No. 112.] 675 



before Quebec, cannot redeem. The great purpose of this move- 

 ment achieved, the French having demolished the fortification, 

 bearing with them the artillery, military stores, and English flo- 

 tilla, returned to their fortresses on Champlain. Grief, indigna- 

 tion and liorror, at this event, pervaded and agitated Britain and 

 the colonies. 



The hour of the massacre at the " bloody pass " marks the 

 culmination of French power upon the continent of America. 

 No armament of France, after the conquest of William Henry, 

 penetrated south of Ticonderoga, in the territory of New-York. 

 Her subsequent history exhibits a dark series of disasters and 

 declensions, illumined by occasional gleams of glory and triumph, 

 until the American empire of France was totally extinguished by 

 the treaty of 1762. 



CHAPTER V. 



THE CAMPAIGNS OF ABERCHOMBI^ AND AMHERST. 



England and America were raised from their humiliation and 

 despondency by the potent genius and splendid combinations of 

 Pitt. His ardent appeals to the patriotism of the colonies, al- 

 though enforced by no coercions of power, aroused and enlisted 

 their whole energies in support of that gigantic scheme, which 

 contemplated a simultaneous attack upon all the widely extended 

 dominions of France. More than nine thousand provincial troops, 

 responding with zeal and alacrity to the summons of Britain, 

 assembled on Lake George in the early summer of 1758. These 

 contingents, combined with seven thousand British veterans, 

 formed the untst brilliant and powerful army before marshalled 

 upon the American continent, under the flag of England. The 

 bosom of an American lake never bore a more gorgeous and im- 

 posing military spectacle, than was exhibited in the passage 

 through Lake George, of Abercromhie's armament. A flotilla of 

 nine liundred batteaux, and one hundred and thirty-five boats, 

 with rafts armed with artillery, broke the deep silence and seclu- 

 sion of this romantic lake, whose rugg^-d banks were then unen- 

 livened by the habitations of man. Amid the clangor of mar- 

 tial music, the glitter of biirniijhed arms, the gleaming of bright 



