Chapter VIII (1)

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE GREAT VALLEYS OF NORTH AMERICA.

BY JUSTIN WINSOR,

_The Editor_.

THE death of Frontenac[1097] and the peace of Ryswick (September, 1697) found France in possession of the two great valleys of North America,—that of the St. Lawrence, with the lakes, and that of the Mississippi, with its affluents.[1098] In 1697 the Iroquois were steadfast in their adherence to Corlear, as they termed the English governor, while they refused to receive French missionaries. In negotiations which Bellomont was conducting (1698) with the Canadian governor, he tried ineffectually to induce a recognition of the Five Nations as subjects of the English king.[1099] Meanwhile, the French were omitting no opportunity to force conferences with these Indians, and Longueil was trying to brighten the chain of amity with them as far west as Detroit, where in July, 1701, La Motte Cadillac began a French post. Within a month the French ratified at Montreal (August 4, 1701) a treaty with the Iroquois just in time to secure their neutrality in the war which England declared against France and Spain the next year (1702). So when the outbreak came it was the New England frontiers which suffered (1703-4),[1100] for the Canadians were careful not to stir the blood of the Iroquois. The French jealously regarded the English glances at Niagara, and proposed (1706) to anticipate their rivals by occupying it. When, in 1709, it was determined to retaliate for the ravages of the New England borders, the Iroquois, at a conference in Albany[1101] (1709), were found ready to aid in the expedition which Francis Nicholson tried to organize, but which proved abortive. Already Spotswood, of Virginia, was urging the home government to push settlers across the Alleghanies into the valley of the Ohio.[1102] But attention was rather drawn to the petty successes in Acadia,[1103] and the spirit of conquest seethed again, when Sir Hovenden Walker appeared at Boston,[1104] and a naval expedition in the summer of 1711 was well under way to capture the great valley of the St. Lawrence. Stupidity and the elements sent the fleet of the English admiral reeling back to Boston, leaving Quebec and Canada once more safe. The next year (1712) the distant Foxes tried to wrest Detroit from the French; but its garrison was too enduring. France had maintained herself all along her Canadian lines, and she was in fair hopes of gaining the active sympathy of the Iroquois, when the treaty of Utrecht (1713) brought the war to a close.

After a water-color sketch in the _Mass. Archives: Documents collected in France_, v. p. 271. The coat is red, faced with brown.]

The language of this treaty declared that the “Five Nations[1105] were subject to the dominion of England.” The interpretation of this clause was the occasion of diplomatic fence at once. The French claimed a distinction between the subjectivity of the Indians and domination over their lands. The English insisted that the allegiance of the Five Nations carried not only their own hereditary territory, but also the regions of Iroquois conquests, namely, all west of the Ottawa River and the Alleghany Mountains to the Mississippi River.[1106] The peace of Utrecht was but the prelude to a struggle for occupying the Ohio Valley, on the part of both French and English. Spotswood had opened a road over the Blue Ridge from Virginia in 1716, and he continued to urge the Board of Trade to establish a post on Lake Erie. Governor Keith, of Pennsylvania, reported to the board (1718) upon the advances of the French across the Ohio Valley, and the English moved effectually when, in 1721, they began to plant colonists on the Oswego River. By 1726 they had completed their fort on the lake, and Montreal found its Indian trade with the west intercepted. Meanwhile, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia strengthened their alliance with the Iroquois by a conference at Albany in September, 1722, and in 1726 the Indians confirmed the cession of their lands west and north of Lake Erie.

When Vaudreuil, in 1725, not long before his death (April 10) suggested to the ministry in Paris that Niagara should be fortified, since, with the Iroquois backing the English, he did not find himself in a position openly to attack them, the minister replied that the governor could at least craze the Indians by dosing them with brandy. Shortly afterwards the commission of his successor, Beauharnois, impressed on that governor the necessity of always having in view the forcible expulsion of the Oswego garrison. In 1727 the French governor tried the effect of a summons of the English post, with an expressed intention “to proceed against it, as may seem good to him,” in case of refusal; but it was mere gasconade, and the minister at home cautioned the governor to let things remain as they were.

Fac-simile of a cut in Grant’s _British Battles_, i. p. 564.]

NOTE TO ANNEXED MAP.—In the _N. Y. Col. Docs._, ix. 1021, is a fac-simile of a map in the Archives of the Marine and Colonies, called _Carte du lac Champlain avec les rivières depuis le fort de Chambly jusques à Orangeville_ [Albany] _de la Nouvelle Angleterre, dressé sur divers mémoires_. It is held to have been made about 1731. There is in the _Doc. Hist. N. Y._, vol. i. p. 557, a _Carte du lac Champlain depuis le fort Chambly jusqu’au fort St. Frederic, levée par le Sr. Anger, arpenteur du Roy en 1732, fait à Quebec le 10 Oct., 1748,—Signé de Lery_.

Nicolas Bellin made his _Carte de la rivière de Richelieu et du lac Champlain_ in 1744, and it appeared in Charlevoix’s _Nouvelle France_, i. 144, reproduced in Shea’s ed., ii. 15. There is also a map of Lake Champlain in Bellin’s _Petit Atlas Maritime_, 1764.

There were surveys made of Lake Champlain, in 1762, by William Brassier, and of Lake George by Captain Jackson, in 1756. These were published by order of Amherst in 1762, and reproduced in 1776. (Cf. _American Atlas_, 1776.) The original drawings are noted in the _Catal. of the King’s Maps_ (Brit. Mus.), i. 223. The Brassier map is also given in Dr. Hough’s edition of Rogers’s _Journals_. The same British Museum _Catalogue_ (i. 489) gives a drawn _Map of New Hampshire_ (1756), which shows the route from Albany by lakes George and Champlain to Quebec. Cf. the _Map of New Hampshire_, by Col. Joseph Blanchard and Rev. Samuel Langdon, engraved by Jefferys, and dated 21 Oct., 1761, which shows the road to Ticonderoga in 1759.

A few years later a sort of flank movement was made on Oswego, as well as on New England, by the French pushing up Lake Champlain, and establishing themselves in the neighborhood of Crown Point (1731), where they shortly after built Fort St. Frederick. The movement alarmed New England more than it did New York.

The French persisted in seeking conferences with the Six Nations,—as they had been called since the Tuscaroras joined them about 1713,—and in 1734 succeeded in obtaining a meeting with the Onondagas. They ventured in 1737 to ask the Senecas to let them establish a post at Irondequot, farther west on Lake Ontario than Oswego. The Iroquois would not permit, however, either side to possess that harbor. For some years Oswego was the burden of the French despatches, and the English seemed to take every possible occasion for new conferences with the fickle Indians.

The most important of these treaties was made at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1744, when an indefinite extent of territory beyond the mountains was ceded to the English in the form of a confirmation of earlier implied grants. A fresh war followed. The New Englanders took Louisbourg,[1107] but New York seemed supine, and let French marauding parties from Crown Point fall upon and destroy the fort at Saratoga without being aroused.[1108] Oswego was in danger, but still the New York assembly preferred to quarrel with the governor; and tardily at best it undertook to restore the post at Saratoga, while the Albanians were suspected of trading clandestinely through the Caughnawagas with the French in Canada. Both sides continued in their efforts to propitiate the Iroquois, while a parade of arming was made for an intended advance on Crown Point and Montreal. Governor Shirley, from Boston, had urged it, since a demonstration which had been intended by way of the St. Lawrence had to be given up, because the promised fleet did not arrive from England. To keep the land levies in spirits, Shirley had written to Albany that he would send them to join in an expedition by the Lakes, and had even despatched a 13-inch mortar by water to New York.[1109] Before the time came, however, the rumors of D’Anville’s fleet frightened the New Englanders, and they thought they had need of their troops at home.[1110] It was some time before Governor Clinton knew of this at Albany, and preparations went on. Efforts to enlist the Iroquois in the enterprise halted, for the inaction of the past year had had its effect upon them, and it needed all the influence of William Johnson, who now first appears as Indian commissioner, to induce them to send a sufficient delegation to a conference at Albany.

From Popple’s _British Empire in America_. It is repeated in fac-simile in Cassell’s _United States_, p. 372; and in Gay’s _Pop. Hist. U. S._, iii. 307. Cf. The view from La Potherie in Vol. IV. p. 320; also reproduced in Shea’s _Charlevoix_, vol. v. Kalm described the town in 1749 (_Travels_, London, 1771, ii. p. 258). See views under date of 1760 and 1761, noted in the _Cat. of the King’s Maps_ (Brit. Mus.), ii. 220. Cf. De Lery’s report on the fortifications of Quebec in 1716, in _N. Y. Col. Docs._, ix. 872.]

The business still further dragged; the withdrawal of New England became in the end known, and by September 16 Clinton had determined to abandon the project, and the French governor had good occasion to twit old Hendrick, the Mohawk chief, when he ventured with more purpose than prudence to Montreal in November.[1111]

This sketch of a footguard, with grenade and match, is taken from Grant’s _British Battles_, ii. 60. Cf. _Mag. of Amer. Hist._, i. 462; and the uniform of the forty-third regiment of foot (raised in America), represented from a drawing in the British Museum, in _The Century_, xxix. 891.]

Early the next summer (June, 1747) the French had some experience of a foray upon their own borders, when a party of English and Indians raided upon the island of Montreal,—a little burst of activity conspicuous amid the paralysis that the quarrels of Clinton and De Lancey had engendered. Shirley had formed the plan of a winter attack upon Crown Point, intending to send forces up the Connecticut, and from Oswego towards Frontenac, by way of distracting the enemy’s councils; but the New York assembly refused to respond.

The next year (1748) the French, acting through Father Picquet, made renewed efforts to enlist Iroquois converts, while Galissonière was urging the home government to send over colonists to occupy the Ohio Valley. A number of Virginians, on the other hand, formed themselves into the Ohio Company, and began to send explorers into the disputed valley. In order to anticipate the English, the French governor had already despatched Céloron de Bienville to take formal possession by burying lead plates, with inscriptions, at the mouths of the streams.[1112]

For the present, there was truce. The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, entered upon in May, and signed in October (1748), had given each side time to manœuvre for an advantage. Picquet established a new barrier against the English at La Presentation, where Ogdensburg now is;[1113] and in 1749 Fort Rouillé was built at the present Toronto.[1114]

The Virginians, meanwhile, began to push their traders farther and farther beyond the mountains. The Pennsylvanians also sent thither a shrewd barterer and wily agent in George Croghan, and the French emissaries whom he encountered found themselves outwitted.[1115] The Ohio Company kept out Christopher Gist on his explorations. Thus it was that the poor Ohio Indians were distracted. The ominous plates of Céloron meant to them the loss of their territory; and they appealed to the Iroquois, who in turn looked to the government of New York. That province, however, was apathetic, while Picquet and Jean Cœur, another Romish priest, who believed in rousing the Indian blood, urged the tribes to maraud across the disputed territory and to attack the Catawbas. William Johnson, on the one side, and Joncaire, on the other, were busy with their conferences, each trying to checkmate the other (1750); while the English legislative assemblies haggled about the money it cost and the expense of the forts. The Iroquois did not fail to observe this; nor did it escape them that the French were building vessels on Ontario and strengthening the Niagara fort (1751).

While Charles Townshend was urging the English home government (1752) to seize the Ohio region forcibly, the French were attacking the English traders and overcoming the allied Indians, on the Miamis. Virginia, by a treaty with the Indians at Logstown, June 13, 1752, got permission to erect a fort at the forks of the Ohio; but the undertaking was delayed.

In the spring of 1753 Duquesne, the governor of Canada, sent an expedition[1116] to possess by occupation the Ohio Valley, and the party approached it by a new route.[1117] They landed at Presquisle, built a log fort,[1118] carried their munitions across to the present French Creek, and built there another defence called Fort Le Bœuf.[1119] This put them during high water in easy communication by boat with the Alleghany River. French tact conciliated the Indians, and where that failed arrogance was sufficient, and the expedition would have pushed on to found new forts, but sickness weakened the men, and Marin, the commander now dying, saw it was all he could do to hold the two forts, while he sent the rest of his force back to Montreal to recuperate. Late in the autumn Legardeur de Saint-Pierre arrived at Le Bœuf, as the successor of Marin. He had not been long there, when on the 11th of December a messenger from Governor Dinwiddie, of Virginia, with a small escort, presented himself at the fort. The guide of the party was Christopher Gist; the messenger was George Washington, then adjutant-general of the Virginia militia.[1120] Their business was to inform the French commander that he was building forts on English territory, and that he would do well to depart peaceably. Washington had been made conscious of the aggressive character of the French occupation, as he passed through the Indian town of Venango, at the confluence of French Creek and the Alleghany River, for he there had seen the French flag floating over the house of an English trader, Fraser, which the French had seized for an outpost of Le Bœuf, and there he had found Joncaire in command.[1121] Washington had been received by Joncaire hospitably, and over his wine the Frenchman had disclosed the unmistakable purpose of his government. At Le Bœuf Washington tarried three days, during which Saint-Pierre framed his reply, which was in effect that he must hold his post, while Dinwiddie’s letter was sent to the French commander at Quebec. It was the middle of January, 1754, when Washington reached Williamsburg on his return, and made his report to Dinwiddie.

The result was that Dinwiddie drafted two hundred men from the Virginia militia, and despatched them under Washington to build a fort at the forks of the Ohio. The Virginia assembly, forgetting for the moment its quarrel with the governor, voted £10,000 to be expended, but only under the direction of a committee of its own. Dinwiddie found difficulty in getting the other colonies to assist, and the Quaker element in Pennsylvania prevented that colony from being the immediate helper, which it might from its position have become.

Meanwhile, some backwoodsmen had been pushed over the mountains and had set to work on a fort at the forks. A much larger French force under Contrecœur soon summoned them,[1122] and the English retired. The French immediately began the erection of Fort Duquesne.

While this was doing, Dinwiddie was toiling with tardy assemblies and their agents to organize a regiment to support the backwoodsmen. Joshua Fry was to be its colonel, with Washington as second in command. The latter, with a portion of the men, had already pushed forward to Will’s Creek, the present Cumberland. Later he advanced with 150 men to Great Meadows, where he learned that the French, who had been reinforced, had sent out a party from their new fort, marching towards him. Again he got word from an Indian—who, from his tributary character towards the Iroquois, was called Half-King, and who had been Washington’s companion on his trip to Le Bœuf—that this chieftain with some followers had tracked two men to a dark glen, where he believed the French party were lurking. Washington started with forty men to join Half-King, and under his guidance they approached the glen and found the French. Shots were exchanged. The French leader, Jumonville, was killed, and all but one of his followers were taken or slain.

The mission of Jumonville was to scour for English, by order of Contrecœur, now in command of Duquesne, and to bear a summons to any he could find, warning them to retire from French territory. The precipitancy of Washington’s attack gave the French the chance to impute to Washington the crime of assassination; but it seems to have been a pretence on the part of the French to cover a purpose which Jumonville had of summoning aid from Duquesne, while his concealment was intended to shield him till its arrival. Rash or otherwise, this onset of the youthful Washington began the war.

The English returned to Great Meadows, and while waiting for reinforcements from Fry, Washington threw up some entrenchments, which he called Fort Necessity. The men from Fry came without their leader, who had sickened and died, and Washington, succeeding to the command of the regiment, found himself at the head of three hundred men, increased soon by an independent company from South Carolina.

Washington again advanced toward Gist’s settlement, when, fearing an attack, he sent back for Mackay, whom he had left with a company of regulars at Fort Necessity. Rumors thickening of an advance of the French, the English leader again fell back to Great Meadows, resolved to fight there. It was now the first of July, 1754. Coulon de Villiers, a brother of Jumonville, was now advancing from Duquesne. The attack was made on a rainy day, and for much of the time a thick mist hung between the combatants. After dark a parley resulted in Washington’s accepting terms offered by the French, and the English marched out with the honors of war.[1123]

The young Virginian now led his weary followers back to Will’s Creek. It was a dismal march. The Indian allies of the French, who were only with difficulty prevented from massacring the wounded English, had been allowed to kill the cattle and horses of the little army; and Washington’s men had to struggle along under the burdens of their own disabled companions. Thus they turned their backs upon the great valley, in which not an English flag now waved.

* * * * *

Appearances were not grateful to Dinwiddie. His house of burgesses preferred to fight him on some domestic differences rather than to listen to his appeals to resist the French. He got little sympathy from the other colonies. The Quakers and Germans of Pennsylvania cared little for boundaries. New York and Maryland seemed slothful.[1124] Only Shirley, far away in Massachusetts, was alive, but he was busy at home.[1125] The Lords of Trade in London looked to William Johnson to appease and attach the Indians; but lest he could not accomplish everything, they directed a congress of the colonial representatives to be assembled at Albany, which talked, but to the liking neither of their constituents nor of the government in England.[1126]

Dinwiddie, despairing of any organized onset, appealed to the home government. The French king was diligently watching for the English ministry’s response. So when Major-General Braddock and his two regiments sailed from England for Virginia, and the Baron Dieskau and an army, with the Marquis of Vaudreuil[1127] to succeed Duquesne as governor, sailed for Quebec, the diplomates of the two crowns bowed across the Channel, and protested to each other it all meant nothing.

The English thought that with their superiority on the sea they could intercept the French armament, and Admiral Boscawen was sent to hover about the Gulf of St. Lawrence. He got only three ships of them,—the rest eluding him.

The two armies were to enter the great valleys, one of the St. Lawrence, the other of the Ohio, but not in direct opposition. Dieskau was hurled back at Lake George; Braddock on the Monongahela. We must follow their fortunes.

In February, 1755, Braddock landed at Hampton, Virginia, and presently he and Dinwiddie were living “in great harmony.” A son of Shirley of Massachusetts was serving Braddock as secretary, and he was telling a correspondent how “disqualified his general was for the service he was employed in, in almost every respect.” This was after the young man had seen his father, for Braddock had gone up to Alexandria[1128] in April, and had there summoned for a conference all the governors of the colonies, Shirley among the rest, the most active of them all, ambitious of military renown, and full of plans to drive the French from the continent. The council readily agreed to the main points of an aggressive campaign. Braddock was to reduce Fort Duquesne; Shirley was to capture Niagara. An army of provincials under William Johnson was to seize Crown Point. These three movements we are now to consider; a fourth, an attack by New Englanders upon the Acadian peninsula, and the only one which succeeded, is chronicled in another chapter.[1129]

Braddock’s first mistake was in moving by the Potomac, instead of across Pennsylvania, where a settled country would have helped him; but this error is said to have been due to the Quaker merchant John Hanbury. He cajoled the Duke of Newcastle into ordering this way, because Hanbury, as a proprietor in the Ohio Company, would profit by the trade which the Virginia route would bring to that corporation. Dinwiddie’s desire to develop the Virginia route to the Ohio had doubtless quite as much to do with the choice. While plagued with impeded supplies and the want of conveyance as he proceeded, Braddock chafed at the Pennsylvanian indifference which looked on, and helped him not. He wished New England was nearer. The way Pennsylvania finally aided the doomed general was through Benjamin Franklin, whom she had borrowed of New England. He urged the Pennsylvania farmers to supply wagons, and they did, and Braddock began his march. On the 10th of May he was at Will’s Creek,[1130] with 2,200 men, and as his aids he had about him Captains Robert Orme and Roger Morris, and Colonel George Washington. Braddock invested the camp with an atmosphere little seductive to Indian allies. There were fifty of them present at one time, but they dwindled to eight in the end.[1131] Braddock’s disregard had also driven off a notorious ranger, Captain Jack, who would have been serviceable if he had been wanted.

On the 10th of June the march was resumed,—a long, thin line, struggling with every kind of difficulty in the way, and making perhaps three or four miles a day. By Washington’s advice, Braddock took his lighter troops and pushed ahead, leaving Colonel Dunbar to follow more deliberately. On the 7th of July this advance body was at Turtle Creek, about eight miles from Fort Duquesne.

After a water-color sketch in the _Mass. Archives: Documents collected in France_, vol. ix. p. 425. The coat is blue, faced with red.

Parkman (vol. i. 368), speaking of the troops which came with Dieskau and Montcalm, says that their uniform was white, faced with blue, red, yellow, or violet, and refers to the plates of the regimental uniforms accompanying Susane’s _Ancienne Infanterie Française_. Parkman (i. p. 370) also says that the _troupes de la marine_, the permanent military establishment of Canada, wore a white uniform faced with black. He gives (p. 370, _note_) various references.]

From _Father Abraham’s Almanac_, 1761. Key: 1, Monongahela River; 2, Fort Du Quesne, or Pittsburgh; 3, the small fort; 4, Alleghany River; 5, Alleghany Indian town; 6, Shanapins; 7, Yauyaugany River; 8, Ohio, or Alleghany, River; 9, Logs Town; 10, Beaver Creek; 11, Kuskaskies, the chief town of the Six Nations; 12, Shingoes Town; 13, Alleguippes; 14, Sennakaas; 15, Tuttle Creek; 16, Pine Creek. The arrows show the course of the river.

A “Plan of Fort le Quesne, built by the French at the fork of the Ohio and Monongahela in 1754,” was published by Jefferys, and is included in his _General Topography of North America and the West Indies_, London, 1768. I suppose this to be based upon the MS. plan noted in the _Catal. of the King’s Maps_ (Brit. Mus.), ii. 184. Cf. the plan (1754) in the _Memoirs_ of Robert Stobo, Pittsburgh, 1854, which is repeated in Sargent’s _Braddock’s Exped._, p. 182, who refers to a plan published in London in 1755, mentioned in the _Gentleman’s Mag._, xxv. P. 383. Stobo’s plan is also engraved in _Penna. Archives_, ii. 147, and the letters of Stobo and Croghan respecting it are in _Penna. Col. Rec._, vi. 141, 161. Parkman refers (i. 208) to a plan in the Public Record Office, London, and (p. 207) describes the fort as does Sargent (p. 182). See the plan in Bancroft, orig. ed., iv. 189, and Gay’s _Pop. Hist. U. S._, iii. 260.

Duquesne was finished in May, 1755. Cf. Duquesne’s Memoir on the Ohio and its dependencies, addressed to Vaudreuil, dated Quebec, July 6, 1755, and given in English in _Penna. Archives_, 2d ser., vi. 253. M’Kinney’s Description of Fort Duquesne (1756) is in Hazard’s _Penna. Reg._, viii. 318; and letters of Robert Stobo, who was a hostage there after the surrender of Fort Necessity, are in _Col. Rec. of Penna._, vi. 141, 161. Cf. notice of Stobo by L. C. Draper in _Olden Time_, i. 369. Parkman also refers to a letter of Captain Hazlet in _Olden Time_, i. 184.

Sargent says (p. 184) that in 1854 the magazine was unearthed, which at that time was all remaining visible of the old fort. (Hazard’s _Penna. Register_, v. 191; viii. 192.) There is a view of the magazine in John Frost’s _Book of the Colonies, N. Y._, 1846.]

The enemy occupying the fort consisted of a few companies of French regulars, a force of Canadians, and about 800 Indians,—all under Contrecœur, with Beaujeu, Dumas, and Ligneres as lieutenants. They knew from scouts that Braddock was approaching, and Beaujeu was sent out with over 600 Indians and 300 French, to ambush the adventurous Briton.

As Braddock reached the ford, which was to put him on the land-side of the fort, Colonel Thomas Gage, some years later known in the opening scenes of the American Revolution,[1132] crossed in advance, without the opposition that was anticipated. Beaujeu had intended to contest the passage, but his Indians, being refractory, delayed him in his march.

Gage, with the advance, was pushing on, when his engineer, laying out the road ahead, saw a man, apparently an officer, wave his cap to his followers, who were unseen in the woods. From every vantage ground of knoll and bole, and on three sides of the column, the concealed muskets were levelled upon the English, who returned the fire. Beaujeu soon fell.[1133] Dumas, who succeeded in command, thought the steady front of the redcoats was going to carry the day, when he saw his Canadians fly, followed by the Indians, after Gage had wheeled his cannon upon the woods. A little time, however, changed all. The Indians rallied and poured their bullets into the massed, and very soon confused, British troops.

Braddock, when he spurred up, found everybody demoralized except the Virginians, who were firing from the tree-trunks, as the enemy did. The British general was shocked at such an unmilitary habit, and ordered them back into line. No one under such orders could find cover, and every puff from a concealed Indian was followed by a soldier’s fall. No exertion of Braddock, or of Washington, or of anybody, prevailed.[1134] The general had four horses shot under him; Washington had two. Still the hillsides and the depths of the wood were spotted with puffs of smoke, and the slaughter-pen was in a turmoil. Young Shirley fell, with a bullet in his brain.[1135] Horatio Gates and Thomas Gage were both wounded. Scarce one Englishman in three escaped the bullets. The general had given the sign to retreat, and was wildly endeavoring to restore order, when a ball struck him from his horse. The flight of the survivors became precipitous, and when the last who succeeded in fording the river stopped to breathe on the other side, there were thirty Indians and twenty Frenchmen almost upon them. The French, however, pursued no farther. They had enough to do to gather their plunder, while the Indians unchecked their murderous instincts as they searched for the wounded and dying Britons. The next morning a large number of the Indians left Contrecœur for their distant homes, laden with their booty. The French general feared for a while that Braddock, reinforced by Dunbar, would return to the attack. He little knew the condition of his enemy. The British army had become bewildered fugitives. Scarce a guard could be kept for the wounded general, as he was borne along on a horse or in a litter. When they met Dunbar the fright increased. Wagons and munitions were destroyed, for no good reason, and the mass surged eastward. The sinking Braddock at last died, and they buried him in the road, that the tramp of the men might obliterate his grave.[1136] Nobody stopped till they reached Fort Cumberland, which was speedily turned into a disordered hospital. The campaign ended with gloomy forebodings. Dunbar, the surviving regular colonel, instead of staying at Cumberland and guarding the frontier, retreated to Philadelphia, leaving the Virginians to hold Cumberland and its hospitals as best they could.

* * * * *

By the death of Braddock Shirley became the ranking officer on the continent, and we must turn to see how the tidings of his new responsibilities found him.

The Massachusetts governor was at Albany when the bad news reached him, and Johnson being taken into the secret, the two leaders tried to keep it from the army. Shirley immediately pushed on the force destined for Fort Niagara, at the other end of Lake Ontario; while Johnson as speedily turned the faces of his men towards Lake George. Shirley’s army found the path to Oswego, much of the way through swamp and forest; and the young provincials sorrowfully begrimed their regulation bedizenments, assumed under the king’s orders, as with the Jersey Blues they struggled along the trail and tugged through the watercourses. It was easier to get the men to their destination than to transport the supplies, and many stores that were on the way were abandoned at the portages when the wagoners heard the fearful details from the Monongahela. Short rations and discouragements harried the men sorely. The axe and spade were put in requisition, and additional forts were planned and constructed as the army pursued its way. Across the lake at Fort Frontenac the enemy held a force ready to be sent against Oswego if Shirley went on, for the capture of Braddock’s papers had revealed all the English plans. Shirley put on a brave face, with all his bereavement, for the death of his son, with Braddock, was a heavy blow. A council of war, on the 18th of September, determined him to take to the lake with his bateaux as soon as provisions arrived. He had now got word of Dieskau’s defeat,[1137] and he tried to use it to inspirit the braves at his camp. It seemed to another council, on the 27th, that the attempt to trust their river bateaux on the lake was foolhardy, and so the purpose of the campaign was abandoned. At the end of October he left the garrison to strengthen the forts, and returned to Albany. He did not get much comfort there. Johnson showed no signs of following up the victory of Lake George, and as late as November Shirley was still at Albany, where he had received his new commission, advising a movement on Crown Point for the winter;[1138] and in December he was exciting the indignant jealousy of Johnson[1139] by daring to instruct him about his Indian management, for Johnson had now been made Indian superintendent.[1140] Shirley had despatched these orders from New York, where he was laying before a congress of governors his schemes for a new campaign.

* * * * *

We need now to see how Dieskau’s defeat had been the result of the third of the expeditions of the campaign just brought to a close.

Before the arrival of Braddock, Shirley had begun (January, 1755) arrangements for an attack on Crown Point,—a project confirmed, as we have seen, by the council at Alexandria, where William Johnson, whom Shirley had already named, was approved as the commander. Johnson, as a young Irishman of no military experience, had been sent over twenty years before by his uncle, Sir Peter Warren, the admiral, to look after some lands of his in the Mohawk Valley. Settling here and building a house, about ten years earlier than this, he had called it first Mount Johnson, though when it was fortified, at a later day, it was usually called Fort Johnson.[1141] It was the seat of numerous conferences with the Indians, over whom Johnson gained an ascendency, which he constantly turned to the advantage of the English.

The provincials who assembled, first at Albany and then at the carrying place between the Hudson and Lake George, were mostly New Englanders, and a Connecticut man, General Phineas Lyman, was placed second in command. The French were not without intelligence of their enemy’s purpose, derived, as already said, from the captured papers of Braddock. So Dieskau, who had come over, as we have seen, with reinforcements, was ordered to Lake Champlain instead of Oswego, as had been the original intention.

From a plate in the _London Mag._, Sept., 1756; which is also the original of prints in the _Doc. Hist. N. Y._, ii. 545, and in Hough’s _Pouchot_, i. 181. Cf. also Stone’s _Life of Johnson_; Simms’s _Trappers of N. Y._; Perry’s _Amer. Episc. Church_, i. 331; Entick’s _General Hist. of the Late War_ (London, 1765); J. C. Smith’s _Brit. Mezzotint Portraits_, iii. 1342 (by Adams, engraved by Spooner).]

Johnson found among those who joined his camp some who knew much better what war was than he did: such were Colonel Moses Titcomb and Lieutenant-Colonel Seth Pomeroy, of Massachusetts; and Colonel Ephraim Williams, who had just made his will, by which the school was founded which became Williams College. He also was a Massachusetts man, as was Israel Putnam by birth, though now a Connecticut private. The later famous John Stark was a lieutenant of the New Hampshire forces. There were also others in command who knew scarce more of war than Johnson himself, and such was Colonel Timothy Ruggles, of a Massachusetts regiment, who was a college-bred lawyer and an innkeeper, destined to be president of the Stamp Act congress.

At the carrying place Lyman began a fort, which was named after him, but all preparations for the campaign proceeded very leisurely, the fault rather of the loosely banded union and hesitating purpose that existed among the colonies which had undertaken the movement; and matters were not mended by a certain incompatibility of temper existing between Johnson and Shirley, now commander-in-chief.

Leaving a garrison at Fort Lyman, the main body marched to the lake, to which Johnson had, out of compliment to the king, given the name of George. Meanwhile Dieskau had pushed up in his canoes to the very head of Lake Champlain, and had started through the wilderness to attack Fort Lyman. An Indian brought the news to Johnson, and Ephraim Williams and Hendrick, the Mohawk chief, were sent out to intercept the enemy. Dieskau, gaining information by capturing a messenger bound to Fort Lyman, and finding his Indians indisposed to assail a fort armed with cannon, turned towards the lake. Scouts informed him of the approach of the party under Williams, and an ambush was quickly planned. The English scout was badly managed, and fell into the trap. The commander and Hendrick were both killed. Nathan Whiting, of Connecticut, extricated the force skilfully, and a reinforcement from Johnson rendered it possible to hold the French somewhat in check. Could Dieskau have controlled his savages, however, he might have followed close enough to enter the English camp with the fugitives. As he did not, Johnson was given time to form a defence of his wagons and bateaux, mixed with tree-trunks, and when the French came on the English fought vigorously behind their barricade. Johnson was wounded and was borne to his tent. Lyman brought the day to a successful issue, and at its end his men leaped over the breastworks and converted the defeat of the French into a rout.

Meanwhile, a part of Dieskau’s Canadians and Indians had broken away from him, and had returned to the field where Williams had been killed, in order to strip the slain. There, near a pond, known still as Bloody Pond,[1142] a scouting party from Fort Lyman attacked them and put them to flight.[1143]

The French, routed by Lyman, were not followed far, and in gathering the wounded on the field Dieskau was discovered. He was borne to Johnson’s tent, and the English commander found it no easy task to protect him from the vengeance of the Mohawks. He was, however, in the end taken to New York, whence he sailed for England, and eventually reached France, but so shattered from his wounds that he died, though not till several years afterwards.

The defeat of the French had taken place on the 8th of September, and an active general would have despatched a force to intercept the fugitives before they reached their canoes, at the head of Lake Champlain; but timidity, the fear of a fresh onset, or a dread of a further tension of the weakening power of the army induced Johnson to tarry where he was, and to erect a fort, which in compliment to the royal family he named Fort William Henry, while in a similar spirit he changed the name of the post at the carrying place from Fort Lyman to Fort Edward. Of Lyman he seems to have been jealous, and in writing his report on the fight he makes no mention of the man to whose leadership the success was largely due. In this way Lyman’s name failed to obtain recognition in England, while the commander received a gift of £5,000 from Parliament and became Sir William Johnson, Baronet.

If Lyman’s advice had been followed, Ticonderoga might have been seized; but the French who reached it had so strongly entrenched themselves in a fortnight that attack was out of the question, and though Shirley, writing from Oswego, urged an advance, nothing was done. A council of war finally declared it inexpedient to proceed, and on the 27th of November Johnson marched the main part of his army southerly to their winter quarters.

British and French diplomates finally ceased bowing to each other, while their ships and armies fought together, and in May and June (1756), respectively, the two governments declared a war which was now nearly two years old.[1144] The French at once sent the Marquis de Montcalm, now about forty-four years of age, to succeed Dieskau. With him went the Chevalier de Lévis and the Chevalier de Bourlamaque as the second and third in command, and Bougainville as his principal aide-de-camp. By the middle of May the French general was in Quebec, and soon proceeded to Montreal to meet Vaudreuil, who was not at all pleased to share the responsibility of the coming campaign with another. The French troops were now divided, being mainly placed at Carillon (Ticonderoga), Fort Frontenac, and Niagara, and these posts had been during the winter severally strengthened,—Lotbinière[1145] superintending at Ticonderoga, Pouchot at Niagara, and two French engineers at Frontenac.

Already in February the French, by sending a scouting party, had captured and destroyed Fort Bull, a station of supplies at the carrying place on the way from Albany to Oswego; but the intervening time till June was spent in preparation. Word now coming of an English advance on Ticonderoga, Montcalm proceeded thither, and found the fort of Carillon, as the French termed it, which was now completed, much as he would wish it.

This follows a painting by Ramsay, engraved by Spooner, which is reproduced in J. C. Smith’s _Brit. Mezzotint Portraits_, p. 1343.]

Shirley, on his part, was preparing to carry out such of the lordly plans which he had suggested at New York as proved practicable. He would repeat the Niagara movement himself, with a hope of better success. For the command in the campaign on Lake Champlain he named Gen. John Winslow, and the New England colonies eagerly furnished the troops.

From a print in the _London Magazine_, Oct., 1757. Cf. the full-length portrait in Shannon’s _N.Y. City Manual_, 1869, p. 767, given as a fac-simile of an old print.]

The eastern colonies and the Massachusetts governor were not fully aware how the cabal of Johnson and De Lancey, the lieutenant-governor of New York, against Shirley was making head with the home government, and so were not well prepared for the tidings which came in June, while Shirley was in New York, that Colonel Webb, Major-General Abercrombie, and the Earl of Loudon were to be sent over successively to relieve Shirley of the chief command.[1146]

From _A set of plans and forts in America, reduced from actual surveys_, 1763, published in London. (Copy in Harvard College library,—5325.67.) A map of the region about Albany and Schenectady, from Sauthier’s map (1779), is given in Pearson’s _Schenectady Patent_ (1883), p. 290. Cf. _Mag. of Amer. Hist._ Feb., 1886.]

While Winslow was employed in pushing forward from Albany his men and supplies, French scouting parties constantly harassed him. Col. Jonathan Bagley was making ready sloops and whale-boats at Lake George; and the English were soon as active as the French in their scouting forays, Capt. Robert Rogers particularly distinguishing himself.

From _A set of plans and forts in America, reduced from actual surveys_, 1763, published in London. An old view of the fort is given in Holden’s _Queensbury_, p. 313. There is an early plan of Albany and its fort (1695) in Miller’s _Description of the Province and City of New York_, of which a fac-simile is given in Weise’s _Albany_, pp. 257-8. The _Catal. of the King’s Maps_, i. 13 (Brit. Mus.), shows a MS. plan of Albany of the 18th century. There is a plan dated 1765 in the _Annals of Albany_, vol. iv. 2d ed.

Mrs. Grant’s _Memoirs of an American Lady_ gives a picture of Albany and its life at this time, which may be compared with the description in Kalm’s _Travels_. (London, 1771, vol. ii. p. 98; also in _Annals of Albany_, vol. i. 2d ed., 1869.) Parkman (i. p. 319), who sketches the community from these sources, speaks of Mrs. Grant’s book as “a charming book, though far from being historically trustworthy;” while it affords a “genuine picture of colonial life.” Grahame (_United States_, ii. 256) considers the picture of manners “entirely fanciful and erroneous.”

Mrs. Grant herself says “I certainly have no intention to relate anything that is not true;” yet it must be remembered that she wrote in 1808, forty years after she, a girl of thirteen, had left the country. The book was published at Edinburgh in 1808; again in 1809, also in New York and in Boston the same year; in London in 1817, and again in New York in 1836 and 1846. The last edition is one printed at Albany in 1876, with notes by Joel Munsell and a memoir by Gen. J. G. Wilson. Cf. Munsell’s _Bibliog. of Albany_; Lossing’s _Schuyler_ (1872), i. 34; Tuckerman’s _America and her Commentators_, p. 171.

The most extensive repository of historical data respecting Albany is in Joel Munsell’s _Annals of Albany_ (1850-59), 10 vols. Vol. i. to iv. were issued in a second edition, 1869-71. (See Vol. IV. p. 435.)]

Johnson, who had now got his commission as sole Indian superintendent, was busily engaged in conferences with the Six Nations, whom he secured somewhat against their will to the side of the English. He extended his persuasions even to the Delawares and Shawanoes. Some of these tribes were coquetting, however, with Vaudreuil at Montreal, and it was too apparent that nothing but an English success would confirm any Indian alliance.

Shirley also carried out a plan of his own in organizing a body of New England whalemen and boatmen for the transportation service, who, being armed, could dispense with an escort. These were placed under the command of Lieut.-Col. John Bradstreet. In May, before Montcalm’s arrival, a party had been sent by Vaudreuil to cut off the communications of Oswego, and Bradstreet encountered and beat them.

This was the state of affairs in June, 1756, when Abercrombie and Webb arrived with reinforcements, and Pitt was writing in England, “I dread to hear from America.”[1147] Shirley went to New York and received them as well as Loudon, who followed the others on the 23d of July. The new governor proceeded to Albany, and countermanded the orders for the Niagara expedition, and stirred up the New Englanders by promulgating a royal direction which in effect made a provincial major-general subordinate to a regular major.[1148]

Affairs were stagnating in the confusion consequent upon the change of command, and Albany was telling other towns what it was to have foreign officers billeted upon its people. Not till August did some fresh troops set off for Oswego, when apprehension began to be felt for the safety of that post. It was too late. The reinforcement had only reached the carrying place when they heard of the capture of the forts.

Montcalm had suddenly returned from Ticonderoga to Montreal, and had hastened to Niaouré Bay (Sackett’s Harbor), where Villiers was with the force which had escaped Bradstreet’s attack. Here Montcalm gathered about three thousand men, and then appeared without warning before the entrenchments at Oswego. Fort Ontario was soon abandoned by its defenders, and gave Montcalm a place to plant his cannon against the other fort, while he sent a strong force by a ford for an attack on the other bank. Colonel Mercer, the commander, was soon killed by a cannon-shot from Ontario. The enemy’s approach in the rear discouraged the garrison, and they surrendered. Montcalm did what he could to prevent a slaughter of the prisoners, which was threatened when his Indian allies became infuriated by the rum among the plunder.[1149]

While the French were destroying what they could not remove, and were later retiring to Montreal, Webb, who commanded the relief which never came, fell back to German Flats, and orders were sent to Fort William Henry to suspend preparations for a movement down the lake.[1150]

After a plan in the contemporary _Mémoires sur le Canada_, 1749-1763, as published in 1838 by the Lit. and Hist. Soc. of Quebec, and (réimpression) 1873, p. 77. It is also reproduced in Dr. Hough’s transl. of Pouchot, i. 65, and in _Doc. Hist. of N. York_, i. 482.

There was a contemporary English draft of the forts “Ontario and Oswego,” published in the _Gentleman’s Mag._, 1757, which is reproduced in Dr. Hough’s _Pouchot_, i. 64, and in the _Doc. Hist. N. York_, i. 447, 483, where will be found various papers relating to the first settlement and capture of Oswego, 1727-1756.

The _Catal. of the King’s Maps_ (Brit. Mus.), ii. 118, shows a plan made in 1756 for Gov. Pownall, and others of dates 1759, 1760, 1762, 1763, with a view in 1761.

In the _New York Col. Docs._, ix. p. 996, is what is called a plan of the mouth of the Chouaguen, showing the English redoubt,—an outline sketch found by Brodhead in the Archives de la Marine at Paris. Martin, _De Montcalm en Canada_, p. 35, gives a plan, “_D’après un MS. du dépôt des Colonies_”, in Paris.

Parkman speaks (_Montcalm and Wolfe_, i. 416) of the published plans and drawings of Oswego at this time as very inexact. There is a French description of the country between Oswego and Albany, 1757, in _Doc. Hist. N. Y._, vol. i.; cf. also _N. Y. Col. Docs._, x. 674. Another map showing the communication between Albany and Oswego is given in Mante’s _Hist. of the Late War_, London, 1772, p. 60.

A view of Oswego, looking towards the lake between the high banks, appeared in the _London Magazine_ (1760), p. 232. It has been reproduced on different scales in Smith’s _Hist. of N. York_, 4^o, Lond. 1767; _Doc. Hist. New York_, i. 495; Hough’s transl. of _Pouchot_, i. 68, Gay’s _Pop. Hist. U. S._, iii. 49; Clark’s _Onondaga_, P. 353; _The Century_, xxviii. 240.]

From Mante’s _Hist. of the Late War_, London, 1772. The _Catalogue of the King’s Maps_ (Brit. Museum), i. 336, shows various drawn plans of the fort, dated 1755; and another of the same date, marked no. 15,535, is among the _Brit. Mus. MSS._ John Montresor’s Journal at Fort Edward, in 1757, is in _N. Y. Hist. Soc. Coll._, 1881, p. 148. He gives a profile of the work (_Ibid._, p. 36).]

Montcalm was soon back at Carillon, watching Winslow’s force at Fort William Henry, while the rest of Loudon’s army was divided between Fort Edward and Albany. Neither opponent moved, and, leaving garrisons at their respective advanced posts, they retired to winter quarters. The regulars were withdrawn to Boston, Philadelphia, and New York; and not a little bad blood was produced by Loudon’s demand for free quarters for the officers.[1151]

The French had the advantage in Indian allies; and during the autumn and winter the forays of the prowling savage and the adventurous scout over the territory neighboring to Lake George and Lake Champlain were checked by the English as best they could. Foremost among their partisans was the New Hampshire ranger, Robert Rogers, whose exploits and those of the Connecticut captain, Israel Putnam, fill a large space in the records of this savage warfare.

From _A set of plans and forts in America, reduced from actual surveys_, 1763, published in London. Cf. the plan in Lossing’s _Field-Book of the Revolution_, i. p. 95.]

The campaign of the next year (1757) opened in March with an attempt to surprise Fort William Henry. The French under Rigaud came up on the ice, 1,600 strong, by night. The surprise failed. They burned, however, two sloops and some bateaux. The next day they summoned Major Eyre, the English commander, but he felt that his four hundred men were enough to hold the fort, and declined to surrender. Rigaud now made a feint of storming the work, but it was only to approach the storehouses, saw-mill, and other buildings outside the entrenchments, which he succeeded in firing, and then withdrew.

Montcalm, when he heard the details, was not over-pleased; and if he had had his way, De Lévis or Bougainville would have led the attack. As it was, Rigaud was a brother of the governor, and Vaudreuil was tenacious of his superiority. The news broke in upon a round of festivities at Montreal, stayed only by Lent. At this season Montcalm prayed, as he had before feasted, with no full recognition of the feelings which Vaudreuil entertained for him. But the minister in France knew it, and he was not, perhaps, so ready to doubt the numbers of the English, exaggerated in Vaudreuil’s report, as he was the prowess of the Canadians in comparison with the timidity of Montcalm and his regulars, which was also reported to him. In Montreal, however, the mutual distrust and dislike of the governor and the general were cloaked with a politeness that was not always successful, when they were apart, in keeping their feelings from their neighbors.

From _A set of plans and forts in America, reduced from actual surveys_, 1763, published in London.]

Loudon had resolved on attacking Louisbourg, with the aid of a fleet from England.[1152] Withdrawing a large part of the force on the northern frontier, he departed for Halifax, where everything miscarried. But before he returned to New York, crestfallen, the French had profited by his absence.

The English general had left the line of the approach by the lakes from Canada to be watched by Webb, who was at Fort Edward, while Col. Munro, with a small force, held Fort William Henry, at the head of Lake George. This was the most advanced post of the English, and the opportunity for Montcalm had come.

After a plan in the contemporary _Mémoires sur le Canada_, 1749-1760, as published by the Lit. and Hist. Soc. of Quebec (réimpression), 1873, p. 95. Kalm describes the fort in 1749. _Travels_, London, 1771, ii. 216.]