A half-century of conflict. France and England in North America. Part ...

^238 FORT MASSACHUSETTS. [1746.De Muy, with thirty men, to guard the canoes.Therest of the party, guided by a brother of the slainCadenaret, filed southward on foot along the base ofSkene Mountain, that overlooks Whitehall. Theycounted about seven hundred men, of whom fivehundred were French, and a little above two hundredwere Indians. ^ Some other French reports put thewhole number at eleven hundred, or even twelvehundred,'^ while several English accounts make iteight hundred or nine hundred. The Frenchmen ofthe party included both regulars and Canadians,with six regular officers and ten cadets, eighteenmilitia officers, two chaplains, — one for the whitesand one for theIndians, — and a surgeon.After a march of four daj^s, they encamped on thetwenty-sixth by a stream which ran into the Hudson,and was no doubt the Batten Kill, known to theFrench as la riviere de Saratogue. Being nearlyoppositeSaratoga, where there was then a garrison,they changed their course, on the twenty-seventh,from south to southeast, the better to avoid scoutingparties,which might discover their trail and defeattheir plan of surprise. Early on the next day theyreached the Hoosac, far above its mouth; and nowtheir march was easier, "for," says Rigaud, "we gotout of the woods and followed a large road that led1 " Le 19, ayant fait passer I'armee on Eevue qui so trouva de700 hommes, scavoir 500 franfois environ et 200 quelques sauvages."— Journal de Rigaud.2 See N. Y. Col. Docs., x. 103, 132.8 Ibid., X. 35.