Character of Lord Loudon: Monro and Ticonderoga

This letter was intercepted by Montcalm, at a moment when he was about to abandon the siege and return to Ticonderoga, for his ammunition and provisions had become almost exhausted during a siege of several days. He sent the letter in to Monro, with a summons for him to surrender. That commander perceived the hopelessness of his situation. His own means for defence were almost exhausted, and he could not expect aid from Fort Edward. He yielded reluctantly, after honorable terms had been agreed upon. The garrison were to march out with the honors of war, carrying with them their baggage and small arms, and one cannon in recognition of their gallant defence of the fort, Monro agreeing that his men should not bear arms against the French for the space of eighteen months; also to deliver at Ticonderoga, all the French and Indian prisoners in the hands of the English. Montcalm pledged himself to furnish them with a strong escort half-way to Fort Edward. All this had been arranged at a council in which the Indians were represented. On the 9th of August, the French entered the fort and the English left it.

It was now near evening. Montcalm had kept intoxicating liquors from the savages, and admonished the English to do likewise. They did not heed the admonition, but supplied the Indians with rum. After a night's carousal, the savages were ready for any mischief. At daybreak they gathered around the English camp with hostile menaces. When the garrison began their march toward Fort Edward, the infuriated Indians fell upon them, plundered nearly all of them, murdered a large number of the soldiers and women, and made many prisoners. Montcalm and his officers did all in their power to arrest the fury of the savages. He and De Levi rushed in between them and their victims, at the peril of their own lives, and finally stayed the massacre. The survivors were sent to Fort Edward under a strong escort, and the prisoners were afterward ransomed in Canada. The fort and all of its appendages were immediately destroyed by fire and pick, and its conquerors moved down the Lake the same day. Putnam, who visited the ruins as soon as the French had left, described the scene as appalling. He saw the bodies of murdered Englishmen scattered in every direction, many of them half-consumed among the dying embers. He counted the bodies of more than one hundred women shockingly mangled, and some of them scalped. The fort was never rebuilt. An irregular line of low mounds--the remains of Fort William Henry--might have been seen on the borders of the Lake until 1854, when the site was covered by a large summer-hotel, already mentioned.

General Webb, at Fort Edward, with almost six thousand men, expecting to be attacked at any moment, sent off his private baggage to a place of safety, preparatory to a retreat to the Hudson Highlands. But his dreaded foe, having accomplished the chief object of his expedition, returned to Lake Champlain to rest upon his laurels. So ended Loudon's campaign in 1757. It was more inglorious than that of the preceding year. The British aristocracy had weakened British power; and their representative in America had disgraced the British arms. The English had been expelled from the Ohio basin; they had been made powerless in northern New York, and contemptible in Nova Scotia; and the French bore undisputed sway over the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes, and the Valley of the Mississippi. At that moment, French territory in America exceeded that of English full twenty-fold. The colonists were humiliated and exasperated. But they were learning, in a degree, the measure of their strength in union. It was a lesson of vast importance to them in their impending struggle with a power that sought to enslave them.

The position of American affairs alarmed the English people. "We are undone at home with increased expenses; abroad, by ill-luck and incapacity," exclaimed Chesterfield, one of the most enlightened of the English aristocracy. He uttered the opinions of the British nation outside of that aristocracy, and their rulers were soon compelled to listen. Light concerning the Americans was spreading over England. Thinking men saw justice in their demands for local self-government, and reason for their restiveness and irritation because they were continually plagued by the rapacity and haughty bearing of many of the royal governors and the unjust exactions of the British ministry. They saw the danger of the Americans being driven to the renunciation of their allegiance to Great Britain, if a more just policy toward them should not be speedily exercised; and the English people became so clamorous for a change in the administration, that the alarmed king, after suffering England to be eleven weeks without a ministry, was compelled to recall Pitt to the cabinet in June, 1757, invested with powers which made him, in fact, prime minister of the realm. To him was intrusted the supreme direction of military and foreign affairs. He wielded his power with wisdom, and won glory for his country.