Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/157

 1755-tf] Failures on the Canadian frontier. 125 Marquis de Vaudreuil was now governor of Canada. He had 5000 regular troops at his command, besides the large and invaluable Canadian militia and countless Indians. Baron Dieskau, an able soldier, was in command of the troops on Lake Champlain. Those who sweepingly attribute Braddock's defeat to his professional spirit and European troops will find food for reflexion in the fact that a large force of provincials was ambushed by Dieskau's Canadians and Indians on Lake George this same summer, with precisely the same results. The provincials however, being undisciplined, ran away quicker and were moreover only three miles from their entrenchments, so that the slaughter was infinitely less. Dieskau, following up his success, was repulsed by Johnson and his troops in an attack on their encampment with considerable loss, and was himself badly wounded and taken prisoner. After a summer yielding no tangible results, the French and English forces faced each other through the winter of 1755-56 from the opposite ends of Lake George, the former at Ticonderoga, the latter at Forts Edward and William Henry. Shirley, like some other capable administrators, had an ambition to shine as a soldier; so he personally took command of the third expedition which Braddock, Dinwiddie, himself, and others of less eminence had projected for the year 1756. Its object was the capture of Niagara, where a strong fort protected the western fur-trade of Canada. Shirley's base of operations was Oswego, the only British outpost on the northern lakes and a thorn in the side of Canada. But his intentions were discovered from letters captured in Braddock's baggage ; and when he reached this solitary British station on the southern shores of Lake Ontario, he found Fort Frontenac (the present Kingston) on the Canadian side reinforced in such strength that he dared not leave Oswego exposed to its attack. So, leaving 700 men, raw levies for the most part, to strengthen the defences, he retired to his administrative duties, which were of more importance to America than his military adventures. Washington in the meantime had been placed in command of 1500 provincials and ordered to protect the frontier. The boundary-line was now pushed back along its whole length, and the labours of a generation were destroyed with all the horrible accom- paniments of savage warfare. Hundreds of persons, including women and children, were butchered. The French not only incited the Indians, but often led them. Panic seized even the oldest settlements and the eastern cities. The Quaker legislature of Pennsylvania earned the reproaches of posterity and the execrations of its contemporaries by refusing to vote a dollar or a man for the public defence. Washington, with his small force on a frontier 400 miles long, was almost powerless, and wrote that he would sooner die a hundred deaths than witness the heart-rending scenes which his hard lot compelled him to see. The triumph of Canada on the other hand was somewhat damped by the CH. IV,