FORT WILLIAM HENRY.
From A set of plans and forts in America, reduced from actual surveys, 1763, published in London. A plan of this fort is in the Brit. Mus. MSS., no. 15,355, and various plans of 1756 and 1757 are noted in the King’s Maps (Brit. Mus.), ii. 475. Plans are also given in Martin’s Montcalm et les dernières années de la colonie Française au Canada, and in Hough’s ed. of Pouchot, p. 48.
A sketch of the fort preserved on a powderhorn is engraved in Stone’s Life of Johnson, i. p. 553, and in Holden’s Queensbury, 306.
At the portage, and before launching his flotilla on Lake George, Montcalm held a grand council, and bound his Indian allies by a mighty belt of wampum. Up the smaller lake the main body now went by boat, but some Iroquois allies led De Lévis, with 2,500 men, along its westerly bank. The force on the lake disembarked under cover of a point of land, which hid them from the English.
THE SITE OF FORT WILLIAM HENRY, 1851.
From a sketch made in 1851. The fort was on the bluff at the left, now the position of the Fort William Henry hotel. Montcalm’s trenches were where the modern village of Caldwell is built, seen beyond the water. The way to the entrenched camp started along the gravelly beach in the foreground, towards the spectator.
The extent of the demonstration was first made known to Munro when the savages spread out across the lake in their bark canoes. Montcalm soon pushed forward La Corne and De Lévis till they cut the communications of the English with Fort Edward, and then the French general began his approaches from his own encampment. When he advanced his lines to within gun-shot of the ramparts, he summoned the fort. Munro declined to surrender, hoping for relief from Webb; but the timid commander at Fort Edward only despatched a note of advice to make terms. This letter was intercepted by Montcalm, who sent it into the fort, and it induced Munro to agree to a capitulation.
On the 9th of August the English retired to the entrenched camp, and the French entered the fort. Munro’s men were to be escorted to Fort Edward, being allowed their private effects, and were not to serve against the French for eighteen months. Montcalm took the precaution to explain the terms to his Indian allies, and received their seeming assent; but the savages got at the English rum, and, with passions roused, they fell the next day upon the prisoners. Despite all exertions of Montcalm and the more honorable of his officers, many were massacred or carried off, so that the line of march became a disorderly rout, beyond all control of the escort, and lost itself in the woods. Not more than six hundred in a body reached Fort Edward, but many others later straggled in. Another portion, which Montcalm rescued from the clutch of the Indians, was subsequently sent in under a strong escort.
