EXPEDITION AGAINST CROWN POINT AND NIAGARA RESOLVED ON.
Our colonies to the north of Pennsylvania were more active, and more successful in their preparations for war. New York, following the example of New England, passed an act to prohibit the sending of provisions to any French port or settlement on the continent of North America, or any of the adjacent islands; and also for raising forty-five thousand pounds, on estates real and personal, for the better defence of their colony, which lay more exposed than any other to a French invasion from Crown Point. However, this sum, great as it might seem to them, was far from being sufficient; nor, indeed, could they have provided properly for their security, without the assistance of our other colonies to the east of them; but with their help, and the additional succour of the small body of regular troops expected under Colonel Dunbar, they boldly resolved upon offensive measures, which when practicable are always the safest; and two expeditions, one against the French fort at Crown Point, and the other against their fort at Niagara, between the lakes Ontario and Erie, were set on foot at the same time. The former of these expeditions was appointed to be executed under the command of general Johnson, a native of Ireland, who had long resided upon the Mohawk river, in the western parts of New York, where he had acquired a considerable estate, and was universally beloved, not only by the inhabitants, but also by the neighbouring Indians, whose language he had learnt, and whose affections he had gained by his humanity towards them. The expedition against Niagara was commanded by general Shirley himself.
The rendezvous of the troops for both these expeditions was appointed to be at Albany, where most of them arrived before the end of June; but the artillery, batteaux, provisions, and other necessaries for the attempt upon Crown Point, could not be prepared till the eighth of August, when general Johnson set out with them from Albany for the Carrying-place from Hudson’s river to Lake George. There the troops had already arrived, under the command of major-general Lyman, and consisted of between five and six thousand men, besides Indians, raised by the governments of Boston, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and New York. Every thing was then prepared as fast as possible for a march; and towards the end of the month, general Johnson advanced about fourteen miles forward with his troops, and encamped in a very strong situation, covered on each side by a thick wooded swamp, by Lake George in his rear, and by a breast-work of trees, cut down for that purpose, in his front. Here he resolved to wait the arrival of his batteaux, and afterwards to proceed to Ticonderoga, at the other end of the lake, from whence it was but about fifteen miles to the fort at the south end of Lake Colaer, or Champlain, called Fort Frederick by the French, and by us Crown Point. Whilst he was thus encamped, some of his Indian scouts, of which he took care to send out numbers along both sides, and to the farther end of Lake George, brought him intelligence that a considerable number of the enemy were then on their march from Ticonderoga, by the way of the south bay, towards the fortified encampment, since called Fort Edward, which general Lyman had built at the Carrying-place; and in which four or five hundred of the New Hampshire and New York men had been left as a garrison. Upon this information general Johnson sent two expresses, one after the other, to colonel Blanchard their commander, with orders to call in all his out-parties, and to keep his whole force within the intrenchments. About twelve o’clock at night, those who had been sent upon the second express returned with an account of their having seen the enemy within four miles of the camp at the Carrying-place, which they scarcely doubted their having by that time attacked. Important as the defence of this place was for the safety of the whole army, and imminent as the danger seemed to be, it does not appear that the general then called any council of war, or resolved upon any thing for its relief; but early the next morning he called a council, wherein it was unadvisedly resolved to detach a thousand men, with a number of Indians, to intercept, or, as the general’s expression was in his letter, to catch the enemy in their retreat, either as victors, or as defeated in their design. This expedient was resolved on, though no one knew the number of the enemy, nor could obtain any information in that respect from the Indian scouts, because the Indians have no words or signs for expressing any large number, which, when it exceeds their reckoning, they signify by pointing to the stars in the firmament, or to the hair of their head; and this they often do to denote a number less than a thousand, as well as to signify ten thousand, or any greater number.
Between eight and nine o’clock in the morning a thousand men, with two hundred Indians, were detached under the command of colonel Williams; but they had not been gone two hours when those in the camp began to hear a close firing, at about three or four miles’ distance, as they judged; as it approached nearer and nearer, they rightly supposed that the detachment was overpowered, and retreating towards the camp; which was soon confirmed by some fugitives, and presently after by whole companies, who fled back in great confusion. In a very short time after, the enemy appeared marching in regular order up to the centre of the camp, where the consternation was so great, that, if they had attacked the breastwork directly, they might probably have thrown all into confusion, and obtained an easy victory; but fortunately for the English, they halted for some time at about an hundred and fifty yards’ distance, and from thence began their attack with platoon firing, too far off to do much hurt, especially against troops who were defended by a strong breastwork. On the contrary, this ineffectual fire served only to raise the spirits of these last, who, having prepared their artillery during the time that the French halted, began to play it so briskly upon the enemy, that the Canadians and Indians in their service fled immediately into the woods on each side of the camp, and there squatted under bushes, or skulked behind trees, from whence they continued firing with very little execution, most of their shot being intercepted by the brakes and thickets; for they never had the courage to advance to the verge of the wood. Baron Dieskau, who commanded the French, being thus left alone with his regular troops at the front of the camp, finding he could not make a close attack upon the centre with his small number of men, moved first to the left, and then to the right, at both which places he endeavoured to force a passage, but was repulsed, being unsupported by the irregulars. Instead of retreating, as he ought in prudence to have done, he still continued his platoon and bush firing till four o’clock in the afternoon, during which time his regular troops suffered greatly by the fire from the camp, and were at last thrown into confusion; which was no sooner perceived by general Johnson’s men, than they, without waiting for orders, leaped over their breastwork, attacked the enemy on all sides, and after killing and taking a considerable number of them, entirely dispersed the rest. The French, whose numbers at the beginning of this engagement amounted to about two thousand men, including two hundred grenadiers, eight hundred Canadians, and the rest Indians of different nations, had between seven and eight hundred men killed, and thirty taken prisoners; among the latter was baron Dieskau himself, whom they found at a little distance from the field of battle, dangerously wounded, and leaning on the stump of a tree for his support. The English lost about two hundred men, and those chiefly of the detachment under Colonel Williams; for they had very few either killed or wounded in the attack upon their camp, and not any of distinction, except colonel Tit-comb killed, and the general himself and major Nichols wounded. Among the slain of the detachment, which would probably have been entirely cut off had not lieutenant-colonel Cole been sent out from the camp with three hundred men, with which he stopped the enemy’s pursuit, and covered the retreat of his friends, were colonel Williams, major Ashly, six captains, and several subalterns, besides private men; and the Indians reckoned that they had lost forty men, besides the brave old Hendrick, the Mohawk sachem, or chief captain.
BRAVERY OF CAPTAIN M’GINNES.
When baron Dieskau set out from Ticonderoga, his design was only to surprise and cut off the intrenched camp, now called Fort Edward, at the Carrying-place, where there were but four or five hundred men. If he had executed this scheme, our army would have been thrown into great difficulties; for it could neither have proceeded farther, nor have subsisted where it was, and he might have found an opportunity to attack it with great advantage in its retreat. But when he was within four or five miles of that fort, his people were informed that there were several cannon there, and none at the camp; upon which they all desired to be led on to this last, which he the more readily consented to, as he himself had been told by an English prisoner, who had left this camp but a few days before, that it was quite defenceless, being without any lines, and destitute of cannon; which, in effect, was true at that time; for the cannon did not arrive, nor was the breast-work erected, till about two days before the engagement. To this misinformation, therefore, must be imputed this step, which would otherwise be inconsistent with the general character and abilities of baron Dieskau. A less justifiable error seems to have been committed by general Johnson, in not detaching a party to pursue the enemy when they were defeated and fled. Perhaps he was prevented from so doing by the ill fate of the detachment he had sent out in the morning under colonel Williams. However that may be, his neglect in this respect had like to have been fatal the next day to a detachment sent from Fort Edward, consisting of an hundred and twenty men of the New Hampshire regiment, under captain M’Ginnes, as a reinforcement to the army at the camp. This party fell in with between three and four hundred men of Dieskau’s troops, near the spot where colonel Williams had been defeated the day before; but M’Ginnes, having timely notice by his scouts of the approach of an enemy, made such a disposition, that he not only repulsed the assailants, but defeated and entirely dispersed them, with the loss only of two men killed, eleven wounded, and five missing. He himself unfortunately died of the wounds he received in this engagement, a few days after he arrived at the camp with his party. It was now judged too late in the year to proceed to the attack of Crown Point, as it would have been necessary, in that case, to build a strong fort in the place where the camp then was, in order to secure a communication with Albany, from whence only the troops could expect to be reinforced, or supplied with fresh stores of ammunition or provisions. They therefore set out upon their return soon after this engagement, having first erected a little stockaded fort, at the hither end of Lake George, in which they left a small garrison, as a future prey for the enemy; a misfortune which might easily have been foreseen, because this whole army being country militia, was to be disbanded, and return to their respective homes, as they actually did soon after their retreat to Albany. This was all the glory, this all the advantage, that the English nation acquired by such an expensive expedition. But so little had the English been accustomed of late to hear of victory, that they rejoiced at this advantage, as if it had been an action of the greatest consequence. The general was highly applauded for his conduct, and liberally rewarded; for he was created a baronet by his majesty, and presented with five thousand pounds by the parliament.
DESCRIPTION OF FORT OSWEGO, &c
The preparations for general Shirley’s expedition against Niagara, were not only deficient, but shamefully slow; though it was well known that even the possibility of his success must, in a great measure, depend upon his setting out early in the year, as will appear to any person who considers the situation of our fort at Oswego, this being the only way by which he could proceed to Niagara. Oswego lies on the south-east side of the lake Ontario, near three hundred miles almost due west from Albany in New York. The way to it from thence, though long and tedious, is the more convenient, as the far greatest part of it admits of water carriage, by what the inhabitants called batteaux, which are a kind of light flat-bottomed boats, widest in the middle, and pointed at each end, of about fifteen hundred weight burden, and managed by two men called batteau-men, with paddles and setting poles, the rivers being in many places too narrow to admit of oars. From Albany to the village of Schenactady, about sixteen miles, is a good waggon road. From thence to the little falls in the Mohawk-river, being sixty-five miles, the passage is by water-carriage up that river, and consequently against the stream, which in many places is somewhat rapid, and in others so shallow, that, when the river is low, the watermen are obliged to get out and draw their batteaux over the rifts. At the little falls is a postage or land-carriage for about a mile, over a ground so marshy that it will not bear any wheel carriage; but a colony of Germans settled there, attend with sledges, on which they draw the loaded batteaux to the next place of embarkation upon the same river. From thence they proceed by water up that river for fifty miles, to the Carrying-place, near the head of it, where there is another postage, the length of which depends upon the dryness or wetness of the season, but is generally above six or eight miles over in the summer months. Here the batteaux are again carried upon sledges, till they come to a narrow river, called Wood’s Creek, down which they are wafted on a gentle stream for about forty miles into the lake Oneyada, which stretches from east to west about thirty miles, and is passed with great ease and safety in calm weather. At the western end of the lake is the river Onondaga, which, after a course of between twenty and thirty miles, unites with the river Cayuga, or Seneca, and their united streams run into the lake Ontario, at the place where Oswego fort is situated. But this river is so rapid as to be sometimes dangerous, besides its being full of rifts and rocks; and about twelve miles on this side of Oswego there is a fall of eleven feet perpendicular, where there is consequently a postage, which however, does not exceed forty yards. From thence the passage is easy quite to Oswego. The lake Ontario, on which this fort stands, is near two hundred and eighty leagues in circumference; its figure is oval, and its depth runs from twenty to twenty-five fathoms. On the north side of it are several little gulfs. There is a communication between this lake and that of the Hurons by the river Tanasuate, from whence it is a land-carriage of six or eight leagues to the river Toronto, which falls into it. The French have two forts of consequence on this lake; Frontenac, which commands the river St. Lawrence, where the lake communicates with it; and Niagara, which commands the communication between the lake Ontario and the lake Erie. But of these forts, and this last lake, which is one of the finest in the world, we shall have occasion to speak hereafter.