ATTACK ON FORT WILLIAM HENRY.
From A set of plans and forts in America, reduced from actual surveys, 1763, published in London.
Key.—A, dock. B, garden. C, Fort William Henry. D, morass. E, French first battery of nine guns and two mortars. F, French second battery of ten guns and three mortars. G, French approaches. H, two intended batteries. I, landing-place of French artillery. K, Montcalm’s camp, with main body. L, De Lévis’ camp, with regulars and Canadians. M, De la Corne, with Canadians and Indians. N, where the English first encamped. O, bridge over morass. P, English entrenchments, where Fort George later stood.
Cf. the plans in Parkman’s Montcalm and Wolfe, i. 494, and in Palmer’s Lake Champlain, p. 73, based on this, and the reproduction of it in Bancroft’s United States, orig. ed., iv. p. 263. There is a rough contemporary sketch given in J. A. Stoughton’s Windsor Farms, 1884, showing the lines of the attacking force, and endorsed, “Taken Oct. 22, 1757, by John Stoughton.” There is another large plan of the attack preserved in the New York State Library, and this is given in the N. Y. Col. Docs., x. 602. Martin, De Montcalm en Canada, p. 81, gives a “Plan du siège de Fort George [William Henry was often so called by the French] dressé par Fernesic de Vesour le 12 Septembre, 1757,” preserved in the Dépôt des Fortifications des Colonies, no. 516, at Paris.
The French destroyed the fort, throwing the bodies of the slain on the fire which was made of its timber, and, lading their boats with the munitions and plunder, they followed the savages, who had already started on their way to Montreal.
FORT AT GERMAN FLATS.
After a plan in the Doc. Hist. New York, ii. 732. In Benton’s Herkimer County, p. 53, is also a “plan and profile of the entrenched works round Harkemer’s house at ye German Flats, 1756.” Cf. Set of Plans, etc., no. 13.
Loudon reached New York on the last of August,[1153] but he had already heard of the Lake George disaster from a despatch-boat which met him on the way. On landing he learned from Albany that Montcalm had retired. Webb, who was much perplexed with the hordes of militia which all too late began to pour in upon him, was now bold enough to think there was no use of retreating to the passes of the Hudson. The necessity of allowing the Canadians to gather their crops, as well as Montcalm’s inability to transport his cannon, had influenced that general to retreat. At Montreal he learned the stories of the fiendish cruelty practised upon their prisoners by the Indians who had preceded him, and who had not been restrained by Vaudreuil,—so Bougainville said; for the governor’s policy of buying some of the captives with brandy led to the infuriation which wreaked itself on the rest.