“Arnold displayed more real military genius and inspiration than all the generals put together, on both sides, engaged in the war, with the most undaunted personal courage.”

—Charles Knight; History of England, Vol. I, p. 430.

ILLUSTRATIONS

PETER MERRILL OF ARUNDEL
In the style of Ralph Earl

ELLEN PHIPPS
In the style of Thomas Sully

CAP HUFF
In the style of Charles Willson Peale

GENERAL BENEDICT ARNOLD
In the style of John Trumbull

SHABONOCK, A SAUK
In the style of Langdon Towne

JOSEPH MARIE VERRIEUL
In the style of Gilbert Stuart

MARIE DE SABREVOIS
In the style of John Singleton Copley

DOC MEANS
In the style of John Mason Furness

“A rabble in arms, flushed with success and insolence.”

—General Burgoyne to Lord Rochfort describing American troops before Boston.

I

IT WAS Cap Huff who said that no business or profession, not even the managing of a distillery, can provide the profusion of delights to be encountered in a good war. I have not found it so; and four my part I want no more of such delights as the powder-blackened faces of the men who died beside us aboard the row-galleys on Lake Champlain, the painted masks of the greasy Indians that laid us by the heels, and the dreadful labors we endured before we stopped the British. Unfortunately I have others to consider; and it is for their sakes that I recall the burdens of those nightmare days.

In the beginning I must say that this is no book for those who swear by old wives’ fables, holding all Americans brave, all Englishmen honorable and all Frenchmen gallant. It cannot please such innocents as are convinced that men in public office always set the nation’s welfare above their own, nor those who think all soldiers patriots. It will disappoint the credulous who cherish the delusion that patriotism burns high in every breast in the hour of a country’s peril. In it there is scant fare for romantics who wish to hear how courage and ability bring greater recognition than mediocrity and bluster, how virtue always triumphs, and how cowards meet a fitting retribution. Those who crave such poppycock must turn to fairy tales for undeveloped minds; for I am obliged to deal with facts and write what I conceive to be the truth.

… My father’s letter was delivered to me in our London lodgings, early on a March evening in 1776. When the letter arrived, my brother Nathaniel and I were on the point of setting out for Ranelagh, the occasion being a special entertainment at that resort of fashion because of somebody’s birthday: the Queen’s, it may have been, or that of one of the King’s innumerable royal relatives in Germany.