Lord Fairfax nod to me, I accepted, but with no very good will. The matter ended with a vote of thanks from the House of Burgesses, Van Braam being left out, and also Adjutant Muse, who was considered to have shown cowardice. I was well done with a sorry business.
Indeed, but for the rain, the bad light, and that I had no reason to disbelieve what Van Braam read to us, I should have looked over the paper, where the word assassin, being as much English as French, must have caught my eye. What seemed to me most strange was that De Villiers should so easily have let go a man whom he professed to consider the murderer of his brother.
When we surrendered the French officers were very civil, and I saw no evidence of unusual enmity, but I do not think I met M. de Villiers.
Van Braam was very much abused and called a traitor, which I neither then nor later believed him to have been. Some few in Virginia blamed me, but since then I have lived through many worse calumnies.
As each nation was casting the blame of warlike action on the other, much was made
