They approved
everything and promised everything. The garrison then evacuated the
fort, and marched to join their comrades in the entrenched camp, which
was included in the surrender. No sooner were they gone than a crowd of
Indians clambered through the embrasures in search of rum and plunder.
All the sick men unable to leave their beds were instantly
butchered.[519] "I was witness of this spectacle," says the missionary
Roubaud; "I saw one of these barbarians come out of the casemates with a
human head in his hand, from which the blood ran in streams, and which
he paraded as if he had got the finest prize in the world." There was
little left to plunder; and the Indians, joined by the more lawless of
the Canadians, turned their attention to the entrenched camp, where all
the English were now collected.
[Footnote 519: _Attestation of William Arbuthnot, Captain in Frye's
Regiment._]
The French guard stationed there could not or would not keep out the
rabble. By the advice of Montcalm the English stove their rum-barrels;
but the Indians were drunk already with homicidal rage, and the glitter
of their vicious eyes told of the devil within. They roamed among the
tents, intrusive, insolent, their visages besmirched with war-paint;
grinning like fiends as they handled, in anticipation of the knife, the
long hair of cowering women, of whom, as well as of children, there were
many in the camp, all crazed with fright.
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