Soldiers’ travails in an early war

When British Army Gen. John Burgoyne surrendered his army at Saratoga in 1777, more than 5,000 British and German soldiers began an odyssey that would eventually lead them on an epic march from Massachusetts through Connecticut to a new place of internment more than 750 miles away, in Charlottesville, Va. The “Convention Troops,” so called because they capitulated under the Saratoga Articles of Convention with terms that were too favorable for Congress to endorse, marched through our part of northwest Connecticut in late November 1778. It was the longest march made by any force during the American Revolution.

Most of the Germans in the Convention Troops were not Hessians but soldiers from the Principality of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, and these Brunswickers left journals that describe the hardships — and diversions — that they experienced during their passage through the
Nutmeg State.

“The march through the mountains, or the so-called ‘Green Woods’ to Nortfolk [sic], which we took today, had been described to us something very bad, and we were expecting the worst road possible. However, our expectations and every idea of a very bad road were still surpassed … Sometimes rock of 3-4 feet circumference lay in the middle of the road. It was very cold, and the water coming down the mountains was frozen, which made the ascents and descents very difficult for men, and almost impossible for horses. In short, everything was surpassed that could be called a bad road, since in addition the valleys were so swampy that it was almost impossible to walk through them.” — Du Roi “the Elder,” Lieutenant and Adjutant. 

A servant of Captain Wilhelm von Geismar kept a journal that includes this entry, translated for me by Liom Miles of Stockbridge, that records his accommodations when his division reached the tiny settlement of New Hartford: 

“November 19th — In the morning at 9 o’clock went from here. The whole day we had a very bad road and came about evening to New Hartford, where we were quartered in a public house. But we had very bad quarters. Then the militia guard came, who transported our division into a house. The officers indeed had an apartment, a room where two beds stood. About 10 o’clock four farmers came into the room without asking, undressed, and lay down on the two beds. Because the officers were not now in the same state of mind as the farmers, they went out of the room and slept partly in their coach, or at the fire which we made near the house. 16 miles. The night was very cold.”

It is hard to imagine what these men, prisoners in a foreign land, endured as they made their way through Connecticut and a succession of other states in early winter on their way to Virginia. The populous viewed them either as curiosities or as hirelings of the king, though their officers did manage to organize balls in several communities where they danced the nights away, including one in Salisbury. About 50 Germans and 30 British dropped by the wayside or slipped off into the forest during the time the prisoners passed through Connecticut, and one or two remained in the community and put down roots here.

Tim Abbott is program director of Housatonic Valley Association’s Litchfield Hills Greenprint. His blog is at www.greensleeves.typepad.com.