MONTCALM:--Why not? Men cannot be in two places at the same time; and you managed to find everywhere Indians and Canadians in your way! There are many kinds of irregular troops in Europe as bad to deal with as the Indians in woods and in wooded countries. But your army was always so struck with terror and dread, that, constantly blinded with fear, the shadow of an Indian set them a trembling. Nevertheless, the New England independent companies, formed by Roger, who afterwards beat the Indians with equal numbers in their own way of fighting behind trees, should have removed the formidable impression they have always made upon the English. Self-preservation is natural to all mankind, and the hour of death must strike with horror the bravest man. But fear is pardonable amongst soldiers only when there exists a real cause for fear; and is not to be tolerated when groundless: this is so much the case of your soldiers with regard to the Indians, that, demoralized by fear, they suffer themselves to be butchered by a vastly inferior number of Indians, without ever thinking of defending themselves, even when they know they will have no quarter. In any danger, soldiers ought to be accustomed to look coolly death in the face,--they, whose duty is to die when the Sovereign demands it: such is the contract they sign with the latter on their entering into his service. These sentiments may be often the means of one's preserving life instead of losing it. Nothing is more incomprehensible to me, in all your conduct in Canada, than your landing at _Anse des Mères_ on the 13th September (the fatal day which deprived us both of our existence, but freed us from mortal folly), at the foot of a steep hill, where a few men at the top of it, with sticks and stones only, must have easily beaten you back on your attempt to climb it, and where we had three posts of one hundred men each: one of them commanded by Douglas, captain in the regiment of Languedoc; another by Rimini, captain in the regiment La Sarre; and the third by De Vergor, captain in the Colony troops, at whose post[G] you made your descent. These three hundred men, had they done their duty, should have been more than sufficient to have repulsed you ignominiously at this steep hill; and you never would have got to the top had you met with the smallest resistance. I own that your daring surpasses my conception.