“We shall be but too happy if we can prevent a massacre.  Detestable position! of which nobody who has not been in it can have any idea, and which makes victory itself a sorrow to the victors.  The Marquis spared no efforts to prevent the rapacity of the savages and, I must say it, of certain persons associated with them, from resulting in something worse than plunder.  At last, at nine o’clock in the evening, order seemed restored.  The Marquis even induced the Indians to promise that, besides the escort agreed upon in the capitulation, two chiefs for each tribe should accompany the English on their way to Fort Edward."[521] He also ordered La Corne and the other Canadian officers attached to the Indians to see that no violence took place.  He might well have done more.  In view of the disorders of the afternoon, it would not have been too much if he had ordered the whole body of regular troops, whom alone he could trust for the purpose, to hold themselves ready to move to the spot in case of outbreak, and shelter their defeated foes behind a hedge of bayonets.

[Footnote 520:  Bougainville au Ministre, 19 Aout, 1757.]

[Footnote 521:  Bougainville, Journal.]

Bougainville was not to see what ensued; for Montcalm now sent him to Montreal, as a special messenger to carry news of the victory.  He embarked at ten o’clock.  Returning daylight found him far down the lake; and as he looked on its still bosom flecked with mists, and its quiet mountains sleeping under the flush of dawn, there was nothing in the wild tranquillity of the scene to suggest the tragedy which even then was beginning on the shore he had left behind.

The English in their camp had passed a troubled night, agitated by strange rumors.  In the morning something like a panic seized them; for they distrusted not the Indians only, but the Canadians.  In their haste to be gone they got together at daybreak, before the escort of three hundred regulars had arrived.  They had their muskets, but no ammunition; and few or none of the provincials had bayonets.  Early as it was, the Indians were on the alert; and, indeed, since midnight great numbers of them had been prowling about the skirts of the camp, showing, says Colonel Frye, “more than usual malice in their looks.”  Seventeen wounded men of his regiment lay in huts, unable to join the march.  In the preceding afternoon Miles Whitworth, the regimental surgeon, had passed them over to the care of a French surgeon, according to an agreement made at the time of the surrender; but, the Frenchman being absent, the other remained with them attending to their wants.  The French surgeon had caused special sentinels to be posted for their protection.  These were now removed, at the moment when they were needed most; upon which, about five o’clock in the morning, the Indians entered the huts, dragged out the inmates, and tomahawked and scalped them all, before the eyes of Whitworth, and in presence of La Corne and other Canadian officers, as well as of a French guard stationed within forty feet of the spot; and, declares the surgeon under oath, “none, either officer or soldier, protected the said wounded men."[522] The opportune butchery relieved them of a troublesome burden.