THE BATTLE OF LAKE GEORGE.
BY THE MOVEMENTS in Western Pennsylvania, the war had already broken
out, though the diplomatists on the transatlantic side had not yet said
so. By the first week in May, the raids on the northern border began by
the destruction of Hoosic, within ten miles of Fort Massachusetts. The
half-naked or starving refugees reaching Albany furnished a vivid
object-lesson of reality. Under Johnson’s vigilance and activity, the
people in the forts, block-houses, and palisaded villages were kept on
guard night and day. In this work he was ably seconded by Governor De
Lancey. Politics make strange bed-fellows; and the late critic and
opponent, now that he occupied the seat of the person whom he had,
largely out of party spirit, opposed, became a warm friend of his friend
Johnson, the untiring frontiersman.
When in New York, Feb. 28, 1755, Johnson learned of the official
declaration of war, and the sailing from Cork, Ireland, of General
Braddock with one thousand regulars, bound for Alexandria, Va.; and to
this place Johnson with Governor De Lancey made a journey. At the
council held by the five royal governors, expeditions against Nova
Scotia, Crown Point, Niagara, and Fort Du Quesne were planned. Johnson
was again made Superintendent of Indian Affairs, and appointed as
major-general to command the forces for the reduction of Crown Point.
The story of the success of one of these expeditions and the failure of
two of them under Braddock and Shirley, is known to all. We may now
glance at that under Johnson. After a great council held in June,
attended by eleven hundred of all ages and sexes, to the devastation of
Johnson’s larder, King Hendrick and many hundred fighting men promised
to be ready for war. After various delays, the motley army gathered from
the colonies left Albany August 8, 1755, and on the 28th Johnson reached
the Lake of the Holy Sacrament. A true courtier, he changed the name
given by Isaac Jogues, which had superseded the Indian term,
Andiatarocte; and in honour of his sovereign George, and “to ascertain
his undoubted right there,” called the beautiful water by the name it
still bears. The modern fanciful name “Horicon” seems to be nothing more
than a printer’s mistake, glorified by a romancer.
Parkman’s magic pen has drawn the picture of the movements of Dieskau,
the German, and his French and Indian forces opposed to the provincial
army, and has brilliantly described the camp and forces at Lake George,
when, on the morning of Sept. 8, 1755, the Canadians, Indians, and
French, numbering fifteen hundred, being, unknown to the English, only
an hour’s march distant, one thousand men sallied out from the camp to
capture Dieskau and his forces. The spirit of Braddock seemed to be
still in the air; and the men—New England and New York militia—sallied
out jauntily, expecting easy victory, but in reality to what proved “the
bloody morning scout.” They were led by Col. Ephraim Williams—whose
will, creating what is now Williams College, had been made a few days
before at Albany—and by Lieutenant-Colonel Whiting. In three divisions
the little army marched out and soon disappeared from view in the
forest, just before nine o’clock A. M. The two columns, French and
English, were thus approaching each other in a narrow road, like trains
on a single track in a tunnel.
Not knowing what the issue might be, Johnson made preparation for all
risks. He at once ordered trees felled and laid lengthwise. With these
and the wagons, bateaux, and camp equipage, he constructed a rough line
of defence, which faced all along the one side of the camp which an
assaulting party might be reasonably expected to attack,—that is, on
that side of the rough quadrangle which was parallel to the lake. At
that portion fronting the road, he planted three of his heaviest pieces
of cannon, one thirty-two and two eighteen-pounders. Another was posted
a little way round to the left, while five howitzers of smaller calibre,
with the mortars, one of thirteen-inch, and four of smaller calibre,
were stationed to throw shell in the morasses and woods on the flanks.
The superb artillerist, Major William Eyre, with a company of British
sailors, served the guns.
The situation then was as follows: Colonel Williams’s party was marching
southward along the stump-embossed road cut by Johnson’s axemen a few
days before. After advancing two miles he halted for the other divisions
to come up, and then moved in a solid body. With what seems incredible
carelessness, neglecting to send out scouts, they moved on,
Braddock-like, unsuspicious of danger, imagining that the French were
miles away.
On the contrary, Dieskau’s scouts had watched their departure from the
camp, and quickly reported the news to the German baron. He at once
ordered his regulars to halt, and sent the Canadians and Indians into
the forest, three hundred paces ahead, with orders to lie flat on the
ground behind trees, rocks, and bushes, and make no noise or sign until
the regulars had fired, when all were to rise and surround the English.
Here, then, was a horseshoe ambuscade in a swampy spot. It was another
case of “the fatal defile.” The regulars were, to the party approaching
them, invisible, for they lay behind a swell of ground. All was as
silent as the grave when the head of Colonel Williams’s line entered the
trap. Had it not been for the treachery of the Indians, or the warning
signal of the French Iroquois to their kindred, given by the discharge
of a gun,—though it may be possible that this unexpected shot was an
accident,—the English would have been nearly annihilated. But before
the party had passed the calks of the horseshoe at the ends of the
ambuscade, the war-whoop and the countless puffs of smoke and whistling
bullets told the whole story. The silent wilderness at once became hell.
Colonel Williams at once took in the situation, and mounting a rock to
direct his men, ordered them to spread out on the hill to the right. He
was soon shot through the head. Hendrick had fallen at the first fire.
The Americans were rallied by Nathan Whiting, and retreated stubbornly,
contesting the ground rod by rod, and firing from behind trees and rocks
at the Canadians and Indians, who followed the same tactics. Where they
met reinforcements sent out by Johnson, their firing was more steady and
destructive.
It was near Bloody Pond that Lieutenant Cole and the three hundred men
sent out from camp by Johnson met them, and ably covered their retreat,
so that the wounded were brought in, and the main body reached the camp
in good order about ten o’clock. Le Gardeur, the officer to whom
Washington had surrendered a few months before, commanded the Canadian
Indians in this battle, and was slain. The savages, seeing the English
out of the way for the present, at once fell back to scalp and plunder
the slain Americans. Dieskau ordered them off, refusing to let them stop
and thus lose time. Though obeying, they were angry and insubordinate,
and later in the day sneaked out of the fight, to return like dogs to
their vomit of war. Dieskau ordered the bugles to sound the assembly,
and re-formed his forces, hoping by a rush on Johnson’s camp to capture
it at once. Unfortunately for him, he had to reckon with Indians and
bush-rangers instead of with trained soldiers.
Once inside the camp, the Massachusetts men were ranged on the right,
the Connecticut men on the left, with the New York and New Hampshire men
between. Five hundred troops were posted on the flanks in reserve. Lying
down flat on their stomachs behind the hastily thrown up barricade, they
lay awaiting the enemy, whom they expected at a double-quick pace.
Everything now depended on the steadiness of the militia. The officers
threatened death to all who flinched from the foe. All eyes were bent on
the woods in front, and especially down the road whence they expected to
see the regulars rush on them with levelled bayonets. Could raw
provincials, commanded by a fur-trader and a lawyer, face the veterans
of Europe?
Three long, cold iron noses poked out at them were too much for
Dieskau’s Indians. The black-mouthed cannon, intercepting with their
round circles a charming view of the blue lake ahead, took away the
courage of the bush-rangers, and both reds and whites scattered and took
to the woods. To the exasperation of Dieskau, all his life used to
regular military formations, his great host melted away from his sight
in the undergrowth and behind trees; where, now creeping forward, now
squatting or lying, they began a dropping fire in the front and on the
flanks of the Americans. In traditional European style, the French
regulars, in white uniforms and with glittering bayonets, marched up and
delivered their volleys from double ranks.
Platoon-firing was then the orthodox method of war. The long, thin lines
of battle which now obtain in the field, and which the Americans taught
to Europe, were not then known to men accustomed to the cleared land and
level fields of the Low Countries, and of Europe generally. Soon moving
forward into the clearing, and deploying to double width, the regulars
fired by platoons of three lines,—the first file of men kneeling down,
and the rear, or third file, delivering their volleys over the shoulders
of those of the second line in front. Aiming too high and being too far
off for the effective range of flint-lock smooth-bores, the result of
their general miss was to arouse the spirits of the Americans, even to
gayety. After the first hour their nerves became more steady, and they
aimed with deadly effect, while the irritated and excited veterans fired
too high to do much execution. When the cannon served by the sailors
under Major Eyre began to tear their ranks with round shot and canister,
the great gaps made among the white coats cheered the provincials still
more. Gallantly dressing up, they endeavoured for many minutes to
present an orderly front; but, finally, Dieskau had to break from the
road, and moving to the right in the face of a murderous fire, began the
attack on the three regiments of Colonels Williams, Ruggles, and
Whitcomb. Here for another hour they stood their ground manfully, in the
face of a fire whose rapidity and accuracy were the astonishment of
Dieskau, who bravely led his troops until struck down.
The commanders on either side in this battle were wounded, and had to
retire in favour of others. Johnson, shortly after the first volley of
the French regulars, was struck by a ball in the thigh which made a
painful flesh wound. The ball broke no bones, but was never extracted,
and the lacerated nerves troubled him more or less all his life
thereafter. He retired to his tent, and Gen. Phineas Lyman took command,
cheering his men, and exposing himself with reckless bravery both behind
and outside the barricade. In fact, this battle of Lake George was
Lyman’s battle, and was largely Lyman’s victory.
Dieskau had bravely led his men during several hours, but while giving
an order to his Indians to move farther to the left, he approached so
near the intrenchments that he received, from an American standing
behind a tree, his first wound. Ordering the Chevalier de Montreuil to
take command, and to order retreat if necessary, then to do his best,
and to send men to remove him, Dieskau crawled near a tree and sat with
his back against it. One Canadian sent to remove him was picked off by
an American, and fell across the baron’s wounded knee. The other went
off for assistance; but soon after his disappearance the retreat was
sounded. A renegade Frenchman, on the American side, then approached
within twelve paces of the German baron, and deliberately shot him, the
bullet traversing his hips. Dieskau had received, in all, five wounds.
Blodget, a sutler in Johnson’s army, stood like a war-correspondent on
the hill near by, watching the fighting. He was thus enabled to make a
sketch of the battle, which he published as a cheap print, “with a full
though short history,” some weeks afterward, in Boston. Even the
wagoners, in the intervals between carrying to Surgeon Williams the
wounded who lay on the ground behind the log-house, took their part in
fighting; each probably doing as much execution as the average farmer’s
boy. For, despite the hot fire so long maintained, the number of killed
and wounded on the enemy’s side, except among the French regulars whose
white uniform made them easy targets, was not very great. It was not
easy to hit men ensconced behind trees or stumps, or occasionally rising
in the smoke above the underbrush, while the enemy could, during most of
the time, see only here and there a head. The Mohawks in the camp were
mostly useless, except to keep up yelling while their white brothers
fought beyond the breastworks; and they enjoyed seeing how the pale
faces fought. Nevertheless, about forty of their number lost their lives
during the day in ambuscade and battle.
While this attack of the regulars on the right was progressing, the
French Canadians and the Abenaki Indians boldly attempted to flank the
left of the camp, many of them even going away round toward the lake,
and clustering in a morass where the musketry fire could not well reach
them. Fortunately, however, Johnson had posted a field-piece
advantageously on the extreme left of his front, which now harassed the
squatting Indians, while on those in the marsh the mortars and howitzers
were trained. Although the howitzers split and became useless, the
mortars did well; and some shells skilfully dropped drove the lurking
enemy away, and completely relieved this flank of danger.
Brave as were the Americans behind the rude barricade, they did not
excel the French regulars, who fought until they were nearly
annihilated. It was well into the afternoon when they were deserted by
hundreds of French forest-rangers and Canadian Indians, who, seeing no
hope of winning the day, skulked away to the scene of the morning’s
ambuscade,—the one set to plunder, and the other to scalp the slain.
About four o’clock so many of the white-coated regulars were prone on
the ground and so few in action, all their officers being disabled,
while the fire of the others had slackened, that the Americans began to
get out of their breastworks, and to fight in the woods. This made the
French give way so visibly that the whole of Lyman’s force rushed out on
the enemy with their hatchets and clubbed muskets, pushing them out of
ambush into full retreat. This onset took place between four and five
o’clock P. M., and resulted in completely driving the enemy off the
field.
The fighting was not yet over, for the third battle on this eventful day
was yet to take place. Hearing the distant firing, Colonel Blanchard, of
Fort Lyman, sent out a party of two hundred and fifty men under command
of the brave Captain McGinnis, who, with his Schenectady men, led the
van. Warily approaching the place of the morning’s ambuscade, with
scouts ahead, they succeeded in getting between the piled-up baggage of
the French army and a vidette of five or six men who were keeping a
lookout on a hill. Moving farther up the road, they found a party of
three hundred French and Indians, consisting of those who had plundered
the slain, and of other remnants of the beaten army, who were eating
cold rations out of their packs. They sat along Rocky Brook and the
marshy pond. McGinnis and his men approached stealthily until within
firing distance, and then, after a volley, charged like tigers upon
their prey.
In the fight which ensued the Americans contested against heavy odds;
but although their brave captain was mortally wounded, he directed their
movements till the firing ceased, and the third battle of this eventful
day resulted in victory. Not till the next evening did the scattered
band of Dieskau’s army meet, exhausted and famished, at the place where
they had left their canoes.
The next day the marshy pool, in places reddened with the blood of the
slain, thrown into it to save burial, was given the name—which it ever
afterward kept—of “Bloody Pond.” When the writer saw it, in 1877, the
sunbeams danced merrily on its dimpled face, as the snow-white and
golden pond-lilies were swayed by the morning’s breeze, rippling the
water’s surface, while yet held at anchor beneath. In this threefold
battle the Americans lost most heavily in the “bloody morning scout” at
the ambuscade,—their total being two hundred and twenty killed, and
ninety wounded. The well-plied tomahawks, after the surprise in the
woods, and the poisoned bullets of the French Canadians accounted for
the disproportionate number of the dead over the wounded. Among the
officers were Colonel Williams, Major Ashley, Captains Keys, Porter,
Ingersoll, and twelve others. Captain McGinnis died in the camp two days
afterward. Of the Indians, beside Hendrick, thirty-eight were slain. On
the French side the loss must have been fully four hundred, or probably
one third of those actually engaged.
In this battle farmers and traders prevailed over European troops,
trained woodcraftsmen, and fierce savages. The honours of the command
belong equally to three men. The credit of the defences, and the
excellent disposition of marksmen, artillery, and reserves, belongs to
Johnson, who, unfortunately, was wounded in the hips in the first part
of the battle, and had to leave the field for shelter. The command then
devolved upon Gen. Phineas Lyman, who deserves equal honour with
Johnson. The Connecticut general, cool and alert, displayed the greatest
courage, and was largely influential in securing the final result. To
McGinnis belongs the credit of winning a victory,—the second of the
day, in what may be called the third battle of this eventful 8th of
September. Nevertheless, such are the peculiarities of the military
mind, that Johnson never mentioned Lyman’s name in his official
despatch. For this reason, and because they unjustly suspected cowardice
in Johnson during the battle, and because they saw comparatively little
of him before and after it, withal being sectional and clannish in their
opinions, Johnson was extremely unpopular with the New England soldiers.
Their judgments have mightily influenced the accounts of the threefold
battle of Lake George as found in the writings of New England annalists
and historians.
Johnson was at once rewarded by being made a baronet, with the gift of
five thousand pounds, while Lyman received the ordinary stipend of his
rank,—another ingredient in Johnson’s unpopularity in the Eastern
colonies.
Three days after, the Iroquois allies waited on Johnson and informed him
that, according to custom, after losing comrades in battle, they must
return home to cheer their people, and protect their castles against the
Abenaki Indians, from whom they feared an attack. It was in vain that
Johnson tried to show them that the campaign had hardly begun, and to
persuade them to alter their purpose. They insisted on going away,
promising, however, to come again soon with fresh zeal.
Dissensions and jealousies between the troops of the various colonies
now broke out. Both the generals commanding, and the new governor,
Hardy, thought that a strong fort should be built to command the
water-way to Canada, by way of Lake George. Though as important for the
defence of New England as of New York, the Eastern officers and men
could not see the need of a fort here, and the work dragged. When
finished, it was called by the courtier, Johnson, Fort William Henry,
after the king’s grandson, and had a notable history. Meanwhile, owing
to remissness of contractors, the petty jealousies of the officers and
militia of five or more colonies, and the overcautiousness of Johnson,
nothing aggressive was done. Late in November, the fort being finished,
the unpopular duty of garrisoning it devolved upon a medley of six
hundred men from the various colonies. The army was disbanded, and the
levies marched home. Johnson resigned his commission, and returned to
Mount Johnson about the middle of December. About ten days later he was
in New York, enjoying, as well as his wound would allow, the parade and
illumination of the city in his honour; while Dieskau languished in the
Schuyler mansion in Albany, waiting for some of his many wounds to heal;
and Lyman received modest honours at home. The patent of Johnson’s
baronetcy was dated Nov. 27, 1755. He invested the four thousand nine
hundred and forty-five pounds eighteen shillings and sixpence which came
into his hands, in three per cent bank annuities.
His coat-of-arms consisted of a heart-shaped shield held and flanked on
either side by an Indian equipped with feathers, medal, quiver, and bow.
On the shield are three fleurs-de-lis; and on the convex band across the
shield, two shells, and between them a smaller heart, on which lies an
open hand supine. Above the shield a hand grasps a dart. The motto is
_Deo Regique Debeo_. The full inscription of the blazon in the language
of heraldry is given in the standard books which treat of the British
peerage.