his regiment, marched a little distance, and then waited for the rest of
the detachment under Lieutenant-Colonel Whiting. Thus Dieskau had full
time to lay his ambush. When Whiting came up, the whole moved on
together, so little conscious of danger that no scouts were thrown out
in front or flank; and, in full security, they entered the fatal snare.
Before they were completely involved in it, the sharp eye of old
Hendrick detected some sign of an enemy. At that instant, whether by
accident or design, a gun was fired from the bushes. It is said that
Dieskau's Iroquois, seeing Mohawks, their relatives, in the van, wished
to warn them of danger. If so, the warning came too late. The thickets
on the left blazed out a deadly fire, and the men fell by scores. In the
words of Dieskau, the head of the column "was doubled up like a pack of
cards." Hendrick's horse was shot down, and the chief was killed with a
bayonet as he tried to rise. Williams, seeing a rising ground on his
right, made for it, calling on his men to follow; but as he climbed the
slope, guns flashed from the bushes, and a shot through the brain laid
him dead. The men in the rear pressed forward to support their comrades,
when a hot fire was suddenly opened on them from the forest along their
right flank. Then there was a panic: some fled outright, and the whole
column recoiled. The van now became the rear, and all the force of the
enemy rushed upon it, shouting and screeching. There was a moment of
total confusion; but a part of Williams's regiment rallied under command
of Whiting, and covered the retreat, fighting behind trees like
Indians, and firing and falling back by turns, bravely aided by some of
the Mohawks and by a detachment which Johnson sent to their aid. "And a
very handsome retreat they made," writes Pomeroy; "and so continued till
they came within about three quarters of a mile of our camp. This was
the last fire our men gave our enemies, which killed great numbers of
them; they were seen to drop as pigeons." So ended the fray long known
in New England fireside story as the "bloody morning scout." Dieskau now
ordered a halt, and sounded his trumpets to collect his scattered men.
His Indians, however, were sullen and unmanageable, and the Canadians
also showed signs of wavering. The veteran who commanded them all,
Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, had been killed. At length they were
persuaded to move again, the regulars leading the way.
About an hour after Williams and his men had begun their march, a
distant rattle of musketry was heard at the camp; and as it grew nearer
and louder, the listeners knew that their comrades were on the retreat.
Then, at the eleventh hour, preparations were begun for defence. A sort
of barricade was made along the front of the camp, partly of wagons, and
partly of inverted bateaux, but chiefly of the trunks of trees hastily
hewn down in the neighboring forest and laid end to end in a single row.
The line extended from the southern slopes of the hill on the left
across a tract of rough ground to the marshes on the right. The forest,
choked with bushes and clumps of rank ferns, was within a few yards of
the barricade, and there was scarcely time to hack away the intervening
thickets. Three cannon were planted to sweep the road that descended
through the pines, and another was dragged up to the ridge of the hill.
The defeated party began to come in; first, scared fugitives both white
and red; then, gangs of men bringing the wounded; and at last, an hour
and a half after the first fire was heard, the main detachment was seen
marching in compact bodies down the road.
Five hundred men were detailed to guard the flanks of the camp. The rest
stood behind the wagons or lay flat behind the logs and inverted
bateaux, the Massachusetts men on the right, and the Connecticut men on
the left. Besides Indians, this actual fighting force was between
sixteen and seventeen hundred rustics, very few of whom had been under
fire before that morning. They were hardly at their posts when they saw
ranks of white-coated soldiers moving down the road, and bayonets that
to them seemed innumerable glittering between the boughs. At the same
time a terrific burst of war-whoops rose along the front; and, in the
words of Pomeroy, "the Canadians and Indians, helter-skelter, the woods
full of them, came running with undaunted courage right down the hill
upon us, expecting to make us flee." Some of the men grew uneasy; while
the chief officers, sword in hand, threatened instant death to any who
should stir from their posts. If Dieskau had made an assault at that
instant, there could be little doubt of the result.
This he well knew; but he was powerless. He had his small force of
regulars well in hand; but the rest, red and white, were beyond control,
scattering through the woods and swamps, shouting, yelling, and firing
from behind trees. The regulars advanced with intrepidity towards the
camp where the trees were thin, deployed, and fired by platoons, till
Captain Eyre, who commanded the artillery, opened on them with grape,
broke their ranks, and compelled them to take to cover. The fusillade
was now general on both sides, and soon grew furious. "Perhaps," Seth
Pomeroy wrote to his wife, two days after, "the hailstones from heaven
were never much thicker than their bullets came; but, blessed be God!
that did not in the least daunt or disturb us." Johnson received a
flesh-wound in the thigh, and spent the rest of the day in his tent.
Lyman took command; and it is a marvel that he escaped alive, for he was
four hours in the heat of the fire, directing and animating the men. "It
was the most awful day my eyes ever beheld," wrote Surgeon Williams to
his wife; "there seemed to be nothing but thunder and lightning and
perpetual pillars of smoke." To him, his colleague Doctor Pynchon, one
assistant, and a young student called "Billy," fell the charge of the
wounded of his regiment. "The bullets flew about our ears all the time
of dressing them; so we thought best to leave our tent and retire a few
rods behind the shelter of a log-house." On the adjacent hill stood one
Blodget, who seems to have been a sutler, watching, as well as bushes,
trees, and smoke would let him, the progress of the fight, of which he
soon after made and published a curious bird's-eye view. As the wounded
men were carried to the rear, the wagoners about the camp took their
guns and powder-horns, and joined in the fray. A Mohawk, seeing one of
these men still unarmed, leaped over the barricade, tomahawked the
nearest Canadian, snatched his gun, and darted back unhurt. The brave
savage found no imitators among his tribesmen, most of whom did nothing
but utter a few war-whoops, saying that they had come to see their
English brothers fight. Some of the French Indians opened a distant
flank fire from the high ground beyond the swamp on the right, but were
driven off by a few shells dropped among them.
Dieskau had directed his first attack against the left and centre of
Johnson's position. Making no impression here, he tried to force the
right, where lay the regiments of Titcomb, Ruggles, and Williams. The
fire was hot for about an hour. Titcomb was shot dead, a rod in front of
the barricade, firing from behind a tree like a common soldier. At
length Dieskau, exposing himself within short range of the English line,
was hit in the leg. His adjutant, Montreuil, himself wounded, came to
his aid, and was washing the injured limb with brandy, when the
unfortunate commander was again hit in the knee and thigh. He seated
himself behind a tree, while the Adjutant called two Canadians to carry
him to the rear. One of them was instantly shot down. Montreuil took his
place; but Dieskau refused to be moved, bitterly denounced the Canadians
and Indians, and ordered the Adjutant to leave him and lead the regulars
in a last effort against the camp.
It was too late. Johnson's men, singly or in small squads, were already
crossing their row of logs; and in a few moments the whole dashed
forward with a shout, falling upon the enemy with hatchets and the butts
of their guns. The French and their allies fled. The wounded General
still sat helpless by the tree, when he saw a soldier aiming at him. He
signed to the man not to fire; but he pulled trigger, shot him across
the hips, leaped upon him, and ordered him in French to surrender. "I
said," writes Dieskau, "'You rascal, why did you fire? You see a man
lying in his blood on the ground, and you shoot him!' He answered: 'How
did I know that you had not got a pistol? I had rather kill the devil
than have the devil kill me.' 'You are a Frenchman?' I asked. 'Yes,' he
replied; 'it is more than ten years since I left Canada;' whereupon
several others fell on me and stripped me. I told them to carry me to
their general, which they did. On learning who I was, he sent for
surgeons, and, though wounded himself, refused all assistance till my
wounds were dressed."
It was near five o'clock when the final rout took place. Some time
before, several hundred of the Canadians and Indians had left the field
and returned to the scene of the morning fight, to plunder and scalp the
dead. They were resting themselves near a pool in the forest, close
beside the road, when their repose was interrupted by a volley of
bullets. It was fired by a scouting party from Fort Lyman, chiefly
backwoodsmen, under Captains Folsom and McGinnis. The assailants were
greatly outnumbered; but after a hard fight the Canadians and Indians
broke and fled. McGinnis was mortally wounded. He continued to give
orders till the firing was over; then fainted, and was carried, dying,
to the camp. The bodies of the slain, according to tradition, were
thrown into the pool, which bears to this day the name of Bloody Pond.
The various bands of fugitives rejoined each other towards night, and
encamped in the forest; then made their way round the southern shoulder
of French Mountain, till, in the next evening, they reached their
canoes. Their plight was deplorable; for they had left their knapsacks
behind, and were spent with fatigue and famine.
Meanwhile their captive general was not yet out of danger. The Mohawks
were furious at their losses in the ambush of the morning, and above all
at the death of Hendrick. Scarcely were Dieskau's wounds dressed, when
several of them came into the tent. There was a long and angry dispute
in their own language between them and Johnson, after which they went
out very sullenly. Dieskau asked what they wanted. "What do they want?"
returned Johnson. "To burn you, by God, eat you, and smoke you in their
pipes, in revenge for three or four of their chiefs that were killed.
But never fear; you shall be safe with me, or else they shall kill us
both." The Mohawks soon came back, and another talk ensued, excited at
first, and then more calm; till at length the visitors, seemingly
appeased, smiled, gave Dieskau their hands in sign of friendship, and
quietly went out again. Johnson warned him that he was not yet safe; and
when the prisoner, fearing that his presence might incommode his host,
asked to be removed to another tent, a captain and fifty men were
ordered to guard him. In the morning an Indian, alone and apparently
unarmed, loitered about the entrance, and the stupid sentinel let him
pass in. He immediately drew a sword from under a sort of cloak which he
wore, and tried to stab Dieskau; but was prevented by the colonel to
whom the tent belonged, who seized upon him, took away his sword, and
pushed him out. As soon as his wounds would permit, Dieskau was carried
on a litter, strongly escorted, to Fort Lyman, whence he was sent to
Albany, and afterwards to New York. He is profuse in expressions of
gratitude for the kindness shown him by the colonial officers, and
especially by Johnson. Of the provincial soldiers he remarked soon after
the battle that in the morning they fought like good boys, about noon
like men, and in the afternoon like devils. In the spring of 1757 he
sailed for England, and was for a time at Falmouth; whence Colonel
Matthew Sewell, fearing that he might see and learn too much, wrote to
the Earl of Holdernesse: "The Baron has great penetration and quickness
of apprehension. His long service under Marshal Saxe renders him a man
of real consequence, to be cautiously observed. His circumstances
deserve compassion, for indeed they are very melancholy, and I much
doubt of his being ever perfectly cured." He was afterwards a long time
at Bath, for the benefit of the waters. In 1760 the famous Diderot met
him at Paris, cheerful and full of anecdote, though wretchedly shattered
by his wounds. He died a few years later.
On the night after the battle the yeomen warriors felt the truth of the
saying that, next to defeat, the saddest thing is victory. Comrades and
friends by scores lay scattered through the forest. As soon as he could
snatch a moment's leisure, the overworked surgeon sent the dismal
tidings to his wife: "My dear brother Ephraim was killed by a ball
through his head; poor brother Josiah's wound I fear will prove mortal;
poor Captain Hawley is yet alive, though I did not think he would live
two hours after bringing him in." Daniel Pomeroy was shot dead; and his
brother Seth wrote the news to his wife Rachel, who was just delivered
of a child: "Dear Sister, this brings heavy tidings; but let not your
heart sink at the news, though it be your loss of a dear husband. Monday
the eighth instant was a memorable day; and truly you may say, had not
the Lord been on our side, we must all have been swallowed up. My
brother, being one that went out in the first engagement, received a
fatal shot through the middle of the head." Seth Pomeroy found a moment
to write also to his own wife, whom he tells that another attack is
expected; adding, in quaintly pious phrase: "But as God hath begun to
show mercy, I hope he will go on to be gracious." Pomeroy was employed
during the next few days with four hundred men in what he calls "the
melancholy piece of business" of burying the dead. A letter-writer of
the time does not approve what was done on this occasion. "Our people,"
he says, "not only buried the French dead, but buried as many of them
as might be without the knowledge of our Indians, to prevent their being
scalped. This I call an excess of civility;" his reason being that
Braddock's dead soldiers had been left to the wolves.
The English loss in killed, wounded, and missing was two hundred and
sixty-two; and that of the French, by their own account, two hundred and
twenty-eight,--a somewhat modest result of five hours' fighting. The
English loss was chiefly in the ambush of the morning, where the killed
greatly outnumbered the wounded, because those who fell and could not be
carried away were tomahawked by Dieskau's Indians. In the fight at the
camp, both Indians and Canadians kept themselves so well under cover
that it was very difficult for the New England men to pick them off,
while they on their part lay close behind their row of logs. On the
French side, the regular officers and troops bore the brunt of the
battle and suffered the chief loss, nearly all of the former and nearly
half of the latter being killed or wounded.
Johnson did not follow up his success. He says that his men were tired.
Yet five hundred of them had stood still all day, and boats enough for
their transportation were lying on the beach. Ten miles down the lake, a
path led over a gorge of the mountains to South Bay, where Dieskau had
left his canoes and provisions. It needed but a few hours to reach and
destroy them; but no such attempt was made. Nor, till a week after, did
Johnson send out scouts to learn the strength of the enemy at
Ticonderoga. Lyman strongly urged him to make an effort to seize that
important pass; but Johnson thought only of holding his own position. "I
think," he wrote, "we may expect very shortly a more formidable
attack." He made a solid breastwork to defend his camp; and as
reinforcements arrived, set them at building a fort, which he named Fort
William Henry, on a rising ground by the lake. It is true that just
after the battle he was deficient in stores, and had not bateaux enough
to move his whole force. It is true, also, that he was wounded, and that
he was too jealous of Lyman to delegate the command to him; and so the
days passed till, within a fortnight, his nimble enemy were intrenched
at Ticonderoga in force enough to defy him.
The Crown Point expedition was a failure disguised under an incidental
success.
A WINTER RAID.
While Johnson was building Fort William Henry at one end of Lake George,
the French began Fort Ticonderoga at the other, though they did not
finish it till the next year. In the winter of 1757, hearing that the
English were making great preparations at Fort William Henry to attack
them, they resolved to anticipate the blow and seize that post by
surprise. To this end, Vaudreuil, Governor of Canada, sent a large
detachment from Montreal, while the small body of troops and provincials
who occupied the English fort remained wholly ignorant of the movement.
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 the 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, bearskins to sleep on, tarpaulins
to sleep under, spare moccasins, 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. 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.
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.
SIEGE AND MASSACRE OF FORT WILLIAM HENRY.
Having failed to take Fort William Henry by surprise, the French
resolved to attack it with all the force they could bring against it,
and in the summer of 1757 the Marquis de Montcalm and the Chevalier de
Levis advanced against it with about eight thousand regulars, Canadians,
and Indians. The whole assembled at Ticonderoga, where several weeks
were spent in preparation. Provisions, camp equipage, ammunition,
cannon, and bateaux were dragged by gangs of men up the road 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.