Burgoyne had a genuine belief in the wisdom of this strategy but he had no power to vary it, to meet changing circumstances, and this was one chief factor in his failure.
Behold Burgoyne then, on the 17th of June, embarking on Lake Champlain the army which, ever since his arrival in Canada on the 6th of May, he had been preparing for this advance.

He had rather more than seven thousand men, of whom nearly one-half were Germans under the competent General Riedesel.

In the force of Burgoyne we find the ominous presence of some hundreds of Indian allies.

They had been attached to one side or the other in every war fought in those regions during the previous one hundred and fifty years.

In the war which ended in 1763 Montcalm had used them and so had his opponent Amherst.