Note 193 — Chapter XII

"The notification of a probable disappointment at Quebec came only to heighten the pleasure of the conquest. You may now give yourself what airs you please; you are master of East and West Indies. An embassador is the only man in the world whom bullying becomes. I beg your pardon, but you are spies, if you are not bragadocios. All precedents are on your side: Persians, Greeks, Romans, always insulted their neighbors when they had taken Quebec. It was a very singular affair, the generals on both sides slain, and on both sides the second in command wounded—in short, very near what battles should be, in which only the principals ought to suffer. If their army has not ammunition and spirit enough to fall again upon ours before Amherst comes up, all North America is ours! Poetic justice could not have been executed with more rigor than it has been on the perjury, treachery, and usurpations of the French.... It appears that the victory was owing to the impracticability, as the French thought, and to desperate resolution on our side. What a scene! an army in the night dragging itself up a precipice by stumps of trees to assault a town and attack an army strongly intrenched and double in numbers. Adieu! I think I shall not write to you again this twelvemonth; for, like Alexander, we have no more worlds left to conquer.

"P.S.—Monsieur Fleurot is said to be sailed with his tiny squadron; but can the lords of America be afraid of half a dozen canoes? Mr. Chute is sitting by me, and says nobody is more obliged to Mr. Pitt than you are: he has raised you from a very uncomfortable situation to hold your head above the Capitol."—Walpole's Letters to Sir H. Mann, October 19, 1759.