[Footnote 645:  On Putnam’s adventures, Humphreys, 57 (1818).  He had the story from Putnam himself, and seems to give it with substantial correctness, though his account of the battle is at several points erroneous.  The “Molang” of his account is Marin.  On the battle, besides authorities already cited, Recollections of Thomson Maxwell, a soldier present (Essex Institute, VII. 97).  Rogers, Journals, 117.  Letter from camp in Boston Gazette, no. 117.  Another in New Hampshire Gazette, no. 104. Gentleman’s Magazine, 1758, p. 498.  Malartic, Journal du Regiment de Bearn.  Levis, Journal de la Guerre en Canada.  The French notices of the affair are few and brief.  They admit a defeat, but exaggerate the force and the losses of the English, and underrate their own.  Malartic, however, says that Marin set out with four hundred men, and was soon after joined by an additional number of Indians; which nearly answers to the best English accounts.]

The petty victory over Marin was followed by a more substantial success.  Early in September Abercromby’s melancholy camp was cheered with the tidings that the important French post of Fort Frontenac, which controlled Lake Ontario, which had baffled Shirley in his attempt against Niagara, and given Montcalm the means of conquering Oswego, had fallen into British hands.  “This is a glorious piece of news, and may God have all the glory of the same!” writes Chaplain Cleaveland in his Diary.  Lieutenant-Colonel Bradstreet had planned the stroke long before, and proposed it first to Loudon, and then to Abercromby.  Loudon accepted it; but his successor received it coldly, though Lord Howe was warm in its favor.  At length, under the pressure of a council of war, Abercromby consented that the attempt should be made, and gave Bradstreet three thousand men, nearly all provincials.  With these he made his way, up the Mohawk and down the Onondaga, to the lonely and dismal spot where Oswego had once stood.  By dint of much persuasion a few Oneidas joined him; though, like most of the Five Nations, they had been nearly lost to the English through the effects of the defeat at Ticonderoga.  On the twenty-second of August his fleet of whaleboats and bateaux pushed out on Lake Ontario; and, three days after, landed near the French fort.  On the night of the twenty-sixth Bradstreet made a lodgment within less than two hundred yards of it; and early in the morning De Noyan, the commandant, surrendered himself and his followers, numbering a hundred and ten soldiers and laborers, prisoners of war.  With them were taken nine armed vessels, carrying from eight to eighteen guns, and forming the whole French naval force on Lake Ontario.  The crews escaped.  An enormous quantity of provisions, naval stores, munitions, and Indian goods intended for the supply of the western posts fell into the hands of the English, who kept what they could carry off, and burned the rest.  In the fort were found sixty