LAKE GEORGE BATTLES AND MASSACRES.
The historical associations of Lake George are of the deepest interest, for it was the route between the colonial frontier and Lake Champlain, and the scene of great military movements and savage combats. For over a century this attractive region was the sojourning place of religious devotees coming down from Canada to convert or conquer the heathen Iroquois, or of hostile expeditions moving both north and south—Indians, French, Dutch, English—all passing over its lovely waters; and it was the scene of two of the most horrid massacres of the colonial wars. Whenever there was war between France and England this lake saw fierce conflicts, the red men taking part with the whites on both sides. In 1755 Sir William Johnson's expedition started northward from the Hudson to capture Crown Point on Lake Champlain, advancing from Glen's Falls to Lake George, over the route still taken. Colonel Ephraim Williams of Massachusetts commanded part of this expedition, and was ambushed by the French and Hurons near the lake, in what was called the "Bloody Morning Scout." Upon the road still exist grim memorials of the ambush and massacre in the "Bloody Pond" and "Williams' Rock." He had twelve hundred troops and two hundred Mohawk Indians, and both Williams and the white-haired Mohawk chief, Hendrick, were slain, with hundreds of their followers, and the bodies of the dead were thrown into the pond. When the brave Williams started on this sad expedition he had a presentiment of his fate and made his will at Albany, giving his estate to support a free school, and from this bequest was founded the well-known Williams College, at Williamstown, in the Berkshire hills of western Massachusetts. A monument on the hillside, resting upon "Williams' Rock," was erected in 1854 by the College Alumni, to mark the place of his death, while deep down in the glen is the sequestered pond which, tradition says, had a bloody hue for many years.
After the surprise and massacre, Johnson's main forces, which had been at the head of Lake George and heard the firings came up and engaged the French, defeating them with great slaughter, wounding and capturing Baron Dieskau, their commander, who was badly maltreated until Johnson, learning who he was, sent for surgeons, took him into his own tent, and, although wounded himself, had Dieskau's wounds dressed first. The Mohawks, furious at the massacre and loss of their old chief, Hendrick, wanted to kill Dieskau, and a number of them, going into the tent, had a long and angry dispute in their own language with Johnson, after which they sullenly left. Dieskau asked what they wanted. "What do they want!" returned Johnson. "To burn you, by God, eat you, and smoke you in their pipes, in revenge for three or four of their chiefs that were killed. But never fear; you shall be safe with me, or else they shall kill us both." A captain and fifty men were detailed to guard Dieskau, but next morning a lone Indian, who had been loitering about the tent, slipped in and, drawing a sword concealed under a sort of cloak he wore, tried to stab the disabled prisoner. He was seized in time, however, to prevent the murder. The distinguished captive, as soon as his wounds permitted, was carried on a litter over to the Hudson, and sent thence to Albany and New York. He was profuse in his expressions of gratitude, and remarked of the provincial soldiers that in the morning they fought like good boys, about noon like men, and in the afternoon like devils. He returned to Europe in 1757, but he never recovered from his wounds and died a few years later. Johnson after the battle built a strong fort at the head of Lake George to hold his position, while the straggling French and Indians, who had retired to the foot of the lake, entrenched themselves at Ticonderoga. Thus was built the famous Fort William Henry by the English, named in honor of the Duke of Cumberland, brother of King George II., the hero of Culloden, while the French named their entrenched camp at Ticonderoga Fort Carillon, or the "Chime of Bells," in allusion to the music of the waterfalls in the outlet stream flowing beside it between the lakes.
Bitter enemies thus holding either end of Lake George, it became a constant battleground. In 1757, after numerous skirmishes, a considerable British and Colonial force was collected at Forts Edward and William Henry, intended to attack Carillon and Crown Point and drive the French down Lake Champlain. General Montcalm then commanded the French, and learning what was going on, and that the main British force was at Fort Edward, he swiftly traversed the lake with a large army and cut off and besieged Fort William Henry, garrisoned by twenty-five hundred men. The commander at Fort Edward was afraid to send reinforcements, and after a few days the British garrison, their guns dismounted and their works almost destroyed, were forced to capitulate. No sooner had they laid down their arms and marched out of the fort and an adjacent entrenched camp, than the Indian allies of the French, the fierce Hurons, fell upon them, plundering indiscriminately and murdering all they could reach, there being fifteen hundred killed or carried into captivity, and over a hundred women slain, with the worst barbarities of the savage. Montcalm did his best to restrain them, but was powerless. The fort was an irregular bastioned square, formed by gravel embankments, surmounted by a rampart of heavy logs laid in tiers, the interstices filled with earth, and it was built almost at the edge of the lake, the site being now occupied by a hotel. The French spent several days demolishing it. The barracks were torn down and the huge logs of the rampart thrown into a heap. The dead bodies filling the casemates were added to the mass, which was set fire, and the mighty funeral pyre blazed all night. Then the French sailed away on the lake, and Parkman says "no living thing was left but the wolves that gathered from the mountains to feast upon the dead." When the English on the subsequent day sent a scouting party from Fort Edward they found a horrible scene; the fires were still burning, and the smoke and stench were suffocating, the half-consumed corpses broiling upon the embers. The fort had mounted nineteen cannon and a few mortars, a train of artillery which Johnson had highly prized. The French carried these guns off with them to Carillon, and they afterwards had a chequered history. The English subsequently retook them at Carillon, and changed the name of that fort to Ticonderoga. At the dawn of the Revolution, Ethan Allen and his Vermonters surprised Ticonderoga and got them. Then the guns were drawn on sledges to Boston, and did notable service in the American siege and capture of that city, afterwards going into many engagements with Washington's army.
ATTACKING CARILLON.
The Lake George outlet stream, which the French called Carillon, from its waterfalls, was known by the Indians as Ticonderoga, or "the sounding waters." It winds through a ridge about four miles wide between the lakes, is pretty but turbulent, and falls down two series of cascades, giving music and water-power to the paper and other mills at the villages of Alexandria and Ticonderoga, the descent being two hundred and thirty feet. The upper cascade at Alexandria goes down rapids descending two hundred feet in a mile, and the lower cascade is a perpendicular fall of thirty feet at Ticonderoga, this village being called by its people "Ty," for short. Here stood the original French Fort Carillon guarding the pass at the verge of Lake Champlain. After the horrible massacre at Fort William Henry, the British colonists determined upon revenge, and General James Abercrombie, who had been made the Commander-in-Chief of all the British forces in North America through political influence, gathered an army of nearly sixteen thousand men at the head of the lake, while Montcalm was at Carillon with barely one-fourth the number. Abercrombie, however, was little more than the nominal British commander. General Wolfe described him as a "heavy man;" and another soldier wrote that he was "an aged gentleman, infirm in body and mind." The British Government meant that the actual command should be in the hands of General Lord Howe, who was in fact the real chief, described by Wolfe as "that great man" and "the noblest Englishman that has appeared in my time, and the best soldier in the British army;" while Pitt called him "a character of ancient times; a complete model of military virtue." This young nobleman, then in his thirty-fourth year, was Viscount George Augustus Howe, in the Irish peerage, the oldest of the three famous Howe brothers who took part in the American wars. The army, Parkman says, "felt him from General to drummer-boy." In that army were also two future famous men, Israel Putnam and John Stark.
They advanced northward on Lake George, July 5, 1758, in a grand flotilla of over a thousand boats, with two floating castles, the procession brilliant with rich uniforms and waving banners, and the music from its many bands echoing from the enclosing hills. Fenimore Cooper, in Satanstoe, gives a vivid description of this pageant. Passing beyond the Narrows, Abercrombie, on a Sunday morning, landed upon the fertile Sabbath Day Point to refresh his men before making the attack, thus naming it. Among them was Major Rogers, the Ranger, and in front could be seen the steep and rugged cliff of Rogers' Slide, named after him, its face a comparatively smooth inclined plane of naked rock, rising four hundred feet. The tale, as Rogers told it, was, that the previous winter, fleeing from the Indians, he practiced upon them a ruse, making them believe he had actually slid down this rock to the frozen surface of the lake. He was on snowshoes, the savages following, and ran out to the edge of the precipice, casting down his knapsack and provision-bag. Then turning around and wearing his snowshoes backward, he went to a neighboring ravine, and making his way safely down, fled over the ice to the head of the lake. The Indians saw the double set of shoe-marks in the snow, and concluded two men had jumped down rather than be captured. They saw Rogers going off over the ice, and believing he had safely slid down the face of the cliff, regarded him as specially protected by the Great Spirit and abandoned the pursuit. Thus has his name clung to the remarkable rock, though he was said to be a great braggart, and there were people who suggested that he ought to have been a leading member of the "Ananias Club." Beyond the slide, at the foot of the lake, is the low-lying Prisoners' Island, where the British kept the captives they took, and nearby Howe's Landing, where the army landed to attack Fort Carillon.
There was then a dense forest covering almost all the surface between the lakes, greatly obstructed by undergrowth, and Montcalm had protected his position at Carillon with massive breastworks of logs, eight or nine feet high, having in front masses of trees cut down with their tops turned outwards, thus making it almost impossible for an enemy to get through, the sharpened points of the broken branches bristling like the quills of a porcupine. As the British troops advanced in four columns, they got much mixed up in the forest and undergrowth, and Howe, with Putnam and a force of rangers at the head of the principal column, although they could not see ahead, suddenly came upon the French, were challenged, and a hot skirmish followed, in which Howe was shot through the breast and dropped dead. Then all was confusion, but they beat this French advanced force and killed or captured most of them. The loss of Howe, however, was irretrievable, for Abercrombie, deprived of his advice, seemed unable to direct. The fort was attacked after a fashion, but the troops floundered about in the woods and the network of felled trees, suffered from a murderous fire, and were beaten and hurled back discomfited to the shore of the lake. A few days later the shattered army, having left nearly two thousand dead and dying in front of Carillon, sailed back up the lake again to Fort William Henry. Leadership had perished with Lord Howe. His monument is in Westminster Abbey, London, having been erected to his memory by the General Court of the Colony of Massachusetts, who voted £250 for it. So proud was Montcalm of his victory that he caused a great cross to be erected on the battlefield, with an inscription in Latin composed by himself, which is thus translated:
"Soldier and chief and rampart's strength are naught;
Behold the conquering Cross! 'Tis God the triumph wrought."