Though he knew now that St. Leger could not come, though he knew nothing, and painfully conjectured a thousand things, of Sir William Howe’s promised movement below upon the river, Burgoyne pushed forward to the Hudson and crossed it (September 13, 1777), to face the Americans under General Gates upon the western bank. It was as safe to go forward as to turn back. Gates, secure within his intrenchments, would not strike; and he, his supplies instantly threatened behind him, could not wait. On the 19th of September he threw four thousand men forward through the forest to turn, if it were possible, the flank of General Gates’s army where it lay so still upon Bemis’s Heights by Stillwater. But Arnold was too quick for him. With three thousand men Arnold met and checked him, moving with all the quick audacity and impetuous dash of which he had given Guy Carleton a taste upon Champlain and at the gates of Quebec, Daniel Morgan and his Virginian riflemen again at his back as they had been at far Quebec. His stroke having failed, Burgoyne lay still for eighteen tedious days, waiting once more for Sir Henry Clinton, now at last, he knew, actually upon the river. On the 7th of October he struck again. Clinton came too slowly. Burgoyne’s lines of communication by the northern lakes, long threatened by General Lincoln and his Vermonters, were now actually cut off, and it was possible to calculate just how few days’ rations remained to make his campaign upon. He tried an attack with picked men, moving quickly; but overwhelming forces met him, and the inevitable Arnold, coming upon the field when he was already beaten, turned his defeat almost into a rout. He withdrew hopelessly towards Saratoga. Every crossing of the river he found heavily guarded against him. No succor came to him, or could come, it seemed, either from the west or from the south; he could find no safe way out of the wilderness; without aid, the odds were too great against him; and on the 17th of October he capitulated. [Illustration: FACSIMILE OF CLOSING PARAGRAPHS OF BURGOYNE’S SURRENDER]