merest thread, and chiefly because the British colonies
had not yet grown out in that direction. The Mississippi
did not come into the war, though it might have done so.
If Montcalm had survived the battle of the Plains, and
if in 1760 the defence of Canada on the St Lawrence had
seemed to him utterly hopeless, his plan would probably
then have been to take his best soldiers from Canada into
the interior, and in the end to New Orleans, there to
make a last desperate stand for France among the swamps.
But this plan died with him; and we may leave the valley
of the Mississippi out of our reckoning altogether.

Not so the valley of the Ohio, which, as we have seen,
was the meeting-place of Canada and Louisiana, and the
chief gateway to the West; and which the French and
British rivals were both most fiercely set on possessing.
It was here that the world-wide Seven Years' War first
broke out; here that George Washington first appeared as
an American commander; here that Braddock led the first
westbound British army; and here that Montcalm struck
his first blow for French America.

But, as we have also seen, even the valley of the Ohio
was less important than the line of the St Lawrence. The
Ohio region was certainly the right arm of French America.
But the St Lawrence was the body, of which the lungs were
Louisbourg, and the head and heart Quebec. Montcalm saw
this at once; and he made no single mistake in choosing
the proper kind of attack and defence during the whole
of his four campaigns.