y, up the
Mohawk and down the Onondaga, to the lonely and dismal spot where Oswego
had once stood. By dint of much persuasion a few Oneidas joined him;
though, like most of the Five Nations, they had been nearly lost to the
English through the effects of the defeat at Ticonderoga. On the
twenty-second of August his fleet of whaleboats and bateaux pushed out
on Lake Ontario; and, three days after, landed near the French fort. On
the night of the twenty-sixth Bradstreet made a lodgment within less
than two hundred yards of it; and early in the morning De Noyan, the
commandant, surrendered himself and his followers, numbering a hundred
and ten soldiers and laborers, prisoners of war. With them were taken
nine armed vessels, carrying from eight to eighteen guns, and forming
the whole French naval force on Lake Ontario. The crews escaped. An
enormous quantity of provisions, naval stores, munitions, and Indian
goods intended for the supply of the western posts fell into the hands
of the English, who kept what they could carry off, and burned the rest.
In the fort were found sixty cannon and sixteen mortars, which the
victors used to batter down the walls; and then, reserving a few of the
best, knocked off the trunnions of the others. The Oneidas were bent on
scalping some of the prisoners. Bradstreet forbade it. They begged that
he would do as the French did,--turn his back and shut his eyes; but he
forced them to abstain from all violence, and consoled them by a lion's
share of the plunder. In accordance with the orders of Abercromby, the
fort was dismantled, and all the buildings in or around it burned, as
were also the vessels, except the two largest, which were reserved to
carry off some of the captured goods. Then, with boats deeply laden, the
detachment returned to Oswego; where, after unloading and burning the
two vessels, they proceeded towards Albany, leaving a thousand of their
number at the new fort which Brigadier Stanwix was building at the Great
Carrying Place of the Mohawk.

Next to Louisbourg, this was the heaviest blow that the French had yet
received. Their command of Lake Ontario was gone. New France was cut in
two; and unless the severed parts could speedily reunite, all the posts
of the interior would be in imminent jeopardy. If Bradstreet had been
followed by another body of men to reoccupy and rebuild Oswego, thus
recovering a harbor on Lake Ontario, all the captured French vessels
could have been broug