Note 5 — Chapter VI · —A MESSAGE OF INDIGNATION

At Burgoyne’s earnest solicitation General Gates consented that the surrender at Saratoga should be styled a “convention.” This was in imitation of the famous convention of Kloster-Seven, by which the Duke of Cumberland, twenty years before, sought to save his feelings while losing his army, beleaguered by the French in Hanover. The soothing phrase has been well remembered by the British, who to this day speak of the surrender as the “Convention of Saratoga.”