as he ought to, and would have done if the English had not been so unwise as to "swop horses while crossing a stream by superseding Shirley, the result might have been different. Everything was against Shirley. The refusal of some of the provinces to give any aid; the apathy and dilatoriness of those which did consent; the number of untrained men, and the inferior quality of most of his officers. His scheme was a good one, and with money, material and good management would have had, at least, a good chance of success. He was adopting measures for strengthening Oswego, and would doubtless have carried them out, if the matter had not been taken out of his hands. Loudon, who was himself chiefly to blame, made a scapegoat of Shirley, and with insult and contumely, ordered him to go to England.

Loudon, now at Fort Edward, with 10,000 men under him, 3,000 of whom were at Fort William Henry, under Winslow, and the remainder at the various posts between there and Albany, waited Montcalm's attack. Montcalm, in a strong position at Ticonderoga with upwards of 5,000 men, did not move.

But a petty warfare was actively carried on. On the western borders of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, the French Indians were busy with tomahawk and scalping knife in the outlying settlements. The forts, however feeble, were generally let alone. A few were attacked by the French with varying success; and the English, under Colonel Armstrong, a settler of Cumberland, surprised and destroyed the Delaware town of Kistanning, between Venango and Fort Duquesne, the centre from which many of the Indian border raids started, killed Jacobs, a chief who had been the terror of the English borders, and released eleven English captives.

Many Indian war parties were sent out from Ticonderoga to harass the English. On the return of one of them victorious, Bougainville writes:"The very recital of the cruelties they committed on the battlefield is horrible. The ferocity and insolence of these black-souled barbarians make one shudder. It is an abominable kind of war." The English retaliated from Forts William Henry and Edward. Some of their expeditions showed great audacity. One Lieutenant Kennedy, with five followers, passed all the French posts, took some prisoners, burned a store of provisions between Montreal and St. John, and returned to Fort William Henry safe, but nearly starved. Israel Putnam, with six followers, descended Lake George, and made

a complete reconnaissance of Ticonderoga and all the French outposts. But the most notable of these daring adventurers was Major Robert Rogers of New Hampshire, who, with his rangers, performed deeds of incredible hardihood. Day and night, summer and winter, these men were continually among the French, reconnoitering, seizing sledges, or capturing prisoners, one of the latter being a sentinel taken from the very gates of Ticonderoga. So the autumn wore away, and in November the French began to withdraw to Canada, leaving a small garrison at Ticonderoga, and the English to New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. Major Eyre with 400 regulars was left to guard Fort William Henry.

The monotony of Eyre's winter exile was unpleasantly varied by a somewhat disastrous expedition of Rogers, who, having captured some French sledges and prisoners between Ticonderoga and Crown Point, was cut off by a large body of the enemy. Fourteen of Rogers' party were killed and six taken prisoners, Rogers himself and some others being wounded; but Rogers led the survivors back to Fort William Henry.

IN

CHAPTER VII.

FORT WILLIAM HENRY. 1757.

N March, 1757, Vaudreuil commenced the year's campaign by sending an expedition, under his brother Rigaud, against Fort William Henry. The attack was only partly successful; against the fort itself, it entirely failed, but the French burnt the buildings outside, and retreated, having suffered heavy loss.

Loudon had projected, for the opening of his campaign, the reduction of Louisburg in Acadia, to be followed possibly, if fortune favoured, by an attack upon Quebec. As usual, the news of the English project had reached the French before it was ripe for execution, and three French expeditions had been sent to Louisburg in anticipation of the attack. Admiral Holbourne with his fleet of fifteen ships, and 5,000 men, was late at the place of rendezvous, Halifax, where Loudon awaited him. The force consisted altogether of 12,000 men, who were landed and drilled for weeks.* Then news reached Loudon that the French combined fleets in Louisburg consisted of twenty-two ships of the line and some frigates, carrying 1,360 cannon, and that the garrison consisted of 7,000 men. Louisburg was a very strong fortress, and Loudon, despairing of success, took his troops back to New York, leaving Holbourne to go to Louisburg to endeavour to tempt the French Admiral, La Motte, with his fleet to come out and fight him. But this wily Gaul knew when he was well off, and Holbourne "had his trouble for his pains." Thus this costly expedition, damned by needless delay, ended in a miserable fiasco.

The watchful Montcalm did not fail to take advantage of the absence of Loudon with most of his troops, and determined to make a descent upon Lake George, and strike a blow for France and St. Denis. He assembled his force of 7,600 men, consisting of Canadians, regulars, and an Indian

* Lord William Hay was put under arrest for publicly describing these dilatory exercises as "Keeping the 66 courage of His Majesty's soldiers at bay, and expending the nation's wealth in making sham fights and "planting cabbages, when they ought to have been fighting the enemies of their king and country in reality." In 1759 he demanded a court martial, and was tried in London, but died before the proceedings were closed.

contingent, in which forty-one tribes were represented, at Ticonderoga, and, leaving a detachment to hold the fort, and sending Lévis with 2,500 men by land, he embarked with the remainder of his force, and, passing down Lake George, joined Lévis before Fort William Henry.

The Fort stood close to the Lake on low ground, and, a little to the East, across a marsh was an entrenched camp on a higher level, on the spot where Fort George was erected two years later. Colonel Monro of the 35th regiment, a Scotchman, was in command. He had with him in the fort barely 500 men, and in the camp were 1,700 more. The fort mounted seventeen cannon and several mortars and swivels, and there were six guns

in the camp.

Montcalm, who had taken prisoners some of an English reconnoitring party, was well informed of the position and weakness of Monro's force. He sent a summons to surrender, which received for answer a message of defiance. Thereupon Montcalm commenced his siege works on the west side of the Lake, and sent La Corne to hold the road to Fort Edward and cut off Monro's communications with that post. Webb was at Fort Edward, with 1,600 men according to Parkman, though Bancroft says 4,000, and Monro sent several messengers to him asking for aid. But it was the same Webb who had retreated in such a dastardly way the year before, abandoning Oswego to its fate, and his nature had not altered in the meantime. He sent to New England asking for reinforcements for himself, to enable him to go to the relief of Monro, though he must have known they could not arrive in time, but to Monro he sent letters advising surrender. Montcalm's men killed one of the messengers and found Webb's letter on the body. After battering the English Fort for several days, Montcalm sent Webb's letter to Monro, hoping that he would follow the advice contained in it. But the gallant commandant returned a polite message refusing to surrender, and the siege was recommenced with redoubled vigour. The English suffered heavily. Three hundred had been killed or wounded, small-pox was raging in the fort, all their large pieces had been burst or disabled and their ammunition was nearly exhausted. Then only, on the 9th August, did Monro hoist the

white flag.

The fort was surrendered, on the terms that the English should march out with the honours of war, and proceed to Fort Edward under a French escort; the troops were not to serve again for eighteen months, and all stores

K

and munitions of war were to be left to the French, except one field piece, which the English were to retain as a compliment on their gallant defence.

Montcalm, sufficiently well acquainted with the Indian nature by this time, dreaded lest he should not be able to restrain the savage passions of his allies, flushed as they were by victory. He called a council of their chiefs, and exacted a promise that they would restrain their followers. He took the further precaution of forbidding the issue of spirituous liquor, but no sooner had the English evacuated the fort to join their companions in the camp, than the Indians rushed in and began to plunder. They murdered the helpless sick and wounded in their beds. The afternoon was one of terror in the English camp. The French Indians stalked about it, showing plainly enough, by their actions, what they would like to do.

In haste to depart, the English were ready before their escort. At five o'clock in the morning several Indians entered some huts in the camp where 17 wounded English lay, and killed and scalped them all, in the presence of the English surgeon Whitworth, and of La Corne and some other French officers, who, according to the sworn testimony of Whitworth, did nothing to prevent the outrage. But worse was to follow. As the English marched out of the camp, the Indians fell upon them, and a massacre of men, women and children ensued. Montcalm and his officers, it is said, endeavoured to stay the tumult, at great personal risk to themselves. But accounts differ as to this. Jonathan Carver, who was present, declares that he saw French officers looking on unconcerned. Colonel Frye gave similar testimony. It seems probable that Montcalm, and some of his superior officers, regretted the massacre and endeavoured to prevent it, but that the bulk of the French officers and men were not altogether displeased at the occurrence, and took no trouble to stay the slaughter; many were killed, how many it is impossible to say, though Parkman has gone fully into the matter and gives the original reports of some of the witnesses in an appendix to his " Montcalm and Wolfe." The accounts of Father Roubaud, a French chaplain, Carver, Whitworth and Lévis, who were all present, differ greatly. Certainly some forty or fifty were killed, besides the sick and wounded who were slaughtered in the fort and camp, and some 700 were made prisoners, stripped or otherwise ill-used. Some of the English took refuge in the fort, and, after being kindly treated by Montcalm, were sent under escort to Fort Edward; many took to the woods, of whom some found their way to Fort Edward or the English