Meantime Frontenac's trusty allies, the Abenaquis, incited by the governor of Acadia and their missionary priests, and led by M. de Portneuf, a brother of M. de Villebon, had been fighting Canada's battles on the New England frontier. In February 1692 a band of between two and three hundred fell on the small frontier settlement of York, situated on the Maine coast, not far from the New Hampshire border, and killed, according to the French accounts, about a hundred persons, chiefly women and children, taking at the same time about eighty captives. New England authorities place the number of killed at forty-eight, and that of the captives at seventy-three. Amongst the slain was the minister of the parish, Dummer by name, a graduate of Harvard, and a man greatly respected. His gown was carried off, and one of the Indians afterwards, arraying himself in it, preached a mock sermon to his companions. As soon as spring opened a body of the warriors proceeded to carry the good news to Villebon, who had established himself in a fort at a place called Naxouat, on the river St. John, near the site of the present town of Fredericton, Port Royal, as he thought, being too open to attack. Villebon received them right royally. Speeches, drinking, and feasting were the order of the day, and presents were distributed with calculated generosity. They had done nobly, but there was more work of the same kind to be done. Their next venture, however, was not equally successful. The settlement of Wells was but a short distance from York, and thither they bent their steps in the early summer. Some of the houses at Wells were fortified; one in particular was defended by fifteen men under a militia captain named Convers. Fourteen more men with supplies arrived in two sloops on the 9th June, the very day on which the enemy made their appearance. The fourteen men managed to get into the fort, and the sloops, which were stranded in the bay by the ebbing tide, were left with no defenders save their crews. An unfortunate man named Diamond was captured in an attempt to pass from the fort to the sloops. The latter were first attacked, but the crew were well armed and shot two or three of the assailants, who then desisted. Turning their attention to the fort they fired some futile shots, and did not a little shouting and threatening. Enraged at their want of success, they wreaked their fury on their unfortunate captive, whom they mutilated horribly before putting him to death. Then, after butchering all the cattle they could see, and burning some empty houses, they departed. Some went to Naxouat to see Villebon, who mentions in his journal that he "gave them a prisoner to burn, and that it would be impossible to add anything to the tortures they made him endure." Such was the frontier warfare of the time, and such were the men who incited it and sanctioned its worst excesses.