t
resistance. Meneval stipulated for an honorable surrender,--all
property to be respected and the garrison to be sent to some French
port; but no sooner were the English in possession than, like the
French at Portland, they broke the pledge. There was no massacre as in
Maine, but plunderers ran riot, seizing everything on which hands could
be laid, ransacking houses and desecrating the churches; and sixty of
the leading people, including Meneval and the priests, were carried off
as prisoners. Leaving one English flag flying, Phips sailed home.

Indignation at Boston had been fanned to fury, for now all the details
of the butchery at Portland were known; and Phips found the colony
mustering a monster expedition to attack the very stronghold of French
power,--Quebec itself. England could afford no aid to her colonies,
but thirty-two merchant vessels and frigates had been impressed into
the service, some of them carrying as many as forty-four cannon.
Artisans, sailors, soldiers, clerks, all classes had volunteered as
fighters, to the number of twenty-five hundred men; but there was one
thing lacking,--they had no pilot who knew the St. Lawrence. Full of
confidence born of inexperience, the fleet set sail on the 9th of
August, commanded again by Phips.

Time was wasted ravaging the coasts of Gaspe, holding long-winded
councils of war, arguing in the commander's stateroom instead of
drilling on deck. Three more weeks were wasted poking about the lower
St. Lawrence, picking up chance vessels off Tadoussac and Anticosti.
Among the prize vessels taken near Anticosti was one of Jolliet's,
bearing his wife and mother-in-law. The ladies delighted the hearts of
the Puritans by the {178} news that not more than one hundred men
garrisoned Quebec; but Phips was reckoning without his host, and his
host was Frontenac. Besides, it was late in the season--the middle of
October--before the English fleet rounded the Island of Orleans and
faced the Citadel of Quebec.

[Illustration: COUNT FRONTENAC (From a statue at Quebec)]

Indians had carried word to the city that an Englishwoman, taken
prisoner in their raids, had told them more than thirty vessels had
sailed from Boston to invade New France. Frontenac was absent in
Montreal. Quickly the commander at Quebec sent coureurs with warning
to Frontenac, and then set about casting up barricades in the narrow
streets that led from Lower to Upper Town.

Frontenac could not credi