Battle on Snowshoes (1757)

The clash known as the Battle on Snowshoes, or in French, Bataille en raquettes, pitted Rogers' Rangers against a combined force of Canadien and Indian troops in the midst of the French and Indian War. It took place on January 21, 1757, and earned its name from the fact that the British fighters had snowshoes strapped to their feet. That same day, Captain Robert Rogers led his rangers out on a scouting mission close to Fort Carillon along Lake Champlain, when suddenly French regulars, Canadien militiamen, and Indians, joined together in a mixed force, sprang an ambush on them. Darkness finally brought the struggle to a close, though not before both sides had suffered heavy losses. Afterward, the French insisted in their own accounts that the snowshoes had given the British a clear edge in the fight.

Background

Territorial quarrels along the colonial frontiers ignited fighting between British and French settlers in 1754, and by the following year the conflict widened to draw in regular soldiers from both sides. Through most of the frontier clashes leading up to 1756, fortune favored the French. Only once had they been checked, when British forces halted their push south from Lake Champlain during the Battle of Lake George in 1755.

Operating out of Fort St. Frédéric, situated where Crown Point, New York, now stands, and Fort Carillon, which the British called Fort Ticonderoga, French forces and their Indian allies kept up a steady campaign of scouting missions aimed at probing British positions along Lake George and the upper Hudson River. Lacking comparable numbers of Indian allies, the British turned instead to ranger companies to carry out this same kind of reconnaissance work. Robert Rogers took charge of organizing and leading these units, which in time came to bear his name as Rogers' Rangers.

Battle

An ambush awaited Rogers and his troops, a force he later described as "250 French and Indians." Nearly total surprise gave the attackers an early advantage, but damp gunpowder caused many French muskets to fail, a stroke of luck for the British. At the back of the ranger column, Lieutenant Stark gathered a portion of the men and formed a defensive position atop a rise, offering cover fire while those ahead fell back to join him. During this retreat, Rogers had his captives killed so his force could move without hindrance.

Combat continued for hours, only ceasing once darkness made it impossible for either side to spot the other. Rogers suffered two wounds in the engagement, one to his head and another to his hand. According to the French, they fought at a disadvantage because they lacked snowshoes and were, in their words, "floundering in snow up to their knees." When night fully descended, Rogers led his surviving men on a six mile (9.7 km) withdrawal to Lake George, from where he dispatched Stark along with two others to seek aid at Fort William Henry. By January 23, Rogers made his way back to Fort William Henry, bringing with him 48 men fit to continue and six who were wounded.

Aftermath

Bougainville put questions to several of the men his forces had seized during the fighting, drawing from them details on troop strength and supplies stretching from Albany all the way to Fort William Henry. Not all prisoners fared so simply; a number of the captured British were handed over to the Indians and forced into servitude. Among them was Thomas Brown, whose pamphlet offered a vivid account of his ordeal. He endured nearly two years enslaved, a stretch that carried him as far west as the Mississippi River before he finally made his way back to Albany in November 1758.

The following year brought a comparable clash, one in which Rogers came close to losing his life and his company was left decimated.