Accordingly, leaving proper guards for his camp, Burgoyne in person, at ten A. M. of the 7th, with 1,500 choice troops and ten pieces of artillery, moved out for the contemplated reconnoissance, which was at the same time to cover a foraging party to gather wheat for the pressing necessities of his army. His troops were formed in three columns, and when within three quarters of a mile of the American left were deployed in line of battle upon open ground behind a screen of dense forest. Fraser, with 500 picked men, formed the right, ready to fall upon Gates's left; Riedesel, with his Brunswickers, held the centre; Phillips was in charge of the British left; while the Indians, rangers, and provincials were to work their way through the woods to gain the left and rear of the American camp, in which Lincoln then commanded the right, and Gates had taken Arnold's place on the left. So soon as the enemy moved and the foragers were at work, Gates ordered out Morgan. Divining Burgoyne's intention, Morgan was to seize the high ground on the enemy's right by making a wide sweep; Learned was to hold the German centre in check; and Poor, with his brigade of Continentals and some militia, concealed by the woods, was to assail the British left. Poor, supported by Learned, opened the battle at half past two with great fury against Major Acland's grenadiers, and extended his blows to Riedesel's centre; Morgan and Dearborn almost simultaneously fell like a thunderbolt upon the enemy's right. [Illustration: GEORGE CLINTON. Reproduced from Delaplaine's _Repository of the lives and portraits of Distinguished Americans_ (Philad.). It was painted by Ames. It is engraved on steel in Allen C. Beach's _Centennial Celebrations of the State of New York_ (Albany, 1879), and by J. B. Forrest in Irving's _Washington_, ii. 209. A profile likeness by St. Memin is engraved in the _Doc. Hist. N. Y._, vol. iv. A portrait in uniform at an earlier age was etched by H. B. Hall, in 1866, and appears in the _Mag. of American History_, December, 1881. An engraving of a bust by Ceracchi (owned by the N. Y. Hist. Soc.) accompanies a memoir of Clinton by W. L. Stone in _Ibid._, iii. 336.—ED.] Burgoyne, seeing the danger of Fraser's right being turned, ordered him to fall back to a new position, in doing which Fraser was mortally wounded by one of Morgan's sharpshooters. In the mean time, Poor was playing wild havoc with Acland's grenadiers, captured Phillips's artillery after killing nearly all of its gunners, and then turned their own pieces upon the British, putting the entire left of their army to flight.