le
retaliation. The concluding scenes of King Philip's War prove, at any
rate, that the men of New England exercised little more clemency
towards their Indian foes than was displayed by the French. The
Puritans justified their acts of carnage by citations from the Old
Testament regarding the Canaanites and the Philistines. The most
bitter chronicler of King Philip's War is William Hubbard, a Calvinist
pastor of Ipswich. On December 19, 1675, the English of Massachusetts
and Connecticut stormed the great stronghold of the Narragansetts. To
quote John Fiske: 'In the slaughter which filled the rest of that
Sunday afternoon till the sun went down behind a {159} dull gray cloud,
the grim and wrathful Puritan, as he swung his heavy cutlass, thought
of Saul and Agag, and spared not. The Lord had delivered up to him the
heathen as stubble to his sword. As usual the number of the slain is
variously estimated. Of the Indians probably not less than a thousand
perished.'

For the slaughter of English women and children by French raiders there
was no precedent or just provocation. Here Frontenac must be deemed
more culpable than the Puritans. The only extenuating circumstance is
that those who survived the first moments of attack were in almost all
cases spared, taken to Canada, and there treated with kindness.

Writers of the lighter drama have long found a subject in the old man
whose irascibility is but a cloak for goodness of heart. It would be
an exaggeration to describe Frontenac as a character of this type, for
his wrath could be vehement, and benevolence was not the essential
strain in his disposition. At the same time, he had many warm impulses
to his credit. His loyalty to friends stands above reproach, and there
are little incidents which show his sense of humour. For instance, he
once fined a woman for lampooning him, but {160} caused the money to be
given to her children. Though often unfair in argument, he was by
nature neither mean nor petty. In ordinary circumstances he remembered
_noblesse oblige_, and though boastfulness may have been among his
failings, he had a love of greatness which preserved him from sordid
misdemeanours. Even if we agree with Parkman that greatness must be
denied him, it yet remains to be pointed out that absolute greatness is
a high standard attained by few. Frontenac was a greater man than most
by virtue of robustness, fire, and a sincere aspiration to discharge
his duty