Most books written about the French and Indian War and the Battle of Lake George close with a wounded and defeated General Jean-Armand de Dieskau and a few sentences in a closing paragraph or footnote to wrap up the general’s movements from North America to Europe and his death in 1767.
Dieskau has been forgotten by history, just as he was forgotten and abandoned during the Seven Years War/French and Indian War.
The battle at Lake George was the second encounter of September 8, 1755 between British and French forces, after the Bloody Morning Scout.
Once near the lake, Dieskau attempted multiple attacks on William Johnson’s fortified position, only to be repulsed each time. While leading a final advance towards the entrenchments, Dieskau received three musket ball wounds to his legs, thus preventing the general from playing any further role in the battle.
After the French retreat, Dieskau laid helpless at the base of a tree near the enemy lines. It was at this time that an enemy soldier encountered the wounded general and fired a shot that passed through his hips and pierced his bladder. After this fleeting exchange, a group of militiamen took Dieskau prisoner and brought him to General William Johnson’s tent.
General Jean-Armand de Dieskau remained at Lake George until September 17, 1755 when William Johnson transported his French counterpart, along with 22 other wounded prisoners of war, to Albany.
To ensure that the general continued receiving proper respect and medical treatment, Johnson requested that those transporting Dieskau “prepare the best Accommodations possible for the general & during his Stay to have him treated with the utmost respect.”
Johnson ordered that Dieskau and the French general’s aide-de-camp, Lieutenant Colonel Benoît François Bernier, accompany part of the New York regiment. Johnson also entrusted Dr. Peter Middleton, the camp’s physician, to accompany Dieskau and to utilize his skills to cure his wounds and restore the general’s health.
Captain Philip Schuyler of the New York militia, at William Johnson’s request, also traveled with Dieskau to ensure that comfortable quarters were prepared for the general and his aide-de-camp.
As the only officer in Johnson’s army with fluency in French, Schuyler was valuable as an interpreter and became close to both gentlemen, who appreciated his diligent attention to their care.
Their friendship continued after the French gentlemen departed the camp and convalesced in Albany. During his recovery in Albany, Dieskau experienced generous hospitality from Johnson’s sister, Catherine Johnson Farrell, as well as the Schuyler family.
Before leaving Albany to return to Lake George, Captain Schuyler instructed his mother and his newly wedded wife, Catherine Van Rensselaer, to do everything necessary to ease the general’s suffering.
Both women carried out their roles as caregivers to Dieskau, who gratefully accepted the care provided and their kindness. Even though Dieskau’s soldiers had killed her husband during the Lake George battles, the French general writes that he never observed Catherine Farrell’s grief because she concealed it, and even persuaded the wounded general that he was causing her no trouble.
Dieskau’s wounds gradually improved, and he was able to travel to the city of New York in October, 1755. The Baron arrived there on Monday, October 20th, and received medical care under Dr. John Jones’s observation in lodgings prepared for him on Nassau Street until March of 1756.
In his letters to Marc-Pierre de Voyer de Paulmy, the Count d’Argenson, the general noted that he expected to stay in New York for two or three months before departing for Bath, England. He planned to use the city’s natural hot spring water in the aid of his recovery during his imprisonment there.
In the early months of 1756, he felt his condition had greatly improved and reported that three of his wounds had healed, yet the wound to his bladder refused to fully heal.
Later in March, Dieskau and Bernier departed New York and, after a three-week voyage, arrived at Falmouth, England in early April. Despite his rank and influence, there is little information regarding Dieskau’s time in England.
From October 12, 1755 to August 5, 1758, the Département de la Guerre acknowledged receiving Dieskau’s personal correspondences. Marc-Pierre de Voyer de Paulmy, Count d’Argenson is apparently the only minister who remained in contact with Dieskau.
Despite receiving the general’s letters, the governor-general and the ministers appear to disregard his pleas for assistance, something Dieskau mentions in a letter to the new French Secretary of War, Charles Fouquet in August 1758, stating that he had not received answers to any of his letters for more than six months.
Once Dieskau arrived in Bath in June 1757, he began treatments for his wounds under the supervision of Mr. Jeremiah Pierce, the Surgeon to the Royal Mineral Water Hospital, whose work included bloodletting, bandaging, splinting, excising foreign objects, and cauterizing and incising abscesses.
While in Bath, the general continued to dispatch letters to d’Argenson and Charles Fouquet, outlining his condition in explicit detail, stressing his scarcity of funds and defending his conduct at Lake George. Dieskau also wrote d’Argenson requesting that his property be preserved, as he proposed to sell it if he could not recover from his wounds.
Because of poor communication between the Count d’Argenson and finance minister André Doreil, the French government erroneously assumed that the general had died and auctioned off his personal effects. Even though King Louis XV granted a pension of 4,000 livres per annum, an amount that was possibly sufficient to cover his expenses and debts, Dieskau sought additional financial assistance and borrowed from his captors.
In his letter to Fouquet, the general explained that he was without resources except for the 100 guineas he borrowed from Lord William Barrington. The French government rejected his draft for the payment of his debt to Lord Barrington, and Louis XV then withdrew a fund for the sustenance for all French prisoners abroad in 1758.
Regrettably for Dieskau, Fouquet and the French court ignored his pleas for assistance. Without further communiqués and remuneration, a desperate and frustrated Dieskau felt abandoned by the Court.
Just as there are scant records of Dieskau’s imprisonment in England, there are few accounts of his life after his return to France. Professor Oliver P. Hubbard’s article in The Magazine of American History with Notes and Queries provided more information on Dieskau’s life than previous publications.
His article, “Harmony of History, Dieskau,” provided a more precise timeline for Dieskau’s journey and discussed the difficulties when composing a narrative of the general’s time after the Battle of Lake George.
He states that in the Paris documents from the Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New-York, Vol. X, he could find “no farther account of his [Dieskau’s] exile in England or of his life after his return to France.”
The article also provided the only reference to the French philosopher Denis Diderot’s Memories, which sheds additional light on Dieskau’s post-battle life with frequent references to his letter of visits and conversations with the French general in Paris in 1760. Diderot’s letter to Louise-Henriette Volland, dated November 6 1760, discloses the severity of Dieskau’s wounds five years after the battle.
Even more helpful was Benson Lossing’s biography of George Washington, which explains, in a footnote, that “as his [Dieskau’s] restoration was deemed impossible, he was permitted to retire, on his parole, to Germany, at one of the spas of which country the veteran soldier lived several years, a sufferer from his wounds, of which he finally died.”
Lossing’s reference of a parole permitting the wounded general to retire to Germany supports the probability that the English government released Dieskau under a
“freedom on parole,” on the condition that the major general gave his word of honor not to fight the English until the French exchanged another officer of similar rank.
An exact date of his parole is still unknown. However, the signing of the Convention of Écluse/Sluys on February 6, 1759, which applied to the sick and the wounded, prisoners of war, deserters, and ground troops (les troupes de terre) and Diderot’s letters from November 6, 1760 provide a sufficient time-frame to ascertain Dieskau’s time of release.
Major General Jean-Armand de Dieskau died at age 61 in Suresnes, Hauts-Seine, France on September 8, 1767, twelve years to the day after the battle at Lake George.
Unfortunately, La Société Généalogique Canadienne-Française’s Project Montcalm database contains no record of the general’s death certificate in their registers.
Michael J. Stoehr is a graduate of Auburn University at Montgomery, MLA in History, and Southeastern Louisiana University, BA in History and Political Science. This article is an abridged version of the third chapter “Dieskau’s Capture and His Journey Back to Europe” from his thesis, entitled Noncompliance or Tactical Adaptability? General Jean-Armand de Dieskau and The Defeat at Lake George, 8 September 1755.
A version of this essay was first published in the Fort George Post, The Journal of the Lake George Battlefield Park Alliance. The Lake George Battlefield Park Alliance is a not-for-profit organization of volunteers who have an abiding interest in the Lake George Region’s critical role in the French and Indian War and the American Revolution. For more information, visit www.lakegeorgebattlefield.org.
Illustrations, from above: Detail from Benjamin West’s fanciful depiction of William Johnson sparing Dieskau’s life after the Battle of Lake George; a portrait of Dieskau; and “Your very humble and obedient Servant” signature of Dieskau.
Recent Comments