A raiding party of 114 French soldiers and militiamen, accompanied by 96 allied Mohawk and Algonquin warriors, attacked the unguarded community, destroying most of the homes, and killing or capturing most of its inhabitants.

The remainder of the surviving captives were dragged through the snow, tied to horses, and left hungry for weeks before arriving in a Mohawk town north of Montreal.

In much of the late 17th century, the Iroquois and the colonists of New France engaged in a protracted struggle for control of the economically important North American fur trade, known as the Beaver Wars.

It consisted of 114 French Canadians, mostly frontier-savvy coureurs de bois but also some marines, 80 Sault, and 16 Algonquin warriors, with a few converted Mohawks.

They found Fort Orange to be well defended, but a scouting party reported on February 8 that no one was guarding the stockade at the small frontier village of Schenectady to the west.

[2] Schenectady and Albany were so politically polarized in the wake of the 1689 Leisler's Rebellion that the opposing factions had not agreed on the setting of guards in the two settlements.

[4] Finding no sentinels other than two snowmen and the gate ajar, according to tradition, the raiders silently entered Schenectady two hours before dawn and launched their attack.

A party of Albany militia and Mohawk warriors pursued the northern invaders and killed or captured 15 or more almost within sight of Montreal.

[2] The attack forced New York's political factions to put aside their differences and focus on the common enemy, New France.

As a result of the attack, the Albany Convention, which had resisted Jacob Leisler's assumption of power in the southern parts of the colony, acknowledged his authority.

Led by Connecticut militia general Fitz-John Winthrop, the expedition turned back in August 1690 because of disease, lack of supplies, and insufficient watercraft for navigating on Lake Champlain.

In 1990, the city of Schenectady commissioned composer Maria Riccio Bryce to create a musical work to commemorate the tricentennial of the massacre.

The resulting piece, Hearts of Fire, followed the lives of Schenectady townspeople through the seasons of 1689, set against the backdrop of the French march from Montreal to Albany.