1758
Fort Frontenac
The rashness of Abercromby before the fight was matched by his
poltroonery after it. Such was his terror that on the evening of his
defeat he sent an order to Colonel Cummings, commanding at Fort William
Henry, to send all the sick and wounded and all the heavy artillery to
New York without delay.[638] He himself followed so closely upon this
disgraceful missive that Cummings had no time to obey it.
[Footnote 638: _Cunningham, aide-de-camp of Abercromby, to Cummings, 8
July, 1758_.]
The defeated and humbled troops proceeded to reoccupy the ground they
had left a few days before in the flush of confidence and pride; and
young Colonel Williams, of Massachusetts, lost no time in sending the
miserable story to his uncle Israel. His letter, which is dated "Lake
George (sorrowful situation), July ye 11th," ends thus: "I have told
facts; you may put the epithets upon them. In one word, what with
fatigue, want of sleep, exercise of mind, and leaving the place we went
to capture, the best part of the army is unhinged. I have told enough to
make you sick, if the relation acts on you as the facts have on me."
In the routed army was the sturdy John Cleaveland, minister of Ipswich,
and now chaplain of Bagley's Massachusetts regiment, who regarded the
retreat with a disgust that was shared by many others. "This day," he
writes in his Diary, at the head of Lake George, two days after the
battle, "wherever I went I found people, officers and soldiers,
astonished that we left the French ground, and commenting on the strange
conduct in coming off." From this time forth the provincials called
their commander Mrs. Nabbycromby.[639] He thought of nothing but
fortifying himself. "Towards evening," continues the chaplain, "the
General, with his Rehoboam counsellors, came over to line out a fort on
the rocky hill where our breastwork was last year. Now we begin to think
strongly that the grand expedition against Canada is laid aside, and a
foundation made totally to impoverish our country." The whole army was
soon intrenched. The chaplain of Bagley's, with his brother Ebenezer,
chaplain of another regiment, one day walked round the camp and
carefully inspected it. The tour proved satisfactory to the militant
divines, and John Cleaveland reported to his wife: "We have built an
extraordinary good breastwork, sufficient to defend ourselves against
twenty thousand of the enemy, though at present we have not above a
third part of that number fit for duty." Many of the troops had been
sent to the Mohawk, and others to the Hudson.
[Footnote 639: Trumbull, _Hist. Connecticut_, II. 392. "Nabby" (Abigail)
was then a common female name in New England.]
In the regiment of which Cleaveland was chaplain there was a young
surgeon from Danvers, Dr. Caleb Rea, who also kept a copious diary, and,
being of a serious turn, listened with edification to the prayers and
exhortations to which the yeoman soldiery were daily summoned. In his
zeal, he made an inquest among them for singers, and chose the most
melodious to form a regimental choir, "the better to carry on the daily
service of singing psalms;" insomuch that the New England camp was vocal
with rustic harmony, sincere, if somewhat nasal. These seemly
observances were not inconsistent with a certain amount of disorder
among the more turbulent spirits, who, removed from the repressive
influence of tight-laced village communities, sometimes indulged in
conduct which grieved the conscientious surgeon. The rural New England
of that time, with its narrowness, its prejudices, its oddities, its
combative energy, and rugged, unconquerable strength, is among the
things of the past, or lingers in remote corners where the whistle of
the locomotive is never heard. It has spread itself in swarming millions
over half a continent, changing with changing conditions; and even the
part of it that clings to the ancestral hive has transformed and
continues to transform itself.
The provincials were happy in their chaplains, among whom there reigned
a marvellous harmony, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and
Congregationalists meeting twice a week to hold prayer-meetings
together. "A rare instance indeed," says Dr. Rea, "and perhaps scarce
ever was an army blessed with such a set of chaplains before." On one
occasion, just before the fatal expedition, nine of them, after prayers
and breakfast, went together to call upon the General. "He treated us
very kindly," says the chaplain of Bagley's, "and told us that he hoped
we would teach the people to do their duty and be courageous; and told
us a story of a chaplain in Germany, where he was, who just before the
action told the soldiers he had not time to say much, and therefore
should only say: 'Be courageous; for no cowards go to heaven.' The
General treated us to a bowl of punch and a bottle of wine, and then we
took our leave of him."[640]
[Footnote 640: For the use of the Diary of Chaplain Cleaveland, as well
as of his letters to his wife, I am indebted to the kindness of Miss
Abby E. Cleaveland, his descendant.]
When Cleaveland and the more gifted among his brethren preached of a
Sunday, officers and men of the regulars, no less than the provincials,
came to listen; yet that pious Sabbatarian, Dr. Rea, saw much to afflict
his conscience. "Sad, sad it is to see how the Sabbath is profaned in
the camp," above all by "the horrid custom of swearing, more especially
among the regulars; and I can't but charge our defeat on this sin."
It would have been well had the harmony that prevailed among the
chaplains found its counterpart among the men of the sword; but between
the British regular officers and those of the provinces there was
anything but an equal brotherhood. It is true that Pitt, in the spirit
of conciliation which he always showed towards the colonies, had
procured a change in the regulations concerning the relative rank of
British and provincial officers, thus putting them in a position much
nearer equality; but this, while appeasing the provincials, seems to
have annoyed the others. Till the campaign was nearly over, not a single
provincial colonel had been asked to join in a council of war; and,
complains Cleaveland, "they know no more of what is to be done than a
sergeant, till the orders come out." Of the British officers, the
greater part had seen but little active service. Most of them were men
of family, exceedingly prejudiced and insular, whose knowledge of the
world was limited to certain classes of their own countrymen, and who
looked down on all others, whether domestic or foreign. Towards the
provincials their attitude was one of tranquil superiority, though its
tranquillity was occasionally disturbed by what they regarded as absurd
pretension on the part of the colony officers. One of them gave vent to
his feelings in an article in the _London Chronicle_, in which he
advanced the very reasonable proposition that "a farmer is not to be
taken from the plough and made an officer in a day;" and he was answered
wrathfully, at great length, in the _Boston Evening Post_, by a writer
signing himself "A New England Man." The provincial officers, on the
other hand, and especially those of New England, being no less narrow
and prejudiced, filled with a sensitive pride and a jealous local
patriotism, and bred up in a lofty appreciation of the merits and
importance of their country, regarded British superciliousness with a
resentment which their strong love for England could not overcome. This
feeling was far from being confined to the officers. A provincial
regiment stationed at Half-Moon, on the Hudson, thought itself affronted
by Captain Cruikshank, a regular officer; and the men were so incensed
that nearly half of them went off in a body. The deportment of British
officers in the Seven Years War no doubt had some part in hastening on
the Revolution.
What with levelling Montcalm's siege works, planting palisades, and
grubbing up stumps in their bungling and laborious way, the regulars
found abundant occupation. Discipline was stiff and peremptory. The
wooden horse and the whipping-post were conspicuous objects in the camp,
and often in use. Caleb Rea, being tender-hearted, never went to see the
lash laid on; for, as he quaintly observes, "the cries were satisfactory
to me, without the sight of the strokes." He and the rest of the doctors
found active exercise for such skill as they had, since fever and
dysentery were making scarcely less havoc than the bullets at
Ticonderoga. This came from the bad state of the camps and unwholesome
food. The provincial surgeons seem to have been very little impressed
with the importance of sanitary regulations, and to have thought it
their business not to prevent disease, but only to cure it. The one
grand essential in their eyes was a well-stocked medicine-chest, rich in
exhaustless stores of rhubarb, ipecacuanha, and calomel. Even this
sometimes failed. Colonel Williams reports "the sick destitute of
everything proper for them; medicine-chest empty; nothing but their
dirty blankets for beds; Dr. Ashley dead, Dr. Wright gone home, low
enough; Bille worn off his legs,--such is our case. I have near a
hundred sick. Lost a sergeant and a private last night."[641] Chaplain
Cleaveland himself, though strong of frame, did not escape; but he found
solace in his trouble from the congenial society of a brother chaplain,
Mr. Emerson, of New Hampshire, "a right-down hearty Christian minister,
of savory conversation," who came to see him in his tent, breakfasted
with him, and joined him in prayer. Being somewhat better, he one day
thought to recreate himself with the apostolic occupation of fishing.
The sport was poor; the fish bit slowly; and as he lay in his boat,
still languid with his malady, he had leisure to reflect on the
contrasted works of Providence and man,--the bright lake basking amid
its mountains, a dream of wilderness beauty, and the swarms of harsh
humanity on the shore beside him, with their passions, discords, and
miseries. But it was with the strong meat of Calvinistic theology, and
not with reveries like these, that he was accustomed to nourish his
military flock.
[Footnote 641: _Colonel William Williams to Colonel Israel Williams, 4
Sept. 1758_.]
While at one end of the lake the force of Abercromby was diminished by
detachments and disease, that of Montcalm at the other was so increased
by reinforcements that a forward movement on his part seemed possible.
He contented himself, however, with strengthening the fort,
reconstructing the lines that he had defended so well, and sending out
frequent war-parties by way of Wood Creek and South Bay, to harass
Abercromby's communications with Fort Edward. These parties, some of
which consisted of several hundred men, were generally more or less
successful; and one of them, under La Corne, surprised and destroyed a
large wagon train escorted by forty soldiers. When Abercromby heard of
it, he ordered Rogers, with a strong detachment of provincials, light
infantry, and rangers, to go down the lake in boats, cross the mountains
to the narrow waters of Lake Champlain, and cut off the enemy. But
though Rogers set out at two in the morning, the French retreated so
fast that he arrived too late. As he was on his way back, he was met by
a messenger from the General with orders to intercept other French
parties reported to be hovering about Fort Edward. On this he retraced
his steps, marched through the forest to where Whitehall now stands, and
thence made his way up Wood Creek to old Fort Anne, a relic of former
wars, abandoned and falling to decay. Here, on the neglected "clearing"
that surrounded the ruin, his followers encamped. They counted seven
hundred in all, and consisted of about eighty rangers, a body of
Connecticut men under Major Putnam, and a small regular force, chiefly
light infantry, under Captain Dalzell, the brave officer who was
afterwards killed by Pontiac's warriors at Detroit.
Up to this time Rogers had observed his usual caution, commanding
silence on the march, and forbidding fires at night; but, seeing no
signs of an enemy, he forgot himself; and on the following morning, the
eighth of August, he and Lieutenant Irwin, of the light infantry, amused
themselves by firing at a mark on a wager. The shots reached the ears of
four hundred and fifty French and Indians under the famous partisan
Marin, who at once took steps to reconnoitre and ambuscade his rash
enemy. For nearly a mile from the old fort the forest had formerly been
cut down and burned; and Nature had now begun to reassert herself,
covering the open tract with a dense growth of bushes and saplings
almost impervious to anything but a wild-cat, had it not been traversed
by a narrow Indian path. Along this path the men were forced to march in
single file. At about seven o'clock, when the two marksmen had decided
their bet, and before the heavy dew of the night was dried upon the
bushes, the party slung their packs and set out. Putnam was in the front
with his Connecticut men; Dalzell followed with the regulars; and
Rogers, with his rangers, brought up the rear of the long and slender
line. Putnam himself led the way, shouldering through the bushes, gun in
hand; and just as the bluff yeoman emerged from them to enter the
forest-growth beyond, the air was rent with yells, the thickets before
him were filled with Indians, and one of them, a Caughnawaga chief,
sprang upon him, hatchet in hand. He had time to cock his gun and snap
it at the breast of his assailant; but it missed fire, and he was
instantly seized and dragged back into the forest, as were also a
lieutenant named Tracy and three private men. Then the firing began. The
French and Indians, lying across the path in a semicircle, had the
advantage of position and surprise. The Connecticut men fell back among
the bushes in disorder; but soon rallied, and held the enemy in check
while Dalzell and Rogers--the latter of whom was nearly a mile
behind--were struggling through briers and thickets to their aid. So
close was the brushwood that it was full half an hour before they could
get their followers ranged in some kind of order in front of the enemy;
and even then each man was forced to fight for himself as best he could.
Humphreys, the biographer of Putnam, blames Rogers severely for not
coming at once to the aid of the Connecticut men; but two of their
captains declare that he came with all possible speed; while a regular
officer present highly praised him to Abercromby for cool and
officer-like conduct.[642] As a man his deserts were small; as a
bushfighter he was beyond reproach.
[Footnote 642: _Letter from the Camp at Lake George, 5 Sept. 1758_,
signed by Captains Maynard and Giddings, and printed in the _Boston
Weekly Advertiser_. "Rogers deserves much to be commended." _Abercromby
to Pitt, 19 Aug. 1758_.]
Another officer recounts from hearsay the remarkable conduct of an
Indian, who sprang into the midst of the English and killed two of them
with his hatchet; then mounted on a log and defied them all. One of the
regulars tried to knock him down with the butt of his musket; but though
the blow made him bleed, he did not fall, and would have killed his
assailant if Rogers had not shot him dead.[643] The firing lasted about
two hours. At length some of the Canadians gave way, and the rest of the
French and Indians followed.[644] They broke into small parties to elude
pursuit, and reuniting towards evening, made their bivouac on a spot
surrounded by impervious swamps.
[Footnote 643: _Thomas Barnsley to Bouquet, 7 Sept. 1758_.]
[Footnote 644: _Doreil au Ministre, 31 Août, 1757_.]
Rogers remained on the field and buried all his own dead, forty-nine in
number. Then he resumed his march to Fort Edward, carrying the wounded
on litters of branches till the next day, when he met a detachment
coming with wagons to his relief. A party sent out soon after for the
purpose reported that they had found and buried more than a hundred
French and Indians. From this time forward the war-parties from
Ticonderoga greatly relented in their activity.
The adventures of the captured Putnam were sufficiently remarkable. The
Indians, after dragging him to the rear, lashed him fast to a tree so
that he could not move a limb, and a young savage amused himself by
throwing a hatchet at his head, striking it into the wood as close as
possible to the mark without hitting it. A French petty officer then
thrust the muzzle of his gun violently against the prisoner's body,
pretended to fire it at him, and at last struck him in the face with the
butt; after which dastardly proceeding he left him. The French and
Indians being forced after a time to fall back, Putnam found himself
between the combatants and exposed to bullets from both sides; but the
enemy, partially recovering the ground they had lost, unbound him, and
led him to a safe distance from the fight. When the retreat began, the
Indians hurried him along with them, stripped of coat, waistcoat, shoes,
and stockings, his back burdened with as many packs of the wounded as
could be piled upon it, and his wrists bound so tightly together that
the pain became intense. In his torment he begged them to kill him; on
which a French officer who was near persuaded them to untie his hands
and take off some of the packs, and the chief who had captured him gave
him a pair of moccasons to protect his lacerated feet. When they
encamped at night, they prepared to burn him alive, stripped him naked,
tied him to a tree, and gathered dry wood to pile about him. A sudden
shower of rain interrupted their pastime; but when it was over they
began again, and surrounded him with a circle of brushwood which they
set on fire. As they were yelling and dancing their delight at the
contortions with which he tried to avoid the rising flames, Marin,
hearing what was going on forward, broke through the crowd, and with a
courageous humanity not too common among Canadian officers, dashed aside
the burning brush, untied the prisoner, and angrily upbraided his
tormentors. He then restored him to the chief who had captured him, and
whose right of property in his prize the others had failed to respect.
The Caughnawaga treated him at first with kindness; but, with the help
of his tribesmen, took effectual means to prevent his escape, by laying
him on his back, stretching his arms and legs in the form of a St.
Andrew's cross, and binding the wrists and ankles fast to the stems of
young trees. This was a mode of securing prisoners in vogue among
Indians from immemorial time; but, not satisfied with it, they placed
brushwood upon his body, and then laid across it the long slender stems
of saplings, on the ends of which several warriors lay down to sleep, so
that the slightest movement on his part would rouse them. Thus he passed
a night of misery, which did not prevent him from thinking of the
ludicrous figure he made in the hands of the tawny Philistines.
On the next night, after a painful march, he reached Ticonderoga, where
he was questioned by Montcalm, and afterwards sent to Montreal in charge
of a French officer, who showed him the utmost kindness. On arriving,
wofully tattered, bruised, scorched, and torn, he found a friend in
Colonel Schuyler, himself a prisoner on parole, who helped him in his
need, and through whose good offices the future major-general of the
Continental Army was included in the next exchange of prisoners.[645]
[Footnote 645: On Putnam's adventures, Humphreys, 57 (1818). He had the
story from Putnam himself, and seems to give it with substantial
correctness, though his account of the battle is at several points
erroneous. The "Molang" of his account is Marin. On the battle, besides
authorities already cited, _Recollections of Thomson Maxwell_, a soldier
present (_Essex Institute_, VII. 97). Rogers, _Journals_, 117. Letter
from camp in _Boston Gazette_, no. 117. Another in _New Hampshire
Gazette_, no. 104. _Gentleman's Magazine, 1758_, p. 498. Malartic,
_Journal du Régiment de Béarn_. Lévis, _Journal de la Guerre en Canada_.
The French notices of the affair are few and brief. They admit a
defeat, but exaggerate the force and the losses of the English, and
underrate their own. Malartic, however, says that Marin set out with
four hundred men, and was soon after joined by an additional number of
Indians; which nearly answers to the best English accounts.]
The petty victory over Marin was followed by a more substantial success.
Early in September Abercromby's melancholy camp was cheered with the
tidings that the important French post of Fort Frontenac, which
controlled Lake Ontario, which had baffled Shirley in his attempt
against Niagara, and given Montcalm the means of conquering Oswego, had
fallen into British hands. "This is a glorious piece of news, and may
God have all the glory of the same!" writes Chaplain Cleaveland in his
Diary. Lieutenant-Colonel Bradstreet had planned the stroke long before,
and proposed it first to Loudon, and then to Abercromby. Loudon accepted
it; but his successor received it coldly, though Lord Howe was warm in
its favor. At length, under the pressure of a council of war, Abercromby
consented that the attempt should be made, and gave Bradstreet three
thousand men, nearly all provincials. With these he made his way, up the
Mohawk and down the Onondaga, to the lonely and dismal spot where Oswego
had once stood. By dint of much persuasion a few Oneidas joined him;
though, like most of the Five Nations, they had been nearly lost to the
English through the effects of the defeat at Ticonderoga. On the
twenty-second of August his fleet of whaleboats and bateaux pushed out
on Lake Ontario; and, three days after, landed near the French fort. On
the night of the twenty-sixth Bradstreet made a lodgment within less
than two hundred yards of it; and early in the morning De Noyan, the
commandant, surrendered himself and his followers, numbering a hundred
and ten soldiers and laborers, prisoners of war. With them were taken
nine armed vessels, carrying from eight to eighteen guns, and forming
the whole French naval force on Lake Ontario. The crews escaped. An
enormous quantity of provisions, naval stores, munitions, and Indian
goods intended for the supply of the western posts fell into the hands
of the English, who kept what they could carry off, and burned the rest.
In the fort were found sixty cannon and sixteen mortars, which the
victors used to batter down the walls; and then, reserving a few of the
best, knocked off the trunnions of the others. The Oneidas were bent on
scalping some of the prisoners. Bradstreet forbade it. They begged that
he would do as the French did,--turn his back and shut his eyes; but he
forced them to abstain from all violence, and consoled them by a lion's
share of the plunder. In accordance with the orders of Abercromby, the
fort was dismantled, and all the buildings in or around it burned, as
were also the vessels, except the two largest, which were reserved to
carry off some of the captured goods. Then, with boats deeply laden, the
detachment returned to Oswego; where, after unloading and burning the
two vessels, they proceeded towards Albany, leaving a thousand of their
number at the new fort which Brigadier Stanwix was building at the Great
Carrying Place of the Mohawk.
Next to Louisbourg, this was the heaviest blow that the French had yet
received. Their command of Lake Ontario was gone. New France was cut in
two; and unless the severed parts could speedily reunite, all the posts
of the interior would be in imminent jeopardy. If Bradstreet had been
followed by another body of men to reoccupy and rebuild Oswego, thus
recovering a harbor on Lake Ontario, all the captured French vessels
could have been brought thither, and the command of this inland sea
assured at once. Even as it was, the advantages were immense. A host of
savage warriors, thus far inclined to France or wavering between the two
belligerents, stood henceforth neutral, or gave themselves to England;
while Fort Duquesne, deprived of the supplies on which it depended,
could make but faint resistance to its advancing enemy.
Amherst, with five regiments from Louisbourg, came, early in October, to
join Abercromby at Lake George, and the two commanders discussed the
question of again attacking Ticonderoga. Both thought the season too
late. A fortnight after, a deserter brought news that Montcalm was
breaking up his camp. Abercromby followed his example. The opposing
armies filed off each to its winter quarters, and only a few scouting
parties kept alive the embers of war on the waters and mountains of Lake
George.
Meanwhile Brigadier Forbes was climbing the Alleghanies, hewing his way
through the forests of western Pennsylvania, and toiling inch by inch
towards his goal of Fort Duquesne.[646]
[Footnote 646: On the capture of Fort Frontenac, _Bradstreet to
Abercromby_, _31 Aug. 1758_. _Impartial Account of Lieutenant-Colonel
Bradstreet's Expedition, by a Volunteer in the Expedition_ (London,
1759). Letter from a New York officer to his colonel, in _Boston
Gazette_, no. 182. Several letters from persons in the expedition, in
_Boston Evening Post_, no. 1,203, _New Hampshire Gazette_, no. 104, and
_Boston News Letter_, no. 2,932. _Abercromby to Pitt_, _25 Nov. 1758_.
_Lieutenant Macauley to Horatio Gates_, _30 Aug. 1758._ _Vaudreuil au
Ministre_, _30 Oct. 1758_. Pouchot, I. 162. _Mémoires sur le Canada_,
1749-1760.]