224 THE THREE WAR-PARTIES. 



partly perhaps because the hated governor had 

 established them, partly through distrust of his 

 officers, some of whom were taken from the reg- 

 ulars, and partly because the men were wanted at 

 Boston. The order of withdrawal cannot be too 

 strongly condemned. It was a part of the bungling 

 inefficiency which marked the military management 

 of the New England governments from the close of 

 Philip's war to the peace of Utrecht. 



When spring opened, the Indians turned with 

 redoubled fury against the defenceless frontier, 

 seized the abandoned stockades, and butchered the 

 helpless settlers. Now occurred the memorable 

 catastrophe at Cocheco, or Dover. Two squaws 

 came at evening and begged lodging in the pali- 

 saded house of Major Waldron. At night, when 

 all was still, they opened the gates and let in their 

 savage countrymen. Waldron was eighty years 

 old. He leaped from his bed, seized his sword, 

 and drove back the assailants through two rooms ; 

 but, as he turned to snatch his pistols, they stunned 

 him by the blow of a hatchet, bound him in an 

 arm-chair, and placed him on a table, where after 

 torturing him they killed him with his own sword. 



The crowning event of the war was the capture 

 of Pemaquicl, a stockade work, mounted with seven 

 or eight cannon. Andros had placed in it a garri- 

 son of a hundred and fiftv-six men, under an officer 

 devoted to him. Most of them had been with- 

 drawn by the council of safety ; and the entire 

 force of the defenders consisted of Lieutenant James 

 Weems and thirty soldiers, nearly half of whom 



