The majority had not died easily, most notably those who’d fallen victim to patrols that had included Mohawks. Despite Johnson’s orders, there had been at least half a dozen scalpings, with the mutilated bodies left in full view so as to spread terror among the enemy; the argument being that it was time they had a taste of what it was like to suffer intimidation and the destruction of livelihood.

Disciplinary action had not been taken against those who had carried out the mutilations; nor would it be. Johnson was aware, as were his superiors, that the support of the Six Nations was vital if the Crown forces were to have any chance of defeating the Continental army. To chastise warriors too harshly for engaging in what they considered to be a legitimate form of warfare would be to risk breaking the alliance, and that could not be allowed to happen.

For their part, those tribes of the Six Nations that had allied themselves to the Crown had done so not because they were fiercely loyal to a distant monarch but for more prosaic reasons. Chief among these was Britain’s promise to support the Iroquois in their battle to prevent American seizure of their tribal lands.

There were other inducements on offer; plunder being high on the list. By far the most persuasive, however, was the opportunity it gave the tribes to wreak bloody revenge upon the Yan-kees. The previous year, under the personal orders of General George Washington, Continental troops had launched a massive raid against the Iroquois’ homeland, in reprisal for joint Indian and Loyalist attacks along the Pennsylvanian and New York frontier. More than forty Iroquois villages had been brutally destroyed. The Iroquois might have had only a nodding acquaintance with the scriptures but they were perfectly familiar with the concept of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

Which was why, Johnson knew, that pursuit in one form or another was inevitable. Had the roles been reversed, no power on earth would have prevented him from tracking down the men who had visited such devastation upon his valley.

As a further precaution, therefore, he had split his force. Following his earlier orders, an advance party – one company of Royal Yorkers and the warriors from the Lake of the Two Mountains – had been dispatched to Bulwagga Bay at Crown Point to secure the embarkation site. With half the irregulars and the remaining Mohawks assigned as scouts and outriders, that had left the rest of the irregulars and Yorkers, along with the men of the 29th, 34th and 53rd Regiments, to protect the column.