The Fall of Fort Frontenac

As Wolfe's guns pounded Louisbourg, Lt. Colonel John Bradstreet of the Royal Americans, led three thousand men to the Mohawk River, near Schenectady. This army was made up of mostly colonials. There were 1,112 New Yorkers, 675 from Massachusetts, 412 from New Jersey, 318 from Rhode Island, and 135 regulars. Once at the gathering place, they loaded supplies, including heavy cannon, and boarded bateaux for the westward journey. They moved easily because after the fall of Oswego, the French believed the enemy had abandoned the Mohawk.

Bradstreet's objective was Fort Frontenac, located where Lake Ontario joins the St. Lawrence River. Fort Frontenac was the chief supply base for French outposts on the Great Lakes and along the Ohio River.

For such an important place, Fort Frontenac was badly undermanned. Its small garrison was in no way able to withstand a siege with artillery. The fort was in such poor condition that, a French officer complained, "it shook whenever a cannon was fired from the walls".

Bradstreet made his final preparations at the ruins of the Oswego forts. When all was ready, he set out across Lake Ontario, and four days after launching his bateaux and whaleboats, landed his men and guns in sight of Fort Frontenac. He arrived on 25 August, with 2,600 provincial troops, 40 Indian scouts, and a force of armed bateau men, to find the fort practically defenseless. Governor Vaudreuil and Montcalm had been so concerned to concentrate their forces in defense of Fort Carillon (Ticonderoga), that they had neglected Frontenac.

The assault was so complete a surprise that his 3,000 men surrounded 120 Regulars, 40 Acadians and Indians in the fort, with their women and children. The following morning he had a battery mounted within point blank range of the enemy's walls. After a token resistance of two days, Commandant Payan de Noyan capitulated. Resistance was hopeless, the fort could not withstand the artillery. On August 27, 1758, Fort Frontenac surrendered, with only two wounded and not a single man killed on the British side.

Bradstreet's men could hardly believe their eyes when they broke into the warehouses. The fort was crammed with stores for the Ohio forts. In addition to seventy-six dismounted cannon, they found ten thousand barrels of food, trade goods, and bales of furs. Bradstreet had also captured nine armed vessels, the total French naval force on Lake Ontario. He ordered two ships be loaded with spoils, burning the rest and all the non transportable goods. The fort was burned and destroyed, with provisions, magazines, stores, artillery, and all vessels excluding the two largest. These the British loaded with the large stores of costly furs, and supplies. They then sailed to reviving Oswego, with the 150 prisoners.

This loss of supplies was soon felt throughout the French west. The booty taken and destroyed at Fort Frontenac was very great, and the loss to the French, they themselves declared, was worse than that of the battle. There were nine vessels, carrying over a hundred guns, most of which were burned, together with the fort itself, and everything inside it that could not be moved. Sixty pieces of artillery were carried away, besides an immense amount of valuable furs, stores, and provisions, valued at nearly a million livres. Bradstreet, to crown the honor of his achievement, refused his share of the booty, his portion being divided among his troops.

Bradstreet sent the prisoners to Montreal on parole, as advance payment for exchange of an equal number of British captives be forwarded to Albany. Six days after landing at Frontenac, his army arrived back at the site of Oswego. Vaudreuil's relief party found only the smoking ruins of Fort Frontenac. With Fort Frontenac in British hands, every French post in the West was cut off Canada.

Soon after the destruction of Fort Frontenac, came the abandonment of Fort Duquesne to General Forbes, a French defeat somewhat traceable to destruction at Fort Frontenac of stores intended for the fortress.