He did
not trust his Indian allies, nor did they trust him. Like the Rat and
his Hurons, they dreaded the conclusion of peace, and wished the war
to continue, that the French might bear the brunt of it, and stand
between them and the wrath of the Iroquois. [Footnote: _Denonville au
Ministre_, 9 _Nov_., 1688.]
In the direction of the Iroquois, there was a long and ominous
silence. It was broken at last by the crash of a thunderbolt. On the
night between the fourth and fifth of August, a violent hail-storm
burst over Lake St. Louis, an expansion of the St. Lawrence a little
above Montreal. Concealed by the tempest and the darkness, fifteen
hundred warriors landed at La Chine, and silently posted themselves
about the houses of the sleeping settlers, then screeched the
war-whoop, and began the most frightful massacre in Canadian history.
The houses were burned, and men, women, and children indiscriminately
butchered. In the neighborhood were three stockade forts, called Remy,
Roland, and La Presentation; and they all had garrisons. There was
also an encampment of two hundred regulars about three miles distant,
under an officer named Subercase, then absent at Montreal on a visit
to Denonville, who had lately arrived with his wife and family.
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