While Burgoyne with the main army was moving south, Lieutenant-Colonel St. Leger, in conformity with instructions from the British cabinet, with a detachment of about 1,000 men (English regulars, provincials, and Indians), was rapidly advancing west to Fort Stanwix, by the St. Lawrence and Lakes Ontario and Oneida. After reducing this post and subjugating the patriots of the Mohawk valley, he was ordered to join his chief at or near Albany. Burgoyne's formidable invading force of 7,863 men, with 42 pieces of artillery, which reached Crown Point June 27th, advanced thence, July 1st, in battle array: the right wing of British troops under General Phillips, upon Fort Ticonderoga on the west bank of the lake; the left wing of Germans under General Riedesel, upon Fort Independence on the east bank; and the floating batteries in line across the lake. Burgoyne had announced in orders: "This army must not retreat." General Schuyler had recently visited Forts Ticonderoga and Independence, where, instead of a garrison of 5,000 men, he found only 2,546 half-armed and poorly provided Continental troops and 900 raw militia, "many of them mere boys, and one third of the whole force unfit for duty." He noted, with serious forebodings, the unfitness of the works to resist attack, a state to which lack of workmen and the neglect of Gates had brought them. The reduction of this stronghold was indispensable to Burgoyne's progress, not only as insuring his communications with Canada, but because of the danger of leaving such a force in his rear. In an endeavor to strengthen these fortifications, of which General St. Clair had recently taken command, the works had been too much extended, and the key-points—Mount Hope, commanding Fort Ticonderoga, and Mount Defiance, a supposed inaccessible eminence at the confluence of the waters of Lakes George and Champlain—had not been occupied; consequently, they were seized by the British and artillery was planted upon them. St. Clair, no favorite of fortune, finding himself nearly invested on the 5th, and exposed to a plunging fire from these heights, which he could not return, wisely determined to evacuate all his works that night, under pretence of making a sortie. As soon as it was dark enough, the women and wounded, together with some ammunition and stores, were placed upon 200 bateaux, which were to be escorted to Skenesborough by five armed galleys and a guard of 600 men, all under the command of Colonel Long. In thus abandoning Ticonderoga, St. Clair justified himself, saying that "we had lost a post, but saved a province."