USA > New York > Warren County > Warren county : a history and guide > Part 4
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After a wrangle among his officers over the fortifications at Fort Ly- man, Johnson, at the head of a detachment of 1,500 men, a few Indians, and some field pieces, set forth on August 26 over the crude way opened to the Lake through dense forest without a single clearing. Toward evening two days later they arrived at beautiful Lake St. Sacrament and began the task of hewing down forest giants to make a camp. Before leaving the Carrying Place, Johnson, overriding objectors, had ordered Lyman to keep 300 men at work there building the fort, to set twenty- five men under a guard of the same number at the task of repairing the lake road, and then to send up the heavy artillery and baggage. The stores and the rest of the troops, however, were to remain at the Carrying Place until the stockaded encampment could be completed.
Indians to the number of about 200 led by the venerable Mohawk chief, King Hendrick, Johnson's close personal friend, reached the camp at Lake George on the 29th or 30th. The new arrivals brought the Indian contingent in camp to a mere 300, a disappointing number in view of the promises made at Johnson's Indian conference in June. Shirley's inter- ference, Braddock's defeat, and the Caughnawagas' declaration for the French, had seriously affected the Indians, always temperamental and easily swayed.
On September 1, 1755, the name Lake George made its first appearance on paper. Johnson's report to General Shirley on that day was headed
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"Camp at Lake George," and in the letter the General announced that "this lake which the French call Lake St. Sacrament, we have called Lake George."
Johnson complained bitterly of deserting wagoners and remarked that lack of transportation might retard his taking "post at Ticonderogue." Word from Lieutenant Governor Spencer Phips that 800 men were being raised by Massachusetts of whom some were already on their way to Albany, and from Governor Thomas Fitch that Connecticut was enlist- ing 2,000 men who would soon be ready to march, further complicated the problem of bringing up supplies.
An old feud between the governor and assembly of Pennsylvania pre- cluded aid from that quarter and caused Benjamin Franklin to write, "Thus, from petty, private considerations in particular Colonies, general public good is obstructed and prevented; which shows more and more the necessity of our proposed union." The New York assembly could not make up its mind promptly to vote another 400 men, and New Hampshire flatly refused further reinforcements. More than ever the harassed John- son fervently wished he were independent of governors and assemblies.
Nevertheless he pushed to completion his camp at Lake George. It occu- pied the summit of a slight rise and fronted on the road to the Carrying Place. In the rear lay the wide expanse of the Lake. On the right, at the foot of a steep declivity, lay a swamp with a hill beyond it. On that hill Johnson set 400 men to work clearing a site for a fortress. A few days after the first of September the camp expanded as Lyman marched in from the Carrying Place with the second division of the army. He left behind only the five companies of Yorkers under Colonel William Cock- croft and the Hampshires of Blanchard who were fighting among them- selves and neglecting work on the fort.
At Johnson's camp on Lake George also the Yorkers were mutinous. They demanded the pay due them and the General ordered it up, at the same time expressing himself impatiently on the subject of money and its uses in an "unhabited woods." It was not easy to keep sentries alert, and the inadequate wagon train became an even more serious problem when he ordered 200 bateaux brought up from the Carrying Place and expressed a determination to advance on Ticonderoga if the small enemy force re- ported there by his scouts was not augmented.
On September 7, Indian patrols dispatched toward Crown Point suddenly returned to camp with startling news which King Hendrick conveyed to a council of war. The French were marching in force from the direction of South Bay toward the English post at the Carrying Place. Johnson hurriedly sent two expresses to warn Blanchard. Guards were doubled and the men ordered to lie on their arms all night.
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About the time Braddock and his regiments left England, there had sailed from France a force of 3,000 French regulars under Baron Dieskau, an experienced veteran of the European campaigns of the great Marshal Saxe. When the papers of the dead Braddock, revealing plans of the expe- ditions of Johnson and Shirley, arrived in Quebec, Dieskau with his army was there. Promptly the Marquis de Vaudreuil, Governor of Canada, ordered the Baron to march southward and protect the Champlain Valley.
In August, Dieskau, with about 700 regulars, 1,600 Canadians and 700 Indians, arrived at Crown Point. Toward the latter part of the month he set off with most of this force in a long line of canoes that traveled swiftly down Lake Champlain to Ticonderoga. Here he camped and pressed his intractable Indians and their leader, Legardeur de Saint Pierre, to obtain information as to the whereabouts of Johnson.
On September 4 he was told that the main army of English were at Lake George and only 500 Colonials guarded the fort at the Great Carry- ing Place. Advised by his officers that the American farmers would not fight, Dieskau boldly divided his force to march southward with a more mobile unit of 216 regulars, 684 Canadians, and 600 Indians. Embarking their canoes on the ever narrowing southern arm of Lake Champlain, this detachment paddled to Two Rocks in the Great Marsh or Drowned Lands, where the lake was little wider than a brook.
On the 5th they advanced to the head of South Bay and encamped for the night. At dawn, Dieskau ordered each man to pack several days supply of food. Leaving their canoes and baggage, the force then set off through the dense wilderness to halt at noon "beyond the mountains," probably near old Fort Anne. Here, on the 7th, the Baron issued instruc- tions for a rapid advance and attack on Fort Lyman at nightfall. For guides and scouts he ordered into the van St. Pierre and his Indians, Hurons, Adirondacks, Abenakis, and Caughnawaga Iroquois, all painted for battle.
Schooled in European warfare, Dieskau possessed little knowledge of Indian ways. He did not know that his red allies had no intention of leading an advance on the fort. Facing cannon was never their idea of a good fight. Toward evening, the column broke out of the woods on John- son's military road near the Hudson, not at Fort Lyman, but at the foot of Sandy Hill. Dieskau raged at the Indians, and berated a country that" required the use of such intolerable allies. But the only result was a point blank refusal to attack Fort Lyman. Resignedly Dieskau ordered an encampment.
Then fate began to write history. Scouting French Indians shot and scalped at least one of Johnson's express riders galloping to warn Blanch-
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ard and carried his papers to their commander. A little later they inter- cepted a group of ten or twelve English wagoners who had chosen a bad moment to desert. Two were captured, the others raced back toward Lake George. About midnight they burst into camp and reported their encounter with the French. They had heard firing, they said, and a man "call on heaven for mercy." Johnson realized that the man must have been poor Adams, his messenger to Blanchard.
In the grey dawn Johnson's war council wanted to order out two de- tachments of 500 men each, one to South Bay to intercept the enemy if they retreated, the other to advance down the Military Road and relieve the unfinished fort at the Carrying Place. Wise old King Hendrick, insisting that this was folly, picked up a stick, broke it, and then showed that a bundle of sticks was stronger.
Heeding this good advice only in part, Johnson ordered the commands united under Colonel Ephraim Williams of Massachusetts and asked Hen- drick to accompany the Provincials with 200 of his Mohawks. Still protesting that "if they are to fight they are too few, if they are to die they are too many," the aged chief, too fat to go on foot, bowed to the wishes of his friend, who lent him a white horse. After he had harangued his followers before leading them to battle, the column marched from camp while it was still early morning.
Similar and almost simultaneous events were taking place in the French encampment beside the Hudson. Possessed of almost complete information on the strength of his foe by virtue of the captured wagoners, Dieskau in council, on the morning of September 8, demanded of his Indians that they join him in an attack on Johnson. "The more English there are, the more we shall kill," he boasted. The intrepid Baron well knew that the enemy outnumbered him but was allowing his contempt for the Colonial farmer-soldiers to sway his mind, adding another error to the one made when, in direct disobedience to Vaudreuil's orders, he had left most of his regulars behind on the plateau of Ticonderoga.
The Indians now agreed to accompany him. There would be scalps and plunder; and a camp, so they thought, would not have cannon. Eagerly Dieskau prepared to march. The regulars, in the center, would advance along the road; the Canadians and Indians were ordered to the flanks. It probably concerned the Baron little that this forced his troublesome allies to beat their way in broken ranks through the tangled brush and woods that lined the highway.
About ten o'clock in the morning the French approached a dark, wooded defile between the rugged ramparts of French Mountain on the right and the gradual slopes of West Mountain on the left. The column suddenly
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halted as advance scouts brought in a prisoner. An English detachment was marching south along the road. Dieskau issued quick commands. The Canadians and Indians, at their best in brush fighting, swiftly dis- appeared behind the rocks, trees, and thickets of the slopes on either side of the defile. The regulars were stationed at the rear to command the road. Then, as all movement ceased, silence settled over the ambush.
Colonel Williams, an Indian fighter of some experience, approached the trap, his troops in solid marching order, two abreast. Apparently unaware that the French were near he had ordered out neither scouts nor flankers. Only the presence of Hendrick and his Mohawks in the van saved the col- umn from utter annihilation. Dieskau's Iroquois could not resist warning their brother Mohawks. Before the English were well within the jaws of the semi-circle of death a few Caughnawagas fired a warning volley.
A withering burst followed from the regulars and Canadians. A shot brought down the weighty King Hendrick's conspicuous white horse, and a French bayonet put an end to the chief as he struggled to rise, while his Mohawks took to the woods. Williams bravely led a charge up the hill to the right, whence poured a heavy fire. Rashly he leaped upon a large rock to urge his men on and fell dead as a rifle ball pierced his brain.
British Colonials dropped on all sides, shot by an enemy they could not see. Panic seized them, the van dropped back, the rear pushed forward, rank folded upon rank, they broke, and the retreat became almost a rout.
Lieutenant Colonel Nathan Whiting, second in command, stormed and exhorted till finally the more courageous rallied. These began to use the tactics they knew best. Retreating from tree to tree and bush to bush, they poured a galling fire on the French. Men fell on all sides. Indians leaped in to tomahawk the wounded and scalp the dead.
Captain Solomon Keys, shot and dying, was placed beside a tree with a loaded rifle to kill himself as the Indians approached. Keeping him company in death were Major Noah Ashley, Captains Hawley, Porter, Ingersoll, Stoddard, Stevens, and Farrell, brother-in-law of Johnson, Lieutenants Cobb, Burt, Pomeroy, and others. More than 200 Colonials were killed or wounded. Neither did the French escape unscathed. Among their officer dead was Legardeur St. Pierre, who had commanded at Fort le Boeuf in the Ohio country at the time Washington traveled there on a mission for Governor Robert Dinwiddie.
As the ominous sound of slaughter came nearer and nearer to his camp, Johnson hurriedly ordered a sortie by Colonel Edward Cole and 300 men to relieve the pressure on the beleaguered Provincials. Covered by Cole's well-directed fire, the beaten detachment streamed into camp at about
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eleven o'clock, and the so-called Bloody Morning Scout, prelude to the main battle, was over.
Actually Colonel Williams led no mere scouting party. It was a fight- ing detachment of 1,000 soldiers and 200 Indians sent to the relief of Blanchard at Fort Lyman, which Dieskau had intended to attack first. Though the fight lasted but one brief hour, it cost Johnson and his Indians their heaviest casualties.
A half hour later the emboldened Dieskau, as if on parade, marched his column directly up the road against the English encampment. The regu- lars, bayonets gleaming in the sun, held the center. The Canadians filtered into the woods right and left, the Indians in support. Halting just within gunshot range and firing by platoons in their best European manner, the veterans opened the attack. The Canadians and Indians advanced behind the cover of trees, which extended to the barricade of logs, wagons, and bateaux thrown up around the camp.
Johnson's Provincials, their first panic over as Dieskau failed to press an immediate attack, returned the French fire volley for volley. Though untrained in military tactics, they were dead shots with their long hunting rifles. Captain Eyre now joined the din, throwing grapeshot from the three large cannon at the front of the camp on the regulars exposed in the road. At the same time he ordered the six field pieces posted on the hill to the left to open up on the Canadian militia and redskins among the trees. The reserve corps, aided by two brass field pieces, blazed away whenever an attempt was made to rush the camp from the right, where swamp and lake made attack less easy.
Through the long afternoon the battle raged, its fury abated for brief intervals only. Johnson received a painful flesh wound in the leg early in the engagement. Retiring to his tent, he turned over the command to General Lyman, who carried on with courage and energy. Though he also took chances with his life at the barricade, he escaped injury.
Dieskau knew well enough that his best opportunity had been at the moment of the first assault, while the untrained defenders were waver- ing. He had indeed thrown in his disciplined regulars, but they were not enough, and he could not control his Canadians and Indians at the critical juncture. Recklessly exposing himself close to the British line in order to urge the Canadians and Indians to a flank attack, he was wounded in the leg.
While his adjutant, Montreuil, also injured, was cleansing Dieskau's wound with brandy, the general was hit again in the knee and thigh. Leaving the thrice-wounded commander seated behind a tree, Montreuil
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brought two Canadians to carry him to safety. One of them was shot down, and Dieskau, refusing to let his adjutant leave the battle to help him, ordered Montreuil to lead the regulars in another attack.
The grenadiers of La Reine and Languedoc fought stubbornly, their ranks decimated by grape and rifle shot. They received little support, however, for the Canadians and Indians had no stomach for steady cannon fire. Dieskau's mistake in leaving two-thirds of his regulars behind, his rash overconfidence, and his underestimate of the fighting ability of the American soldiers, were bringing their tragic consequences.
It was after four o'clock when the French regulars, abandoning the frontal assault, led a last ditch charge on the right. They were nearly shot to pieces by the steady fire of the regiments of Colonels Titcomb, the late Williams, and Timothy Ruggles. Bolder spirits among the Colonials even jumped the barricade and fought the enemy from behind trees. Leading his men in this type of fighting, rifle in hand, Colonel Moses Titcomb, next in rank to Lyman, was killed. As the French fire wavered and slackened, Lyman ordered a charge. With a yell the English Colon- ists leaped the breastworks and drove the enemy before them with clubbed rifle and hatchet.
Dieskau, helpless with his wounds, saw a musket aimed at him. Though he made a sign not to shoot, a bullet plowed through his hips and the soldier who had fired it, leaping upon him, ordered him in French to sur- render. Dieskau's own account as quoted by Parkman from a document in the French Archives de la Guerre follows:
I said, "You rascal, why did you fire? You see a man lying in his blood on the ground and you shoot him!"
He answered, "How did I know you had not got a pistol? I had rather kill the devil than have the devil kill me."
"You are a Frenchman?" I asked.
"Yes," he replies; "it is more than ten years since I left Canada;" whereupon several others fell on me and stripped me.
I told them to carry me to their general, which they did. On learning who I was, he sent for surgeons, and, though wounded himself, refused all assistance till my wounds were dressed.
Johnson had no easy task in protecting his wounded foe from the fury of his Mohawk allies, enraged because of their losses in the morning am- bush, and especially at the death of their beloved chief, King Hendrick. Bursting into the tent where both the rival commanders lay wounded, they disputed angrily with Johnson in their own language.
To Dieskau's query, the British general replied, "What do they want? To burn you, by God, eat you, and smoke you in their pipes in revenge
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for three or four of their chiefs that were killed. But never fear; you shall be safe with me, or else they shall kill us both."
Again they returned, and though they finally calmed down, and, seem- ingly appeased, smiled and shook hands with Dieskau in token of friend- ship, Johnson warned him that there was still serious danger. Not wishing to embarrass his gallant host, the Frenchman asked to be moved to another tent, where Johnson posted a captain with fifty men to guard him. Even so, an Indian with a concealed sword slipped past the sentinel next morn- ing and was prevented from stabbing Dieskau only by quick action on the part of the colonel to whom the tent belonged. This officer wrested the sword from the intruder and pushed him out.
It is small wonder that when Montcalm, two years later, won a hard- fought victory at this spot, he was unable to restrain his more numerous Indian allies or to give his prisoners the protection promised them in the terms of surrender. It was perhaps the severest test of Johnson's strength of character and his influence over the Mohawks, as well as the highest tribute to his honor as a gentleman and a soldier, that he succeeded in protecting his fallen foe. When Dieskau's wounds were sufficiently healed Johnson sent him with an armed escort via Fort Lyman and Albany to New York. Though he sailed for England in the spring, the Baron never fully recovered from his wounds.
After the final assault by the French had been repulsed and the defend- ers of the British camp had begun to relieve the wounded and count their dead, the rattle of musketry to the south was heard as the third episode of the Battle of Lake George was staged. In the morning an Indian runner had arrived at Fort Edward with news that a wagon train dispatched to Lake George had been ambushed and captured. Blanchard sent out scouts to reconnoiter, These soon returned to report the rattle of musketry toward the lake. Blanchard increased the force to 260 men under Captain Robert McGinnis and ordered it to the aid of Johnson.
Toward evening they arrived on the battleground of the Bloody Morn- ing Scout. Coming upon the French baggage the detail moved forward cautiously and surprised 300 Canadians and Indians who had deserted the battle to rob and scalp the dead. Their ghoulish work completed, they were resting beside a "piece of standing water near the road."
The first fire of the colonists did terrible execution, but the survivors resisted fiercely. Mortally wounded, Captain McGinnis continued to direct his men till they had won, when he fainted. His second in com- mand, Folsom, was also wounded. Baron Longueil, leader of the Canadians and Indians, received a fatal injury, and few of the men in his command escaped. The bodies were cast into the pool and their blood dyed the waters red; this pool is still called Bloody Pond.
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Moving on, McGinnis' detachment reached the camp in time to assist in the final rout of the French. Under cover of darkness Chevalier de Montreuil, second in command to Dieskau, rallied his shattered forces behind French Mountain on the shore of Glen Lake, camped for the night, and retreated across country to his canoes at South Bay. The French losses probably totaled 400, though they reported only 228, while Johnson re- ported a loss of 262 killed, wounded, and missing.
The successful defenders did not pursue. Wraxall was busy penning Johnson's reports of success to the Colonial governors and to the English ministry, while the commander in chief himself was nursing his wound and protecting the French general from the wrath of the Indians. Park- man says that Major General Lyman later urged Johnson to advance on Ticonderoga, but the record of a council of war held the day after the bat- tle shows Lyman joining the other field officers in a unanimous vote to em- ploy "all our time in securing ourselves here in the best manner possible."
Shirley and the Colonial governors urged an advance, but Johnson argued that his men were too exhausted and battered, that he had only 1,800 or 1,900 effectives, that the strength of the French was unknown, and that he had an insufficient number of wagons to bring up provisions and bateaux. Aside from all this, he suffered considerably from his wound and was able to maintain only a surface harmony with his leading field officers, including Lyman. He was also deserted by his red allies who, having suffered a loss of 60 killed and wounded, went home to mourn.
Thus the opportunity to cut off the French retreat by destroying their canoes at South Bay was lost, and not till a week later was Johnson able to send a scouting party to Ticonderoga to learn the strength of the French forces. Then he wrote, "I think we may expect shortly a more formidable attack." As reinforcements arrived he set them to work rais- ing a solid breastwork to defend the camp and building a fort on the rising ground beside the Lake. Within two weeks after the battle the French behind their entrenchments at Ticonderoga were able to defy him,
So the army settled down in camp, drank copious quantities of rum, and daily grew more discontented. Johnson urged that a strong fort be built on the hill across the swamp but his council of war voted for a picketed stockade only, saying that the troops would do no digging. The general took the matter to the governors and in a letter to Captain Robert Orme, Braddock's aide-de-camp, asserted he would have his fort in spite of "the obstinacy and ignorance of these officers by whose advice I am obliged to regulate my proceedings."
On September 15 Johnson, fearing a new attack, demanded that the mayor and the magistrates of Albany impress every horse and wagon in the county to bring up provisions and stores, arrest any persons hiding
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their conveyances, and punish those wagoners who had already deserted his army. Thirty French prisoners, including Baron Dieskau and his aide- de-camp, were sent to Albany on the 16th. On the 21st Johnson ordered Cockcroft to be about the business of finishing the fort on the Hudson despite quarrels between Connecticut troops and Yorkers. He proclaimed that its name would be Fort Edward, "in honor of the second Prince of the Blood." Toward the end of September a shortage of rum, meat, and bread caused Johnson to order that no further reinforcements be sent up from Albany.
In camp at Lake George, discontent and sickness increased. A rumor spread that the army could advance but that the wounded Johnson would not turn over the command to Lyman. There was another story that the general was forced to place his friend Eyre in irons because the artillery officer had fired over the heads of the French during the battle. Finally Johnson had his field officers in council on September 29 acknowledge the falsity of these back-fence tales. The same council, after hearing a request from Sir Charles Hardy, the new governor of New York, for a strong fort at Lake George, voted to detach 700 men from all other duty to build one.
September drifted into October and the army unwillingly settled deeper into camp. Wraxall went to Albany to report direct to Hardy on insub- ordination, differences of opinion between Johnson and field officers, and shortage of wagons. At the same time Johnson added a new member to his official family - Captain Beamsley Glazier.
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