Talk:Siege of Fort William Henry

Last of the Mohicans

This battle is depicted in the movie Last of the Mohicans (sp?) - in the movie, the French general appears to suggesting to the natives to attack the British after they leave the fort.75.154.236.150 (talk) 00:28, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

The movie is not historically accurate. Montcalm abhorred what the Natives did, and even attempted to get them to stop, near the end of the 'massacre' —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.30.113.163 (talk) 20:05, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

request for peer review, Battle of the Thousand islands

Wikipedia:Peer review/Battle of the Thousand Islands/archive1

I Just finished up the main body of this article on a relitivly small engagemet of the French and Indian War. I'm hopeing a peer review will bring some suggestions on how the article can be improved and hopfully bring some more info on the subject. I'd like to see more info on some of the personalities that don't have they're own page to link to, and some more detail on how the battle developed... Any input would be very much appreciated! Mike McGregor (Can) 18:13, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Conflicting sentences

-Munro eventually gave in after being shown an intercepted message from General Webb, the commander of British forces in the New York colony, which said that he would be unable to send reinforcements to relieve the beleaguered garrison. -General Webb did in fact send reinforcements to Fort William Henry, which arrived one day too late,

Does this mean that the message was a ploy? Perhaps it should say "forged message?"

colonel munro was very easily tricked into leaving the fort if he was a smart general he would have anticipated this trick by the french.you can understand that he saw how many troops the french and their native allies had plus they knew the terrain well.he should have stayed at the fort and tried to wait it out because the british obviously saw the importance of the fort, so how could munro not see this?

I'd like to add a lot of info on this fort

I was fortunate to work on excavations around Fort William Henry, actually the incomplete Fort George, back in the very late 1990s and early 2000. I have many sources on Fort William Henry and the battle itself. The sources are mostly written by David Starbuck who oversaw some excavations within the reconstructed fort in the 1990s. However, I am a rather busy college student at the moment and I can't spare the time to put up much more than a few observations until this summer (6/2006). After that I'd be more than happy to contribute. ZenTrowel 03:52, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Battle or Siege?

Should the article be renamed to Siege of Fort William Henry? As that is what it literally was. There was very little fighting outside the Fort, except the massacre which was not really a battle.Lord Cornwallis (talk) 18:25, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, that's a no-brainer, so I went ahead and renamed it. A Google Books search suggests that "siege of Fort William Henry" is about six times more common than "battle of...." —Kevin Myers 00:14, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Siege of Fort William Henry/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: JonCatalán^(Talk) 22:46, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

This is generally a very good article, and probably worthy of an A-class review. I really only have one comment:

• You first write, "They took with them about 200 captives that Montcalm was powerless to recover." A paragraph later, you claim that, "[h]e managed to secure the release of about 500 captive..." I figure that some of those captives were unrelated to the siege of Fort William Henry. Maybe this should be made clear.
  • Those two bits have always niggled at me too; I've brought them together so that it's clearer what's going on. Thanks for your review. Magic♪piano 00:22, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Otherwise, the article meets the GA-criteria. JonCatalán^(Talk) 23:13, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

how many eaten?

`in the French Preperations sections it states that "several" prisoners were ritualy eaten following the battle of sabbath day point, but on the battle of sabbath day point page it is specifically stated that "one unlucky prisoner" was eaten. i'm inclined to go with the latter but wtf do i know Primergrey (talk) 22:24, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

I'd be inclined to agree with you, because Parkman (cited here) isn't always right. However, William Nester quotes Bougainville on the matter (link): "They put in the pot and ate three prisoners." Fowler refers to a different primary account that mentions only one victim. Magic♪piano 00:41, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

sounds like maybe the sabbath day point page should be changed to "one or more" or something like that. i'll take it up over there Primergrey (talk) 00:45, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Questioning the Valitity of William Nesters Claims

In the section "Participating Indian nations",  the author of the section references a historian named William Nester who claims that various Indian tribes from all over the continent came to participate in the battle, some traveling distances of 1500 miles to do so.  Just the sheer scale of participation and distance traveled for the battle makes me doubt these claims.  What incentive did the Menominee, Iowa or Winnebago from the great plains or the Fox and Sac from far out west to fight in a war they had no stake in?  Further more, the Iowa, Fox, Sac, Menominee, Winnebago, Kickapoo, Miami, Atikamekw and Winnebago tribes from all records I can find are listed to have no involvement in the French and Indian War.  To question the validity of this claim further, the "Canadian" Iroquois and Onondaga, with the exception of a few deserters, sided with the British in the French and Indian War, not the French, so it would not make sense for them to be in this battle.

The real question I'm posing here is weather that particular section of text should be removed or not. In my opinion it should because it lacks serious a explanation and evidence for how his claims could be possible. For this reason I am going to remove this particular section of text. If someone happened to disagree or has another opinion other than mine I encourage them to voice their concerns. on my talk page.

Elxa izhne (talk) 04:26, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

William Nester has written extensively on the French and Indian War, and is as far as I can tell a respected historian of the period. The primary source he cites for his description of the composition of the Native corps is the journal of Louis Antoine de Bougainville. I agree that the presence of some of the listed tribes is easy to question, but the numbers that came long distances were relatively small. See Nester as cited (or presumably Bougainville's journal, if you have access to a version of it) for a detailed breakdown. I suspect the principal explanation for their presence at all is that they were recruited over a period of months through the extensive French trading networks. Magic♪piano 22:05, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

Article review

It has been a while since this article has been reviewed, so I took a look and noticed that there is an uncited statement in the "Background" section and a "unreferenced section" banner since 2023. Should this article go to WP:GAR? Z1720 (talk) 00:50, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

These two issues are easily remedied by adding verification or removal. However, there have been some significant changes to both the article and our expectations of GA/A-class since promotion - including the unreferenced section. A review may not be a bad idea, if only to affirm its status. Magicpiano? Cinderella157 (talk) 08:05, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

GA Reassessment

Siege of Fort William Henry

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • Most recent review

Result pending

An uncited statement in the "Background" section and a "unreferenced section" banner for the "Order of battle" section since 2023 and no information about the French forces. An editor on the talk page indicated that lots of information was added to the article since its promotion, so a spot check might also be needed. Z1720 (talk) 18:55, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

I am putting the order of battle in a sandbox until I can put it in proper form. I have a citation for the background section from Anderson, Fred "Crucible of War". I want to look at a few other sources before I post it. Donner60 (talk) 07:00, 14 June 2025 (UTC)

I am still working on Battle of Lexington and Concord and Flavian dynasty. I intend to get back to this as soon as I can. I think that my sources, especially the one that I cited above, will provide the references needed to improve the article back to GA. Donner60 (talk) 23:29, 1 July 2025 (UTC)

I likely have finished work on the Battles of Lexington and Concord article and had finished Flavian dynasty earlier. I will now return to work on this article. With any luck, this one will not take as long to recheck and improve. Donner60 (talk) 03:30, 26 July 2025 (UTC)

Progress update: I have added two citations to the uncited statement in the background section. I have deleted a dead link citation but fortunately it is in a paragraph with a citation at the end which supports the earlier sentence.

The size of the article is about 3,000 bytes larger than it was in 2010. It was about 3,000 larger than that for a brief period of time. Every paragraph has one or more citations. I don't see anything new that requires citations or revision. From what I have read about the battle in Anderson and Parkman, the article is reasonably complete but I think I need to do at least some more reading in other sources before I conclude work on this. The number of words is nowhere near too large.

If I am looking at the right comment, the user who stated there was much to be added apparently was involved with the archaeological work mentioned in the last paragraph of the article. Perhaps there have been interesting finds that are not in the article but the absence of more information on that, if it exists, would not seem to affect the assessment. Again, if I am looking at the right comment, the comment is 19 years old and the user has not edited since 2013.

I have looked at Parkman who goes into some detail but I did not see much worth adding. (I might take another quick look. Since Parkman's account was first copyrighted in 1884, he may be one of the sources for the later accounts. Perhaps some more information became available to later authors, as well.) I have a few other books that cover the French and Indian War in whole or in part.

I will look further for any orders of battle. I suspect some general statement on the size of each forces may need to suffice. Some general numbers for the opposing forces precede the order of battle section already. Many of the "French" forces were Native Americans (Indians), who don's seem to have been divided into the type of units found in modern armies. They were from different tribes and led by their tribal leaders, although quite likely under the French commanders' direction to some extent.

I have a few other books about the French and Indian War or which cover that war as part of a larger history of the Seven Years War or a longer period of time. I plan to look at those in the next few days, to see if I can add anything to the article. I will also be looking for details about the numbers and composition of the British and French and Indian forces, of course. Donner60 (talk) 08:25, 29 July 2025 (UTC)

Further update: I removed the order of battle section. I will continue to look for a verifiable order of battle but it may not be possible to find one. I will also see if I can add anything to the numbers of the forces already stated in the article. I think the order of battle section is not crucial for this article and its removal should not affect the GA status. This may put it in good enough shape to keep the assessment already. But I will continue to work on it for at least a short period of time. 03:04, 30 July 2025 (UTC)