p, joined with the valor of the victors of
Ticonderoga.[687] All that could be obtained was between three and four
hundred recruits for the regulars, sixty engineers, sappers, and
artillerymen, and gunpowder, arms, and provisions sufficient, along with
the supplies brought over by the contractor, Cadet, to carry the colony
through the next campaign.[688]

[Footnote 686: _Memoire remis au Ministre par M. de Bougainville,
Decembre, 1758_.]

[Footnote 687: _Le Ministre a Montcalm, 3 Fev. 1759_.]

[Footnote 688: _Ordres du Roy et Depeches des Ministres, Fevrier,
1759_.]

Montcalm had intrusted Bougainville with another mission, widely
different. This was no less than the negotiating of suitable marriages
for the eldest son and daughter of his commander, with whom, in the
confidence of friendship, he had had many conversations on the matter.
"He and I," Montcalm wrote to his mother, Madame de Saint-Veran, "have
two ideas touching these marriages,--the first, romantic and chimerical;
the second, good, practicable."[689] Bougainville, invoking the aid of a
lady of rank, a friend of the family, acquitted himself well of his
delicate task. Before he embarked for Canada, in early spring, a treaty
was on foot for the marriage of the young Comte de Montcalm to an
heiress of sixteen; while Mademoiselle de Montcalm had already become
Madame d'Espineuse. "Her father will be delighted," says the successful
negotiator.[690]

[Footnote 689: _Montcalm a Madame de Saint-Veran, 24 Sept. 1758_.]

[Footnote 690: _Lettres de Bougainville a Madame de Saint-Veran, 1758,
1759_.]

Again he crossed the Atlantic and sailed up the St. Lawrence as the
portentous spring of 1759 was lowering over the dissolving snows of
Canada. With him came a squadron bearing the supplies and the petty
reinforcement which the Court had vouchsafed. "A little is precious to
those who have nothing," said Montcalm on receiving them. Despatches
from the ministers gave warning of a great armament fitted out in
English ports for the attack of Quebec, while a letter to the General
from the Marechal de Belleisle, minister of war, told what was expected
of him, and why he and the colony were abandoned to their fate. "If we
sent a large reinforcement of troops," said Belleisle, "there would be
great fear that the English would intercept them on the way; and as the
King could never send you forces equal to those which the English are
prepared to oppose to you, the attempt