Vermont: A Study of Independence. Rowland Evans Robinson
out the miserable hours of darkness, then arose unrefreshed, and staggered on the way that each day stretched more wearily and hopelessly before them. Some could go no farther, but fell down and died, and were left unburied by comrades too weak to give them the rudest sepulchre, and some in the delirium of famine wandered away from their companions to become hopelessly lost in the pathless wilderness and die alone.
The officer whom Rogers had dispatched to Crown Point performed the difficult journey in nine days, and General Amherst at once sent a lieutenant with three men to Number Four, to proceed thence up the Connecticut with provisions to the appointed place. The relief party embarked in two canoes laden with provisions, which they safely landed on an island near the mouth of the Passumpsic; but though ordered to remain there as long as there was any hope of the coming of those whom they were sent to succor, when only two days had passed they became impatient of waiting, or were seized by a panic, and hastily departed with all the supplies.
Rogers and those who remained with him, following the Passumpsic down to the Connecticut, came at last to the place where they hoped to find relief, but only to find it abandoned, and that so recently that the camp-fire of the relief party was still freshly burning. These men were yet so near that they heard the guns which Rogers fired to recall them, but which, supposed by them to be fired by the enemy, only served to hasten their retreat.
Rogers says: "It is hardly possible to describe the grief and consternation of those of us who came to the Cohasse Intervales."[19] Sorely distressed by this shameful desertion but not discouraged, the brave commander left his worn out and starving men at the Passumpsic in charge of a lieutenant, whom he instructed in the method of preparing ground nuts and lily roots for food, and set forth down the river on a raft with Captain Ogden, one ranger, and a captive Indian boy, in a final endeavor to reach Number Four and obtain relief. At White River Falls the raft was wrecked, and Rogers, too weak to cut trees for another, burned them down and into proper lengths, while Ogden and the ranger hunted red squirrels for food. A second raft was then built, and, after a voyage that would have been perilous to men in the fullness of strength, they at last reached Number Four. Rogers at once dispatched a canoe with supplies to his starving men, which reached them on the tenth day after he had left them, as he had promised. Two days later he himself went up the river with canoes, manned by some of the inhabitants whom he had hired, and laden with provisions for those who might come in by the same route, and he sent expresses to towns on the Merrimac that relief parties might be sent up that river.
On the 1st of December he returned to Crown Point with what remained of his force, having lost, since beginning the retreat from St. Francis, three lieutenants and forty-six non-commissioned officers and privates. Notwithstanding its losses and dire hardships, the expedition was successful in the infliction of a chastisement that the Indians of St. Francis never recovered from and never forgot, and which relieved the New England frontier from the continual dread of the bloody incursions that it had so long suffered. Throughout the whole of it, in leading it to victory and in retreat, in sharing their hardships and in heroic efforts to succor and save his men, Rogers's conduct was such as should make his name honorably remembered in spite of the suspicions which tarnished it in after years.
While Rogers's expedition was in progress, a sloop of sixteen guns and a raft carrying six guns were built at Ticonderoga. With these and a brigantine, Captain Loring sailed down the lake and engaged the French vessels, sinking two of them and capturing a third, which was repaired and brought away after being run aground and deserted by its crew, leaving to the enemy but one schooner on these waters.
Amherst at the same time embarked his whole army in batteaux, and began his advance against Isle aux Noix, but, being delayed by storms and adverse winds, deemed it best to abandon for this season the attempt, and returned to Crown Point, arriving there on the 27th of October. He now began the erection of a new and larger fortress and three new outworks there; completed the road between Crown Point and Ticonderoga, and began another from the latter fort to Number Four.
Meanwhile events of great moment had occurred elsewhere. In July, after the death of General Prideaux, who commanded the army besieging Niagara, Sir William Johnson had defeated the French army sent to its relief, and the fort had surrendered to him. On the 13th of September Wolfe, on the Heights of Abraham, had given his life for imperishable renown; and six days later Quebec, the most impregnable stronghold of the French in America, was surrendered to the enemy, whose attempts to reduce it had for seventy years been unsuccessful.
All the English colonies in America rejoiced in its fall, for the conquest of Canada was now assured, and the day of their deliverance from French and Indian invasion had dawned.
Levis's attempt to recapture Quebec had failed, though sickness and death had sorely weakened Murray's garrison, and now at Montreal the French were to make the last stand against English conquest. Amherst was to advance upon it down the St. Lawrence, Murray from Quebec, and Haviland from the south, to break the last bar of the "Gate of the Country," held by Bougainville at Isle aux Noix.
On the 15th of July Murray embarked with nearly 2,500 men. He met no great opposition from the superior forces of Bourlamaque and Dumas, which on either shore of the river withdrew slowly toward Montreal as the fleet advanced. He issued a proclamation promising safety of person and property to all the inhabitants who remained peaceably at home, and threatening to burn the houses of all who were in arms. He kept his word to the letter in the protection and in the punishment, and the result was the rapid dwindling away of Bourlamaque's army.
Toward the end of August he encamped below the town on the island of Ste. Therese, and awaited the arrival of the other English armies. A regiment of New Hampshire men commanded by Colonel Goffe opened the road which Amherst had ordered to be made from Number Four to Crown Point, and performed the labor in such good time that on the 31st of July they arrived, and, turned drovers as well as pioneers, brought with them a herd of cattle for the supply of the army there.[20] This road ran from Wentworth's Ferry, near Charlestown, up the right bank of Black River to the present township of Ludlow, thence across the mountains to Otter Creek, and down that stream to a station opposite Crown Point, to which it ran across the country. That part of the road across and on the west side of the mountains was begun and nearly completed in the previous year, under the supervision of Colonel Zadok Hawks and Captain John Stark; Stark and 200 rangers being employed on the western portion.[21]
Haviland embarked at Crown Point on the 12th of August with 3,400 regulars, provincials, and Indians in whaleboats and batteaux, which, under sunny skies and on quiet waters, came in four days to Isle aux Noix. Cannon were planted in front and rear of Bougainville's position. The largest vessel of his naval force was cut adrift by a cannon-shot and drifted into the hands of the English; and the others, endeavoring to escape to St. John's, ran aground and were taken by the rangers, who swam out and boarded one, tomahawk in hand, when the others presently surrendered.[22]
Bougainville, abandoning the island, made a difficult night retreat to St. John's, and from thence fell back with Roquemaure to the St. Lawrence. Haviland was soon opposite Montreal, and in communication with Murray, and both awaited the coming of Amherst's army. This force had assembled at Oswego in July, and numbered something more than 10,000 men, exclusive of about 700 Indians under Sir William Johnson, and had embarked on Lake Ontario on the 10th of August, and within five days reached Oswigatchee. After the capture by five gunboats of a French armed brig that threatened the destruction of the batteaux and whaleboats, the army continued its advance to Fort Levis, near the head of the rapids. Amherst invested the fort, and opened fire upon it from land and water; and when for three days rocky islet and wooded shore had been shaken by the thunder of the cannon that splintered the wooden walls, the French commandant, Pouchot, was compelled to surrender the ruined works and his garrison. Johnson's Indians were so enraged at not being allowed to kill the prisoners that three fourths of them went home.[23] There was no further