Descombles, the engineer, went before dawn to reconnoitre the fort, with several other officers and a party of Indians.  While he was thus employed, one of these savages, hungry for scalps, took him in the gloom for an Englishman, and shot him dead.  Captain Pouchot, of the battalion of Bearn, replaced him; and the attack was pushed vigorously.  The Canadians and Indians, swarming through the forest, fired all day on the fort under cover of the trees.  The second division came up with twenty-two more cannon; and at night the first parallel was marked out at a hundred and eighty yards from the rampart.  Stumps were grubbed up, fallen trunks shoved aside, and a trench dug, sheltered by fascines, gabions, and a strong abattis.

Fort Ontario, counted as the best of the three forts at Oswego, stood on a high plateau at the east or right side of the river where it entered the lake.  It was in the shape of a star, and was formed of trunks of trees set upright in the ground, hewn flat on two sides, and closely fitted together,—­an excellent defence against musketry or swivels, but worthless against cannon.  The garrison, three hundred and seventy in all, were the remnant of Pepperell’s regiment, joined to raw recruits lately sent up to fill the places of the sick and dead.  They had eight small cannon and a mortar, with which on the next day, Friday, the thirteenth, they kept up a brisk fire till towards night; when, after growing more rapid for a time, it ceased, and the fort showed no sign of life.  Not a cannon had yet opened on them from the trenches; but it was certain that with the French artillery once in action, their wooden rampart would be shivered to splinters.  Hence it was that Colonel Mercer, commandant at Oswego, thinking it better to lose the fort than to lose both fort and garrison, signalled to them from across the river to abandon their position and join him on the other side.  Boats were sent to bring them off; and they passed over unmolested, after spiking their cannon and firing off their ammunition or throwing it into the well.

The fate of Oswego was now sealed.  The principal work, called Old Oswego, or Fort Pepperell, stood at the mouth of the river on the west side, nearly opposite Fort Ontario, and less than five hundred yards distant from it.  The trading-house, which formed the centre of the place, was built of rough stone laid in clay, and the wall which enclosed it was of the same materials; both would crumble in an instant at the touch of a twelve-pound shot.  Towards the west and south they had been protected by an outer line of earthworks, mounted with cannon, and forming an entrenched camp; while the side towards Fort Ontario was left wholly exposed, in the rash confidence that this work, standing on the opposite heights, would guard against attack from that quarter.  On a hill, a fourth of a mile beyond Old Oswego, stood the unfinished stockade called New Oswego, Fort George, or, by reason of its worthlessness, Fort Rascal.  It had served as a cattle pen before the French appeared, but was now occupied by a hundred and fifty Jersey provincials.  Old Oswego with its outwork was held by Shirley’s regiment, chiefly invalids and raw recruits, to whom were now joined the garrison of Fort Ontario and a number of sailors, boatmen, and laborers.