During the 1750s, rival European colonists sought allies amongst Native American tribes. Abenaki warbands raided the English settlements and participated in the infamous massacre at Fort William Henry - an incident immortalised in "The Last of the Mohicans". This episode fuelled an escalating cycle of revenge that reached a bloody climax two years later when Robert Rogers and his rangers were ordered deep within enemy territory to destroy the Abenaki village of St Francis, which they did with ruthless efficiency. However the raiders endured a nightmare journey as they struggled home. Several were caught by vengeful pursuers and tortured to death; others resorted to cannibalism rather than starve in the wilderness. Rogers' raid was celebrated by Anglo-American colonists, and its leader is credited with founding the 'special forces' tradition in the US Army. Others view the St Francis raid as an eighteenth-century My Lai massacre, in which helpless men and women were butchered. Eschewing prejudices, Stephen Brumwell deploys vivid prose and meticulous research to reconstruct this controversial and dramatic episode from America's violent frontier past.