[Footnote 518:  Frye, Journal.]

It was agreed that the English troops should march out with the honors of war, and be escorted to Fort Edward by a detachment of French troops; that they should not serve for eighteen months; and that all French prisoners captured in America since the war began should be given up within three months.  The stores, munitions, and artillery were to be the prize of the victors, except one field-piece, which the garrison were to retain in recognition of their brave defence.

Before signing the capitulation Montcalm called the Indian chiefs to council, and asked them to consent to the conditions, and promise to restrain their young warriors from any disorder.  They approved everything and promised everything.  The garrison then evacuated the fort, and marched to join their comrades in the entrenched camp, which was included in the surrender.  No sooner were they gone than a crowd of Indians clambered through the embrasures in search of rum and plunder.  All the sick men unable to leave their beds were instantly butchered.[519] “I was witness of this spectacle,” says the missionary Roubaud; “I saw one of these barbarians come out of the casemates with a human head in his hand, from which the blood ran in streams, and which he paraded as if he had got the finest prize in the world.”  There was little left to plunder; and the Indians, joined by the more lawless of the Canadians, turned their attention to the entrenched camp, where all the English were now collected.

[Footnote 519:  Attestation of William Arbuthnot, Captain in Frye’s Regiment.]

The French guard stationed there could not or would not keep out the rabble.  By the advice of Montcalm the English stove their rum-barrels; but the Indians were drunk already with homicidal rage, and the glitter of their vicious eyes told of the devil within.  They roamed among the tents, intrusive, insolent, their visages besmirched with war-paint; grinning like fiends as they handled, in anticipation of the knife, the long hair of cowering women, of whom, as well as of children, there were many in the camp, all crazed with fright.  Since the last war the New England border population had regarded Indians with a mixture of detestation and horror.  Their mysterious warfare of ambush and surprise, their midnight onslaughts, their butcheries, their burnings, and all their nameless atrocities, had been for years the theme of fireside story; and the dread they excited was deepened by the distrust and dejection of the time.  The confusion in the camp lasted through the afternoon.  “The Indians,” says Bougainville, “wanted to plunder the chests of the English; the latter resisted; and there was fear that serious disorder would ensue.  The Marquis de Montcalm ran thither immediately, and used every means to restore tranquillity:  prayers, threats, caresses, interposition of the officers and interpreters who have some influence over these savages."[520]