Here was an opportunity for Vaudreuil, and he did not fail to use it.
Jealous of his rival's exploit, he spared no pains to tarnish it;
complaining that Montcalm had stopped half way on the road to success,
and, instead of following his instructions, had contented himself with
one victory when he should have gained two. But the Governor had
enjoined upon him as a matter of the last necessity that the Canadians
should be at their homes before September to gather the crops, and he
would have been the first to complain had the injunction been
disregarded. To besiege Fort Edward was impossible, as Montcalm had no
means of transporting cannon thither; and to attack Webb without them
was a risk which he had not the rashness to incur.

It was Bougainville who first brought Vaudreuil the news of the success
on Lake George. A day or two after his arrival, the Indians, who had
left the army after the massacre, appeared at Montreal, bringing about
two hundred English prisoners. The Governor rebuked them for breaking
the capitulation, on which the heathen savages of the West declared that
it was not their fault, but that of the converted Indians, who, in
fact, had first raised the war-whoop. Some of the prisoners were
presently bought from them at the price of two kegs of brandy each; and
the inevitable consequences followed.

"I thought," writes Bougainville, "that the Governor would have told
them they should have neither provisions nor presents till all the
English were given up; that he himself would have gone to their huts and
taken the prisoners from them; and that the inhabitants would be
forbidden, under the severest penalties, from selling or giving them
brandy. I saw the contrary; and my soul shuddered at the sights my eyes
beheld. On the fifteenth, at two o'clock, in the presence of the whole
town, they killed one of the prisoners, put him into the kettle, and
forced his wretched countrymen to eat of him." The Intendant Bigot, the
friend of the Governor, confirms this story; and another French writer
says that they "compelled mothers to eat the flesh of their
children."[531] Bigot declares that guns, canoes, and other presents
were given to the Western tribes before they left Montreal; and he adds,
"they must be sent home satisfied at any cost." Such were the pains
taken to preserve allies who were useful chiefly through the terror
inspired by their diabolical cruelties. This time their ferocity cost
them dear. They ha