Fort William Henry, Siege of

The French capture forts Oswego and William Henry from the British in In 1756 and 1757.

The latter victory is marred when France's native allies break the terms of capitulation and attack the retreating British column, which is under French guard, slaughtering and scalping soldiers and taking captive many men, women and children while the French refuse to protect their captives.

French naval deployments in 1757 also successfully defend the key Fortress of Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island called Ile du Roi by the French, securing the seaward approaches to Quebec.

The French and their native allies, based at Fort St. Frédéric (located at what is now Crown Point, New York) and Fort Carillon (known to the British as Fort Ticonderoga), have continued to scout and probe the British defenses on Lake George and the upper Hudson River.

The British, who have fewer native allies, have resort to companies of rangers for their scouting and reconnaissance activities.

The ranger companies, organized and directed by Robert Rogers, had eventually became known as Rogers' Rangers.

In the winter of 1757, Rogers and several companies of his rangers are stationed at Fort William Henry at the southern end of Lake George and at Fort Edward on the upper Hudson.

These forts are principally garrisoned by elements of the 44th and 48th Regiments, and form the frontier between the British province of New York and the French province of Canada.

Captain Rogers had led a scouting expedition from Fort Edward on January 15, stopping at Fort William Henry to acquire provisions, snowshoes, and additional soldiers.

The company had left Fort William Henry on January 17 with eighty-six men, heading down the frozen Lake George.

The next day, twelve men had turned back because of injuries.

The remaining men had continued north, ...

...reaching Lake Champlain at a point between Fort Carillon and Fort St. Frédéric on January 21.

After spotting a sled moving on the lake toward Fort St. Frédéric, Rogers sends Lieutenant John Stark and some men to intercept it.

However, more sleds are spotted, and Stark's men are seen before they can retreat back into the woods.

The sleds turned back toward Carillon.

The British give chase, but most of the French escape.

Rogers succeeds in taking seven prisoners.

Rogers' men now walk into an ambush, according to his estimate, by "two hundred and fifty French and Indians."

The British were fortunate that many of the French muskets misfire  due to wet gunpowder, as the surprise is nearly complete.

Lieutenant Stark, who is bringing up the rear of the ranger column, establishes a defensive line on a rise with some of his men, from which they give covering fire as those in the front retreat to this position.

As they retreat, Rogers orders his captives slain so that his men might move more freely.

The fight lasts several hours and ends only after sunset, when neither side can see the other.

Rogers is injured twice during the battle, once to the head and once to the hand.

The French will report that they were at a disadvantage, since they were without snowshoes and in snow up to their knees.

Once darkness sets in, Rogers and his survivors retreat six miles (nine point seven kilometers) to Lake George, where he sends Stark with two men to Fort William Henry for assistance.

Webb, who commands the area from his base at Fort Edward, had received intelligence in April that the French were accumulating resources and troops at Carillon.

News of continued French activity had arrived with a captive taken in mid-July.

Following an attack by Joseph Marin de la Malgue on a work crew near Fort Edward on 23 July, Webb had traveled to Fort William Henry with a party of Connecticut rangers led by Major Israel Putnam, and sent a detachment of them onto the lake for reconnaissance.

They had returned with word that natives were encamped on islands in the lake about eighteen miles (twenty-nine kilometers) from the fort.

Swearing Putnam and his rangers to secrecy, Webb had returned to Fort Edward, and on August 2 sends Lieutenant Colonel John Young with two hundred regulars and eight hundred Massachusetts militia to reinforce the garrison at William Henry.

This raises the size of the garrison to about twenty-five hundred, although several hundred of these are ill, some with smallpox.

Monro has paid a heavy price to learn that there is a sizeable body of French and natives further up the lake.

The French capitalize on the win and send two forces south from Carillon, one on Lake George and one chopping through the dense forest on the west side of the lake.

With the defeat on Sabbath Day Point, both bodies meet little British resistance.

Their objective is Fort William Henry; on the morning of August 3, the French come down the lake and glide into the view of the British.

The Battle of Fort William Henry is about to begin.

Montcalm's allies had already begun to move south, while his advance force of French troops had departed from Carillon on July 30 under Lévis' command, traveling overland along Lake George's western shore because the expedition does not have enough boats to carry the entire force.

Montcalm and the remaining forces had sailed the next day, and met with Lévis for the night at Ganaouske Bay.

Lévis had camped the next night, just three miles (four point eight kilometers) from Fort William Henry, with Montcalm not far behind.

Early on the morning of August 3, Lévis and the Canadians had blocked the road between Edward and William Henry, skirmishing with the recently arrived Massachusetts militia.

Montcalm had summoned Monro to surrender at 11:00 AM.

Monro had refused, and sent messengers south to Fort Edward, indicating the dire nature of the situation and requesting reinforcements.

Webb, feeling threatened by Lévis, had refused to send any of his estimated sixteen hundred men north, since they are all that stand between the French and Albany.

He writes to Monro on August 4 that he should negotiate the best terms possible; this communication is intercepted and delivered to Montcalm.

Montcalm, in the meantime, orders Bourlamaque to begin siege operations.

The French open trenches to the northwest of the fort with the objective of bringing their artillery to bear against the fort's northwest bastion.

Word of the French movements had reached the influential British Indian agent William Johnson on August 1.

Unlike Webb, he had acted with haste, and arrives at Fort Edward on August 6 with fifteen hundred militia and one hundred and fifty natives.

In a move that infuriates Johnson, Webb refuses to allow him to advance toward Fort William Henry, apparently believing a French deserter's report that the French army is eleven thousand men strong, and that any attempt at relief is futile given the available forces.

French guns had begun firing on the fort from two thousand yards (eighteen hundred meters) on August 5, a spectacle relished by the large native contingent.

The next day a second battery had opened fire from nine hundred feet (two hundred and seventy meters) further along the same trench, creating a crossfire.

The effect of the garrison's return fire had been limited to driving French guards from the trenches, and some of the fort's guns either were dismounted or burst owing to the stress of use.

Montcalm had sent Bougainville to the fort under a truce flag on August 7 to deliver the intercepted dispatch.

By this time the fort's walls had been breached, many of its guns were useless, and the garrison had taken many casualties.

After another day of bombardment by the French, during which their trenches approach another two hundred and fifty yards (two hundred and thirty meters), Monro raises the white flag to open negotiations.

The terms of surrender are that the British and their camp followers will be allowed to withdraw, under French escort, to Fort Edward, with the full honors of war, on condition that they refrain from fighting for eighteen months.

They will be allowed to keep their muskets and a single symbolic cannon, but no ammunition.

In addition, British authorities are to release French prisoners within three months.

Montcalm, before agreeing to these terms, tries to make sure that his native allies understand them, and that the chiefs will undertake to restrain their men.

This process is complicated by the diversity within the native camp, which includes some warriors who speak languages not understood by any European present.

Montcalm and the French leaders have repeatedly promised the natives opportunities for the glory and trophies of war, including plunder, scalping, and the taking of captives.

In the aftermath of the Battle of Sabbath Day Point, captives taken had been ransomed, meaning the natives had no visible trophies.

The terms of surrender at Fort William Henry effectively deny the natives appreciable opportunities for plunder: the war provisions are claimed by the French army, and personal effects of the British were to stay with them, leaving nothing for the natives.

This decision, in the view of historian Ian Steele, bred resentment, as it appeared that the French were conspiring with their enemies (the British) against their friends (the natives), leaving them without any promised war trophies.

The British garrison is now evacuated from the fort to the entrenched camp, and Monro is quartered in the French camp.

The natives now enter the fort and plunder it, butchering some of the wounded and sick that the British have left behind.

The French guards posted around the entrenched camp are only somewhat successful at keeping the natives out of this area, and it takes much effort to prevent plunder and scalping here.

Montcalm and Monro initially plan to march the prisoners south the following morning, but after seeing the native blood lust, decide to attempt the march this night.

When the natives become aware that the British are getting ready to move, a large number of them mass around the camp, causing the leaders to call off the march until morning.

The next morning, even before the British column begins to form up for the march to Fort Edward, the natives renewed attacks on the largely defenseless British.

Natives enter huts in the fort housing wounded British who are supposed to be under the care of French doctors at five AM and kill and scalp them.

Monro complains that the terms of capitulation have been violated, but his contingent is forced to surrender some of its baggage in order to be able even to begin the march.

As they march off, they are harassed by the swarming natives, who snatch at them, grabbing for weapons and clothing, and pulling away with force those that resist their actions, including many of the women, children, servants and enslaved people.

As the last of the men leave the encampment, a war whoop sounds, and a contingent of Abenaki  warriors seizes several men at the rear of the column.

Although Montcalm and other French officers attempt to stop further attacks, others do not, and some explicitly refuse to provide further protection to the British.

At this point, the column dissolves, as some try to escape the native onslaught, while others actively try to defend themselves.

Massachusetts Colonel Joseph Frye will report that he was stripped of much of his clothing and repeatedly threatened.

He flees into the woods, and will not reach Fort Edward until August 12.

Estimates of the numbers killed, wounded, and taken captive during this time vary widely, from two  to fifteen hundred.

Ian Steele's detailed reconstruction of the siege and its aftermath indicates that the final tally of British missing and dead ranges from sixty-nine to one hundred and eighty-four, at most seven and a half percent of the two thousand three hundred and eight who had surrendered.

Most of the natives leave on the afternoon after the massacre at Fort William Henry, heading back to their homes.

General Montcalm is able to secure the release of five hundred captives they had taken, but they still take with them another two hundred.

According to historian William Nester, a large number of tribal nations had been present during the siege, some represented by only a few individual warriors.

Some individuals are thought to have traveled fifteen hundred miles (twenty-four hundred kilometers) to join the French, coming from as far away as the Mississippi River and Hudson Bay.

Nester proposes that some of the atrocities, which included the murder and scalping of sick individuals and the digging up of bodies for plunder and scalping, resulted in many natives becoming infected with smallpox, which they then carried into their communities.

The devastation wrought by the disease in the following years will have a notable effect on native participation in the French campaigns of the following years.

The tribes that Nester lists are: Abenaki, Algonquin, Fox, Huron, Iowa, "Canadian" Iroquois. Menominee, Miami, Mi'kmaq, Mississauga, Nipissing, Ojibwe, Onondaga, Ottawa, Potawatomi, Sac, Tetes-de-Boules, and Winnebago.