So ended in complete failure the attempt of Massachusetts to take Quebec. Yet it was a bold and masterful effort on the part of one undeveloped English colony. It had in it the elements of strength, and under different conditions might have earned success. As it was, the citizen soldiers and sailors of Boston, led by an ex-ship-carpenter, faced Count Frontenac and all the trained strength of New France, their retreat was unmolested, and their failure was hailed as a miraculous deliverance for Quebec.[4] [Footnote 4: Phipps, before he made his attack, was told by French prisoners of the path up the cliff above the town, by which Wolfe subsequently took Quebec; but he preferred to attack from Beauport.] [Sidenote: _Death of Phipps._] Phipps had not proved himself to be a great commander. He failed too as Governor of Massachusetts, to which post he was appointed in the following year; but he had the merit of dogged determination to fight the French in Canada; and, had he lived longer, he might again have tried his hand at besieging Quebec. A few weeks after his repulse and return to Boston, he sailed to England to urge upon the home Government an active policy against New France, and that policy he continued to advocate until he died, in 1695, at the early age of forty-four. [Sidenote: _Wheeler's abortive expedition._] On either side, the true line of defence was to carry war into the enemy's country. It was thus that Frontenac defended Canada. It was by constant raids that the Iroquois maintained their position; and the counsel which those astute savages gave to their English friends was to combine and attack Quebec. 'Strike at Quebec,' urged Phipps on the English Government; 'strike at Boston and New York' was the advice which the leaders of Canada one after another tendered to King Louis. No help had been sent from England to the late expedition against Quebec, but Phipps' {134} subsequent representations led to an English fleet being dispatched to the West Indies in the winter of 1692, under command of Admiral Wheeler. The ships were intended to take Martinique, then to go on to Boston, and embarking a force of New Englanders under Phipps to sail for Quebec. Again there was a failure. Wheeler lost more than half his soldiers and sailors in the West Indies from yellow fever; and, when he reached Boston in midsummer of 1693, bringing the sickness with him, the Massachusetts Government decided that it was hopeless to attempt to carry out the scheme. [Sidenote: _Fighting on the New York frontier._] [Sidenote: _New York protected by the Iroquois._]