George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 4, 15th edition.

[265]

With a view to make the capitulation inviolably

chap. XI.} 1757.

binding on the Indians, Montcalm summoned their warchiefs to council. The English were to depart with the honors of war, on a pledge not to serve against the French for eighteen months; they were to abandon all but their private effects; an escort was to attend them on their departure; every Canadian or French Indian made captive during the war was to be liberated. The Indians applauded; the capitulation was signed. Late on the ninth of August, the French entered the fort, and the English retired to their intrenched camp.

Montcalm had kept from the savages all intoxicating drinks, but they solicited and obtained them of the English, and all night long they were wild with dances and songs and revelry. The Abenakis of Acadia excited the angry passions of other tribes, by recalling the sorrows they had suffered from English perfidy and English power. At daybreak, they gathered round the intrenchments, and, as the terrified English soldiers filed off, began to plunder them, and incited one another to swing the tomahawk recklessly. Twenty, perhaps even thirty, persons were massacred, while very many were made prisoners. Officers and soldiers, stripped of every thing, fled to the woods, to the fort, to the tents of the French. To arrest the disorder, De Levi plunged into the tumult, daring death a thousand times. French officers received wounds in rescuing the captives, and stood at their tents as sentries over those they had recovered. ‘Kill me,’ cried Montcalm, using prayers, and menaces, and promises; ‘but spare the English, who are under my protection;’¹ and he urged the troops to defend