An attack upon Montreal by the Iroquois soon forced him to return; but in the following January a party of French and Indians left Montreal in the depth of a Canadian winter, and after wading for two and twenty days, with provisions on their backs, through snows and swamps and across a wide wilderness, reached the unguarded village of Schenectady.

Here a midnight war-whoop was raised, and the inhabitants either massacred or driven half-clad through the snow to seek protection in the neighboring towns.
In 1690, a congress of the colonies, called to provide means for the general defence, assembled at New York, and resolved to carry war into Canada: an army was to attack Montreal by way of Lake Champlain, and a fleet to attempt Quebec by the St.Lawrence.The former advanced as far as the lake, when the quarrels of the commanding officers defeated the objects of the expedition.

The Massachusetts fleet of thirty-four vessels, (the largest carrying forty-four guns each,) and two thousand men, failed to reduce Quebec, though the defences of that place were then of the slightest character, and armed with only twenty-three guns.
In 1704, and again in 1707, Port Royal was attacked by costly expeditions fitted out by the eastern colonies; and again, in 1709, a land force of fifteen hundred men advanced against Montreal by Lake Champlain; but nothing of importance was effected by either expedition.
In 1711, Lord Bolingbroke planned the conquest of Canada.

The land forces, numbering five thousand men in all, were separated into two distinct armies, the one sent against Detroit, and the other against Montreal by Lake Champlain; while a fleet of fifteen ships of war, forty transports, and six store-ships, carrying a land force of six thousand five hundred men, was to attack Quebec.

The maritime expedition failed to reach its destination, and after losing a part of the fleet and more than a thousand men in the St.Lawrence, this part of the project was abandoned.