Fort Edward Washington New York United States

Jean Erdman, Baron Dieskau, with a view to stopping Johnson's advance, had already left Crown Point for an encampment situated between the two lakes (later to be built into Fort Carillon, the precursor of Fort Ticonderoga.)

Dieskau had decided on September 4 to launch a raid on Johnson's base, the recently constructed Fort Edward (at this time called Fort Lyman) on the Hudson River.

His aim is to destroy the boats, supplies and artillery that Johnson needs for his campaign.

Leaving half his force at Carillon, Dieskau leads the rest on an alternate route to the Hudson by landing his men at South Bay and then marching them east of Lake George along Wood Creek.

Dieskau arrives near Fort Edward on the evening of September 7, 1755 with two hundred and twenty-two French regular grenadiers from the Régiment de la Reine and the Régiment de Languedoc, six hundred Canadian militia and seven hundred Abenaki and Caughnawaga Mohawk allies.

Johnson, camped fourteen miles (twenty-three kilometers) north of Fort Edward at the southern end of Lake George, is alerted by scouts to the presence of the enemy forces to his south, and he dispatches a messenger to warn the five hundred-man garrison at Fort Edward, but the messenger is intercepted, and soon afterward a supply train is captured, with the result that the disposition of all of Johnson's forces becomes known to Dieskau.

General Schuyler, at Albany when he receives word of Ticonderoga's fall, immediately rides to Fort Edward, where there is a garrison of about seven hundred regulars and fourteen hundred militia.

He decides to make Burgoyne's passage as difficult as possible, using the axe as a weapon; as it is much easier to fell large trees in the enemy's path than to remove them after they are down, this brings Burgoyne's advance to a crawl, tiring his troops and forcing them to use up supplies.

On July 11 Burgoyne writes to Lord Germain, complaining that the Americans are systematically felling trees, destroying bridges, and damming streams along the road to Fort Edward.

Schuyler also employs scorched earth tactics to deny the British access to local provisions.

In spite of Burgoyne's lack of movement, his scouts are active; some of Schuyler's work crews are attacked.

Burgoyne had been joined before leaving Skenesboro by about five hundred natives (mostly Ottawas, but also Fox, Mississauga, Chippewa, and Ojibwe, as well as members of the Iroquois) from the Great Lakes region under the leadership of St. Luc de la Corne and Charles Michel de Langlade.

The advance of Burgoyne's army to Fort Edward is, as with the approach to Ticonderoga, preceded by a wave of natives, which chase away the small contingent of troops left there by Schuyler.

These allies become impatient and begin indiscriminate raids on frontier families and settlements, which have the effect of increasing rather than reducing local support to the American rebels.

In particular, the death at native hands of the attractive young Loyalist settler Jane McCrea is widely publicized and served as a catalyst for rebel support, as Burgoyne's decision to not punish the perpetrators was seen as unwillingness or inability to keep the natives under control.

Jane McCrea had been one of the younger children in the large family of Rev. James McCrea of New Jersey.

Since her mother's death and her father's remarriage, she had been living with her brother John near Saratoga, New York, where she became engaged to David Jones.

When the war began, two of her brothers had joined the American forces, while her fiancé had fled with other Loyalists to Quebec.

As Burgoyne's expedition neared the Hudson River during the summer of 1777, Colonel John McCrea had taken up his duty with a regiment of the Albany County militia.

Jones is serving as a lieutenant in one of the Loyalist militia units accompanying Burgoyne, and had been stationed at Fort Ticonderoga after its capture.

McCrea had left her brother's home and was traveling to join her fiancé at Ticonderoga.

She had reached the village by the old Fort Edward, but so had the war.

She was staying at the home of Sara McNeil, another Loyalist and an elderly cousin to the British General Simon Fraser.

On the morning of July 27, 1777, a group of natives, an advance party from Burgoyne's army led by a Wyandot known as Le Loup or Wyandot Panther, descend on the village of Fort Edward.

They massacre a settler and his family, then kill Lieutenant Tobias Van Vechten and four others when they walk into an ambush.

What happened next is a subject of some dispute; what is known is that Jane McCrea and Sara McNeil were taken by the natives and separated.

McNeil was eventually taken to the British camp, where either she or David Jones recognized McCrea's supposedly distinctive scalp being carried by a native.

The traditional version of what happened appears to be based on the account of Thomas Anburey, a British officer.

Two warriors, one of whom was Wyandot Panther, were escorting McCrea to the British camp, when they quarreled over an expected reward for bringing her in.

One of them then killed and scalped her, and Wyandot Panther ended up with the scalp.

Anburey claimed she was taken against her will, but there were also rumors that she was being escorted at her fiancé's request.

The second version of the story, apparently advanced by Wyandot Panther under questioning, was that McCrea was killed by a bullet fired by pursuing Americans.

James Phinney Baxter, in supporting this version of events in his 1887 history of Burgoyne's campaign, asserts that an exhumation of her body revealed only bullet wounds and no tomahawk wounds.

When Burgoyne hears of the killing, he goes to the native camp and orders the culprit to be delivered, threatening to have him executed.

He is told by General Fraser and Luc de la Corne, the agent leading the natives, that such an act would cause the defection of all the native and might cause them to take revenge as they went back north.

Burgoyne relents, and no action is taken against the natives.

Schuyler's tactics require Burgoyne to build a road through the wilderness for his guns and troops, a task that takes about two weeks.

They had moved out of Skenesboro on July 24, and reach Fort Edward on July 29, finding that Schuyler has already abandoned it, in a retreat that ends at Stillwater, New York.

The bulk of Burgoyne's army had made the trip from Skenesboro to Fort Edward in just five days, but the army's lack of adequate transport had served to delay the army again, as the supply train, hampered by a lack of draft animals and carts and wagons that were capable of dealing with the rough tracks through the wilderness, has taken time to follow.

On August 3, messengers from General Howe finally succeed in making their way through the American lines to Burgoyne's camp at Fort Edward. (Numerous attempts by the British generals to communicate have been frustrated by the capture and hanging of their messengers by the Americans.)

The messengers do not bring good news.

On July 17 Howe had written that he was preparing to depart by sea with his army to capture Philadelphia, and that General Clinton, responsible for New York City's defense, would "act as occurrences may direct".

Burgoyne refuses to divulge the contents of this dispatch to his staff.

Burgoyne, realizing that he now has a serious supply problem, decides to act on a suggestion that Baron Riedesel had made to him in July.

Riedesel, whose forces Burgoyne had stationed at Castleton for a time while he was at Skenesboro, has observed that the area is rich in draft animals and horses, which might be seized for the army's benefit (including the mounting of Riedesel's currently unmounted dragoons).

Pursuing this idea, Burgoyne sends Colonel Friedrich Baum's regiment toward western Massachusetts and the New Hampshire Grants on August 9, along with some Brunswick dragoons.

Most of Baum's detachment never returns from the August 16 Battle of Bennington, and the reinforcements he had sent after them come back after they are ravaged in the same battle, which deprives Burgoyne of nearly one thousand men and the much-needed supplies.

What Burgoyne had been unaware of is that St. Clair's calls for militia support following the withdrawal from Ticonderoga had been answered, and General John Stark had placed two thousand men at Bennington.

Stark's force had enveloped Baum's at Bennington, killing him and capturing much of his detachment.

The death of Jane McCrea and the Battle of Bennington, besides acting as rallying cries for the Americans, have another important effect.

Burgoyne blames his native and Canadian allies for McCrea's death, and, even after the natives had lost eighty of their number at Bennington, Burgoyne shows them no gratitude.

As a result, Langlade, La Corne, and most of the natives leave the British camp, leaving Burgoyne with fewer than one hundred native scouts.

Burgoyne is left with no protection in the woods against the American rangers.

Burgoyne will later blame La Corne for deserting him, while La Corne will counter that Burgoyne never respected the natives.

In the British Parliament, Lord Germain will side with La Corne.

Burgoyne's army is readying to cross the Hudson at Fort Edward on August 17 when the first word of the battle arrives.

Believing that reinforcements might be necessary, Burgoyne marches the army toward Bennington until further word arrives that Breymann and the remnants of his force are returning.

Stragglers continue to arrive throughout the day and night, while word of the disaster spreads within the camp.

The effect on Burgoyne's campaign is significant.

Not only has he lost nearly a thousand men, of which half were regulars, but he has also lost the crucial native support.

In a council following the battle, many of the natives (who had traveled with him from Quebec) decide to go home.

This loss severely hampers Burgoyne's reconnaissance efforts in the days to come.

The failure to bring in nearby supplies means that he has to rely on supply lines that are already dangerously long, and that he will eventually break in September.

The shortage of supplies will be a significant factor in his decision to surrender at Saratoga, following which France will enter the war.

The tactic of delay has worked well in the field, but the result in the Continental Congress is a different matter.

General Horatio Gates had been in Philadelphia when Congress discussed its shock at the fall of Ticonderoga, and Gates had been more than willing to help assign the blame to reluctant generals.

Some in the Congress had already been impatient with General George Washington, wanting a large, direct confrontation that might eliminate occupation forces but which Washington feared would probably lose the war

John Adams, the head of the War Committee, had praised Gates and remarked that "we shall never hold a post until we shoot a general."

Over the objections of the New York delegation, Congress had sent Gates to take command of the Northern Department on August 10.

It had also ordered states from Pennsylvania to Massachusetts to call out their militias.

On August 19, Gates arrives at Albany to take charge.

He is cold and arrogant in manner, and pointedly excludes Schuyler from his first war council.

Schuyler leaves for Philadelphia shortly after, depriving Gates of his intimate knowledge of the area.

American Patriots react with optimism to news of the Battle of Bennington.

Especially after Burgoyne's native screen leaves him, small groups of local Patriots began to emerge to harass the fringes of British positions.