Convention Army

As a Convention Army (1777-1783) were designated the captured British and Allied troops of the Saratoga campaign, after the Battle of Saratoga in the American Revolutionary War.

On October 17, 1777 British General John Burgoyne was negotiating with the American General Horatio Gates, the terms of surrender for his remaining forces from the Saratoga campaign. The conditions were recorded in the Convention of Saratoga ( Convention of Saratoga ) and determined that the army would be sent back to Europe if they would give word of honor not to fight again in North America. Gates sent a total of more than 5,800 British, brunswick - wolfenbüttelsche and Canadian troops to Boston.

The Continental Congress ordered Burgoyne to provide a list and description of all officers to ensure that they would not return. As Burgoyne refused, Congress annulled the terms it. In November 1778, the Convention Army had marched 1127 kilometers south to Charlottesville ( Virginia) and was here in the short term erected barracks ( Albemarle Barracks, named after Albemarle County, the area around Charlottesville ) held until 1781. During this time the Convention Army was an important economic factor in the region (especially in the Blue Ridge area ).

The parked to guard Virginia troops were generally better fed and equipped than other troops of the North Americans, so that in the letters of the prisoners was talk of a strong army. Money that was sent by the families of the prisoners from the UK and Germany, provided hard currency for the rural area of Charlottesville. Among the prisoners senior officers, some of their women and children (eg, Major General Friedrich Adolf Riedesel ). They were during the internment in Charlottesville welcome guests at social gatherings and were invited, for example, by Thomas Jefferson.

1781, when the British forces launched military initiatives in Virginia, the Convention Army was moved again and leads north to Lancaster (Pennsylvania). Apart from a few exchanged officers, the prisoners were interned until 1783. When the war formally ended, were those who had survived the forced marches and typhus, sent home.

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