THE WILDERNESS DURING THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS.
By the easiest path, in summer and winter, of the larger streams, the English settlements were pushed into the wilderness, and where the alluvial land gave most promise of fertility the sunlight fell upon the virgin soil of new clearings, the log-houses of the pioneers arose, and families were gathered about new hearthstones. They were soon confronted by the old danger, for the Indians, jealous of their encroachments and covertly incited by the governor of Canada, presently began hostilities, and the gun again was as necessary an equipment of the husbandman afield as his axe or hoe or scythe, and his wife and children lived in a besetting fear of death, or a captivity almost as dreadful. Though England and France were at peace during the time for the five years beginning with 1720, a savage war was waged between the eastern Canadian Indians and the provinces of Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
It was in these troublous times that the first permanent occupation was made in the unnamed region which is now Vermont. In 1723 it was voted by the General Court of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, that "it will be of great service to all the western frontiers, both in this and in the neighboring governments of Connecticut, to build a block-house above Northfield, in the most convenient place on the lands called the 'equivalent lands,'[7] and to post in it forty able men, English and western Indians, to be employed in scouting at a good distance up the Connecticut River, West River, Otter Creek, and sometime eastwardly above great Monadnock, for the discovery of the enemy coming toward any of the frontier towns, and so much of the said equivalent lands as shall be necessary for a block-house be taken up with the consent of the owners of the said land, together with five or six acres of their interval land to be broken up or ploughed for the present use of the western Indians, in case any of them shall think fit to bring their families hither."
Accordingly a site was chosen in the southeastern part of the present town of Brattleboro, and in February, 1724, the work was begun under the superintendence of Colonel John Stoddard of Northampton, by Lieutenant Timothy Dwight, with a force of "four carpenters, twelve soldiers with narrow axes, and two teams." At the beginning of summer the fort was ready for occupancy, and was named Fort Dummer, in honor of the lieutenant-governor of Massachusetts. The fort was built of hewn logs laid horizontally in a square, whose sides were one hundred and eighty feet in length, and outside this was a stockade of square timbers twelve feet in length set upright in the ground. Within the inner inclosure, built against the walls, were the "province houses," the habitation of the garrison and other inmates, and themselves capable of stout defense, should its assailants gain entrance to the interior of the fort. In addition to the small-arms of the garrison, Fort Dummer was furnished with four patereros.[8] There was also a "Great Gun," used only as a signal, when its sudden thunder rolled through leagues of forest to summon aid or announce good tidings. On the 11th of October following its completion, the fort was attacked by seventy hostile Indians, and four or five of its occupants were killed or wounded.
Scouting parties frequently went out to watch for the enemy, sometimes up the Connecticut to the Great Falls, sometimes up West River, and thence across the Wilderness to the same point. Sometimes they were sent to the mountains at West River and the Great Falls, "to lodge on ye top," and from these lofty watch-towers the keen eyes of the rangers scanned the mapped expanse of forest, when it was green with summer leafage, or gorgeous as a parterre with innumerable autumnal hues, or veiled in the soft haze of Indian summer, or gray with the snows of winter and the ramage of naked branches, "viewing for smoaks" of hostile camp-fires. In July, 1725, Captain Wright, with a volunteer force of sixty men, scouted up the Connecticut to Wells River, and some distance up that stream, thence to the Winooski, which they followed till they came within sight of Lake Champlain, when, having penetrated the heart of the Wilderness farther than any English force had previously done, the scantiness of their provisions compelled a return.
By the authority of the General Court of Massachusetts, a "truck house," or trading house, was established at Fort Dummer in 1728, and the Indians finding that they could make better bargains here than at the French trading-posts, flocked hither with their peltry, moose-skins, and tallow.
When, seventeen years after the erection of Fort Dummer, the boundary line was run between Massachusetts and New Hampshire, the fort fell within the limits of the latter State, whose government was appealed to by Massachusetts to maintain it, but declined to do so, on the ground that its own frontier was better protected by a stronger fort at Number Four; also that it was more to the interest of Massachusetts than of New Hampshire to continue its support. Governor Wentworth urged upon a new assembly the safer and more generous policy, but to no purpose, and such a maintenance as Fort Dummer continued to receive was given by Massachusetts.
After pushing their fortified posts up the Richelieu and to Isle la Motte, where they built Fort St. Anne in 1665, the French made a long stride toward the head of the lake, where in 1730 they built a small fort and began a settlement on Chimney Point, called by them Point à la Chevalure, and the next year began the erection of a more considerable work on the opposite headland of Crown Point, a position of much greater natural strength. In the building of this fortress of St. Frederic, which was for many years to remain a close and constant menace to the English colonies, they were opposed only by feeble protest of the government of New York, though that of Massachusetts urged more active opposition. The fort was completed, and the French held the key to the "Gate of the Country," as the Iroquois had so fitly named Lake Champlain. Seigniories were granted on both sides of the lake, and in that of Sieur Hocquart, which extended three leagues along the lake and five leagues back therefrom, was this settlement on Point à la Chevalure. Northward from the fort the habitants built their cabins of logs in close neighborhood along the street, and sowed wheat, planted corn and fruit-trees on their narrow holdings. Flowers new to the wilderness bloomed beside doorways, and the fragrance of foreign herbs was mingled with the balsamic odors of the woods. Where only the glare of camp-fires had briefly illumined the bivouac of armed men, the blaze of the hearth was kindled to shine on happy households; where had been heard no sound of human voice but the sentinel's challenge, the stern, sharp call of military command, or the devilish yell of the savage, now arose the voice of the mother crooning to her babe, the prattle of children at play, the gabble of gossiping dames, and the laughter of the gay habitant; while from the protecting fort flaunted the lilies of France, an assurance to these simple people of the permanency of their newly founded homes. Here the Canadians tilled their little fields, and shared of the lake's abundance with the fish-hawks and the otter, hunted the deer and moose, and trapped the fur-bearing animals in the broad forest, and at the bidding of their masters went forth with their painted allies, the Waubanakees, on bloody forays against the English.
When in 1744 war was again declared between England and France, the English frontier settlements soon began to suffer from the advantage their enemies possessed in a stronghold from which they were so easily reached. During the next year they were frequently harassed by small parties, and in August, 1746, Vaudreuil set forth from Fort St. Frederic with an army of seven hundred French and Indians to attack Fort Massachusetts, then the most advanced post in the province, whose name had been given it.[9] There were but thirty-three persons in the garrison, including women and children, but Colonel Hawkes bravely defended the place with his insignificant force for twenty-eight hours, when the supply of ammunition was exhausted and he surrendered, with the stipulation that none of his people should be delivered to the Indians. Yet in spite of this, soon after the capitulation, Vaudreuil gave up one half of them to the savages, who thereupon at once killed a prisoner who was unable to travel.
After the capture of Louisburg by the force of New England troops which he had organized, Governor Shirley of Massachusetts proposed a plan for the conquest of Canada, in which a fleet and army promised by the mother country were to attack Quebec, while the colonial troops were to march against Fort St. Frederic.
While active preparations for this enterprise were being made, the colonies were alarmed by news of the arrival at Nova Scotia of a French fleet and army so formidable as to threaten the conquest of all their seaboard, and all their efforts were turned toward defense. When storm and shipwreck had scattered and destroyed the fleet and frustrated its objects, Shirley proposed a winter campaign in which the New Hampshire troops were to go up the Connecticut and destroy the Waubanakee village of St. Francis, and the Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York troops, advancing by the way of Lake George, were to attack Fort St. Frederic; but Connecticut declining to take part in it, the project was abandoned.
The English had continued to extend their settlements upon the Connecticut, and had built several small forts on the west side of the river. These so-called forts were block-houses, built of hewn logs, with a projecting upper story and pierced with loopholes for muskets. Such was Bridgman's fort in what is now Vernon, and which was twice attacked by Indians, and in the second attack was destroyed. Some years afterward, in July, 1755, a party of Indians, who were lurking near the fort, now rebuilt, waylaid three settlers as they were returning from their work, and killed one Caleb Howe. Another was drowned in attempting to cross the river, and one escaped. The Indians gained entrance to the fort, whose only inmates were the wives and children of the three men, by making the customary signal, which they had learned by observation. After plundering the fort, and taking the helpless inmates captive, they proceeded through the wilderness to Crown Point, and from thence to Canada. Their prisoners suffered there a long captivity, but were at length mostly redeemed.[10]
The most northerly settlement now on the river was at Number Four, on the east side of the Connecticut. Three years after its settlement, in 1743, a fort was built under the direction of Colonel Stoddard, the builder of Fort Dummer. It was similar to that fortification in size and construction, but was stockaded only on the north side. It inclosed, as "province houses," the dwellings previously built by five of the settlers, and one built at the same time with the fort. The settlers continued here for three years thereafter, during which they suffered frequent assaults from marauding bands of Indians, in which eight of the soldiers and inhabitants were killed and three taken prisoners. When the Massachusetts troops which for a while had garrisoned the place were withdrawn, the helpless people abandoned their newly made homes, and for months the divested fort remained as silent and desolate as the wintry wastes of forests that surrounded it. In response to representations made to him of the expediency of such a measure, Governor Shirley ordered Captain Phineas Stevens, with thirty men, to march to and occupy the fort at Number Four. Arriving there on the 27th of March, 1747, Captain Stevens found the place in good condition, and was heartily welcomed to it by an old dog and cat which had been left behind in the hurry of the autumnal departure. The garrison had been in possession but a few days when they were attacked by French and Indians commanded by M. Debeline, who opened a musketry fire upon the fort on all sides. Failing to take it in this way, the enemy attempted to burn it by setting fire to the fences and houses near it, by discharging flaming arrows upon the roof, and then by pushing a cart loaded with burning brush[11] against the walls.
Stevens thus describes the ingenious device by which he prevented the firing of the wooden walls by the enemy: "Those who were not employed in firing at the enemy were employed in digging trenches under the bottom of the fort. We dug no less than eleven of them, so deep that a man could go and stand upright on the outside and not endanger himself; so that when these trenches were finished we could wet all the outside of the fort, which we did, and kept it wet all night. We drew some hundreds of barrels of water, and to undergo all this hard service there were but thirty men."[12] All the attempts of the enemy were baffled, fair promises and dire threats alike set at naught by the brave defenders of the fort.
On the third day of the siege Debeline offered to withdraw if Stevens would sell them provisions. Stevens refused, but offered to give them five bushels of corn for every hostage that should be given him to be held till an English captive could be brought from Canada, whereupon, after firing a few more shots, the besiegers withdrew to Fort St. Frederic.[13]
No other expeditions were afterward undertaken by the French while the war lasted, but the Indians in small parties continued to harry the settlements till after its close in 1748. To guard against these incursions, scouting parties, led by brave and experienced partisans, frequently went out from the frontier forts to watch the motions of the enemy, when oftentimes their perilous adventures and heroic deeds were such that the story of them is more like a tale from an old romance than like a page of history. One memorable incident of this service took place on Vermont soil in the summer of the next year after the gallant defense of Number Four, when Captain Humphrey Hobbs, Stevens's second in command at that post, being on a scout toward Fort Shirley in Massachusetts, with forty men, for four hours held at bay and finally beat off an Indian force more than four times outnumbering his own. It was a brush fight, wherein the scouts had no shelter but such forest cover as their assailants also took advantage of. But three of the scouts were killed; the loss of the Indians, though great, was never known, as when one fell his nearest comrade crept to the body and attached a line to it, by which it was withdrawn to cover. During the fight, the scouts frequently beheld the ghastly sight of a dead Indian gliding away and fading from view in the haze of undergrowth, as if drawn thither by some superhuman power.[14]
Until the beginning of another French and English war in 1754, and while the colonies were endeavoring to form a union for their better defense, while elsewhere were occurring such events as Braddock's Defeat and Monckton's and Winslow's Conquest of Acadia, there is little of consequence to record of affairs in this quarter till Colonel William Johnson, with an army of 4,000 or more, began an advance against Fort St. Frederic. The French had occupied Ticonderoga, and begun to fortify the point, which soon became far more important than the older fortress of St. Frederic; and their army of 2,000 regulars, Canadians and Indians, under Baron Dieskau, taking the offensive, moved against Johnson and attacked his fortified camp at Lake George in September, 1755. The French were defeated with severe loss;[15] but Johnson did not follow up his success, and the enemy retreated to Ticonderoga unmolested but by the impetuous attack of Captain McGinnis of New Hampshire, with a force of 200 men. Yet in England his barren victory seemed of such importance that he was honored with a baronetcy.
Now, while an army of more than two thousand regulars, under Lord Loudon, was lying at Albany, and Winslow was at Lake George with 7,000 provincial troops, Montcalm besieged Oswego, which presently surrendered with all its garrison, arms, stores, and munitions of war. Montcalm continued actively on the offensive, and in March, 1757, undertook the capture of Fort William Henry, which was held by Colonel Monroe with a garrison of 2,500 men. His surrender was at once demanded, but he refused, and defended the fort with great bravery, being confident General Webb would presently send him relief from Fort Edward. But though frequently entreated, no help came from Webb, only a letter protesting his inability to aid him, and advising him to surrender on the best terms obtainable. This fell into the hands of Montcalm, and with renewed demands of surrender was sent by him to Monroe. Thus abandoned, after holding out for more than a week, he signed the articles of capitulation, by the terms of which his paroled army was to be escorted to Fort Edward, his sick and wounded to be cared for by Montcalm, and given up when sufficiently recovered. The story of the perfidious violation of these terms, and the horrors of the carnage when the defenseless prisoners, of whatever age or sex, or sick or wounded, were butchered by the savage allies of the Frenchmen, some of whom stood passive witnesses of the massacre, raising neither hand nor voice to stay it, is a dark and blood-stained page of American history, and an ineffaceable blot on the name of Montcalm. Webb, with increased alarm for his own safety, sent swift messengers to the provinces for reinforcements, which were at once raised and forwarded to him; but Montcalm did not return from Ticonderoga to attack him, and the recruits were not long kept in service.
Loudon at New York was engaged in a controversy with the government of Massachusetts concerning the quartering of British troops, and threatening to send an army to that province if his demands were not speedily complied with, and so the campaign ended without honor or advantage to the English. Its poor results were chiefly due to the inefficiency of the British ministry, and the incapacity of the British commanders to carry on this unaccustomed warfare of the wilderness, and their unwillingness to avail themselves of the experience of the colonial officers, whom they despised, thus leaving to their alert and active enemy all the advantage of familiarity with its methods. So universal was the complaint in England and her American colonies caused by this and the preceding campaigns that the formation of a new ministry became necessary, and William Pitt was appointed secretary of state.
In his plan of the American campaign, which was soon to be vigorously undertaken, one army of 12,000 men was to attempt the conquest of Louisburg; another, still larger, that of the French forts on Lake Champlain; and a third, that of Fort Du Quesne, at the head of the Ohio River. The expedition against Louisburg was commanded by General Amherst, under whom were Generals Wolfe, Whitmore, and Lawrence. The naval force, commanded by Admiral Boscawen, sailed for America early in the spring, and in May, 1758, the whole armament of 157 sail was gathered at Halifax. Sailing thence on the 28th, a part of the transports arrived near Louisburg, and on the 8th of June the troops, under General Wolfe, disembarked and invested the city. Louisburg was garrisoned by 2,500 regulars, 300 militia, and later by a reinforcement of 350 Canadians and Indians, and the harbor was defended by 11 French ships of war. After a siege of several weeks, during which the French warships were destroyed, the place surrendered to General Amherst on the 26th of July. In the beginning of the same month General Forbes set forth from Philadelphia on his difficult march to Fort Du Quesne. Obstacles which delayed and reverses which checked his progress did not discourage him, although he was so debilitated by a mortal sickness that for much of the distance he was carried on a litter; and in November he took possession of the fort, which had been dismantled and abandoned by the French, and gave it the name of Fort Pitt.
While these undertakings of Amherst and Forbes were progressing, General Abercrombie began his movement upon Ticonderoga with a well-appointed army of more than six thousand regular and nearly ten thousand provincial troops. The army embarked on Lake George in more than a thousand batteaux and whaleboats; and as the flotilla moved down the lake, with glittering arms and gaudy uniforms and flaunting banners shining in the July sunshine, their splendor repeated in innumerable broken reflections on the ruffled waters, this wilderness had never seen such pomp and circumstance of war; nor had its solitudes been stirred by such martial strains as now burst from trumpet, fife, drum, and Highland pipe, and echoed from shore and crag in multitudinous reverberations. Having landed next day without opposition at the lower end of the lake, the troops began their advance in four columns. An advanced guard of one battalion of the enemy, after firing their tents, retreated from their fortified camp on the approach of the English, but afterward engaged in a skirmish with the left column, when the troops had fallen into some disorder in their march through the dense woods. It was in this engagement that the English suffered its first severe loss in the death of Lord Howe, a gallant young general, who had especially endeared himself to the provincials by his kindly manners, by sharing their hardships and perils, and by easily accommodating himself to the exigencies of this new service. Israel Putnam, then a major of the rangers, in which branch of the service he had distinguished himself by his coolness and daring, was a conspicuous actor in this affair. After the death of Howe, Putnam and the troops with him attacked the French with such fury that more than four hundred of them were killed and taken prisoners. But the army having fallen into great disorder in its passage through the woods, it was deemed advisable to withdraw it to the place where it had disembarked. Next day, the sawmill on the outlet of Lake George was taken possession of by a detachment under Colonel Bradstreet, the bridge there which the enemy had destroyed was rebuilt, and the army again began its advance on Ticonderoga.
Montcalm had strengthened his position by throwing up a breastwork across the neck of the peninsula on which the fort stood, and by hedging this with an almost impenetrable abatis. Yet the engineer whom Abercrombie had sent to examine the enemy's position was of the opinion that it might be successfully stormed; and as the prisoners taken reported that large reinforcements were likely to arrive soon, it was determined to assault the works at once. The attacking columns were met by a scathing fire of artillery and musketry, but rushed on to the abatis, through which they vainly endeavored to make their way, Murray's regiment of Highlanders hewing at the bristling barrier of pointed branches with their claymores, while a murderous fire from the breastworks thinned the ranks of the brave clansmen. Again and again the assailants were swept back by the pelting storm of bullets, and again they returned to the assault; the few who struggled through the abatis were slain before they reached the intrenchments, or only reached them to be made prisoners, and of the Highland regiment twenty-five of the officers and half the privates fell. With persistent but unavailing valor, the attack was continued for more than four hours, and then a retreat was ordered, and the defeated army sullenly fell back to the camp which it had occupied the night before. Early next morning it was reëmbarked, and the torn and decimated regiments continued their retreat up the lake.
General Abercrombie's defeat did not discourage him from making further efforts against the enemy. He sent General Stanwix to build a fort at Oneida and dispatched Colonel Bradstreet with 3,000 men against Fort Frontenac on the St. Lawrence, and both successfully performed their allotted duties.
General Amherst returned from Louisburg, assumed command, and in the summer of 1757 began a movement for the reduction of Ticonderoga and Crown Point, which was a part of this year's campaign. Moving forward by the same route that Abercrombie had taken, he reached the neighborhood of Ticonderoga without encountering any opposition from the enemy, and made preparations to besiege this fortress; but the French made only a brief defense, in which, however, Colonel Townshend and a few soldiers were killed, and then, leaving the French flag flying and a match burning in the magazine to blow up the fort, evacuated it and retired to Crown Point the night of the 27th of July. An hour after their departure came the thunder of the explosion, which destroyed one bastion and set the barracks on fire. They presently abandoned Crown Point and retired to the Isle aux Noix, while Amherst was repairing and strengthening the fortifications of Ticonderoga.
So at last, with but slight resistance to the tide of conquest that was now overwhelming their northern possessions in America, the French abandoned the strongholds that guarded the "Gate of the Country."
For more than a quarter of a century Fort St. Frederic had been the point from which marauding bands of Indians and their scarcely less ferocious white associates had set forth on errands of rapine and murder, which had made as dangerous and insecure as a crater's brink every frontier settlement of a wide region. Here had been plotted their forays; here they had returned from them with captives, scalps, and plunder; here found safety from pursuit. The two forts had held civilization at bay on the border of this land of "beautiful valleys and fields fertile in corn," and to all the inhabitants of the New England frontier their fall was a deliverance from an ever-threatening danger.
The French held the Isle aux Noix, their last remaining post on Lake Champlain, with a force of 3,500 regular troops and Canadian militia, and had also on the lake four large armed vessels, commanded by experienced officers of the French navy. The presence of this naval force made it necessary for Amherst to build vessels that might successfully oppose it, and while this work was in progress the British general dispatched a body of rangers against the Indians of St. Francis, who for fifty years had been active and relentless foes of the New England colonies.
Early in the century many members of the different tribes of Waubanakees in the eastern part of New England had been induced by the governor of Canada to remove to that province, and since then had lived on the St. Francis River, and were commonly known as the St. Francis tribe, though they gave themselves the name of "Zooquagese," the people who withdrew from the others, or literally "the Little People."[16]
Their intimate knowledge of the region, which had been the home of many generations of their people, and their familiarity with every waterway and mountain pass that gave easiest access to the English frontiers, made them as valuable instruments, as their hatred of the English made them willing ones for the hostile purposes of the French. From none of their enemies had the frontier settlements suffered more, and toward none did they bear greater enmity.
The wrongs which these tribes had suffered from the English, since their earliest contact with them, gave cause for vengeful retaliation, and its atrocities were such as might be expected of savages accustomed by usage and tradition to inflict on their enemies and receive from them the cruelest tortures that could be devised, and whose religion taught no precept of mercy; but for those Christians, boasting the highest civilization of the world, the French, who encouraged the barbarous warfare and seldom attempted to check its horrors, there can be no excuse.
Amherst chose Major Robert Rogers to lead the expedition against St. Francis, and he could not have chosen one better fitted to carry out the scheme of vengeance than this wary, intrepid, and unscrupulous ranger. To him it was a light achievement to creep within the lines of a French camp, and he could slay and scalp an enemy with as little compunction as would an Indian,[17] while the men whom he led had seen or suffered enough of Indian barbarity to make them as unrelenting as he in the infliction of any measure of punishment on these scourges of the border.
Rogers left Crown Point on the night of the 12th of September with a detachment of 200, embarked in batteaux, and went cautiously down the lake. His force was reduced by one fourth on the fifth day out by the explosion of a keg of powder, which wounded several of his men and made it necessary to send them with an escort back to Crown Point.
Arrived at the head of Missisco Bay, the boats and sufficient provisions for the return voyage were concealed, and left in charge of two trusty Indians, when the little army began its march across the country through the wilderness toward the Indian town. Two days later it was overtaken by the boat guard, bringing to Rogers the alarming news of the discovery of the boats by a force of French and Indians, four hundred strong, fifty of whom had been sent away with the batteaux, while the others, still doubly outnumbering his force, were following him in hot pursuit. Rogers kept his own counsel, and alone formed the plans that he at once acted upon. He dispatched a lieutenant with eight men to Crown Point to acquaint General Amherst with the turn of affairs, and ask him to send provisions to Coos, on the Connecticut, to which place it now seemed that soon or late he must make his way. The only question was, whether he should do so now, or attempt to strike the contemplated blow before his pursuers could overtake him. It was characteristic of the man to decide upon the bolder course, and he marched his men, as enduring as the enemy and as accustomed to such difficult marching, with such celerity that the pursuing force was left well behind when, on the evening of the 4th of October, the neighborhood of the town was reached.
While his men halted for rest and refreshment, he, disguised as an Indian and accompanied by two of his officers, went forward and entered the village. The Indians, unsuspicious of danger, were celebrating some rite with a grand dance, which quite engrossed their attention while Rogers and his companions thoroughly reconnoitred the place. Returning to his troops some hours before daylight, he marched them within a few hundred yards of the town, and at daybreak, the dance being over and the Indians asleep, the onslaught was made.
Amherst's orders to Rogers, after reminding him of the "barbarities committed by the enemy's Indian scoundrels," and bidding him to "take his revenge," had enjoined that "no women or children shall be killed or hurt;" but if this command was heeded at first, it was presently disregarded. If there was any touch of mercy in the hearts of the rangers when the assault began, the last vestige of it was swept away when daylight revealed hundreds of scalps of their own people displayed on poles, silvered locks of age, tresses of women's hair, golden ringlets of childhood, all ghastly trophies of New England raids.
Old and young, warrior, squaw, and pappoose, alike suffered their vengeance, till of the three hundred inhabitants two thirds were killed and twenty taken prisoners, fifteen of whom were soon "let go their way." The church, adorned with plate and an image of silver, and the well-furnished dwellings, were plundered and burned, and the morning sun shone upon a scene of desolation as complete as these savages themselves had ever wrought.
When the work of destruction was finished, Rogers assembled his men, of whom only one had been killed and six slightly wounded, and after an hour's rest began the return march with the prisoners, five recaptured English captives, and what provisions and booty could be carried.
The route taken was up the St. Francis and to the eastward of Lake Memphremagog, the objective point being the Coos Meadows, where it was expected that the relief party with provisions would be met. They were followed by the enemy, and had lost seven men by their attacks, when Rogers formed an ambuscade upon his own track, into which they fell and suffered so severely that they desisted from further pursuit.
When ten days had elapsed, and Rogers and his men had come some distance within the bounds of what is now Vermont, they began to suffer much from lack of food, and it was thought best to divide the force into small parties, each to make its way as best it could to the expected succor at Coos, or to the English settlements farther down the Connecticut.
While its autumnal glories faded and the primeval forest grew bare and bleak, the little bands struggled bravely on over rugged mountains, through tangled windfalls, and swamps whose miry pools were treacherously hidden beneath the fallen leaves, fighting hour after hour and day after day against fatigue and famine, foes more persistent, insidious, and unrelenting than Awahnock[18] and Waubanakee. Such small game as they could kill, and the few edible roots that they found, were their only subsistence; and they would gladly have bartered the silver image and the golden candlesticks brought from the church, and all their booty, for one day's supply of the coarsest food. They buried the treasure, with scant hope that they might ever unearth it, and cast away unheeded the useless burdens of less valuable plunder.
At night they cowered around their camp-fires and shivered out the miserable hours of darkness, then arose unrefreshed, and staggered on the way that each day stretched more wearily and hopelessly before them. Some could go no farther, but fell down and died, and were left unburied by comrades too weak to give them the rudest sepulchre, and some in the delirium of famine wandered away from their companions to become hopelessly lost in the pathless wilderness and die alone.
The officer whom Rogers had dispatched to Crown Point performed the difficult journey in nine days, and General Amherst at once sent a lieutenant with three men to Number Four, to proceed thence up the Connecticut with provisions to the appointed place. The relief party embarked in two canoes laden with provisions, which they safely landed on an island near the mouth of the Passumpsic; but though ordered to remain there as long as there was any hope of the coming of those whom they were sent to succor, when only two days had passed they became impatient of waiting, or were seized by a panic, and hastily departed with all the supplies.
Rogers and those who remained with him, following the Passumpsic down to the Connecticut, came at last to the place where they hoped to find relief, but only to find it abandoned, and that so recently that the camp-fire of the relief party was still freshly burning. These men were yet so near that they heard the guns which Rogers fired to recall them, but which, supposed by them to be fired by the enemy, only served to hasten their retreat.
Rogers says: "It is hardly possible to describe the grief and consternation of those of us who came to the Cohasse Intervales."[19] Sorely distressed by this shameful desertion but not discouraged, the brave commander left his worn out and starving men at the Passumpsic in charge of a lieutenant, whom he instructed in the method of preparing ground nuts and lily roots for food, and set forth down the river on a raft with Captain Ogden, one ranger, and a captive Indian boy, in a final endeavor to reach Number Four and obtain relief. At White River Falls the raft was wrecked, and Rogers, too weak to cut trees for another, burned them down and into proper lengths, while Ogden and the ranger hunted red squirrels for food. A second raft was then built, and, after a voyage that would have been perilous to men in the fullness of strength, they at last reached Number Four. Rogers at once dispatched a canoe with supplies to his starving men, which reached them on the tenth day after he had left them, as he had promised. Two days later he himself went up the river with canoes, manned by some of the inhabitants whom he had hired, and laden with provisions for those who might come in by the same route, and he sent expresses to towns on the Merrimac that relief parties might be sent up that river.
On the 1st of December he returned to Crown Point with what remained of his force, having lost, since beginning the retreat from St. Francis, three lieutenants and forty-six non-commissioned officers and privates. Notwithstanding its losses and dire hardships, the expedition was successful in the infliction of a chastisement that the Indians of St. Francis never recovered from and never forgot, and which relieved the New England frontier from the continual dread of the bloody incursions that it had so long suffered. Throughout the whole of it, in leading it to victory and in retreat, in sharing their hardships and in heroic efforts to succor and save his men, Rogers's conduct was such as should make his name honorably remembered in spite of the suspicions which tarnished it in after years.
While Rogers's expedition was in progress, a sloop of sixteen guns and a raft carrying six guns were built at Ticonderoga. With these and a brigantine, Captain Loring sailed down the lake and engaged the French vessels, sinking two of them and capturing a third, which was repaired and brought away after being run aground and deserted by its crew, leaving to the enemy but one schooner on these waters.
Amherst at the same time embarked his whole army in batteaux, and began his advance against Isle aux Noix, but, being delayed by storms and adverse winds, deemed it best to abandon for this season the attempt, and returned to Crown Point, arriving there on the 27th of October. He now began the erection of a new and larger fortress and three new outworks there; completed the road between Crown Point and Ticonderoga, and began another from the latter fort to Number Four.
Meanwhile events of great moment had occurred elsewhere. In July, after the death of General Prideaux, who commanded the army besieging Niagara, Sir William Johnson had defeated the French army sent to its relief, and the fort had surrendered to him. On the 13th of September Wolfe, on the Heights of Abraham, had given his life for imperishable renown; and six days later Quebec, the most impregnable stronghold of the French in America, was surrendered to the enemy, whose attempts to reduce it had for seventy years been unsuccessful.
All the English colonies in America rejoiced in its fall, for the conquest of Canada was now assured, and the day of their deliverance from French and Indian invasion had dawned.
Levis's attempt to recapture Quebec had failed, though sickness and death had sorely weakened Murray's garrison, and now at Montreal the French were to make the last stand against English conquest. Amherst was to advance upon it down the St. Lawrence, Murray from Quebec, and Haviland from the south, to break the last bar of the "Gate of the Country," held by Bougainville at Isle aux Noix.
On the 15th of July Murray embarked with nearly 2,500 men. He met no great opposition from the superior forces of Bourlamaque and Dumas, which on either shore of the river withdrew slowly toward Montreal as the fleet advanced. He issued a proclamation promising safety of person and property to all the inhabitants who remained peaceably at home, and threatening to burn the houses of all who were in arms. He kept his word to the letter in the protection and in the punishment, and the result was the rapid dwindling away of Bourlamaque's army.
Toward the end of August he encamped below the town on the island of Ste. Therese, and awaited the arrival of the other English armies. A regiment of New Hampshire men commanded by Colonel Goffe opened the road which Amherst had ordered to be made from Number Four to Crown Point, and performed the labor in such good time that on the 31st of July they arrived, and, turned drovers as well as pioneers, brought with them a herd of cattle for the supply of the army there.[20] This road ran from Wentworth's Ferry, near Charlestown, up the right bank of Black River to the present township of Ludlow, thence across the mountains to Otter Creek, and down that stream to a station opposite Crown Point, to which it ran across the country. That part of the road across and on the west side of the mountains was begun and nearly completed in the previous year, under the supervision of Colonel Zadok Hawks and Captain John Stark; Stark and 200 rangers being employed on the western portion.[21]
Haviland embarked at Crown Point on the 12th of August with 3,400 regulars, provincials, and Indians in whaleboats and batteaux, which, under sunny skies and on quiet waters, came in four days to Isle aux Noix. Cannon were planted in front and rear of Bougainville's position. The largest vessel of his naval force was cut adrift by a cannon-shot and drifted into the hands of the English; and the others, endeavoring to escape to St. John's, ran aground and were taken by the rangers, who swam out and boarded one, tomahawk in hand, when the others presently surrendered.[22]
Bougainville, abandoning the island, made a difficult night retreat to St. John's, and from thence fell back with Roquemaure to the St. Lawrence. Haviland was soon opposite Montreal, and in communication with Murray, and both awaited the coming of Amherst's army. This force had assembled at Oswego in July, and numbered something more than 10,000 men, exclusive of about 700 Indians under Sir William Johnson, and had embarked on Lake Ontario on the 10th of August, and within five days reached Oswigatchee. After the capture by five gunboats of a French armed brig that threatened the destruction of the batteaux and whaleboats, the army continued its advance to Fort Levis, near the head of the rapids. Amherst invested the fort, and opened fire upon it from land and water; and when for three days rocky islet and wooded shore had been shaken by the thunder of the cannon that splintered the wooden walls, the French commandant, Pouchot, was compelled to surrender the ruined works and his garrison. Johnson's Indians were so enraged at not being allowed to kill the prisoners that three fourths of them went home.[23] There was no further resistance from the French, but there was yet a terrible enemy to be encountered in the long and dangerous rapids that must be descended. Several were passed with but slight loss; but in the most perilous passage of the last three, forty-seven boats were wrecked, several damaged, some artillery, ammunition, and stores lost, and eighty-four men drowned in the angry turmoil of wild waters. When these perils were past, an uneventful and unopposed voyage ensued, till on the 6th of September the army landed at Lachine, and, marching to the city, encamped before its walls.
The defenses of Montreal were too weak to resist a siege; the troops, abandoned by the militia, too few to give battle to the three armies that hemmed them in; and there was nothing left for Vaudreuil but surrender. Some of the terms of capitulation proposed by him were rejected by Amherst, who demanded that "the whole garrison of Montreal and all the French troops in Canada must lay down their arms, and shall not serve again during the war." In answer to the remonstrances of Vaudreuil and his generals he said: "I am fully resolved, for the infamous part the troops of France have acted in exciting the savages to perpetrate the most horrid and unheard-of barbarities in the whole progress of the war, and for other open treacheries and flagrant breaches of faith, to manifest to all the world, by this capitulation, my detestation of such practices."[24]
Vaudreuil yielded, as perforce he must, and on the 8th of September signed the capitulation by which Canada passed into the possession of England. The French officers, civil and military, the troops and sailors, were to be sent to France, and the inhabitants were to be protected in their property and religion.
The Indian allies of the English, and those who had lately been the allies of the French but were now as ready to turn against them as they had been to serve, were held in such firm restraint that not a person suffered any injury from them more than from the soldiers of the victorious armies.
The long struggle was over, the conquest of Canada was accomplished, and great was the rejoicing of the people of all the English colonies, especially those of New England. The toilsome march through the savage forest, the cheerless bivouac on remote and lonely shores, were no longer to be endured; nor the deadly ambuscade dreaded by the home-loving husbandman, who for love of home had turned soldier; nor was his family to live in the constant fear of the horrors of nightly attack, massacre, or captivity that had made anxious every hour of day and night.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] Massachusetts gave 107,793 acres of land to Connecticut as equivalent for as many acres she had previously granted that were found to be south of the boundary between the two provinces, and which she wished to retain. One section of these "Equivalent Lands" was on the west bank of Connecticut River, within the present towns of Putney, Dummerston, and Brattleboro'. (Colonial Boundaries Mass, vol. iii.) This fell to the share of William Dummer, Anthony Stoddard, William Brattle, and John White. "The Equivalent Lands" were sold at public vendue at Hartford, in 1716, for a little more than a farthing per acre. The proceeds were given to Yale College. (Hall's History of Eastern Vermont.)
[8] Light pieces of ordnance mounted on swivels, and sometimes charged with old nails and like missiles, or, upon a pinch, even with stones; hence sometimes called "stone pieces."
[9] This fort was situated in what is now Williamstown.
[10] Dr. Dwight's Travels, vol. ii. p. 82.
[11] Williams's History of Vermont.
[12] Captain Stevens's letter to Colonel Williams.
[13] Stevens's bravery was so much admired by Sir Charles Knowles, an officer of high rank in the British navy, that he presented him a handsome sword, and in honor of the donor the township was named Charlestown. For Captain Stevens's account of this siege see History of Charlestown, p. 34.
[14] This fight took place on Sunday, June 26, 1748, about twelve miles northwest of Fort Dummer, in the present township of Marlboro'.
[15] Johnson's "Account of Battle of Lake George," Doc. Hist. N. Y. vol. ii. p. 402.
[16] From John Wadno, an intelligent Indian of St. Francis.
[17] For some reports of his scouts, see Doc. Hist. N. Y. vol. iv. p. 169 et seq.
[18] Awahnock, = Frenchman.
[19] Rogers's Journal.
[20] Belknap's History of New Hampshire.
[21] Sanderson's History of Charlestown, p. 87.
[22] Parkman's Montcalm and Wolfe.
[23] Parkman's Montcalm and Wolfe, vol. ii. p. 370.
[24] Parkman.