Now there was a similar plan of bringing together three British forces at or near Albany, on the Hudson.

Of Clinton, at New York, and Burgoyne we know.
The third force was under General St.Leger.With some seventeen hundred men, fully half of whom were Indians, he had gone up the St.Lawrence from Montreal and was advancing from Oswego on Lake Ontario to attack Fort Stanwix at the end of the road from the Great Lakes to the Mohawk River.

After taking that stronghold he intended to go down the river valley to meet Burgoyne near Albany.
On the 3d of August St.Leger was before Fort Stanwix garrisoned by some seven hundred Americans.

With him were two men deemed potent in that scene.

One of these was Sir John Johnson who had recently inherited the vast estate in the neighborhood of his father, the great Indian Superintendent, Sir William Johnson, and was now in command of a regiment recruited from Loyalists, many of them fierce and embittered because of the seizure of their property.