[445] The
assailants were more fortunate at a small stockade called Fort
Granville, on the Juniata. A large body of French and Indians attacked
it in August while most of the garrison were absent protecting the
farmers at their harvest; they set it on fire, and, in spite of a most
gallant resistance by the young lieutenant left in command, took it, and
killed all but one of the defenders.[446]
[Footnote 443: In the public Record Office, _America and West Indies_,
LXXXII., is a manuscript map showing the positions of such of these
posts as were north of Virginia. They are thirty-five in number, from
the head of James River to a point west of Esopus, on the Hudson.]
[Footnote 444: _Colonial Records of Pa._, VII. 76.]
[Footnote 445: _Washington to Morris,--April, 1756_.]
[Footnote 446: _Colonial Records of Pa._, VII. 232, 242; _Pennsylvania
Archives_, II. 744.]
What sort of resistance the Pennsylvanian borderers would have made
under political circumstances less adverse may be inferred from an
exploit of Colonel John Armstrong, a settler of Cumberland. After the
loss of Fort Granville the Governor of the province sent him with three
hundred men to attack the Delaware town of Kittanning, a populous nest
of savages on the Alleghany, between the two French posts of Duquesne
and Venango. Here most of the war-parties were fitted out, and the place
was full of stores and munitions furnished by the French.
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