The Battle on Snowshoes was fought on March 13, 1758, during the French and Indian War. It was fought by a British force led by Captain Robert Rogers against French troops and Indians allied to France. The battle took place near Lake George, now in northern New York, but then in the frontier area between the British Province of New York and the French province of Canada. The battle was given its name because Rogers' troops wore snowshoes.
Rogers led a band of about 180 rangers and regulars out to scout French positions. The French commander at Fort Carillon had been alerted to their movement, and sent a force consisting mostly of Indians to meet them. In fierce fighting, Rogers' force was nearly destroyed, suffering over 130 casualties. The French believed that Rogers was killed in this action, as he was forced to abandon his regimental jacket, which contained his commission papers, during his escape from the scene.
This battle gave rise to the tale that Rogers escaped capture by sliding 400 feet (120 m) down a rockface to the frozen surface of Lake George. That rock is now known as Rogers Rock or Rogers Slide.
The French and Indian War broke out in 1754 between British and French colonists over territorial disputes along their colonial frontiers, and escalated the following year to include regular troops. By 1756, the French had enjoyed successes in most of their frontier battles against the British. Their only notable failure occurred when the British stopped their southward advance from Lake Champlain in the 1755 Battle of Lake George. From bases at Fort St. Frédéric (located at what is now Crown Point, New York) and Fort Carillon (known to the British as Fort Ticonderoga), the French and their Indian allies continued to scout and probe the British defenses on Lake George and the upper Hudson River. The British, who had fewer Indian allies, resorted to companies of colonial rangers for their scouting and reconnaissance activities. The ranger companies were organized and directed by Captain Robert Rogers, and eventually became known as Rogers' Rangers.
Captain Rogers was sent on a reconnaissance mission from Fort Edward northwards toward Fort Carillon on March 10, 1758. Lieutenant Colonel William Haviland, the fort's commander, had originally planned on 400 men taking part but reduced the number to 180, even though he had reason to believe the French knew of the expedition. The French had captured a man from an earlier expedition by Israel Putnam's Connecticut rangers and it was suspected that he had informed his captors of the British plans. Putnam's reconnaissance revealed that there were an estimated 600 Indians encamped near Fort Carillon.
European colonization of North America accelerated after 1600, with England, France, Spain, and the Netherlands establishing competing settlements along the Atlantic coast, the St. Lawrence River, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Mississippi Valley. The first permanent English settlement at Jamestown, Virginia (1607) struggled with starvation and conflict; the Plymouth colony (1620) and the Massachusetts Bay Colony (1630) followed. By the mid-1700s, thirteen English colonies stretched along the Atlantic seaboard, governed through a mix of royal charters, proprietary grants, and elected assemblies. The colonial economy depended on tobacco in Virginia and Maryland, rice and indigo in the Carolinas, and maritime trade in New England — all increasingly reliant on enslaved African labor after 1619. Conflict with Indigenous peoples over land was continuous, punctuated by major wars including King Philip's War (1675–1676) in New England and the Yamasee War (1715–1717) in the South. The French and Indian War (1754–1763), part of the global Seven Years' War, ended French power in North America and left Britain deeply in debt — triggering the taxation disputes that would lead to revolution.
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