Crown forces defend Fort William Henry from French attack

In 1757, the British Colonies of New England had an entrenched population of nearly 1.5 million. New France wrapped around the British colonies to the west and north, stretching from Louisiana to the northern parts of Canada, yet the French territory had a population of barely 70,000. To protect her holdings in the New World, France conducted raids on the British, keeping them off balance and unable to expand New England into Canada.

Fort William Henry, built by Col. William Johnson in 1755, was a serious threat to the French with its position at the head of Lake George. Vaudreuil, Governor of New France, felt it was essential to the security of his domain that the British be driven off Lake George.

In February 1757, an army of French regulars, Canadian militia and their Native American allies set out from Quebec to seize the fort. They were led by Francois-Pierre de Rigaud de Vaudreuil, brother of the New France Governor. The French arrived in the early morning hours of March 19 but lost the planned advantage of surprise when an astute sentinel at Fort William Henry heard a tapping noise out on the ice. As the story is told, one of the Canadians used the head of his ax to test the strength of the ice on Lake George. This sound alerted the British of the French approach.

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Although Vaudreuil’s army greatly outnumbered the British, the French lacked heavy artillery. The original plan had been to slip up to the fort walls unnoticed and scale them with ladders they had built for that purpose at Fort Carillon (now Fort Ticonderoga.) The canons of Fort William Henry drove them back.

The battle continued for two days, with the French doing as much damage as they could to storehouses and other buildings that were outside the fort walls. They made bonfires of the British vessels and destroyed a sawmill before a winter storm left them buried in snow. They retreated up the lake on snowshoes. Many suffered temporary blindness from the glare of the sun on the new fallen snow and were led back to Fort Carillon by holding the hands of their comrades.

Fort William Henry remained standing through the spring and early summer but fell in August 1757 when the French returned with bigger guns. French and Indian War reenactors gathered today at the Fort William Henry to stage Vaudreuil’s Raid. Once again, the French were driven away.