Forcing A Mistake

Enjoy the new chapter and thank you Dekol347, Mium, Porthos10, dodolmantab, AlexZero12, Shingle_Top, and Ranger_Red for the support!

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That day was still gray, but at least it wasn't raining.

By mid-afternoon, the air remained crisp. You could feel winter approaching.

Temperatures hovered between ten and fifteen degrees Celsius during the day, but at night, they dropped close to freezing.

After several days of marching in the footsteps of the Marquis de Montcalm's army—living off roots and herbs, since the berry and fruit season was long over—they finally reached Fort Carillon.

It didn't seem to have changed much in three years.

Since the fall of Fort Edward, it had lost its role as a frontier stronghold and had been relegated to a supply depot and relay post along the long road connecting Fort Bourbon and Montreal.

But now that Fort Bourbon had fallen, Carillon was once again of strategic importance.

Unfortunately, it still fell far short of the other fort—especially after all the upgrades that had been made there.

Even if it had withstood a massive attack in 1758, it was mostly because the enemy commander had been incompetent. That didn't seem to be the case with this James Murray.

If the fort came under siege, there was no guarantee it would hold.

Adam led his ragged band to the gates of the fort and was stopped by a handful of sentries. Upon seeing them, their eyes widened in shock.

One of them ran to fetch an officer, and soon, a familiar figure appeared.

"All is well, gentlemen. They're ours. Good Lord, look at the state of you!"

It was Colonel de Bréhant. Still dignified, still immaculate, though visibly thinner.

"Sorry for the late return, Colonel," Adam said with a proper salute. "We did our best."

"You're back, that's all that matters. I take it you've heard about Fort Bourbon…"

"Yes, sir. We were on the other side of the river when the enemy took it. A great loss."

An emotional silence settled between them. The two men exchanged a long look.

"We all thought you were dead," the colonel said at last.

"We're proud soldiers of the Picardy Regiment, sir. Tough as nails. And I had men to bring back."

The colonel smiled faintly and nodded.

"You certainly look the part. Like you came straight out of hell."

"We weren't far off, and we nearly stayed there a few times. Nothing special."

The Marquis de Bréhant glanced at the men behind Adam. He recognized a few faces. Many, however, were missing.

"Captain Briscard explained the situation to us. What you were doing."

"Captain Briscard? So he made it to Fort Bourbon before the siege?"

"Yes," confirmed the colonel, turning toward the interior of the fort. "He's inside and will certainly want to know more about your actions. Monsieur de Montcalm as well. Ah, but I'm forgetting the most important part—come in. Don't stay out here. Welcome back to French soil."

Adam smiled and bowed his head respectfully.

"Thank you, Colonel. Gentlemen, form up, two by two. Forward, march!"

The ragtag group entered the wooden and earthen enclosure.

Whoa… there are more people than I expected! But…

The fort was packed to the brim, yet something felt off.

The men there lacked energy and spirit. Their eyes were hollow, their bodies worn by hardship.

Not so surprising, knowing what they had been through.

The welcome was lukewarm at first, but slowly, as people saw the state they were in, the looks began to change.

They started to gather around them, to greet them, placing affectionate hands on their shoulders.

"Welcome home!"

"Good to have you back!"

"We knew you'd return! Good work!"

"Hope those bloody English suffered as much as you did!"

Emotion swelled as they saw so many familiar faces.

Though they, too, had suffered this past month, these brave soldiers still managed to show warmth and humanity.

They held back their tears and walked with pride, heads held high, through the line of comrades who had formed an honor guard. Many applauded.

The group passed steaming cauldrons, and each was handed a bowl of soup.

Adam was served a generous portion—ten times better than anything he'd eaten in days.

The heat burned his tongue. The flavors were simple, but to him, it was like a dish prepared by a Michelin-starred chef.

Overwhelmed with emotion, he nearly dropped his bowl.

A bandaged hand rested on his shoulder.

"Well, looks like you were hungry, my friend."

Adam looked up, trembling. It felt like all his strength was leaving his body, as if he no longer had the will to stand.

"Martin…"

It really was Martin Morrel de Lusernes. And Jean-Baptiste Gauthier was there too, slightly wounded but standing.

"Good to see you again, kid."

Adam set down his small bowl and embraced his two friends. They stayed that way for a long moment.

"André?" Jean-Baptiste finally asked.

In response, Adam slowly shook his head and looked down, as if he couldn't bear to meet their eyes.

Neither of them spoke for several seconds, until Martin murmured:

"May he rest in peace. I… I'll pray for him."

A heavy silence fell over the trio. Jean-Baptiste broke it by sitting down next to Adam.

"You must have a lot of questions," he said softly.

Adam nodded.

Jean-Baptiste sighed lightly, then began recounting everything that had happened in his absence.

"The redcoats arrived a bit after Captain Briscard returned. There were so many of them… Like before, they started by cutting us off, building their camp and bastions along the roads. Then they began digging trenches. Real moles, those ones. Their artillery came next, and that was the start of a long bombardment."

Martin nodded slowly. His hands trembled slightly, uncontrollably. His eyes stared off into the distance, as if he could still see the wood and stone splinters flying near his face, and the bodies of his men being torn apart.

"We repelled several assaults, tried to stop their advance, but we were so few. They tried tunneling under us, but luckily the ground was too damp, too unstable. The tunnels kept collapsing on them. One day, a mortar hit one of our supply stores. By some miracle, it wasn't the powder magazine, but we lost a lot of food. We had to put out the flames while fighting off another attack."

He paused and ran a tired hand over his face, as haggard as Adam's own.

"Soon, we began to go hungry. The marquis had no choice: he cut our rations. We stretched what we had for as long as we could. The siege only lasted a month, but I swear before God, it felt like we'd been under fire for a year. In the end, the marquis and the English agreed to negotiate."

"He was granted the honors of war," Adam said in a very small voice.

"Yes. We left the fort with empty stomachs, defeated but alive—and above all, free—with our weapons and our flags. We even… played one of their songs. What a disgrace…"

A tear ran down his cheek, which he quickly wiped away before forcing a smile.

"Bah, it's just a song. Just a song. What matters is that we're here."

He clenched his fists on his knees. Martin placed a comforting hand on his shoulder.

"What happens now?" Adam asked.

"No one really knows," Martin replied. "We agreed not to resume fighting for five months. I think we're to fall back to Montreal. Maybe the war will be over by then, so this might've been our last battle. Damn it! To end like this! After all we did to make Fort Bourbon impregnable…"

"It's frustrating," Jean-Baptiste concluded. "If only we'd had more men."

Then he realized how his words might sound.

"Ah—don't get me wrong, François! I'm not saying things would've gone differently if you and André had stayed at the fort! Maybe it would've been even worse!"

Martin slowly lifted his head and turned it toward Adam.

"Tell us what you did, François. Did you kill a lot of Englishmen?"

Adam opened his mouth, but before he could speak a word, Colonel de Bréhant arrived.

"Sorry to interrupt, gentlemen, but the Marquis de Montcalm wishes to speak with you. He wants to hear your report as soon as possible."

Adam stood and set down his empty soup bowl—so clean one might doubt it had ever been used—then followed his superior to a long wooden building on the other side of the fort.

Inside were only a handful of men, all senior officers. The Marquis de Montcalm stood at the center of the room, dignified despite the state of his army.

"Captain Boucher, welcome back."

The tall man showed no reaction upon seeing Adam's pitiful appearance. His uniform was in tatters, and his face barely resembled that of a man.

"Thank you, General. Forgive my appearance."

Adam felt ashamed. The Marquis de Montcalm looked so refined, even after enduring a siege. He himself looked like a beggar.

"This time, I'll say nothing of it. You have, quite clearly, endured many trials. I summoned you to give your report."

"I am at your service, sir."

Adam thought for a moment, then began recounting everything that had happened since the troop split between Captain Briscard's group and Captain Louis's.

He left nothing out and, at each ambush, estimated the number of enemies killed.

As his story progressed, the officers' expressions shifted from shock to disbelief. Impressed might even be the better word.

It was so unbelievable they began to doubt him—but there would be no shortage of witnesses. If he lied, he'd be quickly exposed.

Finally, he described their escape through the woods, the group's scattering and rebuilding, and their arrival at Fort Bourbon on the day of the capitulation.

Then he fell silent.

Montcalm, Bréhant, and the others looked at him almost like he was a monster. It took them a few seconds to realize he had finished speaking.

If one added up all the French losses, they were heavy: half the men sent into enemy territory had disappeared—nearly forty men. But in return, if his numbers were accurate, he had killed nearly five hundred enemies (regulars and provincials) in his ambushes, to which he could add another eighty during the pursuit.

Such a ratio was almost unbelievable!

Montcalm's stunned silence spoke volumes. Two companies—though one had been destroyed in the process—had wiped out the equivalent of a battalion!

As for the number of carts carrying food and military supplies, it totaled exactly one hundred.

When the shock wore off, Colonel de Bréhant burst into laughter. He couldn't help himself.

Everyone turned toward him.

"HAHAHA! You really are something, Captain Boucher! Ahaha! Over five hundred men and a hundred carts?! Ah, now I understand the look on the Englishmen's faces when they granted us the honors of war! Ahah, my sides hurt! I can just imagine their faces… their faces as they received the reports, day after day!"

Around Montcalm, a few officers exchanged restrained smiles. Only the general remained in full control of his emotions. Worse: he seemed upset.

"Colonel, a little decorum, please! Or else, go and get some air."

"My deepest apologies… General."

With difficulty, the colonel stifled his laughter, his eyes still gleaming.

After all that had happened, this good news exploded in his heart—indeed in all their hearts—like a magnificent firework.

Montcalm, for his part, felt torn. He looked at Adam carefully, as if seeing him for the first time.

He could hardly believe this was the same man who had invented that brutal game he called "rugby."

The general furrowed his brow. He struggled to find the right words. A man of honor by nature, he now felt his world beginning to falter.

He had always acted—or tried to act—by very strict rules. They applied to his daily life, but also to war.

Despite everything that had happened since his arrival in the New World, he wanted to stick to his principles. A man should have principles and hold to them firmly, defend them with strength, even when everything around him tempted him to abandon them.

How many men had he seen forget theirs, twist them for the sake of compromise? Whether small or large, the scale didn't matter.

To him, war had to be a regulated, codified affair. If one started compromising, if one forgot the previously established rules, then there could be no order.

Everything would then become permitted. There would be no limits to violence, and nothing and no one would be protected.

Life itself would lose its sacred nature.

One could kill, of course, but not just anyhow, and not at any cost.

Many of the rules of war dated back to the wars of religion, a terrible era, where atrocities were committed in the name of faith. People allowed themselves to act like barbarians, treating the other not as an enemy, but as a beast to be slaughtered.

What this young man had done—what others were doing, what the Indians were doing—was more akin to hunting than to war. No lines, no flags, no code, no honor.

And yet… he had to admit one thing: New France was in peril. It already had been when he arrived, and despite recent successes—especially since Marshal de Richelieu's arrival—it still was.

Fort Bourbon had fallen, and the enemy was numerous. He himself was bound by the terms of a treaty. His available troops, whether at Fort Carillon or elsewhere, were very limited, and Marshal de Richelieu was busy defending what had been so painfully won on the eastern coast, between Louisbourg and the former Boston.

In other words, he was cornered.

He would have liked to tell this boy that this was not the way war should be waged. But he also knew that no other method would work—not with such results.

Montcalm had to admit it, even if it pained him: they were remarkable.

He stepped closer to Adam, his gaze hard.

"Captain Boucher, you lost half your men. And Captain Louis is dead. He was a good officer. A competent, experienced man."

He paused, his martial presence bearing down on the young captain.

"Even if you did kill five or six hundred enemies… would you call that a victory?"

"My General?"

Adam hadn't expected that reaction. Feeling small and insignificant before this man, he bowed his head, destabilized.

"Well, it's true we lost many men," he stammered, "half our forces."

"If we had equal strength, the situation would certainly be different, but New France sorely lacks soldiers, Captain. Every man counts. Every life. To decimate your unit for a few carts and a few soldiers—do you believe that will change the course of the war? There are nearly five thousand of them at Fort Bourbon."

Adam bowed lower, silent.

Montcalm turned away, hands behind his back, looking out the window at the men in the courtyard.

"That being said," he continued more calmly, "it remains a heavy blow to the enemy. They will mourn those men. But they will mourn those hundred supply carts even more."

Hearing those words, Adam sensed the general's anger fading.

"Winter is near. And perhaps peace. We've returned to the border we had with the Thirteen Colonies at the beginning of the war, but they won't be satisfied with that. As long as the snow hasn't fallen, the British can still attack. Especially now that they have the means to compensate for their earlier defeats. They'll surely want to take Fort Carillon, which would open the way to Montreal, then Quebec. Though they have the means to at least take Montreal before winter, especially now that we're bound by the treaty we signed with them, they will need to make preparations."

He paused to breathe, choosing his next words carefully.

"They have the men, the weapons, and the powder. What they lack most is food. They found nothing at Fort Bourbon, and thanks to your efforts—and those of Captain Louis—they must be running critically low. They will have no choice but to advance, as they cannot retreat. But they will have to wait until we move away from the border, as agreed."

Montcalm then turned to his officers, his gaze firm, filled with resolve.

"But if their general attacks us while we are still here, for instance to seize our depots, then we will be obligated to defend ourselves."

Adam and the other officers opened their mouths wide, realizing what their general was trying to do.

"The treaty will then be broken, and we will be free from our commitments. We will be able to attack again… and retake Fort Bourbon."

He turned once more to Adam.

"Your mission, Captain—even if I dislike these methods—will be to push the British to make that mistake. Attack their supply lines as you have done so well. I will assign you one hundred additional men from the Fort Carillon garrison. Like you, they are not bound by the commitments made at Fort Bourbon."

Adam bowed deeply, his thoughts racing. The general said nothing more.

But when he was alone, Montcalm murmured to himself:

"Perhaps this is the future… Mobile units. This is the end of an era, the end of pitched battles…"