breast, and he sent the letter to Monro, with a summons for him to surrender. The commander of Fort William Henry at once saw the hopelessness of his situation. His own means of defence were almost exhausted, and he could expect no aid from Fort Edward. Very reluctantly, he yielded to the honorable terms which were agreed upon. The terms on which the surrender was to be made were that the garrison were to march out with the honors of war, carrying arms and one cannon in recognition of their gallant defence of the fort, Monro agreeing that his men should not bear arms against France for the term of eighteen months; also to deliver at Ticonderoga, all the French and Indian prisoners in the hands of the English. Montcalm pledged himself to furnish a strong escort half-way to Fort Edward. All this had been arranged at a council in which the Indians were. not represented, and there was some murmuring from the first by them against the terms of the capitulation.

On the evening of the 9th of August, the French entered the fort and the English left it.

"I have kept intoxicating liquors from the Indians," said Montcalm to the Americans, " and wish to earnestly impress on you the necessity of doing the same. value your lives, do not under any circumstances give or sell any liquors to them."

As you

Had the Americans obeyed the wise injunctions of Montcalm, the massacre which followed might have been averted; but some of the looser characters among the Americans dealt out liquor unsparingly to the savages.

Before midnight, the hoots and yells and singing and dancing of the savages bore evidence that they were under the effects of the liquor. After a night's carousal, the Indians were ready for mischief. At dawn they gathered about in groups near the English, murmuring their discontent at not being consulted as to the terms of surrender, and threatening to break the terms of capitulation.

When the Americans began their march toward Fort Edward, the infuriated Indians fell upon them, plundered nearly all of them, murdered a large number of the soldiers and women, and made many prisoners.

Montcalm's attention was attracted to the awful scene by the continuous yells and hoots of the savages. Calling to De Levi to follow him, he dashed over the walls of the fort sword in hand, determined, at the risk of his own life, to put a stop to the massacre. An Indian had seized an infant, which he threatened to slay with his knife. The mother was struggling on her knees in the grasp of a second savage, who had raised his tomahawk to brain her, just as Montcalm reached the scene.

"Hold, monsters!" roared the Frenchman and, with the back of his sword, he felled one savage, while his fist shot out, striking and blinding the other. Montcalm and De Levi endangered their lives and were assailed by the Indians; but, after a stubborn fight, the Indians were humbled and the massacre finally stayed. The survivors were sent to Canada under a strong escort, and the prisoners were afterward ransomed in Canada.

Fort William Henry was totally destroyed, and to-day only an irregular line of low mounds marks the place where once it stood.

The cowardly General Webb at Fort Edward, with almost six thousand men, expecting to be attacked at any moment, sent off his private baggage to a place of safety called the Hudson Highlands; but Montcalm, having accomplished the chief object of the expedition, returned to Lake Champlain to rest on his laurels. So ended the campaigns of 1757. Through Loudon's incompetency, the French had advanced, and the English-American colonists found themselves in jeopardy from a cunning foe in the forest, a powerful enemy on the north and west, and the home government, which seemed to threaten them with perpetual slavery. The bird of freedom only slumbered. The Americans were learning a valuable but bitter lesson by experience. Their rough

struggle with the French and Indians was but the training school, which, in the coming years, was to give them confidence in themselves to accomplish a victory for freedom.

Montcalm, reading the weakness of the Earl of Loudon, had seized his opportunity and struck an almost fatal blow at the English.

CHAPTER XVIII.

CAPTURE OF QUEBEC.

History can only take things in the gross ;
But could we know in detail, perchance,
In balancing the profit and the loss,

War's merit it by no means might enhance,
To waste so much gold for a little dross,

As has been done more conquests to advance.
The drying up of a single tear has more
Of honest fame, than shedding seas of gore.

-BYRON.

THE time had come when the wise heads of England realized that, if the British government would retain her possessions in America, folly must no longer be practised. The Americans were between two foes, the royalists and the French, and there can be no doubt, that as between the two they might in time have yielded to the latter as less tyrannical than the former.

They still had

While Loudon

a strong friend in William Pitt. was making tremendous efforts to conquer the Americans by overawing their assemblies and bringing the people into subjection to the royal will, Pitt was devising plans for conciliating them