A FATE WORSE THAN SURRENDER
Death was everywhere, and in his most terrific and disgusting aspects…. The flow of blood might be likened to the outbreaking of a torrent
- James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mahicans
One early morning in August 1757 a column of some 2,300 Redcoats, provincials and rangers—followed by a smattering of civilians, including women, children, servants and slaves—formed up outside Fort William Henry at the south end of Lake George in the British province of New York. Under French military escort they began what promised to be a tedious 16-mile slog through dense woods along the military road to Fort Edward.
After a six-day siege punctuated by heavy bombardment Lt. Col. George Monro, commanding the fort’s British garrison, had acceded to the French terms of surrender. In accordance with Brig. Gen. Louis-Joseph de Montcalm’s terms of parole, Monro’s soldiers were allowed to keep their weapons and one small fieldpiece. It was a symbolic gesture only; their weapons were unloaded.
Montcalm’s white-uniformed soldiers watched in silence as their defeated foes passed. Such niceties of war, however, were completely lost on Montcalm’s allies—1,800 armed and painted warriors from various tribes. To them this was not how battles were won or celebrated. The fighting had always been about plunder, trophies and prisoners, and about avenging slain friends and loved ones. Now the victorious French expected them to stand by empty-handed as les Anglais, scalps intact, simply walked away. Within minutes the warriors would demonstrate in bloody terms their unwillingness to do so.
In the late 1740s the European conflict known to history as the War of the Austrian Succession ended with an uncomfortable peace between hereditary enemies Britain and France. It would not last. Soon enough they would be at each other’s national throats over their respective claims in North America.
Both countries owned vast tracts of land in the New World, and each wanted more. While Britain’s 13 colonies stretched from Georgia north to Maine, France claimed everything from Cape Breton Island west to the Great Plains
