Legends of the Black Watch; or, Forty-second Highlanders

by James Grant

The terms were soon drawn up and signed by the staff officers of both forces; by Munro in the name of the British Commander-in-Chief, and by Montcalm in the name of the Marquis de Vaudreuil, Governor-General, and Lieutenant-General of New France; and after ably concluding this negotiation, so important for his comrades, MacGillivray returned to the fort just as the red round moon began to rise like a bloody targe above the eastern skirts of the forest, and to tinge with its quivering rays the placid waters of Lake George.

The first who received him at the gate was his "dear wee Mary," as he called her, trembling and in tears for his safety. During the whole time of his visit to the camp of Montcalm, the yelling and whooping of the Indians had filled the fort and the woods with horrid sounds.

The next day passed before Munro had all prepared to leave the shattered ramparts he had defended so well.

It was on a gorgeous August evening when his war-worn and weary garrison paraded, prior to their final departure. The western clouds, as they floated across the sky, were tinged with violet and saffron hues. The forest and the grass wore their most brilliant green, and Lake George its deepest blue. The large golden butter-cups that spotted all the verdant glacis of the ramparts, within which so many brave men were lying stark and stiffened in their blood, and the bright-coloured wildflowers that grew amid the waters of the fosse and by the margin of the lake which filled it, were unclosing their petals, to catch the coming dew, and wore their gayest tints.

The whole aspect of the scenery, and of the soft balmy evening, were little in accordance with the horrors that were passed, and those which were soon to ensue!

Already the grenadiers of Montcalm, with all the formality of friends, had received the gates and various posts from the guards of the Royal Americans; the white banner of France, under a royal salute, had replaced the Union Jack, and at that moment sharply beat the drums, as the garrison began to march out, with their unloaded muskets slung and their colours cased—the Royal Americans, Parker's Foot, and the little band of our old friends, the Black Watch (now less by sixteen men than on the day of their arrival), with the piper and MacGillivray at their head, defiling from the fort in close column of subdivisions, while the French escort was under arms to receive them in line by a general salute, with drummers beating on the flanks.

A faint cheer was heard within the fort. It came from the log huts where the wounded lay. They, poor fellows! were left to the care of the enemy, together with the unburied bodies of those who would never hear a sound again until the last trumpet shakes the earth with its peal.

The veteran Colonel Munro, tall and erect, with his quaint Kevenhuller hat and old-fashioned wig of the days of Malplacquet, marched at the head of his crestfallen column; he was on foot, with his sword drawn, and led by the hand the child, his son, as being the only object he cared about preserving in that hour of bitterness and defeat.

Seated on the tumbril of the 6-pounder, with two other ladies (one of whom had lost her husband in the siege), was the wife of MacGillivray, awe-stricken and all unused to such stern and stirring scenes as she had daily witnessed in Fort William Henry. Her marriage brooch, almost the only ornament she possessed, she had concealed in the folds or tresses of her long black hair, lest it should excite the cupidity of any French soldier or Indian, for she had an equal dread, and nearly an equal repugnance for them both.

A slender escort of French soldiers with their bayonets fixed protected Munro's garrison on both flanks; but as they proceeded into the forest, the savages continued to assemble in dark hordes, till their numbers, their gestures, and yells of rage became seriously alarming. They were animated by the blindest frenzy on finding themselves deluded of their plunder and the blood—the red reeking scalps of the hated Yengees—by a treaty which they could not and cared not to understand. They were rehearsing to each other the bravery and worth, the names and number of their warriors who had perished, and all continued to scream and shout, but none cared to begin the work of destruction while so near the tents of the pale faces of France.