might be successfully stormed; and as the prisoners taken reported that large reinforcements were likely to arrive soon, it was determined to assault the works at once. The attacking columns were met by a scathing fire of artillery and musketry, but rushed on to the abatis, through which they vainly endeavored to make their way, Murray's regiment of Highlanders hewing at the bristling barrier of pointed branches with their claymores, while a murderous fire from the breastworks thinned the ranks of the brave clansmen. Again and again the assailants were swept back by the pelting storm of bullets, and again they returned to the assault; the few who struggled through the abatis were slain before they reached the intrenchments, or only reached them to be made prisoners, and of the Highland regiment twenty-five of the officers and half the privates fell. With persistent but unavailing valor, the attack was continued for more than four hours, and then a retreat was ordered, and the defeated army sullenly fell back to the camp which it had occupied the night before. Early next morning it was reëmbarked, and the torn and decimated regiments continued their retreat up the lake.

General Abercrombie's defeat did not discourage him from making further efforts against the enemy. He sent General Stanwix to build a fort at Oneida and dispatched Colonel Bradstreet with 3,000 men against Fort Frontenac on the St. Lawrence, and both successfully performed their allotted duties.

General Amherst returned from Louisburg, assumed command, and in the summer of 1757 began a movement for the reduction of Ticonderoga and Crown Point, which was a part of this year's campaign. Moving forward by the same route that Abercrombie had taken, he reached the neighborhood of Ticonderoga without encountering any opposition from the enemy, and made preparations to besiege this fortress; but the French made only a brief defense, in which, however, Colonel Townshend and a few soldiers were killed, and then, leaving the French flag flying and a match burning in the magazine to blow up the fort, evacuated it and retired to Crown Point the night of the 27th of July. An hour after their departure came the thunder of the explosion, which destroyed one bastion and set the barracks on fire. They presently abandoned Crown Point and retired to the Isle aux Noix, while Amherst was repairing and strengthening the fortifications of Ticonderoga.

So at last, with but slight resistance to the tide of conquest that was now overwhelming their northern possessions in America, the French abandoned the strongholds that guarded the "Gate of the Country."

For more than a quarter of a century Fort St. Frederic had been the point from which marauding bands of Indians and their scarcely less ferocious white associates had set forth on errands of rapine and murder, which had made as dangerous and insecure as a crater's brink every frontier settlement of a wide region. Here had been plotted their forays; here they had returned from them with captives, scalps, and plunder; here found safety from pursuit. The two forts had held civilization at bay on the border of this land of "beautiful valleys and fields fertile in corn," and to all the inhabitants of the New England frontier their fall was a deliverance from an ever-threatening danger.

The French held the Isle aux Noix, their last remaining post on Lake Champlain, with a force of 3,500 regular troops and Canadian militia, and had also on the lake four large armed vessels, commanded by experienced officers of the French navy. The presence of this naval force made it necessary for Amherst to build vessels that might successfully oppose it, and while this work was in progress the British general dispatched a body of rangers against the Indians of St. Francis, who for fifty years had been active and relentless foes of the New England colonies.

Early in the century many members of the different tribes of Waubanakees in the eastern part of New England had been induced by the governor of Canada to remove to that province, and since then had lived on the St. Francis River, and were commonly known as the St. Francis tribe, though they gave themselves the name of "Zooquagese," the people who withdrew from the others, or literally "the Little People."[16]

Their intimate knowledge of the region, which had been the home of many generations of their people, and their familiarity with every waterway and mountain pass that gave easiest access to the English frontiers, made them as valuable instruments, as their hatred of the English made them willing ones for the hostile purposes of the French. From none of their enemies had the frontier settlements suffered more, and toward none did they bear greater enmity.

The wrongs which these tribes had suffered from the English, since their earliest contact with them, gave cause for vengeful retaliation, and its atrocities were such as might be expected of savages accustomed by usage and tradition to inflict on their enemies and receive from them the cruelest tortures that could be devised, and whose religion taught no precept of mercy; but for those Christians, boasting the highest civilization of the world, the French, who encouraged the barbarous warfare and seldom attempted to check its horrors, there can be no excuse.

Amherst chose Major Robert Rogers to lead the expedition against St. Francis, and he could not have chosen one better fitted to carry out the scheme of vengeance than this wary, intrepid, and unscrupulous ranger. To him it was a light achievement to creep within the lines of a French camp, and he could slay and scalp an enemy with as little compunction as would an Indian,[17] while the men whom he led had seen or suffered enough of Indian barbarity to make them as unrelenting as he in the infliction of any measure of punishment on these scourges of the border.

Rogers left Crown Point on the night of the 12th of September with a detachment of 200, embarked in batteaux, and went cautiously down the lake. His force was reduced by one fourth on the fifth day out by the explosion of a keg of powder, which wounded several of his men and made it necessary to send them with an escort back to Crown Point.

Arrived at the head of Missisco Bay, the boats and sufficient provisions for the return voyage were concealed, and left in charge of two trusty Indians, when the little army began its march across the country through the wilderness toward the Indian town. Two days later it was overtaken by the boat guard, bringing to Rogers the alarming news of the discovery of the boats by a force of French and Indians, four hundred strong, fifty of whom had been sent away with the batteaux, while the others, still doubly outnumbering his force, were following him in hot pursuit. Rogers kept his own counsel, and alone formed the plans that he at once acted upon. He dispatched a lieutenant with eight men to Crown Point to acquaint General Amherst with the turn of affairs, and ask him to send provisions to Coos, on the Connecticut, to which place it now seemed that soon or late he must make his way. The only question was, whether he should do so now, or attempt to strike the contemplated blow before his pursuers could overtake him. It was characteristic of the man to decide upon the bolder course, and he marched his men, as enduring as the enemy and as accustomed to such difficult