Montcalm and Wolfe — Chapter 13, Part 3
[Footnote 466: _Loudon to Denny, 28 Oct.
1756. Colonial Records of Pa_.
, VII.
358-380. _Loudon to Pitt, 10 March, 1757. Notice of Colonel Bouquet_, in _Pennsylvania Magazine_, III.
124. _The Conduct of a Noble Commander in America impartially reviewed_ (1758).
] In New York the privates were quartered in barracks, but the officers were left to find lodging for themselves.
Loudon demanded that provision should be made for them also.
The city council hesitated, afraid of incensing the people if they complied.
Cruger, the mayor, came to remonstrate.
"God damn my blood!"
replied the Earl; "if you do not billet my officers upon free quarters this day, I'll order here all the troops in North America, and billet them myself upon this city."
Being no respecter of persons, at least in the provinces, he began with Oliver Delancey, brother of the late acting Governor, and sent six soldiers to lodge under his roof.
Delancey swore at the unwelcome guests, on which Loudon sent him six more.
A subscription was then raised among the citizens, and the required quarters were provided.
[467] In Boston there was for the present less trouble.
The troops were lodged in the barracks of Castle William, and furnished with blankets, cooking utensils, and other necessaries.
[468] [Footnote 467: Smith, _Hist.
of N. Y.
_, Part II.
242. _William Carry to Johnson, 15 Jan.
1757_, in Stone, _Life of Sir William Johnson_, II.
24, _note.
Loudon to Hardy, 21 Nov.
1756. _] [Footnote 468: Massachusetts Archives, LXXVI.
153. ] Major Eyre and his soldiers, in their wilderness exile by the borders of Lake George, whiled the winter away with few other excitements than the evening howl of wolves from the frozen mountains, or some nocturnal savage shooting at a sentinel from behind a stump on the moonlit fields of snow.
A livelier incident at last broke the monotony of their lives.
In the middle of January Rogers came with his rangers from Fort Edward, bound on a scouting party towards Crown Point.
They spent two days at Fort William Henry in making snow-shoes and other preparation, and set out on the seventeenth.
Captain Spikeman was second in command, with Lieutenants Stark and Kennedy, several other subalterns, and two gentlemen volunteers enamoured of adventure.
They marched down the frozen lake and encamped at the Narrows.
Some of them, unaccustomed to snow-shoes, had become unfit for travel, and were sent back, thus reducing the number to seventy-four.
In the morning they marched again, by icicled rocks and ice-bound waterfalls, mountains gray with naked woods and fir-trees bowed down with snow.
On the nineteenth they reached the west shore, about four miles south of Rogers Rock, marched west of north eight miles, and bivouacked among the mountains.
On the next morning they changed their course, marched east of north all day, passed Ticonderoga undiscovered, and stopped at night some five miles beyond it.
The weather was changing, and rain was coming on.
They scraped away the snow with their snow-shoes, piled in it a bank around them, made beds of spruce-boughs, built fires, and lay down to sleep, while the sentinels kept watch in the outer gloom.
In the morning there was a drizzling rain, and the softened snow stuck to their snow-shoes.
They marched eastward three miles through the dripping forest, til they reached the banks of Lake Champlain, near what is now called Five Mile Point, and presently saw a sledge, drawn by horses, moving on the ice from Ticonderoga towards Crown Point.
Rogers sent Stark along the shore to the left to head it off, while he with another party, covered by the woods, moved in the opposite direction to stop its retreat.
He soon saw eight or ten more sledges following the first, and sent a messenger to prevent Stark from showing himself too soon; but Stark was already on the ice.
All the sledges turned back in hot haste.
The rangers ran in pursuit and captured three of them, with seven men and six horses, while the rest escaped to Ticonderoga.
The prisoners, being separately examined, told an ominous tale.
There were three hundred and fifty regulars at Ticonderoga; two hundred Canadians and forty-five Indians had lately arrived there, and more Indians were expected that evening,--all destined to waylay the communications between the English forts, and all prepared to march at a moment's notice.
The rangers were now in great peril.
The fugitives would give warning of their presence, and the French and Indians, in overwhelming force, would no doubt cut off their retreat.
Rogers at once ordered his men to return to their last night's encampment, rekindle the fires, and dry their guns, which were wet by the rain of the morning.
Then they marched southward in single file through the snow-encumbered forest, Rogers and Kennedy in the front, Spikeman in the centre, and Stark in the rear.
In this order they moved on over broken and difficult ground till two in the afternoon, when they came upon a valley, or hollow, scarcely a musket-shot wide, which ran across their line of march, and, like all the rest of the country, was buried in thick woods.
The front of the line had descended the first hill, and was mounting that on the farther side, when the foremost men heard a low clicking sound, like the cocking of a great number of guns;
and in an instant a furious volley blazed out of the bushes on the ridge above them.
Kennedy was killed outright, as also was Gardner, one of the volunteers.
Rogers was grazed in the head by a bullet, and others were disabled or hurt.
The rest returned the fire, while a swarm of French and Indians rushed upon them from the ridge and the slopes on either hand, killing several more, Spikeman among the rest, and capturing others.
The rangers fell back across the hollow and regained the hill they had just descended.
Stark with the rear, who were at the top when the fray began, now kept the assailants in check by a brisk fire till their comrades joined them.
Then the whole party, spreading themselves among the trees that covered the declivity, stubbornly held their ground and beat back the French in repeated attempts to dislodge them.
As the assailants were more than two to one, what Rogers had most to dread was a movement to outflank him and get into his rear.
This they tried twice, and were twice repulsed by a party held in reserve for the purpose.
The fight lasted several hours, during which there was much talk between the combatants.
The French called out that it was a pity so many brave men should be lost, that large reinforcements were expected every moment, and that the rangers would then be cut to pieces without mercy; whereas if they surrendered at once they should be treated with the utmost kindness.
They called to Rogers by name, and expressed great esteem for him.
Neither threats nor promises had any effect, and the firing went on till darkness stopped it.
Towards evening Rogers was shot through the wrist; and one of the men, John Shute, used to tell in his old age how he saw another ranger trying to bind the captain's wound with the ribbon of his own queue.
As Ticonderoga was but three miles off, it was destruction to stay where they were; and they withdrew under cover of night, reduced to forty-eight effective and six wounded men.
Fourteen had been killed, and six captured.
Those that were left reached Lake George in the morning, and Stark, with two followers, pushed on in advance to bring a sledge for the wounded.
The rest made their way to the Narrows, where they encamped, and presently descried a small dark object on the ice far behind them.
It proved to be one of their own number, Sergeant Joshua Martin, who had received a severe wound in the fight, and was left for dead; but by desperate efforts had followed on their tracks, and was now brought to camp in a state of exhaustion.
He recovered, and lived to an advanced age.
The sledge sent by Stark came in the morning, and the whole party soon reached the fort.
Abercromby, on hearing of the affair, sent them a letter of thanks for gallant conduct.
Rogers reckons the number of his assailants at about two hundred and fifty in all.
Vaudreuil says that they consisted of eighty-nine regulars and ninety Canadians and Indians.
With his usual boastful exaggeration, he declares that forty English were left dead on the field, and that only three reached Fort William Henry alive.
He says that the fight was extremely hot and obstinate, and admits that the French lost thirty-seven killed and wounded.
Rogers makes the number much greater.
That it was considerable is certain, as Lusignan, commandant at Ticonderoga, wrote immediately for reinforcements.
[469] [Footnote 469: Rogers, _Journals_, 38-44. Caleb Stark, _Memoir and Correspondence of John Stark_, 18, 412. _Return of Killed, Wounded, and Missing in the Action near Ticonderoga, Jan.
1757_; all the names are here given.
James Abercromby, aide-de-camp to his uncle, General Abercromby, wrote to Rogers from Albany: "You cannot imagine how all ranks of people here are pleased with your conduct and your men's behavior."
The accounts of the French writers differ from each other, but agree in placing the English force at from seventy to eighty, and their own much higher.
The principal report is that of _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 19 Avril, 1757_ (his second letter of this date).
Bougainville, Montcalm, Malartic, and Montreuil all speak of the affair, placing the English loss much higher than is shown by the returns.
The story, repeated in most of the French narratives, that only three of the rangers reached Fort William Henry, seems to have arisen from the fact that Stark with two men went thither in advance of the rest.
As regards the antecedents of the combat, the French and English accounts agree.
] The effects of his wound and an attack of small-pox kept Rogers quiet for a time.
Meanwhile the winter dragged slowly away, and the ice of Lake George, cracking with change of temperature, uttered its strange cry of agony, heralding that dismal season when winter begins to relax its grip, but spring still holds aloof; when the sap stirs in the sugar-maples, but the buds refuse to swell, and even the catkins of the willows will not burst their brown integuments; when the forest is patched with snow, though on its sunny slopes one hears in the stillness the whisper of trickling waters that ooze from the half-thawed soil and saturated beds of fallen leaves; when clouds hang low on the darkened mountains, and cold mists entangle themselves in the tops of the pines;
now a dull rain, now a sharp morning frost, and now a storm of snow powdering the waste, and wrapping it again in the pall of winter.
In this cheerless season, on St. Patrick's Day, the seventeenth of March, the Irish soldiers who formed a part of the garrison of Fort William Henry were paying homage to their patron saint in libations of heretic rum, the product of New England stills; and it is said that John Stark's rangers forgot theological differences in their zeal to share the festivity.
The story adds that they were restrained by their commander, and that their enforced sobriety proved the saving of the fort.
This may be doubted; for without counting the English soldiers of the garrison who had no special call to be drunk that day, the fort was in no danger till twenty-four hours after, when the revellers had had time to rally from their pious carouse.
Whether rangers or British soldiers, it is certain that watchmen were on the alert during the night between the eighteenth and nineteenth, and that towards one in the morning they heard a sound of axes far down the lake, followed by the faint glow of a distant fire.
The inference was plain, that an enemy was there, and that the necessity of warming himself had overcome his caution.
Then all was still for some two hours, when, listening in the pitchy darkness, the watchers heard the footsteps of a great body of men approaching on the ice, which at the time was bare of snow.
The garrison were at their posts, and all the cannon on the side towards the lake vomited grape and round-shot in the direction of the sound, which thereafter was heard no more.
Those who made it were a detachment, called by Vaudreuil an army, sent by him to seize the English fort.
Shirley had planned a similar stroke against Ticonderoga a year before; but the provincial levies had come in so slowly, and the ice had broken up so soon, that the scheme was abandoned.
Vaudreuil was more fortunate.
The whole force, regulars, Canadians, and Indians, was ready to his hand.
No pains were spared in equipping them.
Overcoats, blankets, bear-skins to sleep on, tarpaulins to sleep under, spare moccasons, spare mittens, kettles, axes, needles, awls, flint and steel, and many miscellaneous articles were provided, to be dragged by the men on light Indian sledges, along with provisions for twelve days.
The cost of the expedition is set at a million francs, answering to more than as many dollars of the present time.
To the disgust of the officers from France, the Governor named his brother Rigaud for the chief command; and before the end of February the whole party was on its march along the ice of Lake Champlain.
They rested nearly a week at Ticonderoga, where no less than three hundred short scaling-ladders, so constructed that two or more could be joined in one, had been made for them; and here, too, they received a reinforcement, which raised their number to sixteen hundred.
Then, marching three days along Lake George, they neared the fort on the evening of the eighteenth, and prepared for a general assault before daybreak.
The garrison, including rangers, consisted of three hundred and forty-six effective men.
[470] The fort was not strong, and a resolute assault by numbers so superior must, it seems, have overpowered the defenders; but the Canadians and Indians who composed most of the attacking force were not suited for such work; and, disappointed in his hope of a surprise, Rigaud withdrew them at daybreak, after trying in vain to burn the buildings outside.
A few hours after, the whole body reappeared, filing off to surround the fort, on which they kept up a brisk but harmless fire of musketry.
In the night they were heard again on the ice, approaching as if for an assault; and the cannon, firing towards the sound, again drove them back.
There was silence for a while, till tongues of flame lighted up the gloom, and two sloops, ice-bound in the lake, and a large number of bateaux on the shore were seen to be on fire.
A party sallied to save them; but it was too late.
In the morning they were all consumed, and the enemy had vanished.
[Footnote 470: _Strength of the Garrison of Fort William Henry when the Enemy came before it_, enclosed in the letter of _Major Eyre to Loudon, 26 March, 1757_.
There were also one hundred and twenty-eight invalids.
] It was Sunday, the twentieth.
Everything was quiet till noon, when the French filed out of the woods and marched across the ice in procession, ostentatiously carrying their scaling-ladders, and showing themselves to the best effect.
They stopped at a safe distance, fronting towards the fort, and several of them advanced, waving a red flag.
An officer with a few men went to meet them, and returned bringing Le Mercier, chief of the Canadian artillery, who, being led blindfold into the fort, announced himself as bearer of a message from Rigaud.
He was conducted to the room of Major Eyre, where all the British officers were assembled; and, after mutual compliments, he invited them to give up the place peaceably, promising the most favorable terms, and threatening a general assault and massacre in case of refusal.
Eyre said that he should defend himself to the last; and the envoy, again blindfolded, was led back to whence he came.
The whole French force now advanced as if to storm the works, and the garrison prepared to receive them.
Nothing came of it but a fusillade, to which the British made no reply.
At night the French were heard advancing again, and each man nerved himself for the crisis.
The real attack, however, was not against the fort, but against the buildings outside, which consisted of several storehouses, a hospital, a saw-mill, and the huts of the rangers, besides a sloop on the stocks and piles of planks and cord-wood.
Covered by the night, the assailants crept up with fagots of resinous sticks, placed them against the farther side of the buildings, kindled them, and escaped before the flame rose; while the garrison, straining their ears in the thick darkness, fired wherever they heard a sound.
Before morning all around them was in a blaze, and they had much ado to save the fort barracks from the shower of burning cinders.
At ten o'clock the fires had subsided, and a thick fall of snow began, filling the air with a restless chaos of large moist flakes.
This lasted all day and all the next night, till the ground and the ice were covered to a depth of three feet and more.
The French lay close in their camps till a little before dawn on Tuesday morning, when twenty volunteers from the regulars made a bold attempt to burn the sloop on the stocks, with several storehouses and other structures, and several hundred scows and whaleboats which had thus far escaped.
They were only in part successful; but they fired the sloop and some buildings near it, and stood far out on the ice watching the flaming vessel, a superb bonfire amid the wilderness of snow.
The spectacle cost the volunteers a fourth of their number killed and wounded.
On Wednesday morning the sun rose bright on a scene of wintry splendor, and the frozen lake was dotted with Rigaud's retreating followers toiling towards Canada on snow-shoes.
Before they reached it many of them were blinded for a while by the insufferable glare, and their comrades led them homewards by the hand.
[471] [Footnote 471: _Eyre to Loudon, 24 March, 1757. Ibid.
, 25 March_, enclosed in Loudon's despatch of 25 April, 1757. _Message of Rigaud to Major Eyre, 20 March, 1757. Letter from Fort William Henry, 26 March, 1757_, in _Boston Gazette_, No. 106, and _Boston Evening Post_, No. 1,128. _Abstract of Letters from Albany_, in _Boston News Letter_, No. 2,860. Caleb Stark, _Memoir and Correspondence of John Stark_, 22, a curious mixture of truth and error.
_Relation de la Campagne sur le Lac St. Sacrement pendant l'Hiver, 1757. _ Bougainville, _Journal_.
Malartic, _Journal.
Montcalm au Ministre, 24 Avril, 1757. Montreuil au Ministre, 23 Avril, 1757. Montcalm à sa Mère, 1 Avril, 1757. Mémoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760. _ The French loss in killed and wounded is set by Montcalm at eleven.
That of the English was seven, slightly wounded, chiefly in sorties.
They took three prisoners.
Stark was touched by a bullet, for the only time in his adventurous life.
] Chapter 14
1757
