In August 1756 Montcalm took Oswego from the English and destroyed it, and in 1757 he captured Fort William Henry; but in the latter year the elder Pitt assumed control of affairs in England, and his aggressive, clear-sighted policy turned the tide of war in England's favour.
He was undoubtedly a clear-sighted and able mathematician, who handled admirably the severe geometrical method, and who in his Method of Tangents approximated to the course of reasoning by which Newton was afterwards led to the doctrine of ultimate ratios; but his substantial contributions to the science are of no great importance, and his lectures upon elementary principles do not throw much light on the difficulties surrounding the border-land between mathematics and philosophy.
In this, as in other things, he was eminently clear-sighted and practical.
He was not constitutionally averse from change; and he was too clear-sighted not to see that, sooner or later, change was inevitable.
In the spring of 18 9 5 he was clear-sighted enough to refuse to join the anti-Japanese League of Russia, France and Germany at the end of the ChinaJapan War.
