The campaign of 1756, the year in which the public declaration of war was made, makes but an indifferent figure in American history. Expeditions against Niagara, Crown Point, Fort Du Quesne, and other places, were projected; but they severally failed. On the other hand, before the close of the summer, the Marquis de Montcalm, an efficient officer, who succeeded Dieskau, with a large force of regulars, Canadians, and Indians, took the important fort of Oswego, on the south side of Lake Ontario, which gave him the command of the lakes Ontario and Erie, and of the entire country of the Five Nations. Sixteen hundred men were taken prisoners; Colonel Mercer, the commanding officer, was killed, and the loss in cannon, mortars, batteaux, and other military resources, was great. [Illustration: Destruction of Kittaning.] During this unfortunate year, a single military adventure on the confines of Pennsylvania, shows that the colonists were not insensible to the Indian depredations, and to the duty of attempting to repress them. Fort Granby, in that state, was surprised by a party of French and Indians, who made the garrison prisoners. Departing, in this instance, from their usual custom of killing and scalping the captives, they loaded them with flour, and thus drove them into the wilderness. In another quarter, the Indians on the Ohio barbarously killed, in their incursions, above a thousand inhabitants of the western frontiers. To avenge this outrageous conduct, Colonel Armstrong, with a party of two hundred and eighty provincials, marched from Fort Shirley, on the Juniata river, about one hundred and fifty miles west of Philadelphia, to Kittaning, an Indian town, the rendezvous of these murdering savages, and destroyed it. An Indian chief, called Captain Jacobs, defended himself through loop-holes of his log cabin. As the Indians refused the quarter which was offered them, Colonel Armstrong gave orders to set their houses on fire. This was at once executed, and many of the Indians perished by the flames and suffocation. Numbers were shot in attempting to reach the river. Jacobs, his squaw, and a boy called the king's son, were fired upon as they were attempting to escape out of the window, and were all killed and scalped. It is computed that between thirty and forty Indians were destroyed in this attack. Eleven English prisoners were also released. On this occasion, a Captain Mercer was wounded, and conveyed away by his ensign and eleven men. He afterwards returned safe with twenty-three men, and four released prisoners. He is believed to be the distinguished General Mercer of the United States army, who died of wounds received in the battle of Princeton in 1776.[26]