Many of the fugitives ran back to the fort, and took refuge there, and Montcalm recovered from the Indians more than four hundred of those they had carried off.  These were all sent under a strong guard to Fort Edward.  The greater part of the survivors of the column dispersed into the woods, and made their way in scattered parties to Fort Edward.  Here cannon had been fired at intervals, to serve as a guide to the fugitives, but many, no doubt, perished in the woods.  On the morning after the massacre the Indians left in a body for Montreal, taking with them two hundred prisoners, to be tortured and murdered on their return to their villages.

Few events cast a deeper disgrace on the arms of France than this massacre, committed in defiance of their pledged honour for the safety of their prisoners, and in sight of four thousand French troops, not a man of whom was set in motion to prevent it.  These facts are not taken only from English sources, but from the letters of French officers, and from the journal of the Jesuit Roubaud, who was in charge of the Christianized Indians, who, according to his own account, were no less ferocious and cruel than the unconverted tribes.  The number of those who perished in the massacre is uncertain.  Captain Jonathan Carver, a colonial officer, puts the killed and captured at 1500.  A French writer, whose work was published at Montreal, says that they were all killed, except seven hundred who were captured; but this is, of course, a gross exaggeration.  General Levis and Roubaud, who were certain to have made the best of the matter, acknowledged that they saw some fifty corpses scattered on the ground, but this does not include those murdered in the fort and camp.

Probably the total number killed was about two hundred, and besides these must be counted the two hundred prisoners carried off to be tortured by the Indians.  The greater portion of these were purchased from the Indians, in exchange for rum, by Vaudreuil, the governor at Montreal; but to the eternal disgrace of this man, he suffered many of them to be carried off, and did not even interfere when, publicly, in the sight of the whole town, the Indians murdered some of the prisoners, and, not content with eating them themselves, forced their comrades to partake of the flesh.  Bougainville, one of the aides-de-camp of Montcalm, was present, and testified to the fact, and the story is confirmed by the intendant Bigot, a friend of the governor.

The ferocity of the Indians cost them dear.  They had dug up and scalped the corpses in the graveyard of Fort William Henry.  Many of these had died of smallpox, and the savages took the infection home to their villages, where great numbers perished of the disease.

As soon as their Indian allies had left, the French soldiers were set to work demolishing the English fort, and the operation was completed by the destruction, by fire, of the remains.  The army then returned to Crown Point.