The Victories Of Montcalm
In France's last, most determined, and most tragic struggle for North
America, the noblest aspect is typified in the figure of Montcalm.
The circle of the King and his mistress at Versailles does not tell the
whole story of France at this time. No doubt Madame de Pompadour made
and unmade ministers, but behind the ministers was the great
administrative system of France, with servants alert and efficient, and
now chiefly occupied with military plans to defeat the great Frederick
of Prussia. At the same time the intellect of France was busy with
problems of science and was soon to express itself in the massive
volumes of Diderot's Encyclopœdia. The soldiers of France were preparing
to fight on many battlefields. The best of them took little part in the
debilitating pleasures of Versailles.
Louis Joseph, Marquis de Montcalm, was a member of the ancient nobility
of Languedoc, in the south of France. He was a scholar, a soldier, and a
landowner. He could write a Latin inscription, fight a battle, and
manage a farm--all with excellence. His was a fruitful race. His wife
had borne him ten children, of whom six had survived. He was sincerely
religious, a family man, enjoying quiet evenings at home. In his career,
as no doubt in that of many other French leaders of the time, we find no
lurid lights, no gay scenes at court--nothing but simple and laborious
devotion to duty. Though a grand seigneur, Montcalm was poor. His
letters show that his mind was always much occupied with family affairs,
the need of economy, the careers of his sons, his mill, his plantations.
He showed the minute care in management which the French practise better
than the English. In 1756 he was forty-four years of age, a soldier who
had campaigned in Germany, Bohemia, and Italy, had known victory and
defeat, had been a prisoner in the hands of the Austrians, and had made
a reputation as a man fit to lead. He lived far from court and went to
Paris only rarely. It was this quiet man who, on January 31, 1756, was
summoned to Paris to head the military force about to be sent to Canada.
Dieskau was a captive in English hands, and Montcalm was to replace
Dieskau.
Thus began that connection of Montcalm with Canada which was destined
three or four years later to bring to him first victory and then defeat,
death, and undying fame. On receiving his appointment he went to Paris,
thanked the King in person for the honor done him, and was delighted
that his son, a mere boy, was given the rank and pay of a colonel, one
of the few abuses of court favor which we find in his career. On March
26, 1756, Montcalm embarked at Brest with his staff. War had not yet
been declared, but already Britain had captured some three hundred
French merchant ships, had taken prisoner nearly ten thousand French
sailors, and was sweeping from the sea the fleets of France.
Owing to the fear of British cruisers, the voyage of Montcalm had its
excitements. As usual, however, France was earlier in the field than
Britain, who had in April no force ready for America which could
intercept Montcalm. The storms were heavy, and on Easter Day, when Mass
was celebrated, a sailor firm on his feet had to hold the chalice for
the officiating priest. On board there were daily prayers, and always
the service ended with cries of "God save the King!" Some of the
officers on board were destined to survive to a new era in France when
there should be no more a king.
Montcalm had with him a capable staff and a goodly number of young
officers, gay, debonair, thinking not of great political designs about
America but chiefly of their own future careers in France, and facing
death light-heartedly enough. Next to Montcalm in command was the
Chevalier de Lévis, a member of a great French family and himself
destined to attain the high rank of Marshal of France, and a capable
though not a brilliant soldier, whose chief gift was tact and the art of
managing men. Third in command was the Chevalier de Bourlamaque, a
quiet, reserved man, with no striking social gifts and in consequence
not likely at first to make a good impression, though Montcalm, who was
at the beginning a little doubtful of his quality, came in the end to
rely upon him fully. The most brilliant man in that company was the
young Colonel de Bougainville, Montcalm's chief aide-de-camp. Though
only twenty-seven years old he was already famous in the world of
science and was destined to be still more famous as a great navigator,
to live through the whole period of the French Revolution, and to die
only on the eve of the fall of Napoleon. In 1756 he was too young and
clever to be always prudent in speech. It is from his quick eye and
eager pen that we learn much of the inner story of these last days of
New France. Montcalm discusses frankly in his letters these and other
officers, with whom he was on the whole well pleased. In his heart he
could echo the words of Bougainville as he watched the brilliant
spectacle of the embarkation at Brest: "What a nation is ours! Happy is
he who leads and is worthy of it."
It was in this spirit of confidence that Montcalm faced the struggle in
America. For him sad days were to come and his sunny, vivacious,
southern temperament caused him to suffer keenly. At first, however, all
was full of brilliant promise. So eager was he that, when his ships lay
becalmed in the St. Lawrence some thirty miles below Quebec, he landed
and drove to the city. It is the most beautiful country in the world, he
writes, highly cultivated, with many houses, the peasants living more
like the lesser gentry of France than like peasants, and speaking
excellent French. He found the hospitality in Quebec such that a
Parisian would be surprised at the profusion of good things of every
kind. The city was, he thought, like the best type of the cities of
France. The Canadian climate was healthgiving, the sky clear, the summer
not unlike that of Languedoc, but the winter trying, since the severe
weather caused the inhabitants to remain too much indoors. He described
the Canadian ladies as witty, lively, devout, those of Quebec amusing
themselves at play, sometimes for high stakes; those of Montreal, with
conversation and dancing. He confessed that one of them proved a little
too fascinating for his own peace of mind. The intolerable thing was the
need to meet and pay court to the Indians whom the Governor, the Marquis
de Vaudreuil, regarded as valuable allies. These savages, brutal,
changeable, exacting, Montcalm from the first despised. It filled him
with disgust to see them swarming in the streets of Montreal, sometimes
carrying bows and arrows, their coarse features worse disfigured by
war-paint and a gaudy headdress of feathers, their heads shaven, with
the exception of one long scalp-lock, their gleaming bodies nearly naked
or draped with dirty buffalo or beaver skins. What allies for a refined
grand seigneur of France! It was a costly burden to feed them. Sometimes
they made howling demands for brandy and for bouillon, by which they
meant human blood. Many of them were cannibals. Once Montcalm had to
give some of them, at his own cost, a feast of three oxen roasted whole.
To his disgust, they gorged themselves and danced round the room
shouting their savage war-cries.
The Governor of Canada, Pierre de Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil, belonged
to one of the most ancient families of France, related to that of Lévis.
He had been born in Canada where his father was Governor for the long
period of twenty-two years, from 1703 to 1725, and in his outlook and
prejudices he was wholly of New France, with a passionate devotion to
its people, and a deep resentment at any airs of superiority assumed by
those who came from old France. A certain admiration is due to Vaudreuil
for his championship of the Canadians and even of the savages of the
land of his birth against officers of his own rank and caste who came
from France. There was in Canada the eternal cleavage in outlook and
manners between the Old World and the New, which is found in equal
strength in New England, and which was one of the chief factors in
causing the American Revolution. Vaudreuil, born at Quebec in 1698, had
climbed the official ladder step by step until, in 1742, he had been
made Governor of Louisiana, a post he held for three years. He succeeded
the Marquis Duquesne as Governor of Canada in the year before Montcalm
arrived. He meant well but he was a vain man, always a leading figure in
the small society about him, and obsessed by a fussy self-importance. He
was not clever enough to see through flattery. The Intendant Bigot, next
to the Governor the most important man in Canada, an able and corrupt
rascal, knew how to manage the Governor and to impose his own will upon
the weaker man. Vaudreuil and his wife between them had a swarm of needy
relatives in Canada, and these and other Canadians who sought favors
from the Governor helped to sharpen his antagonism to the officers from
France. Vaudreuil believed himself a military genius. It was he and not
Montcalm who had the supreme military command, and he regarded as an
unnecessary intruder this general officer sent out from France.
Now that Montcalm was come, Vaudreuil showed a malignant alertness, born
of jealousy, to snub and check him. Outward courtesies were, of course,
maintained. Vaudreuil could be bland and Montcalm restrained, in spite
of his southern temperament, but their dispatches show the bitterness in
their relations. The court of France encouraged not merely the leaders
but even officers in subordinate posts to communicate to it their views.
A voluble correspondence about affairs in Canada has been preserved.
Vaudreuil himself must have tried the patience of the French ministers
for he wrote at prodigious length, exalting his own achievements to the
point of being ludicrous. At the same time he belittled everything done
by Montcalm, complained that he was ruining the French cause in America,
hinted that he was in league with corrupt elements in Canada, and in the
end even went so far as to request his recall in order that the more
pliant Lévis might be put in his place. The letters of Montcalm are more
reserved. Unlike Vaudreuil, he never stooped to falsehood. He knew that
he was under the orders of the Governor and he accepted the situation.
When operations were on hand, Vaudreuil would give Montcalm instructions
so ambiguous that if he failed he would be sure to get the discredit,
while, if he succeeded, to Vaudreuil would belong the glory.
War is, at best, a cruel business. In Europe its predatory barbarity was
passing away and there the lives of prisoners and of women and children
were now being respected. Montcalm had been reared under this more
civilized code, and he and his officers were shocked by what Vaudreuil
regarded as normal and proper warfare. In 1756 the French had a horde of
about two thousand savages, who had flocked to Montreal from points as
far distant as the great plains of the West. They numbered more than
thirty separate tribes or nations, as in their pride they called
themselves, and each nation had to be humored and treated as an equal,
for they were not in the service of France but were her allies. They
expected to be consulted before plans of campaign were completed. The
defeat of Braddock in 1755 had made them turn to the prosperous cause of
France. Vaudreuil gave them what they hardly required--encouragement to
wage war in their own way. The more brutal and ruthless the war on the
English, he said, the more quickly would their enemies desire the kind
of peace that France must have. The result was that the western
frontiers of the English colonies became a hell of ruthless massacre.
The savages attacked English settlements whenever they found them
undefended. A pioneer might go forth in the morning to his labor and
return in the evening to find his house in ashes and his wife and
children lying dead with the scalps torn from their heads as trophies of
savage prowess.
For years, until the English gained the upper hand over the French, this
awful massacre went on. Hundreds of women and children perished.
Vaudreuil reported with pride to the French court the number of scalps
taken, and in his annals such incidents were written down as victories.
He warned Montcalm that he must not be too strict with the savages or
some day they would take themselves off and possibly go over to the
English and leave the French without indispensable allies. He complained
of the lofty tone of the French regular officers towards both Indians
and Canadians, and assured the French court that it was only his own
tact which prevented an open breach.
Canada lay exposed to attack by three routes: by Lake Ontario, by Lake
Champlain, and by the St. Lawrence and the sea. It was vital to control
the route to the West by Lake Ontario, vital to keep the English from
invading Canada by way of Lake Champlain, vital to guard the St.
Lawrence and keep open communications with France. Montcalm first
directed his attention to Lake Ontario. Oswego, lying on the south
shore, was a fort much prized by the English as a base from which they
could attack the French Fort Frontenac on the north side of the lake and
cut off Canada from the West. If the English could do this, they would
redeem the failure of Braddock and possibly turn the Indians from a
French to an English alliance.
The French, in turn, were resolved to capture and destroy Oswego. In the
summer of 1756, they were busy drawing up papers and instructions for
the attack. Montcalm wrote to his wife that he had never before worked
so hard. He kept every one busy, his aide-de-camp, his staff, and his
secretaries. No detail was too minute for his observation. He regulated
the changes of clothes which the officers might carry with them. He
inspected hospitals, stores, and food, and he even ordered an alteration
in the method of making bread. He reorganized the Canadian battalions
and in every quarter stirred up new activity. He was strict about
granting leave of absence. Sometimes his working day endured for twenty
hours--to bed at midnight and up again at four o'clock in the morning.
He went with Lévis to Lake Champlain to see with his own eyes what was
going on there. Then he turned back to Montreal. The discipline among
the Canadian troops was poor and he stiffened it, thereby naturally
causing great offense to those who liked slack ways and hated to take
trouble about sanitation and equipment. He held interminable conferences
with his Indian allies. They were astonished to find that the great
soldier of whom they had heard so much was so small in stature, but they
noted the fire in his eye. He despised their methods of warfare and
notes with a touch of irony that, while every other barbarity continues,
the burning of prisoners at the stake has rather gone out of fashion,
though the savages recently burned an English woman and her son merely
to keep in practice.
Montcalm made his plans secretly and struck suddenly. In the middle of
August, 1756, he surprised and captured Oswego and took more than
sixteen hundred prisoners. Of these, in spite of all that he could do,
his Indians murdered some. The blow was deadly. The English lost vast
stores; and now the French controlled the whole region of the Great
Lakes. The Indians were on the side of the rising power more heartily
than ever, and the unhappy frontier of the English colonies was so
harried that murderous savages ventured almost to the outskirts of
Philadelphia. Montcalm caused a Te Deum to be sung on the scene of his
victory at Oswego. In August he was back in Montreal where again was
sung another joyous Te Deum. He wrote letters in high praise of some of
his officers, especially of Bourlamaque, Malartic, and La Pause, the
last "un homme divin." Some of the Canadian officers, praised by
Vaudreuil, he had tried and found wanting. "Don't forget," he wrote to
Lévis, "that Mercier is a feeble ignoramus, Saint Luc a prattling
boaster, Montigny excellent but a drunkard. The others are not worth
speaking of, including my first lieutenant-general Rigaud." This Rigaud
was the brother of Vaudreuil. When the Governor wrote to the minister,
he, for his part, said that the success of the expedition was wholly due
to his own vigilance and firmness, aided chiefly by this brother, "mon
frère," and Le Mercier, both of whom Montcalm describes as inept.
Vaudreuil adds that only his own tact kept the Indian allies from going
home because Montcalm would not let them have the plunder which they
desired.
Montcalm struck his next blow at the English on Lake Champlain. In July,
1757, he had eight thousand men at Ticonderoga, at the northern end of
Lake George. Two thousand of these were savages drawn from more than
forty different tribes--a lawless horde whom the French could not
control. A Jesuit priest saw a party of them squatting round a fire in
the French camp roasting meat on the end of sticks and found that the
meat was the flesh of an Englishman. English prisoners, sick with
horror, were forced to watch this feast. The priest's protest was
dismissed with anger: the savages would follow their own customs; let
the French follow theirs. The truth is that the French had been only too
successful in drawing the savages to them as allies. They formed now
one-quarter of the whole French army. They were of little use as
fighters and probably, in the long run, the French would have been
better off without them. If, however, Montcalm had caused them to go,
Vaudreuil would have made frantic protests, so that Montcalm accepted
the necessity of such allies.
Each success, however, brought some new horrors at the hands of the
Indians. Montcalm captured Fort William Henry, at the southern end of
Lake George, in August, a year after the taking of Oswego. Fort William
Henry was the most advanced English post in the direction of Canada. The
place had been left weak, for the Earl of Loudoun, Commander-in-Chief of
the British forces in America, was using his resources for an expedition
against Louisbourg, which wholly failed. Colonel Monro, the brave
officer in command at Fort William Henry, made a strong defense, but was
forced to surrender. The terms were that he should march out with his
soldiers and the civilians of the place, and should be escorted in
safety to Fort Edward, about eighteen miles to the south. This time the
savages surpassed themselves in treachery and savagery. They had
formally approved of the terms of surrender, but they attacked the long
line of defeated English as they set out on the march, butchered some of
their wounded, and seized hundreds of others as prisoners. Montcalm did
what he could and even risked his life to check the savages. But some
fifty English lay dead and the whole savage horde decamped for Montreal
carrying with them two hundred prisoners.
Montcalm burned Fort William Henry and withdrew to Ticonderoga at the
north end of the lake. Why, asked Vaudreuil, had he not advanced further
south into English territory, taken Fort Edward--weak, because the
English were in a panic--menaced Albany itself, and advanced even to New
York? Montcalm's answer was that Fort Edward was still strong, that he
had no transport except the backs of his men to take cannon eighteen
miles by land in order to batter its walls, and that his Indians had
left him. Moreover, he had been instructed to hasten his operations and
allow his Canadians to go home to gather the ripening harvest so that
Canada might not starve during the coming winter. Vaudreuil pressed at
the French court his charges against Montcalm and without doubt produced
some effect. French tact was never exhibited with more grace than in the
letters which Montcalm received from his superiors in France, urging
upon him with suave courtesy the need of considering the sensitive pride
of the colonial forces and of guiding with a light rein the barbaric
might of the Indian allies. It is hard to imagine an English Secretary
of State administering a rebuke so gently and yet so unmistakably.
Montcalm well understood what was meant. He knew that some intrigue had
been working at court but he did not suspect that the Governor himself,
all blandness and compliments to his face, was writing to Paris
voluminous attacks on his character and conduct.
In the next summer (1758) Montcalm won another great success. He lay
with his forces at Ticonderoga. The English were determined to press
into the heart of Canada by way of Lake Champlain. All through the
winter, after the fall of Fort William Henry, they had been making
preparations on a great scale at Albany. By this time Amherst and Wolfe
were on the scene in America, and they spent this summer in an attack on
Louisbourg which resulted in the fall of the fortress. On the old
fighting ground of Lake Champlain and Lake George, the English were this
year making military efforts such as the Canadian frontier had never
before seen. William Pitt, who now directed the war from London, had
demanded that the colonies should raise twenty thousand men, a number
well fitted to dismay the timid legislators of New York and
Pennsylvania. At Albany fifteen thousand men came marching in by
detachments--a few of them regulars, but most of them colonial militia
who, as soon as winter came on, would scatter to their homes. The leader
was General Abercromby--a leader, needless to say, with good connections
in England, but with no other qualification for high command.
On July 5, 1758, there was a sight on Lake George likely to cause a
flutter of anxiety in the heart of Montcalm at Ticonderoga. In a line of
boats, six miles long, the great English host came down the lake and,
early on the morning of the sixth, landed before the fort which Montcalm
was to defend. The soul of the army had been a brilliant young officer,
Lord Howe, who shared the hardships of the men, washed his own linen at
the brook, and was the real leader trusted by the inept Abercromby. It
was a tragic disaster for the British that at the outset of the fight
Howe was killed in a chance skirmish. Montcalm's chief defense of
Ticonderoga consisted in a felled forest. He had cut down hundreds of
trees and, on high ground in front of the fort, made a formidable
abbatis across which the English must advance. Abercromby had four men
to one of Montcalm. Artillery would have knocked a passage through the
trunks of the trees which formed the abbatis. Abercromby, however, did
not wait to bring up artillery. He was confident that his huge force
could beat down opposition by a rapid attack, and he made the attack
with all courage and persistence. But the troops could not work through
the thicket of fallen trunks and, as night came on, they had to withdraw
baffled. Next day Lake George saw another strange spectacle--a British
army of thirteen thousand men, the finest ever seen hitherto in America,
retreating in a panic, with no enemy in pursuit. Nearly two thousand
English had fallen, while Montcalm's loss was less than four hundred. He
planted a great cross on the scene of the fight with an inscription in
Latin that it was God who had wrought the victory. All Canada had a
brief period of rejoicing before the gloom of final defeat settled down
upon the country.