[Footnote 317:  Shirley to Johnson, 19 Sept. 1755.  Ibid., 24 Sept. 1755.  Johnson to Shirley, 22 Sept. 1755.  Johnson to Phipps, 10 Oct. 1755 (Massachusetts Archives).]

Johnson called a council of war; and as he was suffering from inflamed eyes, and was still kept in his tent by his wound, he asked Lyman to preside,—­not unwilling, perhaps, to shift the responsibility upon him.  After several sessions and much debate, the assembled officers decided that it was inexpedient to proceed.[318] Yet the army lay more than a month longer at the lake, while the disgust of the men increased daily under the rains, frosts, and snows of a dreary November.  On the twenty-second, Chandler, chaplain of one of the Massachusetts regiments, wrote in the interleaved almanac that served him as a diary:  “The men just ready to mutiny.  Some clubbed their firelocks and marched, but returned back.  Very rainy night.  Miry water standing the tents.  Very distressing time among the sick.”  The men grew more and more unruly, and went off in squads without asking leave.  A difficult question arose:  Who should stay for the winter to garrison the new forts, and who should command them?  It was settled at last that a certain number of soldiers from each province should be assigned to this ungrateful service, and that Massachusetts should have the first officer, Connecticut the second, and New York the third.  Then the camp broke up.  “Thursday the 27th,” wrote the chaplain in his almanac, “we set out about ten of the clock, marched in a body, about three thousand, the wagons and baggage in the centre, our colonel much insulted by the way.”  The soldiers dispersed to their villages and farms, where in blustering winter nights, by the blazing logs of New England hearth-stones, they told their friends and neighbors the story of the campaign.

[Footnote 318:  Reports of Council of War, 11-21 Oct. 1755.]

The profit of it fell to Johnson.  If he did not gather the fruits of victory, at least he reaped its laurels.  He was a courtier in his rough way.  He had changed the name of Lac St. Sacrement to Lake George, in compliment to the King.

He now changed that of Fort Lyman to Fort Edward, in compliment to one of the King’s grandsons; and, in compliment to another, called his new fort at the lake, William Henry.  Of General Lyman he made no mention in his report of the battle, and his partisans wrote letters traducing that brave officer; though Johnson is said to have confessed in private that he owed him the victory.  He himself found no lack of eulogists; and, to quote the words of an able but somewhat caustic and prejudiced opponent, “to the panegyrical pen of his secretary, Mr. Wraxall, and the sic volo sic jubeo of Lieutenant-Governor Delancey, is to be ascribed that mighty renown which echoed through the colonies, reverberated to Europe, and elevated a raw, inexperienced youth into a kind of second Marlborough.[319] Parliament gave him five thousand pounds, and the King made him a baronet.”