tion.
When operations were on hand, Vaudreuil would give Montcalm instructions
so ambiguous that if he failed he would be sure to get the discredit,
while, if he succeeded, to Vaudreuil would belong the glory.

War is, at best, a cruel business. In Europe its predatory barbarity was
passing away and there the lives of prisoners and of women and children
were now being respected. Montcalm had been reared under this more
civilized code, and he and his officers were shocked by what Vaudreuil
regarded as normal and proper warfare. In 1756 the French had a horde of
about two thousand savages, who had flocked to Montreal from points as
far distant as the great plains of the West. They numbered more than
thirty separate tribes or nations, as in their pride they called
themselves, and each nation had to be humored and treated as an equal,
for they were not in the service of France but were her allies. They
expected to be consulted before plans of campaign were completed. The
defeat of Braddock in 1755 had made them turn to the prosperous cause of
France. Vaudreuil gave them what they hardly required--encouragement to
wage war in their own way. The more brutal and ruthless the war on the
English, he said, the more quickly would their enemies desire the
kind of peace that France must have. The result was that the western
frontiers of the English colonies became a hell of ruthless massacre.
The savages attacked English settlements whenever they found them
undefended. A pioneer might go forth in the morning to his labor and
return in the evening to find his house in ashes and his wife and
children lying dead with the scalps torn from their heads as trophies of
savage prowess.

For years, until the English gained the upper hand over the French,
this awful massacre went on. Hundreds of women and children perished.
Vaudreuil reported with pride to the French court the number of scalps
taken, and in his annals such incidents were written down as victories,
He warned Montcalm that he must not be too strict with the savages or
some day they would take themselves off and possibly go over to the
English and leave the French without indispensable allies. He complained
of the lofty tone of the French regular officers towards both Indians
and Canadians, and assured the French court that it was only his own
tact which prevented an open breach.

Canada lay exposed to attack by three routes by Lake Ontario, by Lake
Champlain, and by the St. L