By now darkness had fallen and the Second Battle of Saratoga had ended. At 1:00 a.m., with his army shattered, Burgoyne issued an order for the troops still on the field to withdraw. British and German losses for the day totaled 278 killed, 331 wounded, and 285 captured–roughly half the force that had ventured forth that morning. America

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Burgoyne’s army began a quiet retreat north late the next night. Hampered by heavy rain and harassed by American militia, the infantry, artillery, and the bateaux floating up the Hudson River made slow progress. By the evening of October 9 the army had reached Saratoga, only eight miles from the battlefield, with American forces completely surrounding it. Burgoyne opened negotiations on October 14, and after some haggling over terms, Gentleman Johnny surrendered his army three days later.

The most significant result of the American victory was that it convinced Louis XVI of France to support the American cause. On February 6, 1778, American commissioners and the French government signed the Franco-American Alliance. By the middle of March, France and Great Britain were in a state of war. American fortunes would ebb and flow for some time, but French cash, soldiers, and naval support would permanently buttress their efforts.

Gates, whom Arnold called ‘the greatest poltroon in the world and many other genteel qualifications,’ had contributed little to either battle. His plan to hold his position and fight from behind breastworks made tactical sense. But it smacked of extreme caution at a time when his army had a decisive edge in manpower and when aggression was the order of the day. ‘This gentleman [Gates] is a mere child of fortune,’ Major General Nathanael Greene wrote to Brigadier General Alexander McDougall the following January; ‘the foundation of all the Northern successes was laid long before his arrival there; and Arnold and Lincoln were the principal instruments in compleating the work.’ Washington agreed and presented both men with elaborate sets of French epaulets as symbols of his thanks.

Nevertheless, Gates made his name with the victory. Congress authorized the minting of a gold medal in his honor. New Jersey governor William Livingston declared that Gates’s ‘glory is as yet unrivalled in the annals of America.’ In 1780 a crushing defeat in the Battle of Camden, South Carolina, would take much of the luster off Gates’s reputation. The capable Greene would replace him.

Arnold was conspicuously absent from the formal British surrender ceremony at Saratoga. By mid-October he lay convalescing in an Albany hospital. (Lincoln, wounded on October 8, also missed the ceremony.) Gates downplayed Arnold’s role in the battles, but Arnold had essentially directed the first battle and clinched victory in the second. Burgoyne later told Parliament that he had expected, with good reason, that Gates would keep his men within their fixed lines. But when ‘Arnold chose to give rather than receive the attack,’ Burgoyne lost the chance to follow up with a move on Gates’s right (particularly during the second battle). The aggressive tactics convinced British Lieutenant Thomas Anburey, for one, that the Americans were ‘not that contemptible enemy we had hitherto imagined them, incapable of standing a regular engagement, and that they would only fight behind strong earthworks.’

Arnold never again led American troops in battle. His wound kept him on inactive duty until the summer of 1780. On September 25 Arnold fled to the enemy. Papers captured from British officer and spy Major John André revealed that Arnold had plotted to turn West Point over to the British.

Arnold ultimately defected due to perceived grievances he had suffered at the hands of Congress and the military, his mounting debts, corruption charges filed against him by Pennsylvania civil authorities that resulted in Arnold demanding an investigation to clear his name, and his indignation at the French alliance.

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