At Saratoga there was a small settlement of Dutch farmers, with a stockade fort for their protection. This was the farthest outpost of 210 the colony, and the only defence of Albany in the direction of Canada. It was occupied by a sergeant, a corporal, and ten soldiers, who testified before a court of inquiry that it was in such condition that in rainy weather neither they nor their ammunition could be kept dry. As neither the Assembly nor the merchants of Albany would make it tenable, the garrison was withdrawn before winter by order of the governor.[228] Scarcely was this done when five hundred French and Indians, under the partisan Marin, surprised the settlement in the night of the twenty-eighth of November, burned fort, houses, mills, and stables, killed thirty persons, and carried off about a hundred prisoners.[229] Albany was left uncovered, and the Assembly voted £150 in provincial currency to rebuild the ruined fort. A feeble palisade work was accordingly set up, but it was neglected like its predecessor. Colonel Peter Schuyler was stationed there with his regiment in 1747, but was forced to abandon his post for want of supplies. Clinton then directed Colonel Roberts, commanding at Albany, to examine the fort, and if he 211 found it indefensible, to burn it,--which he did, much to the astonishment of a French war-party, who visited the place soon after, and found nothing but ashes.[230] The burning of Saratoga, first by the French and then by its own masters, made a deep impression on the Five Nations, and a few years later they taunted their white neighbors with these shortcomings in no measured terms. “You burned your own fort at Seraghtoga and ran away from it, which was a shame and a scandal to you.”[231] Uninitiated as they were in party politics and faction quarrels, they could see nothing in this and other military lapses but proof of a want of martial spirit, if not of cowardice. Hence the difficulty of gaining their active alliance against the French was redoubled. Fortunately for the province, the adverse influence was in some measure counteracted by the character and conduct of one man. Up to this time the French had far surpassed the rival nation in the possession of men ready and able to deal with the Indians and mould them to their will. Eminent among such was Joncaire, French emissary among the Senecas in western New York, who, with admirable skill, held back that powerful member of the Iroquois league from siding with the English. But now, among the Mohawks of eastern New York, Joncaire found his match in the person of William Johnson, a vigorous and intelligent young Irishman, 212 nephew of Admiral Warren, and his agent in the management of his estates on the Mohawk. Johnson soon became intimate with his Indian neighbors, spoke their language, joined in their games and dances, sometimes borrowed their dress and their paint, and whooped, yelped, and stamped like one of themselves.