The campaign of 1755 had opened with evil promise for the cause of France in the Western world; four formidable armies were arrayed to check her progress, and turn back the tide of war upon her own territory. A powerful fleet, under the brave and vigilant Boscawen, swept the Atlantic coast, insulted her eastern harbors, and captured her re-enforcements and supplies. The doubtful allegiance of many of her Indian neighbors was far overbalanced by the avowed hostility of others no less numerous and powerful. But the close of the year presented results very different from those that might have been anticipated. Braddock was defeated and slain; the whole of that vast Valley of the Mississippi, whose unequaled fertility is now the wonder of mankind, had been freed from the presence of a British soldier by one decisive victory. Niagara was strengthened and unassailed; Crown Point had not been compromised by Johnson's partial success. The undisputed superiority upon Lake Ontario was upon the Canadian shore. From dangerous foes, or almost as dangerous friends, the forest tribes had generally become zealous allies, and thrown themselves with ready policy into the apparently preponderating scale; the ruined settlements and diminished numbers of the British frontier colonists marked the cruel efficiency of their co-operation. Notwithstanding the check of the Baron Dieskau's detachment, there still remained to the French more than 3000 regular troops, with a large force of the Canadian militia, who were in some respects even better qualified for forest warfare than their veteran brethren from the mother country. All these, united under one able chief, formed a much more formidable military power than the English colonies, with their jarring interests and independent commanders, could bring forward. Nova Scotia, again severed from the territories of New France, and the Acadian peasants reduced to British rule, formed but a slight offset to these hostile gains. The civil progress of the French colony was, however, far from satisfactory. For two years past the scarcity of grain and other provisions had almost amounted to famine. The inhabitants of the country, constantly employed in warfare against their English neighbors were forced to neglect the cultivation of the soil, till absence from their own homesteads was almost as ruinous to themselves as their destructive presence to the enemy. Although the scanty supply of corn was too well known, the intendant Bigot, with infamous avarice, shipped off vast quantities of wheat to the West Indies for his own gain and that of his creatures. The price of food rose enormously, and the commerce of the country, hampered by selfish and stupid restrictions, rapidly declined.