Montcalm and Wolfe — Chapter 15, Part 2

There was some complaint among the Indians because they were crowded upon by the officers who came as spectators.

This difficulty being removed, the council opened, Montcalm having already explained his plans to the chiefs and told them the part he expected them to play.

Pennahouel, chief of the Ottawas, and senior of all the Assembly, rose and said: "My father, I, who have counted more moons than any here, thank you for the good words you have spoken.

I approve them.

Nobody ever spoke better.

It is the Manitou of War who inspires you."

Kikensick, chief of the Nipissings, rose in behalf of the Christian Indians, and addressed the heathen of the west.

"Brothers, we thank you for coming to help us defend our lands against the English.

Our cause is good.

The Master of Life is on our side.

Can you doubt it, brothers, after the great blow you have just struck?

It covers you with glory.

The lake, red with the blood of Corlaer [_the English_] bears witness forever to your achievement.

We too share your glory, and are proud of what you have done."

Then, turning to Montcalm: "We are even more glad than you, my father, who have crossed the great water, not for your own sake, but to obey the great King and defend his children.

He has bound us all together by the most solemn of ties.

Let us take care that nothing shall separate us."

The various interpreters, each in turn, having explained this speech to the Assembly, it was received with ejaculations of applause; and when they had ceased, Montcalm spoke as follows: "Children, I am delighted to see you all joined in this good work.

So long as you remain one, the English cannot resist you.

The great King has sent me to protect and defend you; but above all he has charged me to make you happy and unconquerable, by establishing among you the union which ought to prevail among brothers, children of one father, the great Onontio."

Then he held out a prodigious wampum belt of six thousand beads: "Take this sacred pledge of his word.

The union of the beads of which it is made is the sign of your united strength.

By it I bind you all together, so that none of you can separate from the rest till the English are defeated and their fort destroyed."

Pennahouel took up the belt and said: "Behold, brothers, a circle drawn around us by the great Onontio.

Let none of us go out from it; for so long as we keep in it, the Master of Life will help all our undertakings."

Other chiefs spoke to the same effect, and the council closed in perfect harmony.

[501] Its various members bivouacked together at the camp by the lake, and by their carelessness soon set it on fire;

whence the place became known as the Burned Camp.

Those from the missions confessed their sins all day; while their heathen brothers hung an old coat and a pair of leggings on a pole as tribute to the Manitou.

This greatly embarrassed the three priests, who were about to say Mass, but doubted whether they ought to say it in presence of a sacrifice to the devil.

Hereupon they took counsel of Montcalm.

"Better say it so than not at all," replied the military casuist.

Brandy being prudently denied them, the allies grew restless; and the greater part paddled up the lake to a spot near the place where Parker had been defeated.

Here they encamped to wait the arrival of the army, and amused themselves meantime with killing rattlesnakes, there being a populous "den" of those reptiles among the neighboring rocks.

[Footnote 501: Bougainville, _Journal_.

] Montcalm sent a circular letter to the regular officers, urging them to dispense for a while with luxuries, and even comforts.

"We have but few bateaux, and these are so filled with stores that a large division of the army must go by land;" and he directed that everything not absolutely necessary should be left behind, and that a canvas shelter to every two officers should serve them for a tent, and a bearskin for a bed.

"Yet I do not forbid a mattress," he adds.

"Age and infirmities may make it necessary to some; but I shall not have one myself, and make no doubt that all who can will willingly imitate me."

[502] [Footnote 502: _Circulaire du Marquis de Montcalm, 25 Juillet, 1757. _] The bateaux lay ready by the shore, but could not carry the whole force;

and Lévis received orders to march by the side of the lake with twenty-five hundred men, Canadians, regulars, and Iroquois.

He set out at daybreak of the thirtieth of July, his men carrying nothing but their knapsacks, blankets, and weapons.

Guided by the unerring Indians, they climbed the steep gorge at the side of Rogers Rock, gained the valley beyond, and marched southward along a Mohawk trail which threaded the forest in a course parallel to the lake.

The way was of the roughest;

many straggled from the line, and two officers completely broke down.

The first destination of the party was the mouth of Ganouskie Bay, now called Northwest Bay, where they were to wait for Montcalm, and kindle three fires as a signal that they had reached the rendezvous.

[503] [Footnote 503: _Guerre du Canada, par le Chevalier de Lévis_.

This manuscript of Lévis is largely in the nature of a journal.

] Montcalm left a detachment to hold Ticonderoga; and then, on the first of August, at two in the afternoon, he embarked at the Burned Camp with all his remaining force.

Including those with Lévis, the expedition counted about seven thousand six hundred men, of whom more than sixteen hundred were Indians.

[504] At five in the afternoon they reached the place where the Indians, having finished their rattlesnake hunt, were smoking their pipes and waiting for the army.

The red warriors embarked, and joined the French flotilla; and now, as evening drew near, was seen one of those wild pageantries of war which Lake George has often witnessed.

A restless multitude of birch canoes, filled with painted savages, glided by shores and islands, like troops of swimming water-fowl.

Two hundred and fifty bateaux came next, moved by sail and oar, some bearing the Canadian militia, and some the battalions of Old France in trim and gay attire: first, La Reine and Languedoc; then the colony regulars; then La Sarre and Guienne; then the Canadian brigade of Courtemanche; then the cannon and mortars, each on a platform sustained by two bateaux lashed side by side, and rowed by the militia of Saint-Ours; then the battalions of Béarn and Royal Roussillon; then the Canadians of Gaspé, with the provision-bateaux and the field-hospital;

and, lastly, a rear guard of regulars closed the line.

So, under the flush of sunset, they held their course along the romantic lake, to play their part in the historic drama that lends a stern enchantment to its fascinating scenery.

They passed the Narrows in mist and darkness; and when, a little before dawn, they rounded the high promontory of Tongue Mountain, they saw, far on the right, three fiery sparks shining through the gloom.

These were the signal-fires of Lévis, to tell them that he had reached the appointed spot.

[505] [Footnote 504: _État de l'Armée Française devant le Fort George, autrement Guillaume-Henri, le 3 Août, 1757. Tableau des Sauvages qui se trouvent à l'Armée du Marquis de Montcalm, le 28 Juillet, 1757_.

This gives a total of 1,799 Indians, of whom some afterwards left the army.

_État de l'Armée du Roi en Canada, sur le Lac St. Sacrement et dans les Camps de Carillon, le 29 Juillet, 1757_.

This gives a total of 8,019 men, of whom about four hundred were left in garrison at Ticonderoga.

] [Footnote 505: The site of the present village of Bolton.

] Lévis had arrived the evening before, after his hard march through the sultry midsummer forest.

His men had now rested for a night, and at ten in the morning he marched again.

Montcalm followed at noon, and coasted the western shore, till, towards evening, he found Lévis waiting for him by the margin of a small bay not far from the English fort, though hidden from it by a projecting point of land.

Canoes and bateaux were drawn up on the beach, and the united forces made their bivouac together.

The earthen mounds of Fort William Henry still stand by the brink of Lake George; and seated at the sunset of an August day under the pines that cover them, one gazes on a scene of soft and soothing beauty, where dreamy waters reflect the glories of the mountains and the sky.

As it is to-day, so it was then; all breathed repose and peace.

The splash of some leaping trout, or the dipping wing of a passing swallow, alone disturbed the summer calm of that unruffled mirror.

About ten o'clock at night two boats set out from the fort to reconnoitre.

They were passing a point of land on their left, two miles or more down the lake, when the men on board descried through the gloom a strange object against the bank; and they rowed towards it to learn what it might be.

It was an awning over the bateaux that carried Roubaud and his brother missionaries.

As the rash oarsmen drew near, the bleating of a sheep in one of the French provision-boats warned them of danger; and turning, they pulled for their lives towards the eastern shore.

Instantly more than a thousand Indians threw themselves into their canoes and dashed in hot pursuit, making the lake and the mountains ring with the din of their war-whoops.

The fugitives had nearly reached land when their pursuers opened fire.

They replied; shot one Indian dead, and wounded another; then snatched their oars again, and gained the beach.

But the whole savage crew was upon them.

Several were killed, three were taken, and the rest escaped in the dark woods.

[506] The prisoners were brought before Montcalm, and gave him valuable information of the strength and position of the English.

[507] [Footnote 506: _Lettre du Père Roubaud, 21 Oct.

1757_.

Roubaud, who saw the whole, says that twelve hundred Indians joined the chase, and that their yells were terrific.

] [Footnote 507: The remains of Fort William Henry are now--1882--crowded between a hotel and the wharf and station of a railway.

While I write, a scheme is on foot to level the whole for other railway structures.

When I first knew the place the ground was in much the same state as in the time of Montcalm.

] The Indian who was killed was a noted chief of the Nipissings; and his tribesmen howled in grief for their bereavement.

They painted his face with vermilion, tied feathers in his hair, hung pendants in his ears and nose, clad him in a resplendent war-dress, put silver bracelets on his arms, hung a gorget on his breast with a flame colored ribbon, and seated him in state on the top of a hillock, with his lance in his hand, his gun in the hollow of his arm, his tomahawk in his belt, and his kettle by his side.

Then they all crouched about him in lugubrious silence.

A funeral harangue followed; and next a song and solemn dance to the booming of the Indian drum.

In the gray of the morning they buried him as he sat, and placed food in the grave for his journey to the land of souls.

[508] [Footnote 508: _Lettre du Père Roubaud_.

] As the sun rose above the eastern mountains the French camp was all astir.

The column of Lévis, with Indians to lead the way, moved through the forest towards the fort, and Montcalm followed with the main body;

then the artillery boats rounded the point that had hid them from the sight of the English, saluting them as they did so with musketry and cannon; while a host of savages put out upon the lake, ranged their canoes abreast in a line from shore to shore, and advanced slowly, with measured paddle-strokes and yells of defiance.

The position of the enemy was full in sight before them.

At the head of the lake, towards the right, stood the fort, close to the edge of the water.

On its left was a marsh; then the rough piece of ground where Johnson had encamped two years before; then a low, flat, rocky hill, crowned with an entrenched camp; and, lastly, on the extreme left, another marsh.

Far around the fort and up the slopes of the western mountain the forest had been cut down and burned, and the ground was cumbered with blackened stumps and charred carcasses and limbs of fallen trees, strewn in savage disorder one upon another.

[509] This was the work of Winslow in the autumn before.

Distant shouts and war-cries, the clatter of musketry, white puffs of smoke in the dismal clearing and along the scorched edge of the bordering forest, told that Lévis' Indians were skirmishing with parties of the English, who had gone out to save the cattle roaming in the neighborhood, and burn some out-buildings that would have favored the besiegers.

Others were taking down the tents that stood on a plateau near the foot of the mountain on the right, and moving them to the entrenchment on the hill.

The garrison sallied from the fort to support their comrades, and for a time the firing was hot.

[Footnote 509: _Précis des Événements de la Campagne de 1757 en la Nouvelle France.

_] Fort William Henry was an irregular bastioned square, formed by embankments of gravel surmounted by a rampart of heavy logs, laid in tiers crossed one upon another, the interstices filled with earth.

The lake protected it on the north, the marsh on the east, and ditches with _chevaux-de-frise_ on the south and west.

Seventeen cannon, great and small, besides several mortars and swivels, were mounted upon it;[510] and a brave Scotch veteran, Lieutenant-Colonel Monro, of the thirty-fifth regiment, was in command.

[Footnote 510: _État des Effets et Munitions de Guerre qui se sont trouvés au Fort Guillaume-Henri.

_ There were six more guns in the entrenched camp.

] General Webb lay fourteen miles distant at Fort Edward, with twenty-six hundred men, chiefly provincials.

On the twenty-fifth of July he had made a visit to Fort William Henry, examined the place, given some orders, and returned on the twenty-ninth.

He then wrote to the Governor of New York, telling him that the French were certainly coming, begging him to send up the militia, and saying: "I am determined to march to Fort William Henry with the whole army under my command as soon as I shall hear of the farther approach of the enemy."

Instead of doing so he waited three days, and then sent up a detachment of two hundred regulars under Lieutenant-Colonel Young, and eight hundred Massachusetts men under Colonel Frye.

This raised the force at the lake to two thousand and two hundred, including sailors and mechanics, and reduced that of Webb to sixteen hundred, besides half as many more distributed at Albany and the intervening forts.

[511] If, according to his spirited intention, he should go to the rescue of Monro, he must leave some of his troops behind him to protect the lower posts from a possible French inroad by way of South Bay.

Thus his power of aiding Monro was slight, so rashly had Loudon, intent on Louisburg, left this frontier open to attack.

The defect, however, was as much in Webb himself as in his resources.

His conduct in the past year had raised doubts of his personal courage; and this was the moment for answering them.

Great as was the disparity of numbers, the emergency would have justified an attempt to save Monro at any risk.

That officer sent him a hasty note, written at nine o'clock on the morning of the third, telling him that the French were in sight on the lake; and, in the next night, three rangers came to Fort Edward, bringing another short note, dated at six in the evening, announcing that the firing had begun, and closing with the words: "I believe you will think it proper to send a reinforcement as soon as possible."

Now, if ever, was the time to move, before the fort was invested and access cut off.

But Webb lay quiet, sending expresses to New England for help which could not possibly arrive in time.

On the next night another note came from Monro to say that the French were upon him in great numbers, well supplied with artillery, but that the garrison were all in good spirits.

"I make no doubt," wrote the hardpressed officer, "that you will soon send us a reinforcement;" and again on the same day: "We are very certain that a part of the enemy have got between you and us upon the high road, and would therefore be glad (if it meets with your approbation) the whole army was marched."

[512] But Webb gave no sign.

[513] [Footnote 511: Frye, _Journal of the Attack of Fort William Henry.

Webb to Loudon, 1 Aug.

1757. Ibid.

, 5 Aug.

1757. _] [Footnote 512: _Copy of four Letters from Lieutenant-Colonel Monro to Major-General Webb, enclosed in the General's Letter of the fifth of August to the Earl of Loudon_.

] [Footnote 513: "The number of troops remaining under my Command at this place [_Fort Edward_], excluding the Posts on Hudson's River, amounts to but sixteen hundred men fit for duty, with which Army, so much inferior to that of the enemy, I did not think it prudent to pursue my first intentions of Marching to their Assistance."

_Webb to Loudon, 5 Aug.

1757. _] When the skirmishing around the fort was over, La Corne, with a body of Indians, occupied the road that led to Fort Edward, and Lévis encamped hard by to support him, while Montcalm proceeded to examine the ground and settle his plan of attack.

He made his way to the rear of the entrenched camp and reconnoitred it, hoping to carry it by assault; but it had a breastwork of stones and logs, and he thought the attempt too hazardous.

The ground where he stood was that where Dieskau had been defeated; and as the fate of his predecessor was not of flattering augury, he resolved to besiege the fort in form.

He chose for the site of his operations the ground now covered by the village of Caldwell.

A little to the north of it was a ravine, beyond which he formed his main camp, while Lévis occupied a tract of dry ground beside the marsh, whence he could easily move to intercept succors from Fort Edward on the one hand, or repel a sortie from Fort William Henry on the other.

A brook ran down the ravine and entered the lake at a small cove protected from the fire of the fort by a point of land; and at this place, still called Artillery Cove, Montcalm prepared to debark his cannon and mortars.

Having made his preparations, he sent Fontbrune, one of his aides-de-camp, with a letter to Monro.

"I owe it to humanity," he wrote, "to summon you to surrender.

At present I can restrain the savages, and make them observe the terms of a capitulation, as I might not have power to do under other circumstances; and an obstinate defence on your part could only retard the capture of the place a few days, and endanger an unfortunate garrison which cannot be relieved, in consequence of the dispositions I have made.

I demand a decisive answer within an hour."

Monro replied that he and his soldiers would defend themselves to the last.

While the flags of truce were flying, the Indians swarmed over the fields before the fort; and when they learned the result, an Abenaki chief shouted in broken French: "You won't surrender, eh!

Fire away then, and fight your best; for if I catch you, you shall get no quarter."

Monro emphasized his refusal by a general discharge of his cannon.

The trenches were opened on the night of the fourth,--a task of extreme difficulty, as the ground was covered by a profusion of half-burned stumps, roots, branches, and fallen trunks.

Eight hundred men toiled till daylight with pick, spade, and axe, while the cannon from the fort flashed through the darkness, and grape and round-shot whistled and screamed over their heads.

Some of the English balls reached the camp beyond the ravine, and disturbed the slumbers of the officers off duty, as they lay wrapped in their blankets and bear-skins.

Before daybreak the first parallel was made; a battery was nearly finished on the left, and another was begun on the right.

The men now worked under cover, safe in their burrows; one gang relieved another, and the work went on all day.

The Indians were far from doing what was expected of them.

Instead of scouting in the direction of Fort Edward to learn the movements of the enemy and prevent surprise, they loitered about the camp and in the trenches, or amused themselves by firing at the fort from behind stumps and logs.

Some, in imitation of the French, dug little trenches for themselves, in which they wormed their way towards the rampart, and now and then picked off an artillery-man, not without loss on their own side.

On the afternoon of the fifth, Montcalm invited them to a council, gave them belts of wampum, and mildly remonstrated with them.

"Why expose yourselves without necessity?

I grieve bitterly over the losses that you have met, for the least among you is precious to me.

No doubt it is a good thing to annoy the English; but that is not the main point.

You ought to inform me of everything the enemy is doing, and always keep parties on the road between the two forts."

And he gently hinted that their place was not in his camp, but in that of Lévis, where missionaries were provided for such of them as were Christians, and food and ammunition for them all.

They promised, with excellent docility, to do everything he wished, but added that there was something on their hearts.

Being encouraged to relieve themselves of the burden, they complained that they had not been consulted as to the management of the siege, but were expected to obey orders like slaves.

"We know more about fighting in the woods than you," said their orator; "ask our advice, and you will be the better for it."

[514]