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.