In persisting in the Philadelphia expedition against the advice of Clinton and other British officers who advised cooperation with Burgoyne, Howe preferred a plan of campaign which gained the British nothing to a plan which might well have won them the war. In his defense later, Howe argued that he had received no order to cooperate with the northern army; that he had warned Burgoyne not to expect aid from the south; that his move to Philadelphia had been approved by the King; and finally that he had advised Clinton to assist Burgoyne. This move of Clinton’s however, came so late, and with such limited force, as to make it ineffective. [Illustration: _This old print, after the famous painting by John Graham, portrays the burial of General Fraser. The English historian, Fonblanque, has identified the portrait figures from left to right as: Earl of Harrington, A.D.C.; General Burgoyne; Major-General Phillips; Reverend Brudenell; Captain Green, A.D.C.; Lieutenant Colonel Kingston; Major Fraser; Mr. Wood, Surgeon; Earl of Balcarres; Major General Riedesel._ Courtesy Life Magazine.] As if this were not enough, Burgoyne’s position was still further weakened by the inability of St. Leger to create a proper diversion along the Mohawk. These blunders and misfortunes, inherently grave as they were, do not absolve Burgoyne altogether from responsibility for the failure of the northern campaign. His conduct of the campaign, at times, lacked forceful initiative and drive, to which were added grave errors of judgment, the most serious of which, in all probability, was the poorly planned expedition against Bennington. The imperative orders given to Burgoyne by British ministers in England, with little leeway to adjust his plans according to the actual course of events, was another important cause of the complete failure of the campaign. Sir Guy Carleton, then Governor of Canada, wrote in 1777: “This unfortunate event, it is to be hoped, will in the future prevent ministers from pretending to direct operations of war, in a country at three thousand miles distance, of which they have so little knowledge as not to be able to distinguish between good, bad, or interested advices, or to give positive orders in matters, which from their nature, are ever upon the change; so that expedience or propriety of a measure at one moment, may be totally inexpedient or improper in the next.” [Illustration: _Three examples of the so-called Kentucky Rifle, the type of weapon carried by most of Morgan’s Corps of riflemen. These rifled guns were much more accurate than the smooth-bore muskets used by most of the soldiers on both sides during the American Revolution._]