It was but a few minutes before all formations were hopelessly lost in the jungle of brushwood. When Highlanders, rangers, British, and Yankees were well entangled, sheets of fire issued from a line of heads behind the log breastwork, while the French artillery also played bloody havoc. Abercrombie, hearing of the initial disaster, left the saw-mills and made off with himself to the boat-landing; thence, issuing his orders for attacks on the left, the right, and the centre. For five hours, without flinching, the victims of military incompetence furnished food for French powder, and then broke into disorderly retreat. The whole army followed their commander, and, when at the boats, would have sunk them in their mad rush, but for the coolness and firmness of Colonel Bradstreet. It is said that the French found, stuck in the mud, five hundred pairs of shoes. The Highlanders—old retainers of the Stuarts, but organized by Pitt to fight for the Guelphs—lost in this battle one half of their number. The total loss of the English was nearly two thousand men. Montcalm, the skilful soldier, covered himself with glory. The Indians under Johnson, being on the top of a hill, took no part in the fight, though active as spectators. Abercrombie retreated to the site of Fort William Henry at the head of Lake George. The wildest rumours of the advancing victorious French army now prevailed at Albany and in the Valley; but Johnson did much to allay fear and restore confidence by sending out the militia, doubling the guards, and garrisoning the forts and block-houses. Largely through his earnest appeals, in person, to Abercrombie, General Stanwix was sent with a large force to build a spacious fort at the one place where direct boat navigation between Schenectady and Oswego is interrupted. This portage of four miles—reduced to one mile by ditching and clearing out the streams—was between the Mohawk River and Wood Creek, and made a point of highest strategic importance. The fort—which was built and named Fort Stanwix—had afterward a notable military history. From this point Colonel Bradstreet, having obtained by a bare majority in a council of war permission to attack Fort Frontenac, which for three years he had longed to do, set out with twenty-seven hundred militia, eleven hundred of whom were from New York. Johnson, who had sent Capt. Thomas Butler with forty-two Indians, received from him, under date of August 28, 1758, the joyful news of Bradstreet’s complete victory, which, all considered, compensated for the disaster of Abercrombie. It cleared Lake Ontario of all French shipping, and was in relative influence and importance fully equal to Perry’s victory on Lake Erie, over half a century later. None rejoiced more than the sons and grandsons of the victims of the Schenectady massacre of 1690, which had been instigated by Frontenac, after whom the fort had been named.