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1757] Massacre of the garrison. 131 tomahawks flashed in the air. A scene of wild confusion followed ; the captive garrison had little means of resistance but unloaded muskets. The sick with the women and children were among them, and numbers of these fell instant victims to the fury of the savages. The escort was culpably insufficient, and proved heartlessly indifferent. Montcalm was thoroughly acquainted with the Indian nature, and detested its brutality while he recognised the value of his indispensable allies. When the catastrophe due to his carelessness occurred^ he and his officers threw themselves into the tumult and exerted all their powers of persuasion and intimidation to stop the plunder and slaughter. The troops on guard, chiefly Canadians, callous to Indian excesses, would risk nothing. The French, more especially their officers, though late on the scene, behaved like men. Nearly a hundred of the weaker persons, however, had been butchered; 600 were made prisoners by the savages, and had to be redeemed at various later periods by French money ; while numbers, stripped of their clothes, fled to the woods and found their way eventually to Fort Edward. Montcalm's mistake cost the French, as well as its more immediate victims, dear ; for the English, with just reason, repudiated their part of an agreement which had been broken in such ruthless fashion. The guns and contents of Fort William Henry were carried to Canada ; the fort itself was destroyed ; and French craft plied on Lake George with as much impunity as on Lake Ontario. This winter of 1757-58 was a gloomy one for the English in America, whether colonists or soldiers. The French, firmly seated on the Ohio, were still hurling the Indians on the reeking frontiers of Pennsyl- vania, Maryland and Virginia, whose older settlements showed a remark- able lack of spirit. In the North the horrors of a greater war were detailed in hundreds of rural homesteads by disbanded soldiers who were without laurels to glorify their tales. The faith of the colonies had been greatly shaken, though unjustly, in British troops, and much more reasonably in British generals. The latter, on their part, had cause to complain of many things and were not backward in their complaints. But they were shortly to be relieved ; for Pitt was now in power. Few indeed at that dismal season could have dreamed that within three years the French power in America would have virtually ceased to exist. France indeed was now at the zenith of her success. Her failure as a true colonising power, however, is significantly illustrated by the fact that the Canadians, satiated as they were with glory, were almost starving, in a fertile country occupied for a century and a half. Yet, still land-hungry, France was grasping at a continent. Pitt had risen to supreme power in the preceding June. The train of the late disasters had then already been laid, and he had to take the consequences and profit by them. By the new year the magic of his inspiration had begun to work ; and the agents of his vigorous policy, both at home and abroad, were feeling the influence of his lofty on. iv.