Twenty miles southeastward is another English fort,—Fort Edward,—where General Webb with sixteen hundred men is keeping the road barred against advance to Albany. Soon as scouts bring word to Fort William Henry of the advancing French, Lieutenant Monro sends frantic appeal to Webb for more men; but Webb has already sent all the men he can spare. If he leaves Fort Edward, the French by a flank movement through the woods can march on Albany, so Monro unplugs his seventeen cannon, locks his gates, and bides his fate.
Montcalm follows the same tactics as at Oswego,—brings heavy artillery against slab walls. For the first week of August, eight hundred of his men are digging trenches by night to avoid giving target for the fiery bombs whizzing through the dark from Monro's cannon. By day they lie hidden in the woods with a cordon of sharpshooters encircling the fort, Montcalm encamped on the west to prevent help from Sir William Johnson up the Mohawk, Lévis on the southeast to cut off aid from Webb. Monro sends yet one last appeal for help: two thousand men against eight thousand,—the odds are eloquent of his need! Montcalm's scouts let the messenger pass through the lines as if unseen, but they make a point of catching the return messenger and holding Webb's answer that he cannot come, till their cannon have torn great wounds in the fort walls. Then Bougainville blindfold carries Webb's answer to Monro and demands the surrender of the fort. Monro still has a little ammunition, still hopes against hope that Johnson or Webb or Loudon will come to the rescue, and he keeps his big guns singing over the heads of the French in their trenches till all the cannon have burst but seven, and there are not ten rounds of shells left. Then Colonel Young, with a foot shot off, rides out on horseback waving a white flag. Three hundred English have been killed, as many again are wounded or ill of smallpox, and to the remaining garrison of sixteen hundred Montcalm promises safe conduct to General Webb at Fort Edward. Then the English march out. That night—August 9—the vanquished English camp with Montcalm's forces. The Indians, meanwhile, ramping through the fort for plunder, have maddened themselves with traders' rum! Before daybreak they have butchered all the wounded lying in the hospital and cut to pieces the men ill of smallpox,—a crime that brought its own punishment in contagion. Next morning, when the French guard tried to conduct the disarmed English along the trail to Fort Edward, the Indians snatched at the clothing, the haversacks, the tent kit of the marchers. With their swords the French beat back the drunken horde. In answer, the war hatchets were waved over the heads of the cowering women. The march became a panic; the panic, a massacre; and for twenty-four hours such bedlam raged as might have put fiends to shame. The frenzied Indians would listen to no argument but blows; and when the English prisoners appealed to the French for protection, the French dared not offend their savage allies by fighting to protect the English victims. "Take to the woods," they warned the men, and the women were quickly huddled back to shelter of the fort. Of the men, sixty were butchered on the spot and some seven hundred captured to be held for ransom. The remnant of the English soldiers, along with the women, were held till the Indian frenzy had spent itself, then sent to Fort Edward. August 16 a torch was put to the combustibles of the fort ruins, and as the French boats glided out on Lake George for the St. Lawrence, explosion after explosion, flame leaping above flame, proclaimed that of Fort William Henry there would remain naught but ashes and charred ruins and the skeletons of the dead. So closed the campaign of 1857 [Transcriber's note: 1757?]. For three years hand running England had suffered defeat.
The spring of 1758 witnessed a change. The change was the rise to power of a man who mastered circumstances instead of allowing them to master him. Such men are the milestones of human progress, whether heroes, or quiet toilers unknown to the world. The man was Pitt, the English statesman. Instead of a weak ministry fighting the machinations of France, it was now Pitt versus Pompadour, the English patriot against the light woman who ruled the councils of France.
From fighting weakly on the defensive, England sprang into the position of aggressor all along the line. The French were to be attacked at all points simultaneously, at Louisburg on the east, at Ticonderoga or Carillon on Lake Champlain, at Duquesne on the Ohio, at Frontenac on Lake Ontario, and finally at Quebec itself. London is recalled as commander in chief. Abercrombie succeeds to the position, with the brilliant young soldier, Lord Howe, as right-hand man; but Pitt takes good care that there shall be good chiefs and good right-hand men at all points. The one mistake is Abercrombie,—"Mrs. Nabby Crombie" the soldiers called him. He was an indifferent, negative sort of man; and indifferent, negative sorts of people, by their dishwater goodness, can sometimes do more harm in critical positions than the branded criminal. Red tape had forced him on Pitt, but Pitt trusted to the excellence of the subordinate officers, especially Lord Howe.
Louisburg first!
No more dillydallying and delay "to plant cabbages!" The thing is to reach Louisburg before the French have entered the harbor. Men-of-war are stationed to intercept the French vessels coming from the Mediterranean, and before winter has passed Admiral Boscawen has sailed for America with one hundred and fifty vessels, including forty men-of-war, frigates, and transports carrying twelve thousand men. General Amherst is to command the land forces, and with Amherst is Brigadier James Wolfe, age thirty-one, a tall, slim, fragile man, whose delicate frame is tenanted by a lion spirit; or, to change the comparison, by a motive power too strong for the weak body that held it. By May the fleet is in Halifax. By June Amherst has joined Boscawen, and the ships beat out for Louisburg through heavy fog, with a sea that boils over the reefs in angry surf.
Louisburg was in worse condition than during the siege of 1745. The broken walls have been repaired, but the filling is false,—sand grit. Its population is some four thousand, of whom three thousand eight hundred are the garrison. On the ships lying in the harbor are three thousand marines, a defensive force, in all, of six thousand eight hundred. On walls and in bastions are some four hundred and fifty heavy guns, cannon, and mortars. Imagine a triangle with the base to the west, the two sides running out to sea on the east. The fort is at the apex. The wall of the base line is protected by a marsh. On the northeast side is the harbor protected by reefs and three batteries. Along the south side, Drucourt, the French commander, has stationed two thousand men at three different points where landing is possible, to construct batteries behind barricades of logs.
