Frederika Charlotte Riedesel - The American Revolution - Saratoga Campaign

Saratoga Campaign

Frederika arrived in Canada and was reunited with Friedrich in June at Trois-Rivières. She received permission to accompany the army South, on General John Burgoyne's campaign to capture Albany. Her journals reveal her military background, and she was critical of the lack of security at camp.

Frederika and her daughters followed the army in a calash. She was with the army on 19 September and was an eye-witness to the Battle of Freeman's Farm. Her journals describe her evening in a nearby house, where wounded soldiers came to rest, and where a young English officer slowly died during the night.

Baroness Riedesel was preparing a meal on 7 October when the Battle of Bemis Heights began. The table, with its meal, was cleared to make a bed for General Simon Fraser. Frederika spent the night tending to wounded soldiers, other women, and her own children. General Fraser died the next morning, and that afternoon, the house caught fire, and the Riedesel family was forced to evacuate. General Fraser had requested that his body be buried at a redoubt, and Frederika observed the funeral under American cannon fire.

Immediately thereafter, the British, fearing imminent defeat at the hands of the Americans, determined upon retreat to Canada. "Mrs. General" Riedesel was very critical of General Burgoyne, and broke with 18th-century customs to remind the General that his men were starving.

After marching north through torrential rains with their equipment mired in mud the Baroness took refuge near Saratoga, present day Schuylerville, in what is now known as the Marshall House, a large wooden structure where yet is preserved the stone cellar where Frederika sheltered with her small children, women accompanying the army and wounded officers and men.

Elsewhere in the house remain beams shattered by American cannon fire and bloodstains in the floor left by a wounded English surgeon whose leg was struck off in the cannonade. Three of eleven cannon balls recorded by Frederika as having hit the building are displayed. She spent days managing a house which became a shelter for women and wounded soldiers as the battle continued. A German soldier described her as an "angel of comfort" who "restored order in the chaos."

The heroic and tragic events that took place in the Marshall House are vividly described in Baroness Riedesel’s celebrated diary. The Marshall House was placed upon the National Register of Historic Places in 2002. Erected in 1770 it is the sole remaining structure in the area predating the Battles of Saratoga. It remains today a private home.