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Words: 26015 in 12 pages
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Edition: 10
THE SEATS OF THE MIGHTY
BEING THE MEMOIRS OF CAPTAIN ROBERT MORAY, SOMETIME AN OFFICER IN THE VIRGINIA REGIMENT, AND AFTERWARDS OF AMHERST'S REGIMENT
Volume 4.
UPON THE RAMPARTS
The Governor visited me. His attitude was marked by nothing so much as a supercilious courtesy, a manner which said, You must see I am not to be trifled with; and though I have you here in my chateau, it is that I may make a fine scorching of you in the end. He would make of me an example to amaze and instruct the nations--when I was robust enough to die.
I might easily have flattered myself on being an object of interest to the eyes of nations. I almost pitied him; for he appeared so lost in self-admiration and the importance of his office that he would never see disaster when it came.
"There is but one master here in Canada," he said, "and I am he. If things go wrong it is because my orders are not obeyed. Your people have taken Louisburg; had I been there, it should never have been given up. Drucour was hasty--he listened to the women. I should allow no woman to move me. I should be inflexible. They might send two Amhersts and two Wolfes against me, I would hold my fortress."
He did not see the irony, and he prattled on: "That Wolfe, they tell me, is bandy-legged; is no better than a girl at sea, and never well ashore. I am always in raw health--the strong mind in the potent body. Had I been at Louisburg, I should have held it, as I held Ticonderoga last July, and drove the English back with monstrous slaughter."
Here was news. I had had no information in many months, and all at once two great facts were brought to me.
"I sent Montcalm to defend it," he replied pompously. "I told him how he must act; I was explicit, and it came out as I had said: we were victorious. Yet he would have done better had he obeyed me in everything. If I had been at Louisburg--"
I could not at first bring myself to flatter the vice-regal peacock; for it had been my mind to fight these Frenchmen always; to yield in nothing; to defeat them like a soldier, not like a juggler. But I brought myself to say half ironically, "If all great men had capable instruments, they would seldom fail."
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