[8] Read Parkman's La Salle, pp. 275-288, 350-355, 396-405.
CHAPTER X
WARS WITH THE FRENCH
KING WILLIAM'S WAR.—When James II was driven from his throne (p. 93), he fled to France. His quarrel with King William was taken up by Louis XIV, and in 1689 war began between France and England. The strife thus started in the Old World soon spread to the New, and during eight years the frontier of New England and New York was the scene of French and Indian raids, massacres, and burning towns.
[Illustration: SCENE OF THE EARLY WARS WITH THE FRENCH.]
THE FRONTIER.—The frontier of English settlement consisted of a string of little towns close to the coast in Maine and New Hampshire, and some sixty miles back from the coast in Massachusetts; of a second string of towns up the Connecticut valley to central Massachusetts; and of a third up the Hudson to the Mohawk and up the Mohawk to Schenec'tady. Most of Maine and New Hampshire, all of what is now Vermont, and all New York north and west of the Mohawk was a wilderness pierced by streams which afforded the French and Indians easy ways of reaching the English frontier.
The French frontier consisted of a few fishing towns scattered along the shores of Acadia (what is now Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and eastern Maine), arid a few settlements along the St. Lawrence to Fort Frontenac, just where the river leaves Lake Ontario.
Between these frontiers in Maine and New Hampshire were the Abenaki (ab- nahk'ee) Indians, close allies of the French and bitter enemies of the English; and in New York the Iroquois, allies of the English and enemies of the French since the day in 1609 when Champlain defeated them (p. 115). [1]
THE FRENCH ATTACK THE ENGLISH FRONTIER.—The governor of New France was Count Frontenac, a man of action, keen, fiery, and daring, a splendid executive, an able commander, and well called the Father of New France. Gathering his Frenchmen and Indians as quickly as possible, Frontenac formed three war parties on the St. Lawrence in the winter of 1689-90: that at Montreal was to march against Albany; that at Three Rivers was to ravage the frontier of New Hampshire, and that at Quebec the frontier of Maine. The Montreal party was ready first, and made its way on snowshoes to the little palisaded village of Schenectady, passed through the open gates [2] in a blinding storm of snow, and in the darkness of night massacred threescore men, women, and children, took captive as many more, and left the place in ashes.
[Illustration: THE ATTACK AT SCHENECTADY.]