tian people, as to the employment of savages as allies. Especially among the English at home was there manifested at the time a strong reluctance, and even a bold protest and opposition, to the engagement of Indians as mercenaries, as it was known to be utterly impracticable to restrain them from their barbarities within the rules of what is called civilized warfare. The satire, invective, and denunciation which early in our war were poured out upon Burgoyne, for his employment of Indians and for his absurd proclamation on his route, might be regarded as the expression of a widely prevailing sentiment of disapprobation and disgust.
Near the close of this famous and fulsome proclamation addressed to the rebels as he was advancing from Ticonderoga, are these sentences: —
“I have but to give stretch to the Indian forces under my direction
— and they amount to thousands — to overtake the hardened
enemies of Great Britain and America, and I consider them the
same wherever they may lurk. . . . The messengers of justice and
of wrath await them in the field; and devastation, famine, and
every concomitant horror that a reluctant but indispensable
prosecution of military duty must occasion, will bar the way to their
return.”[1]
When afterwards defending himself for enlisting the
savages, Burgoyne said “he spoke daggers, but used none.”
He called these allies “at best a necessary evil;” and he
said their blood-thirsty and plundering propensities, which
he could not restrain, far exceeded the worth of their
services.
- ↑ Life and Correspondence of the Right Honorable John Burgoyne, p. 492.
By E. B. De Fonblanque. London, 1876.
In a rebel parody of this proclamation is the following stanza: —
“ I will let loose the dogs of hell, — Ten thousand Indians, who shall yell And foam and tear and grin and roar, And drench their moccasons in gore; To them I'll give full scope and play From Ticonderog’ to Florida.”
