ORD LOUDOUN of peppery temper was putting the finishing touches to his plans for reducing Ticonderoga and Crown Point, and within the space of one short year the ancient town of Albany had grown from a sleepy trading-post of Dutch burghers and smugglers to one of the most important military bases in the colonies. And this because of General Braddock's defeat the year before.
Albany in 1756 differed much from Albany of 1755. The same broad street led from the fort on the hill to the river, but the coming and going of regulars and provincials had turned the grassy sward into a dirty brawn thoroughfare. The town-house and guard-house, the two churches and the market-place, still held the middle of the main street with the same houses of Dutch architecture lining the sides.
Dust now marred the little lawns of green, and the good vrouws were in despair. The passing soldiery kicked up a rare mess of dirt and disorder. Soldiers were encamped on the plains above and on the meadows below the town, and soldiers were at all hours mounting and descending the hill; for Loudoun had ten thousand men strung out between the town and the head of Lake George, and had been assured by one of his subordinates that “Every wheel shall go that rum and human flesh can move.”
The bulk of the provincial troops were contributed by New England. These volunteers, going to fight the French for six shillings a month, with their rations including a daily gill of rum, wore blue uniforms with red facings, or coats of coarse blue cloth with red or blue breeches. Many of them, however, lacked such finery of war, and came in their rough workaday clothes.
Nearly all of them were farmers by occupation, and few displayed a soldierly bearing. Their coming and going infused new life into the town, and if they entered tap-rooms they also stood attentive while their chaplains daily preached to them from street-corner or in camp. Silent, lean-faced men as a rule.
The preceding year had been a bloody calendar of events. July had brought the tremendous defeat of Braddock's army, with the Pennsylvania frontier pushed back to Fort Cumberland on the Potomac, The three succeeding months had witnessed the failure of the expedition against Fort Niagara.
To be sure three forts had been captured in Acadia, but the colonies demanded an insurance against a danger nearer home. So the Summer of 1755 had been a dismal one, relieved only by the “bloody morning scout” before Fort William Henry on Lake George.
This affair, although it resulted in the repulse of Dieskau and in the capture of the baron himself, was only half a victory. So grateful were King and Parliament for any measure of success after the disastrous rout on the Monongahela that one made William Johnson a baronet while the other gave him twenty-five thousand dollars.
This recognition was generous inasmuch as General. Phineas Lyman whipped and captured Dieskau while his commanding officer was laid up in his tent from a wound in the thigh. War was not formally declared between-England and France until after their armies had clashed for a year under the ancient forests of the New World.
The dawning of 1756 found the western frontiers weltering under the tomahawk, while Ticonderoga, that “hornets' nest,” was spewing forth its hordes of Miami, Potawatomi, Ottawas and “French” Mohawks to carry horror and desolation from Lake Champlain to the very outskirts of Schenectady and Albany.
Day after day the troops left Albany and its environs, and more raw volunteers entered the town to stare at the quaint houses and to quicken the eye on beholding the gay attire of the Dutch maids, so different from the sad-colored gowns of the girls at home. These farmer boys were concerned only with the present and little realized the importance of their rôle in this, the , which was to rock Europe to its center and pave the way for a giant republic.
The curtain went up on the second act when the colonies received Lord Loudoun as-commander-in-chief of his Majesty's forces in America. And never did a commander have a more grim and majestic stage on which to strut his little day. It extended from Vermont to the Great Lakes and included the valleys of the Mississippi and the Ohio.
The potentials of the struggle were beyond the ken of any man. Benjamin Franklin unwittingly anticipated future events when at the outset of the war he urged a colonial union. His plan was pronounced to be “too democratic,” and now England was sending her Grenadiers and Highland regiments, and heaping up an expense account the payment of which within a score of years was to produce a revolution.