86 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



Canada has failed to produce his superior in villainy. This was Bigot, 

 whose sinister influence is seen even inside the convent, in the letter he 

 ■wrote the Superior, forbidding her to sell or give away any food during 

 the famine, except through him. A few years later the younger Vau- 

 dreuil became Governor-General, and gave the plausible and insinuating 

 Bigot a free hand, while spitefully thwarting the great and incorruptible 

 Montcalm at every turn. No former miseries had been so bad as these; 

 for New France now had worse false friends at home than open enemies 

 abroad. 



In 1755 the Ursulines saw their sisters in the General Hospital 

 burnt out, with loss of life. Messages were instantly sent offering a 

 return of the kindness shown to the homeless Ursulines in the previous 

 century; and presently the Hospitalières arrived. One of their number 

 had been burnt alive; another was dying. She was nursed with all 

 possible care in the infirmary, and when she died the Ursulines buried 

 her in their own vault, " in order," as their annals say, " that her ashes, 

 mingling with ours, may serve to make still more enduring that union 

 whic^i has ever bound us together," 



The next three years were 3-ears of ever-increasing apprehension. 

 The French arms were often victorious; but victory became more and 

 more barren. Braddock'a defeat at the Monongahela was the last real 

 check to the British advance. Montcalm's battles were desperate reaj> 

 guard actions, in which his skill snatched victory for the time being from 

 forces whose reserves were always closing up the ranks of his enemies 

 and pushing the lines of converging invasion one step further into the 

 doomed colony. The Ursulines were devotedly patriotic, and looked 

 upon race and religion as almost one and the same. The contrast be- 

 tween New France and the English-speaking world was, indeed, a strik- 

 ing one. Not a heretic was to be found in Canada ; while Roman Cath- 

 olic disabilities were a striking reality in England, and the Bostonnais 

 were the straitest Protestants in the world. But, even apart from 

 religion, French priests and nuns have always been French of the French 

 abroad ; so much so, indeed, that their services to French influence were 

 freely used by atheists like Paul Bert and Gambetta, who agreed that 

 " Anti-clericalism is not an article of export." Montcalm, a frank and 

 unswerving believer, looked upon the final struggle as somewhat of an 

 Armageddon, though he was man-of-the-world enough to know that the 

 British side was not in the service of an Anti-Christ. His Ticonderoga 

 letter to the Superior of the Ursulines shows the bond of sjnnpathy be- 

 tween the cloister and the sword in that groat crisis. " Continues, 

 madame, à m'accorder vos prières et celles de votre sainte communauté 

 Je mei flatte que celui qui a pris Chouagen saura repousser à 



