tilities against Burgoyne's force.

Burgoyne assembled his troops and confederates near the River Bouquet,
on the west side of Lake Champlain. He then, on June 21, 1777, gave his
red allies a war-feast, and harangued them on the necessity of
abstaining from their usual cruel practices against unarmed people and
prisoners. At the same time he published a pompous manifesto to the
Americans, in which he threatened the refractory with all the horrors of
war, Indian as well as European.

The army proceeded by water to Crown Point, a fortification which the
Americans held at the northern extremity of the inlet, by which the
water from Lake George is conveyed to Lake Champlain. He landed here
without opposition, but the reduction of Ticonderoga--a fortification
about twelve miles to the south of Crown Point--was a more serious
matter, and was supposed to be the critical part of the expedition.
Ticonderoga commanded the passage along the lakes, and was considered to
be the key to the route which Burgoyne wished to follow. The English had
been repulsed in an attack on it in the war with the French in 1758,
with severe loss. But Burgoyne now invested it with great skill; and the
American general, St. Clair, who had only an ill-equipped army of about
three thousand men, evacuated it on July 5th.

It seems evident that a different course would have caused the
destruction or capture of his whole army, which, weak as it was, was the
chief force then in the field for the protection of the New England
States. When censured by some of his countrymen for abandoning
Ticonderoga, St. Clair truly replied "that he had lost a post, but saved
a province." Burgoyne's troops pursued the retiring Americans, gained
several advantages over them, and took a large part of their artillery
and military stores.

The loss of the British in these engagements was trifling. The army
moved southward along Lake George to Skenesborough, and thence, slowly
and with great difficulty, across a broken country, full of creeks and
marshes, and clogged by the enemy with felled trees and other obstacles,
to Fort Edward, on the Hudson River, the American troops continuing to
retire before them.

Burgoyne reached the left bank of the Hudson River on July 30th.
Hitherto he had overcome every difficulty which the enemy and the nature
of the country had placed in his way. His army was in excellent order
and in the highest spirits, and the peril of the expedition seeme