the fertile pastures of the Walloomsac valley. In vain did Riedesel, who saw the danger of sending a detached body of men through the wilderness with the enemy in easy striking distance, use all influence to which his rank and experience entitled him, to dissuade Burgoyne from his plan. The latter had scant respect for the fighting qualities of New Englanders. In his journals Riedesel thus gives the motives for Baum's hapless expedition:

"Lieutenant-Colonel Baum marched to-day from Fort Miller to the Battenkill. General Burgoyne rode up to him to give him further instructions. As the said general had received intelligence that there was a magazine of considerable importance at Bennington, defended only by a small body of military, he countermanded the instructions he had previously given Baum and ordered him, instead of marching to Manchester and thence to Bennington. to take the direct road, attack the enemy and capture the magazine. General Burgoyne informed General Riedesel upon the latter's return from Fort George of the alteration in his plan respecting the expedition under Lieutenant-Colonel Baum. General Riedesel expressed his fear and astonishment in regard to the danger attending it. General Burgoyne, however, considered the change in the plan necessary for the following reasons: (1.) It would be of great advantage to the army to gather their sub

A Street in Bennington

sistence from the captured magazine of the enemy until supplies could be transported to the army sufficent to last for four weeks. (2.) In case he should move with his whole army against the enemy near Stillwater, General Arnold would not be able to send a strong force against Colonel Baum. (3.) That he had received intelligence that Colonel St. Leger was besieging Fort Stanwix and that Arnold intended to send a considerable force to the relief of that place; therefore it was of the greatest importance that a detachment of the left wing should make a move and thus intimidate the enemy and prevent him from sending this force against St. Leger. These three reasons overruled the representations of General Riedesel."

people of the neigh

boring Vermont and

New

some

York towns,

met Colonel

Skene at Castleton to learn how they might earn the gracious clemency of England's king, but a far greater number fled to the southward. The air was full of panic, but in the Catamount Tavern the hardy makers of a new state never lost their heads. Word had already gone out New Hampshire that New England's border was in danger, and the New Hampshire assembly had called John Stark from his Achillean retirement and summoned him to command a brigade and march at once to Vermont. In Massachusetts the

to

officers of inferior merit. It was this treatment that at this very period was pushing Arnold on the downward road to ruin. Stark, cooler

tempered, less egotistical and more patriotic, retired in March, 1777, with the simple explanation that his self-respect, in view of his honorable service, would no longer allow him to hold his commission. He was living quietly on his farm when New Hampshire summoned him to her service. The state council voted at once to raise a brigade, and John Langdon of Portsmouth, its great-hearted president, pledged all his wealth to guarantee the expense. Stark accepted from New Hampshire what he could not accept from the continental congress, but he accepted the command only upon condition that he should have absolute command of the brigade entrusted to him, to hang upon the left wing and rear of the enemy, and with no responsibility other than to New Hampshire. But for this Stark might have been obliged to submit to the commands of Lincoln, and the whole course of events would have been changed. The Council of Safety at Bennington, acknowledging no allegiance but to itself and Vermont, saw the wisdom of giving Stark independent command and cordially supported him. Thus at a most critical time in the struggle for independence, an engagement of the greatest significance came to be fought under a commander commissioned by, and answerable only to, New Hampshire. This commander was enabled to put his

men of Berkshire and Worcester prepared to respond promptly to a call to arms. The rising had begun.

John Stark was one of the bravest of the brave. He was born at Londonderry, New Hampshire, in 1728, and in 1752, while trapping along Baker's River in Rumney, he was captured by Indians. His experiences with the Indians excel in adventurous romance any tale of fiction that ever was written. After several months' residence at St. Francis, he was ransomed. He won a commission in the seven years' war. He raised a regiment immediately after Concord, and commanded it at Bunker Hill, where the New Hampshire men acquitted themselves well. He was in the Canadian expedition with Arnold, and was at Trenton, where he was spoken of as "the dauntless Stark." But Congress showed an incredible

force in the field through the loyal generosity of the civil head of New Hampshire, and from New Hampshire was sent a brigade of several hundred men, fully half, in all probability, of all the men engaged in the battle on the American side.

Stark went at once, upon accepting the command, to Charlestown, No. 4, on the Connecticut, and began forwarding men. and supplies with the promptness which always characterized him. Proceeding to Manchester, where he arrived on the seventh of August, he met Lincoln, and positively declined that officer's instructions to join Schuyler at Stillwater.

He

had come, he said, to the defence of Vermont, and he could not better harass Burgoyne than by hanging on his flank and rear. To Lincoln's credit be it said, that he accepted Stark's position and agreed, possibly because they were mainly Vermonters whom the Council of Safety ultimately controlled, to let him have such of the force at Manchester as he needed. Learning that Bennington was threat

time to share in the second part of the battle.

Seth Warner was a remarkable man. He was a resident of Bennington, but like a large proportion of the early settlers of Vermont, he was a native of Connecticut, where he was born in 1744, in Woodbury. He was a famous hunter and physician, and was, with the more brusque and impetuous Ethan Allen, the leader of the Vermonters in their early territorial struggle with New York. He marched into Ticonderoga with Allen, and served under Montgomery until Montreal was taken, when he went home, but returned in time to cover the American retreat. After Bennington he was with Gates at Saratoga. His death oc

curred in 1785. He was cool, wise, and brave, able in council, strong in the field.

The little army arrived at Bennington on the ninth and encamped, while Stark, Warner, and the Council of Safety considered the situation, and awaited intelli

ened, Stark marched to that town, accompanied by Colonel Seth Warner, whose regiment of Green Mountain Boys remained at Manchester under Lieutenant Colonel Safford. From this time until the brief campaign was over, Warner was Stark's right-hand man and chief adviser. The plan of battle was the joint work of Stark and Warner; but the latter's regiment only came up from Manchester in

gence from their scouts. Baum had marched from the Battenkill to Cambridge, which he reached on the thirteenth. The next morning he arrived at Sancoick, a small village eight miles from Bennington. Five prisoners were here captured, and Baum wrote to Burgoyne that fifteen hundred to eighteen hundred men were at Bennington, "but they are supposed to leave at our approach."

Indians were only the vanguard of a large force with artillery, advancing on Bennington, he marched out to support Gregg.

Then there was mounting of messengers and hot spurring over the hills; some to Manchester to summon Safford and Warner's Green Mountain boys; others to Massachusetts to alarm the sturdy Berkshire men. The south bound couriers, after a hard ride through Pownal, perhaps straight down Pownal Hill, drew rein in Williamstown at the farm house of Benjamin Simonds, colonel of the North Berkshire regiment, and from there couriers went and summoned North Berkshire to arms. They came at the call, until in some villages not an able-bodied man was left. How many there were it is hard to say. Two or three hundred is now the least number

Boston, and tradition still lively in Berkshire, attest the fact that over five hundred men went from Berkshire to Bennington. The part of Massachusetts in the battle has been underrated and but little understood. It is probable that at least four hundred Berkshire men did yeoman service in the fight under their gallant leader. The pay rolls in Boston. which may not, however, be conclusive as to the actual number of men engaged, show four hundred and three men of Simonds' North Berkshire regiment, from Williamstown, Cheshire, Hancock, East Hoosac, Lanesboro and New Providence. Severai detachments from southern and central Berkshire, under Lieutenant-Colonel Rossiter, of Pittsfield, were also rallied in time to join Simonds' command. With the Pittsfield company came, in his ancient chaise, the Rev.

Thomas Allen, the "fighting parson,' who added to fine mental and spiritual attainments the fiery vigor of the church militant. All these Berkshire men were brought together in twenty-four hours, and marched at once, joining Stark at his position west of Bennington on the night of the fifteenth, in a pouring rain. Not long before this, Schuyler had sumImoned all the Berkshire troops to the northern border and then sent them home again. It was this fact that led Parson Allen, when he dismounted from his chaise and reported to Stark, to say:

"Our Berkshire people have been often called out to no purpose, and if you don't let them fight now they will never turn out again."

Stark promised the impatient parson fighting enough on the morrow. The little army now included three New Hampshire regiments under Colonels Hobart, Stickney and Nichols; the Berkshire militia under Colonel Simonds; and of Vermont troops a force of militia from the east side of the state under Colonel William Williams of Wilmington, a corps of rangers under Colonel Herrick, and two Bennington companies, with other militia from the immediate vicinity of Bennington; the whole numbering from sixteen hundred to two thousand men. The exact number cannot be fixed from any existing data. Nothing can be found to determine the number of Vermonters engaged.

was posted the larger part of Riedesel's Brunswickers under Baum's personal command. At the east of this hill the stream, which is not a large one, made a sharp bend to the south. The eastern front of Baum's position was well protected by the abrupt ascent of the hill and by the breastworks of earth and logs that were thrown up. Where the road to Sancoick crossed the hill, entrenchments were also thrown up, and strong breastworks, on one of which was mounted a cannon in charge of German grenadiers, defended the bridge across the Walloomsac. At this point Fraser's marksmen garrisoned small breastworks on opposite sides of the road, while Canadians occupied several log huts near by. The loyalist corps of Pfister and Peters held a hill east of the

Stark had been joined by the Massachusetts contingent at a point near the junction of the Walloomsac and Hoosick rivers about four miles west of Bennington, where he had encamped on the east side of the Walloomsac. Less than two miles away, on the west bank of the stream, but concealed from view by intervening hills, lay Baum. He had prepared for a defensive battle. A wooded hill had been partly cleared and fortified, and here

The Old Schoolhouse, Bennington.

river where the "Tory breastworks" stood. Away on the west, on his left flank, was placed Baum's second piece of artillery, with a body of grenadiers and Tories.

The morning of the sixteenth of August was bright and clear. The plan upon which the battle was to be fought had