The Battle on Snowshoes (French: Bataille en raquettes) was a skirmish fought between Rogers' Rangers and Canadien and Indian troops during the French and Indian War on January 21, 1757. The battle was given this name because the British combatants wore snowshoes. On January 21, 1757, Captain Robert Rogers and a band of his rangers were on a scouting expedition near Fort Carillon on Lake Champlain when they were ambushed by a mixed troop of French regulars, Canadien militiamen, and Indians. The fighting ended when darkness set in, with significant casualties on both sides. The French in their reports claimed the British had a distinct advantage due to their snowshoes.
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 rangers for their scouting and reconnaissance activities. The ranger companies were organized and directed by Robert Rogers, and eventually became known as Rogers' Rangers.
In the winter of 1757, Rogers and several companies of his rangers were stationed at Fort William Henry at the southern end of Lake George and at Fort Edward on the upper Hudson. These forts were principally garrisoned by elements of the 44th and 48th Regiments, and formed the frontier between the British province of New York and the French province of Canada.
Captain Rogers led a scouting expedition from Fort Edward on January 15, stopping at Fort William Henry to acquire provisions, snowshoes, and additional soldiers. The company left Fort William Henry on January 17 with 86 men, heading down the frozen Lake George. The next day twelve men turned back because of injuries. The remaining men continued north, reaching Lake Champlain at a point between Fort Carillon and Fort St. Frédéric on January 21. They spotted a sled moving on the lake toward Fort St. Frédéric, so Rogers sent Lieutenant John Stark and some men to intercept it. However, more sleds were spotted, and Stark's men were seen before they could retreat back into the woods. The sleds turned back toward Carillon. The British gave chase, but most of the French escaped. Rogers succeeded in taking seven prisoners.
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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