CHAPTER LIII.----LOUIS XV., FRANCE IN THE COLONIES. 1745-1763.

France was already beginning to perceive her sudden abasement in Europe;

the defaults of her generals as well as of her government sometimes

struck the king himself; he threw the blame of it on the barrenness of

his times. “This age is not fruitful in great men,” he wrote to Marshal

Noailles: “you know that we miss subjects for all objects, and you have

one before your eyes in the case of the army which certainly impresses me

more than any other.” Thus spoke Louis XV. on the eve of the battle of

Fontenoy Marshal Saxe was about to confer upon the French arms a

transitory lustre; but the king, who loaded him with riches and honors,

never forgot that he was not his born subject. “I allow that Count Saxe

is the best officer to command that we have,” he would say; “but he is a

Huguenot, he wants to be supreme, and he is always saying that, if he is

thwarted, he will enter some other service. Is that zeal for France?

I see, however, very few of ours who aim high like him.”

The king possessed at a distance, in the colonies of the Two Indies, as

the expression then was, faithful servants of France, passionately

zealous for her glory, “aiming high,” ambitious or disinterested, able

politicians or heroic pioneers, all ready to sacrifice both property and

life for the honor and power of their country: it is time to show how La

Bourdonnais, Dupleix, Bussy, Lally-Tollendal were treated in India; what

assistance, what guidance, what encouragement the Canadians and their

illustrious chiefs received from France, beginning with Champlain, one

of the founders of the colony, and ending with Montcalm, its latest

defender. It is a painful but a salutary spectacle to see to what

meannesses a sovereign and a government may find themselves reduced

through a weak complaisance towards the foreigner, in the feverish desire

of putting an end to a war frivolously undertaken and feebly conducted.

French power in India threw out more lustre, but was destined to

speedier, and perhaps more melancholy, extinction than in Canada.

Single-handed in the East the chiefs maintained the struggle against the

incapacity of the French government and the dexterous tenacity of the

enemy; in America the population of French extraction upheld to the

bitter end the name, the honor, and the flag of their country. “The fate

of France,” says Voltaire, “has nearly always been that her enterprises,

and even her successes, beyond her own frontiers should become fatal to

her.” The defaults of the government and the jealous passions of the

colonists themselves, in the eighteenth century, seriously aggravated the

military reverses which were to cost the French nearly all their

colonies.

More than a hundred years previously, at the outset of Louis XIV.’s

personal reign, and through the persevering efforts of Colbert marching

in the footsteps of Cardinal Richelieu, an India Company had been founded

for the purpose of developing French commerce in those distant regions,

which had always been shrouded in a mysterious halo of fancied wealth and

grandeur. Several times the Company had all but perished; it had revived

under the vigorous impulse communicated by Law, and had not succumbed at

the collapse of his system. It gave no money to its shareholders, who

derived their benefits only from a partial concession of the tobacco.

revenues, granted by the king to the Company, but its directors lived a

life of magnificence in the East, where they were authorized to trade on

their own account. Abler and bolder than all his colleagues, Joseph

Dupleix, member of a Gascon family and son of the comptroller-general of

Hainault, had dreamed of other destinies than the management of a

counting-house; he aspired to endow France with the empire of India.

Placed at a very early age at the head of the French establishments at

Chandernuggur, he had improved the city and constructed a fleet, all the

while acquiring for himself an immense fortune; he had just been sent to

Pondicherry as governor-general of the Company’s agencies, when the war

of succession to the empire broke out in 1742. For a long time past

Dupleix and his wife, who was called in India Princess Jane, had been

silently forming a vast network of communications and correspondence

which kept them acquainted with the innumerable intrigues of all the

petty native courts. Madame Dupleix, a Creole, brought up in India,

understood all its dialects. Her husband had been the first to conceive

the idea of that policy which was destined before long to deliver India

to the English, his imitators; mingling everywhere in the incessant

revolutions which were hatching all about him, he gave the support of

France at one time to one pretender and at another to another, relying

upon the discipline of the European troops and upon the force of his own

genius for securing the ascendency to his protege of the moment: thus

increasing little by little French influence and dominion throughout all

the Hindoo territory. Accustomed to dealing with the native princes, he

had partially adopted their ways of craft and violence; more concerned

for his object than about the means of obtaining it, he had the

misfortune, at the outset of the contest, to clash with another who was

ambitious for the glory of France, and as courageous but less able a

politician than he; their rivalry, their love of power, and their

inflexible attachment to their own ideas, under the direction of a feeble

government, thenceforth stamped upon the relations of the two great

European nations in India a regrettable character of duplicity: all the

splendor and all the efforts of Dupleix’s genius could never efface it.

[Illustration: Dupleix----168]

Concord as yet reigned between Dupleix and the governor of Bourbon and of

Ile de France, Bertrand Francis Mahe de La Bourdonnais, when, in the

month of September, 1746, the latter put in an appearance with a small

squadron in front of Madras, already one of the principal English

establishments. Commodore Peyton, who was cruising in Indian waters,

after having been twice beaten by La Bourdonnais, had removed to a

distance with his flotilla; the town was but feebly fortified; the

English, who had for a while counted upon the protection of the Nabob of

the Carnatic, did not receive the assistance they expected;,they

surrendered at the first shot, promising to pay a considerable sum for

the ransom of Madras, which the French were to retain as security until

the debt was completely paid. La Bourdonnais had received from France

this express order “You will not, keep any of the conquests you may make

in India.” The chests containing the ransom of the place descended

slowly from the white town, which was occupied solely by Europeans and by

the English settlements, to the black town, inhabited by a mixed

population of natives and foreigners of various races, traders or

artisans. Already the vessels of La Bourdonnais, laden with these

precious spoils, had made sail for Pondicherry; the governor of Bourbon

was in a hurry to get back to his islands; autumn was coming on, tempests

were threatening his squadron, but Dupleix was still disputing the terms

of the treaty concluded with the English for the rendition of Madras; he

had instructions, he said, to raze the city and place it thus dismantled

in the hands of the Nabob of the Carnatic; the Hindoo prince had set

himself in motion to seize his prey; the English burst out into insults

and threats. La Bourdonnais, in a violent rage, on the point of finding

himself arrested by order of Dupleix, himself put in prison the governor-

general’s envoys; the conflict of authority was aggravated by the

feebleness and duplicity of the instructions from France. All at once a

fearful tempest destroyed a part of the squadron in front of Madras; La

Bourdonnais, flinging himself into a boat, had great difficulty in

rejoining his ships; he departed, leaving his rival master of Madras, and

adroitly prolonging the negotiations, in order to ruin at least the black

city, which alone was rich and prosperous, before giving over the place

to the Nabob. Months rolled by, and the French remained alone at Madras.

[Illustration: La Bourdonnais----170]

A jealous love of power and absorption in political schemes had induced

Dupleix to violate a promise lightly given by La Bourdonnais in the name

of France; he had arbitrarily quashed a capitulation of which he had not

discussed the conditions. The report of this unhappy conflict, and the

color put upon it by the representations of Dupleix, were about to ruin

at Paris the rival whom he had vanquished in India.

On arriving at Ile de France, amidst that colony which he had found

exhausted, ruined, and had endowed with hospitals, arsenals, quays, and

fortifications, La Bourdonnais learned that a new governor was already

installed there. His dissensions with Dupleix had borne their fruits; he

had been accused of having exacted too paltry a ransom from Madras, and

of having accepted enormous presents; the Company had appointed a

successor in his place. Driven to desperation, anxious to go and defend

himself, La Bourdonnais set out for France with his wife and his four

children; a prosecution had already been commenced against him. He was

captured at sea by an English ship, and taken a prisoner to England.

The good faith of the conqueror of Madras was known in London; one of the

directors of the English Company offered his fortune as security for M.

de La Bourdonnais. Scarcely had he arrived in Paris when he was thrown

into the Bastille, and for two years kept in solitary confinement. When

his innocence was at last acknowledged and his liberty restored to him,

his health was destroyed, his fortune exhausted by the expenses of the

trial. La Bourdonnais died before long, employing the last remnants of

his life and of his strength in pouring forth his anger against Dupleix,

to whom he attributed all his woes. His indignation was excusable, and

some of his grievances were well grounded; but the germs of suspicion

thus sown by the unfortunate prisoner released from the Bastille were

destined before long to consign to perdition not only his enemy, but

also, together with him, that French dominion in India to which M. de La

Bourdonnais had dedicated his life.

Meanwhile Dupleix grew greater and greater, every day more powerful and

more daring. The English had not forgotten the affair of Madras. On the

30th of August, 1748, Admiral Boscawen went and laid siege to

Pondicherry; stopped at the outset by the fort of Ariocapang, of the

existence of which they were ignorant, the disembarked troops could not

push their trenches beyond an impassable morass which protected the town.

The fire of the siege-artillery scarcely reached the ramparts; the

sallies of the besieged intercepted the communications between the camp

and the squadron, which, on its side, was bombarding the walls of

Pondicherry without any serious result. Dupleix himself commanded the

French batteries; on the 6th of October he was wounded, and his place

on the ramparts was taken by Madame Dupleix, seconded by her future

son-in-law, M. de Bussy-Castelnau, Dupleix’s military lieutenant,

animated by the same zeal for the greatness of France. The fire of the

English redoubled; but there was laughter in Pondicherry, for the balls

did not carry so far; and on the 20th of October, after forty days’

siege, Admiral Boscawen put to sea again, driven far away from the coasts

by the same tempests which, two years before, had compelled La

Bourdonnais to quit Madras. Twice had Dupleix been served in his designs

by the winds of autumn. The peace of Aix-la-Chapelle came to put an end

to open war between the Europeans; at the French establishments in the

Indies the Te Deum was sung; Dupleix alone was gloomy, despite the riband

of St. Louis and the title of marquis, recently granted him by King Louis

XV: he had been obliged to restore Madras to the English.

War soon recommenced, in the name, and apparently to the profit, of the

Hindoo princes. France and England had made peace; the English and

French Companies in India had not laid down arms. Their power, as well

as the importance of their establishments was as yet in equipoise. At

Surat both Companies had places of business; on the coast of Malabar the

English had Bombay, and the French Mahe; on the coast of Coromandel the

former held Madras and Fort St. George, the latter Pondicherry and

Karikal. The principal factories, as well as the numerous little

establishments which were dependencies of them, were defended by a

certain number of European soldiers, and by Sepoys, native soldiers in

the pay of the Companies.

These small armies were costly, and diminished to a considerable extent

the profits of trade. Dupleix espied the possibility of a new

organization which should secure to the French in India the

preponderance, and ere long the empire even, in the two peninsulas. He

purposed to found manufactures, utilize native hand-labor, and develop

the coasting trade, or Ind to Ind trade, as the expression then was; but

he set his pretensions still higher, and carried his views still further.

He purposed to acquire for the Company, and, under its name, for France,

territories and subjects furnishing revenues, and amply sufficing for the

expenses of the commercial establishments. The moment was propitious;

the ancient empire of the Great Mogul, tottering to its base, was

distracted by revolutions, all the chops and changes whereof were

attentively followed by Madame Dupleix; two contested successions opened

up at once--those of the Viceroy or Soudhabar of the Deccan and of his

vassal, the Nabob of the Carnatic. The Great Mogul, nominal sovereign of

all the states of India, confined himself to selling to all the

pretenders decrees of investiture, without taking any other part in the

contest. Dupleix, on the contrary, engaged in it ardently. He took

sides in the Deccan for Murzapha Jung, and in the Carnatic for Tchunda

Sahib against their rivals supported by the English. Versed in all the

resources of Hindoo policy, he had negotiated an alliance between his two

proteges; both marched against the Nabob of the Carnatic. He, though a

hundred and seven years old, was at the head of his army, mounted on a

magnificent elephant. He espied in the melley his enemy Tchunda Sahib,

and would have darted upon him; but, whilst his slaves were urging on the

huge beast, the little French battalion sent by Dupleix to the aid of his

allies marched upon the nabob, a ball struck him to the heart, and he

fell. The same evening, Murzapha Jung was proclaimed Soudhabar of the

Deccan, and he granted the principality of the Carnatic to Tchunda Sahib,

at the same time reserving to the French Company a vast territory.

Some months rolled by, full of vicissitudes and sudden turns of fortune.

Murzapha Jung, at first victorious, and then vanquished by his uncle

Nazir Jung, everywhere dragged at his heels as a hostage and a trophy of

his triumph, had found himself delivered by an insurrection of the

Patanian chiefs, Affghans by origin, settled in the south of India. The

head of Nazir Jung had come rolling at his feet. For a while besieged in

Pondicherry, but still negotiating and everywhere mingling in intrigues

and conspiracies, Dupleix was now triumphant with his ally; the Soudhabar

of the Deccan made his entry in state upon French territory. Pondicherry

was in holiday trim to receive him. Dupleix, dressed in the magnificent

costume of, the Hindoo princes, had gone with his troops to meet him.

Both entered the town in the same palanquin to the sound of native

cymbals and the military music of the.French. A throne awaited the

soudhabar, surrounded by the Affghan chiefs, who were already claiming

the reward of their services. The Hindoo prince needed the aid of

France; he knew it. He proclaimed Dupleix nabob of all the provinces to

the south of the River Krischna. Tcbunda Sahib, but lately his ally,

became his vassal--“the vassal of France,” murmured Madame Dupleix, when

she heard of this splendid recompense for so many public and private

services. The ability and indomitable bravery of M. de Bussy soon

extended the French conquests in the Deccan. Murzapha Jung had just been

assassinated at the head of his army; Bussy proclaimed and supported a

new soudhabar, who was friendly to the French, and who ceded to them five

provinces, of which the large town of Masulipatam, already in French

hands, became the capital. A third of India was obedient to Dupleix; the

Great Mogul sent him a decree of investiture, and demanded of the

Princess Jane the hand of her youngest daughter, promised to M. de Bussy.

Dupleix well know the frailty of human affairs, and the dark intrigues of

Hindoo courts; he breathed freely, however, for he was on his guard, and

the dream of his life seemed to be accomplished. “The empire of France

is founded,” he would say.

[Illustration: Dupleix meeting the Soudhabar of the Deccan----174]

He reckoned without France, and without the incompetent or timid men who

governed her. The successes of Dupleix scared King Louis XV. and his

feeble ministers; they angered and discomfited England, which was as yet

tottering in India, and whose affairs there had for a long while been ill

managed, but which remained ever vigorous, active, animated by the

indomitable ardor of a free people. At Versailles attempts were made to

lessen the conquests of Dupleix, prudence was recommended to him, delay

was shown in sending him the troops he demanded. In India England had at

last found a man still young and unknown, but worthy of being opposed to

Dupleix. Clive, who had almost in boyhood entered the Company’s offices,

turned out, after the turbulence of his early years, a heaven-born

general; he was destined to continue Dupleix’s work, when abandoned by

France, and to found to the advantage of the English that European

dominion in India which had been the Governor of Pondicherry’s dream.

The war still continued in the Carnatic: Mahomet Ali, Tchunda Sahib’s

rival, had for the last six months been besieged in Trichinopoli; the

English had several times, but in vain, attempted to effect the raising

of the siege; Clive, who had recently entered the Company’s army, was for

saving the last refuge of Mahomet Ali by a bold diversion against Arcot,

the capital of the Carnatic. To him was given the command of the

expedition he had suggested. In the month of September, 1751, he made

himself master of Arcot by a surprise. The Hindoo populations, left to

themselves, passed almost without resistance from one master to another.

The Europeans did not signalize by the infliction of punishment the act

of taking possession. Clive was before long attacked in Arcot by Tchunda

Sahib, who was supported by a French detachment. He was not in a

position to hold the town; so he took refuge in the fort, and there, for

fifty days, withstood all the efforts of his enemies. Provisions fell

short; every day the rations were becoming more insufficient; but Clive

had managed to implant in his soldiers’ hearts the heroic resolution

which animated him. “Give the rice to the English,” said the sepoys; “we

will be content with the water in which it is boiled.” A body of

Mahrattas, allies of the English, came to raise the siege. Clive pursued

the French on their retreat, twice defeated Tchunda Sahib, and, at last

effecting a junction with the Governor-General Lawrence, broke the

investment of Trichinopoli, and released Mahomet Ali. Tchunda Sahib, in

his turn shut up in Tcheringham, was delivered over to his rival by a

Tanjore chieftain in whom he trusted; he was put to death; and the French

commandant, a nephew of Law’s, surrendered to the English. Two French

corps had already been destroyed by Clive, who held the third army

prisoners. Bussy was carrying on war in the Deccan, with great

difficulty making head against overt hostilities and secret intrigues.

The report of Dupleix’s reverses arrived in France in the month of

September, 1752.

[Illustration: Death of the Nabob of the Carnatic----174]

The dismay at Versailles was great, and prevailed over the astonishment.

There had never been any confidence in Dupleix’s projects, there had been

scarcely any belief in his conquests. The soft-hearted inertness of

ministers and courtiers was almost as much disgusted at the successes as

at the defeats of the bold adventurers who were attempting and risking

all for the aggrandizement and puissance of France in the East. Dupleix

secretly received notice to demand his recall. He replied by proposing

to have M. de Bussy nominated in his place. “Never was so grand a fellow

as this Bussy,” he wrote. The ministers and the Company cared little for

the grandeur of Bussy or of Dupleix; what they sought was a dastardly

security, incessantly troubled by the enterprises of the politician and

the soldier. The tone of England was more haughty than ever, in

consequence of Clive’s successes. The recall of Dupleix was determined

upon.

The Governor of Pondicherry had received no troops, but he had managed to

reorganize an army, and had resumed the offensive in the Carnatic; Bussy,

set free at last as to his movements in the Deccan, was preparing to

rejoin Dupleix. Clive was ill, and had just set out for England: fortune

had once more changed front. The open conferences held with Saunders,

English Governor of Madras, failed in the month of January, 1754; Dupleix

wished to preserve the advantages he had won; Saunders refused to listen

to that. The approach of a French squadron was signalled; the ships

appeared to be numerous. Dupleix was already rejoicing at the arrival of

unexpected aid, when, instead of an officer commanding the twelve hundred

soldiers from France, he saw the apparition of M. Godeheu, one of the

directors of the Company, and but lately his friend and correspondent.

“I come to supersede you, sir,” said the new arrival, without any

circumstance; “I have full powers from the Company to treat with the

English.” The cabinet of London had not been deceived as to the

importance of Dupleix in India; his recall had been made the absolute

condition of a cessation of hostilities. Louis XV. and his ministers

had shown no opposition; the treaty was soon concluded, restoring the

possessions of the two Companies within the limits they had occupied

before the war of the Carnatic, with the exception of the district of

Masulipatam, which became accessible to the English. All the territories

ceded by the Hindoo princes to Dupleix reverted to their former masters;

the two Companies interdicted one another from taking any part in the

interior policy of India, and at the same time forbade their agents to

accept from the Hindoo princes any charge, honor, or dignity; the most

perfect equality was re-established between the possessions and revenues

of the two great European nations, rivals in the East as well as in

Europe; England gave up some petty forts, some towns of no importance,

France ceded the empire of India. When Godeheu signed the treaty,

Trichinopoli was at last on the point of giving in. Bussy was furious,

and would have quitted the Deccan, which he still occupied, but Dupleix

constrained him to remain there; he himself embarked for France with his

wife and daughter, leaving in India, together with his life’s work

destroyed in a few days by the poltroonery of his country’s government,

the fortune he had acquired during his great enterprises, entirely sunk

as it was in the service of France; the revenues destined to cover his

advances were seized by Godeheu.

France seemed to comprehend what her ministers had not even an idea of;

Dupleix’s arrival in France was a veritable triumph. It was by this time

known that the reverses which had caused so much talk had been half

repaired. It was by this time guessed how infinite were the resources of

that empire of India, so lightly and mean-spiritedly abandoned to the

English. “My wife and I dare not appear in the streets of Lorient,”

wrote Dupleix, “because of the crowd of people wanting to see us and

bless us;” the comptroller-general, Herault de Sechelles, as well as the

king and Madame de Pompadour, then and for a long while the reigning

favorite, gave so favorable a reception to the hero of India that

Dupleix, always an optimist, conceived fresh hopes. “I shall regain my

property here,” he would say, “and India will recover in the hands of

Bussy.”

He was mistaken about the justice as he had been about the discernment

and the boldness of the French government; not a promise was

accomplished; not a hope was realized; after delay upon delay, excuse

upon excuse, Dupleix saw his wife expire at the end of two years, worn

out with suffering and driven to despair; like her, his daughter,

affianced for a long time past to Bussy, succumbed beneath the weight of

sorrow; in vain did Dupleix tire out the ministers with his views and his

projects for India; he saw even the action he was about to bring against

the Company vetoed by order of the king. Persecuted by his creditors,

overwhelmed with regret for the relatives and friends whom he had

involvedin his enterprises and in his ruin, he exclaimed a few months

before his death, “I have sacrificed youth, fortune, life, in order to

load with honor and riches those of my own nation in Asia. Unhappy

friends, too weakly credulous relatives, virtuous citizens, have

dedicated their property to promoting the success of my projects; they

are now in want. . . . I demand, like the humblest of creditors, that

which is my due; my services are all stuff, my demand is ridiculous, I am

treated like the vilest of men. The little I have left is seized, I have

been obliged to get execution stayed to prevent my being dragged to

prison!” Dupleix died at last on the 11th of November, 1763, the most

striking, without being the last or the most tragical, victim of the

great French enterprises in India.

Despite the treaty of peace, hostilities had never really ceased in

India. Clive had returned from England; freed henceforth from the

influence, the intrigues, and the indomitable energy of Dupleix, he had

soon made himself master of the whole of Bengal, he had even driven the

French from Chandernuggur; Bussy had been unable to check his successes;

he avenged himself by wresting away from the English all their agencies

on the coast of Orissa, and closing against them the road between the

Coromandel coast and Bengal.

Meanwhile the Seven Years’ War had broken out; the whole of Europe had

joined in the contest; the French navy, still feeble in spite of the

efforts that had been made to restore it, underwent serious reverses on

every sea. Count Lally-Tollendal, descended from an Irish family which

took refuge in France with James II., went to Count d’Argenson, still

minister of war, with a proposition to go and humble in India that

English power which had been imprudently left to grow up without

hinderance. M. de Lally had served with renown in the wars of Germany;

he had seconded Prince Charles Edward in his brave and yet frivolous

attempt upon England. The directors of the India Company went and asked

M. d’Argenson to intrust to General Lally the king’s troops promised for

the expedition. “You are wrong,” M. d’Argenson said to them; “I know M.

de Lally; he is a friend of mine, but he is violent, passionate,

inflexible as to discipline; he will not tolerate any disorder; you will

be setting fire to your warehouses, if you send him thither.” The

directors, however, insisted, and M. de Lally set out on the 2d of May,

1757, with four ships and a body of troops. Some young officers

belonging to the greatest houses of France served on his staff.

M. de Lally’s passage was a long one; the English re-enforcements had

preceded, him by six weeks. On arriving in India, he found the arsenals

and the magazines empty; the establishment of Pondicherry alone confessed

to fourteen millions of debt. Meanwhile the enemy was pressing at all

points upon the French possessions. Lally marched to Gondelour

(_Kaddaloue_), which he carried on the sixth day; he, shortly afterwards,

invested Fort St. David, the most formidable of the English fortresses in

India. The first assault was repulsed; the general had neither cannon

nor beasts of burden to draw them. He hurried off to Pondicherry and had

the natives harnessed to the artillery trains, taking pellmell such men

as fell in his way, without regard for rank or caste, imprudently

wounding the prejudices most dear to the country he had come to govern.

Fort St. David was taken and razed. Devicotah, after scarcely the ghost

of a siege, opened its gates. Lally had been hardly a month in India,

and he had already driven the English from the southern coast of the

Coromandel. “All my policy is in these five words, but they are binding

as an oath--No English in the peninsula,” wrote the general. He had sent

Bussy orders to come and join him in order to attack Madras.

The brilliant courage and heroic ardor of M. de Lally had triumphed over

the first obstacles; his recklessness, his severity, his passionateness

were about to lose him the fruits of his victories. “The commission I

hold,” he wrote to the directors of the Company at Paris, “imports that I

shall be held in horror by all the people of the country.” By his

personal defaults he aggravated his already critical position. The

supineness of the French government had made fatal progress amongst its

servants; Count d’Ache, who commanded the fleet, had refused to second

the attempt upon Madras; twice, whilst cruising in Indian waters, the

French admiral had been beaten by the English; he took the course back to

Ile de France, where he reckoned upon wintering. Pondicherry was

threatened, and Lally found himself in Tanjore, where he had hoped to

recover a considerable sum due to the Company; on his road he had

attacked a pagoda, thinking he would find there a great deal of treasure,

but the idols were hollow and of worthless material. The pagoda was in

flames, the disconsolate Brahmins were still wandering round about their

temple; the general took them for spies, and had them tied to the

cannons’ mouths. The danger of Pondicherry forced M. de Lally to raise

the siege of Tanjore; the English fell back on Madras.

Disorder was at its height in the Company’s affairs; the vast enterprises

commenced by Dupleix required success and conquests, but they had been

abandoned since his recall, not without having ingulfed, together with

his private fortune, a portion of the Company’s resources. Lally was

angered at being every moment shackled for want of money; he attributed

it not only to the ill will, but also to the dishonesty, of the local

authorities. He wrote, in 1758, to M. de Leyrit, Governor of

Pondicherry, “Sir, this letter shall be an eternal secret between you and

me, if you furnish me with the means of terminating my enterprise. I

left you a hundred thousand livres of my own money to help you to meet

the expenditure it requires. I have not found so much as a hundred sous

in your purse and in that of all your council; you have both of you

refused to let me employ your credit. I, however, consider you to be

all of you under more obligation to the Company than I am, who have

unfortunately the honor of no further acquaintance with it than to the

extent of having lost half my property by it in 1720. If you continue to

leave me in want of everything and exposed to the necessity of presenting

a front to the general discontent, not only shall I inform the king and

the Company of the fine zeal testified for their service by their

employees here, but I shall take effectual measures for not being at the

mercy, during the short stay I desire to make in this country, of the

party spirit and personal motives by which I see that every member

appears to be actuated to the risk of the Company in general.”

In the midst of this distress, and in spite of this ebullition, M. de

Lally led his troops up in front of Madras; he made himself master of the

Black Town. “The immense plunder taken by the troops,” says the journal

of an officer who held a command under Count Lally, “had introduced

abundance amongst them. Huge stores of strong liquors led to drunkenness

and all the evils it generates. The situation must have been seen to be

believed. The works, the guards in the trenches were all performed by

drunken men. The regiment of Lorraine alone was exempt from this plague,

but the other corps surpassed one another. Hence scenes of the most

shameful kind and most destructive of subordination and discipline, the

details of which confined within the limits of the most scrupulous

truthfulness would appear a monstrous exaggeration.” Lally in despair

wrote to his friends in France, “Hell vomited me into this land of

iniquities, and I am waiting, like Jonah, for the whale that shall

receive me in its belly.”

The attack on the White Town and on Fort St. George was repulsed; and on

the 18th of February, 1759, Lally was obliged to raise the siege of

Madras. The discord which reigned in the army as well as amongst the

civil functionaries was nowhere more flagrant than between Lally and

Bussy. The latter could not console himself for having been forced to

leave the Deccan in the feeble bands of the Marquis of Conflans. An

expedition attempted against the fortress of Wandiwash, of which the

English had obtained possession, was followed by a serious defeat;

Colonel Coote was master of Karikal. Little by little the French army

and French power in India found themselves cooped within the immediate

territory of Pondicherry. The English marched against this town. Lally

shut himself up there in the month of March, 1760. Bussy had been made

prisoner, and Coote had sent him to Europe. “At the head of the French

army Bussy would be in a position by himself alone to prolong the war for

ten years,” said the Hindoos. On the 27th of November, the siege of

Pondicherry was transformed into an investment. Lally had taken all the

precautions of a good general, but he had taken them with his usual

harshness; he had driven from the city all the useless mouths; fourteen

hundred Hindoos, old men, women, and children, wandered for a week

between the English camp and the ramparts of the town, dying of hunger

and misery, without Lally’s consenting to receive them back into the

place; the English at last allowed them to pass. The most severe

requisitions had been ordered to be made on all the houses of

Pondicherry, and the irritation was extreme; the heroic despair of M. de

Lally was continually wringing from him imprudent expressions. “I would

rather go and command a set of Caffres than remain in this Sodom, which

the English fire, in default of Heaven’s, must sooner or later destroy,”

had for a long time past been a common expression of the general’s, whose

fate was henceforth bound up with that of Pondicherry.

He held out for six weeks, in spite of famine, want of money, and

ever-increasing dissensions. A tempest had caused great havoc to the

English squadron which was out at sea; Lally was waiting and waiting for

the arrival of M. d’Ache with the fleet which had but lately sought

refuge at Ile de France after a fresh reverse. From Paris, on the report

of an attack projected by the--English against Bourbon and Ile de France,

ministers had given orders to M. d’Ache not to quit those waters. Lally

and Pondicherry waited in vain.

It became necessary to surrender; the council of the Company called upon

the general to capitulate; Lally claimed the honors of war, but Coote

would have the town at discretion; the distress was extreme as well as

the irritation. Pondicherry was delivered up to the conquerors on the

16th of January, 1761; the fortifications and magazines were razed;

French power in India, long supported by the courage or ability of a few

men, was foundering, never to rise again. “Nobody can have a higher

opinion than I of M. de Lally,” wrote Colonel Coote; “he struggled

against obstacles that I considered insurmountable, and triumphed over

them. There is not in India another man who could have so long kept an

army standing without pay and without resources in any direction.”

“A convincing proof of his merits,” said another English officer, “is his

long and vigorous resistance in a place in which he was universally

detested.”

[Illustration: Lally at Pondicherry----184]

Hatred bears bitterer fruits than is imagined even by those who provoke

it. The animosity which M. de Lally had excited in India was everywhere

an obstacle to the defence; and it was destined to cost him his life and

imperil his honor. Scarcely had he arrived in England, ill, exhausted by

sufferings and fatigue, followed even in his captivity by the reproaches

and anger of his comrades in misfortune, when be heard of the outbreak of

public opinion against him in France; he was accused of treason; and he

obtained from the English cabinet permission to repair to Paris.

“I bring hither my head and my innocence,” he wrote, on disembarking, to

the minister of war, and he went voluntarily to imprisonment in the

Bastille. There he remained nineteen months without being examined.

When the trial commenced in December, 1764, the heads of accusation

amounted to one hundred and sixty, the number of witnesses to nearly two

hundred; the matter lasted a year and a half, conducted with violence on

the part of M. de Lally’s numerous enemies, with inveteracy on the part

of the Parliament, still at strife with the government, with courage and

firmness on the part of the accused. He claimed the jurisdiction of a

court-martial, but his demand was rejected; when he saw himself

confronted with the dock, the general suddenly uncovered his whitened

head and his breast covered with scars, exclaiming, “So this is the

reward for fifty years’ service!” On the 6th of May, 1766, his sentence

was at last pronounced. Lally was acquitted on the charges of high

treason and malversation; he was found “guilty of violence, abuse of

authority, vexations and exactions, as well as of having betrayed the

interests of the king and of the Company.” When the sentence was being

read out to the condemned, “Cut it short, sir,” said the count to the

clerk come to the conclusions.” At the words “betrayed the interests of

the king,” Lally drew himself up to his full height, exclaiming, “Never,

never!” He was expending his wrath in insults heaped upon his enemies,

when, suddenly drawing from his pocket a pair of mathematical compasses,

he struck it violently against his heart; the wound did not go deep

enough; M. de Lally was destined to drink to the dregs the cup of man’s

injustice.

On the 9th of May, at the close of the day, the valiant general whose

heroic resistance had astounded all India, mounted the scaffold on the

Place de Greve, nor was permission granted to the few friends who

remained faithful to him to accompany him to the place of execution;

there was only the parish priest of St. Louis en l’Ile at his side; as

apprehensions were felt of violence and insult on the part of the

condemned, he was gagged like the lowest criminal when he resolutely

mounted the fatal ladder; he knelt without assistance, and calmly awaited

his death-blow. “Everybody,” observed D’Alembert, expressing by that

cruel saying the violence of public feeling against the condemned,

“everybody, except the hangman, has a right to kill Lally.” Voltaire’s

judgment, after the subsidence of passion and after the light thrown by

subsequent events upon the state of French affairs in India before

Lally’s campaigns, is more just. “It was a murder committed with the

sword of justice.” King Louis XV. and his government had lost India; the

rage and shame blindly excited amongst the nation by this disaster had

been visited upon the head of the unhappy general who had been last

vanquished in defending the remnants of French power. The English were

masters forever of India when the son of M. de Lally-Tollendal at last

obtained, in 1780, the rehabilitation of his father’s memory. Public

opinion had not waited till then to decide the case between the condemned

and his accusers.

Whilst the French power in India, after having for an instant had the

dominion over nearly the whole peninsula, was dying out beneath the

incapacity and feebleness of its government, at the moment when the

heroic efforts of La Bourdonnais, Dupleix, and Lally were passing into

the domain of history, a people decimated by war and famine, exhausted by

a twenty years’ unequal struggle, was slowly expiring, preserving to the

very last its hopes and its patriotic devotion. In the West Indies the

whole Canadian people were still maintaining, for the honor of France,

that flag which had just been allowed to slip from the desperate hands of

Lally in the East. In this case, there were no enchanting prospects of

power and riches easily acquired, of dominion over opulent princes and

submissive slaves; nothing but a constant struggle against nature, still

mistress of the vast solitudes, against vigilant rivals and a courageous

and cruel race of natives. The history of the French colonists in Canada

showed traits and presented characteristics rare in French annals; the

ardor of the French nature and the suavity of French manners seemed to be

combined with the stronger virtues of the people of the north;

everywhere, amongst the bold pioneers of civilization in the new world,

the French marched in the first rank without ever permitting themselves

to be surpassed by the intrepidity or perseverance of the Anglo-Saxons,

down to the day when, cooped up within the first confines of their

conquests, fighting for life and liberty, the Canadians defended foot to

foot the honor of their mother-country, which had for a long while

neglected them, and at last abandoned them, under the pressure of a

disastrous war conducted by a government as incapable as it was corrupt.

For a long time past the French had directed towards America their ardent

spirit of enterprise; in the fifteenth century, on the morrow of the

discovery of the new world, when the indomitable genius and religious

faith of Christopher Columbus had just opened a new path to inquiring

minds and daring spirits, the Basques, the Bretons, and the Normans were

amongst the first to follow the road he had marked out; their light barks

and their intrepid navigators were soon known among the fisheries of

Newfoundland and the Canadian coast. As early as 1506 a chart of the St.

Lawrence was drawn by John-Denis, who came from Honfleur in Normandy.

Before long the fishers began to approach the coasts, attracted by the

fur-trade; they entered into relations with the native tribes, buying,

very often for a mere song, the produce of their hunting, and ,

introducing to them, together with the first fruits of civilization, its

corruptions and its dangers. Before long the savages of America became

acquainted with the fire-water.

Policy was not slow to second the bold enterprises of the navigators.

France was at that time agitated by various earnest and mighty passions;

for a moment the Reformation, personified by the austere virtues and

grand spirit of Coligny, had seemed to dispute the empire of the Catholic

church. The forecasts of the admiral became more and more sombre every

day; he weighed the power and hatred of the Guises as well as of their

partisans; in his anxiety for his countrymen and his religion he

determined to secure for the persecuted Protestants a refuge, perhaps a

home, in the new world, after that defeat of which he already saw a

glimmer.

A first expedition had failed, after an attempt on the coasts of Brazil;

in 1562, a new flotilla set out from Havre, commanded by John Ribaut of

Dieppe. A landing was effected in a beautiful country, sparkling with

flowers and verdure; the century-old trees, the vast forests, the unknown

birds, the game, which appeared at the entrance of the glades and stood

still fearlessly at the unwonted apparition of man--this spectacle,

familiar and at the same time new, presented by nature at the

commencement of May, caused great joy and profound gratitude amongst the

French, who had come so far, through so many perils, to the borders of

Florida; they knelt down piously to thank God; the savages, flocking

together upon the shore, regarded them with astonishment mingled with

respect. Ribaut and his companions took possession of the country in the

name of France, and immediately began to construct a fort, which they

called Fort Charles, in honor of the young king, Charles IX. Detachments

scoured the country, and carried to a distance the name of France: during

three years, through a course of continual suffering and intestine strife

more dangerous than the hardships of nature and the ambushes of savages,

the French maintained themselves in their new settlement, enlarged from

time to time by new emigrants. Unhappily they had frequently been

recruited from amongst men of no character, importing the contagion of

their vices into the little colony which Coligny had intended to found

the Reformed church in the new world. In 1565 a Spanish expedition

landed in Florida. Pedro Menendez de Aviles, who commanded it, had

received from King Philip II. the title of _adelantado_ (governor) of

Florida; he had pledged himself, in return, to conquer for Spain this

territory impudently filched from the jurisdiction which His Catholic

Majesty claimed over the whole of America. The struggle lasted but a few

days, in spite of the despair and courage of the French colonists; a

great number were massacred, others crowded on to the little vessels

still at their disposal, and carried to France the news of the disaster.

Menendez took possession of the ruined forts, of the scarcely cleared

fields strewn with the corpses of the unhappy colonists. “Are you

Catholics or Lutherans?” he demanded of his prisoners, bound two and two

before him. “We all belong to the Reformed faith,” replied John Ribaut;

and he intoned in a loud voice a psalm: “Dust we are, and to dust we

shall return; twenty years more or less upon this earth are of small

account;” and, turning towards the _adelantado,_ “Do thy will,” he said.

All were put to death, “as I judged expedient for the service of God and

of your Majesty,” wrote the Spanish commander to Philip II.,” and I

consider it a great piece of luck that this John Ribaut hath died in this

place, for the King of France might have done more with him and five

hundred ducats than with another man and five thousand, he having been

the most able and experienced mariner of the day for knowing the

navigation of the coasts of India and Florida.” Above the heap of

corpses, before committing them to the flames, Menendez placed this

inscription: “Not as Frenchmen, but as heretics.”

Three years later, on the same spot on which the _adelantado_ had heaped

up the victims of his cruelty and his perfidy lay the bodies of the

Spanish garrison. A Gascon gentleman, Dominic de Gourgues, had sworn to

avenge the wrongs of France; he had sold his patrimony, borrowed money of

his friends, and, trusting to his long experience in navigation, put to

sea with three small vessels equipped at his expense. The Spaniards were

living unsuspectingly, as the French colonists had lately done; they had

founded their principal settlement at some distance from the first

landing-place, and had named it St. Augustine. De Gourgues attacked

unexpectedly the little fort of San-Mateo; a detachment surrounded in the

woods the Spaniards who had sought refuge there; all were killed or

taken; they were hanged on the same trees which had but lately served for

the execution of the French. “This I do not as to Spaniards, but as to

traitors, thieves, and murderers,” was the inscription placed by De

Gourgues above their heads. When he again put to sea, there remained not

one stone upon another of the fort of San-Mateo. France was avenged.

“All that we have done was done for the service of the king and for the

honor of the country,” exclaimed the bold Gascon as he re-boarded his

ship. Florida, nevertheless, remained in the hands of Spain; the French

adventurers went carrying elsewhither their ardent hopes and their

indomitable courage.

For a long while expeditious and attempts at French colonization had been

directed towards Canada. James Cartier, in 1535, had taken possession of

its coasts under the name of New France. M. de Roberval had taken

thither colonists agricultural and mechanical; but the hard climate,

famine, and disease had stifled the little colony in the bud; religious

and political disturbances in the mother-country were absorbing all

thoughts; it was only in the reign of Henry IV., when panting France,

distracted by civil discord, began to repose, for the first time since

more than a century, beneath a government just, able, and firm at the

same time, that zeal for distant enterprises at last attracted to New

France its real founder. Samuel de Champlain du Brouage, born in 1567, a

faithful soldier of the king’s so long as the war lasted, was unable to

endure the indolence of peace. After long and perilous voyages, he

enlisted in the company which M. de Monts, gentleman of the bed-chamber

in ordinary to Henry IV., had just formed for the trade in furs on the

northern coast of America; appointed viceroy of Acadia, a new territory,

of which the imaginary limits would extend in our times from Philadelphia

to beyond Montreal, and furnished with a commercial monopoly, M. de Monts

set sail on the 7th of April, 1604, taking with him, Calvinist though he

was, Catholic priests as well as Protestant pastors. “I have seen our

priest and the minister come to a fight over questions of faith,” writes

Champlain in his journal; “I can’t say which showed the more courage, or

struck the harder, but I know that the minister sometimes complained to

Sieur de Monts of having been beaten.” This was the prelude to the

conversion of the savages, which was soon to become the sole aim or the

pious standard of all the attempts at colonization in New France.

[Illustration: Champlain----190]

M. de Monts and his comrades had been for many years struggling against

the natural difficulties of their enterprise, and against the ill-will or

indifference which they encountered in the mother-country; religious zeal

was reviving in France; the edict of Nantes had put a stop to violent

strife; missionary ardor animated the powerful society of Jesuits

especially. At their instigation and under their direction a pious

woman, rich and of high rank, the Marchioness of Guercheville, profited

by the distress amongst the first founders of the French colony; she

purchased their rights, took possession of their territory, and, having

got the king to cede to her the sovereignty of New France, from the St.

Lawrence to Florida, she dedicated all her personal fortune to the holy

enterprise of a mission amongst the Indians of America. Beside the

adventurers, gentlemen or traders, attracted by the hope of gain or by

zeal for discovery, there set out a large number of Jesuits, resolved to

win a new empire for Jesus Christ. Champlain accompanied them. After

long and painful explorations in the forests and amongst the Indian

tribes, after frequent voyages to France on the service of the colony, he

became at last, in 1606, the first governor of the nascent town of

Quebec.

Never was colony founded under more pious auspices; for some time past

the Recollects had been zealously laboring for the conversion of

unbelievers; seconded by the Jesuits, who were before long to remain sole

masters of the soil, they found themselves sufficiently powerful to

forbid the Protestant sailors certain favorite exercises of their

worship: “At last it was agreed that they should not chant the psalms,”

says Champlain, “but that they should assemble to make their prayers.” A

hand more powerful than that of Madame de Guercheville or of the Jesuits

was about to take the direction of the affairs of the colony as well as

of France: Cardinal Richelieu had become premier minister.

The blind gropings and intestine struggles of the rival possessors of

monopolies were soon succeeded by united action. Richelieu favored

commerce, and did not disdain to apply thereto the resources of his great

and fertile mind. In 1627 he put himself at the head of a company of a

hundred associates, on which the king conferred the possession as well as

the government of New France, together with the commercial monopoly and

freedom from all taxes for fifteen years. The colonists were to be

French and Catholics; Huguenots were excluded: they alone had till then

manifested any tendency towards emigration; the attempts at colonization

in America were due to their efforts: less liberal in New France than he

had lately been in Europe, the cardinal thus enlisted in the service of

the foreigner all the adventurous spirits and the bold explorers amongst

the French Protestants, at the very moment when the English Puritans,

driven from their country by the narrow and meddlesome policy of James

I., were dropping anchor at the foot of Plymouth Rock., and were

founding, in the name of religious liberty, a new Protestant England, the

rival ere long of that New France which was Catholic and absolutist.

Champlain had died at Quebec on Christmas Day, 1635, after twenty-seven

years’ efforts and sufferings in the service of the nascent colony. Bold

and enterprising, endowed with indomitable perseverance and rare

practical faculties, an explorer of distant forests, an intrepid

negotiator with the savage tribes, a wise and patient administrator,

indulgent towards all, in spite of his ardent devotion, Samuel de

Champlain had presented the rare intermixture of the heroic qualities of

past times with the zeal for science and the practical talents of modern

ages; he was replaced in his government by a knight of Malta, M. de

Montmagny. Quebec had a seminary, a hospital, and a convent, before it

possessed a population.

The foundation of Montreal was still more exclusively religious. The

accounts of the Jesuits had inflamed pious souls with a noble emulation;

a Montreal association was formed, under the direction of M. Olier,

founder of St. Sulpice. The first expedition was placed under the

command of a valiant gentleman, Paul de Maisonneuve, and of a certain

Mademoiselle Mance, belonging to the middle class of Nogent-le-Roi, who

was not yet a nun, but who was destined to become the foundress of the

hospital-sisters of Ville-Marie, the name which the religious zeal of the

explorers intended for the new colony of Montreal.

It was not without jealousy that the governor of Quebec and the agents of

the hundred associates looked upon the enterprise of M. de Maisonneuve;

an attempt was made to persuade him to remain in the settlement already

founded. “I am not come here to deliberate, but to act,” answered he;

“it is my duty, as well as an honor to me, to found a colony at Montreal,

and I shall go, though every tree were an Iroquois!”

On the 16th of May, 1642, the new colonists had scarcely disembarked when

they were mustered around Father Vimont, a Jesuit, clothed in his

pontifical vestments. The priest, having first celebrated mass, turned

to those present. “You are only a grain of mustard-seed,” said he, “but

you will grow until your branches cover the whole earth. You are few in

number, but your work is that of God. His eye is upon you, and your

children will replenish the earth.” “You say that the enterprise of

Montreal is of a cost more suitable for a king than for a few private

persons too feeble to sustain it,” wrote the associates of Montreal, in

1643, in reply to their adversaries, “and you further allege the perils

of the navigation and the shipwrecks that may ruin it. You have made a

better hit than you supposed in saying that it is a king’s work, for the

King of kings has a hand in it, He whom the winds and the sea obey. We,

therefore, do not fear shipwrecks; He will not cause them save when it is

good for us, and when it is for His glory, which is our only aim. If

the, finger of God be not in the affair of Montreal, if it be a human

invention, do not trouble yourselves about it; it will never endure; but,

if God have willed it, who are you, that you should gainsay Him?”

The affair of Montreal stood, like that of Quebec; New France was

founded, in spite of the sufferings of the early colonists, thanks to

their courage, their fervent enthusiasm, and the support afforded them by

the religious zeal of their friends in Europe. The Jesuit missionaries

every day extended their explorations, sharing with M. de La Salle the

glory of the great discoveries of the West. Champlain had before this

dreamed of and sought for a passage across the continent, leading to the

Southern seas and permitting of commerce with India and Japan. La Salle,

in his intrepid expeditions, discovered Ohio and Illinois, navigated the

great lakes, crossed the Mississippi, which the Jesuits had been the

first to reach, and pushed on as far as Texas. Constructing forts in the

midst of the savage districts, taking possession of Louisiana in the name

of King Louis XIV., abandoned by the majority of his comrades and losing

the most faithful of them by death, attacked by savages, betrayed by his

own men, thwarted in his projects by his enemies and his rivals, this

indefatigable explorer fell at last beneath the blows of a few mutineers,

in 1687, just as he was trying to get back to New France; he left the

field open after him to the innumerable travellers of every nation and

every language who were one day to leave their mark on those measureless

tracts. Everywhere, in the western regions of the American continent,

the footsteps of the French, either travellers or missionaries, preceded

the boldest adventurers. It is the glory and the misfortune of France to

always lead the van in the march of civilization, without having the wit

to profit by the discoveries and the sagacious boldness of her children.

On the unknown roads which she has opened to the human mind and to human

enterprise she has often left the fruits to be gathered by nations less

inventive and less able than she, but more persevering and less perturbed

by a confusion of desires and an incessant renewal of hopes.

The treaty of Utrecht had taken out of French hands the gates of Canada,

Acadia, and Newfoundland. It was now in the neighborhood of New France

that the power of England was rising, growing rapidly through the

development of her colonies, usurping little by little the empire of the

seas. Canada was prospering, however; during the long wars which the

condition of Europe had kept up in America, the Canadians had supplied

the king’s armies with their best soldiers. Returning to their homes,

and resuming without an effort the peaceful habits which characterized

them, they skilfully cultivated their fields, and saw their population

increasing naturally, without any help from the mother-country. The

governors had succeeded in adroitly counterbalancing the influence of the

English over the Indian tribes. The Iroquois, but lately implacable foes

of France, had accepted a position of neutrality. Agricultural

development secured to the country comparative prosperity, but money was

scarce, the instinct of the population was not in the direction of

commerce; it was everywhere shackled by monopolies. The English were

rich, free, and bold; for them the transmission and the exchange of

commodities were easy. The commercial rivalry which set in between the

two nations was fatal to the French; when the hour of the final struggle

came, the Canadians, though brave, resolute, passionately attached to

France, and ready for any sacrifice, were few in number compared with

their enemies. Scattered over a vast territory, they possessed but poor

pecuniary resources, and could expect from the mother country only

irregular assistance, subject to variations of gov ernment and fortune as

well as to the chances of maritime warfare and engagements at sea, always

perilous for the French ships, which were inferior in build and in

number, whatever might be the courage and skill of their commanders.

The capture of Louisbourg and of the Island of Cape Breton by the English

colonists, in 1745, profoundly disquieted the Canadians. They pressed

the government to make an attempt upon Acadia. “The population has

remained French,” they said; “we are ready to fight for our relatives and

friends who have passed under the yoke of the foreigner.” The ministry

sent the Duke of Anville with a considerable fleet; storms and disease

destroyed vessels and crews before it had been possible to attack. A

fresh squadron, commanded by the Marquis of La Jonquiere, encountered the

English off Cape Finisterre in Spain. Admiral Anson had seventeen ships,

M. de La Jonquiere had but six; he, however, fought desperately. “I

never saw anybody behave better than the French commander,” wrote the

captain of the English ship Windsor; “and, to tell the truth, all the

officers of that nation showed great courage; not one of them struck

until it was absolutely impossible to manoeuvre.” The remnants of the

French navy, neglected as it had been through the unreflecting economy of

Cardinal Fleury, were almost completely destroyed, and England reckoned

more than two hundred and fifty ships of war. Neither the successes in

the Low Countries and in Germany nor the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle put a

serious end to the maritime war; England used her strength to despoil the

French forever of the colonies which she envied them. The frontiers of

Canada and Acadia had not been clearly defined by the treaties of peace.

Distrust and disquiet reigned amongst the French colonists; the ardor of

conquest fired the English, who had for a long while coveted the valley

of the Ohio and its fertile territories. The covert hostility which

often betrayed itself by acts of aggression was destined ere long to lead

to open war. An important emigration began amongst the Acadians; they

had hitherto claimed the title of neutrals, in spite of the annexation of

their territory by England, in order to escape the test oath and to

remain faithful to the Catholic faith; the priests and the French agents

urged them to do more; more than three thousand Acadians left their

fields and their cottages to settle on the French coasts, along the Bay

of Fundy. Every effort of the French governors who succeeded one another

only too rapidly in Canada was directed towards maintaining the natural

or factitious barriers between the two territories. The savages, excited

and flattered by both sides, loudly proclaimed their independence and

their primitive rights over the country which the Europeans were

disputing between themselves. “We have not ceded our lands to anybody,”

they said; “and we have no mind to obey any king.” “Do you know what is

the difference between the King of France and the Englishman?” the

Iroquois was asked by Marquis Duquesne, the then governor of Canada.

“Go and look at the forts which the king had set up, and you will see

that the land beneath his walls is still a hunting-ground, he having

chosen the spots frequented by you simply to serve your need. The

Englishman, on the other hand, is no sooner in possession of land than

the game is forced to quit, the woods are felled, the soil is uncovered,

and you can scarcely find the wherewithal to shelter yourselves at

night.”

The governor of Canada was not mistaken. Where France established mere

military posts, and as it were landmarks of her political dominion, the

English colonists, cultivators and traders, brought with them practical

civilization, the natural and powerful enemy of savage life. Already war

was in preparation without regard to the claims of these humble allies,

who were destined ere long to die out before might and the presence of a

superior race. The French commander in the valley of the Ohio, M. de

Contrecoeur, was occupied with preparations for defence, when he learned

that a considerable body of English troops were marching against him

under the orders of Colonel Washington. He immediately despatched M. de

Jumonville with thirty men to summon the English to retire and to

evacuate French territory. At break of day on the 18th of May, 1754,

Washington’s men surprised Jumonville’s little encampment. The attack

was unexpected; it is not known whether the French envoy had time to

convey the summons with which he had been charged; he was killed,

together with nine men of his troops. The irritation caused by this

event precipitated the commencement of hostilities. A corps of

Canadians, re-enforced by a few savages, marched at once against

Washington; he was intrenched in the plain; he had to be attacked with

artillery. The future hero of American independence was obliged to

capitulate; the English retired with such precipitation that they

abandoned even their flag.

Negotiations were still going on between London and Versailles, and

meanwhile the governors of the English colonies had met together to form

a sort of confederation against French power in the new world. They were

raising militia everywhere. On the 20th of January, 1755, General

Braddock with a corps of regulars landed at Williamsburg, in Virginia.

Two months later, or not until the end of April, in fact, Admiral Dubois

de la Motte quitted Brest with re-enforcements and munitions of war for

Canada. After him and almost in his wake went Admiral Boscawen from

Plymouth, on the 27th of April, seeking to encounter him at sea. “Most

certainly the English will not commence hostilities,” said the English

cabinet to calm the anxieties of France.

It was only off Newfoundland that Admiral Boscawen’s squadron encountered

some French vessels detached from the fleet in consequence of the bad

weather. “Captain Hocquart, who commanded the _Alcide,_” says the

account of M. de Choiseul, “finding himself within hail of the

_Dunkerque,_ had this question put in English: ‘Are we at peace or war?’

The English captain appearing not to understand, the question was

repeated in French. ‘Peace! peace!’ shouted the English. Almost at the

same moment the _Dunkerque_ poured in a broadside, riddling the _Alcide_

with balls.” The two French ships were taken; and a few days afterwards,

three hundred merchant vessels, peaceably pursuing their course, were

seized by the English navy. The loss was immense, as well as the

disgrace. France at last decided upon declaring war, which had already

been commenced in fact for more than two years.

It was regretfully, and as if compelled by a remnant of national honor,

that Louis XV. had just adopted the resolution of defending his colonies;

he had, and the nation had as well, the feeling that the French were

hopelessly weak at sea. “What use to us will be hosts of troops and

plenty of money,” wrote the advocate Barbier, “if we have only to fight

the English at sea? They will take all our ships one after another, they

will seize all our settlements in America, and will get all the trade.

We must hope for some division amongst the English nation itself, for the

king personally does not desire war.”

The English nation was not divided. The ministers and the Parliament, as

well as the American colonies, were for war. “There is no hope of repose

for our thirteen colonies, as long as the French are masters of Canada,”

said Benjamin Franklin, on his arrival in London in 1754. He was already

laboring, without knowing it, at that great work of American independence

which was to be his glory and that of his generation; the common efforts

and the common interest of the thirteen American colonies in the war

against France were the first step towards that great coalition which

founded the United States of America.

The union with the mother-country was as yet close and potent: at the

instigation of Mr. Fox, soon afterwards Lord Holland, and at the time

Prime Minister of England, Parliament voted twenty-five millions for the

American war. The bounty given to the soldiers and marines who enlisted

was doubled by private subscription; fifteen thousand men were thus

raised to invade the French colonies.

Canada and Louisiana together did not number eighty thousand inhabitants,

whilst the population of the English colonies already amounted to twelve

hundred thousand souls; to the twenty-eight hundred regular troops sent

from France, the Canadian militia added about four thousand men, less

experienced but quite as determined as the most intrepid veterans of the

campaigns in Europe. During more than twenty years the courage and

devotion of the Canadians never faltered for a single day.

Then began an unequal, but an obstinate struggle, of which the issue,

easy to foresee, never cowed or appeased the actors in it. The able

tactics of M. de Vaudreuil, governor of the colony, had forced the

English to scatter their forces and their attacks over an immense

territory, far away from the most important settlements; the forts which

they besieged were scarcely defended. “A large enclosure, with a

palisade round it, in which there were but one officer and nineteen

soldiers,” wrote the Marquis of Montcalm at a later period, “could not be

considered as a fort adapted to sustain a siege.” In the first campaign,

the settlements formed by the Acadian emigrants on the borders of the Bay

of Fundy were completely destroyed: the French garrisons were obliged to

evacuate their positions.

This withdrawal left Acadia, or neutral land, at the mercy of the

Anglo-Americans. Before Longfellow had immortalized, in the poem of

Evangeline, the peaceful habits and the misfortunes of the Acadians,

Raynal had already pleaded their cause before history. “A simple and a

kindly people,” he said, “who had no liking for blood, agriculture was

their occupation.

They had been settled in the low grounds, forcing back, by dint of dikes,

the sea and rivers wherewith those plains were covered. The drained

marshes produced wheat, rye, oats, barley, and maize. Immense prairies

were alive with numerous flocks; as many as sixty thousand horned cattle

were counted there. The habitations, nearly all built of wood, were very

commodious, and furnished with the neatness sometimes found amongst our

European farmers in the easiest circumstances. Their manners were

extremely simple; the little differences which might from time to time

arise between the colonists were always amicably settled by the elders.

It was a band of brothers, all equally ready to give or receive that

which they considered common to all men.”

War and its horrors broke in upon this peaceful idyl.

The Acadians had constantly refused to take the oath to England; they

were declared guilty of having violated neutrality. For the most part

the accusation was unjust; but all were involved in the same

condemnation.

On the 5th of September, 1755, four hundred and eighteen heads of

families were summoned to meet in the church of Grand Pre. The same

order had been given throughout all the towns of Acadia. The anxious

farmers had all obeyed. Colonel Winslow, commanding the Massachusetts

militia, repaired thither with great array. “It is a painful duty which

brings me here,” he said. “I have orders to inform you that your lands,

your houses, and your crops are confiscated to the profit of the crown;

you can carry off your money and your linen on your deportation from the

province.” The order was accompanied by no explanation; nor did it admit

of any. All the heads of families were at once surrounded by the

soldiers. By tens, and under safe escort, they were permitted to visit

once more the fields which they had cultivated, the houses in which they

had seen their children grow up. On the 10th they embarked, passing, on

their way to the ships, between two rows of women and children in tears.

The young people had shown a disposition to resist, demanding leave to

depart with their families: the soldiers crossed their bayonets. The

vessels set sail for the English colonies, dispersing over the coast the

poor creatures they had torn away from all that was theirs. Many

perished of want while seeking from town to town their families, removed

after them from Acadia; the charity of the American colonists relieved

their first wants. Some French Protestants, who had settled in

Philadelphia after the revocation of the edict of Nantes, welcomed them

as brothers, notwithstanding the difference of their creed; for they knew

all the heart-rending evils of exile.

Much emotion was excited in France by the woes of the Acadians. In spite

of the declaration of war, Louis XV. made a request to the English

cabinet for permission to send vessels along the coasts of America, to

pick up those unfortunates. “Our navigation act is against it,” replied

Mr. Grenville; “France cannot send ships amongst our colonies.” A few

Acadians, nevertheless, reached France; they settled in the outskirts of

Bordeaux, where their descendants still form the population of two

prosperous communes. Others founded in Louisiana settlements which bore

the name of Acadia. The crime was consummated: the religious, pacific,

inoffensive population, which but lately occupied the neutral land, had

completely disappeared. The greedy colonists, who envied them their

farms and pasturage, had taken possession of the spoil; Acadia was

forever in the power of the Anglo-Saxon race, which was at the same

moment invading the valley of the Ohio.

General Braddock had mustered his troops at Wills Creek, in the

neighborhood of the Alleghany Mountains. He meditated surprising Fort

Duquesne, erected but a short time previously by the French on the banks

of the Ohio. The little army was advancing slowly across the mountains

and the forests; Braddock divided it into two corps, and placing himself

with Colonel Washington, who was at that time serving on his staff at the

head of twelve hundred men, he pushed forward rapidly. “Never,” said

Washington afterwards, “did I see a finer sight than the departure of the

English troops on the 9th of July, 1755; all the men were in full

uniform, marching in slow time and in perfect order; the sun was

reflected from their glittering arms; the river rolled its waves along on

their right, and on their left the vast forest threw over them its mighty

shadows. Officers and soldiers were equally joyous and confident of

success.”

Twice the attacking column had crossed the Monongahela by fording; it was

leaving the plain which extended to some distance from Fort Duquesne, to

enter the wood-path, when the advance-guard was all at once brought up by

a tremendous discharge of artillery; a second discharge came almost

immediately from the right. The English could not see their enemy; they

were confused, and fell back upon General Braddock and the main body of

the detachment who were coming up to their aid. The disorder soon became

extreme. The regular troops, unaccustomed to this kind of warfare,

refused to rally, in spite of the efforts of their general, who would

have had them manoeuvre as in the plains of Flanders; the Virginia

militia alone, recurring to habits of forest warfare, had dispersed, but

without flying, hiding themselves behind the trees, and replying to the

French or Indian sharpshooters.

[Illustration: Death of General Braddock----203]

Before long General Braddock received a mortal wound; his staff had

fallen almost to a man; Colonel Washington alone, reserved by God for

another destiny, still sought to rally his men. “I have been protected

by the almighty intervention of Providence beyond every human

probability,” he wrote to his brother after the action. “I received four

balls in my clothes, and I had two horses killed under me; nevertheless I

came out of it safe and sound, whilst death was sweeping down my comrades

around me.” The small English corps was destroyed; the fugitives

communicated their terror to the detachment of Colonel Dunbar, who was

coming to join them. All the troops disbanded, spiking the guns and

burning the munitions and baggage; in their panic the soldiers asked no

question save whether the enemy were pursuing them. “We have been

beaten, shamefully beaten,” wrote Washington, “by a handful of French

whose only idea was to hamper our march. A few moments before the action

we thought our forces almost a match for all those of Canada; and yet,

against every probability, we have been completely defeated and have lost

everything.” The small French corps, which sallied from Fort Duquesne

under the orders of M. de Beaujeu, numbered only two hundred Canadians

and six hundred Indians. It was not until three years later, in 1758,

that Fort Duquesne, laid in ruins by the defenders themselves, at last

fell into the hands of the English, who gave to it, in honor of the great

English minister, the name of Pittsburg, which is borne to this day by a

flourishing town.

The courage of the Canadians and the able use they had the wits to make

of their savage allies still balanced the fortunes of the war; but the

continuance of hostilities betrayed more and more every day the

inferiority of the forces and the insufficiency of the resources of the

colony. “The colonists employed in the army, of which they form the

greater part, no longer till the lands they had formerly cleared, far

from clearing new ones,” wrote the superintendent of Canada; “the levies

about to be made will still further dispeople the country. What will

become of the colony? There will be a deficiency of everything,

especially of corn; up to the present the intention had been not to raise

the levies until the work of spring was over. That indulgence can no

longer be accorded, since the war will go on during the winter, and the

armies must be mustered as early as the month of April. Besides, the

Canadians are decreasing fast; a great number have died of fatigue and

disease. There is no, relying,” added the superintendent, “on the

savages save so long as we have the superiority, and so long as all their

wants are supplied.” The government determined to send re-enforcements

to Canada under the orders of the Marquis of Montcalm.

The new general had had thirty-five years’ service, though he was not yet

fifty; he had distinguished himself in Germany and in Italy. He was

brave, amiable, clever; by turns indolent and bold; skilful in dealing

with the Indians, whom he inspired with feelings of great admiration;

jealous of the Canadians, their officers and their governor, M. de

Vaudreuil; convinced beforehand of the uselessness of all efforts and of

the inevitable result of the struggle he maintained with indomitable

courage. More intelligent than his predecessor, General Dieskau, who,

like Braddock, had fallen through the error of conducting the war in the

European fashion, he, nevertheless, had great difficulty in wrenching

himself from the military traditions of his whole life. An expedition,

in 1756, against Fort Oswego, on the right bank of Lake Ontario, was

completely successful; General Webb had no time to relieve the garrison,

which capitulated. Bands of Canadians and Indians laid waste

Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. Montcalm wrote to the minister of

war, Rouille, “It is the first time that, with three thousand men and

less artillery, a siege has been maintained against eighteen hundred, who

could be readily relieved by two thousand, and who could oppose our

landing, having the naval superiority on Lake Ontario. The success has

been beyond all expectation. The conduct I adopted on this occasion and

the arrangements I ordered are so contrary to the regular rules, that the

boldness displayed in this enterprise must look like rashness in Europe.

Therefore, I do beseech you, monseigneur, as the only favor I ask, to

assure his Majesty that, if ever he should be pleased, as I hope, to

employ me in his own armies, I will behave differently.”

The same success everywhere attended the arms of the Marquis of Montcalm.

In 1757 he made himself master of Fort William Henry, which commanded the

lake of Saint-Sacrement; in 1758 he repulsed with less than four thousand

men the attack of General Abercrombie, at the head of sixteen thousand

men, on Carillon, and forced the latter to relinquish the shores of Lake

Champlain. This was cutting the enemy off once more from the road to

Montreal; but Louisbourg, protected in 1757 by the fleet of Admiral

Dubois de la Motte, and now abandoned to its own resources, in vain

supported an unequal siege; the fortifications were in ruins, the

garrison was insufficient notwithstanding its courage and the heroism of

the governor, M. de Drucourt. Seconded by his wife, who flitted about

the ramparts, cheering and tending the wounded, he energetically opposed

the landing of the English, and maintained himself for two months in an

almost open place. When he was at last obliged to surrender, on the 26th

of July, Louisbourg was nothing but a heap of ruins; all the inhabitants

of the islands of St. John and Cape Breton were transported by the

victors to France.

Canada had by this time cost France dear; and she silently left it to its

miserable fate. In vain did the governor, the general, the commissariat

demand incessantly re-enforcements, money, provisions; no help came from

France. “We keep on fighting, nevertheless,” wrote Montcalm to the

minister of war, “and we will bury ourselves, if necessary, under the

ruins of the colony.” Famine, the natural result of neglecting the land,

went on increasing: the Canadians, hunters and soldiers as they were, had

only cleared and cultivated their fields in the strict ratio of their

daily wants; there was a lack of hands; every man was under arms;

destitution prevailed everywhere; the inhabitants of Quebec were reduced

to siege-rations; the troops complained and threatened to mutiny; the

enemy had renewed their efforts: in the campaign of 1758, the journals of

the Anglo-American colonies put their land forces at sixty thousand men.

“England has at the present moment more troops in motion on this

continent than Canada contains inhabitants, including old men, women,

and children,” said a letter to Paris from M. Doreil, war commissioner.

Mr. Pitt, afterwards Lord Chatham, who had lately, come to the head of

the English government, resolved to strike the last blow at the French

power in America. Three armies simultaneously invaded Canada; on the

25th of June, 1759, a considerable fleet brought under the walls of

Quebec General Wolfe, a young and hopeful officer who had attracted

notice at the siege of Louisbourg. “If General Montcalm succeeds again

this year in frustrating our hopes,” said Wolfe, “he may be considered an

able man; either the colony has resources that nobody knows of, or our

generals are worse than usual.”

Quebec was not fortified; the loss of it involved that of all Canada; it

was determined to protect the place by an outlying camp; appeal was made

to the Indian tribes, lately zealous in the service of France, but now

detached from it by ill fortune and diminution of the advantages offered

them, and already for the most part won over by the English. The

Canadian colonists, exhausted by war and famine, rose in mass to defend

their capital. The different encampments which surrounded Quebec

contained about thirteen thousand soldiers. “So strong a force had not

been reckoned upon,” says an eye-witness, “because nobody had expected to

have so large a number of Canadians; but there prevailed so much

emulation among this people that there were seen coming into the camp old

men of eighty and children of from twelve to thirteen, who would not hear

of profiting by the exemption accorded to their age.” The poor

cultivators, turned soldiers, brought to the camp their slender

resources; the enemy was already devastating the surrounding country.

“It will take them half a century to repair the damage,” wrote an

American officer in his journal of the expedition on the St. Lawrence.

The bombardment of Quebec was commencing at the same moment.

For more than a month the town had stood the enemy’s fire; all the

buildings were reduced to ruins, and the French had not yet budged from

their camp of Ange-Gardien. On the 31st of July, General Wolfe, with

three thousand men, came and attacked them in front by the River

St. Lawrence, and in flank by the River Montmorency. He was repulsed by

the firm bravery of the Canadians, whose French impetuosity seemed to

have become modified by contact with the rough climates of the north.

Immovable in their trenches, they waited until the enemy was within

range; and, when at length they fired, the skill of the practised hunters

made fearful havoc in the English ranks. Everywhere repulsed, General

Wolfe in despair was obliged to retreat. He all but died of vexation,

overwhelmed with the weight of his responsibility. “I have only a choice

of difficulties left,” he wrote to the English cabinet. Aid and

encouragement did not fail him.

The forts of Carillon on Lake Champlain and of Niagara on Lake Ontario

were both in the hands of the English. A portion of the Canadians had

left the camp to try and gather in the meagre crops which had been

cultivated by the women and children. In the night between the 12th and

13th of September, General Wolfe made a sudden dash upon the banks of the

St. Lawrence; he landed at the creek of Foulon. The officers had replied

in French to the _Qui vive_ ( Who goes there?) of the sentinels, who had

supposed that what they saw passing was a long-expected convoy of

provisions; at daybreak the English army was ranged in order of battle on

the Plains of Abraham; by evening, the French were routed, the Marquis of

Montcalm was dying, and Quebec was lost.

General Wolfe had not been granted time to enjoy his victory. Mortally

wounded in a bayonet charge which he himself headed, he had been carried

to the rear. The surgeons who attended to him kept watching the battle

from a distance. “They fly,” exclaimed one of them. “Who?” asked

the general, raising himself painfully. “The French!” was the answer.

“Then I am content to die.” he murmured, and expired.

[Illustration: Death of Wolfe----209]

Montcalm had fought like a soldier in spite of his wounds; when he fell

he still gave orders about the measures to be taken and the attempts to

be made. “All is not lost,” he kept repeating. He was buried in a hole

pierced by a cannonball in the middle of the church of the Ursulines; and

there he still rests. In 1827, when all bad feeling had subsided, Lord

Dalhousie, the then English governor of Canada, ordered the erection at

Quebec of an obelisk in marble bearing the names and busts of Wolfe and

Montcalm, with this inscription: _Mortem virtus communem, famam historia,

monumentum posteritas dedit_ [Valor, history, and posterity assigned

fellowship in death, fame, and memorial].

In 1759, the news of the death of the two generals was accepted as a sign

of the coming of the end. Quebec capitulated on the 18th of September,

notwithstanding the protests of the population. The government of Canada

removed to Montreal.

The joy in England was great, as was the consternation in France. The

government had for a long while been aware of the state to which the army

and the brave Canadian people had been reduced, the nation knew nothing

about it; the repeated victories of the Marquis of Montcalm had caused

illusion as to the gradual decay of resources. The English Parliament

resolved to send three armies to America, and the remains of General

Wolfe were interred at Westminster with great ceremony. King Louis XV.

and his ministers sent to Canada a handful of men and a vessel which

suffered capture from the English; the governor’s drafts were not paid at

Paris. The financial condition of France did not permit her to any

longer sustain the heroic devotion of her children.

M. de Lally-Tollendal was still struggling single-handed in India,

exposed to the hatred and the plots of his fellow-countrymen as well as

of the Hindoos, at the very moment when the Canadians, united in the same

ideas of effort and sacrifice, were trying their last chance in the

service of the distant mother-country, which was deserting them. The

command had passed from the hands of Montcalm into those of the general

who was afterwards a marshal and Duke of Levis. He resolved, in the

spring of 1760, to make an attempt to recover Quebec.

“All Europe,” says Raynal, “supposed that the capture of the capital was

an end to the great quarrel in North America. Nobody supposed that a

handful of French who lacked everything, who seemed forbidden by fortune

itself to harbor any hope, would dare to dream of retarding inevitable

fate.” On the 28th of April, the army of General de Levis, with great

difficulty maintained during the winter, debouched before Quebec on those

Plains of Abraham but lately so fatal to Montcalm.

General Murray at once sallied from the place in order to engage before

the French should have had time to pull themselves together. It was a

long and obstinate struggle; the men fought hand to hand, with

impassioned ardor, without the cavalry or the savages taking any part in

the action; at nightfall General Murray had been obliged to re-enter the

town and close the gates. The French, exhausted but triumphant, returned

slowly from the pursuit; the unhappy fugitives fell into the hands of the

Indians; General de Levis had great difficulty in putting a stop to the

carnage. In his turn he besieged Quebec.

One single idea possessed the minds of both armies; what flag would be

carried by the vessels which were expected every day in the St.

Lawrence? “The circumstances were such on our side,” says the English

writer Knox, “that if the French fleet had been the first to enter the

river, the place would have fallen again into the hands of its former

masters.”

On the 9th of May, an English frigate entered the harbor. A week

afterwards, it was followed by two other vessels. The English raised

shouts of joy upon the ramparts, the cannon of the place saluted the

arrivals. During the night between the 16th and 17th of May, the little

French army raised the siege of Quebec. On the 6th of September, the

united forces of Generals Murray, Amherst, and Haviland invested

Montreal.

A little wall and a ditch, intended to resist the attacks of Indians, a

few pieces of cannon eaten up with rust, and three thousand five hundred

troops--such were the means of defending Montreal. The rural population

yielded at last to the good fortune of the English, who burned on their

marsh the recalcitrant villages. Despair was in every heart; M. de

Vaudreuil assembled during the night a council of war. It was determined

to capitulate in the name of the whole colony. The English generals

granted all that was asked by the Canadian population; to its defenders

they refused the honors of war. M. de Levis retired to the Island of

Sainte-Helene, resolved to hold out to the last extremity; it was only at

the governor’s express command that he laid down arms. No more than

three thousand soldiers returned to France.

The capitulation of Montreal was signed on the 8th of September, 1760;

on the 10th of February, 1763, the peace concluded between France, Spain,

and England completed without hope of recovery the loss of all the French

possessions in America; Louisiana had taken no part in the war; it was

not conquered; France ceded it to Spain in exchange for Florida, which

was abandoned to the English. Canada and all the islands of the St.

Lawrence shared the same fate. Only the little islands of St. Pierre and

Miquelon were preserved for the French fisheries. One single stipulation

guaranteed to the Canadians the free exercise of the Catholic religion.

The principal inhabitants of the colony went into exile on purpose to

remain French. The weak hands of King Louis XV. and of his government

had let slip the fairest colonies of France,

Canada and Louisiana had ceased to belong to her; yet attachment to

France subsisted there a long while, and her influence left numerous

traces there. It is an honor and a source of strength to France that she

acts powerfully on men through the charm and suavity of her intercourse;

they who have belonged to France can never forget her.

The struggle was over. King Louis XV. had lost his American colonies,

the nascent empire of India, and the settlements of Senegal. He

recovered Guadaloupe and Martinique, but lately conquered by the English,

Chandernuggur and the ruins of Pondicherry. The humiliation was deep and

the losses were irreparable. All the fruits of the courage, of the

ability, and of the passionate devotion of the French in India and in

America were falling into the hands of England. Her government had

committed many faults; but the strong action of a free people had always

managed to repair them. The day was coming when the haughty passions of

the mother-country and the proud independence of her colonies would

engage in that supreme struggle which has given to the world the United

States of America.