King William's War Read online

  For Davis the advanced state of the enemy’s siegeworks and his perilous position forced him to request a parley the evening of May 28. Portneuf informed the English officer that his terms required the English to surrender the fort, its guns, and its supplies in return for quarter. The English officer asked for six days to consider the terms, but Portneuf was not interested and gave him that evening. Both sides resumed a steady fire upon one another the next morning, but when the French finished their trench at the fort’s wall and prepared an oxcart full of gunpowder, Davis ordered the flag to be lowered.

  The terms of the surrender were broken almost at once. The French were to provide safe conduct for the prisoners, but to the horror of all, several were dispatched while the rest were broken off into lots. “The Indians retained the majority of them,” one Frenchman’s account noted. In terms of Davis and a few others, the French did honor the terms of the agreement and they were carried to Quebec. Portneuf spiked the cannon, set fire to the fort and the remaining homes in the area, and on June 1 set out for Quebec, arriving later that month.

  As the last of his expeditions returned, Frontenac viewed the attacks as sorely needed successes. There had been some losses, but the governor put these aside in light of the larger gains. Canada had struck back. The English had been chastised and the Iroquois had been shown that Onontio still had teeth. And as he had hoped, the venture had restored the mood of the colony. “You cannot believe, Monseigneur,” he wrote the French court, “the joy that this slight success has caused, and how much it contributes to raise the people from their dejection and terror.”14

  The loss of Falmouth was a crushing blow for New England and the Maine frontier. Towns from Saco to the outskirts of Boston braced for the raids that would soon follow. The militia was called out and sent to bolster the frontier posts, but at the moment little else could be done. “Unless the King help us speedily,” a friend in Boston wrote future New Hampshire lieutenant governor John Usher, “we shall be ruined.”15

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Reduction of Canada

  NEWS OF WAR IN EUROPE did not reach the English colonies until the summer of 1689. Along the Maine and New Hampshire frontier this simply formalized the French-Wabanaki alliance and incorporated the current border conflict into what would become known as King William’s War in North America. For New France a similar occurrence took place as the ongoing Iroquois conflict merged with a general conflict against the English and their allies. Although a state of war now existed between France and England, this did not necessarily translate into a direct conflict in the colonies. This was due in part to the sparse populations, the distances involved, and a general lack of funds. In addition both the English and the French were embroiled in wars along their frontiers, which stretched their resources and held the attention of both governments. For the English the matter was even worse. The change in administration that came with the Glorious Revolution had created confusion and disorder, particularly in the area of defense, as can be attested to by the fall of Pemaquid. At the moment the last thing the English colonies wanted was to broaden the scope of the conflict via a direct confrontation with New France.

  Frontenac, however, had changed all this. By the spring of 1690 two of Frontenac’s three raids had struck, leaving the New York and New England frontiers in shambles. Although collusion on both sides was apparent in the ongoing Wabanaki and Iroquois conflicts, Frontenac had raised the stakes by directly committing the resources of New France to organizing and executing these attacks. However, if the count had thought that New York and New England would shrink from his challenge, he was badly mistaken. Alarms went out as far south as Virginia, but instead of adopting a purely defensive policy as he had hoped for, the English began speaking of retaliation, and soon this talk became centered around the conquest of Canada.

  As rumors circulated, the initial English response was more measured. Several French prisoners informed the authorities in Albany that an invasion of New York was planned for the following summer. Fifteen hundred French would ascend the Lake Champlain–Lake George corridor and seize Albany before marching on the lower Hudson valley and New York City. The news caused a great stir. In the best of times the colony would have been hard pressed to counter such an effort, but these were not the best of times. The changes brought on by the Glorious Revolution had left the colony deeply divided. Questions of command, money, and loyalty paralyzed Governor Leisler’s brief administration. Under such circumstances a French invasion would prove catastrophic.1

  The magistrates of Albany appealed to New England for help, claiming that if the French attacked they would find little to oppose them. “Never poor people in the world was in a worse condition than we are at the present,” they informed the council of Massachusetts. “No Governor, nor Command, no money to forward any expedition, and scarce men to maintain the city.” They pleaded with New England to launch an attack against Quebec at the earliest possible moment. Such an effort would divert Canada’s attention and, if successful, would end the problem with New France once and for all.2

  Great hope was placed in their New England neighbors, but for the moment the leadership of Albany was forced to take more practical steps toward ensuring their security. In late March, a pair of detachments were dispatched onto the lakes. One, under the command of Captain Jacob de Warm, was stationed in the vicinity of Crown Point, while the second, under Captain Abraham Schuyler, was to advance toward Otter Creek along the eastern side of Lake Champlain. These twin sentinels, numbering a few dozen men in all, were to gather intelligence on French movements and interdict any war parties moving up the lake. Scouting parties were to be sent out daily, and volunteers were called upon to advance to the northern portion of the lake in search of prisoners and signs of the impending invasion.

  The effort proved partially successful. Schuyler’s detachment stationed itself on the east side of Lake Champlain at Chimney Point, where they constructed a small earth and stone redoubt. From there Ensign Ardent Schuyler led a handful of men down the lake to Fort Chambly. Lying in the woods about the fort, he surprised a woodcutting party, killing two of their number and taking a third captive. In the meantime, however, a French and Indian war party had penetrated the thin English screen and attacked the hamlet of Canastigaone, killing ten of its inhabitants and setting off a panic in Albany. The war party then retraced its steps back to Montreal, undetected by either de Warm or Schuyler.3

  Massachusetts was sympathetic to Albany’s appeal for help, but at the moment Governor Simon Bradstreet wrote back, “We are in no present capacity of granting, being Infested by the Enemy upon our Towns and Plantations Eastward and Northward And are setting forward a small Expedition against the French of Nova Scotia.”4 This latter venture was originally conceived in January 1689 after a pair of French warships operating out of Port Royal had seized seven English ships the previous fall. At the time there was no interest in fracturing the peace to see it through, but fears of French privateers operating out of Port Royal never subsided. Now, after the fall of Pemaquid and the sack of Dover, and with an official declaration of war in hand, there were more than enough reasons to push the plan forward. In mid-March a committee was assembled to map out the shipping, munitions, and provisional needs for the expedition.5

  A few days later the task took on more meaning when news of the attack on Salmon Falls arrived. A new committee was formed on March 19 and given the powers to accelerate the campaign by impressment, and not long after the recruiting officers began beating their drums, Sir William Phips was appointed commander of the expedition. Phips, born on the Maine frontier, was a well-known ship’s captain and adventurer, but with no military background to speak of he was an odd choice. He had married a wealthy widow and used this modest wealth to finance a series of treasure-hunting expeditions. After several dismal attempts, in 1686 Phips located and salvaged over £200,000 from a sunken Spanish treasure ship off the coast of Haiti. Not only was Phips now a rich man but the ki
ng’s portion of the take was sufficient to earn him a knighthood and a colonial appointment as well.

  It turned out there was no need for impressment. Over 700 men, 446 of whom were formed into a regiment under Captain William Johnson, volunteered for the venture, and seven vessels were gathered together, the largest of which was Phips’s forty-two-gun Six Friends and the smallest being the two-gun Mary Anne. The fleet departed Boston April 28 and set course for the coast of Maine. Phips’s first target was not Port Royal but Castin’s fort at Penobscot. In this, the Massachusetts commander was fortunate. In the early morning hours of May 2, several scouts returned from a reconnaissance of the fort to report that Castin was not present and the stronghold was currently being held by two hundred natives. The news was enough to convince Phips to attack. The initial efforts, however, did not go well. The weather prevented Phips from landing his troops until the evening of May 4, and a few moments later the fort was found to be deserted. The next day was spent destroying the stronghold and welcoming a pair of colonial companies that arrived in two small vessels.6

  From Penobscot Phips set sail for Passamaquoddy Bay, arriving before the French settlement the morning of May 6. Phips offered terms to several French homes in the area, and when they were refused, he landed troops. A sporadic firefight broke out, and before the French withdrew, they had wounded six of the English. Phips plundered and then burned the homes. Three days later his fleet dropped anchor in the Minas basin before Port Royal. Phips began landing men while, under a white flag, an envoy carried a summons for the fort to surrender.

  Louis-Alexander de Menneval, the governor of Acadia, was in a difficult position. The fort’s garrison of seventy-two men was short on powder and arms, and the fort itself was in such bad shape that an engineer had recently been dispatched to build a new one. To make matters worse, the stronghold’s eighteen cannon, in anticipation of the new works, were not mounted, meaning that there was nothing he could do before the pair of forty-two-and twenty-gun English warships anchored not far away. With no hope of timely relief Menneval accepted the inevitable. The governor surrendered, as he claims, under honors of war, meaning he and his men were to keep their arms and be transported back to Quebec as part of the agreement. If this was the case, Phips did not live up to his end of the bargain, as Menneval, his garrison, and two French missionaries, Father Petit and Father Trouve, were immediately taken prisoner. Phips and his men then set themselves to ransacking the fort and the nearby buildings. The zeal for this task even found the fort’s church a legitimate target, as by Phips’s own admission, “we cut down the cross, rifled the Church, pulled down the high altar, and broke their images.” When this was done the fort was demolished, its guns loaded aboard the fleet, and the inhabitants forced to swear an oath of allegiance to King William. The twenty-gun sloop Porcupine was dispatched to raid French coastal settlements in Acadia, while Phips and the rest of the fleet took their prisoners and plunder back to Boston.7

  Although the Port Royal expedition had struck back against the French, any excitement generated by the success soon faded into the background as news of a larger expedition spread across New England. The attack on Salmon Falls along with the other raids along the New York and New England frontier had not brought division as Frontenac hoped but instead a call for unity. In late March, Massachusetts governor Simon Bradstreet took the lead and invited representatives of the New England colonies New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia to meet in Rhode Island on the last Monday of April in order to discuss “Uniting and combining as one to withstand and Oppose the common Enemy.”8 There was a great deal of interest, and by mutual agreement the agenda was shifted to New York City and the meeting delayed until May.

  Before some of Bradstreet’s invitations had even reached their colonial recipients, the governor was busy informing the king’s secretary of state, the Earl of Shrewsbury, of his plans.

  We have stirred up the Maquas against the enemy and have resolved on an expedition by sea against Port Royal and other places, it being the general opinion of the country that the Indian war cannot be stopped, nor peace for the English secured without the removal of those ill neighbors the French. Their increase in Canada is judged utterly inconsistent with the interest of the crown of England, so success in the present attempt will greatly encourage an attack on Canada, if the King will assist us with shipping and a speedy supply of ammunition, of which we have hardly enough to furnish the present expedition. We asked His Majesty to order a supply of arms and ammunition for us, and we beg that the same vessel that bears this may be speedily sent back to us.9

  Even though King William’s new government was more concerned with matters at home, being currently embroiled in a Jacobite uprising in Ireland and a war with France, London could not wholly ignore the plight of its American colonies. If for no other reason than the Royal Navy drew its masts from the region of southern New Hampshire that was currently under siege, a response was necessary. The king dispatched five hundred muskets, two hundred barrels of powder, and twelve tons of lead to New England in late June aboard the merchantman James. In addition, to deal with the complaints coming from New York concerning Leisler’s administration, Colonel Henry Sloughter was appointed royal governor and would sail shortly for the colony with two companies of regulars, which would further bolster the defenses along the New York frontier.10

  As agreed upon, the colonial representatives met in New York City. The meeting was opened with a discussion of the state of affairs, which was quickly summarized with a retelling of the northern colonies’ woes under the relentless assault of French and Indian war parties. The perilous nature of the Maine and New Hampshire frontier was reiterated, as was the need to secure Albany, which one Massachusetts representative had earlier referred to as “the Dam, which should it through neglect be broken down broken by ye weight of ye Enemy, we dread to think of the Inundation of Calamities that would quickly follow thereupon.”11

  With these matters attended to the negotiations quickly moved forward. It was agreed that the colonies, whether support arrived from England or not, would launch a coordinated attack on Canada. New England would raise an expedition to attack Quebec by sea while a second effort would be launched from Albany down Lake Champlain toward Montreal. Massachusetts and Connecticut pledged 355 men toward this last effort, and New York agreed to raise 400 men of its own. Added to this was the promise of the Iroquois to join the effort with up to 1,800 warriors. The twin attacks would overwhelm the forces of New France, leaving it in English hands by the end of the year. The meeting adjourned with a general plan of action but without the appointment of a commander for the land expedition. Colonial jealousies and agendas made the choice difficult—a theme that would surface more than once over the next eighty years.

  With the agreement in place measures were set in motion in New England and New York to launch the largest military expedition ever seen in North America. The recruiters went out with the goal of three thousand men while committees assembled vessels and directed the conversion of merchant ships into warships. The number of troops to be raised was beyond anything ever attempted. On paper the militia of New England mustered 13,279 men, but many of the militia regiments were already busy on the frontier or were serving in key defensive positions. This made it difficult for colonial recruiters to raise such a large number of men in such a short period of time. As Bradstreet had predicted, Phips’s success at Port Royal tempted some men with the prospect of plunder, which, according to the articles agreed upon by the colonies, would “be divided to officers and soldiers according to the custom of war.” In another case, New York, short on men to fill its quota in the expedition, obtained permission to recruit a company in Connecticut. To further entice soldiers to enlist in this company each man returning from the expedition was guaranteed a thousand pounds of tobacco, while his commanding officer would receive ten thousand pounds for his service.12

  By early July the expedition, command of which had been entrusted
to Phips, had procured some thirty-two vessels. A handful of the larger vessels, such as the Swan, the John and Thomas, and the American Merchant, were busy being converted to carry cannon. They would serve alongside the Six Friends and a trio of gunships from New York as the primary escorts for the fleet. The rest of the vessels would carry the 2,300 soldiers raised by recruitment and drafts out of the militia regiments. It seemed that the fleet would be ready to sail by mid-July, but Phips delayed, waiting for supplies to arrive from England, particularly powder which he was desperately short on.

  By early August it was clear that the expedition could wait no longer. With the season slipping away Phips ordered the troops and artillery aboard and put the fleet underway on the morning of August 10. Three squadrons of roughly equal size led by the converted warships traced their way along the coast of Nova Scotia without incident. A little over a week later, Phips dropped anchor near Cape Breton Island to allow the scattered elements of his force to catch up before proceeding. By late August the colonial armada was at the entrance to the St. Lawrence River, but as one participant recalled, “We went from Boston, thirty-two ships and other vessels with about 2,000 men, with four months provision and ammunition, little enough, but had not one man for a pilot.” The lack of a pilot, and any map of use, was now a major problem. After conferring with his senior captains it was agreed that the fleet would push slowly up the great river. Navigation aside, the poor fall weather in the form of contrary winds on the St. Lawrence further complicated matters, such that when Phips finally arrived before Quebec on October 15, he found “the frost was already fallen in, and so sharp that it made two inches ice in a night.”13