Hither, too, came the intendant Francois Bigot, the most accomplished knave in Canada, yet indispensable for his vigor and executive skill; Bougainville, who had disarmed the jealousy of Vaudreuil, and now stood high in his good graces; and the Adjutant-General, Montreuil, clearly a vain and pragmatic personage, who, having come to Canada with Dieskau the year before, thought it behooved him to give the General the advantage of his experience.  “I like M. de Montcalm very much,” he writes to the minister, “and will do the impossible to deserve his confidence.  I have spoken to him in the same terms as to M. Dieskau; thus:  ’Trust only the French regulars for an expedition, but use the Canadians and Indians to harass the enemy.  Don’t expose yourself; send me to carry your orders to points of danger.’  The colony officers do not like those from France.  The Canadians are independent, spiteful, lying, boastful; very good for skirmishing, very brave behind a tree, and very timid when not under cover.  I think both sides will stand on the defensive.  It does not seem to me that M. de Montcalm means to attack the enemy; and I think he is right.  In this country a thousand men could stop three thousand."[379]

[Footnote 378:  Correspondance de Montcalm, Vaudreuil, et Levis.]

[Footnote 379:  Montreuil au Ministre, 12 Juin, 1756.  The original is in cipher.] “M. de Vaudreuil overwhelms me with civilities,” Montcalm writes to the Minister of War.  “I think that he is pleased with my conduct towards him, and that it persuades him there are general officers in France who can act under his orders without prejudice or ill-humor."[380] “I am on good terms with him,” he says again; “but not in his confidence, which he never gives to anybody from France.  His intentions are good, but he is slow and irresolute."[381]

[Footnote 380:  Montcalm au Ministre, 12 Juin, 1756.]

[Footnote 381:  Ibid., 19 Juin, 1756. “Je suis bien avec luy, sans sa confiance, qu’il ne donne jamais a personne de la France.”  Erroneously rendered in N.Y.  Col.  Docs., X. 421.]

Indians presently brought word that ten thousand English were coming to attack Ticonderoga.  A reinforcement of colony regulars was at once despatched to join the two battalions already there; a third battalion, Royal Roussillon, was sent after them.  The militia were called out and ordered to follow with all speed, while both Montcalm and Levis hastened to the supposed scene of danger.[382] They embarked in canoes on the Richelieu, coasted the shore of Lake Champlain, passed Fort Frederic or Crown Point, where all was activity and bustle, and reached Ticonderoga at the end of June.  They found the fort, on which Lotbiniere had been at work all winter, advanced towards completion.  It stood on the crown of the promontory, and was a square with four bastions, a ditch, blown in some parts out of the solid rock, bomb-proofs, barracks