At Niagara, in the angle formed by the lake and the Niagara River, stood the strong fort which Pouchot had rebuilt. It had a dependency[1165] some distance above the cataract, commanded by Joncaire; but that officer withdrew from this outwork on the approach of Prideaux, and reinforced the main work. It was the same Joncaire who had formerly resisted successfully, but of late less so, the efforts of Johnson to secure the alliance to the English of the Senecas and the more westerly tribes of the Six Nations; and now Johnson with a body of braves was in Prideaux’s camp. The English general advanced his siege lines, and had begun to make breaches in the walls of the fort, when new succor for the French approached. Their partisan leaders at the west had gathered such bushrangers and Indians as they could from Detroit and the Illinois country, and were assembling at Presquisle and along the route to the Monongahela for a raid on the English there, in the hopes of recapturing the post. They got word from Pouchot of his danger, and immediately marched to his assistance, under Aubry and Ligneris.
FORT GEORGE.
From A set of plans and forts in America, reduced from actual surveys, 1763, published in London. This plan is reproduced in De Costa’s Hist. of Fort George. For the ruins of the fort and the view from them, see the cuts in Lossing’s Field-Book of the Rev., i. 112; and Scribnner’s Monthly, Mar., 1879, p. 620.
LAKE GEORGE.
Early in the siege, Prideaux had been killed by the bursting of one of his own shells, and the command fell on Johnson, who now went with a part of his force to meet the new-comers, already showing themselves up the river. He beat them, and captured some of their principal officers, while those who survived led the panic-stricken remainder to their boats above the cataract. Thence they fled to Presquisle, which they burned. Here the garrisons of LeBœuf and Venango joined them, and the fugitives continued on to Detroit, leaving the Upper Ohio without a fighting Frenchman to confront the English.
On the same day of the defeat, negotiations for a surrender of Fort Niagara began, and Pouchot, being convinced of the reverses which his intending succorers had experienced, finally capitulated. Johnson succeeded in preventing any revengeful onset of his Indians, who had not forgotten the massacre of William Henry.
The extreme west of Canada was now cut off from the central region, which was threatened, as we shall see, by Amherst and Wolfe, and Vaudreuil could have little hope of preserving it. To press this centre on another side, Amherst now sent General Thomas Gage to succeed Johnson in the command of the Ontario region, and, gathering such troops as could be spared from the garrisons, to descend the St. Lawrence and capture the French post at the head of the rapids. Gage had little enterprise, and was not inclined to undertake a movement in which dash must make up for the lack of men, and he reported back to Amherst that the movement was impossible.