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.
Further misfortune now crowded upon Burgoyne. The general of that
day had two favorite forms of attack. One was to hold the enemy's
front and throw out a column to march round the flank and attack
his rear, the method of Howe at the Brandywine; the other method
was to advance on the enemy by lines converging at a common
center.
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