Raiders from New France

by René Chartrand

  The most important of several forts built by the Massachusetts settlers was Fort Charles at Pemaquid (today Pemaquid Beach, Maine). It was normally garrisoned by about 50 trained militiamen, but in August 1689 barely 16 men were present when hundreds of Abenakis took the fort and the adjoining village.5 Lt James Weems described the attackers as “all well-armed with French fuzees, waist belts and cutlasses, and most of them with bayonets and pistols, gray and black hats on their heads, and some of them with colored wigs” (compare with Plate E).

  This defeat left some 200 miles (300km) of the coast defenseless. The colony’s answer was to rebuild a new, much stronger masonry fort at Pemaquid for the sum of £20,000 – one-third of Massachusetts’ annual budget – during 1692. Called Fort William Henry, this had a permanent garrison of about 90 men and 20 cannon, and was (foolishly) proclaimed to be impregnable. In 1696, it offered a tempting target for a combined sea and land operation to the Canadian officer Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville, by now a French Navy captain.

  Saint-Castin mobilized his warriors, while D’Iberville arrived in Acadian waters with three warships; he anchored off Fort Pentagoet on August 7, to be greeted by Saint-Castin with about 250 Abenakis. The warriors went overland to invest Fort William Henry, soon being joined offshore by D’Iberville’s ships. On August 15 the fort’s commander, one Capt Pasco Chubb (who was known to have treacherously murdered Indigenous people in cold blood) pompously replied to a surrender summons by declaring that he would never capitulate even “if the sea was covered with French ships and the woods full of French and savages.”

  D’Iberville promptly landed some cannon and mortars for two siege batteries, and ordered a few mortar shells to be fired into the fort. These were followed by a second summons, stating that if the defenders capitulated at once they would be safely evacuated, but if they persisted until the fort was breached there could be no quarter, since it would be impossible to restrain the Abenakis. Pressed by his terrified garrison, Chubb surrendered. The prisoners were escorted to safety by French marines, and the fort was destroyed. (The warriors were disappointed at not killing Chubb, especially after they had found in the fort a starving Abenaki chained in a cell, but they finally caught up with him two years later during a raid on Andover, Massachusetts.) After delivering the Pemaquid prisoners to Boston, D’Iberville’s squadron sailed away, and worried colonists as far away as New York wondered where it would strike next.

  Newfoundland, 1696–97

  D’Iberville reappeared off Newfoundland and anchored at Placentia, the capital of its French southern coast. Newfoundland had great economic importance due to its then extraordinary fishing industry; its coasts were studded with mainly French and British anchorages for ships that went out to the nearby Grand Banks. In Placentia, D’Iberville joined its governor, Jacques-François de Montebon de Brouillan, in a plan to destroy the British Newfoundland settlements and fisheries. D’Iberville wanted expert winter raiders, and at his request Frontenac sent him 124 picked Canadian volunteers from Quebec. On October 29, 1696 Governor Brouillan set out by sea with part of the Compagnie franche based at Placentia, while D’Iberville’s party departed overland on November 1 for the British capital, St John’s.

  They joined forces at Ferryland, some 50 miles (80km) south of St John’s, whose outskirts they reached on November 28. The Canadian advance guard immediately attacked during a snowstorm, overwhelming about 80 defenders in advanced posts. Led by D’Iberville in person, they then assaulted and took two small forts, and were about to attack the main fort when it surrendered on November 30. The forts and part of the town were destroyed, and over the next four months the Canadians under Jacques Testard de Montigny benefited from their snowshoes and winter clothing to mount constant raids on the English fisheries. Only Bonavista and Carbonear still flew the Union flag when the attackers withdrew in March 1697, leaving the British Newfoundland fisheries ruined.

  London immediately dispatched Gibson’s Regiment of Foot (subsequently, the 28th) with gunners and engineers to rebuild and secure St John’s. However, it would fall to France again late in 1704, recaptured by a force that included detachments of Canadians, warriors, and some 300 French Basque fishermen. (It is recorded that these were equipped in the Canadian style with tapabord caps, powder horns, bullet pouches worn across the shoulder, snowshoes, and toboggans.) Newfoundland only became entirely British, alongside Nova Scotia, in 1713 following the Treaty of Utrecht.

  E

  AMBUSH OF ALBANY DRAGOONS, 1707

  During both “King William’s War” (1689–97) and “Queen Anne’s War” (1702–13), small parties of warriors from the so-called Wabanaki Confederacy of the Abenaki, Passamaquoddy and Micmac peoples routinely preyed on the outskirts of Anglo-American communities, and there are several accounts of their ambushing militia troopers who rode to the rescue. Here we attempt to reconstruct one remarkable clash that occurred in 1707 and was reported in the Mercure Galant that November. When a few Abenaki warriors were detected on the outskirts of Albany, the alarm was sounded. Blue-coated Albany Dragoons (E1) got to horse and galloped in pursuit of the running warriors, who retreated into woodland. As the riders came up, other hidden warriors opened fire on them from the edge of the trees in what was obviously a deliberately planned ambush. During the five-hour running fight that followed, the Albany militiamen never succeeded in catching up with the elusive warriors, who eventually vanished – taking some scalps with them, and seemingly suffering no casualties themselves.

  Even before the turn of the 17th/18th centuries the French are recorded as giving some warriors, including Abenakis, hats and old uniform coats, and (E2) wears that of a 1690s drummer of the Compagnies franches. In the 1680s–90s the Abenaki also received some French military accoutrements, such as belts with swords and plug bayonets (E4). Hoods extending over the shoulders were characteristic of the dress of the Abenaki and associated nations (E3), originally made of birch bark or leather, and later of trade cloth.

  The “Great Peace of Montreal,” 1701

  Small incursions continued in the New France and New England borderlands, but with less intensity, especially after it was learned that the war between France and Britain had ended in Europe. Just as importantly, the seeds of Frontenac’s diplomacy were bearing fruit and, after his death at Quebec on November 28, 1698, Louis-Hector de Callières ably assumed the mantle of governor-general. He presided in the summer of 1701 over a gathering at Montreal of some 1,300 chiefs and warriors from more than 30 First Nations, including the Iroquois, which concluded a general peace treaty. This “Great Peace of Montreal” was a diplomatic coup for New France, and it essentially held until the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War 50 years later. With the Iroquois more or less neutralized, and the Anglo-Americans neither eager nor usually very effective raiders, the Canadians and their Indigenous allies were left as more or less the masters of the wilderness.

  “Queen Anne’s War,” 1702–13

  The War of the Spanish Succession, called “Queen Anne’s War” by Anglo-Americans, broke out in 1702, and inevitably found France and Britain once again on opposite sides. In Quebec city, staff officers pondered as to what raids would be most effective, while the Anglo-American colonies called in vain for Britain to conquer New France with conventional armies and fleets. In 1703 Philippe de Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil (1650–1725) became governor-general of New France. Trained in the King’s Musketeers before going on to hold commands in several European campaigns, he had arrived in Canada in 1687 as commander of its Compagnies franches de la Marine. Vaudreuil approved of the tactical plans promoted by many of his officers, but this time there would be no expeditions against the Iroquois; all raids would be on the English colonies. These began modestly into Maine in August 1703, and also in the Connecticut River valley.

  Deerfield, 1704

  For Canadians this would be just another large winter raid, but in New England it became one of the most notorious in colonial history.

  On the
evening of March 10, 1704, a party of 200 Abenaki and Iroquois mission warriors with 50 Canadians under the command of Lt Jean-Baptiste Hertel de Rouville were spying, undetected, on the village of Deerfield, which had a garrison of 20 Massachusetts soldiers. Thinking everything “then still and quiet,” no watch was posted, and all went to bed. Two hours before daylight, the raiders attacked “the Fort and by the advantage of some drifts of snow, got over the walls” and broke down doors. In the confused fighting that followed some 48 Anglo-Americans were killed and about 100 taken prisoner; three raiders were killed, and Lt Hertel was among 20 others who were wounded. After plundering and burning the village, Hertel withdrew on March 12. By then the alarm had spread and militiamen tried to pursue, but when the raiders counterattacked and slew nine of them the others fled. The next day many more militiamen were in the area but, according to Penhallow, they did not venture into the woods due to their lack of snowshoes. The raiders made it back safely to Montreal with more than 100 captives.

  Haverhill, 1708

  This summer raid, on a village just 30 miles (50km) north of Boston, provides an example both of the remarkably long distances that some expeditions were prepared to cover, and of defensive measures among small Anglo-American communities.

  The raiding party led by Capt Jean-Baptiste de Saint-Ours Deschaillons and (again) Lt Hertel de Rouville consisted of about 100 soldiers and Canadians, with a “dozen young officers” who had joined it as volunteers to acquire first-hand experience, plus more than 200 allied warriors. The original target was Portsmouth, New Hampshire, but this was abandoned due to sickness breaking out amongst the allied warriors, of whom all but about 50 departed. With the force reduced by half, attacking Portsmouth was now out of the question, and a smaller community was chosen instead.

  According to Deschaillons’ report, the party “surmounted a thousand difficulties, and had traveled nearly 480 miles (770km) by paths so difficult that it surpasses imagination” before they finally got to Haverhill. This was a “village consisting of about 25 to 30 houses, with a timber fort” garrisoned by some 30 Boston provincial militiamen, besides others billeted in various houses. On August 29, 1708, the raiders attacked half an hour before dawn, taking the fort by surprise and setting fire to it and all the houses. It was difficult to estimate the defenders’ losses, “because the English who were shut in them would not come out and fired continuously on our party.”

  Jean-Baptiste Hertel de Rouville (1668–1722), c.1710. Despite the impression given by the stiff conventions of 18th-century portraiture (including an odd rendering of a steel breastplate, although armor had been abandoned by fighting men in New France since the 1640s), this son of François Hertel de la Fresnière was an experienced bush fighter from his teenage years, and notably led the raids on Deerfield (1704) and Haverhill (1708). De Rouville was made a knight of the Order of Saint-Louis in December 1721, and its cross was later painted onto the portrait. (Print after portrait; private collection, author’s photo)

  Since there were four other forts and villages in the vicinity, and the raiders could hear in the distance the sound of “trumpets and drums” mustering militiamen, they soon withdrew. Before long the area was “filled with horsemen and men on foot,” who followed the raiders for some distance. The raiders retired in good order, but after about 1.5 miles (2.5km), as they approached a wood, they were ambushed by 60 to 70 Massachusetts men who fired a volley at them. This was clearly not very effective, as the raiders dumped their packs and charged, jumping over “a sort of fence that provided their cover” and striking “at anything that looked English … [in] so rough a manner” that they ran off. The Canadians and warriors only stopped pursuing the fleeing militiamen when “they reached the first houses,” after which all the raiders resumed their retreat, abandoning part of their baggage. They reported ten men killed including three warriors and two young officers, and 18 wounded (C11A, 28). The Massachusetts casualties were about 30 to 40 killed and wounded. Nevertheless, this lesson in the risks of making very deep raids, on a population that was generally on its guard (despite its local carelessness over posting sentries), was not forgotten in New France.

  These famous raids were just two of at least 30 substantial expeditions during the war which involved regular officers, Canadians and warriors, besides attacks by small Indigenous parties on villages even in the suburbs of Albany or Boston. Pursuing Anglo-American militiamen were almost totally ineffective, and, according to the January 1705 Mercure Galant, Canadians joked that their “bellies full of beer” prevented them from walking fast enough. Even if pursuing cavalrymen did catch up, it might well be their last ride (see Plate E).

  On the whole, Canada had become nearly invulnerable to Anglo-American land raids or troop movements, but the colonists still had hopes of striking effectively by sea. However, when they were shipped to attack Port-Royal in Acadia in 1707, some 1,300 Massachusetts provincial troops were repulsed by about 150 defenders in a series of fiascos. In 1710, this time with the help of the Royal Navy, about 2,000 British and provincial troops finally overcame Port-Royal’s resistance, and it surrendered on October 1. With this encouragement, in summer 1711 forces gathered north of Albany, while Adm Hoveden Walker led a fleet with 7,500 British and provincial troops on board to attack Quebec city. It might have worked; but on August 22, in bad visibility, strong winds and currents drove the fleet against the northern shore of the Gulf of St Lawrence near the Isle aux Oeufs, sinking eight ships and drowning some 900 soldiers and sailors. The fleet withdrew, and the overland attempt was also abandoned.

  A war club of the Fox and Sauk nations, mounting a steel blade. Termed a “gunstock club” from its shape, this type of weapon was carried by warriors of many Indigenous nations from the later 17th century, and this example was recorded by the traveler and artist Karl Bodner as late as the 1830s. (Print after Bodner; private collection, author’s photo)

  The Fox Wars, 1712–37

  In the late 17th century the Fox nation (also called Renard, Outagamis and Mesquakies) lived in present-day Wisconsin. They were a warrior people who detested the French, and were traditional enemies of nearly all the First Nations allied to New France. From 1701, when the French established their large post at Detroit, tensions rose. An attempt by the Fox to take Detroit in May 1712 was defeated, but they continued to prey upon New France’s vital fur-trade routes. Once again, raiding expeditions against them employed the well-proven combination of French troops, Canadians and allied warriors, but the challenges were even greater than for the former operations against the Iroquois. There were relatively few French soldiers of the Compagnies franches in the western forts, and Canadian coureurs-des-bois were also less numerous on this far-flung frontier. The distances were enormous, and the Fox villages were strongly fortified. In 1716 an 800-strong mixed force imposed a peace that lasted for some years, but by 1728 war had resumed after Canadian traders had again been killed. Strong expeditions were sent out, Fox villages were stormed and destroyed (see Plate F), and some 900 had been killed by the end of 1730. Still not totally defeated, the Fox were helped by the neighboring Sauk nation. Despite losing hundreds more killed or enslaved by French-allied warriors, they continued to resist. Both the remaining Fox and the Sauk were pursued as far as present-day Iowa in 1735, but were not caught. Governor Beauharnois “pardoned” both nations in 1737, and sent a French officer to live among them in Iowa the following year.

  F

  ASSAULT EQUIPMENT, 1730s

  (1) Plan for mantlet construction

  (2) Mantlet in action

  (3) Wheeled extendable ladder

  During the Fox Wars in the first third of the 18th century, more elaborate devices than battering-rams were used. The Fox or Mesquakie (“red earth people”) – originally from around the Fox and Wolf rivers and Lake Winnebago, and later reported around Green Bay, Wisconsin – built some remarkable defenses to resist the French raiders and their allies, perhaps being inspired by European examples. Against Indi
genous communities surprise attacks were next to impossible, so, intriguingly, the French resorted to quasi-medieval technology to cope with these challenging fortifications. As early as 1613 the explorer Champlain had used wooden towers to enable his matchlock musketeers to shoot down inside Iroquois “castles,” and the same approach was adopted against the Fox in 1712 and 1730. The engineer Chaussegros de Léry, who took part in the Fox Wars, recommended in a memoir of 1739 the use during attacks of wheeled mantlets with protective planking (frame as F1) to shelter men approaching a rampart or gateway under fire (F2), and extendable ladders mounted on wheeled turrets (F3) to get assault parties inside. Since these “siege engines” had to be constructed on the spot with axe and saw, their actual appearance was probably less precisely finished than in the engineer’s drawings. Typical campaign dress for the Compagnies franches is illustrated, though we choose to show the sergeant in F2 wearing the regulation justaucorps coat and carrying his sword, and the leading attacker in F3 is a Canadian “woods-runner.” (LAC, microfilm 559)

  There are occasional references to the pre-1789 plain white standard of France (without the gold lilies sometimes shown by later artists) being supplied for raiding parties – for instance, “a standard of Lyon linen with its pole” carried by each of three parties “going to war” against the Fox in 1728 (AC, F1A, 27) – and some were also given to First Nations. A white fighting flag was flown by French warships, and when enemy vessels sought to surrender they too raised a white flag; this practice became so widespread that a white flag signifies surrender to this day. (Print after late 17th-century MS; private collection, author’s photo)