The Conquest of New France | Page 7

would have to face one much more formidable. Two French ships
were to cross the sea and to lie in wait near New York. Meanwhile
from Canada, sixteen hundred armed men, a thousand of them French
regular troops, were to advance by land into the heart of the colony,
seize Albany and all the boats there available, and descend by the
Hudson to New York. The warships, hovering off the coast, would then
enter New York harbor at the same time that the land forces made their
attack. The village, for it was hardly more than this, contained, as the
French believed, only some two hundred houses and four hundred
fighting men and it was thought that a month would suffice to complete
this whole work of conquest. Once victors, the French were to show no
pity. All private property, but that of Catholics, was to be confiscated.
Catholics, whether English or Dutch, were to be left undisturbed if not
too numerous and if they would take the oath of allegiance to Louis
XIV and show some promise of keeping it. Rich Protestants were to be
held for ransom. All the other inhabitants, except those whom the
French might find useful for their own purposes, were to be driven out
of the colony, homeless wanderers, to be scattered far so that they
could not combine to recover what they had lost. With New York taken,
New England would be so weakened that in time it too would fall. Such
was the plan of conquest which came from the brilliant chambers at
Versailles.
New York did not fall. The expedition so carefully planned came to
nothing. Frontenac had never shown much faith in the enterprise. At
Quebec, on his arrival in the autumn of 1689, he was planning
something less ideally perfect, but certain to produce results. The
scarred old courtier intended so to terrorize the English that they should
make no aggressive advance, to encourage the French to believe
themselves superior to their rivals, and, above all, to prove to the Indian
tribes that prudence dictated alliance with the French and not with the
English.

Frontenac wrote a tale of blood. There were three war parties; one set
out from Montreal against New York, and one from Three Rivers and
one from Quebec against the frontier settlements of New Hampshire
and Maine. To describe one is to describe all. A band of one hundred
and sixty Frenchmen, with nearly as many Indians, gathers at Montreal
in mid-winter. The ground is deep with snow and they troop on
snowshoes across the white wastes. Dragging on sleds the needed
supplies, they march up the Richelieu River and over the frozen surface
of Lake Champlain. As they advance with caution into the colony of
New York they suffer terribly, now from bitter cold, now from thaws
which make the soft trail almost impassable. On a February night their
scouts tell them that they are near Schenectady, on the English frontier.
There are young members of the Canadian noblesse in the party. In the
dead of night they creep up to the paling which surrounds the village.
The signal is given and the village is awakened by the terrible
war-whoop. Doors are smashed by axes and hatchets, and women and
children are killed as they lie in bed, or kneel, shrieking for mercy.
Houses are set on fire and living human beings are thrown into the
flames. By midday the assailants have finished their dread work and are
retreating along the forest paths dragging with them a few miserable
captives. In this winter of 1689-90 raiding parties also came back from
the borders of New Hampshire and of Maine with news of similar
exploits, and Quebec and Montreal glowed with the joy of victory.
Far away an answering attack was soon on foot. Sir William Phips of
Massachusetts, the son of a poor settler on the Kennebec River, had
made his first advance in life by taking up the trade of carpenter in
Boston. Only when grown up had he learned to read and write. He
married a rich wife, and ease of circumstances freed his mind for great
designs. Some fifty years before he was thus relieved of material cares,
a Spanish galleon carrying vast wealth had been wrecked in the West
Indies. Phips now planned to raise the ship and get the money. For this
enterprise he obtained support in England and set out on his exacting
adventure. On the voyage his crew mutinied. Armed with cutlasses,
they told Phips that he must turn pirate or perish; but he attacked the
leader with his fists and triumphed by sheer strength of body and will.
A second mutiny he also quelled, and then took his ship to Jamaica
where he got rid of its