hands. The obstructions in the river were removed and 1 7 7 7 provisions and stores became more abundant in the city. About the end of October, Washington had taken up In Winter his headquarters at Whitemarsh; about the middle of Quarters December he went into winter quarters at Valley Forge; the route thither was tracked in blood as the men, many of them destitute of shoes and stockings, painfully picked their way over the frozen ground. Log huts chinked with clay were built as quickly as possible, but, before they were ready for occupancy, there was great suffering. Thus the campaign for Philadelphia closed with the royal forces in possession of the rebel capital. Germain's Difficulties CHAPTER I V S A RA T TOG A HE British plan of operations for the campaign. "had been maturely and copiously discussed by the British Cabinet, and had been hopelessly and grievously bungled." Ignoring Sir William Howe's scheme of forcing Washington to risk a battle in order to protect the capital of the confederacy and then crushing "the rebel regular army," Lord Germain had "conceived the ambitious hope of compensating for deficiency of numbers by brilliant and novel strategy." Hence the triple plan outlined in the preceding chapter. Burgoyne was to come down from Canada by way of Lake Champlain, Saint Leger was to go up the Saint Lawrence to Lake Ontario and thence come down by way of Oswego and the Mohawk valley, while Howe was to force his way from New York up the Hudson toward Albany where the three columns were to converge upon the Americans-a "network of complicated and delicate manœuvres." Trevelyan pithily remarks that Lord Germain "exercised Lord Chatham's functions; but he had not mastered Lord Chatham's methods." We have seen that Sir William Howe contributed and Dangers nothing to the close coöperation that was necessary for the success of this plan. The reader of this chapter will do well to keep clearly in mind Howe's successive movements as recorded in the third chapter. But there were other difficulties and dangers that clung close to Burgoyne's line of march from Canada, such as poor roads, long distances, and the proximity of New Eng- 1 7 7 7 land territory, where thousands who were unwilling or unable to join the regular army would promptly answer a call for a few weeks' military service not far from home. Moreover, the triple plan transgressed one of the primary principles of military strategy, namely, that a force operating upon interior lines has a great advantage over a force operating in scattered detachments and upon exterior lines. As the campaign advanced, it was found that every suggestion for a modification of the original plan had to be sent by ocean and river over fifteen hundred miles; that, even when they were not intercepted, dispatches between Howe and Burgoyne took nearly three months to go and come; and that neither general could communicate at all with Saint Leger in the depths of a wilderness fifty leagues from New York or Montreal. As might have been foreseen, each of the three British. commands was compelled to act independently without hope or possibility of much aid from either of the others. On the other hand, news of what was taking place in the northern country might be sent directly and thus quickly to Washington who, operating on interior lines, could send reinforcements from his camp in New Jersey by four easy marches to Putnam at the highlands of the Hudson or march his whole army to Lake George within a fortnight. As a matter of fact, some of the American regulars fought against Burgoyne at Saratoga and then joined Washington in time to take part in his campaign in the central provinces, while the single season saw Benedict Arnold driving Tryon from Connecticut, facing Saint Leger on the Mohawk, and fighting furiously at Saratoga. Burgoyne, who enjoyed the favor of both king and Burgoyne's ministry, had stipulated for a strong veteran force offi- Army cered by men of experience and skill. By the first of July, he had an army of almost eight thousand, nearly half of whom were Hessians; he also had about two hundred and fifty Canadians and provincials and about four hundred Indians; his artillery train was said to be the finest in America and was under the immediate Burgoyne's we met in the French a On the thirteenth of June, Proclamation Burgoyne announced the beginning of his campaign by saluting the royal standard at Saint Johns and, on the twentieth, issued what Professor Tyler has called "gusty and pot-valiant proclamation" that "remains for all time a masterpiece of military gasconading and of thunder-dealing rhetoric." It threatened "devastation, famine, and every concomitant horror" against "the hardened enemies of Great Bemis Cambridge Kingston Esopus Hudson English Statute Miles Britain and America" and made significant allusion to I 777 "the Indian forces under my direction." The grandiloquent attempt to frighten or allure the country people was travestied in verse by Governor Livingston and Autograph of Phillips burlesqued in a counter-proclamation by Francis Hopkinson. The burlesque was everywhere read amid roars of laughter, a safe antidote to a popular panic. Burgoyne then gave a war-feast to his Indian allies, Burgoyne's urged them not to massacre the children, women, and Indian Canteen of the Revolutionary Period old men, and prescribed they might take the go forth! But I exhort you, as you are Christians and members of civil society, to take care not to harm any man, woman, or child.' Harangue Ticonderoga On the twenty-seventh of June, Burgoyne reached The Crown Point; on the thirtieth, he announced that "this Investment of army must not retreat;" on the first of July, he began the investment of Ticonderoga, then held by Major-general Saint Clair and about three thousand. On the other side of the narrowed Lake Champlain, the Americans had fortified Mount Independence; between the two strong |