Welcome to Revolutionary Saratoga

"We were finally obliged to take refuge in the cellar in which I laid myself down in a corner not far from the door. My children lied down on the earth with their heads upon my lap, and in this manner we passed the entire night. A horrible stench, the cries of the children, and yet more than all this, my own anguish, prevented me from closing my eyes. On the following morning the cannonade again began, but from a different side." Frederika Charlotte Riedesel, Letters and Journals relating to the War of the American Revolution, and the Capture of the German Troops at Saratoga. 

Oct. 10th, 1777. A beautiful, aristocratic, 31 year old German Baroness. Her three daughters, 6, 3 and 1. On that date, the first and most catastrophic defeat of the British army, in which her husband was serving. A week besieged in a foul cellar under a fierce cannonade by the American forces. Women and children, desperate wounded soldiers. Cries, blood and human waste. No water. Nothing save despair.