Note 235 — Chapter VIII

Fort William Henry was situated on the southern coast of Lake George, and was built with a view to protect the frontiers of the English colonies—especially New York and Massachusetts. The fortifications were good, defended by a garrison of three thousand men, and covered by an army of four thousand, under the command of General Webb, posted at no great distance at Fort Edward. The Marquis de Montcalm had, early in the season, made three different attacks upon Fort William Henry, in each of which he was repulsed by the resolute and courageous garrison. But Montcalm at length assembled all his forces from Crown Point, Ticonderaga, and other parts, amounting to nearly 10,000, including a considerable body of Canadians and Indians; attacked and invested the fort, which sustained the siege from the 3rd to the 9th of August, when, having burst most of their cannon, and expended their own ammunition, and receiving no relief or assistance from General Webb, at Fort Edward, fourteen miles distant, with 4,000 men, Col. Monro surrendered upon the conditions that the garrison should march out with arms, the baggage of the officers and men, and all the usual necessaries of war, escorted by a detachment of French troops to Fort Edward, and interpreters attached to the savages. But, as in the case of the surrender of Oswego, the articles of capitulation were not observed, but were perfidiously broken; the savages fell upon the British troops as they were marched out, despoiled them of their few remaining effects, dragged the Indians in the English service out of their ranks, and assassinated them under circumstances of unheard-of barbarity. Some soldiers with their wives and children are said to have been savagely murdered by these brutal Indians. The greater part of the garrison, however, arrived at Fort Edward under the protection of the French escort. The enemy demolished the fort, carried off the effects, provisions, and everything else left by the garrison, together with the vessels preserved in the lake, and departed without pursuing their success by any other attempt. "Thus ended," continues the historian, "the third campaign in America (1757), where, with an evident superiority over the enemy, an army of 20,000 regular troops, a great number of provincial forces, and a prodigious naval power—not less than twenty ships of the line—we abandoned our allies, exposed our people, suffered them to be cruelly massacred in sight of our troops, and relinquished a large and valuable tract of country, to the eternal reproach and disgrace of the British name." (Hume and Smollett's History of England, Vol. XII., pp. 207-211.)

Mr. Hildreth remarks: "In America, after three campaigns, and extraordinary efforts on the part of the English, the French still held possession of almost all the territory in dispute. They had been expelled indeed from the Bay of Fundy, but they held Louisburg, commanding the entrance to the St. Lawrence, Crown Point, and Ticonderaga, on Lake Champlain; Frontenac and Niagara, on Lake Ontario; Presque Isle, on Lake Erie; and the chains of forts thence to the head of the Ohio were still in their hands. They had expelled the English from their ancient fort at Oswego, had driven them from Lake George, and compelled the Six Nations to a treaty of neutrality. A devastating Indian war was raging along the whole north-western frontier of the British colonies, and Indian scalping parties penetrated into the very centre of Massachusetts, approached within a short distance of Philadelphia, and kept Maryland and Virginia in constant alarm." (History of the United States, Vol. II., p. 479.)