Fighting in these days was attended by fearful mortality, and the scarcity of pensions to the hero's family, perhaps, made the offer seem handsome. At any rate it seemed a sufficient bribe to the Company's men, who fought like demons.
A continual fire of guns and mortar, as well as of muskets, was kept up. The Canadians sallied out upon a number of skirmishes, filling the air with a frightful din, borrowing from the Iroquois their piercing war-cries. In one of these sallies St. Martin, one of their bravest men, perished.
Under protection of a flag of truce, Sérigny came again to demand a surrender. It was the last time, he said, the request would be preferred. A general assault had been resolved upon by the enemy, who were at their last resort, living like beasts in the wood, feeding on moss, and to whom no extremity could be odious were it but an exchange for their present condition. They were resolved upon carrying the fort, even at the point of the bayonet and over heaps of their slain.
Bailey decided to yield. He sent Morrison to carry the terms of capitulation, in which he demanded all the peltries in the fort belonging to the Hudson's Bay Company. This demand being rejected by the enemy, Bailey later in the evening sent Henry Kelsey with a proposition to retain a portion of their armament; this also was refused. There was now nothing for it but to surrender, Iberville having granted an evacuation with bag and baggage.
At one o'clock on the following day, therefore, the evacuation took place. Bailey, at the head of his garrison, and a number of the crew of the wrecked Hudson's Bay and six survivors of the Hampshire, marched forth from Fort York with drums beating, flag flying, and with arms and baggage. They hardly knew whither they were to go, or what fate awaited them. A vast, and inhospitable region surrounded them, and a winter long to be remembered for its severity had begun. But to the French it seemed as if their spirits were undaunted, and they set forth bravely.
The enemy watched the retreat of the defeated garrison not without admiration, and for the moment speculation was rife as to their fate. But it was only for a moment. Too rejoiced to contemplate anything but the termination of their own sufferings, the Canadians hastened to enter the fort, headed by Boisbriant, late an ensign in the service of the Compagnie du Nord. Fort Nelson was once more in the hands of the French.
On the St. Lawrence the Count of Frontenac, old as he was, sickening of the perpetual raids, led a great war force into the very midst of the Iroquois. Rebuilding Fort Frontenac, which had been destroyed, he launched his men straight against the Onondaga lodges, wiping out all their stores of food and their maize harvests. He laid low also the land of the Oneidas, and the warriors of both tribes fled before him. If they could raid and butcher, by St. Louis, so could he! The Iroquois looked to the English for help against the French. Whatever they might have done, their hand was stopped. News arrived in 1697 of the signing of the peace at Ryswick between the warring kingdoms of England and France. Tired of the conflict grew the haughty Five Nations, and deputies were sent to Quebec to bring it to an end. They offered, as before, to cease fighting the French Canadians, but not their Indian allies in the west. This would not satisfy Frontenac: he would make no peace which could not be lasting. The Governor of New York interfered.
"The Iroquois," he told Frontenac, "are under the King of England's protection. They cannot make either war or peace on their own account. I have told them to be at peace with you. Henceforward you must not treat them as enemies."
"I will make my peace with the Five Nations," Frontenac thundered forth to the Indian deputy, "but it shall be on my own terms. If we continue to fight and you aid them, by St. Louis! the blood will be on your own hands."
A few weeks later, when the reward of his firmness was in sight, the lion-hearted Frontenac, now in his seventy-eighth year, sickened and died, amidst the sorrow of his people. It was a great loss to Canada, and fortunate was it that his successor was as brave and wise as Governor de Callières.