[5] But
first, that the campaign might not seem wholly futile, he permitted
Captain John Schuyler to make a raid into Canada with a band of
volunteers. Schuyler left the camp at Wood Creek with twenty-nine
whites and a hundred and twenty Indians, passed Lake Champlain,
descended the Richelieu to Chambly, and fell suddenly on the
settlement of La Prairie, whence Frontenac had just withdrawn with his
forces. Soldiers and inhabitants were reaping in the wheat-fields.
Schuyler and his followers killed or captured twenty-five, including
several women. He wished to attack the neighboring fort, but his
Indians refused; and after burning houses, barns, and hay-ricks, and
killing a great number of cattle, he seated himself with his party at
dinner in the adjacent woods, while cannon answered cannon from
Chambly, La Prairie, and Montreal, and the whole country was astir.
"We thanked the Governor of Canada," writes Schuyler, "for his salute
of heavy artillery during our meal." [Footnote: _Journal of Captain
John Schuyler_, in Doc. Hist. N. Y., II. 285. Compare La Potherie,
III. 101, and _Relation de Monseignat_.]
The English had little to boast in this affair, the paltry termination
of an enterprise from which great things had been expected.
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