an hour.”  Monro replied that he and his soldiers would defend themselves to the last.  While the flags of truce were flying, the Indians swarmed over the fields before the fort; and when they learned the result, an Abenaki chief shouted in broken French:  “You won’t surrender, eh!  Fire away then, and fight your best; for if I catch you, you shall get no quarter.”  Monro emphasized his refusal by a general discharge of his cannon.

The trenches were opened on the night of the fourth,—­a task of extreme difficulty, as the ground was covered by a profusion of half-burned stumps, roots, branches, and fallen trunks.  Eight hundred men toiled till daylight with pick, spade, and axe, while the cannon from the fort flashed through the darkness, and grape and round-shot whistled and screamed over their heads.  Some of the English balls reached the camp beyond the ravine, and disturbed the slumbers of the officers off duty, as they lay wrapped in their blankets and bear-skins.  Before daybreak the first parallel was made; a battery was nearly finished on the left, and another was begun on the right.  The men now worked under cover, safe in their burrows; one gang relieved another, and the work went on all day.

The Indians were far from doing what was expected of them.  Instead of scouting in the direction of Fort Edward to learn the movements of the enemy and prevent surprise, they loitered about the camp and in the trenches, or amused themselves by firing at the fort from behind stumps and logs.  Some, in imitation of the French, dug little trenches for themselves, in which they wormed their way towards the rampart, and now and then picked off an artillery-man, not without loss on their own side.  On the afternoon of the fifth, Montcalm invited them to a council, gave them belts of wampum, and mildly remonstrated with them.  “Why expose yourselves without necessity?  I grieve bitterly over the losses that you have met, for the least among you is precious to me.  No doubt it is a good thing to annoy the English; but that is not the main point.  You ought to inform me of everything the enemy is doing, and always keep parties on the road between the two forts.”  And he gently hinted that their place was not in his camp, but in that of Levis, where missionaries were provided for such of them as were Christians, and food and ammunition for them all.  They promised, with excellent docility, to do everything he wished, but added that there was something on their hearts.  Being encouraged to relieve themselves of the burden, they complained that they had not been consulted as to the management of the siege, but were expected to obey orders like slaves.  “We know more about fighting in the woods than you,” said their orator; “ask our advice, and you will be the better for it."[514]

[Footnote 514:  Bougainville, Journal.]