From Mante’s Hist. of the Late War, London, 1772. The Catalogue of the King’s Maps (Brit. Museum), i. 336, shows various drawn plans of the fort, dated 1755; and another of the same date, marked no. 15,535, is among the Brit. Mus. MSS. John Montresor’s Journal at Fort Edward, in 1757, is in N. Y. Hist. Soc. Coll., 1881, p. 148. He gives a profile of the work (Ibid., p. 36).
Montcalm was soon back at Carillon, watching Winslow’s force at Fort William Henry, while the rest of Loudon’s army was divided between Fort Edward and Albany. Neither opponent moved, and, leaving garrisons at their respective advanced posts, they retired to winter quarters. The regulars were withdrawn to Boston, Philadelphia, and New York; and not a little bad blood was produced by Loudon’s demand for free quarters for the officers.[1151]
The French had the advantage in Indian allies; and during the autumn and winter the forays of the prowling savage and the adventurous scout over the territory neighboring to Lake George and Lake Champlain were checked by the English as best they could. Foremost among their partisans was the New Hampshire ranger, Robert Rogers, whose exploits and those of the Connecticut captain, Israel Putnam, fill a large space in the records of this savage warfare.
FORT EDWARD.
From A set of plans and forts in America, reduced from actual surveys, 1763, published in London. Cf. the plan in Lossing’s Field-Book of the Revolution, i. p. 95.
The campaign of the next year (1757) opened in March with an attempt to surprise Fort William Henry. The French under Rigaud came up on the ice, 1,600 strong, by night. The surprise failed. They burned, however, two sloops and some bateaux. The next day they summoned Major Eyre, the English commander, but he felt that his four hundred men were enough to hold the fort, and declined to surrender. Rigaud now made a feint of storming the work, but it was only to approach the storehouses, saw-mill, and other buildings outside the entrenchments, which he succeeded in firing, and then withdrew.
Montcalm, when he heard the details, was not over-pleased; and if he had had his way, De Lévis or Bougainville would have led the attack. As it was, Rigaud was a brother of the governor, and Vaudreuil was tenacious of his superiority. The news broke in upon a round of festivities at Montreal, stayed only by Lent. At this season Montcalm prayed, as he had before feasted, with no full recognition of the feelings which Vaudreuil entertained for him. But the minister in France knew it, and he was not, perhaps, so ready to doubt the numbers of the English, exaggerated in Vaudreuil’s report, as he was the prowess of the Canadians in comparison with the timidity of Montcalm and his regulars, which was also reported to him. In Montreal, however, the mutual distrust and dislike of the governor and the general were cloaked with a politeness that was not always successful, when they were apart, in keeping their feelings from their neighbors.
