nation had founded the most sanguine expectations upon this arrangement; nothing else seemed to be talked of among them but this expedition of Canada, which was shortly to bring about the total subjection of America. The junction of the two armies appeared quite sufficient to attain this desired object; the Americans, it was said, cannot oppose it without coming to a general battle, and in such case, there can exist no doubt of the result. The ministers had taken all the measures which they deemed essential to the success of so important an enterprise; they had furnished with profusion whatever the generals themselves had required or suggested. General Burgoyne, an officer of uncontested ability, possessed of an exact knowledge of the country, and animated by an ardent thirst for military glory, had repaired to England during the preceding winter, where he had submitted to the ministers the plan of this expedition, and had concerted with them the means of carrying it into effect. The ministry, besides their confidence in his genius and spirit, placed great hope in that eager desire of renown by which they knew him to be goaded incessantly; they gave him therefore the direction of all the operations. In this appointment, little regard was manifested for the rank and services of general Carleton; what he had already done in Canada, seemed to entitle him to conduct to its conclusion the enterprise he had commenced. No one, assuredly, could pretend to govern that province with more prudence and firmness. He possessed also an accurate knowledge of the country, as he had resided in Canada for several years, and had already made war there. But perhaps the ministers were dissatisfied with his retreat from Ticonderoga, and the repugnance he was said to have manifested to employ the savages. Perhaps also, his severity in the exercise of his command had drawn upon him the ill will of some officers, who endeavored to represent his actions in an unfavorable light. Burgoyne, impatient to make his profit of the occasion, was arrived in England, where, being well received at court, and besieging the ministers with his importunities, he made such magnificent promises, that in prejudice of Carleton he was entrusted with the command of all the troops of Canada. But the governor, finding himself, contrary to his expectation, divested of all military power, and restricted in his functions, requested leave to resign.

General Burgoyne arrived at Quebec in the beginning of the month of May, and immediately set himself to push forward the business of his mission. He displayed an extreme activity in completing all the preparations which might conduce to the success of the enterprise. Meanwhile, several ships arrived from England, bringing arms, munitions, and field equipage, in great abundance. General Carleton, exhibiting an honorable example of moderation and patriotism, seconded Burgoyne with great diligence and energy; he exerted in his favor not only the authority with which he was still

invested as governor, but even the influence he had with his friends and numerous partisans. His zealous cooperation proved of signal utility, and every thing was soon in preparation for an expedition which was to decide the event of the war, and the fate of America. The regular force placed at the disposal of general Burgoyne, consisting of British and German troops, amounted to upwards of seven thousand men, exclusive of a corps of artillery, composed of about five hundred. To these should be added a detachment of seven hundred rangers, under colonel St. Leger, destined to make an incursion into the country of the Mohawks, and to seize Fort Stanwix, otherwise called Fort Schuyler. This corps consisted of some companies of English infantry, of recruits from New York, of Hanau chasseurs, and of a party of Canadians and savages. According to the plan of the ministers and of the general himself, the principal army of Burgoyne was to be joined by two thousand Canadians, including hatchetmen, and other workmen, whose services, it was foreseen, would be much needed to render the ways practicable. A sufficient number of seamen had been assembled, for manning the transports upon the lakes and upon the Hudson. Besides the Canadians that were to be immediately attached to the army, many others were called upon to scour the woods in the frontiers, and to occupy the intermediate posts between the army which advanced towards the Hudson, and that which remained for the protection of Canada; the latter amounted, including the Highland emigrants, to upwards of three thousand men. These dispositions were necessary, partly to intercept the communication between the enemy and the ill affected in Canada; partly to prevent desertion, to procure intelligence, to transmit orders, and for various other duties essential to the security and tranquillity of the country in the rear of the army. But these were not the only services exacted from the Canadians; a great number of them were assembled to complete the fortifications at Sorel, St. Johns, Chambly, and Ile aux Noix. Finally, they were required to furnish horses and carts, to convey from the different repositories to the army all the provisions, artillery stores, and other effects of which it might have need. Under this last head was comprehended a large quantity of uniforms, destined for the loyalists, who, it was not doubted, would after victory flock from all quarters to the royal camp.

But it was also thought that the aid of the savages would be of great advantage to the cause of the king; the government had therefore ordered general Carleton to use his utmost weight and influence to assemble a body of a thousand Indians, and even more if it was possible. His humanity, which could ill endure the cruelty of these barbarians, and experience, which had taught him that they were rather an incumbrance than an aid, in regular operations, would have induced him to decline their alliance; but, in obedience to his

orders, he exerted an active zeal in bringing them forward to support the expedition. His success was answerable to his efforts. Whether by the influence of his name, which was extreme among these tribes, from their avidity to grasp the presents of the English, or from their innate thirst for blood and plunder, their remote as well as near nations poured forth their warriors in such abundance, that the British generals became apprehensive that their numbers might render them rather a clog than any real addition of strength to the army. They hastened therefore to dismiss such as appeared the least proper for war, or the most cruel or intractable. Never, perhaps, was an army of no greater force than this accompanied by so formidable a train of artillery, as well from the number of pieces, as from the skill of those who served it. This powerful apparatus was considered eminently requisite to disperse without effort an undisciplined enemy in the open country, or to dislodge him from strong and difficult places. The generals who seconded Burgoyne in this expedition, were all able and excellent officers. The principal were, majorgeneral Phillips, of the artillery, who had distinguished himself in the wars of Germany; the brigadier-generals Frazer, Powel, and Hamilton, with the Brunswick major-general Baron Reidesel, and brigadier-general Specht. The whole army shared in the ardor and hopes of its chiefs; not a doubt was entertained of an approaching triumph, and the conquest of America.

The preparations being at length completed, and all the troops, as well national as auxiliary, having arrived, general Burgoyne proceeded to encamp near the little river Bouquet, upon the west bank of Lake Champlain, at no great distance to the north of Crown Point. As the time for commencing hostilities was near at hand, and dreading the consequences of the barbarity of the savages, which, besides the dishonor it reflected upon the British arms, might prove essentially prejudicial to the success of the expedition, he -resolved to assemble those barbarians in congress, and afterwards, in compliance with their customs, to give them a war feast. He made a speech to them on that occasion, calculated, in terms of singular energy, to excite their ardor in the common cause, and at the same time to repress their ferocious propensities. To this end, he endeavored to explain to them the distinction between a war carried on against a common enemy, in which the whole country and people were hostile, and the present, in which the faithful were intermixed with rebels, and traitors with friends. He recommended and strictly enjoined them, that they should put none to death but such as actually opposed them with arms in their hands; that old men, women, children, and prisoners, should be held sacred from the knife or tomahawk, even in the heat of action; that they should scalp only those whom they had slain in battle; but that under no pretext, or color of prevarication, they should scalp the wounded, or even the

dying, and much less kill them, by way of evading the injunction. He promised them a due reward for every prisoner they brought him in, but denounced the severest penalties against those who should scalp the living.

While, on the one hand, general Burgoyne attempted to mitigate the natural ferocity of the Indians, he endeavored, on the other, to render them an object of terror with those who persisted in resistance. For this purpose, on the twenty-ninth of June, he issued a proclamation from his camp at Putnam Creek, wherein he magnified the force of the British armies and fleets which were about to embrace and to crush every part of America. He painted, with great vivacity of coloring, the excesses committed by the chiefs of, the rebellion, as well as the deplorable condition to which they had reduced the colonies. He reminded the Americans of the arbitrary imprisonments and oppressive treatment with which those had been persecuted who had shown themselves faithful to their king and country; he enlarged upon the tyrannic cruelties inflicted by the assemblies and committees upon the most quiet subjects, without distinction of age or sex, for the sole offence, and often for the sole suspicion of having adhered in principle to the government under which they were born, under which they had lived for so long a time, and to which, by every tie divine and human, they owed allegiance. He instanced the violence offered to their consciences, by the exaction of oaths and of military services, in support of an usurpation they abhorred. He had come, he continued, with a numerous and veteran army, and in the name of the king, to put an end to such unheard of enormities. He invited the well disposed to join him, and assist in redeeming their country from slavery, and in the reestablishment of legal government. He promised protection and security to all those who should continue quietly to pursue their occupations; who should abstain from removing their cattle, or corn, or any species of forage; from breaking up the bridges, or obstructing the roads, and in a word, from committing any act of hostility; and who, on the contrary, should furnish the camp with all sorts of provisious, assured as they might be, of receiving the full value thereof, in solid coin. But against the contumacious, and those who should persist in rebellion, he denounced the most terrible war; he warned them that justice and vengeance were about to overtake them, accompanied with devastation, famine, and all the calamities in their train. Finally, he admonished them not to flatter themselves, that distance or coverts could screen them from his pursuit, for he had only to let loose the thousands of Indians that were under his direction to discover in their most secret retreats, and to punish with condign severity, the hardened enemies of Great Britain and America.

This manifesto, so little worthy of the general of a civilised nation, was justly censured, not only in the two houses of parliament and throughout Great Britain, but excited the indignation of every mode

rate and generous mind in all Europe. In vain did Burgoyne attempt to excuse himself, by pretending that he had merely intended to intimidate the people he was about to combat; he should have employed for this purpose the arms that are in use among polished nations, and not the menaces appropriate to barbarians. Moreover his soldiers, and especially the savages, were already but too much disposed to ravage and massacre, and to take in earnest what their general would have it believed he only announced as an artifice or feint. This was was not a race to be sported with, and the thing itself was no light matter. Be this as it may, the proclamation produced an effect entirely contrary to its author's expectations. That fearless people who inhabit New England, far from allowing it to terrify them, were much inclined to deride it; they never met with each other without contemptuously inquiring what vent the vaunting general of Britain had found for his pompous and ridiculous declamations? These preliminary dispositions accomplished, general Burgoyne made a short stop at Crown Point, for the establishment of magazines, an hospital, and other necessary services, and then proceeded with all his troops to invest Ticonderoga. The right wing took the western bank of the lake, the left advanced upon the eastern, and the centre was embarked upon the lake itself. The reduction of this fortress, without which it was impossible for the army to advance a step further, was of course the first object of its operations. Art had added to the natural strength of Ticonderoga, and the unfortunate issue of the attempt made upon it by the British in 1758, when occupied by the French, was still fresh in remembrance. But general Burgoyne, either impatient to avenge this affront, or because the ardor of his army seemed to promise him an easy triumph over the most formidable obstacles, persuaded himself that its reduction would detain him but a very short time. He arrived under the walls of the place on the first of July. At the same time, the detachment of light troops which, as we have mentioned above, was destined to scour the country of the Mohawks, under the command of sir John Johnson and colonel St. Leger, advanced from Oswego, in order to attack Fort Stanwix. It was intended, after the acquisition of this fortress, to occupy the ground which extends between the same and Fort Edward, situated upon the banks of the Hudson, with a view to intercept the retreat of the garrison of Ticonderoga, and to rejoin the main army as it advanced.

The American army, destined to oppose the progress of the royal troops, and to defend Ticonderoga, was altogether insufficient. The garrison had experienced such a diminution during the winter, that it was much feared the English would seize that fortress by assault. The spring being arrived, and the rumors of the enemy's approach receiving daily confirmation, general Schuyler, to whom the Congress had recently given the command of all the troops in that quarter, employed