142 DENONVILLE AND THE SENEGAS. [1687. 



was fifty-one, sustained by such food as their wives 

 were able to get for them. Of more than a hun- 

 dred and fifty women and children captured with 

 them, many died at the fort, partly from excite- 

 ment and distress, and partly from a pestilential 

 disease. The survivors were all baptized, and 

 then distributed among the mission villages in the 

 colony. The men were sent to Quebec, where 

 some of them were given up to their Christian 

 relatives in the missions who had claimed them, 

 and whom it was not expedient to offend ; and the 

 rest, after being baptized, were sent to France, to 

 share with convicts and Huguenots the horrible 

 slavery of the royal galleys. 1 



Before reaching Fort Frontenac, Denonville, to 

 his great relief, was joined by Lamberville, delivered 

 from the peril to which the governor had exposed 

 him. He owed his life to an act of magnanimity 



1 The authorities for the above are Denonville, Champigny, Abbe 

 Belmont, Bishop Saint- Vallier, and the author of Recueil de ce qui s'est 

 passe en Canada an Suj<4 de la Guerre, etc., depuis Vannee 1682. 



Belmont, who accompanied the expedition, speaks of the affair with 

 indignation, which was shared by many Erench officers. The bishop, 

 on the other hand, mentions the success of the stratagem as a reward 

 accorded by Heaven to the piety of Denonville. Etat Present de VEglise, 

 91,92 (reprint, 1856). 



Denonville's account, which is sufficiently explicit, is contained in the 

 long journal of the expedition which he sent to the court, and in several 

 letters to the minister. Both Belmont and the author of the Recueil 

 speak of the prisoners as having been " pris par l'appat d'un festin." 



Mr. Shea, usually so exact, has been led into some error by con- 

 founding the different acts of this affair. By Denonville's official 

 journal, it appears that, on the 19th June, Perre, by his order, captured 

 several Indians on the St. Lawrence ; that, on the 25th June, the gover- 

 nor, then at Rapide Plat on his way up the river, received a letter from 

 Champigny, informing him that he had seized all the Iroquois near Fort 

 Frontenac; and that, on the 3d July, Perre, whom Denonville had sent 

 several days before to attack Ganneious, arrived with his prisoners. 



