truggle in the forest against French and
Indians he was defeated and killed. George Washington was in the fight
and had to report to Dinwiddie the dismal record of what had happened.
The frontier was aflame; and nearly all the Indians of the West, seeing
the rising star, went over to the French. The power of France was, for
the time, supreme in the heart of the continent. At that moment even
far away in the lone land about the Saskatchewan, the English trader,
Hendry, had to admit that the French knew better than the English how to
attract the support of the savage tribes.

Meanwhile Dieskau had arrived at Quebec. In the colony of New York
Sir William Johnson, the rough and cheery Irishman, much loved of the
Iroquois, was gathering forces to attack Canada. Early in July, 1755,
Johnson had more than three thousand provincial troops at Albany,
a motley horde of embattled farmers, most of them with no uniforms,
dressed in their own homespun, carrying their own muskets, electing
their own officers, and altogether, from the strict soldier's point of
view, a rabble rather than an army. To meet this force and destroy it
if he could, Dieskau took to the French fort at Crown Point, on Lake
Champlain, and southward from there to Ticonderoga at the head of
this lake, some three thousand five hundred men, including his French
regulars, some Canadians and Indians. Johnson's force lay at Fort
George, later Fort William Henry, the most southerly point on Lake
George. The names, given by Johnson himself, show how the dull
Hanoverian kings and their offspring were held in honor by the Irish
diplomat who was looking for favors at court. The two armies met on the
shores of Lake George early in September and there was an all-day fight.
Each side lost some two hundred men. Among those who perished on the
French side was Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, who had escaped all the
perils of the western wilderness to meet his fate in this border
struggle. The honors of the day seem to have been with Johnson, for the
French were driven off and Dieskau himself, badly wounded, was taken
prisoner. That Johnson had great difficulty in keeping his savages from
burning alive and then boiling and eating Dieskau and smoking his flesh
in their pipes, in revenge for some of their chiefs killed in the fight,
shows what an alliance with Indians meant.

There was small gain to the English from Johnson's success. He was too
cautious to advance towards Canada; and, a