Webb had remained at Fort Edward in mortal dread of attack.  Johnson had joined him with a band of Mohawks; and on the day when Fort William Henry surrendered there had been some talk of attempting to throw succors into it by night.  Then came the news of its capture; and now, when it was too late, tumultuous mobs of militia came pouring in from the neighboring provinces.  In a few days thousands of them were bivouacked on the fields about Fort Edward, doing nothing, disgusted and mutinous, declaring that they were ready to fight, but not to lie still without tents, blankets, or kettles.  Webb writes on the fourteenth that most of those from New York had deserted, threatening to kill their officers if they tried to stop them.  Delancey ordered them to be fired upon.  A sergeant was shot, others were put in arrest, and all was disorder till the seventeenth; when Webb, learning that the French were gone, sent them back to their homes.[528]

[Footnote 528:  Delancey to [Holdernesse?], 24 Aug. 1757.]

Close on the fall of Fort William Henry came crazy rumors of disaster, running like wildfire through the colonies.  The number and ferocity of the enemy were grossly exaggerated; there was a cry that they would seize Albany and New York itself;[529] while it was reported that Webb, as much frightened as the rest, was for retreating to the Highlands of the Hudson.[530] This was the day after the capitulation, when a part only of the militia had yet appeared.  If Montcalm had seized the moment, and marched that afternoon to Fort Edward, it is not impossible that in the confusion he might have carried it by a coup-de-main.

[Footnote 529:  Captain Christie to Governor Wentworth, 11 Aug. 1757.  Ibid., to Governor Pownall, same date.]

[Footnote 530:  Smith, Hist.  N.Y., Part II. 254.]

Here was an opportunity for Vaudreuil, and he did not fail to use it.  Jealous of his rival’s exploit, he spared no pains to tarnish it; complaining that Montcalm had stopped half way on the road to success, and, instead of following his instructions, had contented himself with one victory when he should have gained two.  But the Governor had enjoined upon him as a matter of the last necessity that the Canadians should be at their homes before September to gather the crops, and he would have been the first to complain had the injunction been disregarded.  To besiege Fort Edward was impossible, as Montcalm had no means of transporting cannon thither; and to attack Webb without them was a risk which he had not the rashness to incur.

It was Bougainville who first brought Vaudreuil the news of the success on Lake George.  A day or two after his arrival, the Indians, who had left the army after the massacre, appeared at Montreal, bringing about two hundred English prisoners.  The Governor rebuked them for breaking the capitulation, on which the heathen savages of the West declared that it was not their fault, but that of the converted Indians, who, in fact, had first raised the war-whoop.  Some of the prisoners were presently bought from them at the price of two kegs of brandy each; and the inevitable consequences followed.