Crucible of War

by Fred Anderson

  19. Wraxall to Fox, 27 Sept. 1755, in Pargellis, Military Affairs, 139; Wraxall was Johnson’s private secretary.

  20. Daniel Claus’s narrative, quoted in Steele, Betrayals, 50. That Dieskau was facing what amounted to a mutiny is confirmed in Dieskau to d’Argenson, 17 Sept. 1755, quoted in Gipson, Years of Defeat, 172.

  21. Pomeroy to Williams, 9 Sept. 1755, in DeForest, Journals and Papers of Pomeroy, 138 (“6 Deep & as I judg’d about 20 rods in Length Close Order ye Indians . . . hilter Scilter ye woods full of them—they Came with In about 20 rods & fir’d Regular Plattoons but we Soon brook there order ye Indians & Cannadians Directly took tree with In handy gun Shot”). Effects of artillery: anonymous gunner quoted in Steele, Betrayals, 50. Effects of Legardeur’s death: Vaudreuil to the minister of marine, 30 Oct. 1755, in Joseph L. Peyser, ed., Jacques Legardeur de Saint-Pierre: Officer, Gentleman, Entrepreneur (East Lansing, Mich., 1996), 225–6.

  22. Wraxall to Fox, 27 Sept. 1755, in Pargellis, Military Affairs, 139.

  23. Quotation: Wraxall to Fox, ibid., 140. The taking of trophies: Steele, Betrayals, 53.

  24. Aftermath of battle: Seth Pomeroy diary, entries for 9–11 Sept. 1755, in DeForest, Journals and Papers of Pomeroy, 115–16. Casualties: Steele, Betrayals, 47, 53; Wraxall to Fox, 27 Sept. 1755, in Pargellis, Military Affairs, 139. (The Anglo-Americans suffered 223 dead and 108 wounded; the official French tally was 149 dead, 103 wounded, and 27 taken prisoner, exclusive of Indian casualties. Including Indians, the total losses were almost identical, with 331 English casualties and 339 French; the French force, however, suffered the highest casualty rate, approximately 23 percent, as against 14 percent for the English.) Johnson, aware of the demands of mourning war, gave all the prisoners except Dieskau to the Mohawks after the battle; aware, too, of the expectations of European war-making, he hid the fact from Shirley (Ian K. Steele, Warpaths: Invasions of North America [New York, 1994], 193).

  25. Gipson, Years of Defeat, 174–5; Steele, Betrayals, 55–6; Fred Anderson, A People’s Army: Massachusetts Soldiers and Society in the Seven Years’ War (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1984), 10.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: British Politics, and a Revolution in European Diplomacy

  1. See Reed Browning, The Duke of Newcastle (New Haven, Conn., 1975), 194-253 passim, esp. 222–3; and Richard Middleton, The Bells of Victory: The Pitt-Newcastle Ministry and the Conduct of the Seven Years’ War, 1757–1762 (Cambridge, U.K., 1985), 3–4.

  2. W. A. Speck, Stability and Strife: England, 1714–1760 (Cambridge, Mass., 1977), 260–1.

  3. H. M. Scott, British Foreign Policy in the Age of the American Revolution (Oxford, 1990), 29-52; id., “ ‘The True Principles of the Revolution’: The Duke of Newcastle and the Idea of the Old System,” in Jeremy Black, ed., Knights Errant and True Englishmen: British Foreign Policy 1600–1800 (Edinburgh, 1989), 55–91; also see, more generally, Eliga Gould, The Persistenceof Empire: British Political Culture in the Age of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, N.C., forthcoming), chaps. 1 and 2.

  4. Browning, Newcastle, 219–21; Speck, Stability and Strife, 262–3.

  5. Pitt’s speech in the House of Commons, 13 Nov. 1755, quoted in Stanley Ayling, The Elder Pitt, Earl of Chatham (New York, 1976), 170; Lawrence Henry Gipson, The British Empire before the American Revolution, vol. 6, The Great War for the Empire: The Years of Defeat, 1754–1757 (New York, 1968), 378–9.

  6. Ibid., 386–91. On Frederick’s fear of Russia, see Speck, Stability and Strife, 263; and Christopher Duffy, The Military Life of Frederick the Great (New York, 1986), 83–4.

  7. Armies and populations: André Corvisier, Armies and Societies in Europe, 1494–1789, trans. Abigail Siddall (Bloomington, Ind., 1979), 113, table 1, “Effectives in the Regular Armies and Populations of the States.”

  8. On the demise of the Austrian alliance, see Gipson, Years of Defeat, 369, 379. On the ministry’s newfound security, see Browning, Newcastle, 228–30.

  9. Gipson, Years of Defeat, 187–8; Stanley M. Pargellis, Lord Loudoun in North America (1933; reprint, Hamden, Conn., 1968), 39–40.

  10. Shirley’s estrangement from Newcastle: John Schutz, William Shirley: King’s Governor of Massachusetts (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1961), 153–4, 166–7, 226. Filius Gallicae: Nicholas B. Wainwright, George Croghan, Wilderness Diplomat (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1959), 106–9 (the letters are reprinted in American Historical Association, Report 1 [1896]: 660–703). Shirley’s recall: Gipson, Years of Defeat, 188–9; Schutz, Shirley, 232–3; Pargellis, Loudoun, 76–7. Quotation: Fox to Shirley, 31 Mar. 1756, quoted in Gipson, Years of Defeat, 188.

  11. Ibid., 188–91; Schutz, Shirley, 225–6, 232–4, 240–3, 245.

  12. Ibid., 30–43.

  13. On the effects of French efficiency vs. British slowness and commitment to introducing more conventional military order into American operations, see Ian K. Steele, Warpaths: Invasions of North America (New York, 1994), 195–6.

  PART III: NADIR, 1756-1757 CHAPTER TWELVE: Lord Loudoun Takes Command

  1. Francis Parkman’s depiction of Montcalm as tragic hero continues to influence American historians; see David Levin, ed., Francis Parkman: France and England in North America, vol. 2, Montcalm and Wolfe (New York, 1983), 1088–92. W. J. Eccles’s more judicious appraisal has greater value; see Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 3, s.v. “Montcalm, Louis-Joseph de, Marquis de Montcalm.” Ian K. Steele surveys the fluctuations in Montcalm’s historical reputation in Betrayals: Fort William Henry and the “Massacre” (New York, 1990), 176–81; see also id., Warpaths: Invasions of North America (New York, 1994), 199–201, 205–6, 215–19.

  2. Lawrence Henry Gipson, The British Empire before the American Revolution, vol. 6, The Great War for the Empire: The Years of Defeat, 1754–1757 (New York, 1968), 183–4; Douglas Edward Leach, Arms for Empire: A Military History of the British Colonies in North America, 1607–1763 (New York, 1973), 381–2; “Information of Captain John Vicars of the 50th Regiment,” 4 Jan. 1757, in Stanley M. Pargellis, ed., Military Affairs in North America, 1748–1763 (1936; reprint, Hamden, Conn., 1968), 286–90.

  3. Shirley’s activities: John Schutz, William Shirley: King’s Governor of Massachusetts (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1961), 224–30. Enlistments in 1755: Gipson, Years of Defeat, 181 n. 65; for means of estimating these as a proportion of the population in the prime military age range of sixteen to twenty-nine years, see Fred Anderson, A People’s Army: Massachusetts Soldiers and Society in the Seven Years’ War (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1984), 60 n. 83. (This evidently matched the rate of participation in Connecticut; see Harold E. Selesky, War and Society in Colonial Connecticut [New Haven, Conn., 1990], 166–70.)

  4. Schutz, Shirley, 227–9; Thomas Hutchinson, The History of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts-Bay, ed. Lawrence Shaw Mayo, vol. 3 (1936; reprint, New York, 1970), 32–4.

  5. Gipson, Years of Defeat, 177–81.

  6. Anderson, A People’s Army, 169; Douglas Edward Leach, Roots of Conflict: British Armed Forces and Colonial Americans, 1677–1763 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1986), 119–20.

  7. Report of the Solicitor General to Sir Thomas Robinson, 3 Dec. 1754, quoted in Leach, Roots of Conflict, 111.

  8. Anderson, A People’s Army, 174.

  9. Pargellis, Military Affairs, xviii, 187 n. 2; id., Lord Loudoun in North America (1933; reprint, Hamden, Conn., 1968), 155–7.

  10. Gipson, Years of Defeat, 184–5, 193; Pargellis, Loudoun, 88; Schutz, Shirley, 231.

  11. Pargellis, Loudoun, 83 ff.

  12. Ibid., 89–90.

  13. Anderson, A People’s Army, 170; Pargellis, Loudoun, 88–9.

  14. Ibid., 81–2; the description quoted is from Peter Wraxall, who had accompanied Sir William Johnson to wait on the new commander in chief.

  15. Ibid., 47–9, 52–66, 81. Loudoun replaced the earl of Albemarle, who had recently died, as governor of Virginia; Dinwiddie remained as lieutenant governor.

  16. Ibid., 132–66; Loudoun to Cumberland, 20 Aug. 1756, in id., Military Affairs, 22
3–30.

  17. “A tree to a man”: id., Loudoun, 44. Provincials ahead of regulars: Loudoun to Cumberland, 3 Oct. 1756, in id., Military Affairs, 240 (“It looks odd on the Map, to see the Provincials advanced before the Troops”). Contractualism and resistance to joint command: Anderson, A People’s Army, 167–95, esp. 171–3; Alan Rogers, Empire and Liberty: American Resistance to British Authority, 1755–1763 (Berkeley, Calif., 1974), 69–71; Pargellis, Loudoun, 83–93. “Dissolution”: Winslow to Shirley, 2 Aug. 1756, in Charles H. Lincoln, ed., Correspondence of William Shirley, Governor of Massachusetts and Military Commander in America, 1731–1760 (New York, 1912), 2:497–8.

  18. “First contriver”: Loudoun to Cumberland, 20 Aug. 1756, in Pargellis, Military Affairs, 226. Promulgation of the Rule of 1755: id., Loudoun, 92; Anderson, A People’s Army, 169.

  19. “Ready and willing”: Winslow to Loudoun, 10 Aug. 1756, quoted in ibid., 174. “Terms and conditions”: Joseph Dwight to Loudoun, 11 Aug. 1756, ibid. The terms were that Winslow was to be commander in chief of the provincials; that the men were to receive the wages, bounties, and subsistence stipulated by their respective provincial assemblies; that their service was to be confined to the Lake George–Lake Champlain region; and that they were to serve no longer than twelve months from the date of enlistment.

  20. Ibid., 174–5.

  21. Loudoun’s outrage: id. to Fox, 19 Aug. 1756; to Cumberland, 20 and 29 Aug. 1756, in Pargellis, Military Affairs, 223–33. Provisioning: Anderson, A People’s Army, 179–85; Pargellis, Loudoun, 184–5.

  22. Ibid., 195–6; Rogers, Empire and Liberty, 82–3, 75–89, passim; Loudoun to Cumberland, 29 Aug. 1756, in Pargellis, Military Affairs, 231.

  23. Albany quartering incident: id., Loudoun, 195–6; Rogers, Empire and Liberty, 83–4. Quotation: Loudoun to Cumberland, 29 Aug. 1756, in Pargellis, Military Affairs, 230.

  24. “Opposition” and “Cyphers [who have] sold”: Loudoun to Cumberland, 22 Nov.–26 Dec. 1756, in ibid., 272–3. “From whence”: Loudoun to Halifax, 26 Dec. 1756, quoted in id., Loudoun, 185–6.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Oswego

  1. Patrick Mackellar, “A Journal of the Transactions at Oswego from the 16th of May to the 14 of August 1756,” in Stanley M. Pargellis, ed., Military Affairs in North America, 1748–1765: Documents from the Cumberland Papers in Windsor Castle (1936; reprint, New York, 1969), 207 (entry of Aug. 10); Louis Antoine de Bougainville, Adventure in the Wilderness: The American Journals of Louis Antoine de Bougainville, 1756–1760, ed. Edward P. Hamilton (Norman, Okla., 1964), 25 (entry of 10 Aug. 1756); Lawrence Henry Gipson, The British Empire before the American Revolution, vol. 6, The Great War for the Empire: The Years of Defeat, 1754–1757 (New York, 1968), 199.

  2. Vaudreuil quoted in Douglas Edward Leach, Arms for Empire: A Military History of the British Colonies in North America, 1607–1763 (New York, 1973), 379. Ian K. Steele, Warpaths: Invasions of North America (New York, 1994), 197–200 and 205–6, masterfully explains the significance of Vaudreuil’s commitment to petite guerre strategy and Montcalm’s distaste for it— and for him.

  3. Montcalm’s strength: Leach, Arms for Empire, 385; George F. G. Stanley, New France: The Last Phase, 1744–1760 (Toronto, 1968), 143. Indians: Bougainville, Adventure, 21, 24 (entries of 30 July and 6 Aug. 1756); Steele, Warpaths, 199–200.

  4. Road: Mackellar’s journal, 11 Aug. 1756, in Pargellis, Military Affairs, 208. Fortifications: Major W. H. Bertsch, “The Defenses of Oswego,” New-York Historical Society, Proceedings 13 (1914): 108–27, esp. 114–20.

  5. Mackellar’s journal, 25 May 1756, and id., “Plan of Oswego with Its Forts,” in Pargellis, Military Affairs, 189–90, 210 and facing page. Quotation from Sarah Mulliken, ed., “Journal of Stephen Cross of Newburyport, Entitled ‘Up to Ontario,’ the Activities of Newburyport Shipbuilders in Canada in 1756,” Essex Institute Historical Collections 76 (1940): 14 (entry of 13 Aug.); see also 75 (1939): 356–7 (entries of 10–12 Aug.). Strength of the garrison: Leach, Arms for Empire, 385.

  6. Stephen Cross journal, 13 Aug. 1756, 15.

  7. Ibid.

  8. Cf. Ian K. Steele, Betrayals: Fort William Henry and the “Massacre” (New York, 1990), 78–9.

  9. Stephen Cross journal, 14 Aug. 1756, 16.

  10. Montcalm to d’Argenson, 28 Aug. 1756, quoted in Francis Jennings, Empire of Fortune: Crowns, Colonies, and Tribes in the Seven Years War in America (New York, 1988), 296.

  11. Bougainville to his brother, 17 Sept. 1757, in Bougainville, Adventure, 332.

  12. Stanley M. Pargellis, Lord Loudoun in North America (1933; reprint, Hamden, Conn., 1968), 164–5.

  13. Gipson, Years of Defeat, 208; Loudoun to Cumberland, 20 Aug., 3 Oct., and 22 Nov.–26 Dec. 1756, in Pargellis, Military Affairs, 223–33, 239–43, 263–80.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: The State of the Central Colonies

  1. “Troops in the Pay of the Province of Pennsylvania and Where Posted,” 23 Feb. 1756, in Stanley M. Pargellis, ed., Military Affairs in North America, 1748–1765: Documents from the Cumberland Papers in Windsor Castle (1936; reprint, New York, 1969), 166–7; James Titus, The Old Dominion at War: Society, Politics, and Warfare in Late Colonial Virginia (Columbia, S.C., 1991), 94–5; Lawrence Henry Gipson, The British Empire before the American Revolution, vol. 7, The Great War for the Empire: The Victorious Years, 1758–1760 (New York, 1967), 38. Montcalm quotation: Montcalm to d’Argenson, 12 June 1756, in Stephen F. Auth, The Ten Years’ War: Indian-White Relations in Pennsylvania, 1755–1765 (New York, 1989), 36. Washington quotation: Washington to?, late 1756, in Titus, Old Dominion, 181 n. 54.

  2. Gipson, Victorious Years, 35–6, 45–6. Washington actually traveled to Boston in Mar. 1756 to ask Shirley to decide the question of seniority; Shirley ruled in Washington’s favor. See Thomas Lewis, For King and Country: The Maturing of George Washington (New York, 1993), 200–7.

  3. Hayes Baker-Crothers, Virginia in the French and Indian War (Chicago, 1928), 102–3; Titus, Old Dominion, 77–100 passim; John Ferling, “Soldiers for Virginia: Who Served in the French and Indian War?” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 94 (1986): 307–28. Quotation: Washington to Loudoun, 10 Jan. 1757, in W. W. Abbot et al., eds., The Papers of George Washington, Colonial Series, vol. 4, November 1756–October 1757 (Charlottesville, Va., 1984), 86.

  4. Quotation: ibid., 88, 83. Appropriations: Baker-Crothers, French and Indian War, 102–3.

  5. Virginia Regiment’s record in 1756: Washington to Loudoun, 10 Jan. 1757, Papers of Washington,4:83. Growth of discipline: Don Higginbotham, George Washington and the American Military Tradition (Athens, Ga., 1985), 7–38. Tenuousness of Virginia’s frontier and Indian diplomacy: Titus, Old Dominion, 96–8.

  6. Peter L. D. Davidson, War Comes to Quaker Pennsylvania, 1682–1756 (New York, 1957), 163–4.

  7. Gipson, Victorious Years, 48–9; Davidson, Quaker Pennsylvania, 163–5; Jack Marrietta, The Reformation of American Quakerism, 1748–1783 (Philadelphia, 1984), 150–6; Benjamin Newcomb, Franklin and Galloway: A Political Partnership (New Haven, Conn., 1972), 21–32.

  8. Ibid., 5–32; Marietta, Reformation of American Quakerism, 150–86, passim; Davidson, Quaker Pennsylvania, 166–96.

  9. Prisoners and scalps: Report of Claude Godfrey Cocquard, c. Mar. 1757, in Auth, Ten Years’ War, 37. Burning of Fort Granville: Loudoun to Robert Hunter Morris, 20 Aug. 1756, ibid.,

  36. “Deplorable situation”: Denny to the council, 15 Oct. 1756, ibid., 37. Raid on Lebanon: Gipson, Victorious Years, 52–4.

  10. Raid on Upper Kittanning: Davidson, Quaker Pennsylvania, 185–6; Gipson, Victorious Years, 53; Auth, Ten Years’ War, 204 n. 5. “Without . . . Encouragement”: Shingas’s narrative, quoted in Francis Jennings, Empire of Fortune: Crowns, Colonies, and Tribes in the Seven Years War in America (New York, 1988), 166. “Seldom mist”: Armstrong’s report, quoted in Auth, Ten Years’ War, 204 n. 5. “He could eat fire”: “An Account of the Captivity of Hugh Gibson Among the Delaware Indians . . . ,” Massachu
setts Historical Society, Collections, 3rd ser., 6 (1837): 143. “Leg and Thigh”: Pennsylvania Gazette, 23 Sept. 1756.

  11. Auth, Ten Years’ War, 37–9, 30–5, 62–5. Anthony F. C. Wallace’s King of the Delawares: Teedyuscung, 1700–1763 (Philadelphia, 1949) remains critical to understanding the ensuing diplomatic encounters at Easton.

  12. Factions: Auth, Ten Years’ War, 64. Effects of war: Wallace, Teedyuscung, 161–2. On the tenuousness of life at Shamokin and the significance of Fort Augusta, see esp. James Merrell, “Shamokin, ‘the very seat of the Prince of darkness’: Unsettling the Early American Frontier,” in Andrew R. L. Cayton and Frederika Teute, eds., Contact Points: American Frontiers from the Mohawk Valley to the Mississippi, 1750–1830 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1998), 16–59.

  13. Quotation from Easton treaty minutes, cited in Wallace, Teedyuscung, 76.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN: The Strains of Empire: Causes of Anglo-American Friction

  1. Stanley M. Pargellis, Lord Loudoun in North America (1933; reprint, Hamden, Conn., 1968), 201–2, Denny quoted on 202.

  2. Quartering disputes broke out in New York, Aug.–Dec. 1756; Pennsylvania, Oct.–Dec. 1756; Maryland, Nov. 1756; Massachusetts, Oct.–Dec. 1757; and South Carolina, June 1757–Feb. 1758. New Jersey and Connecticut towns quartered troops with less dislocation in 1757, but only after their assemblies (conscious of previous disputes) agreed to reimburse the towns in question. See ibid., 204–10; and Alan Rogers, Empire and Liberty: American Resistanceto British Authority, 1755–1763 (Berkeley, Calif., 1974), 84–7.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Britain Drifts into a European War

  1. Pitt’s speech in the House of Commons, quoted in Horace Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Second (London, 1846), 2:189. For the collapse of the Fox-Newcastle ministry, see Reed Browning, The Duke of Newcastle (New Haven, Conn., 1975), 230–4; and Richard Middleton, The Bells of Victory: The Pitt-Newcastle Ministry and the Conduct of the Seven Years’ War, 1757–1762 (Cambridge, U.K., 1985), 22–46.