historians; and it was by this corps that the Niagara
district of Upper Canada was settled after the war.

It is not possible here to give more than a brief sketch
of the operations of these troops. In 1777 they formed
an important part of the forces with which General
Burgoyne, by way of Lake Champlain, and Colonel St Leger,
by way of Oswego, attempted, unsuccessfully, to reach
Albany. An offshoot of the first battalion of the 'Royal
Greens,' known as Jessup's Corps, was with Burgoyne at
Saratoga; and the rest of the regiment was with St Leger,
under the command of Sir John Johnson himself. The
ambuscade of Oriskany, where Sir John Johnson's men first
met their Whig neighbours and relatives, who were defending
Fort Stanwix, was one of the bloodiest battles of the
war. Its 'fratricidal butchery' denuded the Mohawk valley
of most of its male population; and it was said that if
Tryon county 'smiled again during the war, it smiled
through tears.' The battle was inconclusive, so bitterly
was it contested; but it was successful in stemming the
advance of St Leger's forces.

The next year (1778) there was an outbreak of sporadic
raiding all along the border. Alexander Macdonell, the
former aide-de-camp of Bonnie Prince Charlie, fell with
three hundred Loyalists on the Dutch settlements of the
Schoharie valley and laid them waste. Macdonell's ideas
of border warfare were derived from his Highland ancestors;
and, as he expected no quarter, he gave none. Colonel
Butler, with his Rangers and a party of Indians, descended