THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1758
"Between the French and the earthquakes," wrote Horace Walpole in 1758
to Mr. Conway, "you have no notion how good we have grown; nobody makes
a suit of clothes now but of sackcloth turned up with ashes." The years
1756 and 1757 were crowded with disappointments. With the miscarriage of
the three campaigns of 1755, Governor Shirley became the successor of
the forgotten Braddock and assembled a council of war at New York
composed of Governors Shirley, Hardy, Sharpe, Morris, and Fitch,
Colonels Dunbar and Schuyler, Majors Craven and Rutherford, and Sir John
St. Clair. As though in very mockery, the king's instructions to the
betrayed and sacrificed Braddock were read to the council, after which
General Shirley announced a scheme for campaigns to be conducted during
the new year. The new "generalissimo" proposed four campaigns: one army
of five thousand men was to assemble at Oswego, four thousand of whom
were to be sent to destroy, first, Fort Frontenac, then Forts Niagara,
Presque Isle, La Boeuf, and Detroit; a second army of three thousand
provincials was to march over Braddock's Road against Fort Duquesne; an
army of one thousand men was to advance to Crown Point on Lake Champlain
and erect a fort there; a fourth army of two thousand men was to "carry
fire and sword" up the Kennebec River, across the portage, and down
Riviere Chaudiere to its mouth near Quebec. The Council agreed, as
councils will, to all this Quixotic program; insisting, however, that
ten thousand men should be sent to Crown Point and six thousand to
Oswego.
In spite of Shirley's earnestness things moved very slowly, and the
bickering between governors and assemblies and the jealousy of men out
of power of those in power retarded every movement. The deadlock in
Pennsylvania resulted in the abandonment of that province and Virginia
so far as offensive measures were concerned, and the two governors
busied themselves in fortifying their smoking frontiers, as described
above. And finally the northern campaigns toward the lakes came to a
sudden stand when General Shirley was superseded in his command by Lord
Loudoun who, lacking the sense to forward Shirley's plans, officiously
altered them completely at a time when everything depended on quick and
concerted action. As a result, Loudoun moved northward at a snail's
pace.
It seemed as though affairs in America were momentarily paralyzed by the
shock of the tremendous conflict now opened on the continent. On the
eighteenth of May England had declared war on France and twenty-two days
later France responded, and the most terrible conflict of the eighteenth
century opened, in which the great Frederick eventually humbled, with
England's help, the three empresses whose hatred he had drawn upon
himself. But while Louis sent an army of one hundred thousand against
Frederick, he had yet twelve thousand to hurry over to New France to
make good the successes of 1755. These sailed under that best and
bravest of Frenchmen since the days of Champlain, Montcalm, on the
third of April. In three months Montcalm had swept down Lake
Champlain to Fort Ticonderoga. Then, as if to make sport of his
antagonist--Loudoun, who had abandoned Shirley's Oswego scheme--Montcalm
returned to Montreal, hurried with three thousand soldiers down the St.
Lawrence and across to Oswego, which surrendered at once with its twelve
hundred defenders. The outwitted Loudoun crawled slowly up to Lake
George; the winter of 1756-57 came on, and the two commanders glared at
each other across the narrow space of snow and ice that separated them.
The two important campaigns planned by Shirley were utter failures, and
the westward campaign against Fort Duquesne was not even attempted. The
French were strengthening everywhere. "Whoever is in or whoever is out,"
exclaimed Chesterfield, "I am sure we are undone both at home and
abroad.... We are no longer a nation." But one of Shirley's _coups_ had
succeeded; Winslow captured Beausejour. In the west Armstrong had razed
the Indian town of Kittanning on the Allegheny. On the other hand these
minor successes were far overbalanced by the destruction of Oswego and
Fort Bull, between the Mohawk and Lake Oneida, and the menacing position
Montcalm had assumed with the strengthening of Ticonderoga, Crown Point,
and Frontenac.
Pitt, a fine example of a man too powerful to hold office with peace,
was forced into the premiership again near the end of this black year of
1756. Parliament refused to support him, the Duke of Cumberland,
captain-general of the army, opposed him, and the king hated him; early
in April 1757 he was dismissed. England had found her man but the
pigmies in power shrank from acknowledging him. With that sublime
confidence which once or twice in a century betokens latent genius, Pitt
exclaimed: "I am sure I can save this country, and that nobody else
can." Meantime Chesterfield was sighing: "I never saw so dreadful a
time." The year of 1757 dragged on as gloomily as its predecessor.
Montcalm, master of the situation, pushed southward upon Fort William
Henry on Lake George, and General Webb at Fort Edward. Loudoun
abandoned the scene and went gallantly sailing with the fleet against
Louisbourg. Fort William Henry surrendered and Montcalm spread terror to
Albany and New York. Had he pressed his advantage it is questionable if
he could not have occupied the whole Hudson Valley. Why he did not could
have been explained better in Quebec than in New York. It was ever the
foe behind Montcalm that was his worst enemy, and which eventually
compassed his ruin.
If official jealousies were now the bane of New France, incapacity until
now had handicapped her enemies. When Pitt was forced out of office in
April, England was "left without a government." "England has been long
in labor," said the Prussian Frederick, "and at last she has brought
forth a man." Her hour was long delayed, but early in 1758 Pitt was
again made Secretary of State with old Newcastle First Lord of the
Treasury. "It was a partnership of magpie and eagle. The dirty work of
government, intrigue, bribery, and all the patronage that did not affect
the war, fell to the share of the old politician. If Pitt could appoint
generals, admirals, and ambassadors, Newcastle was welcome to the rest.
'I will borrow the Duke's majorities to carry on the government,' said
the new secretary."[53]
Seldom indeed has the elevation of one man to power produced such almost
instantaneous results as did the elevation of Pitt. The desperateness of
England's condition undoubtedly intensified, by contrast, the successes
which came when he assumed full power. England had been fighting, not
France and her allies, but the stars; all the bravery and sturdiness of
her soldiers and sailors could not counteract the ignorance and
incapacity of those who had heretofore commanded them. Now, capacity and
ability were in league; like an electric shock the realization of this
significant union passed from man to man. The people felt it, and the
army and navy; the political pigmies about the throne felt it, as well
as the king. Pitt, vain as any genius, asked for the latter's
confidence; the reply was "deserve it and you shall have it"--and a
Hanoverian king of England kept his word. "I shall now have no more
peace," he had sighed when Pelham died; and had not the reins of power
soon passed into the hands of Pitt it is doubtful if he ever could have
had peace with honor. It was the skilful surgeon's knife that England
needed, and no time for men who feared the sight of blood; the "Great
Commoner" proved the skilful surgeon and at once gave England a motto
Pelham never knew: "Neither fleet nor army should eat the bread of the
nation in idleness."
Pitt at once displayed a prime qualification for his post of honor by
choosing with unfailing discernment men who should lead both fleets and
armies from idleness into action. His American campaign of 1758 embraced
three decisive movements, an attack on Louisbourg--stepping-stone to
Quebec--an invasion upon Montcalm on Lake Champlain, and an expedition
to Fort Duquesne. For these three movements he chose two of the three
leaders. The two he chose completed their assignments with utmost
courage and success. The third, Abercrombie, whom Pitt could not
prevent succeeding the incompetent Loudoun--met with defeat. As if to
reaffirm his sagacity, Ferdinand of Brunswick, whom Pitt sent to
Frederick the Great in the place of the disgraced Duke of Cumberland,
was also signally victorious over the foes who had compelled the king's
brother, the year before, to sign a convention in which he promised to
disband his army.
Admiral Boscawen set Amherst down before Louisbourg with fourteen
thousand men at the beginning of June, young Wolfe leading the army up
from the boats over crags which the French had left unguarded because
they were, seemingly, inaccessible. At the same time Abercrombie was
gathering his army, of equal strength, at the head of Lake George,
preparatory to proceeding northward upon Fort Ticonderoga.
The command, of the Fort Duquesne campaign was given by Pitt to
Brigadier John Forbes, a Scot, ten years younger than his century. Of
Forbes little seems to be known save that he began life as a medical
student; abandoning his profession for that of arms he made a brave and
good officer. That Pitt chose him to retrieve the dead Braddock's
mistakes speaks loudly of his commanding abilities; the numerous
quotations from his correspondence given elsewhere in this monograph
will present a clearer picture of this almost unknown hero than has ever
yet been drawn. "Though a well-bred man of the world," writes Parkman,
"his tastes were simple; he detested ceremony, and dealt frankly and
plainly with the colonists, who both respected and liked him."[54]
The correspondence between Forbes and his chief assistant,
Lieutenant-colonel Henry Bouquet, a Swiss, commanding the regiment of
Royal Americans, is convincing proof of the democratic plainness and
whole-hearted earnestness of Braddock's successor.
The condition of the frontiers of Virginia and Pennsylvania during the
years succeeding Braddock's defeat has been previously reviewed, and the
greatness of the task now thrown upon General Forbes's shoulders can be
readily conceived. Yet there was much in his favor; the colonies were
quite aroused to the danger. Pennsylvania and Virginia were at last
ready to put shoulder to shoulder in an attempt to drive the French
from the Ohio. Pennsylvania promised Forbes twenty-seven hundred men;
sixteen hundred were to come from Virginia and other of the southern
provinces. Twelve hundred Highlanders from Montgomery's regiment were
given Forbes, also the Royal American regiment, made up largely of
Pennsylvania Germans and officered by men brought for the purpose from
Europe. The force, when at last gathered together, amounted to between
six and seven thousand men. The very proportions of this army were its
principal menace. No one believed that Fort Duquesne, far away in the
forests beyond the mountains, could hold out against this formidable
array. That the French, now being attacked simultaneously in the east
and in the north, could send reenforcements to the Ohio was no more
likely. But there still lay the Alleghenies, their crags and gorges.
Could this large body of troops cross them and take provisions
sufficient to support men and horses? As with Braddock, so now with
Forbes, it was the mere physical feat of throwing an army three hundred
miles into the forests that was the crucial problem. Fort Duquesne could
have been captured with half of Forbes's army; Wolfe had hardly more
than that at Quebec in the year succeeding. If Forbes could move this
army, or any considerable fraction of it, across the mountains, there
was no reasonable doubt of his success.
Forbes was much more delayed in getting his expedition off than was
either of his two colleagues, Abercrombie and Amherst. Little dreaming
that it would not be until the middle of June that his stores would
arrive from England, Forbes had in March settled upon Conococheague
(Williamsport, Maryland) as a convenient point of rendezvous for his
army.[55] In this he acted upon the advice of his quartermaster-general,
Sir John St. Clair, who was sent forward to examine routes and provide
forage, but for whom, however, Forbes had little respect. Some time
later St. Clair urged Forbes to alter this plan and make the new outpost
on Burd's Road toward the Youghiogheny, Raystown, the point of
rendezvous. The difficulty of the route from Conococheague to Fort
Cumberland undoubtedly induced St. Clair to advise this change of base;
later Governor Sharpe had a road cut from Fort Frederick to Fort
Cumberland, but that was not until late in June. Following St. Clair's
advice, Forbes changed his original plan and Raystown (Bedford,
Pennsylvania) became the base of supplies and point of rendezvous. On
the twenty-third of April Colonel Bouquet, commanding the Royal
Americans, wrote Forbes of his arrival at New York and in less than a
month this exceedingly efficient officer was on his way over the old
road westward through Shippensburg and Carlisle. He was at Lancaster May
20, and wrote Forbes: "I arrived here this morning, and found Mr Young
waiting for money to clear Armstrong's Path the Commissioners having
disappointed him."[56] On the twenty-second he wrote again outlining the
route and stages on the road to Raystown:
"The first Stage (from Lancaster) Shippensburg
2^d Fort Loudon
3 Fort Littleton
4 18 miles 1/2 way to Rays Town, where I shall have a stockade Erect'd
5 17 miles at Rays Town where we shall Build a Fort."[57]
General Forbes reached Philadelphia by the middle of April but found
himself as yet without an army. The raising of the provincials
progressed slowly; his Highlanders were not yet arrived from South
Carolina; his stores and ammunition had not come from England. However,
on May 20, he wrote Bouquet giving orders concerning the formation of
magazines and ordered him to contract for one hundred and twenty wagons
to transport provisions "backwards to Rays town," and to select at that
point a site for a fort. He added: "By all means have the road
reconnoitred from Rays town to the Yohageny"--the road Burd had
completed to the summit of Allegheny Mountain in 1755. It is plain that
Forbes intended, at this time, to march to Fort Cumberland by way of
Carlisle and Bedford, and go on to Fort Duquesne over Braddock's Road.
In this case he much needed Burd's road to the Youghiogheny--for the
same reasons that Braddock did. There is no evidence that Forbes
conceived the plan of using a new road westward from Raystown until he
and Bouquet came to realize that, with that point as a rendezvous, the
Fort Cumberland route would necessitate a long detour from a direct line
toward Fort Duquesne.
Bouquet pushed on westward. He left Fort Lowther, at Carlisle, June 8,
and was writing Forbes from Fort Loudoun on the eleventh. On the
twenty-second he reached the Juniata and wrote Forbes on the
twenty-eighth from his "Camp near Raes Town," which now became the
rendezvous of the summer's campaign. Here Fort Bedford was built, making
the most westernly fort in the chain of fortresses built through central
Pennsylvania. It was one of the leading features of General Forbes's
plan to extend this chain of forts all the way to the Ohio. "It was
absolutely necessary," he wrote to Pitt, explaining this feature of his
campaign, "that I should take precautions by having posts along my
route, which I have done from a project that I took from Turpin's Essay,
_Sur la Guerre_. Last chapter 4^{th} Book, Intitled _Principe sur lequel
on peut etablir un projet de Campagne_, if you take the trouble of
Looking into this Book, you will see the General principles upon which I
have proceeded."[58]
The Highlanders did not arrive from South Carolina until the seventh of
June, and the army stores and artillery did not arrive from England
until the fourteenth. The work of raising the provincial troops was not
forwarded with any greater despatch. In general terms Forbes did not get
fairly started from the seaboard until three weeks later than Braddock
had left Fort Cumberland. Thus, though personally blameless, Forbes
began his campaign under an almost fatal handicap. And, with this army
converging from many points upon Fort Bedford, arose the vital question
of routes to be pursued.