William Pitt, afterward Earl of Chatham, became Prime Minister of England. He made great changes in the conduct of the war in America. He was resolved, indeed, to take Canada, and to drive the French out of America. He chose his commanders with care, and from the time he came to power the English colonies began to feel some hope of getting rid of the enemy that had so long sent the American Indians to destroy the English settlements.

In 1758, the English, under Amherst, again laid siege to Louisbourg, that great fortress which New Englanders had once captured. After a siege by sea and land, lasting nearly two months, and much hard fighting, the town surrendered.

In September of this same year, the French fort, called Frontenac, which stood where the town of Kingston in Canada now stands, and controlled Lake Ontario, was taken by an English expedition.

General Forbes, though so sick with a painful and mortal illness that he had to be carried on a litter, cut a road through the thick forests on the Pennsylvania mountains, marched to the Ohio, and forced the French to abandon Fort Duquesne. The English established a fort here and called the place Pittsburg, in honor of the great prime minister who had turned the current of the war from defeat to victory.

The English army in America suffered one considerable defeat at Fort Ticonderoga, on Lake Champlain. General Abercromby had sailed down Lake George and marched through the woods to attack Montcalm, at Ticonderoga. The English and colonial troops tried to carry the French works by assault, but after several repulses they retreated in a panic to their boats, and sailed back to the fort at the south end of Lake George.

But the English successes in 1758 pushed the French in America far toward ruin. Louisbourg, the great French stronghold, from which privateers were sent out, was gone, and by the fall of Fort Duquesne and Fort Frontenac the routes from Canada to Louisiana were cut off. The fur trade of Canada was destroyed, and the American Indians of the interior were no longer willing to come to the support of the French, seeing the English in possession of the main roads into their country.

During the siege of Louisbourg, Wolfe, a young brigadier-general, had attracted much attention by the energy and daring of his operations. He was sent by Pitt to take Quebec, if such a thing were possible. Quebec is on a high, steep bluff, overlooking the St. Lawrence where that river is narrow, and the natural strength of the fortress is very great. All through July and August of 1759, Wolfe's army and the English fleet tried in vain to find a weak spot in the defenses of the Canadian stronghold, but the fortress frowned on them from its inaccessible heights. In several attacks, made at various points, the English were repulsed. As the season of storms was coming on, and the fleet must soon leave, even Wolfe began to despond. But, in spite of sickness and pain, this heroic man roused his army to make one more attempt. Meantime Montcalm, who commanded the French forces, was extremely vigilant. He kept his horses saddled day and night to ride to any point that might be assailed, and he did not take off his clothes for nearly three months.

Wolfe put his men in boats and dropped down, in the night, from the fleet above the town to a little bay, now known as Wolfe's Cove. Twenty-four volunteers climbed the steep precipice by a rough path and drove off the guard at the top. When firing was heard, the whole force landed and clambered up the rocky steep, holding by bushes. When morning came, the British soldiers were in line of battle on the "Plains of Abraham," less than a mile from Quebec, where the French supplies cut off.

Montcalm attacked immediately, but his ranks were broken by the steady English fire, and Wolfe led a charge in person. Though twice wounded by bullets, Wolfe kept on until a shot entered his breast, inflicting a mortal wound When told that the enemy were fleeing everywhere, he said, "Now, God be praised, I die in peace!" Montcalm, who was also mortally wounded, said, "I am happy that I shall not live to see the surrender of Quebec."

Quebec soon capitulated, and the fate of Canada was sealed. The French attempted to retake the city in vain. The taking of Montreal, in 1760, completed the conquest of Canada by the English. By the Treaty between England and France, made in 1763, all the French possessions in America east of the Mississippi, except a district around New Orleans, were ceded to England.

The joy in the colonies knew no bounds. The people had seen their shipping cut off by privateers, their property wasted by taxation, their paper money depreciated, and their young men destroyed by almost continual war. The frontiers had been desolated by the American Indians, under French influence, for three quarters of a century. Now they looked forward to peace, and the expansion of the English settlements in America into a vast empire.



ROBERT ROGERS AND THE RANGERS

The perils of the frontier led to the formation of companies of rangers, who fought the American Indians in their own way. Robert Rogers became very famous for his daring expeditions in the region about Lake George. He had many desperate fights with the French. He and his men journeyed on skates or snowshoes in winter, and in light whale-boats or afoot in summer. His main objects were to capture prisoners for information and to annoy the enemy. Once, with fifty men, he carried his light whale-boats six miles over a mountain-gorge, from near the middle of Lake George to the waters of Lake Champlain, and then rowed with muffled oars under the French fort at Ticonderoga, so close as to hear the sentries give the watchword, and then passed the fort at Crown Point in the same way. He captured and sunk two sloops laden with provisions, hid his boats, and got back afoot to Lake George. Then he returned and reconnoitered Lake Champlain in his boats, captured some prisoners, and again hid his boats. This time the French found his boats, and sent out scouts to find some water-passage by which the boats could have come into Lake Champlain, not suspecting that they could have been carried over. Rogers, with five men, once walked coolly up to a sentinel near the French fort. When challenged, he answered in French. Then, when he had got near the sentinel, and the latter demanded, in amazement, "Who are you?" He answered, "Rogers," and took him prisoner. There is a tradition that, in escaping from the American Indians, he threw his packs down a steep rock to the ice on Lake George, and then turned around on his snowshoes and walked away. The American Indians, seeing the tracks, believed that two men had slid down the frightful slope. The place is still known as "Rogers's Slide."