With Wolfe in Canada: The Winning of a Continent

by G. A. Henty

The Canadian officers did nothing at all to try to assuage the fury of the Indians, and the officers of the Canadian detachment, which formed the advance guard of the French escort, refused any protection to the men, telling them they had better take to the woods and shift for themselves. Montcalm, and the principal French officers, did everything short of the only effectual step, namely, the ordering up of the French regular troops to save the English. They ran about among the yelling Indians, imploring them to desist, but in vain.

Some seven or eight hundred of the English were seized and carried off by the savages, while some seventy or eighty were massacred on the spot. The column attempted no resistance. None had ammunition, and, of the colonial troops, very few were armed with bayonets. Had any resistance been offered, there can be no doubt all would have been massacred by the Indians.

Many of the fugitives ran back to the fort, and took refuge there, and Montcalm recovered from the Indians more than four hundred of those they had carried off. These were all sent under a strong guard to Fort Edward. The greater part of the survivors of the column dispersed into the woods, and made their way in scattered parties to Fort Edward. Here cannon had been fired at intervals, to serve as a guide to the fugitives, but many, no doubt, perished in the woods. On the morning after the massacre the Indians left in a body for Montreal, taking with them two hundred prisoners, to be tortured and murdered on their return to their villages.

Few events cast a deeper disgrace on the arms of France than this massacre, committed in defiance of their pledged honour for the safety of their prisoners, and in sight of four thousand French troops, not a man of whom was set in motion to prevent it. These facts are not taken only from English sources, but from the letters of French officers, and from the journal of the Jesuit Roubaud, who was in charge of the Christianized Indians, who, according to his own account, were no less ferocious and cruel than the unconverted tribes. The number of those who perished in the massacre is uncertain. Captain Jonathan Carver, a colonial officer, puts the killed and captured at 1500. A French writer, whose work was published at Montreal, says that they were all killed, except seven hundred who were captured; but this is, of course, a gross exaggeration. General Levis and Roubaud, who were certain to have made the best of the matter, acknowledged that they saw some fifty corpses scattered on the ground, but this does not include those murdered in the fort and camp.

Probably the total number killed was about two hundred, and besides these must be counted the two hundred prisoners carried off to be tortured by the Indians. The greater portion of these were purchased from the Indians, in exchange for rum, by Vaudreuil, the governor at Montreal; but to the eternal disgrace of this man, he suffered many of them to be carried off, and did not even interfere when, publicly, in the sight of the whole town, the Indians murdered some of the prisoners, and, not content with eating them themselves, forced their comrades to partake of the flesh. Bougainville, one of the aides-de-camp of Montcalm, was present, and testified to the fact, and the story is confirmed by the intendant Bigot, a friend of the governor.

The ferocity of the Indians cost them dear. They had dug up and scalped the corpses in the graveyard of Fort William Henry. Many of these had died of smallpox, and the savages took the infection home to their villages, where great numbers perished of the disease.

As soon as their Indian allies had left, the French soldiers were set to work demolishing the English fort, and the operation was completed by the destruction, by fire, of the remains. The army then returned to Crown Point.

In view of the gross breach of the articles of capitulation by the French, the English government refused also to be bound by it, and the French prisoners in their hands were accordingly retained.

Colonel Monro himself was one of those who survived. He had made his way through the savages back to the fort, to demand that the protection of the French troops should be given to the soldiers, and so escaped the massacre.

Upon his arrival at Albany, James reported, to the officer in command there, the reason which had induced him to quit the fort with his company. These reasons were approved of, but the officer advised James to send in a written report to General Webb, and to march at once to Fort Edward, and place himself under that officer's directions.