The Fall of Montreal

Amherst built a closing fist: three armies, hundreds of miles apart, all aimed at the one island. A tiny French garrison bought a week at Fort Lévis, the rapids drowned more men than the enemy did, and the trap shut within a day.

Inside Montreal, Vaudreuil and Lévis faced the arithmetic. No fleet was coming, the militia had gone home to the farms, the regulars were deserting, and the Native allies had stepped aside. Lévis wanted a last stand; Vaudreuil chose to spare the people.

Fifty-five articles, signed September 8. Denied the honours of war, Lévis burned the colors. The Native nations had won their own peace first, and the conquest would teach them, faster than the British learned it, what a single empire meant.