[Footnote 610:  Pitt to Grenville, 22 Aug. 1758, in Grenville Papers, I. 262.]

[Footnote 611:  Pouchot, Derniere Guerre de l’Amerique, I. 140.]

[Footnote 612:  Letter from Camp, 12 June, 1758, in Boston Evening Post. Another, in Boston News Letter, contains similar statements.]

Here, as in all things, he shared the lot of the soldier, and required his officers to share it.  A story is told of him that before the army embarked he invited some of them to dinner in his tent, where they found no seats but logs, and no carpet but bear-skins.  A servant presently placed on the ground a large dish of pork and peas, on which his lordship took from his pocket a sheath containing a knife and fork and began to cut the meat.  The guests looked on in some embarrassment; upon which he said:  “Is it possible, gentlemen, that you have come on this campaign without providing yourselves with what is necessary?” And he gave each of them a sheath, with a knife and fork, like his own.

Yet this Lycurgus of the camp, as a contemporary calls him, is described as a man of social accomplishments rare even in his rank.  He made himself greatly beloved by the provincial officers, with many of whom he was on terms of intimacy, and he did what he could to break down the barriers between the colonial soldiers and the British regulars.  When he was at Alban, sharing with other high officers the kindly hospitalities of Mrs. Schuyler, he so won the heart of that excellent matron that she loved him like a son; and, though not given to such effusion, embraced him with tears on the morning when he left her to lead his division to the lake.[613] In Westminster Abbey may be seen the tablet on which Massachusetts pays grateful tribute to his virtues, and commemorates “the affection her officers and soldiers bore to his command.”

[Footnote 613:  Mrs. Grant, Memoirs of an American Lady, 226 (ed. 1876).]

On the evening of the fourth of July, baggage, stores, and ammunition were all on board the boats, and the whole army embarked on the morning of the fifth.  The arrangements were perfect.  Each corps marched without confusion to its appointed station on the beach, and the sun was scarcely above the ridge of French Mountain when all were afloat.  A spectator watching them from the shore says that when the fleet was three miles on its way, the surface of the lake at that distance was completely hidden from sight.[614] There were nine hundred bateaux, a hundred and thirty-five whaleboats, and a large number of heavy flatboats carrying the artillery.  The whole advanced in three divisions, the regulars in the centre, and the provincials on the flanks.  Each corps had its flags and its music.  The day was fair and men and officers were in the highest spirits.

[Footnote 614:  Letter from Lake George, in Boston News Letter.]