When St. Leger was before Fort Stanwix he heard that a force of eight hundred men, led by a German settler named Herkimer, was coming up against him. When it was at Oriskany, about six miles away, St. Leger laid a trap. He sent Brant with some hundreds of Indians and a few soldiers to be concealed in a marshy ravine which Herkimer must cross. When the American force was hemmed in by trees and marsh on the narrow causeway of logs running across the ravine the Indians attacked with wild yells and murderous fire. Then followed a bloody hand to hand fight. Tradition has been busy with its horrors. Men struggled in slime and blood and shouted curses and defiance. Improbable stories are told of pairs of skeletons found afterwards in the bog each with a bony hand which had driven a knife to the heart of the other. In the end the British, met by resolution so fierce, drew back. Meanwhile a sortie from the American fort on their rear had a menacing success. Sir John Johnson's camp was taken and sacked. The two sides were at last glad to separate, after the most bloody struggle in the whole war. St. Leger's Indians had had more than enough. About a hundred had been killed and the rest were in a state of mutiny. Soon it was known that Benedict Arnold, with a considerable force, was pushing up the Mohawk Valley to relieve the American fort. Arnold knew how to deal with savages. He took care that his friendly Indians should come into contact with those of Brant and tell lurid tales of utter disaster to Burgoyne and of a great avenging army on the march to attack St. Leger. The result was that St. Leger's Indians broke out in riot and maddened themselves with stolen rum. Disorder affected even the soldiers. The only thing for St. Leger to do was to get away. He abandoned his guns and stores and, harassed now by his former Indian allies, made his way to Oswego and in the end reached Montreal with a remnant of his force. News of these things came to Burgoyne just after the disaster at Bennington. Since Fort Stanwix was in a country counted upon as Loyalist at heart it was especially discouraging again to find that in the main the population was against the British. During the war almost without exception Loyalist opinion proved weak against the fierce determination of the American side. It was partly a matter of organization. The vigilance committees in each State made life well-nigh intolerable to suspected Tories. Above all, however, the British had to bear the odium which attaches always to the invader. We do not know what an American army would have done if, with Iroquois savages as allies, it had made war in an English county. We know what loathing a parallel situation aroused against the British army in America. The Indians, it should be noted, were not soldiers under British discipline but allies; the chiefs regarded themselves as equals who must be consulted and not as enlisted to take orders from a British general.