Published under the Auspices of the
Literary and Historical Society of Quebec
[Reprinted.]
Quebec:
Printed at the "Morning Chronicle" Office.
1887.
[The original of this manuscript is deposited in the French war
archives, in Paris; a copy was, with the permission of the French
Government, taken in 1855, and deposited in the Library of the
Legislative Assembly of Canada. The Literary and Historical Society
of Quebec, through the kindness of Mr. Todd, the Librarian, was
permitted to have communication thereof. This document is supposed to
have been written about the year 1765, that is five years after the
return to France from Canada of the writer, the Chevalier Johnstone,
a Scottish Jacobite, who had fled to France after the defeat at
Culloden, and obtained from the French monarch, with several other
Scotchmen, commissions in the French armies. In 1748, says _Francisque
Michel_,[A] "he sailed from Rochefort as an Ensign with troops going
to Cape Breton; he continued to serve in America until he returned to
France, in December, 1760, having acted during the campaign of 1759, in
Canada, as aide-de-camp to Chevalier de Levis. On Levis being ordered
to Montreal, Johnstone was detached and retained by General Montcalm
on his staff, on account of his thorough knowledge of the environs
of Quebec, and particularly of Beauport, where the principal works
of defence stood, and where the whole army, some 11,000 men, were
entrenched, leaving in Quebec merely a garrison of 1500. The journal
is written in English, and is not remarkable for orthography or purity
of diction; either Johnstone had forgotten or had never thoroughly
known the language. The style is prolix, sententious, abounding in
quotations from old writers. This document had first attracted the
attention of one of the late historians of Canada, the Abbé Ferland,
who attached much importance to it, as calculated to supply matters of
detail and incidents unrecorded elsewhere. Colonel Margry, in charge of
the French records, had permitted the venerable writer, then on a visit
to Paris, to make extracts from it; some of which extracts, the abbé
published at the time of the laying of the St. Foy Monument, in 1862.
The Chevalier Johnstone differs _in toto_ from the opinions expressed
by several French officers of regulars, respecting the conduct of the
Canadian Militia, in 1759, ascribing to their valour, on the 13th
September, the salvation of a large portion of the French army. He has
chosen the singular, though not unprecedented mode of the Dialogue,
to recapitulate the events of a campaign in which he played a not
inconsiderable part."--J. M. LEMOINE.]
[Published under the auspices of the Literary and Historical Society
of Quebec.]