"Massachusetts shall hear
Of the Huguenot's wrong,
And from island and creekside
Her fishers shall throng!
[Pentagoet shall rue]
What his Papists have done,
When his palisades echo
The Puritan's gun!"
Oh, the loveliest of heavens
Hung tenderly o'er him,
There were waves in the sunshine,
And green isles before him;
But a pale hand was beckoning
The Huguenot on;
And in blackness and ashes
Behind was St. John!
John Greenleaf Whittier.
The rivalry between the colonists for the fur trade grew steadily more bitter, and in 1690 (King William's War) Canada undertook the conquest of New York and destroyed a number of frontier towns. The English made some reprisals; Sir William Phips capturing Acadia and Major Peter Schuyler leading a raid into the country south of Montreal, where he defeated a considerable body of French and Indians under Valrennes, in a spirited fight at La Prairie.
THE BATTLE OF LA PRAIRIE
[1691]
That was a brave old epoch,
Our age of chivalry,
When the Briton met the Frenchman
At the fight of La Prairie;
And the manhood of New England,
And the Netherlanders true
And Mohawks sworn, gave battle
To the Bourbon's lilied blue.
That was a brave old governor
Who gathered his array,
And stood to meet, he knew not what,
On that alarming day.
Eight hundred, amid rumors vast
That filled the wild wood's gloom,
With all New England's flower of youth,
Fierce for New France's doom.
And the brave old half five hundred!
Theirs should in truth be fame;
Borne down the savage Richelieu,
On what emprise they came!
Your hearts are great enough, O few:
Only your numbers fail,—
New France asks more for conquerors,
All glorious though your tale.
It was a brave old battle
That surged around the fort,
When D'Hosta fell in charging,
And 'twas deadly strife and short;
When in the very quarters
They contested face and hand,
And many a goodly fellow
Crimsoned yon La Prairie sand.