1 He revives Act of 1683. As governor he needed revenue and began to look at the collection of taxes from a new point of view. In default of any new statute, the Colonial he proclaimed that the Colonial Act of 1683 with regard to customs and excise was still valid and would be rigorously enforced. That act, albeit passed by New York's first popular assembly, that assembly so long desired and prayed for, had never enjoyed popular favour; doubtless because it put an end to the two years of free trade which had ensued upon the departure of Andros in 1681. The history of this piece of legislation was extremely curious. Passed by a popular assembly, it was disallowed by the Duke of York, but was nevertheless continued in operation by Governor Dongan and his council, for want of something better. But neither under Dongan nor under Nicholson was it very strictly enforced.2 Now by adopting this unpalatable act the unhappy Leisler at once sacrified a large part of his popular support. People tore down the copies of his proclamation from the walls and trees where they were posted. Merchants declared his title unsound and refused to pay duties to his collector. savagely with fines and confiscations. Men were dragged to prison till the jails ity is defied. were full. The fact that he could keep up such a course shows how strong at the outset must have been the popular impulse that brought him into power. He retorted His author 1 Colonial Laws of New York, Albany, 1894, i. 116–121. 2 Leisler himself had refused to pay duties under it. See Brodhead, History of the State of New York, ii. 599. Jacob Milborne. Outside the city his authority was more easily defied. When he appointed new sheriffs and justices, and ordered the old ones to give up their commissions, he was sometimes obeyed but often openly derided. Albany flatly refused to acknowledge his authority. Late in the summer the mayor, Peter Schuyler, and his brother-in-law, Robert Livingston, called a convention and took measures for protection against the French, but they would have nothing to say to Leisler. About that time Leisler's old friend, Jacob Milborne, returned from a visit to Europe and became his most energetic supporter. Milborne was an Englishman of Anabaptist proclivities. He had some book-knowledge and some skill in writing, and was determined to have all the ills ' in the world mended, say by the year 1700. If he had lived in these days he would have edited some anarchist newspaper. Leisler deemed him a treasure of knowledge and capacity and sent him up the river with three sloops to tame the frowardness of Albany. His persuasive tongue won a number of adherents and succeeded in sowing some seeds of dissension, but Livingston and Schuyler were too much for him, and his mission was unsuccessful. This was in November, 1689, and Frontenac had arrived in Canada. As we have seen, the Iroquois had been there before him, and his grand scheme for conquering New York dwindled ignominiously into the sending of three scalping parties to destroy the most exposed frontier settlements of the Dutch and English. It was necessary to make some show of strength in order to retrieve in the minds of the war parties. Indians the somewhat shaken military reputation of the French. The Algonquin allies The French must be encouraged and the Iroquois foes confounded, and there was nothing, of course, that the red men appreciated more highly than a wholesale massacre. The distances to be traversed were long and difficult, and this made it all the easier to surprise the remote villages that sometimes forgot to be watchful against the diabolism that lurked in the forest. The first of the three scalping parties was sent to the Hudson River, the second into New Hampshire, the third into Maine. The first party consisted of 114 French Canadians skilled in all manner of woodcraft, and 96 Christian Indians; their leaders were French noblemen, among them the famous LeMoyne d'Iberville, founder of Louisiana. The march of seventeen days was attended with terrible hardships. It was an alternation of thawing and freezing. On one day they were struggling against a blinding snowstorm, on another they were half drowned in the mud and slush of treacherous swamps, on another their ears and toes were frozen in the icy wind. Their coats and blankets were torn to shreds in the stubborn underbrush, and their stock of food, dragged on sleds, was not enough, so that they had to be put on starving rations. They could not have encountered more hardship if they had been a party of scientific explorers, and they fought their way through it all with the tenacity and the ferocious zeal of crusadTheir original plan was to strike at Albany, but as the limit of human endurance was approach ers. VOL. II. ing before they could accomplish the distance, they turned upon Schenectady, some fiftion at Sche- teen miles nearer. This little Dutch vil The situa nectady. lage was the extreme frontier outpost of the New York colony. Its population numbered about 150 souls. It was surrounded by a palisade and defended by a blockhouse in which there were eight or ten Connecticut militia. The Leisler affair had bred civil dudgeon in this little community. Most of the people were Leislerites. The chief magistrate, John Glen, an adherent of Schuyler, was held in disfavour, and out of sheer spite and insubordination the people disobeyed his orders to mount guard. They left their two gates open, and placed at each a big snow image as sentinel. The idea that they could now be in danger from Canada, harrowed and humbled as it had lately been by their friends the Iroquois, they scouted as preposterous. It was argued that the beaten French were not likely to be in a mood for distant expeditions. And so it happened that toward midnight of the 8th of February, 1690, in the midst of a freezing, lightly whirling and drifting snowstorm their fate overtook them. The French war-party, haggard and glaring, maddened with suffering, came with crouching stealth and exultant spring, like a band of tigers. Noiselessly they crept in and leisurely arranged themselves in a cordon around the sleeping village within the palisade, cutting Schenec- off all escape. When all was ready, a terrific war-whoop awoke the inhabitants to their doom. "No pen can write and no tongue Massacre at tady. express," said brave old Peter Schuyler, "the cruelties that were wrought that night. The work was sharp and quick. About sixty were killed, and the other ninety captured. Then the butchers paused to appease their famine out of the rude cellars and larders of their victims, and to sleep until morning the sleep of the just. The Connecticut militia were all among the slain. The magistrate was strongly fortified in his house on a hill outside the enclosure, but he was not attacked. He had more than once rescued French prisoners from the firebrands of the Mohawks, and in requital of this kindness Iberville not only spared him and his family, but in a spirit of chivalry gave back to him about sixty out of the ninety prisoners with polite and edifying speeches. Before noon of the next day, leaving Schenectady a heap of ashes, mangled corpses, and charred timbers, the party started on its return march to Montreal, carrying the other thirty prisoners to be tortured to death in a leisurely and comfortable way. The news of the disaster spread quickly through the Mohawk valley, and a sturdy company of warriors of the Long House pursued the French party with sleuth-hound tenacity until near Montreal, when at last they overtook them and partially amended the reckoning by killing fifteen or twenty. As a fresh demonstration of the danger from France, the affair of Schenectady served Albany to strengthen Leisler's position. He sent yields to Milborne with 160 men to aid in defend Leisler. ing Albany. As it was not a time when one would |