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Montcalm’s most grievous error was to deploy these troops to fight in the open at his last battle on the Plains of Abraham outside Quebec, where they simply could not volley as well as the Redcoats. And this misuse occurred after they had begun the battle from hidden positions and had done serious damage in sniping at the British regulars.
    Early on in this bitter conflict, the French had made much better use of their irregular capabilities. Indeed, their bush tactics had worked spectacularly well. In one early action, a hundred or so French colonial regulars, augmented by perhaps six hundred Indian allies, inflicted a crushing defeat on a British column in brigade strength—just over two thousand troops when they set out, but down by several hundred after a month on the march, due largely to sickness. The Redcoats were joined by just a few hundred colonists and a half-dozen Indians, giving them little capacity for bush tactics. All were under the command of General Edward Braddock, slowly marching through the forest toward the key strategic point, Fort Duquesne (present-day Pittsburgh). When ambushed by the French and Indian force, Braddock tried to employ traditional field formations—all that he knew to do—massing his troops for volley fire, but this only made them more compact targets. The resulting slaughter saw Braddock mortally wounded and more than two-thirds of his force killed or wounded. The general’s last words, however, foreshadowed a more supple strategic approach to war in the wilderness: “We shall know better how to deal with them another time.” 3 Braddock would prove to be prophetic. But for the moment, complete catastrophe was barely headed off by the steady courage of the American colonial officer George Washington, who had come along on the expedition.
    Other defeats would soon follow for the British as Montcalm continually exploited his ability to move conventional forces under the protection of a ring of irregulars during the campaigns of 1757 and 1758. His most notable success came with the capture of Fort William Henry, at the southern end of Lake George in New York, though it was tarnished by the atrocities committed by his Indian irregulars in the wake of the siege; the awful episode that has come down to us vividly through James Fenimore Cooper’s account in THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS.
    At this point in the war it was hard to see how the French could be beaten, given their seemingly winning mix of conventional and irregular methods, and the far greater number of Native Americans who flocked to their side. But the British had learned from Braddock’s defeat and other reverses, and if they had fewer Indian allies, they had far more colonists, many of whom were more inclined toward bush fighting than open-field battles. These were the men who would populate the ranks of the ranger companies, described by the historian Fred Anderson as “whole battalions of little wiry men able to move quickly through the woods.” 4 They would eventually go well beyond merely providing security for the Redcoat regulars. Under the leadership of one of their own and of a British general of receptive mind, they would transform a field army and win control of a continent.
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    Robert Rogers was a New Hampshireman who loved the wilderness world and felt most truly alive there. In his youth he picked up Indian bush craft and almost certainly put it to use as a border smuggler, bringing in illicit goods to the British colonies from French Canada. 5 Some evidence indicates that when he was a child his family homestead was burned out by marauding Abenaki Indians, kindling an anger toward them that would never leave him. Aside from smuggling, Rogers is thought to have involved himself in other dubious activities, including forgery and counterfeiting. Francis Parkman summed up Rogers simply: “His character leaves much to be desired.” 6 Nevertheless he became a folk hero for his exploits during the French and Indian