The military operations of that memorable year were a striking illustration of the magnitude of the task the British generals were set to accomplish, and of their singular lack of the energy, decision, and despatch necessary to accomplish it. They seemed like men who dallied and dreamed and did not mean to succeed. They planned like men of action, but then tarried and bungled at the execution of their plans. It was their purpose that year (1777) to strike from three several directions along the valley of the Hudson, and break once for all the connection between the New England colonies and their confederates. General Burgoyne was to move, with eight thousand men, down Lake Champlain; Colonel St. Leger, with a small but sufficient force, along a converging line down the valley of the Mohawk, from Oswego on Ontario; and General Howe was to meet them from the south, moving in strength up the Hudson. More than thirty-three thousand men would have effectually swept the whole of that great central valley, north and south, when their plan was executed. But it was not executed. The British commanders were to learn that, for their armies, the interior of the country was impracticable. [Illustration: JOHN BURGOYNE] Both St. Leger and Burgoyne were baffled in that vast wilderness. It was simple enough for Burgoyne to descend the lakes and take once again the forts which guarded them. Even Ticonderoga he took without a blow struck. A precipitous height, which the Americans had supposed inaccessible by any sort of carriage, rose above the strong fortifications of the place beyond a narrow strip of water; the English dragged cannon to its summit; and General St. Clair promptly withdrew in the night, knowing his position to be no longer tenable. But it was another matter to penetrate the forests which lay about Lake George and the upper waters of the Hudson with militiamen out of every country-side within reach swarming thicker and thicker at every step the redcoats took into the depths of the perplexing region. A thousand men Burgoyne felt obliged to leave at Ticonderoga for the sake of his communications; close upon a thousand more he lost (August 16th) at Bennington, whither he had sent them to seize stores; and by the time he had reached the neighborhood of Saratoga with the six thousand left him, fully fourteen thousand provincials beset him. He had been told that the people of the country through which he was to pass would gladly give him aid and succor; that those quiet forests of Vermont and New York would even yield him, it might be, a regiment or two of loyalists wherewith to recruit his ranks when once his presence there should give the secluded settlers heart of grace to declare themselves openly for the King. Instead of that, he presently had a formidable force of provincial yeomanry out of Vermont dogging his steps under General Lincoln; a like levy, hurriedly drawn together out of New Hampshire and