at, namely the destruction
of English settlements amid fire and carnage. All three employed
Indians, who were suffered, either willingly or unwillingly, to commit
barbarities.

It is much more the business of history to explain than to condemn or
to extenuate. How could a man like Francois Hertel lead one of these
raids without sinking to the moral level of his Indian followers? Some
such question may, not unnaturally, rise to the lips of a modern reader
who for the first time comes upon the story of Dover and Salmon {120}
Falls. But fuller knowledge breeds respect for Francois Hertel. When
eighteen years old he was captured by the Mohawks and put to the
torture. One of his fingers they burned off in the bowl of a pipe.
The thumb of the other hand they cut off. In the letter which he wrote
on birch-bark to his mother after this dreadful experience there is not
a word of his sufferings. He simply sends her his love and asks for
her prayers, signing himself by his childish nickname, 'Your poor
Fanchon.' As he grew up he won from an admiring community the name of
'The Hero.' He was not only brave but religious. In his view it was
all legitimate warfare. If he slew others, he ran a thousand risks and
endured terrible privations for his king and the home he was defending.
His stand at the bridge over the Wooster river, sword in hand, when
pressed on his retreat by an overwhelming force of English, holding the
pass till all his men are over, is worthy of an epic. He was
forty-seven years old at the time. The three eldest of his nine sons
were with him in that little band of twenty-six Frenchmen, and two of
his nephews. 'To the New England of old,' says Parkman, 'Francois
Hertel was the abhorred chief of Popish {121} malignants and murdering
savages. The New England of to-day will be more just to the brave
defender of his country and his faith.'

The atrocities committed by the French and Indians are enough to make
one shudder even at this distance of time. As Frontenac adopted the
plan and sent forth the war-parties, the moral responsibility in large
part rests with him. There are, however, some facts to consider before
judgment is passed as to the degree of his culpability. The modern
distinction between combatants and non-combatants had little meaning in
the wilds of America at this period. When France and England were at
open war, every settler was a soldier, and as such each man's duty was
to keep on