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 -1763] The capture of Montreal. 143 Champlain route, now easy to force, he left to Colonel Haviland, while with 10,000 men he ascended the Mohawk to Oswego on Lake Ontario, thence to descend the St Lawrence upon Montreal. Thus three powerful corps were converging upon this last stronghold of the Canadas; and the French forces, terribly diminished by death, sickness and the deser- tion of the militia, could only hope to harass the British advance, make a last stand at Montreal, and obtain the best terms they could. Amherst, as we have seen, was not a dashing leader, but he was an admirable organiser. His difficulties in descending the rapids of the St Lawrence were very great, 90 men being drowned in the descent; but he reached Montreal actually upon the same day as Haviland, Murray arriving some twenty-four hours later. Vaudreuil the governor and the famous mtendant Bigot were at Montreal. There too were de Levis, Bourlamaque and Bougainville with 2400 men, the remnant of that gallant force, which unsupported by the mother country had struggled with such devotion against adverse circumstances and sometimes against great odds. The militia had all returned home. The Indians, quick to desert a falling cause, had vanished into the woods. It was now but a matter of arranging terms of capitulation, though the soldiers themselves showed much genuine eagerness for further resistance. But the counsels of Vaudreuil and the civil powers prevailed against such useless expenditure of human life; and on September 8th, exactly a year after the death of Wolfe, the capitulation was signed. Under it the whole of Canada passed to the British Crown ; and the Treaty of Paris (1763) left this arrangement undisturbed. The fact that the Catholic religion remained unmolested and that the language and, for all practical purposes, the laws of the inhabitants were in no way interfered with, is creditable to the combination of policy and humanity which dictated these concessions. OH. IV.