The War of American Independence, to quote the words of the Annual Register for 1777,[109] was ‘a war of posts, surprises, and skirmishes, instead of a war of battles’. The disaster to the Hessians at Trenton was what would have been called in the late South African war a regrettable incident, but it had far-reaching consequences. The German troops employed by the British Government were not unnaturally regarded by the American colonists with special dislike and apprehension. They were foreigners and professional soldiers, alien in sympathies and in speech, partisans in a quarrel with which they had no concern, fighting for profit not for principle. The citizen general, at the darkest time of the national cause, came back to Philadelphia, bringing a number of them prisoners, and broke at once the spell of ill success. There followed, as a direct consequence, the abandonment of the Jerseys by the English, the rising again of colonial feeling throughout the region, and corresponding depression of the Loyalists. But almost more important was the effect on the side of Canada; for the Trenton episode led to the supersession of Carleton and to his eventual resignation.

In the year 1768 the office of Secretary of State for the American Department was created in England, to deal especially with colonial matters. The Council of Trade and Plantations, which in one form or another had hitherto taken charge of the colonies, was not superseded, but to the new Secretary of State it fell to handle questions of war and peace with the American colonies. The appointment was not long lived, being abolished, together with the Council of Trade and Plantations, by Burke’s Act in 1782. The first Secretary of State for the American Department was Lord Hillsborough; the second, appointed in 1772, was Lord Dartmouth, in character and sympathy, a pleasing exception to the type of politicians who at the time had power in Great Britain; the third, appointed at the beginning of 1776, was Lord George Germain who, when he took office, was about sixty years of age.

No name in English political history during the last 150 years is less loved than that of Lord George Sackville, or, as he was known in later years, Lord George Germain. He was born in 1716, a younger son of the first Duke of Dorset. Lady Betty Germain, who died in 1769, left him the Drayton estate[110] in Northamptonshire, and he took her name. Ten years before, he had been cashiered for disobedience to an order to charge at the battle of Minden in 1759, laying himself open by his conduct in that battle to what was no doubt an unfounded charge of cowardice. He took to political life, and has been commonly regarded as in a special manner the evil genius of the British ministry during the war with America. Yet he was not a man without parts. In his early life he had some reputation as a soldier, being highly spoken of by Wolfe. After he was dismissed from the army, he pertinaciously demanded a court-martial, though warned that more serious results even than dismissal might follow from re-opening the case. The inquiry was held, and the dismissal confirmed; but, helped no doubt by his family connexions, he held up his head in public life, and became, in Horace Walpole’s opinion, one of the five best speakers in the House of Commons.[111] Walpole, and probably others also, disbelieved the charge of cowardice;[112] and certainly in politics, whatever may have been the case on the battlefield, Germain cannot be denied the merits of courage and tenacity, though he may well have been embittered by his past, and hardened into fighting narrowly for his own hand. He became a follower of Lord North, and under him was appointed a Lord Commissioner of Trade and Plantations and Secretary of State for the American Department. He was an unbending opponent of the colonists and their claims. ‘I don’t want you to come and breathe fire and sword against the Bostonians like that second Duke of Alva, the inflexible Lord George Germain,’ wrote Horace Walpole in January, 1775,[113] before Germain had taken office. To use Germain’s own words, he would be satisfied with nothing less from the Americans than ‘unlimited submission’.[114]

Germain seems to have been deeply imbued with the great political vice of the time, that of dealing with national questions from a personal and partisan point of view. It was a vice inculcated by George the Third. The King was a narrow man: his school bred narrow men: and one of the narrowest was Lord George Germain. Such men are fearful of power passing from their hands, and are consequently prone to be constantly interfering with their officers. Hence it was that the evil of ministers trying to order the operations of generals, and of men in one continent purporting to regulate movements in another, was more pronounced at this time than at almost any other period in English history. Moreover, Lord George Germain having been a soldier, though a discredited one, no doubt thought that he could control armies; and, mixing military knowledge with political intrigue, he communed with the generals who came home, and formulated plans with slight regard to the views of the responsible men in America. The result was disastrous, in spite of the fact that he seems to have formed a true conception of the campaign, viz., that the one army in Canada and the other at New York should co-operate and cut in two the revolting colonies. The immediate outcome of his arrogant meddling was the loss of Carleton’s services.

On the 22nd of August, 1776, while Carleton was busy making preparations to drive the Americans back up Lake Champlain, Germain wrote to him, commending what had been done, expressing a hope that the frontiers of Canada would soon be cleared of the rebel forces, and giving instructions that, when this task had been accomplished, Carleton should return to Quebec, to attend to civil duties and the restoration of law and order, while detaching Burgoyne with any troops that could be spared to co-operate with Howe’s army acting from New York. Written when it was, the letter could hardly have been received in any case before the year’s campaign was drawing to its close, and before events had already determined what could or could not be done. It might have been received, wrote Carleton in a dignified and reasoned reply, at the beginning of November,[115] and coming to hand then could only have caused embarrassment. As a matter of fact, the ship which carried Germain’s letter, was driven back three times, and Carleton only received a duplicate in May, 1777, under cover of a second letter from Germain which was dated the 26th of March in that year. This Carleton censured and superseded in command of the army on the side of Canada. second letter attributed the disaster to the Hessians at Trenton, which had happened in the meantime, in part to the fact that by retreating from before Ticonderoga in the preceding autumn Carleton had relaxed the pressure on the American army in front of him, which had thereby been enabled to reinforce Washington; and it announced that two expeditions were in the coming campaign to be sent from Canada, one under Colonel St. Leger, the other under Burgoyne, while Carleton himself was to remain behind in Canada and devote his energies to the defence of the province, and to furnishing supplies and equipment for the two expeditions in question. It will be remembered that Burgoyne had in the meantime returned to England, reaching Portsmouth about the 9th of December, 1776, and had brought with him Carleton’s plans for the operations of 1777, which were therefore well known to Germain when he wrote in March.

It is difficult to imagine how a responsible minister could have been at once so ignorant and so unfair as Germain showed himself to be in this communication. To suppose that the movement or want of movement on Lake Champlain could have had any real connexion with the cutting off of a detachment on the Delaware river, which was within easy reach of the rest of Howe’s forces, overpowering in numbers as compared with Washington’s, was at best wilful blindness to facts. To supersede Carleton in the supreme command of the troops on the Canadian side was an act of unwisdom and injustice. It is true that, already in the previous August, while Carleton was still on the full tide of success, it had been determined to confine his authority to Canada, and apparently, in order that his commission might not clash with that of Howe, to place under a subordinate officer the troops which were intended to effect a junction with Howe’s army. But in any case Personal relations of Germain and Carleton. it is not easy to resist the conclusion that Germain had some personal grudge against the governor.[116] From a letter written by the King to Lord North in February, 1777, it would seem that, had Germain been given his way, Carleton would have been recalled, and, writing to Germain on the 22nd of May, Carleton did not hesitate to refer to the reports which were set abroad when Germain took office, to the effect that he intended to remove Carleton from his appointment, and in the meantime to undermine his authority. In his answer, dated the 25th of July, 1777, Germain gave the lie to these allegations, assuring Carleton that ‘whatever reports you may have heard of my having any personal dislike to you are without the least foundation. I have at no time received any disobligation from you’; he stated categorically that the action which had been taken for giving Burgoyne an independent command was by ‘the King’s particular directions’, and he added that the hope that Carleton would in his advance in the previous autumn penetrate as far as Albany was based upon the opinions of officers who had served in the country, and was confirmed by intelligence since received to the effect that the Americans had intended to abandon Ticonderoga, if Carleton had attacked it.[117] But, whatever may have been the facts as to the personal relations of Carleton and Germain, it seems clear that the small-minded minister in England was bent on ridding himself of the best man who served England in America.[118]

As Germain superseded Carleton in his military command, so he set aside his advice, and over-rode his appointments in civil matters. Reference has already been made to the evil effects produced by appointing unfit men to legal and judicial offices in Canada. The climax was reached when Germain in August, 1776, appointed to the Chief Justiceship of Canada a man named Livius, whose case attained considerable notoriety in the annals of the time. Peter Livius seems to have been a foreigner by extraction. Before the war broke out, he had been a judge in New Hampshire; and, his appointment having been abolished, he came back to England with a grievance against the governor and council, with whom he had been on bad terms while still holding his judgeship. A provision in the Quebec Act had annulled all the commissions given to the judges and other officers in Canada under the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which that Act superseded: and the English ministry seems to have taken advantage of this provision to displace men who had done their work well, and whose services Carleton desired to retain, substituting for them unfit nominees from England.

One of the men thus substituted was Livius, for whom they saw an opportunity of providing in Canada. Lord Dartmouth wrote to Carleton in May, 1775, notifying the appointment of Livius as a judge of Common Pleas for the district of Montreal; and in August of the following year he was promoted by Germain to be Chief Justice of Canada. Livius succeeded Chief Justice Hey, who had held the office since 1766, and had in August, 1775, requested to be allowed to retire after ‘ten years honest, however imperfect, endeavours to serve the Crown in an unpleasant and something critical situation’.[119] Hey was a man of high standing and character, and had been much consulted by the Government in passing the Quebec Act. Livius was a man of a wholly different class. Carleton’s Carleton’s description of Livius. unflattering description of him in a letter written on the 25th of June, 1778,[120] was that he was ‘greedy of power and more greedy of gain, imperious and impetuous in his temper, but learned in the ways and eloquence of the New England provinces, valuing himself in his knowledge how to manage governors, well schooled, it seems, in business of this sort’. ‘’Tis unfortunate,’ he wrote in another and earlier letter, referring apparently to Livius, ‘that your Lordship should find it necessary for the King’s service to send over a person to administer justice to this people, when he understands neither their laws, manners, customs, nor their language.’[121]

Livius’ appointment as Chief Justice apparently did not take effect till 1777, and he lost no time in making difficulties. Though paid better than his predecessor, he protested as to his emoluments and position; he claimed the powers which had been enjoyed by the Intendant under the old French régime, and both in his judicial capacity and as a member of the council, constituted himself an active opponent of the government. As Chief Justice, he espoused the cause of a Canadian who had been arrested and sent to prison for disloyalty by the Lieutenant-Governor Cramahé, and in the council, in April, 1778, he brought forward motions directed against what he held to be illegal and irregular proceedings on the part of the governor. The result of his attitude was that on the 1st of May, 1778, Carleton, before he left Canada, summarily, and without giving any reason, dismissed him from office.

Both Livius and Carleton went back to England, and in September Livius appealed to the King. His appeal was referred to the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations, whose report on the case was in turn referred to the Lords of the Committee of Council for Plantation Affairs, and with their recommendation was brought before the King in Privy Council, Livius having in the course of the inquiry stated his case fully both in person and in writing, while Carleton declined to appear, and contented himself with referring to his dispatches and to the minutes of council. On technical grounds Livius had a strong case. Appointed by the King, he had been Merits of the case. dismissed by the governor without any reason being assigned in the letter of dismissal. His conduct in a judicial capacity had not been specifically impugned, and the two motions directed against Carleton, which he had brought forward in the Legislative Council immediately prior to his dismissal, had, at any rate, some show of reason. The first was to the effect that the governor should communicate to the council the Royal Instructions which had been given him with respect to legislation, and which by those instructions he was to communicate so far as it was convenient for the King’s service. The second referred to a committee of five members of the council, which Carleton had constituted in August, 1776, a kind of Privy Council for the transaction of executive, as opposed to legislative business, in which Livius was not included. Livius contended, and his contention was upheld, that the instruction under which the governor had appointed this board or committee, did not contemplate the formation of a standing committee of particular members of council, but only authorized the transaction of executive business by any five councillors, if more were not available at the time.

The result of the inquiry was that the Chief Justice was restored to his office, but he never returned to Canada. In July, 1779, a mandamus for his re-appointment as Chief Justice was sent to Governor Haldimand, Carleton’s successor, and in the same month he was ordered to go back at once to Quebec. But he remained on in England on one pretext or another. In March, 1780, he was still in London asking for further extension of leave, to see his brother who was coming home from India. Two years later, in April, 1782, he had not gone, though he alleged that he had attempted to cross the Atlantic and had been driven back by stress of weather; and he pleaded with rare audacity that it was advisable that he should still prolong his absence from Canada, as otherwise it would be his duty to oppose the high-handed proceedings, as he deemed them to be, of General Haldimand. So matters went on until Carleton, now Lord Dorchester, returned to govern Canada in the autumn of 1786, when a new Chief Justice was at once appointed, and Livius finally disappeared from history.[122]

It has been worth while to give at some length the details of this somewhat squalid incident, because it is a good illustration of the difficulties which may arise from one of the most valued and valuable of English principles, the independence of the judicature. In the distant possessions of Great Britain, even more than at home, a great safeguard and a strong source of confidence is and always has been that the judges are in no way dependent on the Executive; and yet the case of Livius is by no means the only case in which serious mischief to the public service has resulted from this very cause. There can be no doubt that on technical grounds the Privy Council were right in upholding Livius’ appeal. What weighed with them most of all was that Livius had not been dismissed for judicial misconduct; and short of such misconduct, flagrant and proved beyond all shadow of doubt, it would still be held that a judge should not be removed from office by the King himself, much less by the governor. Carleton, like other men cast in a large mould, did not sufficiently safeguard his action. A mischief-making adventurer was placed in high office for which he was clearly unfit. At a time of national crisis he used his powers of making mischief, and feeling secure in the independence of his judicial position, sought to undermine the authority of the Government. Unwilling to leave the difficulty for his successor to solve, the outgoing governor, fearless of responsibility, summarily dismissed the man, and contemptuously refused to justify the grounds of dismissal. He acted in the best interests of the public service, but, in doing so, he placed himself in the wrong, and the restoration of Livius to his office must be held to be justified, while his original appointment admits of no excuse.

In June, 1777, Carleton sent in his resignation, but a year passed before he was able to leave Canada, and a bitter year it was for the English cause in America. Germain’s letter to him of the 26th of March, to which reference has already been made, gave a minute account of Germain’s plan of campaign for 1777. the plans for the year’s campaign. Carleton was to remain behind in Canada with 3,770 men. He was to place under command of General Burgoyne 7,173 men, in addition to Canadians and Indians, and after providing him with whatever artillery, stores, and provisions he might require, and rendering him every assistance in his power, ‘to give him orders to pass Lake Champlain and from thence, by the most vigorous exertion of the force under his command, to proceed with all expedition to Albany, and put himself under the command of Sir William Howe.’ In an earlier part of the same letter the phrase is used that Burgoyne was ‘to force his way to Albany’, leaving no doubt of the writer’s intention that at all hazards Burgoyne was to effect a junction with Howe. Carleton was further to place under Lieutenant-Colonel St. Leger 675 men, also to be supplemented by Canadians and Indians, to give him all the necessaries for his expedition, and to instruct him to advance to the Mohawk river, and down that river to Albany, where he was to place himself under Sir William Howe. St. Leger’s force was to be supplementary to Burgoyne’s: as phrased elsewhere in the same letter, he was ‘to make a diversion on the Mohawk river’.

It is noteworthy how this remarkable letter purported to settle all the details. The exact number of men for each service are counted, the particular regiments and companies of regiments are told off, no discretion is left to Carleton or to Burgoyne as to whom they should send forward to Lake Champlain or the Mohawk, and whom they should keep in Canada. No mention is made of the reinforcements which Carleton had written were necessary. Nothing is allowed apparently for sick or ineffectives. All is on paper, concocted by the man at a distance who persisted in knowing better than the far more capable man on the spot. But the most damning passage in the letter is as follows, ‘I shall write to Sir William from hence by Germain fails to communicate with Sir W. Howe. the first packet, but you will nevertheless endeavour to give him the earliest intelligence of this measure, and also direct Lieutenant-General Burgoyne and Lieutenant-Colonel St. Leger to neglect no opportunity of doing the same, that they may receive instructions from Sir William Howe.’ Sir William Howe’s Narrative of his operations, given to a Committee of the House of Commons in April, 1779, states explicitly that the promised letter was never sent to him by Germain; that it was not until the 5th of June that he received from Carleton a copy of the letter which has been quoted above, unaccompanied by any instructions; and that, before Burgoyne left England, Germain had received Howe’s plans for the Philadelphia expedition, and had written approving them. Such was Lord George Germain’s conduct of the war in America.

On the 27th of March Burgoyne left London. On the 6th of May he arrived at Quebec. There was no friction between him and Carleton. He had made no attempt to supplant Carleton, and, bitterly as Carleton resented his own treatment by Germain, he gave Burgoyne the utmost assistance for the coming campaign. ‘Had that officer been acting for himself or for his brother, he could not have shown more indefatigable zeal than he did to comply with and expedite my requisitions and desires.’ Such was Burgoyne’s testimony to Carleton, in his Narrative of the ‘state of the Expedition from Canada’ as given to the House of Commons.[123]

Before following the fortunes of Burgoyne and his army, it will be well to give an account of how St. Leger fared in the ‘diversion on the Mohawk river’. As in the days of the French and English wars, the twofold British advance from Canada followed the course of the waterways. While the main army moved up Lake Champlain to strike the Hudson at Fort Edward and thence move down to Albany, St. Leger’s smaller force was dispatched up the St. Lawrence to Oswego on Lake Ontario, in order by lake and stream to reach and overpower Fort Stanwix on the upper waters of the Mohawk river, and then to follow down that river to the Hudson, and reach the meeting-point with Burgoyne’s troops at Albany. At Albany both Burgoyne and St. Leger were to place themselves under Sir William Howe’s command. Oswego, the starting-point of St. Leger’s expedition, owing to its geographical position always played a prominent part in the border wars of Canada and the North American colonies. From this point Count Frontenac started when, in 1696, Oswego. he led his men to Onondaga, burnt the villages of the Iroquois, and laid waste their cornfields. The first fort at Oswego was built in 1727 by Governor Burnet of New York, who reported that he had built it with the consent of the Six Nations. It was built on the western bank of the mouth of the Onondaga or Oswego river, which here runs into Lake Ontario, and it was still the main fort in 1756, when Oswego was taken by Montcalm, although a subsidiary fort had also lately been built upon the opposite—the eastern side of the river. The effect produced both in England and in America by the French general’s brilliant feat of arms marked the importance which was attached to the position. The place was re-occupied by Prideaux and Haldimand with Sir William Johnson in 1759; and subsequently a new fort was constructed on the high ground which forms a promontory on the eastern side of the estuary. This fort, which after the War of Independence passed into American hands, was stormed and taken by Gordon Drummond in the war of 1812.

The Oswego river, or one branch of it, runs out of Lake Oneida: and into that lake, at the eastern end, runs the stream which was known as Wood Creek. From the Wood Creek there was a portage to the Mohawk river, and at the end of the portage stood Fort Stanwix, held by an American garrison, and barring St. Leger’s way to the Mohawk valley and the Hudson. All this was the country The Six Nations. of the Six Nation Indians, Six Nations instead of Five since the early part of the eighteenth century, when the Tuscaroras, driven up from the south by the white men, had been admitted to the Iroquois Confederacy. The Allies of the English. people of the Long House, as the Iroquois called themselves, had always been, in the main, allies of the English as against the French. From the time when the state of New York became a British possession, these Indians, who had had friendly trading relations with the Dutch, transferred their friendship to the English, and the chain of the covenant, though often strained, was never completely broken. When the War of American Independence began, and the English were divided, the Six Nations, though confused by the issue and by the competing appeals of the two parties, adhered as a whole to the Royalist cause. The majority of the Oneidas, and possibly the Tuscaroras, inclined to the American side, the Oneidas having come under the strong personal influence of a New England missionary, Samuel Kirkland, but the other members of the league were for the King. After the battle of Oriskany, where, among others, the powerful clan of Senecas suffered heavily, the enmity between these Indians and the colonists became more pronounced, and took the form of a blood feud, accompanied by all the horrors of militant savagery.

There were various reasons why the Iroquois should espouse the side of England against America. They looked to the Great King beyond the sea as their father and protector. The English colonists on their borders had shown little respect for their lands: and in 1774, in one of the inevitable conflicts between white men and red on the Virginian frontier, which was known as Cresap’s war, some of the Six Nation warriors had been involved, and the family of a friendly Cayuga chief had been murdered by the whites, bringing bitterness into the hearts of the western members of the Iroquois Confederacy. But, most of all, the Mohawks shaped the policy of the league, and they in turn were guided by the Johnson family, and by their famous fighting chief Thayandenegea, more commonly known by his English name of Joseph Brant.

The Mohawks had always been the leaders among the Six Nation Indians, though, by the time when war broke out between England and America, they were comparatively few in number, worn down by constant fighting, and by other causes.[124] Of all the Iroquois, they had been most consistently loyal to the English, and the most determined foes of the French. Their homes were at the eastern end of the Long House, in the valley of the Mohawk river, and they had therefore always been in close touch with the settlements at Albany, Schenectady, and along the course of the river to which they gave their name. They had mingled much and intermarried with their white neighbours; and for thirty-five years they had had living among them the Englishman, or rather the Irishman, who above all others won the confidence of the North American Indians, Sir William Johnson. They adopted Sir William Johnson. him and he adopted them, taking to wife in his later years, a Mohawk girl, Mary or Molly Brant. If Johnson in large measure lived down to the Indians, he also endeavoured to make the Indians live up to the white men’s level. He encouraged missionary effort, and promoted education, sending, among others, Joseph Brant, brother of Molly Brant, to a school for Indian boys at Lebanon in the state of Connecticut. Johnson represented the authority of the King, and he used his authority and his influence for the protection of the Indians against the inroads of the white men into their lands. The Mohawks, from their position, were more exposed than the other members of the confederacy to white land-jobbers, whose aggressiveness increased after Johnson’s death in 1774. Accordingly, while their traditional sympathies had always been with the English, when the civil war came, they had no hesitation in attaching themselves to the King’s cause. It was the cause of their protector; it was the cause of the Johnson family; it was the cause to which both interest and sentiment bade them to adhere. When Sir William Johnson died, he left as his political representative, his nephew and son-in-law, Colonel Guy Johnson: the heir of his estates was his own son, Sir John Johnson. Both the one and the other were pronounced Loyalists: they drew the Mohawks after them; and when, in the summer of 1775, after hearing of the fight at Bunker’s Hill, Guy Johnson left the Mohawk Valley for Oswego and crossed over to Canada, the majority of the Mohawks left their homes and followed him. In Canada, it was said, they received assurances from Carleton, which were confirmed by Haldimand, that they should not be allowed to suffer for their loyalty to the King.[125]

The leader of these Mohawk friends of England was Joseph Brant, who was born, the son of a full-blooded Mohawk, in 1742. He was therefore a man of between thirty and forty years of age at the time of the American Revolution. In the period intervening between the British conquest of Canada and the battle of Waterloo, North America produced three very remarkable men of pure Indian descent. Pontiac was one, Joseph Brant was the second, the third was Tecumseh, who fought and fell in the war of 1812. Of these three, Joseph Brant alone sprang from the famous Iroquois stock. Pontiac was to a greater extent than the others a leader of the red men against the whites. So far as he had sympathies with white men, they were with the French as against the English. Brant, in the main, and Tecumseh played their parts when French rule had ceased to exist in North America; they were fast allies of the English as against the Americans or, to put it more accurately, of the English controlled from home as against the English installed in their own right in America. But all these three Indian chiefs had, in one form or another, the same main motive for action, to prevent what the red man had being taken from him by the white man. Of the three, Brant was by far the most civilized. He was an educated man and a Christian. He was, as has been seen, sent to school in Connecticut, he was a friend of the missionaries, he visited England twice, went to Court, had interviews and correspondence with Secretaries of State, made acquaintance with Boswell, was painted by Romney, and was presented by Fox with a silver snuff-box. He was poles asunder from the ordinary native inhabitant of the North American backwoods. He had known war from early boyhood, had borne arms under Sir William Johnson against the French, and had apparently fought against Pontiac. At the outbreak of the revolution he followed Guy Johnson to Canada, and seems to have taken part in opposing the American advance on Montreal. He paid his first visit to England towards the end of 1775, returned to New York in July 1776, and before the year closed made his way back up country to the lands belonging to or within striking distance of the Six Nations. Throughout the coming years of the war his name was great and terrible in the borderland, the main scene of his warfare being what was then known as the Tryon county of New York, the districts east of the Fort Stanwix treaty line, which were watered by the Mohawk river and its tributaries, and by the streams which flow south and south-west to form the Susquehanna. Once portrayed as the embodiment of ruthless ferocity, Brant was afterwards given a place in history as a hero. He was present at the Cherry Valley massacre, but in his fighting he seems to have been beyond question more humane than most Indian warriors, and at least as humane as some white men in these border wars, while his courage, his skill in bush-fighting, and his rapidity of movement were never surpassed. He was not a devil, and not an angel. Like other men, both coloured and white, he no doubt acted from mixed motives. His friendship for the English, and his patriotism for the native races, may well have been coupled with personal ambition. But he fought heart-whole and with no little chivalry for the cause which he espoused; and in war, as in peace, he was above and beyond the normal level of the North American Indian. After the war was over, he settled with his people in Canada, where he died in 1807, and the town of Brantford preserves his name.

St. Leger’s expedition had been suggested to Germain by Burgoyne, while the latter was in England: indeed, some enterprise of the kind had been contemplated by Carleton. In view alike of past history and of the general plan of the summer’s campaign, it had much to recommend it; but the opposition which the English were likely to encounter, and actually did encounter, was under-rated, and the force was too small for the task imposed upon it. The total number has usually been given at 1,700 men, including Indians; but this seems to have been an over-estimate, at any rate when the fighting came. The white troops probably did not in any case exceed 650 in number. There were only 200 British regulars, half of whom were a detachment of the 8th, now the King’s (Liverpool Regiment), the same regiment which had furnished a company for the attack on the Cedars. There were a few German troops, who had just arrived in Canada, and some of whom did not reach Oswego until the expedition was over. The Germans, being wholly ignorant of the country, were quite unsuited for bush-fighting and bateau-work. There was a corps of New York Loyalists under the command of Sir John Johnson, and known as Johnson’s Royal Greens. Colonel John Butler led a company of the Rangers, and a small body of Canadians also took part in the expedition. The Indian contingent numbered over 800 men. Brant joined at Oswego at the head of 300 Indian warriors, mostly Mohawks, and the Senecas were much in evidence. The Indians, as a whole, were under the command of Colonel Daniel Claus, Johnson’s brother-in-law, who for many years was one of the officers charged by the British Government with the superintendence of Indian affairs. Thus St. Leger had with him most of the men whose names are best known on the British side in the annals of the border warfare in these troubled times. Guns were taken with the force, though of too small calibre to overpower a well-built fort; and, when the advance began towards the end of July, no precautions were neglected, a detachment was sent on a day’s march or so in front of the main column, and the latter was led and flanked on either side by Indians.

Fort Stanwix had at the time been renamed Fort Schuyler by the Americans, presumably in honour of General Schuyler, who commanded the American forces in the Northern Department. The older and better known name was subsequently restored. The fort stood on the Mohawk river, not actually on the bank of the river, but about 300 yards distant, guarding the end of the portage from Wood Creek. The length of the portage where the two rivers were nearest to each other, was rather over a mile.[126] The old blockhouse, Fort Williams, which had been the predecessor of the existing fort, and the ruins of which were standing at the time of St. Leger’s expedition, was destroyed by the English general, Daniel Webb, in 1756, as he retreated in hot haste on hearing of the capture of Oswego by Montcalm. Two years later General Stanwix built a new fort, which bore his own name. The town of Rome now covers the site on which Fort Stanwix stood. The fort was square in form. It had evidently been carefully designed by a trained soldier and strongly constructed, but during the years of peace, in this case as in those of the other border forts, the defences had fallen more or less into decay, and had not been fully repaired or rebuilt when the siege began. None the less, they proved to be too strong to be overpowered by St. Leger’s light guns. The garrison consisted of 750 men, 200 of whom came in, bringing stores and provisions, on the very day on which the forerunners of St. Leger’s force appeared on the scene. The commander of the garrison was Colonel Gansevoort, the second in command was Colonel Willett, Fort Stanwix. both thoroughly competent men.

St. Leger’s advanced guard, consisting of a detachment of 30 men of the 8th Regiment, under Lieutenant Bird, with 200 Indians under Brant, arrived before the fort on The siege of Fort Stanwix begins. the 2nd of August. They had been sent on, as is told in St. Leger’s dispatch, ‘to seize fast hold of the lower landing-place, and thereby cut off the enemy’s communication with the lower country.’[127] It had been hoped that they would be in time to intercept the reinforcements which were due at the fort, but they arrived too late for this purpose. They took up their position at the point named, below and due south of the fort, on the bank of the Mohawk river, athwart the road to Albany. On the following day, the 3rd of August, St. Leger came up himself, sent a proclamation into the fort, and began to invest it, fixing his main encampment about half a mile to the north-east of the fort, and higher up the river, which here runs in a curving course, so that a straight line drawn from the main British camp to the post at the lower landing-place would cross and recross the river, forming the base of a semi-circle. The Americans had blocked up Wood Creek with fallen timber, and St. Leger reported that it took nine days and the work of 110 men to clear away the obstructions, while two days were spent in making several miles of track through the woods in order in the meantime to bring up stores and guns. The siege, therefore, began long before the necessary preparations had been made, and long before the besieging force had been concentrated and duly entrenched. On the evening of the 5th of August there were not 250 of the white troops in camp, and at this juncture St. Leger was threatened by a strong body of Americans who had gathered for the relief of the fort.

When news came to the New York settlements of the British advance, the militia of Tryon county were called out by their commander, General Nicholas Herkimer. The rendezvous was Fort Dayton, at the German Flatts, lower down the Mohawk valley than Fort Stanwix. The German Flatts were so named after settlers from the Palatinate, who had come out early in the eighteenth century, and from this stock Herkimer was himself descended. On the 4th of August he moved forward, the number of his force being usually given at from 800 to 1,000 men. St. Leger reported that they were 800 strong, and assuming that the total was between 700 and 800, the relief force and the garrison together equalled, if they did not outnumber, the whole of St. Leger’s army, the majority of which moreover consisted, as has been seen, of Indians. On the 5th Herkimer encamped near a place called Oriskany, about eight[128] miles short of Fort Stanwix, where a stream called the Oriskany Creek flowed into the Mohawk river. From this point he sent on messengers to the fort to secure the co-operation of the garrison. Meanwhile intelligence had reached St. Leger, sent it was said by Molly Brant, of the coming relief force, and at five o’clock on the evening of the 5th he dispatched 80 white troops, being all that he could spare, with 400 Indians, to intercept the advancing Americans before they came into touch with the fort, and ambush them among the woods. Sir John[129] Johnson was placed in command of the detachment, and with him were Butler and Joseph Brant. It was work for which Brant was eminently suited, and he seems to have been the leading spirit in planning the ambuscade. Very early on the morning of the 6th of August, urged on by his impatient followers, and against his own better judgement, Herkimer, without waiting for reinforcements or for a sign from the beleaguered fort, continued his advance. He reached a point between two and three miles beyond Oriskany, and within six miles of the fort, where the path descended into a semi-circular ravine, with swampy ground at the bottom and high wooded ground at the sides. Here the Americans were caught in a trap, which would have been more complete had not the Indians begun fighting before the plan of ambush had been fully developed. The American rearguard, which had not yet entered the ravine, broke and fled: the main body were surrounded, Johnson barring their way in front, Brant falling on their rear, while others of the Indians and Butler’s rangers fought on the flanks. There followed a confused fight among the trees, gradually becoming a hand to hand struggle, with a brief interlude caused by a heavy storm of rain. Herkimer was mortally wounded, many, if not most, of the other leading American officers were killed; while, on the British side, the Indians suffered heavy losses. In the end the remnant of the American force seem to have beaten off or tired out their assailants, and made good their retreat, but according to St. Leger’s report only 200 of them escaped. Butler estimated the total American casualties in killed, wounded, and prisoners, at 500, and, according to American accounts, the total was about 400. The white casualties on the British side were very small, but the casualties among the Indians seem to have numbered from 60 to 100.

While the engagement was going on, a sortie was made from the fort, and it was probably news of this movement, coupled with the Indian losses, which put an end to the fight at Oriskany. Bird, the commander of the post at the lower landing-place, had been misled by a rumour that Johnson was hard pressed, and led out his men to support him, leaving the post undefended. Meanwhile, Willett at the head of 250 men marched out of the fort, apparently in ignorance of the ambuscade and designing to join hands with Herkimer’s force. Willett found the post practically deserted, mastered it, and carried off its contents, eluding an attempt which St. Leger made to cut him off on his return to the fort.[130] This ended the day’s work. Herkimer’s force had been blotted out, but it must have become increasingly evident that St. Leger’s men and resources were hopelessly inadequate for the task which had been set him, to force his way to Albany.