r, at Fort Edward, was no more fortunate in his attempts to take
satisfaction on his midnight visitors; and reports that he has not thus
far been able "to give those villains a dressing."[397] The English,
however, were fast learning the art of forest war, and the partisan
chief, Captain Robert Rogers, began already to be famous. On the
seventeenth of June he and his band lay hidden in the bushes within the
outposts of Ticonderoga, and made a close survey of the fort and
surrounding camps.[398] His report was not cheering. Winslow's so-called
army had now grown to nearly seven thousand men; and these, it was
plain, were not too many to drive the French from their stronghold.

[Footnote 395: _Bagley to Winslow, 2 July, 1756._]

[Footnote 396: _Ibid., 15 July, 1756._]

[Footnote 397: _Wooster to Winslow, 2 June, 1756._]

[Footnote 398: _Report of Rogers, 19 June, 1756._ Much abridged in his
published _Journals_.]

While Winslow pursued his preparations, tried to settle disputes of rank
among the colonels of the several colonies, and strove to bring order
out of the little chaos of his command, Sir William Johnson was engaged
in a work for which he was admirably fitted. This was the attaching of
the Five Nations to the English interest. Along with his patent of
baronetcy, which reached him about this time, he received, direct from
the Crown, the commission of "Colonel, Agent, and Sole Superintendent of
the Six Nations and other Northern Tribes."[399] Henceforth he was
independent of governors and generals, and responsible to the Court
alone. His task was a difficult one. The Five Nations would fain have
remained neutral, and let the European rivals fight it out; but, on
account of their local position, they could not. The exactions and lies
of the Albany traders, the frauds of land-speculators, the contradictory
action of the different provincial governments, joined to English
weakness and mismanagement in the last war, all conspired to alienate
them and to aid the efforts of the French agents, who cajoled and
threatened them by turns. But for Johnson these intrigues would have
prevailed. He had held a series of councils with them at Fort Johnson
during the winter, and not only drew from them a promise to stand by the
English, but persuaded all the confederated tribes, except the Cayugas,
to consent that the English should build forts near their chief towns,
under the pretext of protecting them from the French.[400]