USA > New York > Warren County > Warren county : a history and guide > Part 5
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Governor Hardy urged that Johnson push on and Goldsbrow Banyar warned the general that he should at least give the appearance of action to save the prestige already gained. Lieutenant Governor Phips wrote that the Massachusetts people would be greatly disappointed if the army failed to advance after large sums had been appropriated for reinforcements.
Ill with his wound, Johnson, on October 9, finally gave Lyman author- ity to call a council of war. That afternoon the council decided that the troops could not march. The forces in camp were not sufficient, a large enough stock of food was lacking, and provision wagons could not be spared to bring up boats from Fort Edward and ammunition from The Flats and from Half Moon.
On Sunday, October 12, a council of war, again presided over by Ly- man, reported that there were 3,600 men at Lake George, 500 at Fort Edward, and 2,500 recruits at Albany or on the march to camp. Of this number 700 were unfit for duty because of a shortage of tents, bedding, and heavy clothing. The council further held that there had been at no time more than a two-week supply of food, except meat, in camp, and
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that it was now becoming increasingly difficult to bring up provisions because of impassable roads, breaking down of wagons, and wearing out of horses. For these reasons they voted to notify the home governments that it was impracticable to proceed with the expedition.
Banyar, sympathizing with Johnson in these difficulties, commented sarcastically that "these are the blessed effects of that unbounded liberty we boast of and value ourselves for." As usual, and not wholly without reason, the Royalists, Tories, and army leaders blamed the delays of the democratic process and the dissensions among independent government agencies, unable to unite promptly in a common undertaking, as the reason for military ineffectiveness.
A third council of war on Sunday and Monday, October 19 and 20, presided over by Lyman, again voted that an advance was impossible. It was pointed out that the food was decreasing, the rivers rising, the roads growing worse, one-third of the men were sick because of the long en- campment, and 3,000 French were entrenched at Ticonderoga. In his report to the various governors, Johnson added another reason: the troops were homesick, tired of army life, ill-prepared for cold weather, and dis- inclined to proceed farther.
On October 29 Massachusetts appointed a commission to inquire into the conduct of Johnson's army. The following day the general proposed to a council of war that they attack the French outpost at Ticonderoga. The proposal was voted down. On the 31st, Connecticut requested that its troops be disbanded and sent home.
Meanwhile Governor Shirley had abandoned his expedition against Niagara and returned to Albany, where he had received a Crown commis- sion as commander in chief of His Majesty's Forces in North America. There, on November 7, Johnson sent him a report that the fort at Lake George, almost ready for garrison, had been named Fort William Henry, "after two of the Royal Family." Two days later he congratulated Shirley on his new office and asked to be relieved of his military command in order to devote himself to his duties as Superintendent of Indian Affairs, an office to which he had been appointed by Braddock. Shirley coldly re- fused to accept the resignation and it may here be noted that Johnson had received his military title from Shirley.
In the same dispatch the general advised Shirley that the Connecticut troops had learned of their government's desire to have them discharged, that they attempted to march from camp, complained that they had only a biscuit a day, half a pint of flour, and no sauce for their meat. They were restrained, he said, only by a promise that they would be discharged after 12 more days of work on the fort.
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As the cold rains of November fell on the ill-equipped camp, it settled into something near despair. The lack of sanitary regulations had long since made it a place of inexpressible filth. A fierce stench rose and spread above the conglomeration of huts and tents. Even with twentieth-century army sanitation, casualties from disease far exceed those from wounds in action, so it is not surprising that at Fort William Henry sickness increased till twelve or fifteen men were being buried every day.
The military road was abominable; work gangs were continually out to keep it in some repair. Recruits from Albany were posted by the ford at Old Saratoga to help the supply wagons across the rising Hudson. Wagon trains, hub-deep in mud, pushed through with such difficulty that at times only one day's supply of bread remained in camp. Men muttered against their officers, officers wrangled among themselves, leaders differed with Johnson, and Johnson bitingly condemned what he termed the "democratical fabric" of his army.
But the deadly stalemate continued. The only excitement in camp was a report by Indian scouts on November 11 that a force of French with "countless campfires" was advanced to the east side of Lake George. Those rising young military men, Captains Robert Rogers and Israel Putnam of the Rangers, went out on scout to prove the alarm groundless. Finally, on November 17, a council of officers from Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York, which met at Albany with Governor Hardy and Major General Shirley, recommended what amounted to an absolute order that Johnson "advance against the enemy." On November 21 and 22 John- son's field officers again voted in council that the state of the army was such that it could not proceed. In private they told the general that the men would flatly refuse to march if so ordered.
A council on November 24 and 25, attended by the commissioners from the several governments, who had journeyed to Lake George, ordered the troops discharged and the expedition abandoned. By agreement a quota from the regiments of each Colony would make up the garrison of 430 men for Fort William Henry and 320 for Fort Edward. Colonel Jonathan Bagly was left behind as commandant at the lake and Lieutenant Colonel Nathan Whiting at the post on the Hudson. They had detailed instruc- tions from Captain Eyre on how best to defend the new fortresses - irregular squares with bastioned corners, palisaded walls, and earth-filled ramparts enclosing frame barracks.
At Albany on December 2 Johnson wrote his final report to the Colo- nial Governors. The record proved, he asserted, that it would have been imprudent for his forces to advance and he maintained that the disap- pointment manifest in some governments was being "nursed and strength-
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ened" by members of his own army "from political and selfish motives." "Without wishing to insinuate my own consequences," he pointed out that a failure to defeat Dieskau would "not only have destroyed all our other military operations, have totally lost us all our remaining Indian allies, but have plunged these northern Colonies into the most calamitous situation and opened streams of blood in every vein." For meritorious service he named only the members of his official family, Wraxall, Eyre, and Glazier. On behalf of Major General Lyman, who carried the burden of the Battle of Lake George, he penned not a word. In concluding Johnson resigned his command.
That Shirley instructed Johnson to continue as Superintendent of In- dian Affairs was no indication that the breach between the two men was healed. In fact, Johnson's friends about this time succeeded in calling to the King's attention the interference of Shirley in the Indian department, his failure in the Niagara expedition, and his culpability in ordering the removal by Colonel Dunbar of Braddock's defeated veterans from Vir- ginia to Albany, thus permitting the Indian allies of the French to ravage the undefended frontier of Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York.
The events of the next few months proved that Johnson's campaign at the court of King George had been successful. In February word arrived that Johnson had been made a baronet; in April came news of a grant to him of 5,000 pounds by Parliament; in June he received a royal commis- sion as colonel of the Six Nations and sole superintendent of Indian affairs. At the same time Colonel Daniel Webb arrived with orders to supersede Shirley. It is small wonder that forever after Johnson was intensely hated by the embittered Shirley.
Plans were now pushed for the campaign of 1756. Webb was super- seded by Major General James Abercromby and His Lordship, the Earl of Loudoun, was placed in command over both. They constituted a trio of ineptitude in sharp contrast to Shirley, who, if headstrong and vain, was also energetic and zealous. Because of their timorousness and obstinacy in time of crisis, Webb and Abercromby showed themselves unequal to the difficult tasks imposed upon them. Because Loudoun trumpeted much, marched back and forth, frittered away his time with ineffectual activity, but never found time to make an attack, he earned general disapproval at Albany, Fort Edward, and Fort William Henry.
Before the arrival of his successors Shirley made plans to lead an expe- dition to reinforce Oswego and attack the French forts at Niagara, and to place Major General John Winslow of Boston at the head of another march against Crown Point. In June Abercromby removed Shirley from this command and in July Loudoun withdrew the Niagara expedition
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entirely. He ordered all efforts joined for the attack on Ticonderoga, where the French, laboring all winter after Johnson's failure to advance, had thrown up the fortress called Carillon. About this time, after a year of war, the mother countries gave formal recognition to the state of con- flict by formal declarations.
Slowly Loudoun's army gathered into camps at Albany, Fort Edward, and Fort William Henry. To protect his line of communications he built the blockhouse and stockaded enclosure at Halfway Brook, known as Seven Mile Post, located just north of the present city of Glens Falls on US 9. It soon became noted as a frontier stopping place and notorious as the site of bloody ambushes by the Canadian and Indian bushrangers. In June, July, and August these allies of France frequently raided the Eng- lish supply line, plundering wagon trains, slaughtering indiscriminately the guards, teamsters, and woman passengers. They practiced those fron- tier and border warfare tactics, used alike by Indians and white men on both sides, that made the military road across Warren County from the Hudson River to Lake George a "continuous scene of carnage."
By August, 10,000 Provincials had gathered for the storming of Ticon- deroga, with Colonel Lyman in command of the camp at Fort Edward and Colonel Bagly at Fort William Henry. Then the blow foreseen by Shirley fell. Montcalm in a rapid maneuver took Oswego, destroyed the British fort, and captured the garrison. Immediately he returned to Ticonderoga, bringing reinforcements released by the victory from the French posts on Lake Ontario. His army at Carillon swelled to upwards of 5,000 men.
The alarmed Loudoun ordered his army on the defensive. And so once more the grumbling Colonials settled down in the insanitary northern camps. There, with scant regard for cleanliness in the location of slaughter houses, graves, kitchens, and latrines the men died at the rate of a dozen or more each day. The only activity fell to Rogers, Putnam, Stark, and their Rangers, who scouted and harassed the enemy and did their best to protect the line of supply from the lightning thrusts of Canadians and Indians.
Montcalm did not advance; he was content to hold Carillon. Thus the armies remained, separated by the 32 miles of Lake George's primitive beauty, until winter ended all hope of action on a large scale.
Captain Robert Rogers and a hundred of his Rangers relieved the monotony of the winter camp in January. After making snowshoes for themselves, a party of 74 set off on January 17 to scout around Ticon- deroga. There they found more than they bargained for and in a disastrous snowshoe battle with the French and Indians they lost fourteen dead, six
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captured and six wounded, including Rogers, whose head was grazed by one bullet and his wrist broken by another. To be sure, the Rangers gave a good account of themselves in the fight, for the French admitted 37 casualties, but they brought home very little useful information. Rogers was laid up for the rest of the winter; while his wound was healing at Fort William Henry he contracted smallpox, which was decimating the garrison.
The campaign of 1757 was opened by the French attack on Fort William Henry in March. A detachment of 1,500 regulars, provincials, and Indians was sent to Fort Carillon under the command of Sieur de Rigaud de Vaudreuil, brother of the Governor of Canada. In mid-month, reinforced by another hundred men from the garrison, they advanced up the frozen surface of Lake George, which was free of snow, traveling light and carrying supplies and stores for twelve days on hundreds of hand sleds. On the night of March 18 they sought the cover afforded by the northern slopes of French Mountain, reached the head of the lake, and made their way through the darkness across the ice toward the fort's northern ramparts.
According to tradition, Rigaud hoped to catch the garrison still in their cups while they were celebrating St. Patrick's Day, but for that he was too late. At all events the 346 effective defenders, including John Stark and his scouts, were on the alert, and greeted the French with a burst of can- non fire. Having failed to surprise the garrison the French Provincials and Indians had no stomach for the kind of determined assault which, with their overwhelming superiority in numbers, should have been successful; and they did not use the hundreds of scaling ladders they had brought.
When le Mercier, chief of the Canadian artillery, whom they sent to parley with the British, returned with word that they would not consider surrender, but would hold the fort to the last man, the French merely besieged the fortress for five days, keeping well out of range and content- ing themselves with sallies to set fire to outbuildings and boats. On the 23rd they packed their remaining supplies, left a large number of sleds and five dead behind, and with derisive yells and futile volleys backtracked to Ticonderoga.
The English admitted the loss of only a few boats; the French claimed the destruction of "everything outside the fort, over 300 bateaux, 4 sloops, one of which was pierced for 16 guns, a sawmill, a great pile of building timber and firewood, two magazines full of provisions and mili- tary effects, and a little stockaded fort containing a dozen of houses or barracks to lodge the troops and their sick." Even at their own estimate the expedition was a poor bargain for the French. They had spent the
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King's money lavishly in equipping it with winter clothing and supplies and it was only the merchants and sutlers who profited.
After this attack on Fort William Henry, French scouts and scalping parties continued during the spring and summer to raid the English line of communications. At dawn, July 26, a force of French Indians suddenly darted from the Harbor Islands to surprise a detachment of 300 or 400 English, mostly recruits from New Jersey, commanded by Colonel John Parker, scouting down the lake from Fort William Henry. Only 12 sol- diers escaped; 131 were killed outright; of the rest who were taken captive some provided cannibal feasts for the red men there and at Montreal.
Despite these omens Loudoun continued to exhibit a genius for making the wrong move. In the early summer he concluded plans for an attack on Louisburg, the well-nigh impregnable French fortress in Nova Scotia. The outposts of the northern frontier, Fort Edward and Fort William Henry, were now exposed. It was an opportunity long awaited by the restless Montcalm. Once more, on the plateau of Ticonderoga, there gathered the regulars of La Reine, Languedoc, and other famous French regiments, this time to the number of about 3,000, together with Cana- dian militia and rangers totaling 2,500, and nearly 2,000 Indians.
On July 18, Montcalm arrived and within a fortnight all was in readi- ness. Although he detested the role he felt compelled to play, the gallant Marquis called the Indians together for a powwow to arouse them to the pitch of battle, joined in their deliberations, took part in their war dance, and made them his allies. Thus he considered it necessary to rear a monster that he knew was likely to get out of control and to bring bitter regret and remorse because of barbaric acts, for which he would be held responsible.
On July 30, Montcalm sent part of his troops under Levis along the west shore of Lake George, since there were not boats enough for the entire force. On August 1, the rest of the 7,500 men embarked in a great flotilla of birch bark canoes, bateaux and other craft propelled by paddle, oar, and sail. That night they saw three fires forming a triangle high up on a mountain top which signaled to Montcalm that Levis had arrived at the appointed rendezvous, half way down the lake. Two days later the whole force appeared before Fort William Henry.
Montcalm then called on the fort to surrender to avoid the horrors of capture by assault, when it might be impossible to restrain the Indians. Although he had but 2,200 men, 500 in the fort and 1,700 in the fortified camp constructed by Johnson two years before, the stout-hearted Scotch commandant, Colonel George Monro of the British 35th, scorned the demand. French guns then landed in Artillery Cove, 800 men went to work under cover of night digging trenches and parallels, and the next
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day thirty-three pieces of artillery began to blow the sand and log ram- parts to bits. Meanwhile the brilliant Levis took post with 3,000 men in the rear of the fort to help fight off any attempted sally and to support the noted partisan Sieur de Luc de la Corne, who, with a detachment of Cana- dians and Indians, had encamped directly across the Fort Edward road.
The distant booming of cannon told Major General Webb at Fort Edward, that Fort William Henry, only fourteen miles away, was still holding out. Loudoun had taken 4,000 of the best American troops in addition to his British Regulars on the futile expedition against Louisburg, leaving Webb in command with not much over 4,500 men in all. Webb had sent a thousand men to reinforce Monro, increasing the garrison to 2,200 just before the French arrived.
But he did not do as he apparently intended when at the end of July he asked the Governor of New York for reinforcements because the French were advancing. What he then wrote was: "I am determined to march to Fort William Henry with the whole army under my command as soon as I hear of the further approach of the enemy." Perhaps he really meant only to frighten the Governor into hastening the reinforcements for Fort Edward and the posts between it and Albany. Though they arrived with more speed than usual, Webb failed to use them.
Sir William Johnson had received word from Webb on August 1 of his urgent need for aid because of Montcalm's approach. He was in the midst of an important council with Cherokees and other Indians, and though it was harvest time and every man was needed on the farms, he quickly gathered his militia. Still suffering from the wound he had received two years since, he arrived at Fort Edward after a day and a half in the saddle. Since Webb showed no sign of doing anything, Johnson sought and gained permission to lead out Putnam's rangers and a mixed force of volunteers who were clamoring for action.
Hardly had they gotten out of sight of Fort Edward when Webb re- called them and instead dispatched a courier with a message for Monro. La Corne's Indians, who held the road outside Fort William Henry, killed the messenger, but the letter did eventually reach its destination. First it was brought to Montcalm who read that General Webb "does not think it prudent to attempt a junction or to assist you till reinforced by the militia of the colonies for the immediate march of which repeated ex- presses have been sent." It stated further that the French, in complete possession of the road between the forts, had very great strength in men and cannon, and advised Monro to come to terms with the enemy unless the militia arrived very soon.
A few days later, when the French cannon had half-destroyed the Brit- ish ramparts, Montcalm sent an officer with a flag of truce to deliver the
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letter to Monro. He was led blindfolded through the fort and returned under escort to the French lines. In his diary the French emissary, Bou- gainville, wrote, "He [Monro] returned many thanks for the courtesy of our nation, and protested his joy at having to do with so generous an enemy; this was his answer to Marquis de Montcalm . . . I hope Webb's letter may induce the English to surrender the sooner."
Once more the cannon blazed and thundered, the sappers worked their way to the swamp by the lake, a causeway of logs and brush was built, guns were hauled across, and the cannonade was renewed from the camp garden only 200 yards from the English defences. Indians concealed among the maize, beans, and cabbages watched in glee. Sorties from camp and fort had been repulsed, more than 300 of the defenders had been killed and wounded, and smallpox raged among the survivors. The large cannon had all burst and only seven small pieces were in action, when, on August 9 at a morning council of officers, it was decided to raise the white flag and ask for terms.
Lieutenant Colonel Young went to Montcalm's tent, where it was agreed that the English troops should march out with the honors of war, retaining one field piece as a token of their brave defense. All the remain- ing arms and stores were to go to the French, who would escort the surrendered garrison to Fort Edward. The men were to be under parole not to serve against France for eighteen months, and all French prisoners captured in America since the war began were to be released. Montcalm called in the Indian chiefs, who agreed to restrain their young braves.
No sooner had the disarmed garrison marched from the fort to the entrenched camp than the Indians came looking for scalps, rum, and other plunder. Sick men, unable to leave their beds, were butchered, and the French guards could not keep the bloodthirsty savages out of the English camp, where they terrified the many women and children by handling their long hair which would furnish highly prized scalps. Bougainville wrote, "At last, at nine o'clock in the evening order seemed restored. The Marquis even induced the Indians to promise that besides the escort agreed upon in the capitulation, two chiefs for each tribe should accompany. the English on their way to Fort Edward." At ten that evening Bougainville was on his way down Lake George with a message of victory to Montreal so that he did not see what ensued.
At dawn on August 10, the English, not without reason fearing the Canadians hardly less than the Indians, assembled before the arrival of their escort of 300 regulars. Montcalm would have done well to call out all his regulars as guards, since they alone could be depended upon. At five o'clock the Indians dragged seventeen wounded men from a hut where
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Miles Whitworth, an English surgeon, had tended them, and before his eyes, and without protest from La Corne, other Canadian officers, and a French guard who were present, tomahawked and scalped all of them.
On the advice of French officers, Monro let the Indians have the bag- gage to appease them, but it seemed only to make matters worse. Just how many were killed is not known with certainty, though Levis saw fifty corpses not counting the sick and wounded who had been slaughtered. Montcalm and his chief officers recovered more than 400 prisoners from the Indians that day but they carried off another 200 to Montreal. Some refugees drifted in stripped and exhausted to Fort Edward where canon were fired at intervals to guide them. Women, children, and others res- cued from the savages at Fort William Henry, were assembled at the intrenched camp, and on August 15 they were marched under guard to Fort Edward.
The British held that since the terms of the capitulation were broken, they were not bound by it, even though Montcalm and his chief officers had risked their lives in belated efforts to restore order. No doubt Bou- gainville expressed the feelings of his fellow officers, when he wrote, "Detestable position! of which nobody who has not been in it can have any idea, and which makes victory itself a sorrow to the victors." Even so it must be said that in failing to use all the means at his disposal for the protection of his helpless prisoners, Montcalm had gambled with the lives and safety of those to whom he had guaranteed safe conduct.
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