Great as were the immediate material results of Montcalm's success, the indirect moral advantage which the French derived from it was greater still. Oswego, Burke reminds us in the _Annual Register_ for 1758,[8] was 'designed to cover the country of the Five Nations, to secure the Indian trade, to interrupt the communication between the {258} French northern and southern establishments, and to open a way to our arms to attack the forts of Frontenac and Niagara.' A few pages later, he describes the effect of the disaster in the following words: 'Since Oswego had been taken, the French remained entirely masters of all the lakes, and we could do nothing to obstruct their collecting the Indians from all parts, and obliging them to act in their favour. But our apprehensions (or what shall they be called?) did more in favour of the French than their conquests. Not satisfied with the loss of that important fortress, we ourselves abandoned to the mercy of the enemy all the country of the Five Nations, the only body of Indians who preserved even the appearance of friendship to us. The forts we had at the Great Carrying Place were demolished, Wood Creek was industriously stopped up and filled with logs, by which it became evident to all those who knew that country that our communication with our allied Indians was totally cut off, and, what was worse, our whole frontier left perfectly uncovered to the irruption of the enemy's savages.' [Footnote 8: pp. 13, 29.] [Sidenote: _The Iroquois discouraged._] The effect of what had happened on the minds of the Five Nation Indians was disastrous. Oswego had covered their cantons, it had been the entrepôt of trade between them and the west. They saw it swept away with little or no resistance. They saw Webb hurry back towards Albany, only anxious, as it seemed, to quit the country unmolested. Hesitating constantly between the French and English alliance, they had now every reason to prefer the former; and, had it not been for Johnson's influence with the Mohawks, the Iroquois would, for the time at any rate, have abandoned the English cause in disgust and contempt.[9] [Footnote 9: Sir William Johnson, writing to the Lords of Trade on Sept. 10, 1756, says: 'Oswego in our hands, fortified and secured by us, and our having a navigation on Lake Ontario, was not only a curb to the power of the French that way, but esteemed by the Six Nations, whenever they joined our arms, as a secure cover to them and their habitations against the resentment of the French.' Later in the same letter he speaks of the fort as 'the barrier of the Six Nations,' and says that, in consequence of its capture, 'the spirit they had recently shown in our favour was sunk and overawed by the success of the French' (O'Callaghan's _Documentary History of New York_, vol. ii, pp. 733, 734).]