John Stark's Glory, Part I
Back in seventeen seventy-seven,
British general John Burgoyne faced hard times,
despite winning at Hubbardton, and Fort Anne,
supplies were getting very hard to find.
When word came that General Howe wouldn’t be
marching up the Hudson to meet his forces,
Burgoyne realized he couldn’t take Albany
without foodstuffs, munitions, and horses.
So he then turned to one of his Hessians,
a Lieutenant Colonel named Freidrich Baum,
and to Bennington ordered him to march,
to seize the supply depot in that town.
With eight hundred men, most Germans,
famed mercenaries who would fight for pay,
along with Indian allies and loyalists,
Baum’s force quickly got itself under way.
They believed only a few hundred rebels
guarded the town against their approach,
the battered survivors of Hubbardton,
but there was something that Baum didn’t know.
The people of the green New Hampshire grants,
that would later become the state of Vermont,
had sent a call for aid to their neighbors,
whose militias were now marching strong.
New Hampshire sent out General John Stark,
a skilled veteran of war in the north,
where he’d fought amidst Roger’s Rangers;
now with sixteen hundred men he marched for war.
Stark stopped at the fort at Number Four,
where more men rallied to his command,
brought on Seth Warner, a Green Mountain Boy,
to show him the way through wilderness lands.
Stark had no knowledge the British were near,
but soon word started to filter on in,
he alterd his plains and went searching for Baum,
hoping his numbers would bring freedom a win.
Baum did not fear the Americans at first,
he’d heard the militia broke time and again,
but now outnumbered more than two-to-one,
he decided to find a place to defend.
On a hill just north of Hoosick town,
but a few miles to Bennington’s west,
Baum sent a message for reinforcements,
and built a redoubt, with no time to rest.
Stark and his men, now two thousand strong,
arrayed themselves at the base of the hill.
He wanted to attack, but two days of rain
thwarted the eager General’s will.
But when the sun finally returned to them,
towards the Hessians his forces did go,
Stark was heard to say,”We’re taking that hill,
or tonight Molly Stark sleeps a widow!”
Stark was clever, and under the dim of night,
had sent troops both to the right and left,
when the advance began, the pincer was sprung,
the Hessians were not expecting it...
CONLUDES IN PART II.
Copyright © David Welch | Year Posted 2018
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