The Public Library.

The night before the attack on the fort, De Vandreuil and his party encamped in what is now Williamstown. Early the next morning, after a march of about four miles, the fort came into view. What was intended as a surprise failed through the youthful ardor of the young French cadets and the wild enthusiasm of the Indians. Unable to restrain themselves at the sight of the fort, they rushed forward with yells and a useless discharge of firearms. The garrison of the fort was nominally fifty-two men; but the commander, Captain Williams, was away on an expedition to threaten Canada, and others of the garrison had been sent to Deerfield for a supply of powder and lead, so that when the stress of war came there were but twenty-two men, including the chaplain, Norton, and the commander, Sergeant Hawks, of Deerfield, in the fort, and half of these were disabled by sickness. There were also in the fort three women and five children.

The siege lasted for twenty-eight hours, during the course of which the besiegers tried all the stratagems known to border warfare. At the end of that time the garrison had killed one Indian chief and wounded sixteen of the Frenchmen and Indians— which, under the circumstances, as Parkman says, was good execution for ten farmers and a minister. The garrison had lost from its effective force three men by wounds. Then the end came. The chaplain, Norton, claimed that the French opened the parley for surrender; and the French commander in his report claimed that the first sign of weakening came from the English. However, the situation of the garrison was desperate; they were outnumbered, sixty to one, their ammunition was gone, and, accepting the word of De Vaudreuil that they should be protected from his Indian allies, they surrendered. The French burned the fort, took the prisoners,