page_title: Robert Rogers (British Army officer)
section_title: Northern campaign
hierarchical_section_title: Robert Rogers (British Army officer) / French and Indian War / Northern campaign
caption_attribution_description: English: Abenaki Couple, an 18th-century watercolor by an unknown artist. Courtesy of the City of Montreal Records Management &amp; Archives, Montreal, Canada.
context_page_description: Robert Rogers was an American colonial frontiersman. Rogers served in the British army during both the French and Indian War and the American Revolution. During the French and Indian War, Rogers raised and commanded the famous Rogers' Rangers, trained for raiding and close combat behind enemy lines.
context_section_description: From 1755 to 1758, Rogers and his rangers served under a series of unsuccessful British commanders operating over the northern accesses to the British colonies: Major General William Johnson, Major General William Shirley, Colonel William Haviland, and Major General James Abercromby. At the time, the British could do little more than fight defensive campaigns around Lake Champlain, Crown Point, Ticonderoga, and the upper Hudson.
  During this time, the rangers proved indispensable; they grew gradually to twelve companies, as well as several additional contingents of Indians who had pledged their allegiance to the British cause. The rangers were kept organizationally distinct from British regulars. Rogers was their acting commandant, as well as the direct commander of his own company.
  On 21 January 1757 at the First Battle of the Snowshoes, Rogers' Rangers ambushed and captured seven Canadiens near Fort Carillon but then encountered a hundred French and Canadian militia and Ottawa Indians from the Ohio Country. Roger's forces retreated after taking casualties of 14 killed, nine wounded, and six missing or captured; the French-Indian forces were 11 killed, 27 wounded.
  British forces surrendered Fort William Henry in August 1757, after which the Rangers were stationed on Rogers Island near Fort Edward. This allowed them to train and operate with more freedom than the regular British forces.
  On 13 March 1758 at the Second Battle of the Snowshoes, Rogers' Rangers ambushed a French and Indian column and, in turn, were ambushed by enemy forces. The Rangers lost 125 men in this encounter, as well as eight men wounded, with 52 surviving. Rogers estimated 100 killed and nearly 100 wounded of the French-Indian forces; however, the French listed casualties as a total of ten Indians killed and seventeen wounded.
  On 7 July 1758, Rogers' Rangers took part in the Battle of  Ticonderoga.
  In 1758, Abercromby recognized Rogers' accomplishments by promoting him to Major, with the equally famous John Stark as his second in command. Rogers now held two ranks appropriate to his double role: Captain and Major.
  In 1759, the tide of the war turned and the British advanced on the city of Quebec. Major General Jeffrey Amherst, the newly appointed Commander-in-Chief of British forces in North America, had a brilliant and definitive idea. He dispatched Rogers and his rangers on an expedition far behind enemy lines to the west against the Abenakis at Saint-Francis in Quebec, a staging base for Indian raids into New England. Rogers led a force of two hundred rangers from Crown Point, New York, deep into French territory to Saint-Francis.
  At this time, the Indians near Saint-Francis had given up their aboriginal way of life and were living in a town next to a French mission. Rogers burned the town and claimed to have killed 200; the actual number was 30 killed and 5 captured. Rogers losses were 41 killed; 7 wounded 10 captured. Following the 3 October 1759 attack and successful destruction of Saint-Francis, Rogers' force ran out of food during their retreat back through the rugged wilderness of northern Vermont. The Rangers reached a safe location along the Connecticut River at the abandoned Fort Wentworth. Rogers left them encamped, and returned a few days later with food and relief forces from Fort at Number 4, now Charlestown, New Hampshire, the nearest British town.
  The destruction of Saint-Francis by Rogers was a major psychological victory, as the colonists no longer felt that they were helpless. The residents of Saint-Francis, a combined group of Abenakis and others, understood that they were no longer beyond reach. Abenaki raids along the frontier did not cease, but significantly diminished.
caption: Abenakis (18th-century)
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