"Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne"

"GENTLEMAN JOHNNY BURGOYNE"

MISADVENTURES OF AN ENGLISH GENERAL IN THE REVOLUTION

Note
The following electronic version has been prepared by Frank's grandson David Hyde.

He states that Frank appeared to him in a vision and directed him to create it. Frank also said that he had discussed with Charles Babbage preparing it by means of a steam driven analytical engine but that Thomas J Watson Snr. (a later arrival), recommended the use of an IBM mainframe computer.

Click the following links to view the documentation.

BOOK OF THE WEEK.

"GENTLEMAN JOHNNY BURGOYNE"
The Dramatist-Soldier Who Helped Us Lose America.
(JOHN O' LONDONS WEEKLY - April 14, 1928)

GENERAL JOHN BURGOYNE is one of those military figures who are not conspicuous in popular and patriotic histories. A famous soldier once said that luck was the first requisite of a successful general; Burgoyne had not luck. That is why we hear so little about him. Most of us knew that Burgoyne led one of the British armies against the American troops in the War of Independence that he was surrounded at Saratoga and compelled to surrender with 5,000 men. We also knew that he was a dramatist of some slight distinction, and that made it all the more difficult to take him seriously as a soldier. Moreover when we discovered that after his surrender he became Commander-in-Chief in Ireland and was buried in Westminster Abbey, we began to think that he had not been so unlucky after all.

The villain of the piece.
It has remained for the late Mr. F. J. Hudleston, formerly Librarian at the War Office, to disinter from the mould of forgetfulness and misunderstanding the gallant, likeable, and by no means incompetent soldier who was associated with one of the most epoch-making failures that ever attended British arms. And from Mr. Hudleston's book, "Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne," we learn just the measure of his bad luck.

We first meet Burgoyne when he is a youthful commander of light dragoons, sprinkling his recruiting advertisements with quotations from Shakespeare but licking his men into shape until George III. took such pride in them that he never wearied of inspecting them.

Burgoyne with two other generals Howe and Clinton sailed for America on the Cerebus while London laughed over a wit's remark, "Our Generals may terrify the enemy, the. certainly terrify me." They arrived at Boston to be greeted by another jest :

Behold the Cerebus, the Atlantic plough,
      Her precious cargo, Burgoyne, Clinton, Howe.
                                  Bow wow wow!

Not long after taking up his command in the field, Burgoyne fell into a curious correspondence with a rebel general, Lee, who had been a subordinate of his in Portugal and was later to be a traitor to the American cause. Burgoyne proposed a conference which Lee rejected in the highfalutin language of the day, as it "might create those jealousies and suspicions so natural to a people struggling in the dearest of all causes, that of their liberty, prosperity, wives children, anti their future generation."

"It is as well," says Mr. Hudleston, slyly, "the conference did not take place. It could have only led to a long speech in Gentleman Johnny's best, Parliamentary manner besprinkled with: 'Good God, sirs.'

But Lee did not lose hope of converting his old comrade to the American point of View,"

An eccentric commander.
Blockaded in Boston Burgoyne wrote a farce to be performed by the soldiers: The Americans knowing when the performance was to start attacked the mill at Charlestown at that very moment. The alarm was given and a sergeant outside the playhouse door rushed in upon the stage, crying: "Turn out, turn out! They're at it hammer and tongs." He was as vigorously applauded it, being taken as a character in the play.

Burgoyne was later sent to Canada to carry out a southward advance from that country upon Albany in the State of New York, where he was to meet Howe and St. Leger, "a crazy plan," as Mr. Hudleston tells us, which could only have succeeded had the gods been persuaded to annihilate time and space.

But Burgoyne set out light-heartedly, as became the fine, full-blooded gentleman that he was. Often he was, as a disapproving German lady saw him on the eve of surrender, "very merry and spent the whole night singing and drinking and amusing himself with the wife of a commissary who was his mistress and who like him was fond of champagne." The lady was very beautiful and her husband was doubtless advanced rapidly in, the Service.

At first, Burgoyne's expedition was successful. The important fortress of Ticonderoga was taken, and George III. "ran into the Queen's room, crying : 'I have beat them! Beat all the Americans.' " His Majesty was somewhat premature.

Love and war.
After this success all might have gone well with the campaign had Howe been instructed to march north and join forces with Burgoyne. As for Howe, he had no thoughts save for the lovely Mrs. Loring, whom the Army called "the Sultana." In New York he missed a chance while lunching with a beauty Mrs. Lindly Murray, who detained him with "crafty hospitality" while the American General Putnam got away.

Meanwhile the American forces were closing in round Burgoyne and his ill-assorted host of British and German regulars Canadians and Indians.

The first of the Saratoga battles was on Bemus's Heights, "a very smart and honourable action," as Burgoyne called it, but deciding nothing, unless perhaps the deadliness of the guerilla methods of the Americans.

And Nemesis was waiting for Gentleman Johnny. His army was surrounded, his auxiliaries the Indians were melting away. He called a council of war (it was interrupted by a cannon-ball which whizzed across the table) and sent Major Kingston to open negotiations with the American General Gates; When he met the American's aide-de-camp, Major Kingston "expatiated with taste and eloquence on the beautiful scenery of the Hudson River and the charms of the season!"

What a charming touch of Anglo-Saxon sangfroid that is!

Britain lost her American colonies, but Burgoyne returned to become a dramatist and to write a vigorous apologia.

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"GENTLEMAN JOHNNY BURGOYNE" by 'Frank' Hudleston - (Joan's father).

"GENTLEMAN JOHNNY BURGOYNE"
by 'Frank' Hudleston - (Joan's father).