Chapter 16: The Massacre At Fort William Henry.
When the skirmishing round Fort Henry was over, La Corne, with a bodyof Indians, occupied the road that led to Fort Edward; and Levisencamped close by, to support him, and check any sortie the Englishmight make from their intrenched camp. Montcalm reconnoitred theposition. He had, at first, intended to attack and carry the intrenchedcamp, but he found that it was too strong to be taken by a rush. Hetherefore determined to attack the fort, itself, by regular approachesfrom the western side, while the force of Levis would intercept anysuccour which might come from Fort Edward, and cut off the retreat ofthe garrison in that direction. He gave orders that the cannon were tobe disembarked at a small cove, about half a mile from the fort, andnear this he placed his main camp. He now sent one of his aides-de-campwith a letter to Monro.
"I owe it to humanity," he said, "to summon you to surrender. Atpresent I can restrain the savages, and make them observe the terms ofa capitulation, but I might not have the power to do so under othercircumstances, and an obstinate defence on your part could only retardthe capture of the place a few days, and endanger the unfortunategarrison, which cannot be relieved, in consequence of the dispositionsI have made. I demand a decisive answer within an hour."
Monro replied simply that he and his soldiers would defend themselvestill the last.
The trenches were opened on the night of the 4th. The work wasextremely difficult, the ground being covered with hard stumps of treesand fallen trunks. All night long 800 men toiled at the work, while theguns of the fort kept up a constant fire of round shot and grape; butby daybreak the first parallel was made. The battery on the left wasnearly finished, and one on the right begun. The men were now workingunder shelter, and the guns of the fort could do them little harm.
While the French soldiers worked, the Indians crept up through thefallen trees, close to the fort, and fired at any of the garrison whomight, for a moment, expose themselves. Sharpshooters in the fortreplied to their fire, and all day the fort was fringed with lightpuffs of smoke, whilst the cannon thundered unceasingly. The nextmorning, the French battery on the left opened with eight heavy cannonand a mortar, and on the following morning the battery on the rightjoined in with eleven other pieces.
The fort only mounted, in all, seventeen cannon, for the most partsmall, and, as some of them were upon the other faces, the Englishfire, although kept up with spirit, could reply but weakly to that ofthe French. The fort was composed of embankments of gravel, surmountedby a rampart of heavy logs, laid in tiers, crossing each other, theinterstices filled with earth; and this could ill support the heavycannonade to which it was exposed. The roar of the distant artillerycontinuing day after day was plainly audible at Fort Edward; butalthough Monro had, at the commencement of the attack, sent off severalmessengers asking for reinforcements, Webb did not move.
On the third day of the siege he had received 2000 men from New York,and, by stripping all the forts below, he could have advanced with 4500men, but some deserters from the French told him that Montcalm had12,000 men, and Webb considered the task of advancing, through theintervening forests and defiles between him and Fort Henry, far toodangerous an operation to be attempted. Undoubtedly it would have beena dangerous one, for the Indians pervaded the woods as far as FortEdward. No messenger could have got through to inform Monro of hiscoming, and Montcalm could therefore have attacked him, on the march,with the greater part of his force. Still, a brave and determinedgeneral would have made the attempt. Webb did not do so, but left Monroto his fate.
He even added to its certainty by sending off a letter to him, tellinghim that he could do nothing to assist him, and advising him tosurrender at once. The messenger was killed by the Indians in theforest, and the note taken to Montcalm, who, learning that Webb did notintend to advance, was able to devote his whole attention to the fort.Montcalm kept the letter for several days, till the English rampart washalf battered down, and then sent it in by an officer to Monro, hopingthat it would induce the latter to surrender. The old soldier, however,remained firm in his determination to hold out, even though hisposition was now absolutely hopeless. The trenches had been pushedforward until within 250 yards of the fort, and the Indians crept upalmost to the wall on this side.
Two sorties were made--one from the fort, the other from the intrenchedcamp; but both were repulsed with loss. More than 300 of the defendershad been killed and wounded. Smallpox was raging, and the casemateswere crowded with sick. All their large cannon had been burst ordisabled, and only seven small pieces were fit for service. The Frenchbattery in the foremost trench was almost completed, and, when this wasdone, the whole of Montcalm's thirty-one cannon and fifteen mortarswould open fire, and, as a breach had already been effected in thewall, further resistance would have been madness.
On the night of the 8th, it was known in the fort that a council of warwould be held in the morning, and that, undoubtedly, the fort wouldsurrender.
James, with his company, had, after escorting the cattle to the fort,crossed the marsh to the intrenched camp, as the fort was alreadycrowded with troops. The company therefore avoided the horrors of thesiege. When the report circulated that a surrender would probably bemade the next morning, Nat went to James.
"What are you going to do, captain?"
"Do, Nat? Why, I have nothing to do. If Monro and his council decide tosurrender, there is an end of it. You don't propose that our company isto fight Montcalm's army alone, do you?"
"No, I don't," Nat said, testily; "there has been a deal too muchfighting already. I understand holding out till the last, when there'sa hope of somebody coming to relieve you; but what's the use offighting, and getting a lot of your men killed, and raising the bloodof those redskin devils to boiling point? If the colonel had given upthe place at once, we should have saved a loss of 300 men, and Montcalmwould have been glad enough to let us march off to Fort Edward."
"But probably he will agree to let us do that now," James said.
"He may agree," Nat said, contemptuously; "but how about the redskins?Do you think that, after losing a lot of their braves, they are goingto see us march quietly away, and go home without a scalp? I tell you,captain, I know redskin nature, and, as sure as the sun rises tomorrow,there will be a massacre; and I, for one, ain't going to lay down myrifle, and let the first redskin, as takes a fancy to my scalp,tomahawk me."
"Well, but what do you propose, Nat?"
"Well, captain, I have heard you say yours is an independent command,and that you can act with the company wherever you like. While you arehere, I know you are under the orders of the colonel; but if you hadchosen to march away on any expedition of your own, you could have doneit."
"That is so, Nat; but now the siege is once begun, I don't know that Ishould be justified in marching away, even if I could."
"But they are going to surrender, I tell you," Nat insisted. "I don'tsee as how it can be your duty to hand over your company to the French,if you can get them clear away, so as to fight for the king again."
"What do you say, Edwards?" James asked his lieutenant.
"I don't see why we shouldn't march away, if we could," Edwards said."Now that the game is quite lost here, I don't think anyone could blameyou for saving the company, if possible, and I agree with Nat thatMontcalm will find it difficult, if not impossible, to keep his Indiansin hand. The French have never troubled much on that score."
"Well, Nat, what is your plan?" James asked, after a pause.
"The plan is simple enough," Nat said. "There ain't no plan at all. Allwe have got to do is to march quietly down to the lake, to take some ofthe canoes that are hauled up at the mouth of the swamp, and to paddlequietly off, keeping under the trees on the right-hand side. Thereain't many redskins in the woods that way, and the night is as dark aspitch. We can land eight or ten miles down the lake, and then marchaway to the right, so as to get clean round the redskins altogether."
"Very well, Nat, I will do it," James said. "It's
a chance, but I thinkit's a better chance than staying here, and if I should get into a rowabout it, I can't help it. I am doing it for the best."
The corps were quietly mustered, and marched out through the gate ofthe intrenchments, on the side of the lake. No questions were asked,for the corps had several times gone out on its own account, and drivenback the Indians and French pickets. The men had, from their firstarrival at the fort, laid aside their heavy boots, and taken tomoccasins as being better fitted for silent movement in the forest.Therefore not a sound was heard as, under Nat's guidance, they madetheir way down the slope into the swamp.
Here they were halted, for the moment, and told to move with thegreatest care and silence, and to avoid snapping a bough or twig. This,however, was the less important, as the cannon on both sides were stillfiring, and a constant rattle of musketry was going on round the fort.
Presently, they reached the point where the canoes were hauled up, andwere told off, three to a canoe.
"Follow my canoe in single file," James said. "Not a word is to bespoken, and remember that a single splash of a paddle will bring theredskins down upon us. Likely enough there may be canoes out upon thelake--there are sure to be Indians in the wood."
"I don't think there's much fear, captain," Nat whispered. "There's notiring a redskin when he's out on the scout on his own account, butwhen he's acting with the whites he's just as lazy as a hog, and, asthey must be sure the fort can't hold out many hours longer, they willbe too busy feasting, and counting the scalps they mean to take, tothink much about scouting tonight."
"We shall go very slowly. Let every man stop paddling the instant thecanoe ahead of him stops," were James's last instructions, as hestepped into the stern of a canoe, while Nat and Jonathan took thepaddles. Edwards was to take his place in the last canoe in the line.
Without the slightest sound, the canoes paddled out into the lake, andthen made for the east shore. They were soon close to the trees, and,slowly and noiselessly, they kept their way just outside the screenafforded by the boughs drooping down, almost into the water. Only nowand then the slightest splash was to be heard along the line, and thismight well have been taken for the spring of a tiny fish feeding.
Several times, when he thought he heard a slight sound in the forest onhis right, Nat ceased paddling, and lay for some minutes motionless,the canoes behind doing the same. So dark was it, that they couldscarce see the trees close beside them, while the bright flashes fromthe guns from fort and batteries only seemed to make the darkness moreintense. It was upwards of an hour before James felt, from the greaterspeed with which the canoe was travelling, that Nat believed that hehad got beyond the spot where any Indians were likely to be watching inthe forest.
Faster and faster the boat glided along, but the scouts were still farfrom rowing their hardest. For, although the whole of the men wereaccustomed to the use of the paddle, the other boats would be unable tokeep up with that driven by the practised arms of the leaders of thefile. After paddling for another hour and a half, the scout stopped.
"We are far enough away now," Nat said. "There ain't no chance in theworld of any redskins being in the woods, so far out as this. The hopeof scalps will have taken them all down close to the fort. We can landsafely, now."
The word was passed down the line of canoes, the boats glided throughthe screen of foliage, and the men landed.
"Better pull the canoes ashore, captain. If we left them in the water,one might break adrift and float out beyond the trees. Some redskin orother would make it out, and we should have a troop of them on ourtrail, before an hour had passed."
"There's no marching through the forest now, Nat," James said. "I can'tsee my own hand close to my face."
"That's so, captain, and we'd best halt till daylight. I could make myway along, easy enough, but some of these fellows would be pitchingover stumps, or catching their feet in a creeper, and, like enough,letting off their pieces as they went down. We may just as well staywhere we are. They ain't likely to miss us, even in the camp, andsartin the redskins can't have known we have gone. So there's no chancewhatever of pursuit, and there ain't nothing to be gained by makinghaste."
James gave the order. The men felt about, till each found a space ofground, sufficiently large to lie down upon, and soon all were asleepexcept the two scouts, who said, at once, that they would watch byturns till daylight.
As soon as it was sufficiently light to see in the forest, the bandwere again in motion. They made due east, until they crossed the trailleading from the head of Lake Champlain to Fort Edward; kept on foranother hour, and then, turning to the south, made in the direction ofAlbany, for it would have been dangerous to approach Fort Edward, roundwhich the Indians were sure to be scattered thickly.
For the first two hours after starting, the distant roar of the gunshad gone on unceasingly, then it suddenly stopped.
"They have hoisted the white flag," Edwards said. "It is all over.Thank God, we are well out of it! I don't mind fighting, Walsham, butto be massacred by those Indians is a hideous idea."
"I am glad we are out of it too," James agreed; "but I cannot thinkthat Montcalm, with so large a force of French regulars at his command,will allow those fiendish Indians to massacre the prisoners."
"I hope not," Edwards said. "It will be a disgrace indeed to him andhis officers if he does; but you know what the Indians are, better thanI do, and you have heard Nat's opinion. You see, if Montcalm were touse force against the Indians, the whole of them would go off, and thenthere would be an end to any hope of the French beating the colonistsin the long run. Montcalm daren't break with them. It's a horribleposition for an officer and a gentleman to be placed in. Montcalm didmanage to prevent the redskins from massacring the garrison of Oswego,but it was as much as he could do, and it will be ten times asdifficult, now that their blood is up with this week of hard fighting,and the loss of many of their warriors. Anyhow, I am glad I am out ofit, even if the bigwigs consider we had no right to leave the fort, andbreak us for it. I would rather lose my commission than run the risk ofbeing massacred in cold blood."
James agreed with him.
For two days, they continued their march through the forest, usingevery precaution against surprise. They saw, however, nothing of theenemy, and emerged from the forest, on the evening of the second day'smarch, at a distance of a few miles from Albany.
They had not reached that town many hours, when they learned that Nat'ssombre predictions had been fulfilled. The council of war in the fortagreed that further resistance was impossible, and Lieutenant ColonelYoung went out, with a white flag, to arrange the terms of surrenderwith Montcalm. It was agreed that the English troops should march out,with the honours of war, and be escorted to Fort Edward by a detachmentof French troops; that they should not serve for eighteen months; andthat all French prisoners captured in America, since the war began,should be given up within three months. The stores, ammunition, andartillery were to be handed over to the French, except one field piece,which the garrison were to be allowed to retain, in recognition oftheir brave defence.
Before signing the capitulation, Montcalm summoned the Indian chiefsbefore him, and asked them to consent to the conditions, and torestrain their young braves from any disorder. They gave theirapproval, and promised to maintain order.
The garrison then evacuated the fort, and marched to join theircomrades in the intrenched camp. No sooner had they moved out, than acrowd of Indians rushed into the fort through the breach andembrasures, and butchered all the wounded who had been left behind tobe cared for by the French. Having committed this atrocity the Indians,and many of the Canadians, rushed up to the intrenched camp, where theEnglish were now collected. The French guards, who had been stationedthere, did nothing to keep them out; and they wandered about,threatening and insulting the terrified women, telling the men thateveryone should be massacred, and plundering the baggage.
Montcalm did his best, by entreaty, to restrain the Indians, but hetook no steps w
hatever to give effectual protection to the prisoners,and that he did not do so will remain an ineffaceable blot upon hisfame. Seeing the disposition of the redskins, he should have ordered upall the regular French troops, and marched the English garrison undertheir protection to Fort Edward, in accordance with the terms ofsurrender; and he should have allowed the English troops to again filltheir pouches with cartridge, by which means they would have been ableto fight in their own defence.
The next morning, the English marched at daybreak. Seventeen woundedmen were left behind in the huts, having been, in accordance with theagreement, handed over to the charge of a French surgeon; but as he wasnot there in the morning, the regimental surgeon, Miles Whitworth,remained with them attending to their wants. The French surgeon hadcaused special sentinels to be placed for their protection, but thesewere now removed, when they were needed most.
At five in the morning the Indians entered the huts, dragged out theinmates, tomahawked and scalped them before the eyes of Whitworth, andin the presence of La Corne and other Canadian officers, as well as ofa French guard stationed within forty feet of the spot--none of whom,as Whitworth declared on oath, did anything to protect the wounded men.
The Indians, in the meantime, had begun to plunder the baggage of thecolumn. Monro complained, to the officers of the French escort, thatthe terms of the capitulation were broken; but the only answer was thathe had better give up all the baggage to the Indians, to appease them.But it had no effect in restraining the passion of the Indians. Theyrushed upon the column, snatching caps, coats, and weapons from men andofficers, tomahawking all who resisted, and, seizing upon shriekingwomen and children, carried them away or murdered them on the spot. Arush was made upon the New Hampshire men, at the rear of the column,and eighty of them were killed or carried away.
The Canadian officers did nothing at all to try to assuage the fury ofthe Indians, and the officers of the Canadian detachment, which formedthe advance guard of the French escort, refused any protection to themen, telling them they had better take to the woods and shift forthemselves. Montcalm, and the principal French officers, did everythingshort of the only effectual step, namely, the ordering up of the Frenchregular troops to save the English. They ran about among the yellingIndians, imploring them to desist, but in vain.
Some seven or eight hundred of the English were seized and carried offby the savages, while some seventy or eighty were massacred on thespot. The column attempted no resistance. None had ammunition, and, ofthe colonial troops, very few were armed with bayonets. Had anyresistance been offered, there can be no doubt all would have beenmassacred by the Indians.
Many of the fugitives ran back to the fort, and took refuge there, andMontcalm recovered from the Indians more than four hundred of thosethey had carried off. These were all sent under a strong guard to FortEdward. The greater part of the survivors of the column dispersed intothe woods, and made their way in scattered parties to Fort Edward. Herecannon had been fired at intervals, to serve as a guide to thefugitives, but many, no doubt, perished in the woods. On the morningafter the massacre the Indians left in a body for Montreal, taking withthem two hundred prisoners, to be tortured and murdered on their returnto their villages.
Few events cast a deeper disgrace on the arms of France than thismassacre, committed in defiance of their pledged honour for the safetyof their prisoners, and in sight of four thousand French troops, not aman of whom was set in motion to prevent it. These facts are not takenonly from English sources, but from the letters of French officers, andfrom the journal of the Jesuit Roubaud, who was in charge of theChristianized Indians, who, according to his own account, were no lessferocious and cruel than the unconverted tribes. The number of thosewho perished in the massacre is uncertain. Captain Jonathan Carver, acolonial officer, puts the killed and captured at 1500. A Frenchwriter, whose work was published at Montreal, says that they were allkilled, except seven hundred who were captured; but this is, of course,a gross exaggeration. General Levis and Roubaud, who were certain tohave made the best of the matter, acknowledged that they saw some fiftycorpses scattered on the ground, but this does not include thosemurdered in the fort and camp.
Probably the total number killed was about two hundred, and besidesthese must be counted the two hundred prisoners carried off to betortured by the Indians. The greater portion of these were purchasedfrom the Indians, in exchange for rum, by Vaudreuil, the governor atMontreal; but to the eternal disgrace of this man, he suffered many ofthem to be carried off, and did not even interfere when, publicly, inthe sight of the whole town, the Indians murdered some of theprisoners, and, not content with eating them themselves, forced theircomrades to partake of the flesh. Bougainville, one of theaides-de-camp of Montcalm, was present, and testified to the fact, andthe story is confirmed by the intendant Bigot, a friend of thegovernor.
The ferocity of the Indians cost them dear. They had dug up and scalpedthe corpses in the graveyard of Fort William Henry. Many of these haddied of smallpox, and the savages took the infection home to theirvillages, where great numbers perished of the disease.
As soon as their Indian allies had left, the French soldiers were setto work demolishing the English fort, and the operation was completedby the destruction, by fire, of the remains. The army then returned toCrown Point.
In view of the gross breach of the articles of capitulation by theFrench, the English government refused also to be bound by it, and theFrench prisoners in their hands were accordingly retained.
Colonel Monro himself was one of those who survived. He had made hisway through the savages back to the fort, to demand that the protectionof the French troops should be given to the soldiers, and so escapedthe massacre.
Upon his arrival at Albany, James reported, to the officer in commandthere, the reason which had induced him to quit the fort with hiscompany. These reasons were approved of, but the officer advised Jamesto send in a written report to General Webb, and to march at once toFort Edward, and place himself under that officer's directions.
When he reached the fort, the fugitives were coming in from the woods.James at once reported himself to the general, and handed in hiswritten statement. At the same time he gave his reasons, in a fewwords, for the course he had taken. Webb was far too much excited bythe news of the terrible events which had taken place, and for which,as he could not but be aware, he would be to some extent heldresponsible, by public opinion, for having refused to move to Monro'sassistance, to pay much attention to the young officer's statement.
"You were quite right, sir, quite right to carry off your command," hesaid hastily. "Thank God there are so many the fewer of his majesty'stroops sacrificed! You will please take your company out at once intothe woods. They are accustomed to the work, which is more than any ofmy troops here are. Divide them into four parties, and let them scourthe forest, and bring in such of the fugitives as they can find. Letthem take as much provisions and rum as they can carry, for many of thefugitives will be starving."
James executed his orders, and, during the next five days, sent in aconsiderable number of exhausted men, who, hopelessly lost in thewoods, must have perished unless they had been discovered by his party.
Had Montcalm marched direct upon Fort Edward, he could doubtless havecaptured it, for the fall of Fort William Henry had so scared Webb,that he would probably have retreated the moment he heard the news ofMontcalm's advance, although, within a day or two of the fall of thefort, many thousands of colonial militia had arrived. As soon, however,as it was known that Montcalm had retired, the militia, who werealtogether unsupplied with the means of keeping the field, returned totheir homes.
Loudon, on his way back from the unsuccessful expedition againstLouisbourg, received the news of the calamity at Fort William Henry. Hereturned too late to do anything to retrieve that disaster, anddetermined, in the spring, to take the offensive by attackingTiconderoga. This had been left, on the retirement of Montcalm, with asmall garrison commanded by Captain Hepecourt, who, durin
g the winter,was continually harassed by the corps of Captain Rogers, and JamesWalsham's scouts.
Toward the spring, receiving reinforcements, Hepecourt caught Rogersand a hundred and eighty men in an ambush, and killed almost all ofthem; Rogers himself, and some twenty or thirty men, alone escaping.
In the spring there was a fresh change of plans. The expedition againstTiconderoga was given up, as another attempt at Louisbourg was about tobe made. The English government were determined that the disastrousdelays, which had caused the failure of the last expedition, should notbe repeated. Loudon was recalled, and to General Abercromby, the secondin command, was intrusted the charge of the forces in the colonies.Colonel Amherst was raised to the rank of major general, and appointedto command the expedition from England against Louisbourg, having underhim Brigadier Generals Whitmore, Lawrence, and Wolfe. Before the winterwas ended two fleets put to sea: the one, under Admiral Boscawen, wasdestined for Louisbourg; while the other, under Admiral Osborne, sailedfor the Straits of Gibraltar, to intercept the French fleet of AdmiralLa Clue, which was about to sail from Toulon for America.
At the same time Sir Edward Hawke, with seven ships of the line andthree frigates, sailed for Rochefort, where a French squadron with afleet of transports, with troops for America, were lying.
The two latter expeditions were perfectly successful. Osborne preventedLa Clue from leaving the Mediterranean. Hawke drove the enemy's vesselsashore at Rochefort, and completely broke up the expedition. ThusCanada, at the critical period, when the English were preparing tostrike a great blow at her, was cut off from all assistance from themother country, and left to her own resources.
As before, Halifax was the spot where the troops from the colonies wereto meet the fleet from England, and the troops who came out under theirconvoy, and here, on the 28th of May, the whole expedition wascollected. The colonies had again been partially stripped of theirdefenders, and five hundred provincial rangers accompanied theregulars. James Walsham's corps was left for service on the frontier,while the regiments, to which they belonged, sailed with the forcedestined for the siege of Louisbourg.
This fortress stood, at the mouth of a land-locked bay, on the stormycoast of Cape Breton. Since the peace of Aix la Chapelle, vast sums hadbeen spent in repairing and strengthening it, and it was, by far, thestrongest fortress in English or French America. The circuit of itsfortifications was more than a mile and a half, and the town containedabout four thousand inhabitants. The garrison consisted of thebattalions of Artois, Bourgogne, Cambis, and Volontaires Etrangers,with two companies of artillery, and twenty-four of colonial troops; inall, three thousand and eighty men, besides officers. In the harbourlay five ships of the line and seven frigates, carrying five hundredand forty-four guns, and about three thousand men, and there were twohundred and nineteen cannons and seventeen mortars mounted on theramparts and outworks, and forty-four in reserve.
Of the outworks, the strongest were the grand battery at LighthousePoint, at the mouth of the harbour; and that on Goat Island, a rockyislet at its entrance. The strongest front of the works was on the landside, across the base of the triangular peninsula on which the townstood. This front, twelve hundred yards in extent, reached from thesea, on the left, to the harbour on the right, and consisted of fourstrong bastions with connecting works.
The best defence of Louisbourg, however, was the craggy shore, which,for leagues on either side, was accessible only at a few points, and,even there, a landing could only be effected with the greatestdifficulty. All these points were watched, for an English squadron, ofnine ships of war, had been cruising off the place, endeavouring toprevent supplies from arriving; but they had been so often blown off,by gales, that the French ships had been able to enter, and, on the 2ndof June, when the English expedition came in sight, more than a year'ssupply of provisions was stored up in the town.