adian officers did nothing at all to try to assuage the fury of
the Indians, and the officers of the Canadian detachment, which formed
the advance guard of the French escort, refused any protection to the
men, telling them they had better take to the woods and shift for
themselves. Montcalm, and the principal French officers, did everything
short of the only effectual step, namely, the ordering up of the French
regular troops to save the English. They ran about among the yelling
Indians, imploring them to desist, but in vain.

Some seven or eight hundred of the English were seized and carried off
by the savages, while some seventy or eighty were massacred on the
spot. The column attempted no resistance. None had ammunition, and, of
the colonial troops, very few were armed with bayonets. Had any
resistance been offered, there can be no doubt all would have been
massacred by the Indians.

Many of the fugitives ran back to the fort, and took refuge there, and
Montcalm recovered from the Indians more than four hundred of those
they had carried off. These were all sent under a strong guard to Fort
Edward. The greater part of the survivors of the column dispersed into
the woods, and made their way in scattered parties to Fort Edward. Here
cannon had been fired at intervals, to serve as a guide to the
fugitives, but many, no doubt, perished in the woods. On the morning
after the massacre the Indians left in a body for Montreal, taking with
them two hundred prisoners, to be tortured and murdered on their return
to their villages.

Few events cast a deeper disgrace on the arms of France than this
massacre, committed in defiance of their pledged honour for the safety
of their prisoners, and in sight of four thousand French troops, not a
man of whom was set in motion to prevent it. These facts are not taken
only from English sources, but from the letters of French officers, and
from the journal of the Jesuit Roubaud, who was in charge of the
Christianized Indians, who, according to his own account, were no less
ferocious and cruel than the unconverted tribes. The number of those
who perished in the massacre is uncertain. Captain Jonathan Carver, a
colonial officer, puts the killed and captured at 1500. A French
writer, whose work was published at Montreal, says that they were all
killed, except seven hundred who were captured; but this is, of course,
a gross exaggeration. General Levis and Roubaud, who were certain to
have made