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Fort William Henry

Last of the Mohicans

At noon on the ninth of August, 1757, Fort William Henry was turned over to the French. The soldiers in the fort laid down their arms and marched out to the fortified encampment. A number of wounded who were unable to walk were left behind. Within minutes several Indians forced their way past French sentries and into the fort. As the departing troops reached the encampment, they heard screams from behind. Father Roubaud reported that he saw a warrior dash from the building where the wounded had been gathered, carrying a "human head, from which trickled streams of blood. " Other warriors burst through the gate and went for the military stores and provisions, including rum. A few French guards tried to restrain them, a move the Indians correctly viewed as a ploy so that the soldiers could take the spoils for themselves. While the Indians and French pillaged the fort, Lt. colonel George Monro and his men remained in the camp. Montcalm posted sentries to keep the British in and the Indians out. The Indians, however, muscled their way past the French, and all afternoon and into the evening, dozens of drunk and angry Indians marauded among the terrified prisoners, taunting them and stealing their personal goods. Marechal de camp (Major General) Louis-Joseph de Montcalm, marquis de Montcalm, and his officers attempted to bring order, but with so many different tribes and only a handful of interpreters, their task was nearly impossible.

Montcalm let it be known that he planned to march the prisoners to Fort Edward in the morning. This was a deception. About midnight two hundred French soldiers were awakened and ordered to fall in near the camp. Montcalm hoped to spirit the British away before the Indians could realize what was happening. It was an ill-conceived plan, and only further antagonized the Indians, who were beginning to view the French and English as partners in league to deny them their spoils. When the warriors woke up, they swarmed toward the encampment. Faced with an angry mob, the French officers hastily countermanded the order to march and returned the prisoners to the encampment. It would, they decided, be safer to leave in daylight.

When Brigadier Francois-Gaston, Chevealier de Levis cut the road to Fort Edward, he had posted Indians to guard the route, so dozens of small native campsites dotted the roadside down which the prisoners had to march. At dawn the prisoners-unarmed regulars, militia, civilians, even women and children-left the encampment and made their way toward the road. Montcalm was not at the scene, but several officers of the Troupes de la Marine were on hand. Luc La Corne, a soldier who had spent his entire career with the Indians, Jean Daniel Dumas, the victor over Braddock, and Charles-Michel Mouet de Langlade, the commander who had permitted the massacre at Pickawillany, were all present. These soldiers understood Indians in war better than any of their colleagues. They felt the tension, and they knew what was likely to happenand in fact did happen. First, the Indians invaded the camp and killed and scalped the wounded who had been left behind. Then they turned to the long column inching its way toward the road. Prisoners were yanked from the line and carried off. The "hell whoop" alarmed Montcalm, and from his tent nearly a mile away he hurried to the scene with his officers. Levis was already there, desperately trying to regain control. By the time the marquis arrived, most of the harm had been done. For several hours French officers and interpreters scurried about, trying to persuade warriors to surrender their captives. Most refused, and by afternoon hundreds of Indians had disappeared from the scene, taking with them captives and booty.

Major General Daniel Webb learned of the formal surrender on the night of August 9. Believing that the standard protocols had been followed, he ordered a five-hundred-man detachment down the road to meet the expected column of prisoners coming under French guard. Instead of an orderly procession, the officer in command of the escort reported that he saw "about 30 of our People coming running down the Hill out of the woods along the Road that comes from William Henry, mostly stripped to their shirts and Breeches, and many without shirts." How many prisoners were "massacred" at Fort William Henry is difficult to determine. Of the 2,308 who surrendered, at least 69 were killed in the aftermath of chaos at the encampment and along the road, and more than 100 were counted as missing, many of whom were probably captives carried off by the Indians. Although the casualty rate at William Henry pales against the figures for contemporary European battles, what shocked those who heard of the "massacre" was not the toll of death but rather the way people died. The tragedy at William Henry provided emotional fodder for the American and British press, and judging by the number of accounts published, each more lurid than the one before, survivors were eager to share their memories.

Although he was the victor, Montcalm refused to push onto Fort Edward. Having lost his Indian allies, and unsure whether the Canadians would stay with him through the coming harvest season, he opted to level William Henry and return to Ticonderoga. At the same time, he had to explain how the "massacre" had occurred under his command. Naturally, he blamed the sad affair on the Indians and the British. According to the marquis, no harm would have happened if, he alleged, the British soldiers had not given rum to the Indians, and if everyone had followed the orders of the French escort to remain together rather than panicking and running away. In the case of the Indians, Montcalm's explanation rings true. He claimed that he simply could not restrain "3000 Indians of 33 different Nations."

Historians have often painted Montcalm as the villain in this drama, and they have done the same for Webb, whom they often condemn for not marching to the rescue. James Fenimore Cooper's romantic tale The Last of the Mohicans (1826) enshrined the view of the brave Monro, a hapless Webb, and a French commander unable to control his allies. Sadly, there was little Webb could have done. He had barely enough troops to defend Fort Edward. They and Monro's beleaguered garrison were the only forces standing between the French and Albany. If Webb had risked a march to William Henry and was defeated, it would have been a disaster. Its sacrifice was a sound and necessary strategic decision.

After capturing Fort William Henry, Montcalm returned to Quebec with a feeling of unease rather than jubilation. Despite the ferocity of the battle for the fort, all he had accomplished was to snip off a British salient that would soon grow back; in a few months the British advance would continue north again. Furthermore, victory had its cost in terms of human casualties, and Montcalm could ill afford to lose a single soldier. Louix XV focused on Europe, was not inclined to send more soldiers to defend what Voltaire called a "few acres of snow." Nor could the general look to Canada for succor. The harvests of 1756 and 1757 had been woeful, grain prices were skyrocketing, bread was rationed at a quarter pound per day, and shoes were scarce. An Ursuline at the Quebec convent lamented, "Three plagues have descended on our country, pestilence, famine, and war; but famine is the worst of all." The bread, accordingto the convent's Mother la Grange, was "as black as [our] robes." Manpower too was in short supply. Montcalm's entire regular force was smaller than the British garrison at Fort Edward, and although the Troupes de la Marine had shown themselves to be able soldiers, there weren't enough of them. As for the militia, they had the same unhappy traits as their counterparts to the south: They were unreliable and undisciplined. Indians were also a concern. After their treatment at William Henry, both the domiciled tribes and those from more distant: places returned home angry that Montcalm had denied them their just rewards. Their unhappiness over the division of spoils, however, was about to be eclipsed by an even greater catastrophe.

Smallpox was a frequent visitor to Canada. In most instances the dread virus arrived by ship at Quebec and then spread along the settled parts of the St. Lawrence River valley. Occasionally, fur traders and missionaries carried the plague to the villages far in the interior, but rarely did it reach epidemic proportions among those tribes. In the fall of 1755 the "pox" struck Quebec, undoubtedly brought in by the soldiers newly arrived from France. It swept through the valley, infecting, disfiguring, and killing hundreds of Canadians and domiciled Indians. (Those who were infected and survived - about 80 percent of the sick - developed an immunity.) The disease erupted again in the summer of 1756, and as the weather warmed in 1757, people in Quebec feared a third epidemic. Thankfully, none appeared. Only a few scattered cases were reported, most of them among soldiers. The menace, however, hovered elsewhere.

For several days after the fall of William Henry, the area around the fort was packed with thousands of soldiers - British and French - and as many Indians and civilians. During these hot August days, William Henry was one of the most populous and crowded places in North America. It was also a pest hole and a haven for smallpox. For the time being, however, only a few cases appeared, not enough to cause undue alarm. Once contracted, smallpox takes anywhere from ten to fourteen days to make its deadly presence apparent. That was sufficient time for the Indians at William Henry to become exposed and make their way home before showing serious signs of illness. These infected warriors may not have carried spoils home to their families, but they did bring the pox. Through the fall and winter of 1757-58 smallpox ravaged the western tribes. Jean-Nicholas Desandrouins, an engineering officer with Montcalm, noted that the disease "made astonishing ravages," and whole villages were "laid waste." The French blamed the British for the disease. The Indians blamed the nation that invited them east; the French had given them "bad medicine." First cheated of their rightful spoils, then infected by the French, the western tribes simmered as they sickened.

Montcalm ignored the sufferings of both the Indians and Canadians. Early in February 1758 the tone-deaf marquis wrote to his superiors in Paris: "The Canadians, the simple farmer respects and loves me. As to the Indian I believe I have seized their genius and manners." When the marquis addressed the people whose "genius and manners he had seized," to ask them to join him in the coming campaign, they ignored his message. As spring approached, the western Indians, remembering William Henry and smallpox, remained at home. Montcalm's strategic choice was to play for time. He believed that if his forces could hold the enemy at bay until reinforcements arrived from home (an unlikely event), or until French victories elsewhere in the world forced the British to seek a negotiated peace (much likelier), then France might save Canada by swapping other conquests for its losses in North America. To that end, the general decided to concentrate his forces at Ticonderoga, anticipating that they would eventually fall back to Quebec and Montreal. In this plan the stranded forts in the Ohio and Great Lakes regions, as well as at Louisbourg, could expect no major reinforcements. Their orders were to hold their posts as long as possible in order to block the British drive into the heart of New France.

Pierre de Rigaud Vaudreuil de Cavagnial, the marquis de Vaudreuil, and many other Canadians, accused the general of being a defeatist. For more than one hundred years, with very little direct assistance from regular troops, Canadians had resisted the British. Indeed, the Troupes de la Marine, militia, and Indians had often carried out raids deep into enemy territory. Caught off guard by such sudden violent attacks, the English rarely retaliated. Citing Canada's history, Vaudreuil argued that small units moving aggressively against the British would force them to disperse their army. Montcalm's strategy to pull back and rely on a strong defense was, in the opinion of the governor, badly suited to the Canadian environment. Vaudreuil made his position clear when he wrote to the minister of war reflecting on Montcalm's strategy: "It is in the true and fundamental interest of the colony that I devote my main efforts to defending the soil of our frontiers foot by foot against the enemy, whereas M. de Montcalm and the land troops seek only to preserve their reputation and would like to return to France without having suffered a single defeat.”

William M. Fowler, Jr. Empires at War : The French and Indian War and the Struggle for North America, 1754-1763. Walker & Company, New York. 2005.

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