The tone of the novel is melancholy and sensational, but also academic and even facetious at times. For example, in Chapter 18, Cooper laments the limited scope of what his novel can do to right the wrongs of history:
[A]s history, like love, is so apt to surround her heroes with an atmosphere of imaginary brightness, it is probable that Louis de Saint Véran will be viewed by posterity only as the gallant defender of his country, while his cruel apathy on the shores of the Oswego and of the Horican will be forgotten. Deeply regretting this weakness on the part of a sister muse, we shall at once retire from her sacred precincts, within the proper limits of our own humble vocation.
At this point in the novel, Montcalm has just allowed the Hurons to massacre the surrendering inhabitants of Fort William Henry. Cooper has sensationalized the violence, even suggesting that the Hurons savored the blood of the women and children who were trying to leave the fort. He is aghast at Montcalm's failure to prevent this violence on behalf of the French king, Louis de Saint Véran, and he is depressed that history remembers this French king with uncomplicated admiration. Cooper expresses all this emotion and then takes a drier tone as he expresses the limits of what he can do to address it: he is creating art, not history, he admits. While he seeks to memorialize some elements of history, he can't spend too long in history's "sacred precincts."
Cooper is being somewhat facetious when he admits that history is not his realm. He has painted his readers a highly unflattering picture of the French military. Even though his readership does not encompass the whole world, the people who do read his book may very well be left with a revised image of the French king and his war strategy. At the same time, Cooper's melancholy insistence that what's done is done and that a lowly novelist can't intervene in history serves its own purpose. If history's precincts are "sacred," Cooper and his readers can sit at a distance from the ongoing injustices of history, all the while believing that they are powerless to change anything.
