Each of them
watched its neighbors, or, jealous lest it should do more than its just
share, waited for them to begin. Each popular assembly acted under the
eye of a frugal constituency, who, having little money, were as chary of
it as their descendants are lavish; and most of them were shaken by
internal conflicts, more absorbing than the great question on which hung
the fate of the continent. Only the four New England colonies were fully
earnest for the war, and one, even of these, was ready to use the crisis
as a means of extorting concessions from its Governor in return for
grants of money and men. When the lagging contingents came together at
last, under a commander whom none of them trusted, they were met by
strategical difficulties which would have perplexed older soldiers and
an abler general; for they were forced to act on the circumference of a
vast semicircle, in a labyrinth of forests, without roads, and choked
with every kind of obstruction.
Opposed to them was a trained army, well organized and commanded,
focused at Montreal, and moving for attack or defence on two radiating
lines,--one towards Lake Ontario, and the other towards Lake
Champlain,--supported by a martial peasantry, supplied from France with
money and material, dependent on no popular vote, having no will but
that of its chief, and ready on the instant to strike to right or left
as the need required. It was a compact military absolutism confronting a
heterogeneous group of industrial democracies, where the force of
numbers was neutralized by diffusion and incoherence.
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