Peter Way

Soldiers of Misfortune
New England Regulars and the Fall of Oswego, 1755–1756

DAVID SANDERS OF STANFORD enlisted in the British regulars in May 1755 for the planned campaign against Niagara in the Seven Years' War, and thereupon embarked upon a picaresque journey comparable with the peregrinations of fictional fellow soldiers Candide, Tom Jones, and Barry Lyndon. Sanders traveled to Oswego on Lake Ontario, where he remained for a year marked by illness, lack of pay and provision, desertion, mutiny, and Indian attacks, "till the place wos taken by the french and indians august ye 14 1756 and stayd there till ye french had Blowed and burnt up the place." The French then took him as a prisoner to Quebec, where they kept him a month before shipping him to "old England." The next year, Sanders sailed for Spithead, then on to Cork where he was attached to the 1st Regiment. On his way to Halifax in July, he found himself drafted into the 48th Regiment midway across the Atlantic. He stayed in Halifax but a month before sailing to winter quarters in New Jersey. In April 1758, Sanders marched to Philadelphia to sail back to Halifax, from which he departed with the expedition against Louisbourg on June 1. After the fall of the French fortress, Sanders shipped to Boston, then home to Stanford where he was discharged.¹

Richard Williams's story, by comparison, was worthy of a Fenimore Cooper. A drummer boy in the 51st Regiment when it went to Oswego, he was about seventeen years old in March 1756 when three Indians captured him while fishing near the fort. His captors took him to Oswegatchie (present day Ogdensburg, New York) and gave him to some Onondagas, who in turn took him to Montreal in time to see the arrival of the prisoners from fallen Oswego. Finally settled at the Onondaga Castle at Cataraqui near the head of the St. Lawrence, Williams remained for about two years with the Indians, who taught him to hunt and eventually allowed him to go out alone. On a trip with three Indian companions to Schenectady to trade furs, he tried to escape but was caught and bound. During the night he freed himself and hid in a hollow log for a day before making his escape. Williams claimed to have carried two scalps with him to Boston, where, in late 1757, he apprenticed himself to a ship's pilot, who described him as "About five feet high, of a Ruddy Compexion, Somewhat freckled, hawksbill Nose, a hole bored trou the Bridge of his Nose, both Ears Cut According to the Indian fashion, One of them torn Out (As he Says by an Indian)." Williams, who claimed "that he Could paint himself So As not to be known from an Indian," ran away from the pilot, leaving his clothes but taking with him a gun, a hatchet, his "Sculping knyfe," some powder, ball and flints, and two striped blankets. He apparently intended to return to his erstwhile Indian life when taken as a deserter.²

Sanders's transatlantic tour and Williams's traversing of the racial frontier, both set in motion by the misfortune of the garrison at Oswego, describe a strand of experience of American soldiery too often neglected in studies of the Seven Years' War. Fascinated with the colonial militias and provincial regiments,³ with their hawkeyes looking ahead to the Revolution, military historians have tended to dismiss regular soldiers as the blunt end of imperial rule. These scholars often cast colonial troops—with their resistance to authority and democratic understanding of military relations—as important prognosticators of the "American" revolutionary struggle.⁴ Regardless of differences in motivation, financial reward, and martial attitude, provincials and regulars had largely the same experience of camp life—in terms of conditions, dangers, and to a lesser extent, discipline—once in the field. The distinctions blurred even further after 1756, when the colonials became fully integrated into the regular army command structure, a move that effectively subordinated provincial officers and troops to British military law. Historians' concentration on colonial troops, furthermore, obscures the fact that many colonists joined the regular army, particularly in the war's early years.⁵ The experience at Oswego of the soldiers in the 50th and 51st Regiments (not to mention the Royal American or 60th Regiment), for example, does not fit easily into the conventional framework. Enlisted largely in New England and the mid-Atlantic region, they presumably shared similar motivations with provincial recruits, and they certainly endured warfare of a comparable nature. The lack of opportunity that defined their experiences, as the fates would have it, reflected not simply their status as regular soldiers but more so the nature of colonial warfare at the time. The often overwhelming problems of supply, recruitment, and officership impacted as much on colonial irregulars as it did on regular forces.

More often than not, historians recount the fall of Oswego without reference to these colonial regulars. Instead, the narrative has focused on the campaign's key architect, William Shirley; a British lawyer, governor of Massachusetts since 1741, hero of the capture of Louisbourg in 1745, and in 1755 temporary commander-in-chief of British Forces in America, he was, above all else, an eighteenth-century politician driven by the logic of patronage. The historical debate around Shirley's role in the debacle at Oswego tends to cast him as either victim or villian. His apologists attribute the fort's fall to the disruption of its supply line, caused principally by infighting amongst colonial politicians; Shirley, they argue, was caught in the crux. His detractors blame his dubious military judgement and involvement in criminal economic activities.⁶

William Shirley, temporary commander-in-chief of British forces in America. Engraving by J. McArdell after T. Hudson, 1750. Courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

The literature's fascination with the issues of command and contracting have developed an elitist perspective on the whole episode, for regardless of which camp they fell into, historians have viewed Oswego from securely on high. The dynamic role played by the rank and file in the making of this historical event has gone virtually unnoticed. Regulars, whether of European or colonial extraction, had as clear a notion as provincial troops of just military relations and would break military law to attain it. They resisted what they saw as unfair treatment by the army and their officers. Exposed to severe deprivation at the lake, the soldiers repeatedly fought authority through insubordination, desertion, and mutiny, thereby undermining the garrison's fighting effectiveness. Unluckily, in this instance the troops' agency also made their own post a plum ripe for the picking by the enemy. As a result, warfare for these "American" regular soldiers was not a tale of developing national character or of accumulating capital, but one of almost epic misfortune.

1754–Summer 1755:
"they were going for their Right"

War was all but inevitable by 1754. The building of forts by the French in Nova Scotia and their expansion into the Ohio Valley in the early 1750s caused concern among the British, while the defeat of George Washington's Virginia force at Great Meadows demanded reprisal. Consequently, two regular regiments of foot each numbering five hundred private men crossed the Atlantic to Virginia, where colonial enlistees increased their number to seven hundred. William Shirley and Sir William Pepperrell (the merchant and erstwhile general in the successful expedition against Louisbourg in 1745) received orders in December 1754 to raise two regiments, the 50th and 51st respectively, of a thousand men each from New England and the Mid-Atlantic region to rendezvous in Boston.⁷ Orders stipulated the raising of three thousand men to complete these regiments and the establishment of a common fund by the colonies to pay for their needs. The lead in military operations fell to Shirley, seconded by British officers sent out to command the troops. Those enlisting in the regulars in North America were promised arms and clothing at the King's expence as well as passage home at the end of their service in America.⁸ According to the campaign plan, British regulars and Virginia provincial troops would attack Fort Duquesne in the Ohio Valley, while the "American" regiments of Shirley and Pepperrell made for Niagara. After taking Niagara, the two regiments would besiege Fort Frédéric at Crown Point, along with a force of provincial troops with William Johnson and their Mohawk allies. Meanwhile, a largely provincial army led by the regular officer Robert Monckton would assault the French in Nova Scotia.⁹

Sir William Pepperrell, commander of the 51st. Engraving bound into an extra-illustrated edition of Washington Irving's Life of Washington (New York, 1855–1859). Guild Library, Massachusetts Historical Society.

While Gen. Edward Braddock prepared for the Ohio Valley campaign at Alexandria in the spring of 1755, Shirley and Pepperrell set about resurrecting their regiments. Recruiting orders stipulated that the 51st enlist only "Able Bodied, Straite and well made Men betwixt Seventeen and Thirty five Years of Age, free from all Bodily Ailments, and perfect and Sound Limbs," with prohibitions enforced against Catholics, Indians, Negroes or Mulattoes, anyone shorter than five feet five inches without shoes, or those "Subject to Fitts, Ruptures, or who are any way Distemper'd."¹⁰ Recruits enlisted for a number of years up to life, receiving larger bounties for longer terms, and tended to opt for long service.¹¹ Despite their status as regulars, the treatment of soldiers in the 50th and 51st initially differed from that of the British regiments preparing for Duquesne, as they had to pay for their provisions. Shirley addressed this inequity right away, successfully petitioning to put the two American regiments on the same footing as regulars, because he feared "a Mutiny from the General Discontent of the Men, at paying for them when all the other Regiments were allowed them, over and above their pay."¹²

The 1755 campaign got off to a bad start with the British defeat on the Monongahela early in July. Braddock died in the battle, and the tattered remnants of his regiments retreated to premature winter quarters. Command devolved onto Shirley, officially appointed commander-in-chief in August, although he had never commanded an army and was inexperienced at organization and supply. Mobilization for the Niagara campaign soon exposed this weakness, due in part to a supply route characterized by rapids and tricky currents in the best of times. A daunting prospect loomed: boating provisions from Schenectady up the Mohawk River to the Great Carrying Place, eighty-five miles below Oswego; transferring them into wagons for the four-mile portage to Wood Creek, then into bateaux; rowing down this small tributary to and across Lake Oneida; then into the Oswego River, and transhipment again at the falls upriver from the post on Lake Ontario before the final descent.¹³ The multiple expeditions planned for 1755 strained resources, both men and supplies, driving prices up. Because Shirley lacked useful contacts with knowledgeable regular army contractors, he could not make the best of the situation.

If inexperience and physical obstacles did not promise enough trouble, the Byzantine nature of the new commander-in-chief's financial dealings further jeoparadized the Niagara campaign. Shirley gave the provisioning contract to a partnership of Peter Van Burgh Livingston and Lewis Morris, Jr., with whom he had various connections. He maintained political alliances with the Livingston faction in New York and with Gov. Robert Morris of Pennsylvania, who was Lewis Morris's uncle. Livingston's existing partner, William Alexander, acted as secretary to Shirley for the Niagara campaign, and Morris's, John Erving, Jr., was Shirley's son-in-law. Such conflict of interest often arose in army contracting, but critics soon alleged corruption, particularly Shirley's New York enemies in the De Lancey family, amongst them lieutenant governor of New York James De Lancey and William Johnson, kin to the De Lanceys and a great friend of the Mohawks. The De Lanceys, already angered by Shirley's attempts to disrupt the smuggling trade between Albany and Montreal that had proved so profitable, now found themselves excluded from the lucrative army contracts. They consequently inhibited the mobilization of the Oswego campaign at its Albany base. Thus, although Alexander, who managed this part of the operation, expended much effort in purchasing and packing supplies, building bateaux to transport the goods, having the waterways cleared of obstructions, and hiring civilian laborers for Oswego, his pains in establishing a supply line went for naught. Food shortages plagued Oswego as soon as the first troops arrived. The De Lancey faction rumored that the fault lay with the contractors' peculations and Shirley's (at best) negligence; Shirley's camp blamed the lack of bateauxmen and wagoneers, and unexpectedly low water.¹⁴ The truth of the tale seems to lie in between, but the moral of the story for the soldiers of the Niagara expedition would prove to be that the army and its officers failed to provide for their troops, with mortal consequences.

The 50th and 51st Regiments began mobilizing in late spring of 1755, principally in Boston, and gradually made their way to Oswego via New York, Albany, and Schenectady. By early August, 1,200 regulars from the 50th and 51st, plus 400 New Jersey provincials, 50 Albany scouts, and 100 Indians reached the Carrying Place. A company of Pepperrell's regiment under Capt. William Williams garrisoned the Carrying Place, and a further 350 regulars remained at Schenectady to guard their supply lines. Shirley doubted that this force would suffice for the expedition against Niagara, particularly as reports came in of a French military buildup at Fort Fronteac, about fifty miles northwards.¹⁵

The paltry nature of the existing defences at Oswego also concerned Shirley as Fort Oswego was "very small and weak, and was first only built as a house to keep up the trade with the Indians." Fearing an attack, Shirley ordered the building of a wooden fort on the higher eastern side of the river—a fatal mistake, since, if captured, it would offer a point of enfilade into the existing fort. The real hope for defense, however, lay in the plans for a new fort, Fort Ontario. Clearing the ground for Fort Ontario began shortly after arrival and construction of the pallisade began on September 12. Shirley also gave orders to build two sixty-ton vessels, two row gallies, and eight whaleboats capable of holding up to twelve men. Already stretching his resources thin, Shirley also agreed to build a new fort—Fort George—west of the old one; it soon became known as Fort Rascal due to its ramshackle construction.¹⁶

It was from within the defences, however, that the immediate threat would come. Desertion, which was commonplace in all armies at this time, bedevilled the 50th and 51st from the beginning, but the drainage in manpower accelerated the nearer the force came to Oswego, once the problems of supply and the difficulty of the terrain became apparent, and as news of Braddock's defeat arrived in early August. Some eight hundred men deserted en route to the lake.¹⁷ Soldiers risked major reprisals for such lightfootedness. Christopher Porter of the 50th, for example, having deserted from Oswego in the summer of 1755 but not taken up until the following June, received a death sentence for his year of illicit freedom. But desertion constituted more than a punishable offense; it also provided soldiers a functional response to the manifold injuries of army life, personal and professional.¹⁸ Economic grievance in particular permeates the Oswego records with complaints about late wages, missing daily rations, and broken enlistment terms regarding bounties and clothing. Peter Williamson, a soldier in Shirley's regiment, asserted that "so little Care had been taken to get the King's Provisions sent up, that, when we arrived, we must have perish'd with Famine," had they not borrowed the bare minimum from the stores provided by New York for its troops. But the provincial stores soon evaporated. Reduced to half-rations, many men fell sick, and the regimental strength dwindled within six weeks.¹⁹

These shortcomings soon diminished the number of soldiers willing to remain in the field. Jacob Treach, George Snyder, Henry Funnel, and Michael Merchant, all of the 50th, deserted August 18; twelve days later a schooner discovered them about forty miles from Oswego, "almost starv'd." Treach claimed that he had enlisted for four months and never received more than $5.36, while Snyder said the army broke its promise of 6d. a day paid weekly. Merchant did not receive his daily ration or 6d. sterling, and "not being able to live upon the Allowance he received, he thought to better himself by going home to Pennsylvania." All four received a punishment of one thousand lashes. Conrad Saloff deserted on August 17, claiming that he never got the allowance promised, "that he was bare of Shoes" despite repeated requests, and that he had received no pay at Oswego. Peter Sawn, who fled Shirley's the same day, stated that "not receiving this Allowance occasion'd his deserting." The court martial sentenced both men to a flogging of one thousand strokes. John Pitzall and Henry Rapp, also of the 50th, deserted August 26, but Indians captured them four days later in return for $20. Pitzall deposed that before he left "he had but 3 biscuits for two days, that he had no Shoes, & no Money; having received but one Dollar since he left Schenectady." Rapp, too, pleaded lack of food and pay since leaving Schenectady. Each suffered a thousand lashes.²⁰

This spate of desertion meant that in late August and early September troops at Oswego witnessed repeated courts martial as well as the subsequent flogging and even execution of their mates. An officer recorded one such spectacle in his journal: "all the troops were ordered under arms and drawn up behind the Fort, and 5 deserters who were sentenced to die by a General Court Martial were brought out to receive their punishment; but the General was pleased to reprieve three on the spot just before they were going to kneel down, and the others were executed before the whole army."²¹ Meant as a warning against desertion, such macabre theater could hardly have helped morale already sapped by problems of supply and payment, particularly given the colonial recruits' unfamiliarity with this degree of discipline.

General discontent came to a head the afternoon of Saturday, August 30, when a group of about two hundred armed soldiers from Shirley's regiment began massing in the camp.²² Confronted by Ensign Mountgarret, they said "they were going for their Right," marching to General Shirley (en route from Schenectady at this time) "to ask the reason of their not having their full allowance of Provisions," and that "they were all of one Mind, and that they would have it." When Mountgarrett seized Patrick Carney, who had done the talking, Carney joined the fray and grabbed the officer's spontoon.²³ A lieutenant managed to extricate Mountgarret and take Carney prisoner, but soldiers showered the officers with stones as they marched to the guardhouse. At his court martial for mutiny Carney claimed that he had led the group and had only grabbed the spontoon to prevent Mountgarret striking him again. Nonetheless, he received seven hundred lashes. A number of other mutineers were brought to justice. Moses Whitmore, who had run towards the mutiny and refused to give up his arms to Lieutenant Fitzimmons, failed to convince the court he was only cleaning his gun and received one thousand strokes. Likewise Grinel Clark and Seth Wood suffered five hundred and seven hundred lashes respectively for mutiny and failing to yield their arms. Their comrade Ebenezer Alby, who went to join the mutiny but disarmed when ordered, endured a mere one hundred strokes due to his "being a Young Soldier." Summing up the mutineers' perspective, Pvt. Matthew Carragan blamed the revolt on a "Want of Provision & Rum."²⁴

These courts martial records obscure the true meaning of the uprising by turning it into a simple matter of disciplinary infractions corrected with the cat-o'-nine-tails. Due consideration suggests that ideas of popular justice—specifically, the expectation of pay and provision in return for military labor—contributed to or motivated the men's actions.²⁵ From this perspective, the true blame falls on William Shirley and his contractors for failing to pay and feed the soldiers, which not only reduced their military effectiveness but arrayed their armed might against their officers, however temporarily. Shirley's arrangements consigned the men to an effective prison on the shores of Lake Ontario and forced them to perform hard labor without proper subsistence.

The rumored malfeasance of the contractors added to the soldiers' sense of injustice. A report written in May 1756 first subjected Shirley's actions to official scrutiny. George Demler, who had been at Oswego, attributed the mutiny among Shirley's soldiers to the "want of Provisions after having loudly Complained to their Officers about it, and their Officers to the General, but without any Redress." He claimed that, although bateaux from the south came loaded with retail goods, the soldiers had not received their half allowance since arriving. They applied directly to the contractor, Alexander, who replied "that he could not make Provisions, and that if they were not Satisfied they might eat Stones." They absolutely refused to work after this, "for that they could not work without pay, and not half the Provision allowed to them, and when the Officers attempted to Force them to work, the Grenadeers of Genl. Shirley's ran to their Arms, which brought great Confusion in the Garrison." The night of the mutiny, the commander ordered payment for the men, but no provisions existed to give them, excepting a gill (four ounces) of rum allowed men when at work "as a further encouragement to Carry on the works."²⁶ Shirley thus expected the soldiers to perform his ambitious construction plans without their due provisions, instead having with the little pay they did receive to buy food from the extortionate merchants at Oswego, who recognized a closed market when they saw it. Little wonder, then, that problems with health and discipline persisted. In fact, the day after the mutiny two soldiers informed officers that Ebit Roberts of Shirley's regiment had solicited signatures for an agreement to desert, and two other soldiers confessed to having signed the paper. The protesters planned to take it to their officers, promising not to desert if they could get their allowance. Roberts contended that this petition, signed by about twenty men, did not constitute a desertion agreement. Still, the court awarded him five hundred lashes for his effrontery, further throwing salt on the wounds of the 50th.²⁷

Shirley finally arrived at Oswego with the last detachment of his regiment on September 2 and found the prospect at the lake disconcerting. The troops were "much reduced by Desertion and Sickness," and the recent mutiny hardly forgotten or its causes removed. At a Council of War held at Oswego on September 18, Shirley maintained that insufficient dry provisions at Oswego[,] due to the great desertion of bateauxmen and lack of wagons on the Mohawk as well as the desertion of slaymen at the Great Carrying Place, had threatened the expedition on Niagara. He declared, however, that he expected the imminent arrival of bateaux laden with provisions, after which the regiments could go into action against Niagara. Still, a week later, the army had not moved. With their native allies leaving for home, the Albany traders and others familiar with the region considering it too late in the season to brave an unpredictable Lake Ontario, and more men getting sick due to rain and lack of barracks (some three hundred men were ill, exclusive of officers), another Council of War decided to postpone the expedition until the following campaign. Until that time, the troops would concentrate on building barracks, constructing the forts, and completing the other necessary works.²⁸

"A South View of Oswego, on Lake Ontario, in North America." Engraving bound into Irving's Life of Washington, Guild Library, MHS.

The council's explanation for postponing the expedition, predicated on factors beyond the officers' control, ignored how elements that the officers should control—provisions and payment—affected their men and thus contributed to the army's inaction. In fact, between Shirley's arrival and the second council, the problems persisted. Capt. John Shirley, William's son, reported that soldiers continued to desert, being "dissatisfy'd at our being oblig'd to allow'em no more than half a pound of bread & no Rum." Oswego lost twenty-one on September 8, including fifteen from Schuyler's New Jersey irregulars.²⁹ John Williams of the 50th, who deserted on September 16, was sentenced to death on September 17; likewise the deserters Patrick White, Francis Gavin, Henry Compton, and Michael McDonald, all from Schuyler's.³⁰ Not only soldiers absconded, but also carpenters and bateauxmen, "frighten'd at a flux" which had killed some of the craftsmen.³¹

By late September 1755, the younger Shirley was "uneasy" about the situation. "Our men have been upon half Allowance of Bread these three Weeks past," he wrote on September 22, "& no Rum given to 'em." (Yet his father was able to give the Indian allies a bullock to roast in an attempt to keep them at the fort.) Several days later, he reported "great Numbers being in the Hospitals ill of fluxes, &.c, & Numbers ill in their tents, who won't go to the Surgeons for fear of being sent to the Hospitals, wch are in fact very bad ones, being only Shedds, wch won't keep out a small shower of rain, & we have unluckily had for this week past continu'd Rains as heavy as I ever saw."³² If deprivation and disease did not suffice, soldiers also had to be worry about enemy scalping parties that haunted the area. Indians killed and scalped three men working on the fort across the river. Furthermore, troops had to confront this threat with insufficient and substandard firearms, "the Locks being wore out, & the Hammers so soft, that notwithstanding repeated Repairs, they are almost unfitt for service."³³

All these elements set a pattern at Oswego by September 1755 that endured until its fall in August 1756. Poor provisioning meant that the soldiers did not receive their due food and clothing, while the failure to pay wages made it very difficult for them to purchase goods from overcharging sutlers. Deprivation, illness, and death resulted. Concurrently, these soldiers engaged in war, which meant they had to labor prodigiously to lay the ambitious defences planned by Shirley, all the while subject to surprise enemy attack. The story of these unfortunate colonial regulars captures (albeit in exaggerated form) the British-American experience in the first few years of war, which was for the most part one of logistical and military failure. Whereas Braddock's force suffered short, sharp agony, the 50th and 51st, along with their colonial auxiliaries, underwent more protracted and often officer-inflicted torture.

Fall 1755–Spring 1756:
"dying very fast and no provision for the Men, so that they must perish to Death"

When Shirley left Oswego for Boston on October 19, 1755, Peter Williamson claimed the soldiers he left behind were "living in perpetual Terror, on the Brink of Famine, and become mutinous for Want of their Pay." Demler remembered them as so weak that they worked very slowly, and "the place was in no better order, than at the time he [Shirley] came there." No storehouses, barracks, or hospital (except two unfurnished rooms a distance from the fort) existed, while the ovens built to bake bread had fallen in by Christmas. In December, the five hundred men of both regiments and Schuyler's company still were without barracks. Sixty of Shirley's men lived in huts at the west fort, the rest of the regiment in trading sheds open on all sides, "and not capable of keeping out Cold and Rain, and which caused a great Sickness and Mortality amongst them." Pepperrell's men had been sent to Fort Ontario to build huts for themselves. Furthermore, officers held back the King's stores from the men, even though most of them were "perishing in the Cold, for want of blankets to warm them, lying in Sheds without being covered from the Rain & Ice." Demler and some soldiers who could afford it bought their own blankets from the stores at an exorbitant price of 15s. Capt. John Vickers also testified to the absence of barracks in Fort Oswego in 1755–1756. With just a guardroom and officer quarters, the men had to make do with outbuildings. "There was a Barrack of three Rooms, in which there was two Tier of Bed Steads, but no bedding; as the Barrack was made of green Boards, they all Split, and the Snow drove in Constantly on the Men; The rest lived in Bark Hutts, and lay on the ground all winter."³⁴

Lt. Col. James Mercer, the commanding officer at Oswego, reported in January 1756 that the garrison survived on three-quarters allowance all winter because Shirley had left behind only forty days supply of bread, two months of meat, and three weeks of spirits. He claimed that Shirley and his secretary had repeatedly ignored his requests for provisions. The garrison became very sickly, Demler recalled, "and numbers of them died for want of the Common Necessaries of Life." Warned of an Indian attack in January, the enfeebled garrison could only mount a guard of sixteen to eighteen men, "and half of those were obliged to have Sticks in their hands to Support them; The men were so weak that the Centrys often fell down on their Posts, and lay there till the Releif came and lifted them up." At times carpenters had to stand guard against attacks. Mercer granted furloughs so as to preserve rations, but they were still very short by February, "and if the Soldiers had not died so fast there would not have been provisions Sufficient to have Subsisted them," Demler asserted.³⁵

By mid February, only about 330 men were fit for duty. Later that month, a report noted that "our Numbers are greatly deminishing daily by the Scurvey which proves Mortal among the Soldiery, and those now doeing Duty are so imatiated, that they look more like Spectries than Men." Provisions ran so low that by February 21 the officers were "under the necessity of Issuing Tainted Meat that was condemned the last Fall" to men "full of Scrobutick Humours." By early March, they were "dying very fast and no provision for the Men, so that they must perish to Death." If no provisions came by March 25, the garrison would have to abandon the fort.³⁶ On March 14, Mercer warned that the scurvy decreased numbers daily, and only a few days' food remained. He begged Captain Williams, commandant at the Carrying Place, to send provisions "quick as Lightening." Luckily Williams had just despatched thirteen loaded bateaux for Oswego, which arrived the next day.³⁷ Finally recognizing the enormity of the problem, Shirley hired two thousand bateauxmen to supply Oswego and placed them under the command of John Bradstreet, the Nova Scotian who had first proposed the 1745 campaign against Louisbourg. For many this initiative came too late, the "men that Compos'd the Garrison in the Winter being mostly dead," according to Captain Vickers.³⁸

The fact that the officers possessed no money at the post with which to pay the troops exacerbated the situation at Oswego. On February 22, Mercer reported that the regiment had not been paid since October 24.³⁹ Furthermore, soldiers had not received the additional wages earned for performing extraordinary work. Hired laborers and artisans, many recruited in New England and New York, originally performed much of the work at Oswego and along its supply line.⁴⁰ But difficulty in attracting and retaining sufficient civil workers to this war zone meant that a deficit of manpower always existed, which officers increasingly expected their troops to make good, despite the lack of money.⁴¹ This [situation] forced Shirley in January to print promisary notes inscribed "This Bill to pass current within the Garrison of Oswego, for One Spanish Dollar," with redemption promised by April 24. Major Craven, the regimental paymaster, sent $4,150 of these notes to Oswego, but Mercer refused to accept them as currency. When the subsistence money finally arrived at the Carrying Place on July 3, Craven did not want to risk sending it up to Oswego for fear of enemy attack. At that time, Mercer informed Shirley that he feared the garrison endangerd by "the discontent of the Troops" due to "the want of their pay for this Eight Months past."⁴²

If pinched bellies, scurvy, and empty wallets did not suffice, enemy attack also threatened the soldiers. Although the climate made winter campaigns unusual in this region, in late January two French prisoners reported the readying of a major expedition in Montreal against the British forts. In early March, Oswegatchie Indians captured ten troops from Pepperrell's regiment on the east side of the river at Oswego. Soon thereafter, the Iroquois reported a French and Indian presence in the region.⁴³ One such party, led by Monsieur de Léry, lieutenant in the French colonial troops, settled on attacking the fort situated at the transhipment point on Wood Creek four miles from the Carrying Place, named Fort Bull after its commander Lieutenant Bull, which contained a great amount of provisions and ammunition. On March 27, Captain Williams reported from German Flats that bateauxmen encountered a party of Indians a mile away. He sent out a sergeant and twenty men to investigate and within ten minutes he heard gunfire. Only two men returned. Firing also came from Fort Bull, manned by a detachment of Captain Littlehale's company of the 50th Regiment. The next day, Williams reported that the fort had fallen, and five scalped corpses discovered there, among them Lieutenant Bull. As soon as he received news of the attack, William Johnson went to Wood Creek with five hundred militiamen and Indians, and "found within the Fort twenty three Soldiers, two women, and one Battoe Man, Some burn'd almost to Ashes, others most Inhumanly Butchered, and all Scalped," while three other soldiers were scalped outside the fort. The French account did not mention the scalping nor alleged cannibalism, and attributed the burning to a magazine catching fire, but did acknowledge their soldiers "put everyone to the sword that they could lay hands on."⁴⁴

The sack of Fort Bull constituted the opening strike to months of raids on the Oswego corridor. On April 6, native scouts brought intelligence of a force of one thousand French and Indians in the area of Oswego with another five hundred on the way from Niagara, while raiding parties were above German Flats. Mercer demanded the supplying and reinforcing of Oswego, yet bateaux moved slowly upriver, fearing "the Enemys Schulking parties."⁴⁵ The next day, an engagement near Fort Ontario on the east side of the river cost the British four men. Mercer wrote that they had "been much infested with Scouting Parties of Indians, by whome we have lost five Men, four of them Carried off Prisoners and the fifth scalp'd under the Guns of Fort Ontario at 10 O'Clock in the Morning."⁴⁶

Soldiers at Oswego weakly faced such sustained incursions, given the winter they had endured, and the continuing poor conditions. Bateauxmen, frightened by what had happened at Wood Creek, refused to go there or to Oswego without a guard, and the army placed a detachment of the 44th Regiment on this duty. Furthermore, most men who transhipped goods with horses and slays were so discontented because they had not received money due them from the year before that they would not go up to the Carrying Place.⁴⁷ Safe in Boston, Shirley finally took the initiative, ordering the reinforcement of Schenectady to five hundred men and the Carrying Place to four hundred. Several days later, having heard from Bradstreet that Oswego lay besieged for four days, he ordered Lt. Col. Thomas Gage, the British officer who would become commander-in-chief of the army in America at war's end, to march five hundred men of the 44th and 48th Regiments, and Colonel Schuyler's regiment to cover the provisions going to Oswego, at the same time instructing Johnson to gather all the Indians and militia at hand to join Gage.⁴⁸ By this time, Demler confided, the troops at Oswego "were so weak in the Garrison that the Indians Came and Scalpt and killed the People before us, and we had not men enough to pursue them properly." On May 11, ten carpenters died and three were taken in front of the fort. Those men physically able went out after they enemy but could only kill one.⁴⁹

By the spring of 1756, the dangers and dissatisfactions of the winter had decimated the force at Oswego. Captain Vickers' company of the 50th Regiment numbered 50 men in October; by May, 39 had died (a mortality rate of 78 percent) and 1 was taken prisoner. Such loss affected all the companies at Oswego, each losing 30 to 40 men, Vickers reported, "owing to bad Barracks, and want of Beds, which threw the men into Scurveys, and the Water which gave them Fluxes." Shirley recorded that his 50th Regiment, which numbered 1,019 in April 1755, lost 849 men: 361 died from illness at Oswego, sickness led to the discharge of 86, the enemy killed about 30, and 347 deserted.⁵⁰

Unbeknownst to these poor men, who already had fought and died for eight months, King George finally declared war on France in the middle of May, yet Shirley's day at the helm of the army in North America had ended. In late winter the ministry decided to strip him of command, the governorship of Jamaica promised as a sop for his loss, and to replace him with John Campbell, the Fouth Earl of Loudoun, a loyal officer to the Duke of Cumberland in the defeat of the Jacobite uprising of 1745 and a military man of a different stripe from Shirley, with whom he soon clashed.⁵¹ Loudoun would not arrive until July, however—too late to protect weakened Oswego.

Lord Loudoun. Engraving bound into Irving's Life of Washington, Guild Library, MHS.

In his record from that May, George Demler summarized the problems compromising Oswego's battle readiness. Troops could not fire the cannons at Old Fort Oswego because the stone in its outer wall had become loose and cracked. Cannon and mortars stood ready on a breastwork made of fascines and earth in front of the incomplete hornwork, but this artillery would have to be brought into the old fort to protect them from enemy capture. Meanwhile, the lack of manpower had doomed the defences of the new Fort George: an incomplete three-foot wall stood behind a "protective" ditch only three feet deep. The want of ramparts rendered the barracks built inside useless. Engineer Patrick Mackellar concurred with Demler's assessment of the two forts' defensive failings. Furthermore, while Fort Ontario on the east side of the river was stoutly made of timbers, it was poorly planned, with only loopholes for cannon. Nonetheless, Mercer and his officers, convinced that no siege threatened, decided that construction of shipping should take precedence. The weakness and sickness of the force precluded much work on the land defences.⁵²

Help was on the way, however. On May 14, Captain Bradstreet arrived with bateaux laden with provisions and about 150 recruits; another 200 came on May 25, when Schuyler also brought 110 men for his company. The garrison welcomed the arrival of the provisions with open arms according to Stephen Cross, a carpenter from Newburyport: "the officers and Soldiers of the Garison ... having been all on S[h]ort allowance, and for some months, only one pint of Flower, put Litely in. and half a Pound of Pork a day, which Greatly Reduced their Bodies and Spirits, and having had for Several Months been verry Sickley, had Reduced their Number, to see Such A Number of Men Come with 3000 Barrells of Provisions to their Relief, almost Put them into an extacy of Joy."⁵³

The ecstasy did not last long, however, as provisions did not fill one's wallet. "The Poor Soldiers of both Regiments have not Received any pay from the 24th of October 1755," Demler reported in late May. In July, Mercer informed Shirley that "the discontent of the Troops" endangered the garrison. Their grievances stemmed from "first the want of their pay for this Eight Months past, the reduction of the price of Labour, and the witholding from them any allowance of Rum, which every man here the Army Excepted enjoy." He blamed the first on the neglect of the paymasters, the second on Shirley's order to reduce wages to 6d., and the last on insufficient quantities of rum in store. These complaints, combined with "the annonimus threatnings to desert if regard is not paid to what they call their Just complaints," heightened his anxiety. A council of the field officers decided the works could not extend beyond July 17 because of lack of money to pay wages to the workmen. Eleven men had deserted recently from the 50th, and fourteen the past two days from the 51st.⁵⁴

On July 19, however, when the ship carpenters and other artisans threatened to quit Oswego, Mercer ordered them impressed into His Majesty's Service to work as long as necessary at their usual rates, and any craftsmen caught leaving Oswego without a pass were to be returned there. Carpenters and sawyers numbered 130 and seamen 120 at Oswego about this time. Several days later, Mercer reported that he had employed several overseers and most of the troops not on duty in strengthening their works. The colonel "Candidly Acknowledges to them our want of Cash at present, either to Pay what is due, or may become so ... but have Engaged my word of honor to see it Punctually done." He also "for the Sake of their Healths thought it necessary to Allow the Labourers Rum" and took possession of the traders' liquor to do so. To compound the problem, Bradstreet warned that he could not move any more provisions up to Oswego until he had money to pay the bateauxmen.⁵⁵

Coerced, unpaid labor naturally provoked more discontent, and desertion again picked up. Recent recruits received part of the blame. Vickers characterized them as "very bad, a great many of them Spoke French, and were the People that inveigled the men to desert."⁵⁶ Some officers reported that an Irish brigade fought with the French forces, and Lord Loudoun wrote that "they Scattered letters all round Oswego this last spring, promising great Rewards, to any soldier, that would come over to them, which drew Great Numbers of the Irish Recruits, from the two Regiments there, which were mostly Roman Catholicks." With the omnipresent problems of provisioning and pay there thus combined the threat of subversion, as deserters carried word to the French of the depleted garrison and delapidated fortifications of Oswego.⁵⁷

Stirring the internal turmoil at Oswego was the incessant threat of Indian attack. Stephen Cross, the Newburyport carpenter, noted that "the Woods Round the Forts, was Constantly infested by the Enemy."⁵⁸ On May 17, Indians killed Lieutenant Blair and a soldier from the 51st and "Mortaly Wounded" 2 others. A week later, bateauxmen came under attack forty yards from town, 4 of whom died. Two men perished during an attack in the woods on May 29. One June 16, about 150 Indians attacked a bateaux guard of a sergeant, a corporal, and 12 men, and only 2 privates escaped. Nine days later, a whale boat full of Schuyler's New Jersey men fell captive two days thereafter to the French, who took one of the schooners. Indians fired on sentries on June 1 and 5, and on June 16 the enemy killed a sergeant and 4 sentries and wounded 2 soldiers on the west side of the river, while on the east Fort Ontario was fired upon. Moreover, Oswego's sailing vessels clashed with the enemy on the lake and shoreline on June 25 and 27. Unworried, the officers held "a Barbacue and high frolick" for themselves in the midst of this carnage.⁵⁹ But the fighting escalated on July 1, when the enemy attacked Bradstreet's bateaux on their way to Oswego, killing 2 men. Two days later on their return trip upriver, 600 French and Indians attacked 250 bateauxmen eleven miles from Oswego. The British took refuge on an island, from which they resisted repeated assaults. The French finally broke, and Bradstreet gave chase. The small victory cost the British 20 dead and 24 wounded.⁶⁰

Debilitated by disaffection and decimated by disease, desertion, and death, the military might at Oswego, always at best feeble, grew increasingly unmanned. In June, the men fit for duty amounted to only 266 of the 50th, 325 of the 51st, 164 of Schuyler's, and 18 of the military train—a total of 773. This depletion forced Mercer to withdraw the detachment from Fort George, it being indefensible with a small number of men if attacked. Shirley's and Schuyler's men camped within the works of the old fort, and Pepperrell's in Fort Ontario. Reinforcements increased numbers by the end of July to 449 rank-and-file effectives and 134 sick for the 50th, and 532 healthy and 95 unfit for the 51st, for a total of 1,031 fighting men and 229 ineffectives. Nonetheless, the garrison continued to lose men. From July 24 to August 14, the 50th reported 6 men dead, 1 discharged, 9 deserted, and 1 shot for desertion, and the 51st returned 13 dead, 2 deserted, 4 killed by the enemy, and 1 shot for desertion.⁶¹ Meanwhile, plans to bring the 44th Regiment up to Oswego and to discharge the unfit troops seem to have faltered on the same old problem: a lack of supplies.⁶²

While conflict with the French reached a climax, Lord Loudoun arrived in America and declared war.⁶³ Concurrently, the internal war between soldiers and officers at Oswego continued, as desertion invoked repression. The last general court martial fell on August 4, ten days before the fall of Oswego. Jeremiah Sullivan of the 50th, who had deserted on June 15, 1755, during the march from Boston to Providence, was found in June 1756 in Schuyler's regiment. Tried for desertion, he received a thousand lashes. Hugh Kennedy deserted the 51st from Fort Ontario on June 4; captured July 4, he received a sentence of a thousand strokes on August 4.⁶⁴ Abner Tyler, a grenadier in the 50th, absconded from Burnet's Field on June 8 and was caught three days later. Likewise, Daniel Bane of the 51st, who had deserted in August 1755 from Schenectady, was turned in by people looking for a reward at Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The two American soldiers, Tyler and Bane, received death sentences as an example to others. On Sunday, August 8, the chaplain of the 50th preached from Psalms 89:48 for the men facing execution the next day. "Early this morning," recorded Stephen Cross, "Observed Peperals Regt on the other Side the River, were all Mustered and Drawn up in order; soon heard Some Guns which Put an end to the Life of Daniell Been Belonging to Kingston in N H.... Soon after Shirley's Regt was Mustered and drawn up, when Abner Tyler of Uxbridge, was Brought out and Shot, at the head of the Regiment."⁶⁵ Such mournful procceedings must have further demoralized a garrison that felt the French and Indian noose drawing ever tighter around its collective neck.

August 1756:
"Plunder, Havock, and Devastation"

The French deemed Oswego, or Chouaguen as they knew it, an important post, "the key of the Upper country by its communication with the Five Nations, Albany and the River Hudson." The governor of New France, Pierre de Rigaud de Vaudreuil, feared the naval vessels abuilding there, which promised Britain control of the lakes. The Marquis de Montcalm, who arrived in Canada in May 1756 to take field command of the French forces, commanded the expedition of 3,000 men (1,300 regulars, the rest composed of colonial soldiers, militia, and Indians), despite his reservations about the undertaking and the Canadien troops and native allies. The force deployed at Niaouré Bay, about fifteen leagues from Oswego, in early August, then moved in stages along the coast largely under the cover of night.

On August 11, the French invested Fort Ontario on the east side of the river.⁶⁶ Three hundred of Pepperrell's men manned the fort—actually little more than a stockade—and eight cannon gaurded the doors, which had to be opened when the cannon fired. The French began the attack with small arms fire, then brought cannons to bear. On the evening of August 12, the French trenches came within a pistol shot of Fort Ontario, and at 2 p.m. the next day the garrison, with three men dead, quit the fort after having spiked the cannons and crossed the river. Mercer sent all of Pepperrell's men and a hundred of Shirley's to reinforce Schuyler's detachment at Fort George, a building deserted since the spring and in use as a cattle pen.⁶⁷

The French built an artillery battery on the river's eastern cliff to fire down into Fort Oswego; the British responded with twelve guns and four mortars. On August 14, at about 7 a.m., the French and Indians forded the river. Soon, a cannon shot killed Lieutenant Colonel Mercer, and Captain Littlehales, assuming command, ordered the men from Fort George to the unfinished hornworks in front of Fort Oswego. They received fire as they made the shift and 2 men died, while about 20 perished within the hornworks.⁶⁸ The enemy encircled Fort Oswego so "that there was no part of their camp where they were not exposed, even to the buckle of their shoe." A British council of war decided to seek terms of surrender, "hoisted the white flag and surrendered prisoners of war." Under the terms of surrender, the victorious French and Indians would treat the garrison with humanity according to the conventions of war. The British would retain their baggage and be carried as prisoners of war to Montreal until exchanged.⁶⁹ The French had only 30 men killed or wounded; the British casualties numbered 150 and prisoners upwards of 1,700.⁷⁰

The fall of Oswego seems to have acted as a release for the soldiers—some of whom had gone without adequate food or much pay for a year, while being subjected to the psychological terror of Indian warfare—and a carnival of sorts erupted. The prisoners, ordered into Fort Ontario by the French, nonetheless first headed for the storehouses to liberate the rum. Once safely inside the fort, as Stephen Cross confided to his journal, many prisoners "began to Drink and Soon Got Intoxicated, and Soon began fighting, with oneanother; while others Singing, Dancing, Hollowing, and Cahooping, that it appeared more like Bedlam, than A Prison."⁷¹ This frolic went on until midnight, while outside a more serious celebration unwound.

Despite the terms of surrender promising safe passage for the garrison and its baggage, Indians attacked some prisoners and plundered their possessions. Peter Williamson later recounted

the Plunder, Havock, and Devastation, made by the French, as well as the Savages, who rush'd in by Thousands.... [T]hey all behav'd more like infernal Beings, than Creatures in human Shapes. In short, not contented with surrendering upon the above Terms, they scalp'd and kill'd all the Sick and wounded in the Hospitals; mangling, butchering, cutting, and chopping off their Heads, Arms, Legs, &c. with the utmost Cruelty, notwithstanding the repeated Intercessions of the defenceless Sick and Wounded for Mercy; which were, indeed, piteous enough to have soften'd any Heart possessed of the minutest Particle of Humanity!⁷²

Stephen Cross gave a more measured account of the attack in his journal. As soon as the Indians got into Fort Oswego, "they went Searching for Rum; which they found, and began to Drink, when they Soon became like so Many hel Hounds." They then turned their attentions to "all the Sick, and Wounded, and those who instid, of Coming directly over the River to the French Regular troops, went to the Setlers, and traders Houses, and Intoxicated themSelves with liquor." "After Murdering, and Scalping, all they Could find on that Side," he reported, they crossed the river and attempted to force the gates of Fort Ontario, where the remaining British prisoners were ensconced, but the French troops kept them off. Thus, "all those who obeyed the orders, and Crossed the River, to the French Army, was verry well Used."⁷³ A French journal of the siege admitted that the Indians killed some soldiers "in attempting to escape into the woods." One French officer acknowledged "the horrors and cruelties" of the Indians, but another more candidly recorded in a letter that the Indians "have supped full of horrors; and have massacred more than 100 persons who were included in the capitulation, without our being able to prevent them or having the right of remonstrating with them. These species of animal, whom I look on as mad dogs, are, when drunk, beyond control." Montcalm merely said that the Indians wished to violate the capitulation, that it would cost millions of livres to preserve their affections, and that they had committed "a little plunder, which it was even necessary to tolerate. We are not in Europe, and it is very difficult to prevent 300 Indians and 1500 Canadians regaling themselves."⁷⁴ Thus, the custom of the country and of French-Indian martial relations explained the sack of Oswego.⁷⁵

When the dust settled, the French destroyed Oswego's defences and, as promised under the terms of surrender, conveyed the surviving prisoners to Montreal, where the populace sang Te Deum and paraded the fort's captured flags through the streets (and later ensconced them in the parish church). A witness to the British entry to the city described the rank and file as "in a most tatter'd condition, all on their backs not worth a shilling, and many of them without shoes or stockings." The French sent others to Quebec, where they kept them in jail for a month.⁷⁶ Preparations began immediately to remove the prisoners to either England or France, and by December four to five hundred of these prisoners had already arrived in England. The removal to Europe hardly constituted a pleasure trip. Peter Williamson "almost starved for want of Provisions" in the journey to England. Even upon the prisoners' arrival in Plymouth on November 6, the fact that no cartel yet existed with the French forced them to remain aboard the French ship "in a miserable Condition" for eight days. Williamson wintered locally, then the army discharged him because of a hand injury. He received only 6s. to carry him the eight hundred miles to his home city of Aberdeen in the north of Scotland.⁷⁷

Williamson made it home; others had less good fortune. Many were sent to France, including 249 rank and file, 21 sergeants, and 24 officers and officials from the 51st alone. The French expatriated civilian workers also, Stephen Cross among them. He recounted the cramped six-week voyage across the Atlantic, their quarters the space above the water casks in the hold, which at midship was only four feet high, "and so Small that we had not room for us all to lydow Except lying Partly one on the other." There followed months of captivity in France.⁷⁸ As late as September 1757, however, there remained in Canada 3 officers, 1 drummer, 1 sergeant, and 30 privates from the 51st ; 139 privates from the 50th; and 6 officers and officials and 193 rank-and-file New Jerseymen; 46 New York soldiers; and assorted carpenters, sailors, bateauxmen, and other camp followers.⁷⁹

The Aftermath:
"a Trading Voiage in place of a Military Expedition"

The fall of Oswego imperiled the British who remained on the New York frontier. Old Fort Williams at the Carrying Place, described as "a most despicable thing and not tenable," offered little protection, while the half-finished new fort would prove too small when completed. The detachments from the 50th and 51st regiments and the provincial forces that guarded the supply route to Oswego, between four and five hundred men, constituted the front line against the French, but they struck an officer as "indifferent as to their appearance, and much worse as to their Discipline." Thus the commander-in-chief decided to destroy the forts at Carrying Place and withdraw all troops to German Flats, which provided a more secure frontier post.⁸⁰

Coming as it did on the heels of Braddock's fiasco and undermining Loudoun's command from the first, the debacle prompted considerable finger-pointing. Knowing that most censure was likely to settle upon him and his contractors, Shirley devised a defense. First, he claimed that he had left Oswego in good shape in late October 1755—a patent falsehood—and insinuated that Colonel Mercer and Patrick Mackellar, the engineer, had allowed the defenses to deteriorate. Neither man could defend himself, the former being dead and the latter a prisoner in New France. Second, he blamed the fluxes and scurvy for weakening the garrison and delaying the works, without addressing their cause: poor provisioning. Third, he attributed the supply problems to low water in the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers (by all accounts true), a lack of bateauxmen (due to problems with pay and the threat of enemy attack), and the resulting high costs of transportation. Finally, Shirley denied that he failed to keep Loudoun apprised of the perilous situation at the lake and implicitly blamed him for not having the 44th and 48th Regiments prepared to march until August 12, thus forcing Bradstreet to delay provisions and reinforcements for Oswego.⁸¹

Loudoun, also seeking to insulate himself from the fallout, settled on Shirley as his scapegoat. He claimed Shirley had never informed him of Oswego's weakness. Furthermore, he argued, much of the provisions Shirley's contractors sent to Oswego arrived "damaged and Rotten; some originally bad, and others, from want of Care, and being left lying in the sun" [because] the contractors had not built proper magazines. Loudoun voiced even more damning suspicions that the handling of supplies by Shirley's contractors evinced corrupt practices. This suspicion became the heart of the attack. Even before the fall of Oswego, rumors about the contractors' malfeasance had led the newly arrived commander-in-chief to halt payment on all unpaid warrants issued by Shirley. Loudoun confided his suspicions to the Duke of Cumberland and wrote to Henry Fox (the representative of Newcastle's ministry in the Commons) that, instead of carrying satisfactory supplies for the garrison, Shirley's contractors filled the post with "Merchants goods, sent up there by his Friends, to dispose of to the Indians," and these in "the Kings Batteaus, at the Kings Expense." Such "carrying Private goods to Oswego," affirmed Loudoun, "was one of the Reasons, of the Troops last summer, being in such want, and the Garrison being starved in the Winter." Loudoun's attack on Shirley gained strength as autumn set in when he asserted that "the distress at Oswego last Year, was wholly owing to Mr. Shirleys going on a Trading Voiage in place of a Military Expedition." The desertion, diseases, and deaths of the garrison "were on the one hand owing, to their want of Provisions; and on the other hand, from the want of Barracks and Bedding; most of them having lain in bark hutts, with out the Garrison, all Winter." The soldiers' "want of Pay" from October the year before compounded the situtation. These "Military Crimes," Loudon charged, deserved a general court martial.⁸²

William Williams, commander at the Great Carrying Place and therefore closer to the scene, offered a number of reasons for the lack of provisions at Oswego in 1755–1756. First, as he charged, the contractors did not get enough supplies to Schenectady before farmers became involved in their own work, after which they could not work at transportation. Second, the lack of manpower and unwillingness of people to go beyond the Carrying Place slowed the process. Third, owners were reluctant to hire out their horses due to the contractors' failure to pay or insistence on paying in goods rather than money. Fourth, the bateauxmen also resented not getting paid. Finally, the uncontrolled consumption of the provisions by the bateauxmen and Indians ate away at resources. Williams also acknowledged, however, that only sixty-seven of the boats to Oswego actually bore supplies for the garrison, while the other bateaux ferried goods intended as presents for Indian allies. The commissary then took advantage of the soldiers' wants by selling at exorbitant rates. Such exploitation, he asserted, caused desertions to the French.⁸³

The contention that carriers overcharged and carried private commercial goods masquerading as government stores is supported by an examination of one partnership's records.⁸⁴ Furthermore, such profiteering contaminated participants other than the traders, even the officer ranks. Captain Williams himself reportedly bartered rum to Indians at the Carrying Place in the spring and sold provisions to slaymen. He claimed to have only sold liquor from leaky barrels according to Shirley's order, but others believed he profited from these transactions.⁸⁵

Oliver De Lancey summed up the case against Shirley. He pointed out that among the contractors Shirley owned Erving as a son-in-law and Alexander as a secretary, and that such nepotism opened the door to varied peculations.⁸⁶ Historians have defended the contractors against De Lancey's charges, but their arguments appear unsatisfactory in light of all the evidence to the contrary.⁸⁷ Even if the charges proved largely untrue, the contractors and Shirley were nonetheless guilty of incompetence, in that they did not perform the terms of their contract: to supply Oswego so as to make it defensible. The Duke of Cumberland considered hauling Shirley, "that notorious Criminal," before a court martial, but the government pursued only a court of enquiry, which proved inconclusive. Shirley's accounts were so tangled, however, that the Treasury did not close his books until 1763.⁸⁸

THOSE WHO HAD ACTUALLY done the suffering at Oswego, the soldiers, had a second, more enduring complaint that the command structure (and later historians) largely ignored in the aftermath: the army's failure to pay them for their service. They carried this grievance with them to New France, on to England or France, and back again to the New World.

Soldiers drafted into the 1st Regiment could not wait to land upon their return to North America in 1757, petitioning from on board their transport ship that "your Supplicants sheweth we have not Received as Pay from the 24th of October 1755 to the 24th of August following, wherefore we beg your Excellency to see us rectified in this our humble address." This appears to have had no effect, for they [applied] again from Halifax, at which time they also noted that there was "likewise remaining in arrear to the major part of us one whole Years compleat Clothing." The army owed these men a significant amount: £753.4.10 in back pay (mostly for the October 1755 to August 1756 period) to the 130 soldiers from Pepperrell's regiment who had since joined the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Americans, or an average of just under £6 per man.⁸⁹ Their commanders were reluctant to make restitution, however. Captain Vickers of the 50th claimed that the soldiers from his regiment had little pay coming to them as officers had bought them chocolate, tea, sugar, coffee, shirts, shoes, and stockings from the commissary.⁹⁰

In an attempt to silence the grumblings at Halifax, Loudoun ordered read before the men a report of Major Craven, paymaster of Pepperrell's regiment, that the soldiers late of the two American regiments had already received their pay and clothing. Outraged, the troops petitioned their general to "utterly Deny" this assertion and forced Craven to admit the army had neither paid these men for the period October 1755 to August 1756 nor had dispersed their clothing for 1756. The matter remained unsettled, however, as Craven required certificates for pay before he would release the money. Not all the men possessed these, because their officers remained in France and could not supply copies. Loudoun was asked to advance them two months' pay until the release of their officers.⁹¹ On August 7, the army sent £752.10.6 to Craven to pay the former soldiers of Pepperrell's regiment in Halifax, an act considered no only "Just & Equitable" but also necessary to prevent "discontent" among the troops. The men received their arrears, minus any sums advanced to them for necessaries. Loudoun suspected that the troops received more than their due, but he had no proof and felt compelled to order their payment, "or they would probably have mutinied." The army desired that Craven would make his final account by December 1757 and that it would hear no more of "those two poor unlucky Regiments."⁹² Duty at Oswego, if nothing else, had taught these "unlucky" soldiers to voice their grievances loud and long—this time with more success.

Soldiers did not beg alone their due. The civilian workmen and craftsmen who had remained at Oswego until its fall, many of whom the French took as prisoners, also had wages coming. Laborers employed in making roads and clearing Wood Creek, "Very often in the water to our midle in Frozen mornings," had suffered enemy attack, "Which Made Some Widows; & Some of Us Wounded that is Not able to work one Days work since." Despite these hardships, they claimed never to have received their pay and asked Loudoun in 1757 for the "wages which by the Sweat of our Bodys & at the Peril of our Lives we honestly Earned." Their minister in Boston endorsed the request and claimed the congregation had to support the men's wives and children to prevent their begging. Artificers contracted to build boats at Oswego, paid for their time up until their capture on the fort's fall, had received no wages for their time as prisoners or reimbursement for their lost tools and arms as per their contract. Likewise, wives of some tradesmen taken at Oswego had received portions of their husbands' wages, but once Oswego fell they received no further wages nor the amount due on earlier wages, though their contracts guaranteed continued payment in case of capture. They asked for relief so as not to become "a Burden to our fellow Citizens."⁹³ The military disaster at the lake thus not only rippled across the Atlantic but along the seaboard communities of the colonies.

The loss of Oswego demoralised the army. Unlike the defeat of Braddock, after which the English regiments of the 44th and 48th continued in existence, the army moved to break the two American regiments and to redistribute their officers and men to other battalions. Loudoun informed the governor of Nova Scotia in February 1757 that 300 men from the 50th and 51st should be put into the Halifax regiments, with the remainder and all noncommissioned officers going into the Royal Americans. He did express the fear that if "the Men, who have not been much used to military Discipline, should resist being drafted, and you have no Troope to enforce your Orders, in which case we might run a Risk of loosing the men." If they did not go peacefully, Loudoun promised a battalion "to put his majesty's Orders in Execution in Stile they cannot Resist."⁹⁴ The fear of discontent amongst the soldiers from the disbanded American regiments was not misplaced, but manifested itself in desertion rather than mutiny. In March 1757, for example, of 436 privates from the 50th and 51st living in Boston 128 (29.4 percent) were deserters.⁹⁵ It appears that many of the deserters from these regiments had absconded during the siege of Oswego or from the other detachments along the supply route, for, according to one report, more than 20 deserters had been living in Sheffield concealed by the inhabitants.

Loudoun sought to console himself with the loss of Oswego by discounting the men of the 50th and 51st Regiments, who he claimed "never were Soldiers."⁹⁶ Officers in other regiments doubted that such drafts from the broken 50th and 51st, shamed by defeat and tainted by desertion, would make a positive addition to their ranks. A captain in the Royal Americans feared the "danger of others being corrupted by their Want of Principalls." There were some good men and noncommissioned officers amongst them, he admitted, "but the Majority Right New England Men, tho' that Levelling Spirit shou'd either be broke, or the Town drain'd of every fathom of Whip Cord, were I to continue here with them any time."⁹⁷ Other veterans of Oswego, worn out by their hard service and captivity or bereft of all military equipment, caused their new regiments various headaches. Drafts who arrived in Halifax "almost naked" led Loudoun to demand of Shirley and Pepperrell the complete set of clothing owed the men in June 1756. The 1st Regiment had to discharge as invalids forty-five men drafted from the American regiments in England, tacit evidence of the rigors of the Oswego campaign.⁹⁸

Fresh recruits drawn largely from the colonies they may have been, but increasingly the British army relied on such troops as it expanded its war effort in the New World from 1757, in part as a reaction to the loss of Oswego. It scoured new bodies from the margins of Britain—in Ireland and Scotland, Germanic principalities, and American colonies—and gradually forged them into a coherent fighting force. The American regiments had failed at Oswego, but so had the English at Monongahela. Not until 1758, when some 20,000 regular troops garrisoned North America, would the army begin to turn the tide against the enemy. Whether European or colonial, regular or provincial, it took experience to make good soldiers and a sufficient support network to make a battle-ready army. Oswego provided an object lesson of these axioms, but one that the British army ultimately learned as Britons and "Americans" pooled their resources and expertise to craft a fighting force that would secure and enlarge the British Empire in North America.

The story of Oswego and its defenders dragged on, as various people added their own personal postscripts. Shirley did not receive his plum post in Jamaica but instead received the lesser governorship of the Bahamas in late 1758. On his voyage there he was shipwrecked on the coast of his new government and had to make a humiliating wet landing, a fitting sequel to his attempted expedition to Niagara.⁹⁹ For the soldiers of Oswego, less irony and more pathos characterized the telling of their tales. In August 1759, Reverend Henry True visited the ruins of Oswego, where he saw "many inscriptions on stones where many corpses have been reposited." He could barely read the names carved therein.¹⁰⁰ Yet many survived the traumatic year at the lake, and their experiences, albeit partially effaced from the historical record, reappear in fragments. David Sanders finally came home to Stanford in the spring of 1758, three years after enlisting for the expedition against Niagara. He never saw the falls, but he managed to tour the Anglo-American world from Oswego to England then to Louisbourg, the most recent addition to the empire. Richard Williams made a more internal journey, recrossing cultural frontiers that altered him physically and, apparently, psychologically. He likewise never reached Niagara, but when discovered in 1757 he again was about to immerse himself in the wilderness.

Other men captured by or who had deserted to the enemy trickled back over the years. William Hair of Brookfield, a member of Shirley's regiment also taken at Oswego, fled Canada with two other English captives shortly thereafter with scanty provisions. Hair and one of the others finally could go no further, so the third man went on without them, leaving them with only a few berries. He feared "they are perysh'd in the Wilderness." Coffee Oxfurd of the 50th, taken at Oswego, made his escape from Canada in the summer of 1757. He no doubt felt happy at finding £3.6.6. owed to him in back pay, but perhaps less enthusiastic at being drafted into the Royal Americans during his enforced absence.¹⁰¹ Perhaps the final unearthing of an Oswego veteran came in 1764, when "a certain German" named Christopher Strobel resurfaced in jail in Albany. Strobel confessed he had deserted from Pepperrell's regiment at Oswego in 1756 and had lived with the Seneca ever since. A witness against Strobel claimed he had said "that he would Return again to the Indians again as soon as it was peace that he was used better by the Indians than by the Christians."¹⁰²

While an unusual case, Strobel's experience does reflect on that of the many soldiers who served at Oswego, where "Christian" officers and contractors treated them as "savages" meriting neither the pay nor food that was their right. Like soldiers everywhere, when treated unfairly they acted insubordinately, deserted, and mutinied. Such bloodymindedness did not only characterize colonial troops, minutemen before their time, but constituted the residue of power left common people caught in the exceptional circumstances of fullscale warfare. David Sanders, Richard Williams, and the many other troops at Oswego, despite Loudoun's denial, had the misfortune to be soldiers in a poorly thought out, criminally unsupported campaign that brought death, disease, and the loss of freedom. They fought a war as much against their officers and the army contractors as against the French and Indians.

PETER WAY, who has just taken up the Chair of the Department of History at Bowling Green State University, is writing a social history of the British army in America during the Seven Years' War. His first book, Common Labour: Workers and the Digging of North American Canals, 1760–1860, won the Organization of American Historians' 1994 Frederick Jackson Turner Prize.

NOTES

I would like to thank the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston and the Huntington Library of San Marino, California, for funding and the use of their facilities, as well as the British Academy and the University of Sussex for their financial support.

^1. David Sanders, Diary, 1755–1759, Miscellaneous Collections, Typescript, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston [hereafter MHS].

^2. Deposition of Richard Williams, 5 Feb. 1757, no. 2780, box 62, Loudoun Papers, North American Series, Huntington Library, San Marino, California [hereafter in form LO2780/62]; Examination of James Swan concerning Richard Williams, 5 Jan. 1758, LO5344/115.

^3. For literature on provincials, see John Ferling, "Soldiers for Virginia: Who Served in the French and Indian War?" Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 94, no. 3 (July 1986): 307–328; Harold E. Selesky, War and Society in Colonial Connecticut (New Haven, 1990); James Titus, The Old Dominion at War: Society, Politics, and Warfare in Late Colonial Virginia (Columbia, S.C., 1991); R. S. Stephenson, "Pennsylvania Provincial Soldiers in the Seven Years' War," Pennsylvania History 62, no. 2 (Spring 1995): 197–212.

^4. Fred Anderson, in particular, has sought to differentiate provincials from the redcoats, offering their experience as a specific manifestation of New England culture and history. Provincial military service offered economic opportunity to young single males, and was informed by a contractual model of military relations that balanced the rights of privates with that of officers and the state, themes he believes anticipate the Revolutionary struggle. Fred Anderson, A People's Army: Massachusetts Soldiers and Society in the Seven Years' War (Chapel Hill, 1984), and Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754–1766 (New York, 2000), 145–147, 219–221, 370–372, 685.

^5. Colonials accounted for about 5 percent of the regular army in July 1757, 10 percent if European-born residents of the colonies are included. These figures are based on records of nativity for 13,083 soldiers taken from regimental returns: 683 4.9 percent) were born in the colonies, and 747 (5.4 percent) were "Foreigners" recruited in America. This probably underestimates colonial residents, as those born in England but enlisted in America likely were recorded as English. Regimental Returns: LO4011/no.1/90; LO6695/99; LO2533/no.4/90; LO2529/no.1/90; LO4012/no.1/90; LO1944/no.5/90; LO6616/88; LO1683/no.1/90; LO5661/85; LO1391/no.1/90; LO1384/no.2/90; LO3936/no.1/90; LO6639/89; LO1345/no.5- /90; LO6616/88; LO4068/no.2/90.

^6. Theodore Thayer and John A. Schutz have been the main defenders of Shirley and his contractors, blaming their political opponents in New York, the De Lancey faction, for making the provisioning of Oswego extremely difficult, and rejecting allegations of financial peculation against them. See Thayer, "The Army Contractors for the Niagara Campaign, 1755–1756," William & Mary Quarterly, 3d. ser., vol. 14 (Jan. 1957): 31–46; and Schutz, William Shirley: King's Governor of Massachusetts (Chapel Hill, 1961), 191–192, 211–212, 215–216, 248–249; also, Anderson, Crucible of War, 88, 91, 110. Others have been less forgiving. Stanley McCrory Pargellis and Francis Jennings, while admitting that provisoning in this instance was particularly difficult and that contracting regularly invited profiteering, essentially concluded that Shirley and company were less effective than they should have been at the former activity and more successful than prudence allowed in the latter. See Pargellis, Lord Loudoun in North America (1933; Hamden, Conn., 1968), 160, 165; and Jennings, Empire of Fortune: Crowns, Colonies and Tribes in the Seven Years War in America (New York, 1988), 287.

^7. These regiments had first been raised in 1745 but were reduced after the war and the officers put on half pay.

^8. T[homas] Robinson, Circular to the Governors in North America, 26 Oct. 1754, LO503/11; Robinson to Shirley and Pepperell, 26 Oct. 1754, LO504/11; Shirley, Petition to King George II, [Jan. 1756], LO2591/59; Thayer, "Army Contractors," 31–32; Robinson to the Governors in North America, 23 Jan. 1755, LO545/12.

^9. [Robinson], Sketch for the Operations in North America, 16 Nov. 1754, LO510/11; George II, Secret Instructions for Edward Braddock, 25 Nov. 1754, LO514/11.

^10. Pepperrell to William Williams, 18 Feb. 1755, LO552/12; [Pepperrell], Recruiting Instructions, [1755], LO727/15; Schutz, William Shirley, 189–190. However, Stephen Cross, a carpenter with the expedition, complained of "Soldiers in Shirlies Regiment which had been Inlisted in some of the Southern Provinces of Scotch Irish and English and by their Manners and behaviour we Suppose were Convicts transported from their own Countery." "Journal of Stephen Cross of Newburyport, entitled 'Up to Ontario,' the Activities of Newburyport Shipbuilders in Canada in 1756," Essex Institute Historical Collections 76 (1940): 25.

^11. Men were paid £2 for a three-year enlistment, £2.10s. for five years, £3 for seven years, and £4 for life. Over a ten month period in 1754–1755, the 51st recruited 644 men at an average levy of £3.7s. A company from the 50th Regiment reported in 1756 that all corporals and drummers had enlisted for life, as had 4 of 5 sergeants and 99 privates, while only 5 men had signed on for three-year terms. Similarly, all the noncommissioned officers, drummers, and 107 of 110 privates of a company from the 51st Regiment were life recruits, the other 3 joining for three years. Pepperrell to Williams, 18 Feb. 1755, LO552/12; Capt. DeLancey's Company of the 51st Regiment, 18 Sept. 1756, LO1835/41. These figures are quite surprising, as the literature on the provincial regiments leads one to believe not only that New England recruits were loath to join the regulars but that they avoided enlisting for longer terms than by the campaign, that is annually.

^12. Braddock to Robinson, 19 Apr. 1755, LO572/12.

^13. Robinson to Shirley, 26 Aug. 1755, LO640/14; Schutz, William Shirley, 196–197; Anderson, Crucible of War, 88.

^14. Thayer, "Army Contractors," 32–39; and Schutz, William Shirley, 211–212; Anderson, Crucible of War, 88, 91; Jennings, Empire of Fortune, 162–163.

^15. William Hervey, The Journals of the Hon. William Hervey, in North America and Europe, from 1755 to 1814; with Order Books at Montreal, 1760–1763 (Bury St. Edmund's, 1906), 1–11; Peter Williamson, French and Indian Cruelty; Exemplified in the Life and Various Vicissitudes of Fortune, of Peter Williamson, a Disbanded Soldier (1757; New York, 1978), 49, 53; Shirley to Robinson, 11 Aug. 1755, LO622/13.

^16. Minutes of a Council of War held at Oswego, 18 Sept. 1755, LO649/13; Hervey, Journals, 12, 14.

^17. Anderson, Crucible of War, 110; Ian K. Steele, Warpaths: Invasions of North America (New York, 1994), 191; Hervey, Journals, 3, 4, 5, 7.

^18. War Office Papers, Courts Martial Records, Series 71, vol. 43, p. 155 [hereafter in form WO71/43/155], Public Records Office at Kew, London [hereafter PRO]. See also WO71/42/198–200, 204–207, 211–213, 235–236. On desertion in general, see Arthur N. Gilbert, "Why Men Deserted from the Eighteenth-Century English Army," Armed Forces and Society 6 (1980): 353–367.

^19. Williamson, French and Indian Cruelty, 54–55.

^20. WO71/42/230–238; Hervey, Journals, 13.

^21. Hervey, Journals, 14.

^22. Significantly, Thayer gets the date of this mutiny wrong, placing it in late September and attributing it to Shirley's request that soldiers work on the forts, thus exonnerating the contractors he is defending. Thayer, "Army Contractors," 40.

^23. A short pike typically carried by subordinate officers of the infantry.

^24. WO71/42/214–219, 223–230.

^25. In this regard, I adopt a "moral economy" model of such contractual thinking based on an understanding of military service as a labor contract, as opposed to Anderson's "covenantal" reading of New England history as the source of the lack of discipline amongst provincial troops. See Way, "Rebellion of the Regulars," and Anderson, Crucible of War, esp. 146–147.

^26. George Demler Report, 28 May 1756, LO1185/26.

^27. WO71/42/219–222.

^28. Shirley to Stephen Hopkins, Sept. 9, 1755, William Shirley Papers, Ms. N-180, MHS; Shirley to Robinson, 11 Aug. 1755, LO622/13; Minutes of a Council of War held at Oswego, 18 Sept. 1755, LO649/13; Minutes of a Council of War held at Oswego, 27 Sept. 1755, LO655/13.

^29. John Shirley to Governor Morris, 9 Sept. 1755, John Shirley Letters, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; Hervey, Journals, 14.

^30. WO71/42/239–243. Presumably it was these men who were pardoned on September 18, their officers perhaps fearing to exacerbate a dangerous situation. Hervey, Journals, 15.

^31. John Shirley to Morris, 8 Sept. 1755, John Shirley Letters, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

^32. John Shirley to Morris, Sept. 22, 25, 1755, in Pennsylvania Archives, ed. Samuel Hazard (Philadelphia, 1852), 2:424–425. A return of the 51st Regiment at Oswego in late October indicated that 454 rank and file were fit for service, 20 sick but present, and 67 sick in hospital; 1 had died and 2 discharged since the week before. Weekly return of the 51st Regiment of Foot, 24 Oct. 1755, LO664/14.

^33. Minutes of a Council of War held at Oswego, 18 Sept. 1755, LO649/14; Hervey, Journals, 16; Memorial of the Field Officers of Shirley's & Pepperell's regiments, [28 Sept. 1755], LO658/14.

^34. Williamson, French and Indian Cruelty, 59; Demler Report; Information of John Vickers, 5 Jan. 1757, LO2636/59.

^35. Mercer to Williams, 24 Jan. 1756, LO768/17; Demler Report; Information of Vickers; Demler Report.

^36. Demler Report; Francis Lewis to [anon.], 21 Feb. 1756, LO841/19; Mercer to Williams, 22 Feb. 1756, LO844/19; John Van Sice to Johnson, 6 Mar. 1756, LO883/19.

^37. Mercer to Williams, 14 Mar. 1756, LO931/20 and LO960/21; Williams to Johnson, 13 Mar. 1756, LO914/20.

^38. Jennings, Empire of Fortune, 289–290; Information of Vickers.

^39. Mercer to Williams, 22 Feb. 1756, LO844/19.

^40. In February 1756, for example, Shirley contracted with Philip Pettinger to provide carpenters and sawyers for Oswego. Their pay began at the time of leaving and continued until their return to New York City, at a rate of £5–10 New York currency per month, plus a soldier's ration. Articles of agreement between P.V.B. Livingston and Louis Morris, Jr., on behalf of Maj. Gen. Shirley, and Philip Pettinger et al., 2 Feb. 1756, LO796/18.

^41. Soldiers who worked on the storehouses at the Carrying Place on the Mohawk, for instance, were to receive 1s.6d. New York currency above their regular daily pay, while troops worked as bateauxmen in transporting provisions (at £4 NY per trip) and as horse drivers. And soldiers who helped clear the water passage between Schenectady and Oswego were allowed 6d. sterling a day. See William Alexander to Williams, 17 Oct. 1755, LO663/14; Alexander to Williams, 7 Sept. 1755, LO643/14; Shirley, Instructions to Capt. James Fairservice, [1 Mar. 1756], LO691/19; Shirley to Fairservice, Mar. 1756, LO702/19. Accounts for an eight-month period at the Carrying Place show that the army owed troops over £44 for work done. Twenty-eight soldiers employed as bateauxmen to Oswego earned £56 as a whole, but only received half that, while six soldiers who drove horses loaded with provisions at 12d. per day had £18 coming. Williams, Accounts from 22 Nov. 1755 to 10 June 1756, LO686/15.

^42. Charles Craven, Accounts of the 51st [Regiment], 23 Oct. 1755–3 July 1756, LO473/16; Representation of Major Craven, [Nov. 1756], LO6948/53; Mercer to Shirley, 2 July 1756, LO1279/28.

^43. Robt. Burton and John Bradstreet to Shirley, Jan. 23, 1756, in Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York; Procured in Holland, England and France [hereafter DRNY], ed. E. B. O'Callaghan (Albany, 1856), 7:39; Van Sice to Johnson, 6 Mar. 1756, LO883/19; Williams to Johnson, 13 Mar. 1756, LO914/20, 14 Mar. 1756, LO927/20, 18 Mar. 1756, LO948/21, 26 Mar. 1756, LO967/21.

^44. Capture of Fort Bull by M. Lery, in DRNY, 10:403–405; Williams To all that have His majesty's Service at Heart, 27 Mar. 1756, LO973/21; Information of Vickers; Johnson to Shirley, 3 Apr. 1756, LO1010/22; Capture of Fort Bull, 404–405.

^45. Mercer to Williams or Johnson, 6 Apr. 1756, LO1018/23; Thomas Falconer to Johnson, 7 Apr. 1756, LO1022/23.

^46. Mercer to Johnson, 7 Apr. 1756, LO1023/23; Mercer to Johnson, 16 Apr. 1756, LO1056/23.

^47. Bradstreet to Johnson, 14 Apr. 1756, LO1045/23; Bradstreet to Johnson, 17 Apr. 1756, LO1057/23; Hervey, Journals, 19.

^48. Shirley to Johnson, 17 Apr. 1756, LO1058/23; Shirley to Johnson, 21 Apr. 1756, LO1066/24.

^49. Demler Report; "Journal of Stephen Cross," 75:344; New York Mercury, May 31, 1756, in The Documentary History of the State of New York, ed. E. B. O'Callaghan (Albany, 1849), 476–478.

^50. Information of Vickers; Shirley, Petition to King George II, [Jan. 1757?], LO2591/59.

^51. Henry Fox to Loudoun, 17 May 1756, LO1154/26; Hervey, Journals, 24; Anderson, Crucible of War, 129–131.

^52. George Demler, References to the True State of the Plan of Oswego as it was on 28th of May 1756, LO1188/26; Pat McKellar to James Montresor, 25 May 1756, LO1179/26.

Soldiers of MisfortuneNew England Regulars and the Fall of Oswego, 1755–1756

PETER WAY

Soldiers of Misfortune
New England Regulars and the Fall of Oswego, 1755–1756