Siege of Fort at Number 4

For three days in early April 1747, from the 7th to the 9th, colonial defenders at what is now Charlestown, New Hampshire held off a French and Native assault during King George's War. The outpost under attack, known as the Fort at Number 4, took its name from its position within the fourth parcel of a set of recently surveyed township lands. Ensign Joseph Boucher de Niverville led the combined force that laid siege to it, but the effort ultimately failed. Barking dogs gave the garrison inside early warning of the approaching attackers, leaving the British occupants ready to mount a defense. When the besiegers tried to set the fort ablaze, the defenders beat back the attempt, and they likewise refused every call to surrender. At one point, hunger drove some of Boucher de Niverville's Native allies to seek a deal with those inside the fort for food, but this request was turned away as well.

Background

During Dummer's War in the 1720s, the Province of Massachusetts Bay built Fort Dummer on the site where Brattleboro, Vermont now stands. As years passed, Massachusetts settlers who claimed the surrounding land pushed northward along the Connecticut River, founding scattered outposts along the frontier. Chief among these, positioned 34 miles (55 km) above Fort Dummer near what is today Charlestown, New Hampshire, was a settlement known as Number Four. When King George II ruled in 1741 that this land fell under the Province of New Hampshire, Massachusetts pulled its protective forces from both Fort Dummer and Number Four. New Hampshire, having no nearby settlements of its own, likewise declined to defend the area. Left to fend for themselves, the residents built the Fort at Number 4 in 1744.

Once King George's War erupted, Massachusetts grudgingly sent some militia troops to help guard the region. Throughout the summer of 1746, French and Native fighters organized by New France's leadership launched repeated assaults on Number Four, and the militia stationed there managed to hold them off each time. Yet the relentless nature of these attacks eventually drove the settlers to give up the outpost entirely, leaving it deserted through the winter of 1746 to 1747. Come spring, Captain Phineas Stevens arrived with 30 provincial militiamen to reoccupy the fort, bringing along several dogs that would later prove useful in alerting the garrison whenever outsiders approached.

Since Louisbourg's collapse in 1745 had cut off vital trade goods and supplies, the Marquis de Beauharnois, serving as New France's governor, had been directing a sustained campaign against the frontiers of New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Nova Scotia. Among the forces dispatched southward in early 1747 was a company of 10 French troupes de la marine, the colony's regular troops, alongside 60 Abenaki warriors, all placed under Ensign Joseph Boucher de Niverville's command. Certain English narratives of what followed echo Boucher de Niverville's own assertions that his force numbered in the several hundreds, and these same accounts mistakenly refer to him as "General Debeline."

Siege

Eleven days after Captain Stevens and his men had taken up positions there, Boucher de Niverville's troops reached Number Four on April 7. They stayed hidden among the trees ringing the fort, but their presence did not go unnoticed for long: the persistent barking of dogs tipped off one of Stevens' men that enemies were nearby. He crept outside with some of the dogs to check things out, only to take a minor wound from enemy fire before pulling back inside the walls.

Boucher de Niverville's men loosed several rounds of musket fire at the fort, none of which did much damage, then tried a different approach: setting alight the buildings positioned upwind in hopes the flames would spread and consume the fort. Fortunately for the defenders, water was not in short supply, and they devised a clever countermeasure. Several men ventured beyond the walls and dug trenches close by. These trenches shielded them from enemy shots while allowing them to pass buckets of water hand to hand from within the fort, keeping the wooden structure soaked and safe from fire.

Having failed to burn the fort down, Boucher de Niverville asked for a halt in the fighting through the night, proposing talks the following morning. Stevens accepted the truce but, during the parley, turned down the demand that he surrender the position. Back inside the fort, he convened his men in council, and every one of them backed his choice. Boucher de Niverville's forces kept up their fruitless shooting through that day and well into the night, even launching flaming arrows at the fort, but the defenders doused each one without difficulty.

Two days later, on the morning of April 9, a pair of Natives approached under a flag of truce. They proposed ending the siege in return for supplies. Stevens declined this offer but countered with a proposal of his own: he would hand over hostages, later to be traded for British captives, in exchange for food. The Natives would not accept these terms, and following a scattered burst of gunfire, the combined French and Native force pulled back and left the area.

Aftermath

Starved and depleted, Boucher de Niverville's men pressed on southward, leaving a trail of ruin in their wake. One account tells of three meeting-houses laid waste, along with several fine barns and roughly one hundred dwellings, most standing two stories tall and outfitted down to their chests of drawers. The same account records that five to six hundred sheep and hogs perished, along with about thirty horned cattle.

Word of the stout defense at Number Four eventually reached Boston, where Sir Charles Knowles of the Royal Navy happened to be stationed at the time. Knowles, who would go on to become Rear-Admiral of Great Britain, honored Stevens' command by presenting him with a sword bearing a silver hilt. Grateful for this gesture, the townspeople of Number Four chose to rename their settlement Charlestown after him. Today, a fort rebuilt in 1960 stands as an open-air museum, preserving the memory of the King George's War period.