The Reign of George III. (Continued.) page 9

The republican party was successful in killing or driving out the royalists, and was then called on to send a larger reinforcement from their own body to the aid of congress, This left the place, to a certain degree, defenceless; and the royalists, who had taken refuge with the Indians, saw the opportunity, and determined to attack it. The inhabitants received several warnings of the tempest gathering, but they despised the fugitive royalists, and paid no attention to the danger that threatened them. But early in July they were roused by the incursion of a body of eight hundred men, partly in the disguise of Indians, and partly real Indians. They were said to be led on by colonel John Butler, the same who had offered his troop of Indians four years before to general Carleton, for service in Canada, and by Brandt, a half-caste Mohawk, said to be as cruel as he was brave. That Brandt was the cruel man described, or that he was at Wyoming on this occasion, his son afterwards denied to Campbell the poet, in England; but, on the other hand, Marshall, the biographer of Washington, who took great pains to collect authentic information concerning the massacre of Wyoming, asserts that he was there. However this may be, colonel Butler led on his infuriated royalist fugitives and his Indians, and attacked and destroyed one of the forts called Wintermoots, which they burned. The militia, and all the inhabitants capable of bearing arms, assembled at Forty Fort, on the west side of the Susquehanna, and about four miles from the camp of the invaders. They were headed by colonel Dennison, and amounted to about three hundred men. Besides these, there were only about sixty regulars in the district, commanded by colonel Zebulon Butler, said to be of the same family as the invading colonel Butler.

Washington was sending a body of troops to encounter the invaders, but Zebulon Butler rashly determined to attack them with his insufficient force of regulars and militia. He found the American - Indian army strongly encamped in a pine wood; and, as he was leading up his miscellaneous troops, he was fired at from behind the trees and bushes at once, in flank and rear. His militia gave way and fled in complete rout, pursued by the Indians with their tomahawks, who knocked them on the head, regardless of their cries for quarter. Most of the soldiers, militia, and regulars, were massacred, but Butler escaped with a few of the latter; and Dennison, seeing that the inhabitants were paralysed with terror, capitulated on condition that the people should be spared. The inhabitants, however, did not wait to experience the mercy of those whom they had themselves ruthlessly expelled, and of their Indian allies: they voluntarily abandoned their homes and property, and became, in their turn, ruined outcasts. The invaders, hearing of the approach of Washington's detachment, collected the property and live stock, burned the houses, destroyed the forts, and retreated again into the woods with their associates, the Indians, who carried back many scalps and much booty. Sad as the tale of Wyoming was, party rage and imagination exaggerated the real terrors, and made them unexampled and incredible.

Wyoming was soon reoccupied by the troops sent by Washington. A regiment of Pennsylvanian continentals, stationed at Schoharie, also pursued the plunderers of Wyoming; penetrated to the neighbouring branches of the Upper Susquehanna, and destroyed the settlement of Unadilla, occupied by Indians and refugees. The Indians and loyalists soon took their revenge, by surprising Cherry Valley. The fort, which had a continental garrison, held out; but colonel Alden, who lodged in the town, was killed, the lieutenant-colonel was made prisoner, and the settlement suffered almost the fate of Wyoming.

The feeling against the tories was still further excited by the conduct of Arnold, who was appointed the military commander at Philadelphia, where he ingratiated himself with the rich tories, and married from amongst them a young, beautiful, and accomplished second wife. His leaning to this faction was keenly canvassed, and brought him into collision with Reed, who was now the president of the assembly. In the south, captain Welling made an expedition against the English settlers in Florida; seized an English vessel at Manshac, and proceeded to Baton Rouge and Natchez, burning houses, abducting slaves, and committing other ravages on the English planters. A British force sent out against Welling took him prisoner; and this force built forts at Baton Rouge and Natchez, for the defence of the settlers.

Indications of Indian hostilities appearing on the western frontiers, congress sent commissioners to Pittsburg to investigate the subject. These commissioners reported that the Western Indians were stimulated to hostilities by Hamilton, the British commandant at Detroit; and they determined to send a force against that fort. Another expedition was undertaken by George Rogers Clarke, a backwoodsman of Kentucky. Furnished with men, money, and supplies for three months, by the state of Virginia, Clarke sailed from Pittsburgh to the falls of the Ohio, where he was joined by a body of Kentuckians, and descended the river to near its junction with the Mississippi, Thence they marched by land to Kaskaskia, an old French settlement. On arriving at that town, the adventurers were on the point of starvation; but the inhabitants being taken by surprise, submitted. Cahokia and two other neighbouring forts were also seized, and the commandant at Kaskaskia, in whose possession Clarke said he found written orders from Hamilton to stimulate the Indians to hostilities, was sent prisoner to Virginia. His slaves were sold for five hundred pounds, and the money divided amongst the troops. Some of Clarke's people remained at the falls of the Ohio, and built a stockade, the first rudiment of the present city of Louisville. The conquered country, including all the country north of the Ohio, claimed as within their limits, was created into the present state of Illinois.

The American troops were hutted for the winter in a line of cantonments extending from Danbury, in Connecticut, across the Hudson at West Point, to Elizabeth Town and West Jersey. A tolerable supply of clothing had been received from France; to insure a supply of provisions, congress had laid an embargo on all exports. The commissary department was now on a better footing; and the soldiers, on the whole, better clothed and fed than they had been since the commencement of the war; but the depreciation of the currency reduced their pay to a trifle, and the officers, especially, were greatly distressed for money.

Lord Howe, when he had collected his ships after the storm which separated him from D'Estaing, again made for Boston, in the hope of being able to attack the French admiral in the harbour; but he found him too well protected by the batteries to be able to reach him. He therefore returned to New York, and, as his leave of absence had arrived, he surrendered the command to admiral Byron, and took his leave of America on the 26th of September, and reached Portsmouth on the 25th of October. Byron now had a very good fleet, consisting of ships of one size or other to the number of ninety-one sail. Such a fleet assembled on the American coast at a proper time would have intercepted and destroyed the fleet of D'Estaing, and have cleared all those waters of French and American privateers.

Byron no sooner came into command than he also made a voyage to Boston, in order to see whether he could not come at D'Estaing's fleet; but his usual weather attended him: his ships were scattered by a tempest, and D'Estaing took the opportunity of sailing out, and proceeding to the West Indies, according to orders from France. Notwithstanding the agreement of the French to assist America, they were thinking much more of recovering Canada or seizing on the British West India Islands for themselves.

The English, apprised of the views of France, determined to send a fleet and troops to the West Indies to protect them; but, instead of sending the requisite force from home, the ministers ordered Clinton to send five thousand men from New York. This was another example of the feeble and penurious manner in which they carried on this war. Clinton had recently sent three thousand five hundred men to Georgia, and now this detachment of five thousand diminished his already insufficient army by eight thousand five hundred men. It was, therefore, utterly impossible that he could take another decisive step in America during this year, and thus congress was left to strengthen its army, and to await fresh reinforcements from France.

Commodore Hotham, with only five ships of the line, a bomb vessel, and some frigates, conveyed major-general Grant and this force to the West Indies, being nearly the whole way within a short sail of D'Estaing and his much superior fleet, without knowing it. Grant's destination was to protect Dominica; but, before his arrival, marshal de Bouille, governor-general of Martinique, had landed with two thousand men, and had compelled lieutenant-governor Stewart, who had only about one hundred regular troops and some indifferent militia for its defence, to surrender. Grant being too late to save Dominica, turned his attention to St. Lucia, being conveyed thither by the joint fleet of Hotham and Barrington. They had scarcely made a good footing on the island when D'Estaing's fleet hove in sight. He had twelve sail of the line, numerous frigates and transports, and ten thousand men on board, and the English would have had little chance could he have landed. But the British fleet resolutely attacked him, and, after several days' struggle, prevented his landing more than half his troops. These were so gallantly repulsed by brigadier Medows, who was at the head of only one thousand five hundred men, that, on the 28th of December, D'Estaing again embarked his troops, and quitted the island. The original French force under chevalier de Michaud then surrendered, and St. Lucia was won, though Dominica was lost.

Meantime, congress was preparing for an invasion of Canada which was to be conducted by La Fayette. According to this plan, the American army was to proceed by three routes to the common object of destination. One corps was to proceed to Wyoming, and thence to Detroit and Niagara, to dislodge the English there; the second corps was to encamp on the Mohawk river during the winter, and, being powerfully reinforced in the spring, were to seize Oswego, and to secure the navigation of Lake Ontario by building vessels there, as Carleton had done on Lake Champ- lain; the third was to take the old route of Montgomery, and, having entered Canada, to establish itself betwixt Montreal and Quebec till the others were sufficiently advanced to cooperate. Besides this, Franklin was to procure from Louis XVI. a fleet and army to attack Halifax and Quebec from the sea, and thus both Canada and Nova Scotia were to be reft from Great Britain for ever. So blinded was congress by its conceit, that it could not perceive that Canada and Nova Scotia would thus only be won for France. A proclamation was drawn up by D'Estaing, before leaving Boston, urging the Canadians to assume hostilities against the English, in which he said, " To bear arms against your mother country would be parricide, and must be the completion of misfortunes." This was a hard blow at his allies the Americans, who were doing this very thing. Not even this, however, opened the eyes of congress. They sent a sketch of the plan to Washington, and his sagacious mind comprehended the folly of it a t once. He wrote to the president of the congress, entreating them to lay aside the fatal edict. " France," he said, " acknowledged for some time past the most powerful monarchy in Europe by land; able now to dispute the empire of the sea with Great Britain, and, if joined with Spain, I may say, certainly superior, - if possessed of New Orleans on our right, and of Canada on our left, and if seconded by the numerous tribes of Indians in our rear, from one extremity to the other - a people so friendly to her, and whom she knows so well how to conciliate - would, it is much to be feared, have it in her power to give law to these states."

Washington said that he could read, he thought, in the countenances of the French something more than the disinterested zeal of allies, and, at all events, objected to laying America under any but absolutely necessary obligations to a foreign power. These were arguments to which the Americans were accessible. The arrival of the French had brought them little satisfaction; but, on the other hand, had revived their ancient antipathies to that nation, imbibed when they had been their troublesome neighbours. Washington, therefore, told congress that he had not laid their scheme before La Fayette, as they proposed, because he considered it replete with danger, and that body agreed to postpone this scheme at least till the British were wholly expelled from the States.

La Fayette, whose health had failed considerably, now left America for a visit to his native country. He was enthusiastically received by all parties, though the king considered it a matter of etiquette to order him not to quit Paris for some days, as a nominal punishment for his having gone to America without leave, and he was commanded to avoid public places where the people " might consecrate his disobedience by loud applauses." But this was mere form; he was received most cordially at court, and, at the instance of the queen, honoured with the command of the dragoons of the king's guard. " I had the honour," he says, " of being consulted by all the ministers, and embraced by all the ladies. Those embraces lasted but one day, but I retained for a greater length of time the confidence of the cabinet, and I enjoyed both favour at the court of Versailles and popularity at Paris. I was the theme of conversation in every circle." Fetes were given in his honour, at which Franklin constantly appeared with him; thus in their two persons maintaining a constant reminder of the alliance of France and America.

The British commissioners, finding their overtures to congress rejected, prepared to return. Before doing so, however, general Clinton informed congress that he was authorised by the English government to ratify any agreement for peace independent of reference to Parliament. This was a full answer to their former quibble, and he demanded the release of general Burgoyne's army in accordance with the convention. But congress, dead to any sense of international faith, and having no other subterfuge, pretended to take offence at Clinton's language, and replied that " congress could give no answer to insolent letters;" they were, in fact, determined to hold fast Burgoyne's troops, in spite of all the laws of honour and of nations. Character they had none to lose; it was gone long before. The commissioners took their leave, after making a strong appeal to the American people against the disreputable proceedings of their government.