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Behold the conquering Cross! 'Tis God the triumph wrought! But the glorious joy of victory did not last long. Vaudreuil claimed most of the credit for himself and the Canadians. He wrote lying dispatches to France and senseless orders to Montcalm. Now that reinforcements were worse than useless, because they ate up the food and could not attack the enemy, he kept on sending them every day.
It is now becoming obscured by time; and thousands, who know that Montcalm died like a hero on the plains of Abraham, have yet to learn how much he was deficient in that moral courage without which no man can be truly great.
With a splendid force of regular and provincial troops, from fourteen to fifteen thousand altogether, but entirely destitute of artillery, an evidence of extraordinary incapacity, or of culpable negligence, he had thrown himself upon most formidable entrenchments of fallen trees, with their sharp ends pointing outwards, that the French had ingeniously constructed in front of Carillon, which was still incomplete, and defended by less than three thousand men under Montcalm and Lévis.
When this opening was translated to Munro, he answered with dignity, but with sufficient courtesy: "However I may prize such testimony from Monsieur Montcalm, it will be more valuable when it shall be better merited." The French general smiled, as Duncan gave him the purport of this reply, and observed: "What is now so freely accorded to approved courage, may be refused to useless obstinacy.
There were then about three thousand men at Fort William Henry, with as many more held in reserve at Fort Edward, half a day's march only away. Against the lake fort, however, Montcalm brought an army of eight or nine thousand men, including not only a corps of Canadians, but a "larger number of Indians in a body than had ever before been collected."
He was, however, under Vaudreuil's foolish orders and he had no power to check Bigot's knaveries. Much against his will he was already getting into debt, and was thus rendered even more helpless. Vaudreuil, as governor, had plenty of money. Bigot stole as much as he wished. But Montcalm was not well paid.
He spoke of the help for Montcalm that had been thrown into Quebec, of his own illness, of the decline in his army's strength through the operations already carried out, of the fact that practically the whole force of Canada was now against him, but, in closing, he assured the minister that the little time left to the campaign should be used to the utmost.
Then came a burst of cheering. Montcalm had been seen spurring on with only a small band of followers over the bridge of the St.
He is also the kinsman of the Marquis of Montcalm, whose name no doubt you know by this time." "He is the new military commander sent out by the King of France, to take the lead in the war now commenced in Canada and along the border between France and England," answered Stark promptly. "Yes; and my father and uncle came out with him, and my brother and I also.
These were the three original French Gates, improved and strengthened by the great engineer, de Lery. Through them, sixteen years before, the army of Montcalm passed after its defeat on the Plains of Abraham, and then passed out again, crossing by a bridge of boats to the camp at Beauport. Through them one year later, the broken army of Murray rushed back in flight from the disastrous field of St.
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