aiting news of the final triumph.

Burgoyne did his best. Early in August he had to make a venturesome
stroke to get sorely needed food. Some twenty-five miles east of the
Hudson at Bennington, in difficult country, New England militia had
gathered food and munitions, and horses for transport. The pressure of
need clouded Burgoyne's judgment. To make a dash for Bennington meant a
long and dangerous march. He was assured, however, that a surprise
was possible and that in any case the country was full of friends only
awaiting a little encouragement to come out openly on his side. They
were Germans who lay on Burgoyne's left and Burgoyne sent Colonel Baum,
an efficient officer, with five or six hundred men to attack the New
Englanders and bring in the supplies. It was a stupid blunder to send
Germans among a people specially incensed against the use of these
mercenaries. There was no surprise. Many professing loyalists, seemingly
eager to take the oath of allegiance, met and delayed Baum. When near
Bennington he found in front of him a force barring the way and had to
make a carefully guarded camp for the night. Then five hundred men, some
of them the cheerful takers of the oath of allegiance, slipped round to
his rear and in the morning he was attacked from front and rear.

A hot fight followed which resulted in the complete defeat of the
British. Baum was mortally wounded. Some of his men escaped into the
woods; the rest were killed or captured. Nor was this all. Burgoyne,
scenting danger, had ordered five hundred more Germans to reinforce
Baum. They, too, were attacked and overwhelmed. In all Burgoyne lost
some eight hundred men and four guns. The American loss was seventy.
It shows the spirit of the time that, for the sport of the soldiers,
British prisoners were tied together in pairs and driven by negroes
at the tail of horses. An American soldier described long after, with
regret for his own cruelty, how he had taken a British prisoner who had
had his left eye shot out and mounted him on a horse also without
the left eye, in derision at the captive's misfortune. The British
complained that quarter was refused in the fight. For days tired
stragglers, after long wandering in the woods, drifted into Burgoyne's
camp. This was now near Saratoga, a name destined to be ominous in the
history of the British army.

Further misfortune now crowded upon Burgoyne. The general of that day
had two favorite forms of attack. One w