Raid on Haverhill (1708)
Who Fought
French and Indian raiding party of approximately 160 men, comprising Canadian militia, troupes de la marine, Abenaki, Algonquin, and other Indian warriors under Jean-Baptiste Hertel de Rouville; approximately 40 provincial militia were present at Haverhill.
History & Significance
The Raid on Haverhill was a military engagement that took place on August 29, 1708, during Queen Anne's War. French, Algonquin, and Abenaki warriors under the command of Jean-Baptiste Hertel de Rouville descended on Haverhill, then a small frontier community in the Province of Massachusetts Bay. In the surprise attack, 16 people were killed and another 14 to 24 were taken captive. A rapid militia muster gave chase, and in a skirmish later in the day, nine of the French and Indian party were killed and some of their prisoners escaped.
Haverhill was not the original target of the raiders. Expecting a larger Indian contingent, French authorities planned to engage in a series of raids on the communities of the Piscataqua River. However, the unwillingness of some Indian tribes to participate in the expedition forced the French to reduce the scope of the operation and choose an easier target. The raid was more costly to the French than previous frontier raids like that in 1704 on Deerfield, Massachusetts because the province had been warned of the raiders' advance.
When Queen Anne's War (as the War of the Spanish Succession was called in the colonies of British America) broke out in 1702, it sparked war on the already tense frontier between the English colonies of New England and the colonies of New France, including Acadia and Canada. French military officers from the troupes de la marine, the defense force of New France, often led parties of Indians from their settlements along the Saint Lawrence River south to the northern frontiers of New England, which then included small communities in what is now northern Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire and Maine.
The largest and most successful raid of the war occurred in February 1704, when Jean-Baptiste Hertel de Rouville led about 250 men, principally Indians on a raid against the frontier town of Deerfield in the Province of Massachusetts Bay. Hertel de Rouville's band killed or took prisoner many of the townsfolk, returning to Canada on a difficult trek in which a number of the prisoners died; many of the surviving captives were adopted into Indian communities afterward. Massachusetts fortified its frontier with militia in response to this raid, and launched a raid against Acadia in retaliation.
The Massachusetts village of Haverhill was also subjected to smaller-scale raids in 1704, but it was not originally the target of the ambitious expedition planned by New France's Governor-General Philippe de Rigaud Vaudreuil in 1708. In the aftermath of the failed English siege of Port Royal, Acadia in 1707, Vaudreuil was criticized by French Marine Minister the Comte de Pontchartrain for failing to apply sufficient pressure on the New England colonies. Vaudreuil was also concerned over the increasing tendency of Indians that were under French influence to engage in illicit trade with the Province of New York, cutting into New France's economic activity. Vaudreuil decided to address these issues by organizing a major raid into New England that was intended to be even larger in scope than the Deerfield raid.
The ground they fought on
The site of Raid on Haverhill (1708) lies on White Chalk Subgroup, bedrock that formed in the Maastrichtian. The rock here is chalk.
The exiled Abenaki war chief Escumbuit joined the party at some point during its travels to Haverhill, adding a notable frontier figure to a force that had already been whittled down from the ambitious 400-strong expedition originally envisaged by Governor-General Vaudreuil. When the raiders struck on the morning of 29 August 1708, they killed 16 inhabitants and seized between 14 and 24 captives, but the militia response was swift enough that a skirmish later in the day cost the raiders nine men killed and allowed some prisoners to escape, making the operation far less profitable than Hertel de Rouville's celebrated 1704 strike on Deerfield.
- 16 settlers killed; 14 to 24 taken captive (some later escaped); 9 of the French and Indian party killed in the subsequent skirmish.
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