FORT WILLIAM HENRY
1757
In January Montcalm paid a visit to Quebec, and there
began to see how Bigot and his fellow-vampires were
sucking away the life-blood of Canada. 'The intendant
lives in grandeur, and has given two splendid balls,
where I have seen over eighty very charming and
well-dressed ladies. I think Quebec is a town of very
good style, and I do not believe we have a dozen cities
in France that could rank before it as a social centre.'
This was well enough; though not when armies were only
half-fed. But here is the real crime: 'The intendant's
strong taste for gambling, and the governor's weakness
in letting him have his own way, are causing a great deal
of play for very high stakes. Many officers will repent
it soon and bitterly.' Montcalm was placed in a most
awkward position. He wished to stop the ruinous gambling.
But he was under Vaudreuil, had no power over the intendant,
and, as he said himself, 'felt obliged not to oppose
either of them in public, because they were invested with
the king's authority.'
Vaudreuil nearly did Canada a very good turn this winter,
by falling ill on his way to Montreal. But, luckily for
the British and unluckily for the French, he recovered.
On February 14 he began hatching more mischief. The
British, having been stopped in the West at Oswego, were
certain to try another advance, in greater force, by the
centre, up Lake Champlain. The French, with fewer men
and very much less provisions and stores of all kinds,
could hope to win only by giving the British another
sudden, smashing blow and then keeping them in check for
the rest of the summer. The whole strength of Canada was
needed to give this blow, and every pound of food was
precious. Vaudreuil, however, was planning to take separate
action on his own account. He organized a raid under his
brother, Rigaud, without telling Montcalm a word about
it till the whole plan was made, even though the raid
required the use of some of the French regulars, who
were, in an especial degree, under Montcalm's command.
Montcalm told Vaudreuil that it was a pity not to keep
their whole strength for one decisive dash, and that, if
this raid was to take place at all, Levis or some other
regular French officer high in rank should be in command.
Vaudreuil, however, adhered to his own plan. This time
there was to be no question of credit for anyone but
Canadians, Indians, Vaudreuil himself, and his brother.
As for making sure of victory by taking, as Montcalm
advised, a really strong force: well, Vaudreuil would
trust to luck, hit or miss, as he always had trusted
before. And a strange stroke of luck very nearly did
serve his unworthy turn. For, on March 17, when the 1,600
raiders were drawing quite close to Fort William Henry,
most of the little British garrison of 400 men were
drinking so much New England rum in honour of St Patrick's
Day that their muskets would have hurt friends more than
foes if an attack had been made that night. Next evening
the French crept up, hoping to surprise the place. But
the sentries were once more alert. Through the silence
they heard a tapping noise on the lake, which turned out
to be made by a Canadian who was trying the strength of
the ice with the back of his axe to see if it would bear.
This led to a brisk defence. When the French advanced
over the ice the British gunners sent such a hail of
grape-shot crashing along this precarious foothold that
the enemy were glad to scamper off as hard as their legs
would take them.
The French did not abandon their attempt, however, and
two days later Vaudreuil's brother arrayed his 1,600 men
against the fort and summoned it to surrender. As he had
no guns the garrison would not listen to him. Rigaud then
proceeded to burn what he could outside the fort. He
certainly made a splendid bonfire; the wild, red flames
leaped into the sky from the open, snow-white clearings
beside the fort, with the long, white reaches of Lake
George in front and the dark, densely wooded hills all
round. A great deal was burnt: four small ships, 350
boats, a sawmill, sheds, magazines, immense piles of
firewood, and a large supply of provisions. But the
British could afford this loss much better than the French
could afford the cost of the raid. And the cost, of
course, was five times as great as it ought to have been.
Bigot's gang took care of that.
Then the raiders, unable to take the fort, set out for
home on snow-shoes. There had been a very heavy snowstorm
before they started, and the spring sun was now shining
full on the glaring white snow. Many of them, even among
the Canadians and Indians, were struck snowblind so badly
that they had to be led by the hand--no easy thing on
snow-shoes. At the end of March they were safely back in
Montreal, where Vaudreuil and his brother went strutting
about like a pair of turkey-cocks.
Montcalm's first Canadian winter wore away. Vaudreuil
and Bigot still kept up an outward politeness in all
their relations with him. But they were beginning to fear
that he was far too wise and honest for them. He was,
however, under Vaudreuil's foolish orders and he had no
power to check Bigot's knaveries. Much against his will
he was already getting into debt, and was thus rendered
even more helpless. Vaudreuil, as governor, had plenty
of money. Bigot stole as much as he wished. But Montcalm
was not well paid. Yet, as the commander-in-chief, he
had to be asking people to dinners and receptions almost
every day, while becoming less and less able to meet the
expense. The Bigot gang made provisions so scarce and so
dear that only the thieves themselves could pay for them.
Well might the sorely tried general write home: 'What a
country, where knaves grow rich and honest men are ruined!'
In June there was such a sight in Montreal as Canada had
never seen before, and never saw again. During the autumn,
the winter, and the spring, messengers had been going
along every warpath and waterway, east and west for
thousands of miles, to summon the tribes to meet Onontio;
as they called the French governor, at Montreal. The ice
had hardly gone in April when the first of the braves
began to arrive in flotillas of bark canoes. The surrender
of Washington at Fort Necessity and the capture and
rebuilding of Fort Duquesne in 1754, the bloody defeat
of Braddock in 1755, and Montcalm's sudden, smashing blow
against Oswego in 1756, all had led the western Indians
to think that the French were everything and the British
nothing. In Canada itself the Indians were equally sure
that the French were going to be the victors there; while
in the east, in far Acadia, the Abnakis were as bitter
as the Acadians themselves against the British. So now,
whether eager for more victories or thirsting for revenge,
the warriors came to Montreal from far and near.
Fifty-one of the tribes were ready for the warpath. Their
chiefs had sat in grave debate round the council fires.
Their medicine men had made charms in secret wigwams and
seen visions of countless British scalps and piles of
British booty. Accordingly, when the braves of these
fifty-one tribes met at Montreal, there was war in every
heart among them. No town in the world had ever shown
more startling contrasts in its streets. Here, side by
side, were outward signs of the highest civilization and
of the lowest barbarism. Here were the most refined of
ladies, dressed in the latest Paris fashions, mincing
about in silks and satins and high-heeled, golden-buckled
shoes. Here were the most courtly gentlemen of Europe,
in the same embroidered and beruffled uniforms that they
would have worn before the king of France. Yet in and
out of this gay throng of polite society went hundreds
of copper-coloured braves; some of them more than
half-naked; most of them ready, after a victory, to be
cannibals who revelled in stews of white man's flesh;
all of them decked in waving plumes, all of them grotesquely
painted, like demons in a nightmare, and all of them
armed to the teeth.
Much to Vaudreuil's disgust the man whom the Indians
wished most to see was not himself, the 'Great Onontio,'
much less Bigot, prince of thieves, but the warrior chief,
Montcalm. They had the good sense to prefer the lion to
the owl or the fox. Three hundred of the wildest Ottawas
came striding in one day, each man a model of agility
and strength, a living bronze, a sculptor's dream, the
whole making a picture for the brush of the greatest
painter. 'We want to see the chief who tramples the
British to death and sweeps their forts off the face of
the earth.' Montcalm, though every inch a soldier, was
rather short than tall; and at first the Ottawa chief
looked surprised. 'We thought your head would be lost in
the clouds,' he said. But then, as he caught Montcalm's
piercing glance, he added: 'Yet when we look into your
eyes, we see the height of the pine and the wings of the
eagle.'
Meanwhile, prisoners, scouts, and spies had been coming
in; so too had confidential dispatches from France
confirming the rumours that the greater part of the
British army was to attack Louisbourg, and that the French
were well able to defend it. With the British concentrating
their strength on Louisbourg a chance offered for another
Oswego-like blow against the British forts at the southern
end of Lake George if it could be made by July. But
Vaudreuil's raid in March, and Bigot's bill for it, had
eaten up so much of the supplies and money, that nothing
like a large force could be made ready to strike before
August; and the month's delay might give the militia of
the British colonies, slow as they were, time to be
brought up to the help of the forts.
Montcalm was now eager to strike the blow. Once clear of
Montreal and its gang of parasites, he soon had his motley
army in hand, in spite of all kinds of difficulties. In
May Bourlamaque had begun rebuilding Ticonderoga. In July
Lake Champlain began to swarm with boats, canoes, and
sailing vessels, all moving south towards the doomed fort
on Lake George. Montcalm's whole force numbered 8,000.
Of these 3,000 were regulars, 3,000 were militia, and
2,000 were Indians from the fifty-one different tribes,
very few of whom knew anything of war, except war as it
was carried on by savages. By the end of the month these
8,000 men were camped along the four miles of valley
between Lakes Champlain and George. Meanwhile the British
were at the other end of Lake George, little more than
thirty miles away. Their first post was Fort William
Henry, where they had 2,200 men under Colonel Monro.
Fourteen miles inland beyond that was Fort Edward, where
Webb commanded 3,600 men. There were goo more British
troops still farther on, but well within call, and it
was known that a large force of militia were being
assembled somewhere near Albany. Thus Montcalm knew that
the British already had nearly as many men as his own
regulars and militia put together, and that further levies
of militia might come on at any time and in any numbers.
He therefore had to strike as hard and fast as he could,
and then retire on Ticonderoga. He knew the Indians would
go home at once after the fight and also that he must
send the Canadians home in August to save their harvest.
Then he would be left with only 3,000 regulars, who could
not be fed for the rest of the summer so far from
headquarters. With this 3,000 he could not advance, in
any case, because of lack of food and because of the
presence of Webb's 4,500, increased by an unknown number
of American militia.
The first skirmish on Lake George was fought while the
main bodies of both armies were still at opposite ends.
A party of 400 Indians and 50 Canadians were paddling
south when they saw advancing on the lake a number of
British boats with 300 men, mostly raw militia from New
Jersey. The Indians went ashore and hid. The doomed
militiamen rowed on in careless, straggling disorder.
Suddenly, as they passed a wooded point, the calm air
was rent with blood-curdling war-whoops, and the lake
seemed alive with red-skinned fiends, who paddled in
among the British boats in one bewildering moment. The
militiamen were seized with a panic and tried to escape.
But they could not get away from the finest paddlers in
the world, who cut them off, upset their boats, tomahawked
some, and speared a good many others like fish in the
water. Only two boats, out of twenty-three, escaped to
tell the tale. That night the forest resounded with savage
yells of triumph as the prisoners, out of reach of all
help from either army, were killed and scalped to the
last man.
On August 1 Montcalm advanced by land and water. He sent
Levis by land with 3,000 men to cut Fort William Henry
off from Fort Edward, while he went himself, with the
rest of his army, by water in boats and canoes. The next
day they met at a little bay quite close to the fort. On
the 3rd the final advance was made. The French canoes
formed lines stretching right across the lake. While
the artillery was being landed in a cove out of reach of
the guns of the fort Levis was having a lively skirmish
with the British, who were trying to drive in their cattle
and save their tents. About 500 of them held the fort,
and 1,700 were in the entrenched camp some way beyond.
Montcalm sent in a summons to surrender. But old Colonel
Monro replied that he was ready to fight. On the 4th and
5th the French batteries rose as if by magic. But the
Indians, not used to the delay and the careful preparation
which a siege involves, soon grew angry and impatient,
and swarmed all over the French lines, asking why they
were ordered here and there and treated like slaves, why
their advice had not been sought, and why the big guns
were not being fired. Montcalm had been counselled to
humour them as much as possible and on no account whatever
to offend them. Their help was needed, and the British
were quite ready to win them over to their own side if
possible. Accordingly, on the afternoon of the 5th,
Montcalm held a grand 'pow-wow' with the savages. He told
them that the French had to be slow at first, but that
the very next day the big guns would begin to fire, and
that they would all be in the fight together. The fort
was timbered and made a good target. The Indians greeted
the first roar of the siege guns with yells of delight;
and when they saw shells bursting and scattering earth
and timbers in all directions they shrieked and whooped
so loudly that their savage voices woke almost as many
wild echoes along those beautiful shores as the thunder
of the guns themselves.
Presently a man came in to the French camp with a letter
addressed to Monro, which the Indians had found concealed
in a hollow bullet on a British messenger whom they had
killed. This letter was from Monro's superior officer,
General Webb, fourteen miles distant at Fort Edward. He
advised Monro to make the best terms possible with
Montcalm, as he did not feel strong enough to relieve
Fort William Henry. Montcalm stopped his batteries and
sent the letter in to Monro by Bougainville, with his
compliments. But Monro, while thanking him for his
courtesy, still said he should hold out to the last.
Montcalm now decided to bring matters to a head at once.
As yet his batteries were too far off to be effective,
and between them and the fort lay first a marsh and then
a little hill. By sheer hard work the French made a road
for their cannon across the marsh; and Monro saw, to his
horror, that Montcalm's new batteries were rising, in
spite of the British fire, right opposite the fort, on
top of the little hill, and only two hundred and fifty
yards away.
Monro knew he was lost. Smallpox was raging in the fort.
Webb would not move. Montcalm was able to knock the whole
place to pieces and destroy the garrison. On the 9th the
white flag went up. Montcalm granted the honours of war.
The British were to march off the next morning to Fort
Edward, carrying their arms, and under escort of a body
of French regulars. Every precaution was taken to keep
the Indians from committing any outrage. Montcalm assembled
them, told them the terms, and persuaded them to promise
obedience. He took care to keep all strong drink out of
their way, and asked Monro to destroy all the liquor in
the British fort and camp.
In spite of these precautions a dire tragedy followed.
While the garrison were marching out of the fort towards
their own camp, some Indians climbed in without being
seen and began to scalp the sick and wounded who were
left behind in charge of the French. The French guard,
hearing cries, rushed in and stopped the savages by force.
The British were partly to blame for this first outrage:
they had not poured out the rum, and the Indians had
stolen enough to make them drunk. Montcalm came down
himself, at the first alarm, and did his utmost. He seized
and destroyed all the liquor; and he arranged with two
chiefs from each tribe to be ready to start in the morning
with the armed British and their armed escort. He went
back to his tent only at nine o'clock, when everything
was quiet.
Much worse things happened the next morning. The British,
who had some women and children with them, and who still
kept a good deal of rum in their canteens, began to stir
much earlier than had been arranged. The French escort
had not arrived when the British column began to straggle
out on the road to Fort Edward. When the march began the
scattered column was two or three times as long as it
ought to have been. Meanwhile a savage enemy was on the
alert. Before daylight the Abnakis of Acadia, who hated
the British most of all, had slunk off unseen to prepare
an ambush for the first stragglers they could find. Other
Indians, who had appeared later, had begged for rum from
the British, who had given it in the hope that, in this
way, they might be got rid of. Suddenly, a war-whoop was
raised, a wild rush on the British followed, and a savage
massacre began. The British column, long and straggling
already, broke up, and the French escort could defend
only those who kept together. At the first news Montcalm
ordered out another guard, and himself rushed with all
his staff officers to the scene of outrage. They ran
every risk to save their prisoners from massacre. Several
French officers and soldiers were wounded by the savages,
and all did their best. The Canadians, on the other hand,
more hardened to Indian ways, simply looked on at the
wild scene. Most of the British were rescued and were
taken safely to Fort Edward. The French fired cannon from
Fort William Henry to guide fugitives back. Those not
massacred at once, but made prisoners by the Indians in
the woods, were in nearly all cases ransomed by Vaudreuil,
who afterwards sent them to Halifax in a French ship.
Such was the 'massacre of Fort William Henry,' about
which people took opposite views at the time, as they do
still. It is quite clear that, in the first instance,
Montcalm did almost everything that any man in his place
could possibly do to protect his captives from the Indians.
It is also clear that he did everything possible during
and after the massacre, even to risking his life and the
lives of his officers and men. He might, indeed, have
turned out all his French regulars to guard the captive
column from the first. But there were only 2,500 of these
regulars, not many more than the British, who were armed,
who ought to have poured out every drop of rum the night
before, and who ought to have started only at the proper
time and in proper order. There were faults on both sides,
as there usually are. But, except for not having the
whole of his regulars ready at the spot, which did not
seem necessary the night before, Montcalm stands quite
clear of all blame as a general. His efforts to stop the
bloody work--and they were successful efforts involving
danger to himself--clear him of all blame as a man.
The number of persons massacred has been given by some
few British and American writers as amounting to 1,500.
Most people know now that this is nonsense. All but about
a hundred of the losses on the British side are accounted
for otherwise, under the heading of those who were either
killed in battle, or died of sickness, or were given up
at Fort Edward, or were sent back by way of Halifax. It
is simply impossible that more than a hundred were
massacred.
Still, a massacre is a massacre; all sorts of evil are
sure to come of it; and this one was no exception to the
rule. It blackened unjustly the good name of Montcalm.
It led to an intensely bitter hate of the British against
the Canadians, many of whom were given no quarter
afterwards. It caused the British to break the terms of
surrender, which required the prisoners not to fight
again for the next eighteen months. Most of all, the
massacre hurt the Indians, guilty and innocent alike.
Many of them took scalps from men who had smallpox; and
so they carried this dread disease throughout the
wilderness, where it killed fifty times as many of their
own people as they had killed on the British side.
The massacre at Fort William Henry raises the whole vexed
question of the rights of the savages and of their means
of defence. The Indians naturally wished to live in their
own country in their own way--as other people do. They
did not like the whites to push them aside--who does like
being pushed aside? But, if they had to choose between
different nations of whites, they naturally chose the
ones who changed their country the least. Now, the British
colonists were aggressive and numerous; and they were
always taking more and more land from the Indians, in
one way or another. The French, on the other hand, were
few, they wanted less of the land, for they were more
inclined to trade than to farm, and in general they
managed to get on with the Indians better. Therefore most
of the Indians took sides with the French; and therefore
most of the scalps lifted were British scalps. The question
of the barbarity of Indian warfare remains. The Indians
were in fact living the same sort of barbarous life that
the ancestors of the French and British had lived two or
three thousand years earlier. So the Indians did, of
course, just what the French and the British would have
done at a corresponding age. Peoples take centuries to
grow into civilized nations; and it is absurd to expect
savages to change more in a hundred years than Europeans
changed in a thousand.
We need hardly inquire which side was the more right and
which the more wrong in respect to these barbarities.
The fact is, there were plenty of rights and wrongs all
round. Each side excused itself and accused the other.
The pot has always called the kettle black. Both the
French and the British made use of Indians when the
savages themselves would gladly have remained neutral.
In contrast with the colonial levies the French and
British regulars, trained in European discipline, were
less inclined to 'act the Indian'; but both did so on
occasion. The French regulars did a little scalping on
their own account now and then; the Canadian regulars
did more than a little; while the Canadian militiamen,
roughened by their many raids, did a great deal. The
first thing Wolfe's regulars did at Louisbourg was to
scalp an Indian chief. The American rangers were scalpers
when their blood was up and when nobody stopped them.
They scalped under Wolfe at Quebec. They scalped whites
as well as Indians at Baie St Paul, at St Joachim, and
elsewhere. Even Washington was a party to such practices.
When sending in a batch of Indian scalps for the usual
reward offered by Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia he asked
that an extra one might be paid for at the usual rate,
'although it is not an Indian's.' It is thus clear that
the barbarities were in effect a normal feature of warfare
in the wilderness.
A week after its surrender Fort William Henry had been
wiped off the face of the earth, as Oswego had been the
year before, and Montcalm's army had set out homeward
bound. But he was sick at heart. Vaudreuil had been
behaving worse than ever. He had written and ordered
Montcalm to push on and take Fort Edward at once. Yet,
as we have seen, the Indians had melted away, the Canadians
had gone home for the harvest, only 3,000 regulars were
left, and these could not be kept a month longer in the
field for lack of food. In spite of this, Vaudreuil
thought Montcalm ought to advance into British territory,
besiege a larger army than his own, and beat it in spite
of all the British militia that were coming to its aid.
Even before leaving for the front Montcalm had written
to France asking to be recalled from Canada. In this
letter to the minister of Marine he spoke very freely.
He pointed out that if Vaudreuil had died in the winter
the new governor would have been Rigaud, Vaudreuil's
brother. What this would have meant every one knew only
too well; for Rigaud was a still bigger fool than Vaudreuil
himself. Montcalm gave the Canadians their due. 'What a
people, when called upon! They have talent and courage
enough, but nobody has called these qualities forth.' In
fact, the wretched Canadian was bullied and also flattered
by Vaudreuil, robbed by Bigot, bothered on his farm by
all kinds of foolish regulations, and then expected to
he a model subject and soldier. How could he be considered
a soldier when he had never been anything but a mere
raider, not properly trained, not properly armed, not
properly fed, and not paid at all?
While Montcalm was writing the truth Vaudreuil was writing
lie after lie about Montcalm, in order to do him all the
harm he could. Busy tell-tales repeated and twisted every
impatient word Montcalm spoke, and altogether Canada was
at sixes and sevens. Vaudreuil, sitting comfortably at
his desk and eating three good meals a day, had written
to Montcalm saying that there would be no trouble about
provisions if Fort Edward was attacked. Yet, at this very
time, he had given orders that, because of scarcity, the
Canadians at home should not have more than a quarter of
a pound of bread a day. Canada was drawing very near a
famine, though its soil could grow some of the finest
crops in the world. But what can any country do under
knaves and fools, especially when it is gagged as well
as robbed? Montcalm's complaints did not always reach
the minister of Marine, who was the special person in
France to look after Canada; for the minister's own
right-hand man was one of the Bigot gang and knew how to
steal a letter as well as a shipload of stores.
To outward view, and especially in the eyes of the British
Americans, 1757 was a year of nothing but triumph for
the French in America. They had made Louisbourg safer
than ever; the British fleet and army had not even dared
to attack it. French power had never been so widespread.
The fleurs-de-lis floated over the whole of the valleys
of the St Lawrence, Ohio, and Mississippi, as well as
over the Great Lakes, where these three valleys meet.
But this great show of strength depended on the army of
Montcalm--that motley host behind whose dauntless front
everything was hollow and rotten to the last degree. The
time was soon to come when even the bravest of armies
could no longer stand against lions in front and jackals
behind.