Siege of Fort William Henry

Background

Fort William Henry stood at the southern end of Lake George, on the water route between the Hudson River and Canada. It was built in 1755, after a British and provincial force defeated a French army near the site. The fort was an earth-and-timber work with four corner bastions. It was the forward British post facing the French Fort Carillon, later called Ticonderoga, at the other end of the lake. About sixteen miles to the south lay Fort Edward on the Hudson.

In 1757 the British commander in America, Lord Loudoun, took most of his regulars away for an attempt on Louisbourg, which was later abandoned. The French commander, Louis-Joseph, Marquis de Montcalm, used the chance to strike at Lake George. He gathered about 6,000 French regulars, colonial regulars and Canadian militia at Carillon. With them were nearly 2,000 Native warriors from a wide range of nations, some from mission villages on the St Lawrence and many from the upper Great Lakes and beyond. In late July most of a British scouting force of boats was destroyed on the lake at Sabbath Day Point.

The fort was commanded by Lieutenant Colonel George Monro of the 35th Foot. With reinforcements sent just before the siege he had about 2,300 men: regulars of his own regiment and provincials from New England, New York and New Jersey. The fort itself could hold only a few hundred, so most were posted in an entrenched camp on higher ground nearby.

The Battle

Montcalm's army came up the lake by boat and overland and appeared before the fort on 3 August. Warriors and Canadians cut the road to Fort Edward. Montcalm called on Monro to surrender, and Monro refused. The French then opened a formal siege. Working at night, they dug trenches toward the north-west bastion and brought up their guns. The first battery opened fire on 6 August and a second the next day, and the trenches crept closer.

Monro sent repeated requests for help to General Daniel Webb at Fort Edward. Webb judged his own force too weak to march, and replied that Monro should seek the best terms he could. The letter was taken from a courier killed by Montcalm's scouts. On 7 August Montcalm sent it into the fort under a flag of truce, carried by his aide Louis-Antoine de Bougainville.

By 9 August the French trenches were close to the walls and many of the fort's heavier guns and mortars had burst from constant firing. Smallpox was in the garrison. Monro raised a white flag that morning.

Weapons

This was a European-style siege, and artillery decided it. Montcalm brought a siege train of some thirty to forty cannon and mortars up the lake on platforms laid across boats, and the fire of heavy guns and the Siege Mortar broke down the timber walls. The French regulars carried the army's flintlock musket, described under Charleville Musket, and the British regulars the Brown Bess Musket. Canadian militia and Native warriors carried lighter guns such as the Fusil de Chasse, along with knives, the Tomahawk and war clubs, among them the Gunstock War Club. British regulars of the period were also issued a short sword, the Infantry Hanger.

Aftermath

Montcalm granted generous terms. The garrison would march to Fort Edward with the honors of war, keeping its muskets and colors, and would not serve against France for eighteen months. The warriors had not been consulted. They had come for captives, scalps and plunder, which the terms denied them. On 9 August some entered the fort and killed wounded men left there. On the morning of 10 August warriors attacked the column as it left the entrenched camp, killing, stripping and seizing soldiers and camp followers. Montcalm and his officers intervened, though critics then and since have held that he took too few precautions.

Early reports spoke of well over a thousand dead. The historian Ian Steele, after tracing the garrison's records, put the number killed at between 69 and 184, with several hundred carried off as captives. Many of these were later ransomed or returned. Montcalm destroyed the fort and withdrew to Carillon without attacking Fort Edward. Monro died at Albany in November 1757.

On Screen

The Last of the Mohicans (1992), directed by Michael Mann and based on James Fenimore Cooper's novel of 1826, sets its story around the siege. Daniel Day-Lewis plays the fictional frontiersman Hawkeye, Maurice Roëves plays Colonel Munro, Patrice Chéreau plays Montcalm and Wes Studi plays the fictional Huron warrior Magua. The film shows the night-time trench digging, the mortar bombardment, the intercepted letter from Webb and the surrender with honors of war, all of which rest on the record. Much else is invented. Munro's daughters Cora and Alice come from the novel, not from history. In the film Magua kills Munro during the attack on the column, but the real Monro survived and died some three months later. The attack is shown as a planned ambush with very heavy slaughter, and Montcalm is shown quietly encouraging it. Most historians do not think he planned or wanted it.