An expedition that deserves to be recorded was undertaken in the month of February of the following year (1692), when some three hundred men were sent to attack a band of Iroquois, understood to be hunting somewhere between the St. Lawrence and the Ottawa. The leader of the party was M. Dorvilliers, an officer who had distinguished himself in the fight under Valrennes. At the very outset, however, Dorvilliers was accidentally disabled, and the command fell upon a youthful officer of engineers named Beaucour. The march through the forest was a terrible one: the cold was intense, and, accustomed as the men were to the rigours of the Canadian winter, they were rapidly losing heart, while some of the Indians were refusing to follow. Nothing but the indomitable spirit and courage of the leader saved the expedition from failure. He gathered the men round him and harangued them in terms and tones that gave new life to the whole party. Guided by the snowshoe tracks of the enemy, they followed on for four hours longer, when they caught up to and surprised them in their bivouac on an island in the St. Lawrence about a day's march below Cataraqui. Few of the savages escaped; most were killed in the first onset, but some, less fortunate, were captured and taken to Quebec, where three of them were tortured and burned. To avoid the same fate another killed himself in prison. It was in the month of October of the same year that an incident occurred that has become the basis of what may be called one of the classic tales of Canadian history, the defence of the fort at Vercheres by Madeleine, the fourteen-year-old daughter of the seigneur of the place, then absent on duty at Quebec. The story is so fully and interestingly told by Parkman in his _Count Frontenac and New France_,[52] and is otherwise so well known, that it seems needless to repeat it here. A people may well be proud who know that the blood of such heroes and heroines as gave lustre to the early annals of Canada flows in their veins.