The English general Braddock led forces to the northwest just as he would have marched them in a European campaign. He paid with his life the penalty of his ignorance of Indian warfare, being defeated and fatally wounded by an Indian attack in the forest. This defeat was the first of many. “I dread to hear from America,” said the English statesman, Pitt, as month after month, year after year, brought tidings of defeat. In the spring of 1756, Montcalm was sent to Canada to command the French forces. He began a career of victory by capturing Fort Ontario at Oswego. The next year he captured Fort William Henry at the head of Lake George, with its garrison of twenty-five hundred men. In 1758, with thirty-six hundred men he defended Fort Ticonderoga against an English force of fifteen thousand. As he had neither men nor supplies to hold the place, he was compelled to abandon it the next year and retire to Quebec. Here he was to contend in a death struggle with the English general Wolfe, who was sent to America in 1758. The English realized the value of their New World possessions. The best of their troops were sent over to prosecute the war with vigor. Montcalm, on the other hand, lacked men, means, ammunition, and supplies, for which he appealed in vain to the home government. With a sad heart he foresaw the downfall of French power in America. Resolved “to find his grave under the ruins of the colony,” he bent all his energies to the struggle. One place after another was captured by the English. News of their victories came now as regularly as tidings of their defeat had come a few months before. Louisburg, a naval station and fortified town commanding the mouth of the St. Lawrence, was attacked and taken. The French were driven from Fort Frontenac at Oswego which guarded the outlet of the Great Lakes. Fort Du Quesne was taken by Washington, and Crown Point was captured and strengthened. In 1759 the rival powers made ready for a final struggle at Quebec, the stronghold of the French. Montcalm had retired there and collected his forces--fourteen thousand men. Wolfe, with a smaller army, besieged the place. Week after week the English endeavored to find a vulnerable spot; week after week the French held the strongly-fortified city. At last Wolfe determined to conduct soldiers up a bluff which was so steep that it was thought to be inaccessible and so was not strongly guarded. One September night his boats dropped down the river and landed the soldiers who marched up the cliff. On the way Wolfe quoted some lines from Gray’s noble poem, “The Elegy in a Country Churchyard:” “The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave Await alike the inevitable hour:-- The paths of glory lead but to the grave.” “I would rather have written that than to take Quebec,” he said.