| Death of Prideaux. Johnson takes command and defeats the French relief force. Surrender of Niagara. |
On July 8 Prideaux summoned the fort to surrender, and, his summons being rejected, began to invest the place. No great skill was shown in the investment, and on July 20 the English general was accidentally killed by the bursting of a shell from one of his own guns. The command devolved on Johnson, who heard that a relief force was coming down Lake Erie—a force which numbered at least 1,200 men all told, and was led by some of the best border fighters in Canada, including Ligneris, who had in the preceding year been in charge of Fort Duquesne. Johnson marched out to intercept them on the road between the fort and the falls, attacked them at once in front and on the flank, and gained a complete victory. The French officers were taken prisoners, their troops were utterly routed and broken up, and the survivors retreated westward to Detroit, abandoning Lake Erie and the whole of the Ohio country. It was on July 24 that the fight took place, and on the following day Pouchot, having verified the news of the French defeat, surrendered Niagara. One of the terms of the surrender was that the prisoners should be protected from the Indians by an English escort, the massacre at Fort William Henry being evidently borne in mind; and on this condition six hundred Frenchmen were sent to New York.
| Result of its fall. |
Thus, for the second time, Sir William Johnson had rendered signal service to the English cause; and with the fall of Niagara the French lost all command of the lower lakes. Their only communication now with Detroit and the far West was by the old route of the Ottawa river, and their scheme of conquest in the lands of the Ohio was wholly and for ever undone. 'The taking of Niagara broke off effectually that communication, so much talked of and so much dreaded, between Canada and Louisiana; and by this stroke one of the capital political designs of the French, which gave occasion to the present war, was defeated in its direct and immediate object.'8 On hearing of the success, Amherst sent up General Gage to replace Prideaux, with orders to come down the St. Lawrence and join in the combination against central Canada; but the force was small, Gage, like Amherst, was cautious, and the summer passed away without any further success by the troops on Lake Ontario.
8 Annual Register for 1759, p. 34.
| Amherst's advance. The French abandon Ticonderoga and Crown Point. |
While Prideaux and Johnson were operating against Niagara, Amherst had begun his northward movement. He had carefully secured his communications by fortified posts, and, before June ended, had gathered a force of 11,000 men at the southern end of Lake George, the scene of so many encampments and so much fighting. On July 21 he embarked his troops, followed the line of Abercromby's advance in the previous year, found the famous entrenchment, which had foiled Abercromby's troops, deserted, but the fort itself still held. On the evening of the twenty-sixth, however, deserters brought news that the garrison was in retreat, and shortly afterwards a loud explosion told its own tale. Ticonderoga had been abandoned and blown up. The French commander opposed to Amherst was Bourlamaque, and his orders were to fall back before the English to the outlet of Lake Champlain, where a small island in the Richelieu river, the Île aux Noix, could easily be defended, blocking the enemy's advance on Montreal. He had a force of over 3,000 men, the rearguard of which, consisting of 400 men, had held Ticonderoga for two or three days, to cover the retreat of the main force. On August 1, Crown Point was found to be abandoned also, and the way north, down Lake Champlain, lay open to the invaders of Canada. Amherst entered Crown Point on August 4, and on the following day wrote to Pitt: 'I shall take fast hold of it, and not neglect at the same time to forward every measure I can to enable me to pass Lake Champlain.'
| Amherst's inaction. |
Now was the time for the quick aggressive movement which Wolfe practised and preached, but the Commander-in-Chief fell miserably short of the occasion. August went by, and September, but Robert Rogers and his Rangers, who harried the French Indians on the river St. Francis north-east of Lake Champlain, were the only fighting members of Amherst's army. Time was spent in constructing a new fort at Crown Point; in making a road eastward from Lake Champlain, opposite Crown Point, to the Connecticut river; in building vessels to overpower four little armed sloops, which represented French naval enterprise on the lake. In the middle of October Amherst embarked his troops to go north, met with wind and storm, returned to Crown Point, and made all snug for the winter. This was not the way to conquer Canada: the real work was done by another man at another place. While the main English army loitered on the shores of Lake Champlain, Wolfe had laid down his life in victory on the Plains of Abraham.