town, with wooden houses, some of them a hundred and
twenty feet long and with lodging for eight or nine
families. These houses were well supplied with provisions,
tools, and utensils. An immense quantity of Indian corn
and other necessaries was stored in Andaraque-'food enough
to feed Canada for ten years'--and in the surrounding
fields a plentiful crop was ready for harvest. All this
was to be destroyed; but first an impressive ceremony
had to be performed. The army was drawn up in battle
array. A French officer, Jean-Baptiste Dubois, commander
of the artillery, advanced, sword in hand, to the front,
and in the presence of Tracy and Courcelle, declared that
he was directed by M. Jean Talon, king's counsellor and
intendant of justice, police, and finance for New France,
to take possession of Andaraque, and of all the country
of the Mohawks, in the name of the king. A cross was
solemnly planted alongside a post bearing the king's coat
of arms. Mass was celebrated and the Te Deum sung. Then
the work of destruction began. The palisades, the dwellings,
the bastions, the stores of grain and provisions, except
what was needed by the invaders, the standing crops-all
were set on fire; and when night fell the glaring
illumination of that tremendous blaze told the savages
that at last New France had asserted her power, and that
the soldiers of the great king had come far enough through
forest and over mountain and stream to chastise in their
own country the bloodthirsty tribes who for a quarter of
a century had been the terror of the growing settlements
on the St Lawrence.