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The British series of four campaigns against the French the previous year had ended largely in failure. Following the death of Major General Edward Braddock at Monongahela, Massachusetts Governor Shirley took command and intended to continue Braddock’s original strategy, namely capture Fort Duquesne, take control of Lake Ontario and capture Fort St. Frederic. Unfortunately, Braddock’s defeat had left the frontier defenseless, so Pennsylvania and Virginia were struggling to deal with a wave of Indian raids, and the governors of the other colonies refused to contribute men to anything other than a defense of their colonies, therefore the matter was shelved until spring.

However, the French realized the need to maintain momentum, so four hundred men under Gaspard-Joseph Chaussegros de Lery were sent to attack the two relatively weak forts that protected Oswego’s supply chain. Lery decided to move on Fort Bull first because its garrison of 60 men was much smaller than Fort William’s 150 men. The English had not set any patrols, so on March 27 Lery and his men would have made it to the open gate undetected except that his Indian allies could not stop themselves from whooping, which gave the garrison enough time to close the gate. This merely postponed the inevitable since the fort was so badly built that Lery’s men were able to force their way in after an hour and slaughter most of the garrison. The French took as many supplies as they could and burned the rest along with the fort. This quick victory prevented an early campaign against Fort Niagara and ensured that the English would remain on the defensive.

Despite Governor Vaudreuil’s impressive track record Paris would not allow a colonial to command French regulars but no senior officers were willing to serve in the wilderness of Canada, so Louis-Joseph de Montcalm, marquis de Montcalm, was chosen. Although he had led a regiment during the War of the Austrian Succession (1744-1748) he was not a major officer, but he was a willing officer, so he was promoted to major-general and sent to Canada with the Chevalier de Levis was his second-in-command. Unsurprisingly, Vaudreuil resented Montcalm and felt that he had no idea how to fight in North America, while Montcalm had only disdain for the majority of the colonials. Vaudreuil would probably have been happier if Montcalm had brought more than 1,200 reinforcements. Despite a career setback, Vaudreuil knew that the situation favored the French and the additional troops were used to reinforce Forts Niagara, Frontenac, St. Frederic and Carillon.

Realizing that the situation was dangerous, England declared war on May 18 and France did the same on June 9. In addition, two more regiments were sent from England and another was to be raised in the colonies. John Campbell, the earl of Loudon, was put in overall command with Major General James Abercromby and Major General Daniel Webb as second and third in command respectively. Things did not go as well for Shirley, since he was removed from his post as governor in mid-April as punishment for Braddock’s defeat. This may seem unfair since Shirley had not been involved in the planning of the campaign against Fort Duquesne and had been nowhere near the fatal ambush but somebody had to take the blame and Braddock, the obvious choice, was dead. This decision did not help an already difficult situation. While he was clearly not a great military commander, he had possessed the political skills needed to smooth over friction between regular officers and militia commanders. Most important, he had been the overall military commander and his replacement, Lord Loudon, did not arrive until late July, although Loudon’s second in command General Abercromby did take charge in late June. However, given the vital need to campaign during the summer months, the lengthy delay before the arrival of the new commander ensured that the French would have the initiative.

Worse, the French had built a solid stone fort at Fort Carillon on the north end of Lake George and they were gradually starving out the garrison at Oswego but Abercromby was unwilling to take responsibility for sending reinforcements. Montcalm made a huge display of arriving at Fort Carillon and then slipped away to lead the assault against Oswego. By late July, 3,000 French regulars and militia, and hundreds of Indians had gathered at Fort Frontenac and the French force reached Oswego on August 11. Oswego was commanded by Lieutenant Colonel John Mercer who had 1,200 men divided among the three forts that made up Oswego: Forts Ontario, George and Oswego. While the three forts could provide mutual support since they were within cannon range of each other, none of them were strong positions. Ontario was the strongest but was too small to hold the entire garrison, Oswego had a badly maintained stone wall and its main building was too weak to bear the recoil of cannon, while George was simply a stockade with earthworks on only two sides. The forts were so badly designed because the garrison had lacked the supplies to construct a single proper fort, therefore the existing trading post had been strengthened and work was progressing on two separate forts (Ontario and George) on two nearby hilltops.

The weakness of the three forts became apparent on August 13, when the French siege lines were close enough that the artillery could hit Ontario and as soon as the cannon started firing the entire garrison retreated to Oswego. Shortly after, the garrison of George also shifted to Oswego, which surrendered the following day. Loudon had finally taken charge of the situation and sent a relief force but it was still a hundred miles away when Oswego fell and the English retreated as soon as they learned of the French victory.

It had been quite a victory indeed. Montcalm’s casualties were 23 men and he gained 1,000 prisoners (another 150 men had died during the battle) and huge quantities of captured weapons, artillery and boats. The Indians were less satisfied even though they had basically left the fighting to the French, and killed and looted the wounded. Montcalm knew that Oswego was too far away to be held, so the forts were burned and the army returned north.

While the French were busily capturing Oswego, troops were gathering at Fort William Henry to finish the job that William Johnson had started the previous year. Only provincial units were assigned to the Fort St. Frederic expedition since militia could not work with regulars because provincial troops hated the discipline of the British regular army but also because militia officers would automatically be ranked as captains when dealing with regular officers, so they would be outranked.

Johnson’s performance had been far from satisfactory so command was given to General John Winslow, who had cooperated smoothly with British regulars to capture Fort Beausejour in Acadie, the previous year’s single victory. There were only eleven hundred French regulars and Canadian militia guarding Fort Carillon and Lake George, and Canada’s longer winter meant that the English colonies could mount an offensive before reinforcements could arrive. At least that was the theory, but Winslow soon found out why Johnson had moved so slowly. None of the promised soldiers had arrived at Albany by the end of April, at which point the French forts could be reinforced. Furthermore, Johnson had failed to recruit large numbers of Indian allies, so scouting was carried out by Robert Rogers’ rangers.

Despite these many problems, Winslow proved to be an effective leader and his seven thousand man army had reached Fort William Henry by late July. The situation at that point was auspicious, since the army was twice as large, had more artillery and was there a month earlier than the previous year. Things did not look good for the French garrisons on Lake George but they had an ace in the hole, namely incompetent British leadership. When Winslow should have been preparing to attack Fort Carillon, he was suddenly summoned to Albany to discuss the issue of officers’ rank with Loudon even though there were no regular units serving in his expedition. Winslow finally made it back to Fort William Henry on August 19 but the next day he received orders cancelling the expedition because Fort Oswego had fallen. In his absence, the men had reinforced Fort William Henry and had built another encampment to the southwest, and the artillery remained so the fort did not lack for cannon, but that was poor reward for the expense and energy employed to raise and transport an army of seven thousand men.

Winslow and his officers must have been asking what had happened? The answer is that the speed with which Montcalm had captured Fort Oswego had been completely unexpected. Aside from capturing Forts Carillon and St. Frederic, the objective of the Lake George campaign had been to force the French to divide their forces, thus reducing the pressure on Oswego. With Oswego eliminated as a threat, Montcalm was free to concentrate his army at Lake George. However, although Montcalm had five thousand men at Lake George by the end of the summer, Winslow had seven thousand men, supported by five regiments of regulars under Loudon, and the theoretical support of twenty thousand militia. Unfortunately, Winslow’s men had been stuck in camps for much too long and the supply system was still struggling, so men were dying from disease in increasing numbers.

In the end, the provincials simply stayed on their side of the lake and Loudon wasted his energy dealing with the colonial assemblies in an attempt to raise even more men, when the supply system could not handle the current situation. One wonders what would have happened if instead of wasting time discussing officers’ ranks in Albany, Winslow had launched his offensive as planned in late July/early August when Montcalm was pre-occupied with Oswego. When the army finally left, Fort William Henry was garrisoned by a hundred rangers and four hundred regulars under Captain Eyre and Fort Edward was garrisoned by two hundred rangers and five hundred regulars.

The French victories of 1755 and 1756 naturally attracted more Indian allies, so the French commander at Carillon had a much better idea of the situation on the other side of the lake than his opposite number did. Attempts to train provincial troops to serve as rangers met with limited success. Rogers found enough experienced men to form several companies of rangers but still had difficulty penetrating the Indian screen to acquire solid information. As a result, he was unable to warn Eyre that Montcalm had sent a force of fifteen hundred militia, regulars and Indians against Fort William Henry in mid-March 1757. The French succeeded in burning all of the boats but Eyre refused to surrender. After four consecutive night assaults to conceal the size of the force, the attack was abandoned. This was a great moral victory, but not much of an accomplishment since the fort was too solid to be captured without cannon. In the end, Montcalm realized that he would need to launch a real expedition to take the fort and that is exactly what he did the following summer.

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Further Reading:

Betrayals: Fort William Henry and the Massacre-Ian K. Steele, New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Steele uses the experience of an English colonist who was abducted along with her family by the Abenaki to show that the Indians viewed taking captives for resale as an integral part of their society and economy. In fact, it was a thriving industry since if the captives were able to raise the money then they would be freed, if not they were purchased by well-off Canadians either as laborers or to be raised as part of a new family. Oddly enough, the Abenaki were devout and deferential towards a Jesuit missionary who lived in their town but apparently made no effort to prevent the habit of taking prisoners. It is a very well researched book that excels at explaining how the principal actors saw the situation at the time and why they made their decisions. An entire chapter is devoted to determining how many prisoners were taken by the Indians following the surrender at Fort William Henry and how many were freed by the French, as well as how many escaped to finally return home. Steele concludes with a chapter that examines in detail how the massacre has been perceived, showing how Montcalm’s refusal to acknowledge responsibility was accepted for two centuries.

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