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Seven Years' War · 1757 Free to explore

Siege of Fort William Henry, 3-10 August 1757

In August 1757 the Marquis de Montcalm led about 7,500-8,000 French regulars, Canadians and Native allies south from Fort Carillon against Fort William Henry at the head of Lake George. It was held by roughly 2,300 British regulars and colonial provincials under Lt Col George Monro, split between the fort and an entrenched camp on the 1755 battlefield. For six days French trenches and batteries worked down the hillside above the west shore against the north-west bastion, while General Webb stayed at Fort Edward. Monro surrendered on 9 August on terms that promised the garrison safe conduct. On 10 August Native warriors who felt cheated of the captives and plunder they had fought for attacked the paroled column as it left the camp. Steele's reconstruction puts the dead at 69 to 184, far fewer than legend claims; hundreds were taken captive, most later recovered. The episode hardened British attitudes for the rest of the war. The fort is placed from the museum's bastion markers on the original site. Units inside the fort and camp are schematic, and the French works and camps are reconstructed from period distances.

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Plan of the siege, 1757
Plan of the siege, 1757 — Library of Congress — public domain

The battle, stage by stage

  1. 2-3 August 1757

    Montcalm arrives

    In late July warriors allied with France destroyed a provincial scouting force of some 350 at Sabbath Day Point. Then the Marquis de Montcalm came south from Fort Carillon (Ticonderoga) with the largest army yet seen on Lake George: roughly 3,000 French regulars, 3,000 Canadian militia and troupes de la Marine, and by most counts 1,800-2,000 warriors from more than thirty Native nations. The Chevalier de Lévis led an advance guard of about 2,500-3,000 overland down the west shore from 29-30 July. Montcalm, the siege guns and the stores followed by water. On 2-3 August the French came ashore at coves north-west of the fort, and Lévis's men and the warriors moved round to cut the road to Fort Edward. At Fort William Henry, Lieutenant Colonel George Monro of the 35th Foot commanded about 2,300 regulars and provincials (Steele). He had been reinforced on 2 August by Lt Col John Young's Royal Americans and Col Joseph Frye's Massachusetts regiment, but several hundred men were sick. General Daniel Webb stayed at Fort Edward, about 14-16 miles south, with some 1,600 men.

  2. 3-4 August

    Fort and entrenched camp

    Monro split his force. About 500 men held the fort itself, a four-bastioned square of log cribbing filled with earth, its walls about 30 feet thick, standing on a sandy terrace above the south shore of the lake. The other 1,700 or so manned an entrenched camp behind a log breastwork on the high ground a quarter mile to 750 yards south-east, on the 1755 Lake George battlefield. That ground is now Lake George Battlefield Park, where Starbuck's excavations have looked for the camp. The French closed the ring. Montcalm's regulars camped on the slope above the west shore, where a state marker on Canada Street now stands, and landed the guns at a cove nearby. Lévis's Canadians and many of the warriors took post to the south, across the road to Fort Edward and close enough to check any sortie from the camp. Bougainville carried a summons to surrender; Monro refused. The French camp positions are approximate.

  3. 4-6 August

    Opening the trenches

    On the night of 4-5 August the French opened a trench on the hillside above the west shore, roughly 700-800 yards from the fort and aimed at the fort's north-west bastion. Working parties dug while warriors and Canadians crept close through the felled trees and fired on the fort and camp. At about sunrise on 6 August the left battery, nearest the lake, opened fire. It is usually given as eight guns and a mortar. The fort's guns replied. The trench and battery positions shown are reconstructed from the distances in the journals; they are not surveyed earthworks.

  4. 7 August

    Webb's letter

    The right battery, eleven guns by the usual count, joined the bombardment. Under a flag of truce Bougainville brought Monro a letter taken from a courier killed by Native scouts on the road. Webb's aide had written it at Fort Edward on 4 August. Webb did not think it 'prudent to attempt a junction or to assist you' until colonial militia arrived, and Monro should 'make the best terms left in your power' if he could not hold out. Montcalm meant the letter to break the garrison's will. Monro held on.

  5. 8 August

    Bombardment

    The French pushed their trench in zig-zags down the hillside to the turn of the lake. They filled the swampy ravine beyond with fascines and logs to make a causeway into the fort's old gardens, today the Fort William Henry Hotel grounds. There they began a battery that accounts place 150-250 yards from the north-west bastion, which took the heaviest damage. Inside the fort, two 32-pounders and an 18-pounder had already burst, and more guns failed later. Smallpox was in the garrison. Canadians and warriors skirmished round the entrenched camp, and the road to Fort Edward stayed closed. The garrison's losses during the siege are usually put at around 130-185 killed and wounded; French losses were lighter.

  6. 9 August, morning

    Surrender

    Early on 9 August Monro's council of war agreed the fort could no longer be held, and a white flag went up. The terms followed European convention. The garrison would march out with the honours of war, keeping arms, baggage and one cannon. It gave parole not to serve against France for eighteen months, French and allied prisoners were to be returned, and a French escort would see it to Fort Edward. The fort's men marched out to the entrenched camp, and the French took possession at about noon; the sick and wounded were left in French care. Many warriors had come for captives, plunder and honours, and saw the terms as cheating them. They entered the fort and killed a number of the sick and wounded left there. Through the afternoon and night they moved among the crowded camp, taking goods.

  7. 10 August, dawn

    The road to Fort Edward

    At first light the column of soldiers, women, children and servants set off down the military road for Fort Edward. The regulars led with part of the French escort, and the New Hampshire men brought up the rear. Before the column was clear of the camp, warriors killed wounded men left behind and fell on the rear, seizing baggage, then people; some who resisted were killed, and panic ran up the column. Montcalm, Lévis and other officers intervened and recovered many captives. Others reached Fort Edward in scattered groups over the following days; Frye arrived on the 12th. Contemporary rumour claimed 1,500 dead. Ian K. Steele's reconstruction (Betrayals, 1990) puts the killed or missing at 69 to 184, at most 8% of the 2,308 who surrendered. Several hundred were carried off: about 500 were recovered at once or ransomed later in Montreal, and perhaps 200 were taken to Native villages. The French burned the fort before withdrawing, and smallpox carried home by warriors struck several western nations. The exact place of the attack has never been located, so the positions on the road are schematic.

Weapons

British and provincial garrison (Monro)

Short Land Pattern musket ("Brown Bess")

Short Land Pattern musket ("Brown Bess")

Smoothbore flintlock musket · 1768–1790s pattern

At Fort William Henry: British infantry musket

The British infantryman's musket for most of the 18th century. Accuracy beyond about 100 yards was poor, so the tactics were volleys at close range followed by the bayonet, which the Brown Bess was built to carry.

Calibre
.75 (ball about .69)
Effective range
about 50–100 yd against a formed line
Rate of fire
3 rounds a minute, drilled
Photo: Tower (British Ordnance) · Public domain
Socket bayonet

Socket bayonet

Edged weapon (musket attachment) · c. 1690s-1860s

At Fort William Henry: Socket bayonet

The socket bayonet slipped over the outside of the musket barrel and locked in place, turning every musket into a short pike without blocking the muzzle. It made the pike obsolete and let infantry defend themselves against cavalry and finish an assault at close quarters. For a century and a half, a determined bayonet charge often decided fights that musketry could not.

Length
Triangular blade, about 17 in on the Brown Bess
Use
Fitted over the muzzle so the musket could still be fired
Photo: Rama · CC BY-SA 2.0 fr

French army and Native allies (Montcalm)

French Model 1766 musket ("Charleville")

French Model 1766 musket ("Charleville")

Smoothbore flintlock musket · 1766–1777 pattern

At Fort William Henry: French infantry musket

France shipped tens of thousands of these muskets to the Continental Army from 1777, quietly, before it entered the war. Lighter and slightly smaller-bored than the Brown Bess, it became the pattern for America's first national musket, the Springfield Model 1795.

Calibre
.69
Effective range
about 100 yd
Rate of fire
2–3 rounds a minute
Photo: Charleville Arsenal · Public domain
Socket bayonet

Socket bayonet

Edged weapon (musket attachment) · c. 1690s-1860s

At Fort William Henry: Socket bayonet

The socket bayonet slipped over the outside of the musket barrel and locked in place, turning every musket into a short pike without blocking the muzzle. It made the pike obsolete and let infantry defend themselves against cavalry and finish an assault at close quarters. For a century and a half, a determined bayonet charge often decided fights that musketry could not.

Length
Triangular blade, about 17 in on the Brown Bess
Use
Fitted over the muzzle so the musket could still be fired
Photo: Rama · CC BY-SA 2.0 fr

Paintings and photographs

Plan of the siege, 1757
Plan of the siege, 1757 A plan of Fort William Henry and the entrenched camp of the English, with the camps and attacks of the French, 1757. Library of Congress — public domain · source
Montresor's map of the siege
Montresor's map of the siege Hand-drawn map of the siege by the British engineer James Gabriel Montresor. Public domain · source
Montcalm tries to stop the attack
Montcalm tries to stop the attack A 19th-century engraving of Montcalm trying to stop the attack on the paroled column, 10 August 1757 — a later, romanticised image. Public domain · source
Montcalm
Montcalm Louis-Joseph, Marquis de Montcalm, commander of the French army. Library of Congress — public domain · source
Bougainville
Bougainville Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, Montcalm's aide, who carried the summons and Webb's intercepted letter; his journal is a main French source. Public domain · source

Free for everyone every year on its anniversary: August 9–10.

Accuracy score: 72/100 (good)

How the accuracy score works

Sources and method

Siege of Fort William Henry, 3-9 August 1757.
  • Ian K. Steele, Betrayals: Fort William Henry and the 'Massacre' (Oxford University Press, 1990) — strengths, chronology, the 69-184 killed/missing estimate (p. 144) and the analysis of the surrender terms; Oxford Academic.
  • David R. Starbuck, 'The "Massacre" at Fort William Henry', Expedition 50:1 (2008), on the 1953-54 Gifford excavation, the reconstruction 'closely approximating the location of the original buildings', and the 1997-2000 digs — Penn Museum; Starbuck, Massacre at Fort William Henry (UPNE, 2002) and The Legacy of Fort William Henry (UPNE, 2014, Project MUSE); Starbuck, 'Archaeology and Preservation at the Lake George Battlefield' (SHA 2015, tDAR 433961) on the 1757 entrenched camp in Lake George Battlefield Park; Archaeology magazine on the 2014 field school (link).
  • Fort William Henry Museum bastion markers on the original site: NW Bastion, NE Bastion, SE Bastion (entrenched camp on the 1755 battlefield a quarter mile away), SW Bastion (HMdb).
  • Lake George Battlefield Park: NYS DEC park page and self-guided tour; HMdb markers 16115, 16035, 16113, 9410, 16118.
  • NYS marker 'Montcalm's Camp, 1757' (HMdb 17388); shoreline markers 308159, 98320, 148261, 17385, 162789.
  • Town of Lake George historical overview (PDF) — trench length (c. 890 yards) and line above the lake, Montresor's breastwork and its guns, Artillery Cove.
  • Lake George Examiner, 'Siege and surrender of Fort William Henry' (link) — landing, battery distances, the swamp causeway by the hotel grounds, Webb's letter text, terms, burst guns.
  • Military road and Fort Edward: HMdb 17339, 131638, 274260, 134641, 17776.
  • Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Lévis; The Canadian Encyclopedia, Siege of Fort William Henry (strengths, dates, terms, captives).
  • Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, Adventure in the Wilderness, trans. E. P. Hamilton (University of Oklahoma Press, 1964), and Col Joseph Frye's journal: contemporary French and provincial accounts, used here through Steele and the summaries above.
  • Francis Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe (1884), ch. 14: a classic narrative history. It is vivid but dated, and its casualty figures are superseded.
Images from Wikimedia Commons (public domain).

Where the positions come from

Further reading