advancing!

We were so near an English post at the Prairie de Boileau, that a grenadier of the Regiment de Berry, seeing his commander, Cormier, sink down with fatigue, and not in a condition to go any further, carried off a horse from them which was upon the borders of the wood, and mounted his commander on it; otherwise he would have been left aside and taken prisoner by the English, or scalped by the Indians.

Having lost all hopes of going to Montreal through the woods, we took the road to Fort St. Jean, on the River Chambly, four leagues lower than Isle aux Noix, and five leagues by land to Montreal. My strength was so entirely spent, that it was with great difficulty I could draw one leg after the other. Nevertheless the fear of falling into the hands of the Indians, the idea of the horrible cruelties which they practice on their prisoners, which shock human nature, prevented me from sinking down with pain, and gave me strength to push on.

Arrived at a settlement at four in the afternoon, about a league and a half from St. John's Fort, where De Bougainville caused his detachment to halt and repose themselves for the first time since midnight, that they left Isle aux Noix. I perceived there a boat going off to St. Jean, and I had only strength enough remaining to throw myself into it. We lost in this march about eighty men: those who could not hold out were left behind, victims to the Indians. Arriving at St. John's Fort, the first person I saw there was Poularies, on the river side, who told me they had news of our retreat, and that he was sent with his regiment to sustain us in case we had been pursued by the English.

We were now shut up in the island of Montreal on all sides. The English were masters of the River Chambly by the possession of Isle aux Noix. General Amherst approached with his army from Lake Ontario; and General Murray was in march, coming up from Quebec, with six thousand men that had passed through the winter there, and with some men-of-war, one of which of about forty guns, on its arrival in sight of the town of Montreal, greatly astonished, and excited the admiration of, the inhabitants, who, from the ignorance and negligence of those persons charged with the sounding of the St. Lawrence, had never seen vessels arrive there of above sixty or seventy tons.

General Murray conducted himself as an officer of great understanding, knowledge and capacity, and left nothing to do for General Amherst; he employed five weeks in coming from Quebec to Montreal, which is only sixty leagues, and did us during his march more harm by his policy than by his army. He stopped often in the villages; spoke kindly to the inhabitants he found at home in their houses—whom hunger and famine had obliged to fly from our army at Montreal; gave provisions to those unhappy creatures perishing for want of subsistence. He burned, in some cases, the houses of those who were absent from home and in the French army at Montreal, publishing everywhere an amnesty and good treatment to all Canadians who would return to their habitations and live there peaceably. In short—flattering some and frightening others—he succeeded so well, that at last there was no more possibility of keeping them at Montreal. It is true we had now only need of them to make a good countenance. The three English armies amounting to above twenty thousand men, it was impossible to make any further resistance.

Amherst's army appeared in sight from the town of Montreal, towards the gate of Lachine, on the 7th of September, about three in the afternoon. General Murray with his army, from Quebec, appeared two hours after at the opposite side of the town: thus a dark crisis was at hand for the fate of Canada. Montreal was nowise susceptible of defence. It was surrounded with stone walls, built in the beginning of that colony, merely to preserve the inhabitants from the incursions of the Indians, few imagining at that time it would become the theatre of a regular war, and that one day they would see formidable armies of regular, well-disciplined troops before its walls.

We were, however, all pent up in that miserable, bad place—without provisions, a thousand times worse off than an advantageous position in open fields—whose pitiful walls could not resist two hours' cannonade without being level with the ground, and where we would have been forced to surrender at discretion, if the English had insisted upon it.

The night between the 7th and 8th September was passed in negotiating for the articles of capitulation. But in the morning all the difficulties were removed, and General Amherst granted conditions infinitely more favourable than could be expected in our circumstances.

Thus the Canadians, as brave as they are docile, and easy to be governed, became subjects of Great Britain; and if they can think themselves happy under that Government, by remembering their past vexations, they will do so.

M. (Col.) Poularies and M. (Col.) Dalquier, who were generally distinguished in the French army by their high sense of honor, probity, and their bravery, experience and knowledge in the art of war, were both of them, on their arrival in France, broken as commanders of a battalion—a grade which was abolished in the French service, in order to make the Major, as in the British service, command the regiment in absence of the Colonel and Lieutenant-Colonel. Belcomb, Poularies' Adjt. of Royal Roussillon, and Montgnary, Captain in the Regiment of Bearn which Dalquier commanded—(two very handsome men, capable to attract the attention of the ladies of any court in Europe)—were made Colonels of Foot, without possessing any remarkable military talent or capacity.

Fortune manifested most cruelly her almighty power in the military state, where justice, punishments and rewards alone ought to be the base of it. Men conduct themselves from the view either of honor or interest; and there can be no emulation in a service where mediocrity of talents, intrigues, favor, and credit, override merit.

Greatness of soul, joined to superiority of talent, ignores the art of cringing; it is even impossible that merit can lead to fortune in a corrupted and venal country: on the contrary, it becomes a cause of exclusion. Virtue elevates the soul, and can neither fawn nor buy credit, nor flatter vice and incapacity. "If such is the military constitution of a State," says M. Gaubert, in his Treatise of Tactics, "of which the Sovereign (the King of Prussia) is one of the greatest men of the age, who instructs and commands his armies, and whose armies form all the pomp of the court, what ought it to be in those States where the Sovereign is not at all a military man; where he does not see his troops; where he seems to disdain or be ignorant of all that regards them; where the Court, who always obey the impression of the Sovereign, is consequently not military; where almost all the great rewards are obtained by surprise, by intrigue; where the greater portion of favors are hereditary; where merit languishes for want of support; where favor can advance without talent; where to make a fortune no more implies acquiring a reputation, but merely to heap up riches; where men may be, at one and the same time, covered with orders and infamy—with grades and ignorance, serve ill the State, and occupy the best places; be smeared with the censure of the public, and enjoy the Sovereign's good graces? If, whilst all other sciences are becoming perfected, that of war remains in its infancy, it is the fault of the Governments, who do not attach to it sufficient importance; who do not make it an object of public education; who fail to direct men of genius to that profession; who suffer them to find more glory and advantages in sciences trifling or less useful; who render the profession of arms an ungrateful