Abercrombie apparently magnified beyond belief an enemy whom he had not seen, and went up the lake in trepidation, lest he should be pursued. Safe on his old camping-ground at the head of the lake, he made haste to entrench himself, while Montcalm, lucky to escape as he did, prepared for a new campaign by rebuilding his lines. So the two armies still watched each other at a safe distance.[1158]
Montcalm for a while tried to harass the English communications with Fort Edward, by sending out his leading partisan, Marin; but Rogers was more than his match, and gave the English general some grains of comfort by his successes. Putnam, however, was captured and carried to Canada. Meanwhile, much greater relief came to the army’s spirits in September when the news of Bradstreet’s success at Fort Frontenac reached them.
A council of war had forced Abercrombie to give Bradstreet 3,000 men, and with these he made his way to Oswego, whence, towards the end of August, his whale-boats and bateaux pushed out upon the lake, and in three days he was before Frontenac. The fort quickly surrendered. Bradstreet levelled it, ruined seven armed vessels, put as much of the plunder as he could carry on two others, and returned to Oswego unmolested. Here he landed his booty, destroyed the vessels, and the French naval power on Ontario was at an end. He began his march for Albany, and, passing the great carrying place where Brigadier Stanwix was building a fort for the protection of the valley, left there a thousand men for its garrison. In October Amherst came overland from Boston, with some of his victorious regiments from Louisbourg. It was too late for further campaigning; and each side left garrisons at their camps, and retired to winter quarters.
FORT STANWIX.
From A set of plans and forts in America, reduced from actual surveys, 1763, published in London. The Catal. of the King’s Maps (Brit. Mus.), ii. 354-55, shows drawn plans (1758, 1759, 1764) of Fort Stanwix, built by I. Williams, engineer.
A large map of the neighborhood of Fort Stanwix is in the Doc. Hist. New York (iv. p. 324), with a plan of the fort itself (p. 327), accompanied by a paper on the history of the fort. A map of the siege of the fort, presented to Col. Gansevoort by L. Flury, is given with a plan of the modern city of Rome superposed, in Dr. Hough’s ed. of Pouchot, i. 207. Cf. the chapter on Fort Schuyler (Stanwix) in Bogg’s Pioneers of Utica, 1877. The fort was originally called Fort Williams. It was begun on July 23, 1758, by Brig.-Gen. John Stanwix. Cf. note on Stanwix in N. Y. Col. Docs., vii. 280.