I 777 Honor and Punic Faith Although General Burgoyne had given his honor that the baggage exempted from search should contain no public stores, advantage was taken of the exemption to save some of the flags of the surrendered army. In her Journal, the wife of General Riedesel wrote: "Now I was forced to consider how I should safely carry the colors of our German regiments still further, as we had made the Americans at Saratoga believe that they were burnt up. But it was only the staves that had been burned, the colors having been thus far concealed. Now my husband confided to me his secret, and entrusted me with their still further concealment. I therefore shut myself in with a right honorable tailor, who helped me make a mattress in which we sewed every one of them. Captain O'Connell, under pretence of some errand, was dispatched to New York and passed the mattress off as his bed. He sent it to Halifax, where we again found it in our passage from New York to Canada, and where-in order to ward off all suspicion in case our ship should be taken -I transferred it to my cabin, and slept during the whole of the remaining voyage to Canada upon those honorable badges." As to the British flags, Burgoyne declared that they had all been left in Canada. It is known that one of them had been displayed at Ticonderoga and that, after the convention had been agreed upon, Lieutenant-colonel Hill concealed the colors of the ninth regiment in his baggage. Upon his return to England in 1781, Hill presented the colors to King George. But the dishonorable action connected with the convention was not confined to one side. Americans quickly realized that Gates had been overreached in the negotiation; the less brilliant but more able Schuyler would have done better. If the prisoners were allowed to return to England, they could, without any violation of the terms of the agreement, be used to relieve garrisons at home, thus setting other soldiers free to fight in America. Furthermore, the leaders in congress felt sure that France would soon be at war with England in behalf |