ubt many
Acadians did not understand the summons. Few of them could read and it
hardly mattered to them that on one occasion a notice on the church door
was posted upside down. Some four hundred anxious peasants appeared.
Winslow read to them a proclamation to the effect that their houses and
lands were forfeited and that they themselves and their families were
to be deported. Five vessels from Boston lay at Grand Pre. In time more
ships arrived, but chill October had come before Winslow was finally
ready.

By this time the Acadians realized what was to happen. The men were
joined by their families. As far as possible the people of the same
village were kept together. They were forced to march to the transports,
a sorrow-laden company, women carrying babes in their arms, old and
decrepit people borne in carts, young and strong men dragging what
belongings they could gather. Winslow's task, as he says, lay heavy on
his heart and hands: "It hurts me to hear their weeping and wailing
and gnashing of teeth." By the 1st of November he had embarked fifteen
hundred unhappy people. His last ship-load he sent off on the 13th of
December. The suffering from cold must have been terrible.

In all, from Grand Pre and other places, more than six thousand Acadians
were deported. They were scattered in the English colonies from Maine to
Georgia and in both France and England. Many died; many, helpless in new
surroundings, sank into decrepit pauperism. Some reached people of their
own blood in the French colony of Louisiana and in Canada. A good many
returned from their exile in the colonies to their former home after the
Seven Years' War had ended. Today their descendants form an appreciable
part of the population of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward
Island. The cruel act did one thing effectively: it made Nova Scotia
safe for the British cause in the attack that was about to be directed
against Canada.

CHAPTER VIII. The Victories Of Montcalm

In France's last, most determined, and most tragic struggle for North
America, the noblest aspect is typified in the figure of Montcalm.

The circle of the King and his mistress at Versailles does not tell the
whole story of France at this time. No doubt Madame de Pompadour
made and unmade ministers, but behind the ministers was the great
administrative system of France, with servants alert and efficient, and
now chiefly occupied with military plans to defeat the great Frede