Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 5).djvu/72

68 Frenchmen since the days of Champlain, Montcalm, on the third of April. In three months Montcalm had swept down Lake Champlain to Fort Ticonderoga. Then, as if to make sport of his antagonist—Loudoun, who had abandoned Shirley's Oswego scheme—Montcalm returned to Montreal, hurried with three thousand soldiers down the St. Lawrence and across to Oswego, which surrendered at once with its twelve hundred defenders. The outwitted Loudoun crawled slowly up to Lake George; the winter of 1756–57 came on, and the two commanders glared at each other across the narrow space of snow and ice that separated them. The two important campaigns planned by Shirley were utter failures, and the westward campaign against Fort Duquesne was not even attempted. The French were strengthening everywhere. "Whoever is in or whoever is out," exclaimed Chesterfield, "I am sure we are undone both at home and abroad We are no longer a nation." But one of Shirley's coups had succeeded; Winslow captured Beauséjour. In the west Armstrong had razed the Indian town of Kittan-