The English patrols caught one of them
as he was passing the time in fishing. "He seemed to be a subtle old
rogue," says Knox, "of seventy years of age, as he told us. We plied him
well with port wine, and then his heart was more open; and seeing that
we laughed at the exaggerated accounts he had given us, he said he
'wished the affair was well over, one way or the other; that his
countrymen were all discontented, and would either surrender, or
disperse and act a neutral part, if it were not for the persuasions of
their priests and the fear of being maltreated by the savages, with whom
they are threatened on all occasions.'" A deserter reported on the
nineteenth of July that nothing but dread of the Indians kept the
Canadians in the camp.
Wolfe's proclamation, at first unavailing, was now taking effect. A
large number of Canadian prisoners, brought in on the twenty-fifth,
declared that their countrymen would gladly accept his offers but for
the threats of their commanders that if they did so the Indians should
be set upon them. The prisoners said further that "they had been under
apprehension for several days past of having a body of four hundred
barbarians sent to rifle their parish and habitations."[718] Such
threats were not wholly effectual. A French chronicler of the time says:
"The Canadians showed their disgust every day, and deserted at every
opportunity, in spite of the means taken to prevent them.
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