1757
Fort William Henry
"I am going on the ninth to sing the war-song at the Lake of Two
Mountains, and on the next day at Saut St. Louis,--a long, tiresome,
ceremony. On the twelfth I am off; and I count on having news to tell
you by the end of this month or the beginning of next." Thus Montcalm
wrote to his wife from Montreal early in July. All doubts had been
solved. Prisoners taken on the Hudson and despatches from Versailles had
made it certain that Loudon was bound to Louisbourg, carrying with him
the best of the troops that had guarded the New York frontier. The time
was come, not only to strike the English on Lake George, but perhaps to
seize Fort Edward and carry terror to Albany itself. Only one difficulty
remained, the want of provisions. Agents were sent to collect corn and
bacon among the inhabitants; the curés and militia captains were ordered
to aid in the work; and enough was presently found to feed twelve
thousand men for a month.[493]
[Footnote 493: Vaudreuil, _Lettres circulates aux Curés et aux
Capitaines de Milice des Paroisses du Gouvernement de Montreal, 16 Juin,
1757._]
The emissaries of the Governor had been busy all winter among the tribes
of the West and North; and more than a thousand savages, lured by
prospect of gifts, scalps, and plunder, were now encamped at Montreal.
Many of them had never visited a French settlement before. All were
eager to see Montcalm, whose exploit in taking Oswego had inflamed their
imagination; and one day, on a visit of ceremony, an orator from
Michillimackinac addressed the General thus: "We wanted to see this
famous man who tramples the English under his feet. We thought we should
find him so tall that his head would be lost in the clouds. But you are
a little man, my Father. It is when we look into your eyes that we see
the greatness of the pine-tree and the fire of the eagle."[494]
[Footnote 494: Bougainville, _Journal_.]
It remained to muster the Mission Indians settled in or near the limits
of the colony; and it was to this end that Montcalm went to sing the
war-song with the converts of the Two Mountains. Rigaud, Bougainville,
young Longueuil, and others were of the party; and when they landed, the
Indians came down to the shore, their priests at their head, and greeted
the General with a volley of musketry; then received him after dark in
their grand council-lodge, where the circle of wild and savage visages,
half seen in the dim light of a few candles, suggested to Bougainville a
midnight conclave of wizards. He acted vicariously the chief part in the
ceremony. "I sang the war-song in the name of M. de Montcalm, and was
much applauded. It was nothing but these words: 'Let us trample the
English under our feet,' chanted over and over again, in cadence with
the movements of the savages." Then came the war-feast, against which
occasion Montcalm had caused three oxen to be roasted.[495] On the next
day the party went to Caughnawaga, or Saut St. Louis, where the ceremony
was repeated; and Bougainville, who again sang the war-song in the name
of his commander, was requited by adoption into the clan of the Turtle.
Three more oxen were solemnly devoured, and with one voice the warriors
took up the hatchet.
[Footnote 495: Bougainville describes a ceremony in the Mission Church
of the Two Mountains in which warriors and squaws sang in the choir.
Ninety-nine years after, in 1856, I was present at a similar ceremony on
the same spot, and heard the descendants of the same warriors and squaws
sing like their ancestors. Great changes have since taken place at this
old mission.]
Meanwhile troops, Canadians and Indians, were moving by detachments up
Lake Champlain. Fleets of bateaux and canoes followed each other day by
day along the capricious lake, in calm or storm, sunshine or rain, till,
towards the end of July, the whole force was gathered at Ticonderoga,
the base of the intended movement. Bourlamaque had been there since May
with the battalions of Béarn and Royal Roussillon, finishing the fort,
sending out war-parties, and trying to discover the force and designs of
the English at Fort William Henry.
Ticonderoga is a high rocky promontory between Lake Champlain on the
north and the mouth of the outlet of Lake George on the south. Near its
extremity and close to the fort were still encamped the two battalions
under Bourlamaque, while bateaux and canoes were passing incessantly up
the river of the outlet. There were scarcely two miles of navigable
water, at the end of which the stream fell foaming over a high ledge of
rock that barred the way. Here the French were building a saw-mill; and
a wide space had been cleared to form an encampment defended on all
sides by an abattis, within which stood the tents of the battalions of
La Reine, La Sarre, Languedoc, and Guienne, all commanded by Lévis.
Above the cascade the stream circled through the forest in a series of
beautiful rapids, and from the camp of Lévis a road a mile and a half
long had been cut to the navigable water above. At the end of this road
there was another fortified camp, formed of colony regulars, Canadians,
and Indians, under Rigaud. It was scarcely a mile farther to Lake
George, where on the western side there was an outpost, chiefly of
Canadians and Indians; while advanced parties were stationed at Bald
Mountain, now called Rogers Rock, and elsewhere on the lake, to watch
the movements of the English. The various encampments just mentioned
were ranged along a valley extending four miles from Lake Champlain to
Lake George, and bordered by mountains wooded to the top.
Here was gathered a martial population of eight thousand men, including
the brightest civilization and the darkest barbarism: from the
scholar-soldier Montcalm and his no less accomplished aide-de-camp; from
Lévis, conspicuous for graces of person; from a throng of courtly young
officers, who would have seemed out of place in that wilderness had they
not done their work so well in it; from these to the foulest man eating
savage of the uttermost northwest.
Of Indian allies there were nearly two thousand. One of their tribes,
the Iowas, spoke a language which no interpreter understood; and they
all bivouacked where they saw fit: for no man could control them. "I see
no difference," says Bougainville, "in the dress, ornaments, dances, and
songs of the various western nations. They go naked, excepting a strip
of cloth passed through a belt, and paint themselves black, red, blue,
and other colors. Their heads are shaved and adorned with bunches of
feathers, and they wear rings of brass wire in their ears. They wear
beaver-skin blankets, and carry lances, bows and arrows, and quivers
made of the skins of beasts. For the rest they are straight, well made,
and generally very tall. Their religion is brute paganism. I will say it
once for all, one must be the slave of these savages, listen to them day
and night, in council and in private, whenever the fancy takes them, or
whenever a dream, a fit of the vapors, or their perpetual craving for
brandy, gets possession of them; besides which they are always wanting
something for their equipment, arms, or toilet, and the general of the
army must give written orders for the smallest trifle,--an eternal,
wearisome detail, of which one has no idea in Europe."
It was not easy to keep them fed. Rations would be served to them for a
week; they would consume them in three days, and come for more. On one
occasion they took the matter into their own hands, and butchered and
devoured eighteen head of cattle intended for the troops; nor did any
officer dare oppose this "St. Bartholomew of the oxen," as Bougainville
calls it. "Their paradise is to be drunk," says the young officer. Their
paradise was rather a hell; for sometimes, when mad with brandy, they
grappled and tore each other with their teeth like wolves. They were
continually "making medicine," that is, consulting the Manitou, to whom
they hung up offerings, sometimes a dead dog, and sometimes the
belt-cloth which formed their only garment.
The Mission Indians were better allies than these heathen of the west;
and their priests, who followed them to the war, had great influence
over them. They were armed with guns, which they well knew how to use.
Their dress, though savage, was generally decent, and they were not
cannibals; though in other respects they retained all their traditional
ferocity and most of their traditional habits. They held frequent
war-feasts, one of which is described by Roubaud, Jesuit missionary of
the Abenakis of St. Francis, whose flock formed a part of the company
present.
"Imagine," says the father, "a great assembly of savages adorned with
every ornament most suited to disfigure them in European eyes, painted
with vermilion, white, green, yellow, and black made of soot and the
scrapings of pots. A single savage face combines all these different
colors, methodically laid on with the help of a little tallow, which
serves for pomatum. The head is shaved except at the top, where there is
a small tuft, to which are fastened feathers, a few beads of wampum, or
some such trinket. Every part of the head has its ornament. Pendants
hang from the nose and also from the ears, which are split in infancy
and drawn down by weights till they flap at last against the shoulders.
The rest of the equipment answers to this fantastic decoration: a shirt
bedaubed with vermilion, wampum collars, silver bracelets, a large knife
hanging on the breast, moose-skin moccasons, and a belt of various
colors always absurdly combined. The sachems and war-chiefs are
distinguished from the rest: the latter by a gorget, and the former by a
medal, with the King's portrait on one side, and on the other Mars and
Bellona joining hands, with the device, _Virtues et Honor_."
Thus attired, the company sat in two lines facing each other, with
kettles in the middle filled with meat chopped for distribution. To a
dignified silence succeeded songs, sung by several chiefs in succession,
and compared by the narrator to the howling of wolves. Then followed a
speech from the chief orator, highly commended by Roubaud, who could not
help admiring this effort of savage eloquence. "After the harangue," he
continues, "they proceeded to nominate the chiefs who were to take
command. As soon as one was named he rose and took the head of some
animal that had been butchered for the feast. He raised it aloft so that
all the company could see it, and cried: 'Behold the head of the enemy!'
Applause and cries of joy rose from all parts of the assembly. The
chief, with the head in his hand, passed down between the lines, singing
his war-song, bragging of his exploits, taunting and defying the enemy,
and glorifying himself beyond all measure. To hear his self-laudation in
these moments of martial transport one would think him a conquering hero
ready to sweep everything before him. As he passed in front of the other
savages, they would respond by dull broken cries jerked up from the
depths of their stomachs, and accompanied by movements of their bodies
so odd that one must be well used to them to keep countenance. In the
course of his song the chief would utter from time to time some
grotesque witticism; then he would stop, as if pleased with himself, or
rather to listen to the thousand confused cries of applause that greeted
his ears. He kept up his martial promenade as long as he liked the
sport; and when he had had enough, ended by flinging down the head of
the animal with an air of contempt, to show that his warlike appetite
craved meat of another sort."[496] Others followed with similar songs
and pantomime, and the festival was closed at last by ladling out the
meat from the kettles, and devouring it.
[Footnote 496: _Lettre du Père_ ...(Roubaud), _Missionnaire chez les
Abnakis, 21 Oct_. 1757, in _Lettres Edifiantes et Curieuses_, VI. 189
(1810).]
Roubaud was one day near the fort, when he saw the shore lined with a
thousand Indians, watching four or five English prisoners, who, with the
war-party that had captured them, were approaching in a boat from the
farther side of the water. Suddenly the whole savage crew broke away
together and ran into the neighboring woods, whence they soon emerged,
yelling diabolically, each armed with a club. The wretched prisoners
were to be forced to "run the gauntlet" which would probably have killed
them. They were saved by the chief who commanded the war-party, and who,
on the persuasion of a French officer, claimed them as his own and
forbade the game; upon which, according to rule in such cases, the rest
abandoned it. On this same day the missionary met troops of Indians
conducting several bands of English prisoners along the road that led
through the forest from the camp of Lévis. Each of the captives was held
by a cord made fast about the neck; and the sweat was starting from
their brows in the extremity of their horror and distress. Roubaud's
tent was at this time in the camp of the Ottawas. He presently saw a
large number of them squatted about a fire, before which meat was
roasting on sticks stuck in the ground; and, approaching, he saw that it
was the flesh of an Englishman, other parts of which were boiling in a
kettle, while near by sat eight or ten of the prisoners, forced to see
their comrade devoured. The horror-stricken priest began to remonstrate;
on which a young savage fiercely replied in broken French: "You have
French taste; I have Indian. This is good meat for me;" and the feasters
pressed him to share it.
Bougainville says that this abomination could not be prevented; which
only means that if force had been used to stop it, the Ottawas would
have gone home in a rage. They were therefore left to finish their meal
undisturbed. Having eaten one of their prisoners, they began to treat
the rest with the utmost kindness, bringing them white bread, and
attending to all their wants--a seeming change of heart due to the fact
that they were a valuable commodity, for which the owners hoped to get a
good price at Montreal. Montcalm wished to send them thither at once, to
which after long debate the Indians consented, demanding, however, a
receipt in full, and bargaining that the captives should be supplied
with shoes and blankets.[497]
[Footnote 497: _Journal de l'Expédition contre le Fort George_ [William
Henry] _du 12 Juillet au 16 Août_, 1757. Bougainville, _Journal. Lettre
du P. Roubaud_.]
These unfortunates belonged to a detachment of three hundred
provincials, chiefly New Jersey men, sent from Fort William Henry under
command of Colonel Parker to reconnoitre the French outposts. Montcalm's
scouts discovered them; on which a band of Indians, considerably more
numerous, went to meet them under a French partisan named Corbière, and
ambushed themselves not far from Sabbath Day Point. Parker had rashly
divided his force; and at daybreak of the twenty-sixth of July three of
his boats fell into the snare, and were captured without a shot. Three
others followed, in ignorance of what had happened, and shared the fate
of the first. When the rest drew near, they were greeted by a deadly
volley from the thickets, and a swarm of canoes darted out upon them.
The men were seized with such a panic that some of them jumped into the
water to escape, while the Indians leaped after them and speared them
with their lances like fish. "Terrified," says Bougainville, "by the
sight of these monsters, their agility, their firing, and their yells,
they surrendered almost without resistance." About a hundred, however,
made their escape. The rest were killed or captured, and three of the
bodies were eaten on the spot. The journalist adds that the victory so
elated the Indians that they became insupportable; "but here in the
forests of America we can no more do without them than without cavalry
on the plain."[498]
[Footnote 498: Bougainville, _Journal_. Malartic, _Journal. Montcalm à
Vaudreuil, 27 Juillet, 1757. Webb to Loudon, 1 Aug. 1757. Webb to
Delancey, 30 July, 1757. Journal de l'Expédition contre le Fort George.
London Magazine_, 1757, 457. Miles, _French and Indian Wars. Boston
Gazette, 15 Aug. 1757._]
Another success at about the same time did not tend to improve their
manners. A hundred and fifty of them, along with a few Canadians under
Marin, made a dash at Fort Edward, killed or drove in the pickets, and
returned with thirty-two scalps and a prisoner. It was found, however,
that the scalps were far from representing an equal number of heads, the
Indians having learned the art of making two or three out of one by
judicious division.[499]
[Footnote 499: This affair was much exaggerated at the time. I follow
Bougainville, who had the facts from Marin. According to him, the
thirty-two scalps represented eleven killed; which exactly answers to
the English loss as stated by Colonel Frye in a letter from Fort
Edward.]
Preparations were urged on with the utmost energy. Provisions, camp
equipage, ammunition, cannon, and bateaux were dragged by gangs of men
up the road from the camp of Lévis to the head of the rapids. The work
went on through heat and rain, by day and night, till, at the end of
July, all was done. Now, on the eve of departure, Montcalm, anxious for
harmony among his red allies, called them to a grand council near the
camp of Rigaud. Forty-one tribes and sub-tribes, Christian and heathen,
from the east and from the west, were represented in it. Here were the
mission savages,--Iroquois of Caughnawaga, Two Mountains, and La
Présentation; Hurons of Lorette and Detroit; Nipissings of Lake
Nipissing; Abenakis of St. Francis, Becancour, Missisqui, and the
Penobscot; Algonkins of Three Rivers and Two Mountains; Micmacs and
Malecites from Acadia: in all eight hundred chiefs and warriors. With
these came the heathen of the west,--Ottawas of seven distinct bands;
Ojibwas from Lake Superior, and Mississagas from the region of Lakes
Erie and Huron; Pottawattamies and Menomonies from Lake Michigan; Sacs,
Foxes, and Winnebagoes from Wisconsin; Miamis from the prairies of
Illinois, and Iowas from the banks of the Des Moines: nine hundred and
seventy-nine chiefs and warriors, men of the forests and men of the
plains, hunters of the moose and hunters of the buffalo, bearers of
steel hatchets and stone war-clubs, of French guns and of flint-headed
arrows. All sat in silence, decked with ceremonial paint, scalp-locks,
eagle plumes, or horns of buffalo; and the dark and wild assemblage was
edged with white uniforms of officers from France, who came in numbers
to the spectacle. Other officers were also here, all belonging to the
colony. They had been appointed to the command of the Indian allies,
over whom, however, they had little or no real authority. First among
them was the bold and hardy Saint-Luc de la Corne, who was called
general of the Indians; and under him were others, each assigned to some
tribe or group of tribes,--the intrepid Marin; Charles Langlade, who had
left his squaw wife at Michillimackinac to join the war; Niverville,
Langis, La Plante, Hertel, Longueuil, Herbin, Lorimier, Sabrevois, and
Fleurimont; men familiar from childhood with forests and savages. Each
tribe had its interpreter, often as lawless as those with whom he had
spent his life; and for the converted tribes there were three
missionaries,--Piquet for the Iroquois, Mathevet for the Nipissings, who
were half heathen, and Roubaud for the Abenakis.[500]
[Footnote 500: The above is chiefly from _Tableau des Sauvages qui se
trouvent à l'Armée du Marquis de Montcalm, le 28 Juillet, 1757_.
Forty-one tribes and sub-tribes are here named, some, however,
represented by only three or four warriors. Besides those set down under
the head of Christians, it is stated that a few of the Ottawas of
Detroit and Michillimackinac still retained the faith.]
There was some complaint among the Indians because they were crowded
upon by the officers who came as spectators. This difficulty being
removed, the council opened, Montcalm having already explained his plans
to the chiefs and told them the part he expected them to play.
Pennahouel, chief of the Ottawas, and senior of all the Assembly, rose
and said: "My father, I, who have counted more moons than any here,
thank you for the good words you have spoken. I approve them. Nobody
ever spoke better. It is the Manitou of War who inspires you."
Kikensick, chief of the Nipissings, rose in behalf of the Christian
Indians, and addressed the heathen of the west. "Brothers, we thank you
for coming to help us defend our lands against the English. Our cause is
good. The Master of Life is on our side. Can you doubt it, brothers,
after the great blow you have just struck? It covers you with glory. The
lake, red with the blood of Corlaer [_the English_] bears witness
forever to your achievement. We too share your glory, and are proud of
what you have done." Then, turning to Montcalm: "We are even more glad
than you, my father, who have crossed the great water, not for your own
sake, but to obey the great King and defend his children. He has bound
us all together by the most solemn of ties. Let us take care that
nothing shall separate us."
The various interpreters, each in turn, having explained this speech to
the Assembly, it was received with ejaculations of applause; and when
they had ceased, Montcalm spoke as follows: "Children, I am delighted to
see you all joined in this good work. So long as you remain one, the
English cannot resist you. The great King has sent me to protect and
defend you; but above all he has charged me to make you happy and
unconquerable, by establishing among you the union which ought to
prevail among brothers, children of one father, the great Onontio." Then
he held out a prodigious wampum belt of six thousand beads: "Take this
sacred pledge of his word. The union of the beads of which it is made is
the sign of your united strength. By it I bind you all together, so that
none of you can separate from the rest till the English are defeated and
their fort destroyed."
Pennahouel took up the belt and said: "Behold, brothers, a circle drawn
around us by the great Onontio. Let none of us go out from it; for so
long as we keep in it, the Master of Life will help all our
undertakings." Other chiefs spoke to the same effect, and the council
closed in perfect harmony.[501] Its various members bivouacked together
at the camp by the lake, and by their carelessness soon set it on fire;
whence the place became known as the Burned Camp. Those from the
missions confessed their sins all day; while their heathen brothers hung
an old coat and a pair of leggings on a pole as tribute to the Manitou.
This greatly embarrassed the three priests, who were about to say Mass,
but doubted whether they ought to say it in presence of a sacrifice to
the devil. Hereupon they took counsel of Montcalm. "Better say it so
than not at all," replied the military casuist. Brandy being prudently
denied them, the allies grew restless; and the greater part paddled up
the lake to a spot near the place where Parker had been defeated. Here
they encamped to wait the arrival of the army, and amused themselves
meantime with killing rattlesnakes, there being a populous "den" of
those reptiles among the neighboring rocks.
[Footnote 501: Bougainville, _Journal_.]
Montcalm sent a circular letter to the regular officers, urging them to
dispense for a while with luxuries, and even comforts. "We have but few
bateaux, and these are so filled with stores that a large division of
the army must go by land;" and he directed that everything not
absolutely necessary should be left behind, and that a canvas shelter to
every two officers should serve them for a tent, and a bearskin for a
bed. "Yet I do not forbid a mattress," he adds. "Age and infirmities may
make it necessary to some; but I shall not have one myself, and make no
doubt that all who can will willingly imitate me."[502]
[Footnote 502: _Circulaire du Marquis de Montcalm, 25 Juillet, 1757._]
The bateaux lay ready by the shore, but could not carry the whole force;
and Lévis received orders to march by the side of the lake with
twenty-five hundred men, Canadians, regulars, and Iroquois. He set out
at daybreak of the thirtieth of July, his men carrying nothing but their
knapsacks, blankets, and weapons. Guided by the unerring Indians, they
climbed the steep gorge at the side of Rogers Rock, gained the valley
beyond, and marched southward along a Mohawk trail which threaded the
forest in a course parallel to the lake. The way was of the roughest;
many straggled from the line, and two officers completely broke down.
The first destination of the party was the mouth of Ganouskie Bay, now
called Northwest Bay, where they were to wait for Montcalm, and kindle
three fires as a signal that they had reached the rendezvous.[503]
[Footnote 503: _Guerre du Canada, par le Chevalier de Lévis_. This
manuscript of Lévis is largely in the nature of a journal.]
Montcalm left a detachment to hold Ticonderoga; and then, on the first
of August, at two in the afternoon, he embarked at the Burned Camp with
all his remaining force. Including those with Lévis, the expedition
counted about seven thousand six hundred men, of whom more than sixteen
hundred were Indians.[504] At five in the afternoon they reached the
place where the Indians, having finished their rattlesnake hunt, were
smoking their pipes and waiting for the army. The red warriors embarked,
and joined the French flotilla; and now, as evening drew near, was seen
one of those wild pageantries of war which Lake George has often
witnessed. A restless multitude of birch canoes, filled with painted
savages, glided by shores and islands, like troops of swimming
water-fowl. Two hundred and fifty bateaux came next, moved by sail and
oar, some bearing the Canadian militia, and some the battalions of Old
France in trim and gay attire: first, La Reine and Languedoc; then the
colony regulars; then La Sarre and Guienne; then the Canadian brigade of
Courtemanche; then the cannon and mortars, each on a platform sustained
by two bateaux lashed side by side, and rowed by the militia of
Saint-Ours; then the battalions of Béarn and Royal Roussillon; then the
Canadians of Gaspé, with the provision-bateaux and the field-hospital;
and, lastly, a rear guard of regulars closed the line. So, under the
flush of sunset, they held their course along the romantic lake, to play
their part in the historic drama that lends a stern enchantment to its
fascinating scenery. They passed the Narrows in mist and darkness; and
when, a little before dawn, they rounded the high promontory of Tongue
Mountain, they saw, far on the right, three fiery sparks shining through
the gloom. These were the signal-fires of Lévis, to tell them that he
had reached the appointed spot.[505]
[Footnote 504: _État de l'Armée Française devant le Fort George,
autrement Guillaume-Henri, le 3 Août, 1757. Tableau des Sauvages qui se
trouvent à l'Armée du Marquis de Montcalm, le 28 Juillet, 1757_. This
gives a total of 1,799 Indians, of whom some afterwards left the army.
_État de l'Armée du Roi en Canada, sur le Lac St. Sacrement et dans les
Camps de Carillon, le 29 Juillet, 1757_. This gives a total of 8,019
men, of whom about four hundred were left in garrison at Ticonderoga.]
[Footnote 505: The site of the present village of Bolton.]
Lévis had arrived the evening before, after his hard march through the
sultry midsummer forest. His men had now rested for a night, and at ten
in the morning he marched again. Montcalm followed at noon, and coasted
the western shore, till, towards evening, he found Lévis waiting for him
by the margin of a small bay not far from the English fort, though
hidden from it by a projecting point of land. Canoes and bateaux were
drawn up on the beach, and the united forces made their bivouac
together.
The earthen mounds of Fort William Henry still stand by the brink of
Lake George; and seated at the sunset of an August day under the pines
that cover them, one gazes on a scene of soft and soothing beauty, where
dreamy waters reflect the glories of the mountains and the sky. As it
is to-day, so it was then; all breathed repose and peace. The splash of
some leaping trout, or the dipping wing of a passing swallow, alone
disturbed the summer calm of that unruffled mirror.
About ten o'clock at night two boats set out from the fort to
reconnoitre. They were passing a point of land on their left, two miles
or more down the lake, when the men on board descried through the gloom
a strange object against the bank; and they rowed towards it to learn
what it might be. It was an awning over the bateaux that carried Roubaud
and his brother missionaries. As the rash oarsmen drew near, the
bleating of a sheep in one of the French provision-boats warned them of
danger; and turning, they pulled for their lives towards the eastern
shore. Instantly more than a thousand Indians threw themselves into
their canoes and dashed in hot pursuit, making the lake and the
mountains ring with the din of their war-whoops. The fugitives had
nearly reached land when their pursuers opened fire. They replied; shot
one Indian dead, and wounded another; then snatched their oars again,
and gained the beach. But the whole savage crew was upon them. Several
were killed, three were taken, and the rest escaped in the dark
woods.[506] The prisoners were brought before Montcalm, and gave him
valuable information of the strength and position of the English.[507]
[Footnote 506: _Lettre du Père Roubaud, 21 Oct. 1757_. Roubaud, who saw
the whole, says that twelve hundred Indians joined the chase, and that
their yells were terrific.]
[Footnote 507: The remains of Fort William Henry are now--1882--crowded
between a hotel and the wharf and station of a railway. While I write, a
scheme is on foot to level the whole for other railway structures. When
I first knew the place the ground was in much the same state as in the
time of Montcalm.]
The Indian who was killed was a noted chief of the Nipissings; and his
tribesmen howled in grief for their bereavement. They painted his face
with vermilion, tied feathers in his hair, hung pendants in his ears and
nose, clad him in a resplendent war-dress, put silver bracelets on his
arms, hung a gorget on his breast with a flame colored ribbon, and
seated him in state on the top of a hillock, with his lance in his hand,
his gun in the hollow of his arm, his tomahawk in his belt, and his
kettle by his side. Then they all crouched about him in lugubrious
silence. A funeral harangue followed; and next a song and solemn dance
to the booming of the Indian drum. In the gray of the morning they
buried him as he sat, and placed food in the grave for his journey to
the land of souls.[508]
[Footnote 508: _Lettre du Père Roubaud_.]
As the sun rose above the eastern mountains the French camp was all
astir. The column of Lévis, with Indians to lead the way, moved through
the forest towards the fort, and Montcalm followed with the main body;
then the artillery boats rounded the point that had hid them from the
sight of the English, saluting them as they did so with musketry and
cannon; while a host of savages put out upon the lake, ranged their
canoes abreast in a line from shore to shore, and advanced slowly, with
measured paddle-strokes and yells of defiance.
The position of the enemy was full in sight before them. At the head of
the lake, towards the right, stood the fort, close to the edge of the
water. On its left was a marsh; then the rough piece of ground where
Johnson had encamped two years before; then a low, flat, rocky hill,
crowned with an entrenched camp; and, lastly, on the extreme left,
another marsh. Far around the fort and up the slopes of the western
mountain the forest had been cut down and burned, and the ground was
cumbered with blackened stumps and charred carcasses and limbs of fallen
trees, strewn in savage disorder one upon another.[509] This was the
work of Winslow in the autumn before. Distant shouts and war-cries, the
clatter of musketry, white puffs of smoke in the dismal clearing and
along the scorched edge of the bordering forest, told that Lévis'
Indians were skirmishing with parties of the English, who had gone out
to save the cattle roaming in the neighborhood, and burn some
out-buildings that would have favored the besiegers. Others were taking
down the tents that stood on a plateau near the foot of the mountain on
the right, and moving them to the entrenchment on the hill. The garrison
sallied from the fort to support their comrades, and for a time the
firing was hot.
[Footnote 509: _Précis des Événements de la Campagne de 1757 en la
Nouvelle France._]
Fort William Henry was an irregular bastioned square, formed by
embankments of gravel surmounted by a rampart of heavy logs, laid in
tiers crossed one upon another, the interstices filled with earth. The
lake protected it on the north, the marsh on the east, and ditches with
_chevaux-de-frise_ on the south and west. Seventeen cannon, great and
small, besides several mortars and swivels, were mounted upon it;[510]
and a brave Scotch veteran, Lieutenant-Colonel Monro, of the
thirty-fifth regiment, was in command.
[Footnote 510: _État des Effets et Munitions de Guerre qui se sont
trouvés au Fort Guillaume-Henri._ There were six more guns in the
entrenched camp.]
General Webb lay fourteen miles distant at Fort Edward, with twenty-six
hundred men, chiefly provincials. On the twenty-fifth of July he had
made a visit to Fort William Henry, examined the place, given some
orders, and returned on the twenty-ninth. He then wrote to the Governor
of New York, telling him that the French were certainly coming, begging
him to send up the militia, and saying: "I am determined to march to
Fort William Henry with the whole army under my command as soon as I
shall hear of the farther approach of the enemy." Instead of doing so he
waited three days, and then sent up a detachment of two hundred regulars
under Lieutenant-Colonel Young, and eight hundred Massachusetts men
under Colonel Frye. This raised the force at the lake to two thousand
and two hundred, including sailors and mechanics, and reduced that of
Webb to sixteen hundred, besides half as many more distributed at Albany
and the intervening forts.[511] If, according to his spirited intention,
he should go to the rescue of Monro, he must leave some of his troops
behind him to protect the lower posts from a possible French inroad by
way of South Bay. Thus his power of aiding Monro was slight, so rashly
had Loudon, intent on Louisburg, left this frontier open to attack. The
defect, however, was as much in Webb himself as in his resources. His
conduct in the past year had raised doubts of his personal courage; and
this was the moment for answering them. Great as was the disparity of
numbers, the emergency would have justified an attempt to save Monro at
any risk. That officer sent him a hasty note, written at nine o'clock on
the morning of the third, telling him that the French were in sight on
the lake; and, in the next night, three rangers came to Fort Edward,
bringing another short note, dated at six in the evening, announcing
that the firing had begun, and closing with the words: "I believe you
will think it proper to send a reinforcement as soon as possible." Now,
if ever, was the time to move, before the fort was invested and access
cut off. But Webb lay quiet, sending expresses to New England for help
which could not possibly arrive in time. On the next night another note
came from Monro to say that the French were upon him in great numbers,
well supplied with artillery, but that the garrison were all in good
spirits. "I make no doubt," wrote the hardpressed officer, "that you
will soon send us a reinforcement;" and again on the same day: "We are
very certain that a part of the enemy have got between you and us upon
the high road, and would therefore be glad (if it meets with your
approbation) the whole army was marched."[512] But Webb gave no
sign.[513]
[Footnote 511: Frye, _Journal of the Attack of Fort William Henry. Webb
to Loudon, 1 Aug. 1757. Ibid., 5 Aug. 1757._]
[Footnote 512: _Copy of four Letters from Lieutenant-Colonel Monro to
Major-General Webb, enclosed in the General's Letter of the fifth of
August to the Earl of Loudon_.]
[Footnote 513: "The number of troops remaining under my Command at this
place [_Fort Edward_], excluding the Posts on Hudson's River, amounts to
but sixteen hundred men fit for duty, with which Army, so much inferior
to that of the enemy, I did not think it prudent to pursue my first
intentions of Marching to their Assistance." _Webb to Loudon, 5 Aug.
1757._]
When the skirmishing around the fort was over, La Corne, with a body of
Indians, occupied the road that led to Fort Edward, and Lévis encamped
hard by to support him, while Montcalm proceeded to examine the ground
and settle his plan of attack. He made his way to the rear of the
entrenched camp and reconnoitred it, hoping to carry it by assault; but
it had a breastwork of stones and logs, and he thought the attempt too
hazardous. The ground where he stood was that where Dieskau had been
defeated; and as the fate of his predecessor was not of flattering
augury, he resolved to besiege the fort in form.
He chose for the site of his operations the ground now covered by the
village of Caldwell. A little to the north of it was a ravine, beyond
which he formed his main camp, while Lévis occupied a tract of dry
ground beside the marsh, whence he could easily move to intercept
succors from Fort Edward on the one hand, or repel a sortie from Fort
William Henry on the other. A brook ran down the ravine and entered the
lake at a small cove protected from the fire of the fort by a point of
land; and at this place, still called Artillery Cove, Montcalm prepared
to debark his cannon and mortars.
Having made his preparations, he sent Fontbrune, one of his
aides-de-camp, with a letter to Monro. "I owe it to humanity," he wrote,
"to summon you to surrender. At present I can restrain the savages, and
make them observe the terms of a capitulation, as I might not have power
to do under other circumstances; and an obstinate defence on your part
could only retard the capture of the place a few days, and endanger an
unfortunate garrison which cannot be relieved, in consequence of the
dispositions I have made. I demand a decisive answer within an hour."
Monro replied that he and his soldiers would defend themselves to the
last. While the flags of truce were flying, the Indians swarmed over the
fields before the fort; and when they learned the result, an Abenaki
chief shouted in broken French: "You won't surrender, eh! Fire away
then, and fight your best; for if I catch you, you shall get no
quarter." Monro emphasized his refusal by a general discharge of his
cannon.
The trenches were opened on the night of the fourth,--a task of extreme
difficulty, as the ground was covered by a profusion of half-burned
stumps, roots, branches, and fallen trunks. Eight hundred men toiled
till daylight with pick, spade, and axe, while the cannon from the fort
flashed through the darkness, and grape and round-shot whistled and
screamed over their heads. Some of the English balls reached the camp
beyond the ravine, and disturbed the slumbers of the officers off duty,
as they lay wrapped in their blankets and bear-skins. Before daybreak
the first parallel was made; a battery was nearly finished on the left,
and another was begun on the right. The men now worked under cover, safe
in their burrows; one gang relieved another, and the work went on all
day.
The Indians were far from doing what was expected of them. Instead of
scouting in the direction of Fort Edward to learn the movements of the
enemy and prevent surprise, they loitered about the camp and in the
trenches, or amused themselves by firing at the fort from behind stumps
and logs. Some, in imitation of the French, dug little trenches for
themselves, in which they wormed their way towards the rampart, and now
and then picked off an artillery-man, not without loss on their own
side. On the afternoon of the fifth, Montcalm invited them to a council,
gave them belts of wampum, and mildly remonstrated with them. "Why
expose yourselves without necessity? I grieve bitterly over the losses
that you have met, for the least among you is precious to me. No doubt
it is a good thing to annoy the English; but that is not the main point.
You ought to inform me of everything the enemy is doing, and always
keep parties on the road between the two forts." And he gently hinted
that their place was not in his camp, but in that of Lévis, where
missionaries were provided for such of them as were Christians, and food
and ammunition for them all. They promised, with excellent docility, to
do everything he wished, but added that there was something on their
hearts. Being encouraged to relieve themselves of the burden, they
complained that they had not been consulted as to the management of the
siege, but were expected to obey orders like slaves. "We know more about
fighting in the woods than you," said their orator; "ask our advice, and
you will be the better for it."[514]
[Footnote 514: Bougainville, _Journal_.]
Montcalm assured them that if they had been neglected, it was only
through the hurry and confusion of the time; expressed high appreciation
of their talents for bush-fighting, promised them ample satisfaction,
and ended by telling them that in the morning they should hear the big
guns. This greatly pleased them, for they were extremely impatient for
the artillery to begin. About sunrise the battery of the left opened
with eight heavy cannon and a mortar, joined, on the next morning, by
the battery of the right, with eleven pieces more. The fort replied with
spirit. The cannon thundered all day, and from a hundred peaks and crags
the astonished wilderness roared back the sound. The Indians were
delighted. They wanted to point the guns; and to humor them, they were
now and then allowed to do so. Others lay behind logs and fallen trees,
and yelled their satisfaction when they saw the splinters fly from the
wooden rampart.
Day after day the weary roar of the distant cannonade fell on the ears
of Webb in his camp at Fort Edward. "I have not yet received the least
reinforcement," he writes to Loudon; "this is the disagreeable situation
we are at present in. The fort, by the heavy firing we hear from the
lake, is still in our possession; but I fear it cannot long hold out
against so warm a cannonading if I am not reinforced by a sufficient
number of militia to march to their relief." The militia were coming;
but it was impossible that many could reach him in less than a week.
Those from New York alone were within call, and two thousand of them
arrived soon after he sent Loudon the above letter. Then, by stripping
all the forts below, he could bring together forty-five hundred men;
while several French deserters assured him that Montcalm had nearly
twelve thousand. To advance to the relief of Monro with a force so
inferior, through a defile of rocks, forests, and mountains, made by
nature for ambuscades,--and this too with troops who had neither the
steadiness of regulars nor the bush-fighting skill of Indians,--was an
enterprise for firmer nerve than his.
He had already warned Monro to expect no help from him. At midnight of
the fourth, Captain Bartman, his aide-de-camp, wrote: "The General has
ordered me to acquaint you he does not think it prudent to attempt a
junction or to assist you till reinforced by the militia of the
colonies, for the immediate march of which repeated expresses have been
sent." The letter then declared that the French were in complete
possession of the road between the two forts, that a prisoner just
brought in reported their force in men and cannon to be very great, and
that, unless the militia came soon, Monro had better make what terms he
could with the enemy.[515]
[Footnote 515: Frye, in his _Journal_, gives the letter in full. A
spurious translation of it is appended to a piece called _Jugement
impartial sur les Opérations militaires en Canada_.]
The chance was small that this letter would reach its destination; and
in fact the bearer was killed by La Corne's Indians, who, in stripping
the body, found the hidden paper, and carried it to the General.
Montcalm kept it several days, till the English rampart was half
battered down; and then, after saluting his enemy with a volley from all
his cannon, he sent it with a graceful compliment to Monro. It was
Bougainville who carried it, preceded by a drummer and a flag. He was
met at the foot of the glacis, blindfolded, and led through the fort and
along the edge of the lake to the entrenched camp, where Monro was at
the time. "He returned many thanks," writes the emissary in his Diary,
"for the courtesy of our nation, and protested his joy at having to do
with so generous an enemy. This was his answer to the Marquis de
Montcalm. Then they led me back, always with eyes blinded; and our
batteries began to fire again as soon as we thought that the English
grenadiers who escorted me had had time to re-enter the fort. I hope
General Webb's letter may induce the English to surrender the
sooner."[516]
[Footnote 516: Bougainville, _Journal. Bougainville au Ministre, 19
Août, 1757._]
By this time the sappers had worked their way to the angle of the lake,
where they were stopped by a marshy hollow, beyond which was a tract of
high ground, reaching to the fort and serving as the garden of the
garrison.[517] Logs and fascines in large quantities were thrown into
the hollow, and hurdles were laid over them to form a causeway for the
cannon. Then the sap was continued up the acclivity beyond, a trench was
opened in the garden, and a battery begun, not two hundred and fifty
yards from the fort. The Indians, in great number, crawled forward among
the beans, maize, and cabbages, and lay there ensconced. On the night of
the seventh, two men came out of the fort, apparently to reconnoitre,
with a view to a sortie, when they were greeted by a general volley and
a burst of yells which echoed among the mountains; followed by
responsive whoops pealing through the darkness from the various camps
and lurking-places of the savage warriors far and near.
[Footnote 517: Now (1882) the site of Fort William Henry Hotel, with its
grounds. The hollow is partly filled by the main road of Caldwell.]
The position of the besieged was now deplorable. More than three hundred
of them had been killed and wounded; small-pox was raging in the fort;
the place was a focus of infection, and the casemates were crowded with
the sick. A sortie from the entrenched camp and another from the fort
had been repulsed with loss. All their large cannon and mortars had been
burst, or disabled by shot; only seven small pieces were left fit for
service;[518] and the whole of Montcalm's thirty-one cannon and fifteen
mortars and howitzers would soon open fire, while the walls were already
breached, and an assault was imminent. Through the night of the eighth
they fired briskly from all their remaining pieces. In the morning the
officers held a council, and all agreed to surrender if honorable terms
could be had. A white flag was raised, a drum was beat, and
Lieutenant-Colonel Young, mounted on horseback, for a shot in the foot
had disabled him from walking, went, followed by a few soldiers, to the
tent of Montcalm.
[Footnote 518: Frye, _Journal_.]
It was agreed that the English troops should march out with the honors
of war, and be escorted to Fort Edward by a detachment of French troops;
that they should not serve for eighteen months; and that all French
prisoners captured in America since the war began should be given up
within three months. The stores, munitions, and artillery were to be the
prize of the victors, except one field-piece, which the garrison were to
retain in recognition of their brave defence.
Before signing the capitulation Montcalm called the Indian chiefs to
council, and asked them to consent to the conditions, and promise to
restrain their young warriors from any disorder. They approved
everything and promised everything. The garrison then evacuated the
fort, and marched to join their comrades in the entrenched camp, which
was included in the surrender. No sooner were they gone than a crowd of
Indians clambered through the embrasures in search of rum and plunder.
All the sick men unable to leave their beds were instantly
butchered.[519] "I was witness of this spectacle," says the missionary
Roubaud; "I saw one of these barbarians come out of the casemates with a
human head in his hand, from which the blood ran in streams, and which
he paraded as if he had got the finest prize in the world." There was
little left to plunder; and the Indians, joined by the more lawless of
the Canadians, turned their attention to the entrenched camp, where all
the English were now collected.
[Footnote 519: _Attestation of William Arbuthnot, Captain in Frye's
Regiment._]
The French guard stationed there could not or would not keep out the
rabble. By the advice of Montcalm the English stove their rum-barrels;
but the Indians were drunk already with homicidal rage, and the glitter
of their vicious eyes told of the devil within. They roamed among the
tents, intrusive, insolent, their visages besmirched with war-paint;
grinning like fiends as they handled, in anticipation of the knife, the
long hair of cowering women, of whom, as well as of children, there were
many in the camp, all crazed with fright. Since the last war the New
England border population had regarded Indians with a mixture of
detestation and horror. Their mysterious warfare of ambush and surprise,
their midnight onslaughts, their butcheries, their burnings, and all
their nameless atrocities, had been for years the theme of fireside
story; and the dread they excited was deepened by the distrust and
dejection of the time. The confusion in the camp lasted through the
afternoon. "The Indians," says Bougainville, "wanted to plunder the
chests of the English; the latter resisted; and there was fear that
serious disorder would ensue. The Marquis de Montcalm ran thither
immediately, and used every means to restore tranquillity: prayers,
threats, caresses, interposition of the officers and interpreters who
have some influence over these savages."[520] "We shall be but too happy
if we can prevent a massacre. Detestable position! of which nobody who
has not been in it can have any idea, and which makes victory itself a
sorrow to the victors. The Marquis spared no efforts to prevent the
rapacity of the savages and, I must say it, of certain persons
associated with them, from resulting in something worse than plunder.
At last, at nine o'clock in the evening, order seemed restored. The
Marquis even induced the Indians to promise that, besides the escort
agreed upon in the capitulation, two chiefs for each tribe should
accompany the English on their way to Fort Edward."[521] He also ordered
La Corne and the other Canadian officers attached to the Indians to see
that no violence took place. He might well have done more. In view of
the disorders of the afternoon, it would not have been too much if he
had ordered the whole body of regular troops, whom alone he could trust
for the purpose, to hold themselves ready to move to the spot in case of
outbreak, and shelter their defeated foes behind a hedge of bayonets.
[Footnote 520: _Bougainville au Ministre, 19 Août, 1757._]
[Footnote 521: Bougainville, _Journal_.]
Bougainville was not to see what ensued; for Montcalm now sent him to
Montreal, as a special messenger to carry news of the victory. He
embarked at ten o'clock. Returning daylight found him far down the lake;
and as he looked on its still bosom flecked with mists, and its quiet
mountains sleeping under the flush of dawn, there was nothing in the
wild tranquillity of the scene to suggest the tragedy which even then
was beginning on the shore he had left behind.
The English in their camp had passed a troubled night, agitated by
strange rumors. In the morning something like a panic seized them; for
they distrusted not the Indians only, but the Canadians. In their haste
to be gone they got together at daybreak, before the escort of three
hundred regulars had arrived. They had their muskets, but no ammunition;
and few or none of the provincials had bayonets. Early as it was, the
Indians were on the alert; and, indeed, since midnight great numbers of
them had been prowling about the skirts of the camp, showing, says
Colonel Frye, "more than usual malice in their looks." Seventeen wounded
men of his regiment lay in huts, unable to join the march. In the
preceding afternoon Miles Whitworth, the regimental surgeon, had passed
them over to the care of a French surgeon, according to an agreement
made at the time of the surrender; but, the Frenchman being absent, the
other remained with them attending to their wants. The French surgeon
had caused special sentinels to be posted for their protection. These
were now removed, at the moment when they were needed most; upon which,
about five o'clock in the morning, the Indians entered the huts,
dragged out the inmates, and tomahawked and scalped them all, before the
eyes of Whitworth, and in presence of La Corne and other Canadian
officers, as well as of a French guard stationed within forty feet of
the spot; and, declares the surgeon under oath, "none, either officer or
soldier, protected the said wounded men."[522] The opportune butchery
relieved them of a troublesome burden.
[Footnote 522: _Affidavit of Miles Whitworth_. See Appendix F.]
A scene of plundering now began. The escort had by this time arrived,
and Monro complained to the officers that the capitulation was broken;
but got no other answer than advice to give up the baggage to the
Indians in order to appease them. To this the English at length agreed;
but it only increased the excitement of the mob. They demanded rum; and
some of the soldiers, afraid to refuse, gave it to them from their
canteens, thus adding fuel to the flame. When, after much difficulty,
the column at last got out of the camp and began to move along the road
that crossed the rough plain between the entrenchment and the forest,
the Indians crowded upon them, impeded their march, snatched caps,
coats, and weapons from men and officers, tomahawked those that
resisted, and, seizing upon shrieking women and children, dragged them
off or murdered them on the spot. It is said that some of the
interpreters secretly fomented the disorder.[523] Suddenly there rose
the screech of the war-whoop. At this signal of butchery, which was
given by Abenaki Christians from the mission of the Penobscot,[524] a
mob of savages rushed upon the New Hampshire men at the rear of the
column, and killed or dragged away eighty of them.[525] A frightful
tumult ensued, when Montcalm, Lévis, Bourlamaque, and many other French
officers, who had hastened from their camp on the first news of
disturbance, threw themselves among the Indians, and by promises and
threats tried to allay their frenzy. "Kill me, but spare the English who
are under my protection," exclaimed Montcalm. He took from one of them a
young officer whom the savage had seized; upon which several other
Indians immediately tomahawked their prisoners, lest they too should be
taken from them. One writer says that a French grenadier was killed and
two wounded in attempting to restore order; but the statement is
doubtful. The English seemed paralyzed, and fortunately did not attempt
a resistance, which, without ammunition as they were, would have ended
in a general massacre. Their broken column straggled forward in wild
disorder, amid the din of whoops and shrieks, till they reached the
French advance-guard, which consisted of Canadians; and here they
demanded protection from the officers, who refused to give it, telling
them that they must take to the woods and shift for themselves. Frye was
seized by a number of Indians, who, brandishing spears and tomahawks,
threatened him with death and tore off his clothing, leaving nothing but
breeches, shoes, and shirt. Repelled by the officers of the guard, he
made for the woods. A Connecticut soldier who was present says of him
that he leaped upon an Indian who stood in his way, disarmed and killed
him, and then escaped; but Frye himself does not mention the incident.
Captain Burke, also of the Massachusetts regiment, was stripped, after a
violent struggle, of all his clothes; then broke loose, gained the
woods, spent the night shivering in the thick grass of a marsh, and on
the next day reached Fort Edward. Jonathan Carver, a provincial
volunteer, declares that, when the tumult was at its height, he saw
officers of the French army walking about at a little distance and
talking with seeming unconcern. Three or four Indians seized him,
brandished their tomahawks over his head, and tore off most of his
clothes, while he vainly claimed protection from a sentinel, who called
him an English dog, and violently pushed him back among his tormentors.
Two of them were dragging him towards the neighboring swamp, when an
English officer, stripped of everything but his scarlet breeches, ran
by. One of Carver's captors sprang upon him, but was thrown to the
ground; whereupon the other went to the aid of his comrade and drove his
tomahawk into the back of the Englishman. As Carver turned to run, an
English boy, about twelve years old, clung to him and begged for help.
They ran on together for a moment, when the boy was seized, dragged from
his protector, and, as Carver judged by his shrieks, was murdered. He
himself escaped to the forest, and after three days of famine reached
Fort Edward.
[Footnote 523: This is stated by Pouchot and Bougainville; the latter of
whom confirms the testimony of the English witnesses, that Canadian
officers present did nothing to check the Indians.]
[Footnote 524: See note, end of chapter.]
[Footnote 525: Belknap, _History of New Hampshire_, says that eighty
were killed. Governor Wentworth, writing immediately after the event,
says "killed or captivated."]
The bonds of discipline seem for the time to have been completely
broken; for while Montcalm and his chief officers used every effort to
restore order, even at the risk of their lives, many other officers,
chiefly of the militia, failed atrociously to do their duty. How many
English were killed it is impossible to tell with exactness. Roubaud
says that he saw forty or fifty corpses scattered about the field. Lévis
says fifty; which does not include the sick and wounded before murdered
in the camp and fort. It is certain that six or seven hundred persons
were carried off, stripped, and otherwise maltreated. Montcalm succeeded
in recovering more than four hundred of them in the course of the day;
and many of the French officers did what they could to relieve their
wants by buying back from their captors the clothing that had been torn
from them. Many of the fugitives had taken refuge in the fort, whither
Monro himself had gone to demand protection for his followers; and here
Roubaud presently found a crowd of half-frenzied women, crying in
anguish for husbands and children. All the refugees and redeemed
prisoners were afterwards conducted to the entrenched camp, where food
and shelter were provided for them and a strong guard set for their
protection until the fifteenth, when they were sent under an escort to
Fort Edward. Here cannon had been fired at intervals to guide those who
had fled to the woods, whence they came dropping in from day to day,
half dead with famine.
On the morning after the massacre the Indians decamped in a body and set
out for Montreal, carrying with them their plunder and some two hundred
prisoners, who, it is said, could not be got out of their hands. The
soldiers were set to the work of demolishing the English fort; and the
task occupied several days. The barracks were torn down, and the huge
pine-logs of the rampart thrown into a heap. The dead bodies that filled
the casemates were added to the mass, and fire was set to the whole. The
mighty funeral pyre blazed all night. Then, on the sixteenth, the army
reimbarked. The din of ten thousand combatants, the rage, the terror,
the agony, were gone; and no living thing was left but the wolves that
gathered from the mountains to feast upon the dead.[526]
[Footnote 526: The foregoing chapter rests largely on evidence never
before brought to light, including the minute _Journal_ of
Bougainville,--document which can hardly be commended too much,--the
correspondence of Webb, a letter of Colonel Frye, written just after the
massacre, and a journal of the siege, sent by him to Governor Pownall as
his official report. Extracts from these, as well as from the affidavit
of Dr. Whitworth, which is also new evidence, are given in Appendix F.
The Diary of Malartic and the correspondence of Montcalm, Lévis,
Vaudreuil, and Bigot, also throw light on the campaign, as well as
numerous reports of the siege, official and semi-official. The long
letter of the Jesuit Roubaud, printed anonymously in the _Lettres
Édifiantes et Curieuses_, gives a remarkably vivid account of what he
saw. He was an intelligent person, who may be trusted where he has no
motive for lying. Curious particulars about him will be found in a paper
called, _The deplorable Case of Mr. Roubaud_, printed in the _Historical
Magazine, Second Series_, VIII. 282. Compare Verreau, _Report on
Canadian Archives_, 1874.
Impressions of the massacre at Fort William Henry have hitherto been
derived chiefly from the narrative of Captain Jonathan Carver, in his
_Travels_. He has discredited himself by his exaggeration of the number
killed; but his account of what he himself saw tallies with that of the
other witnesses. He is outdone in exaggeration by an anonymous French
writer of the time, who seems rather pleased at the occurrence, and
affirms that all the English were killed except seven hundred, these
last being captured, so that none escaped (_Nouvelles du Canada envoyées
de Montréal, Août_, 1757). Carver puts killed and captured together at
fifteen hundred. Vaudreuil, who always makes light of Indian
barbarities, goes to the other extreme, and avers that no more than five
or six were killed. Lévis and Roubaud, who saw everything, and were
certain not to exaggerate the number, give the most trustworthy evidence
on this point. The capitulation, having been broken by the allies of
France, was declared void by the British Government.
_The Signal of Butchery_. Montcalm, Bougainville, and several others say
that the massacre was begun by the Abenakis of Panaouski. Father Martin,
in quoting the letter in which Montcalm makes this statement, inserts
the word _idolâtres_, which is not in the original. Dussieux and
O'Callaghan give the passage correctly. This Abenaki band, ancestors of
the present Penobscots, were no idolaters, but had been converted more
than half a century. In the official list of the Indian allies they are
set down among the Christians. Roubaud, who had charge of them during
the expedition, speaks of these and other converts with singular candor:
"Vous avez dû vous apercevoir ... que nos sauvages, pour être Chrétiens,
n'en sont pas plus irrépréhensibles dans leur conduite."]