Johnson’s uncle, Captain Warren, had by the capture of a privateer distinguished himself at sea, and receiving promotion to the grade of Commodore, was ordered to command the naval forces for the reduction of Louisburg. By his energy and ability strict blockade was maintained while the American citizen soldiery under Pepperell tightened the coils of investment. When the “Vigilante,” a French frigate laden with reinforcements in men and provisions, had been decoyed and captured, the fortress was surrendered. Warren became an admiral; and Pepperell, a merchant like Johnson, was made a baronet,—the former one day, the latter one month, after receipt of the news in England.
Chronology was in this case a key to English jealousy of the colonists, whose growing strength and republicanism monarchical Britain feared. The joy of the Americans was excessive. It culminated in Boston, where “Louisburg Square” still preserves the name. The gladness on this side of the Atlantic equalled the astonishment, flavoured with jealousy, which fell upon Europe. One would have thought that it would salt wholesomely the inborn contempt which the regular officers of the king’s troops felt toward provincial fighters, but it did not; and Braddock, Loudon, Abercrombie, and their foolish imitators were yet numerously to come. Indeed, this success of provincial Americans induced a jealousy that was to rankle for a generation or more in British breasts, to the serious disadvantage of both Great Britain and the colonies, as we shall soon see.
Meanwhile, Indian affairs were in a critical condition, and the signs of danger on the frontier were ominous. For reasons not here to be analyzed, there were bad feelings between the Iroquois and the Albany people. Rumours of the purpose of the English to destroy the Indians were diligently kept in circulation by both lay and clerical Frenchmen. Those who wore canonicals and those who wore regimentals were equally industrious in fomenting dissatisfaction. The uneasiness of the Mohawks was so great that they sent several chiefs to confer with their brethren, the Caughnawaga Indians, in Canada. It was generally believed that the French would attack Oswego. There is also evidence that attempts were made to kidnap Johnson, against whom, as a relative of Admiral Warren, as one of the captors of Louisburg, and as the man who especially influenced the Iroquois in favour of the English, the French had an especial grudge. It was known that from the fort at Crown Point scalping parties issued at intervals; but mere rumours turned into genuine history when Longmeadow, Massachusetts, was attacked and burned by French Indians. On Nov. 17, 1745, the poorly fortified Dutch village of Saratoga on the Hudson was attacked by an overwhelming force of over six hundred French and Indians. After easy victory the place was given over to the torch, and the sickening story of the massacre of Schenectady was repeated.
In French civilization the priest and the soldier always go together. They are the two necessary figures, whether in Corea, Africa, Cochin China, or Canada. The soldier, Marin, was in this case led by the priest, Picquet. Besides the massacre, in which thirty persons were killed and scalped, sixty were made prisoners; and the whole fertile farming country, blooming with the flower and fruit of industry, was desolated for many miles. Many of the captives were negroes, and a majority of the whole number died of disease in the prisons of Quebec. One of the best accounts of this massacre—meagre in details—is contained in a letter to Mr. Johnson from Mr. Sanders, of Albany. It was nine days after this event that Johnson received the urgent letter inviting him to move for safety to Albany.
A line of fire and blood, ashes and blackness, was now being drawn from Springfield to Niagara. All men were under arms, and each was called to watch every third night. No house was safe, except palisaded or built of logs for defence. The forts were repaired and garrisoned. The bullet moulds were kept hot, and extra flints, ramrods, and ammunition laid out all ready, while weary sentinels strained ear and eye through each long, dark night.
Out from the gateway of Crown Point, like centrifugal whirlwinds of fire, swept bands of savages, who swooped down on the settlements. Almost under the shadow of the palisades of Albany, Schenectady, and the villages along the Hudson and Mohawk Valleys, men were shot and their scalps taken to decorate Canadian wigwams. The little “God’s Acre” in every settlement on the Mohawk began to fatten with victims who had died out of their beds. Perhaps none of these ancient sleeping-places has been reverently emptied in order to consign their memorials of once active life to more enduring public honour in the modern cemeteries, but the number of perforated skulls surprises the beholder. In these mute witnesses to the disquiet of the past, he reads the story of ancestral danger and suffering. The devout frontiersman made his way to church on the Lord’s Day with his loaded gun on his shoulder, its flint well picked and its pan well primed. He took his seat at the end of the pew, only after sentinels had been posted and arms made ready for instant use. Slight wonder was it that the effects of all-night vigils, and the unusual posture of repose in a pew, rather than the length of the Domine’s sermon, induced sleep even in meeting.
Most of the churches were loop-holed for defence, and even in the few old houses occasionally found with projecting second floor, we see an interesting survival of the old days, when from both church and dwelling a line of gun-barrels might at any hour decorate the eaves with gargoyles spouting fire and death. Away from the villages, the farmers, building a block-house on some commanding hill, and if possible over a well or spring, kept a sentinel on the roof while they laboured in the fields. Horn in hand, the watcher surveyed the wide stretches of valley, or scrutinized the edges of the clearing, to give warning of the approach of skulking red or white murderers. Yet human nerves would weary, and after constant strain for months with no near sign of danger, vigilance would often relax at the very moment when the enemy opened fire and raised his yell. Men would laugh to-day at warnings, while, perhaps, the boys in play would set up mock sentinels at the gateways, who on the morrow would be scalped or be bound and on their way to Canada.
The twofold plan of campaign decided on in England was the old one first formulated by Leisler in 1690, looking to the invasion and subjugation of Canada, attempted again in 1711, when a German regiment in New York was raised for the purpose, and which was frustrated by the disaster to the British fleet. The land and naval forces of New and Old England were now to make rendezvous at Louisburg, and move up the St. Lawrence to Quebec, while the provincial militia of the middle and lower colonies, combined with the Iroquois if possible, should capture the French fort, St. Frederick, at Crown Point, and the city of Montreal.
The disastrous inaction of King George and the London lords, arising probably from jealousy of the provincials, and the rumours of a great French fleet under D’Anville to be sent against New England, caused the abandonment of the expedition to Quebec. This, however, was not known by submarine electric cable; and meantime New York politics, at which we must now glance, had become interesting.
Two friends, the Chief-Justice De Lancey and Governor Clinton, quarrelled over their cups at a convivial gathering, and this took place just after the latter had renewed the former’s commission for life. Happening, too, on the eve of the great council of the Six Nations, which Clinton had summoned at Albany, just when that town was pestiferous with small-pox and bilious fever, the outlook for successful negotiations was not very promising. Messrs. Rutherford, Livingston, and Dr. Cadwallader Colden were the only members of his council who came with Clinton, while of the expected Indians only three had arrived. These, for the two scalps with the blood hardly dried on the hair, were rewarded with strouds and laced coats, and sent to drum up recruits, while the governor waited a month for the tardy, suspicious, and sullen savages to appear before him.