King William's War
Page 23
With over one hundred warships in his arsenal, Louis XIV could have easily supported Frontenac’s plans to strike at New York and New England, and given the state of the colonial coastal defenses, even a handful of warships could have wreaked havoc upon the Eastern Seaboard. The monarch’s attention, however, was focused on his army and its campaigns in Europe. The money, the time, and the resources could not be diverted to support French naval aims. Instead, a policy of guerre de course, which focused on merchant raiding, was adopted. Privateers and cruisers, typically frigates, would strike at their enemy’s commerce, causing damage out of proportion to the numbers employed and forcing their opponents to divert valuable resources to protect their trade. The approach was analogous to the policy of the petite guerre employed by New France. It was cheap and risked little in the way of resources to carry out. With such a transition taking place the king agreed to send several frigates to Canada to carry out privateering work along the northeastern coast, but no attack of any measure was to be conducted by the French navy against the ports of the English colonies. Little did Louis XIV know that his country would never again be in a better position to strike against the American colonies.
Part Three
Attrition
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Disunity and Discord
ON THE NORTHERN NEW ENGLAND FRONTIER a heavy snowfall ushered in 1692. For the town of York, along the southern coast of Maine, January 25 was no different. It had snowed hard throughout the evening, leaving a thick white blanket draped across the landscape. Daylight brought relief from the snow, but it also brought something else. Three hundred Wabanaki warriors had arrived the previous evening and quietly slipped into position, their footfalls muffled by the fresh snow. As the first rays of sunlight filtered through the breaking flurries a shot rang out. A few townsfolk went to their windows to see where it had come from, but many had barely awoken when hundreds of war whoops rang out. Caught completely by surprise, most never had a chance to reach their arms before the door to their dwelling was kicked in and the inhabitants put to the tomahawk or carried away. A few individuals managed to make their way to one of the town’s five garrison houses, and although badly outnumbered, from these strongholds they were able to fend off several half-hearted attacks. Most of the town, however, was not so fortunate. When the war party withdrew later that day, other than the garrison houses, not a single structure remained standing. Forty-eight of the town’s inhabitants lay dead, many buried beneath the burning embers of their homes, and another seventy-three were led away as prisoners. Within the span of a few hours York had been reduced to a ghost town, a stark reminder of the price of vigilance on the frontier.1
Along the New York frontier the spring of 1692 brought much smaller enemy raids, which probed the colony’s settlements in search of prisoners and information. Spring also brought an alarm that Frontenac was preparing to march on Albany with eight hundred men. Lt. Governor Ingoldsby called out the militia and rode to Albany to personally oversee the town’s defenses. “By God’s blessing Albany is still ours,” Ingoldsby wrote to the governor of Maryland in yet another attempt to solicit help in defending the frontier. “But in such a languishing condition that all the inhabitants are ready to retire to the waterside. Trade is extinguished and alarms of the enemy incessant. We have been obliged to forbid the people to leave the town, which the enemy would rejoice to hear of.” The lieutenant governor oversaw small improvements to Albany’s defenses, but by June nothing had materialized, so he released the militia and returned to New York City.
In May newly appointed Massachusetts governor William Phips arrived. After a long stay in England and a lengthy voyage across the Atlantic Phips was shocked upon his arrival to find he had to contend with spreading accusations of witchcraft that had spawned from an incident in Salem. What had started out as a single accusation had now become an epidemic. “No doubt you have heard of the wizards and witches,” one gentleman wrote future governor Francis Nicholson. “There are now over a hundred of them in jail, but they betray each other so fast that they say there are seven hundred in all.”2
The new governor was aghast by the circus the mania had created. In some cases the accused were being dragged from their homes and subjected to tests of fire and water, from which many, looking to spare themselves from further torment, confessed. Courts of inquiry had convicted a score of individuals on charges of witchcraft, and at the rate at which the accusations were being generated the courts would have to be expanded to keep up. Already engulfing several towns the matter was clearly escalating out of control. The mania was no doubt exacerbated by the anxiety of a frontier in shambles and the constant threat of instant annihilation lurking behind every tree, by political and economic woes brought on by the colony’s poorly led government, and by the threat posed to the colony’s maritime economy by French privateers operating off the coast.3
While the actions of the French and their allies were a more difficult problem to contend with, the governor at least had the power to stop the witch hunts. Phips, with the advice of his new council, intervened to head off the panic. “I have now forbidden the committal of any more accused persons,” he wrote Whitehall, “and them that have been committed I would shelter from any proceedings wherein the innocent could possibly suffer wrong.” The governor also put a stop to pamphlets that were being circulated that fanned the flames of the witch hunters and suspended the courts of inquiry until he received word from the king on how to proceed in “this perplexed affair.”4
Meanwhile, to the north, with the arrival of spring Governor Villebon met with one hundred Kennebec warriors at his newly erected fort, named St. Joseph, near the junction of the Nashwaak and St. John Rivers.5 At a large celebration the governor urged the Kennebec to carry through with their attacks against their mutual enemy. He then handed out gifts and, in a sign of solidarity, performed the war dance with his visitors. The next day the war party departed for Pentagoet, where Villebon had sent his brother, Lt. Rene Robinau de Portnuef, and twenty Canadians to help organize an expedition. By late May, three hundred Abenaki, Micmac, and Kennebec warriors had assembled at Pentagoet. Under the leadership of Castin, Father Baudoin, Portnuef, and their war chiefs, Modockawando and Moxus, the group agreed to attack Wells, the location Moxus had vowed to return to after his repulse last year.
The 320-man force had little to fear during its travels and arrived at Wells undetected on June 20. Before the expedition lay the town’s five garrison houses, positioned in a string upon cleared ground near the shore. The numbers were overwhelmingly in favor of the French and Indians, but a pair of sloops and a small shallop anchored in a tidal creek near the garrison houses complicated the matter. These vessels, no doubt armed with swivel guns, would be free to pour fire upon any party attacking the strongholds. The Wabanaki seemed hesitant and turned to slaughtering the settlement’s cattle, which gave away any element of surprise. Not interested in exposing themselves further they then opened a useless long-distance fusillade with the garrison and the nearby vessels throughout the day.6
It soon became clear to the attackers that the English vessels had to be dealt with. To offer some form of protection an abandoned oxcart was fitted with planks to act as a rolling shield for the attackers. At first the makeshift siege engine performed its task admirably as a handful of Canadians and Abenaki rolled the cart to within fifteen yards of one of the sloops. “This Chariot,” one chronicler noted, “they pushed on, towards the sloops, till they were got, maybe, within fifteen yards of them.” At this point one of the wheels struck a rock and the cart became stuck in the mud. Two Canadians were killed attempting to dislodge the cart and, under a concentrated fire from the vessels, the entire detachment broke in retreat, which led to a number of casualties as they scurried back to the safety of the wood line. The event was viewed as a bad omen by the Wabanaki, and interest in another attack quickly waned. Both Castin and Portnuef pushed on their allies to carry through with the plan but to no avail
. The war party soon broke up, with each contingent returning to their respective villages.7
After attempting to squash the witch-hunting fervor through use of his royal authority Phips pursued one of his primary orders—that of rebuilding the fort at Pemaquid. A number of colonial leaders questioned the wisdom of his rebuilding the Maine outpost. Although a new fort could certainly be built at Pemaquid, its isolated location would make it difficult to support, as the only practical avenue to do so was by sea. Undeterred, the governor raised a force of 450 men, gathered together the necessary materials, and set sail for the Maine coast in early August 1692. The flotilla briefly stopped at Falmouth to inspect the ruins. The dead, still scattered about the town after its capture several years before, were buried, and the fort’s great guns, which had been left behind by the victorious French and Indians, were recovered. As half of his force turned toward the task of constructing the new fort at Pemaquid, Phips detached Major Church with the rest of the troops to attack nearby enemy villages. Church accomplished little, but his efforts did seem to screen Phips’s work at Pemaquid, as no attempt was made to disrupt it.8
In October the English flag was raised over Fort William Henry, as the structure was christened. Given the abundance of nearby rock, and the desire to build as secure of a fortification as possible, it was agreed to construct the fort of stone. Unfortunately, limestone was nowhere to be found in the vicinity. Instead, a mixture of clay and sand was used as a substitute. It was a mistake that weakened the structure and, in the estimation of Royal Engineer colonel Wolfgang Romer who visited the site after the conclusion of the war, led to the fort’s early demise. The resulting structure was essentially a stone square, about 185 feet to a side. The seaside walls were six feet thick and twenty-two feet in height, with a three-story cylindrical bastion occupying the western corner. The walls facing the land side of the fort were slightly shorter, with a smaller bastion occupying the eastern corner of the structure. The interior of the fort was also bisected with 108-foot walls to create something of a keep. Twenty-eight gun ports were cut into the walls and bastions to allow the fort’s fourteen cannon to be brought to bear, in particular the fort’s largest guns, six eighteen-pounders, which were positioned to defend the seaside of the structure. With the weather soon deteriorating and little else to be accomplished Phips left Captain John March and sixty men to garrison the fort and departed with the rest for Boston.9
The year was to bring new leadership to New York as well. On April 28, 1692, a frigate carrying Governor Benjamin Fletcher dropped anchor in New York harbor. Little is known about Fletcher’s past until in 1689 he becomes a major in Princess Anne’s Danish Regiment of Foot. Princess Anne’s Regiment, which would one day be known as the Queen’s Regiment, had fought in several major engagements during William’s Irish campaigns, including the Battle of the Boyne and both sieges of Limerick. It is perhaps here that William first encountered Fletcher. Whatever the case, by 1691 Fletcher had become the regiment’s lieutenant colonel, and the following year, upon his appointment to the governorship of New York by the king, he was breveted to the rank of colonel of foot.
Fletcher’s arrival did not start well. The two dispatch brigantines assigned to the governor were missing. One had been taken by a French privateer, while the other vessel had been lost at sea, and like his predecessors the new governor was soon forced to make a trip to Albany to meet with his Iroquois allies. Fletcher gave his condolences to the assembly of sachems and urged them to carry on the fight against the French. To help support the nearby Mohawk, the governor informed them that he intended to garrison several posts north of Albany, including Half Moon and Schenectady, and to answer the Five Nations’ earlier calls for help from the other colonies, Fletcher informed them that Virginia was sending help as they spoke. Unfortunately, the governor also scolded the Five Nations for their failure to launch an attack on Montreal last year while Schuyler approached the French town from the south.
The Iroquois, who had conducted most of the fighting against the French and their allies along the New York frontier, took offense at the governor’s statements. Corlaer, as they referred to the governor of New York, was ignoring the mounting Iroquois losses. Thus far the Five Nations were the losers in this conflict. They then reminded the governor that they continued “the war for your sakes and for your interests and avoid the making of a peace, which we could do very advantageously.” These tense moments for the alliance were quickly passed over as the Iroquois informed the English delegation that they were committed to continuing the fight against the French no matter what.10
Fletcher considered himself fortunate in that beyond a few small raiding parties the frontier remained quiet for the remainder of the year. The colony was still in turmoil after the political divide brought on by Leisler and his revolutionary council, and it was deeply in debt and short on revenue. Rumors abounded that fourteen French ships had landed at Quebec and disembarked two thousand troops destined to march on Albany. Fletcher had dispatched three hundred men to man the frontier posts over the winter but could do little more. “It appears to me,” he informed Whitehall, “utterly impossible for this single Province to support the war another Year.”11
For New France the spring of 1692 brought the return of two seasonal constants to the colony: planting and Iroquois raids. In late May, a ninety-man French and Indian trading party was ambushed at the Long Sault. The convoy was busy pulling their canoes ashore to carry them around the rapids when an Iroquois war party, under the Onondaga war chief Black Kettle, attacked. A surprise volley and a sudden rush scattered the French and Indian covering force. Those near the canoes immediately tried to embark, but in the confusion a number of canoes were upset either by the enemy fire or by their occupants’ haste. Once in the water the only good thing that could be said for the freezing current was that it carried these individuals away from the Iroquois. When it was done, seven French and Indians lay dead, while another fifteen were taken prisoner, including the French commander and two of his officers.
It was not the last to be heard from Black Kettle. On July 15, his war party struck first near Fort Roland and then La Chesnaye, capturing a dozen French farmers. Governor Callières of Montreal immediately organized a pursuit and sent eighty men under Captains Duplessis and Merville to intercept the Onondaga war chief. The French officers tracked the Iroquois to a tree line and, fearing a trap, held their position. A second larger force of 150 men under Major Vaudreuil arrived the next day, but by then Black Kettle and his warriors were gone. There was some good news, however, as a French officer named Vildenay, who had been a prisoner of the Iroquois for three years and was brought along by his captives, managed to escape. Upon his return to Montreal Vildenay informed Callières and Vaudreuil as to the identity of the attackers and that they had left two canoes full of fur above the Long Sault. Upon hearing the news the governor reinforced Vaudreuil’s detachment with local troops and 120 volunteers from the mission Indians at Sault St. Louis and the mountain. He then ordered the major to set an ambush at the reported location of the canoes.12
Vaudreuil’s party ascended the Ottawa River and had ported around the Long Sault when they came across an Iroquois canoe in the river before them. Believing that his forces had been discovered the French commander ordered a landing. One hundred men were left to guard the canoes while the rest quickly set off with Vaudreuil along the shore in search of an Iroquois encampment. Around nightfall the advanced guard of the French and Indian column, following the sound of wood being chopped, surprised a party of Iroquois. The Iroquois sounded the alarm and the nearby encampment rushed for its arms. Not wanting to give his opponents the time to organize Vaudreuil ordered a charge with the advance guard. War whoops and bursts of musket fire rang out as the French moved to press the advantage. At first Black Kettle and his men resisted, but when the French main column came into sight a few minutes later, the Iroquois broke and disappeared into the woods, leaving everything behind. The French had struck
a serious blow. Twenty-eight Iroquois were either killed or were now French prisoners. In addition, all of the French captives were rescued, but it had come at a price. Vaudreuil had lost eleven men in the engagement, including three of his seasoned officers, “the best qualified for war in this country.”13
There were smaller encounters through the summer, but in all it was far less than previous years. As fall approached Frontenac assembled a detachment of two hundred militia and fifty mission Indians to help cover the harvest in the Montreal district. On his way to Montreal at the head of this force the governor encountered a French canoe, the occupants of which informed him that a four-hundred-man French and Indian detachment had arrived at Montreal from Michilimackinac. Frontenac was delighted to see the Ottawa, Huron, and Illinois warriors, as well as the French coureurs de bois from the high country. The detachment had not come to trade furs but in response to the threat posed by Black Kettle. The governor was also delighted to hear news of continued attacks on the Iroquois by his high country allies.
Although no expedition was launched against the English due to a disagreement with the Ottawa, good news arrived not long after. A supply convoy had arrived from France. It brought provisions and munitions but none of the reinforcements the colony desperately needed to man its frontier posts. Fortunately, the Iroquois incursions had faded to a trickle, and as to what remained Frontenac informed the French court, “It is impossible to prevent these sorts of surprisals however prudent we be, or to overtake these people after they have struck a blow, because they disperse through the woods, and are no longer to be found in the places where they are expected to be; and herein consists the great difficulty in waging war in this country.”14