[Footnote 406:  Detail de ce qui s’est passe en Canada, Oct. 1755 Juin, 1756.]

[Footnote 407:  Letter of J. Choate, Albany, 12 July, 1756, in Massachusetts Archives, LV. Three Letters from Albany, July, Aug. 1756, in Doc.  Hist, of N.Y., I. 482. Review of Military Operations.  Shirley to Fox, 26 July, 1756.  Abercromby to Sir Charles Hardy, 11 July, 1756.  Niles, in Mass.  His.  Coll., Fourth Series, V. 417.  Lossing, Life of Schuyler, I. 121 (1860).  Mante, 60.  Bradstreet’s conduct on this occasion afterwards gained for him the warm praises of Wolfe.]

This affair was trumpeted through Canada as a victory of the French.  Their notices of it are discordant, though very brief.  One of them says that Villiers had four hundred men.  Another gives him five hundred, and a third eight hundred, against fifteen hundred English, of whom they killed eight hundred, or an Englishman apiece.  A fourth writer boasts that six hundred Frenchmen killed nine hundred English.  A fifth contents himself with four hundred; but thinks that forty more would have been slain if the Indians had not fired too soon.  He says further that there were three hundred boats; and presently forgetting himself, adds that five hundred were taken or destroyed.  A sixth announces a great capture of stores and provisions, though all the boats were empty.  A seventh reports that the Canadians killed about three hundred, and would have killed more but for the bad quality of their tomahawks.  An eighth, with rare modesty, puts the English loss at fifty or sixty.  That of Villiers is given in every proportion of killed or wounded, from one up to ten.  Thus was Canada roused to martial ardor, and taught to look for future triumphs cheaply bought.[408]

[Footnote 408:  Nouvelles du Camp etabli au Portage de Chouaguen, premiere Relation.  Ibid., Seconde Relation, 10 Juillet, 1756.  Bougainville, Journal, who gives the report as he heard it Lettre du R.P.  Cocquard, S.J., 1756.  Vaudreuil au Ministre, 10 Juillet, 1756.  Ursulines de Quebec, II. 292. N.Y.  Col.  Docs., X. 434, 467, 477, 483.  Some prisoners taken in the first attack were brought to Montreal, where their presence gave countenance to these fabrications.]

The success of Bradstreet silenced for a time the enemies of Shirley.  His cares, however, redoubled.  He was anxious for Oswego, as the two prisoners declared that the French meant to attack it, instead of waiting to be attacked from it.  Nor was the news from that quarter reassuring.  The engineer, Mackellar, wrote that the works were incapable of defence; and Colonel Mercer, the commandant, reported general discontent in the garrison.[409] Captain John Vicars, an invalid officer of Shirley’s regiment, arrived at Albany with yet more deplorable accounts.  He had passed the winter at Oswego, where he declared the dearth of food to have been such that several councils of