The object of attack was an unoffending
hamlet, that from its position could never be a menace to the French,
and the destruction of which could profit them nothing. The aim of the
enterprise was not military, but political. "I have sent no war-party
towards Albany," writes Vaudreuil, "because we must do nothing that
might cause a rupture between us and the Iroquois; but we must keep
things astir in the direction of Boston, or else the Abenakis will
declare for the English." In short, the object was fully to commit these
savages to hostility against New England, and convince them at the same
time that the French would back their quarrel.[53]

The party consisted, according to French accounts, of fifty Canadians
and two hundred Abenakis and Caughnawagas,--the latter of whom, while
trading constantly with Albany, were rarely averse to a raid against
Massachusetts or New Hampshire.[54] The command was given to the younger
Hertel de Rouville, who was accompanied by four of his brothers. They
began their march in the depth of winter, journeyed nearly three hundred
miles on snow-shoes through the forest, and approached their destination
on the afternoon of the twenty-eighth of February, 1704. It was the
village of Deerfield, which then formed the extreme northwestern
frontier of Massachusetts,--its feeble neighbor, the infant settlement
of Northfield, a little higher up the Connecticut, having been abandoned
during the last war. Rouville halted his followers at a place now called
Petty's Plain, two miles from the village; and here, under the shelter
of a pine forest, they all lay hidden, shivering with cold,--for they
dared not make fires,--and hungry as wolves, for their provisions were
spent. Though their numbers, by the lowest account, were nearly equal
to the whole population of Deerfield,--men, women, and children,--they
had no thought of an open attack, but trusted to darkness and surprise
for an easy victory.

Deerfield stood on a plateau above the river meadows, and the
houses--forty-one in all--were chiefly along the road towards the
villages of Hadley and Hatfield, a few miles distant. In the middle of
the place, on a rising ground called Meeting-house Hill, was a small
square wooden meeting-house. This, with about fifteen private houses,
besides barns and sheds, was enclosed by a fence of palisades eight feet
high, flanked by "mounts," or blockhouses, at two or more of the
corners. The four sides of this palisaded