THE TWO HIGHLAND SEIGNEURS AT MALBAIE
Pitt's use of the Highlanders in the Seven Years' War.--The origin
of Fraser's Highlanders.--The career of Lord Lovat.--Lovat's son
Simon Fraser and other Frasers at Quebec.--Malcolm Fraser and John
Nairne, future seigneurs at Malbaie.--The Highlanders and Wolfe's
victory.--The Highlanders in the winter of 1759-60.--Malcolm Fraser
on Murray's defeat in April, 1760.--The return of Canadian
seigneurs to France.--General Murray buys Canadian
seigniories.--Nairne and Fraser at Malbaie.--Their grants from
Murray.
The great British fleet which has passed up beyond Malbaie to Quebec is
important for our tale. It carried men who have since become world
famous; not only Wolfe but Jervis, afterward Lord St. Vincent, Cook, the
great navigator, Guy Carleton, who saved Canada for Britain during the
American Revolution, and many others of lesser though still considerable
fame. But for Malbaie the most interesting men in that great array were
those connected with the 78th, or Fraser's, Highlanders. On the decks of
the British ships were hundreds of these brawny, bare-legged and kilted
sons of the north, speaking their native Gaelic, and on occasion
harangued by their officers in that tongue. A few years earlier many of
them had served under Prince Charles Stuart to overthrow, if possible,
King George II, and the house of Hanover; now they were fighting for
that King against their old allies the French. Unreal in truth had been
the rising in behalf of the Stuarts. Scotland had no grievances: she did
not wish to dissolve the union with England, and if the tyranny of any
royal house troubled her it was that of the Stuarts, alien from most
Scots in both religious and political thought. But when, in 1745, some
of the chieftains called out their clansmen, loyalty made these heed the
summons, though half-heartedly. The same devotion was now given to the
house of Hanover. Years earlier Duncan Forbes of Culloden, one of the
noblest and wisest Scots of his age, had urged Walpole to call the
Highlanders to fight Britain's battles. The hint was not then taken but
later, Pitt, the greatest war minister Britain has ever had, revived
Forbes's plan. Some Highland regiments were formed. The Highland dress
that had been proscribed after Culloden as the brand of treason was now
given its place in Britain's battle array: ever since it has played
there its creditable part. Wolfe called his Highland companions in arms
the most manly lot of officers he had ever seen.
The Highland regiment that came with Wolfe to Quebec was known as
Fraser's Highlanders because recruited chiefly from that ancient and
powerful Scottish clan. In the rising of 1745 the Frasers had supported
the Stuart cause and they suffered when that cause was lost. In 1747
the head of the clan, Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, an old man of 80,
perished on the scaffold for his treason. The details of Lovat's career
are amazing. In one aspect he was a wild, half barbarous Highland
chieftain, in another one of the polished gentlemen and courtiers of his
time. He was devoured by the ambition to be the most powerful man in
Scotland. In that age others, more reputable than Fraser, found it wise
to stand well with both royal houses, but he surpassed them all in
tortuous treachery. In the rising of 1715 he was on the Whig side; in
1745 he was forced at last to come out openly for the Stuarts. For
neither side did he really care: he was merely serving his own ends.
Considering his deeds it is a wonder that he so long escaped the
scaffold. When he was a young man a certain Baroness Lovat stood in the
way of his own claims to be the heir to the title of Lovat; so he
offered to marry this lady's daughter and thus end the dispute. When his
advances were refused he determined to use force and seized Lady Lovat's
residence, Castle Dounie, only to find that the young lady had been
spirited away. He resolved on the spot to marry her mother who was in
the castle. She was a widow of thirty-four, he a man of thirty, so the
disparity of age was not great. Stories of what happened vary, but it is
said that in the dead of night a clergyman was brought to Lady Lovat's
chamber and she was forced to go through the form of marriage, the
bag-pipes playing in the next room to drown her cries. The lady was
connected with the great house of Atholl who warred on Fraser with fire
and sword. Outlawed, he escaped to the Continent to survive for half a
century of intrigue and treason.
Though profligate, cruel, treacherous and avaricious, so smooth was
Lovat's address, so profound his knowledge of Scotland, and so strong
his hold upon his own clansmen, that he always remained a man to be
reckoned with. Since he served on the Hanoverian side in 1715 George I
granted a pardon for his many offences; for his treason in 1745 George
II let him go to the block. His last days in London were like those of a
dying saint. He wrote to his son Simon Fraser, who led Fraser's
Highlanders at Quebec in 1759, a beautiful spiritual letter. To the
Major of the Tower he said he was going to Heaven where, he added, "very
few Majors go." He was gay on his last morning:--"I hope to be in heaven
by one o'clock or I should not be so merry now,"--and expressed his pity
for those who "must continue to crawl a little longer in this evil
world." He took what he called an eternal farewell from some of those
about him: "we shall not meet again in the same place; I am sure of
that." He practised kneeling at the block so that he might do it with
dignity on the scaffold. A great crowd assembled to witness his
execution and a platform fell killing several people. "The more
mischief, the better sport," said Lord Lovat grimly, but he wondered
that so many should come to see the taking off of his "old grey head."
He carefully felt the edge of the executioner's axe to make sure that it
was sharp.
No doubt there was a touch of madness in Lord Lovat but the Fraser clan
was devoted to him. By his treason all his honours and estates were
forfeited. At the time his heir, Simon Fraser, only twenty-one years
old, was a prisoner in the Castle of Edinburgh, attainted for high
treason. But so good was his conduct that in 1750 he received a pardon.
Then, a penniless man, he was called to the Scottish Bar. But another
career was in store for him. Some years later when Pitt formed his
design to use the Highlanders in the Seven Years' War he made Simon
Fraser Colonel of a battalion, to be raised on the forfeited estates of
his family and from the clan of which he was head. Success was
instantaneous. Within a few weeks Fraser was at the head of some 1500
men. They wore the Highland dress, with a sporran of badger's or otter's
skin and carried musket and broadsword; some of them wore a dirk at
their own cost. Among the officers were no less than five Simon
Frasers,[3] three or four each of Alexander Frasers and John Frasers,
and a good many other Frasers, among them a young Ensign, Malcolm
Fraser, destined to rule one of the seigniories at Malbaie for more than
half a century. Other Scottish names also appear, Macnabs, Chisholms,
Macleans, and among them John Nairne who, like Malcolm Fraser, spent the
best part of his life at Malbaie.
The head of the Nairne clan, a John Nairne, third Baron Nairne, had
fought for the Stuarts in 1745. He died an exile in France. Of how close
kin to him was the young Highland Officer, John Nairne, who settled
later at Malbaie, we do not know. His family was of course Jacobite. In
"Waverley" Sir Walter Scott mentions a Miss Nairne with whom he says he
was acquainted, and this lady appears to have been one of the sisters of
Captain John Nairne. In 1745, as the Highland army rushed into
Edinburgh, Miss Nairne was standing with some ladies on a balcony, when
a shot, discharged by accident from a Highlander's musket, grazed her
forehead. "Thank God," she said, "that the accident happened to me whose
principles are known; had it befallen a Whig [the name then identified
with the anti-Jacobite party] they would have said it was done on
purpose."[4] At Murray Bay there is still a miniature portrait of Prince
Charlie given it is said by himself to Miss Nairne.
Before fighting under Wolfe John Nairne had followed the Dutch flag.
Just before the rising of 1745, when a youth of only 17, he, like a
great many others of his countrymen, is found serving in the well known
"Scots Brigade"; many years later at Malbaie, he tells in his letters,
of old companions in this service with well known Scottish names--Bruce,
Maclean, Seton, Hepburn, Campbell, Dunbar, Dundass, Graham, and so on.
In the pay of Holland Nairne remained for some nine years. He made, he
says, "long voyages" possibly to the Dutch possessions in the far East.
But he was glad of the chance to serve his own land which came when
Britain, embarked upon the Seven Years' War, was anxious to recall her
banished sons and to find soldiers, Scots or of any other nationality,
who would fight her battles. So John Nairne left the Dutch service to
join the 78th Highlanders and henceforth his loyalty to the house of
Hanover was never questioned. From the first, since Scotland offered
only a poor prospect of a career, Nairne may have thought of remaining
in the new world when the war should end. The Highlander of that day,
like the Irishman, found better chances abroad than at home. Unlike
Nairne, Malcolm Fraser, a younger man, had not seen foreign service. The
two met for the first time when, in 1757, they both joined the 78th
Highlanders. Soon they became fast friends and for nearly half a century
they were to live in the closest relations.
Fraser's Highlanders had landed at Halifax in Nova Scotia in June, 1757.
Their dress seemed unsuited to both the severe winters and the hot
summers of North America and a change of costume was proposed; but
officers and men protested vehemently and no change was made. During the
campaigns in America the Highlanders boasted, not with entire truth as
we shall see, that they with their bare legs enjoyed better health than
those who wore breeches and warm clothing. At Louisbourg they did well.
At Quebec a Highland officer's knowledge of French proved a great boon.
When, in the darkness of the momentous morning of September 13th, 1759,
Wolfe's boats were drifting down with the tide close to the north shore
near Quebec, intending to land and scale the heights at what is now
Wolfe's Cove, a French sentry called out sharply from the bank, "_Qui
vive?_" A Highland officer, who had served in Holland, was able to reply
"_France!_" without betraying his nationality.
"_A quel régiment?_" demanded the sentry.
"_De la reine_," answered the Highlander, giving the name of a
well-known French regiment commanded by Bougainville; and then he added
in a low voice, "_Ne faites pas de bruit; ce sont les vivres_"--for a
convoy with provisions was expected by the French. The Highlanders were
at the forefront in the stiff climb up the heights which proved to be
Wolfe's master stroke. Malcolm Fraser has left his own account of that
morning's work. The troops, he says, had been in the boats since nine
o'clock on the previous night. At about twelve they had set out with a
falling tide and they landed just as day was breaking. The light
infantry struggled up the hill first, the French meanwhile firing on the
boats, killing and wounding some of the occupants; but "the main body of
our army soon got to the upper ground, after climbing a hill or rather a
precipice, of about three hundred yards, very steep and covered with
wood and brush." By ten the army was drawn up in order of battle,--"in a
masterly manner," John Nairne said later,--on the Plains of Abraham, the
bag-pipes of the Highlanders screaming a wild defiance to the foe. Then
followed that brief death grapple, fatal to the leader on each side.
Fraser and his Highlanders, we are told, rushed at the enemy with their
broadswords in such irresistible fury that they were driven with a
prodigious slaughter into the town. The Highlanders suffered as much
after the battle as in it, for General Murray led them to reconnoitre in
the direction of the General Hospital and a good many were shot by the
French from bushes and from houses in the suburbs of St. Louis and St.
John. To the French the Highlanders seemed especially ferocious,
possibly owing to the wild music of their pipes, their waving tartans,
their terrible broadswords, and perhaps, also, their partially naked
bodies. They were indeed christened "the savages of Europe."
Not many days after Wolfe's victory the Highlanders marched into Quebec
with the victorious army. The French garrison was sent away to Europe,
the British fleet itself soon followed, and the conquerors, with General
Murray in command, settled down to face for the first time the rigours
of a winter at Quebec. The Highlanders suffered terribly. One suspects
that, in spite of their protests, the Highland costume was ill-suited to
meet the severity of the climate; and, in any case, the army was
ill-fed, ill-housed, and overworked. Malcolm Fraser kept a journal,[5]
but Nairne, the other future seigneur at Malbaie, the most methodical of
men, was less ready with the pen and appears to have made no chronicle
of those slow but momentous days. The bitter weather was the dread
enemy. Fraser tells how men on duty lost fingers and toes and some were
even deprived of speech and sensation in a few minutes through "the
incredible severity of the frost.... Our regiment in particular is in a
pitiful situation having no breeches. Nothing but the last necessity
obliged any man to go out of doors." Colonel Simon Fraser is, he adds,
doing his best to provide trousers. Pitying nuns observed the need and
soon busied themselves knitting long hose for the poor strangers. The
scurvy carried off a good many. In April, 1760, of 894 men in Fraser's
Highlanders not fewer than 580 were on the sick list and it was a wan
and woe-begone host that set itself grimly to the task of meeting the
assault on Quebec for which the French under Lévis had been preparing
throughout the winter.
When it came on April 28th, 1760, the Highlanders were not wanting.
Instead of fighting behind Quebec's crazy walls Murray marched his men
out to the Plains of Abraham to meet the enemy in the open. On ground
half covered by snow, with here and there deep pools of water from the
heavy rain of the previous day, the two armies grappled in what was
sometimes a hand to hand conflict. Of the British one-third had come
from the hospital to take their places in the ranks. The proportion of
the Highlanders who did this was even greater; half of them rose on that
day from sick beds. It proved a dark day for Britain. Murray was
defeated, losing about one-third of his army on the field. Four of the
Highland officers were killed, twenty-three were wounded, among them
Colonel Simon Fraser himself. Malcolm Fraser was dangerously wounded;
but he tells us gleefully that within twenty days he was entirely cured.
Nairne seems to have gone through the fight without a hurt. It was
surely by a strange turn of fortune that men, some of whom fought
against George II in '45 and had been condemned as traitors, should
fifteen years later shed their blood like water for the same sovereign.
Malcolm Fraser was disposed to be critical of Murray's tactics. He ought
to have stood like a wall on the rising ground near Quebec, says Fraser;
but "his passion for glory getting the better of his reason he ordered
the army to march out and attack the enemy ... in a situation the most
desired by them and [that] ought to be avoided by us as the Canadians
and Savages could be used against us to the greatest advantage in their
beloved ... element, woods." Nearly half a century later when Malcolm
Fraser was giving advice to a young officer, Nairne's son, he advised
him not to be too critical of the actions of his superiors. The
confident young diarist of 1760 had meanwhile learned reserve. But he
was not alone among the Highlanders in his criticism of Murray. A Murray
led at Culloden in April, 1746, as at Quebec in April, 1760. Lieutenant
Charles Stewart was wounded in both battles; as he lay in Quebec
surrounded by brother officers he said, "From April battles and Murray
generals, Good Lord deliver me." It is to General Murray's credit that,
when the remark was repeated to him, he called on his subordinate to
express the hope for better luck next time.
A little later Quebec was saved by the arrival of a British fleet and
the French fell back on Montreal. Murray followed them but the
Highlanders remained in garrison at Quebec, apparently because, with
half the officers and men invalided, they could make but a poor muster
for active campaigning. It thus happened that Nairne and Fraser did not
share the glory of being present at the fall of Montreal. There, on a
September day in 1760, the Governor of Canada, the Marquis de Vaudreuil,
handed over to General Amherst, the Commander-in-Chief in America of the
armies of Great Britain, the vast territory which he had ruled. It was
not certain, albeit the great Pitt was resolved what to do, that, when
the war ended, the country would not be handed back to France. The
French officers professed, indeed, to believe that a peace was imminent
by which France should save what she held in America. Meanwhile,
however, they and their regiments were to be sent to France. The few
residents at Malbaie whom Captain Gorham had spared, looking out across
the river in October, 1760, saw it dotted with the white sails of many
ships outward bound. Though they floated the British flag, their decks
were crowded with the soldiers of France now carried home by the
triumphant conqueror.
But more than the soldiers went back to France. Rather than live under
the sway of the British, many civilians also left Canada, among them
some of the seigneurs of Canadian manors. Land was cheap in Canada and
it is not to be wondered at that young British officers, seeking their
fortune, should have thought of settling in the country. A hundred
years earlier French officers of the Carignan Regiment had abandoned
their military careers to become Canadian seigneurs. In the end John
Nairne and Malcolm Fraser took up this project most warmly and in their
plan to get land they had the support of their commanding officer,
General Murray. Murrays, Nairnes and Frasers had all fought on the
Jacobite side in 1745; and we know how the Scots hold together.
[Illustration: GENERAL JAMES MURRAY]
James Murray, son of a Scottish peer, Lord Elibank, was himself still a
young man of only a little more than thirty,--a high-spirited, brave,
generous and impulsive officer. His family played some considerable part
in the life of the time and they were always suspected of Jacobite
leanings. Murray's brother, Lord Elibank, was a leader among the
Scottish wits of his day. Dr. Johnson's famous quip against the Scots
when he defined oatmeal as a food in England for horses and in Scotland
for men was met by Elibank's neat retort: "And where will you find such
horses and such men?" Another brother, Alexander, was a forerunner of
John Wilkes the radical; the cry of "Murray and Liberty" was heard in
London long before that of "Wilkes and Liberty." A third brother, George
became an admiral. General James Murray sometimes described himself as a
soldier of fortune. He was certainly not rich. Yet now when many of the
Canadian seigneurs sold their manors, in some way Murray was able to
purchase half a dozen of these vast estates. He bought that of Lauzon
opposite Quebec on which now stands the town of Levis and half a dozen
villages. He bought St. Jean and Sans-Bruit (now Belmont), near Quebec,
Rivière du Loup and Madawaska, on the lower St. Lawrence, and Foucault
on Lake Champlain.
To Nairne and Fraser, brave young Scots, who had done good service,
Murray was specially attracted. Nairne, though only a lieutenant, till
1761, when he purchased a captaincy, was his junior by but a few years;
Lieutenant Malcolm Fraser was three years younger than Nairne. The young
men were seeking their fortunes but since they had very little money to
buy estates, as Murray did, they could not expect to get land in the
more settled parts of the country. For them Malbaie was a promising
field and in September, 1761, they went down to have a look at it. The
property was vested in the government, for which Murray could act. It
was not wholly untrodden wilderness, for some land was cleared and a
good deal of live stock still remained. The houses too had not been
entirely destroyed by Gorham's men. The war had not yet ended. It was
still uncertain whether Britain would hold Canada. But, for the moment,
there was little to do. It was possible that in Canada further
opportunities of military service would not be wanting. As seigneurs in
Canada the young officers would retain rank as gentlemen and would not
sink to the social level of mere cultivators of the soil. The experience
too of founding settlements in the Canadian wilderness had
compensations. Good sport was always to be had. They could pay at least
annual visits to Quebec for a few weeks, and were, perhaps, hardly more
remote from the cultivated world than some of the chieftains in their
own Scottish Highlands.
The survey of Malbaie must have proved satisfactory. It is true, as the
young officers said, that there was an over-abundance of "mountains and
morasses," with good land scattered only here and there. But in their
formal proposals to Murray they made this fact the plea for the grant of
a larger area. Nairne apparently had greater resources than Fraser and,
being now a captain, was his senior in rank. He asked for the more
important tract lying west of the little river at Malbaie and stretching
to the seigniory of Les Eboulements, Fraser for that lying east of the
river and stretching some eighteen miles along the St. Lawrence to the
Rivière Noire. The grants were to extend for three leagues into the
interior. They were to be held under seigniorial tenure but Nairne asked
for 3000 acres of freehold and Fraser for 2000. They thus close their
petition to Murray: "This [request], if his Excellency is pleased to
grant, will make the proposers extremely happy, and they shall forever
retain the most grateful remembrance of his bounty; and [they] hope his
Excellency will be pleased in the grant to allow them to give the lands
to be granted such a name as may perpetuate their sense of his great
kindness to them." They got what they asked for. It may indeed be
doubted whether Murray had any right to allot huge areas of land in a
country which had not yet been ceded finally to Great Britain, but any
defects of title in this respect were corrected long after by new grants
under the great seal. As it was, Murray wrote on a sheet of ordinary
foolscap, still preserved at Murray Bay, a brief deed of the land[6]
and, behold, the two young officers have become landed proprietors! To
their request for permission to use Murray's name, in grateful
remembrance of his kindness, he also assented. Nairne's seigniory was to
be called Murray's Bay and Fraser's Mount Murray. The grants were made
because "it is a national advantage and tends to promote the cultivation
of lands within the province to encourage His Majesty's natural-born
subjects settling within the same"; and the consideration was "the
faithful services" rendered by the two officers.
A good deal of stock and farm implements remained at Malbaie and this
the new proprietors arranged to buy, giving in payment their promissory
notes, Nairne's for £85, 6s. 8d., currency and Fraser, who got only
one-third, his for £42, 13s. 4d. They seem to have had a good deal for
their money. There were a score and a half or so of cattle, four or five
horses, (one of them twenty-two years old), twenty sheep, fourteen pigs,
besides chickens and other living creatures. In addition there were
waggons and other farm appliances, most of them probably old and of
little use, though they must have helped to tide over the first
difficult days when everything would have to be provided.
On getting his grant Nairne retired from the army on half pay, but
Fraser remained on active service for many years still. Thus Nairne was
the more continuously resident at Murray Bay and in its development he
played the greater part. Fraser's interests were divided, not only
between Murray Bay and the army, but also between Murray Bay and another
seigniory which he secured on the south side of the river at Rivière du
Loup and known as Fraserville. For us therefore the interest at Murray
Bay now centres chiefly in Nairne and his family.
[Footnote 3: The name Simon Fraser appears with credit more than once in
Canadian history. It was a Simon Fraser who crossed the Rocky Mountains
and first followed for its whole course the Fraser River named after
him.]
[Footnote 4: Waverley, Chapter II.]
[Footnote 5: See Appendix A., p. 249. "Journal of Malcolm Fraser, First
Seigneur of Mount Murray, Malbaie."]
[Footnote 6: See copy of the grant in Appendix B., p. 271.]