The Strategy Of Pitt
During four campaigns the British had suffered humiliating disasters. It
is the old story in English history of caste privilege and deadly
routine bringing to the top men inadequate in the day of trial. It has
happened since, even in our own day, as it has happened so often before.
It seems that imminent disaster alone will arouse the nation to its best
military effort. In 1757, however, England was thoroughly aroused.
Failure then on her own special element, the sea, touched her vitally.
Admiral Byng--through sheer cowardice, as was charged--had failed to
attack a French fleet aiding in the siege of the island of Minorca which
was held by the English, and Minorca had fallen to the French. Such was
the popular clamor at this disaster that Byng was tried, condemned, and
shot. There was also an upheaval in the government. At no time in
English history were men more eager for the fruits of office; and now,
even in a great crisis, the greed for spoils could not be shaken off.
The nation demanded a conduct of the war which sought efficiency above
all else. The politicians, however, insisted on government favors.
In the end a compromise was reached. At the head of the government was
placed a politician, the Duke of Newcastle, who loved jobbery and
patronage in politics and who doled out offices to his supporters. At
the War Office was placed Pitt with a free hand to carry on military
operations. He was the terrible cornet of horse who had harried Walpole
in the days when that minister was trying to keep out of war. He knew
and even loved war; his fierce national pride had been stirred to
passion by the many humiliations at the hand of France; and now he was
resolved to organize, to spend, and to fight, until Britain trampled on
France. He had the nation behind him. He bullied and frightened the
House of Commons. Members trembled if Pitt turned on them. By his fiery
energy, by making himself a terror to weakness and incompetence, he won
for Britain the Seven Years' War.
Though Pitt became Secretary of State for War in June, 1757, not until
1758 did the tide begin to turn in America. But when it did turn, it
flowed with resistless force. In little more than a year the doom of New
France was certain. The first great French reverse was at a point where
the naval and military power of Britain could unite in attack. Pitt well
understood the need of united action by the two services. Halifax became
the radiating center of British activities. Here, in 1757, before Pitt
was well in the saddle, a fleet and an army gathered to attack
Louisbourg--an enterprise not carried out that year partly because
France had a great fleet on the spot, and partly, too, on account of the
bad quality of British leadership.
Only in the campaign of 1758 did Pitt's dominance become effective. With
him counted one quality and one alone, efficiency. The old guard at the
War Office were startled when men with rank, years, influence, and every
other claim but competence for their tasks, were passed over, and young
and obscure men were given high command. To America in the spring of
1758 were sent officers hitherto little known. Edward Boscawen,
Commander of the Fleet, and veteran among these leaders, was a
comparatively young man, only forty-seven; Jeffrey Amherst, just turned
forty, was Commander-in-Chief on land. Next in command to Amherst was
James Wolfe, aged thirty.
These young and vigorous men knew the value of promptness or they would
not have been tolerated under Pitt. Before the end of May, 1758,
Boscawen was in Halifax harbor with a fleet of some forty warships and a
multitude of transports. On board were nearly twelve thousand soldiers,
more than eleven thousand of them British regulars. The colonial forces
now play a minor part in the struggle; Pitt was ready to send from
England all the troops needed. The array at Halifax, the greatest yet
seen in America, numbered about twenty thousand men, including sailors.
Before the first of June the fleet was on its way to Louisbourg. The
defense was stubborn; and James Wolfe, who led the first landing party,
had abundant opportunity to prove his courage and capacity. By the end
of July, however, Louisbourg had fallen, and nearly six thousand
prisoners were in the hands of the English. It was the beginning of the
end.
In the autumn Wolfe was back in England, where he was quickly given
command of the great expedition which was planned against Quebec for the
following year. Admiral Sir Charles Saunders, who seems almost old
compared with Wolfe, for he was nearly fifty, was in chief command of
the fleet. Amherst had remained in America as Commander-in-Chief, and
was taking slow, deliberate, thorough measures for the last steps in the
conquest of New France.
To be too late had been the usual fate of the many British expeditions
against Canada. No one, however, dared to be late under Pitt. On
February 17, 1759, the greatest fleet that had ever put out for America
left Portsmouth. More than two hundred and fifty ships set their sails
for the long voyage. There were forty-nine warships, carrying fourteen
thousand sailors and marines, and two hundred other ships manned by
perhaps seven thousand men in the merchant service, but ready to fight
if occasion offered. Altogether nearly thirty thousand men now left the
shores of England to attack Canada.
There is a touch of doom for France in the fact that its own lost
fortress of Louisbourg was to be the rendezvous of the fleet. Saunders,
however, arrived so early that the entrance to Louisbourg was still
blocked with ice, and he went on to Halifax. In time he returned to
Louisbourg, and from there the great fleet sailed for Quebec. The voyage
was uneventful. We can picture the startled gaze of the Canadian
peasants as they saw the stately array, many miles long, pass up the St.
Lawrence. On the 26th of June, Wolfe and Saunders were in the basin
before Quebec and the great siege had begun which was to mark one of the
turning-points in history.
Nature had furnished a noble setting for the drama now to be enacted.
Quebec stands on a bold semicircular rock on the north shore of the St.
Lawrence. At the foot of the rock sweeps the mighty river, here at the
least breadth in its whole course, but still a flood nearly a mile wide,
deep and strong. Its currents change ceaselessly with the ebb and flow
of the tide which rises a dozen feet, though the open sea is eight
hundred miles away. Behind the rock of Quebec the small stream of the
St. Charles furnishes a protection on the landward side. Below the
fortress, the great river expands into a broad basin with the outflow
divided by the Island of Orleans. In every direction there are cliffs
and precipices and rising ground. From the north shore of the great
basin the land slopes gradually into a remote blue of wooded mountains.
The assailant of Quebec must land on low ground commanded everywhere
from heights for seven or eight miles on the east and as many on the
west. At both ends of this long front are further natural defenses--at
the east the gorge of the Montmorency River, at the west that of the Cap
Rouge River.
Wolfe's desire was to land his army on the Beauport shore at some point
between Quebec and Montmorency. But Montcalm's fortified posts, behind
which lay his army, stretched along the shore for six miles, all the way
from the Montmorency to the St. Charles. Wolfe had a great contempt for
Montcalm's army--"five feeble French battalions mixed with undisciplined
peasants." If only he could get to close quarters with the "wily and
cautious old fox," as he called Montcalm! Already the British had done
what the French had thought impossible. Without pilots they had steered
their ships through treacherous channels in the river and through the
dangerous "Traverse" near Cap Tourmente. Captain Cook, destined to be a
famous navigator, was there to survey and mark the difficult places, and
British skippers laughed at the forecasts of disaster made by the pilots
whom they had captured on the river. The French were confident that the
British would not dare to take their ships farther up the river past the
cannonade of the guns in Quebec, though this the British accomplished
almost without loss.
Wolfe landed a force upon the lower side of the gorge at Montmorency and
another at the head of the Island of Orleans. He planted batteries at
Point Levis across the river from Quebec, and from there he battered the
city. The pleasant houses in the Rue du Parloir which Montcalm knew so
well were knocked into rubbish, and its fascinating ladies were driven
desolate from the capital. But this bombardment brought Wolfe no nearer
his goal. On the 31st of July he made a frontal attack on the flats at
Beauport and failed disastrously with a loss of four hundred men. Time
was fighting for Montcalm.
By the 1st of September Wolfe's one hope was in a surprise by which he
could land an army above Quebec, the nearer to the fortress the better.
Its feeble walls on the landward side could not hold out against
artillery. But Bougainville guarded the high shore and marched his men
incessantly up and down to meet threatened attacks. On the heights, the
battalion of Guienne was encamped on the Plains of Abraham to guard the
Foulon. This was a cove on the river bank from which there was a path,
much used by the French for dragging up provisions, leading to the top
of the cliff at a point little more than a mile from the walls of the
city. On the 6th of September the battalion of Guienne was sent back to
the Beauport lines by order of Vaudreuil. Montcalm countermanded the
order, but was not obeyed, and Wolfe saw his chance. For days he
threatened a landing, above and below Quebec, now at one point, now at
another, until the French were both mystified and worn out with
incessant alarms. Then, early on the morning of the 13th of September,
came Wolfe's master-stroke. His men embarked in boats from the war-ships
lying some miles above Quebec, dropped silently down the river, close to
the north shore, made sentries believe that they were French boats
carrying provisions to the Foulon, landed at the appointed spot, climbed
up the cliff, and overpowered the sleeping guard. A little after
daylight Wolfe had nearly five thousand soldiers, a "thin red line,"
busy preparing a strong position on the Plains of Abraham, while the
fleet was landing cannon to be dragged up the steep hill to bombard the
fortress on its weakest side.
Montcalm had spent many anxious days. He had been incessantly on the
move, examining for himself over and over again every point, Cap Rouge,
Beauport, Montmorency, reviewing the militia of which he felt uncertain,
inspecting the artillery, the commissariat, everything that mattered. At
three o'clock in the morning of one of these days he wrote to
Bourlamaque, at Lake Champlain, noting the dark night, the rain, his men
awake and dressed in their tents, everyone alert. "I am booted and my
horses are saddled, which is in truth my usual way of spending the
night. I have not undressed since the twenty-third of June." On the
evening of the 12th of September the batteries at Point Levis kept up a
furious fire on Quebec. There was much activity on board the British
war-ships lying below the town. Boats filled with men rowed towards
Beauport as if to attempt a landing during the night. Here the danger
seemed to lie. At midnight the British boats were still hovering off the
shore. The French troops manned the entrenched lines and Montcalm was
continually anxious. A heavy convoy of provisions was to come down to
the Foulon that night, and orders had been given to the French posts on
the north shore above Quebec to make no noise. The arrival of the convoy
was vital, for the army was pressed for food. Montcalm was therefore
anxious for its fate when at break of day he heard firing from the
French cannon at Samos, above Quebec. Had the provisions then been taken
by the English? Near his camp all now seemed quiet. He gave orders for
the troops to rest, drank some cups of tea with his aide-de-camp
Johnstone, a Scotch Jacobite, and at about half-past six rode towards
Quebec to the camp of Vaudreuil to learn why the artillery was firing at
Samos. Immediately in front of the Governor's house he learned the
momentous news. The English were on the Plains of Abraham. Soon he had
the evidence of his own eyes. On the distant heights across the valley
he could see the redcoats.
No doubt Montcalm had often pondered this possibility and had decided in
such a case to attack at once before the enemy could entrench and bring
up cannon. A rapid decision was now followed by rapid action. He had a
moment's conversation with Vaudreuil. The French regiments on the right
at Vaudreuil's camp, lying nearest to the city, were to march at once.
To Johnstone he said, "The affair is serious," and then gave orders that
all the French left, except a few men to guard the ravine at
Montmorency, should follow quickly to the position between Quebec and
the enemy, a mile away. Off to this point he himself galloped. Already,
by orders of officers on the spot, regiments were gathering between the
walls of the city and the British. The regiments on the French right at
Beauport were soon on the move towards the battlefield, but two thousand
of the best troops still lay inactive beyond Beauport. Johnstone
declares that Vaudreuil countermanded the order of Montcalm for these
troops to come to his support and ordered that not one of them should
budge. There was haste everywhere. By half-past nine Montcalm had some
four thousand men drawn up between the British and the walls of Quebec.
He hoped that Bougainville, advancing from Cap Rouge, would be able to
assail the British rear: "Surely Bougainville understands that I must
attack."
The crisis was over in fifteen minutes. Montcalm attacked at once. His
line was disorderly. His center was composed of regular troops, his
wings of Canadians and Indians. These fired irregularly and lay down to
reload, thus causing confusion. The French moved forward rapidly; the
British were coming on more slowly. The French were only some forty
yards away when there was an answering fire from the thin red line; for
Wolfe had ordered his men to put two balls in their muskets and to hold
their fire for one dread volley. Then the roar from Wolfe's center was
like that of a burst of artillery; and, when the smoke cleared, the
French battalions were seen breaking in disorder from the shock, the
front line cut down by the terrible fire. A bayonet charge from the
redcoats followed. Some five thousand trained British regulars bore
down, working great slaughter on four thousand French, many of them
colonials who had never before fought in the open. The rout of the
French was complete. Some fled to safety behind the walls of Quebec,
others down the Côte Ste. Geneviève and across the St. Charles River,
where they stopped pursuit by cutting the bridge. Both Wolfe and
Montcalm were mortally wounded after the issue of the day was really
decided, and both survived to be certain, the one of victory, the other
of defeat. Wolfe died on the field of battle. Montcalm was taken into a
house in Quebec and died early the next morning. It is perhaps the only
incident in history of a decisive battle of world import followed by the
death of both leaders, each made immortal by the tragedy of their common
fate.
At two o'clock in the afternoon of the day of defeat, Vaudreuil held a
tumultuous council of war. It was decided to abandon Quebec, where
Montcalm lay dying and to retreat up the St. Lawrence to Montreal, to
the defense of which Lévis had been sent before the fight. That night
the whole French army fled in panic, leaving their tents standing and
abandoning quantities of stores. Vaudreuil who had talked so bravely
about death in the ruins of Canada, rather than surrender, gave orders
to Ramezay, commanding in Quebec, to make terms and haul down his flag.
On the third day after the battle, the surrender was arranged. On the
fourth day the British marched into Quebec, where ever since their flag
has floated.
Meanwhile, Amherst, the Commander-in-Chief of the British armies in
America, was making a toilsome advance towards Montreal by way of Lake
Champlain. He had occupied both Ticonderoga and Crown Point, which had
been abandoned by the French. Across his path lay Bourlamaque at Isle
aux Noix. Another British army, having captured Niagara, was advancing
on Montreal down the St. Lawrence from Lake Ontario. Amherst, however,
made little progress this year in his menace to Montreal and soon went
into winter quarters, as did the other forces elsewhere. The British
victory therefore was as yet incomplete.
The year 1759 proved dire for France. She was held fast by her treaty
with Austria and at ruinous cost was ever sending more and more troops
to help Austria against Prussia. The great plan of which Belle-Isle had
written to Montcalm was the chief hope of her policy. England was to be
invaded and London occupied. If this were done, all else would be right.
It was not done. France could not parry Pitt's blows. In Africa, in the
West Indies, in India, the British won successes which meant the ruin of
French power in three continents. French admirals like Conflans and La
Clue were no match for Boscawen, Hawke, and Rodney, all seamen of the
first rank, and made the stronger because dominated by the fiery Pitt.
They kept the French squadrons shut up in their own ports. When, at
last, on November 20, 1759, Conflans came out of Brest and fought Hawke
at Quiberon Bay, the French fleet was nearly destroyed, and the dream of
taking London ended in complete disaster.