Haughty Conquerors: Amherst and the Great Indian Uprising of 1763

I was come to take Canada and I did not intend to take anything less.

-- Sir Jeffrey Amherst

I have served over 22 years but I have never seen such . . . rebels, bandits, and harnstringers, especially the grenadiers.

-- Captain Simeon Ecuyer

Drive off your land those dogs clothed in red who will do you nothing but harm.

-- The Master of Life to Neolin

In early September 1760, three British armies converged on Montreal. General William Haviland's 3,400 troops approached from Albany, General James Murray's 2,500 troops from Quebec, and General Jeffrey Amherst's 10,350 troops from Lake Ontario. Amherst, His Majesty's commander in chief for North America, had engineered that rendezvous. He boasted that never before did "three Armys, setting out from different & very distant Parts from each other joyned in the Center, as was intended, better than we did."¹

For Montreal's defenders, the odds of fending off that huge army were bleak. The 2,200 French troops, stretched thin along the parapets, stared out at the camps of 16,250 British troops.² Ammunition and food were nearly exhausted. British artillery would soon blast Montreal's high thin walls to rubble. Thousands of redcoats would then pour through the breaches to sack the city and slaughter its defenders and civilians alike. With

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