Naturalist's Almanac

The Battle of Bennington, which occurred on August 16, 1777, isn’t celebrated by many people besides Vermonters, and many Vermonters aren’t even clear about why Vermont’s state offices are closed that day. Furthermore, it wasn’t even fought in Vermont.
But it was indeed a crucial battle, the first in a series of events that led to what historians now consider the turning point of the American Revolution. It also demonstrates how geography and weather shape history.

By the summer of 1777, British General John Burgoyne was on a roll. He was moving southward from Canada, capturing American forts as he went. He intended to continue straight down the Lake Champlain and Hudson River Valleys to Albany and cut New England off from the rest of the American colonies.

But then he encountered geography. The southern end of Lake Champlain gives way to marshes and swamps, and Burgoyne had to portage his military equipment and supplies overland to the Hudson River. It was rough going, and he realized he would need more supplies to continue his victorious trip south.

He heard about a well-stocked storehouse in Bennington and sent a detachment of raiders to take what they could. These soldiers, many of whom were German cavalry without horses, had an exasperating trip. As one of the officers later wrote: “One prodigious forest, bottomed in swamps and morasses, covered the whole face of the country.”

What geography didn’t take care of, the weather did. When the raiders, who were under the command of a German officer named Friedrich Baum, finally reached the Bennington area, they decided to build earthworks on a knoll called Walloomsac Heights in New York.

At that point, it began to rain. As David Ludlum puts it in his book, The Weather Factor, “The hard rain washed down the dirt walls, filled the trenches with water, and made the troops miserable in their exposed position on a hillside.”

The rain also gave the American volunteers who had begun gathering in Bennington an extra day to organize. The rest, as they say, is history. The untrained Americans defeated Baum’s exhausted and soaked soldiers, Burgoyne suffered his first major setback, and two months later he surrendered at Saratoga.

I would probably be stretching it to say that Burgoyne was done in by geography and weather, but at what we celebrate each year as the Battle of Bennington, a detachment of his unhappy soldiers certainly were.

MORE INFORMATION

National Park Service
http://www.nps.gov/history/nr/twhp/wwwlps/lessons/107bennington/107bennington.htm

This National Park Services Web site starts with a brief overview followed by a Teaching With Historic Places lesson plan that includes historical context, maps, readings, illustrations, articles, and links to other resources.

Battle of Bennington - Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Bennington


This detailed article recounts the background and the battle and offers a chart summarizing the combatants, commanders, numbers of soldiers involved, and casualties. It includes numerous cross references to related articles and a few external links.

Bennington Battle Monument
http://www.historicvermont.org/bennington/bennington3.html

The Bennington Battle Monument is a Vermont State Historic Site and as such has its own Web page, which explains the prelude to the battle, the battle, and information about the monument. It includes some interesting photographs.