So delighted were the French by their success that in the following year they determined to capture Boston. The Marquis de Nesmond was to command the fleet, while Frontenac was to lead the land forces. Delay for one reason or another, contrary winds and stormy weather, kept the expedition back until the summer was passed, when it was found to be too late in the season to proceed. By the time that any fresh expedition could be undertaken King William's War was over, and the Treaty of Ryswick had been signed and was proclaimed in America in 1698. The importance of the treaty with regard to the American colonies is to be found only in the fact that it gave breathing-space to the combatants. Both parties regarded it as a truce more than a treaty, and both looked forward to a not far distant date when their differences might once again be decided by the arbitrament of war. The long-looked-for day came in 1701 when James II. died, and Louis XIV., with that spirit, half-bravado half-chivalrous, declared the Old Pretender James III. of England. The real fighting that now ensued took place not in the forests of North America but in the lowlands of Europe. The Netherlands, the cockpit of Europe, were once again to be drenched with blood. The battles of Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet played an important part in the history of North American colonies. Fighting, however, was not unknown in the West, and on May 4, 1702, war was openly declared. The old raiding expeditions began again, and the French led the way by an attack on Wells, situated on Casco Bay. The little town was terribly beset by the marauding Abenaki Indians, and was almost at its last gasp when succoured by an armed force by sea from Massachusetts. Then followed the historic attack upon Deerfield in 1704. It was a small town of 300 inhabitants on the north-west border of Massachusetts. The French and their Indian allies burst upon it in February. Fifty of the people were butchered and one hundred were carried into a captivity made famous by John Williams, one of the prisoners, in _The Redeemed Captive returning to Sion_. "The direct and simple narrative of Williams is plainly the work of an honest and courageous man."[255] He tells of his own and his fellow-captives' sufferings; and, in particular, of how the Jesuits promised him untold wealth if he would be converted, to which he replied, "the offer of the whole world would tempt him no more than a blackberry."[256] As years went by the captives were either exchanged or, having been converted, married Canadians and settled at Quebec or Montreal.