Siege of Fort William Henry (1757): Montcalm and the Massacre

The siege of Fort William Henry took place from 3 to 9 August 1757, when a French and Native army led by the Marquis de Montcalm forced the surrender of a British fort at the southern end of Lake George in the Province of New York. It is remembered above all for what happened next: on 10 August Native warriors attacked the surrendered garrison as it marched away, an event British colonists called a massacre. The episode shaped the bitter course of the French and Indian War and later inspired James Fenimore Cooper’s novel The Last of the Mohicans.

Background: the Lake George corridor

In the 1750s the chain of lakes and rivers between Montreal and Albany was the main invasion route between New France and the British colonies. Whoever controlled Lake Champlain and Lake George could threaten the other side’s heartland. After the Battle of Lake George in September 1755, the British colonial commander William Johnson began building Fort William Henry at the southern tip of the lake, while the French built Fort Carillon (later Ticonderoga) near its northern end.

Fort William Henry was a square fort of earth and timber with corner bastions, able to hold only a few hundred men. Larger forces camped in an entrenched position on a nearby rise. In March 1757 a French raiding force under François-Pierre de Rigaud failed to take the fort but burned boats and buildings around it.

By 1757 the war, now part of the wider Seven Years’ War, was going badly for Britain. The British commander-in-chief, Lord Loudoun, had taken many of his best troops away for a planned attack on Louisbourg, leaving the New York frontier thinly defended.

The siege

Montcalm gathered an army of roughly 6,000 to 7,000 French regulars, colonial troops and Canadian militia at Fort Carillon, joined by around 1,800 to 2,000 Native warriors. The warriors came from dozens of nations, including Christian communities near Montreal and peoples from the Great Lakes region, some of whom had travelled more than 1,000 km. In late July a Native force destroyed a British scouting flotilla at Sabbath Day Point on Lake George.

On 3 August 1757 the French arrived at the southern end of the lake and surrounded the fort. The garrison was commanded by Lieutenant Colonel George Monro of the 35th Regiment of Foot and numbered about 2,300 men, split between the fort and the entrenched camp. Monro rejected a call to surrender and sent urgent requests for help to General Daniel Webb at Fort Edward, about 25 km (16 miles) to the south.

French engineers dug siege trenches and moved artillery steadily closer. Several British cannon burst under heavy use, and smallpox was present among the defenders. Webb, believing his own force too small to risk a battle, sent a letter advising Monro to make the best terms he could. Native scouts intercepted the messenger, and Montcalm passed the letter to Monro under a flag of truce. With his walls breached and no relief coming, Monro asked for terms on 9 August.

The surrender terms

Montcalm offered generous terms in the European tradition, known as the honours of war. The garrison could march to Fort Edward with its personal belongings, colours and one symbolic cannon, escorted by French troops. In return the soldiers gave their parole not to fight for 18 months, and French prisoners held by the British were to be released.

Montcalm called a council to explain the terms to Native leaders, but many warriors did not accept them. They had come expecting plunder, captives and trophies, the customary rewards of war in their societies, and the terms left them almost nothing.

The attack on the garrison

On the evening of 9 August warriors entered the fort and killed some of the sick and wounded left behind. Early on 10 August, as the column of soldiers, women, children and camp followers left the entrenched camp, warriors began seizing baggage and then people. Panic spread along the column, and the small French escort did little to stop the violence. Montcalm and other officers intervened in person, and later accounts describe them trying to recover captives.

The number of victims has long been disputed. Historian Ian Steele estimated that between 69 and 184 people were killed or went missing presumed dead, while several hundred more were taken captive. Many captives were ransomed by the French in Montreal over the following months. Early British and colonial reports spoke of far higher deaths, and these inflated figures shaped popular memory for generations.

Consequences

Montcalm destroyed the fort and withdrew north instead of marching on Fort Edward and Albany, partly because many Native allies went home with their captives and his militia were needed for the harvest. Smallpox carried home from the fort spread through several Native communities over the following winter, causing heavy losses.

British commanders treated the attack as a breach of the surrender and refused to honour the parole. The bitterness lasted: when Jeffery Amherst took the Siege of Louisbourg in 1758, he denied the French garrison the honours of war, partly in retaliation for Fort William Henry. Monro died in Albany in November 1757, and Webb was soon removed from field command.

Myths and facts

The Last of the Mohicans (1826) made the siege famous, but its plot is fiction. Monro was real, but his daughters Cora and Alice are invented characters, and the novel exaggerates the scale of the killing. The term “massacre” is also debated: historians accept that many people were killed or captured in violation of the agreed terms, but stress that most of the column reached Fort Edward and that the warriors were following their own understanding of warfare rather than acting from random savagery.

Timeline

• 1755, September: Construction of Fort William Henry begins after the Battle of Lake George.
• 1757, March: A French winter raid burns boats and buildings around the fort.
• 1757, late July: Native warriors destroy a British flotilla at Sabbath Day Point.
• 1757, 3 August: Montcalm’s army surrounds the fort and begins the siege.
• 1757, 9 August: Monro surrenders on terms granting the honours of war.
• 1757, 10 August: Warriors attack the departing column; the French later burn the fort.
• 1757, November: George Monro dies in Albany.
• 1826: James Fenimore Cooper publishes The Last of the Mohicans.

Why it matters

The fall of Fort William Henry marked the high point of French success in North America. The violence that followed hardened British attitudes, influenced how later sieges were conducted and gave the war one of its most enduring legends. Within two years the tide turned, ending with the Battle of the Plains of Abraham and the fall of New France.