Montcalm and Wolfe — Chapter 15, Part 3

[Footnote 514: Bougainville, _Journal_.

] Montcalm assured them that if they had been neglected, it was only through the hurry and confusion of the time; expressed high appreciation of their talents for bush-fighting, promised them ample satisfaction, and ended by telling them that in the morning they should hear the big guns.

This greatly pleased them, for they were extremely impatient for the artillery to begin.

About sunrise the battery of the left opened with eight heavy cannon and a mortar, joined, on the next morning, by the battery of the right, with eleven pieces more.

The fort replied with spirit.

The cannon thundered all day, and from a hundred peaks and crags the astonished wilderness roared back the sound.

The Indians were delighted.

They wanted to point the guns; and to humor them, they were now and then allowed to do so.

Others lay behind logs and fallen trees, and yelled their satisfaction when they saw the splinters fly from the wooden rampart.

Day after day the weary roar of the distant cannonade fell on the ears of Webb in his camp at Fort Edward.

"I have not yet received the least reinforcement," he writes to Loudon; "this is the disagreeable situation we are at present in.

The fort, by the heavy firing we hear from the lake, is still in our possession; but I fear it cannot long hold out against so warm a cannonading if I am not reinforced by a sufficient number of militia to march to their relief."

The militia were coming;

but it was impossible that many could reach him in less than a week.

Those from New York alone were within call, and two thousand of them arrived soon after he sent Loudon the above letter.

Then, by stripping all the forts below, he could bring together forty-five hundred men;

while several French deserters assured him that Montcalm had nearly twelve thousand.

To advance to the relief of Monro with a force so inferior, through a defile of rocks, forests, and mountains, made by nature for ambuscades,--and this too with troops who had neither the steadiness of regulars nor the bush-fighting skill of Indians,--was an enterprise for firmer nerve than his.

He had already warned Monro to expect no help from him.

At midnight of the fourth, Captain Bartman, his aide-de-camp, wrote: "The General has ordered me to acquaint you he 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 expresses have been sent."

The letter then declared that the French were in complete possession of the road between the two forts, that a prisoner just brought in reported their force in men and cannon to be very great, and that, unless the militia came soon, Monro had better make what terms he could with the enemy.

[515] [Footnote 515: Frye, in his _Journal_, gives the letter in full.

A

spurious translation of it is appended to a piece called _Jugement impartial sur les Opérations militaires en Canada_.

] The chance was small that this letter would reach its destination; and in fact the bearer was killed by La Corne's Indians, who, in stripping the body, found the hidden paper, and carried it to the General.

Montcalm kept it several days, till the English rampart was half battered down; and then, after saluting his enemy with a volley from all his cannon, he sent it with a graceful compliment to Monro.

It was Bougainville who carried it, preceded by a drummer and a flag.

He was met at the foot of the glacis, blindfolded, and led through the fort and along the edge of the lake to the entrenched camp, where Monro was at the time.

"He returned many thanks," writes the emissary in his Diary, "for the courtesy of our nation, and protested his joy at having to do with so generous an enemy.

This was his answer to the Marquis de Montcalm.

Then they led me back, always with eyes blinded; and our batteries began to fire again as soon as we thought that the English grenadiers who escorted me had had time to re-enter the fort.

I hope General Webb's letter may induce the English to surrender the sooner."

[516] [Footnote 516: Bougainville, _Journal.

Bougainville au Ministre, 19 Août, 1757. _] By this time the sappers had worked their way to the angle of the lake, where they were stopped by a marshy hollow, beyond which was a tract of high ground, reaching to the fort and serving as the garden of the garrison.

[517] Logs and fascines in large quantities were thrown into the hollow, and hurdles were laid over them to form a causeway for the cannon.

Then the sap was continued up the acclivity beyond, a trench was opened in the garden, and a battery begun, not two hundred and fifty yards from the fort.

The Indians, in great number, crawled forward among the beans, maize, and cabbages, and lay there ensconced.

On the night of the seventh, two men came out of the fort, apparently to reconnoitre, with a view to a sortie, when they were greeted by a general volley and a burst of yells which echoed among the mountains; followed by responsive whoops pealing through the darkness from the various camps and lurking-places of the savage warriors far and near.

[Footnote 517: Now (1882) the site of Fort William Henry Hotel, with its grounds.

The hollow is partly filled by the main road of Caldwell.

] The position of the besieged was now deplorable.

More than three hundred of them had been killed and wounded; small-pox was raging in the fort;

the place was a focus of infection, and the casemates were crowded with the sick.

A sortie from the entrenched camp and another from the fort had been repulsed with loss.

All their large cannon and mortars had been burst, or disabled by shot; only seven small pieces were left fit for service;[518] and the whole of Montcalm's thirty-one cannon and fifteen mortars and howitzers would soon open fire, while the walls were already breached, and an assault was imminent.

Through the night of the eighth they fired briskly from all their remaining pieces.

In the morning the officers held a council, and all agreed to surrender if honorable terms could be had.

A white flag was raised, a drum was beat, and Lieutenant-Colonel Young, mounted on horseback, for a shot in the foot had disabled him from walking, went, followed by a few soldiers, to the tent of Montcalm.

[Footnote 518: Frye, _Journal_.

] It was agreed that the English troops should march out with the honors of war, and be escorted to Fort Edward by a detachment of French troops;

that they should not serve for eighteen months; and that all French prisoners captured in America since the war began should be given up within three months.

The stores, munitions, and artillery were to be the prize of the victors, except one field-piece, which the garrison were to retain in recognition of their brave defence.

Before signing the capitulation Montcalm called the Indian chiefs to council, and asked them to consent to the conditions, and promise to restrain their young warriors from any disorder.

They approved everything and promised everything.

The garrison then evacuated the fort, and marched to join their comrades in the entrenched camp, which was included in the surrender.

No sooner were they gone than a crowd of Indians clambered through the embrasures in search of rum and plunder.

All the sick men unable to leave their beds were instantly butchered.

[519] "I was witness of this spectacle," says the missionary Roubaud; "I saw one of these barbarians come out of the casemates with a human head in his hand, from which the blood ran in streams, and which he paraded as if he had got the finest prize in the world."

There was little left to plunder; and the Indians, joined by the more lawless of the Canadians, turned their attention to the entrenched camp, where all the English were now collected.

[Footnote 519: _Attestation of William Arbuthnot, Captain in Frye's Regiment.

_] The French guard stationed there could not or would not keep out the rabble.

By the advice of Montcalm the English stove their rum-barrels;

but the Indians were drunk already with homicidal rage, and the glitter of their vicious eyes told of the devil within.

They roamed among the tents, intrusive, insolent, their visages besmirched with war-paint;

grinning like fiends as they handled, in anticipation of the knife, the long hair of cowering women, of whom, as well as of children, there were many in the camp, all crazed with fright.

Since the last war the New England border population had regarded Indians with a mixture of detestation and horror.

Their mysterious warfare of ambush and surprise, their midnight onslaughts, their butcheries, their burnings, and all their nameless atrocities, had been for years the theme of fireside story; and the dread they excited was deepened by the distrust and dejection of the time.

The confusion in the camp lasted through the afternoon.

"The Indians," says Bougainville, "wanted to plunder the chests of the English; the latter resisted; and there was fear that serious disorder would ensue.

The Marquis de Montcalm ran thither immediately, and used every means to restore tranquillity: prayers, threats, caresses, interposition of the officers and interpreters who have some influence over these savages."

[520] "We shall be but too happy if we can prevent a massacre.

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.

The Marquis spared no efforts to prevent the rapacity of the savages and, I must say it, of certain persons associated with them, from resulting in something worse than plunder.

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."

[521] He also ordered La Corne and the other Canadian officers attached to the Indians to see that no violence took place.

He might well have done more.

In view of the disorders of the afternoon, it would not have been too much if he had ordered the whole body of regular troops, whom alone he could trust for the purpose, to hold themselves ready to move to the spot in case of outbreak, and shelter their defeated foes behind a hedge of bayonets.

[Footnote 520: _Bougainville au Ministre, 19 Août, 1757. _] [Footnote 521: Bougainville, _Journal_.

] Bougainville was not to see what ensued; for Montcalm now sent him to Montreal, as a special messenger to carry news of the victory.

He embarked at ten o'clock.

Returning daylight found him far down the lake;

and as he looked on its still bosom flecked with mists, and its quiet mountains sleeping under the flush of dawn, there was nothing in the wild tranquillity of the scene to suggest the tragedy which even then was beginning on the shore he had left behind.

The English in their camp had passed a troubled night, agitated by strange rumors.

In the morning something like a panic seized them; for they distrusted not the Indians only, but the Canadians.

In their haste to be gone they got together at daybreak, before the escort of three hundred regulars had arrived.

They had their muskets, but no ammunition;

and few or none of the provincials had bayonets.

Early as it was, the Indians were on the alert; and, indeed, since midnight great numbers of them had been prowling about the skirts of the camp, showing, says Colonel Frye, "more than usual malice in their looks."

Seventeen wounded men of his regiment lay in huts, unable to join the march.

In the preceding afternoon Miles Whitworth, the regimental surgeon, had passed them over to the care of a French surgeon, according to an agreement made at the time of the surrender; but, the Frenchman being absent, the other remained with them attending to their wants.

The French surgeon had caused special sentinels to be posted for their protection.

These were now removed, at the moment when they were needed most; upon which, about five o'clock in the morning, the Indians entered the huts, dragged out the inmates, and tomahawked and scalped them all, before the eyes of Whitworth, and in presence of La Corne and other Canadian officers, as well as of a French guard stationed within forty feet of the spot; and, declares the surgeon under oath, "none, either officer or soldier, protected the said wounded men."

[522] The opportune butchery relieved them of a troublesome burden.

[Footnote 522: _Affidavit of Miles Whitworth_.

See Appendix F. ] A scene of plundering now began.

The escort had by this time arrived, and Monro complained to the officers that the capitulation was broken;

but got no other answer than advice to give up the baggage to the Indians in order to appease them.

To this the English at length agreed;

but it only increased the excitement of the mob.

They demanded rum; and some of the soldiers, afraid to refuse, gave it to them from their canteens, thus adding fuel to the flame.

When, after much difficulty, the column at last got out of the camp and began to move along the road that crossed the rough plain between the entrenchment and the forest, the Indians crowded upon them, impeded their march, snatched caps, coats, and weapons from men and officers, tomahawked those that resisted, and, seizing upon shrieking women and children, dragged them off or murdered them on the spot.

It is said that some of the interpreters secretly fomented the disorder.

[523] Suddenly there rose the screech of the war-whoop.

At this signal of butchery, which was given by Abenaki Christians from the mission of the Penobscot,[524] a mob of savages rushed upon the New Hampshire men at the rear of the column, and killed or dragged away eighty of them.

[525] A frightful tumult ensued, when Montcalm, Lévis, Bourlamaque, and many other French officers, who had hastened from their camp on the first news of disturbance, threw themselves among the Indians, and by promises and threats tried to allay their frenzy.

"Kill me, but spare the English who are under my protection," exclaimed Montcalm.

He took from one of them a young officer whom the savage had seized; upon which several other Indians immediately tomahawked their prisoners, lest they too should be taken from them.

One writer says that a French grenadier was killed and two wounded in attempting to restore order; but the statement is doubtful.

The English seemed paralyzed, and fortunately did not attempt a resistance, which, without ammunition as they were, would have ended in a general massacre.

Their broken column straggled forward in wild disorder, amid the din of whoops and shrieks, till they reached the French advance-guard, which consisted of Canadians; and here they demanded protection from the officers, who refused to give it, telling them that they must take to the woods and shift for themselves.

Frye was seized by a number of Indians, who, brandishing spears and tomahawks, threatened him with death and tore off his clothing, leaving nothing but breeches, shoes, and shirt.

Repelled by the officers of the guard, he made for the woods.

A Connecticut soldier who was present says of him that he leaped upon an Indian who stood in his way, disarmed and killed him, and then escaped; but Frye himself does not mention the incident.

Captain Burke, also of the Massachusetts regiment, was stripped, after a violent struggle, of all his clothes; then broke loose, gained the woods, spent the night shivering in the thick grass of a marsh, and on the next day reached Fort Edward.

Jonathan Carver, a provincial volunteer, declares that, when the tumult was at its height, he saw officers of the French army walking about at a little distance and talking with seeming unconcern.

Three or four Indians seized him, brandished their tomahawks over his head, and tore off most of his clothes, while he vainly claimed protection from a sentinel, who called him an English dog, and violently pushed him back among his tormentors.

Two of them were dragging him towards the neighboring swamp, when an English officer, stripped of everything but his scarlet breeches, ran by.

One of Carver's captors sprang upon him, but was thrown to the ground; whereupon the other went to the aid of his comrade and drove his tomahawk into the back of the Englishman.

As Carver turned to run, an English boy, about twelve years old, clung to him and begged for help.

They ran on together for a moment, when the boy was seized, dragged from his protector, and, as Carver judged by his shrieks, was murdered.

He himself escaped to the forest, and after three days of famine reached Fort Edward.

[Footnote 523: This is stated by Pouchot and Bougainville; the latter of whom confirms the testimony of the English witnesses, that Canadian officers present did nothing to check the Indians.

] [Footnote 524: See note, end of chapter.

] [Footnote 525: Belknap, _History of New Hampshire_, says that eighty were killed.

Governor Wentworth, writing immediately after the event, says "killed or captivated."

] The bonds of discipline seem for the time to have been completely broken; for while Montcalm and his chief officers used every effort to restore order, even at the risk of their lives, many other officers, chiefly of the militia, failed atrociously to do their duty.

How many English were killed it is impossible to tell with exactness.

Roubaud says that he saw forty or fifty corpses scattered about the field.

Lévis says fifty; which does not include the sick and wounded before murdered in the camp and fort.

It is certain that six or seven hundred persons were carried off, stripped, and otherwise maltreated.

Montcalm succeeded in recovering more than four hundred of them in the course of the day;

and many of the French officers did what they could to relieve their wants by buying back from their captors the clothing that had been torn from them.

Many of the fugitives had taken refuge in the fort, whither Monro himself had gone to demand protection for his followers; and here Roubaud presently found a crowd of half-frenzied women, crying in anguish for husbands and children.

All the refugees and redeemed prisoners were afterwards conducted to the entrenched camp, where food and shelter were provided for them and a strong guard set for their protection until the fifteenth, when they were sent under an escort to Fort Edward.

Here cannon had been fired at intervals to guide those who had fled to the woods, whence they came dropping in from day to day, half dead with famine.

On the morning after the massacre the Indians decamped in a body and set out for Montreal, carrying with them their plunder and some two hundred prisoners, who, it is said, could not be got out of their hands.

The soldiers were set to the work of demolishing the English fort; and the task occupied several days.

The barracks were torn down, and the huge pine-logs of the rampart thrown into a heap.

The dead bodies that filled the casemates were added to the mass, and fire was set to the whole.

The mighty funeral pyre blazed all night.

Then, on the sixteenth, the army reimbarked.

The din of ten thousand combatants, the rage, the terror, the agony, were gone; and no living thing was left but the wolves that gathered from the mountains to feast upon the dead.

[526] [Footnote 526: The foregoing chapter rests largely on evidence never before brought to light, including the minute _Journal_ of Bougainville,--document which can hardly be commended too much,--the correspondence of Webb, a letter of Colonel Frye, written just after the massacre, and a journal of the siege, sent by him to Governor Pownall as his official report.

Extracts from these, as well as from the affidavit of Dr. Whitworth, which is also new evidence, are given in Appendix F. The Diary of Malartic and the correspondence of Montcalm, Lévis, Vaudreuil, and Bigot, also throw light on the campaign, as well as numerous reports of the siege, official and semi-official.

The long letter of the Jesuit Roubaud, printed anonymously in the _Lettres Édifiantes et Curieuses_, gives a remarkably vivid account of what he saw.

He was an intelligent person, who may be trusted where he has no motive for lying.

Curious particulars about him will be found in a paper called, _The deplorable Case of Mr. Roubaud_, printed in the _Historical Magazine, Second Series_, VIII.

282. Compare Verreau, _Report on Canadian Archives_, 1874. Impressions of the massacre at Fort William Henry have hitherto been derived chiefly from the narrative of Captain Jonathan Carver, in his _Travels_.

He has discredited himself by his exaggeration of the number killed; but his account of what he himself saw tallies with that of the other witnesses.

He is outdone in exaggeration by an anonymous French writer of the time, who seems rather pleased at the occurrence, and affirms that all the English were killed except seven hundred, these last being captured, so that none escaped (_Nouvelles du Canada envoyées de Montréal, Août_, 1757).

Carver puts killed and captured together at fifteen hundred.

Vaudreuil, who always makes light of Indian barbarities, goes to the other extreme, and avers that no more than five or six were killed.

Lévis and Roubaud, who saw everything, and were certain not to exaggerate the number, give the most trustworthy evidence on this point.

The capitulation, having been broken by the allies of France, was declared void by the British Government.

_The Signal of Butchery_.

Montcalm, Bougainville, and several others say that the massacre was begun by the Abenakis of Panaouski.

Father Martin, in quoting the letter in which Montcalm makes this statement, inserts the word _idolâtres_, which is not in the original.

Dussieux and O'Callaghan give the passage correctly.

This Abenaki band, ancestors of the present Penobscots, were no idolaters, but had been converted more than half a century.

In the official list of the Indian allies they are set down among the Christians.

Roubaud, who had charge of them during the expedition, speaks of these and other converts with singular candor: "Vous avez dû vous apercevoir ...

que nos sauvages, pour être Chrétiens, n'en sont pas plus irrépréhensibles dans leur conduite."

] Chapter 16

1757, 1758