[31] See his Lake St. Louis, Old and New.
[32] Both as regards the number of the slain and the details of the massacre Charlevoix simply repeats the statements made by Frontenac in a despatch dated the 15th November 1689, one month after his return to Canada, and after several days spent at the scene of the disaster and at Montreal. It is he who speaks of the "enlèvement de cent vingt personnes après un massacre de deux cents brûlés, rôtis vifs, mangés, et les enfans arrachés du ventre de leurs mères." The tendency in furnishing information to the French government was always to exaggerate the havoc wrought by the Indians. At the time Frontenac wrote this despatch he was not aware of the further massacre at La Chesnaye, the news of which only reached him on the 17th of November.
[33] Frontenac et ses Amis, p. 93.
[34] Comte de Frontenac, p. 358.
[35] Far from yielding to Frontenac's view of the matter, Denonville doggedly adhered to his own opinion that the fort ought to be entirely abandoned; and, when it was found that it had only been partly destroyed, he wrote to the king advising that Frontenac should be ordered to send up three hundred men with instructions to demolish it utterly.
[36] Parkman tells the story in his usual brilliant manner in chapter iii. of his Old Régime in Canada. Père Charlevoix gives the facts and adds: "Je l'ai vu en 1721, âgé de quatre-vingt ans, plein de forces et de santé; toute la colonie rendant hommage à sa vertu et à son mérite," vol. ii. p. 111, edition of 1744.
[37] New York Colonial Documents, p. 464.
[38] Perrot and his party, according to Monseignat's narrative, left the end of the Island of Montreal on the 22nd May. The Albany—or more correctly Schenectady party, for they did not venture to attack Albany—returned towards the end of March. Frontenac's message must have been composed some months before Perrot's departure, otherwise he would undoubtedly have mentioned with pride the Schenectady massacre. It was certainly not up to date.
[39] "There was little resistance," says Père Chrétien Leclercq, a contemporary writer, "except at one house, where Sieur de Marque Montigny was wounded; but Sieur de Ste. Hélène, having come up, all were slaughtered with sword or tomahawk, the Indians sparing no one."—Premier Etablissement de la Foi.
[40] Documentary History of New York, vol. ii. pp. 164-9.