Vaudreuil’s anxiety was natural; and so was the action of Montcalm in making known to the Court the outrageous abuses that threatened the King’s service with ruin.  His doing so was necessary both for his own justification and for the public good; and afterwards, when Vaudreuil and others were brought to trial at Paris, and when one of the counselfor the defence charged the late general with slanderously accusing his clients, the Court ordered the charge to be struck from the record.[812] The papers the existence of which, if they did exist, so terrified Vaudreuil, have thus far escaped research.  But the correspondence of the two rivals with the chiefs of the departments on which they severally depended is in large measure preserved; and while that of the Governor is filled with defamation of Montcalm and praise of himself, that of the General is neither egotistic nor abusive.  The faults of Montcalm have sufficiently appeared.  They were those of an impetuous, excitable, and impatient nature, by no means free from either ambition or vanity; but they were never inconsistent with the character of a man of honor.  His impulsive utterances, reported by retainers and sycophants, kept Vaudreuil in a state of chronic rage; and, void as he was of all magnanimity, gnawed with undying jealousy, and mortally in dread of being compromised by the knaveries to which he had lent his countenance, he could not contain himself within the bounds of decency or sense.  In another letter he had the baseness to say that Montcalm met his death in trying to escape from the English.

[Footnote 812:  Proces de Bigot, Cadet, et autres.]

Among the Governor’s charges are some which cannot be flatly denied.  When he accuses his rival of haste and precipitation in attacking the English army, he touches a fair subject of criticism; but, as a whole, he is as false in his detraction of Montcalm as in his praises of Bigot and Cadet.

The letter which Wolfe sent to Pitt a few days before his death, written in what may be called a spirit of resolute despair, and representing success as almost hopeless, filled England with a dejection that found utterance in loud grumblings against the Ministry.  Horace Walpole wrote the bad news to his friend Mann, ambassador at Florence:  “Two days ago came letters from Wolfe, despairing as much as heroes can despair.  Quebec is well victualled, Amherst is not arrived, and fifteen thousand men are encamped to defend it.  We have lost many men by the enemy, and some by our friends; that is, we now call our nine thousand only seven thousand.  How this little army will get away from a much larger, and in this season, in that country, I don’t guess:  yes, I do.”