The Baroness Friederike Charlotte Louise Riedesel zu Eisenbach (née von Massow; 11 July 1746 – 29 March 1808) was a German writer and the wife of Brunswick–Luneburg general Friedrich Adolf Riedesel, she kept a journal of her experiences as a spouse attached to the so-called Hessian forces during the American War of Independence.

"[5] In the following years, the Riedesels had two daughters, Gustava and Frederica, and Charlotte was pregnant with a third, Carolina, in 1776 when Brunswick–Luneburg signed a treaty to support Great Britain in the suppression of the rebellion in their American colonies.

Charlotte took with her some antiques to sell in England, where the demand for such items would provide them with needed money for their travelling expenses.

[6] "Mrs. General" Riedesel was well received in England in court, but she and her daughters suffered abuse in public, on account of her fashions being mistaken for French.

She received permission to accompany the army South, on General John Burgoyne's campaign to capture Albany.

[9] Her journals describe her evening in a nearby house, where wounded soldiers came to rest, and where a young English officer slowly died during the night.

[10] General Fraser died the next morning, and that afternoon, the house caught fire, and the Riedesel family was forced to evacuate.

General Fraser had requested that his body be buried at a redoubt, and Frederika observed the funeral under American cannon fire.

[11] After marching north through torrential rains with their equipment mired in mud the Baroness took refuge near Saratoga, present day Schuylerville, in what is now known as the Marshall House, a large wooden structure where yet is preserved the stone cellar where Charlotte sheltered with her small children, women accompanying the army and wounded officers and men.

Elsewhere in the house remain beams shattered by American cannon fire and bloodstains in the floor left by "one poor soldier", in the words of the Baroness, whose leg was struck off in the cannonade.

"[12] The heroic and tragic events that took place in the Marshall House are vividly described in Baroness Riedesel's celebrated diary.

[16] That same year, a smallpox epidemic broke out, and Charlotte again became the nurse to her household, perhaps even saving the life of her husband, who had asked to die.

[17] Charlotte is credited with saving the Braunschweig regimental colors by hiding them in her mattress, and she returned them to Duke Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand.