Bennington

Burgoyne's invasion army had outrun its food, and its German cavalry regiment had no horses. The fix was a raid on a lightly held depot in supposedly friendly country. The depot was Bennington, the country was not friendly, and waiting in front of it were 1,500 New Hampshire militia under a Bunker Hill veteran with a grievance.

After a day of rain, Stark's militia circled through the woods and swallowed Baum's hilltop whole; the dragoons' saber charge died on the slope. Then a second German column marched into the wreckage, and the battle had to be won all over again before dark.

Burgoyne lost a seventh of his field army and got nothing back: no horses, no flour, no Loyalist rising. What rose instead was the militia, and the road from Bennington ran straight downhill to Saratoga.