With Wolfe in Canada Part 19

A few of the soldiers tried to imitate the Indians, and fight behind the trees, but Braddock beat them back with the flat of his sword, and forced them to stand with the others, who were now huddled in a ma.s.s, forming a target for the enemy's bullets. Lieutenant Colonel Burton led 100 of them towards a knoll from which the puffs came thickest, but he fell wounded, and his men, on whom the enemy instantly concentrated their fire, fell back. The soldiers, powerless against the unseen foe, for afterwards some of the officers and men who escaped declared that, throughout the whole fight, they had not seen a single Indian, discharged their guns aimlessly among the trees.

They were half stupefied now with the terror and confusion of the scene, the rain of bullets, the wild yells which burst ceaselessly from their 600 savage foemen; while the horses, wild with terror and wounds, added to the confusion by dashing madly hither and thither. Braddock behaved with furious intrepidity. He dashed hither and thither, shouting and storming at the men, and striving to get them in order, and to lead them to attack the enemy. Four horses were, one after the other, shot under him. His officers behaved with equal courage and self devotion, and in vain attempted to lead on the men, sometimes advancing in parties towards the Indians, in hopes that the soldiers would follow them. Sir Peter Halket was killed, Horne and Morris, the two aides-de-camp, Sinclair the quartermaster general, Gates, Gage, and Gladwin were wounded. Of 86 officers, 63 were killed or disabled, while of non-commissioned officers and privates only 459 came off unharmed.

James Walsham had been riding by the side of Washington when the fight began, and followed him closely as he galloped among the troops, trying to rally and lead them forward. Washington's horse was pierced by a ball and, staggering, fell. James leaped from his horse and gave it to the colonel, and then, seeing that there was nothing for him to do, withdrew a short distance from the crowd of soldiers, and crouched down between the trunks of two great trees growing close to each other; one of which protected him, for the most part, from the fire of the Indians, and the other from the not less dangerous fire of the English. Presently, seeing a soldier fall at a short distance from him, he ran out and picked up his musket and cartridge box, and began to fire at the bushes where the puffs of smoke showed that men were in hiding.

After three hours' pa.s.sive endurance of this terrible fire, Braddock, seeing that all was lost, commanded a retreat, and he and such officers as were left strove to draw off the soldiers in some semblance of order; but at this moment a bullet struck him, and, pa.s.sing through his arm, penetrated his lungs, and he fell from his horse. He demanded to be left where he lay, but Captain Stewart of the Virginians, and one of his men, bore him between them to the rear.

The soldiers had now spent all their ammunition, and, no longer kept in their places by their general, broke away in a wild panic. Washington's second horse had now been shot, and as, trying to check the men, he pa.s.sed the trees where James had taken up his position, the latter joined him.

In vain Washington and his other officers tried to rally the men at the ford. They dashed across it, wild with fear, leaving their wounded comrades, cannon, baggage, and military chest a prey to the Indians.

Fortunately, only about fifty of the Indians followed as far as the ford, the rest being occupied in killing the wounded and scalping the dead. Dumas, who had now but twenty Frenchmen left, fell back to the fort, and the remnants of Braddock's force continued the flight unmolested.

Chapter 10: The Fight At Lake George.

Fortunate was it, for the remnant of Braddock's force, that the Indians were too much occupied in gathering the abundant harvest of scalps, too anxious to return to the fort to exhibit these trophies of their bravery, to press on in pursuit; for, had they done so, few indeed of the panic-stricken fugitives would ever have lived to tell the tale. All night these continued their flight, expecting every moment to hear the dreaded war whoop burst out again in the woods round them.

Colonel Washington had been ordered, by the dying general, to press on on horseback to the camp of Dunbar, and to tell him to forward waggons, provisions, and ammunition; but the panic, which had seized the main force, had already been spread by flying teamsters to Dunbar's camp. Many soldiers and waggoners at once took flight, and the panic was heightened when the remnants of Braddock's force arrived. There was no reason to suppose that they were pursued, and even had they been so, their force was ample to repel any attack that could be made upon it; but probably their commander saw that, in their present state of utter demoralization, they could not be trusted to fight, and that the first Indian war whoop would start them again in flight. Still, it was clear that a retreat would leave the whole border open to the ravages of the Indians, and Colonel Dunbar was greatly blamed for the course he took.

A hundred waggons were burned, the cannon and sh.e.l.ls burst, and the barrels of powder emptied into the stream, the stores of provisions scattered through the woods, and then the force began its retreat over the mountains to Fort c.u.mberland, sixty miles away. General Braddock died the day that the retreat began. His last words were:

"We shall know better how to deal with them next time."

The news of the disaster came like a thunderbolt upon the colonists. Success had been regarded as certain, and the news that some fourteen hundred English troops had been utterly routed, by a body of French and Indians of half their strength, seemed almost incredible. The only consolation was that the hundred and fifty Virginians, who had accompanied the regulars, had all, as was acknowledged by the English officers themselves, fought with the greatest bravery, and had kept their coolness and presence of mind till the last, and that on them no shadow of the discredit of the affair rested. Indeed, it was said that the greater part were killed not by the fire of the Indians, but by that of the troops, who, standing in ma.s.ses, fired in all directions, regardless of what was in front of them.

But Colonel Dunbar, not satisfied with retreating to the safe shelter of Fort c.u.mberland, to the amazement of the colonists, insisted upon withdrawing with his own force to Philadelphia, leaving the whole of the frontier open to the a.s.saults of the hostile Indians. After waiting a short time at Philadelphia, he marched slowly on to join a force operating against the French in the region of Lake George, more than two hundred miles to the north. He took with him only the regulars, the provincial regiments being under the control of the governors of their own states.

Washington therefore remained behind in Virginia with the regiment of that colony. The blanks made in Braddock's fight were filled up, and the force raised to a thousand strong. With these he was to protect a frontier of three hundred and fifty miles long, against an active and enterprising foe more numerous than himself, and who, acting on the other side of the mountain, and in the shade of the deep forests, could choose their own time of attack, and launch themselves suddenly upon any village throughout the whole length of the frontier.

Nor were the troops at his disposal the material which a commander would wish to have in his hand. Individually they were brave, but being recruited among the poor whites, the most turbulent and troublesome part of the population, they were wholly unamenable to discipline, and Washington had no means whatever for enforcing it. He applied to the House of a.s.sembly to pa.s.s a law enabling him to punish disobedience, but for months they hesitated to pa.s.s any such ordinance, on the excuse that it would trench on the liberty of free white men.

The service, indeed, was most unpopular, and Washington, whose headquarters were at Winchester, could do nothing whatever to a.s.sist the settlements on the border. His officers were as unruly as the men, and he was further hampered by having to comply with the orders of Governor Dinwiddie, at Williamsburg, two hundred miles away.

"What do you mean to do?" he had asked James Walsham, the day that the beaten army arrived at Fort c.u.mberland.

"I do not know," James said. "I certainly will not continue with Dunbar, who seems to me to be acting like a coward; nor do I wish to go into action with regulars again; not, at least, until they have been taught that, if they are to fight Indians successfully in the forests, they must abandon all their traditions of drill, and must fight in Indian fashion. I should like to stay with you, if you will allow me."

"I should be very glad to have you with me," Washington said; "but I do not think that you will see much action here. It will be a war of forays. The Indians will pounce upon a village or solitary farm house, murder and scalp the inhabitants, burn the buildings to the ground, and in an hour be far away beyond reach of pursuit. All that I can do is to occupy the chief roads, by which they can advance into the heart of the colony, and the people of the settlements lying west of that must, perforce, abandon their homesteads, and fly east until we are strong enough to again take up the offensive.

"Were I in your place, I would at once take horse and ride north. You will then be in plenty of time, if inclined, to join in the expedition against the French on Fort George, or in that which is going to march on Niagara. I fancy the former will be ready first. You will find things better managed there than here. The colonists in that part have, for many years, been accustomed to Indian fighting, and they will not be hampered by having regular troops with them, whose officers' only idea of warfare is to keep their men standing in line as targets for the enemy.

"There are many bodies of experienced scouts, to which you can attach yourself, and you will see that white men can beat the Indians at their own game."

Although sorry to leave the young Virginian officer, James Walsham thought that he could not do better than follow his advice, and accordingly, the next day, having procured another horse, he set off to join the column destined to operate on the lakes.

The prevision of Washington was shortly realized, and a cloud of red warriors descended on the border settlements, carrying murder, rapine, and ruin before them. Scores of quiet settlements were destroyed, hundreds of men, women, and children ma.s.sacred, and in a short time the whole of the outlying farms were deserted, and crowds of weeping fugitives flocked eastward behind the line held by Washington's regiment.

But bad as affairs were in Virginia, those in Pennsylvania were infinitely worse. They had, for many years, been on such friendly terms with the Indians, that many of the settlers had no arms, nor had they the protection in the way of troops which the government of Virginia put upon the frontier. The government of the colony was at Philadelphia, far to the east, and sheltered from danger, and the Quaker a.s.sembly there refused to vote money for a single soldier to protect the unhappy colonists on the frontier. They held it a sin to fight, and above all to fight with Indians, and as long as they themselves were free from the danger, they turned a deaf ear to the tales of ma.s.sacre, and to the pitiful cries for aid which came from the frontier. But even greater than their objection to war, was their pa.s.sion of resistance to the representative of royalty, the governor.

Pet.i.tion after pet.i.tion came from the border for arms and ammunition, and for a militia law to enable the people to organize and defend themselves; but the Quakers resisted, declaring that Braddock's defeat was a just judgment upon him and his soldiers for molesting the French in their settlement in Ohio. They pa.s.sed, indeed, a bill for raising fifty thousand pounds for the king's use, but affixed to it a condition, to which they knew well the governor could not a.s.sent; viz, that the proprietary lands were to pay their share of the tax.

To this condition the governor was unable to a.s.sent, for, according to the const.i.tution of the colony, to which he was bound, the lands of William Penn and his descendants were free of all taxation. For weeks the deadlock continued. Every day brought news of ma.s.sacres of tens, fifties, and even hundreds of persons, but the a.s.sembly remained obstinate; until the mayor, aldermen, and princ.i.p.al citizens clamoured against them, and four thousand frontiersmen started on their march to Philadelphia, to compel them to take measures for defence.

Bodies of ma.s.sacred men were brought from the frontier villages and paraded through the town, and so threatening became the aspect of the population, that the a.s.sembly of Quakers were at last obliged to pa.s.s a militia law. It was, however, an absolutely useless one. It specially excepted the Quakers from service, and constrained n.o.body, but declared it lawful for such as chose to form themselves into companies, and to elect officers by ballot. The company officers might, if they saw fit, elect, also by ballot, colonels, lieutenant colonels, and majors. These last might then, in conjunction with the governor, frame articles of war, to which, however, no officer or man was to be subjected, unless, after three days' consideration, he subscribed them in presence of a justice of the peace, and declared his willingness to be bound by them.

This mockery of a bill, drawn by Benjamin Franklin while the savages were raging in the colony and the smoke of a hundred villages was ascending to the skies, was received with indignation by the people, and this rose to such a height that the a.s.sembly must have yielded unconditionally, had not a circ.u.mstance occurred which gave them a decent pretext for retreat.

The governor informed them that he had just received a letter from the proprietors, as Penn's heirs were called, giving to the province five thousand pounds to aid in its defence, on condition that the money should be accepted as a free gift, and not as their proportion of any tax that was or might be laid by the a.s.sembly.

Thereupon, the a.s.sembly struck out the clause taxing the proprietory estates, and the governor signed the bill. A small force was then raised, which enabled the Indians to be to some extent kept in check; but there was no safety for the unhappy settlers in the west of Pennsylvania during the next three years, while the French from Montreal were hounding on their savage allies, by gifts and rewards, to deeds of ma.s.sacre and bloodshed.

The northern colonies had shown a better spirit. Ma.s.sachusetts, which had always been the foremost of the northern colonies in resisting French and Indian aggression, had at once taken the lead in preparation for war. No less than 4500 men, being one in eight of her adult males, volunteered to fight the French, and enlisted for the various expeditions, some in the pay of the province, some in that of the king. Shirley, the governor of Ma.s.sachusetts, himself a colonist, was requested by his a.s.sembly to nominate the commander. He did not choose an officer of that province, as this would have excited the jealousy of the others, but nominated William Johnson of New York--a choice which not only pleased that important province, but had great influence in securing the alliance of the Indians of the Five Nations, among whom Johnson, who had held the post of Indian commissioner, was extremely popular.

Connecticut voted 1200 men, New Hampshire 500, Rhode Island 400, and New York 800, all at their own charge. Johnson, before a.s.suming the command, invited the warriors of the Five Nations to a.s.semble in council. Eleven hundred Indian warriors answered the invitation, and after four days' speech making agreed to join. Only 300 of them, however, took the field, for so many of their friends and relatives were fighting for the French, that the rest, when they sobered down after the excitement of the council, returned to their homes.

The object of the expedition was the attack of Crown Point--an important military post on Lake Champlain--and the colonists a.s.sembled near Albany; but there were great delays. The five colonial a.s.semblies controlled their own troops and supplies. Connecticut had refused to send her men until Shirley promised that her commanding officer should rank next to Johnson, and the whole movement was for some time at a deadlock, because the five governments could not agree about their contributions of artillery and stores.

The troops were a rough-looking body. Only one of the corps had a blue uniform, faced with red. The rest wore their ordinary farm clothing. All had brought their own guns, of every description and fashion. They had no bayonets, but carried hatchets in their belts as a sort of subst.i.tute.

In point of morals the army, composed almost entirely of farmers and farmers' sons, was exemplary. It is recorded that not a chicken was stolen. In the camps of the Puritan soldiers of New England, sermons were preached twice a week, and there were daily prayers and much singing of psalms; but these good people were much shocked by the profane language of the troops from New York and Rhode Island, and some prophesied that disaster would be sure to fall upon the army from this cause.

Months were consumed in various delays; and, on the 21st of August, just as they were moving forward, four Mohawks, whom Johnson had sent into Canada, returned with the news that the French were making great preparations, and that 8000 men were marching to defend Crown Point. The papers of General Braddock, which fell, with all the baggage of the army, into the hands of the French, had informed them of the object of the gathering at Albany, and now that they had no fear of any further attempt against their posts in Ohio, they were able to concentrate all their force for the defence of their posts on Lake Champlain.

On the receipt of this alarming news, a council of war was held at Albany, and messages were sent to the colonies asking for reinforcements. In the meantime, the army moved up the Hudson to the spot called the Great Carrying Place, where Colonel Lyman, who was second in command, had gone forward and erected a fort, which his men called after him, but was afterwards named Fort Edward.

James Walsham joined the army a few days before it moved forward. He was received with great heartiness by General Johnson, to whom he brought a letter of introduction from Colonel Washington, and who at once offered him a position as one of his aides-de-camp. This he found exceedingly pleasant, for Johnson was one of the most jovial and open hearted of commanders. His hospitality was profuse, and, his private means being large, he was able to keep a capital table, which, on the line of march, all officers who happened to pa.s.s by were invited to share. This was a contrast, indeed, to the discipline which had prevailed in Braddock's columns, and James felt as if he were starting upon a great picnic, rather than upon an arduous march against a superior force.

After some hesitation as to the course the army should take, it was resolved to march for Lake George. Gangs of axemen were sent to hew a way, and, on the 26th, 2000 men marched for the lake, while Colonel Blanchard, of New Hampshire, remained with 500 to finish and defend Fort Lyman. The march was made in a leisurely manner, and the force took two days to traverse the fourteen miles between Fort Lyman and the lake. They were now in a country hitherto untrodden by white men save by solitary hunters.

They reached the southern end of the beautiful lake, which hitherto had received no English name, and was now first called Lake George in honour of the king. The men set to work, and felled trees until they had cleared a sufficient extent of ground for their camp, by the edge of the water, and posted themselves with their back to the lake. In their front was a forest of pitch pine, on their right a marsh covered with thick brush wood, on their left a low hill. Things went on in the same leisurely way which had marked the progress of the expedition.

No attempt was made to clear away the forest in front, although it would afford excellent cover for any enemy who might attack them, nor were any efforts made to discover the whereabouts or intention of the enemy. Every day waggons came up with provisions and boats.

On September 7th, an Indian scout arrived about sunset, and reported that he had found the trail of a body of men moving from South Bay, the southern extremity of Lake Champlain, towards Fort Lyman. Johnson called for a volunteer to carry a letter of warning to Colonel Blanchard. A waggoner named Adams offered to undertake the perilous service, and rode off with the letter. Sentries were posted, and the camp fell asleep.

While Johnson had been taking his leisure on Lake George, the commander of the French force, a German baron named Dieskau, was preparing a surprise for him. He had reached Crown Point at the head of 3573 men--regulars, Canadians, and Indians--and he at once moved forward, with the greater portion of his command, on Cariolon, or, as it was afterwards called, Ticonderoga, a promontory at the junction of Lake George with Lake Champlain, where he would bar the advance of the English, whichever road they might take.

The Indians with the French caused great trouble to their commander, doing nothing but feast and sleep, but, on September 4th, a party of them came in bringing a scalp and an English prisoner, caught near Fort Lyman.

He was questioned, under the threat of being given over to the Indians to torture, if he did not tell the truth, but the brave fellow, thinking he should lead the enemy into a trap, told them that the English army had fallen back to Albany, leaving 500 men at Fort Lyman, which he represented as being entirely indefensible.

Dieskau at once determined to attack that place, and, with 216 regulars of the battalions of Languedoc and La Reine, 684 Canadians, and about 600 Indians, started in canoes and advanced up Lake Champlain, till they came to the end of South Bay. Each officer and man carried provisions for eight days in his knapsack.

Two days' march brought them to within three miles of Fort Lyman, and they encamped close to the road which led to Lake George. Just after they had encamped, a man rode by on horseback. It was Adams, Johnson's messenger. He was shot by the Indians, and the letter found upon him. Soon afterwards, ten or twelve waggons appeared, in charge of ammunition drivers who had left the English camp without orders.

Some of the drivers were shot, two taken prisoners, and the rest ran away. The two prisoners declared that, contrary to the a.s.sertion of the prisoner at Ticonderoga, a large force lay encamped by the lake. The Indians held a council, and presently informed Dieskau that they would not attack the fort, which they believed to be provided with cannon, but would join in an attempt on the camp by the lake. Dieskau judged, from the report of the prisoners, that the colonists considerably outnumbered him, although in fact there was no great difference in numerical strength, the French column numbering 1500 and the colonial force 2200, besides 300 Mohawk Indians. But Dieskau, emulous of repeating the defeat of Braddock, and believing the a.s.sertions of the Canadians that the colonial militia was contemptible, determined to attack, and early in the morning the column moved along the road towards the lake.

When within four miles of Johnson's camp, they entered a rugged valley. On their right was a gorge, hidden in bushes, beyond which rose the rocky height of French Mountain. On their left rose gradually the slopes of West Mountain. The ground was thickly covered with thicket and forest. The regulars marched along the road, the Canadians and Indians pushed their way through the woods as best they could. When within three miles of the lake, their scout brought in a prisoner, who told them that an English column was approaching. The regulars were halted on the road, the Canadians and Indians moved on ahead, and hid themselves in ambush among the trees and bushes on either side of the road.