Attack on German Flatts (1757)

On November 12, 1757, during the French and Indian War, a joint force of French troops and Indian allies struck the British settlement of German Flatts, New York. The defenders, a militia of seventy-five Palatine colonists, proved no match for the attacking body of 300, and the settlement fell and was razed. Casualties among the colonists ranged between 40 and 50 killed, with another 150 taken prisoner, while the attackers came away with only five men wounded.

Background

Things had gone reasonably well for New France during the 1757 campaign. British forces had failed to seize Louisbourg on Île Royale, now called Cape Breton Island in the far north of Nova Scotia, and had suffered defeat at the hands of French troops and their Indian allies at the Battle of Fort William Henry, near the southern tip of Lake George along the boundary separating the British Province of New York from the French Province of Canada. Vaudreuil, who governed New France as its Marquis, had earlier tried persuading German settlers along the Mohawk River valley to throw their support behind the French. Those settlers did not answer that call when Fort William Henry came under assault in August, and Vaudreuil responded by ordering a retaliatory strike against them. His target was German Flatts, a settlement on the Mohawk River's north bank west of Little Falls, near where Herkimer, New York now stands, distinct from the present day German Flatts situated on the river's south side.

To carry out this plan, Vaudreuil gathered roughly 300 men at Lachine, placing them under François-Marie Picoté de Belestre, a seasoned officer of the troupes de la marine. This force departed Lachine on October 20, making its way up the Saint Lawrence River and along Lake Ontario's shoreline until reaching the Oswego River's mouth, the same location where France had claimed victory during the Battle of Fort Oswego in 1756. Continuing from there, they pushed up the river, crossed over the Oneida Carry into the Mohawk River, and followed it down toward German Flatts, arriving in the settlement's vicinity on November 11.

German Flatts at that point held around 60 dwellings, roughly 300 residents, and five blockhouses built for defense. Oneida allies had given warning of the coming attack, yet the settlers took no steps to prepare against it.

Attack

In the predawn darkness of November 12, 1757, near three in the morning, Belestre's men descended from the hills overlooking German Flatts and struck the settlement below. Facing overwhelming numbers, the defenders holding the five blockhouses surrendered almost immediately. The toll was severe: forty residents lost their lives, either killed outright or drowned, while every structure in the village went up in flames. Over 150 villagers, spanning all ages and both sexes, were seized as prisoners, among them the mayor, the surgeon, and several militia officers, and marched off toward Montreal. A number of residents managed to escape by crossing the Mohawk to the safety of Fort Herkimer. From there, the fort's commander dispatched fifty soldiers to respond, but after trading shots briefly with Belestre's force, they pulled back. Belestre himself withdrew the following day, his canoes weighed down with captives and looted goods, and by November 20 he had made it back to Montreal.

Aftermath

A day passed before word of the raid traveled the sixty miles east to Schenectady along the Mohawk. General George Howe responded at once, marching his 42nd Regiment upriver, only to arrive and find the settlement reduced to smoldering wreckage.

In time, the British released most of those taken captive in exchange for prisoners of their own, and the German families who had fled slowly made their way back to reconstruct what had been lost. The peace proved temporary, however. When the Revolutionary War came, German Flatts again suffered violence in 1778, an assault that claimed many lives and destroyed crops throughout the area. Those years brought brutal combat to the valley's frontier, a struggle that showed little mercy to either side.