war had been held on the question of abandoning the place from sheer starvation.  More than half his regiment died of hunger or disease; and, in his own words, “had the poor fellows lived they must have eaten one another.”  Some of the men were lodged in barracks, though without beds, while many lay all winter in huts on the bare ground.  Scurvy and dysentery made frightful havoc.  “In January,” says Vicars, “we were informed by the Indians that we were to be attacked.  The garrison was then so weak that the strongest guard we proposed to mount was a subaltern and twenty men; but we were seldom able to mount more than sixteen or eighteen, and half of those were obliged to have sticks in their hands to support them.  The men were so weak that the sentries often fell down on their posts, and lay there till the relief came and lifted them up.”  His own company of fifty was reduced to ten.  The other regiment of the garrison, Pepperell’s, or the fifty-first, was quartered at Fort Ontario, on the other side of the river; and being better sheltered, suffered less.

[Footnote 409:  Mackellar to Shirley, June, 1756.  Mercer to Shirley, 2 July, 1756.]

The account given by Vicars of the state of the defences was scarcely more flattering.  He reported that the principal fort had no cannon on the side most exposed to attack.  Two pieces had been mounted on the trading-house in the centre; but as the concussion shook down the stones from the wall whenever they were fired, they had since been removed.  The second work, called Fort Ontario, he had not seen since it was finished, having been too ill to cross the river.  Of the third, called New Oswego, or “Fort Rascal,” he testifies thus:  “It never was finished, and there were no loopholes in the stockades; so that they could not fire out of the fort but by opening the gate and firing out of that."[410]

[Footnote 410:  Information of Captain John Vicars, of the Fiftieth (Shirley’s) Regiment, enclosed with a despatch of Lord Loudon.  Vicars was a veteran British officer who left Oswego with Bradstreet on the third of July. Shirley to Loudon, 5 Sept. 1756.]

Through the spring and early summer Shirley was gathering recruits, often of the meanest quality, and sending them to Oswego to fill out the two emaciated regiments.  The place must be defended at any cost.  Its fall would ruin not only the enterprise against Niagara and Frontenac, but also that against Ticonderoga and Crown Point; since, having nothing more to fear on Lake Ontario, the French could unite their whole force on Lake Champlain, whether for defence or attack.