1763, 1764.] COMPLAINTS OF OFFICERS. 161 



Now follow the letters, written in French, of the 

 gallant Swiss, Captain Ecuyer, always lively and 

 entertaining even in his discontent. He writes to 

 Bouquet from Bedford, on the thirteenth of Novem- 

 ber. Like other officers on the frontier, he com- 

 plains of the settlers, who, notwithstanding their 

 fear of the enemy, always did their best to shelter 

 deserters ; and he gives a list of eighteen soldiers 

 who had deserted within five days : ^ "I have been 

 twenty-two years in service, and I never in my life 

 saw any thing equal to it, — a gang of mutineers, 

 bandits, cut-throats, especially the grenadiers. I 

 have been obliged, after all the patience imagin- 

 able, to have two of them whipped on the spot, 

 without court-martial. One wanted to kill the ser- 

 geant and the other wanted to kill me. . . . For 

 God's sake, let me go and raise cabbages. You 

 can do it if you will, and I shall thank you eter- 

 nally for it. Don't refuse, I beg you. Besides, my 

 health is not very good ; and I don't know if I can 

 go up again to Fort Pitt with this convoy." 



Bouquet himself was no better satisfied than his 

 correspondents. On the twentieth of June, 1764, 

 he wrote to Gage, Amherst's successor : "I flatter 

 myself that you will do me the favor to have me 



1 " The three companies of Royal Americans were reduced when I met 

 them at Lancaster to 55 men, having lost 38 by desertion in my short 

 absence. I look upon Sir Jeffrey Amherst's Orders forbidding me to 

 continue to discharge as usual the men whose time of service was expired, 

 and keeping us for seven years in the Woods, — as the occasion of this 

 unprecedented desertion. The encouragement given everywhere in this 

 Country to deserters, screened almost by every person, must in time ruin 

 the Army, unless the Laws against Harbourers are better enforced by 

 the American {provincial) government." — Bouquet to Gage, 20 June, 1764. 



TOL. II. 11 



