What followed was war in its worst form, including the massacre of women and children. The three bands organized by Frontenac at the beginning of 1690 set out on snowshoes from Montreal, Three Rivers, and Quebec. {119} The largest party contained a hundred and fourteen French and ninety-six Indians. It marched from Montreal against Schenectady, commanded by D'Aillebout de Mantet and Le Moyne de Sainte-Hélène. The second party, proceeding from Three Rivers and numbering twenty-six French and twenty-nine Indians under the command of François Hertel, aimed at Dover, Pemaquid, and other settlements of Maine and New Hampshire. The Quebec party, under Portneuf, comprised fifty French and sixty Indians. Its objective was the English colony on Casco Bay, where the city of Portland now stands. All three were successful in accomplishing what they aimed at, namely the destruction of English settlements amid fire and carnage. All three employed Indians, who were suffered, either willingly or unwillingly, to commit barbarities. It is much more the business of history to explain than to condemn or to extenuate. How could a man like François Hertel lead one of these raids without sinking to the moral level of his Indian followers? Some such question may, not unnaturally, rise to the lips of a modern reader who for the first time comes upon the story of Dover and Salmon {120} Falls. But fuller knowledge breeds respect for François Hertel. When eighteen years old he was captured by the Mohawks and put to the torture. One of his fingers they burned off in the bowl of a pipe. The thumb of the other hand they cut off. In the letter which he wrote on birch-bark to his mother after this dreadful experience there is not a word of his sufferings. He simply sends her his love and asks for her prayers, signing himself by his childish nickname, 'Your poor Fanchon.' As he grew up he won from an admiring community the name of 'The Hero.' He was not only brave but religious. In his view it was all legitimate warfare. If he slew others, he ran a thousand risks and endured terrible privations for his king and the home he was defending. His stand at the bridge over the Wooster river, sword in hand, when pressed on his retreat by an overwhelming force of English, holding the pass till all his men are over, is worthy of an epic. He was forty-seven years old at the time. The three eldest of his nine sons were with him in that little band of twenty-six Frenchmen, and two of his nephews. 'To the New England of old,' says Parkman, 'François Hertel was the abhorred chief of Popish {121} malignants and murdering savages. The New England of to-day will be more just to the brave defender of his country and his faith.'