“And was it true?” inquired Clara.

“Probably not,” said Grandfather.  “But the mere suspicion did Shirley a great deal of harm.  Partly, perhaps, for this reason, but much more on account of his inefficiency as a general, he was deprived of his command, in 1756, and recalled to England.  He never afterwards made any figure in public life.”

As Grandfather’s chair had no locomotive properties, and did not even run on castors, it cannot be supposed to have marched in person to the Old French War.  But Grandfather delayed its momentous history, while he touched briefly upon some of the bloody battles, sieges, and onslaughts, the tidings of which kept continually coming to the ears of the old inhabitants of Boston.  The woods of the north were populous with fighting men.  All the Indian tribes uplifted their tomahawks, and took part either with the French or English.  The rattle of musketry and roar of cannon disturbed the ancient quiet of the forest, and actually drove the bears and other wild beasts to the more cultivated portion of the country in the vicinity of the sea-ports.  The children felt as if they were transported back to those forgotten times, and that the couriers from the army, with the news of a battle lost or won, might even now be heard galloping through the streets.  Grandfather told them about the battle of Lake George, in 1755, when the gallant Colonel Williams, a Massachusetts officer, was slain, with many of his countrymen.  But General Johnson and General Lyman, with their army, drove back the enemy, and mortally wounded the French leader, who was called the Baron Dieskau.  A gold watch, pilfered from the poor Baron, is still in existence, and still marks each moment of time, without complaining of weariness, although its hands have been in motion ever since the hour of battle.

In the first years of the war, there were many disasters on the English side.  Among these was the loss of Fort Oswego, in 1756, and of Fort William Henry, in the following year.  But the greatest misfortune that befell the English, during the whole war, was the repulse of General Abercrombie, with his army, from the ramparts of Ticonderoga, in 1758.  He attempted to storm the walls; but a terrible conflict ensued, in which more than two thousand Englishmen and New Englanders were killed or wounded.  The slain soldiers now lie buried around that ancient fortress.  When the plough passes over the soil, it turns up here and there a mouldering bone.

Up to this period, none of the English generals had shown any military talent.  Shirley, the Earl of Loudon, and General Abercrombie, had each held the chief command, at different times; but not one of them had won a single important triumph for the British arms.  This ill success was not owing to the want of means; for, in 1758, General Abercrombie had fifty thousand soldiers under his command.  But the French general, the famous Marquis de Montcalm, possessed a great genius for war, and had something within him, that taught him how battles were to be won.