"I have been protected by the all-powerful intervention of Providence," he wrote to his brother after the action; "I received four bullets in my coat, and I have had two horses killed under me; however, I have got out of it safe and sound, while death swept off all our comrades around me. We have been beaten, shamefully beaten, by a handful of Frenchmen, who only anticipated hindering our march. A few moments before action we believed our forces almost equal to all those of Canada, and now, contrary to all probability, we have been completely defeated, and have lost everything." The little French corps, sent out from Fort Duquesne under the command of M. de Beaujeu, numbered but two hundred Canadians and six hundred Indians. It was only three years later, when Canada, exhausted and dying, succumbed beneath the burden of a war which it had sustained almost without aid, that Fort Duquesne, destroyed by its defenders themselves, fell into the hands of the English. They gave it the name of Pittsburg, in honor of the great minister who was in power--a name which a prosperous city bears even to-day. While the Marquis de Montcalm was successfully sustaining the war against the English in America, Marshal Richelieu, a clever, prodigal, and corrupt courtier, had the good luck to achieve the only happy stroke of the Seven Years' War, the remembrance of which should remain firm in the mind of posterity. On the 17th of April, 1756; a French squadron under the command of M. de la Galissonière attacked the Island of Minorca, an important military point in the Mediterranean to which the English attached a high Value. Chased from Ciudadela and Port Mahon, the garrisons had taken refuge in Fort St. Philip. They relied on the help of the English fleet. The Admiral who commanded it attacked M. de la Galissonière on the 10th of May. {232} The English were repulsed and could not effect a landing. The ships had suffered a good deal, and the English forces were inferior to those of France. Byng feared defeat; he consulted his council of war and fell back on Gibraltar. General Blakeney, shut up in the fortress, sick, and without hope of aid, defended himself weakly against the impetuous assault of the French. Fort St. Philip was taken, and the Duke de Fronsac, eldest son of the Duke de Richelieu, hastened to Paris to convey the news to King Louis XV.