Montcalm At Quebec
The rejoicing in Canada was brief. Before the end of the year the
British were victorious at both the eastern and western ends of the long
battle-line. Louisbourg had fallen in July; Fort Duquesne, in November.
Fort Frontenac--giving command of Lake Ontario and, with it, the
West--had surrendered to Bradstreet in August just after Montcalm's
victory at Ticonderoga. The Ohio was gone. The great fortress guarding
the gateway to the Gulf was gone. The next English attack would fall on
Quebec. Montcalm had told Vaudreuil in the autumn, with vigorous
precision, that the period of petty warfare, for taking scalps and
burning houses, was past. It was time now to defend the main trunk of
the tree and not the outer branches. The best Canadians should be
incorporated into and trained in the battalions of regulars. The militia
regiments themselves should be clothed and drilled like regular
soldiers. Interior posts, such as Detroit, should be held by the
smallest possible number of men. This counsel enraged Vaudreuil.
Montcalm, he wrote, was trying to upset everything. Vaudreuil was
certain that the English would not attack Quebec.
There is a melancholy greatness in the last days of Montcalm. He was
fighting against fearful odds. With only about three thousand trained
regulars and perhaps four times as many untrained Canadians and savages,
he was confronting Britain's might on sea and land which was now thrown
against New France. From France itself Montcalm knew that he had nothing
to hope. In the autumn of 1758 he sent Bougainville to Versailles. That
brilliant and loyal helper managed to elude the vigilance of the British
fleet, reached Versailles, and there spent some months in varied and
resourceful attempts to secure aid for Canada. He saw ministers. He
procured the aid of powerful connections of his own and of his
fellow-officers in Canada. He went to what was at this time the
fountainhead of authority at the French court, and it was not the King.
"The King is nothing," wrote Bougainville, "the Marchioness is
all-powerful--prime minister." Bougainville saw the Marchioness, Madame
de Pompadour, and read to her some of Montcalm's letters. She showed no
surprise and said nothing--her habit, as Bougainville said. By this time
the name of Montcalm was one to charm with in France. Bougainville wrote
to him "I should have to include all France if I should attempt to give
a list of those who love you and wish to see you Marshal of France. Even
the little children know your name." There had been a time when the
court thought the recall of Montcalm would be wise in the interests of
New France. Now it was Montcalm's day and the desire to help him was
real. France, however, could do little. Ministers were courteous and
sympathetic; but as Berryer, Minister of Marine, said to Bougainville,
with the house on fire in France, they could not take much thought of
the stable in Canada.
This Berryer was an inept person. He was blindly ignorant of naval
affairs, coarse, obstinate, a placeman who owed his position to intrigue
and favoritism. His only merit was that he tried to cut down
expenditure, but in regard to the navy this policy was likely to be
fatal. It is useless, said this guardian of France's marine, to try to
rival Britain on the sea, and the wise thing to do is to save money by
not spending it on ships. Berryer even sold to private persons stores
which he had on hand for the use of the fleet. If the house was on fire
he did not intend, it would seem, that much should be left to burn. The
old Due de Belle-Isle, Minister of War, was of another type, a fine and
efficient soldier. He explained the situation frankly in a letter to
Montcalm. Austria was an exigent ally, and Frederick of Prussia a
dangerous foe. France had to concentrate her strength in Europe. The
British fleet, he admitted, paralyzed efforts overseas. There was no
certainty, or even probability, that troops and supplies sent from
France would ever reach Canada. France, the Duke said guardedly, was not
without resources. She had a plan to strike a deadly blow against
England and, in doing so, would save Canada without sending overseas a
great army. The plan was nothing less than the invasion of England and
Scotland with a great force, the enterprise which, nearly half a century
later, Napoleon conceived as his master stroke against the proud
maritime state. During that winter and spring France was building a
great number of small boats with which to make a sudden descent and to
land an army in England.
If this plan succeeded, all else would succeed. Montcalm must just hold
on, conduct a defensive campaign and, above all, retain some part of
Canada since, as the Duke said with prophetic foresight, if the British
once held the whole of the country they would never give it up. Montcalm
himself had laid before the court a plan of his own. He estimated that
the British would have six men to his one. Rather than surrender to
them, he would withdraw to the far interior and take his army by way of
the Ohio to Louisiana. The design was a wild counsel of despair for he
would be cut off from any base of supplies, but it shows the risks he
was ready to take. In him now the court had complete confidence.
Vaudreuil was instructed to take no military action without seeking the
counsel of Montcalm. "The King," wrote Belle-Isle to Montcalm, "relies
upon your zeal, your courage and your resolution." Some little help was
sent. The British control of the sea was not complete; since more than
twenty French ships eluded British vigilance, bringing military stores,
food (for Canada was confronted by famine), four hundred soldiers, and
Bougainville himself, with a list of honors for the leaders in Canada.
Montcalm was given the rank of Lieutenant-General and, but for a
technical difficulty, would have been made a Marshal of France.
All this reliance upon Montcalm was galling to Vaudreuil. This weak man
was entirely in the hands of a corrupt circle who recognized in the
strength and uprightness of Montcalm their deadly enemy. An incredible
plundering was going on. Its strength was in the blindness of Vaudreuil.
The secretary of Vaudreuil, Grasset de Saint-Sauveur, an ignorant and
greedy man, was a member of the ring and yet had the entire confidence
of the Governor. The scale of the robberies was enormous. Bigot, the
Intendant, was stealing millions of francs; Cadet, the head of the
supplies department, was stealing even more. They were able men who knew
how to show diligence in their official work. More than once Montcalm
praises the resourcefulness with which Bigot met his requirements. But
it was all done at a fearful cost to the State. Under assumed names the
ring sold to the King, of whose interests they were the guardians,
supplies at a profit of a hundred or a hundred and fifty per cent. They
made vast sums out of transport. They drew pay for feeding hundreds of
men who were not in the King's service. They received money for great
bills of merchandise never delivered and repeated the process over and
over again. To keep the Indians friendly the King sent presents of guns,
ammunition, and blankets. These were stolen and sold. Even the bodies of
Acadians were sold. They were hired out for their keep to a contractor
who allowed them to die of cold and hunger. Hundreds of the poor exiles
perished. The nemesis of a despotic system is that, however
well-intentioned it may be, its officials are not controlled by an alert
public opinion and yet must be trusted by their master. France meant
well by her colony but the colony, unlike the English colonies, was not
taught to look after itself. While nearly every one in Canada understood
what was going on, it was another thing to inform those in control in
France. La Porte, the secretary of the colonial minister, was in the
service of the ring. He intercepted letters which should have made
exposures. Until found out, he had the ear of the minister and echoed
the tone of lofty patriotism which Bigot assumed in his letters to his
superiors.
History has made Montcalm one of its heroes--and with justice. He was a
remarkable man, who would have won fame as a scholar had he not followed
the long family tradition of a soldier's career. Bougainville once said
that the highest literary distinction of a Frenchman, a chair in the
Academy, might be within reach of Montcalm as well as the baton of a
Marshal of France. He had a prodigious memory and had read widely. His
letters, written amid the trying conditions of war, are nervous, direct,
pregnant with meaning, the notes of a penetrating intelligence. He had
deep family affection. "Adieu, my heart, I believe that I love you more
than ever I did before"; these were the last words of what he did not
know was to be his last letter to his wife. In the midst of a gay scene
at Montreal, in the spring of 1759, he writes to Bourlamaque, then at
Lake Champlain, with acute longing for the south of France in the
spring. For six or seven months in the year he could receive no letters
and always the British command of the sea made their expected arrival
uncertain. "When shall I be again at the Château of Candiac, with my
plantations, my oaks, my oil mill, my mulberry trees? O good God." He
lays bare his spirit especially to Bourlamaque, a quiet, efficient,
thoughtful man, like himself, and enjoins him to burn the letters--which
he does not, happily for posterity. Scandal does not touch him but, like
most Frenchmen, he is dependent on the society of women. He lived in a
house on the ramparts of Quebec and visited constantly the salons of his
neighbor in the Rue du Parloir, the beautiful and witty Madame de la
Naudière. In two or three other households he was also intimate and the
Bishop was a sympathetic friend. His own tastes were those of the
scholar, and more and more, during the long Canadian winters, he enjoyed
evenings of quiet reading. The elder Mirabeau, father of the
revolutionary leader of 1789, had just published his Ami des Hommes and
this we find Montcalm studying. But above all he reads the great
encyclopædia of Diderot. By 1759 seven of the huge volumes had been
issued. They startled the intellectual world of the time and Montcalm
set out to read them, omitting the articles which had no interest for
him or which he could not understand. C is a copious letter in an
encyclopædia, and Montcalm found excellent the articles on Christianity,
College, Comedy, Comet, Commerce, Council, and so on. Wolfe--soon to be
his opponent--had the same taste for letters. The two men, unlike in
body, for Wolfe was tall and Montcalm the opposite, were alike in
spirit, painstaking students as well as men of action.
At first Montcalm had not realized what was the deepest shadow in the
life of Canada. Perhaps chiefly because Vaudreuil was always at
Montreal, Montcalm preferred Quebec and was surprised and charmed by the
life of that city. It had, he said, the air of a real capital. There
were fair women and brave men, sumptuous dinners with forty or fifty
covers, brilliantly lighted salons, a vivid social life in which he was
much courted. The Intendant Bigot was agreeable and efficient. Soon,
however, Montcalm had misgivings. It was a gambling age, but he was
staggered by the extent of the gambling at the house of the Intendant.
He did not wish to break with Bigot, and there was perhaps some weakness
in his failure to denounce the orgies from which his conscience
revolted. He warned his own officers but he could not control the
colonial officers, and Vaudreuil was too weak to check a man like Bigot.
Whence came the money? In time, Montcalm understood well enough. He
himself was poor. To discharge the duties of his position he was going
into debt, and he had even to consider the possible selling of his
establishment in France. He had to beg the court for some financial
relief. At the same time he saw about him a wild extravagance. There was
famine in Canada. During the winter of 1758-59 the troops were put on
short rations and, in spite of their bitter protests, had to eat horse
flesh. Suffering and starvation bore heavily on the poor. Through lack
of food people fell fainting in the streets. But the circle of Bigot
paid little heed and feasted, danced, and gambled. Montcalm pours out
his soul to Bourlamaque. He spends, he says, sleepless nights, and his
mind is almost disordered by what he sees. In his journal he notes his
own fight with poverty and its contrast with the careless luxury of a
crowd of worthless hangers-on making four or five hundred thousand
francs a year and insulting decency by their lavish expenditure. One of
the ring, a clerk with a petty salary, a base creature, spends more on
carriages, horses, and harness than a foppish and reckless young member
of the nouveaux-riches would spend in France. Corruption in Canada is
protected by corruption in France. Montcalm cries out with a devotion
which his sovereign hardly deserved, though it was due to France
herself, "O King, worthy of better service, dear France, crushed by
taxes to enrich greedy knaves!"
The weary winter of 1758-59 at length came to an end. In May the ships
already mentioned arrived from France, bringing Bougainville and, among
other things, the news that Pitt was sending great forces for a decisive
attack on Canada. At that very moment, indeed, the British ships were
entering the mouth of the St. Lawrence. Canada had already been cut off
from France. Montcalm held many councils with his officers. The strategy
decided upon was to stand at bay at Quebec, to strike the enemy if he
should try to land, and to hold out until the approach of winter should
force the retirement of the British fleet.