British Military Campaigns and Strategy in North America, 1755: An Overview

Tonight, Billy Griffith takes a look at the first full year of conflict during the French and Indian War in North America and England’s military objectives for 1755.  

By year’s end in 1755 the perils of war had blanketed the North American landscape as the battle for the continent raged between England and France. The opening years of conflict in what would come to be known as the French and Indian War were fought during a time of peace between the two mighty European powers in which no declaration of war would be announced until 1756. However, King George II and Louis XV had assembled the largest armies ever seen on the North American continent up to that time to defend and expand their respective colonial possessions. These measures were far from peaceful, and it was evident that after blood had been spilled in New York, Pennsylvania, and Nova Scotia, a declared war was inevitable.

The story of the campaigns of 1755 begins the previous year when tension in the Ohio River Valley boiled over, precipitating armed conflict. Colonial expansion (England moving west, France moving south) forced these two super powers on a collision course that culminated in May 1754 when a detachment of Virginians under the command of George Washington fired on a party of French colonial troops that were on a “diplomatic” mission to order all Englishmen out of the Ohio River Valley. These were the first shots fired in what eventually evolved into the French and Indian War. Although the only territory disputed over in 1754 was the land surrounding present day Pittsburgh, by the following year England’s eyes turned to French military strongholds in Nova Scotia, the Great Lakes region, and upstate New York.

The plan orchestrated by England’s Captain General, the Duke of Cumberland (George II’s son), for 1755 was to be carried out on four fronts in order to counter all of France’s military gains the previous year. Placed in command of the British regular troops being sent to the colonies, as well as the colonial provincial units then being raised for the coming campaigns, was Major General Edward Braddock. Meeting in Alexandria, Virginia in April with the royal governors of Maryland (Horatio Sharpe), Massachusetts (William Shirley), New York (James De Lancey), Pennsylvania (Robert Morris), and Virginia (Robert Dinwiddie), Braddock laid out Cumberland’s plans and what was to be expected of the colonies taking part in the various expeditions. Also present at the conference was William Johnson of New York, who was personally appointed by the general as Superintendent of Indian Affairs.

Maj. Gen. Edward Braddock

William Johnson was given command of the provincial force that was to move north from Albany, NY and capture the French stronghold at Crown Point astride Lake Champlain. Using his close ties with the Iroquois, it fell upon his shoulders to muster Native American support and recruit warriors for his expedition as well as William Shirley’s thrust against Fort Niagara at the southwestern tip of Lake Ontario. A clash of personality and interests between the two men would eventually lead to Shirley being denied of Indian support for his offensive and Johnson obtaining all that was offered.

William Johnson

Along with these two armies moving through New York, efforts to secure the Chignecto Isthmus in Nova Scotia by capturing Fort Beausejour, as well as a major push to take Fort Duquesne at the Forks of the Ohio River were also formulated. Robert Monckton was given overall command of the force that would advance from New England and capture Beausejour, and Edward Braddock himself would lead a large 2,400 man army of regulars and provincials that would oust the French from the Ohio River Valley. Upon capturing Duquesne, Braddock was then set to move north and link up with Shirley to assist in the capture of Fort Niagara. On paper the plan appeared clear and simple, and the men believed all the objectives could be taken with ease. By winter 1755, North America should belong to George II.

More times than none, plans that appear perfect on paper are hardly ever executed properly. This was the case for England’s grand scheme to capture the continent in 1755 before a large scale conflict with France could be forced upon them. On July 9, Braddock’s force made it to within several miles of the French at Fort Duquesne before it was attacked and defeated, suffering nearly 900 casualties, including the general who suffered a mortal wound. He later died during his army’s retreat to Fort Cumberland, Maryland four days later. By the end of the month, Colonel Thomas Dunbar, Braddock’s successor, had his men marching eastward towards Philadelphia where they would enter winter quarters in the middle of summer.

Battle of the Monongahela

With Edward Braddock’s demise, William Shirley was elevated to the position of Commander-in-Chief. Mourning the loss of his son, who served as a secretary to Braddock and was killed during the fighting along the Monongahela River, he was given the task of trying to avoid another disaster. Good news arrived from Nova Scotia later that summer as Monckton reported that his expedition had been a success. Forts Beausejour and Gaspereau had fallen and the Chignecto Isthmus was secure. This British victory the in part led to the first ever ethnic cleansing to occur in the modern world. Thousands of French Acadians were deported out of the country to prevent any possible uprisings that might hinder British colonial expansion and military efforts against New France.

Lt. Col. Robert Monckton

The victory in Nova Scotia was the only successfully executed expedition of the four-pronged movement against the French in North America. Although Shirley and Johnson would not meet any sort of  battlefield defeat in their efforts, Monckton’s campaign was the only one that captured its main objective.

Arriving at Fort Oswego at the southeastern corner of Lake Ontario, William Shirley was determined to repair and strengthen the old fortification before advancing any further. His time spent there went by wasted as he just simply could not get his army properly supplied or moving to capture Fort Niagara. He returned east to New York City and left his army at Oswego hoping to resume the offensive the following summer. As William Shirley failed to capture Fort Niagara, so too did William Johnson fail to capture Crown Point. However, Johnson’s army was able to secure the southern end of Lake George and defend New York from a French advance into the colony’s interior.

William Shirley

Among the dead and dying of Braddock’s command along the Monongahela River in July 1755, wagons filled with the general’s personal and official military correspondence were captured by the French-Canadians and their Native allies. Within these papers were the plans for the British offensives against New France. Freshly arrived from France and now having the knowledge of his enemy’s intentions, Jean Armand, Baron de Dieskau, the newly appointed General-in-Chief of regular troops in the colonies, sought to move against Johnson’s force south of Lake George from Crown Point, and then move west to deal with Shirley. On September 8, 1755, roughly three thousand British and French troops clashed south of and at the base of Lake George. When the day finally came to an end, Dieskau’s army had been repulsed and was sent retreating north towards Ticonderoga. With the southern shore of the lake now securely in British hands, Johnson’s army began construction of what would become Fort William Henry. Had Dieskau succeeded in dislodging Johnson’s men from the lake, it is quite possible that he could then have overrun Fort Lymann (Edward) fourteen miles to the south, and then marched his victorious army against Albany where he could have captured a major supply base and cut New England off from the rest of the colonies.

Battle of Lake George, September 8, 1755

Even though Johnson failed to capture his objective, he still claimed a victory for England in a year of military disasters. Braddock was dead and his army mauled by the French outside Duquesne; Shirley was bogged down at Oswego and refused to go any further; Johnson was recovering from a wound received at Lake George while his army erected defenses; and Monckton’s men were deporting Acadians following their sole victory. Britain had failed to expel the French from North America before a full-scale war could be declared. As tension grew in Europe over alliances and territorial possessions, the world went to war in May 1756. Ultimate control of North America would be determined by how much attention could be placed on defending the British colonies and New France without risking defeat elsewhere throughout the world’s battlefronts.

Securing the Pass: The Battle of Lake George, September 8, 1755

This is Billy Griffith posting the first article for GTR History’s new blog. I hope you enjoy this piece on a widely forgotten military action fought during the early stages of the French and Indian War in North America.

 

The beginning of the year 1755 was plagued with disaster for the British Empire. Fighting an undeclared war with France for control of North America, His Majesty’s forces appeared to be outmatched and outwitted against the defenders of New France and their Native American allies. Met with defeat near the Forks of the Ohio River on July 9, 1755, Edward Braddock – then Commander-in-Chief of His Majesty’s forces in North America – and his combined force of some 2,200 British regulars, colonial provincials, and Native American allies were slaughtered by an inferior contingent of French and Indians from Fort Duquesne. During the fight, Braddock had refused to allow his colonials to fight in an irregular style and ordered his men to remain in closed files. Engaged against an enemy who took full advantage of the concealment offered by the dense woodland, Braddock and nearly half of his army became casualties.[1]

Left behind on the battlefield amongst the dead, dying, and wounded men of Braddock’s force were the personal and military papers of the general himself. Within these captured documents that rested in the hands of the victorious French was a copy of a proposed four-pronged movement against New France that would hopefully expel Louis XV’s influence from North America. Braddock’s expedition against Fort Duquesne was the first of these four efforts and had been easily snuffed out. The remaining three campaigns of 1755 included thrusts against Fort Niagara on Lake Ontario, the French forts on the Chignecto Isthmus in Nova Scotia, and Crown Point, located alongside Lake Champlain.[2]

The death of Edward Braddock immediately placed William Shirley, royal governor of Massachusetts and Braddock’s appointed second-in-command, at the head of all British and colonial forces in North America – a huge task that he was not at all prepared to undertake. Grieving at the news of his son’s death in battle along the Monongahela – he had been an aide to General Braddock – Shirley assumed command of the expedition against Fort Niagara.

While Braddock’s command marched to their imminent doom near the Forks of the Ohio during the early summer of 1755, 3,000 men were gathering at Albany, New York in preparation for what would become the campaign against Fort Saint-Frédéric near Crown Point. The fate of this expedition was placed in the hands of forty-year-old William Johnson. Appointed by Braddock to the “sole superintendency and management of the affairs of the Six United Nations”, Johnson was given command of the force assembling in Albany in hopes that his great influence and popularity amongst the New York tribes, especially the Mohawks, would keep them loyal to the British crown in the coming campaign. His friendship with the Mohawk sachem Theyanoguin, or King Hendrick as he was known to the English, would be crucial in accomplishing this task. .[3]

Sir William Johnson

As the summer drug on, news of Braddock’s defeat reached Albany. It must have been disheartening to the raw recruits assembling for the Crown Point expedition, many of them simply colonial farmers and militia conscripts. Johnson’s Army that would subsequently fight at the Battle of Lake George included troops from the colonies of Massachusetts (three regiments), Connecticut (two regiments), Rhode Island (one regiment), New Hampshire (one regiment), and New York (one regiment). Hendrick and his Mohawks arrived piecemeal throughout the summer, but nevertheless devoted themselves to Johnson and his men.[4]

In late July, Phineas Lyman, Major General of Connecticut forces, traveled with a body of men from Albany 25 miles north to the Great Carrying Place along the Hudson River. Here, he began construction of Fort Lyman (later to be renamed Fort Edward) and awaited the arrival of Johnson and the rest of the Army.[5] On August 22, after his force had finally concentrated at Fort Edward, Johnson held a council of war with the subordinate officers of his provincial regiments. During this council, it was decided that the colonial force would move forward with “two thousand Men and half the Artillery and a suitable quantity of Artillery stores” to the southern shore of Lac du St. Sacrament, and prepare to debark north, up the lake, and ascend on Crown Point.[6] 500 men were left behind to garrison Fort Edward, and six days later, August 28, Johnson arrived at the southern end of Lac du St. Sacrament, rechristened it “Lake George” to declare the beautiful glacial waters as part of His Majesty’s dominion, and made camp with his army of 2,000 men. The only British regular officer serving on the expedition, Captain William Eyre, 44^th Regiment of Foot, holding the positions of engineer, quartermaster general, and chief of artillery, was given the task of beginning construction of a “place of arms and Magazines”.[7] Over 30 miles to the North of the provincial encampment, a combined French, Canadian, and Native American force under the overall command of Jean-Armand, Baron de Dieskau, was preparing to fall upon its enemies to the south.

Jean-Armand, Baron de Dieskau, was a career soldier and a distinguished officer. Few could compare to his exemplary leadership and battlefield valor in his service of over thirty years. A Saxon by birth, Dieskau was a protégé of the Comte de Saxe and served with him from 1733 to 1744 through various campaigns. In March 1755 he was ordered to assume overall command of the regular battalions then being sent to North America. In late June, he arrived in Canada alongside the newly appointed Governor General of New France, Pierre de Rigaud de Vaudreuil.[8]

These French troops arriving in Canada were supposed to be intercepted before reaching the continent. A British fleet under the command of Admiral Edward Boscawen had been ordered to locate and prevent the landing of the French ships carrying these reinforcements. Thick fog, severe storms, and an ice-clogged Gulf of St. Lawrence had led to the safe passage of 2,600 regulars. Boscawen had failed his mission and managed to only catch two ships, carrying ten companies – about 400 men. Thus, Dieskau had at his disposal a significant force capable of being sent to any military sector that became a target of the British’s 1755 Northern Campaign.[9]

William Shirley’s efforts to advance from Oswego to besiege Fort Niagara had been minimal. Internal disputes within his ranks and an over-stretched supply line had forced him to abandon the campaign until the following year. As Johnson’s Army moved North, word of the developing situation reached Montreal and Dieskau moved his force of nearly 3,000 men to Crown Point to challenge the movement against Fort St. Frédéric. Jacques Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, in command of the French-allied Indian contigent – Abenakis, Algonquins, Nipissings, and Caughnawagas – was ordered by Dieskau to inform them, “not to waste time taking scalps,” when they finally met Johnson’s Army on the battlefield “until the enemy is completely defeated, considering that you can kill 10 men in the time it takes to remove one scalp.”[10] This order would prove to be difficult to carry out once the Indians had their first chance at plunder.

“About 250 Indians have already joined me …,” Johnson wrote to the Lords of Trade from his camp at the southern end of Lake George on September 3, “I expect … to have a full 300.”[11] Although Hendick’s body of Native American allies numbered half of Dieskau’s, their role as scouts would be crucial in the coming campaign. The same day Johnson wrote to the Lords of Trade in England, the French made their way down to the Ticonderoga to begin work on a series of fortifications that would run southward. After receiving word of Fort Lyman’s construction, Dieskau moved down Lake Champlain on September 5th with a detachment of 260 grenadiers of the Languedoc and La Reine regiments, 800 Canadian militiamen, and 700 Indians under Saint-Pierre. Landing at South Bay, the French Army advanced southward passed Johnson’s encampment to their west, and on the night of the 7^th, were within several miles of the Fort Lyman garrison.[12]

Baron de Dieskau’s movement towards the Great Carrying Place did not go undetected. The same day, Hendrick’s scouts reported “three large Roads made by a great Body of Men Yesterday” running toward Fort Lyman from South Bay, and the frequent sound of gunfire caused them to expect that “there may be an Attack made at the Carrying Place either to day or this Night.”[13] In response to this crisis at hand, Johnson ordered 1,000 men of the 3^rd Massachusetts and 2^nd Connecticut regiments, under the overall command of Colonel Ephraim Williams and Lt. Colonel Nathan Whiting, to debark south the next morning along the military road. Two-hundred Indians, with Hendrick at the front, would lead the way to reinforce Fort Lyman. Little did they know that Dieskau’s attack against Lyman had been called off after his Indian allies refused to assault a fort defended by cannon. Instead, they would move against Johnson’s encampment – a task the Indians accepted. A message destined for the defenders of Fort Lyman had been intercepted by Dieskau’s men, and with full knowledge of Williams’s reinforcing party moving towards them the next morning, the General advanced his men north along the military road in three columns. Moving to a position where the road ran through a deep ravine, the Canadian militia deployed on the right side of the tract, the Indians on the left, and the regulars in the center – forming a cul de sac. Dieskau had prepared a trap that his English counterparts would march straight into, spelling disaster for Williams, Hendrick, Whiting, and the 1,200 men of their reinforcing body.[14]

The column under Ephraim Williams left camp around eight the next morning, Monday, September 8. Marching south, six-abreast along the military road with Hendrick and his Mohawks leading in a single-file line, the column briefly stopped to allow Whiting’s Connecticut men to catch up. Around 10:30, after traveling roughly three miles, the provincials and Indians entered the section of the road that passed through the ravine. Hendrick, at the head of the column, had his attention drawn to a voice coming from the embankment to the right. One of Dieskau’s Indian allies had given away the surprise and warned Hendrick of the trap that he and the rest of the column were marching into. The Caughnawagas of Saint-Pierre’s command were cousins to the New York Mohawks, and after recognizing Hendrick, the famed sachem, this courageous soul had made an effort to avoid a confrontation between the warriors of the two tribes. Hendrick spurred his horse, a shot rang out, and the entire ravine opened with a blazing sheet of musketry.[15]

The Mohawks and the men of the leading provincial column, Williams’s 3^rd Massachusetts, received the first volley with devastating effect. Saint-Pierre’s Indians and the Canadian militia threw themselves upon the panic-stricken enemy, and soon the fight became hand-to-hand. Hendrick’s horse was shot out from underneath him, and the animal fell with the rider’s leg pinned beneath it. Unable to escape the fray, the sachem was bayoneted to death. With their leader out of the action, the Mohawk warriors began to break north up the military road, carrying many of the Massachusetts men with them in a full retreat back to Johnson’s camp. Attempting to rally his men and lead an assault up the rise alongside the ravine, Williams, leading by example like the valiant officer he was, jumped a top a large boulder and yelled for the men of his command to follow. A musket ball hit the colonel square in the forehead and killed him instantly.[16]

Both Williams and Hendrick were now dead on the field and the entire column was in full collapse. Command then fell on Lt. Colonel Nathan Whiting. Gathering his Connecticut regiment and a handful of Mohawks and Massachusetts men who gallantly reformed their ranks, the Colonel conducted a fighting retreat with the “greatest resolution” that bought Johnson and the men within his Lake George encampment enough time to prepare a defense to face Dieskau’s impending onslaught.[17] The first engagement of the Battle of Lake George, forever afterwards known throughout New England as the “Bloody Morning Scout,” had come to a close.

The fighting between Williams and Dieskau could be clearly heard by the men of Johnson’s encampment three miles to the north. Thomas Williams, regimental surgeon of the 3^rd Massachusetts and the older brother of Ephraim, remembered making note upon hearing the distant musketry that, “The attack began about half an hour after ten in the morning … The enemy were about an hour & a half driving our people before them, before they reached the camp….”[18] During this period of time the men could hear the sound of the guns growing nearer and nearer, which immediately led them to believe that Williams and his men were being pushed back towards the camp. Taking full advantage of the time bought by Whiting’s fighting-retreat, Johnson ordered his provincials to erect a breastwork to defend the camp. The New Englanders worked admirably and managed to prepare a defensive work of fallen trees, overturned supply wagons, and bateaux that the men dragged ashore from the lake.[19]

It was nearing noon time, and the survivors of the morning’s ambush began to appear from the tree line at the end of the 150-yard clearing in front of Johnson’s camp. Streaming up over the breastworks, Whiting and the courageous colonials of his command were finally behind cover. The walking wounded were sent to the surgeon’s tent of Thomas Williams, and those still willing to fight took their positions alongside the others behind the breastworks. Stray bullets began to fly over the heads of Johnson’s men as black powder smoke rose from the woods to their front, announcing the arrival of the French-allied Indians and the Canadian militia, who according to Lt. Colonel Seth Pomeroy of Moses Titcomb’s 2^nd Massachusetts Regiment, advanced, “Hilter Scilter down along Toward the Camp…then took Trees & Logs & Places to hide them Selves.”[20] Advancing in column formation, six-abreast along the military road, with fixed bayonets gleaming in the summer sun, the imposing white coats of the French regular grenadiers came into view of the provincial camp. The stage was set, and the second engagement of the Battle of Lake George was about to begin.

Dieskau’s plan of attack was problematic right from the beginning. Saint-Pierre had been killed during the morning’s ambush, and without the man who they trusted to lead them against the works, the Indians refused to advance any further. The Canadians declined to make the attack without the natives beside them, so Dieskau was in a tough spot. Believing that his regulars could single handedly storm the breastworks without the aid of the others, he ordered them forward and allowed the Indians and his militiamen to remain behind cover in the woods, where they would apply pressure on the flanks and cover the regulars’ attack towards the center of Johnson’s line.

On the regulars came in a long column, advancing down the road straight towards the breastworks where four guns of Captain Eyre’s artillery awaited them. A gunner of one of the pieces remembered the enemy’s initial advance: “…the French thought to go thro’ all, but was much surprised with our Artillery which made Lanes, Streets and Alleys thro’ their army.”[21] Captain Peter Wraxall, aide-de-camp to Johnson, described the ensuing battle as “very warm on both sides,” while, “Our Artillery played briskly in our front the whole time, and the breast work secured our Men.”[22]

Early in the fighting, Johnson received a wound to the upper thigh which took him out of the action. Command of the defense was passed on to Major General Phineas Lyman of the 1^st Connecticut Regiment, Johnson’s appointed second-in-command. The fighting continued into the afternoon as the air grew thicker and thicker with lead, and the men were “Sean to Drop as Pigons” as the French regulars advanced to within a proximity of “20 rods In Length” from the colonial line. It was the “most vilolent Fire” Seth Pomeroy had ever witnessed, and writing after the fighting, he believed, “Perhaps yt Ever was heard of in this Country In any Battle.”[23]

The Main Provincial Line

Behind the frontline, Thomas Williams and his two assistants became overwhelmed with wounded men: “The wounded were brought in very fast, & it was with the utmost difficulty that their wounds could be dressed fast enough…having in about three hours near forty men to be dressed. Not before long, the fighting grew much too heavy as “The bullets flew like hail-stones about our wounded,” forcing Williams to evacuate the injured to a much safer area.”[24]

Major General Lyman’s conduct in directing the defense against Dieskau’s repeated assault was spectacular. He led by example, and according to the war’s first scholar, Francis Parkman, “it is a marvel that he escaped alive, for he was four hours in the heat of the fire, directing and animating the men.”[25] Lyman’s role in the battle would go on uncredited, however, for after the fight, Johnson would not make any mention of the general in his reports to the Royal Governors. In fact, Johnson claimed that he had been wounded near the end of the fighting, and therefore, remained directing the defense throughout the entire fight until its anti-climax. To further give evidence of some kind of jealousy towards his subordinate, Fort Lyman was renamed Fort Edward.

The French regulars began to tire as it neared four in the afternoon. Leading an attack from the front, Dieskau had been wounded three times, including a ball that had penetrated his bladder. He was left in great pain on the field, slipping in and out of consciousness, leaning against a tree stump in the open clearing between the two lines. As the French line gave way in the final attempt to carry the enemy defenses, the provincials and their Indian allies saw their opportunity to secure a victory. Surging forward over top of the breastworks, the defenders of Lake George swarmed the field and “beat ‘em of[f] ye ground” as the enemy “Broke to Peaces.”[26] Dieskau was taken prisoner along with countless others as his Army dwindled away, dispersing to the south and back to South Bay to the northeast. Johnson’s force had secured an ending to a dramatic victory.

Although the main engagement of the Battle of Lake George had come to a decisive close, several miles to the south, a reinforcing party of 143 New Hampshire and New York provincials from Fort Lyman clashed with a small body of Canadian militia and Native Americans who had returned to the morning’s ambush site to collect scalps and plunder. The fight was sharp and carried on into the night, and Captain William McGinnis of the New York detachment was killed leading the assault. In the end, the last body of Dieskau’s Army was finally driven from the field.

Thus ended the Battle of Lake George – a victory that gave much-needed hope to the British Empire which had suffered defeat after defeat in its fight against France for control of North America. Casualties on both sides were roughly the same at 260-300 dead, wounded, missing, and captured each.[27] The Crown Point expedition was abandoned as Captain William Eyre began directing the construction of a fort on the site of the battlefield. Completed several months later, the log-faced fortification was christened Fort William Henry. The men of the defeated French army did the same, returning to Ticonderoga to begin construction of Fort Carillon (Ticonderoga). Although the campaign against the French at Crown Point was a failure, William Johnson’s victory at the Battle of Lake George earned him a knighthood. Baron de Dieskau survived his wounds and returned to France, never to command a military force again. He died in 1767.

The victory won by the provincials at Lake George on September 8, 1755 secured the colony of New York, and Lake George as a highway of transportation for the British Army in the coming campaigns. A small and widely forgotten engagement, its consequences were great and helped set the stage for England’s eventual victory against France in the battle for North America.

 

[1] Fred Anderson, Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766 (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 2000), 96.

[2] Anderson, The War That Made America: A Short History of the French and Indian War (New York, NY:Viking, 2005), 74.

[3] Russell P. Bellico, Empires in the Mountains: French and Indian War Campaigns and Forts in the Lake Champlain, Lake George, and Hudson River Corridor (Fleishmanns, NY: Purple Mountain Press, 2010), 44.

[4] “Return of Killed, Wounded and Missing in the Battle of Lake George,” September 11, 1755, in Documents relative to the Colonial History of the State of New-York (Albany, NY: Parson and Company, Printers, 1855), vol. 6, 1006-7. Hereafter cited as NYCD.

[5] Henry Taylor Blake, The Battle of Lake George (September 8, 1755) and the men who won it (Albany, NY: Privately Published, 1909), 113-14.

[6] “Minutes of General Johnson’s Council of War,” August 22, 1755, NYCD, 6: 1000-1.

[7] Ibid.

[8] J. F. Flinn, ed., Dictionary of Canadian Biography (Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto, 1974), vol. 3, 185-6; Ellen Hardin Walworth, “Battle of Lake George and Baron Dieskau, 1755,” Constitution and By-Laws with Proceedings of the Second Annual Meeting (New York State Historical Association, 1901), 55.

[9] Richard Berleth, Bloody Mohawk: The French and Indian War & American Revolution on New York’s Frontier (Hensonville, NY: Black Dome Press Corps., 2010), 45.

[10] Joseph L. Peyser, Jaques Legardeur de Saint-Pierre: Officer, Gentleman, Entrepreneur (Detroit, MI: Michigan State University Press, 1996), 224.

[11] “Major-General Johnson to the Lords of Trade,” September 3, 1755, NYCD, 6: 994.

[12] Morris Patterson Ferris, Account of the Battle Of Lake George: September 8^th, 1755 (New York, NY: Lake George Celebration Committee of the Society of Colonial Wars in the State of New York, 1903), 4.

[13] “Minutes of Council of War,” September 7, 1755, The Papers of Sir William Johnson (Albany, NY: The University of the State of New York, 1922), vol. 2, 16-17.

[14] Bellico, Empires in the Mountains, 58.

[15] Ibid., 60.

[16] Francis Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe: The French and Indian War (New York, NY: Barnes & Noble, 2005 reprint of 1884 edition), 163-4.

[17] Samuel Blodget, The battle near Lake George in 1755, a prospective plan with an explanation thereof by Samuel Blodget, occasionally at the camp when the battle was fought (London, England: Henry Stevens, Son & Stiles, 1911 reprint of 1756 edition), 2.

[18] Bellico, Chronicles of Lake George: Journeys in War and Peace (Fleischmanns, NY: Purple Mountain Press, 1995), 35.

[19] Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe, 164.

[20] Seth Pomeroy, The Journals and Papers of Seth Pomeroy: Sometime General in

the Colonial Service, ed. By Louis Effingham De Forest (New York: Society of Colonial Wars in the State of New York, 1926), 114.

[21] “Letter from a Gunner to his Cousin,” September 10, 1755, NYCD, 1005.

[22] “Captain Wraxall to Lieutenant-Governor De Lancy,” September 10, 1755, NYCD, 1008.

[23] Pomeroy, The Journals and Papers of Seth Pomeroy, 114.

[24] Bellico, Chronicles of Lake George, 35.

[25] Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe, 165.

[26] Pomeroy, The Journals and Papers of Seth Pomeroy, 114-5.

[27] “Return of Killed, Wounded and Missing in the Battle of Lake George,” September 11, 1755, NYCD, vol. 6, 1006-7.