Vaudreuil yielded, as perforce he must, and on the 8th of September signed the capitulation by which Canada passed into the possession of England. The French officers, civil and military, the troops and sailors, were to be sent to France, and the inhabitants were to be protected in their property and religion.
The Indian allies of the English, and those who had lately been the allies of the French but were now as ready to turn against them as they had been to serve, were held in such firm restraint that not a person suffered any injury from them more than from the soldiers of the victorious armies.
The long struggle was over, the conquest of Canada was accomplished, and great was the rejoicing of the people of all the English colonies, especially those of New England. The toilsome march through the savage forest, the cheerless bivouac on remote and lonely shores, were no longer to be endured; nor the deadly ambuscade dreaded by the home-loving husbandman, who for love of home had turned soldier; nor was his family to live in the constant fear of the horrors of nightly attack, massacre, or captivity that had made anxious every hour of day and night.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] Massachusetts gave 107,793 acres of land to Connecticut as equivalent for as many acres she had previously granted that were found to be south of the boundary between the two provinces, and which she wished to retain. One section of these "Equivalent Lands" was on the west bank of Connecticut River, within the present towns of Putney, Dummerston, and Brattleboro'. (Colonial Boundaries Mass, vol. iii.) This fell to the share of William Dummer, Anthony Stoddard, William Brattle, and John White. "The Equivalent Lands" were sold at public vendue at Hartford, in 1716, for a little more than a farthing per acre. The proceeds were given to Yale College. (Hall's History of Eastern Vermont.)
[8] Light pieces of ordnance mounted on swivels, and sometimes charged with old nails and like missiles, or, upon a pinch, even with stones; hence sometimes called "stone pieces."
[9] This fort was situated in what is now Williamstown.
[10] Dr. Dwight's Travels, vol. ii. p. 82.
[11] Williams's History of Vermont.
[12] Captain Stevens's letter to Colonel Williams.