Fort Oswego, on the right of the river, was a large stone building surrounded by a wall flanked with four small bastions, and was commanded from adjacent heights. For its defence, Shirley had crowned a summit on the opposite bank with Fort Ontario. Against this outpost, Montcalm, on the twelfth of August, at midnight, opened his trenches. The next evening, the garrison, having expended their ammunition, spiked their cannon, and retreated to Fort Oswego. Immediately he occupied the height, and turned such of the guns as were serviceable against the remaining fortress. His fire killed Mercer, the commander, and soon made a breach in the wall. On the fourteenth, just as he was preparing to storm the intrenchments, the British force, about sixteen hundred in number, capitulated. Forty-five perished: twelve of them in action; the rest by the Indians, in attempting to escape through the woods. The prisoners of war descended the St. Lawrence; their colors were sent as trophies to decorate the churches of Montreal, Three Rivers, and Quebec; one hundred and twenty cannon, six vessels of war, three hundred boats, stores of ammunition and provisions, and three chests of money, fell to the conquerors. Amidst the delight of the Canadians and the savages, the missionaries planted a cross bearing the words: "This is the banner of victory;" by its side rose a pillar with the arms of France, and the inscription: "Bring lilies with full hands." Expressions of triumphant ecstasy broke from Montcalm; but, to allay all jealousy of the red men, he razed the forts and left Oswego a solitude. Webb, who should have relieved the place, went tardily to the Oneida portage; and, after felling trees to obstruct the passage to the Onondaga, fled in terror to Albany. Loudoun approved placing obstacles between his army and the enemy; for he, also, “was extremely anxious about an attack" from the French, while "flushed with success." "If it had been made on the provincials alone, it would," he complacently asserted, "have been followed with very fatal consequences." Provincials had, it was true, saved the remnant of Braddock's army; provincials had conquered 1756. Acadia; provincials had defeated Dieskau; but Abercrombie and his chief sheltered their own imbecility under complaints of America. After wasting a few more weeks in busy inactivity, Loudoun, whose forces could have penetrated to the heart of Canada, left the French to construct a fort at Ticonderoga, and dismissed the provincials to their homes, the regulars to winter-quarters. Of the latter, a thousand were sent to New York, where free quarters for the officers were demanded of the city. The demand was resisted by the mayor, as contrary to the laws of England and the liberties of America. "Free quarters are everywhere usual," answered the commander in chief; "I assert it on my honor, which is the highest evidence you can require." The citizens pleaded in reply their privileges as Englishmen, by the common law, by the petition of right, and by acts of parliament. Furious at the remonstrance, the "viceroy," with an oath, answered the mayor : "If you do not billet my officers upon free quarters this day, I'll order here all the troops in North America under my command, and billet them myself upon the city." So the magistrates got up a subscription for the winter support of officers who had done nothing for the country but burden its resources. In Philadelphia, Loudoun uttered the same menace; and the storm was averted only by an adjustment. The frontier had been left open to the French; this quartering troops in the principal towns at the expense of the inhabitants, by the illegal authority of a military chief, was the great result of the campaign. Yet native courage flashed up in every part of the colonies. The false Delawares, thirsting for victims and secret as the night, from their village at Kittaning, within fortyfive miles of Fort Duquesne, stained all the border of Pennsylvania with murder and scalping. To destroy them, three hundred Pennsylvanians crossed the Alleghanies, conducted by John Armstrong, of Cumberland county, famed as inheriting the courage of the Scottish covenanters. In the night following the seventh of September, the avenging party, having marched on that day thirty miles through the unbroken forests, were guided to the Indian village of Kittaning, by the beating of a drum and the whooping of warriors at their festival; and they lay quiet and hush till the moon was fairly set. They heard a young fellow whistling near them, as a signal to a squaw after his dance was over; and in a field of maize, on the margin of the river, they saw the fires near which the Indians, with 1756. no dreams of danger, took their rest. At daybreak, three companies which lagged in the rear were brought over the last precipice; and at the same moment the attack began on the Delawares who had slept abroad, and on the houses which lay discovered under the light of morning. Jacobs raised the war-whoop, crying: "The white men are come; we shall have scalps enough." The squaws and children fled to the woods; the warriors fought with desperate bravery and skill as marksmen. "We are men," they shouted; "we will not be made prisoners." The town being set on fire, some of them sang their death-song in the flames. Their store of powder, which was enough for a long war, scattered destruction as it exploded. Jacobs and others, attempting flight, were shot and scalped; the town was burnt to ashes, never to be rebuilt by savages. But the Americans lost sixteen men; and Armstrong was among the wounded. Hugh Mercer, captain of the company which suffered most, was hit by a musket-ball in the arm, and with five others separated from the main body; but, guided by the stars and rivulets, they found their way back. Philadelphia voted honors to Armstrong and his gallant band; Pennsylvania has given his name to the county that includes the battle-field. At the south, adventurers formed a settlement beyond the Alatamaha, on the banks of the Santilla and the Island of Cumberland; established their own rules of government; and held the country as far as the St. Mary's, in defiance of South Carolina and of the Spaniards at St. Augustine. At the same time, two hundred men, three fifths of whom were provincials, under the command of Captain Demeré, were engaged in completing the new Fort Loudoun, near the junction of the Tellico and the Tennessee. It had twelve great guns, which had been brought from Charleston over the mountains. The Cherokees were much divided in sentiment. "Use all means you think proper," wrote Lyttelton, "to induce our Indians to take up the hatchet; promise a reward to every man who shall bring in the scalp of a Frenchman or of a French Indian.” In December, the Six Nations sent a hundred and eighty delegates to meet the Nipisings, the Algonkins, the Pottawatomies, and the Ottawas, at Montreal. All promised at least neutrality; the young braves wished to join the French, and they trod the English medals under foot. In England, the cabinet, though commanding a subservient majority, was crumbling in pieces from its real weakness, and the weariness of the people of England at the unmixed government of the aristocracy. The great commoner, a poor and now a private man, "prepared to take the reins out of such hands;" and the influence of popular opinion came in aid of his just ambition. To this end, he connected himself with the family of the successor. In June, 1756, Prince George, being eighteen, became of age; and Newcastle, with the concurrence of the king, would have separated his establishment from that of his mother. They both were opposed to the separation; and Pitt exerted his influence against it with a zeal and activity to which they were most sensible. 1756. The Earl of Bute had been one of the lords of the bedchamber to the late Prince of Wales, who used to call him 66 a fine, showy man, such as would make an excellent ambassador in a court where there was no business." He was ambitious, yet his personal timidity loved to lean on a nature firmer than his own. Though his learning was small, he was willing to be thought a man who could quote Horace, and find pleasure in Virgil and Columella. He had an air of the greatest importance, and in look and manner assumed an extraordinary appearance of wisdom. Unacquainted with business and unemployed in public office, yet as a consistent and obsequious royalist, he retained the confidence of the princess dowager, and was the instructor of the future sovereign of England in the theory of the British constitution. On the organization of his household, Prince George desired to have him about his person. 1756. The request of the prince, which Pitt advocated, was resisted by Newcastle and by Hardwicke. To embroil the royal family, the latter did not hesitate to assail the reputation of the mother of the heir-apparent by tales of malicious scandal, which party spirit delighted to perpetuate. But, in the first public act of Prince George, he displayed the firmness of his character. Heedless of the prime minister and the chancellor, the young man of eighteen, with many professions of duty to the king, expressed “his desires, nay, his fixed resolutions," to have "the free choice of his servants." Having wantoned with the resentment of the successor and his mother, Newcastle became terrified and yielded. The king gave his consent reluctantly. While Pitt formed intimate relations with the favorite of Leicester house, Charles Townshend, who had recently married the cousin of Bute, thought even more meanly of him than of Newcastle. Restless at sharing the disgrace of an administration which met everywhere with defeat except in the venal house of commons, Fox declared "his situation impracticable," and he left the cabinet. At the same time, Murray, refusing to serve longer as attorney-general, would be lord chief justice with a peerage, or retire to private life. The place had been vacant a term and a circuit; Newcastle dared not refuse or make more delay; and the influence of Bute and Leicester house prevailed to bring Murray as Lord Mansfield upon the bench. There was no one in the house who, even with a sure majority, dared attempt to cope with Pitt. Newcastle sought to negotiate with him. "A plain man," he answered, "unpractised in the policy of a court, must never presume to be the associate of so experienced a minister.' "Write to him yourself," said Newcastle to Hardwicke; "don't boggle at it; you see the king wishes it; Lady Yarmouth advises it;" and Hardwicke saw him. But Pitt, after a three hours' interview, gave him a totally negative answer, unless there should be a change both of “the Duke of Newcastle and his measures." Newcastle next in |