Vermont: A Study of Independence

by Rowland Evans Robinson

While Rogers's expedition was in progress, a sloop of sixteen guns and a raft carrying six guns were built at Ticonderoga. With these and a brigantine, Captain Loring sailed down the lake and engaged the French vessels, sinking two of them and capturing a third, which was repaired and brought away after being run aground and deserted by its crew, leaving to the enemy but one schooner on these waters.

Amherst at the same time embarked his whole army in batteaux, and began his advance against Isle aux Noix, but, being delayed by storms and adverse winds, deemed it best to abandon for this season the attempt, and returned to Crown Point, arriving there on the 27th of October. He now began the erection of a new and larger fortress and three new outworks there; completed the road between Crown Point and Ticonderoga, and began another from the latter fort to Number Four.

Meanwhile events of great moment had occurred elsewhere. In July, after the death of General Prideaux, who commanded the army besieging Niagara, Sir William Johnson had defeated the French army sent to its relief, and the fort had surrendered to him. On the 13th of September Wolfe, on the Heights of Abraham, had given his life for imperishable renown; and six days later Quebec, the most impregnable stronghold of the French in America, was surrendered to the enemy, whose attempts to reduce it had for seventy years been unsuccessful.

All the English colonies in America rejoiced in its fall, for the conquest of Canada was now assured, and the day of their deliverance from French and Indian invasion had dawned.

Levis's attempt to recapture Quebec had failed, though sickness and death had sorely weakened Murray's garrison, and now at Montreal the French were to make the last stand against English conquest. Amherst was to advance upon it down the St. Lawrence, Murray from Quebec, and Haviland from the south, to break the last bar of the "Gate of the Country," held by Bougainville at Isle aux Noix.

On the 15th of July Murray embarked with nearly 2,500 men. He met no great opposition from the superior forces of Bourlamaque and Dumas, which on either shore of the river withdrew slowly toward Montreal as the fleet advanced. He issued a proclamation promising safety of person and property to all the inhabitants who remained peaceably at home, and threatening to burn the houses of all who were in arms. He kept his word to the letter in the protection and in the punishment, and the result was the rapid dwindling away of Bourlamaque's army.

Toward the end of August he encamped below the town on the island of Ste. Therese, and awaited the arrival of the other English armies. A regiment of New Hampshire men commanded by Colonel Goffe opened the road which Amherst had ordered to be made from Number Four to Crown Point, and performed the labor in such good time that on the 31st of July they arrived, and, turned drovers as well as pioneers, brought with them a herd of cattle for the supply of the army there.[20] This road ran from Wentworth's Ferry, near Charlestown, up the right bank of Black River to the present township of Ludlow, thence across the mountains to Otter Creek, and down that stream to a station opposite Crown Point, to which it ran across the country. That part of the road across and on the west side of the mountains was begun and nearly completed in the previous year, under the supervision of Colonel Zadok Hawks and Captain John Stark; Stark and 200 rangers being employed on the western portion.[21]

Haviland embarked at Crown Point on the 12th of August with 3,400 regulars, provincials, and Indians in whaleboats and batteaux, which, under sunny skies and on quiet waters, came in four days to Isle aux Noix. Cannon were planted in front and rear of Bougainville's position. The largest vessel of his naval force was cut adrift by a cannon-shot and drifted into the hands of the English; and the others, endeavoring to escape to St. John's, ran aground and were taken by the rangers, who swam out and boarded one, tomahawk in hand, when the others presently surrendered.[22]

Bougainville, abandoning the island, made a difficult night retreat to St. John's, and from thence fell back with Roquemaure to the St. Lawrence. Haviland was soon opposite Montreal, and in communication with Murray, and both awaited the coming of Amherst's army. This force had assembled at Oswego in July, and numbered something more than 10,000 men, exclusive of about 700 Indians under Sir William Johnson, and had embarked on Lake Ontario on the 10th of August, and within five days reached Oswigatchee. After the capture by five gunboats of a French armed brig that threatened the destruction of the batteaux and whaleboats, the army continued its advance to Fort Levis, near the head of the rapids. Amherst invested the fort, and opened fire upon it from land and water; and when for three days rocky islet and wooded shore had been shaken by the thunder of the cannon that splintered the wooden walls, the French commandant, Pouchot, was compelled to surrender the ruined works and his garrison. Johnson's Indians were so enraged at not being allowed to kill the prisoners that three fourths of them went home.[23] There was no further resistance from the French, but there was yet a terrible enemy to be encountered in the long and dangerous rapids that must be descended. Several were passed with but slight loss; but in the most perilous passage of the last three, forty-seven boats were wrecked, several damaged, some artillery, ammunition, and stores lost, and eighty-four men drowned in the angry turmoil of wild waters. When these perils were past, an uneventful and unopposed voyage ensued, till on the 6th of September the army landed at Lachine, and, marching to the city, encamped before its walls.

The defenses of Montreal were too weak to resist a siege; the troops, abandoned by the militia, too few to give battle to the three armies that hemmed them in; and there was nothing left for Vaudreuil but surrender. Some of the terms of capitulation proposed by him were rejected by Amherst, who demanded that "the whole garrison of Montreal and all the French troops in Canada must lay down their arms, and shall not serve again during the war." In answer to the remonstrances of Vaudreuil and his generals he said: "I am fully resolved, for the infamous part the troops of France have acted in exciting the savages to perpetrate the most horrid and unheard-of barbarities in the whole progress of the war, and for other open treacheries and flagrant breaches of faith, to manifest to all the world, by this capitulation, my detestation of such practices."[24]