SING

CHAPTER VI.

MONTCALM AT OSWEGO. 1756.

INCE the capture of the French ships, the "Lys" and "Alcide," by Admiral Boscawen, the English navy had been employed in harrying the maritime trade of France with great effect. Hundreds of vessels were seized, and 8,000 French sailors taken prisoners. The French complained of this as "nothing but a system of piracy on a grand scale, unworthy of a civilised "nation. In time of full peace, merchant ships have been seized to the value "of thirty millions of livres." The pretext for the apparently unjustifiable action of the English, was French encroachment on British territory in America. The excuse was not accepted in Paris, and the "piracies of this insolent nation" wounded the French deeply.

In February, 1756, Vaudreuil sent Léry, with 362 men, to capture the English Fort Bull on Wood Creek, Oneida, and Fort Williams on the Mohawk, both built to protect the portage. Fort Bull was being used as the depôt of stores and ammunition for the intended spring campaign, and was guarded by thirty of Shirley's provincials. The small garrison defended itself to the last, the French beat down the doors, the English still fought desperately, till they were all killed, with the exception of two or three, who, as a last resource, hid themselves. Léry blew up the fort, and retired without attacking Fort Williams, as Johnson was on the march up the Mohawk with reinforcements. The loss of stores and munitions of war seriously delayed the English operations, and gave the French time to secure their posts on Lake Ontario, which was done by the end of June.

After the failure of the Oswego campaign in the autumn of 1755, Shirley had formed his plans for the spring, and laid them before a council of war at New York. Like the former schemes they were quadripartite. A strong force was to seize the French Forts at Niagara, Frontenac and Toronto; another force was to deal with Ticonderoga and Crown Point; a third was to capture Fort Duquesne, and a fourth was to create an embarrassing

diversion by passing down the Chaudière and falling upon the French settlements about Quebec. The council approved the scheme, but the provinces would not afford the means of carrying it out. Two parts of it, viz., the attacks on Fort Duquesne and on the Quebec settlements were abandoned. For the other two, on a grant in aid being promised by Parliament, New England provided men for the attack on Ticonderoga and Crown Point, with Winslow as commander, while Shirley proposed to lead the expedition to Lake Ontario in person. But while he was still engaged in recruiting his numbers and overcoming preliminary difficulties, unfriendly hands and tongues were at work, and Shirley found himself superseded in command temporarily by Colonel Webb, who was to be succeeded by General Abercombie, who was eventually, in his turn, to give place to the Earl of Loudon. Webb and Abercrombie arrived in June, the Earl in July. While awaiting his successors at Albany, Shirley had rebuilt the Fort on Wood Creek, Oneida, destroyed by the French in the previous March, and gathered stores at the posts on the way to Oswego, in preparation for his favourite project of driving the French from Lake Ontario.

Meanwhile a notable figure had appeared upon the scene, Louis Joseph, Marquis de Montcalm-Gozon de Saint Véran. He was a man of noble character, scholarly, pious and honourable, a soldier from his youth up, happily married and the father of ten children, with an intense affection for his family and love of the peaceful duties of a country life, and the domestic repose of his chateau of Candiac. Appointed to command in Canada he left all that he cared for with reluctance, but, like a true soldier, without hesitation, to encounter the dangers and hardships of a campaign in the backwoods. The Chevalier de Lévis was his second in command, and Bougainville, afterwards renowned as a navigator, was one of his aides. Montcalm, with about 1,200 men, arrived in the St. Lawrence in the early part of May, and at once reported his arrival to Vaudreuil at Montreal, in person.

During the winter the French had been fortifying or strengthening already existing defences at Niagara, Ticonderoga and Frontenac. Vaudreuil, warned of the English preparations and aware of their plans, designed to anticipate them, and himself to strike the first blow by descending on Oswego, and so obtaining the entire command of Lake Ontario. On the 18th May England had declared war, and on the 9th June, France did the same.

At the end of May, the New England and New York men had mustered at Albany, and moved up the Hudson to Halfmoon. Here there were rapids, and the advance was by road to Stillwater, thence by river to Saratoga, thence by road to Upper Falls (Fort Miller), thence by boat to Fort Edward, and thence across the portage to Fort William Henry, where the army was to embark, on Lake George, for Ticonderoga. While Winslow was busy with his preparations, Sir William Johnson was employed in counteracting the intrigues of the French with the Indians friendly to the English, and the more dangerous effects of the tricks and dishonesty of the English and Dutch rascals, who plundered and deceived the natives, and inclined them to join the more specious French. After much trouble, exuberant verbosity on both sides, great expenditure of wampum, and a considerable consumption of rum, Johnson was entirely successful, and Picquet and the rest of the French intriguers were checkmated.

Meanwhile, Shirley from his head-quarters at Albany, was directing the preparations for the expedition to Ontario, and impatiently desiring the assembling of the Five Nations at the latter place. He organised a body of armed boatmen, under Colonel Bradstreet, to carry his stores and provisions to his posts on the Mohawk, and the Oneida portage. Vaudreuil had sent de Villiers with 1,100 men to cut off the communication between Oswego and Albany, but Bradstreet successfully took a convoy to Oswego. On his return, when about nine miles from the fort, de Villiers fell upon him, in the sudden manner characteristic of backwoods warfare. After a temporary discomfiture, Bradstreet rallied his men and put the French to rout. He was prevented by heavy rains from following up his success, and returned to Albany with two prisoners, eighty French muskets, and a number of knapsacks, having lost between 60 and 70 of his own men.

During the winter the unfortunate garrison at Oswego had suffered severely from hunger and disease, and a large number died. Pepperell's regiment, the 51st, quartered in Fort Ontario on the opposite side of the river, suffered less. Letters from Mackellar, the engineer, declared the Forts to be incapable of defence. There was a third fort, New Oswego, nicknamed Fort Rascal, a miserable affair. These things made Shirley very anxious.

On the arrival of Webb and Abercrombie at Albany with reinforcements, at the end of June, Shirley resigned his command, and was sent to New York to await the Earl of Loudon's coming, and to report to him how things stood.

The report did not please the Earl, and when he reached Albany, he abandoned the Ontario Expedition, and resolved to concentrate his forces against Ticonderoga.

Winslow was now at Lake George with about half his men, the remainder being at Fort Edward under Lyman or in the posts along the Hudson. According to the reports of Earl Loudon's officers the forts were in a very insanitary condition, even for that time, when sanitary engineering was yet unborn, and there was much sickness of body, and according to the chaplains, nothing but a hurry and confusion of vice and wickedness." The vices were principally "curseing and swareing," omitting to say grace at meals and to attend daily prayers, and not shaving often enough.

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On the 12th August, Loudon sent Webb, with the 44th Regiment and some of Bradstreet's boatmen, to reinforce Oswego. Shirley's anxiety about that place proved to have been too well founded. When Webb reached the portage, he learned that the French had taken Oswego, and was told that they were advancing 6,000 strong. Staying only to fell some trees to choke Wood Creek and obstruct the passage of the enemy, and burning the forts built for the protection of the portage, Webb turned and fled to German Flats on the Mohawk. Dismayed at the blow, Loudon ordered Winslow to abandon the idea of attacking Ticonderoga, and to remain at Lake George to check any French advance in that direction.

The French had heard of the English advance against Ticonderoga, and determined to make a feint against Oswego, not without considering the possibility of turning it into a real attack. Leaving Lévis in command at Ticonderoga, Montcalm hastened to Montreal, left there on the 21st July, and reached Fort Frontenac on the 29th, embarked there on the 4th August, joined Rigaud and Villiers, who had been encamped at Sackett's Harbour, and, on the 10th, with a force of 3,000 men, was before Oswego.

Fort Ontario, the strongest of the three forts at Oswego, stood on high ground on the right bank of the river, but it was only a wooden star-shaped erection, and was useless as a defence against artillery. Fort Pepperell, or Old Oswego, in which Colonel Mercer, the commandant, was, stood on the opposite side of the river, and about a quarter of a-mile further on was the third work, New Oswego, also called Fort George or Fort Rascal.* After

* There is a good view (often wanting however) of Oswego, in Smith's History of New York.

a day's firing, during which Montcalm was digging trenches and getting his guns into position, Colonel Mercer, considering that Fort Ontario must be knocked into splinters directly the artillery opened upon it, signalled to Pepperell, who was in command of its garrison of 370 men, to cross the river and join him at Oswego. This was safely accomplished. At nightfall Montcalm began a battery on the height on which Fort Ontario stood, and before morning had there twenty guns, some of which had been captured from Braddock, and nine of them in position. The English unprepared for an attack from the east, had to form a hasty rampart with pork barrels, and to shift their guns to that side. "Exposed to their shoe-buckles," according to the French account, they made a gallant fight for some time. But Montcalm had sent Rigaud with a force of Canadians and Indians to cross the river, which was effected without the knowledge of the English, and the sudden appearance of the enemy around the forts served to dishearten the garrison. They had kept up their spirits while they had Mercer to encourage them, but now the commandant was cut in two by a cannon shot and a panic ensued. The women, of whom there were 100 in the fort, begged that it might be surrendered. A hasty council of war was convened, and the white flag hoisted. Bougainville was sent to arrange the terms, and the English surrendered as prisoners of war. As usual the victors went straight for the rum barrels, and in the drunken tumult which ensued some of the prisoners were tomahawked by the Indians, and Montcalm had much ado to prevent a general massacre.

To gratify the Indians, Montcalm burned the forts and the vessels in course of construction, and destroyed everything he could not carry away. The exultant Picquet raised a tall cross and planted the arms of France on a pole among the ruins.

The French took 1,600 prisoners, 120 cannon, six ships of war, 300 boats, a quantity of ammunition and provisions, and three chests of money. "It was a glorious victory" for the French. Nothing could have been more gratifying to them, than this scarcely hoped-for destruction of the bugbear Oswego, as the success left them undisputed masters of Lake Ontario, and free to use the bulk of their forces to repel the threatened attack on Ticonderoga, and, perhaps, to drive back the English and seize Albany.

England was indignant at the surrender, but the garrison had fought well under great disadvantages. If Webb had started a month earlier,