On the 16th, they began to remove us; the officers were first sent in batteaux, and two hundred soldiers a day afterwards, till the whole were gone, being carried first to Montreal, and from thence to Quebec. Our duty in the batteaux, till we reached the first place, was very hard and slavish: and during the time we were on the lake and river St. Laurence, it appeared very easy and feasible for Commodore Bradley, had he thought proper, to have destroyed all the enemy's batteaux, and have prevented them from ever landing their cannon within forty miles of the fort. But he knew his own reasons for omitting this piece of service best.

Our party arrived at Montreal in Canada on the 28th. We were that night secured in the fort, as were the rest as they came in. The French used various means to win some of our troops over to their interest, or, at least, to do their work in the fields, which many refused, among whom was myself; who were then conducted on board a ship, and sent to Quebec, where, on arriving the 5th of September, we were lodged in a gaol [jail], and kept there for the space of one month.

During this our captivity, many of our men, rather than lie in a prison, went out to work and assist the French in getting in their harvest, they having then scarce any people left in that country but old men, women, and children, so that the corn was continually falling into the stubble for want of hands to reap it; but those who did go out, in two or three days, chose confinement again rather than liberty on such terms, being almost starved, having nothing in the country to live on but dry bread, whereas we in the prison were each of us ate 2 lbs. of bread and half a pound of meat a day, and otherwise treated with a good deal of humanity.

[This passage does show the superiority of the English slave-based, plantation agriculture over the French version—which, ironically, looks more like the lifeway Americans adopted after 1776—for freeing a military class of men for combat while servants labored in a system based on medieval serfdom.]

Eighteen soldiers were all the guard they had to place over us, who, being greatly fatigued with hard duty, and dreading our rising on them, which, had we had any arms, we might easily have done, and ravaged the country round, as it was then entirely defenceless; and the town's people themselves fearing the consequences of having such a number of men in a place where provisions were at that time very scarce and dear, they thought of sending us away, the most eligible way of keeping themselves from famine, and accordingly put 1500 of us on board a vessel for England.

Successfully waging war under the rules of war insuring the taking and proper treatment of captives becomes a heavy burden for the side with the weaker economic base. A hundred and seven years later, the Confederacy, unable to feed its own troops, found itself burdened with tens of thousands of union troops, who suffered terribly, especially after the Union High Command [Grant] refused to exchange prisoners, knowing this would tax Confederate resources and deny the South soldiers it could not replace. In this case the slave economy proved weaker militarily than an industrial economy, just as the French and Indian lifeway in North America, with its smallness of scale and relatively autonomous living conditions, was unable to sustain long term and large scale military operations against the great weight of the English slave economy. The advantage of the English slave economy over the French trade-based economy in the North America of 1756 is an indication that the slave-based economy of the Southern United States in the intervening century between the Seven Years War and the American Civil War, was not so outdated, in terms of efficiency, as is generally supposed.

As in the ancient world, trade-based economies do not field sufficient forces, or develop sufficient surplus agricultural resources, to sustain long term conflict with plantation-based economies. The Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage reflect this relationship most clearly. The changing of this balance is a profound consequence of industrialization. Do note, though, that early industrialists borrowed heavily from the playbook of the slave-master when it came to staffing their factories.