Fort Niagara
In 1759 the British continued their success by continuing to capture more and more French forts. As spring arrived General John Prideaux would launch an expedition to capture Fort Niagara. By mid June he had reached Oswego on the southwestern shore of Lake Ontario. At this point they had just met up with a British General who had a thousand Iroquois warriors with him. John Prideaux left one thousand of his troops to stay and rebuild the Fort of Oswego, it was destroyed by the French in 1756. Then John Prideaux took his army along with the Indians to Fort Niagara. On July 6, John Prideaux's army reached the fort. The commander of the French at Fort Niagara was Captain Pierre Pouchot. Pouchot was confident that his Indian scouts would tell him if any British troops were coming but he was wrong. He had no time to react and the Fort was soon under siege by Britain. Then Pouchot decided to just wait it out until reinforcements arrived from Venango. While the Fort was being sieged, John Prideaux was killed leaving the army to be run by the other general, William Johnson. To stop the French reinforcements from arriving, a log wall was built on the road to the French fort, but this only delayed the French by a few days. The French arrived on July 23 with six hundred soldiers and one thousand Indians. Before the battle began the Indians from both sides met and had a conference to decide that neither side would participate. The French soldiers were not able to break through the British's siege to the city and left Pouchot to surrender to the British. This victory gave the British a huge advantage over the French because they now controlled the road to their western forts making the French abandon these forts.
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