_This stone marks the grave of the victims of the Deerfield massacre on February 29, 1704._]
[Illustration: GENERAL MONTCALM’S HEADQUARTERS AT QUEBEC]
The French were better wood fighters than the English, and throughout these struggles had a disagreeable habit of raiding English settlements. Twice they captured villages within a day’s march of sacred Boston. Their most spectacular achievement was the raid upon Deerfield in 1704, upon which an epic poem might be written. Depict the French and Indians stealing two hundred miles through the frozen wilderness; the Puritans in Deerfield trusting to their stockade; the sudden dash at dawn; the shots, cries, screams; the Indians chopping away with their hatchets at Parson Williams’ front door, till they made a loophole through which to fire at the family; the file of captives quickly marshaled for the terrible northward trail; the valiant little band from Hatfield pursuing the Indians, many times their number, and getting a bad licking; the wrath and fear of all New England at this appearance of the fearful enemy!
The people of Haverhill, Massachusetts, have put up a statue to a militant woman named Hannah Dustin, who, when carried away a captive, had the sweet thought to brain half a dozen of her captors, and so get home again with her children. Had there been more Hannah Dustins, there would have been fewer French raids!
In all these wars the English colonists excelled as fighting seamen. We may still be proud of William Phipps and his levy of colonial forces, who took Port Royal in 1690. Who shall envy him his well earned title of Sir William, and his fair brick house on Green Lane, Boston? Think of the New England men, aided by a small British fleet, sallying out in 1745 to attack Louisburg, the proudest fortress in the western world,--laying siege to it, digging trenches before it, complimenting it with bombshells, and compelling it to surrender! That was worth a score of Deerfields!
_This memorial commemorates the capture of Quebec from the French by the English._]
The world has agreed to give the palm of picturesqueness in warfare to the capture of Quebec in 1759 by Wolfe’s English fleet and army. Modern critics tell you that nothing could be easier; that anybody can make his way up the steep footpath in Wolfe’s Cove. But Montcalm, the French commander, as brave a man and as skilled a warrior as you could find, did not think it likely that a British army would find its way to the Plains of Abraham at the top. Still, he realized, when his little army came out of the strongly fortified town, and offered battle, that the French empire in America was at stake. The battle of Quebec was a stage battle,--soldiers arriving in alarms and incursions, and both commanders fighting like heroes till they fell covered with wounds. Quebec was a battle that makes a man glad of being what he is, whether French or English.