One resource still remained--Montreal. There Monsieur de Vaudreuil, the General Governor, fixed his stand, and collected the whole force of the province. But he had to deal with a man, who, as brave as Wolfe or as Murray, and as circumspect as Vaudreuil was insidious, possessed the whole system of war. Provident, methodic, conciliating, and cool, Amherst disposed his plans, adapted his measures, reconciled jarring interests, and pursued his operations with steadiness; neither precipitating nor delaying beyond the due point, and comprehending the whole under an authority which he knew how to assume, and to temper from giving disgust.[111] A character so composed could not shine on a sudden: it required penetration to admire him; but the finer the details, the more astonishing was the result. Amherst had determined, by one collective arrangement, to overwhelm the last hopes of France in Canada; an object sufficiently important to justify the exertion of superabundant resources. Colonel Haviland was ordered to sail from Crown Point, and proceed directly to Montreal: General Murray was commanded to bring up all the force he could spare from Quebec. Amherst himself, with a body of ten thousand men, and reinforced by a thousand savages under Sir William Johnson, embarked on Lake Ontario for the river St. Laurence; a spectacle that recalled the expeditions of ancient story, when the rudeness and novelty of naval armaments raised the first adventurers to the rank of demigods. That vast lake was to be traversed in open galleys laden with artillery, not with arrows and javelins. Wolfe, with all the formidable apparatus of modern war, had almost failed before Quebec: Amherst with barks and boats invaded Montreal, and achieved the conquest, though, what would have daunted the heroes of antiquity, he had the cataracts to pass. He surmounted that danger with inconsiderable loss, and appeared before Montreal on the very same day with General Murray. Too many obstacles, to which Monsieur de Vaudreuil had trusted, were conquered. The place itself was little tenable. The Governor took the only part that remained, that of surrendering his garrison prisoners of war. Thus was the French empire in Canada annihilated without effusion of blood. Amherst’s glory was completed by pardoning Vaudreuil’s perfidy and cruelties, and by preserving the vanquished from insult and injury. The power of France drew as near to a period in the East Indies. Colonel Coote, Major Brereton, who fell in the contest, Major Monson, and others, carried on the war triumphantly. Lally, who left no valour unexerted, no stratagem unattempted, was constantly defeated. Sir George Pococke entirely dispersed their Navy in those seas after three repeated engagements.