[Footnote 471:  Eyre to Loudon, 24 March, 1757.  Ibid., 25 March, enclosed in Loudon’s despatch of 25 April, 1757. Message of Rigaud to Major Eyre, 20 March, 1757.  Letter from Fort William Henry, 26 March, 1757, in Boston Gazette, No. 106, and Boston Evening Post, No. 1,128. Abstract of Letters from Albany, in Boston News Letter, No. 2,860.  Caleb Stark, Memoir and Correspondence of John Stark, 22, a curious mixture of truth and error. Relation de la Campagne sur le Lac St. Sacrement pendant l’Hiver, 1757. Bougainville, Journal.  Malartic, Journal.  Montcalm au Ministre, 24 Avril, 1757.  Montreuil au Ministre, 23 Avril, 1757.  Montcalm a sa Mere, 1 Avril, 1757.  Memoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760.

The French loss in killed and wounded is set by Montcalm at eleven.  That of the English was seven, slightly wounded, chiefly in sorties.  They took three prisoners.  Stark was touched by a bullet, for the only time in his adventurous life.]

Chapter 14

1757

Montcalm and Vaudreuil

Spring came at last, and the Dutch burghers of Albany heard, faint from the far height, the clamor of the wild-fowl, streaming in long files northward to their summer home.  As the aerial travellers winged their way, the seat of war lay spread beneath them like a map.  First the blue Hudson, slumbering among its forests, with the forts along its banks, Half-Moon, Stillwater, Saratoga, and the geometric lines and earthen mounds of Fort Edward.  Then a broad belt of dingy evergreen; and beyond, released from wintry fetters, the glistening breast of Lake George, with Fort William Henry at its side, amid charred ruins and a desolation of prostrate forests.  Hence the lake stretched northward, like some broad river, trenched between mountain ranges still leafless and gray.  Then they looked down on Ticonderoga, with the flag of the Bourbons, like a flickering white speck, waving on its ramparts; and next on Crown Point with its tower of stone.  Lake Champlain now spread before them, widening as they flew:  on the left, the mountain wilderness of the Adirondacks, like a stormy sea congealed; on the right, the long procession of the Green Mountains; and, far beyond, on the dim verge of the eastern sky, the White Mountains throned in savage solitude.  They passed over the bastioned square of Fort St. John, Fort Chambly guarding the rapids of the Richelieu, and the broad belt of the St. Lawrence, with Montreal seated on its bank.  Here we leave them, to build their nests and hatch their brood among the fens of the lonely North.