PIERRE LE MOYNE, SIEUR D'IBERVILLE

From an engraving in the John Ross Robertson Collection, Toronto Public Library

The largest party contained a hundred and fourteen French and ninety-six Indians. It marched from Montreal against Schenectady, commanded by D'Aillebout de Mantet and Le Moyne de Sainte-Hélène. The second party, proceeding from Three Rivers and numbering twenty-six French and twenty-nine Indians under the command of François Hertel, aimed at Dover, Pemaquid, and other settlements of Maine and New Hampshire. The Quebec party, under Portneuf, comprised fifty French and sixty Indians. Its objective was the English colony on Casco Bay, where the city of Portland now stands. All three were successful in accomplishing what they aimed at, namely the destruction of English settlements amid fire and carnage. All three employed Indians, who were suffered, either willingly or unwillingly, to commit barbarities.

It is much more the business of history to explain than to condemn or to extenuate. How could a man like François Hertel lead one of these raids without sinking to the moral level of his Indian followers? Some such question may, not unnaturally, rise to the lips of a modern reader who for the first time comes upon the story of Dover and Salmon

Falls. But fuller knowledge breeds respect for François Hertel. When eighteen years old he was captured by the Mohawks and put to the torture. One of his fingers they burned off in the bowl of a pipe. The thumb of the other hand they cut off. In the letter which he wrote on birch-bark to his mother after this dreadful experience there is not a word of his sufferings. He simply sends her his love and asks for her prayers, signing himself by his childish nickname, 'Your poor Fanchon.' As he grew up he won from an admiring community the name of The Hero.' He was not only brave but religious. In his view it was all legitimate warfare. If he slew others, he ran a thousand risks and endured terrible privations for his king and the home he was defending. His stand at the bridge over the Wooster river, sword in hand, when pressed on his retreat by an overwhelming force of English, holding the pass till all his men are over, is worthy of an èpic. He was forty-seven years old at the time. The three eldest of his nine sons were with him in that little band of twenty-six Frenchmen, and two of his nephews. To the New England of old,' says Parkman, François Hertel was the abhorred chief of Popish

malignants and murdering savages. The New England of to-day will be more just to the brave defender of his country and his faith.'

The atrocities committed by the French and Indians are enough to make one shudder even at this distance of time. As Frontenac adopted the plan and sent forth the warparties, the moral responsibility in large part rests with him. There are, however, some facts to consider before judgment is passed as to the degree of his culpability. The modern distinction between combatants and non-combatants had little meaning in the wilds of America at this period. When France and England were at open war, every settler was a soldier, and as such each man's duty was to keep on his guard. If caught napping he must take the consequences. Thus, to fall upon an unsuspecting hamlet and slay its men-folk with the tomahawk, while brutal, was hardly more brutal than under such circumstances we could fairly expect war to be.

The massacre of women and children is another matter, not to be excused on any grounds, even though Schenectady and Salmon Falls are paralleled by recent acts of the Germans in Belgium. Still, we should not forget that European warfare in the age of