Vermont: A Study of Independence. Rowland Evans Robinson
resistance from the French, but there was yet a terrible enemy to be encountered in the long and dangerous rapids that must be descended. Several were passed with but slight loss; but in the most perilous passage of the last three, forty-seven boats were wrecked, several damaged, some artillery, ammunition, and stores lost, and eighty-four men drowned in the angry turmoil of wild waters. When these perils were past, an uneventful and unopposed voyage ensued, till on the 6th of September the army landed at Lachine, and, marching to the city, encamped before its walls.
The defenses of Montreal were too weak to resist a siege; the troops, abandoned by the militia, too few to give battle to the three armies that hemmed them in; and there was nothing left for Vaudreuil but surrender. Some of the terms of capitulation proposed by him were rejected by Amherst, who demanded that "the whole garrison of Montreal and all the French troops in Canada must lay down their arms, and shall not serve again during the war." In answer to the remonstrances of Vaudreuil and his generals he said: "I am fully resolved, for the infamous part the troops of France have acted in exciting the savages to perpetrate the most horrid and unheard-of barbarities in the whole progress of the war, and for other open treacheries and flagrant breaches of faith, to manifest to all the world, by this capitulation, my detestation of such practices."[24]
Vaudreuil yielded, as perforce he must, and on the 8th of September signed the capitulation by which Canada passed into the possession of England. The French officers, civil and military, the troops and sailors, were to be sent to France, and the inhabitants were to be protected in their property and religion.
The Indian allies of the English, and those who had lately been the allies of the French but were now as ready to turn against them as they had been to serve, were held in such firm restraint that not a person suffered any injury from them more than from the soldiers of the victorious armies.
The long struggle was over, the conquest of Canada was accomplished, and great was the rejoicing of the people of all the English colonies, especially those of New England. The toilsome march through the savage forest, the cheerless bivouac on remote and lonely shores, were no longer to be endured; nor the deadly ambuscade dreaded by the home-loving husbandman, who for love of home had turned soldier; nor was his family to live in the constant fear of the horrors of nightly attack, massacre, or captivity that had made anxious every hour of day and night.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] Massachusetts gave 107,793 acres of land to Connecticut as equivalent for as many acres she had previously granted that were found to be south of the boundary between the two provinces, and which she wished to retain. One section of these "Equivalent Lands" was on the west bank of Connecticut River, within the present towns of Putney, Dummerston, and Brattleboro'. (Colonial Boundaries Mass, vol. iii.) This fell to the share of William Dummer, Anthony Stoddard, William Brattle, and John White. "The Equivalent Lands" were sold at public vendue at Hartford, in 1716, for a little more than a farthing per acre. The proceeds were given to Yale College. (Hall's History of Eastern Vermont.)
[8] Light pieces of ordnance mounted on swivels, and sometimes charged with old nails and like missiles, or, upon a pinch, even with stones; hence sometimes called "stone pieces."
[9] This fort was situated in what is now Williamstown.
[10] Dr. Dwight's Travels, vol. ii. p. 82.
[11] Williams's History of Vermont.
[12] Captain Stevens's letter to Colonel Williams.
[13] Stevens's bravery was so much admired by Sir Charles Knowles, an officer of high rank in the British navy, that he presented him a handsome sword, and in honor of the donor the township was named Charlestown. For Captain Stevens's account of this siege see History of Charlestown, p. 34.
[14] This fight took place on Sunday, June 26, 1748, about twelve miles northwest of Fort Dummer, in the present township of Marlboro'.
[15] Johnson's "Account of Battle of Lake George," Doc. Hist. N. Y. vol. ii. p. 402.
[16] From John Wadno, an intelligent Indian of St. Francis.
[17] For some reports of his scouts, see Doc. Hist. N. Y. vol. iv. p. 169 et seq.
[18] Awahnock, = Frenchman.
[19] Rogers's Journal.
[20] Belknap's History of New Hampshire.
[21] Sanderson's History of Charlestown, p. 87.
[22] Parkman's Montcalm and Wolfe.
[23] Parkman's Montcalm and Wolfe, vol. ii. p. 370.
[24] Parkman.
CHAPTER III.
OCCUPATION AND SETTLEMENT.
Now that Canada was conquered and the French armies withdrawn from Ticonderoga and Crown Point, all the country lying between Lake Champlain and the Connecticut, commonly called the Wilderness, was open to settlement.
In 1696, long before the granting of French seigniories on Lake Champlain, Godfrey Dellius, a Dutch clergyman of Albany, had purchased of the Mohawks, who claimed all this territory, an immense tract, extending from Saratoga along both sides of the Hudson River and Wood Creek, and on the east side of Lake Champlain, twenty miles north of Crown Point. The purchase was confirmed by New York, but three years later was repealed, "as an extravagant favor to one subject."
In 1732 Colonel John Henry Lydius purchased of the Mohawks a large tract of land situated on "the Otter Creek, which emptieth itself into Lake Champlain in North America, easterly from and near Crown Point." The deed was confirmed by Governor Shirley of Massachusetts in 1744. This tract embraced nearly the whole of the present counties of Addison and Rutland. It was divided into townships, and most of it sold by Lydius to a great number of purchasers,[25] some of whom settled upon it. The township of Durham was originally settled under this