took care not to approach the forts; the darkness was so thick that the soldiers discovered nothing unusual and did not fire the cannon as was the custom on the approach of the enemy.  Long before daybreak the savages, divided into a number of squads, had surrounded the houses within a radius of several miles.  Suddenly a piercing signal is given by the chiefs, and at once a horrible clamour rends the air; the terrifying war-cry of the Iroquois has roused the sleepers and raised the hair on the heads of the bravest.  The colonists leap from their couches, but they have no time to seize their weapons; demons who seem to be vomited forth by hell have already broken in the doors and windows.  The dwellings which the Iroquois cannot penetrate are delivered over to the flames, but the unhappy ones who issue from them in confusion to escape the tortures of the fire are about to be abandoned to still more horrible torments.  The pen refuses to describe the horrors of this night, and the imagination of Dante can hardly in his “Inferno” give us an idea of it.  The butchers killed the cattle, burned the houses, impaled women, compelled fathers to cast their children into the flames, spitted other little ones still alive and compelled their mothers to roast them.  Everything was burned and pillaged except the forts, which were not attacked; two hundred persons of all ages and of both sexes perished under torture, and about fifty, carried away to the villages, were bound to the stake and burned by a slow fire.  Nevertheless the great majority of the inhabitants were able to escape, thanks to the strong liquors kept in some of the houses, with which the savages made ample acquaintance.  Some of the colonists took refuge in the forts, others were pursued into the woods.

Meanwhile the alarm had spread in Ville-Marie.  M. de Denonville, who was there, gives to the Chevalier de Vaudreuil the order to occupy Fort Roland with his troops and a hundred volunteers.  De Vaudreuil hastens thither, accompanied by de Subercase and other officers; they are all eager to measure their strength with the enemy, but the order of Denonville is strict, they must remain on the defensive and run no risk.  By dint of insistence, Subercase obtained permission to make a sortie with a hundred volunteers; at the moment when he was about to set out he had to yield the command to M. de Saint-Jean, who was higher in rank.  The little troop went and entrenched itself among the debris of a burned house and exchanged an ineffectual fire with the savages ambushed in a clump of trees.  They soon perceived a party of French and friendly Indians who, coming from Fort Remy, were proceeding towards them in great danger of being surrounded by the Iroquois, who were already sobered.  The volunteers wished to rush out to meet this reinforcement, but their commander, adhering to his instructions, which forbade him to push on farther, restrained them.  What might have been foreseen happened:  the detachment from Fort Remy was exterminated.  Five of its officers were taken and carried off towards the Iroquois villages, but succeeded in escaping on the way, except M. de la Rabeyre, who was bound to the stake and perished in torture.