History of Northampton, Massachusetts, from its settlement in 1654;

CHAPTER XII.
KING GEORGE'S FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR.
Aggressive Policy The year 1746 was full of alarms, skirmishes
of the French. ^iid ambuscades. The French developed a
peculiarly aggressive policy, constantly harassing
the frontiers with small bands, cutting oft" unsupported
parties, devastating solitary and detached settlements,
capturing, slaying, scalping and destroying. Expedition
after expedition was hurled against New England,
composed mostly of Indians, but with French soldiers,
commanded by French officers. Within nine months from
the last of December, 1745, not less than forty-three of
these separate detachments, in which about two thousand
men were engaged, were dispatched upon errands of blood
and destruction.^ Thirty-seven persons were killed, captured
or wounded on the northern frontiers before the summer
ended. An attack upon the fortifications at Bernardston
was foiled, one man being wounded, while at Colrain
one soldier was killed and another made prisoner. The
enemy was constantly prowling about Fort Massachusetts ;
a party of men sent not above sixty rods from the fortification
fell into an ambuscade, one was killed, another
wounded and a third captured.
Capture of Fort On the 10^" of August, Fort Massachusetts
Massachusetts. ^y^s iuvcstcd by a body of nearly eight hun-
dred French and Indians under command of
M. Rigaud de Vaudreuil, brother of Gov. Vaudreuil.
Sergt., afterwards Lieut. -Colonel, John Hawks, was tem-
Capt. Williams, commander of the
porarily in command ;
post, being absent on duty connected with the projected
1 New Yorli Colonial Documents, vol. X., pp. 34, 30.
147