Daniel Webb
Daniel Webb sat fifteen miles from Fort William Henry with the relief force and advised the garrison to surrender. He was a career officer who came to America in 1756 as one of a succession of British commanders sent to a war they did not understand, and briefly held the supreme command between Shirley and Loudoun. His reputation was made before that at Oswego, where he was marching to reinforce the garrison, heard it had fallen, and fell back so hurriedly that he felled trees behind him to block the road. In August 1757 Montcalm besieged Fort William Henry on Lake George with some 8,000 men and Indian allies from as far as the Great Lakes. Monro held for six days with his guns bursting one by one and sent messenger after messenger to Fort Edward, where Webb had roughly 1,600 regulars and thousands of militia within a day's march. He wrote back that he could not relieve the fort and that Monro should get the best terms he could - a letter the French intercepted and forwarded to Monro themselves, having read it. The garrison surrendered on terms and was attacked on the road out by Montcalm's allies, who had been promised plunder and were given a capitulation instead. That is the massacre Fenimore Cooper built The Last of the Mohicans around, and the reason a British officer's caution is one of the best-known episodes of the war. He was recalled to Europe and eventually made a general anyway. Whether he could have relieved the fort is genuinely arguable - he believed Montcalm had far more men than he did, and losing Fort Edward as well would have opened the Hudson - but he never made that case publicly, and the letter did it for him.
- Lived: 1700 CE – 1773 CE
- Nationality: British
- Roles: military
