Victory and glory are so certain that a tailor stands with his feet on the neck of the King of France.

The decks of captured ships swim with punch and are clotted with gold dust, and happy soldiers play with diamonds as if they were marbles.

The senators of England, says Burgoyne, care chiefly to make sure of good game laws for their own pleasure.

The worthless son of one of them, who sets out on the long drive to his father's seat in the country, spends an hour in "yawning, picking his teeth and damning his journey" and when once on the way drives with such fury that the route is marked by "yelping dogs, broken-backed pigs and dismembered geese." It was under this playwright and satirist, who had some skill as a soldier, that the British cause now received a blow from which it never recovered.

Burgoyne had taken part in driving the Americans from Canada in 1776 and had spent the following winter in England using his influence to secure an independent command.