All in all, the letters provided here remove all doubt about the validity of the stories about Lord Jeff and germ warfare. The General's own letters sustain the stories. An additional source of information on the matter is the Journal of William Trent , commander of the local militia of the townspeople of Pittsburgh during Pontiac's seige of the fort. I hope it will have the desired effect. Trent's Journal confirms that smallpox had broken out in Fort Pitt prior to the correspondence between Bouquet and Amherst, thus making their plans feasible.
Some readers question whether smallpox can be spread by such methods as infected blankets.
There is a smallpox virus Variola minor that is transmitted by inhalation, communicable for 3-7 days. Marking a milestone of sorts, certain colonists during the French and Indian Wars resorted to trading smallpox-contaminated blankets to local tribes with immediate and devastating results. While infected carcasses had long been catapulted into besieged cities, this seems to be the first time a known weakness in the immunity structure of an adversary population was deliberately exploited with a weapons response. Author of this WWW site is Peter d'Errico .