led from Three Rivers by Francois Hertel was
almost the same. Setting out in January, he was followed by
twenty-five French and twenty-five Indians to the border lands between
Maine and New Hampshire. The end of March saw the bushrovers outside
the little village of Salmon Falls. Thirty inhabitants were tomahawked
on the spot, the houses burned, and one hundred prisoners carried off;
but news had gone like wildfire to neighboring settlements, and Hertel
was pursued by two hundred Englishmen. He placed his bushrovers on a
small bridge across Wooster River and here held the pursuers at bay
till darkness enabled him to escape.

But the darkest deed of infamy was perpetrated by the third band of
raiders,--a deed that reveals the glories of war as they {175} exist,
stripped of pageantry. Portneuf had led the raiders from Quebec, and
he was joined by that famous leader of the Abenaki Indians, Baron de
Saint-Castin, from the border lands between Acadia and Maine. Later,
when Hertel struck through the woods with some of his followers,
Portneuf's men numbered five hundred. With these he attacked Fort
Loyal, or what is now Portland, Maine, in the month of June. The fort
boasted eight great guns and one hundred soldiers. Under cover of the
guns Lieutenant Clark and thirty men sallied out to reconnoiter the
attacking forces ambushed in woods round a pasturage. At a musket
crack the English were literally cut to pieces, four men only escaping
back to the fort. The French then demanded unconditional surrender.
The English asked six days to consider. In six days English vessels
would have come to the rescue. Secure, under a bluff of the ocean
cliff, from the cannon fire of the fort, the French began to trench an
approach to the palisades. Combustibles had been placed against the
walls, when the English again asked a parley, offering to surrender if
the French would swear by the living God to conduct them in safety to
the nearest English post. To these conditions the French agreed.
Whether they could not control their Indian allies or had not intended
to keep the terms matters little. The English had no sooner marched
from the fort than, with a wild whoop, the Indians fell on men, women,
and children. Some were killed by a single blow, others reserved for
the torture stake. Only four Englishmen survived the onslaught, to be
carried prisoners to Quebec.

The French had been victorious on all three raids; but they were