Montcalm and Wolfe — Chapter 13, Part 2

[Footnote 453: Compare Massachusetts Archives, LXXVI.

81. ] After much persuasion, much feasting, and much consumption of tobacco and brandy, four hundred Indians, Christians from the Missions and heathen from the far west, were persuaded to go on a grand war-party with the Canadians.

Of these last there were a hundred,--a wild crew, bedecked and bedaubed like their Indian companions.

Perière, an officer of colony regulars, had nominal command of the whole; and among the leaders of the Canadians was the famous bushfighter, Marin.

Bougainville was also of the party.

In the evening of the sixteenth they all embarked in canoes at the French advance-post commanded by Contrecoeur, near the present steamboat-landing, passed in the gloom under the bare steeps of Rogers Rock, paddled a few hours, landed on the west shore, and sent scouts to reconnoitre.

These came back with their reports on the next day, and an Indian crier called the chiefs to council.

Bougainville describes them as they stalked gravely to the place of meeting, wrapped in colored blankets, with lances in their hands.

The accomplished young aide-de-camp studied his strange companions with an interest not unmixed with disgust.

"Of all caprice," he says, "Indian caprice is the most capricious."

They were insolent to the French, made rules for them which they did not observe themselves, and compelled the whole party to move when and whither they pleased.

Hiding the canoes, and lying close in the forest by day, they all held their nocturnal course southward, by the lofty heights of Black Mountain, and among the islets of the Narrows, till the eighteenth.

That night the Indian scouts reported that they had seen the fires of an encampment on the west shore; on which the whole party advanced to the attack, an hour before dawn, filing silently under the dark arches of the forest, the Indians nearly naked, and streaked with their war-paint of vermilion and soot.

When they reached the spot they found only the smouldering fires of a deserted bivouac.

Then there was a consultation; ending, after much dispute, with the choice by the Indians of a hundred and ten of their most active warriors to attempt some stroke in the neighborhood of the English fort.

Marin joined them with thirty Canadians, and they set out on their errand; while the rest encamped to await the result.

At night the adventurers returned, raising the death-cry and firing their guns; somewhat depressed by losses they had suffered, but boasting that they had surprised fifty-three English, and killed or taken all but one.

It was a modest and perhaps an involuntary exaggeration.

"The very recital of the cruelties they committed on the battle-field is horrible," writes Bougainville.

"The ferocity and insolence of these black-souled barbarians makes one shudder.

It is an abominable kind of war.

The air one breathes is contagious of insensibility and hardness."

[454] This was but one of the many such parties sent out from Ticonderoga this year.

[Footnote 454: Bougainville, _Journal_.

] Early in September a band of New England rangers came to Winslow's camp, with three prisoners taken within the lines of Ticonderoga.

Their captain was Robert Rogers, of New Hampshire,--a strong, well-knit figure, in dress and appearance more woodsman than soldier, with a clear, bold eye, and features that would have been good but for the ungainly proportions of the nose.

[455] He had passed his boyhood in the rough surroundings of a frontier village.

Growing to manhood, he engaged in some occupation which, he says, led him to frequent journeyings in the wilderness between the French and English settlements, and gave him a good knowledge of both.

[456] It taught him also to speak a little French.

He does not disclose the nature of this mysterious employment;

but there can be little doubt that it was a smuggling trade with Canada.

His character leaves much to be desired.

He had been charged with forgery, or complicity in it, seems to have had no scruple in matters of business, and after the war was accused of treasonable dealings with the French and Spaniards in the west.

[457] He was ambitious and violent, yet able in more ways than one, by no means uneducated, and so skilled in woodcraft, so energetic and resolute, that his services were invaluable.

In recounting his own adventures, his style is direct, simple, without boasting, and to all appearance without exaggeration.

During the past summer he had raised a band of men, chiefly New Hampshire borderers, and made a series of daring excursions which gave him a prominent place in this hardy by-play of war.

In the spring of the present year he raised another company, and was commissioned as its captain, with his brother Richard as his first lieutenant, and the intrepid John Stark as his second.

In July still another company was formed, and Richard Rogers was promoted to command it.

Before the following spring there were seven such; and more were afterwards added, forming a battalion dispersed on various service, but all under the orders of Robert Rogers, with the rank of major.

[458] These rangers wore a sort of woodland uniform, which varied in the different companies, and were armed with smooth-bore guns, loaded with buckshot, bullets, or sometimes both.

[Footnote 455: A large engraved portrait of him, nearly at full length, is before me, printed at London in 1776. ] [Footnote 456: Rogers, _Journals, Introduction_ (1765).

] [Footnote 457: _Provincial Papers of New Hampshire_, VI.

364. _Correspondence of Gage, 1766. N.

Y.

Col. Docs.

_, VII.

990. Caleb Stark, _Memoir and Correspondence of John Stark_, 386. ] [Footnote 458: Rogers, _Journals.

Report of the Adjutant-General of New Hampshire_ (1866), II.

158, 159. ] The best of them were commonly employed on Lake George; and nothing can surpass the adventurous hardihood of their lives.

Summer and winter, day and night, were alike to them.

Embarked in whaleboats or birch-canoes, they glided under the silent moon or in the languid glare of a breathless August day, when islands floated in dreamy haze, and the hot air was thick with odors of the pine; or in the bright October, when the jay screamed from the woods, squirrels gathered their winter hoard, and congregated blackbirds chattered farewell to their summer haunts; when gay mountains basked in light, maples dropped leaves of rustling gold, sumachs glowed like rubies under the dark green of the unchanging spruce, and mossed rocks with all their painted plumage lay double in the watery mirror: that festal evening of the year, when jocund Nature disrobes herself, to wake again refreshed in the joy of her undying spring.

Or, in the tomb-like silence of the winter forest, with breath frozen on his beard, the ranger strode on snow-shoes over the spotless drifts; and, like Dürer's knight, a ghastly death stalked ever at his side.

There were those among them for whom this stern life had a fascination that made all other existence tame.

Rogers and his men had been in active movement since midwinter.

In January they skated down Lake George, passed Ticonderoga, hid themselves by the forest-road between that post and Crown Point, intercepted two sledges loaded with provisions, and carried the drivers to Fort William Henry.

In February they climbed a hill near Crown Point and made a plan of the works; then lay in ambush by the road from the fort to the neighboring village, captured a prisoner, burned houses and barns, killed fifty cattle, and returned without loss.

At the end of the month they went again to Crown Point, burned more houses and barns, and reconnoitred Ticonderoga on the way back.

Such excursions were repeated throughout the spring and summer.

The reconnoissance of Ticonderoga and the catching of prisoners there for the sake of information were always capital objects.

The valley, four miles in extent, that lay between the foot of Lake George and the French fort, was at this time guarded by four distinct outposts or fortified camps.

Watched as it was at all points, and ranged incessantly by Indians in the employ of France, Rogers and his men knew every yard of the ground.

On a morning in May he lay in ambush with eleven followers on a path between the fort and the nearest camp.

A large body of soldiers passed; the rangers counted a hundred and eighteen, and lay close in their hiding-place.

Soon after came a party of twenty-two.

They fired on them, killed six, captured one, and escaped with him to Fort William Henry.

In October Rogers was passing with twenty men in two whaleboats through the seeming solitude of the Narrows when a voice called to them out of the woods.

It was that of Captain Shepherd, of the New Hampshire regiment, who had been captured two months before, and had lately made his escape.

He told them that the French had the fullest information of the numbers and movements of the English; that letters often reached them from within the English lines; and that Lydius, a Dutch trader at Albany, was their principal correspondent.

[459] Arriving at Ticonderoga, Rogers cautiously approached the fort, till, about noon, he saw a sentinel on the road leading thence to the woods.

Followed by five of his men, he walked directly towards him.

The man challenged, and Rogers answered in French.

Perplexed for a moment, the soldier suffered him to approach; till, seeing his mistake, he called out in amazement, "_Qui êtes vous_?"

"Rogers," was the answer; and the sentinel was seized, led in hot haste to the boats, and carried to the English fort, where he gave important information.

[Footnote 459: _Letter and Order Books of Winslow_.

"One Lydiass ...

whom we suspect for a French spy; he lives better than anybody, without any visible means, and his daughters have had often presents from Mr. Vaudreuil."

_Loudon_ (_to Fox?

_), _19 Aug.

1756_.

] An exploit of Rogers towards midsummer greatly perplexed the French.

He embarked at the end of June with fifty men in five whaleboats, made light and strong, expressly for this service, rowed about ten miles down Lake George, landed on the east side, carried the boats six miles over a gorge of the mountains, launched them again in South Bay, and rowed down the narrow prolongation of Lake Champlain under cover of darkness.

At dawn they were within six miles of Ticonderoga.

They landed, hid their boats, and lay close all day.

Embarking again in the evening, they rowed with muffled oars under the shadow of the eastern shore, and passed so close to the French fort that they heard the voices of the sentinels calling the watchword.

In the morning they had left it five miles behind.

Again they hid in the woods; and from their lurking-place saw bateaux passing, some northward, and some southward, along the narrow lake.

Crown Point was ten or twelve miles farther on.

They tried to pass it after nightfall, but the sky was too clear and the stars too bright; and as they lay hidden the next day, nearly a hundred boats passed before them on the way to Ticonderoga.

Some other boats which appeared about noon landed near them, and they watched the soldiers at dinner, within a musket-shot of their lurking-place.

The next night was more favorable.

They embarked at nine in the evening, passed Crown Point unseen, and hid themselves as before, ten miles below.

It was the seventh of July.

Thirty boats and a schooner passed them, returning towards Canada.

On the next night they rowed fifteen miles farther, and then sent men to reconnoitre, who reported a schooner at anchor about a mile off.

They were preparing to board her, when two sloops appeared, coming up the lake at but a short distance from the land.

They gave them a volley, and called on them to surrender; but the crews put off in boats and made for the opposite shore.

They followed and seized them.

Out of twelve men their fire had killed three and wounded two, one of whom, says Rogers in his report, "could not march, therefore we put an end to him, to prevent discovery."

[460] They sank the vessels, which were laden with wine, brandy, and flour, hid their boats on the west shore, and returned on foot with their prisoners.

[461] [Footnote 460: _Report of Rogers to Sir William Johnson, July, 1756. _ This incident is suppressed in the printed _Journals_, which merely say that the man "soon died."

] [Footnote 461: _Rogers, Journals, 20. Shirley to Fox, 26 July, 1756. _ "This afternoon Capt. Rogers came down with 4 scalps and 8 prisoners which he took on Lake Champlain, between 20 and 30 miles beyond Crown Point."

_Surgeon Williams to his Wife, 16 July_, 1756. ] Some weeks after, Rogers returned to the place where he had left the boats, embarked in them, reconnoitred the lake nearly to St. John, hid them again eight miles north of Crown Point, took three prisoners near that post, and carried them to Fort William Henry.

In the next month the French found several English boats in a small cove north of Crown Point.

Bougainville propounds five different hypotheses to account for their being there; and exploring parties were sent out in the vain attempt to find some water passage by which they could have reached the spot without passing under the guns of two French forts.

[462] [Footnote 462: Bougainville, _Journal_.

] The French, on their side, still kept their war-parties in motion, and Vaudreuil faithfully chronicled in his despatches every English scalp they brought in.

He believed in Indians, and sent them to Ticonderoga in numbers that were sometimes embarrassing.

Even Pottawattamies from Lake Michigan were prowling about Winslow's camp and silently killing his sentinels with arrows, while their "medicine men" remained at Ticonderoga practising sorcery and divination to aid the warriors or learn how it fared with them.

Bougainville writes in his Journal on the fifteenth of October: "Yesterday the old Pottawattamies who have stayed here 'made medicine' to get news of their brethren.

The lodge trembled, the sorcerer sweated drops of blood, and the devil came at last and told him that the warriors would come back with scalps and prisoners.

A

sorcerer in the medicine lodge is exactly like the Pythoness on the tripod or the witch Canidia invoking the shades."

The diviner was not wholly at fault.

Three days after, the warriors came back with a prisoner.

[463] [Footnote 463: This kind of divination was practised by Algonkin tribes from the earliest times.

] Till November, the hostile forces continued to watch each other from the opposite ends of Lake George.

Loudon repeated his orders to Winslow to keep the defensive, and wrote sarcastically to the Colonial Minister: "I think I shall be able to prevent the provincials doing anything very rash, without their having it in their power to talk in the language of this country that they could have taken all Canada if they had not been prevented by the King's servants."

Winslow tried to console himself for the failure of the campaign, and wrote in his odd English to Shirley: "Am sorry that this years' performance has not succeeded as was intended; have only to say I pushed things to the utmost of my power to have been sooner in motion, which was the only thing that should have carried us to Crown Point; and though I am sensible that we are doing our duty in acting on the defensive, yet it makes no _eclate_ [_sic_], and answers to little purpose in the eyes of my constituents."

On the first of the month the French began to move off towards Canada, and before many days Ticonderoga was left in the keeping of five or six companies.

[464] Winslow's men followed their example.

Major Eyre, with four hundred regulars, took possession of Fort William Henry, and the provincials marched for home, their ranks thinned by camp diseases and small-pox.

[465] In Canada the regulars were quartered on the inhabitants, who took the infliction as a matter of course.

In the English provinces the question was not so simple.

Most of the British troops were assigned to Philadelphia, New York, and Boston; and Loudon demanded free quarters for them, according to usage then prevailing in England during war.

Nor was the demand in itself unreasonable, seeing that the troops were sent over to fight the battles of the colonies.

In Philadelphia lodgings were given them in the public-houses, which, however, could not hold them all.

A long dispute followed between the Governor, who seconded Loudon's demand, and the Assembly, during which about half the soldiers lay on straw in outhouses and sheds till near midwinter, many sickening, and some dying from exposure.

Loudon grew furious, and threatened, if shelter were not provided, to send Webb with another regiment and billet the whole on the inhabitants; on which the Assembly yielded, and quarters were found.

[466] [Footnote 464: Bougainville, _Journal_.

Malartic, _Journal_.

] [Footnote 465: _Letter and Order Books of Winslow.

Winslow to Halifax, 30 Dec.

1756. _]