itish army under the command of General Burgoyne
held Canada. That province had shown no disposition to join in the
revolt; an early attempt on the part of the rebels to invade it had been
successfully repelled. Besides English and German troops, Burgoyne had
the aid of several tribes of Indian auxiliaries, whose aid the British
Government had been at some pains to secure--a policy denounced by
Chatham in a powerful and much-quoted speech. Burgoyne was a clever and
imaginative though not a successful soldier. He conceived and suggested
to his Government a plan of campaign which was sound in strategic
principle, which might well have succeeded, and which, if it had
succeeded, would have dealt a heavy and perhaps a decisive blow to
American hopes. How far its failure is to be attributed to his own
faulty execution, how far to the blunders of the Home Government, and
how far to accidents which the best general cannot always avoid, is
still disputed. But that failure was certainly the turning-point of the
war.

Burgoyne's project was this: He proposed to advance from Canada and push
across the belt of high land which forms the northern portion of what is
now New York State, until he struck the upper Hudson. Howe was at the
same time to advance northward up the Hudson, join hands with him and
cut the rebellion in two.

It was a good plan. The cutting off and crushing of one isolated
district after another is just the fashion in which widespread
insurrectionary movements have most generally been suppressed by
military force. The Government accepted it, but, owing as it would seem
to the laziness or levity of the English Minister involved, instructions
never reached Howe until it was too late for him to give effective
support to his colleague. All, however, might have prospered had
Burgoyne been able to move more rapidly. His first stroke promised well.
The important fort of Ticonderoga was surprised and easily captured,
and the road was open for his soldiers into the highlands. But that
advance proved disastrously slow. Weeks passed before he approached the
Hudson. His supplies were running short, and when he reached Saratoga,
instead of joining hands with Howe he found himself confronted by
strongly posted American forces, greatly outnumbering his own
ill-sustained and exhausted army. Seeing no sign of the relief which he
had expected to the south--though as a fact Howe had by this time learnt
of the expedition and was has