After General Arthur St. Clair withdrew from Fort Ticonderoga on July 5, 1777, General Simon Fraser defeated the Continental army's rear guard at Hubbardton in what is now Vermont. In this hotly contested battle, the British had about 35 killed and 140 wounded, while the Revolutionaries lost about 40 dead and 300 captured (many of whom were wounded). Although the remaining Continental forces were compelled to escape the battlefield, the British ended their hot pursuit of the larger Revolutionary army under St. Clair.

St Clair had initially placed the rear guard under the command of Colonel Ebenezer Francis. After a long, hard march of 20 miles from Fort Ticonderoga on July 5, Francis, along with Colonel Nathan Hale (not the executed spy), joined forces with Colonel Seth Warner of Vermont at Hubbardton. St. Clair's orders were for Warner to then take command, since he knew the local area, and to continue on to Castle Town, six miles down the road, where the main force was encamped. With about 1,200 Continentals and several hundred militia a few miles down the road for support, Warner decided that his men were too exhausted to continue. He bivouacked for the night at Hubbardton in what he thought was a defensible position. Fraser, with about 650 British crack troops, camped about three miles away that night. A few miles behind him was a force of several hundred German troops under the command of General Friedrich von Riedesel. Frasier and Riedesel agreed to get their troops moving at 3:00 a.m. to see if they could catch the Revolutionaries.

About 7:00 a.m., just as the Revolutionaries were beginning to break camp, the British under Fraser surprised Warner's men. Fraser struck right in the middle of a hastily formed Continental line and sent Major Alexander Lindsay, earl of Balcarres, with light infantry to turn the Revolutionary left flank. Outnumbered and meeting heavier resistance than expected, Fraser was in a precarious position. The Revolutionaries had held the attack in the center in check, and his own left flank (the Revolutionary right) was in danger of being turned. Knowing that Riedesel should be arriving quickly, Fraser continued to push on the Continental left, and he had his troops scramble up some high ground to cut off the road to Castle Town. In the meantime, a few miles away, the Revolutionary militia, despite orders to march toward the battle, headed in the opposite direction. As soon as Riedesel came upon the scene, he quickly determined to reinforce the British left and turn the Revolutionary right. With his band playing and his men singing to make it sound as if a larger force was arriving, he sent elite jagers and grenadiers into action. Both the Revolutionary right and left now collapsed, and Colonel Francis, who had led some of the stoutest resistance, was killed. The remaining Revolutionary forces went into a pell-mell retreat that quickly turned into a rout in which Colonel Hill was captured. Of the three Continental colonels on the field, only Warner escaped as he issued his last command of the battle: "Scatter and meet at Manchester" (in Vermont some 30 miles away). The battle had lasted about an hour and a half.

Bibliography:

Richard M. Ketchum, Saratoga: Turning Point of America's Revolutionary War (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1997).

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