The Battle of Lake George, September 8, 1775. Part of a larger engraving, this shows Dieskau's attack on the fortified camp.
Johnson's hasty barricade saved him.36 His undisciplined militia force would have never stood firm in open formation against French regulars, but the New Englanders proved steady enough behind their barricade. To the perfect cadence of the drum, the French advanced against heavy musket fire. Dieskau was in the lead with his sword raised, ordering his men, "March, let us force the place."37 From the cover of trees, brush, and wagons Johnson's men volleyed. More devastating than musket balls was the iron storm let loose by Eyre's cannon. The heavy guns caught the French completely by surprise and quickly scattered their Indian allies. As the stunned French fell back, Johnson's Mohawk swept over the barricades, swinging their tomahawks and knives against French bayonets. For several hours fierce hand-to-hand combat raged, during which Johnson suffered a painful wound in the groin. Early in the evening the battered French withdrew. Among the wounded abandoned on the battlefield was Dieskau himself, left propped against a tree. The general had been hit four times.
As the French fell back along the road, a large number of them, mostly Indians and Canadians, stopped a few miles away to rest at Rocky Brook. A contingent of New York and New Hampshire militiamen, led by Captain Maginess from Schenectady, surprised them as they sat by the stream. This was the third encounter of the day and the worst moment for the French. As many as two hundred were killed and their bodies tossed into a nearby pond, which, according to local lore, was stained red for weeks and has been known ever since as "Bloody Pond. "38
By the end of the day, both sides were bloodied and exhausted. The English gathered their wounded from along the road and withdrew to their camp at Lake George, while the French circled to the west and made their way to the north end of the lake, headed for Crown Point. Although the English had driven the French back, the battles of September 8, 1755, resulted in a stalemate. Over the next few weeks both sides laid plans to consolidate their positions on the lake. Johnson and Eyre built Fort William Henry on the south shore. On the north, overlooking the portage between Lake George and Lake Champlain, the French drew plans for Fort Carillon, known to the English as Ticonderoga.
Seventeen fifty-five had not been a good year for the British in North America. The exception was Nova Scotia. For decades the English, particularly New England land speculators, had coveted the fertile Acadian lands along the Bay of Fundy and the Minas Basin. The troubles of the 1750s provided them with an opportunity to seize by force what they had been unable to take by persuasion and purchase. In the words of the Boston-born Jonathan Belcher, chief justice of Nova Scotia and Governor William Shirley's protege, the growing Anglo-French rupture provided "such a juncture as the present may never occur again."39
First Fort Beausejour needed to be taken. On May 26, 1755, a convoy of thirty vessels loaded with Massachusetts militia and supplies left Boston bound for Annapolis Royal on the Bay of Fundy. There the Boston force was joined by regular troops under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Robert Monckton. Two thousand provincials and 250 regulars landed unopposed at the head of the bay covered by the guns of Fort Lawrence. Monckton quickly seized the high ground overlooking Beausejour, and on June 13 his mortars and artillery commenced fire.40
Louis Du Pont Duchambon de Vergor, Beausejour's commandant, was one of Canada's least impressive officers. His contemporaries alleged that he owed his rise in the Troupes de la Marine to his friendship with the colony's intendant, François Bigot, for whom he acted as a "pimp." The gossipy Sieur de Courville noted that Vergor lacked "sense and education." 41 He did not apparently lack courage. For three days he and his men endured near constant fire from the English lines. Inside the fort Vergor commanded some two hundred soldiers and three hundred uneasy Acadian militia, who, sensing that the British were likely to win this contest, displayed a marked reluctance to join the fray. With morale collapsing on the inside, and mortar shells raining down from outside, on June 16 Vergor surrendered. Beausejour was quickly renamed Fort Cumberland. Two days later, nearby Fort Gaspereau surrendered without firing a shot.
Within a few weeks the Acadians felt the victor's lash. Firmly in control, and claiming that the Acadians were in league with the French, Governor Lawrence confiscated their property and ordered his troops and New England militia to round up families so that they could be herded aboard waiting ships and expelled from their homeland. The British finally controlled all of Acadia, and they had cut the overland routes to Isle Royale (Cape Breton) and Louisbourg.
"Victory" in Nova Scotia and Acadia was scant comfort for the ministers in London. Braddock was dead, and the valley of the Ohio was in French hands. Shirley was bogged down in northern New York, while Johnson's advance had ground to a halt at the south end of Lake George. In London Newcastle, still a bit befuddled by the onrush of events, consulted with his friend the chief of ordnance, Lieutenant General John Ligonier, about how to defend Nova Scotia against a French counterattack. Ligonier recommended fortifying Annapolis Royal. According to the court insider Horace Walpole, Newcastle, with his characteristic lisp, muttered to the general, "Annapolis, Annapolis, certainly we must defend Annapolis," and then in a whispering aside, queried, "Where is Annapolis?"42
By contrast, 1755 had yielded a vintage harvest for the French, and they looked forward to the coming year's campaign. They had more troops in North America than the British. Their native allies were rallying, and spirits were high. Vaudreuil wasted no regrets over the loss of Dieskau. Never short on self-confidence, he wrote to Paris arguing that "war in this country is very different from the wars in Europe." Regular officers were "not acquainted with the country, and Canadians and Indians would not march with the same confidence" under French officers as they would under local commanders.43 The governor apologized for "flatter[ing] himself," but his message was clear: Vaudreuil was offering to be both governor and commander in chief. He awaited the king's reply.
(5)
Montcalm and Loudoun
Mercier is a weakling and an ignoramus, Saint-Luc a
very garrulous braggart, Montigny admirable, but
a looter.
—Montcalm to Lévis, August 17, 1756
Braddock's debacle in the Ohio Valley and the Lake George surprise were major setbacks for the British. Monckton's victories in Nova Scotia and Boscawen's captures off Newfoundland were poor recompense for these substantial losses. At sea the British were "vexing" the French "for a little muck."1 With wanton disregard for the laws of neutrality, the Royal Navy had taken hundreds of French merchantment. Those illegal seizures infuriated the French, and by late 1755 Newcastle's spies brought alarming reports that the French were massing troops and ships at ports along the Atlantic and Mediterranean. England, Ireland, Scotland, and Minorca were all rumored to be invasion targets. London was anxious. As regiments were rushed to the coast, the financial markets, the most reliable barometer of national sentiment, weighed in with their opinion: Prices of public securities tumbled as interest rates rose, reflecting "near panic in some quarters."2 Newcastle's problems were mounting. Not least among them was Sir William Shirley. As the senior officer in America, Shirley succeeded Braddock to become commander in chief of the British forces in North America. It was an unfortunate, albeit unavoidable, appointment. Shirley was a petty politician with little military experience but a passion for self-advancement. The news of his promotion reached him at his wilderness post near the head of navigation on the Mohawk River, where he had paused en route to Oswego to organize the attack on Niagara. Instead of returning immediately to Albany to take charge of his much expanded command, Shirley remained with the army, slogging his way through the rough interior to one of the most remote posts in British North America.
Good information had trouble catching up with Shirley's traveling headquarters. Upon learning of Braddock's death, the new commander in chief, completely unaware of the scale of the disaster, dispatched orders to Dunbar to attack Duque
sne and then march north to Presque Isle for its "Reduction." Dunbar's reaction to these orders is unrecorded. On August 18, 1755, after nearly a month on the march, Shirley arrived at Oswego. The fort was a mess.3 Nearly half the garrison was sick, provisions were running low, and dozens of men had deserted. Adding to Shirley's woes was the inept layout of the post. A triptych of "strong points" had been erected on the shore at the point where the Oswego River entered Lake Ontario. The most formidable of the trio stood on a bluff on the north side of the river. The other two posts on the south side were far less impressive. Buildings were crumbling, and the nervous garrison was ready to flee at the first sign of the French and Indians. As best he could, Shirley set to work to repair the defenses and prepare for the attack on Niagara.
Plan of Fort Oswego
Weeks went by. Summer was fading fast and chill winds were sweeping in from across the lake as men deserted and supplies dwindled. Several deserters were caught, and Shirley ordered two of them executed to serve as an example for the rest. In the midst of his professional misery the general learned that his son William was among those who had died with Braddock.4
Shirley was, in effect, fighting a war on two fronts: against the French and Indians in front of him and William Johnson to his rear. Shirley had precipitated the unpleasantness with Johnson. When he received the preliminary reports of Johnson's battles at Lake George, instead of biding his time and holding his tongue, Shirley sent off dispatches questioning Johnson's leadership and the courage of his men. Johnson, stung by Shirley's criticisms, found his own way to retaliate against the governor. When Shirley asked him to use his influence to recruit Iroquois for the Niagara campaign, Johnson refused to help, saying that he did not think the commander in chief required "the assistance of any considerable Number of Indians. "5
Surrounded by failure, overwhelmed by his responsibilities, and having alienated nearly everyone with whom he had had contact, Shirley finally returned to Albany, leaving Oswego with a sizable force he hoped to use for an early spring offensive against Niagara. The garrison had less than a two-month supply of provisions to get them through the harsh winter. It would have to depend upon a supply chain that stretched all the way back to Albany. The most critical and vulnerable link was the portage at the Great Carrying Place,* which connected the Mohawk River and Wood Creek.6
As early as 1780, British fur traders had established a small post at the southeastern end of the carry on the Mohawk River. From there, travelers portaged north a short distance to Wood Creek, a shallow, meandering stream that flowed to Oneida Lake. The creek slid between narrow, heavily wooded banks that made navigation extremely difficult. Elkanah Watson, a land promoter, described it: "In many places the windings are so sudden, and so short, that while the bow of the boat was ploughing in the bank on one side, her stern was rubbing hard against the opposite shore. In some places our men were obliged to drag the boats by main strength; and in others, the boughs and limbs were so closely interwoven, and so low, as to arch the creek completely over, and oblige all hands to lie flat."7 Once out of the confines of the creek, a quick passage across the lake brought travelers to the headwaters of the Oneida River. A few miles west, that river married the Seneca River to form the Oswego River, which eventually floated the canoes and bateaux to Lake Ontario. In good weather with sufficient water, the trip from Albany to Oswego was likely to take at least two weeks.8
To secure the Great Carrying Place, Shirley ordered Captain William Williams to fortify the camp on the Mohawk side, and to lay out a similar post at the other end of the portage near Wood Creek. Williams built two small log houses, and on the Mohawk side of the carry he managed to erect a palisade around the storehouse. Fort Williams, as it came to be called, could accommodate 150 men and four cannon. At the other end of the carry, construction did not go as well. Captain Marcus Petri, the engineer in charge of the workmen at Wood Creek, made every effort to throw up a stockade, but poor weather prevented him from completing the construction. Known officially as Wood Creek Fort but nicknamed by the men Fort Bull after its commander, the half-built fort offered thin protection for the small garrison holed up inside.9
Shirley arrived in Albany on December 2.10 On the twelfth he summoned his staff and presented his plan for the coming year. For the most part he kept to Braddock's strategy, laying out attacks on Niagara, Duquesne, and Crown Point. He also suggested two new targets: an expedition against Fort Frontenac and a thrust up the Kennebec River across the highlands to the Chaudiere River and down to the St. Lawrence. The intent of the latter move was to offer a feint at Quebec City in order to tie down French forces in the north that might otherwise be sent south. Shirley's inclusion of Frontenac and Quebec in his strategic plan hinted at a much more ambitious goal than simply defending the king's territory. But two days of discussion in Albany failed to produce an agreement on strategy. New York's governor, Sir Charles Hardy, resisted any campaign that went beyond Braddock's original defensive orders. An attack on Frontenac, Hardy felt, would provide the French with ample reason to let loose on his colony's frontier. It might also, he feared, set the Iroquois, who claimed the territory around Ontario, to wondering if New York had designs on their lands as well.
Despite his outward confidence and the boastful tone of his letters to officials in London, at heart Shirley was a saddened man. His son William was dead, while another son, Jack, lay near death from dysentery. His operation against Niagara had gone badly. Lake George was still contested, and French power was growing daily. On every side his political enemies, William Johnson chief among them, were swarming. When British agents intercepted four letters written by a high officer in America intended for the French ambassador, rumors circulated that Shirley, who had a French wife, must be the author. In retrospect, such allegations seem preposterous; nonetheless, dark clouds gathered over Shirley as he returned to Boston in late December to complete his plans for the coming year.
Winter was a common enemy in North America, but the English feared it more than the French and Indians. As Shirley sat snug by the fire at his hillside mansion in Roxbury on the outskirts of Boston, enemy raiders swept through the Ohio country. In Montreal Governor Vaudreuil gathered his officers to plan a bold winter attack against Oswego. Lieutenant Jean-Baptiste-Philippe Testard de Montigny had spent several days spying on the English at Oswego. He advised that while it would require troops and cannon to take Oswego, Forts Bull and Williams were more vulnerable. Montigny urged the governor to attack those weak positions. Vaudreuil agreed and summoned Gaspard-Joseph Chaussegros de Léry, an officer in the Troupes de la Marine and the son of Canada's chief engineer, to command the expedition. Montigny joined as second in command.
On the morning of March 12 nearly four hundred men—including one hundred Indians, mostly Mohawk and Abenaki—set off overland on snowshoes and skates, dragging their traines. Two weeks out from Montreal, they arrived near the Great Carrying Place in a miserable state. The quartermaster had miscalculated, and for two days the men had marched without food.
Early on the morning of March 27 Léry's Indian scouts brought in two prisoners. When Léry threatened to release them to the Indians, who would "knock their brains out," the prisoners quickly revealed that eight bateaux were loaded at Fort Bull, scheduled to depart for Oswego that same day, and that several sleds laden with supplies were on their way across the portage from Fort Williams.11 Terrified of being turned over to the Indians, the prisoners went on to tell Léry that Fort Bull had barely 60 men in its garrison and was weakly defended. Fort Williams, on the other hand, had nearly 150 men and cannon. Léry's interrogation was interrupted by the welcome news that the Mohawk and Abenaki had taken the sleds. They had also managed to capture eight Englishmen, but one of the teamsters, a black man, had escaped to Fort Williams. Léry decided to attack Fort Bull before the garrison could be alerted or reinforced. In the meantime, the men feasted on the captured English supplies.
Moving quietly along the creek bank, Léry's men ca
me to within a half mile of the fort undetected. Over the edge of the bank they could see that its gate was open. Nearby six men were loading bateaux. Hoping to rush the gate and take the fort by surprise, Léry ordered his soldiers to fix bayonets. He told the Indians to circle toward the bateauxmen while he moved against the fort. At less than a thousand feet from the gate, Léry and his men were still unnoticed, but off to the other side the Indians, unable to restrain themselves, let loose with a curdling war cry, which sent the bateauxmen running for the open gate while the soldiers inside, equally frightened, rushed to close it. Furious at the ill discipline of his allies, Léry ordered a charge. By the time the unfortunate bateauxmen reached the stockade, their comrades had secured the gate, so they ran for the woods.
Léry divided his assault force into three groups. The main element laid down heavy fire at the men defending the gate. The other two split to the left and right and fired through the wide gaps in the palisade at the flanks of the men defending the gate. Attacking the gate with axes, it took the French less than an hour to chop open a breech, through which they charged, shouting, "Vive le Roi." Within minutes Lieutenant Bull was killed, and most of the garrison was put to the sword. According to the French report, "One woman and a few soldiers only were fortunate enough to escape the fury of our troops."12 The Mohawk and Abenaki pursued the terrified bateauxmen into the woods to finish them off.
Fort Bull yielded a cornucopia. Between the storehouse, the bateaux, and the piles of supplies within the stockade, Léry took enormous quantities of gunpowder, salt provisions, butter, and bread. Dozens of uniforms and blankets were piled outside and burned, while shot and ammunition were tossed into the creek. Léry's men packed their traines with whatever they could carry, and set fire to the rest. A few minutes later a huge explosion tore the stockade and storehouse apart, spewing pieces of debris in every direction, some of them striking and wounding Léry's own men.
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