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The St. Francis Raid was an attack in the French and Indian War by Robert Rogers on St. Francis, near the southern shore of the Saint Lawrence River in what was then the French province of Canada, on October 4, 1759. Rogers and about 140 men entered the village, which was reportedly occupied primarily by women, children, and the elderly, early that morning, slaughtered many of the inhabitants where they lay, shot down many who attempted to flee, and then burned the village. Rogers reported killing as many as 300 people, while French reports placed the number closer to thirty, mainly women and children. One of Rogers' men was killed, and seven were wounded. Rogers and his men endured significant hardships to reach the village from the British base at Fort Crown Point in present-day New York, and even more hardship afterwards. Chased by the French and vengeful Indians, and short on rations, Rogers and his men returned to Crown Point via the Connecticut River valley. Missteps in caching food stores for the expedition's use led to starvation, and some of Rogers' men were reportedly driven to cannibalism in order to survive. However, Abenaki historians have a (different story ) than this one. About one third of the raid's participants did not return. British colonial reports of the raid were unapologetic, as St. Francis had long been a place from which the natives raided colonial settlements as far south as Massachusetts, and Rogers reported a large number of English scalps decorating the main village buildings. ==Background== The 1759 summer campaign season in the French and Indian War was a resounding success for the forces of Great Britain. Fort Ticonderoga was captured in July, as was Fort Niagara, and Quebec was under siege. General Jeffery Amherst, the victor at Ticonderoga, had little news of the situation before Quebec, and he required accurate intelligence before deciding whether a move of his army along Lake Champlain was warranted. To that end he sent one party of rangers out on August 7 to reach General James Wolfe near Quebec by traveling up the Kennebec River, a long and roundabout route that took the party nearly one month to complete. Although this party successfully traveled the route in both directions, the time taken meant that their news was effectively useless to Amherst due to the lateness of the season. Amherst sent a second party, consisting of two officers from the 17th Regiment and a handful of Stockbridge Indians, on a route from the northern end of Lake Champlain toward Quebec via the primarily Abenaki village of St. Francis. In addition to dispatches for Wolfe, this party, led by Captain Quinton Kennedy, had, as a sort of cover for their movements, instructions to make offers of friendship to the Abenakis in exchange for their non-participation in the hostilities between the British and French. They carried a belt of wampum as part of this offer. The village of St. Francis, which was regarded by many as an Abenaki village, was in fact inhabited by a diverse community. In addition to the Abenakis who arrived after Father Rale's War, members of other tribes that had been driven from New England in earlier conflicts lived there, as did white settlers that had either by choice or by capture adopted native ways. The village consisted of what were then typical European-style homes centered around a church. It had a reputation among British colonists to the south as the launching point for raids into communities as far south as Massachusetts.〔Fowler, p. 217〕 Robert Rogers was a teenager in New Hampshire at the time of one such raid in 1746.〔Brumwell, p. 54〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「St. Francis Raid」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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