Canada at this time, there is no doubt, was suffering from severe depression. Frontenac himself says that when the ships arrived in July, "the colony was reduced to the greatest extremities." He estimated that out of thirteen hundred soldiers maintained by the king at the date of the attack on Quebec more than half had been "killed on divers occasions or had died of disease." In all, he said, more than two thousand men, "militia, regulars and veterans," had been lost in Canada since the war, by which he probably means the war against the Iroquois commenced by his predecessor. He asks that one thousand effective men should be sent "to complete the twenty-eight companies his Majesty has hitherto maintained here." The ships that arrived in July had not brought out any additional troops. It must be confessed that it is a little difficult to understand the loss of so many soldiers as Frontenac reports. The losses of men at Quebec in repelling Phipps's attack--represented by the French accounts as being very light, and which even the enemy did not pretend were very heavy--fell chiefly on the militia; while, in the fights with Schuyler, described by the French annalist as "the most obstinate battle that has ever been fought in Canada since the foundation of the colony," the acknowledged losses were only forty killed and about the same number wounded. There is nothing on record to show that many perished in casual skirmishes with the Indians, whose custom was to avoid troops whenever possible.
An expedition that deserves to be recorded was undertaken in the month of February of the following year (1692), when some three hundred men were sent to attack a band of Iroquois, understood to be hunting somewhere between the St. Lawrence and the Ottawa. The leader of the party was M. Dorvilliers, an officer who had distinguished himself in the fight under Valrennes. At the very outset, however, Dorvilliers was accidentally disabled, and the command fell upon a youthful officer of engineers named Beaucour. The march through the forest was a terrible one: the cold was intense, and, accustomed as the men were to the rigours of the Canadian winter, they were rapidly losing heart, while some of the Indians were refusing to follow. Nothing but the indomitable spirit and courage of the leader saved the expedition from failure. He gathered the men round him and harangued them in terms and tones that gave new life to the whole party. Guided by the snowshoe tracks of the enemy, they followed on for four hours longer, when they caught up to and surprised them in their bivouac on an island in the St. Lawrence about a day's march below Cataraqui. Few of the savages escaped; most were killed in the first onset, but some, less fortunate, were captured and taken to Quebec, where three of them were tortured and burned. To avoid the same fate another killed himself in prison.