From the Geschichte der Kriege in und ausser Europa, Elfter Theil, Nürnberg, 1777. This follows a print published in London, Oct. 1, 1776, described in Smith’s Brit. Mezzotint Portraits, and in Parkman’s Pontiac, i. p. 164.
This stipulation was adhered to, and during the autumn the principal French officers were on their way to France. The season for good weather on the ocean was passed, and the transportation was not accomplished without some wrecks, accompanied by suffering and death. Vaudreuil, Bigot, Cadet, and others found a dubious welcome in France after they had weathered the November storms. The government was not disposed that the loss of Canada should be laid wholly to its account, and the ministry had heard stories enough of the peculations of its agents in the colony to give a chance of shifting a large part of the responsibility upon those whose bureaucratic thefts had sapped the vitals of the colony. Trials ensued, the records of which yield much to enable us to depict the rotten life of the time; and though Vaudreuil escaped, the hand of the law fell crushingly on Bigot and Cadet, and banishment, restitution, and confiscation showed them the shades of a stern retribution. They were not alone to suffer, but they were the chief ones.
The war was over, and a new life began in Canada. The surrender of the western posts was necessary to perfect the English occupancy, and to receive these Major Rogers was despatched by Amherst on the 13th of September. On the way, somewhere on the southern shore of Lake Erie,[1182] he met (November 7) Pontiac, and, informing him of the capitulation at Montreal, the politic chief was ready to smoke the calumet with him. Rogers pushed on towards Detroit.[1183] There was some apprehension that Belêtre, who commanded there, would rouse his Indians to resist, but the French leader only blustered, and when (November 29) the white flag came down and the red went up, his 700 Indians hailed the change of masters with a yell; and it was with open-eyed wonder that the savages saw so many succumb to so few, and submit to be taken down the lake as prisoners. An officer was sent along the route from Lake Erie to the Ohio to take possession of the forts at Miami and Ouatanon; but it was not till the next season that a detachment of the Royal Americans pushed still farther on to Michillimachinac and the extreme posts.[1184]
English power was now confirmed throughout all the region embraced in the surrender of Vaudreuil.
[CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION].
THE ninth volume of the N. Y. Col. Docs. richly illustrates the French movements near the beginning of the century to secure Indian alliances.[1185]
A number of papers from the archives of the Marine, respecting the founding of Detroit (1701), is given by Margry (Découvertes, etc.) in his fifth volume (pp. 135-250), as well as records of the conferences held by La Motte Cadillac with the neighboring Indians (p. 253, etc.). These papers come down to 1706.[1186]