American Revolution · 1777–1778

Why Did the Battle of Saratoga Matter?

By the Aurelius editorial team · 3 min read · Updated 15 October 2026

Last time: Congress declared independence in July 1776. Now the new nation had to win the war, and it needed allies.

Before sailing for America in 1777, General John Burgoyne wrote a bet into the book of a London club: he would be home, victorious, by Christmas. By October he was surrounded in the woods of upstate New York, his army shrinking and his food running out.

A plan to split the colonies

Burgoyne's plan was to march south from Canada along Lake Champlain and the Hudson River to Albany. A second column would come east along the Mohawk Valley, and the British commander in New York, General William Howe, was expected to help from the south. Holding the Hudson would cut off New England, the heart of the rebellion.

The plan was never properly coordinated. Lord George Germain, the minister in London, also approved Howe's own campaign to capture Philadelphia, the rebel capital. Howe took Philadelphia in September; Burgoyne was left largely on his own.

Into the wilderness

Burgoyne began well, taking Fort Ticonderoga in early July almost without a fight. Then the wilderness slowed him. Americans felled trees across the roads and wrecked bridges, and his army of about 7,000 British and German regulars, with Canadian, Loyalist and Native allies, needed weeks to cover some twenty miles.

In August came two blows. At Bennington, New England militia under John Stark destroyed a German detachment sent to seize horses and supplies, and the column from the west abandoned its siege of Fort Stanwix. Meanwhile, the killing of a young woman, Jane McCrea, by warriors allied to Burgoyne became a rallying story, though she was engaged to a Loyalist officer. Militiamen poured into the American camp.

Battles at Bemis Heights

General Horatio Gates dug in on Bemis Heights, a ridge commanding the Hudson road, behind defences laid out by the Polish engineer Tadeusz Kościuszko. On 19 September Burgoyne attacked at Freeman's Farm. He held the field but lost about 600 men he could not replace, many of his officers picked off by Daniel Morgan's riflemen.

On 7 October Burgoyne tried again and was beaten. The most aggressive American on the field was Benedict Arnold, who had quarrelled with Gates and had been stripped of his command. He led attacks on the British redoubts until a musket ball shattered his leg.

Surrender

Burgoyne retreated a few miles north to Saratoga, where an American force roughly three times the size of his own surrounded him. On 17 October 1777 he surrendered nearly 6,000 men. Gates agreed they could sail home if they promised not to serve in America again, but Congress found reasons to break the agreement, and the “Convention Army” stayed prisoner until the war ended.

Arnold later turned traitor. At the battlefield today, a monument shows only a boot, honouring his wounded leg without naming him.

Franklin's Paris

Benjamin Franklin had been in France since December 1776, a celebrity in a fur cap playing the simple American sage. France was already secretly sending money and weapons, much of it through a front company run by the playwright Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais. Much of the powder fired at Saratoga was French.

The foreign minister, the Comte de Vergennes, wanted proof the Americans could win before he risked an open war. News of Saratoga reached Paris in early December 1777, and Vergennes also feared that a shaken Britain would now offer the colonists generous peace terms. On 6 February 1778 France signed treaties recognising the United States and promising to fight until its independence was secure. Spain joined the war against Britain in 1779, as France's ally rather than America's.

In their own words

“The essential and direct End of the present defensive alliance is to maintain effectually the liberty, Sovereignty, and independance absolute and unlimited of the said united States, as well in Matters of Gouvernement as of commerce.”

Treaty of Alliance between France and the United States, Article 2, 6 February 1778

Signed in Paris by Conrad Alexandre Gérard for France and Benjamin Franklin, Silas Deane and Arthur Lee for the United States. Spelling as in the English text ratified by Congress.

Why it happened

• Britain's plan to cut off New England by holding the Hudson valley.
• Poor coordination between Burgoyne, Howe and Germain in London.
• Mass turnout of New England and New York militia in the late summer of 1777.

What happened next

• France entered the war in 1778, followed by Spain in 1779, turning a colonial rebellion into a global war.
• French troops and, above all, a French fleet made the decisive victory possible in 1781. Read the story →
• The cost of the war deepened the French crown's debts, which helped bring on the crisis of 1789.

Why it still matters

The alliance was remembered. On 4 July 1917, soon after American troops reached France, Colonel Charles E. Stanton stood at Lafayette's grave in Paris and declared, “Lafayette, we are here.” The line is often credited to General John Pershing, but it was Stanton's, and it repaid a debt that dated from 1778.

Connected stories

• The Declaration of Independence: Only a formally independent nation could sign a treaty with France.
• The Trap at Yorktown: The alliance born after Saratoga supplied the fleet and troops that trapped Cornwallis in 1781.

Sources

• Richard M. Ketchum, Saratoga: Turning Point of America's Revolutionary War (1997)
• Stacy Schiff, A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America (2005)
• Robert Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763–1789 (1982; rev. 2005)
• Treaty of Alliance between the United States and France, 6 February 1778 (Avalon Project, Yale Law School)

Images are credited under each picture. Paintings and photographs come from public collections via Wikimedia Commons; scenes with no surviving image are marked as illustrations.