Early the next season it was deemed necessary to withdraw the American army from Canada.  This retreat of undisciplined troops, in the presence of vastly superior numbers of the enemy, would have been extremely hazardous had it not been effected on a line of forts which were held by our own troops.  As it was we sustained no considerable loss.

Carleton pursued on rapidly, to co-operate with General Howe, who was now lying at New York with over one hundred ships and about thirty-five thousand troops; but he received a decided check from the guns of Ticonderoga, and retired again to Canada.

By the British plan of campaign in 1777, the entire force of their northern army was to concentrate at Albany.  One division of fifteen hundred men, including Indians, advanced by Oswego, Wood Creek, and the Mohawk; but Fort Stanwix, with a garrison of only six hundred men, arrested their progress and forced them to return.  Another, leaving New York, ascended the Hudson as far as Esopus; but its progress was so much retarded by the small forts and water-batteries along that river, that it would have been too late to assist Burgoyne, even if it could possibly have reached Albany.  The principal division of the enemy’s army, numbering about nine thousand men, advanced by the Champlain route.  Little or no preparations were made to arrest its progress.  The works of Ticonderoga were so out of repair as to be indefensible on the flanks.  Its garrison consisted of only fifteen hundred continental troops, and about as many militia, over whom the general had no control.  Their supply of provisions was exhausted, and only one man in ten of the militia had bayonets to their guns.  Under these circumstances it was deemed best to withdraw the garrison six days after the investment.  Burgoyne now advanced rapidly, but with so little precaution as to leave his communications in rear entirely unprotected.  Being repulsed by the American forces collected at Saratoga, his line of supplies cut off by our detached forts, his provisions exhausted, his troops dispirited, and his Indian allies having deserted him, retreat became impossible, and his whole army was forced to capitulate.  This campaign closed the military operations on our northern frontier during the war of the Revolution.

We now come to the war of 1812.  In the beginning of this war the number of British regulars in the Canadas did not exceed three thousand men, who were scattered along a frontier of more than nine hundred miles in extent.  In the whole of Upper Canada there were but seven hundred and twenty men, and at Montreal, Three Rivers, and on the whole line of the Sorel the whole defensive force amounted to only thirteen hundred and thirty men, and the garrison of Quebec was so small, that no detachment could be made without great inconvenience and danger.  The fortifications of Isle aux Noix, then emphatically the key of central Canada, was without a garrison during nearly the whole of the first campaign.  Under these circumstances an American force of fifteen hundred or two thousand men marching rapidly from Albany, might readily have broken the enemy’s line of defence, and cut off all Upper Canada from supplies and reinforcements from England by way of Quebec.  Let us see what course was pursued.