Dead bodies, mangled with knives and tomahawks, including those of more than one hundred women, were everywhere to be seen, affording a spectacle too horrible for description." And this awful occurrence might have been obviated, if, in the first place, Major Putnam's precautions had been adopted and a firm stand made in the face of the enemy; or if, in the second place, the reenforcements so often requested by the commander of the garrison had been sent.
Montcalm himself told Major Putnam, when he was a prisoner in Canada, the next year, that when Sir William Johnson with the militia and Rangers set out from Fort Edward one of his runners reported as to their number, "If you can count the leaves on the trees, you can count them." Believing, then, that a mighty force was advancing against him, Montcalm was on the point of abandoning the siege, when General Webb's order to return saved the situation for the French.

Of a truth, the conduct of General Webb, in command of the forces at Fort Edward and Fort William Henry, deserves the execration of the world.

Fuming inwardly against their unjustifiable detention, yet so well disciplined as to accept their commander's orders with impassive faces, the soldiers all, Provincials as well as regulars, were compelled to inaction, and thus became in a sense accessories to the blood-thirsty savages who had murdered their friends.
We have no record of any oath that Putnam may have taken, but doubtless one was registered in Heaven, that his comrades should be avenged, for his acts accord with this assumption.

He was even more active than before in annoying the enemy and in taking prisoners, both French and Indian; but there is no stain of cruelty affixed to any of his deeds.

He fought honorably, without thought of himself, without regard for what Fame might say of him, or the future hold in store.