Burgoyne, things went from bad to worse. He did not receive the local support in New York that he had counted on. Dangerously handicapped by a slowness of movement and over-extended lines of supply and communications, Burgoyne’s army was finally surrounded and forced to surrender near Saratoga on October 17.
When the defeat of Burgoyne’s army was certain, some Loyalists began to fear for their safety, for they did not think they would be protected under the articles of capitulation in the same manner as the British regulars. With Burgoyne’s permission, large numbers of them slipped away and escaped to Canada. Along with those later paroled, they may have numbered as many as 560.
The surrender at Saratoga was a debacle of the first order for the royal cause. An entire army, which the British could ill afford, had been completely lost. No major offensive using regular troops would again be mounted from Canada in the course of the war. Without such heavy involvement from the regular army, the whole nature of the conflict on the Great Lakes frontier was dramatically altered. Despite their losses, the British still had the upper hand in the lakes region. Their hold on the forts along the northern edge of the colonies was never significantly challenged after 1776. These posts – Montreal, Oswegatchie (now Ogdensburg), Carleton Island (off Kingston), Oswego, Niagara, Detroit and Michilimackinac – provided excellent bases for the staging of raids into New York and Pennsylvania as well as into the Illinois and Ohio Country. Control of the Great Lakes allowed the royalist forces to provision their interior garrisons and the cause of the crown continued to attract an increasing number of frontier settlers and Indians who could be effectively used in an all-out guerilla war. South of the lakes, the rebel settlements were poorly protected. Few Continental troops were stationed there, while the local militias were incapable of undertaking decisive offensive operations and were hardly able to provide an adequate defence. Penetrating at will, small Loyalist bands by-passed the garrisoned forts and aimed crippling blows against the isolated settlements. Before the American militia could respond, they were gone. For five years the Loyalist corps pressed this grim frontier war. They could not hope to conquer and hold the rebel territories, but they could devastate them settlement by settlement. So the Tory raiders swept down from Canada, gathering supporters and protecting the women and children they had left behind, destroying foodstuffs – Tryon County was the bread basket of Washington’s army – and forcing American commanders to weaken their position by drawing off troops for the defence of the back country.
Foreshadowing this change in strategy, in September 1777 John Butler was commissioned to raise a corps of rangers. Butler’s Rangers, the last of the major Loyalist regiments operating out of Canada to be formed, was to consist of eight companies, two to be of “people speaking the Indian language and acquainted with their customs and manner of making war” and the six remaining “to be composed of people speaking the Indian language and well acquainted with the woods, in consideration of the fatigue they were liable to undergo.” At its height the corps contained about six hundred men. Butler’s Rangers were similar in organization and function to the rangers attached directly to the Indian Department; both were composed of colonials and in the field the two were often indistinguishable.
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