1756, 1757
Partisan War
Shirley's grand scheme for cutting New France in twain had come to
wreck. There was an element of boyishness in him. He made bold plans
without weighing too closely his means of executing them. The year's
campaign would in all likelihood have succeeded if he could have acted
promptly; if he had had ready to his hand a well-trained and
well-officered force, furnished with material of war and means of
transportation, and prepared to move as soon as the streams and lakes of
New York were open, while those of Canada were still sealed with ice.
But timely action was out of his power. The army that should have moved
in April was not ready to move till August. Of the nine discordant
semi-republics whom he asked to join in the work, three or four refused,
some of the others were lukewarm, and all were slow. Even Massachusetts,
usually the foremost, failed to get all her men into the field till the
season was nearly ended. Having no military establishment, the colonies
were forced to improvise a new army for every campaign. Each of them
watched its neighbors, or, jealous lest it should do more than its just
share, waited for them to begin. Each popular assembly acted under the
eye of a frugal constituency, who, having little money, were as chary of
it as their descendants are lavish; and most of them were shaken by
internal conflicts, more absorbing than the great question on which hung
the fate of the continent. Only the four New England colonies were fully
earnest for the war, and one, even of these, was ready to use the crisis
as a means of extorting concessions from its Governor in return for
grants of money and men. When the lagging contingents came together at
last, under a commander whom none of them trusted, they were met by
strategical difficulties which would have perplexed older soldiers and
an abler general; for they were forced to act on the circumference of a
vast semicircle, in a labyrinth of forests, without roads, and choked
with every kind of obstruction.
Opposed to them was a trained army, well organized and commanded,
focused at Montreal, and moving for attack or defence on two radiating
lines,--one towards Lake Ontario, and the other towards Lake
Champlain,--supported by a martial peasantry, supplied from France with
money and material, dependent on no popular vote, having no will but
that of its chief, and ready on the instant to strike to right or left
as the need required. It was a compact military absolutism confronting a
heterogeneous group of industrial democracies, where the force of
numbers was neutralized by diffusion and incoherence. A long and dismal
apprenticeship waited them before they could hope for success; nor could
they ever put forth their full strength without a radical change of
political conditions and an awakened consciousness of common interests
and a common cause. It was the sense of powerlessness arising from the
want of union that, after the fall of Oswego, spread alarm through the
northern and middle colonies, and drew these desponding words from
William Livingston, of New Jersey: "The colonies are nearly exhausted,
and their funds already anticipated by expensive unexecuted projects.
Jealous are they of each other; some ill-constituted, others shaken with
intestine divisions, and, if I may be allowed the expression,
parsimonious even to prodigality. Our assemblies are diffident of their
governors, governors despise their assemblies; and both mutually
misrepresent each other to the Court of Great Britain." Military
measures, he proceeds, demand secrecy and despatch; but when so many
divided provinces must agree to join in them, secrecy and despatch are
impossible. In conclusion he exclaims: "Canada must be demolished,
--_Delenda est Carthago_,--or we are undone."[435] But Loudon
was not Scipio, and cis-Atlantic Carthage was to stand for some time
longer.
[Footnote 435: _Review of Military Operations_, 187, 189 (Dublin,
1757).]
The Earl, in search of a scapegoat for the loss of Oswego, naturally
chose Shirley, attacked him savagely, told him that he was of no use in
America, and ordered him to go home to England without delay.[436]
Shirley, who was then in Boston, answered this indecency with dignity
and effect.[437] The chief fault was with Loudon himself, whose late
arrival in America had caused a change of command and of plans in the
crisis of the campaign. Shirley well knew the weakness of Oswego; and in
early spring had sent two engineers to make it defensible, with
particular instructions to strengthen Fort Ontario.[438] But they,
thinking that the chief danger lay on the west and south, turned all
their attention thither, and neglected Ontario till it was too late.
Shirley was about to reinforce Oswego with a strong body of troops when
the arrival of Abercromby took the control out of his hands and caused
ruinous delay. He cannot, however, be acquitted of mismanagement in
failing to supply the place with wholesome provisions in the preceding
autumn, before the streams were stopped with ice. Hence came the ravages
of disease and famine which, before spring, reduced the garrison to a
hundred and forty effective men. Yet there can be no doubt that the
change of command was a blunder. This is the view of Franklin, who knew
Shirley well, and thus speaks of him: "He would in my opinion, if
continued in place, have made a much better campaign than that of
Loudon, which was frivolous, expensive, and disgraceful to our nation
beyond conception. For though Shirley was not bred a soldier, he was
sensible and sagacious in himself, and attentive to good advice from
others, capable of forming judicious plans, and quick and active in
carrying them into execution."[439] He sailed for England in the autumn,
disappointed and poor; the bull-headed Duke of Cumberland had been
deeply prejudiced against him, and it was only after long waiting that
this strenuous champion of British interests was rewarded in his old age
with the petty government of the Bahamas.
[Footnote 436: _Loudon to Shirley, 6 Sept. 1756_.]
[Footnote 437: The correspondence on both sides is before me, copied
from the originals in the Public Record Office.]
[Footnote 438: "The principal thing for which I sent Mr. Mackellar to
Oswego was to strengthen Fort Ontario as much as he possibly could."
_Shirley to Loudon, 4 Sept. 1756._]
[Footnote 439: _Works of Franklin_, I. 220.]
Loudon had now about ten thousand men at his command, though not all fit
for duty. They were posted from Albany to Lake George. The Earl himself
was at Fort Edward, while about three thousand of the provincials still
lay, under Winslow, at the lake. Montcalm faced them at Ticonderoga,
with five thousand three hundred regulars and Canadians, in a position
where they could defy three times their number.[440] "The sons of Belial
are too strong for me," jocosely wrote Winslow;[441] and he set himself
to intrenching his camp; then had the forest cut down for the space of a
mile from the lake to the mountains, so that the trees, lying in what he
calls a "promiscuous manner," formed an almost impenetrable abatis. An
escaped prisoner told him that the French were coming to visit him with
fourteen thousand men;[442] but Montcalm thought no more of stirring
than Loudon himself; and each stood watching the other, with the lake
between them, till the season closed.
[Footnote 440: "Nous sommes tant à Carillon qu'aux postes avancés 5,300
hommes." Bougainville, _Journal_.]
[Footnote 441: _Winslow to Loudon, 29 Sept. 1756_.]
[Footnote 442: _Examination of Sergeant James Archibald_.]
Meanwhile the western borders were still ravaged by the tomahawk. New
York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia all writhed under
the infliction. Each had made a chain of blockhouses and wooden forts to
cover its frontier, and manned them with disorderly bands, lawless, and
almost beyond control.[443] The case was at the worst in Pennsylvania,
where the tedious quarrelling of Governor and Assembly, joined to the
doggedly pacific attitude of the Quakers, made vigorous defence
impossible. Rewards were offered for prisoners and scalps, so bountiful
that the hunting of men would have been a profitable vocation, but for
the extreme wariness and agility of the game.[444] Some of the forts
were well built stockades; others were almost worthless; but the enemy
rarely molested even the feeblest of them, preferring to ravage the
lonely and unprotected farms. There were two or three exceptions. A
Virginian fort was attacked by a war-party under an officer named
Douville, who was killed, and his followers were put to flight.[445] The
assailants were more fortunate at a small stockade called Fort
Granville, on the Juniata. A large body of French and Indians attacked
it in August while most of the garrison were absent protecting the
farmers at their harvest; they set it on fire, and, in spite of a most
gallant resistance by the young lieutenant left in command, took it, and
killed all but one of the defenders.[446]
[Footnote 443: In the public Record Office, _America and West Indies_,
LXXXII., is a manuscript map showing the positions of such of these
posts as were north of Virginia. They are thirty-five in number, from
the head of James River to a point west of Esopus, on the Hudson.]
[Footnote 444: _Colonial Records of Pa._, VII. 76.]
[Footnote 445: _Washington to Morris,--April, 1756_.]
[Footnote 446: _Colonial Records of Pa._, VII. 232, 242; _Pennsylvania
Archives_, II. 744.]
What sort of resistance the Pennsylvanian borderers would have made
under political circumstances less adverse may be inferred from an
exploit of Colonel John Armstrong, a settler of Cumberland. After the
loss of Fort Granville the Governor of the province sent him with three
hundred men to attack the Delaware town of Kittanning, a populous nest
of savages on the Alleghany, between the two French posts of Duquesne
and Venango. Here most of the war-parties were fitted out, and the place
was full of stores and munitions furnished by the French. Here, too,
lived the redoubted chief called Captain Jacobs, the terror of the
English border. Armstrong set out from Fort Shirley, the farthest
outpost, on the last of August, and, a week after, was within six miles
of the Indian town. By rapid marching and rare good luck, his party had
escaped discovery. It was ten o'clock at night, with a bright moon. The
guides were perplexed, and knew neither the exact position of the place
nor the paths that led to it. The adventurers threaded the forest in
single file, over hills and through hollows, bewildered and anxious,
stopping to watch and listen. At length they heard in the distance the
beating of an Indian drum and the whooping of warriors in the war-dance.
Guided by the sounds, they cautiously moved forward, till those in the
front, scrambling down a rocky hill, found themselves on the banks of
the Alleghany, about a hundred rods below Kittanning. The moon was near
setting; but they could dimly see the town beyond a great intervening
field of corn. "At that moment," says Armstrong, "an Indian whistled in
a very singular manner, about thirty perches from our front, in the foot
of the cornfield." He thought they were discovered; but one Baker, a
soldier well versed in Indian ways, told him that it was only some
village gallant calling to a young squaw. The party then crouched in the
bushes, and kept silent. The moon sank behind the woods, and fires soon
glimmered through the field, kindled to drive off mosquitoes by some of
the Indians who, as the night was warm, had come out to sleep in the
open air. The eastern sky began to redden with the approach of day. Many
of the party, spent with a rough march of thirty miles, had fallen
asleep. They were now cautiously roused; and Armstrong ordered nearly
half of them to make their way along the ridge of a bushy hill that
overlooked the town, till they came opposite to it, in order to place it
between two fires. Twenty minutes were allowed them for the movement;
but they lost their way in the dusk, and reached their station too late.
When the time had expired, Armstrong gave the signal to those left with
him, who dashed into the cornfield, shooting down the astonished savages
or driving them into the village, where they turned and made desperate
fight.
It was a cluster of thirty log-cabins, the principal being that of the
chief, Jacobs, which was loopholed for musketry, and became the centre
of resistance. The fight was hot and stubborn. Armstrong ordered the
town to be set on fire, which was done, though not without loss; for the
Delawares at this time were commonly armed with rifles, and used them
well. Armstrong himself was hit in the shoulder. As the flames rose and
the smoke grew thick, a warrior in one of the houses sang his
death-song, and a squaw in the same house was heard to cry and scream.
Rough voices silenced her, and then the inmates burst out, but were
instantly killed. The fire caught the house of Jacobs, who, trying to
escape through an opening in the roof, was shot dead. Bands of Indians
were gathering beyond the river, firing from the other bank, and even
crossing to help their comrades; but the assailants held to their work
till the whole place was destroyed. "During the burning of the houses,"
says Armstrong, "we were agreeably entertained by the quick succession
of charged guns, gradually firing off as reached by the fire; but much
more so with the vast explosion of sundry bags and large kegs of
gunpowder, wherewith almost every house abounded; the prisoners
afterwards informing us that the Indians had frequently said they had a
sufficient stock of ammunition for ten years' war with the English."
These prisoners were eleven men, women, and children, captured in the
border settlements, and now delivered by their countrymen. The day was
far spent when the party withdrew, carrying their wounded on Indian
horses, and moving perforce with extreme slowness, though expecting an
attack every moment. None took place; and they reached the settlements
at last, having bought their success with the loss of seventeen killed
and thirteen wounded.[447] A medal was given to each officer, not by the
Quaker-ridden Assembly, but by the city council of Philadelphia.
[Footnote 447: _Report of Armstrong to Governor Denny, 14 Sept. 1756_,
in _Colonial Records of Pa._, VII. 257,--a modest yet very minute
account. _A list of the Names of the Persons killed, wounded, and
missing in the late Expedition against the Kittanning_. Hazard,
_Pennsylvania Register_, I. 366.]
The report of this affair made by Dumas, commandant at Fort Duquesne, is
worth noting. He says that Attiqué, the French name of Kittanning, was
attacked by "le Général Wachinton," with three or four hundred men on
horseback; that the Indians gave way; but that five or six Frenchmen who
were in the town held the English in check till the fugitives rallied;
that Washington and his men then took to flight, and would have been
pursued but for the loss of some barrels of gunpowder which chanced to
explode during the action. Dumas adds that several large parties are now
on the track of the enemy, and he hopes will cut them to pieces. He then
asks for a supply of provisions and merchandise to replace those which
the Indians of Attiqué had lost by a fire.[448] Like other officers of
the day, he would admit nothing but successes in the department under
his command.
[Footnote 448: _Dumas à Vaudreuil, 9 Sept. 1756_, cited in _Bigot au
Ministre, 6 Oct. 1756_, and in Bougainville, _Journal_.]
Vaudreuil wrote singular despatches at this time to the minister at
Versailles. He takes credit to himself for the number of war-parties
that his officers kept always at work, and fills page after page with
details of the _coups_ they had struck; how one brought in two English
scalps, another three, another one, and another seven. He owns that they
committed frightful cruelties, mutilating and sometimes burning their
prisoners; but he expresses no regret, and probably felt none, since he
declares that the object of this murderous warfare was to punish the
English till they longed for peace.[449]
[Footnote 449: _Dépêches de Vaudreuil, 1756._]
The waters and mountains of Lake George, and not the western borders,
were the chief centre of partisan war. Ticonderoga was a hornet's nest,
pouring out swarms of savages to infest the highways and byways of the
wilderness. The English at Fort William Henry, having few Indians, could
not retort in kind; but they kept their scouts and rangers in active
movement. What they most coveted was prisoners, as sources of
information. One Kennedy, a lieutenant of provincials, with five
followers, white and red, made a march of rare audacity, passed all the
French posts, took a scalp and two prisoners on the Richelieu, and
burned a magazine of provisions between Montreal and St. John. The party
were near famishing on the way back; and Kennedy was brought into Fort
William Henry in a state of temporary insanity from starvation.[450]
Other provincial officers, Peabody, Hazen, Waterbury, and Miller, won a
certain distinction in this adventurous service, though few were so
conspicuous as the blunt and sturdy Israel Putnam. Winslow writes in
October that he has just returned from the best "scout" yet made, and
that, being a man of strict truth, he may be entirely trusted.[451]
Putnam had gone with six followers down Lake George in a whale-boat to a
point on the east side, opposite the present village of Hague, hid the
boat, crossed northeasterly to Lake Champlain, three miles from the
French fort, climbed the mountain that overlooks it, and made a complete
reconnoissance; then approached it, chased three Frenchmen, who escaped
within the lines, climbed the mountain again, and moving westward along
the ridge, made a minute survey of every outpost between the fort and
Lake George.[452] These adventures were not always fortunate. On the
nineteenth of September Captain Hodges and fifty men were ambushed a few
miles from Fort William Henry by thrice their number of Canadians and
Indians, and only six escaped. Thus the record stands in the _Letter
Book_ of Winslow.[453] By visiting the encampments of Ticonderoga, one
may learn how the blow was struck.
[Footnote 450: _Minute of Lieutenant Kennedy's Scout. Winslow to Loudon,
20 Sept. 1756._]
[Footnote 451: _Winslow to Loudon, 16 Oct. 1756._]
[Footnote 452: _Report of a Scout to Ticonderoga, Oct. 1756_, signed
Israel Putnam.]
[Footnote 453: Compare Massachusetts Archives, LXXVI. 81.]
After much persuasion, much feasting, and much consumption of tobacco
and brandy, four hundred Indians, Christians from the Missions and
heathen from the far west, were persuaded to go on a grand war-party
with the Canadians. Of these last there were a hundred,--a wild crew,
bedecked and bedaubed like their Indian companions. Perière, an officer
of colony regulars, had nominal command of the whole; and among the
leaders of the Canadians was the famous bushfighter, Marin. Bougainville
was also of the party. In the evening of the sixteenth they all embarked
in canoes at the French advance-post commanded by Contrecoeur, near the
present steamboat-landing, passed in the gloom under the bare steeps of
Rogers Rock, paddled a few hours, landed on the west shore, and sent
scouts to reconnoitre. These came back with their reports on the next
day, and an Indian crier called the chiefs to council. Bougainville
describes them as they stalked gravely to the place of meeting, wrapped
in colored blankets, with lances in their hands. The accomplished young
aide-de-camp studied his strange companions with an interest not unmixed
with disgust. "Of all caprice," he says, "Indian caprice is the most
capricious." They were insolent to the French, made rules for them which
they did not observe themselves, and compelled the whole party to move
when and whither they pleased. Hiding the canoes, and lying close in the
forest by day, they all held their nocturnal course southward, by the
lofty heights of Black Mountain, and among the islets of the Narrows,
till the eighteenth. That night the Indian scouts reported that they had
seen the fires of an encampment on the west shore; on which the whole
party advanced to the attack, an hour before dawn, filing silently under
the dark arches of the forest, the Indians nearly naked, and streaked
with their war-paint of vermilion and soot. When they reached the spot
they found only the smouldering fires of a deserted bivouac. Then there
was a consultation; ending, after much dispute, with the choice by the
Indians of a hundred and ten of their most active warriors to attempt
some stroke in the neighborhood of the English fort. Marin joined them
with thirty Canadians, and they set out on their errand; while the rest
encamped to await the result. At night the adventurers returned, raising
the death-cry and firing their guns; somewhat depressed by losses they
had suffered, but boasting that they had surprised fifty-three English,
and killed or taken all but one. It was a modest and perhaps an
involuntary exaggeration. "The very recital of the cruelties they
committed on the battle-field is horrible," writes Bougainville. "The
ferocity and insolence of these black-souled barbarians makes one
shudder. It is an abominable kind of war. The air one breathes is
contagious of insensibility and hardness."[454] This was but one of the
many such parties sent out from Ticonderoga this year.
[Footnote 454: Bougainville, _Journal_.]
Early in September a band of New England rangers came to Winslow's camp,
with three prisoners taken within the lines of Ticonderoga. Their
captain was Robert Rogers, of New Hampshire,--a strong, well-knit
figure, in dress and appearance more woodsman than soldier, with a
clear, bold eye, and features that would have been good but for the
ungainly proportions of the nose.[455] He had passed his boyhood in the
rough surroundings of a frontier village. Growing to manhood, he engaged
in some occupation which, he says, led him to frequent journeyings in
the wilderness between the French and English settlements, and gave him
a good knowledge of both.[456] It taught him also to speak a little
French. He does not disclose the nature of this mysterious employment;
but there can be little doubt that it was a smuggling trade with Canada.
His character leaves much to be desired. He had been charged with
forgery, or complicity in it, seems to have had no scruple in matters of
business, and after the war was accused of treasonable dealings with the
French and Spaniards in the west.[457] He was ambitious and violent, yet
able in more ways than one, by no means uneducated, and so skilled in
woodcraft, so energetic and resolute, that his services were invaluable.
In recounting his own adventures, his style is direct, simple, without
boasting, and to all appearance without exaggeration. During the past
summer he had raised a band of men, chiefly New Hampshire borderers, and
made a series of daring excursions which gave him a prominent place in
this hardy by-play of war. In the spring of the present year he raised
another company, and was commissioned as its captain, with his brother
Richard as his first lieutenant, and the intrepid John Stark as his
second. In July still another company was formed, and Richard Rogers was
promoted to command it. Before the following spring there were seven
such; and more were afterwards added, forming a battalion dispersed on
various service, but all under the orders of Robert Rogers, with the
rank of major.[458] These rangers wore a sort of woodland uniform, which
varied in the different companies, and were armed with smooth-bore guns,
loaded with buckshot, bullets, or sometimes both.
[Footnote 455: A large engraved portrait of him, nearly at full length,
is before me, printed at London in 1776.]
[Footnote 456: Rogers, _Journals, Introduction_ (1765).]
[Footnote 457: _Provincial Papers of New Hampshire_, VI. 364.
_Correspondence of Gage, 1766. N.Y. Col. Docs._, VII. 990. Caleb Stark,
_Memoir and Correspondence of John Stark_, 386.]
[Footnote 458: Rogers, _Journals. Report of the Adjutant-General of New
Hampshire_ (1866), II. 158, 159.]
The best of them were commonly employed on Lake George; and nothing can
surpass the adventurous hardihood of their lives. Summer and winter, day
and night, were alike to them. Embarked in whaleboats or birch-canoes,
they glided under the silent moon or in the languid glare of a
breathless August day, when islands floated in dreamy haze, and the hot
air was thick with odors of the pine; or in the bright October, when the
jay screamed from the woods, squirrels gathered their winter hoard, and
congregated blackbirds chattered farewell to their summer haunts; when
gay mountains basked in light, maples dropped leaves of rustling gold,
sumachs glowed like rubies under the dark green of the unchanging
spruce, and mossed rocks with all their painted plumage lay double in
the watery mirror: that festal evening of the year, when jocund Nature
disrobes herself, to wake again refreshed in the joy of her undying
spring. Or, in the tomb-like silence of the winter forest, with breath
frozen on his beard, the ranger strode on snow-shoes over the spotless
drifts; and, like Dürer's knight, a ghastly death stalked ever at his
side. There were those among them for whom this stern life had a
fascination that made all other existence tame.
Rogers and his men had been in active movement since midwinter. In
January they skated down Lake George, passed Ticonderoga, hid themselves
by the forest-road between that post and Crown Point, intercepted two
sledges loaded with provisions, and carried the drivers to Fort William
Henry. In February they climbed a hill near Crown Point and made a plan
of the works; then lay in ambush by the road from the fort to the
neighboring village, captured a prisoner, burned houses and barns,
killed fifty cattle, and returned without loss. At the end of the month
they went again to Crown Point, burned more houses and barns, and
reconnoitred Ticonderoga on the way back. Such excursions were repeated
throughout the spring and summer. The reconnoissance of Ticonderoga and
the catching of prisoners there for the sake of information were always
capital objects. The valley, four miles in extent, that lay between the
foot of Lake George and the French fort, was at this time guarded by
four distinct outposts or fortified camps. Watched as it was at all
points, and ranged incessantly by Indians in the employ of France,
Rogers and his men knew every yard of the ground. On a morning in May he
lay in ambush with eleven followers on a path between the fort and the
nearest camp. A large body of soldiers passed; the rangers counted a
hundred and eighteen, and lay close in their hiding-place. Soon after
came a party of twenty-two. They fired on them, killed six, captured
one, and escaped with him to Fort William Henry. In October Rogers was
passing with twenty men in two whaleboats through the seeming solitude
of the Narrows when a voice called to them out of the woods. It was that
of Captain Shepherd, of the New Hampshire regiment, who had been
captured two months before, and had lately made his escape. He told them
that the French had the fullest information of the numbers and movements
of the English; that letters often reached them from within the English
lines; and that Lydius, a Dutch trader at Albany, was their principal
correspondent.[459] Arriving at Ticonderoga, Rogers cautiously
approached the fort, till, about noon, he saw a sentinel on the road
leading thence to the woods. Followed by five of his men, he walked
directly towards him. The man challenged, and Rogers answered in French.
Perplexed for a moment, the soldier suffered him to approach; till,
seeing his mistake, he called out in amazement, "_Qui êtes vous_?"
"Rogers," was the answer; and the sentinel was seized, led in hot haste
to the boats, and carried to the English fort, where he gave important
information.
[Footnote 459: _Letter and Order Books of Winslow_. "One Lydiass ...
whom we suspect for a French spy; he lives better than anybody, without
any visible means, and his daughters have had often presents from Mr.
Vaudreuil." _Loudon_ (_to Fox?_), _19 Aug. 1756_.]
An exploit of Rogers towards midsummer greatly perplexed the French. He
embarked at the end of June with fifty men in five whaleboats, made
light and strong, expressly for this service, rowed about ten miles down
Lake George, landed on the east side, carried the boats six miles over a
gorge of the mountains, launched them again in South Bay, and rowed down
the narrow prolongation of Lake Champlain under cover of darkness. At
dawn they were within six miles of Ticonderoga. They landed, hid their
boats, and lay close all day. Embarking again in the evening, they rowed
with muffled oars under the shadow of the eastern shore, and passed so
close to the French fort that they heard the voices of the sentinels
calling the watchword. In the morning they had left it five miles
behind. Again they hid in the woods; and from their lurking-place saw
bateaux passing, some northward, and some southward, along the narrow
lake.
Crown Point was ten or twelve miles farther on. They tried to pass it
after nightfall, but the sky was too clear and the stars too bright; and
as they lay hidden the next day, nearly a hundred boats passed before
them on the way to Ticonderoga. Some other boats which appeared about
noon landed near them, and they watched the soldiers at dinner, within a
musket-shot of their lurking-place. The next night was more favorable.
They embarked at nine in the evening, passed Crown Point unseen, and hid
themselves as before, ten miles below. It was the seventh of July.
Thirty boats and a schooner passed them, returning towards Canada. On
the next night they rowed fifteen miles farther, and then sent men to
reconnoitre, who reported a schooner at anchor about a mile off. They
were preparing to board her, when two sloops appeared, coming up the
lake at but a short distance from the land. They gave them a volley, and
called on them to surrender; but the crews put off in boats and made
for the opposite shore. They followed and seized them. Out of twelve men
their fire had killed three and wounded two, one of whom, says Rogers in
his report, "could not march, therefore we put an end to him, to prevent
discovery."[460] They sank the vessels, which were laden with wine,
brandy, and flour, hid their boats on the west shore, and returned on
foot with their prisoners.[461]
[Footnote 460: _Report of Rogers to Sir William Johnson, July, 1756._
This incident is suppressed in the printed _Journals_, which merely say
that the man "soon died."]
[Footnote 461: _Rogers, Journals, 20. Shirley to Fox, 26 July, 1756._
"This afternoon Capt. Rogers came down with 4 scalps and 8 prisoners
which he took on Lake Champlain, between 20 and 30 miles beyond Crown
Point." _Surgeon Williams to his Wife, 16 July_, 1756.]
Some weeks after, Rogers returned to the place where he had left the
boats, embarked in them, reconnoitred the lake nearly to St. John, hid
them again eight miles north of Crown Point, took three prisoners near
that post, and carried them to Fort William Henry. In the next month the
French found several English boats in a small cove north of Crown Point.
Bougainville propounds five different hypotheses to account for their
being there; and exploring parties were sent out in the vain attempt to
find some water passage by which they could have reached the spot
without passing under the guns of two French forts.[462]
[Footnote 462: Bougainville, _Journal_.]
The French, on their side, still kept their war-parties in motion, and
Vaudreuil faithfully chronicled in his despatches every English scalp
they brought in. He believed in Indians, and sent them to Ticonderoga in
numbers that were sometimes embarrassing. Even Pottawattamies from Lake
Michigan were prowling about Winslow's camp and silently killing his
sentinels with arrows, while their "medicine men" remained at
Ticonderoga practising sorcery and divination to aid the warriors or
learn how it fared with them. Bougainville writes in his Journal on the
fifteenth of October: "Yesterday the old Pottawattamies who have stayed
here 'made medicine' to get news of their brethren. The lodge trembled,
the sorcerer sweated drops of blood, and the devil came at last and told
him that the warriors would come back with scalps and prisoners. A
sorcerer in the medicine lodge is exactly like the Pythoness on the
tripod or the witch Canidia invoking the shades." The diviner was not
wholly at fault. Three days after, the warriors came back with a
prisoner.[463]
[Footnote 463: This kind of divination was practised by Algonkin tribes
from the earliest times.]
Till November, the hostile forces continued to watch each other from the
opposite ends of Lake George. Loudon repeated his orders to Winslow to
keep the defensive, and wrote sarcastically to the Colonial Minister: "I
think I shall be able to prevent the provincials doing anything very
rash, without their having it in their power to talk in the language of
this country that they could have taken all Canada if they had not been
prevented by the King's servants." Winslow tried to console himself for
the failure of the campaign, and wrote in his odd English to Shirley:
"Am sorry that this years' performance has not succeeded as was
intended; have only to say I pushed things to the utmost of my power to
have been sooner in motion, which was the only thing that should have
carried us to Crown Point; and though I am sensible that we are doing
our duty in acting on the defensive, yet it makes no _eclate_ [_sic_],
and answers to little purpose in the eyes of my constituents."
On the first of the month the French began to move off towards Canada,
and before many days Ticonderoga was left in the keeping of five or six
companies.[464] Winslow's men followed their example. Major Eyre, with
four hundred regulars, took possession of Fort William Henry, and the
provincials marched for home, their ranks thinned by camp diseases and
small-pox.[465] In Canada the regulars were quartered on the
inhabitants, who took the infliction as a matter of course. In the
English provinces the question was not so simple. Most of the British
troops were assigned to Philadelphia, New York, and Boston; and Loudon
demanded free quarters for them, according to usage then prevailing in
England during war. Nor was the demand in itself unreasonable, seeing
that the troops were sent over to fight the battles of the colonies. In
Philadelphia lodgings were given them in the public-houses, which,
however, could not hold them all. A long dispute followed between the
Governor, who seconded Loudon's demand, and the Assembly, during which
about half the soldiers lay on straw in outhouses and sheds till near
midwinter, many sickening, and some dying from exposure. Loudon grew
furious, and threatened, if shelter were not provided, to send Webb with
another regiment and billet the whole on the inhabitants; on which the
Assembly yielded, and quarters were found.[466]
[Footnote 464: Bougainville, _Journal_. Malartic, _Journal_.]
[Footnote 465: _Letter and Order Books of Winslow. Winslow to Halifax,
30 Dec. 1756._]
[Footnote 466: _Loudon to Denny, 28 Oct. 1756. Colonial Records of Pa_.,
VII. 358-380. _Loudon to Pitt, 10 March, 1757. Notice of Colonel
Bouquet_, in _Pennsylvania Magazine_, III. 124. _The Conduct of a Noble
Commander in America impartially reviewed_ (1758).]
In New York the privates were quartered in barracks, but the officers
were left to find lodging for themselves. Loudon demanded that provision
should be made for them also. The city council hesitated, afraid of
incensing the people if they complied. Cruger, the mayor, came to
remonstrate. "God damn my blood!" replied the Earl; "if you do not
billet my officers upon free quarters this day, I'll order here all the
troops in North America, and billet them myself upon this city." Being
no respecter of persons, at least in the provinces, he began with Oliver
Delancey, brother of the late acting Governor, and sent six soldiers to
lodge under his roof. Delancey swore at the unwelcome guests, on which
Loudon sent him six more. A subscription was then raised among the
citizens, and the required quarters were provided.[467] In Boston there
was for the present less trouble. The troops were lodged in the barracks
of Castle William, and furnished with blankets, cooking utensils, and
other necessaries.[468]
[Footnote 467: Smith, _Hist. of N.Y._, Part II. 242. _William Carry to
Johnson, 15 Jan. 1757_, in Stone, _Life of Sir William Johnson_, II. 24,
_note. Loudon to Hardy, 21 Nov. 1756._]
[Footnote 468: Massachusetts Archives, LXXVI. 153.]
Major Eyre and his soldiers, in their wilderness exile by the borders of
Lake George, whiled the winter away with few other excitements than the
evening howl of wolves from the frozen mountains, or some nocturnal
savage shooting at a sentinel from behind a stump on the moonlit fields
of snow. A livelier incident at last broke the monotony of their lives.
In the middle of January Rogers came with his rangers from Fort Edward,
bound on a scouting party towards Crown Point. They spent two days at
Fort William Henry in making snow-shoes and other preparation, and set
out on the seventeenth. Captain Spikeman was second in command, with
Lieutenants Stark and Kennedy, several other subalterns, and two
gentlemen volunteers enamoured of adventure. They marched down the
frozen lake and encamped at the Narrows. Some of them, unaccustomed to
snow-shoes, had become unfit for travel, and were sent back, thus
reducing the number to seventy-four. In the morning they marched again,
by icicled rocks and ice-bound waterfalls, mountains gray with naked
woods and fir-trees bowed down with snow. On the nineteenth they reached
the west shore, about four miles south of Rogers Rock, marched west of
north eight miles, and bivouacked among the mountains. On the next
morning they changed their course, marched east of north all day, passed
Ticonderoga undiscovered, and stopped at night some five miles beyond
it. The weather was changing, and rain was coming on. They scraped away
the snow with their snow-shoes, piled in it a bank around them, made
beds of spruce-boughs, built fires, and lay down to sleep, while the
sentinels kept watch in the outer gloom. In the morning there was a
drizzling rain, and the softened snow stuck to their snow-shoes. They
marched eastward three miles through the dripping forest, til they
reached the banks of Lake Champlain, near what is now called Five Mile
Point, and presently saw a sledge, drawn by horses, moving on the ice
from Ticonderoga towards Crown Point. Rogers sent Stark along the shore
to the left to head it off, while he with another party, covered by the
woods, moved in the opposite direction to stop its retreat. He soon saw
eight or ten more sledges following the first, and sent a messenger to
prevent Stark from showing himself too soon; but Stark was already on
the ice.
All the sledges turned back in hot haste. The rangers ran in pursuit and
captured three of them, with seven men and six horses, while the rest
escaped to Ticonderoga. The prisoners, being separately examined, told
an ominous tale. There were three hundred and fifty regulars at
Ticonderoga; two hundred Canadians and forty-five Indians had lately
arrived there, and more Indians were expected that evening,--all
destined to waylay the communications between the English forts, and all
prepared to march at a moment's notice. The rangers were now in great
peril. The fugitives would give warning of their presence, and the
French and Indians, in overwhelming force, would no doubt cut off their
retreat.
Rogers at once ordered his men to return to their last night's
encampment, rekindle the fires, and dry their guns, which were wet by
the rain of the morning. Then they marched southward in single file
through the snow-encumbered forest, Rogers and Kennedy in the front,
Spikeman in the centre, and Stark in the rear. In this order they moved
on over broken and difficult ground till two in the afternoon, when they
came upon a valley, or hollow, scarcely a musket-shot wide, which ran
across their line of march, and, like all the rest of the country, was
buried in thick woods. The front of the line had descended the first
hill, and was mounting that on the farther side, when the foremost men
heard a low clicking sound, like the cocking of a great number of guns;
and in an instant a furious volley blazed out of the bushes on the ridge
above them. Kennedy was killed outright, as also was Gardner, one of the
volunteers. Rogers was grazed in the head by a bullet, and others were
disabled or hurt. The rest returned the fire, while a swarm of French
and Indians rushed upon them from the ridge and the slopes on either
hand, killing several more, Spikeman among the rest, and capturing
others. The rangers fell back across the hollow and regained the hill
they had just descended. Stark with the rear, who were at the top when
the fray began, now kept the assailants in check by a brisk fire till
their comrades joined them. Then the whole party, spreading themselves
among the trees that covered the declivity, stubbornly held their ground
and beat back the French in repeated attempts to dislodge them. As the
assailants were more than two to one, what Rogers had most to dread was
a movement to outflank him and get into his rear. This they tried twice,
and were twice repulsed by a party held in reserve for the purpose. The
fight lasted several hours, during which there was much talk between the
combatants. The French called out that it was a pity so many brave men
should be lost, that large reinforcements were expected every moment,
and that the rangers would then be cut to pieces without mercy; whereas
if they surrendered at once they should be treated with the utmost
kindness. They called to Rogers by name, and expressed great esteem for
him. Neither threats nor promises had any effect, and the firing went on
till darkness stopped it. Towards evening Rogers was shot through the
wrist; and one of the men, John Shute, used to tell in his old age how
he saw another ranger trying to bind the captain's wound with the ribbon
of his own queue.
As Ticonderoga was but three miles off, it was destruction to stay where
they were; and they withdrew under cover of night, reduced to
forty-eight effective and six wounded men. Fourteen had been killed, and
six captured. Those that were left reached Lake George in the morning,
and Stark, with two followers, pushed on in advance to bring a sledge
for the wounded. The rest made their way to the Narrows, where they
encamped, and presently descried a small dark object on the ice far
behind them. It proved to be one of their own number, Sergeant Joshua
Martin, who had received a severe wound in the fight, and was left for
dead; but by desperate efforts had followed on their tracks, and was now
brought to camp in a state of exhaustion. He recovered, and lived to an
advanced age. The sledge sent by Stark came in the morning, and the
whole party soon reached the fort. Abercromby, on hearing of the affair,
sent them a letter of thanks for gallant conduct.
Rogers reckons the number of his assailants at about two hundred and
fifty in all. Vaudreuil says that they consisted of eighty-nine regulars
and ninety Canadians and Indians. With his usual boastful exaggeration,
he declares that forty English were left dead on the field, and that
only three reached Fort William Henry alive. He says that the fight was
extremely hot and obstinate, and admits that the French lost
thirty-seven killed and wounded. Rogers makes the number much greater.
That it was considerable is certain, as Lusignan, commandant at
Ticonderoga, wrote immediately for reinforcements.[469]
[Footnote 469: Rogers, _Journals_, 38-44. Caleb Stark, _Memoir and
Correspondence of John Stark_, 18, 412. _Return of Killed, Wounded, and
Missing in the Action near Ticonderoga, Jan. 1757_; all the names are
here given. James Abercromby, aide-de-camp to his uncle, General
Abercromby, wrote to Rogers from Albany: "You cannot imagine how all
ranks of people here are pleased with your conduct and your men's
behavior."
The accounts of the French writers differ from each other, but agree in
placing the English force at from seventy to eighty, and their own much
higher. The principal report is that of _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 19
Avril, 1757_ (his second letter of this date). Bougainville, Montcalm,
Malartic, and Montreuil all speak of the affair, placing the English
loss much higher than is shown by the returns. The story, repeated in
most of the French narratives, that only three of the rangers reached
Fort William Henry, seems to have arisen from the fact that Stark with
two men went thither in advance of the rest. As regards the antecedents
of the combat, the French and English accounts agree.]
The effects of his wound and an attack of small-pox kept Rogers quiet
for a time. Meanwhile the winter dragged slowly away, and the ice of
Lake George, cracking with change of temperature, uttered its strange
cry of agony, heralding that dismal season when winter begins to relax
its grip, but spring still holds aloof; when the sap stirs in the
sugar-maples, but the buds refuse to swell, and even the catkins of the
willows will not burst their brown integuments; when the forest is
patched with snow, though on its sunny slopes one hears in the stillness
the whisper of trickling waters that ooze from the half-thawed soil and
saturated beds of fallen leaves; when clouds hang low on the darkened
mountains, and cold mists entangle themselves in the tops of the pines;
now a dull rain, now a sharp morning frost, and now a storm of snow
powdering the waste, and wrapping it again in the pall of winter.
In this cheerless season, on St. Patrick's Day, the seventeenth of
March, the Irish soldiers who formed a part of the garrison of Fort
William Henry were paying homage to their patron saint in libations of
heretic rum, the product of New England stills; and it is said that John
Stark's rangers forgot theological differences in their zeal to share
the festivity. The story adds that they were restrained by their
commander, and that their enforced sobriety proved the saving of the
fort. This may be doubted; for without counting the English soldiers of
the garrison who had no special call to be drunk that day, the fort was
in no danger till twenty-four hours after, when the revellers had had
time to rally from their pious carouse. Whether rangers or British
soldiers, it is certain that watchmen were on the alert during the night
between the eighteenth and nineteenth, and that towards one in the
morning they heard a sound of axes far down the lake, followed by the
faint glow of a distant fire. The inference was plain, that an enemy was
there, and that the necessity of warming himself had overcome his
caution. Then all was still for some two hours, when, listening in the
pitchy darkness, the watchers heard the footsteps of a great body of men
approaching on the ice, which at the time was bare of snow. The garrison
were at their posts, and all the cannon on the side towards the lake
vomited grape and round-shot in the direction of the sound, which
thereafter was heard no more.
Those who made it were a detachment, called by Vaudreuil an army, sent
by him to seize the English fort. Shirley had planned a similar stroke
against Ticonderoga a year before; but the provincial levies had come in
so slowly, and the ice had broken up so soon, that the scheme was
abandoned. Vaudreuil was more fortunate. The whole force, regulars,
Canadians, and Indians, was ready to his hand. No pains were spared in
equipping them. Overcoats, blankets, bear-skins to sleep on, tarpaulins
to sleep under, spare moccasons, spare mittens, kettles, axes, needles,
awls, flint and steel, and many miscellaneous articles were provided, to
be dragged by the men on light Indian sledges, along with provisions for
twelve days. The cost of the expedition is set at a million francs,
answering to more than as many dollars of the present time. To the
disgust of the officers from France, the Governor named his brother
Rigaud for the chief command; and before the end of February the whole
party was on its march along the ice of Lake Champlain. They rested
nearly a week at Ticonderoga, where no less than three hundred short
scaling-ladders, so constructed that two or more could be joined in one,
had been made for them; and here, too, they received a reinforcement,
which raised their number to sixteen hundred. Then, marching three days
along Lake George, they neared the fort on the evening of the
eighteenth, and prepared for a general assault before daybreak.
The garrison, including rangers, consisted of three hundred and
forty-six effective men.[470] The fort was not strong, and a resolute
assault by numbers so superior must, it seems, have overpowered the
defenders; but the Canadians and Indians who composed most of the
attacking force were not suited for such work; and, disappointed in his
hope of a surprise, Rigaud withdrew them at daybreak, after trying in
vain to burn the buildings outside. A few hours after, the whole body
reappeared, filing off to surround the fort, on which they kept up a
brisk but harmless fire of musketry. In the night they were heard again
on the ice, approaching as if for an assault; and the cannon, firing
towards the sound, again drove them back. There was silence for a while,
till tongues of flame lighted up the gloom, and two sloops, ice-bound in
the lake, and a large number of bateaux on the shore were seen to be on
fire. A party sallied to save them; but it was too late. In the morning
they were all consumed, and the enemy had vanished.
[Footnote 470: _Strength of the Garrison of Fort William Henry when the
Enemy came before it_, enclosed in the letter of _Major Eyre to Loudon,
26 March, 1757_. There were also one hundred and twenty-eight invalids.]
It was Sunday, the twentieth. Everything was quiet till noon, when the
French filed out of the woods and marched across the ice in procession,
ostentatiously carrying their scaling-ladders, and showing themselves to
the best effect. They stopped at a safe distance, fronting towards the
fort, and several of them advanced, waving a red flag. An officer with a
few men went to meet them, and returned bringing Le Mercier, chief of
the Canadian artillery, who, being led blindfold into the fort,
announced himself as bearer of a message from Rigaud. He was conducted
to the room of Major Eyre, where all the British officers were
assembled; and, after mutual compliments, he invited them to give up the
place peaceably, promising the most favorable terms, and threatening a
general assault and massacre in case of refusal. Eyre said that he
should defend himself to the last; and the envoy, again blindfolded, was
led back to whence he came.
The whole French force now advanced as if to storm the works, and the
garrison prepared to receive them. Nothing came of it but a fusillade,
to which the British made no reply. At night the French were heard
advancing again, and each man nerved himself for the crisis. The real
attack, however, was not against the fort, but against the buildings
outside, which consisted of several storehouses, a hospital, a saw-mill,
and the huts of the rangers, besides a sloop on the stocks and piles of
planks and cord-wood. Covered by the night, the assailants crept up with
fagots of resinous sticks, placed them against the farther side of the
buildings, kindled them, and escaped before the flame rose; while the
garrison, straining their ears in the thick darkness, fired wherever
they heard a sound. Before morning all around them was in a blaze, and
they had much ado to save the fort barracks from the shower of burning
cinders. At ten o'clock the fires had subsided, and a thick fall of snow
began, filling the air with a restless chaos of large moist flakes. This
lasted all day and all the next night, till the ground and the ice were
covered to a depth of three feet and more. The French lay close in their
camps till a little before dawn on Tuesday morning, when twenty
volunteers from the regulars made a bold attempt to burn the sloop on
the stocks, with several storehouses and other structures, and several
hundred scows and whaleboats which had thus far escaped. They were only
in part successful; but they fired the sloop and some buildings near it,
and stood far out on the ice watching the flaming vessel, a superb
bonfire amid the wilderness of snow. The spectacle cost the volunteers a
fourth of their number killed and wounded.
On Wednesday morning the sun rose bright on a scene of wintry splendor,
and the frozen lake was dotted with Rigaud's retreating followers
toiling towards Canada on snow-shoes. Before they reached it many of
them were blinded for a while by the insufferable glare, and their
comrades led them homewards by the hand.[471]
[Footnote 471: _Eyre to Loudon, 24 March, 1757. Ibid., 25 March_,
enclosed in Loudon's despatch of 25 April, 1757. _Message of Rigaud to
Major Eyre, 20 March, 1757. Letter from Fort William Henry, 26 March,
1757_, in _Boston Gazette_, No. 106, and _Boston Evening Post_, No.
1,128. _Abstract of Letters from Albany_, in _Boston News Letter_, No.
2,860. Caleb Stark, _Memoir and Correspondence of John Stark_, 22, a
curious mixture of truth and error. _Relation de la Campagne sur le Lac
St. Sacrement pendant l'Hiver, 1757._ Bougainville, _Journal_. Malartic,
_Journal. Montcalm au Ministre, 24 Avril, 1757. Montreuil au Ministre,
23 Avril, 1757. Montcalm à sa Mère, 1 Avril, 1757. Mémoires sur le
Canada, 1749-1760._
The French loss in killed and wounded is set by Montcalm at eleven. That
of the English was seven, slightly wounded, chiefly in sorties. They
took three prisoners. Stark was touched by a bullet, for the only time
in his adventurous life.]