On the evening of October 7th, 1777, as fighting on Bemis Heights subsided, Harriet Acland came to General Burgoyne with a startling request.
The British surrender at Saratoga on October 17th, 1777, was a turning point in the American Revolutionary War (1776-1783) because it brought France in on the colonists’ side. In his account of the fighting, the English general John Burgoyne recalled what happened on the night of the 7th — with the contest still in the balance — after Harriet Acland heard that her husband John had been captured.