Battle of Fort Niagara

The Battle of Fort Niagara was a siege late in the French and Indian War, the North American theatre of the Seven Years' War. The British siege of Fort Niagara in July 1759 was part of a campaign to remove French control of the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley regions, making possible a western invasion of the French province of Canada in conjunction with General James Wolfe's invasion to the east.

Background

British General Jeffery Amherst made plans for the 1759 military campaigns of the Seven Years' War that included an expedition to capture Fort Niagara, a major French military and supply point between the French province of Canada and their forts in the Ohio Valley. Amherst chose Brigadier General John Prideaux to lead the expedition, which also included Sir William Johnson, the British Indian agent who led the expedition's Haudenosaunee forces.

Fort Niagara had been largely constructed under the direction of Captain Pierre Pouchot of the French Army. In early 1759, General Louis-Joseph de Montcalm and New France's governor, the Marquis de Vaudreuil, sent him with about 2,500 men to fortify Niagara beyond the 500 men that had wintered there. Pouchot, under orders from Vaudreuil, sent many of those men south to Fort Machault in mid-June as part of a plan to reinforce the French forts of the Ohio Country and attack the British at Fort Pitt. The forces left to defend Niagara consisted of about 200 men from the regiments of Royal Roussillon, Languedoc, La Sarre, and Béarn, 20 artillerymen, and about 300 provincial troops and militia.

Prideaux's British Army troops consisted of the 44th and 46th Regiments, and two companies from the 60th, numbering about 2,200 men. He also commanded 2500 provincial militia from New York and 700 from Rhode Island.