Fort William Henry 1755-57 by Ian Castle

Author:Ian Castle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fort William Henry 1755–57: A battle, two sieges and bloody massacre
ISBN: 9781782002765
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

A formidable battery of guns positioned in the Dauphin Bastion, Louisbourg. Louisbourg occupied a strategically significant position guarding the approaches to the St Lawrence River, a highway into the heart of New France. Loudoun planned to capture it in 1757 to open up the route to Québec.

THE FIRST FRENCH SIEGE OF FORT WILLIAM HENRY: NIGHT OF 22/23 MARCH 1757 (PP. 48–49)

The first French attempt to capture Fort William Henry took place in the winter of 1757. Led by Rigaud de Vaudreuil, the younger brother of the governor general of New France, the expedition marched up the frozen Lake George (1) without artillery due to the harsh weather conditions and hoped to take the fort by surprise. When Rigaud approached the fort in the early hours of 19 March he realised the garrison was alert and so turned his attention instead to the disruption of the fort complex.

The French limited their daytime activities to surrounding the fort and keeping up an irritating fire on the garrison, which the fort’s commander, Major William Eyre, 44th Regiment, replied to with artillery fire. During the night, however, Rigaud’s men made more determined efforts. On the night of 19/20 March they managed to set fire to a number of the garrison’s precious bateaux drawn up on the shore and burnt one of the sloops, causing significant damage (2).

The following night the French attacked again, successfully burning many of the huts and storehouses surrounding the fort, as well as more of the bateaux. Heavy snow on the night 21/22 prevented further attacks, leaving the men, now cold, wet and hungry, to seek what shelter they could.

The French made one final attack, on the night of 22/23 March. An officer led 20 volunteers (3) intent on destroying the Lord Loudoun, the largest of the sloops, but which was still under construction. Alert sentries on the north-east bastion (4) discovered their first attempt and ‘played so well with their small arms that the French turn’d tail.’ A later attempt, just after midnight, met with success as the raiders managed to take shelter behind a large woodpile (5) without discovery before rushing the sloop. One of the garrison recalled that they ‘could not see them until they had put the sloop on fire’ (6) which, ‘gave us such light that we could see … we fired among them very smartly (7), and killed some, but as their custom is to take as good care of the dead, as of the living, we can’t tell what number we killed.’

That was the last action of the first siege and later that night the French departed and struggled back to Fort Carillon.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.