Day 13–Ft. Ticonderoga and Saratoga
“We are coming to a time when forts are becoming irrelevant”–Jim, our tour guide
Our trip to Ft. Ticonderoga was good not just for the information about the fort itself, but for what it actually portended for the future of the Revolutionary War, in terms of how to fight one. About a half mile from the fort itself, General Montcalm of the French Army readied himself to fight a vastly superior (at least in size) British force about 4-5 times the size of what he had under his command. Montcalm did have some fortifications, but still doubted he would live through the day. However, the British apparently had only been taught one particular way of staging a battle and marched right in, line after line, and suffered huge casualties compared to the French (2000 vs. 554). This punched a hole in theory of England’s unquestioned dominance in the field of battle, and, even more important, the loss was witnessed by a few on the British side who would, in future years, be siding with the American rebellion (Ebeneezer Larned, Putnam, etc.), and saw that some change of approach might the way to go. They would share this information with others during the Revolutionary War, and pass on the now-punctured myth of the redcoat dominance. I remarked to our guide that often this willingness to reassess strategy had served the United States well in other conflicts, not to mention a decentralized decision-making process that has shown confidence in persons in all ranks of the armed forces. Ft. Tinconderoga was loaded with lots of good information in a series of rooms within the fort itself. Jim also gave a very useful baseball analogy to the types of heavy weaponry used in and around its confines:
1)Cannon–”line drive”–usually aimed at the wall, not necessarily discharged at close range.
2)Howitzers–”fly ball”–shot over the wall, often with shells meant to explode over the air above the target, whose force will will knock down the opposing troops.
3)Mortars–”pop fly”–shells also explode in the air with same hoped-for result, though firing may be from closer range, due to the arc of the actual shot.
Jim also told us that the cannons, sent from France, were each inscribed with the motto–in Latin– ”the final argument of kings”. I’m sure this analogy will help simplify the explanation for my students (as an aside, I talked with Paul Zschokke about other examples of cannons used in battle, and he told me that at Gettysburg, untested fuse lengths on the shot fired from Southern cannons may have lessened their impact on the Union forces they were being used on in this pivotal battle–one of the many untold stories of that conflict). Also, one of the re-enactors at the fort told me that winters here for the American troops were every bit as bad Valley Forge, when the army stayed here after marching down from Canada. The soldiers were often reduced to eating shoe leather, with firewood being a three-mile walk from the place. What they didn’t have was a General Washington to lend a more publicized story to their plight.
On to Saratoga. I found Jim’s retelling–as we sat in the field–about this place being the turning point of the war to be very dramatic. What lends even more realism to the scene is the fact that the battlefield has been left relatively untouched from what it looked like at the time of the fight,especially in terms of the ravines, rivers, and hills on the land (some trees may have grown up in the time since the engagement). But here it was– the finest troops the British could put on the field, the kind of soldiers who had made other fighting forces run at the sight of them. They commence the action and–the rebels don’t run. They fire back! And Jim explains that at that point the tide of the war changes, as the Americans–an apparently more battle-tested group of fighters–refuses to yield. The Revolutionary War is about to take on the analogy offered by Ken Jackson earlier in this trip where he likens this conflict to the Vietnam War, in that it is a much longer, much more expensive, much more bloody engagement than the leaders had previously led their countries to believe. Whether–when each nation, the U.S. and England, at the apparent height of their powers–began looking for some sort of face-saving exit strategy is unquestionably open to many learned historians’ interpretations.
