Chapter 28
1759
Fall of Quebec
"Never was rout more complete than that of our army," says a French official.[783] It was the more so because Montcalm held no troops in reserve, but launched his whole force at once against the English. Nevertheless there was some resistance to the pursuit. It came chiefly from the Canadians, many of whom had not advanced with the regulars to the attack. Those on the right wing, instead of doing so, threw themselves into an extensive tract of bushes that lay in front of the English left; and from this cover they opened a fire, too distant for much effect, till the victors advanced in their turn, when the shot of the hidden marksmen told severely upon them. Two battalions, therefore, deployed before the bushes, fired volleys into them, and drove their occupants out.
[Footnote 783: Daine au Ministre, 9 Oct. 1759.]
Again, those of the Canadians who, before the main battle began, attacked the English left from the brink of the plateau towards the St. Charles, withdrew when the rout took place, and ran along the edge of the declivity till, at the part of it called Côte Ste.-Geneviève, they came to a place where it was overgrown with thickets. Into these they threw themselves; and were no sooner under cover than they faced about to fire upon the Highlanders, who presently came up. As many of these mountaineers, according to their old custom, threw down their muskets when they charged, and had no weapons but their broadswords, they tried in vain to dislodge the marksmen, and suffered greatly in the attempt. Other troops came to their aid, cleared the thickets, after stout resistance, and drove their occupants across the meadow to the bridge of boats. The conduct of the Canadians at the Côte Ste.-Geneviève went far to atone for the short-comings of some of them on the battle-field.
A part of the fugitives escaped into the town by the gates of St. Louis and St. John, while the greater number fled along the front of the ramparts, rushed down the declivity to the suburb of St. Roch, and ran over the meadows to the bridge, protected by the cannon of the town and the two armed hulks in the river. The rout had but just begun when Vaudreuil crossed the bridge from the camp of Beauport. It was four hours since he first heard the alarm, and his quarters were not much more than two miles from the battle-field. He does not explain why he did not come sooner; it is certain that his coming was well timed to throw the blame on Montcalm in case of defeat, or to claim some of the honor for himself in case of victory. "Monsieur the Marquis of Montcalm," he says, "unfortunately made his attack before I had joined him."[784] His joining him could have done no good; for though he had at last brought with him the rest of the militia from the Beauport camp, they had come no farther than the bridge over the St. Charles, having, as he alleges, been kept there by an unauthorized order from the chief of staff, Montreuil.[785] He declares that the regulars were in such a fright that he could not stop them; but that the Canadians listened to his voice, and that it was he who rallied them at the Côte Ste.-Geneviève. Of this the evidence is his own word. From other accounts it would appear that the Canadians rallied themselves. Vaudreuil lost no time in recrossing the bridge and joining the militia in the redoubt at the farther end, where a crowd of fugitives soon poured in after him.
[Footnote 784: Vaudreuil au Ministre, 21 Sept. 1759.]
[Footnote 785: Ibid., 5 Oct. 1759.]
The aide-de-camp Johnstone, mounted on horseback, had stopped for a moment in what is now the suburb of St. John to encourage some soldiers who were trying to save a cannon that had stuck fast in a marshy hollow; when, on spurring his horse to the higher ground, he saw within musket-shot a long line of British troops, who immediately fired upon him. The bullets whistled about his ears, tore his clothes, and wounded his horse; which, however, carried him along the edge of the declivity to a windmill, near which was a roadway to a bakehouse on the meadow below. He descended, crossed the meadow, reached the bridge, and rode over it to the great redoubt or hornwork that guarded its head.
The place was full of troops and Canadians in a wild panic. "It is impossible," says Johnstone, "to imagine the disorder and confusion I found in the hornwork. Consternation was general. M. de Vaudreuil listened to everybody, and was always of the opinion of him who spoke last. On the appearance of the English troops on the plain by the bakehouse, Montguet and La Motte, two old captains in the regiment of Béarn, cried out with vehemence to M. de Vaudreuil 'that the hornwork would be taken in an instant by assault, sword in hand; that we all should be cut to pieces without quarter; and that nothing would save us but an immediate and general capitulation of Canada, giving it up to the English.'"[786] Yet the river was wide and deep, and the hornwork was protected on the water side by strong palisades, with cannon. Nevertheless there rose a general cry to cut the bridge of boats. By doing so more than half the army, who had not yet crossed, would have been sacrificed. The axemen were already at work, when they were stopped by some officers who had not lost their wits.
[Footnote 786: Confirmed by Journal tenu à l'Armée, etc. "Divers officiers des troupes de terre n'hésitèrent point à dire, tout haut en présence du soldat, qu'il ne nous restoit d'autre ressource que celle de capituler promptement pour toute la colonie," etc.]
"M. de Vaudreuil," pursues Johnstone, "was closeted in a house in the inside of the hornwork with the Intendant and some other persons. I suspected they were busy drafting the articles for a general capitulation, and I entered the house, where I had only time to see the Intendant, with a pen in his hand, writing upon a sheet of paper, when M. de Vaudreuil told me I had no business there. Having answered him that what he had said was true, I retired immediately, in wrath to see them intent on giving up so scandalously a dependency for the preservation of which so much blood and treasure had been expended." On going out he met Lieutenant-colonels Dalquier and Poulariez, whom he begged to prevent the apprehended disgrace; and, in fact, if Vaudreuil really meant to capitulate for the colony, he was presently dissuaded by firmer spirits than his own.
Johnstone, whose horse could carry him no farther, set out on foot for Beauport, and, in his own words, "continued sorrowfully jogging on, with a very heavy heart for the loss of my dear friend M. de Montcalm, sinking with weariness, and lost in reflection upon the changes which Providence had brought about in the space of three or four hours."
Great indeed were these changes. Montcalm was dying; his second in command, the Brigadier Senezergues, was mortally wounded; the army, routed and demoralized, was virtually without a head; and the colony, yesterday cheered as on the eve of deliverance, was plunged into sudden despair. "Ah, what a cruel day!" cries Bougainville; "how fatal to all that was dearest to us! My heart is torn in its most tender parts. We shall be fortunate if the approach of winter saves the country from total ruin."[787]
[Footnote 787: Bougainville à Bourlamaque, 18 Sept. 1759.]
The victors were fortifying themselves on the field of battle. Like the French, they had lost two generals; for Monckton, second in rank, was disabled by a musket-shot, and the command had fallen upon Townshend at the moment when the enemy were in full flight. He had recalled the pursuers, and formed them again in line of battle, knowing that another foe was at hand. Bougainville, in fact, appeared at noon from Cap-Rouge with about two thousand men; but withdrew on seeing double that force prepared to receive him. He had not heard till eight o'clock that the English were on the Plains of Abraham; and the delay of his arrival was no doubt due to his endeavors to collect as many as possible of his detachments posted along the St. Lawrence for many miles towards Jacques-Cartier.
Before midnight the English had made good progress in their redoubts and intrenchments, had brought cannon up the heights to defend them, planted a battery on the Côte Ste.-Geneviève, descended into the meadows of the St. Charles, and taken possession of the General Hospital, with its crowds of sick and wounded. Their victory had cost them six hundred and sixty-four of all ranks, killed, wounded, and missing. The French loss is placed by Vaudreuil at about six hundred and forty, and by the English official reports at about fifteen hundred. Measured by the numbers engaged, the battle of Quebec was but a heavy skirmish; measured by results, it was one of the great battles of the world.
Vaudreuil went from the hornwork to his quarters on the Beauport road and called a council of war. It was a tumultuous scene. A letter was despatched to Quebec to ask for advice of Montcalm. The dying General sent a brief message to the effect that there was a threefold choice,--to fight again, retreat to Jacques-Cartier, or give up the colony. There was much in favor of fighting. When Bougainville had gathered all his force from the river above, he would have three thousand men; and these, joined to the garrison of Quebec, the sailors at the batteries, and the militia and artillerymen of the Beauport camp, would form a body of fresh soldiers more than equal to the English then on the Plains of Abraham. Add to these the defeated troops, and the victors would be greatly outnumbered.[788] Bigot gave his voice for fighting. Vaudreuil expressed himself to the same effect; but he says that all the officers were against him. "In vain I remarked to these gentlemen that we were superior to the enemy, and should beat them if we managed well. I could not at all change their opinion, and my love for the service and for the colony made me subscribe to the views of the council. In fact, if I had attacked the English against the advice of all the principal officers, their ill-will would have exposed me to the risk of losing the battle and the colony also."[789]
[Footnote 788: Bigot, as well as Vaudreuil, sets Bougainville's force at three thousand. "En réunissant le corps M. de Bougainville, les bataillons de Montréal [laissés au camp de Beauport] et la garrison de la ville, il nous restoit encore près de 5,000 hommes de troupes fraîches." Journal tenu à l'Armée. Vaudreuil says that there were fifteen hundred men in garrison at Quebec who did not take part in the battle. If this is correct, the number of fresh troops after it was not five thousand, but more than six thousand; to whom the defeated force is to be added, making, after deducting killed and wounded, some ten thousand in all.]
[Footnote 789: Vaudreuil au Ministre, 5 Oct. 1759.]
It was said at the time that the officers voted for retreat because they thought Vaudreuil unfit to command an army, and, still more, to fight a battle.[790] There was no need, however, to fight at once. The object of the English was to take Quebec, and that of Vaudreuil should have been to keep it. By a march of a few miles he could have joined Bougainville; and by then intrenching himself at or near Ste.-Foy he would have placed a greatly superior force in the English rear, where his position might have been made impregnable. Here he might be easily furnished with provisions, and from hence he could readily throw men and supplies into Quebec, which the English were too few to invest. He could harass the besiegers, or attack them, should opportunity offer, and either raise the siege or so protract it that they would be forced by approaching winter to sail homeward, robbed of the fruit of their victory.
[Footnote 790: Memoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760.]
At least he might have taken a night for reflection. He was safe behind the St. Charles. The English, spent by fighting, toil, and want of sleep, were in no condition to disturb him. A part of his own men were in deadly need of rest; the night would have brought refreshment, and the morning might have brought wise counsel. Vaudreuil would not wait, and orders were given at once for retreat.[791] It began at nine o'clock that evening. Quebec was abandoned to its fate. The cannon were left in the lines of Beauport, the tents in the encampments, and provisions enough in the storehouses to supply the army for a week. "The loss of the Marquis de Montcalm," says a French officer then on the spot, "robbed his successors of their senses, and they thought of nothing but flight; such was their fear that the enemy would attack the intrenchments the next day. The army abandoned the camp in such disorder that the like was never known."[792] "It was not a retreat," says Johnstone, who himself a part of it, "but an abominable flight, with such disorder and confusion that, had the English known it, three hundred men sent after us would have been sufficient to cut all our army to pieces. The soldiers were all mixed, and scattered, dispersed, and running as hard as they could, as if the English army were at their heels." They passed Charlesbourg, Lorette, and St. Augustin, till, on the fifteenth, they found rest on the impregnable hill of Jacques-Cartier, by the brink of the St. Lawrence, thirty miles from danger.
[Footnote 791: Livre d'Ordres, Ordre du 13 Sept. 1759.]
[Footnote 792: Foligny, Journal mémoratif.]
In the night of humiliation when Vaudreuil abandoned Quebec, Montcalm was breathing his last within its walls. When he was brought wounded from the field, he was placed in the house of the Surgeon Arnoux, who was then with Bourlamaque at Isle-aux-Noix, but whose younger brother, also a surgeon, examined the wound and pronounced it mortal. "I am glad of it," Montcalm said quietly; and then asked how long he had to live. "Twelve hours, more or less," was the reply. "So much the better," he returned. "I am happy that I shall not live to see the surrender of Quebec." He is reported to have said that since he had lost the battle it consoled him to have been defeated by so brave an enemy; and some of his last words were in praise of his successor, Lévis, for whose talents and fitness for command he expressed high esteem. When Vaudreuil sent to ask his opinion, he gave it; but when Ramesay, commandant of the garrison, came to receive his orders, he replied: "I will neither give orders nor interfere any further. I have much business that must be attended to, of greater moment than your ruined garrison and this wretched country. My time is very short; therefore pray leave me. I wish you all comfort, and to be happily extricated from your present perplexities." Nevertheless he thought to the last of those who had been under his command, and sent the following note to Brigadier Townshend: "Monsieur, the humanity of the English sets my mind at peace concerning the fate of the French prisoners and the Canadians. Feel towards them as they have caused me to feel. Do not let them perceive that they have changed masters. Be their protector as I have been their father."[793]
[Footnote 793: I am indebted to Abbé Bois for a copy of this note. The last words of Montcalm, as above, are reported partly by Johnstone, and partly by Knox.]
Bishop Pontbriand, himself fast sinking with mortal disease, attended his deathbed and administered the last sacraments. He died peacefully at four o'clock on the morning of the fourteenth. He was in his forty-eighth year.
In the confusion of the time no workman could be found to make a coffin, and an old servant of the Ursulines, known as Bonhomme Michel, gathered a few boards and nailed them together so as to form a rough box. In it was laid the body of the dead soldier; and late in the evening of the same day he was carried to his rest. There was no tolling of bells or firing of cannon. The officers of the garrison followed the bier, and some of the populace, including women and children, joined the procession as it moved in dreary silence along the dusky street, shattered with cannon-ball and bomb, to the chapel of the Ursuline convent. Here a shell, bursting under the floor, had made a cavity which had been hollowed into a grave. Three priests of the Cathedral, several nuns, Ramesay with his officers, and a throng of townspeople were present at the rite. After the service and the chant, the body was lowered into the grave by the light of torches; and then, says the chronicle, "the tears and sobs burst forth. It seemed as if the last hope of the colony were buried with the remains of the General."[794] In truth, the funeral of Montcalm was the funeral of New France.[795]
[Footnote 794: Ursulines de Québec, III. 10.]
[Footnote 795: See Appendix J.]
It was no time for grief. The demands of the hour were too exigent and stern. When, on the morning after the battle, the people of Quebec saw the tents standing in the camp of Beauport, they thought the army still there to defend them.[796] Ramesay knew that the hope was vain. On the evening before, Vaudreuil had sent two hasty notes to tell him of his flight. "The position of the enemy," wrote the Governor, "becomes stronger every instant; and this, with other reasons, obliges me to retreat." "I have received all your letters. As I set out this moment, I pray you not to write again. You shall hear from me to-morrow. I wish you good evening." With these notes came the following order: "M. de Ramesay is not to wait till the enemy carries the town by assault. As soon as provisions fail, he will raise the white flag." This order was accompanied by a memorandum of terms which Ramesay was to ask of the victors.[797]
[Footnote 796: Mémoire du Sieur de Ramesay.]
[Footnote 797: _Mémoire pour servir d'Instruction à M. de Ramesay, 13 Sept. _ 1759. Appended, with the foregoing notes, to the Mémoire de Ramesay.]
"What a blow for me," says the unfortunate commandant, "to find myself abandoned so soon by the army, which alone could defend the town!" His garrison consisted of between one and two hundred troops of the line, some four or five hundred colony troops, a considerable number of sailors, and the local militia.[798] These last were in a state of despair. The inhabitants who, during the siege, had sought refuge in the suburb of St. Roch, had returned after the battle, and there were now twenty-six hundred women and children, with about a housand invalids and other non-combatants to be supported, though the provisions in the town, even at half rations, would hardly last a week. Ramesay had not been informed that a good supply was left in the camps of Beauport; and when he heard at last that it was there, and sent out parties to get it, they found that the Indians and the famished country people had carried it off.
[Footnote 798: The English returns give a total of 615 French regulars in the place besides sailors and militia.]
"Despondency," he says again, "was complete; discouragement extreme and universal. Murmurs and complaints against the army that had abandoned us rose to a general outcry. I could not prevent the merchants, all of whom were officers of the town militia, from meeting at the house of M. Daine, the mayor. There they declared for capitulating, and presented me a petition to that effect, signed by M. Daine and all the principal citizens."
Ramesay called a council of war. One officer alone, Piedmont, captain of artillery, was for reducing the rations still more, and holding out to the last. All the others gave their voices for capitulation.[799] Ramesay might have yielded without dishonor; but he still held out till an event fraught with new hope took place at Jacques-Cartier.
[Footnote 799: Copie du Conseil de Guerre term par M. de Ramesay à Québec, 15 Sept. 1759.]
This event was the arrival of Lévis. On the afternoon of the battle Vaudreuil took one rational step; he sent a courier to Montreal to summon that able officer to his aid.[800] Lévis set out at once, reached Jacques-Cartier, and found his worst fears realized. "The great number of fugitives that I began to meet at Three Rivers prepared me for the disorder in which I found the army. I never in my life knew the like of it. They left everything behind in the camp at Beauport; tents, baggage, and kettles."
[Footnote 800: Lévis à Bourlamaque, 15 Sept. 1759. Lévis, Guerre du Canada.]
He spoke his mind freely; loudly blamed the retreat, and urged Vaudreuil to march back with all speed to whence he came.[801] The Governor, stiff at ordinary times, but pliant at a crisis, welcomed the firmer mind that decided for him, consented that the troops should return, and wrote afterwards in his despatch to the Minister: "I was much charmed to find M. de Lévis disposed to march with the army towards Quebec."[802]
[Footnote 801: Bigot au Ministre, 15 Oct. 1759. Malartic à Bourlamaque, 28 Sept. 1759.]
[Footnote 802: "Je fus bien charmé," etc. _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 5 Oct. _ 1759.]
Lévis, on his part, wrote: "The condition in which I found the army, bereft of everything, did not discourage me, because M. de Vaudreuil told me that Quebec was not taken, and that he had left there a sufficiently numerous garrison; I therefore resolved, in order to repair the fault that had been committed, to engage M. de Vaudreuil to march the army back to the relief of the place. I represented to him that this was the only way to prevent the complete defection of the Canadians and Indians; that our knowledge of the country would enable us to approach very near the enemy, whom we knew to be intrenching themselves on the heights of Quebec and constructing batteries to breach the walls; that if we found their army ill posted, we could attack them, or, at any rate, could prolong the siege by throwing men and supplies into the town; and that if we could not save it, we could evacuate and burn it, so that the enemy could not possibly winter there."[803]
[Footnote 803: Lévis au Ministre, 10 Nov. 1759.]
Lévis quickly made his presence felt in the military chaos about him. Bigot bestirred himself with his usual vigor to collect provisions; and before the next morning all was ready.[804] Bougainville had taken no part in the retreat, but sturdily held his ground at Cap-Rouge while the fugitive mob swept by him. A hundred of the mounted Canadians who formed part of his command were now sent to Quebec, each with a bag of biscuit across his saddle. They were to circle round to the Beauport side, where there was no enemy, and whence they could cross the St. Charles in canoes to the town. Bougainville followed close with a larger supply. Vaudreuil sent Ramesay a message, revoking his order to surrender if threatened with assault, telling him to hold out to the last, and assuring him that the whole army was coming to his relief. Lévis hastened to be gone; but first he found time to write a few lines to Bourlamaque. "We have had a very great loss, for we have lost M. de Montcalm. I regret him as my general and my friend. I found our army here. It is now on the march to retrieve our fortunes. I can trust you to hold your position; as I have not M. de Montcalm's talents, I look to you to second me and advise me. Put a good face on it. Hide this business as long as you can. I am mounting my horse this moment. Write me all the news."[805]
[Footnote 804: Livre d'Ordres, Ordre du 17-18 Sept. 1759.]
[Footnote 805: Lévis a Bourlamaque, 18 Sept. 1759.]
The army marched that morning, the eighteenth. In the evening it reached St. Augustin; and here it was stopped by the chilling news that Quebec had surrendered. Utter confusion had reigned in the disheartened garrison. Men deserted hourly, some to the country, and some to the English camp; while Townshend pushed his trenches nearer and nearer to the walls, in spite of the cannonade with which Piedmont and his artillerymen tried to check them. On the evening of the seventeenth, the English ships of war moved towards the Lower Town, and a column of troops was seen approaching over the meadows of the St. Charles, as if to storm the Palace Gate. The drums beat the alarm; but the militia refused to fight. Their officers came to Ramesay in a body; declared that they had no mind to sustain an assault; that they knew he had orders against it; that they would carry their guns back to the arsenal; that they were no longer soldiers, but citizens; that if the army had not abandoned them they would fight with as much spirit as ever; but that they would not get themselves killed to no purpose. The town-major, Joannès, in a rage, beat two of them with the flat of his sword.
The white flag was raised; Joannès pulled it down, thinking, or pretending to think, that it was raised without authority; but Ramesay presently ordered him to go to the English camp and get what terms he could. He went, through driving rain, to the quarters of Townshend, and, in hope of the promised succor, spun out the negotiation to the utmost, pretended that he had no power to yield certain points demanded, and was at last sent back to confer with Ramesay, under a promise from the English commander that, if Quebec were not given up before eleven o'clock, he would take it by storm. On this Ramesay signed the articles, and Joannes carried them back within the time prescribed. Scarcely had he left the town, when the Canadian horsemen appeared with their sacks of biscuit and a renewed assurance that help was near; but it was too late. Ramesay had surrendered, and would not break his word. He dreaded an assault, which he knew he could not withstand, and he but half believed in the promised succor. "How could I trust it"? he asks. "The army had not dared to face the enemy before he had fortified himself; and could I hope that it would come to attack him in an intrenched camp, defended by a formidable artillery?" Whatever may be thought of his conduct, it was to Vaudreuil, and not to him, that the loss of Quebec was due.
The conditions granted were favorable, for Townshend knew the danger of his position, and was glad to have Quebec on any terms. The troops and sailors of the garrison were to march out of the place with the honors of war, and to be carried to France. The inhabitants were to have protection in person and property, and free exercise of religion.[806]
[Footnote 806: Articles de Capitulation, 18 Sept. 1759.]
In the afternoon a company of artillerymen with a field-piece entered the town, and marched to the place of arms, followed by a body of infantry. Detachments took post at all the gates. The British flag was raised on the heights near the top of Mountain Street, and the capital of New France passed into the hands of its hereditary foes. The question remained, should they keep, or destroy it? It was resolved to keep it at every risk. The marines, the grenadiers from Louisbourg, and some of the rangers were to reimbark in the fleet; while the ten battalions, with the artillery and one company of rangers, were to remain behind, bide the Canadian winter, and defend the ruins of Quebec against the efforts of Lévis. Monckton, the oldest brigadier, was disabled by his wound, and could not stay; while Townshend returned home, to parade his laurels and claim more than his share of the honors of victory.[807] The command, therefore, rested with Murray.
[Footnote 807: Letter to an Honourable Brigadier-General [Townshend], printed in 1760. A Refutation soon after appeared, angry, but not conclusive. Other replies will be found in the _Imperial Magazine _for 1760.]
The troops were not idle. Levelling their own field-works, repairing the defences of the town, storing provisions sent ashore from the fleet, making fascines, and cutting firewood, busied them through the autumn days bright with sunshine, or dark and chill with premonition of the bitter months to come. Admiral Saunders put off his departure longer than he had once thought possible; and it was past the middle of October when he fired a parting salute, and sailed down the river with his fleet. In it was the ship "Royal William," carrying the embalmed remains of Wolfe.
Montcalm lay in his soldier's grave before the humble altar of the Ursulines, never more to see the home for which he yearned, the wife, mother, and children whom he loved, the olive-trees and chestnut-groves of his beloved Candiac. He slept in peace among triumphant enemies, who respected his memory, though they hardly knew his resting-place. It was left for a fellow-countryman--a colleague and a brother-in-arms--to belittle his achievements and blacken his name. The jealous spite of Vaudreuil pursued him even in death. Leaving Lévis to command at Jacques-Cartier, whither the army had again withdrawn, the Governor retired to Montreal, whence he wrote a series of despatches to justify himself at the expense of others, and above all of the slain general, against whom his accusations were never so bitter as now, when the lips were cold that could have answered them. First, he threw on Ramesay all the blame of the surrender of Quebec. Then he addressed himself to his chief task, the defamation of his unconscious rival. "The letter that you wrote in cipher, on the tenth of February, to Monsieur the Marquis of Montcalm and me, in common,[808] flattered his self-love to such a degree that, far from seeking conciliation, he did nothing but try to persuade the public that his authority surpassed mine. From the moment of Monsieur de Montcalm's arrival in this colony, down to that of his death, he did not cease to sacrifice everything to his boundless ambition. He sowed dissension among the troops, tolerated the most indecent talk against the government, attached to himself the most disreputable persons, used means to corrupt the most virtuous, and, when he could not succeed, became their cruel enemy. He wanted to be Governor-General. He privately flattered with favors and promises of patronage every officer of the colony troops who adopted his ideas. He spared no pains to gain over the people of whatever calling, and persuade them of his attachment; while, either by himself or by means of the troops of the line, he made them bear the most frightful yoke (le joug le plus affreux). He defamed honest people, encouraged insubordination, and closed his eyes to the rapine of his soldiers."
[Footnote 808: See Supra, p. 462.]
This letter was written to Vaudreuil's official superior and confidant, the Minister of the Marine and Colonies. In another letter, written about the same time to the Minister of War, who held similar relations to his rival, he declares that he "greatly regretted Monsieur de Montcalm."[809]
[Footnote 809: Vaudreuil au Ministre de la Guerre, 1 Nov. 1759.]
His charges are strange ones from a man who was by turns the patron, advocate, and tool of the official villains who cheated the King and plundered the people. Bigot, Cadet, and the rest of the harpies that preyed on Canada looked to Vaudreuil for support, and found it. It was but three or four weeks since he had written to the Court in high eulogy of Bigot and effusive praise of Cadet, coupled with the request that a patent of nobility should be given to that notorious public thief.[810] The corruptions which disgraced his government were rife, not only in the civil administration, but also among the officers of the colony troops, over whom he had complete control. They did not, as has been seen already, extend to the officers of the line, who were outside the circle of peculation. It was these who were the habitual associates of Montcalm; and when Vaudreuil charges him with "attaching to himself the most disreputable persons, and using means to corrupt the most virtuous," the true interpretation of his words is that the former were disreputable because they disliked him (the Governor), and the latter virtuous because they were his partisans.
[Footnote 810: See Supra, p. 374.]
Vaudreuil continues thus: "I am in despair, Monseigneur, to be under the necessity of painting you such a portrait after death of Monsieur the Marquis of Montcalm. Though it contains the exact truth, I would have deferred it if his personal hatred to me were alone to be considered; but I feel too deeply the loss of the colony to hide from you the cause of it. I can assure you that if I had been the sole master, Quebec would still belong to the King, and that nothing is so disadvantageous in a colony as a division of authority and the mingling of troops of the line with marine [colony] troops. Thoroughly knowing Monsieur de Montcalm, I did not doubt in the least that unless I condescended to all his wishes, he would succeed in ruining Canada and wrecking all my plans."
He then charges the dead man with losing the battle of Quebec by attacking before he, the Governor, arrived to take command; and this, he says, was due to Montcalm's absolute determination to exercise independent authority, without caring whether the colony was saved or lost. "I cannot hide from you, Monseigneur, that if he had had his way in past years Oswego and Fort George [William Henry] would never have been attacked or taken; and he owed the success at Ticonderoga to the orders I had given him."[811] Montcalm, on the other hand, declared at the time that Vaudreuil had ordered him not to risk a battle, and that it was only through his disobedience that Ticonderoga was saved.
[Footnote 811: Vaudreuil au Ministre de la Marine, 30 Oct. 1759.]
Ten days later Vaudreuil wrote again: "I have already had the honor, by my letter written in cipher on the thirteenth of last month, to give you a sketch of the character of Monsieur the Marquis of Montcalm; but I have just been informed of a stroke so black that I think, Monseigneur, that I should fail in my duty to you if I did not tell you of it." He goes on to say that, a little before his death, and "no doubt in fear of the fate that befell him," Montcalm placed in the hands of Father Roubaud, missionary at St. Francis, two packets of papers containing remarks on the administration of the colony, and especially on the manner in which the military posts were furnished with supplies; that these observations were accompanied by certificates; and that they involved charges against him, the Governor, of complicity inpeculation. Roubaud, he continues, was to send these papersto France; "but now, Monseigneur, that you are informed about them, I feel no anxiety, and I am sure that the King will receive no impression from them without acquainting himself with their truth or falsity."
Vaudreuil's anxiety was natural; and so was the action of Montcalm in making known to the Court the outrageous abuses that threatened the King's service with ruin. His doing so was necessary both for his own justification and for the public good; and afterwards, when Vaudreuil and others were brought to trial at Paris, and when one of the counselfor the defence charged the late general with slanderously accusing his clients, the Court ordered the charge to be struck from the record.[812] The papers the existence of which, if they did exist, so terrified Vaudreuil, have thus far escaped research. But the correspondence of the two rivals with the chiefs of the departments on which they severally depended is in large measure preserved; and while that of the Governor is filled with defamation of Montcalm and praise of himself, that of the General is neither egotistic nor abusive. The faults of Montcalm have sufficiently appeared. They were those of an impetuous, excitable, and impatient nature, by no means free from either ambition or vanity; but they were never inconsistent with the character of a man of honor. His impulsive utterances, reported by retainers and sycophants, kept Vaudreuil in a state of chronic rage; and, void as he was of all magnanimity, gnawed with undying jealousy, and mortally in dread of being compromised by the knaveries to which he had lent his countenance, he could not contain himself within the bounds of decency or sense. In another letter he had the baseness to say that Montcalm met his death in trying to escape from the English.
[Footnote 812: Procès de Bigot, Cadet, et autres.]
Among the Governor's charges are some which cannot be flatly denied. When he accuses his rival of haste and precipitation in attacking the English army, he touches a fair subject of criticism; but, as a whole, he is as false in his detraction of Montcalm as in his praises of Bigot and Cadet.
The letter which Wolfe sent to Pitt a few days before his death, written in what may be called a spirit of resolute despair, and representing success as almost hopeless, filled England with a dejection that found utterance in loud grumblings against the Ministry. Horace Walpole wrote the bad news to his friend Mann, ambassador at Florence: "Two days ago came letters from Wolfe, despairing as much as heroes can despair. Quebec is well victualled, Amherst is not arrived, and fifteen thousand men are encamped to defend it. We have lost many men by the enemy, and some by our friends; that is, we now call our nine thousand only seven thousand. How this little army will get away from a much larger, and in this season, in that country, I don't guess: yes, I do."
Hardly were these lines written when tidings came that Montcalm was defeated, Quebec taken, and Wolfe killed. A flood of mixed emotions swept over England. Even Walpole grew half serious as he sent a packet of newspapers to his friend the ambassador. "You may now give yourself what airs you please. An ambassador is the only man in the world whom bullying becomes. All precedents are on your side: Persians, Greeks, Romans, always insulted their neighbors when they took Quebec. Think how pert the French would have been on such an occasion! What a scene! An army in the night dragging itself up a precipice by stumps of trees to assault a town and attack an enemy strongly intrenched and double in numbers! The King is overwhelmed with addresses on our victories; he will have enough to paper his palace."[813]
[Footnote 813: Letters of Horace Walpole, III. 254, 257 (ed. Cunningham 1857).]
When, in soberer mood, he wrote the annals of his time, and turned, not for the better, from the epistolary style to the historical, he thus described the impression made on the English public by the touching and inspiring story of Wolfe's heroism and death: "The incidents of dramatic fiction could not be conducted with more address to lead an audience from despondency to sudden exaltation than accident prepared to excite the passions of a whole people. They despaired, they triumphed, and they wept; for Wolfe had fallen in the hour of victory. Joy, curiosity, astonishment, was painted on every countenance. The more they inquired, the more their admiration rose. Not an incident but was heroic and affecting."[814] England blazed with bonfires. In one spot alone all was dark and silent; for here a widowed mother mourned for a loving and devoted son, and the people forbore to profane her grief with the clamor of their rejoicings.
[Footnote 814: Walpole, Memoirs of George II., II. 384.]
New England had still more cause of joy than Old, and she filled the land with jubilation. The pulpits resounded with sermons of thanksgiving, some of which were worthy of the occasion that called them forth. Among the rest, Jonathan Mayhew, a young but justly celebrated minister of Boston, pictured with enthusiasm the future greatness of the British-American colonies, with the continent thrown open before them, and foretold that, "with the continued blessing of Heaven, they will become, in another century or two, a mighty empire;" adding in cautious parenthesis, "I do not mean an independent one." He read Wolfe's victory aright, and divined its far-reaching consequence.
NOTE: The authorities of this chapter are, in the main, the same as those of the preceding, with some additions, the principal of which is the Mémoire du Sieur de Ramezay, Chevalier de l'Ordre royal et militaire de St.-Louis, cy-devant Lieutenant pour le Roy commandant à Québec, au sujet de la Reddition de cette Ville, qui a été suivie de la Capitulation du 18 7bre 1759 (Archives de la Marine). To this document are appended a number of important "pièces justificatives." These, with the Mémoire, have been printed by the Quebec Historical Society. The letters of Vaudreuil cited in this chapter are chiefly from the Archives Nationales.
If Montcalm, as Vaudreuil says, really intrusted papers to the care of the Jesuit missionary Roubaud, he was not fortunate in his choice of a depositary. After the war Roubaud renounced his Order, adjured his faith, and went over to the English. He gave various and contradictory accounts of the documents said to be in his hands. On one occasion he declared that Montcalm's effects left with him at his mission of St. Francis had been burned to prevent their falling into the hands of the enemy (see Verreau, Report on Canadian Archives, 1874, p. 183). Again, he says that he had placed in the hands of the King of England certain letters of Montcalm (see Mr. Roubaud's Deplorable Case, humbly submitted to Lord North's Consideration, in Historical Magazine, Second Series, VIII. 283). Yet again, he speaks of these same letters as "pretended" (Verreau, as above). He complains that some of them had been published, without his consent, "by a Lord belonging to His Majesty's household" (Mr. Roubaud's Deplorable Case).
The allusion here is evidently to a pamphlet printed in London, in 1777, in French and English, and entitled, Lettres de Monsieur le Marquis de Montcalm, Gouverneur-Général en Canada, à Messieurs de Berryer et de la Molé, écrites dans les Années 1757, 1758, et 1759, avec une Version Angloise. They profess to be observations by Montcalm on the English colonies, their political character, their trade, and their tendency to independence. They bear the strongest marks of being fabricated to suit the times, the colonies being then in revolt. The principal letter is one addressed to Molé, and bearing date Quebec, Aug. 24, 1759. It foretells the loss of her colonies as a consequence to England of her probable conquest of Canada. I laid before the Massachusetts Historical Society my reasons for believing this letter, like the rest, an imposture (see the Proceedings of that Society for 1869-1870, pp. 112-128). To these reasons it may be added that at the date assigned to the letter all correspondence was stopped between Canada and France. From the arrival of the English fleet, at the end of spring, till its departure, late in autumn, communication was completely cut off. It was not till towards the end of November, when the river was clear of English ships, that the naval commander Kanon ran by the batteries of Quebec and carried to France the first news from Canada. Some of the letters thus sent were dated a month before, and had waited in Canada till Kanon's departure.
Abbé Verreau--a high authority on questions of Canadian history--tells me a comparison of the handwriting has convinced him that these pretended letters of Montcalm are the work of Roubaud.
On the burial of Montcalm, see Appendix J.
Chapter 29
1759, 1760
Sainte-Foy
The fleet was gone; the great river was left a solitude; and the chill days of a fitful November passed over Quebec in alternations of rain and frost, sunshine and snow. The troops, driven by cold from their encampment on the Plains, were all gathered within the walls. Their own artillery had so battered the place that it was not easy to find shelter. The Lower Town was a wilderness of scorched and crumbling walls. As you ascend Mountain Street, the Bishop's Palace, on the right, was a skeleton of tottering masonry, and the buildings on the left were a mass of ruin, where ragged boys were playing at seesaw among the fallen planks and timbers.[815] Even in the Upper Town few of the churches and public buildings had escaped. The Cathedral was burned to a shell. The solid front of the College of the Jesuits was pockmarked by numberless cannon-balls, and the adjacent church of the Order was wofully shattered. The church of the Recollects suffered still more. The bombshells that fell through the roof had broken into the pavement, and as they burst had thrown up the bones and skulls of the dead from the graves beneath.[816] Even the more distant Hôtel-Dieu was pierced by fifteen projectiles, some of which had exploded in the halls and chambers.[817]
[Footnote 815: Drawings made on the spot by Richard Short. These drawings, twelve in number, were engraved and published in 1761.]
[Footnote 816: Short's Views in Quebec, 1759. Compare Pontbriand, in N.Y. Col. Docs., X. 1,057.]
[Footnote 817: Casgrain, Hôtel-Dieu de Québec, 445.]
The Commissary-General, Berniers, thus describes to Bourlamaque the state of the town: "Quebec is nothing but a shapeless mass of ruins. Confusion, disorder, pillage reign even among the inhabitants, for the English make examples of severity every day. Everybody rushes hither and thither, without knowing why. Each searches for his possessions, and, not finding his own, seizes those of other people. English and French, all is chaos alike. The inhabitants, famished and destitute, escape to the country. Never was there seen such a sight."[818]
[Footnote 818: Berniers à Bourlamaque, 27 Sept. 1759.]
Quebec swarmed with troops. There were guardhouses at twenty different points; sentinels paced the ramparts, squads of men went the rounds, soldiers off duty strolled the streets, some in mitre caps and some black three-cornered hats; while a ceaseless rolling of drums and a rigid observance of military forms betrayed the sense of a still imminent danger. While some of the inhabitants left town, others remained, having no refuge elsewhere. They were civil to the victors, but severe towards their late ruler. "The citizens," says Knox, "particularly the females, reproach M. Vaudreuil upon every occasion, and give full scope to bitter invectives." He praises the agreeable manners and cheerful spirit of the Canadian ladies, concerning whom another officer also writes: "It is very surprising with what ease the gayety of their tempers enables them to bear misfortunes which to us would be insupportable. Families whom the calamities of war have reduced from the height of luxury to the want of common necessaries laugh, dance, and sing, comforting themselves with this reflection--Fortune de guerre. Their young ladies take the utmost pains to teach our officers French; with what view I know not, if it is not that they may hear themselves praised, flattered, and courted without loss of time."[819]
[Footnote 819: Alexander Campbell to John Floyd, 22 Oct. 1759. Campbell was a lieutenant of the Highlanders; Lloyd was a Connecticut merchant.]
Knox was quartered in a small stable, with a hayloft above and a rack and manger at one end: a lodging better than fell to the lot of many of his brother officers; and, by means of a stove and some help from a carpenter, he says that he made himself tolerably comfortable. The change, however, was an agreeable one when he was ordered for a week to the General Hospital, a mile out of the town, where he was to command the guard stationed to protect the inmates and watch the enemy. Here were gathered the sick and wounded of both armies, nursed with equal care by the nuns, of whom Knox speaks with gratitude and respect. "When our poor fellows were ill and ordered to be removed from their odious regimental hospital to this general receptacle, they were indeed rendered inexpressibly happy. Each patient has his bed, with curtains, allotted to him, and a nurse to attend him. Every sick or wounded officer has an apartment to himself, and is attended by one of these religious sisters, who in general are young, handsome, courteous, rigidly reserved, and very respectful. Their office of nursing the sick furnishes them with opportunities of taking great latitudes if they are so disposed; but I never heard any of them charged with the least levity." The nuns, on their part, were well pleased with the conduct of their new masters, whom one of them describes as the "most moderate of all conquerors."
"I lived here," Knox continues, "at the French King's table, with an agreeable, polite society of officers, directors, and commissaries. Some of the gentlemen were married, and their ladies honored us with their company. They were generally cheerful, except when we discoursed on the late revolution and the affairs of the campaign; then they seemingly gave way to grief, uttered by profound sighs, followed by an O mon Dieu!" He walked in the garden with the French officers, played at cards with them, and passed the time so pleasantly that his short stay at the hospital seemed an oasis in his hard life of camp and garrison.
Mère de Sainte-Claude, the Superior, a sister of Ramesay, late commandant of Quebec, one morning sent him a note of invitation to what she called an English breakfast; and though the repast answered to nothing within his experience, he says that he "fared exceedingly well, and passed near two hours most agreeably in the society of this ancient lady and her virgin sisters."
The excellent nuns of the General Hospital are to-day what their predecessors were, and the scene of their useful labors still answers at many points to that described by the careful pen of their military guest. Throughout the war they and the nuns of the Hôtel-Dieu had been above praise in their assiduous devotion to the sick and wounded.
Brigadier Murray, now in command of Quebec, was a gallant soldier, upright, humane, generous, eager for distinction, and more daring than prudent. He befriended the Canadians, issued strict orders against harming them in person or property, hanged a soldier who had robbed a citizen of Quebec, and severely punished others for slighter offences of the same sort. In general the soldiers themselves showed kindness towards the conquered people; during harvest they were seen helping them to reap their fields, without compensation, and sharing with them their tobacco and rations. The inhabitants were disarmed, and required to take the oath of allegiance. Murray reported in the spring that the whole country, from Cap-Rouge downward, was in subjection to the British Crown.[820]
[Footnote 820: Murray to Pitt, 25 May, 1760. Murray, _Journal, 1759, 1760_.]
Late in October it was rumored that some of the French ships in the river above Quebec were preparing to run by the batteries. This was the squadron which had arrived in the spring with supplies, and had lain all summer at Batiscan, in the Richelieu, and at other points beyond reach of the English. After nearly a month of expectancy, they at length appeared, anchored off Sillery on the twenty-first of November, and tried to pass the town on the dark night of the twenty-fourth. Seven or eight of them succeeded; four others ran aground and were set on fire by their crews, excepting one which was stranded on the south shore and abandoned. Captain Miller, with a lieutenant and above forty men, boarded her; when, apparently through their own carelessness, she blew up.[821] Most of the party were killed by the explosion, and the rest, including the two officers, were left in a horrible condition between life and death. Thus they remained till a Canadian, venturing on board in search of plunder, found them, called his neighbors to his aid, carried them to his own house, and after applying, with the utmost kindness, what simple remedies he knew, went over to Quebec and told of the disaster. Fortunately for themselves, the sufferers soon died.
[Footnote 821: Murray to Amherst, 25 Jan. 1760. Not, as some believed, by a train laid by the French.]
December came, and brought the Canadian winter, with its fierce light and cold, glaring snowfields, and piercing blasts that scorch the cheek like a firebrand. The men were frost-bitten as they dug away the dry, powdery drifts that the wind had piled against the rampart. The sentries were relieved every hour; yet feet and fingers were continually frozen. The clothing of the troops was ill-suited to the climate, and, though stoves had been placed in the guard and barrack rooms, the supply of fuel constantly fell short. The cutting and dragging of wood was the chief task of the garrison for many weeks. Parties of axemen, strongly guarded, were always at work in the forest of Ste.-Foy, four or five miles from Quebec, and the logs were brought to town on sledges dragged by the soldiers. Eight of them were harnessed in pairs to each sledge; and as there was always danger from Indians and bushrangers, every man carried his musket slung at his back. The labor was prodigious; for frequent snowstorms made it necessary again and again to beat a fresh track through the drifts. The men bore their hardships with admirable good humor; and once a party of them on their return, dragging their load through the street, met a Canadian, also with a load of wood, which was drawn by a team of dogs harnessed much like themselves. They accosted them as yoke-fellows, comrades, and brothers; asked them what allowance of pork and rum they got; and invited them and their owner to mess at the regimental barracks.
The appearance of the troops on duty within the town, as described by Knox, was scarcely less eccentric. "Our guards on the grand parade make a most grotesque appearance in their different dresses; and our inventions to guard us against the extreme rigor of this climate are various beyond imagination. The uniformity as well as nicety of the clean, methodical soldier is buried in the rough, fur-wrought garb of the frozen Laplander; and we rather resemble a masquerade than a body of regular troops, insomuch that I have frequently been accosted by my acquaintances, whom, though their voices were familiar to me, I could not discover, or conceive who they were. Besides, every man seems to be in a continual hurry; for instead of walking soberly through the streets, we are obliged to observe a running or trotting pace."
Early in January there was a storm of sleet, followed by severe frost, which glazed the streets with ice. Knox, being ordered to mount guard in the Lower Town, found the descent of Mountain Street so slippery that it was impossible to walk down with safety, especially as the muskets of the men were loaded; and the whole party, seating themselves on the ground, slid one after another to the foot of the hill. The Highlanders, in spite of their natural hardihood, suffered more from the cold than the other troops, as their national costume was but a sorry defence against the Canadian winter. A detachment of these breechless warriors being on guard at the General Hospital, the nuns spent their scanty leisure in knitting for them long woollen hose, which they gratefully accepted, though at a loss to know whether modesty or charity inspired the gift.
From the time when the English took possession of Quebec, reports had come in through deserters that Lévis meant to attack and recover it. Early in November there was a rumor that he was about to march upon it with fifteen thousand men. In December word came that he was on his way, resolved to storm it on or about the twenty-second, and dine within the walls, under the French flag, on Christmas Day. He failed to appear; but in January a deserter said that he had prepared scaling-ladders, and was training his men to use them by assaults on mock ramparts of snow. There was more tangible evidence that the enemy was astir. Murray had established two fortified outposts, one at Ste.-Foy, and the other farther on, at Old Lorette. War-parties hovered round both, and kept the occupants in alarm. A large body of French grenadiers appearedat the latter place in February, and drove off a herd of cattle; when a detachment of rangers, much inferior in number, set upon them, put them to flight, and recovered the plunder. At the same time a party of regulars, Canadians, andIndians took up a strong position near the church at Point Levi, and sent a message to the English officers that a large company of expert hairdressers were ready to wait upon them whenever they required their services. The allusion was of course to the scalp-lifting practices of the Indians and bushrangers.
The river being now hard frozen, Murray sent over a detachment of light infantry under Major Dalling. A sharp fight ensued on the snow, around the church, and in the neighboringforest, where the English soldiers, taught to use snow-shoes by the rangers, routed the enemy, and killed or captured a considerable number. A third post was then established at the church and the priest's house adjacent. Some days after, the French came back in large numbers, fortified themselves with felled trees, and then attacked the English position. The firing being heard at Quebec, the light infantry went over to the scene of action, and Murray himself followed on the ice, with the Highlanders and other troops. Before he came up, the French drew off and retreated to their breastwork, where they were attacked and put to flight, the nimble Highlanders capturing a few, while the greater part made their escape.
As it became known that the French held a strong post at Le Calvaire, near St. Augustin, two days' march from Quebec, Captain Donald MacDonald was sent with five hundred men to attack it. He found the enemy behind a breastwork of logs protected by an abattis. The light infantry advanced and poured in a brisk fire; on which the French threw down their arms and fled. About eighty of them were captured; but their commander, Herbin, escaped, leaving to the victors his watch, hat and feather, wine, liquor-case, and mistress. The English had six men wounded and nearly a hundred frost-bitten.[822]
[Footnote 822: Knox, II. 275. Murray, Journal. Fraser, Journal. Vaudreuil, in his usual way, multiplies the English force by three.]
Captain Hazen and his rangers soon after had a notable skirmish. They were posted in a house not far from the station at Lorette. A scout came in with news that a large party of the enemy was coming to attack them; on which Hazen left a sergeant and fourteen men in the house, and set out for Lorette with the rest to ask a reinforcement. On the way he met the French, who tried to surround him; and he told his men to fall back to the house. They remonstrated, saying that they "felt spry," and wanted to show the regulars that provincials could fight as well as red-coats. Thereupon they charged the enemy, gave them a close volley of buckshot and bullets, and put them to flight; but scarcely had they reloaded their guns when they were fired upon from behind. Another body of assailants had got into their rear, in order to cut them off. Theyfaced about, attacked them, and drove them back like the first. The two French parties then joined forces, left Hazen topursue his march, and attacked the fourteen rangers in the house, who met them with a brisk fire. Hazen and his men heard the noise; and, hastening back, fell upon the rear of the French, while those in the house sallied and attacked them infront. They were again routed; and the rangers chased them two miles, killing six of them and capturing seven. Knox, in whose eyes provincials usually find no favor, launches this time into warm commendation of "our simply honest New England men."
Fresh reports came in from time to time that the French were gathering all their strength to recover Quebec; and late in February these stories took a definite shape. A deserter from Montreal brought Murray a letter from an officer of rangers, who was a prisoner at that place, warning him that eleven thousand men were on the point of marching to attack him. Three other deserters soon after confirmed the news, but added that the scheme had met with a check; for as it was intended to carry the town by storm, a grand rehearsal had taken place, with the help of scaling-ladders planted against the wall of a church; whereupon the Canadians rushed with such zeal to the assault that numerous broken legs, arms, and heads ensued, along with ruptures, sprains, bruises, and dislocations; insomuch, said the story, that they became disgusted with the attempt. All remained quiet till after the middle of April, when the garrison was startled by repeated assurances that at the first breaking-up of the ice all Canada would be upon them. Murray accordingly ordered the French inhabitants to leave the town within three days.[823]
[Footnote 823: Ordonnance faite à Québec le 21 Avril, 1760, par son Excellence, Jacques Murray.]
In some respects the temper of the troops was excellent. In the petty warfare of the past winter they had generally been successful, proving themselves a match for the bushrangers and Indians on their own ground; so that, as Sergeant Johnson remarks, in his odd way, "Very often a small number of our men would put to flight a considerable party of those Cannibals." They began to think themselves invincible; yet they had the deepest cause for anxiety. The effective strength of the garrison was reduced to less than half, and of those that remained fit for duty, hardly a man was entirely free from scurvy. The rank and file had no fresh provisions; and, in spite of every precaution, this malignant disease, aided by fever and dysentery, made no less havoc among them than among the crews of Jacques Cartier at this same place two centuries before. Of about seven thousand men left at Quebec in the autumn, scarcely more than three thousand were fit for duty on the twenty-fourth of April.[824] About seven hundred had found temporary burial in the snowdrifts, as the frozen ground was impenetrable as a rock.
[Footnote 824: Return of the present State of His Majesty's Forces in Garrison at Quebec, 24 April, 1760 (Public Record Office).]
Meanwhile Vaudreuil was still at Montreal, where he says that he "arrived just in time to take the most judicious measures and prevent General Amherst from penetrating into thecolony."[825] During the winter some of the French regulars were kept in garrison at the outposts, and the rest quartered on the inhabitants; while the Canadians were dismissed to theirhomes, subject to be mustered again at the call of the Governor. Both he and Lévis were full of the hope of retaking Quebec. He had spies and agents among Murray's soldiers; and though the citizens had sworn allegiance to King George, some of them were exceedingly useful to his enemies. Vaudreuil had constant information of the state of the garrison. He knew that the scurvy was his active and powerful ally, and that the hospitals and houses of Quebec were crowded withthe sick. At the end of March he was informed that more than half the British were on the sick-list; and it was presentlyrumored that Murray had only two thousand men able to bear arms.[826] With every allowance for exaggeration in these reports, it was plain that the French could attack their invaders in overwhelming force.
[Footnote 825: Vaudreuil au Ministre, 30 Oct. 1759.]
[Footnote 826: Vaudreuil au Ministre, 15 Avril, 1760.]
The difficulty was to find means of transportation. The depth of the snow and the want of draught animals made it necessary to wait till the river should become navigable; but preparation was begun at once. Lévis was the soul of the enterprise. Provisions were gathered from far and near; cannon, mortars, and munitions of war were brought from the frontier posts, and butcher-knives were fitted to the muzzles of guns to servethe Canadians in place of bayonets. All the workmen aboutMontreal were busied in making tools and gun-carriages. Stores were impressed from the merchants; and certain articles, which could not otherwise be had, were smuggled, with extraordinary address, out of Quebec itself.[827] Early in spring the militia received orders to muster for the march. There were doubts and discontent; but, says a contemporary, "sensible people dared not speak, for if they did they were set down as English." Some there were who in secret called the scheme "Lévis' folly;" yet it was perfectly rational, well conceived, and conducted with vigor and skill. Two frigates, two sloops-of-war, and a number of smaller craft still remained in the river, under command of Vauquelin, the brave officer who haddistinguished himself at the siege of Louisbourg. The storesand cannon were placed on board these vessels, the army embarkedin a fleet of bateaux, and on the twentieth of April thewhole set out together for the scene of action. They comprised eight battalions of troops of the line and two of colony troops; with the colonial artillery, three thousand Canadians, and four hundred Indians. When they left Montreal, their effective strength, besides Indians, is said by Lévis to have been six thousand nine hundred and ten, a number which was increased as he advanced by the garrisons of Jacques-Cartier, Déschambault, and Pointe-aux-Trembles, as well as by the Canadians on both side of the St. Lawrence below Three Rivers; forVaudreuil had ordered the militia captains to join his standard, with all their followers, armed and equipped, on pain of death.[828] These accessions appear to have raised his force to between eight and nine thousand.
[Footnote 827: __Vaudreuil au Ministre, 23 Avril, 1760_.]
[Footnote 828: Vaudreuil aux Capitaines de Milice, 16 Avril, 1760. I am indebted to Abbé H.R. Casgrain for a copy of this letter.]
The ice still clung to the river banks, the weather was bad, and the navigation difficult; but on the twenty-sixth the army landed at St. Augustin, crossed the river of Cap-Rouge on bridges of their own making, and moved upon the English outpost at Old Lorette. The English abandoned it and fell backto Ste.-Foy. Lévis followed. Night came on, with a gale from the southeast, a driving rain, and violent thunder, unusual at that season. The road, a bad and broken one, led through themarsh called La Suède. Causeways and bridges broke down under the weight of the marching columns and plunged the men into water, mud, and half-thawed ice. "It was a frightful night," says Lévis; "so dark that but for the flashes of lightning we should have been forced to stop." The break of day found the vanguard at the edge of the woods bordering the farther side of the marsh. The storm had abated; and they saw before them, a few hundred yards distant, through the misty air, a ridge of rising ground on which stood the parish church of Ste.-Foy, with a row of Canadian houses stretching far to right and left. This ridge was the declivity of the plateau of Quebec; the same which as it approaches the town, some five or six miles towards the left, takes the names of Côte d'Abraham and Côte Ste.-Geneviève. The church and the houses were occupied by British troops, who, as the French debouchedfrom the woods, opened on them with cannon, and compelledthem to fall back. Though the ridge at this point is not steep, the position was a strong one; but had Lévis known how fewwere as yet there to oppose him, he might have carried it byan assault in front. As it was, he resolved to wait till night, and then flank the enemy by a march to the right along the border of the wood.
It was the morning of Sunday, the twenty-seventh. Till late in the night before, Murray and the garrison of Quebec were unaware of the immediate danger; and they learned it at last through a singular stroke of fortune. Some time after midnight the watch on board the frigate "Racehorse," which hadwintered in the dock at the Lower Town, heard a feeble cryof distress from the midst of the darkness that covered the St. Lawrence. Captain Macartney was at once informed of it; and, through an impulse of humanity, he ordered a boat to put outamid the drifting ice that was sweeping up the river with thetide. Guided by the faint cries, the sailors found a man lying on a large cake of ice, drenched, and half dead with cold; and, taking him with difficulty into their boat, they carried him to the ship. It was long before he was able to speak intelligibly; but at last, being revived by cordials and other remedies, he found strength to tell his benefactors that he was a sergeant of artillery in the army that had come to retake Quebec; that in trying to land a little above Cap-Rouge, his boat had been overset, his companions drowned, and he himself saved by climbing upon the cake of ice where they had discovered him; that he had been borne by the ebb tide down to the Island of Orleans, and then brought up to Quebec by the flow; and, finally, that Lévis was marching on the town with twelve thousand men at his back.
He was placed in a hammock and carried up Mountain Street to the quarters of the General, who was roused from sleep at three o'clock in the morning to hear his story. The troops were ordered under arms; and soon after daybreak Murray marched out with ten pieces of cannon and more than half the garrison. His principal object was to withdraw the advanced posts at Ste.-Foy, Cap-Rouge, Sillery, and Anse du Foulon. The storm had turned to a cold, drizzling rain, and the men, as they dragged their cannon through snow and mud, were soon drenched to the skin. On reaching Ste.-Foy, they opened a brisk fire from the heights upon the woods which now covered the whole army of Lévis; and being rejoined by the various outposts, returned to Quebec in the afternoon, after blowing up the church, which contained a store of munitions that they had no means of bringing off. When they entered Quebec a gill of rum was served out to each man; several houses in the suburb of St. Roch were torn down to supply them with firewood for drying their clothes; and they were left to take what rest they could against the morrow. The French, meanwhile, took possession of the abandoned heights; and while some filled the houses, barns, and sheds of Ste.-Foy and its neighborhood, others, chiefly Canadians, crossed the plateau to seek shelter in the village of Sillery.
Three courses were open to Murray. He could defend Quebec, fortify himself outside the walls on the Buttes-à-Neveu, or fight Lévis at all risks. The walls of Quebec could not withstand a cannonade, and he had long intended to intrench his army on the Buttes, as a better position of defence; but the ground, frozen like a rock, had thus far made the plan impracticable. Even now, though he surface was thawed, the soil beneath was still frost-bound, making the task of fortificationextremely difficult, if indeed the French would give him time for it. Murray was young in years, and younger still in impulse. He was ardent, fearless, ambitious, and emulous of the fame of Wolfe. "The enemy," he soon after wrote to Pitt, "was greatly superior in number, it is true; but when I considered that our little army was in the habit of beating the enemy, and had a very fine train of field artillery; that shutting ourselves at once within the walls was putting all upon the single chance of holding out for a considerable time a wretched fortification, I resolved to give them battle; and, half an hour after six in the morning, we marched with all the force I could muster, namely, three thousand men."[829] Some of these had left the hospitals of their own accord in their eagerness to take part in the fray.
[Footnote 829: Murray to Pitt, 25 May, 1760.]
The rain had ceased; but as the column emerged from St. Louis Gate, the scene before them was a dismal one. As yet there was no sign of spring. Each leafless bush and tree was dark with clammy moisture; patches of bare earth lay oozy and black on the southern slopes: but elsewhere the ground was still covered with snow, in some places piled in drifts, and everywhere sodden with rain; while each hollow and depression was full of that half-liquid, lead-colored mixture of snow and water which new England schoolboys call "slush," for all drainage was stopped by the frozen subsoil. The troops had with them two howitzers and twenty field-pieces, which had been captured when Quebec surrendered, and had formed a part of that very battery which Ramesay refused to Montcalm at the battle of the autumn before. As there were no horses, the cannon were dragged by some of the soldiers, while others carried picks and spades; for as yet Murray seems not to have made up his mind whether to fortify or fight. Thus they advanced nearly half a mile; till reaching the Buttes-à-Neveu, they formed in order of battle along their farther slopes, on thesame ground that Montcalm had occupied on the morning of his death.
Murray went forward to reconnoitre. Immediately before him was a rising ground, and, beyond it, a tract of forest called Sillery Wood, a mile or more distant. Nearer, on the left, he could see two blockhouses built by the English in the last autumn, not far from the brink of the plateau above the Anse du Foulon where Wolfe climbed the heights. On the right, at the opposite brink of the plateau, was a house and a fortified wind mill belonging to one Dumont. The blockhouses, the mill, and the rising ground between them were occupied by the vanguard of Lévis' army; while, behind, he could descry the main body moving along the road from Ste.-Foy, then turning, battalion after battalion, and rapidly marching across the plateau along the edge of Sillery Wood. The two brigades of the leading column had already reached the blockhouses by the Anse du Foulon, and formed themselves as the right wing of the French line of battle; but those behind were not yet in position.
Murray, kindling at the sight, thought that so favorable a moment was not to be lost, and ordered an advance. His line consisted of eight battalions, numbering a little above two thousand. In the intervals between them the cannon were dragged through slush and mud by five hundred men; and, at a little distance behind, the remaining two battalions followed as a reserve. The right flank was covered by Dalling's light infantry; the left by Hazen's company of rangers and a hundred volunteers under Major MacDonald. They all moved forward till they were on nearly the same ground where Wolfe's army had been drawn up. Then the cannon unlimbered, andopened on the French with such effect that Lévis, who was on horseback in the middle of the field, sent orders to the corpsof his left to fall back to the cover of the woods. The movement caused some disorder. Murray mistook it for retreat, and commanded a farther advance. The whole British line, extending itself towards the right, pushed eagerly forward: in doing which it lost the advantage of the favorable position it had occupied; and the battalions of the right soon found themselves on low grounds, wading in half-melted snow, which in some parts was knee deep. Here the cannon could no longer be worked with effect. Just in front, a small brook ran along the hollow, through soft mud and saturated snowdrifts, then gurgled down the slope on the right, to lose itself in the meadows of the St. Charles. A few rods before this brook stood the house and windmill of Dumont, occupied by five companies of French grenadiers. The light infantry at once attacked them. A furious struggle ensued, till at length the French gave way, and the victors dashed forward to follow up their advantage. Their ardor cost them dear. The corps on the French left, which had fallen back into the woods, now advanced again as the cannon ceased to play, rushing on without order but with the utmost impetuosity, led by a gallant old officer, Colonel Dalquier, of the battalion of Béarn. A bullet in the body could not stop him. The light infantry were overwhelmed; and such of them as were left alive were driven back in confusion upon the battalions behind them, along the front of which they remained dispersed for some minutes, preventing the troops from firing on the advancing French, whothus had time to reform their ranks. At length the light infantrygot themselves out of the way and retired to the rear, where, having lost nearly all their officers, they remained during the rest of the fight. Another struggle followed for the house and mill of Dumont, of which the French again got possession, to be again driven out; and it remained, as if by mutual consent, unoccupied for some time by either party. For above an hour more the fight was hot and fierce. "We drove them back as long as we had ammunition for our cannon," says Sergeant Johnson; but now it failed, and no more was to be had, because, in the eccentric phrase of the sergeant, the tumbrils were "bogged in deep pits of snow."
While this was passing on the English right, it fared still worse with them on the left. The advance of the line was no less disastrous here than there. It brought the troops close to the woods which circled round to this point from the French rear, and from which the Canadians, covered by the trees, now poured on them a deadly fire. Here, as on the right, Lévis had ordered his troops to fall back for a time; but when the fire of the English cannon ceased, they advanced again, and their artillery, though consisting of only three pieces, played its part with good effect. Hazen's rangers and MacDonald's volunteers attacked and took the two adjacent blockhouses, but could not hold them. Hazen was wounded, MacDonald killed, and their party overpowered. The British battalions held their ground till the French, whose superior numbers enabled them to extend themselves on both sides beyond the English line, made a furious attack on the left wing, in front and flank. The reserves were ordered up, and the troops stood for a time in sullen desperation under the storm of bullets; but they were dropping fast in the blood-stained snow, and the order came at length to fall back. They obeyed with curses: "Damn it, what is falling back but retreating?"[830] The right wing, also outflanked, followed the example of the left. Some of the corps tried to drag off their cannon; but being prevented by the deep mud and snow they spiked the pieces and abandoned them. The French followed close, hoping to cut off the fugitives from the gates of Quebec; till Lévis, seeing that the retreat, though precipitate, was not entirely without order, thought best to stop the pursuit.
[Footnote 830: Knox, II. 295.]
The fight lasted about two hours, and did credit to both sides. The Canadians not only showed their usual address and courage when under cover of woods, but they also fought well in the open field; and the conduct of the whole French force proved how completely they had recovered from the panic of the last autumn. From the first they were greatly superior in number, and at the middle and end of the affair, when they had all reached the field, they were more than two against one.[831] The English, on the other hand, besides the opportunity of attacking before their enemies had completely formed, had a vastly superior artillery and a favorable position, both which advantages they lost after their second advance.
[Footnote 831: See Appendix K.]
Some curious anecdotes are told of the retreat. Colonel Fraser, of the Highlanders, received a bullet which was no doubt half spent, and which, with excellent precision, hit the base of his queue, so deadening the shock that it gave him no other inconvenience than a stiff neck. Captain Hazen, of the rangers, badly wounded, was making his way towards the gate, supported by his servant, when he saw at a great distance a French officer leading a file of men across a rising ground; whereupon he stopped and told the servant to give him his gun. A volunteer named Thompson, who was near by and who tells the story, thought that he was out of his senses; but Hazen persisted, seated himself on the ground, took a long aim, fired, and brought down his man. Thompson congratulated him. "A chance shot may kill the devil," replied Hazen; and resigning himself again to the arms of his attendant, he reached the town, recovered from his wound, and lived to be a general of the Revolution.[832]
[Footnote 832: Thompson, deceived by Hazen's baptismal name, Moses, thought that he was a Jew. (Revue Canadienne, IV, 865.) He was, however, of an old New England Puritan family. See the Hazen genealogy in Historic-Genealogical Register, XXXIII.]
The English lost above a thousand, or more than a third of their whole number, killed, wounded, and missing.[833] They carried off some of their wounded, but left others behind; and the greater part of these were murdered, scalped, and mangled by the Indians, all of whom were converts from the mission villages. English writers put the French loss at two thousand and upwards, which is no doubt a gross exaggeration. Lévis declares that the number did not exceed six or eight hundred; but afterwards gives a list which makes it eight hundred and thirty-three.
[Footnote 833: Return of Killed, Wounded, and Missing, signed J. Murray.]
Murray had left three or four hundred men to guard Quebec when the rest marched out; and adding them to those who had returned scathless from the fight, he now had about twenty-four hundred rank and file fit for duty. Yet even the troops that were rated as effective were in so bad a condition that the hyperbolical Sergeant Johnson calls them "half-starved, scorbutic skeletons." That worthy soldier, commonly a model of dutiful respect to those above him, this time so far forgets himself as to criticise his general for the "mad, enthusiastic zeal" by which he nearly lost the fruits of Wolfe's victory. In fact, the fate of Quebec trembled in the balance. "We were too few and weak to stand an assault," continues Johnson, "and we were almost in as deep a distress as we could be." At first there was some drunkenness and some plundering of private houses; but Murray stopped the one by staving the rum-barrels of the sutlers, and the other by hanging the chief offender. Within three days order, subordination, hope, and almost confidence were completely restored. Not a man was idle. The troops left their barracks and lay in tents close to their respective alarm posts. On the open space by St. Louis Gate a crowd of convalescents were busy in filling sand-bags to strengthen the defences, while the sick and wounded in the hospitals made wadding for the cannon. The ramparts were faced with fascines, of which a large stock had been provided in the autumn; chevaux-de-frise were planted in exposed places; an outwork was built to protect St. Louis Gate; embrasures were cut along the whole length of the walls; and the French cannon captured when the town was taken were planted against their late owners. Every man was tasked to the utmost of his strength; and the garrison, gaunt, worn, besmirched with mud, looked less like soldiers than like overworked laborers.
The conduct of the officers troubled the spirit of Sergeant Johnson. It shocked his sense of the fitness of things to see them sharing the hard work of the private men, and he thus gives utterance to his feelings: "None but those who were present on the spot can imagine the grief of heart the soldiers felt to see their officers yoked in the harness, dragging up cannon from the Lower Town; to see gentlemen, who were set over them by His Majesty to command and keep them to their duty, working at the batteries with the barrow, pickaxe, and spade." The effect, however, was admirable. The spirit of the men rose to the crisis. Murray, no less than his officers, had all their confidence; for if he had fallen into a fatal error, he atoned for it now by unconquerable resolution and exhaustless fertility of resource. Deserters said that Lévis would assault the town; and the soldiers replied: "Let him come on; he will catch a Tartar."
Lévis and his army were no less busy in digging trenches along the stony back of the Buttes-à-Neveu. Every day the English fire grew hotter; till at last nearly a hundred and fifty cannon vomited iron upon them from the walls of Quebec, and May was well advanced before they could plant a single gun to reply. Their vessels had landed artillery at the Anse du Foulon; but their best hope lay in the succors they daily expected from the river below. In the autumn Lévis, with a view to his intended enterprise, had sent a request to Versailles that a ship laden with munitions and heavy siege-guns should be sent from France in time to meet him at Quebec in April; while he looked also for another ship, which had wintered at Gaspé, and which therefore might reach him as soon as navigation opened. The arrival of these vessels would have made the position of the English doubly critical; and, on the other hand, should an English squadron appear first, Lévis would be forced to raise the siege. Thus each side watched the river with an anxiety that grew constantly more intense; and the English presently descried signals along the shore which seemed to say that French ships were moving up the St. Lawrence. Meantime, while doing their best to compass each other's destruction, neither side forgot the courtesies of war. Lévis heard that Murray liked spruce-beer for his table, and sent him a flag of truce with a quantity of spruce-boughs and a message of compliment; Murray responded with a Cheshire cheese, and Lévis rejoined with a present of partridges.
Bad and scanty fare, excessive toil, and broken sleep were telling ominously on the strength of the garrison when, on the ninth of May, Murray, as he sat pondering over the fire at his quarters in St. Louis Street, was interrupted by an officer who came to tell him that there was a ship-of-war in the Basin beating up towards the town. Murray started from his revery, and directed that British colors should be raised immediately on Cape Diamond.[834] The halyards being out of order, a sailor climbed the staff and drew up the flag to its place. The news had spread; men and officers, divided between hope and fear, crowded to the rampart by the Château, where Durham Terrace now overlooks the St. Lawrence, and every eye was strained on the approaching ship, eager to see whether she would show the red flag of England or the white one of France. Slowly her colors rose to the mast-head and unfurled to the wind the red cross of St. George. It was the British frigate "Lowestoffe." She anchored before the Lower Town, and saluted the garrison with twenty-one guns. "The gladness of the troops," says Knox, "is not to be expressed. Both officers and soldiers mounted the parapet in the face of the enemy and huzzaed with their hats in the air for almost an hour. The garrison, the enemy's camp, the bay, and circumjacent country resounded with our shouts and the thunder of our artillery; for the gunners were so elated that they did nothing but load and fire for a considerable time. In short, the general satisfaction is not to be conceived, except by a person who had suffered the extremities of a siege, and been destined, with his brave friends and countrymen, to the scalping-knives of a faithless conqueror and his barbarious allies." The "Lowestoffe" brought news that a British squadron was at the mouth of the St. Lawrence, and would reach Quebec in a few days.
[Footnote 834: Thompson in Revue Canadienne, IV. 866.]
Lévis, in ignorance of this, still clung to the hope that French ships would arrive strong enough to overpower the unwelcome stranger. His guns, being at last in position, presently opened fire upon a wall that was not built to bear the brunt of heavy shot; but an artillery better and more numerous than his own almost silenced them, and his gunners were harassed by repeated sallies. The besiegers had now no real chance of success unless they could carry the place by storm, to which end they had provided abundant scaling-ladders as well as petards to burst in the gates. They made, however, no attempt to use them. A week passed, when, on the evening of the fifteenth, the ship of the line "Vanguard" and the frigate "Diana" sailed into the harbor; and on the next morning the "Diana" and the "Lowestoffe" passed the town to attack the French vessels in the river above. These were six in all,--two frigates, two smaller armed ships, and two schooners; the whole under command of the gallant Vauquelin. He did not belie his reputation; fought his ship with persistent bravery till his ammunition was spent, refused even then to strike his flag, and being made prisoner, was treated by his captors with distinguished honor. The other vessels made little or no resistance. One of them threw her guns overboard and escaped; the rest ran ashore and were burned.
The destruction of his vessels was a death-blow to the hopes of Lévis, for they contained his stores of food and ammunition. He had passed the preceding night in great agitation; and when the cannonade on the river ceased, he hastened to raise the siege. In the evening deserters from hiscamp told Murray that the French were in full retreat; on which all the English batteries opened, firing at random through the darkness, and sending cannon-balls en ricochet, bowling by scores together, over the Plains of Abraham on the heels of the retiring enemy. Murray marched out at dawn of day to fall upon their rear; but, with a hundred and fifty cannon bellowing behind them, they had made such speed that, though he pushed over the marsh to Old Lorette, he could not overtake them; they had already crossed the river of Cap-Rouge. Why, with numbers still superior, they went off in such haste, it is hard to say. They left behind them thirty-four cannon and six mortars, with petards, scaling-ladders, tents, ammunition, baggage, intrenching tools, many of their muskets, and all their sick and wounded.
The effort to recover Quebec did great honor to the enterprise of the French; but it availed them nothing, served only to waste resources that seemed already at the lowest ebb, and gave fresh opportunity of plunder to Cadet and his crew, who failed not to make use of it.
After the battle of Ste.-Foy Murray sent the frigate "Racehorse" to Halifax with news of his defeat, and from Halifax it was sent to England. The British public were taken by surprise. "Who the deuce was thinking of Quebec?" says Horace Walpole. "America was like a book one has read and done with; but here we are on a sudden reading our book backwards." Ten days passed, and then came word that the siege was raised and that the French were gone; upon which Walpole wrote to General Conway: "Well, Quebec is come to life again. Last night I went to see the Holdernesses. I met my Lady in a triumphal car, drawn by a Manx horse, thirteen little fingers high, with Lady Emily. Mr. Milbank was walking by himself in ovation after the car, and they were going to see the bonfire at the alehouse at the corner. The whole procession returned with me; and from the Countess's dressing-room we saw a battery fired before the house, the mob crying, 'God bless the good news!' These are all the particulars I know of the siege. My Lord would have showed me the journal; but we amused ourselves much better in going to eat peaches from the new Dutch stoves [hothouses]."
NOTE: On the battle of Ste.-Foy and the subsequent siege, Lévis, Guerre du Canada. Relation de la seconde Bataille de Québec et du Siége de cette Ville (there are several copies of this paper, with different titles and some variation). Murray to Amherst, 30 April, 1760. Murray, Journal kept at Quebec from Sept. 18, 1759, to May 17, 1760 (Public Record Office, America and West Indies, XCIX.). Murray to Pitt, 25 May, 1760. Letter from an Officer of the Royal Americans at Quebec, 24 May, 1760 (in London Magazine and several periodical papers of the time). Fraser, Journal (Quebec Hist. Soc.); Johnstone, Campaign of 1760 (Ibid.). Relation de ce qui s'est passé au Siége de Québec, par une Religieuse de l'Hôpital Général (Ibid.). Memoirs of the Siege of Quebec, by Sergeant John Johnson. Mémoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760. Letters of Lévis, Bourlamaque, and Vaudreuil, May, June, 1760. Several letters from officers at Quebec in provincial newspapers. Knox, II. 292-322. Plan of the Battle and Situation of the British and French on the Heights of Abraham, the 28th of April, 1760,--an admirable plan, attached to the great plan of operations at Quebec before mentioned, and necessary to an understanding of the position and movements of the two armies (British Museum, King's Maps).
The narratives of Mante, Entick, Wynne, Smith, and other secondary writers give no additional light. On the force engaged on each side, see Appendix K.
Chapter 30
1760
Fall of Canada
The retreat of Lévis left Canada little hope but in a speedy peace. This hope was strong, for a belief widely prevailed that, even if the colony should be subdued, it would be restored to France by treaty. Its available force did not exceed eight or ten thousand men, as most of the Canadians below the district of Three Rivers had sworn allegiance to King George; and though many of them had disregarded the oath to join the standard of Lévis, they could venture to do so no longer. The French had lost the best of their artillery, their gunpowder was falling short, their provisions would barely carry them to harvest time, and no more was to be hoped for, since a convoy of ships which had sailed from France at the end of winter, laden with supplies of all kinds, had been captured by the English. The blockade of the St. Lawrence was complete. The Western Indians would not fight, and even those of the mission villages were wavering and insolent.
Yet Vaudreuil and Lévis exerted themselves for defence with an energy that does honor to them both. "Far from showing the least timidity," says the ever-modest Governor, "I have taken positions such as may hide our weakness from the enemy."[835] He stationed Rochbeaucourt with three hundred men at Pointe-aux-Trembles; Repentigny with two hundred at Jacques-Cartier; and Dumas with twelve hundred at Deschambault to watch the St. Lawrence and, if possible, prevent Murray from moving up the river. Bougainville was stationed at Isle-aux-Noix to bar the approach from Lake Champlain, and a force under La Corne was held ready to defend the rapids above Montreal, should the English attempt that dangerous passage. Prisoners taken by war parties near Crown Point gave exaggerated reports of hostile preparation, and doubled and trebled the forces that were mustering against Canada.
[Footnote 835: Vaudreuil au Ministre, 22 Juin, 1760.]
These forces were nevertheless considerable. Amherst had resolved to enter the colony by all its three gates at once, and, advancing from east, west, and south, unite at Montreal and crush it as in the jaws of a vice. Murray was to ascend the St. Lawrence from Quebec, while Brigadier Haviland forced an entrance by way of Lake Champlain, and Amherst himself led the main army down the St. Lawrence from Lake Ontario. This last route was long, circuitous, difficult, andfull of danger from the rapids that obstructed the river. His choice of it for his chief line of operation, instead of the shorter and easier way of Lake Champlain, was meant, no doubt, to prevent the French army from escaping up the Lakes to Detroit and the other wilderness posts, where it might have protracted the war for an indefinite time; while the plan adopted, if successful, would make its capture certain. The plan was a critical one. Three armies advancing from three different points, hundreds of miles apart, by routes full of difficulty, and with no possibility of intercommunication, were to meet at the same place at the same time, or, failing to do so, run the risk of being destroyed in detail. If the French troops could be kept together, and if the small army of Murray or of Haviland should reach Montreal a few days before the co-operating forces appeared, it might be separately attacked and overpowered. In this lay the hope of Vaudreuil and Lévis.[836]
[Footnote 836: Lévis à Bourlamaque, Juillet, Août, 1760.]
After the siege of Quebec was raised, Murray had an effective force of about twenty-five hundred rank and file.[837] As the spring opened the invalids were encamped on the Island of Orleans, where fresh air, fresh provisions, and the change from the pestiferous town hospitals wrought such wonders on the scorbutic patients, that in a few weeks a considerable number of them were again fit for garrison duty, if not for the field. Thus it happened that on the second of July twenty-four hundred and fifty men and officers received orders to embark for Montreal; and on the fifteenth they set sail, in thirty-two vessels, with a number of boats and bateaux.[838] They were followed some time after by Lord Rollo, with thirteen hundred additional men just arrived from Louisbourg, the King having ordered that fortress to be abandoned and dismantled. They advanced slowly, landing from time to time, skirmishing with detachments of the enemy who followed them along the shore, or more frequently trading with the farmers who brought them vegetables, poultry, eggs, and fresh meat. They passed the fortified hill of Jacques-Cartier, whence they were saluted with shot and shell, stopped at various parishes, disarmed the inhabitants, administered oaths of neutrality, which were taken without much apparent reluctance, and on the fourth of August came within sight of Three Rivers, then occupied by a body of troops expecting an attack. "But," says Knox, "a delay here would be absurd, as that wretched place must share the fate of Montreal. Our fleet sailed this morning. The French troops, apparently about two thousand, lined their different works, and were in general clothed as regulars, except a very few Canadians and about fifty naked Picts or savages, their bodies being painted of a reddish color and their faces of different colors, which I plainly discerned with my glass. Their light cavalry, who paraded along shore, seemed to be well appointed, clothed in blue, faced with scarlet; but their officers had white uniforms. In fine, their troops, batteries, fair-looking houses; their situation on the banks of a delightful river; our fleet sailing triumphantly before them, with our floating batteries drawn up in line of battle; the country on both sides interspersed with neat settlements, together with the verdure of the fields and trees and the clear, pleasant weather, afforded as agreeable a prospect as the most lively imagination can conceive."
[Footnote 837: Return of the Present State of His Majesty's Forces in Garrison at Quebec, 21 May, 1760.]
[Footnote 838: Knox, II. 344, 348.]
This excellent lover of the picturesque was still more delighted as the fleet sailed among the islands of St. Peter. "I think nothing could equal the beauties of our navigation this morning: the meandering course of the narrow channel; the awfulness and solemnity of the dark forests with which these islands are covered; the fragrancy of the spontaneous fruits, shrubs, and flowers; the verdure of the water by the reflection of the neighboring woods; the wild chirping notes of the feathered inhabitants; the masts and sails of ships appearing as if among the trees, both ahead and astern: formed altogether an enchanting diversity."
The evening recalled him from dreams to realities; for towards seven o'clock they reached the village of Sorel, where they found a large body of troops and militia intrenched along the strand. Bourlamaque was in command here with two or three thousand men, and Dumas, with another body, was on the northern shore. Both had orders to keep abreast of the fleet as it advanced; and thus French and English alike drew slowly towards Montreal, where lay the main French force under Lévis, ready to unite with Bourlamaque and Dumas, and fall upon Murray at the first opportunity. Montreal was now but a few leagues distant, and the situation was becoming delicate. Murray sent five rangers towards Lake Champlain to get news of Haviland, and took measures at the same time to cause the desertion of the Canadians, who formed the largest part of the opposing force. He sent a proclamation among the parishes, advising the inhabitants to remain peacefully at home, promising that those who did so should be safe in person and property, and threatening to burn every house from which the men of the family were absent. These were not idle words. A detachment sent for the purpose destroyed a settlement near Sorel, the owners of which were in arms under Bourlamaque. "I was under the cruel necessity of burning the greatest part of these poor unhappy people's houses," wrote Murray. "I pray God this example may suffice, for my nature revolts when this becomes a necessary part of my duty."[839] On the other hand, he treated with great kindness all who left the army and returned to their families. The effect was soon felt. The Canadians came in by scores and by hundreds to give up their arms and take the oath of neutrality, till, before the end of August, half Bourlamaque's force had disappeared. Murray encamped on Isle Ste.-Thérèse, just below Montreal, and watched and waited for Haviland and Amherst to appear.[840]
[Footnote 839: Murray to Pitt, 24 Aug. 1760.]
[Footnote 840: Knox, II. 382, 384. Mante, 340.]
Vaudreuil on his part was not idle. He sent a counter-proclamation through the parishes as an antidote to that of Murray. "I have been compelled," he writes to the Minister, "to decree the pain of death to the Canadians who are so dastardly as to desert or give up their arms to the enemy, and to order that the houses of those who do not join our army shall be burned."[841] Execution was to be summary, without court-martial.[842] Yet desertion increased daily. The Canadians felt themselves doubly ruined, for it became known that the Court had refused to redeem the paper that formed the whole currency of the colony; and, in their desperation, they preferred to trust the tried clemency of the enemy rather than exasperate him by persisting in a vain defence. Vaudreuil writes in his usual strain: "I am taking the most just measures to unite our forces, and, if our situation permits, fight a battle, or several battles. It is to be feared that we shall go down before an enemy so numerous and strong; but, whatever may be the event, we will save the honor of the King's arms. I have the honor to repeat to you, Monseigneur, that if any resource were left me, whatever the progress the English might make, I would maintain myself in some part of the colony with my remaining troops, after having fought with the greatest obstinacy; but I am absolutely without the least remnant of the necessary means. In these unhappy circumstances I shall continue to use every manoeuvre and device to keep the enemy in check; but if we succumb in the battles we shall fight, I shall apply myself to obtaining a capitulation which may avert the total ruin of a people who will remain forever French, and who could not survive their misfortunes but for the hope of being restored by the treaty of peace to the rule of His Most Christian Majesty. It is with this view that I shall remain in this town, the Chevalier de Lévis having represented to me that it would be an evil to the colonists past remedy if any accident should happen to me." Lévis was willing to go very far in soothing the susceptibilities of the Governor; but it may be suspected this time that he thought him more useful within four walls than in the open field.
[Footnote 841: Vaudreuil au Ministre, 29 Août, 1760.]
[Footnote 842: Lévis à Bourlamaque, 25 Août, 1760.]
There seemed good hope of stopping the advance of Haviland. To this end Vaudreuil had stationed Bougainville at Isle-aux-Noix with seventeen hundred men, and Roquemaure at St. John, a few miles distant, with twelve or fifteen hundred more, besides all the Indians.[843] Haviland embarked at Crown Point with thirty-four hundred regulars, provincials, and Indians.[844] Four days brought him to Isle-aux-Noix; he landed, planted cannon in the swamp, and opened fire. Major Darby with the light infantry, and Rogers with the rangers, dragged three light pieces through the forest, and planted them on the river-bank in the rear of Bougainville's position, where lay the French naval force, consisting of three armed vessels and several gunboats. The cannon were turned upon the principal ship; a shot cut her cable, and a strong west wind drove her ashore into the hands of her enemies. The other vessels and gunboats made all sail for St. John, but stranded in a bend of the river, where the rangers, swimming out with their tomahawks, boarded and took one of them, and the rest soon surrendered. It was a fatal blow to Bougainville, whose communications with St. John were now cut off. In accordance with instructions from Vaudreuil, he abandoned the island on the night of the twenty-seventh of August, and, making his way with infinite difficulty through the dark forest, joined Roquemaure at St. John, twelve miles below. Haviland followed, the rangers leading the way. Bougainville and Roquemaure fell back, abandoned St. John and Chambly, and joined Bourlamaque on the banks of the St. Lawrence, where the united force at first outnumbered that of Haviland, though fast melted away by discouragement and desertion. Haviland opened communication with Murray, and they both looked daily for the arrival of Amherst, whose approach was rumored by prisoners and deserters.[845]
[Footnote 843: Vaudreuil au Ministre, 29 Août, 1760.]
[Footnote 844: A List of the Forces employed in the Expedition against Canada, 1760. Compare Mante, 340, Knox, II. 392, and Rogers, 188. Chevalier Johnstone, who was with Bougainville, says "about four thousand," which Vaudreuil multiplies to twelve thousand.]
[Footnote 845: Rogers, Journals. Diary of a Sergeant in the Army of Haviland. Johnstone, Campaign of 1760. Bigot au Ministre, 29 Août, 1760.]
The army of Amherst had gathered at Oswego in July. On the tenth of August it was all afloat on Lake Ontario, to the number of ten thousand one hundred and forty-two men, besides about seven hundred Indians under Sir William Johnson.[846]Before the fifteenth the whole had reached La Présentation, otherwise called Oswegatchie or La Galette, the seat of Father Piquet's mission. Near by was a French armed brig, the "Ottawa," with ten cannon and a hundred men, threatening destruction to Amherst's bateaux and whaleboats. Five gunboats attacked and captured her. Then the army advanced again, and were presently joined by two armed vessels of their own which had lingered behind, bewildered among the channels of the Thousand Islands.
[Footnote 846: A List of the Forces employed in the Expedition against Canada. Compare Mante, 301, and Knox, II. 403.]
Near the head of the rapids, a little below La Galette, stood Fort Lévis, built the year before on an islet in mid-channel. Amherst might have passed its batteries with slight loss, continuing his voyage without paying it the honor of a siege; and this was what the French commanders feared that he would do. "We shall be fortunate," Lévis wrote to Bourlamaque, "if the enemy amuse themselves with capturing it. My chief anxiety is lest Amherst should reach Montreal so soon that we may not have time to unite our forces to attack Haviland or Murray." If he had better known the English commander, Lévis would have seen that he was not the man to leave a post of the enemy in his rear under any circumstances; and Amherst had also another reason for wishing to get the garrison into his hands, for he expected to find among them the pilots whom he needed to guide his boats down the rapids. He therefore invested the fort, and, on the twenty-third, cannonaded it from his vessels, the mainland, and the neighboring islands. It was commanded by Pouchot, the late commandant of Niagara, made prisoner in the last campaign, and since exchanged. As the rocky islet had but little earth, the defences, though thick and strong, were chiefly of logs, which flew in splinters under the bombardment. The French, however, made a brave resistance. The firing lasted all day, was resumed in the morning, and continued two days more; when Pouchot, whose works were in ruins, surrendered himself and his garrison. On this, Johnson's Indians prepared to kill the prisoners; and, being compelled to desist, three fourths of them went home in a rage.[847]
[Footnote 847: On the capture of Fort Lévis, _Amherst to Pitt, 26 Aug. 1760. Amherst to Monckton, same date_. Pouchot, II. 264-282. Knox, II. 405-413. Mante, 303-306. _All Canada in the Hands of the English_ (Boston, 1760). Journal of Colonel Nathaniel Woodhull.]
Now began the critical part of the expedition, the descent of the rapids. The Galops, the Rapide Plat, the Long Saut, the Côteau du Lac were passed in succession, with little loss, till they reached the Cedars, the Buisson, and the Cascades, where the reckless surges dashed and bounded in the sun, beautiful and terrible as young tigers at play. Boat after boat, borne on their foaming crests, rushed madly down the torrent. Forty-six were totally wrecked, eighteen were damaged, and eighty-four men were drowned.[848] La Corne was watching the rapids with a considerable body of Canadians; and it is difficult to see why this bold and enterprising chief allowed the army to descend undisturbed through passes so dangerous. At length the last rapid was left behind; and the flotilla, gliding in peace over the smooth breast of Lake St. Louis, landed at Isle Perrot, a few leagues from Montreal. In the morning, September sixth, the troops embarked again, landed unopposed at La Chine, nine miles from the city, marched on without delay, and encamped before its walls.
[Footnote 848: Amherst to Pitt, 8 Sept. 1760.]
The Montreal of that time was a long, narrow assemblage of wooden or stone houses, one or two stories high, above which rose the peaked towers of the Seminary, the spires of three churches, the walls of four convents, with the trees of their adjacent gardens, and, conspicuous at the lower end, a high mound of earth, crowned by a redoubt, where a few cannon were mounted. The whole was surrounded by a shallow moat and a bastioned stone wall, made for defenceagainst Indians, and incapable of resisting cannon.[849]
[Footnote 849: An East View of Montreal, drawn on the Spot by Thomas Patten (King's Maps, British Museum), Plan of Montreal, 1759. A Description of Montreal, in several magazines of the time. The recent Canadian publication called Le Vieux Montréal, is exceedingly incorrect as to the numbers of the British troops and the position of their camps.]
On the morning after Amherst encamped above the place, Murray landed to encamp below it; and Vaudreuil, looking across the St. Lawrence, could see the tents of Haviland's little army on the southern shore. Bourlamaque, Bougainville, and Roquemaure, abandoned by all their militia, had crossed to Montreal with the few regulars that remained with them. The town was crowded with non-combatant refugees. Here, too, was nearly all the remaining force of Canada, consisting of twenty-two hundred troops of the line and some two hundred colony troops; for all the Canadians had by this time gone home. Many of the regulars, especially of the colony troops, had also deserted; and the rest were so broken in discipline that their officers were forced to use entreaties instead of commands. The three armies encamped around the city amounted to seventeen thousand men;[850] Amherst was bringing up his cannon from La Chine, and the town wall would have crumbled before them in an hour.
[Footnote 850: A List of the Forces employed in the Expedition against Canada. See Smith, History of Canada, I. Appendix xix. Vaudreuil writes to Charles Langlade, on the ninth, that the three armies amount to twenty thousand, and raises the number to thirty-two thousand in a letter to the Minister on the next day. Berniers says twenty thousand; Lévis, for obvious reasons, exaggerates the number to forty thousand.]
On the night when Amherst arrived, the Governor called a council of war.[851] It was resolved that since all the militia and many of the regulars had abandoned the army, and the Indian allies of France had gone over to the enemy, further resistance was impossible. Vaudreuil laid before the assembled officers a long paper that he had drawn up, containing fifty-five articles of capitulation to be proposed to the English; and these were unanimously approved.[852] In the morning Bougainville carried them to the tent of Amherst. He granted the greater part, modified some, and flatly refused others. That which the French officers thought more important than all the rest was the provision that the troops should march out with arms, cannon, and the honors of war; to which it was replied: "The whole garrison of Montreal and all other French troops in Canada must lay down their arms, and shall not serve during the present war." This demand was felt to be intolerable. The Governor sent Bougainville back to remonstrate; but Amherst was inflexible. Then Lévis tried to shake his resolution, and sent him an officer with the following note: "I send your Excellency M. de la Pause, Assistant Quartermaster-General of the Army, on the subject of the too rigorous article which you dictate to the troops by the capitulation, to which it would not be possible for us to subscribe." Amherst answered the envoy: "I am fully resolved, for the infamous part the troops of France have acted in exciting the savages to perpetrate the most horrid and unheard of barbarities in the whole progress of the war, and for other open treacheries and flagrant breaches of faith, to manifest to all the world by this capitulation my detestation of such practices;" and he dismissed La Pause with a short note, refusing to change the conditions.
[Footnote 851: Vaudreuil au Ministre, 10 Sept. 1760.]
[Footnote 852: Procès-verbal de la Déliberation du Conseil de Guerre tenu à Montréal, 6 Sept. 1760.]
On the next morning, September eighth, Vaudreuil yielded, and signed the capitulation. By it Canada and all its dependencies passed to the British Crown. French officers, civil and military, with French troops and sailors, were to be sent to France in British ships. Free exercise of religion was assured to the people of the colony, and the religious communities were to retain their possessions, rights, and privileges. All persons who might wish to retire to France were allowed to do so, and the Canadians were to remain in full enjoyment of feudal and other property, including negro and Indian slaves.[853]
[Footnote 853: Articles of Capitulation, 8 Sept. 1760. Amherst to Pitt, same date.]
The greatest alarm had prevailed among the inhabitants lest they should suffer violence from the English Indians, and Vaudreuil had endeavored to provide that these dangerous enemies should be sent back at once to their villages. This was refused, with the remark: "There never have been any cruelties committed by the Indians of our army." Strict precautions were taken at the same time, not only against the few savages whom the firm conduct of Johnson at Fort Lévis had not driven away, but also against the late allies of the French, now become a peril to them. In consequence, not a man, woman, or child was hurt. Amherst, in general orders, expressed his confidence "that the troops will not disgrace themselves by the least appearance of inhumanity, or by any unsoldierlike behavior in seeking for plunder; and that as the Canadians are now become British subjects, they will feel the good effects of His Majesty's protection." They were in fact treated with a kindness that seemed to surprise them.
Lévis was so incensed at the demand that the troops should lay down their arms and serve no longer during the war that, before the capitulation was signed, he made a formal protest[854] in his own name and that of the officers from France, and insisted that the negotiation should be broken off. "If," he added, "the Marquis de Vaudreuil, through political motives, thinks himself obliged to surrender the colony at once, we ask his permission to withdraw with the troops of the line to the Island of St. Helen, in order to uphold there, on our own behalf, the honor of the King's arms." The proposal was of course rejected, as Lévis knew that it would be, and he and his officers were ordered to conform to the capitulation. When Vaudreuil reached France, three months after, he had the mortification to receive from the Colonial Minister a letter containing these words: "Though His Majesty was perfectly aware of the state of Canada, nevertheless, after the assurances you had given to make the utmost efforts to sustain the honor of his arms, he did not expect to hear so soon of the surrender of Montreal and the whole colony. But, granting that capitulation was a necessity, his Majesty was not the less surprised and ill pleased at the conditions, so little honorable, to which you submitted, especially after the representations made you by the Chevalier de Lévis."[855] The brother of Vaudreuil complained to the Minister of the terms of this letter, and the Minister replied: "I see with regret, Monsieur, that you are pained by the letter I wrote your brother; but I could not help telling him what the King did me the honor to say to me; and it would have been unpleasant for him to hear it from anybody else."[856]
[Footnote 854: Protêt de M. de Lévis à M. de Vaudreuil contre la Clause dans les Articles de Capitulation qui exige que les Troupes mettront bas les Armes, avec l'Ordre de M. de Vaudreuil au Chevalier de Lévis de se conformer à la Capitulation proposée. Vaudreuil au Ministre de la Marine, 10 Sept. 1760. Lévis au Ministre de la Guerre, 27 Nov. 1760.]
[Footnote 855: Le Ministre à Vaudreuil, 5 Déc. 1760.]
[Footnote 856: Le Ministre au Vicomte de Vaudreuil, Frère du Gouverneur, 21 Déc. 1760.]
It is true that Vaudreuil had in some measure drawn this reproach upon himself by his boastings about the battles he would fight; yet the royal displeasure was undeserved. The Governor had no choice but to give up the colony; for Amherst had him in his power, and knew that he could exact what terms he pleased. Further resistance could only have ended in surrender at the discretion of the victor, and the protest of Lévis was nothing but a device to save his own reputation and that of his brother officers from France. Vaudreuil had served the King and the colony in some respects with ability, always with an unflagging zeal; and he loved the land of his birth with a jealous devotion that goes far towards redeeming his miserable defects. The King himself, and not the servants whom he abandoned to their fate, was answerable for the loss of New France.
Half the continent had changed hands at the scratch of a pen. Governor Bernard, of Massachusetts, proclaimed a day of thanksgiving for the great event, and the Boston newspapers recount how the occasion was celebrated with a parade of the cadets and other volunteer corps, a grand dinner in Faneuil Hall, music, bonfires, illuminations, firing of cannon, and, above all, by sermons in every church of the province; for the heart of early New England always found voice through her pulpits. Before me lies a bundle of these sermons, rescued from sixscore years of dust, scrawled on their title-pages with names of owners dead long ago, worm-eaten, dingy, stained with the damps of time, and uttering in quaint old letterpress the emotions of a buried and forgotten past. Triumph, gratulation, hope, breathe in every line, but no ill-will against a fallen enemy. Thomas Foxcroft, pastor of the "Old Church in Boston," preaches from the text, "The Lord hath done great things for us, whereof we are glad." "Long," he says, "had it been the common opinion, Delenda est Carthago, Canada must be conquered, or we could hope for no lasting quiet in these parts; and now, through the good hand of our God upon us, we see the happy day of its accomplishment. We behold His Majesty's victorious troops treading upon the high places of the enemy, their last fortress delivered up, and their whole country surrendered to the King of Britain in the person of his general, the intrepid, the serene, the successful Amherst."
The loyal John Mellen, pastor of the Second Church in Lancaster, exclaims, boding nothing of the tempest to come: "Let us fear God and honor the King, and be peaceable subjects of an easy and happy government. And may the blessing of Heaven be ever upon those enemies of our country that have now submitted to the English Crown, and according to the oath they have taken lead quiet lives in all godliness and honesty." Then he ventures to predict that America, now thrown open to British colonists, will be peopled in a century and a half with sixty million souls: a prophecy likely to be more than fulfilled.
"God has given us to sing this day the downfall of New France, the North American Babylon, New England's rival," cries Eli Forbes to his congregation of sober farmers and staid matrons at the rustic village of Brookfield. Like many of his flock, he had been to the war, having served two years as chaplain of Ruggles's Massachusetts regiment; and something of a martial spirit breathes through his discourse. He passes in review the events of each campaign down to their triumphant close. "Thus God was our salvation and our strength; yet he who directs the great events of war suffered not our joy to be uninterrupted, for we had to lament the fall of the valiant and good General Wolfe, whose death demands a tear from every British eye, a sigh from every Protestant heart. Is he dead? I recall myself. Such heroes are immortal; he lives on every loyal tongue; he lives in every grateful breast; and charity bids me give him a place among the princes of heaven." Nor does he forget the praises of Amherst, "the renowned general, worthy of that most honorable of all titles, the Christian hero; for he loves his enemies, and while he subdues them he makes them happy. He transplants British liberty to where till now it was unknown. He acts the General, the Briton, the Conqueror, and the Christian. What fair hopes arise from the peaceful and undisturbed enjoyment of this good land, and the blessing of our gracious God with it! Methinks I see towns enlarged, settlements increased, and this howling wilderness become a fruitful field which the Lord hath blessed; and, to complete the scene, I see churches rise and flourish in every Christian grace where has been the seat of Satan and Indian idolatry."
Nathaniel Appleton, of Cambridge, hails the dawning of a new era. "Who can tell what great and glorious things God is about to bring forward in the world, and in this world of America in particular? Oh, may the time come when these deserts, which for ages unknown have been regions of darkness and habitations of cruelty, shall be illuminated with the light of the glorious Gospel, and when this part of the world, which till the later ages was utterly unknown, shall be the glory and joy of the whole earth!"
On the American continent the war was ended, and the British colonists breathed for a space, as they drifted unwittingly towards a deadlier strife. They had learned hard and useful lessons. Their mutual jealousies and disputes, the quarrels of their governors and assemblies, the want of any general military organization, and the absence, in most of them, of military habits, joined to narrow views of their own interest, had unfitted them to the last degree for carrying on offensive war. Nor were the British troops sent for their support remarkable in the beginning for good discipline or efficient command. When hostilities broke out, the army of Great Britain was so small as to be hardly worth the name. A new one had to be created; and thus the inexperienced Shirley and the incompetent Loudon, with the futile Newcastle behind them, had, besides their own incapacity, the disadvantage of raw troops and half-formed officers; while against them stood an enemy who, though weak in numbers, was strong in a centralized military organization, skilful leaders armed with untrammelled and absolute authority, practised soldiers, and a population not only brave, but in good part inured to war.
The nature of the country was another cause that helped to protract the contest. "Geography," says Von Moltke, "is three fourths of military science;" and never was the truth of his words more fully exemplified. Canada was fortified with vast outworks of defence in the savage forests, marshes, and mountains that encompassed her, where the thoroughfares were streams choked with fallen trees and obstructed by cataracts. Never was the problem of moving troops, encumbered with baggage and artillery, a more difficult one. The question was less how to fight the enemy than how to get at him. If a few practicable roads had crossed this broad tract of wilderness, the war would have been shortened and its character changed.
From these and other reasons, the numerical superiority of the English was to some extent made unavailing. This superiority, though exaggerated by French writers, was nevertheless immense if estimated by the number of men called to arms; but only a part of these could be employed in offensive operations. The rest garrisoned forts and blockhouses and guarded the far reach of frontier from Nova Scotia to South Carolina, where a wily enemy, silent and secret as fate, choosing their own time and place of attack, and striking unawares at every unguarded spot, compelled thousands of men, scattered at countless points of defence, to keep unceasing watch against a few hundred savage marauders. Full half the levies of the colonies, and many of the regulars, were used in service of this kind.
In actual encounters the advantage of numbers was often with the French, through the comparative ease with which they could concentrate their forces at a given point. Of the ten considerable sieges or battles of the war, five, besides the great bushfight in which the Indians defeated Braddock, were victories for France; and in four of these--Oswego, Fort William Henry, Montmorenci, and Ste.-Foy--the odds were greatly on her side.
Yet in this the most picturesque and dramatic of American wars, there is nothing more noteworthy than the skill with which the French and Canadian leaders used their advantages; the indomitable spirit with which, slighted and abandoned as they were, they grappled with prodigious difficulties, and the courage with which they were seconded by regulars and militia alike. In spite of occasional lapses, the defence of Canada deserves a tribute of admiration.
Chapter 31
1758-1763
The Peace of Paris
In accordance with the terms of the capitulation of Montreal, the French military officers, with such of the soldiers as could be kept together, as well as all the chief civil officers of the colony, sailed for France in vessels provided by the conquerors. They were voluntarily followed by the principal members of the Canadian noblesse, and by many of the merchants who had no mind to swear allegiance to King George. The peasants and poorer colonists remained at home to begin a new life under a new flag.
Though this exodus of the natural leaders of Canada was in good part deferred till the next year, and though the number of persons to be immediately embarked was reduced by the desertion of many French soldiers who had married Canadian wives, yet the English authorities were sorely perplexed to find vessels enough for the motley crowd of passengers. When at last they were all on their way, a succession of furious autumnal storms fell upon them. The ship that carried Lévis barely escaped wreck, and that which bore Vaudreuil and his wife fared little better.[857] Worst of all was the fate of the "Auguste," on board of which was the bold but ruthless partisan, Saint-Luc de la Corne, his brother, his children, and a party of Canadian officers, together with ladies, merchants, and soldiers. A worthy ecclesiastical chronicler paints the unhappy vessel as a floating Babylon, and sees in her fate the stern judgment of Heaven.[858] It is true that New France ran riot in the last years of her existence; but before the "Auguste" was well out of the St. Lawrence she was so tossed and buffeted, so lashed with waves and pelted with rain, that the most alluring forms of sin must have lost their charm, and her inmates passed days rather of penance than transgression. There was a violent storm as the ship entered the Gulf; then a calm, during which she took fire in the cook's galley. The crew and passengers subdued the flames after desperate efforts; but their only food thenceforth was dry biscuit. Off the coast of Cape Breton another gale rose. They lost their reckoning and lay tossing blindly amid the tempest. The exhausted sailors took, in despair, to their hammocks, from which neither commands nor blows could rouse them, while amid shrieks, tears, prayers, and vows to Heaven, the "Auguste" drove towards the shore, struck, and rolled over on her side. La Corne with six others gained the beach; and towards night they saw the ship break asunder, and counted a hundred and fourteen corpses strewn along the sand. Aided by Indians and by English officers, La Corne made his way on snow-shoes up the St. John, and by a miracle of enduring hardihood reached Quebec before the end of winter.[859]
[Footnote 857: Lévis à Belleisle, 27 Nov. 1760.]
[Footnote 858: Faillon, Vie de Mademoiselle Le Ber, 363-370.]
[Footnote 859: Journal du Voyage de M. Saint-Luc de la Corne. This is his own narrative.]
The other ships weathered the November gales, and landed their passengers on the shores of France, where some of them found a dismal welcome, being seized and thrown into the Bastille. These were Vaudreuil, Bigot, Cadet, Péan, Bréard, Varin, Le Mercier, Penisseault, Maurin, Corpron, and others accused of the frauds and peculations that had helped to ruin Canada. In the next year they were all put on trial, whether as an act of pure justice or as a device to turn public indignation from the Government. In December, 1761, judges commissioned for the purpose began their sessions at the Châtelet, and a prodigious mass of evidence was laid before them. Cadet, with brazen effrontery, at first declared himself innocent, but ended with full and unblushing confession. Bigot denied everything till silenced point by point with papers bearing his own signature. The prisoners defended themselves by accusing each other. Bigot and Vaudreuil brought mutual charges, while all agreed in denouncing Cadet. Vaudreuil, as before mentioned, was acquitted. Bigot was banished from France for life, his property was confiscated, and he was condemned to pay fifteen hundred thousand francs by way of restitution. Cadet was banished for nine years from Paris and required to refund six millions; while others were sentenced in sums varying from thirty thousand to eight hundred thousand francs, and were ordered to be held in prison till the money was paid. Of twenty-one persons brought to trial ten were condemned, six were acquitted, three received an admonition, and two were dismissed for want of evidence. Thirty-four failed to appear, of whom seven were sentenced in default, and judgment was reserved in the case of the rest.[860] Even those who escaped from justice profited little by their gains, for unless they had turned them betimes into land or other substantial values, they lost them in a discredited paper currency and dishonored bills of exchange.
[Footnote 860: Jugement rendu souverainement et en dernier Ressort dans l'Affaire du Canada. Papers at the Châtelet of Paris, cited by Dussieux.]
While on the American continent the last scenes of the war were drawing to their close, the contest raged in Europe with unabated violence. England was in the full career of success; but her great ally, Frederic of Prussia, seemed tottering to his ruin. In the summer of 1758 his glory was at its height. French, Austrians, and Russians had all fled before him. But the autumn brought reverses; and the Austrian general, Daun, at the head of an overwhelming force, gained over him a partial victory, which his masterly strategy robbed of its fruits. It was but a momentary respite. His kingdom was exhausted by its own triumphs. His best generals were dead, his best soldiers killed or disabled, his resources almost spent, the very chandeliers of his palace melted into coin; and all Europe was in arms against him. The disciplined valor of the Prussian troops and the supreme leadership of their undespairing King had thus far held the invading hosts at bay; but now the end seemed near. Frederic could not be everywhere at once; and while he stopped one leak the torrent poured in at another. The Russians advanced again, defeated General Wedell, whom he sent against them, and made a junction with the Austrians. In August, 1759, he attacked their united force at Kunersdorf, broke their left wing to pieces, took a hundred and eighty cannon, forced their centre to give ground, and after hours of furious fighting was overwhelmed at last. In vain he tried to stop the rout. The bullets killed two horses under him, tore his clothes, and crushed a gold snuff-box in his waistcoat pocket. "Is there no b---- of a shot that can hit me, then?" he cried in his bitterness, as his aides-de-camp forced him from the field. For a few days he despaired; then rallied to his forlorn task, and with smiles on his lip and anguish at his heart watched, manoeuvred, and fought with cool and stubborn desperation. To his friend D'Argens he wrote soon after his defeat: "Death is sweet in comparison to such a life as mine. Have pity on me and it; believe that I still keep to myself a great many evil things, not wishing to afflict or disgust anybody with them, and that I would not counsel you to fly these unlucky countries if I had any ray of hope; Adieu, mon cher!" It was well for him and for Prussia that he had strong allies in the dissensions and delays of his enemies. But his cup was not yet full. Dresden was taken from him, eight of his remaining generals and twelve thousand men were defeated and captured at Maxen, and "this infernal campaign," as he calls it, closed in thick darkness.
"I wrap myself in my stoicism as best I can," he writes to Voltaire. "If you saw me you would hardly know me: I am old, broken, gray-headed, wrinkled. If this goes on there will be nothing left of me but the mania of making verses and an inviolable attachment to my duties and to the few virtuous men I know. But you will not get a peace signed by my hand except on conditions honorable to my nation. Your people, blown up with conceit and folly, may depend on this."
The same stubborn conflict with overmastering odds, the same intrepid resolution, the same subtle strategy, the same skill in eluding the blow and lightning-like quickness in retorting it, marked Frederic's campaign of 1760. At Liegnitz three armies, each equal to his own, closed round him, and he put them all to flight. While he was fighting in Silesia, the Allies marched upon Berlin, took it, and held it three days, but withdrew on his approach. For him there was no peace. "Why weary you with the details of my labors and my sorrows?" he wrote again to his faithful D'Argens. "My spirits have forsaken me; all gayety is buried with the loved noble ones to whom my heart was bound." He had lost his mother and his devoted sister Wilhelmina. "You as a follower of Epicurus put a value upon life; as for me, I regard death from the Stoic point of view. I have told you, and I repeat it, never shall my hand sign a humiliating peace. Finish this campaign I will, resolved to dare all, to succeed, or find a glorious end." Then came the victory of Torgau, the last and one of the most desperate of his battles: a success dearly bought, and bringing neither rest nor safety. Once more he wrote to D'Argens: "Adieu, dear Marquis; write to me sometimes. Don't forget a poor devil who curses his fatal existence ten times a day." "I live like a military monk. Endless business, and a little consolation from my books. I don't know if I shall outlive this war, but if I do I am firmly resolved to pass the rest of my life in solitude in the bosom of philosophy and friendship. Your nation, you see, is blinder than you thought. These fools will lose their Canada and Pondicherry to please the Queen of Hungary and the Czarina."
The campaign of 1761 was mainly defensive on the part of Frederic. In the exhaustion of his resources he could see no means of continuing the struggle. "It is only Fortune," says the royal sceptic, "that can extricate me from the situation I am in. I escape out of it by looking at the universe on the great scale like an observer from some distant planet. All then seems to be so infinitely small that I could almost pity my enemies for giving themselves so much trouble about so very little. I read a great deal, I devour my books. But for them I think hypochondria would have had me in Bedlam before now. In fine, dear Marquis, we live in troublous times and desperate situations. I have all the properties of a stage hero; always in danger, always on the point of perishing."[861] And in another mood: "I begin to feel that, as the Italians say, revenge is a pleasure for the gods. My philosophy is worn out by suffering. I am no saint, and I will own that I should die content if only I could first inflict a part of the misery that I endure."
[Footnote 861: The above extracts are as translated by Carlyle in his History of Frederick II. of Prussia.]
While Frederic was fighting for life and crown, an event took place in England that was to have great influence on the war. Walpole recounts it thus, writing to George Montagu on the twenty-fifth of October, 1760: "My man Harry tells me all the amusing news. He first told me of the late Prince of Wales's death, and to-day of the King's; so I must tell you all I know of departed majesty. He went to bed well last night, rose at six this morning as usual, looked, I suppose, if all his money was in his purse, and called for his chocolate. A little after seven he went into the closet; the German valet-de-chambre heard a noise, listened, heard something like a groan, ran in, and found the hero of Oudenarde and Dettingen on the floor with a gash on his right temple by falling against the corner of a bureau. He tried to speak, could not, and expired. The great ventricle of the heart had burst. What an enviable death!"
The old King was succeeded by his grandson, George III., a mirror of domestic virtues, conscientious, obstinate, narrow. His accession produced political changes that had been preparing for some time. His grandfather was German at heart, loved his Continental kingdom of Hanover, and was eager for all measures that looked to its defence and preservation. Pitt, too, had of late vigorously supported the Continental war, saying that he would conquer America in Germany. Thus with different views the King and the Minister had concurred in the same measures. But George III. was English by birth, language, and inclination. His ruling passion was the establishment and increase of his own authority. He disliked Pitt, the representative of the people. He was at heart averse to a war, the continuance of which would make the Great Commoner necessary, and therefore powerful, and he wished for a peace that would give free scope to his schemes for strengthening the prerogative. He was not alone in his pacific inclinations. The enemies of the haughty Minister, who had ridden roughshod over men far above him in rank, were tired of his ascendency, and saw no hope of ending it but by ending the war. Thus a peace party grew up, and the young King became its real, though not at first its declared, supporter.
The Tory party, long buried, showed signs of resurrection. There were those among its members who, even in a king of the hated line of Hanover, could recognize and admire the same spirit of arbitrary domination that had marked their fallen idols, the Stuarts; and they now joined hands with the discontented Whigs in opposition to Pitt. The horrors of war, the blessings of peace, the weight of taxation, the growth of the national debt, were the rallying cries of the new party; but the mainspring of their zeal was hostility to the great Minister. Even his own colleagues chafed under his spirit of mastery; the chiefs of the Opposition longed to inherit his power; and the King had begun to hate him as a lion in his path. Pitt held to his purpose regardless of the gathering storm. That purpose, as proclaimed by his adherents, was to secure a solid and lasting peace, which meant the reduction of France to so low an estate that she could no more be a danger to her rival. In this he had the sympathy of the great body of the nation.
Early in 1761 the King, a fanatic for prerogative, set his enginery in motion. The elections for the new Parliament were manipulated in his interest. If he disliked Pitt as the representative of the popular will, he also disliked his colleague, the shuffling and uncertain Newcastle, as the representative of a too powerful nobility. Elements hostile to both were introduced into the Cabinet and the great offices. The King'sfavorite, the Earl of Bute, supplanted Holdernesse as Secretary of State for the Northern Department; Charles Townshend, an opponent of Pitt, was made Secretary of War; Legge, Chancellor of the Exchequer, was replaced by Viscount Barrington, who was sure for the King; while a place in the Cabinet was also given to the Duke of Bedford, one of the few men who dared face the formidable Minister. It was the policy of the King and his following to abandon Prussia, hitherto supported by British subsidies, make friends with Austria and Russia at her expense, and conclude a separate peace with France.
France was in sore need of peace. The infatuation that had turned her from her own true interest to serve the passions of Maria Theresa and the Czarina Elizabeth had brought military humiliation and financial ruin. Abbé de Bernis, Minister of Foreign Affairs, had lost the favor of Madame de Pompadour, and had been supplanted by the Duc de Choiseul. The new Minister had gained his place by pleasing the favorite; but he kept it through his own ability and the necessities of the time. The Englishman Stanley, whom Pitt sent to negotiate with him, drew this sketch of his character: "Though he may have his superiors, not only in experience of business, but in depth and refinement as a statesman, he is a person of as bold and daring a spirit as any man whatever in our country or in his own. Madame Pompadour has ever been looked upon by all preceding courtiers and ministers as their tutelary deity, under whose auspices only they could exist, and who was as much out of their reach as if she were of a superior class of beings; but this Minister is so far from being in subordination to her influence that he seized the first opportunity of depriving her not of an equality, but of any share of power, reducing her to the necessity of applying to him even for those favors that she wants for herself and her dependents. He has effected this great change, which every other man would have thought impossible, in the interior of the Court, not by plausibility, flattery, and address, but with a high hand, with frequent railleries and sarcasms which would have ruined any other, and, in short, by a clear superiority of spirit and resolution."[862]
[Footnote 862: Stanley to Pitt, 6 Aug. 1761, in Grenville Correspondence, I. 367, note.]
Choiseul was vivacious, brilliant, keen, penetrating; believing nothing, fearing nothing; an easy moralist, an uncertain ally, a hater of priests; light-minded, inconstant; yet a kind of patriot, eager to serve France and retrieve her fortunes.
He flattered himself with no illusions. "Since we do not know how to make war," he said, "we must make peace;"[863] and he proposed a congress of all the belligerent Powers at Augsburg. At the same time, since the war in Germany was distinct from the maritime and colonial war of France and England, he proposed a separate negotiation with the British Court in order to settle the questions between them as a preliminary to the general pacification. Pitt consented, and Stanley went as envoy to Versailles; while M. de Bussy came as envoy to London and, in behalf of Choiseul, offered terms of peace, the first of which was the entire abandonment of Canada to England.[864] But the offers were accompanied by the demand that Spain, which had complaints of its own against England, should be admitted as a party to the negotiation, and even hold in some measure the attitude of a mediator. Pitt spurned the idea with fierce contempt. "Time enough to treat of all that, sir, when the Tower of London is taken sword in hand."[865] He bore his part with the ability that never failed him, and with a supreme arrogance that rose to a climax in his demand that the fortress of Dunkirk should be demolished, not because it was any longer dangerous to England, but because the nation would regard its destruction "as an eternal monument of the yoke imposed on France."[866]
[Footnote 863: Flassan, Diplomatie Française, V. 376 (Paris, 1809).]
[Footnote 864: See the proposals in Entick, V. 161.]
[Footnote 865: Beatson, Military Memoirs, II. 434. The Count de Fuentes to the Earl of Egremont, 25 Dec. 1761, in Entick, V. 264.]
[Footnote 866: On this negotiation, see Mémoire historique sur la Négociation de la France et de l'Angleterre (Paris, 1761), a French Government publication containing papers on both sides. The British Ministry also published such documents as they saw fit, under the title of Papers relating to the Rupture with Spain. Compare Adolphus, George III., I. 31-39.]
Choiseul replied with counter-propositions less humiliating to his nation. When the question of accepting or rejecting them came before the Ministry, the views of Pitt prevailed by a majority of one, and, to the disappointment of Bute and the King, the conferences were broken off. Choiseul, launched again on the billows of a disastrous war, had seen and provided against the event. Ferdinand VI. of Spain had died, and Carlos III. had succeeded to his throne. Here, as in England, change of kings brought change of policy. While negotiating vainly with Pitt, the French Minister had negotiated secretly and successfully with Carlos; and the result was the treaty known as the Family Compact, having for its object the union of the various members of the House of Bourbon in common resistance to the growing power of England. It provided that in any future war the Kings of France and Spain should act as one towards foreign Powers, insomuch that the enemy of either should be the enemy of both; and the Bourbon princes of Italy were invited to join in the covenant.[867] What was more to the present purpose, a special agreement was concluded on the same day, by which Spain bound herself to declare war against England unless that Power should make peace with France before the first of May, 1762. For the safety of her colonies and her trade Spain felt it her interest to join her sister nation in putting a check on the vast expansion of British maritime power. She could bring a hundred ships of war to aid the dilapidated navy of France, and the wealth of the Indies to aid her ruined treasury.
[Footnote 867: Flassan, Diplomatie Française, V. 317 (Paris, 1809).]
Pitt divined the secret treaty, and soon found evidence of it. He resolved to demand at once full explanation from Spain; and, failing to receive a satisfactory reply, attack her at home and abroad before she was prepared. On the second of October he laid his plan before a Cabinet Council held at a house in St. James Street. There were present the Earl of Bute, the Duke of Newcastle, Earl Granville, Earl Temple, and others of the Ministry. Pitt urged his views with great warmth. "This," he exclaimed, "is the time for humbling the whole House of Bourbon!"[868] His brother-in-law, Temple, supported him. Newcastle kept silent. Bute denounced the proposal, and the rest were of his mind. "If these views are to be followed," said Pitt, "this is the last time I can sit at this board. I was called to the administration of affairs by the voice of the people; to them I have always considered myself as accountable for my conduct; and therefore cannot remain in a situation which makes me responsible for measures I am no longer allowed to guide." Nothing could be more offensive to George III. and his adherents.
[Footnote 868: Beatson, II. 438.]
The veteran Carteret, Earl Granville, replied angrily: "I find the gentleman is determined to leave us; nor can I say I am sorry for it, since otherwise he would certainly have compelled us to leave him. But if he is resolved to assume the office of exclusively advising His Majesty and directing the operations of the war, to what purpose are we called to this council? When he talks of being responsible to the people, he talks the language of the House of Commons, and forgets that at this board he is responsible only to the King. However, though he may possibly have convinced himself of his infallibility, still it remains that we should be equally convinced before we can resign our understandings to his direction, or join with him in the measure he proposes."[869]
[Footnote 869: Annual Register, 1761, p. 44. Adolphus, George III., I. 40. Thackeray, Life of Chatham, I. 592.]
Pitt resigned, and his colleagues rejoiced.[870] Power fell to Bute and the Tories; and great was the fall. The mass of the nation was with the defeated Minister. On Lord Mayor's Day Bute and Barrington were passing St. Paul's in a coach, which the crowd mistook for that of Pitt, and cheered lustily; till one man, looking in at the window, shouted to the rest: "This isn't Pitt; it's Bute, and be damned to him!" The cheers turned forthwith to hisses, mixed with cries of "No Bute!" "No Newcastle salmon!" "Pitt forever!" Handfuls of mud were showered against the coach, and Barrington's ruffles were besmirched with it.[871]
[Footnote 870: Walpole, George III., I. 80, and note by Sir Denis Le Marchant, 80-82.]
[Footnote 871: Nuthall to Lady Chatham, 12 Nov. 1761, in Chatham Correspondence, II. 166.]
The fall of Pitt was like the knell of doom to Frederic of Prussia. It meant abandonment by his only ally, and the loss of the subsidy which was his chief resource. The darkness around him grew darker yet, and not a hope seemed left; when as by miracle the clouds broke, and light streamed out of the blackness. The bitterest of his foes, the Czarina Elizabeth, she whom he had called infâme catin du Nord, died, and was succeeded by her nephew, Peter III. Here again, as in England and Spain, a new sovereign brought new measures. The young Czar, simple and enthusiastic, admired the King of Prussia, thought him the paragon of heroes, and proclaimed himself his friend. No sooner was he on the throne than Russia changed front. From the foe of Frederic she became his ally; and in the opening campaign of 1762 the army that was to have aided in crushing him was ranged on his side. It was a turn of fortune too sharp and sudden to endure. Ill-balanced and extreme in all things, Peter plunged into headlong reforms, exasperated the clergy and the army, and alienated his wife, Catherine, who had hoped to rule in his name, and who now saw herself supplanted by his mistress. Within six months he was deposed and strangled. Catherine, one of whose lovers had borne part in the murder, reigned in his stead, conspicuous by the unbridled disorders of her life, and by powers of mind that mark her as the ablest of female sovereigns. If she did not share her husband's enthusiasm for Frederic, neither did she share Elizabeth's hatred of him. He, on his part, taught by hard experience, conciliated instead of insulting her, and she let him alone.
Peace with Russia brought peace with Sweden, and Austria with the Germanic Empire stood alone against him. France needed all her strength to hold her own against the mixed English and German force under Ferdinand of Brunswick in the Rhine countries. She made spasmodic efforts to seize upon Hanover, but the result was humiliating defeat.
In England George III. pursued his policy of strengthening the prerogative, and, jealous of the Whig aristocracy, attacked it in the person of Newcastle. In vain the old politician had played false with Pitt, and trimmed to please his young master. He was worried into resigning his place in the Cabinet, and Bute, the obsequious agent of the royal will, succeeded him as First Lord of the Treasury. Into his weak and unwilling hands now fell the task of carrying on the war; for the nation, elated with triumphs and full of fight, still called on its rulers for fresh efforts and fresh victories. Pitt had proved a true prophet, and his enemies were put to shame; for the attitude of Spain forced Bute and his colleagues to the open rupture with her which the great Minister had vainly urged upon them; and a new and formidable war was now added to the old.[872] Their counsels were weak and half-hearted; but the armies and navies of England still felt the impulsion that the imperial hand of Pitt had given and the unconquerable spirit that he had roused.
[Footnote 872: Declaration of War against the King of Spain, 4 Jan. 1762.]
This spirit had borne them from victory to victory. In Asia they had driven the French from Pondicherry and all their Indian possessions; in Africa they had wrested from them Gorée and the Senegal country; in the West Indies they had taken Guadeloupe and Dominica; in the European seas they had captured ship after ship, routed and crippled the great fleet of Admiral Conflans, seized Belleisle, and defeated a bold attempt to invade Ireland. The navy of France was reduced to helplessness. Pitt, before his resignation, had planned a series of new operations, including an attack on Martinique, with other West Indian islands still left to France, and then in turn on the Spanish possessions of Havana, Panama, Manila, and the Philippines. Now, more than ever before, the war appeared in its true character. It was a contest for maritime and colonial ascendency; and England saw herself confronted by both her great rivals at once.
Admiral Rodney sailed for Martinique, and Brigadier Monckton joined him with troops from America. Before the middle of February the whole island was in their hands; and Grenada, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent soon shared its fate. The Earl of Albemarle and Admiral Sir George Pococke sailed in early spring on a more important errand, landed in June near Havana with eleven thousand soldiers, and attacked Moro Castle, the key of the city. The pitiless sun of the tropic midsummer poured its fierce light and heat on the parched rocks where the men toiled at the trenches. Earth was so scarce that hardly enough could be had to keep the fascines in place. The siege works were little else than a mass of dry faggots; and when, after exhausting toil, the grand battery opened on the Spanish defences, it presently took fire, was consumed, and had to be made anew. Fresh water failed, and the troops died by scores from thirst; fevers set in, killed many, and disabled nearly half the army. The sea was strewn with floating corpses, and carrion-birds in clouds hovered over the populous graveyards and infected camps. Yet the siege went on: a formidable sally was repulsed; Moro Castle was carried by storm; till at length, two months and eight days after the troops landed, Havana fell into their hands.[873] At the same time Spain was attacked at the antipodes, and the loss of Manila and the Philippines gave her fresh cause to repent her rash compact with France. She was hardly more fortunate near home; for having sent an army to invade Portugal, whichwas in the interest of England, a small British force, under Brigadier Burgoyne, foiled it, and forced it to retire.
[Footnote 873: Journal of the Siege, by the Chief Engineer, in Beatson, II. 544. Mante, 398-465. Entick, V. 363-383.]
The tide of British success was checked for an instant in Newfoundland, where a French squadron attacked St. John's and took it, with its garrison of sixty men. The news reached Amherst at New York; his brother, Lieutenant-Colonel Amherst, was sent to the scene of the mishap. St. John's was retaken, and its late conquerers were made prisoners of war.
The financial condition of France was desperate. Her people were crushed with taxation; her debt grew apace; and her yearly expenditure was nearly double her revenue. Choiseul felt the need of immediate peace; and George III. and Bute were hardly less eager for it, to avert the danger of Pitt's return to power and give free scope to their schemes for strengthening the prerogative. Therefore, in September, 1762, negotiations were resumed. The Duke of Bedford was sent to Paris to settle the preliminaries, and the Duc de Nivernois came to London on the same errand. The populace were still for war. Bedford was hissed as he passed through the streets of London, and a mob hooted at the puny figure of Nivernois as he landed at Dover.
The great question was, Should Canada be restored? Should France still be permitted to keep a foothold on the North American continent? Ever since the capitulation of Montreal a swarm of pamphlets had discussed the momentous subject. Some maintained that the acquisition of Canada was not an original object of the war; that the colony was of little value and ought to be given back to its old masters; that Guadeloupe should be kept instead, the sugar trade of that island being worth far more than the Canadian fur trade; and, lastly, that the British colonists, if no longer held in check by France, would spread themselves over the continent, learn to supply all their own wants, grow independent, and become dangerous. Nor were these views confined to Englishmen. There were foreign observers who clearly saw that the adhesion of her colonies to Great Britain would be jeopardized by the extinction of French power in America. Choiseul warned Stanley that they "would not fail to shake off their dependence the moment Canada should be ceded;" while thirteen years before, the Swedish traveller Kalm declared that the presence of the French in America gave the best assurance to Great Britain that its own colonies would remain in due subjection.[874]
[Footnote 874: Kalm, Travels in North America, I. 207.]
The most noteworthy argument on the other side was that of Franklin, whose words find a strange commentary in the events of the next few years. He affirmed that the colonies were so jealous of each other that they would never unite against England. "If they could not agree to unite against the French and Indians, can it reasonably be supposed that there is any danger of their uniting against their own nation, which it is well known they all love much more than they love one another? I will venture to say union amongst them for such a purpose is not merely improbable, it is impossible;" that is, he prudently adds, without "the most grievous tyranny and oppression," like the bloody rule of "Alva in the Netherlands."[875]
[Footnote 875: Interest of Great Britain in regard to her Colonies (London, 1760)
Lord Bath argues for retaining Canada in A Letter addressed to Two Great Men on the Prospect of Peace (1759). He is answered by another pamphlet called Remarks on the Letter to Two Great Men (1760). The Gentleman's Magazine for 1759 has an ironical article styled Reasons for restoring Canada to the French; and in 1761 a pamphlet against the restitution appeared under the title, Importance of Canada considered in Two Letters to a Noble Lord. These are but a part of the writings on the question.]
If Pitt had been in office he would have demanded terms that must ruin past redemption the maritime and colonial power of France; but Bute was less exacting. In November the plenipotentiaries of England, France, and Spain agreed on preliminaries of peace, in which the following were the essential points. France ceded to Great Britain Canada and all her possessions on the North American continent east of the River Mississippi, except the city of New Orleans and a small adjacent district. She renounced her claims to Acadia, and gave up to the conqueror the Island of Cape Breton, with all other islands in the Gulf and River of St. Lawrence. Spain received back Havana, and paid for it by the cession of Florida, with all her other possessions east of the Mississippi. France, subject to certain restrictions, was left free to fish in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and off a part of the coast of Newfoundland; and the two little islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon were given her as fishing stations on condition that she should not fortify or garrison them. In the West Indies, England restored the captured islands of Guadeloupe, Marigalante, Désirade, and Martinique, and France ceded Grenada and the Grenadines; while it was agreed that of the so-called neutral islands, St. Vincent, Dominica, and Tobago should belong to England, and St. Lucia to France. In Europe, each side promised to give no more help to its allies in the German war. France restored Minorca, and England restored Belleisle; France gave up such parts of Hanoverian territory as she had occupied, and evacuated certain fortresses belonging to Prussia, pledging herself at the same time to demolish, under the inspection of English engineers, her own maritime fortress of Dunkirk. In Africa France ceded Senegal, and received back the small Island of Gorée. In India she lost everything she had gained since the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle; recovered certain trading stations, but renounced the right of building forts or maintaining troops in Bengal.
On the day when the preliminaries were signed, France made a secret agreement with Spain, by which she divested herself of the last shred of her possessions on the North American continent. As compensation for Florida, which her luckless ally had lost in her quarrel, she made over to the Spanish Crown the city of New Orleans, and under the name of Louisiana gave her the vast region spreading westward from the Mississippi towards the Pacific.
On the ninth of December the question of approving the preliminaries came up before both Houses of Parliament. There was a long debate in the Commons. Pitt was not present, confined, it was said, by gout; till late in the day the House was startled by repeated cheers from the outside. The doors opened, and the fallen Minister entered, carried in the arms of his servants, and followed by an applauding crowd. His bearers set him down within the bar, and by the help of a crutch he made his way with difficulty to his seat. "There was a mixture of the very solemn and the theatric in this apparition," says Walpole, who was present. "The moment was so well timed, the importance of the man and his services, the languor of his emaciated countenance, and the study bestowed on his dress were circumstances that struck solemnity into a patriot mind, and did a little furnish ridicule to the hardened and insensible. He was dressed in black velvet, his legs and thighs wrapped in flannel, his feet covered with buskins of black cloth, and his hands with thick gloves." Not for the first time, he was utilizing his maladies for purposes of stage effect. He spoke for about three hours, sometimes standing, and sometimes seated; sometimes with a brief burst of power, more often with the accents of pain and exhaustion. He highly commended the retention of Canada, but denounced the leaving to France a share in the fisheries, as well as other advantages tending to a possible revival of her maritime power. But the Commons listened coldly, and by a great majority approved the preliminaries of peace.
These preliminaries were embodied in the definitive treaty concluded at Paris on the tenth of February, 1763. Peace between France and England brought peace between the warring nations of the Continent. Austria, bereft of her allies, and exhausted by vain efforts to crush Frederic, gave up the attempt in despair, and signed the treaty of Hubertsburg. The Seven Years War was ended.
Chapter 32
1763-1884
Conclusion
"This," said Earl Granville on his deathbed, "has been the most glorious war and the most triumphant peace that England ever knew." Not all were so well pleased, and many held with Pitt that the House of Bourbon should have been forced to drain the cup of humiliation to the dregs. Yet the fact remains that the Peace of Paris marks an epoch than which none in modern history is more fruitful of grand results. With it began a new chapter in the annals of the world. To borrow the words of a late eminent writer, "It is no exaggeration to say that three of the many victories of the Seven Years War determined for ages to come the destinies of mankind. With that of Rossbach began the re-creation of Germany, with that of Plassey the influence of Europe told for the first time since the days of Alexander on the nations of the East; with the triumph of Wolfe on the Heights of Abraham began the history of the United States."[876]
[Footnote 876: Green, History of the English People, IV. 193 (London, 1880).]
So far, however, as concerns the war in the Germanic countries, it was to outward seeming but a mad debauch of blood and rapine, ending in nothing but the exhaustion of the combatants. The havoc had been frightful. According to the King of Prussia's reckoning, 853,000 soldiers of the various nations had lost their lives, besides hundreds of thousands of non-combatants who had perished from famine, exposure, disease, or violence. And with all this waste of life not a boundary line had been changed. The rage of the two empresses and the vanity and spite of the concubine had been completely foiled. Frederic had defied them all, and had come out of the strife intact in his own hereditary dominions and master of all that he had snatched from the Empress-Queen; while Prussia, portioned out by her enemies as their spoil, lay depleted indeed, and faint with deadly striving, but crowned with glory, and with the career before her which, through tribulation and adversity, was to lead her at last to the headship of a united Germany.
Through centuries of strife and vicissitude the French monarchy had triumphed over nobles, parliaments, and people, gathered to itself all the forces of the State, beamed with illusive splendors under Louis the Great, and shone with the phosphorescence of decay under his contemptible successor; till now, robbed of prestige, burdened with debt, and mined with corruption, it was moving swiftly and more swiftly towards the abyss of ruin.
While the war hastened the inevitable downfall of the French monarchy, it produced still more notable effects. France under Colbert had embarked on a grand course of maritime and colonial enterprise, and followed it with an activity and vigor that promised to make her a great and formidable ocean power. It was she who led the way in the East, first trained the natives to fight her battles, and began that system of mixed diplomacy and war which, imitated by her rival, enabled a handful of Europeans to master all India. In North America her vast possessions dwarfed those of every other nation. She had built up a powerful navy and created an extensive foreign trade. All this was now changed. In India she was reduced to helpless inferiority, with total ruin in the future; and of all her boundless territories in North America nothing was left but the two island rocks on the coast of Newfoundland that the victors had given her for drying her codfish. Of her navy scarcely forty ships remained; all the rest were captured or destroyed. She was still great on the continent of Europe, but as a world power her grand opportunities were gone.
In England as in France the several members of the State had battled together since the national life began, and the result had been, not the unchecked domination of the Crown, but a system of balanced and adjusted forces, in which King, Nobility, and Commons all had their recognized places and their share of power. Thus in the war just ended two great conditions of success had been supplied: a people instinct with the energies of ordered freedom, and a masterly leadership to inspire and direct them.
All, and more than all, that France had lost England had won. Now, for the first time, she was beyond dispute the greatest of maritime and colonial Powers. Portugal and Holland, her precursors in ocean enterprise, had long ago fallen hopelessly behind. Two great rivals remained, and she had humbled the one and swept the other from her path. Spain, with vast American possessions, was sinking into the decay which is one of the phenomena of modern history; while France, of late a most formidable competitor, had abandoned the contest in despair. England was mistress of the seas, and the world was thrown open to her merchants, explorers, and colonists. A few years after the Peace the navigator Cook began his memorable series of voyages, and surveyed the strange and barbarous lands which after times were to transform into other Englands, vigorous children of this great mother of nations. It is true that a heavy blow was soon to fall upon her; her own folly was to alienate the eldest and greatest of her offspring. But nothing could rob her of the glory of giving birth to the United States; and, though politically severed, this gigantic progeny were to be not the less a source of growth and prosperity to the parent that bore them, joined with her in a triple kinship of laws, language, and blood. The war or series of wars that ended with the Peace of Paris secured the opportunities and set in action the forces that have planted English homes in every clime, and dotted the earth with English garrisons and posts of trade.
With the Peace of Paris ended the checkered story of New France; a story which would have been a history if faults of constitution and the bigotry and folly of rulers had not dwarfed it to an episode. Yet it is a noteworthy one in both its lights and its shadows: in the disinterested zeal of the founder of Quebec, the self-devotion of the early missionary martyrs, and the daring enterprise of explorers; in the spiritual and temporal vassalage from which the only escape was to the savagery of the wilderness; and in the swarming corruptions which were the natural result of an attempt to rule, by the absolute hand of a master beyond the Atlantic, a people bereft of every vestige of civil liberty. Civil liberty was given them by the British sword; but the conqueror left their religious system untouched, and through it they have imposed upon themselves a weight of ecclesiastical tutelage that finds few equals in the most Catholic countries of Europe. Such guardianship is not without certain advantages. When faithfully exercised it aids to uphold some of the tamer virtues, if that can be called a virtue which needs the constant presence of a sentinel to keep it from escaping: but it is fatal to mental robustness and moral courage; and if French Canada would fulfil its aspirations it must cease to be one of the most priest-ridden communities of the modern world.
Scarcely were they free from the incubus of France when the British provinces showed symptoms of revolt. The measures on the part of the mother-country which roused their resentment, far from being oppressive, were less burdensome than the navigation laws to which they had long submitted; and they resisted taxation by Parliament simply because it was in principle opposed to their rights as freemen. They did not, like the American provinces of Spain at a later day, sunder themselves from a parent fallen into decrepitude; but with astonishing audacity they affronted the wrath of England in the hour of her triumph, forgot their jealousies and quarrels, joined hands in the common cause, fought, endured, and won. The disunited colonies became the United States. The string of discordant communities along the Atlantic coast has grown to a mighty people, joined in a union which the earthquake of civil war served only to compact and consolidate. Those who in the weakness of their dissensions needed help from England against the savage on their borders have become a nation that may defy every foe but that most dangerous of all foes, herself, destined to a majestic future if she will shun the excess and perversion of the principles that made her great, prate less about the enemies of the past and strive more against the enemies of the present, resist the mob and the demagogue as she resisted Parliament and King, rally her powers from the race for gold and the delirium of prosperity to make firm the foundations on which that prosperity rests, and turn some fair proportion of her vast mental forces to other objects than material progress and the game of party politics. She has tamed the savage continent, peopled the solitude, gathered wealth untold, waxed potent, imposing, redoubtable; and now it remains for her to prove, if she can, that the rule of the masses is consistent with the highest growth of the individual; that democracy can give the world a civilization as mature and pregnant, ideas as energetic and vitalizing, and types of manhood as lofty and strong, as any of the systems which it boasts to supplant.
Appendix A
3. Conflict for the West
Piquet and his War-Party.--"Ce parti [de guerre] pour lequel M. le Général a donné son consentement, sera de plus de 3,800 hommes.... 500 hommes de nos domicilies, 700 des Cinq nations à l'exclusion des Agniers [Mohawks] qui ne sont plus regardés que comme des anglais, 600 tant Iroquois que d'autres nations le long de la Belle Rivière d'où ils espèrent chasser les anglais qui y formentù des Établissemens contraires au bien des guerriers, 2,000 hommes qu'ils doivent prendre aux têtes plates [Choctaws] où ils s'arresteront, c'est la où les deux chefs de guerre doivent proposer a l'armée l'expédition des Miamis au retour de celle contre la Nation du Chien [Cherokees]. Un vieux levain, quelques anciennes querelles leur feront tout entreprendre contre les anglais de la Virginie s'ils donnent encore quelques secours à cette dernière nation, ce qui ne manquera pas d'arriver...."
"C'est un grand miracle que malgré l'envie, les contradictions, l'opposition presque générale de tous les Villages sauvages, j'aye formé en moins de 3 ans une des plus florissantes missions du Canada.... Je me trouve donc, Messieurs, dans l'occasion de pouvoir étendre l'empire de Jésus Christ et du Roy mes bons maîtres jusqu'aux extrémités de ce nouveau monde, et de plus faire avec quelques secours que vous me procurerez que la France et l'angleterre ne pourraient faire avec plusieurs millions et toutes leur troupes." Copie de la Lettre écrite par M. l'Abbé Picquet, dattée à la Présentation du 8 Fév. 1752 (Archives de la Marine).
I saw in the possession of the late Jacques Viger, of Montreal, an illuminated drawing of one of Piquet's banners, said to be still in existence, in which the cross, the emblems of the Virgin and the Saviour, the fleur-de-lis, and the Iroquois totems are all embroidered and linked together by strings of wampum beads wrought into the silk.
Directions of the French Colonial Minister for the Destruction of Oswego.--"La seule voye dont on puisse faire usage en temps de paix pour une pareille operation est celle des Iroquois des cinq nations. Les terres sur lesquelles le poste à été établi leur appartiennent et ce n'est qu'avec leur consentement que les anglois s'y sont placés. Si en faisant regarder à ces sauvages un pareil établissement comme contraire à leur liberté et comme une usurpation dont les anglois prétendent faire usage pour acquérir la propriété de leur terre on pourrait les déterminer à entreprendre de les détruire, une pareille opération ne seroit pas à négliger; mais M. le Marquis de la Jonquière doit sentir avec quelle circonspection une affaire de cette espèce doit être conduite et il faut en effêt qu'il y travaille de façon à ne se point compromettre." Le Ministre à MM. de la Jonquière et Bigot, 15 Avril, 1750 (Archives de la Marine).
Appendix B
4. Acadia
English Treatment of Acadians.--"Les Anglois dans la vue de la Conquête du Canada ont voulu donner aux peuples françois de ces Colonies un exemple frappant de la douceur de leur gouvernement dans leur conduite à l'égard des Accadiens."
"Ils leur ont fourni pendant plus de 35 ans le simple nécessaire, sans élever la fortune d'aucun, ils leur ont fourni ce nécessaire souvent à crédit, avec un excès de confiance, sans fatiguer les débiteurs, sans les presser, sans vouloir les forcer au payement."
"Ils leur ont laissé une apparence de liberté si excessive qu'ils n'ont voulu prendre aucune différence [sic] de leur différents, pas même pour les crimes.... Ils ont souffert que les accadiens leur refusassent insolemment certains rentes de grains, modiques & très-légitimement dues."
"Ils ont dissimulé le refus méprisant que les accadiens ont fait de prendre d'eux des concessions pour les nouveaux terreins qu'ils voulaient occuper."
"Les fruits que cette conduite a produit dans la dernière guerre nous le savons [sic] et les anglois n'en ignorent rien. Qu'on juge là-dessus de leur ressentiment et des vues de vengeance de cette nation cruelle.... Je prévois notamment la dispersion des jeunes accadiens sur les vaisseaux de guerre anglois, oú la seule règle pour la ration du pain suffit pour les detruire jusqu'au dernier." Roma, Officier à l'Isle Royale à----, 1750.
Indians, directed by Missionaries, to attack the English in Time of Peace.--"La lettre de M. l'Abbé Le Loutre me paroit si intéressante que j'ay l'honneur de vous en envoyer Copie.... Les trois sauvages qui m'ont porté ces dépêches m'ont parlé relativement à ce que M. l'Abbé Le Loutre marque dans sa lettre; je n'ay eu garde de leur donner aucun Conseil là-dessus et je me suis borné à leur promettre que je ne les abandonnerai point, aussy ai-je pourvu à tout, soit pour les armes, munitions de guerre et de bouche, soit pour les autres choses nécessaires."
"Il seroit à souhaiter que ces Sauvages rassemblés pussent parvenir à traverser les anglois dans leurs entreprises, même dans celle de Chibouctou [Halifax], ils sont dans cette résolution et s'ils peuvent mettre à execution ce qu'ils ont projetté il est assuré qu'ils seront fort incommodes aux Anglois et que les vexations qu'ils exerceront sur eux leur seront un très grand obstacle. Ces sauvages doívent agir seuls, il n'y aura ny soldat ny habitant, tout se fera de leur pur mouvement, et sans qu'il paraisse que j'en eusse connoissance."
"Cela est très essentiel, aussy ai-je écrit au Sr. de Boishébert d'observer beaucoup de prudence dans ses démarches et de les faire très secrètement pour que les Anglois ne puissent pas s'apercevoir que nous pourvoyons aux besoins des dits sauvages."
"Ce seront les missionnaires qui feront toutes les négociations et qui dirigeront les pas des dits sauvages, ils sont en très bonnes mains, le R.P. Germain et M. l'Abbé Le Loutre étant fort au fait d'en tirer tout le party possible et le plus avantageux pour nos intérêts, ils ménageront leur intrigue de façon à n'y pas paroitre...."
"Je sens, Monseigneur, toute la délicatesse de cette negociation, soyez persuadé que je la conduirai avec tant de précautions que les anglois ne pourront pas dire que mes ordres y ont eu part." La Jonquière au Minístre, 9 Oct. 1749.
Missionaries to be encouraged in their Efforts to make the Indians attack the English.--"Les sauvages.... se distinguent, depuis la paix, dans les mouvements qu'il y a du côté de l'Acadie, et sur lesquels Sa Majesté juge à propos d'entrer dans quelques détails avec le Sieur de Raymond...."
"Sa Majesté luy a déjà observé que les sauvages ont été jusqu'à présent dans les dispositions les plus favorables. Il est de la plus grande importance, et pour le présent et pour l'avenir, de ne rien négliger pour les y maintenir. Les missionnaires qui sont auprès d'eux sont plus à portés d'y contribuer que personne, et Sa Majesté a lieu d'être satisfaite des soins qu'ils y donnent. Le Sr. de Raymond doit exciter ces missionnaires à ne point se relacher sur cela; mais en même temps il doit les avertir de contenir leur zèle de manière qu'ils ne se compromettent pas mal à propos avec les anglois et qu'ils ne donnent point de justes sujets de plaintes." Mémoire du Roy pour servir d'Instruction au Comte de Raymond, 24 Avril, 1751.
Acadians to join the Indians in attacking the English.--"Pour que ces Sauvages agissent avec beaucoup de Courage, quelques accadiens habillés et matachés comme les Sauvages pourront se joindre à eux pour faire coup sur les Anglois. Je ne puis éviter de consentir à ce que ces Sauvages feront puisque nous avons les bras liés et que nous ne pouvons rien faire par nous-mêmes, au surplus je ne crois pas qu'il y ait de l'inconvenient de laisser mêler les accadiens parmi les Sauvages, parceque s'ils sont pris, nous dirons qu'ils ont agi de leur propre mouvement." La Jonquière au Minístre, 1 Mai, 1751.
Cost of Le Loutre's Intrigues.--"J'ay déjà fait payer a M. Le Loutre depuis l'année dernière la somme de 11183l. 18s. pour acquitter les dépenses qu'il fait journellement et je ne cesse de luy recommander de s'en tenir aux indispensables en evitant toujours de rien compromettre avec le gouvernement anglois." Prévost au Ministre, 22 Juillet, 1750.
Payment for English Scalps in Time of Peace.--"Les Sauvages ont pris, il y a un mois, 18 chevelures angloises [English scalps,] et M. Le Loutre a été obligé de les payer 1800 l., argent de l'Acadie, dont je luy ay fait le remboursement." Ibid., 16 Août, 1753.
Many pages might be filled with extracts like the above. These, with most of the other French documents used in Chapter 4, are taken from the Archives de la Marine et des Colonies.
Appendix C
5. Washington
Washington and the Capitulation at Fort Necessity.--Villiers, in his Journal, boasts that he made Washington sign a virtual admission that he had assassinated Jumonville. In regard to this point, a letter, of which the following is an extract, is printed in the provincial papers of the time. It is from Captain Adam Stephen, an officer in the action, writing to a friend five weeks after.
"When Mr. Vanbraam returned with the French proposals, we were obliged to take the sense of them from his mouth; it rained so heavy that he could not give us a written translation of them; we could scarcely keep the candle lighted to read them by; they were written in a bad hand, on wet and blotted paper, so that no person could read them but Vanbraam, who had heard them from the mouth of the French officer. Every officer there is ready to declare that there was no such word as assassination mentioned. The terms expressed were, the death of Jumonville. If it had been mentioned we would by all means have had it altered, as the French, during the course of the interview, seemed very condescending, and desirous to bring things to an issue." He then gives several other points in which Vanbraam had misled them.
Dinwiddie, recounting the affair to Lord Albemarle, says that Washington, being ignorant of French, was deceived by the interpreter, who, through poltroonery, suppressed the word assassination.
Captain Mackay, writing to Washington in September, after a visit to Philadelphia, says: "I had several disputes about our capitulation; but I satisfied every person that mentioned the subject as to the articles in question, that they were owing to a bad interpreter, and contrary to the translation made to us when we signed them."
At the next meeting of the burgesses they passed a vote of thanks for gallant conduct to Washington and all his officers by name, except Vanbraam and the major of the regiment, the latter being charged with cowardice, and the former with treacherous misinterpretation of the articles.
Sometime after, Washington wrote to a correspondent who had questioned him on the subject: "That we were wilfully or ignorantly deceived by our interpreter in regard to the word assassination I do aver, and will to my dying moment; so will every officer that was present. The interpreter was a Dutchman little acquainted with the English tongue, therefore might not advert to the tone and meaning of the word in English; but, whatever his motives for so doing, certain it is that he called it the death or the loss of the Sieur Jumonville. So we received and so we understood it, until, to our great surprise and mortification, we found it otherwise in a literal translation." Sparks, Writings of Washington, II. 464, 465.
Appendix D
7. Braddock
It has been said that Beaujeu, and not Contrecoeur, commanded at Fort Duquesne at the time of Braddock's expedition. Some contemporaries, and notably the chaplain of the fort, do, in fact, speak of him as in this position; but their evidence is overborne by more numerous and conclusive authorities, among them Vaudreuil, governor of Canada, and Contrecoeur himself, in an official report. Vaudreuil says of him: "Ce commandant s'occupa le 8 [Juillet] à former un parti pour aller au devant des Anglois;" and adds that this party was commanded by Beaujeu and consisted of 250 French and 650 Indians (Vaudreuil au Ministre, 5 Août, 1755). In the autumn of 1756 Vaudreuil asked the Colonial Minister to procure a pension for Contrecoeur and Ligneris. He says: "Le premier de ces Messieurs a commandé longtemps au fort Duquesne; c'est luy qui a ordonné et dirigé tous les mouvements qui se sont faits dans cette partie, soit pour faire abandonner le premier établissement des Anglois, soit pour les forcer à se retirer du fort Nécessité, et soit enfin pour aller au devant de l'armée du Général Braddock qui a été entièrement défaite" (Vaudreuil au Ministre, 8 Nov. 1756.) Beaujeu, who had lately arrived with a reinforcement, had been named to relieve Contrecoeur (Dumas au Ministre, 24 Juillet, 1756), but had not yet done so.
As the report of Contrecoeur has never been printed, I give an extract from it (Contrecceur à Vaudreuil, 14 Juillet, 1755, in Archives de la Marine):--
"Le meme jour [8 Juillet] je formai un party de tout ce que je pouvois mettre hors du fort pour aller à leur rencontre. Il étoit composé de 250 François et de 650 sauvages, ce qui faisoit 900 hommes. M. de Beaujeu, capitaine, le commandoit. Il y avoit deux capitaines qui estoient Mrs. Dumas et Ligneris et plusieurs autres officiers subalternes. Ce parti se mit en marche le 9 à 8 heures du matin, et se trouva à midi et demie en présence des Anglois à environ 3 lieues du fort. On commença à faire feu de part et d'autre. Le feu de l'artillerie ennemie fit reculer un peu par deux fois notre parti. M. de Beaujeu fut tué à la troisième décharge. M. Dumas prit le commandement et s'en acquitta au mieux. Nos François, pleins de courage, soutenus par les sauvages, quoiqu'ils n'eussent point d'artillerie, firent à leur tour plier les Anglois qui se battirent en ordre de bataille et en bonne contenance. Et ces derniers voyant l'ardeur de nos gens qui fonçoient avec une vigeur infinie furent enfin obligés de plier tout à fait après 4 heures d'un grand feu. Mrs. Dumas et Ligneris qui n'avoient plus avec eux q'une vingtaine de François ne s'engagerent point dans la poursuite. Ils rentrerent dans le fort, parceq'une grande partie des Canadiens qui n'estoient malheureusement que des enfants s'estoient retirés à la première décharge."
The letter of Dumas cited in the text has been equally unknown. It was written a year after the battle in order to draw the attention of the minister to services which the writer thought had not been duly recognized. The following is an extract (Dumas au Ministre, 24 Juillet, 1756, in Archives de la Marine):--
"M. de Beaujeu marcha donc, et sous ses ordres M. de Ligneris et moi. Il attaqua avec beaucoup d'audace mais sans nulle disposition; notre première décharge fut faite hors de portée; l'ennemi fit la sienne de plus près, et dans le premier instant du combat, cent miliciens, qui faisaient la moitié de nos Français lâchèrent honteusement le pied en criant 'Sauve qui peut.' Deux cadets qui depuis ont été faits officiers autorisaient cette fuite par leur exemple. Ce mouvement en arrière ayant encouragé l'ennemi, il fit retentir ses cris de Vive le Roi et avança sur nous à grand pas. Son artillerie s'étant preparée pendant ce temps là commença à faire feu ce qui épouvanta tellement les Sauvages que tout prit la fuite; l'ennemi faísait sa troisième décharge de mousqueterie quand M. de Beaujeu fut tué."
"Notre déroute se présenta a mes yeux sous le plus désagréable point de vue, et pour n'être point chargé de la mauvaise manoeuvre d'autrui, je ne songeai plus qu'à me faire tuer. Ce fut alors, Monseigneur, qu'excitant de la voix et du geste le peu de soldats qui restait, je m'avançai avec la contenance qui donne le désespoir. Mon peloton fit un feu si vif que l'ennemi en parut étonné; il grossit insensiblement et les Sauvages voyant que mon attaque faisait cesser les crís de l'ennemi revinrent à moi. Dans ce moment j'envoyai M. le Chev'r. Le Borgne et M. de Rocheblave dire aux officiers qui étaient à la tête des Sauvages de prendre l'ennemi en flanc. Le canon qui battit en tête donna faveur à mes ordres. L'ennemi, pris de tous cotés, combattit avec la fermeté la plus opiniâtre. Des rangs entiers tombaient à la fois; presque tous les officiers périrent; et le désordre s'étant mis par là dans cette colonne, tout prit la fuite."
Whatever may have been the conduct of the Canadian militia, the French officers behaved with the utmost courage, and shared with the Indians the honors of the victory. The partisan chief Charles Langlade seems also to have been especially prominent. His grandson, the aged Pierre Grignon, declared that it was he who led the attack (Draper, Recollections of Grignon, in the Collections of the Wisconsin Historical Society, III.). Such evidence, taken alone, is of the least possible weight; but both the traveller Anbury and General John Burgoyne, writing many years after the event, speak of Langlade, who was then alive, as the author of Braddock's defeat. Hence there can be little doubt that he took an important part in it, though the contemporary writers do not mention his name. Compare Tassé, Notice sur Charles Langlade. The honors fell to Contrecoeur, Dumas, and Ligneris, all of whom received the cross of the Order of St Louis (Ordres du Roy et Dépêches des Ministres, 1755).
Appendix E
14. Montcalm
To show the style of Montcalm's familiar letters, I give a few examples. Literal translation is often impossible.
À MADAME DE MONTCALM, À MONTRÉAL, 16 AVRIL, 1757.
(Extrait.)
"Ma santé assez bonne, malgré beaucoup de travail, surtout d'ecriture. Estève, mon secretaire, se marie. Beau caractère. Bon autographe, écrivant vite. Je lui procure un emploi et le moyen de faire fortune s'il veut. Il fait un meilleur mariage que ne lui appartient; malgré cela je crains qu'il ne la fasse pas comme un autre; fat, frivole, joueur, glorieux, petit-maître, dépensier. J'ai toujours Marcel, des soldats copistes dans le besoin....Tous les soldats de Montpellier se portants bien, hors le fils de Pierre mort chez moi. Tout est hors de prix. Il faut vivre honorablement et je le fais, tous les jours seize personnes. Une fois tous les quinze jours chez M. le Gouverneur général et Mr. le Chev. de Lévis qui vit aussi très bien. Il a donné trois beaux grands bals. Pour moi jusqu'au carême, outre les dîners, de grands soupers de dames trois fois la semaine. Le jour des devotes prudes, des concerts. Les jours des jeûnes des violons d'hazard, parcequ'on me les demandait, cela ne menait que jusqu'à deux heures du matin et il se joignait l'après-souper compagnie dansante sans être priée, mais sure d'être bien reçue à celle qui avait soupé. Fort cher, peu amusant, et souvent ennuyeux.... Vous connaissiez ma maison, je l'ai augmentée d'un cocher, d'un frotteur, un garçon de cuisine, et j'ai marié mon aide de cuisine; car je travaille à peupler la colonie: 80 mariages de soldats cet hiver et deux d'officiers. Germain a perdu sa fille. Il a épousé mieux que lui; bonne femme mais sans bien, comme toutes...."
À MADAME DE MONTCALM, À MONTRÉAL, 6 JUIN, 1757.
(Extrait.)
"J'addresse la première de cette lettre à ma mère. Il n'y a pas une heure dans la journée que je ne songe à vous, à elle, et à mes enfants. J'embrasse ma fille; je vous adore, ma très chère, ainsi que ma mère. Mille choses à mes soeurs. Je n'ai pas le temps de leur écrire, ni à Naujac, ni aux abbesses.... Des compliments au château d'Arbois, aux Du Cayla, et aux Givard. P.S. N'oubliez pas d'envoyer une douzaine de bouteilles d'Angleterre de pinte d'eau de lavande; vous en mettrez quatre pour chaque envoi."
À BOURLAMAQUE, À MONTRÉAL, 20 FÉVRIER, 1757.
(Extrait.)
"Dimanche j'avais rassemblé les dames de France hors Mad. de Parfouru qui m'a fait l'honneur de me venir voir il y a trois jours et en la voyant je me suis apperçu que l'amour avait des traits de puissance dont on ne pouvait pas rendre raison, non pas par l'impression qu'elle a faite sur mon coeur, mais bien par celle qu'elle a faite sur celui de son époux. Mercredi une assemblée chez Mad. Varin. Jeudi un bal chez le Chev. de Lévis qui avait prié 65 Dames ou demoiselles; Il n'y en avait que trente--autant d'hommes qu'à la guerre. Sa salle bien éclairée, aussi grand que celle de l'Intendance, beaucoup d'ordre, beaucoup d'attention, des rafraîchissements en abondance toute la nuit de tout genre et de toute espèce et on ne se retira qu'à sept heures du matin. Pour moi qui ay quitté le séjour de Québec, Je me couchai de bonne heure. J'avais eu ce jour-là huit dames à souper et ce souper était dédié à Mad. Varin. Demain j'en aurai une demi douzaine. Je ne sais encore a qui il est dedié, Je suis tenté de croire que c'est à La Roche Beaucourt Le galant Chev'r. nous donne encore un bal."
Appendix F
15. Fort William Henry
WEBB TO LOUDON, FORT EDWARD, 11 AUG. 1757.
Public Record Office. (Extract.)
"On leaving the Camp Yesterday Morning they [the English soldiers] were stript by the Indians of everything they had both Officers and Men the Women and Children drag'd from among them and most inhumanly butchered before their faces, the party of about three hundred Men which were given them as an escort were during this time quietly looking on, from this and other circumstances we are too well convinced these barbarities must have been connived at by the French. After having destroyed the women and children they fell upon the rear of our Men who running in upon the Front soon put the whole to a most precipitate flight in which confusion part of them came into this Camp about two o'Clock yesterday morning in a most distressing situation, and have continued dropping in ever since, a great many men and we are afraid several Officers were massacred."
The above is independent of the testimony of Frye, who did not reach Fort Edward till the day after Webb's letter was written.
FRYE TO THOMAS HUBBARD, SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF MASSACHUSETTS, ALBANY, 16 AUG. 1757.
Public Record Office. (Extract.)
"We did not march till ye 10th at which time the Savages were let loose upon us, Strips, Kills, & Scalps our people drove them into Disorder Rendered it impossible to Rally, the French Gaurds we were promised shou'd Escort us to Fort Edward Could or would not protect us so that there Opened the most horrid Scene of Barbarity immaginable, I was strip'd myself of my Arms & Cloathing that I had nothing left but Briches Stockings Shoes & Shirt, the Indians round me with their Tomehawks Spears &c threatening Death I flew to the Officers of the French Gaurds for Protection but they would afford me none, therefore was Oblig'd to fly and was in the woods till the 12th in the Morning of which I arriv'd at Fort Edward almost Famished ... with what of Fatigue Starving &c I am obliged to break off but as soon as I can Recollect myself shall write to you more fully."
FRYE, JOURNAL OF THE ATTACK OF FORT WILLIAM HENRY.
Public Record Office. (Extract.)
"Wednesday, August 10th.--Early this morning we were ordered to prepare for our march, but found the Indians in a worse temper (if possible) than last night, every one having a tomahawk, hatchett or some other instrument of death, and Constantly plundering from the officers their arms &ca this Col'o. Monro Complained of, as a breach of the Articles of Capitulation but to no effect, the french officers however told us that if we would give up the baggage of the officers and men, to the Indians, they thought it would make them easy, which at last Col'o. Monro Consented to but this was no sooner done, then they began to take the Officers Hatts, Swords, guns & Cloaths, stripping them all to their Shirts, and on some officers, left no shirt at all, while this was doing they killed and scalp'd all the sick and wounded before our faces and then took out from our troops, all the Indians and negroes, and Carried them off, one of the former they burnt alive afterwards."
"At last with great difficulty the troops gott from the Retrenchment, but they were no sooner out, then the savages fell upon the rear, killing & scalping, which Occasioned an order for a halt, which at last was done in great Confusion but as soon as those in the front knew what was doing in the rear they again pressed forward, and thus the Confusion continued & encreased till we came to the Advanc'd guard of the French, the savages still carrying away Officers, privates, Women and Children, some of which latter they kill'd & scalpt in the road. This horrid scene of blood and slaughter obliged our officers to apply to the Officers of the French Guard for protection, which they refus'd & told them they must take to the woods and shift for themselves which many did, and in all probability many perish't in the woods, many got into Fort Edward that day and others daily Continued coming in, but vastly fatigued with their former hardships added to this last, which threw several of them into Deliriums."
AFFIDAVIT OF MILES WHITWORTH, SURGEON OF THE MASSACHUSETTS REGIMENT, TAKEN BEFORE GOVERNOR POWNALL 17 OCT.1757.
Public Record Office. (Extract.)
"Being duly sworn on the Holy Evangelists doth declare ... that there were also seventeen Men of the Massachusetts Regiment wounded unable to March under his immediate Care in the Intrenched Camp, that according to the Capitulation he did deliver them over to the French Surgeon on the ninth of August at two in the Afternoon ... that the French Surgeon received them into his Custody and placed Centinals of the French Troops upon the said seventeen wounded. That the French Surgeon going away to the French Camp, the said Miles Whitworth continued with the said wounded Men till five o'clock on the Morn of the tenth of August, That the Centinals were taken off and that he the said Whitworth saw the French Indians about 5 O'clock in the Morn of the 10th of August dragg the said seventeen wounded men out of their Hutts, Murder them with their Tomohawks and scalp them, That the French Troops posted round the lines were not further than forty feet from the Hutts where the said wounded Men lay, that several Canadian Officers particularly one Lacorne were present and that none, either Officer or Soldier, protected the said wounded Men."
MILES WHITWORTH. "Sworn before me T. POWNALL."
Appendix G
20. Ticonderoga
The French accounts of the battle at Ticonderoga are very numerous, and consist of letters and despatches of Montcalm, Lévis, Bougainville, Doreil, and other officers, besides several anonymous narratives, one of which was printed in pamphlet form at the time. Translations of many of them may be found in N.Y. Colonial Documents, X. There are, however, various others preserved in the archives of the War and Marine Departments at Paris which have not seen the light. I have carefully examined and collated them all. The English accounts are by no means so numerous or so minute. Among those not already cited, may be mentioned a letter of Colonel Woolsey of the New York provincials, and two letters from British officers written just after the battle and enclosed in a letter from Alexander Colden to Major Halkett, 17 July. (Bouquet and Haldimand Papers.)
The French greatly exaggerated the force of the English and their losses in the battle. They place the former at from twenty thousand to thirty-one thousand, and the latter at from four thousand to six thousand. Prisoners taken at the end of the battle told them that the English had lost four thousand,--a statement which they readily accepted, though the prisoners could have known little more about the matter than they themselves. And these figures were easily magnified. The number of dead lying before the lines is variously given at from eight hundred to three thousand. Montcalm himself, who was somewhat elated by his victory, gives this last number in one of his letters, though he elsewhere says two thousand; while Lévis, in his Journal de la Guerre, says "about eight hundred." The truth is that no pains were taken to ascertain the exact number, which, by the English returns, was a little above five hundred, the total of killed, wounded, and missing being nineteen hundred and forty-four. A friend of Knox, writing to him from Fort Edward three weeks after the battle, gives a tabular statement which shows nineteen hundred and fifty in all, or six more than the official report. As the name of every officer killed or wounded, with the corps to which he belonged, was published at the time (London Magazine, 1758), it is extremely unlikely that the official return was falsified. Abercromby's letter to Pitt, of July 12, says that he retreated "with the loss of four hundred and sixty-four regulars killed, twenty-nine missing eleven hundred and seventeen wounded; and eighty-seven provincials killed, eight missing, and two hundred and thirty-nine wounded, officers of both included." In a letter to Viscount Barrington, of the same date (Public Record Office), Abercromby encloses a full detail of losses, regiment by regiment and company by company, being a total of nineteen hundred and forty-five. Several of the French writers state correctly that about fourteen thousand men (including reserves) were engaged in the attacks; but they add erroneously that there were thirteen thousand more at the Falls. In fact there was only a small provincial regiment left there, and a battalion of the New York regiment, under Colonel Woolsey, at the landing.
A LEGEND OF TICONDEROGA.--Mention has been made of the death of Major Duncan Campbell of Inverawe. The following family tradition relating to it was told me in 1878 by the late Dean Stanley, to whom I am also indebted for various papers on the subject, including a letter from James Campbell, Esq., the present laird of Inverawe, and great-nephew of the hero of the tale. The same story is told, in an amplified form and with some variations, in the Legendary Tales of the Highlands of Sir Thomas Dick Lauder. As related by Dean Stanley and approved by Mr. Campbell, it is this:--
The ancient castle of Inverawe stands by the banks of the Awe, in the midst of the wild and picturesque scenery of the western Highlands. Late one evening, before the middle of the last century, as the laird, Duncan Campbell, sat alone in the old hall, there was a loud knocking at the gate; and, opening it, he saw a stranger, with torn clothing and kilt besmeared with blood, who in a breathless voice begged for asylum. He went on to say that he had killed a man in a fray, and that the pursuers were at his heels. Campbell promised to shelter him. "Swear on your dirk!" said the stranger; and Campbell swore. He then led him to a secret recess in the depths of the castle. Scarcely was he hidden when again there was a loud knocking at the gate, and two armed men appeared. "Your cousin Donald has been murdered, and we are looking for the murderer!" Campbell, remembering his oath, professed to have no knowledge of the fugitive; and the men went on their way. The laird, in great agitation, lay down to rest in a large dark room, where at length he feel asleep. Waking suddenly in bewilderment and terror, he saw the ghost of the murdered Donald standing by his bedside, and heard a hollow voice pronounce the words: "Inverawe! Inverawe! blood has been shed. Shield not the murderer!" In the morning Campbell went to the hiding-place of the guilty man and told him that he could harbor him no longer. "You have sworn on your dirk!" he replied; and the laird of Inverawe, greatly perplexed and troubled, made a compromise between conflicting duties, promised not to betray his guest, led him to the neighboring mountain, and hid him in a cave.
In the next night, as he lay tossing in feverish slumbers, the same stern voice awoke him, the ghost of his cousin Donald stood again at his bedside, and again he heard the same appalling words: "Inverawe! Inverawe! blood has been shed. Shield not the murderer!" At break of day he hastened, in strange agitation, to the cave; but it was empty, the stranger was gone. At night, as he strove in vain to sleep, the vision appeared once more, ghastly pale, but less stern of aspect than before. "Farewell, Inverawe!" it said; "Farewell, till we meet at TICONDEROGA!"
The strange name dwelt in Campbell's memory. He had joined the Black Watch, or Forty-second Regiment, then employed in keeping order in the turbulent Highlands. In time he became its major; and, a year or two after the war broke out, he went with it to America. Here, to his horror, he learned that it was ordered to the attack of Ticonderoga. His story was well known among his brother officers. They combined among themselves to disarm his fears; and when they reached the fatal spot they told him on the eve of the battle, "This is not Ticonderoga; we are not there yet; this is Fort George." But in the morning he came to them with haggard looks. "I have seen him! You have deceived me! He came to my tent last night! This is Ticonderoga! I shall die to-day!" and his prediction was fulfilled.
Such is the tradition. The indisputable facts are that Major Duncan Campbell of Inverawe, his arm shattered by a bullet, was carried to Fort Edward, where, after amputation, he died and was buried. (Abercromby to Pitt,19 August, 1758.) The stone that marks his grave may still be seen, with this inscription: "Here lyes the Body of Duncan Campbell of Inverawe, Esq, Major to the old Highland Regiment, aged 55 Years, who died on the 17th July, 1758, of the Wounds he received in the Attack of the Retrenchment of Ticonderoga or Carrillon, on the 8th July, 1758."
His son, Lieutenant Alexander Campbell, was severely wounded at the same time, but reached Scotland alive, and died in Glasgow. Mr. Campbell, the present Inverawe, in the letter mentioned above, says that forty-five years ago he knew an old man whose grandfather was foster-brother to the slain major of the forty-second, and who told him the following story while carrying a salmon for him to an inn near Inverawe. The old man's grandfather was sleeping with his son, then a lad, in the same room, but in another bed. This son, father of the narrator, "was awakened," to borrow the words of Mr. Campbell, "by some unaccustomed sound, and behold there was a bright light in the room, and he saw a figure, in full Highland regimentals, cross over the room and stoop down over his father's bed and give him a kiss. He was too frightened to speak, but put his head under his coverlet and went to sleep. Once more he was roused in like manner, and saw the same sight. In the morning he spoke to his father about it, who told him that it was Macdonnochie [the Gaelic patronymic of the laird of Inverawe] whom he had seen, and who came to tell him that he had been killed in a great battle in America. Sure enough, said my informant, it was on the very day that the battle of Ticonderoga was fought and the laird was killed."
It is also said that two ladies of the family of Inverawe saw a battle in the clouds, in which the shadowy forms of Highland warriors were plainly to be described; and that when the fatal news came from America, it was found that the time of the vision answered exactly to that of the battle in which the head of the family fell.
The legend of Inverawe has within a few years found its way into an English magazine, and it has also been excellently told in the Atlantic Monthly of September of this year, 1884, by Miss C.F. Gordon Cumming. Her version differs a little from that given above from the recital of Dean Stanley and the present laird of Inverawe, but the essential points are the same. Miss Gordon Cumming, however, is in error when she says that Duncan Campbell was wounded in the breast, and that he was first buried at Ticonderoga. His burial-place was near Fort Edward, where he died, and where his remains still lie, though not at the same spot, as they were long after removed by a family named Gilchrist, who claimed kinship with the Campbells of Inverawe.
Appendix H
25. Wolfe at Quebec
FORCE OF THE FRENCH AND ENGLISH AT THE SIEGE OF QUEBEC.
"Les retranchemens que j'avois fait tracer depuis la rivière St. Charles jusqu'au saut Montmorency furent occupés par plus de 14,000 hommes, 200 cavaliers dont je formai un corps aux ordres de M. de la Rochebeaucour, environ 1,000 sauvages Abenakis et des différentes nations du nord des pays d'en haut. M. de Boishébert arriva ensuite avec les Acadiens et sauvages qu'il avoit rassemblés. Je réglai la garnison de Québec à 2,000 hommes." Vaudreuil au Ministre, 5 Oct. 1759.
The commissary Berniers says that the whole force was about fifteen thousand men, besides Indians, which is less than the number given by Vaudreuil.
Bigot says: "Nous avions 13,000 hommes et mille à 1,200 sauvages, sans compter 2,000 hommes de garnison dans la ville." Bigot au Ministre, 25 Oct. 1759.
The Hartwell Journal du Siége says: "II fut décidé qu'on ne laisseroit dans la place que 1,200 hommes, et que tout le reste marcheroit au camp, où l'on comptoit se trouver plus de 15,000 hommes, y compris les sauvages."
Rigaud, Vaudreuil's brother, writing from Montreal to Bourlamaque on the 23d of June, says: "Je compte que l'armée campée sous Québec sera de 17,000 hommes bien effectifs, sans les sauvages." He then gives a list of Indians who have joined the army, or are on the way, amounting to thirteen hundred.
At the end of June Wolfe had about eight thousand six hundred effective soldiers. Of these the ten battalions, commonly mentioned as regiments, supplied six thousand four hundred; detached grenadiers from Louisbourg, three hundred; artillery, three hundred; rangers, four hundred; light infantry, two hundred; marines, one thousand. The complement of the battalions was in some cases seven hundred and in others one thousand (Knox, II. 25); but their actual strength varied from five hundred to eight hundred, except the Highlanders, who mustered eleven hundred, their ranks being more than full. Fraser, in his Journal of the Siege, gives a tabular view of the whole. At the end of the campaign Lévis reckons the remaining English troops at about six thousand (Lévis au Ministre, 10 Nov. 1759), which answers to the report of General Murray: "The troops will amount to six thousand" (Murray to Pitt, 12 Oct. 1759). The precise number is given in the Return of the State of His Majesty's Forces left in Garrison at Québec, dated 12 Oct. 1759, and signed, Robert Monckton (Public Record Office, America and West Indies, XCIX.). This shows the total of rank and file to have been 6,214, which the addition of officers, sergeants, and drummers raises to about seven thousand, besides 171 artillerymen.
Appendix I
27. The Heights of Abraham
One of the most important unpublished documents on Wolfe's operations against Quebec is the long and elaborate Journal mémoratif de ce qui s'est passé de plus remarquable pendant qu'a duré le Siége de la Ville de Québec (Archives de la Marine). The writer, M. de Foligny, was a naval officer who during the siege commanded one of the principal batteries of the town. The official correspondence of Vaudreuil for 1759 (Archives Nationales) gives the events of the time from his point of view; and various manuscript letters of Bigot, Lévis, Montreuil, and others (Archives de la Marine, Archives de la Guerre) give additional particulars. The letters, generally private and confidential, written to Bourlamaque by Montcalm, Lévis, Vaudreuil, Malartic, Berniers, and others during the siege contain much that is curious and interesting.
Siége de Québec en 1759, d'après un Manuscrit déposé à la Bibliothêque de Hartwell en Angleterre. A very valuable diary, by a citizen of Quebec; it was brought from England in 1834 by the Hon. D.B. Viger, and a few copies were printed at Quebec in 1836. Journal tenu a l'Armee que commandoit feu M. le Marquis de Montcalm. A minute diary of an officer under Montcalm (printed by the Quebec Historical Society). Memoire sur la Campagne de 1759, par M. de Joannès, Major de Québec (Archives de la Guerre). Lettres et Depeches de Montcalm (Ibid.). These touch briefly the antecedents of the Siege. Mémoires sur le Canada depuis 1749 jusqu'à 1760 (Quebec Historical Society). Journal du Siege de Québec en 1759, par M. Jean Claude Panet, notaire (Ibid.). The writer of this diary was in Quebec at the time. Several other journals and letters of persons present at the siege have been printed by the Quebec Historical Society, under the title Événements de la Guerre en Canada durant les Années 1759 et 1760. Relation de ce qui s'est passé au Siége de Québec, par une Réligieuse de l'Hôpital Général de Québec (Quebec Historical Society). Jugement impartial sur les Opérations militaires de la Campagne, par M'gr. de Pontbriand, Évêque de Québec (Ibid.). Memoirs of the Siege of Quebec, from the Journal of a French Officer on board the Chezine Frigate, taken by His Majesty's Ship Rippon, by Richard Gardiner, Esq., Captain of Marines in the Rippon, London, 1761.
General Wolfe's Instructions to Young Officers, Philadelphia, 1778. This title is misleading, the book being a collection of military orders. General Orders in Wolfe's Army (Quebec Historical Society). This collection is much more full than the foregoing, so far as concerns the campaign of 1759. Letters of Wolfe (in Wright's Wolfe), Despatches of Wolfe, Saunders, Monckton, and Townshend (in contemporary magazines). A Short Authentic Account of the Expedition against Quebec, by a Volunteer upon that Expedition, Quebec, 1872. This valuable diary is ascribed to James Thompson, a volunteer under Wolfe, who died at Quebec in 1830 at the age of ninety-eight, after holding for many years the position of overseer of works in the Engineer Department. Another manuscript, for the most part identical with this, was found a few years ago among old papers in the office of the Royal Engineers at Quebec. Journal of the Expedition on the River St. Lawrence. Two entirely distinct diaries bear this name. One is printed in the New York Mercury for December, 1759; the other was found among the papers of George Alsopp, secretary to Sir Guy Carleton, who served under Wolfe (Quebec Historical Society). Johnstone, A Dialogue in Hades (Ibid.). The Scotch Jacobite, Chevalier Johnstone, as aide-de-camp to Lévis, and afterwards to Montcalm, had great opportunities of acquiring information during the campaign; and the results, though produced in the fanciful form of a dialogue between the ghosts of Wolfe and Montcalm, are of substantial historical value. The Dialogue is followed by a plain personal narrative. Fraser, Journal of the Siege of Quebec (Ibid.). Fraser was an officer in the Seventy-eighth Highlanders. Journal of the Siege of Quebec, by a Gentleman in an Eminent Station on the Spot, Dublin, 1759. Journal of the Particular Transactions during the Siege of Quebec (Notes and Queries, XX.). The writer was a soldier or noncommissioned officer serving in the light infantry.
Memoirs of the Siege of Quebec and Total Reduction of Canada, by John Johnson, Clerk and Quarter-master Sergeant to the Fifty-eighth Regiment. A manuscript of 176 pages, written when Johnson was a pensioner at Chelsea (England). The handwriting is exceedingly neat and clear; and the style, though often grandiloquent, is creditable to a writer in his station. This curious production was found among the papers of Thomas McDonough, Esq., formerly British Consul at Boston, and is in possession of his grandson, my relative, George Francis Parkman, Esq., who, by inquiries at the Chelsea Hospital, learned that Johnson was still living in 1802.
I have read and collated with extreme care all the above authorities, with others which need not be mentioned.
Among several manuscript maps and plans showing the operations of the siege may be mentioned one entitled, Plan of the Town and Basin of Quebec and Part of the Adjacent Country, shewing the principal Encampments and Works of the British Army commanded by Major Gen'l. Wolfe, and those of the French Army by Lieut. Gen'l. the Marquis of Montcalm. It is the work of three engineers of Wolfe's army, and is on a scale of eight hundred feet to an inch. A facsimile from the original in possession of the Royal Engineers is before me.
Among the "King's Maps," British Museum (CXIX. 27), is a very large colored plan of operations at Quebec in 1759, 1760, superbly executed in minute detail.
Appendix J
28. Fall of Quebec
Death and Burial of Montcalm.--Johnstone, who had every means of knowing the facts, says that Montcalm was carried after his wound to the house of the surgeon Arnoux. Yet it is not quite certain that he died there. According to Knox, his death took place at the General Hospital; according to the modern author of the Ursulines de Québec, at the Château St.-Louis. But the General Hospital was a mile out of the town, and in momentary danger of capture by the English; while the Château had been made untenable by the batteries of Point Levi, being immediately exposed to their fire. Neither of these places was one to which the dying general was likely to be removed, and it is probable that he was suffered to die in peace at the house of the surgeon.
It has been said that the story of the burial of Montcalm in a grave partially formed by the explosion of a bomb, rests only on the assertion in his epitaph, composed in 1761 by the Academy of Inscriptions at the instance of Bougainville. There is, however, other evidence of the fact. The naval captain Foligny, writing on the spot at the time of the burial, says in his Diary, under the date of September 14: "A huit heures du soir, dans l'église des Ursulines, fut enterré dans une fosse faite sous la chaire par le travail de la Bombe, M. le Marquis de Montcalm, décédé du matin à 4 heures après avoir reçu tous les Sacrements. Jamais Général n'avoit été plus aimé de sa troupe et plus universellement regretté. Il étoit d'un esprit supérieur, doux, gracieux, affable, familier à tout le monde, ce qui lui avoit fait gagner la confiance de toute la Colonie: requiescat in pace."
The author of Les Ursulines de Québec says: "Un des projectiles ayant fait une large ouverture dans le plancher de bas, on en profita pour creuser la fosse du général."
The Boston Post Boy and Advertiser, in its issue of Dec. 3, 1759, contains a letter from "an officer of distinction" at Quebec to Messrs. Green and Russell, proprietors of the newspaper. This letter contains the following words: "He [Montcalm] died the next day; and, with a little Improvement, one of our 13-inch Shell-Holes served him for a Grave."
The particulars of his burial are from the Acte Mortuaire du Marquis de Montcalm in the registers of the Church of Notre Dame de Québec, and from that valuable chronicle, Les Ursulines de Québec, composed by the Superior of the convent. A nun of the sisterhood, Mère Aimable Dubé de Saint-Ignace, was, when a child, a witness of the scene, and preserved a vivid memory of it to the age of eighty-one.
Appendix K