er, to take command of the French forces
in Canada. Montcalm displayed not only courage and skill, but humanity
likewise, in the management of his campaigns, and history relieves him of
responsibility for the horrid massacre by Indians of the captured English
garrison of Fort William Henry, after a safe escort to Fort Edward had
been promised to the captives. The facts are that both British and French
used the Indians as allies regardless of their savage practices, but that
the French, as at Fort Duquesne, showed less ability to restrain the
savages after a victory. In the following summer--1758--Montcalm
inflicted a most disastrous defeat at Ticonderoga on fifteen thousand
British and colonial troops, led by General Abercrombie. The French force
numbered only four thousand French and Indians. The English attempted to
carry the works by assault, without the aid of artillery, and were mowed
down by the fire of the French posted behind insuperable barriers. The
English loss was about two thousand, while that of the French was
inconsiderable. This was the last important success of the French in
America. A master hand had seized the helm in Great Britain.

William Pitt, the "Great Commoner," determined upon a vigorous
prosecution of the war in America. General John Forbes was sent, in 1758,
with about nine thousand men to reduce Fort Duquesne. The illness which
caused his death in the following year may be fairly accepted in excuse
and explanation of the incompetent management of the expedition, and its
almost fatal delays. Fortunately the French appeared to have lost the
vigor and daring which they had displayed in the defeat of Braddock, and
the sullen roar of an explosion, when the British troops were within a
few miles of Duquesne, gave notice that it had been abandoned without a
blow. General Forbes changed the name of the place to Fort Pitt, in honor
of that illustrious minister to whose energetic direction of affairs was
largely due the expulsion of the French arms from North America. When
Westminster Abbey shall have crumbled over the tombs of Britain's heroes,
and the House of Hanover shall have joined the misty dynasties of the
past, Pittsburg will remain a monument, growing in grandeur with the
progress of ages, to England's great statesman of the eighteenth century.

Louisburg also fell in 1758, and in the following year the English
prepared to end the struggle by an attack on Quebec. Pitt placed at the
head of