nglish lost vast
stores; and now the French controlled the whole region of the Great
Lakes. The Indians were on the side of the rising power more heartily
than ever, and the unhappy frontier of the English colonies was so
harried that murderous savages ventured almost to the outskirts of
Philadelphia. Montcalm caused a Te Deum to be sung on the scene of his
victory at Oswego. In August he was back in Montreal where again was
sung another joyous Te Deum. He wrote letters in high praise of some
of his officers, especially of Bourlamaque, Malartic, and La Pause,
the last "un homme divin." Some of the Canadian officers, praised by
Vaudreuil, he had tried and found wanting. "Don't forget," he wrote
to Levis, "that Mercier is a feeble ignoramus, Saint Luc a prattling
boaster, Montigny excellent but a drunkard. The others are not worth
speaking of, including my first lieutenant-general Rigaud." This Rigaud
was the brother of Vaudreuil. When the Governor wrote to the minister,
he, for his part, said that the success of the expedition was wholly due
to his own vigilance and firmness, aided chiefly by this brother,
"mon frere," and Le Mercier, both of whom Montcalm describes as inept.
Vaudreuil adds that only his own tact kept the Indian allies from going
home because Montcalm would not let them have the plunder which they
desired.

Montcalm struck his next blow at the English on Lake Champlain. In July,
1757, he had eight thousand men at Ticonderoga, at the northern end of
Lake George. Two thousand of these were savages drawn from more than
forty different tribes--a lawless horde whom the French could not
control. A Jesuit priest saw a party of them squatting round a fire in
the French camp roasting meat on the end of sticks and found that
the meat was the flesh of an Englishman. English prisoners, sick with
horror, were forced to watch this feast. The priest's protest was
dismissed with anger: the savages would follow their own customs; let
the French follow theirs. The truth is that the French had been only
too successful in drawing the savages to them as allies. They formed
now one-quarter of the whole French army. They were of little use as
fighters and probably, in the long run, the French would have been
better off without them. If, however, Montcalm had caused them to go,
Vaudreuil would have made frantic protests, so that Montcalm accepted
the necessity of such allies.

Each success, however, brought some new horrors a