Battle of Freeman's Farm
First Battle of Saratoga: British hold Freeman's Farm but their advance stalls
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Original prompt & settings (JSON) ↗The British won possession of the field and lost roughly twice as many men as the army that walked away from it.
19 September 1777: contact at Freeman's Farm
Burgoyne's army left camp in three columns on 19 September 1777 and moved south toward the American fortifications at Bemis Heights, near present-day Stillwater, New York.
Shortly after noon, Daniel Morgan's riflemen ran into Burgoyne's center column near Freeman's Farm. Benedict Arnold then fed successive American regiments into the fighting, managing the forward battle from a distance.
Seesaw, then the late reinforcements
The fighting swung back and forth through the farm clearing and the surrounding woods, running from about 12:30 p.m. to roughly 5 p.m.
It ended when General Friedrich Riedesel arrived with about 750 reinforcements, prompting a general American withdrawal.
A tactical win that went nowhere
The British held the battlefield at day's end. The Americans fell back to their fortified lines and went on blocking the route south toward Albany.
The National Park Service estimates about 580 Crown casualties against about 320 American. Burgoyne had lost roughly twice as many troops as Gates and had advanced no farther, while additional militia kept reaching the American camp.
Sources
Researched 23 Aug 2026 7 sources 2 audit passes
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What the sources leave uncertain
- Casualty figures are estimates. Current NPS pages give approximately 580 Crown and 320 American casualties, while other official histories round the Crown loss to about 600.
- Accounts differ in emphasis on Arnold’s role. The current NPS reconstruction has him managing the battle from a distance and dispatching units, not personally leading charges on September 19.