Battle of Fort Niagara

Fort Niagara fell after a siege, one of the later actions of the French and Indian War, itself the North American extension of the Seven Years' War. When British forces surrounded the fort in July 1759, the effort formed part of a larger push to strip French authority from the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley. Success there would open the way for an invasion of the French province of Canada from the west, working alongside General James Wolfe's advance from the east.

Background

For the 1759 campaign season of the Seven Years' War, British commander Jeffery Amherst drew up strategy that called for seizing Fort Niagara, an important French supply depot and military hub linking Canada to French positions in the Ohio Valley. He picked Brigadier General John Prideaux to command the venture, and Sir William Johnson, the Crown's Indian agent, came along to direct the Haudenosaunee warriors joining the effort.

Captain Pierre Pouchot of the French Army had overseen most of the fort's building. Early in 1759, General Louis-Joseph de Montcalm and the Marquis de Vaudreuil, governor of New France, dispatched him to Niagara with roughly 2,500 troops to strengthen its defenses, adding to the 500 who had already spent the winter there. Following instructions from Vaudreuil, Pouchot then shipped a large portion of these forces south to Fort Machault by mid-June, part of a broader scheme to bolster French outposts in the Ohio Country and strike British-held Fort Pitt. What remained to guard Niagara amounted to some 200 soldiers drawn from the Royal Roussillon, Languedoc, La Sarre, and Béarn regiments, along with 20 gunners and roughly 300 colonial troops and militiamen.

On the British side, Prideaux's regulars came from the 44th and 46th Regiments plus two companies pulled from the 60th, totaling about 2,200 soldiers. Alongside them marched 2,500 militiamen raised in New York and another 700 from Rhode Island. Setting out proved slower than planned, since flooding on the Mohawk River and tardy provincial units held things up, so the force did not leave Schenectady until partway through May. By 27 June the column reached Fort Oswego, where Johnson met them with close to 600 Haudenosaunee allies.

After stationing a garrison to hold Oswego, Prideaux pushed on toward Niagara on 1 July, leading about 3,200 men. French vessels were meant to be watching Lake Ontario for enemy activity, but carelessness by one crew let the British ships slip past undetected. The expedition reached Fort Niagara on 6 July, put troops ashore near a marshy stretch hidden from the fort's view, and moved straight into siege preparations.

Aftermath

On the very day Fort Niagara fell, French forces likewise gave up Fort Carillon, unable to hold against the massive British force led by General Amherst.

Once Niagara was lost, France began pulling back from its remaining frontier posts, drawing garrisons inward to shore up the settled parts of Canada. Among the strongholds given up were Fort St. Frédéric, near what is now Crown Point, and Fort Rouillé, in the area known today as Toronto. As French soldiers withdrew from Lake Champlain to safeguard the colony's interior, they leveled Fort St. Frédéric rather than let it stand. Orders had already gone out to those stationed at Fort Rouillé: if Niagara went under, they were to clear out and put the fort to the torch. That is precisely what happened once the British seized Niagara, after which the departing troops made their way to Montreal. The last French positions scattered through the Ohio and Illinois Country would, in time, also pass into British hands.

That same month, Montcalm was occupied defending Quebec City against General Wolfe, whose British forces laid siege to the city for three months. By September of 1759, the fight at the Plains of Abraham delivered the colonial capital into British control. Over the following year, French forces tried more than once to retake the city, but each effort collapsed once British reinforcements arrived. Then, in September 1760, following a campaign lasting two months, Montreal itself gave way to British conquest, and officials governing New France put their signatures to the Articles of Capitulation, formally yielding all of Canada. With that surrender, large scale fighting in the North American front of the Seven Years' War came to a close.