history while he
touched briefly upon some of the bloody battles, sieges, and onslaughts,
the tidings of which kept continually coming to the ears of the old
inhabitants of Boston. The woods of the North were populous with
fighting men. All the Indian tribes uplifted their tomahawks, and took
part either with the French or English. The rattle of musketry and roar
of cannon disturbed the ancient quiet of the forest, and actually drove
the bears and other wild beasts to the more cultivated portion of the
country in the vicinity of the seaports. The children felt as if they
were transported back to those forgotten times, and that the couriers
from the army, with the news of a battle lost or won, might even now
be heard galloping through the streets. Grandfather told them about
the battle of Lake George in 1755, when the gallant Colonel Williams,
a Massachusetts officer, was slain, with many of his countrymen. But
General Johnson and General Lyman, with their army, drove back the
enemy and mortally wounded the French leader, who was called the
Baron Dieskau. A gold watch, pilfered from the poor baron, is still in
existence, and still marks each moment of time without complaining of
weariness, although its hands have been in motion ever since the hour of
battle.

In the first years of the war there were many disasters on the English
side. Among these was the loss of Fort Oswego in 1756, and of Fort
William Henry in the following year. But the greatest misfortune that
befell the English during the whole war was the repulse of General
Abercrombie, with his army, from the ramparts of Ticonderoga in 1758. He
attempted to storm the walls; but a terrible conflict ensued, in which
more than two thousand Englishmen and New-Englanders were killed or
wounded. The slain soldiers now lie buried around that ancient fortress.
When the plough passes over the soil, it turns up here and there a
mouldering bone.

Up to this period, none of the English generals had shown any military
talent. Shirley, the Earl of Loudon, and General Abercrombie had each
held the chief command at different times; but not one of them had won a
single important triumph for the British arms. This ill success was not
owing to the want of means: for, in 1758, General Abercrombie had fifty
thousand soldiers under his command. But the French general, the famous
Marquis de Montcalm, possessed a great genius for war, and had something
within him that taught him how bat