Urgent as the necessity was for strict discipline and vigilance, there was too much irritation between the partisans of Leisler and his opponents to admit of their cordial joint action; and it was said, moreover, that the inhabitants had not believed such an invasion to be possible, and on account of the inclement weather had allowed their sentries to be withdrawn. 1690. The surprise was complete. At two o'clock of a severely cold morning the assailants entered through a gate Feb. 8. which they found open. "The massacre," according to the French officer's report, "lasted two hours." "There were upwards of eighty well-built and well-furnished houses in the town," of which all were burned but two. "The lives of between fifty and sixty persons, old men, women, and children, were spared," they having escaped the first fury of the attack. Thirty prisoners were led away. A list is preserved of the names, mostly Dutch, of sixty persons who were killed, of both sexes and all ages. Of the two gates of the town, the invaders had not been able in the darkness to find that which opened towards Albany, and by it some of the miserable people escaped through "snow above knee-deep," several of them being so frozen on the way as to be maimed for life. Of fifty horses which they captured, the victors had to kill almost all for food on their return march. The details of the massacre are of the most revolting description.2 Of the three parties despatched at the same time by Count Frontenac for depredations in different quarters, another, mustered at Besancour Jan. 18March 18. 1 Captain Bull had been sent with a company from Connecticut for the protection of Albany. Writing to the government of Massachusetts of the disaster at Schenectady, he does not spare the misbehavior of the factious New-Yorkers. (Mass. Archives, XXXV. 236, 237; comp. Document or ary History of New York, II. 103; O'Callaghan, III. 692, 695, 708.) 2 They are to be found (in full, it is to be hoped) in the " Documentary History of New York" (I. 186 et seq.), in the letter from M. de Monseignat. Comp. Mass. Archives, XXXVI. 111. of New and Maine. Three Rivers, was led by an experienced officer, named Hertel de Rouville, and consisted of fifty men, Renewed of whom one half were Indians. By a winter invasions march of two months they reached the village of Hampshire Salmon Falls (Semenfels), in Dover, a neighborhood with which they had become but too well acquainted in the preceding summer. Making their attack just before daylight, as was their practice, they found their victims unprepared. They killed thirty men, burned the twenty-five or thirty houses of the village, and led away more than fifty prisoners, most of whom were women and children.' May 17. The Indians and their civilized neighbors, both French and English, had become acquainted with the line of transit by the Chaudière and the Kennebec, as well as with that by Lake Champlain and the Hudson. The third party of invaders, four or five hundred strong, mostly consisting of Frenchmen, left Quebec on the day of the departure of the last mentioned from Three Rivers, and, taking such a direction towards the coast as to traverse a formerly inhabited region of Maine, reached Casco Bay (Kaskebé) after a tramp of four months, prolonged by a want of provisions which forced them to supply themselves by the chase.2 At Falmouth, where they came to the sea, seventy Englishmen were collected in an intrenchment, which was mounted with eight pieces of cannon. Observing the French to be preparing to push a siege with regular approaches, the garrison surrendered on the fourth day of the investment. "Women and children, and especially the wounded, were cruelly murdered” by the victors. The surviving prisoners were marched to Quebec. The fort was demolished, and all the buildings around it reduced to ashes. The flag had scarcely been 1 et seq. 2 Charlevoix, Histoire, &c., II. 50 in Mass. Hist. Col., XXIV. 101– 112. La Hontan, Voyages, I. 204; Letter of Captain Sylvanus Davis Charlevoix, Histoire, &c., II. 50. Ibid., 52. July 4. struck, when four vessels sent from Boston to relieve the place appeared in the offing. There was nothing for them but to put to sea again. A portion of the victorious party took the ill-fated Dover on their way back. There, at a hamlet called Fox Point, they captured six persons, killing twice as many, and burning some houses. Later in the summer a party of Indians fell upon Exeter, where on one day they killed eight persons whom they found mowing in a field, and in the next put to death as many more belonging to a garrison-house, from which, however, the savages were repulsed. Two companies of English, following an Indian track, found at Wheelwrights' Pond, in Dover, a superior force, which they attacked without success, being obliged to draw off after the loss of several men, of whom twelve were killed. Forty more Englishmen were murdered within the week, along the Massachusetts line.2 July 6. The alarm was great throughout New York and New England, the greater because the Mohawks, disgusted with what they considered the pusillanimity of the Dutch and English, many of whom, terrified by the disaster at Schenectady, had moved down the river to be out of harm's way, seemed to be wavering in fidelity to their alliance." Charlevoix, Histoire, &c., II. 54. 2 Magnalia, VII. 72-75. — 1690, May 28, David Jeffries writes from Boston, to John Usher in London, of the miserable condition" of the Eastern people, and their "cries for relief." Counsellor Bullivant writes of the distressed condition, and says that Danforth answered to applicants for relief that "the Lord Jesus was King of the earth as well as the heaven, and if he did not help them, he could not." (British Colonial Papers.) 8 A change of Counsellors which was made at the election of May, 1690, is perhaps to be interpreted as an indication of popular uneasiness. Wait Winthrop, Sir William Phips, and Dr. Oakes were substituted for Shrimpton, Richards, and Pynchon. (Mass. Col. Rec., ad loc.) Colden, History, &c., I. 123, 125, 130. But there was more than hesitation among the Mohawks, since no fewer than eighty of that furious tribe had been with the French in the assault on Schenectady. Charlevoix gave the Iroquois credit for an astute policy. "Ils ne veulent pas qu'aucune des deux nations Européennes, entre lesquelles leur pays est situé, prenne une trop grande supériorité sur l'autre, persuadés qu'ils en seroient bientôt les victimes." (II. 89; comp. 138.) May 1. Connecticut, not herself immediately exposed, sent troops to secure Albany and the upper towns on Connecticut River. The General Court of Massachusetts invited a consultation of commissioners from the several Colonies as far south as Virginia, appointing William Stoughton and Samuel Sewell on her own part.1 Delegates from Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New York, met at New York, and part of the result of their deliberations is to be seen in the expedition against Quebec which is presently to be described. Meanwhile a spirited enterprise was proceeding, which Massachusetts had set on foot. That Colony despatched seven or eight hundred men in eight small vessels for an attack on Port Royal (afterwards Annapolis), in Acadia, from which place privateers had been fitted out to prey upon her commerce. The expedition was under the command of Sir William Phips, who was now for Capture of the first time made a freeman, having "voluntarily Port Royal. offered himself" for the service. It had complete sucPort Royal, surprised and unprepared for resistance, surrendered at the first summons; and Phips followed up his good fortune by capturing and destroying the French fort at the mouth of the river St. John.3 cess. 1 Mass. Archives, XXXVI. 4, 5. 2 Mass. Col. Rec. O'Callaghan, IX. 455; Murdock, History of Nova Scotia, 183, 185; Charlevoix, Histoire, &c., II. 65-72. According to Charlevoix, the garrison of Port Royal consisted of but eighty-six men, and they had but eighteen guns, and those not mounted. He understood the four English vessels which appeared before Falmouth just after its capture to have been part of Phips's squadron. (Ibid., 65.) The expedition cost £3000 more than the plunder amounts to." (Letter of Jan. 8, 1691, from James 2 April 28. May 23. Unfortunately, this gratifying exploit gave new encouragement to the more ambitious scheme, the consideration of which had hitherto been only approached with a reasonable and warning conviction of its difficulty and hazards. The conquest of Canada was indeed no new idea. against The project had formerly found favor in England; ' Canada. and, encouraged by the remembrance of this approval, the General Court sent a vessel to solicit from the Expedition 3 1 King a supply of arms and ammunition, and the March 12. aid of a naval force,2 the first time that ever Massachusetts asked military help from England, and now with the purpose of a foreign conquest for the crown. The fruitlessness of the application did not defeat the enterprise. The present time, if any, seemed in some respects highly suitable for its prosecution. It was believed that Quebec was not in a good condition for defence. The existing animosity of the Five Nations against the French promised a formidable auxiliary force, and their urgency for the movement was even such as it might not be prudent to oppose. The conquest would be an immense benefit to Massachusetts, in respect to her security for the future against disturbances from the Eastern Indians, as well as to hostile relations always likely to exist with the French, whose aggressions had hitherto been so brutal. A special reason for energetic action at the present moment was presented by the position. of Massachusetts at the British Court. Soliciting as she was from the King a restoration of her charter, in no way could she better recommend herself to his good-will than by laying at his feet the dominion of Canada, the conquest of her arms. A solemn proclamation was sent out, exhort years later by Governor Bernard to the Board of Trade. After Phips's conquest a President and Council were appointed to reside on the spot, and report to the Governor of Massachusetts. 114. See above, Vol. II. 630; III. 2 Mass. Col. Rec., sub die. |