It was a difficult and dangerous task that the soldiers had laid out for themselves, for the Indians could be counted upon to make a desperate resistance, and there were enough of them behind those intrenchments to give their assailants all and quite possibly more than they could do.
The soldiers were so ill-supplied with food that, despite the bad weather, they dared not wait. From a captured prisoner, Governor Winslow had learned of the single approach to the stronghold. The footbridge was so narrow that two men could not walk abreast. The first arrivals started on a run across the support, but were shot down the moment they came within range. Others took their places only to fall in turn. When six captains and a large number of privates had been swept away, those behind them fell back, and it looked as if the whole force was checked.
But Captain Mosely, whom a singular good fortune seemed always to attend, had managed by some means to get within the fort at the rear with a handful of men, and all were fighting hand to hand against overwhelming odds. Their shouts brought others to their side, and by almost superhuman efforts, the Indians were driven from their main stronghold. Men, women and children ran in terror from wigwam to wigwam, chased by men as merciless as they, who spared none. In the assault at the rear, Captain Benjamin Church was wounded three times. He kept on fighting, and wished to save the wigwams with their valuable supplies, but the torch was applied, and the immense stronghold became a roaring conflagration.
INDIAN VILLAGE ENCLOSED
WITH PALISADES
Driven into the open, the Indians fought with the same fierce bravery as at first, and inflicted great loss upon the troops. But they were forced from the fort, which was now in possession of their enemies. Of the Indians, more than seven hundred were slain, while eighty of the English were killed and a hundred and fifty wounded.
Captain Church and Governor Winslow wished to stay in the stronghold, since it was the place where the wounded could have proper attention, but the surgeon and Captain Mosely opposed, believing the warriors would return to the attack and drive them out. Their advice was followed, and, as a consequence, many of the wounded, who otherwise might have been saved, died before reaching the end of the dismal march of eighteen miles.
Among the prisoners was the head sachem of the Narragansetts, who, because he had violated his treaty with the whites, was put to death. The providential arrival of a vessel from Boston with supplies was all that saved the survivors from perishing of starvation.
This crushing blow to the Narragansetts would have ended the war had Philip been among the captured or slain, but he escaped and became more active than ever. He fled with most of the defeated warriors to the Nipmuck country, and made a visit to the Mohawks of New York, whom he strove to persuade to join him in the uprising against the English, but they refused, and the Wampanoag orator roused the Indians elsewhere. In the course of a month, the war was raging over an area of three hundred miles. Settlers who lived beyond the confines of villages were attacked, generally in the dead of night, and often when the weather was bitterly cold or a violent storm raged. They fought bravely, but few thus assailed escaped. Husband and wife, and, perhaps one or two of the larger children, joined in defending the home that was doomed from the first. The helpless ones were often tortured, and in other instances, were carried off to a captivity to which a quiet death would have been merciful. Warwick and Providence, in Rhode Island, narrowly escaped being laid in ashes, and Medford, Weymouth, Groton, Lancaster, and Marlborough—all in Massachusetts—were burned.
The Indians were so successful that they grew more daring. As if to show their contempt for the English, a body went to the deserted fields at Greenfield and began planting corn, showing thereby that they expected to harvest it. Captain William Turner, some twenty miles away, was so indignant over the "nerve" of these redskins, that he resolved to teach them a lesson. He gathered more than a hundred troopers, and rode so hard that he reached Deerfield before daylight on the morning of May 10.