The
soldiers were set to the work of demolishing the English fort; and the
task occupied several days. The barracks were torn down, and the huge
pine-logs of the rampart thrown into a heap. The dead bodies that filled
the casemates were added to the mass, and fire was set to the whole. The
mighty funeral pyre blazed all night. Then, on the sixteenth, the army
reimbarked. The din of ten thousand combatants, the rage, the terror,
the agony, were gone; and no living thing was left but the wolves that
gathered from the mountains to feast upon the dead.[526]
[Footnote 526: The foregoing chapter rests largely on evidence never
before brought to light, including the minute _Journal_ of
Bougainville,--document which can hardly be commended too much,--the
correspondence of Webb, a letter of Colonel Frye, written just after the
massacre, and a journal of the siege, sent by him to Governor Pownall as
his official report. Extracts from these, as well as from the affidavit
of Dr. Whitworth, which is also new evidence, are given in Appendix F.
The Diary of Malartic and the correspondence of Montcalm, Levis,
Vaudreuil, and Bigot, also throw light on the campaign, as well as
numerous reports of the siege, official and semi-official. The long
letter of the Jesuit Roubaud, printed anonymously in the _Lettres
Edifiantes et Curieuses_, gives a remarkably vivid account of what he
saw. He was an intelligent person, who may be trusted where he has no
motive for lying.
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