July 18, 2023 • 36 mins
Before his name became synonymous with treason, Benedict Arnold may have been the most heroic and badass general of the American Revolution. In this episode author Ben Thompson and Professor of History Dr. Pat Larash discuss General Arnold's incredible military career, and the decisions that ultimately led him to become the most infamous soldier in American history.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Badass of the Week is an iHeartRadio podcast produced by
High five Content. October seventh, seventeen seventy seven. The forests
of upstate New York are a fire, with musket flashes,
gun smoke, and the screams of fighting men. Through fierce determination,
(00:23):
Daniel Morgan's Rangers have heroically held the line against the
British and have begun to drive them back in disarray.
The entire war and the American Revolution depends on this moment.
The opportunity to strike is now, yet the overall commander
of American forces either doesn't see it or he's too
(00:45):
timid to try to exploit it. In that moment, with
so much hanging into balance, one American hero took it
into his own hands to lead his troops to victory.
Jumping on his horse, he unsheaths his saber, reared up
on his steed, and charge screaming into battle. A single
man streaking towards the enemy with his blade at the ready,
(01:05):
inspired his men rallied behind him. Their ferocious bayet attack
that day smashed through the British lines, marking a turning
point in the revolution. Despite all of this, American officers
heroics here and in the dozens of battles that came
before and after, you cannot find a single statue to
this man in all of the United States. In fact,
(01:29):
his name today is synonymous with one word traitor. Hello,
and welcome back to Badass of the Week. My name
is Ben Thompson, and I am here with my co host,
doctor Pat Larish. Pat, have you have you been watching
anything good on TV recently?
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Yeah? I finished Only Murders in the Building and I
haven't really picked up anything since that.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Yeah, it's always so weird with so much stuff on
VOD so like it's always you know, you don't have
these like cultural events as often anymore. Where there's just
like a thing that everybody has to watch and they're watching, Oh, Juicy,
Walking Dead. It was on either or whatever. Yeah, we
don't have that quite as much anymore. Are you watching
House of the Dragon at all? I've been watching that.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
No, not really. I haven't picked it up yet.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
It's not season one of Game of Thrones. It's fine,
I don't I don't have any problems with it. But
I also watched three episodes on Monday in a row.
And I really can't tell you too much about any
of it, and I was like a pretty big time
Game of Thrones person I liked. I was super into it.
I had this big list of Game of Thrones people
I was going to write about on my website.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
But Game of Thrones in particular is kind of a
weird cultural thing because everybody loved it and was crazy
about it. And then it didn't get like a lot
of hate. It didn't get a lot of like people
weren't just like angry about it forever. It just disappeared overnight.
It seemed like nobody wanted to talk about it anymore.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Yeah, everyone moved on to the next thing.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Did you watch Game of Thrones at all?
Speaker 2 (03:00):
I watched a few. I watched some of the seasons,
and I kind of fell off and didn't pick it
up again. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Yeah, So, I mean, so what happened with that show
is that, like it was, it was amazing and it
was so good. It was nothing like it. It was
really really and I had read all the books and stuff,
but you know, people were so into this every week,
Oh did you watch the show? Did you watch it?
You know what's going on? All this crazy stuff is happening.
And then basically, like the book got like basically the
(03:27):
last season, like you know, the show got beyond the books,
and then it was on the writers of the show
to keep it going. And and the last two seasons,
but in particular, in particular the last season were so
bad and it ended so horribly and so miserably that
everybody was just like, oh, well, forget this right, you know, yeah,
(03:50):
I never it's so poorly that you don't want to
go back and rewatch season one with like for nostalgia purposes.
It's just Nope, that was awful. I was a huge
eight year wasting my time.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Oh so, it's not like it's a Godfather three kind
of situation where it's like, you know, excellent, excellent and
then meh, or it's just like it was so mad
that it kind of ruined the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
No, it was not so mad that I totally ruined
the whole thing. It was we have these characters, and
we've established them, and they're they're clearly arking towards these
varying different end points, and then like, actually, I was
a bad guy the whole time, and actually this is
like you thought I liked you, but I don't like
you actually, and it's like what wait wait, so yeah wait,
(04:33):
all of this stuff was coming out of left field.
It was just just brutal. It was. It was a
miserable experience watching the last season of Game of Thrones,
and and that suck because I really loved the show
and I like the books and you know.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Uh yeah it was it really was part of the culture.
Yeah for so long.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Yeah, and it's just gone.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Yeah, so.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
I bring this up right, And like Game of Thrones
in particular, it was huge, huge, huge thing. People would
go to bars and watch it and like react to
it whatever, and then overnight it disappears. Nobody's talking about
it anymore, and nobody's going back to rewatch the old stuff.
Even when House of the Dragon came out, they put
like Game of Thrones in very small font at the
top because they kind of want to associate themselves with
(05:20):
the entire thing. And we actually have a story like
that in American history.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
And you have dragons, Ben.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
It does not have dragons, No, it really happened. They're
ride on horses, they fight with swords. It's a true story.
Whereas okay, okay, is only kind of based on the
historical events. So that what do you think when I
say the name Benedict Arnold, ew he's.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
That trader guy from the American Revolution.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
Yeah, yeah, you're not wrong. He is that trader guy
from the American Revolution. But I'm going to talk about
him this week on the Badass of the Week podcast
because he was also kind of badass.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
So you ick, Benedict Arnold, the trader was a badass.
That's what you're That's what you're.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Going for, ben That is the that is the thesis
statement that I am presenting right now. And I would
just ask you to hold all judgment until the end.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Okay, I will hear you out, present your evidence, present
your reasoning.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Okay, here we go. I'm going to talk to you
about Benedict Arnold. Okay, let's get back into it. So
Benedict Arnold, he's a guy whose name is synonymous with
treason and being a trader and being hatefully remembered by
(06:44):
anybody who has any rudimentary knowledge of American history. But
right before he became the biggest trader in American history
and the first big one, I guess he was actually
pretty bad ass. So let's get into talking about Benedict Arnold.
So for Benedict Arnold, the war begins for him. He
(07:07):
is a pretty wealthy Connecticut shopkeeper. He's living in the
colonies under British rule or early seventeen seventies. He's doing
well with his business. Things are going pretty good. But
as the revolution is starting to brew, he definitely airs
on the side of the patriots. He is not a loyalist.
He does not like the Crown. He doesn't like paying
(07:28):
his taxes like many wealthy shopkeepers don't. And he decides
he is all in on this revolution, like, let's start
our own country, let's not attack the rich all of
that good stuff. And when he hears about the American
army putting up a good fight at the Battle of
Bunker Hill, he gets so excited that he runs to
the local armory, demands the keys from the guys there,
(07:49):
gets a bunch of guns out of the armory, and
just like recruits a militia, which is just a if
you study American revolution history, that is just a thing
that people knew how to do in these days. You
just put out a call for a militia and a
militia arrives.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Yeah. Yeah, that's a motifs that just keeps coming up
over and over again.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Yes, we're going to see a lot of people who
randomly were able to summon armies out of nowhere, and
Bennedict Donald is one of them. He gets this militia,
he heads out for upstate New York, which is kind
of the line like the border between Canada and New
York State, and he links up with another guy who
raised his own militia, a guy named Ethan Allen, who
(08:27):
is now remembered as a great hero for his victory
at Fort Ticonderoga, and a lot of people forget that
Benedict Donald was also there. So these two guys get together.
They storm Fort Ticonderoga on May tenth, seventeen seventy five,
and it's just a bunch of screaming Americans with rifles
running up the hill, which is incredibly terrifying to the
(08:47):
British and the Canadians and many other people in the world.
And the British commander runs outside in his underwear and
immediately surrenders the keys to the fort. Benedict Donald and
Ethan Allen are great heroes of the American Revolution, very
early on in the proceedings for their capture of a
dude in his underwear at a fort on the border
between New York and Canada. Another thing that Arnold is
(09:09):
very well known for, and one of the craziest things
that he did during his career, is he led the
first American invasion of Canada. We've tried to invade Canada twice.
We have failed both times. Benedict Arnold was in command
of the first attempt. He led a thousand soldiers on
a three hundred and fifty mile canoe ride and hike
through the uncharted wildernesses of Canada in the middle of winter.
(09:33):
And when I mean uncharted, I mean like the only
notes we had on this on the route that they
were taking was literally not on any maps because nobody
had gone It was all swamp and river and all
this stuff. Nobody had gone through any of it before.
And the only guide they had along this way was
some dude who like more than ten years ago, had
(09:53):
traveled this route and made a little journal about it
and drew little maps and stuff, very sketchy. But Arnold
was like, Yeah, whatever, we can do this. I'll march
a thousand guys this way in the middle of winter
in canoes that we just made like two weeks ago.
That sounds feasible, totally, totally ha. So they march with
the wilderness. It doesn't go well, like people are starting
(10:16):
to desert, people are starting to get hungry. It's cold,
people are freezing, the food's starting to run out. There's
stories of people eating the leather off of their shoelaces.
There's to get any kind of calories to sustain themselves.
On this hike. They go all the way up the
Kennebec River, waterfalls, rapids, Sometimes they're rowing, sometimes they're portaging across,
carrying the boats and stuff. But they do eventually make it.
(10:38):
It takes nearly two months for them to get through
this passageway. And the idea was that when they get
out the other side, they're going to attack Canada from
the direction that they were at least expecting it right
the main roads were all fortified. They wanted to go
the back way, and they did, and they were incredibly successful,
a lot due to the leadership of Benedict Arnold. He
spent a bunch of his own money to outfit and
(10:59):
supply the soldiers, and they did it. They entered Canada
American Army thousand guys outside the wall of the Canadian
capital Quebec City, which has forty foot tall walls and
several hundred people defending the town. It's the only city
in North America that still has its original fortifications and walls.
And they're very impressive, and they're very big. And Benedict
(11:21):
Arnold he's got no cannons. He has enough powder left
from his journey that every guy can get five shots.
Only five, right, they get five shots? No cannons. Have
the thousand, six hundred guys or left the rest of
either deserted or died along the way. What do you
think The first thing he did was when he gets
outside the capital of Quebec. If you had to.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Guess I would I would say a bad word.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
I'd be like, sorry, guys, thanks for following me out here,
but like this, I really wasn't prepared for this. No,
he demands the unconditional surrender of the castle effective immediately.
Whoa yeah. They respond by shooting a cannon at his messenger.
The guy lived, but it wasn't that fun. So Bennett
Donald to six hundred guys, he lays siege to Quebec City.
(12:07):
Of course, as you do, even though he has no food,
He's going to lay siege to Quebec City.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
So no food, no cannon, and almost no.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Powder, right, and yeah, he lays siege to the forty
foot walls of Quebec City. They have six bastions, they
have two hundred cannons, they have nearly a thousand defenders,
including like every man, woman and child in Quebec City,
Like the Canadians really don't want to be part of America,
and they never have and they probably never will. Every man,
(12:37):
woman and child in the city was building fortifications inside
the city, like roadblocks and things like that, digging trenches
to try to like fortify the city against Bennedict Donald.
But he's going to push forward. He gets reinforced, he
gets a little bit more supplies, and on New Year's Eve,
seventeen seventy five, in the dead of winter and the
dead of night, in a white out blizzard, he personally
(12:59):
leads the against Quebec City. You can say a lot
of stuff about Bennedict Donald, and we're going to say
a lot of bad stuff about Benetic Donald, but he
was very brave. One of his men once wrote that
he was the kind of guy who would say follow
me rather than go get him, and he personally leads
the attack. He is dragging a sled that he is
mounted with a little cannon on it.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Wait a minute, wait, so they actually do have a cannon.
They have one little cannon.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
They found one. Yeah, they managed over the two months
I believe that they were besieging Quebec City, they managed
to get their hands on it. And not a big one.
A little cannon fits on a slid, right, But they
did it. And they break into the lower city, not
the walls yet, but they're fighting through the lower parts
of the city. Citizens are throwing things at them from
(13:46):
the windows. The town guard is fighting them, but they
are pushing their way through and they're winning and they're
doing pretty well. And then Bennedict Nald gets shot in
the leg. He's falling, he's down, he's screaming, yell, and
he's trying to crow all his way to like keep fighting.
Three of his own guys drag him, kicking and screaming
off the battlefield. The attack kind of stalls and then
(14:08):
it gets crushed. I think something like five hundred Americans
get captured. The attack is completely destroyed. Arnold is lucky
to escape with just like a little group of his
own guys. They get away, but complete defeat. Right after
all of that work, all of that travel all the
way up there, they besiege him for a couple of months.
They have this huge attack, very daring, but it's a
(14:28):
big failure and they're running away.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Yeah. Tactical withdrawal.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Tactical withdrawal. Yeah, that's the military term.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
That's the military term. Need to remember that. Yeah, okay, okay,
So this is I'm guessing this is not the end
of the story.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
It is not the end of the story because Ben
and mcdonnold now has a new problem, which is that
the Canadian army has defeated the American army in the
north and now they are going to march south and
attack into New York and just pursue the defeated army
and try to route them and then basically like, okay,
well we've defeated you, and now we're going to go
in because all you guys are dead, and we're going
(15:02):
to go march in there and take New York. So
Arnold's retreating, retreating, and he learns that the British are
set to attack and they're not going to go the
way he went. They're not going to go to the
main road. They are going to go by water. You know,
you've got all those lakes up in Upstate New York
and Canada. They're going to go across a big lake
called Lake Champlain. They have twenty nine warships that they've
(15:24):
built on this lake, and they're going to transport thirteen
thousand men across Lake Champlain into upstate New York to
launch an attack. Arnold has like foreigner guys with him.
He's in big trouble, but he puts out a call,
like I said, everybody's raising militias. So he raises a
militia of just everybody he can get his hands on.
On the way back right upstate New York, people like, hey,
(15:47):
we got some trouble here. We got a problem. He
has what's left of his soldiers chopped down trees. They
melt horseshoes and gun barrels and can whatever pizza cannons
left they have. They make nails out of it.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
So they're actually melting down their firearms, melting.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Down their guns. Yeah, melting down the firearms.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Like they're choosing to sacrifice their guns for.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
This right to build ships. Yeah, they're going to cut
down trees and melt down their gear to make nails
to build ships, which I mean the main thing they're
going to do with them is set them on fire
and seal them into the British Fleet to try to
cause some havoc there. But he and his men manage
to build sixteen warships in Lake Champlain in an incredibly
(16:31):
short period of time. So he gets defeated on New
Year's Eve seventeen seventy five. On October ten, seventeen seventy six,
So ten months later he's built sixteen warships, and he
trained a regiment of New Hampshire infantrymen who had never
been on a boat before how to sail a ship.
And those guys are going to go out and sail
against twenty nine warships of the British Navy and thirteen
(16:53):
thousand men and try to stop this attack into New York.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
That's pretty impressive.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Yeah, yeah, it's impressive. The odds are not great, no,
And like I said, they're playing was to light some
of those ships on fire and just sail them into
the British Navy to try to hope to catch some
of their ships on fire. But they end up fighting
this Battle of Lake Champlain. It's seven hours on the lake,
which I just love the idea of two navies fighting
each other in a big lake. Whoever wins. There's no
exit playing here, right, All you could do is sail
(17:20):
back and forth around this lake. There's no there's no
ocean access, which I just always find kind of kind
of funny.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
Yeah, Everything catches on fire, the boats all gets smashed,
everything gets blown up. Ben Azard loses every single ship
in his fleet, and like I said, he was planning
on setting most of them on fire, which is what
he does. He uses the sails to carry his wounded
men home in these bloody sails. But he was able
to delay the British attack. He did enough damage to them.
(17:49):
He didn't win the battle. He lost every ship in
his fleet, but he did enough damage to them that
they couldn't press the invasion and they were kind of
stuck there. Arnold retreats back to fourteen Canderogo, which is
the fort he captured in like the very beginning days
of the war, starts building more ships, starts getting reinforcements,
starts building up his army, and it's going to be
(18:09):
another six or seven months before the British are able
to try to attack again. Bought himself some time, and
that's pretty awesome to have like been defeated, and then
you cover your own tactical withdrawal. But building these ships
and having them fight against this invasion force.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Yeah, that was pretty that was a pretty badass tactic.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Okay. The British do eventually come and this is where
you get the Battle of Saratoga, which is the one
that everybody knows. It's the turning port of the war.
That's the only thing I've ever remembered learning about this
growing up was that Battle of Saratoga's the turning point
of the American Revolution. The Battle of Saratoga was won
by Benedict Arnold. And we're going to get into that.
(18:56):
So the British come down and the British take the
sweet time getting down there. The British army is led
by a guy named Johnny Burgoyne, and he's they call
him Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne. Johnny Bergoyne is like, you know
that question of like which historical figure would you have
dinner with? If you could have dinner with any historical figure,
what would your answer to that be?
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Pat Oh, good goodness. I don't know, honestly, maybe, oh maybe,
the Roman poet added, I don't know. It's like I think,
actually I'd want to have like a whole dinner party
of people. But anyway, is this the cue for me
to ask you, Ben, so, Ben, who would you like
to have dinner with?
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Well? I think a lot of people go with the
historical figure they think is the most interesting. Gentlemen, Johnny
Burgoyne might have been the most fun person to have
dinner with. If you were going to have a dinner party,
have dinner with somebody from history, it'd be like it'd
be a close one between like Peter the Great and
gentleman Johnny burgoing because they were both party monsters. So
the British are going down. Johnny Bergoyne was just some guy.
(19:56):
He was just some British officer. He meets the commander
of the British Army at a party in Canada and
it's like, hey, you want to you want to take
car of these Americans. I'll take car of these Americans
for you, dude. I got this under control. And the
guy was like, yeah, sure, why not. You can have
an army of guys to attack the colonies. So we're
going is going down. He's got this big baggage trained
with him, and he's got one giant horse drawn carriage
(20:17):
that's filled entirely with silverware for his parties. He's a
party machine and that's all he really wants to do,
and that's all he does on the ride south from
Canada into New York to fight the Americans. And the
bummer with this is that it also really slows him
down because you've got to get all these carts through
the mud and the rain and the muck and all
of this stuff. They're not not an easy way to
(20:40):
get down there. And by the time to get down there,
the Americans reinforce their base at Saratoga. So there's two
guys in charge of the base at Saratoga. One's Benedict
Donald and one is Horatio Gates. Gates is the guy
who gets all the credit for winning this, even though
Horatio Gates would have lost it without Benedic Donald. Gates
strategy was like like, hey, we're in this fort. We
(21:01):
got these cannons, we got these trenches which just a
hangout here and defend. And Arnold was like, no, they've
got more guys than us. They got six thousand troops,
they've got hundreds of cannons, and they're bringing up more
and more every single day. Every day we wait here,
more of Johnny Burgoyne's silverware is going to arrive, and
with it's going to be cannons and horses and guys,
(21:21):
and so we have to attack. We have to find
the right moment in an attack. And him and Gates
really have an argument about this. There's one they do,
like a little skirmish at one point at a place
called Fraser's Farm or a place that's now known as
Fraser's Farm. The Americans win. Arnold is like, this is it.
We got to go, We got to break in. We've
got him on the run. Gate says no. They have
this huge argument and Benedict Arnold it's very like it's
(21:45):
one of these like you can't fire me, I quit situations.
He might have been We might have been fired. He
might have quit. We don't really know. There was a
big argument, There was a lot of swearing, there was
a lot of anger, and it ended up with Arnold
having stayed at Sarah because he really wanted to see
this thing through. But he was completely removed of all
command and was no longer in charge of any soldiers.
(22:08):
So a few weeks later, the British launchs an even
bigger attack and the Americans hold again same place, Fraser's farm.
It's called that because the British commander's name was Fraser.
He gets killed on the battlefield at the second engagement.
Here the British kind of on the run and the
British main force isn't really prepared for this. There's this
huge hole in their lines. Arnold is sitting on the
(22:29):
hill at Saratoga watching this, tells Gates like, this is
the time. Gates is like, no, no, We're just gonna
hang out here. Arnold's like, you can hang out here.
I'm going. He goes on his horse by himself, rides
directly to that gap by himself. He jumps over like
a fence on his horse. He's like waving his sword around.
He's screaming. The American troops that are there are so
inspired by this that they follow him, even though he's
(22:50):
not their commanding officer. He commands nobody. Their orders are
to hold, and they charge with them, and they run
through and they break through this flank. Arnold gets shot
in the leg keeps fighting. His horse gets shot, falls
on the same leg that has now been shot twice,
crushes his leg. He's pinned under the horse. He's still
like waving his sworder around, trying to get people to rally.
And they do. They defeat Scottish Highlanders, they defeat some
(23:13):
of the more like intense units of the British army,
drive them from the field, and the next day Johnny
Bergoyne surrenders his entire army to the Americans six thousand soldiers. Wow,
so he's the greatest hero of the biggest battle of
the American Revolution.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Yeah, mister Benedict, follow me, Arnold.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Yeah, follow me exactly. That's how we did it, and that's.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
And that's how we're seeing him in this moment. Yes,
this is you know, this is Benedict Arnold at his best.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
This is Ben Darnel at his best. It's all downhill
from here. Oh, yes, this is This is the bummer
part of the story. So he gets put in charge
of Philadelphia. He's re regrouping, right, his legs all messed up.
He technically disobeyed orders. Him and Gates still hate each other.
Gates is a little bit more influential Arnold was a
(24:01):
little bit more of like a renegade. While he's recovering,
they put him in Philadelphia. He marries into a loyalist family,
which take from that what you will, Like there's a
lot of historical stuff around, like those words made him
do it, which I don't really think is a very
like productive way of looking at historical figures, because he
still had to make the decision, right. I don't understand
(24:22):
this like, oh, he had an evil wife and that's
why she hadn't pecked him into doing evil stuff, which
I hated as a as a historical way of looking
at things, exactly.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
Yeah, I mean, she's not the only influence on him.
And you know, we have just so many examples of
married couples disagreeing on things. I'm with you on.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
This, Ben, exactly. It's like he's married into the loyalist
family now after having been fighting the British from day
one of this war. It's not like he didn't give
that at least a little bit of thought before he
bought the ring. Right, he gets passed over for promotion.
The Continental Congress accuses of him stealing funds because they
don't like him. He wasn't stealing funds. By most accounts,
(25:01):
he wasn't stealing funds. He came into money when he
married this family, so he started buying nicer things. They
accused him of stealing money from the Continental Congress. I
think that was just kind of a way of opportunity
given him a hard time. Yeah, his leg hurt every
single day because we're looking at like eighteenth century medicine
to repair a dude who got shot twice in the
same leg and then had a horse fall on it.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Oh yeah, even with twenty first century medicine, that's woo rough.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Yes. So he's still brigadier general, which is not that high, right,
it's like the lowest level of general. He's a brigadier general,
and he's one of the greatest war heroes of the
war so far. Gates gets promoted over him and has
given command of the entire army in the South, completely
blows it and gets massively defeated, and Arnold is super mad.
(25:49):
He's like, why should be having a better post than
just this Philadelphia thing, And so they put him in
charge of a little base called West Point, which is
currently where the United States Military Academy is, where the
Army train it's officers, but at the time it was
just a fort on a river in upstate New York,
and he was just like, what is this? What the
hell is this?
Speaker 2 (26:09):
Right, like, yeah, he was promoted out of the way.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
Right, you were just kind of stuck out here in
the middle of nowhere. He's mad, Like I would be
a little I'd be a little annoyed with this too,
So what he does is not awesome. He meets with
some British spies and is like, you know what, I'll
just hand over West Point to you guys, if you
just make me an officer in the British Army and
treat me better than these Americans. He wants money, he
wants an officer's commission, and he is going to turn
(26:32):
over West Point.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Oh, Benedict, Benedict.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
That's not a good idea. This is a really bad
This is a really like this is the this is
the American Revolution version of like having too much wine
and like emailing your ex girlfriend, right, Like, this is
not good. This is not a well thought out decision.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
No, you know, it is not well thought out. I
mean it takes on like a larger scale than you know,
drunk texting your ex or whatever. But you know, ye,
not Benedict Arnold's finest moment.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
And he's not even good at it because he gets caught.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
Yeah, oh, he sucks at treason.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
He sucks at treason. It's not his thing. He's more
about you know, he went about treason in the same
way he went about the Battle of Saratoga, just like
waving his sword around and yelling. Because he gets busted.
Washington spies the culpa ring. They find him, and luckily
he figured Luckily for him, I guess he figures it
out before he gets caught. He escapes, They go to
(27:32):
get him, and they he gets away. He does become
an officer in a British army. They give him a
general ship. He goes back and he sets fire to
some stores outside of Richmond, Virginia. He goes back to
his hometown of New London, Connecticut and burns it to
the ground. Which, you know what, this is not cool
in seventeen seventy five when you're like the greatest war
hero in American history.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Not cool, Benedict not cool.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
And that's it. He's survives the war. He goes back
to England, he starts up a business there. He retires
with an officer's commission, and he dies in peace. Nobody
gets him. If you were going to do a Hollywood
movie of his life, you'd end up having like Lafayette
duel him at the end and defeat him or something,
or George Washington would throw him off a tower or whatever.
(28:18):
But like, it doesn't happen. He goes home and he retires,
and he's rich, and he lives in a mansion, and
you know, he's a little bit sad about the way
that things went. But but but he's sad and rich,
sad and rich. It's better to be sad and rich
than sad and poor.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
Yeah, yeah, he's sad and rich and uh not in jail, right.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Yes, right, Yeah. He committed treason and got away with
it and lived happily ever after, and that's how the
story ends.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
There are currently three monuments to Benedict Arnold in the
United States, which is kind of interesting considering that he's
the biggest trader in American history.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
Well, you got to remember things somehow.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
Yeah, I mean, he was a great hero, right, and
he wouldn't have been such a big trade, Like, there
were plenty of people who were flipping sides in the
American Revolution on the lower levels, but you don't remember
their names because they weren't big time celebrity is in
their own lifetime, right, Yeah, So.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
These monuments, how do you commemorate a guy who is
as complicated as Benedict Arnold, big War hero, also a trader.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Yes, mostly just leave his name off the monument, which
is what they did to Arnold with these ones. Two
of the monuments at Saratoga. One is just the statue
of a boot on the foot that got shot and
it's placed right at the spot where he led the
charge and got shot in the leg, and it simply says,
in memory of the most brilliant officer of the Continental
(29:39):
Army who was desperately wounded on this spot, winning for
his countrymen the decisive battle of the American Revolution, and
for himself the rank of major general. Pretty good. That's
pretty good one as far as monuments go. That's a
pretty solid one. There's another statue on the battlefield at
Saratoga that shows the American commanders Horatio Gays, Philip Schuler,
(29:59):
and A Morgan. And there's a fourth pedestal there that's empty,
just kind of say like there was another guy here,
but we're not going to talk about him.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
Yeah, mmm, conspicuous by his absence.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
Yes, exactly. I like the boot one. There's a story
that when Bennedict Donald was leading those raids into Virginia,
he captured some American soldiers and he was interrogating them personally.
And this is this is back before you know Instagram
and live streaming and all that stuff. So like people
knew who Benedict Donald. These American soldiers knew who Bennedict
Donald was, but they didn't really know what he looked like, right,
(30:32):
because there wasn't like you weren't sending like photographs around you.
There was no ap wire of like what his face
looked like. So he captures these guys and he asks
them if there were any orders regarding what to do
with General Benedict Donald if they were to capture him,
and the soldier that he talked to, I mean, this
is a story, right, but the soldier said, yes, we
are to bury the wounded leg with the highest military
(30:54):
honors and hang the rest of him. Ooh, pretty solid,
that's pretty good. I'd say that it's like some way
like I would say that it's pretty bad ass to
be remembered in this way. I mean, it's not good, right,
It's not good to betray your country for some money.
I think if he had just kind of been chill,
he'd be remembered as like one of the greatest like
founding fathers and American war heroes. Ever, if he had
(31:16):
just like gone to West Point and like written an
angry letter.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Yeah, use your words, people, well, yeah, exactly use your
words and then don't sell out. If he had made
different choices, he'd be remembered quite differently. He'd be he
wouldn't he wouldn't be outshown by her Ratio Gates.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
Yeah, I mean it's a and it's interesting, right because
because of this treason, everybody does know his name, even
though if I don't think they quite like I think,
over the last couple of hundred years, it's been kind
of lost as to why his name was so so
hated at the time. Right, it was because he was
(31:54):
such a badass warrior of American history that when he betrayed,
when betrayed his post, it was shocking to everybody.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Yeah, I didn't talk about the third monument, but the
third ones at the United States Military Academy at West Point,
which is like they have a statue to this guy
at the place where he was most famously going to
like betray the country. But on the grounds at West Point,
they have a bunch of plaques that depict every American
general of the Revolution, and it just puts like birth, year, rank, death,
(32:26):
a little sentence or two about them, the name. And
there's one amid all of these, with all the biological
details of everybody who achieved the rank of general the
American Revolution, there's one that is just blank and it
says major General born seventeen forty with no additional details.
So that was the story of Benedict Donald, American hero
(32:47):
who became American villain overnight. Pat, does it convince you
at all? Is it still you Benedict Donald?
Speaker 2 (32:55):
Okay, okay, yes, I'll confess I still have you Benedict Donald,
but this is Benedict Arnold say it ain't. So you know,
you have convinced me that he was a badass, and
he you know, he did a total heel turn, but
he was a bad ass.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
He was, and yeah, he totally he he'l turn is
the best way to put it. Just overnight, greatest war
hero in American history. If he decides that he doesn't
want to, you know, betray everything that he fought for,
then he's he's probably on money right now. Yeah, but
he did, and he had his season eaightive Game of
(33:31):
Thrones and now nobody wants to talk about him anymore,
and there's no statues of him, and uh, and that's
that's the story of Benedict Arnold. It's it's it's much
more of a tragedy than a lot of people really
give it credit for, because they just think, oh, he's
that guy that betrayed the country, and yeah, it's a
little more deeper and interesting.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
And it's not even well, it's not even that there
are no statues. It's that there are things that whose
point is to tell you this is not a statue
of Benedict Arnold.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
Yes, yes, they they went through great effort to outfuskate
and to to say, yeah, this is a statue of
a great hero, but who shall not be named, and
we will never talk about and we don't have any
persona non Groudover's memoriad in the US.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
I guess, yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah, good old memori good
old Roman tradition. Yes, so, yep, you have convinced me
he's a badass, and like any human being, he's a
complex character and you can be a badass.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
Yeah. So I'm not comfortable referring to him as as
friend of the show, Benedict Arnold just yet.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
But no.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
But he uh, you know, he's he's more badass than
people like to give him credit for. And yeah, so
hopefully we won't get too many horrifying hate mail emails
about this or angry Twitter comments. So I'm keeping my
fingers crossed on that.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
That is a hobby of some people.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
Okay, well, we will see you on the next one.
If you made it this far, We're really glad that
you did, and thanks for listening. Have a great one.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
Badass of the Week is an iHeartRadio podcast produced by
High five Content. Executive producers are Andrew Jacobs, Me, Pat Larish,
and my co host Ben Thompson. Writing is by Me
and Ben. Story editing is by Ian Jacobs, Brandon Phibbs,
and Allie Lamer. Mixing and music and sound design is
(35:27):
by Jude Brewer. Consulting by Michael May. Special thanks to
Noel Brown at iHeart. Badass of the Week is based
on the website Badass of Theweek dot com, where you
can read all sorts of stories about other badasses. If
you want to reach out with questions ideas, you can
email us at Badass Podcast at badassoftheweek dot com. If
(35:52):
you like the podcast, subscribe, follow, listen, and tell your
friends and your enemies if you want as. We'll be
back next week with another one. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
Badass of the Week is an iHeartRadio podcast produced by
High five Content. October seventh, seventeen seventy seven. The forests
of upstate New York are a fire, with musket flashes,
gun smoke, and the screams of fighting men. Through fierce determination,
(00:23):
Daniel Morgan's Rangers have heroically held the line against the
British and have begun to drive them back in disarray.
The entire war and the American Revolution depends on this moment.
The opportunity to strike is now, yet the overall commander
of American forces either doesn't see it or he's too
(00:45):
timid to try to exploit it. In that moment, with
so much hanging into balance, one American hero took it
into his own hands to lead his troops to victory.
Jumping on his horse, he unsheaths his saber, reared up
on his steed, and charge screaming into battle. A single
man streaking towards the enemy with his blade at the ready,
(01:05):
inspired his men rallied behind him. Their ferocious bayet attack
that day smashed through the British lines, marking a turning
point in the revolution. Despite all of this, American officers
heroics here and in the dozens of battles that came
before and after, you cannot find a single statue to
this man in all of the United States. In fact,
(01:29):
his name today is synonymous with one word traitor. Hello,
and welcome back to Badass of the Week. My name
is Ben Thompson, and I am here with my co host,
doctor Pat Larish. Pat, have you have you been watching
anything good on TV recently?
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Yeah? I finished Only Murders in the Building and I
haven't really picked up anything since that.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Yeah, it's always so weird with so much stuff on
VOD so like it's always you know, you don't have
these like cultural events as often anymore. Where there's just
like a thing that everybody has to watch and they're watching, Oh, Juicy,
Walking Dead. It was on either or whatever. Yeah, we
don't have that quite as much anymore. Are you watching
House of the Dragon at all? I've been watching that.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
No, not really. I haven't picked it up yet.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
It's not season one of Game of Thrones. It's fine,
I don't I don't have any problems with it. But
I also watched three episodes on Monday in a row.
And I really can't tell you too much about any
of it, and I was like a pretty big time
Game of Thrones person I liked. I was super into it.
I had this big list of Game of Thrones people
I was going to write about on my website.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
But Game of Thrones in particular is kind of a
weird cultural thing because everybody loved it and was crazy
about it. And then it didn't get like a lot
of hate. It didn't get a lot of like people
weren't just like angry about it forever. It just disappeared overnight.
It seemed like nobody wanted to talk about it anymore.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Yeah, everyone moved on to the next thing.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Did you watch Game of Thrones at all?
Speaker 2 (03:00):
I watched a few. I watched some of the seasons,
and I kind of fell off and didn't pick it
up again. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Yeah, So, I mean, so what happened with that show
is that, like it was, it was amazing and it
was so good. It was nothing like it. It was
really really and I had read all the books and stuff,
but you know, people were so into this every week,
Oh did you watch the show? Did you watch it?
You know what's going on? All this crazy stuff is happening.
And then basically, like the book got like basically the
(03:27):
last season, like you know, the show got beyond the books,
and then it was on the writers of the show
to keep it going. And and the last two seasons,
but in particular, in particular the last season were so
bad and it ended so horribly and so miserably that
everybody was just like, oh, well, forget this right, you know, yeah,
(03:50):
I never it's so poorly that you don't want to
go back and rewatch season one with like for nostalgia purposes.
It's just Nope, that was awful. I was a huge
eight year wasting my time.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Oh so, it's not like it's a Godfather three kind
of situation where it's like, you know, excellent, excellent and
then meh, or it's just like it was so mad
that it kind of ruined the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
No, it was not so mad that I totally ruined
the whole thing. It was we have these characters, and
we've established them, and they're they're clearly arking towards these
varying different end points, and then like, actually, I was
a bad guy the whole time, and actually this is
like you thought I liked you, but I don't like
you actually, and it's like what wait wait, so yeah wait,
(04:33):
all of this stuff was coming out of left field.
It was just just brutal. It was. It was a
miserable experience watching the last season of Game of Thrones,
and and that suck because I really loved the show
and I like the books and you know.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Uh yeah it was it really was part of the culture.
Yeah for so long.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Yeah, and it's just gone.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Yeah, so.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
I bring this up right, And like Game of Thrones
in particular, it was huge, huge, huge thing. People would
go to bars and watch it and like react to
it whatever, and then overnight it disappears. Nobody's talking about
it anymore, and nobody's going back to rewatch the old stuff.
Even when House of the Dragon came out, they put
like Game of Thrones in very small font at the
top because they kind of want to associate themselves with
(05:20):
the entire thing. And we actually have a story like
that in American history.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
And you have dragons, Ben.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
It does not have dragons, No, it really happened. They're
ride on horses, they fight with swords. It's a true story.
Whereas okay, okay, is only kind of based on the
historical events. So that what do you think when I
say the name Benedict Arnold, ew he's.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
That trader guy from the American Revolution.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
Yeah, yeah, you're not wrong. He is that trader guy
from the American Revolution. But I'm going to talk about
him this week on the Badass of the Week podcast
because he was also kind of badass.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
So you ick, Benedict Arnold, the trader was a badass.
That's what you're That's what you're.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Going for, ben That is the that is the thesis
statement that I am presenting right now. And I would
just ask you to hold all judgment until the end.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Okay, I will hear you out, present your evidence, present
your reasoning.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Okay, here we go. I'm going to talk to you
about Benedict Arnold. Okay, let's get back into it. So
Benedict Arnold, he's a guy whose name is synonymous with
treason and being a trader and being hatefully remembered by
(06:44):
anybody who has any rudimentary knowledge of American history. But
right before he became the biggest trader in American history
and the first big one, I guess he was actually
pretty bad ass. So let's get into talking about Benedict Arnold.
So for Benedict Arnold, the war begins for him. He
(07:07):
is a pretty wealthy Connecticut shopkeeper. He's living in the
colonies under British rule or early seventeen seventies. He's doing
well with his business. Things are going pretty good. But
as the revolution is starting to brew, he definitely airs
on the side of the patriots. He is not a loyalist.
He does not like the Crown. He doesn't like paying
(07:28):
his taxes like many wealthy shopkeepers don't. And he decides
he is all in on this revolution, like, let's start
our own country, let's not attack the rich all of
that good stuff. And when he hears about the American
army putting up a good fight at the Battle of
Bunker Hill, he gets so excited that he runs to
the local armory, demands the keys from the guys there,
(07:49):
gets a bunch of guns out of the armory, and
just like recruits a militia, which is just a if
you study American revolution history, that is just a thing
that people knew how to do in these days. You
just put out a call for a militia and a
militia arrives.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Yeah. Yeah, that's a motifs that just keeps coming up
over and over again.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Yes, we're going to see a lot of people who
randomly were able to summon armies out of nowhere, and
Bennedict Donald is one of them. He gets this militia,
he heads out for upstate New York, which is kind
of the line like the border between Canada and New
York State, and he links up with another guy who
raised his own militia, a guy named Ethan Allen, who
(08:27):
is now remembered as a great hero for his victory
at Fort Ticonderoga, and a lot of people forget that
Benedict Donald was also there. So these two guys get together.
They storm Fort Ticonderoga on May tenth, seventeen seventy five,
and it's just a bunch of screaming Americans with rifles
running up the hill, which is incredibly terrifying to the
(08:47):
British and the Canadians and many other people in the world.
And the British commander runs outside in his underwear and
immediately surrenders the keys to the fort. Benedict Donald and
Ethan Allen are great heroes of the American Revolution, very
early on in the proceedings for their capture of a
dude in his underwear at a fort on the border
between New York and Canada. Another thing that Arnold is
(09:09):
very well known for, and one of the craziest things
that he did during his career, is he led the
first American invasion of Canada. We've tried to invade Canada twice.
We have failed both times. Benedict Arnold was in command
of the first attempt. He led a thousand soldiers on
a three hundred and fifty mile canoe ride and hike
through the uncharted wildernesses of Canada in the middle of winter.
(09:33):
And when I mean uncharted, I mean like the only
notes we had on this on the route that they
were taking was literally not on any maps because nobody
had gone It was all swamp and river and all
this stuff. Nobody had gone through any of it before.
And the only guide they had along this way was
some dude who like more than ten years ago, had
(09:53):
traveled this route and made a little journal about it
and drew little maps and stuff, very sketchy. But Arnold
was like, Yeah, whatever, we can do this. I'll march
a thousand guys this way in the middle of winter
in canoes that we just made like two weeks ago.
That sounds feasible, totally, totally ha. So they march with
the wilderness. It doesn't go well, like people are starting
(10:16):
to desert, people are starting to get hungry. It's cold,
people are freezing, the food's starting to run out. There's
stories of people eating the leather off of their shoelaces.
There's to get any kind of calories to sustain themselves.
On this hike. They go all the way up the
Kennebec River, waterfalls, rapids, Sometimes they're rowing, sometimes they're portaging across,
carrying the boats and stuff. But they do eventually make it.
(10:38):
It takes nearly two months for them to get through
this passageway. And the idea was that when they get
out the other side, they're going to attack Canada from
the direction that they were at least expecting it right
the main roads were all fortified. They wanted to go
the back way, and they did, and they were incredibly successful,
a lot due to the leadership of Benedict Arnold. He
spent a bunch of his own money to outfit and
(10:59):
supply the soldiers, and they did it. They entered Canada
American Army thousand guys outside the wall of the Canadian
capital Quebec City, which has forty foot tall walls and
several hundred people defending the town. It's the only city
in North America that still has its original fortifications and walls.
And they're very impressive, and they're very big. And Benedict
(11:21):
Arnold he's got no cannons. He has enough powder left
from his journey that every guy can get five shots.
Only five, right, they get five shots? No cannons. Have
the thousand, six hundred guys or left the rest of
either deserted or died along the way. What do you
think The first thing he did was when he gets
outside the capital of Quebec. If you had to.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Guess I would I would say a bad word.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
I'd be like, sorry, guys, thanks for following me out here,
but like this, I really wasn't prepared for this. No,
he demands the unconditional surrender of the castle effective immediately.
Whoa yeah. They respond by shooting a cannon at his messenger.
The guy lived, but it wasn't that fun. So Bennett
Donald to six hundred guys, he lays siege to Quebec City.
(12:07):
Of course, as you do, even though he has no food,
He's going to lay siege to Quebec City.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
So no food, no cannon, and almost no.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Powder, right, and yeah, he lays siege to the forty
foot walls of Quebec City. They have six bastions, they
have two hundred cannons, they have nearly a thousand defenders,
including like every man, woman and child in Quebec City,
Like the Canadians really don't want to be part of America,
and they never have and they probably never will. Every man,
(12:37):
woman and child in the city was building fortifications inside
the city, like roadblocks and things like that, digging trenches
to try to like fortify the city against Bennedict Donald.
But he's going to push forward. He gets reinforced, he
gets a little bit more supplies, and on New Year's Eve,
seventeen seventy five, in the dead of winter and the
dead of night, in a white out blizzard, he personally
(12:59):
leads the against Quebec City. You can say a lot
of stuff about Bennedict Donald, and we're going to say
a lot of bad stuff about Benetic Donald, but he
was very brave. One of his men once wrote that
he was the kind of guy who would say follow
me rather than go get him, and he personally leads
the attack. He is dragging a sled that he is
mounted with a little cannon on it.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Wait a minute, wait, so they actually do have a cannon.
They have one little cannon.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
They found one. Yeah, they managed over the two months
I believe that they were besieging Quebec City, they managed
to get their hands on it. And not a big one.
A little cannon fits on a slid, right, But they
did it. And they break into the lower city, not
the walls yet, but they're fighting through the lower parts
of the city. Citizens are throwing things at them from
(13:46):
the windows. The town guard is fighting them, but they
are pushing their way through and they're winning and they're
doing pretty well. And then Bennedict Nald gets shot in
the leg. He's falling, he's down, he's screaming, yell, and
he's trying to crow all his way to like keep fighting.
Three of his own guys drag him, kicking and screaming
off the battlefield. The attack kind of stalls and then
(14:08):
it gets crushed. I think something like five hundred Americans
get captured. The attack is completely destroyed. Arnold is lucky
to escape with just like a little group of his
own guys. They get away, but complete defeat. Right after
all of that work, all of that travel all the
way up there, they besiege him for a couple of months.
They have this huge attack, very daring, but it's a
(14:28):
big failure and they're running away.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Yeah. Tactical withdrawal.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Tactical withdrawal. Yeah, that's the military term.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
That's the military term. Need to remember that. Yeah, okay, okay,
So this is I'm guessing this is not the end
of the story.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
It is not the end of the story because Ben
and mcdonnold now has a new problem, which is that
the Canadian army has defeated the American army in the
north and now they are going to march south and
attack into New York and just pursue the defeated army
and try to route them and then basically like, okay,
well we've defeated you, and now we're going to go
in because all you guys are dead, and we're going
(15:02):
to go march in there and take New York. So
Arnold's retreating, retreating, and he learns that the British are
set to attack and they're not going to go the
way he went. They're not going to go to the
main road. They are going to go by water. You know,
you've got all those lakes up in Upstate New York
and Canada. They're going to go across a big lake
called Lake Champlain. They have twenty nine warships that they've
(15:24):
built on this lake, and they're going to transport thirteen
thousand men across Lake Champlain into upstate New York to
launch an attack. Arnold has like foreigner guys with him.
He's in big trouble, but he puts out a call,
like I said, everybody's raising militias. So he raises a
militia of just everybody he can get his hands on.
On the way back right upstate New York, people like, hey,
(15:47):
we got some trouble here. We got a problem. He
has what's left of his soldiers chopped down trees. They
melt horseshoes and gun barrels and can whatever pizza cannons
left they have. They make nails out of it.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
So they're actually melting down their firearms, melting.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Down their guns. Yeah, melting down the firearms.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Like they're choosing to sacrifice their guns for.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
This right to build ships. Yeah, they're going to cut
down trees and melt down their gear to make nails
to build ships, which I mean the main thing they're
going to do with them is set them on fire
and seal them into the British Fleet to try to
cause some havoc there. But he and his men manage
to build sixteen warships in Lake Champlain in an incredibly
(16:31):
short period of time. So he gets defeated on New
Year's Eve seventeen seventy five. On October ten, seventeen seventy six,
So ten months later he's built sixteen warships, and he
trained a regiment of New Hampshire infantrymen who had never
been on a boat before how to sail a ship.
And those guys are going to go out and sail
against twenty nine warships of the British Navy and thirteen
(16:53):
thousand men and try to stop this attack into New York.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
That's pretty impressive.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Yeah, yeah, it's impressive. The odds are not great, no,
And like I said, they're playing was to light some
of those ships on fire and just sail them into
the British Navy to try to hope to catch some
of their ships on fire. But they end up fighting
this Battle of Lake Champlain. It's seven hours on the lake,
which I just love the idea of two navies fighting
each other in a big lake. Whoever wins. There's no
exit playing here, right, All you could do is sail
(17:20):
back and forth around this lake. There's no there's no
ocean access, which I just always find kind of kind
of funny.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
Yeah, Everything catches on fire, the boats all gets smashed,
everything gets blown up. Ben Azard loses every single ship
in his fleet, and like I said, he was planning
on setting most of them on fire, which is what
he does. He uses the sails to carry his wounded
men home in these bloody sails. But he was able
to delay the British attack. He did enough damage to them.
(17:49):
He didn't win the battle. He lost every ship in
his fleet, but he did enough damage to them that
they couldn't press the invasion and they were kind of
stuck there. Arnold retreats back to fourteen Canderogo, which is
the fort he captured in like the very beginning days
of the war, starts building more ships, starts getting reinforcements,
starts building up his army, and it's going to be
(18:09):
another six or seven months before the British are able
to try to attack again. Bought himself some time, and
that's pretty awesome to have like been defeated, and then
you cover your own tactical withdrawal. But building these ships
and having them fight against this invasion force.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Yeah, that was pretty that was a pretty badass tactic.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Okay. The British do eventually come and this is where
you get the Battle of Saratoga, which is the one
that everybody knows. It's the turning port of the war.
That's the only thing I've ever remembered learning about this
growing up was that Battle of Saratoga's the turning point
of the American Revolution. The Battle of Saratoga was won
by Benedict Arnold. And we're going to get into that.
(18:56):
So the British come down and the British take the
sweet time getting down there. The British army is led
by a guy named Johnny Burgoyne, and he's they call
him Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne. Johnny Bergoyne is like, you know
that question of like which historical figure would you have
dinner with? If you could have dinner with any historical figure,
what would your answer to that be?
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Pat Oh, good goodness. I don't know, honestly, maybe, oh maybe,
the Roman poet added, I don't know. It's like I think,
actually I'd want to have like a whole dinner party
of people. But anyway, is this the cue for me
to ask you, Ben, so, Ben, who would you like
to have dinner with?
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Well? I think a lot of people go with the
historical figure they think is the most interesting. Gentlemen, Johnny
Burgoyne might have been the most fun person to have
dinner with. If you were going to have a dinner party,
have dinner with somebody from history, it'd be like it'd
be a close one between like Peter the Great and
gentleman Johnny burgoing because they were both party monsters. So
the British are going down. Johnny Bergoyne was just some guy.
(19:56):
He was just some British officer. He meets the commander
of the British Army at a party in Canada and
it's like, hey, you want to you want to take
car of these Americans. I'll take car of these Americans
for you, dude. I got this under control. And the
guy was like, yeah, sure, why not. You can have
an army of guys to attack the colonies. So we're
going is going down. He's got this big baggage trained
with him, and he's got one giant horse drawn carriage
(20:17):
that's filled entirely with silverware for his parties. He's a
party machine and that's all he really wants to do,
and that's all he does on the ride south from
Canada into New York to fight the Americans. And the
bummer with this is that it also really slows him
down because you've got to get all these carts through
the mud and the rain and the muck and all
of this stuff. They're not not an easy way to
(20:40):
get down there. And by the time to get down there,
the Americans reinforce their base at Saratoga. So there's two
guys in charge of the base at Saratoga. One's Benedict
Donald and one is Horatio Gates. Gates is the guy
who gets all the credit for winning this, even though
Horatio Gates would have lost it without Benedic Donald. Gates
strategy was like like, hey, we're in this fort. We
(21:01):
got these cannons, we got these trenches which just a
hangout here and defend. And Arnold was like, no, they've
got more guys than us. They got six thousand troops,
they've got hundreds of cannons, and they're bringing up more
and more every single day. Every day we wait here,
more of Johnny Burgoyne's silverware is going to arrive, and
with it's going to be cannons and horses and guys,
(21:21):
and so we have to attack. We have to find
the right moment in an attack. And him and Gates
really have an argument about this. There's one they do,
like a little skirmish at one point at a place
called Fraser's Farm or a place that's now known as
Fraser's Farm. The Americans win. Arnold is like, this is it.
We got to go, We got to break in. We've
got him on the run. Gate says no. They have
this huge argument and Benedict Arnold it's very like it's
(21:45):
one of these like you can't fire me, I quit situations.
He might have been We might have been fired. He
might have quit. We don't really know. There was a
big argument, There was a lot of swearing, there was
a lot of anger, and it ended up with Arnold
having stayed at Sarah because he really wanted to see
this thing through. But he was completely removed of all
command and was no longer in charge of any soldiers.
(22:08):
So a few weeks later, the British launchs an even
bigger attack and the Americans hold again same place, Fraser's farm.
It's called that because the British commander's name was Fraser.
He gets killed on the battlefield at the second engagement.
Here the British kind of on the run and the
British main force isn't really prepared for this. There's this
huge hole in their lines. Arnold is sitting on the
(22:29):
hill at Saratoga watching this, tells Gates like, this is
the time. Gates is like, no, no, We're just gonna
hang out here. Arnold's like, you can hang out here.
I'm going. He goes on his horse by himself, rides
directly to that gap by himself. He jumps over like
a fence on his horse. He's like waving his sword around.
He's screaming. The American troops that are there are so
inspired by this that they follow him, even though he's
(22:50):
not their commanding officer. He commands nobody. Their orders are
to hold, and they charge with them, and they run
through and they break through this flank. Arnold gets shot
in the leg keeps fighting. His horse gets shot, falls
on the same leg that has now been shot twice,
crushes his leg. He's pinned under the horse. He's still
like waving his sworder around, trying to get people to rally.
And they do. They defeat Scottish Highlanders, they defeat some
(23:13):
of the more like intense units of the British army,
drive them from the field, and the next day Johnny
Bergoyne surrenders his entire army to the Americans six thousand soldiers. Wow,
so he's the greatest hero of the biggest battle of
the American Revolution.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Yeah, mister Benedict, follow me, Arnold.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Yeah, follow me exactly. That's how we did it, and that's.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
And that's how we're seeing him in this moment. Yes,
this is you know, this is Benedict Arnold at his best.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
This is Ben Darnel at his best. It's all downhill
from here. Oh, yes, this is This is the bummer
part of the story. So he gets put in charge
of Philadelphia. He's re regrouping, right, his legs all messed up.
He technically disobeyed orders. Him and Gates still hate each other.
Gates is a little bit more influential Arnold was a
(24:01):
little bit more of like a renegade. While he's recovering,
they put him in Philadelphia. He marries into a loyalist family,
which take from that what you will, Like there's a
lot of historical stuff around, like those words made him
do it, which I don't really think is a very
like productive way of looking at historical figures, because he
still had to make the decision, right. I don't understand
(24:22):
this like, oh, he had an evil wife and that's
why she hadn't pecked him into doing evil stuff, which
I hated as a as a historical way of looking
at things, exactly.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
Yeah, I mean, she's not the only influence on him.
And you know, we have just so many examples of
married couples disagreeing on things. I'm with you on.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
This, Ben, exactly. It's like he's married into the loyalist
family now after having been fighting the British from day
one of this war. It's not like he didn't give
that at least a little bit of thought before he
bought the ring. Right, he gets passed over for promotion.
The Continental Congress accuses of him stealing funds because they
don't like him. He wasn't stealing funds. By most accounts,
(25:01):
he wasn't stealing funds. He came into money when he
married this family, so he started buying nicer things. They
accused him of stealing money from the Continental Congress. I
think that was just kind of a way of opportunity
given him a hard time. Yeah, his leg hurt every
single day because we're looking at like eighteenth century medicine
to repair a dude who got shot twice in the
same leg and then had a horse fall on it.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Oh yeah, even with twenty first century medicine, that's woo rough.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Yes. So he's still brigadier general, which is not that high, right,
it's like the lowest level of general. He's a brigadier general,
and he's one of the greatest war heroes of the
war so far. Gates gets promoted over him and has
given command of the entire army in the South, completely
blows it and gets massively defeated, and Arnold is super mad.
(25:49):
He's like, why should be having a better post than
just this Philadelphia thing, And so they put him in
charge of a little base called West Point, which is
currently where the United States Military Academy is, where the
Army train it's officers, but at the time it was
just a fort on a river in upstate New York,
and he was just like, what is this? What the
hell is this?
Speaker 2 (26:09):
Right, like, yeah, he was promoted out of the way.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
Right, you were just kind of stuck out here in
the middle of nowhere. He's mad, Like I would be
a little I'd be a little annoyed with this too,
So what he does is not awesome. He meets with
some British spies and is like, you know what, I'll
just hand over West Point to you guys, if you
just make me an officer in the British Army and
treat me better than these Americans. He wants money, he
wants an officer's commission, and he is going to turn
(26:32):
over West Point.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Oh, Benedict, Benedict.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
That's not a good idea. This is a really bad
This is a really like this is the this is
the American Revolution version of like having too much wine
and like emailing your ex girlfriend, right, Like, this is
not good. This is not a well thought out decision.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
No, you know, it is not well thought out. I
mean it takes on like a larger scale than you know,
drunk texting your ex or whatever. But you know, ye,
not Benedict Arnold's finest moment.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
And he's not even good at it because he gets caught.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
Yeah, oh, he sucks at treason.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
He sucks at treason. It's not his thing. He's more
about you know, he went about treason in the same
way he went about the Battle of Saratoga, just like
waving his sword around and yelling. Because he gets busted.
Washington spies the culpa ring. They find him, and luckily
he figured Luckily for him, I guess he figures it
out before he gets caught. He escapes, They go to
(27:32):
get him, and they he gets away. He does become
an officer in a British army. They give him a
general ship. He goes back and he sets fire to
some stores outside of Richmond, Virginia. He goes back to
his hometown of New London, Connecticut and burns it to
the ground. Which, you know what, this is not cool
in seventeen seventy five when you're like the greatest war
hero in American history.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Not cool, Benedict not cool.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
And that's it. He's survives the war. He goes back
to England, he starts up a business there. He retires
with an officer's commission, and he dies in peace. Nobody
gets him. If you were going to do a Hollywood
movie of his life, you'd end up having like Lafayette
duel him at the end and defeat him or something,
or George Washington would throw him off a tower or whatever.
(28:18):
But like, it doesn't happen. He goes home and he retires,
and he's rich, and he lives in a mansion, and
you know, he's a little bit sad about the way
that things went. But but but he's sad and rich,
sad and rich. It's better to be sad and rich
than sad and poor.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
Yeah, yeah, he's sad and rich and uh not in jail, right.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Yes, right, Yeah. He committed treason and got away with
it and lived happily ever after, and that's how the
story ends.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
There are currently three monuments to Benedict Arnold in the
United States, which is kind of interesting considering that he's
the biggest trader in American history.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
Well, you got to remember things somehow.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
Yeah, I mean, he was a great hero, right, and
he wouldn't have been such a big trade, Like, there
were plenty of people who were flipping sides in the
American Revolution on the lower levels, but you don't remember
their names because they weren't big time celebrity is in
their own lifetime, right, Yeah, So.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
These monuments, how do you commemorate a guy who is
as complicated as Benedict Arnold, big War hero, also a trader.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Yes, mostly just leave his name off the monument, which
is what they did to Arnold with these ones. Two
of the monuments at Saratoga. One is just the statue
of a boot on the foot that got shot and
it's placed right at the spot where he led the
charge and got shot in the leg, and it simply says,
in memory of the most brilliant officer of the Continental
(29:39):
Army who was desperately wounded on this spot, winning for
his countrymen the decisive battle of the American Revolution, and
for himself the rank of major general. Pretty good. That's
pretty good one as far as monuments go. That's a
pretty solid one. There's another statue on the battlefield at
Saratoga that shows the American commanders Horatio Gays, Philip Schuler,
(29:59):
and A Morgan. And there's a fourth pedestal there that's empty,
just kind of say like there was another guy here,
but we're not going to talk about him.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
Yeah, mmm, conspicuous by his absence.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
Yes, exactly. I like the boot one. There's a story
that when Bennedict Donald was leading those raids into Virginia,
he captured some American soldiers and he was interrogating them personally.
And this is this is back before you know Instagram
and live streaming and all that stuff. So like people
knew who Benedict Donald. These American soldiers knew who Bennedict
Donald was, but they didn't really know what he looked like, right,
(30:32):
because there wasn't like you weren't sending like photographs around you.
There was no ap wire of like what his face
looked like. So he captures these guys and he asks
them if there were any orders regarding what to do
with General Benedict Donald if they were to capture him,
and the soldier that he talked to, I mean, this
is a story, right, but the soldier said, yes, we
are to bury the wounded leg with the highest military
(30:54):
honors and hang the rest of him. Ooh, pretty solid,
that's pretty good. I'd say that it's like some way
like I would say that it's pretty bad ass to
be remembered in this way. I mean, it's not good, right,
It's not good to betray your country for some money.
I think if he had just kind of been chill,
he'd be remembered as like one of the greatest like
founding fathers and American war heroes. Ever, if he had
(31:16):
just like gone to West Point and like written an
angry letter.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Yeah, use your words, people, well, yeah, exactly use your
words and then don't sell out. If he had made
different choices, he'd be remembered quite differently. He'd be he
wouldn't he wouldn't be outshown by her Ratio Gates.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
Yeah, I mean it's a and it's interesting, right because
because of this treason, everybody does know his name, even
though if I don't think they quite like I think,
over the last couple of hundred years, it's been kind
of lost as to why his name was so so
hated at the time. Right, it was because he was
(31:54):
such a badass warrior of American history that when he betrayed,
when betrayed his post, it was shocking to everybody.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Yeah, I didn't talk about the third monument, but the
third ones at the United States Military Academy at West Point,
which is like they have a statue to this guy
at the place where he was most famously going to
like betray the country. But on the grounds at West Point,
they have a bunch of plaques that depict every American
general of the Revolution, and it just puts like birth, year, rank, death,
(32:26):
a little sentence or two about them, the name. And
there's one amid all of these, with all the biological
details of everybody who achieved the rank of general the
American Revolution, there's one that is just blank and it
says major General born seventeen forty with no additional details.
So that was the story of Benedict Donald, American hero
(32:47):
who became American villain overnight. Pat, does it convince you
at all? Is it still you Benedict Donald?
Speaker 2 (32:55):
Okay, okay, yes, I'll confess I still have you Benedict Donald,
but this is Benedict Arnold say it ain't. So you know,
you have convinced me that he was a badass, and
he you know, he did a total heel turn, but
he was a bad ass.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
He was, and yeah, he totally he he'l turn is
the best way to put it. Just overnight, greatest war
hero in American history. If he decides that he doesn't
want to, you know, betray everything that he fought for,
then he's he's probably on money right now. Yeah, but
he did, and he had his season eaightive Game of
(33:31):
Thrones and now nobody wants to talk about him anymore,
and there's no statues of him, and uh, and that's
that's the story of Benedict Arnold. It's it's it's much
more of a tragedy than a lot of people really
give it credit for, because they just think, oh, he's
that guy that betrayed the country, and yeah, it's a
little more deeper and interesting.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
And it's not even well, it's not even that there
are no statues. It's that there are things that whose
point is to tell you this is not a statue
of Benedict Arnold.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
Yes, yes, they they went through great effort to outfuskate
and to to say, yeah, this is a statue of
a great hero, but who shall not be named, and
we will never talk about and we don't have any
persona non Groudover's memoriad in the US.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
I guess, yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah, good old memori good
old Roman tradition. Yes, so, yep, you have convinced me
he's a badass, and like any human being, he's a
complex character and you can be a badass.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
Yeah. So I'm not comfortable referring to him as as
friend of the show, Benedict Arnold just yet.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
But no.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
But he uh, you know, he's he's more badass than
people like to give him credit for. And yeah, so
hopefully we won't get too many horrifying hate mail emails
about this or angry Twitter comments. So I'm keeping my
fingers crossed on that.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
That is a hobby of some people.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
Okay, well, we will see you on the next one.
If you made it this far, We're really glad that
you did, and thanks for listening. Have a great one.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
Badass of the Week is an iHeartRadio podcast produced by
High five Content. Executive producers are Andrew Jacobs, Me, Pat Larish,
and my co host Ben Thompson. Writing is by Me
and Ben. Story editing is by Ian Jacobs, Brandon Phibbs,
and Allie Lamer. Mixing and music and sound design is
(35:27):
by Jude Brewer. Consulting by Michael May. Special thanks to
Noel Brown at iHeart. Badass of the Week is based
on the website Badass of Theweek dot com, where you
can read all sorts of stories about other badasses. If
you want to reach out with questions ideas, you can
email us at Badass Podcast at badassoftheweek dot com. If
(35:52):
you like the podcast, subscribe, follow, listen, and tell your
friends and your enemies if you want as. We'll be
back next week with another one. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com