Part 29 (1/2)
Impressions of the ma.s.sacre at Fort William Henry have hitherto been derived chiefly from the narrative of Captain Jonathan Carver, in his _Travels_. He has discredited himself by his exaggeration of the number killed; but his account of what he himself saw tallies with that of the other witnesses. He is outdone in exaggeration by an anonymous French writer of the time, who seems rather pleased at the occurrence, and affirms that all the English were killed except seven hundred, these last being captured, so that none escaped (_Nouvelles du Canada envoyees de Montreal, Aout_, 1757). Carver puts killed and captured together at fifteen hundred. Vaudreuil, who always makes light of Indian barbarities, goes to the other extreme, and avers that no more than five or six were killed. Levis and Roubaud, who saw everything, and were certain not to exaggerate the number, give the most trustworthy evidence on this point. The capitulation, having been broken by the allies of France, was declared void by the British Government.
_The Signal of Butchery_. Montcalm, Bougainville, and several others say that the ma.s.sacre was begun by the Abenakis of Panaouski. Father Martin, in quoting the letter in which Montcalm makes this statement, inserts the word _idolatres_, which is not in the original. Dussieux and O'Callaghan give the pa.s.sage correctly. This Abenaki band, ancestors of the present Pen.o.bscots, were no idolaters, but had been converted more than half a century. In the official list of the Indian allies they are set down among the Christians. Roubaud, who had charge of them during the expedition, speaks of these and other converts with singular candor: ”Vous avez du vous apercevoir ... que nos sauvages, pour etre Chretiens, n'en sont pas plus irreprehensibles dans leur conduite.”]
Chapter 16
1757, 1758
A Winter of Discontent
Loudon, on his way back from Halifax, was at sea off the coast of Nova Scotia when a despatch-boat from Governor Pownall of Ma.s.sachusetts startled him with news that Fort William Henry was attacked; and a few days after he learned by another boat that the fort was taken and the capitulation ”inhumanly and villanously broken.” On this he sent Webb orders to hold the enemy in check without risking a battle till he should himself arrive. ”I am on the way,” these were his words, ”with a force sufficient to turn the scale, with G.o.d's a.s.sistance; and then I hope we shall teach the French to comply with the laws of nature and humanity. For although I abhor barbarity, the knowledge I have of Mr.
Vaudreuil's behavior when in Louisiana, from his own letters in my possession, and the murders committed at Oswego and now at Fort William Henry, will oblige me to make those gentlemen sick of such inhuman villany whenever it is in my power.” He reached New York on the last day of August, and heard that the French had withdrawn. He nevertheless sent his troops up the Hudson, thinking, he says, that he might still attack Ticonderoga; a wild scheme, which he soon abandoned, if he ever seriously entertained it.[527]
[Footnote 527: _Loudon to Webb, 20 Aug. 1757. London to Holdernesse, Oct. 1757. Loudon to Pownall, 16_ [_18?_] _Aug. 1757_. A pa.s.sage in this last letter, in which Loudon says that he shall, if prevented by head-winds from getting into New York, disembark the troops on Long Island, is perverted by that ardent partisan, William Smith, the historian of New York, into the absurd declaration ”that he should encamp on Long Island for the defence of the continent.”]
Webb had remained at Fort Edward in mortal dread of attack. Johnson had joined him with a band of Mohawks; and on the day when Fort William Henry surrendered there had been some talk of attempting to throw succors into it by night. Then came the news of its capture; and now, when it was too late, tumultuous mobs of militia came pouring in from the neighboring provinces. In a few days thousands of them were bivouacked on the fields about Fort Edward, doing nothing, disgusted and mutinous, declaring that they were ready to fight, but not to lie still without tents, blankets, or kettles. Webb writes on the fourteenth that most of those from New York had deserted, threatening to kill their officers if they tried to stop them. Delancey ordered them to be fired upon. A sergeant was shot, others were put in arrest, and all was disorder till the seventeenth; when Webb, learning that the French were gone, sent them back to their homes.[528]
[Footnote 528: _Delancey to_ [_Holdernesse?_], _24 Aug. 1757._]
Close on the fall of Fort William Henry came crazy rumors of disaster, running like wildfire through the colonies. The number and ferocity of the enemy were grossly exaggerated; there was a cry that they would seize Albany and New York itself;[529] while it was reported that Webb, as much frightened as the rest, was for retreating to the Highlands of the Hudson.[530] This was the day after the capitulation, when a part only of the militia had yet appeared. If Montcalm had seized the moment, and marched that afternoon to Fort Edward, it is not impossible that in the confusion he might have carried it by a _coup-de-main._
[Footnote 529: _Captain Christie to Governor Wentworth, 11 Aug. 1757.
Ibid., to Governor Pownall, same date._]
[Footnote 530: Smith, _Hist. N.Y._, Part II. 254.]
Here was an opportunity for Vaudreuil, and he did not fail to use it.
Jealous of his rival's exploit, he spared no pains to tarnish it; complaining that Montcalm had stopped half way on the road to success, and, instead of following his instructions, had contented himself with one victory when he should have gained two. But the Governor had enjoined upon him as a matter of the last necessity that the Canadians should be at their homes before September to gather the crops, and he would have been the first to complain had the injunction been disregarded. To besiege Fort Edward was impossible, as Montcalm had no means of transporting cannon thither; and to attack Webb without them was a risk which he had not the rashness to incur.
It was Bougainville who first brought Vaudreuil the news of the success on Lake George. A day or two after his arrival, the Indians, who had left the army after the ma.s.sacre, appeared at Montreal, bringing about two hundred English prisoners. The Governor rebuked them for breaking the capitulation, on which the heathen savages of the West declared that it was not their fault, but that of the converted Indians, who, in fact, had first raised the war-whoop. Some of the prisoners were presently bought from them at the price of two kegs of brandy each; and the inevitable consequences followed.
”I thought,” writes Bougainville, ”that the Governor would have told them they should have neither provisions nor presents till all the English were given up; that he himself would have gone to their huts and taken the prisoners from them; and that the inhabitants would be forbidden, under the severest penalties, from selling or giving them brandy. I saw the contrary; and my soul shuddered at the sights my eyes beheld. On the fifteenth, at two o'clock, in the presence of the whole town, they killed one of the prisoners, put him into the kettle, and forced his wretched countrymen to eat of him.” The Intendant Bigot, the friend of the Governor, confirms this story; and another French writer says that they ”compelled mothers to eat the flesh of their children.”[531] Bigot declares that guns, canoes, and other presents were given to the Western tribes before they left Montreal; and he adds, ”they must be sent home satisfied at any cost.” Such were the pains taken to preserve allies who were useful chiefly through the terror inspired by their diabolical cruelties. This time their ferocity cost them dear. They had dug up and scalped the corpses in the graveyard of Fort William Henry, many of which were remains of victims of the small-pox; and the savages caught the disease, which is said to have made great havoc among them.[532]
[Footnote 531: ”En chemin faisant et meme en entrant a Montreal ils les ont manges et fait manger aux autres prisonniers.” _Bigot au Ministre, 24 Aout, 1757._
”Des sauvages out fait manger aux meres la chair de leurs enfants.”
_Jugement impartial sur les Operations militaires en Canada_. A French diary kept in Canada at this time, and captured at sea, is cited by Hutchinson as containing similar statements.]
[Footnote 532: One of these corpses was that of Richard Rogers, brother of the noted partisan Robert Rogers. He had died of small-pox some time before. Rogers, _Journals_, 55, _note_.]
Vaudreuil, in reporting what he calls ”my capture of Fort William Henry,” takes great credit to himself for his ”generous procedures”
towards the English prisoners; alluding, it seems, to his having bought some of them from the Indians with the brandy which was sure to cause the murder of others.[533] His obsequiousness to his red allies did not cease with permitting them to kill and devour before his eyes those whom he was bound in honor and duty to protect. ”He let them do what they pleased,” says a French contemporary; ”they were seen roaming about Montreal, knife in hand, threatening everybody, and often insulting those they met. When complaint was made, he said nothing. Far from it; instead of reproaching them, he loaded them with gifts, in the belief that their cruelty would then relent.”[534]
[Footnote 533: _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 15 Sept. 1757._]
[Footnote 534: _Memoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760._]
Nevertheless, in about a fortnight all, or nearly all, the surviving prisoners were bought out of their clutches; and then, after a final distribution of presents and a grand debauch at La Chine, the whole savage rout paddled for their villages.