From the Battlefield to the Stage: The

Many Lives of General John Burgoyne

Norman S. Poser
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From the Battlefield to the Stage
From the
Battlefield
to the Stage
The Many Lives
of General John
Burgoyne

Norman S. Poser

McGill-Queen’s University Press

Montreal & Kingston • London • Chicago
© Norman S. Poser 2022

ISBN 978-0-2280-1453-9 (cloth)

ISBN 978-0-2280-1563-5 (ePDF)
ISBN 978-0-2280-1564-2 (ePUB)

Legal deposit fourth quarter 2022

Bibliothèque nationale du Québec

Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest

free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: From the battlefield to the stage : the many lives of

General John Burgoyne / Norman S. Poser.
Names: Poser, Norman S., 1928– author.
Description: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20220219826 | Canadiana
(ebook) 20220219931 | ISBN 9780228014539 (cloth) |
ISBN 9780228015635 (ePDF) | ISBN 9780228015642 (ePUB)
Subjects: LCSH : Burgoyne, John, 1722-1792. | LCSH : Generals—
Great Britain—Biography. | LCSH : Dramatists, English—
Biography. | LCSH : Saratoga Campaign, N.Y., 1777. | LCSH :
United States—History—Revolution, 1775-1783—British
forces. | LCSH : Great Britain—Politics and government—18th
century. | LCGFT : Biographies.
Classification: LCC DA 67.1.B 8 P 67 2022 | DDC 973.3/41092—dc23

Set in 11/14.5 Adobe Caslon Pro

Book design & typesetting by Garet Markvoort, zijn digital
To Judy and Suzy
 Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 3
1 Early Days 10
2 Army, Elopement, Exile 17
3 Raiding the French Coast 27
4 Belle Île: Blood and Champagne 31
5 Portugal: Making a Reputation 39
6 A Soldier in Peacetime 46
7 The Preston Election 58
8 Politics and India 64
9 The Maid of the Oaks 71
10 A General without a Command 80
11 How to Plan a Disaster 95
12 The Saratoga Campaign: Before Crossing the Hudson 105
13 Dangerous Allies 122
14 The Saratoga Campaign: After Crossing the Hudson 131
15 The Captive Army 140
16 The Politics of Saratoga 155
17 Man of the Theatre 164
18 Last Days 175
Epilogue 184

Notes 189
Bibliography 231
Index 241
Acknowledgments

I am enormously grateful to the librarians who assisted me with cheer-

ful efficiency in the research for the book. They include Jean Davis
at Brooklyn Law School Library, Moira Goff at the Garrick Club
Library, Barbara Bieck at the New York Society Library, and Mary
Painter of the Blackburn (UK) with Darwen Library and Information
Service. I also wish to thank the librarians at the New York Public
Library, British Library, J.P. Morgan Library, New York Historical So-
ciety, and Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The members of the writing group at the Lotos Club gave me helpful
criticism of several chapters of the book. They are Diana Benet, Peter
Friedman, Steve Greenwald, Yvonne Korshak, Rick Petersen, Paula
Powell, Robert Ravitz, Ed Schiff, Gloria Shafer, and Renee Summers.
Others who gave me valuable advice and assistance include Profes-
sor Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy of the University of Virginia Law
School; Dr Stephen Lloyd, curator of the Derby Collection at Knows-
ley Hall; and Jim McIntyre, editor of the Journal of the Seven Years War
Association. My niece Margaret Poser helped me find illustrations for
the book, and my longtime friend Jeffrey Knight gave me useful and
interesting information about the clubs on St James’s Street, including
Brooks’s and its betting book.
Above all, I thank my daughter, Susan Poser, and my wife, Judy
Cohn, both of whom maintained a continuous and active interest in
my research and writing. They both read drafts of every chapter, some
of it more than once, and gave me many helpful and perceptive com-
ments and suggestions. Our discussions of the book as it progressed
were wonderfully productive. Words cannot adequately express how
much I appreciate their patience and devotion to the project.
From the Battlefield to the Stage
Introduction

No British general has been more written about than John Burgoyne,
not even the great commanders Marlborough or Wellington, who won
victory after victory.1 By contrast, most people have heard of Burgoyne
for one critical event in his life, the surrender of his army at Sara-
toga, New York, in 1777, regarded as the turning point in the American
Revolutionary War. This humane, ambitious, patriotic, sensual, socia-
ble, proud, brave, and sometimes reckless man deserves to be remem-
bered for more than being the cause or scapegoat of one of Britain’s
worst military disasters.
My purpose in this book is to paint a full and convincing picture
of Burgoyne in the context of the culture and politics of eighteenth-
century Britain. He was an active member of Parliament for thirty
years and a playwright whose works, successfully produced at Drury
Lane, London’s leading theatre, took a humorous but penetrating look
at the social life of which he was a part. The mildly erotic verse he
enjoyed writing must have delighted his friends. He proved his bravery
and leadership ability on European and American battlefields, and he
socialized in London’s elite gambling clubs and fashionable drawing
rooms. Although his formal education ended at the age of fifteen, he
had the easy familiarity with classical literature expected of an Eng-
lish gentleman.

My interest in Burgoyne began by accident. I was doing research at the

J.P. Morgan Library in New York for a book on the eighteenth-century
London stage when I came across a letter Burgoyne wrote to David
Garrick, manager of the Drury Lane Theatre, about a play he had writ-
ten. Was the author some minor playwright with the same name as the
well-known general, who was trying to persuade Garrick to produce
his play? But no: it soon became clear to me that the writer of the
letter – and the play – was indeed General Burgoyne of Saratoga.
4 From the Battlefield to the Stage

The letter, which to my knowledge has never been published, came

from the pen of no ordinary general or, for that matter, no ordinary
playwright. It shows a generous character: he wanted his share in the
profits to go to a theatrical charity. Nor did he desire any personal
publicity, unless it would help the play’s popularity. The play, The Maid
of the Oaks, was performed that year (1774) at Drury Lane and was
followed by three more of his plays, also produced there successfully.

Political power in eighteenth-century Britain was held by an oligarchy

of about two hundred immensely wealthy landowning families. A man
could hardly rise to the top in politics or the military unless he be-
longed to, or married into, one of these families. Burgoyne’s connec-
tion with the Stanley family – the earls of Derby – shaped his life and
career. Burgoyne, who came from a military, not aristocratic, family,
joined the Stanleys in a dramatic fashion: he eloped with Charlotte,
the Eleventh Earl’s youngest daughter. Although he was ambitious
and gained immeasurably by the connection, it would be a mistake to
be too cynical; it was a love marriage that lasted for twenty-five years
until Charlotte’s death. Once the earl became convinced of Burgoyne’s
good character, impeccable manners, formidable ambition, and high
intelligence, he enthusiastically welcomed him into his family and pro-
vided him with the influence and money required to further his career.
After Burgoyne died, the young Twelfth Earl of Derby (Burgoyne’s
nephew by marriage) provided his son with the care and education
that enabled him to become, like his father, a British army general.
A noble connection gave Burgoyne the means necessary for success;
to this he added his own talents and ambition. As a young colonel
commanding a cavalry regiment in Portugal in the Seven Years War,
he proved his bravery and returned home a national hero. As a military
leader he was far ahead of his time. Unlike most other commanding
officers of the day, Burgoyne believed soldiers should be treated hu-
manely; he hated flogging, the punishment of choice in the armies of
Europe, including the British. He shaped the men under his command
into an efficient fighting force. He treated the officers and men he led
with firmness, tempered by kindness and understanding, and so earned
their love, even in defeat.
 Introduction 5

Burgoyne’s devotion to his men was not just talk. When he and
his army were held captive by the Americans after the surrender at
Saratoga, an American officer made an unprovoked attack on one of
Burgoyne’s soldiers with a bayonet. Burgoyne persuaded the American
general in charge of the prisoners to court-martial the officer. Instead
of delegating the prosecution to a junior officer, Burgoyne took on the
task himself.
As a member of Parliament, Burgoyne supported the rule of law,
fought the corruption of the East India Company, and advocated reli-
gious toleration. He voted with the government on most matters, but
on issues that he regarded of great importance to his country he voted
his conscience.
In peacetime Burgoyne made a tour of Prussia, Austria, and France
to study the military situation of these countries – and it seems he did
a little spying on the side. The report he made to the prime minister
when he completed the mission reveals the wide range of his interests,
from mundane (though not unimportant) matters such as the soldiers’
clothing, to issues of international concern such as the possibility of a
new war in central Europe.

Burgoyne’s London was the unmatched centre of the Western world.

It was said at the time that “the parallelogram between Oxford-street,
Piccadilly, Regent-street, and Hyde Park encloses more intelligence
and human ability, to say nothing of wealth and beauty, than the world
has ever collected in such a space before.”2 In London, Burgoyne was
in his element. He loved its theatres, taverns, clubs, and fashionable
drawing rooms. He would have agreed with Samuel Johnson’s dictum
that “when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in
London all that life can afford.”3
Burgoyne was the most sociable of men. He counted among his
friends many leaders of Britain’s political, artistic, and intellectual
life, including philosopher-statesman Edmund Burke, political leader
Charles James Fox, portrait painter Joshua Reynolds, actor-manager
David Garrick, historian Edward Gibbon, playwright Richard Brins-
ley Sheridan, biographer James Boswell, and architect Robert Adam.
His friendship with the Duc de Choiseul, one of France’s greatest
6 From the Battlefield to the Stage

statesmen, lasted for thirty years, even while their two countries were
at war with each other.

Burgoyne was ambitious, perhaps to a fault: like many others in

eighteenth-century Britain, he used his family connections shamelessly
to obtain preferment. His other personal flaws were those common to
many upper-class Englishmen of this time. In an era when gambling
was a national passion, he frequented Brooks’s Club on St James’s
Street, which has been called the “greatest gambling den” in London.4
He was not only a skilled card player but was willing to lay a wager
with a friend or acquaintance on almost any contingent event. Despite
his close and loving relationship with his wife, he had a reputation as
a womanizer, which he confessed to in a private memorandum and in
his will.5 He loved wine, especially champagne, if that can be called a
weakness, but there is no evidence that he overindulged to an extent
that it affected his judgment or behaviour. He was a proud man who
could act with barely suppressed fury if he detected an insult. During a
hotly contested election campaign, he appeared in the hustings carry-
ing two loaded pistols and paid a large fine for inciting violence.

And of course, there was Saratoga. The problem here is that there is
almost too much information rather than too little. The main facts
are not seriously in dispute. Burgoyne led an army of 7,400 British
and German soldiers and Native American warriors from Canada into
the rebellious North American colonies in June 1777; and four months
later he surrendered the exhausted remnants of his army to the over-
whelming forces of American general Horatio Gates at Saratoga in
upstate New York.
Who should be blamed for the defeat? Historians on both sides
of the Atlantic have debated this question for the past 250 years. Was
Burgoyne the man who lost America by his recklessness or his lack of
the skills and experience required of a general, or was he a scapegoat
for the incompetence and bad decisions of others? Should the princi-
pal blame for the British defeat be pinned on General William Howe,
who abandoned Burgoyne’s army in upstate New York, leaving it to
face overwhelming American forces alone? Or should it rest on Lord
 Introduction 7

George Germain, the secretary of state for the colonies, who allowed
Burgoyne and Howe, commanding the only two sizable British armies
fighting the American colonists, to be separated and out of touch with
each other? Howe and Germain, both of them younger sons of noble-
men, escaped unpunished after Saratoga; Burgoyne, connected by
marriage to a noble family but not himself a nobleman, was effectively
ostracized by the king and his ministers.
Finally, was this a war that Britain could not win even if all the
generals and government ministers involved in planning and fighting
the war had been totally competent? Given the difficulty of suppress-
ing a largely hostile population spread out over more than 1,100 miles
of mostly wilderness; the problems of conducting a war at a distance of
3,000 miles; the lack of Loyalist support; and, not least, the tactical
skill and ideological zeal of the colonists, Britain might well have lost
the war even if it had won all the battles it fought.

As indicated above, Burgoyne has been much written about. There

are at least seven biographies and one novel.6 The first biography, by
the journalist Edward De Fonblanque, written at the request of his
granddaughters, was published in 1876.7 While it has the drawback,
common to many authorized biographies, of glossing over or ignoring
his subject’s flaws, it has proved invaluable to Burgoyne’s later biog-
raphers, including this one, because it reprints many letters he wrote
and received, the originals of which have since disappeared.
The next Burgoyne biography that I know of, by F.J. Hudleston,
then librarian of the British War Office, came out in 1927.8 As to be ex-
pected, the author is knowledgeable on military subjects, and he spices
up the book with numerous amusing and interesting digressions. The
main problem with this highly readable book is that, although it con-
tains a ten-page bibliography, it lacks footnotes or endnotes.
Between 1973 and 1983 no fewer than five Burgoyne biographies
appeared.9 There has been nothing since then, except for chapters de-
voted to Burgoyne in books on Revolutionary War generals, as well as
many books and articles on the Saratoga campaign.
Despite Burgoyne’s celebrity, there are large gaps in our knowledge
about his ancestry, his childhood, his first days in the army, the years he
8 From the Battlefield to the Stage

spent as a socialite and gambler in London, and the five years he and
his wife spent in France and Italy. And there is scarcely any informa-
tion available about the actress and singer Susan Caulfield, with whom
Burgoyne had four children out of wedlock after the death of his wife.
One of his earlier biographers, James Lunt, notes that there is an
“absence of any original letters and memoranda [by Burgoyne]. The
most diligent search has failed to disclose anything of real value.” Lunt
concludes that Burgoyne’s descendants, to suppress information about
their illegitimacy, destroyed their father’s personal correspondence.10
The scarcity of source material has led Burgoyne’s previous biog-
raphers to offer differing – and sometimes inconsistent – versions
of some of the important events of his life and even to serve up, as
facts, conclusions that have no basis in contemporaneous sources. I
note a few examples of these questionable assertions in the book, one
of which I will mention here. More than a century after Burgoyne’s
death, George Bernard Shaw invented the nickname “Gentleman
Johnny” for the semi-fictional John Burgoyne he created in the play
The Devil’s Disciple, having first discarded “Frosty Fred.”11 But at least
one Burgoyne biographer writes that Burgoyne’s soldiers called him
that a hundred years earlier.12
As to Burgoyne’s character, his biographers disagree so much that
it is hard to believe they are describing the same man. A twentieth-
century writer had this to say: “[H]is irresistibly charming manner;
his genial, kindly nature, his unquestioned reputation for courage –
were impeccable credentials in every circle.”13 On the other hand, the
biographer Richard Hargrove concluded that Burgoyne had few gifts
as a politician; lacked a brilliant mind; gave incoherent and pompous
speeches; was an ineffective field commander; depended on his wife’s
family connections; and appeared to the public as a buffoon.14
The lack of solid information posed a difficulty for someone writing
a new life of Burgoyne. In my own research I found a few of Bur-
goyne’s hitherto unpublished letters, but Lunt was surely correct when
he concludes that much valuable source material has been lost or, more
likely, destroyed by his descendants. The difficulty cannot be ignored
or glossed over; the reader is entitled to know what is known and
what is not. In this book I avoid arbitrarily filling in the blanks where
 Introduction 9

evidence is lacking or disputed. In such instances I make the problem

clear and state my own view, based on the historical context and my
judgment as to the reliability of the available sources. Burgoyne was an
extraordinary man who led an event-filled life; the authentic story is
worth telling; it needs no embellishment.
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