sent out another four hundred to replace them. But no
veteran soldiers could be spared. So the second four
hundred, raised from all sorts of men, were of poor
quality, and spoiled the discipline of the regiments they
joined in Canada. One of the regiments, which had the
worst of these recruits, proved to be the least trust.
worthy in the final struggle before Quebec in 1759. Thus
the power of the British navy in the Gulf of St Lawrence
in 1755 made itself felt four years later, and a long
distance away, at the very crisis of the war on land.

Strange as it seems to us now, all this fighting had
taken place in a time of nominal peace. But in 1756 the
Seven Years' War broke out in Europe, and then many plans
were made, especially in the English colonies in America,
for the conquest of Canada. The British forces were
greater than the French, all told on both sides, both
then and throughout the war. But the thirteen colonies
could not agree. Some of them were hot, others lukewarm,
others, such as the Quakers of Pennsylvania, cold.
Moreover, the British generals were of little use, and
the colonial ones squabbled as the colonies themselves
squabbled. Pitt had not yet taken charge of the war,
and the British in America were either doing nothing
or doing harm.

There was only one trained and competent general on the
whole continent; and that general was Montcalm. Though
new to warfare in the wilds he soon understood it as well
as those who had waged it all their lives; and he saw at