By the 7th of July Prideaux with thirty-two hundred men, including Johnson’s Indians, began siege operations. On the twelfth day he was killed in the trenches by the bursting of a shell from a coehorn mortar. This left the command to Johnson, who renewed operations with greater vigour, and by the 22d breached the wall sufficiently for assault. While active in the trenches with hot shot, bombs, and canister, Johnson did not forget to keep out his scouts and rangers. From them he learned that the French officer D’Aubrey was advancing to the relief of the garrison with twelve hundred men whom he had gathered from all the four French posts on the lakes. Leaving a force to continue the bombardment, Johnson marched out with infantry and grenadiers, having the Indians on his flanks, and attacked the advancing French with vigour. In this battle the Indians fought like genuine soldiers, and threw the French into disorder. Seeing this, the charge of the regulars and militia was made with such force and fury that in less than an hour the fight was over, and a splendid victory for the English was the result. Returning to camp and trench, Johnson sent Major Harvey to Captain Pouchot, the French commander, to tell of the defeat of D’Aubrey, and to advise capitulation, especially while it was possible to restrain the Indians. Pouchot yielded; and the surrender of the whole force of over six hundred took place the next morning. Johnson wisely had ready an escort for the French prisoners, and not one of them lost his scalp or was rudely treated by the Iroquois. While the women and children were sent to Montreal, the men were marched by way of Oswego to New York, to fill English prisons. The manner in which Johnson restrained the savages was in marked contrast to the butcheries allowed, or only with great difficulty prevented, by the French under similar circumstances. Johnson’s victory at Niagara broke the chain of French forts along the great valleys and water-ways from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the delta of the Mississippi. One after another the French deserted the other forts, except Detroit; and General Stanwix at once occupied them or their ruins. Leaving Colonel Farquar at Niagara with a garrison of seven hundred men, Johnson came to Oswego, there meeting General Gage, who had been appointed to succeed Prideaux. Gage, perhaps irritated that the provincial fur-trader or “Heaven-born general” had, instead of himself, won the most brilliant of victories, refused to allow Johnson to advance and destroy the French forts at La Galette and Oswegatchie, or Ogdensburg. Finding that Gage, despite his advice and that of Amherst, meant to do nothing of importance until the next year, Johnson, after meeting the chief men of the Ottawa and Mississagey Indian tribes, returned home. He was now the most popular man in the province; while his name in England was joined with that of his fellow-tradesman, Clive, as a “Heaven-born general.”