force on the lake disembarked under cover of a point of land, which hid them from the English. The extent of the demonstration was first made known to Munro when Montcalm the savages spread out across the lake in their bark canoes. soon pushed forward La Corne and De Lévis till they cut the communications of the English with Fort Edward, and then the French general began his approaches from his own encampment. When he advanced his lines to within gun-shot of the ramparts, he summoned the fort. Munro declined to surrender, hoping for relief from Webb; but the timid commander at Fort Edward only despatched a note of advice to make terms. This letter was intercepted by Montcalm, who sent it into the fort, and it induced Munro to agree to a capitulation. On the 9th of August the English retired to the entrenched camp, and the French entered the fort. Munro's men were to be escorted to Fort Edward, being allowed their private effects, and were not to serve against the French for eighteen months. Montcalm took the precaution to explain the terms to his Indian allies, and received their seeming assent; but the savages got at the English rum, and, with passions roused, they fell the next day upon the prisoners. Despite all exertions of Montcalm and the more honorable of his officers, many were massacred or carried 1 From a sketch made in 1851. The fort was on the bluff at the left, now the position of the Fort William Henry hotel. Montcalm's trenches were where the modern village of Caldwell is built, seen beyond the water. The way to the entrenched camp started along the gravelly beach in the foreground, towards the spectator. off, so that the line of march became a disorderly rout, beyond all control of the escort, and lost itself in the woods. Not more than six hundred in a body reached Fort Edward, but many others later straggled in. Another portion, which Montcalm rescued from the clutch of the Indians, was subsequently sent in under a strong escort. The French destroyed the fort, throwing the bodies of the slain on the fire which was made of its timber, and, lading their boats with the muni 1 From A set of plans and forts in America, reduced from actual surveys, 1763, published in London. KEY.-A, dock. B, garden. C, Fort William Henry. D, morass. E, French first battery of nine guns and two mortars. F, French second battery of ten guns and three mortars. G, French approaches. H, two intended batteries. I, landing-place of French artillery. K, Montcalm's camp, with main body. L, De Lévis' camp, with regulars and Canadians. M, De la Corne, with Canadians and Indians. N, where the English first encamped. O, bridge over morass. P, English entrenchments, where Fort George later stood. Wolfe, i. 494, and in Palmer's Lake Champlain, p. 73, based on this, and the reproduction of it in Bancroft's United States, orig. ed., iv. p. 263. There is a rough contemporary sketch given in J. A. Stoughton's Windsor Farms, 1884, showing the lines of the attacking force, and endorsed, "Taken Oct. 22, 1757, by John Stoughton." There is another large plan of the attack preserved in the New York State Library, and this is given in the N. Y. Col. Docs., x. 602. Martin, De Montcalm en Canada, p. 81, gives a "Plan du siège de Fort George [William Henry was often so called by the French] dressé par Fernesic de Vesour le 12 Septembre, 1757," preserved in the Dépôt des Fortifications des Colo Cf. the plans in Parkman's Montcalm and nies, no. 516, at Paris. tions and plunder, they followed the savages, who had already started on their way to Montreal. Plan and Profile of Retrenched Work round Harkemeis house aty German Flats 1750. FORT AT GERMAN FLATS.1 1 After a plan in the Doc. Hist. New York, ii. 732. In Benton's Herkimer County, p. 53, is also a "plan and profile of the entrenched works round Harkemer's house at ye German Flats, 1756." Cf. Set of Plans, etc., no. 13. Loudon reached New York on the last of August,1 but he had already heard of the Lake George disaster from a despatch-boat which met him on the way. On landing he learned from Albany that Montcalm had retired. Webb, who was much perplexed with the hordes of militia which all too late began to pour in upon him, was now bold enough to think there was no use of retreating to the passes of the Hudson. The necessity of allowing the Canadians to gather their crops, as well as Montcalm's inability to transport his cannon, had influenced that general to retreat. At Montreal he learned the stories of the fiendish cruelty practised upon their prisoners by the Indians who had preceded him, and who had not been restrained by Vaudreuil, — so Bougainville said; for the governor's policy of buying some of the captives with brandy led to the infuriation which wreaked itself on the rest. The campaign closed in November with an attack on the post at German Flats, a settlement of Palatine Germans, by a scouting body of French and Indians under one of Vaudreuil's Canadians, Belêtre. Everything disappeared in the havoc, which a detachment sent by Colonel Townshend from Fort Herkimer, not far off, was powerless to check. Before Lord Howe, with a larger force from Schenectady,2 could reach the scene, the French had departed. The winter of 1757-58 at Montreal and Quebec passed with the usual official gayety and bureaucratic peculation. The passions of war were only aroused as occasional stories of rapine and scalps came in from the borders. Good hearty rejoicing took place, however, in March, over the report that a scouting party from Ticonderoga had encountered Rogers, and that the dreaded partisan had been killed and his followers annihilated. The last part of the story was too true, but Rogers had escaped, leaving behind his coat, which he had thrown off in the fray, and in its pocket was his commission, the capture of which had given rise to the belief in his death. Meanwhile, on the English side a new spirit of control was preparing to give unaccustomed vigor to the coming campaign. In England's darkest hour William Pitt had come to power, thrown up by circumstances. He was trusted in the country's desperation, and proved himself capable of imparting a momentum that all British movements had lacked since the war began. He developed his plans for America, and made his soldiers and 1 Bancroft and those who follow him, taking their cue from Smith (Hist. of New York), say that Loudon "proposed to encamp on Long Island for the defence of the continent." Parkman (ii. p. 2) points out that this is Smith's perversion of a statement of Loudon that he should disembark on that island if head winds prevented his entering New York bay, when he returned from Halifax. There seems to have been a current apprehension of a certain ridiculousness in all of Loudon's movements. It induced John Adams to believe even then that the colonies sailors spring to their work. Loudon was recalled. The provincial officer was made the equal of the regular, by conferring upon him the same right of seniority by commission. The whole colonial service felt that they were thereby made equal sharers of the honors as well as of the burdens of the times. Pitt put his finger upon the three vulnerable gaps in the French panoply. He would reach Quebec by taking Louisbourg; and singling out a stubborn colonel who had shown his mettle in Germany, he made him Major-General Amherst, and sent him with a fleet to take Louisbourg, as we may see in another chapter. Circumstances, or a mischance in judg ment, made him retain Abercrombie for the Crown Point campaign, but a better decision named Brigadier John Forbes to attack Fort Duquesne. It belongs to this place to tell the story of these last two campaigns. 1 In June, Abercrombie had assembled at the head of Lake George a force of 15,000 men, of whom 6,000 were regulars. Montcalm was at Ticonde roga with scarce a quarter as many; but Vaudreuil was tardily sending forward some scant reinforcements under De Lévis. The French general got tidings early in July of the embarkation in England, but had done nothing up to that time to protect his army, which was lying on the peninsula of Ticonderoga, mainly outside the fort. In fact, he was at a loss what to do; no help had reached him, and the approaching army was too numerous to hope for success. He thought of retreating to Crown Point, but some of his principal officers opposed it. He now began a breastwork of logs on the high ground before the fort, and, felling the trees within musket range, he covered the ground with a dense barrier. All the while, the English were in a heydey of assurance. Pitt was waiting anxiously in London for the first tidings. Abercrombie, now a man of Fames Abercromby fifty-two years, did not altogether inspire confidence. His heavy build and lethargic temperament made lookers-on call him "aged." There was, however, a proud expectation of success from the vigorous, companionable Earl Howe, the brigadier next in command, whom Pitt hoped to prove the real commander, because of the trust which Abercrombie put in him. On the 5th of July the immense flotilla, which bore the English army and its train, started down Lake George. To a spectator it completely deadened the glare of the water for miles away. The next morning at daybreak the army was passing Rogers' Slide, whence a French party under Langy watched them. By noon it had disembarked at the extreme north end of Lake George, and near the river conducting to Ticonderoga they built an entrenchment, to protect their bateaux. Rogers, with his rangers, was sent into the woods to lead the way, while the army followed; but the denseness of the forest soon brought the column into confusion. Meanwhile, 1 Chapter vii. |