e made the attack
with all courage and persistence. But the troops could not work through
the thicket of fallen trunks and, as night came on, they had to withdraw
baffled. Next day Lake George saw another strange spectacle--a British
army of thirteen thousand men, the finest ever seen hitherto in America,
retreating in a panic, with no enemy in pursuit. Nearly two thousand
English had fallen, while Montcalm's loss was less than four hundred. He
planted a great cross on the scene of the fight with an inscription
in Latin that it was God who had wrought the victory. All Canada had a
brief period of rejoicing before the gloom of final defeat settled down
upon the country.

CHAPTER IX. Montcalm At Quebec

The rejoicing in Canada was brief. Before the end of the year the
British were victorious at both the eastern and western ends of the long
battle-line. Louisbourg had fallen in July; Fort Duquesne, in November.
Fort Frontenac--giving command of Lake Ontario and, with it, the
West--had surrendered to Bradstreet in August just after Montcalm's
victory at Ticonderoga. The Ohio was gone. The great fortress guarding
the gateway to the Gulf was gone. The next English attack would fall
on Quebec. Montcalm had told Vaudreuil in the autumn, with vigorous
precision, that the period of petty warfare, for taking scalps and
burning houses, was past. It was time now to defend the main trunk
of the tree and not the outer branches. The best Canadians should be
incorporated into and trained in the battalions of regulars. The
militia regiments themselves should be clothed and drilled like regular
soldiers. Interior posts, such as Detroit, should be held by the
smallest possible number of men. This counsel enraged Vaudreuil.
Montcalm, he wrote, was trying to upset everything. Vaudreuil was
certain that the English would not attack Quebec.

There is a melancholy greatness in the last days of Montcalm. He was
fighting against fearful odds. With only about three thousand trained
regulars and perhaps four times as many untrained Canadians and savages,
he was confronting Britain's might on sea and land which was now thrown
against New France. From France itself Montcalm knew that he had nothing
to hope. In the autumn of 1758 he sent Bougainville to Versailles. That
brilliant and loyal helper managed to elude the vigilance of the British
fleet, reached Versailles, and there spent some months in varied and
resourceful attempts to secure aid