As may well be surmised, the patriotic Lydia kept her own counsel, and not until the British had left Philadelphia was the important secret of that signal failure made known.

THE SIEGE OF FORT SCHUYLER.

All was terror in the valley of the Mohawk, for its fertile fields and happy homes were threatened with the horrors of Indian warfare.  All New York State, indeed, was in danger.  The hopes of American liberty were in danger.  The deadliest peril threatened the patriotic cause; for General Burgoyne, with an army of more than seven thousand men, was encamped at St. John’s, at the foot of Lake Champlain, prepared to sweep down that lake and Lake George, march to the valley of the upper Hudson, driving the feeble colonial forces from his path, and by joining with a force sent up the Hudson from New York City, cut off New England from the remaining colonies and hold this hot-bed of rebellion at his mercy.  It was a well-devised and threatening scheme.  How disastrously for the royalists it ended all readers of history know.  With this great enterprise, however, we are not here concerned, but with a side issue of Burgoyne’s march whose romantic incidents fit it for our pages.

On the Mohawk River, at the head of boat-navigation, stood a fort, built in 1758, and named Fort Stanwix; repaired in 1776, and named Fort Schuyler.  The possession of this fort was important to General Burgoyne’s plan.  Its defence was of vital moment to the inhabitants of the Mohawk Valley.  Interest for the time being centred round this outpost of the then almost unbroken wilderness.

On one side Lieutenant-Colonel St. Leger was despatched, at the head of seven hundred rangers, to sail up the St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario to Oswego, and from that point to march southward, rousing and gathering the Indians as he went, capture Fort Schuyler, sweep the valley of the Mohawk with the aid of his savage allies, and join Burgoyne at Albany when his triumphant march should have reached that point.

On the other side no small degree of haste and consternation prevailed.  Colonel Gansevoort had been placed in command at the fort with a garrison of seven hundred and fifty men.  But he found it in a state of perilous dilapidation.  Originally a strong square fortification, with bomb-proof bastions, glacis, covered way, and ditch outside the ramparts, it had been allowed to fall into decay, and strenuous efforts were needed to bring it into condition for defence.

Meanwhile, news of the coming danger had spread widely throughout the Mohawk Valley, and everywhere the most lively alarm prevailed.  An Oneida Indian brought the news to the fort, and from there it made its way rapidly through the valley.  Consternation was wide-spread.  It was too late to look for aid to a distance.  The people were in too great a panic to trust to themselves.  That the rotten timbers of the old fort could resist assault seemed very doubtful.  If they went down, and Brant with his Indians swept the valley, for what horrors might they not look?  It is not surprising that, for the time, fear drove valor from almost every heart in the imperilled region.