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They would rather fight than eat. Their reputation in this regard prevents them getting berths in any but Oswego vessels, and even affects the policy of the nation.
After arriving at Quebec the baron Dieskau, who commanded the French forces, resolved, without loss of time, to proceed against the English. At the head of about twelve hundred regulars, and about six hundred Canadians and Indians, he marched against Oswego.
He doubted not of putting them to rout, and meant never to hold his hand till he had chased them back to Albany. "Make all haste," Vaudreuil wrote to him; "for when you return we shall send you to Oswego to execute our first design." [Footnote 294: Mémoire pour servir d'Instruction
Upon this refusal, Mr. Shirley proceeded forward, being joined by a very few Indians, and arrived at Oswego on the seventeenth or eighteenth of August; but the rest of the troops and artillery did not arrive till the last day of that month; and even then, their store of provisions was not sufficient to enable them to go against Niagara, though some tolerably good vessels had by this time been built and got ready for that purpose.
Burnet was on ill terms with his Assembly, which grudged him all help in serving the province whose interests it was supposed to represent. Burnet's plan was to build a fortified trading-house at Oswego, on Lake Ontario, in the belief that the Western Indians, who greatly preferred English goods and English prices, would pass Niagara and bring their furs to the new post.
Leger, who was ordered to proceed up the St. Lawrence to Oswego, and from thence to Fort Stanwix and Albany. It must be allowed that this plan was well conceived; yet its success depended so much upon all the parts working in harmony together, that to have set it in motion, without consultation or clear understanding between the generals who were to execute it, is inconceivable.
Perceiving that Johnson was approaching lake George, and being informed that the provincials were without artillery, he determined to postpone his designs upon Oswego, and to attack them in their camp. On being informed that Dieskau was approaching, Johnson detached colonel Williams, with about one thousand men, to reconnoitre and skirmish with him.
The haggard post-rider came galloping in with news from north and west, which the throng of anxious village folks gather to hear. There have been skirmishes, successes, retreats, surprises, massacres, retaliations; there is news from Niagara and Oswego on far away Lake Ontario, and echoes of the guns at Ticonderoga.
"I have laid Oswego in ashes," said Vaudreuil; "the English quail before me. Why do you nourish serpents in your bosom? They mean only to enslave you." The deputies trampled under foot the medals the English had given them, and promised the "Devourer of Villages," for so they styled the Governor, that they would never more lift the hatchet against his children.
In this war, Irish soldiers fought on both sides, and in the "Journals of the Marquis of Montcalm" may be seen references to the English garrison at Oswego, which, in August, 1756, surrendered to that same Irish Brigade by which they had been defeated eleven years before on the battlefield of Fontenoy.
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