Global InformationSiege of Fort William Henry information
| Siege of Fort William Henry | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the French and Indian War | |||||||
 Plan of Fort William Henry and Camp at Lake George | |||||||
| |||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||
 France  New France Odawa Abenaki Potawatomi Nipissing |
 Great Britain  British America | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
|
Montcalm Charles de Langlade |
George Monro  | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
|
6,200 regulars and militia 1,800 Native Americans[1] | 2,500 regulars and provincials[2] | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| Light[3] |
130 killed or wounded 2,308 captured[4][5] | ||||||
| 69–184 British prisoners killed in captivity or missing[5] | |||||||
The siege of Fort William Henry (3–9 August 1757, French: Bataille de Fort William Henry) was conducted by a French and Indian force led by Louis-Joseph de Montcalm against the British-held Fort William Henry. This fort, located at the southern end of Lake George, on the frontier between the British Province of New York and the French Province of Canada, was garrisoned by a poorly supported force of British regulars and provincial militia led by Lieutenant Colonel George Monro.
After several days of bombardment and increasing casualty rates, Monro surrendered to Montcalm, whose force included nearly 2,000 Indians from various tribes. The terms of surrender included the withdrawal of the garrison to Fort Edward, with specific terms that the French military protect the British from the Indians as they withdrew from the area.
In one of the most notorious incidents of the French and Indian War, Montcalm's Indian allies violated the agreed terms of surrender and attacked the departing British column, which had been deprived of ammunition, as it left the fort. They killed and scalped numerous soldiers and civilians, took as captives women, children, servants, and slaves, and slaughtered sick and wounded prisoners. Early accounts of the events called it a massacre and implied that as many as 1,500 people were killed, although it is unlikely more than 200 people (less than 10% of the British fighting strength) were actually killed in the massacre.[5]
Whether or not Montcalm and the other French officers present encouraged or opposed the actions of their Indians allies, and the total number of victims remains a matter of historical debate. The memory of the killings influenced the actions of British military commanders, especially those of General Jeffery Amherst, for the remainder of the war.
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S69was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Sources do not generally count French casualties. Even detailed secondary-source accounts of the siege, such as Dodge and Steele, do not attempt to count them. One of Steele's only specific mentions of incidents involving French or allied Indian casualties mentions 15 Indians killed. (Steele, p. 104)
- ^ Pargellis, p. 250
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