The most important of them involved the colorful British General John “Gentleman Johnny” Burgoyne, commanding the northern forces, who was to move his men down from Canada and across Lake Champlain toward Albany. He successfully traversed the lake and occupied the abandoned Fort Ticonderoga on the lake’s southern end. But when he tried to go further, the effort, slowed by an immense baggage train that included thirty carts carrying Burgoyne’s lavish wardrobe and his supplies of champagne, became bogged down in the dense woods north of Saratoga. The American forces swelled in numbers and
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Watch out for baggage
