[Footnote 538:  Vaudreuil au Ministre de la Marine, 16 Sept. 1757.  Ibid., au Ministre de la Guerre, meme date.]

Under the hollow gayeties of the ruling class lay a great public distress, which broke at last into riot.  Towards midwinter no flour was to be had in Montreal; and both soldiers and people were required to accept a reduced ration, partly of horse-flesh.  A mob gathered before the Governor’s house, and a deputation of women beset him, crying out that the horse was the friend of man, and that religion forbade him to be eaten.  In reply he threatened them with imprisonment and hanging; but with little effect, and the crowd dispersed, only to stir up the soldiers quartered in the houses of the town.  The colony regulars, ill-disciplined at the best, broke into mutiny, and excited the battalion of Bearn to join them.  Vaudreuil was helpless; Montcalm was in Quebec; and the task of dealing with the mutineers fell upon Levis, who proved equal to the crisis, took a high tone, threatened death to the first soldier who should refuse horse-flesh, assured them at the same time that he ate it every day himself, and by a characteristic mingling of authority and tact, quelled the storm.[539]

[Footnote 539:  Bougainville, Journal.  Montcalm a Mirepoix, 20 Avril, 1758.  Levis, Journal de la Guerre du Canada.]

The prospects of the next campaign began to open.  Captain Pouchot had written from Niagara that three thousand savages were waiting to be let loose against the English borders.  “What a scourge!” exclaims Bougainville.  “Humanity groans at being forced to use such monsters.  What can be done against an invisible enemy, who strikes and vanishes, swift as the lightning?  It is the destroying angel.”  Captain Hebecourt kept watch and ward at Ticonderoga, begirt with snow and ice, and much plagued by English rangers, who sometimes got into the ditch itself.[540] This was to reconnoitre the place in preparation for a winter attack which Loudon had planned, but which, like the rest of his schemes, fell to the ground.[541] Towards midwinter a band of these intruders captured two soldiers and butchered some fifteen cattle close to the fort, leaving tied to the horns of one of them a note addressed to the commandant in these terms:  “I am obliged to you, sir, for the rest you have allowed me to take and the fresh meat you have sent me.  I shall take good care of my prisoners.  My compliments to the Marquis of Montcalm.”  Signed, Rogers.[542]

[Footnote 540:  Montcalm a Bourlamaque, 28 Mars, 1758.]

[Footnote 541:  Loudon to Pitt, 14 Feb. 1758.]

[Footnote 542:  Journal de ce qui s’est passe en Canada, 1757, 1758.  Compare Rogers, Journals, 72-75.]