This slow-minded personage, Lord Loudon, the Scotsman, reached Albany on the 29th of July; but correct ideas as to the situation percolated into his brain with difficulty. Indeed, as with Sydney Smith’s proverbial joke about the Scotchman’s skull, it seemed necessary to perform a surgical operation in order to show him how needful it was to march at once to Oswego, notwithstanding that Montcalm with his host was daily approaching. While Loudon was fooling away his time in jealousy of the provincial militia, and sending a force in the wrong direction at Crown Point, Montcalm with three thousand troops and plenty of cannon, part of which had been captured from Braddock, settled himself before Oswego. Of the three forts garrisoned by Shirley’s and Pepperell’s regiments of New England men, only one was able to stand a protracted siege. All assembled in this fort, Ontario, and fought gallantly until Colonel Mercer was cut in half by a cannon-shot. Then a panic ensued. The one hundred women in the fort begged that the place should be surrendered, and the white flag was shortly afterward hoisted. The forts were burned, and the place left a desolation, in which the priest, Picquet, set up a lofty cross, and beside it the arms of France. The French were now masters of Lake Ontario, and of the passages by land and water to the Ohio, and free to attack the Lake George forts. They found themselves enriched to the extent of sixteen hundred prisoners, one hundred and twenty cannon, six ships of war, three hundred boats, three chests of money, besides a great quantity of provisions and the stores of war. The destruction instead of the occupation of the forts was a master stroke of policy in favor of conciliating the Six Nations. In this affair Montcalm showed the nobility of his nature in protecting, at the hazard of his life, the prisoners from massacre. When the Indians, filled with rum, had turned into devils, and were sinking their hatchets in the brains of the unarmed, Montcalm, as the eyewitness John Viele of Schenectady on his return testified before Johnson, ordered out his troops and fired on the brutes. Six of the drunken savages were shot dead. The murdering ceased at once, and there was no massacre. Loudon the lazy had finally awaked to the situation, and sent General Webb with twelve hundred men to reinforce Oswego. At the Oneida portage Webb heard of the surrender, and hoping to delay the French who were advancing, as he supposed, on Albany, he had some trees chopped down to delay their boats. He then hastily retreated to the fort at German Flats. Johnson, at Albany, heard the news August 20, and under Loudon’s orders, with two battalions of the Valley militia and a corps of three hundred Indians, hastened to reinforce Webb. Remaining in camp fifteen days, until hearing of the removal of the French, he dismissed the militia and returned home.