s have made great havoc in
Pennsylvania and Virginia, and carried off, according to their custom,
men, women, and children. I beg you will have High Mass said at
Montpellier or Vauvert to thank God for our safe arrival and ask for
good success in future."[365]

[Footnote 365: These extracts are translated from copies of the original
letters, in possession of the present Marquis de Montcalm.]

Vaudreuil, the governor-general, was at Montreal, and Montcalm sent a
courier to inform him of his arrival. He soon went thither in person,
and the two men met for the first time. The new general was not welcome
to Vaudreuil, who had hoped to command the troops himself, and had
represented to the Court that it was needless and inexpedient to send
out a general officer from France.[366] The Court had not accepted his
views;[367] and hence it was with more curiosity than satisfaction that
he greeted the colleague who had been assigned him. He saw before him a
man of small stature, with a lively countenance, a keen eye, and, in
moments of animation, rapid, vehement utterance, and nervous
gesticulation. Montcalm, we may suppose, regarded the Governor with no
less attention. Pierre Francois Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil, who had
governed Canada early in the century; and he himself had been governor
of Louisiana. He had not the force of character which his position
demanded, lacked decision in times of crisis; and though tenacious of
authority, was more jealous in asserting than self-reliant in exercising
it. One of his traits was a sensitive egotism, which made him forward to
proclaim his own part in every success, and to throw on others the
burden of every failure. He was facile by nature, and capable of being
led by such as had skill and temper for the task. But the impetuous
Montcalm was not of their number; and the fact that he was born in
France would in itself have thrown obstacles in his way to the good
graces of the Governor. Vaudreuil, Canadian by birth, loved the colony
and its people, and distrusted Old France and all that came out of it.
He had been bred, moreover, to the naval service; and, like other
Canadian governors, his official correspondence was with the minister of
marine, while that of Montcalm was with the minister of war. Even had
Nature made him less suspicious, his relations with the General would
have been critical. Montcalm commanded the regulars from France, whose
very presence was in the eyes of Vaudreuil a