Only about 1,500 regular soldiers were available for the movement,

with ten pieces of artillery: and, small as the number was, hardly

enough men were left behind to guard the lines. The detachment

advanced, and was formed within about three-quarters of a mile of

the enemy’s left, waiting for some of the marksmen with Canadians

and Indians to make a detour through the woods still further to the

right and take the enemy in the rear. On a sudden the Americans

in superior numbers made a determined attack on the left wing of

the little force, where were the grenadiers and a German regiment.

At the same time the flank of the right wing was in imminent

danger of being turned: and, while the troops on this side were

being drawn back and reformed in order to secure the retreat, the

Americans redoubled the attack on the grenadiers and the Germans.

The German regiment gave way, the grenadiers were overpowered, and

complete disaster was averted only by the stanch fighting of the

gunners and by bringing up supports from the right under General

Fraser who, in carrying out the movement, was mortally wounded.

Hard pressed and heavily defeated, leaving six guns behind them,

the force regained their lines, but the Americans, who fought with

conspicuous boldness and resolution, followed on, broke through

the entrenchments, and eventually stormed the post in the rear of

the right which was held by Colonel Breyman and the scanty German

reserve. The position was taken, but night came on, Arnold who

had led the fight was wounded, and the Congress troops drew off,

content with the success which they had already gained. Under

cover of the same night Burgoyne fell back, and took up a new

position on high ground in the rear of his former camp.[146]

[Sidenote: Burgoyne’s fatal delay.]

Up to this point in the campaign General Burgoyne may have made

mistakes, but at any rate he had not shown himself to be either

irresolute or incompetent. He had been sent to achieve the

impossible: he had loyally attempted to carry out his instructions,

even when opposed to his own views; and, bearing in mind the small

number of his troops and the difficulty of securing provisions and

supplies, it is not easy to find ground for criticism either in his

delays or in his fighting. But now his duty was clear, to retreat

at once on Fort Edward and save the remnant of the expedition.

Every hour was of importance, for every hour numbers greater

than his own, emboldened by success, were gathering round him

and threatening his retreat. The position in which he was placed

after the battle of the 7th of October was no doubt one of great

difficulty, but at any rate there was only one practical course

to be taken, and a firm resolute man, intent only on the public

good, would have taken it at once. Burgoyne acted otherwise, his

movements were leisurely and almost invited the final catastrophe.

Reading the account of what took place, and his own defence, it is

difficult to resist the conclusion that the personal element was

strong in him, that there was a theatrical strain in his character,

and that he was concerned with public opinion and effect, instead

of simply gripping the nettle in manful fashion, neglecting no

chance, and fighting out hard to the last.[147]

[Sidenote: Beginning of the retreat.]

[Sidenote: Loss of the boats.]

[Sidenote: Burgoyne’s irresolution.]

[Sidenote: Negotiations with Gates.]

[Sidenote: The final surrender.]

All day on the 8th the army remained in their new position offering

battle, and burying General Fraser with the honour due to a brave

and much loved man, while parties of the enemy crossed the Hudson,

and fired on the British camp from the opposite side. A day was

lost, the Americans were beginning to turn the right or inland

flank, and on the night of the 8th the retreat began, the wounded

being left behind in hospital. The weather was bad, the baggage

encumbered the army, it was necessary to guard the boats on the

river, yet the distance to be traversed to Fort Edward was less

than twenty miles and a hurried retreat would have saved the army.

When the morning of the 9th came, however, Burgoyne called a halt

for his wearied men, and through the greater part of that day no

further movement was made. Late in the afternoon the march was

resumed, when darkness came, the troops passed through Saratoga and

crossed the Fish Kill stream, and on the morning of the 10th the

artillery was brought over. Meanwhile the Americans had pressed

forward up the eastern bank of the Hudson, and, when the British

troops neared Saratoga, they found a party of the enemy already in

front of them on the western side, who were beginning to throw up

entrenchments, but withdrew as the British came up, leaving the

road still open for retreat. On the 10th some troops were sent

forward by Burgoyne to hold the ford opposite Fort Edward and to

cover the work of repairing the bridges, but were recalled when the

main American force attacked the rear of the British army on the

line of the Fish Kill. The boats could now no longer be adequately

defended against the American guns, the provisions were taken out

of them, and they drifted into the enemy’s hands. Through the next

three days, the 11th, the 12th and the 13th, Burgoyne remained

inactive. Councils of war were held, and it was contemplated to

make a night march and try to cross the river near Fort Edward,

but the procrastination and indecision of the general put off

the movement until it was too late. ‘The army’, wrote Burgoyne

in his subsequent dispatch, ‘took the best position possible and

fortified, waiting till the 13th at night, in the anxious hope of

succours from our friends or, the next desirable expectation, an

attack from our enemy’. On the 14th negotiations were begun with

General Gates, they continued for three days, terms were signed

late on the 16th, and on the 17th the English surrendered to the

American general and his army, kindly and generous in the hour of

victory as they had been strong and stubborn in fighting.

[Sidenote: Clinton’s movements.]

The delay in the conclusion of the matter was due at first to the

wording of the terms which Gates dictated, and subsequently to

intelligence which reached both armies of Clinton’s movements up

the Hudson. On the 4th of October Clinton started up the river from

New York with some ships of war, carrying 3,000 men, and on the 6th

stormed two American forts which barred the passage of the river

about fifty miles from the sea; some of the ships went higher up

stream but did not come within many miles of Albany; and, brilliant

as the operation was, it could not in any case have affected the

main issue and only served, with the help of rumour and report, to

make Gates anxious to conclude the negotiations of surrender and

Burgoyne for a few hours reluctant to sign the terms. At length the

inevitable was accepted and the remains of the English army, under

5,000 in number, of whom about 3,500 were fighting men, were taken

as prisoners of war to Albany and Boston.[148]

[Sidenote: Causes of the disaster.]

[Sidenote: Carleton on Lord George Germain.]

[Sidenote: Character of Burgoyne.]

The ultimate cause of the disaster was Lord George Germain. Here

is Carleton’s judgement upon the matter, contained in a letter to

Burgoyne dated the following 12th of November, ‘This unfortunate

event, it is to be hoped, will in future prevent ministers from

pretending to direct operations of war, in a country at 3,000 miles

distance, of which they have so little knowledge as not to be able

to distinguish between good, bad, or interested advices, or to

give positive orders in matters which from their nature are ever

upon the change.’ The more immediate cause was the character of

Burgoyne. His condemnation is written in his own dispatch.

‘The bulk of the enemy’s army was hourly joined by new corps of

militia and volunteers, and their numbers together amounted to

upwards of 16,000 men. After the execution of the treaty General

Gates drew together the force that had surrounded my position, and

I had the consolation to have as many witnesses as I had men under

my command, of its amounting to the numbers mentioned above.’

Why had the 16,000 men gathered round him? Because he had given

them time to do so, because in the hour of need his thought was

rather of saving his own reputation than of saving the force

under his command. Would Wolfe, weakly and suffering, have waited

helplessly for something to turn up, looking for co-operation

from Amherst in the far distance, as Burgoyne looked for it from

Clinton? Would he have found consolation in allowing the enemy’s

numbers to grow and counting up how far superior they were to his

own? Would he have been at pains to make the story plausible and

dramatic, so that he might hold up his head thereafter in London

circles and retain the favour of those who were in high places?

It was not English to court surrender, and to cast about for

excuse for surrender. Had Chatham been in Germain’s place, no such

foolhardy expedition would have been ordered cut and dried from

England. Had Wolfe been in Burgoyne’s, if success was possible he

would have achieved it, if it was impossible he would have redeemed

failure or died. Military skill, daring, manhood, self-reliance,

leadership of soldiers and of men, were the qualities which less

than twenty years before had shone out in dark days round Quebec;

the same qualities seemed dead or numbed, when Burgoyne bade his

men lay down their arms by the banks of the Hudson river.

[Sidenote: Consequences of the disaster.]

[Sidenote: The French intervene in the war.]

The story of this ill-fated expedition has been told at some

length because it is part and parcel of the history of Canada.

The scene of the later years of the War of Independence was the

Atlantic seaboard; and Canada, except on her western borders,

though threatened, was unmolested. The surrender of Burgoyne’s

army by no means finished the fighting, the English were still to

win barren successes before the final catastrophe at Yorktown;

but after Saratoga the war entered upon a wholly new stage. The

surrender in itself was serious enough. No colonists had in modern

history achieved so great a triumph, no such disaster had ever

clouded British arms in the story of her colonization. The Preface

of the _Annual Register_ for 1777 refers to the ‘awful aspect of

the times’, awful indeed to a country whose best men had no faith

in her cause. But the great practical result which followed on the

reverse of Saratoga, the result which eventually decided the war,

was that the French now joined hands with the Americans, and the

latter thereby secured the help of a fleet, strong enough, when

the Spaniards at a later date also entered the ranks of England’s

enemies, to compete with the British navy on the western seas.

[Sidenote: The French alliance with the Americans tended to protect

Canada from invasion.]

While, however, the intervention of France greatly increased the

difficulties with which Great Britain had to contend at this

critical time of her history, for the moment it made the war more

popular in England, inasmuch as Englishmen were now called upon

to fight against their old rivals and not merely against their

kinsfolk. In another respect too it was of distinct advantage to

the British Empire, in that it brought to Canada immunity from

invasion. The American colonists welcomed French aid in securing

their independence, but they had no mind to restore Canada to

France, and they looked with suspicion on any proposal or utterance

which might seem to point in that direction. Though the French in

their treaty with the United States disclaimed any intention of

national aggrandizement in America,[149] Admiral D’Estaing, in

October, 1778, a few months after his arrival in American waters,

issued a proclamation to the Canadians, appealing to their French

nationality; and Lafayette proposed a scheme for an invasion of

Canada which Congress accepted but Washington set aside. There

was sufficient uneasiness in American minds with regard to French

designs to restrict French co-operation in the main to the Atlantic

side; and, though the Canadians were excited by their countrymen’s

appeal, they did not rise in arms themselves, nor did the Americans

attempt to repeat the movement by which Montgomery had over-run the

country up to the walls of Quebec.

[Sidenote: Precautions taken in Canada against invasion.]

It would not indeed have been easy for them to do so, for

Carleton and his successor Haldimand, though badly in need of

reinforcements, were yet better prepared and had more men at

their command than when the war first broke out. Immediately

after Burgoyne’s capitulation Ticonderoga and Crown Point were

abandoned, and the troops were withdrawn to the northern end of

Lake Champlain. A year later Haldimand directed the whole country

round the lake to be cleared of settlement and cultivation, as a

safeguard against American invasion. At various points, where such

invasion might take place, he established posts, on an island at

the opening of Lake Ontario, which was named Carleton Island; at

the Isle aux Noix at the head of the Richelieu river, and at Sorel

at its mouth: on the river St. Francis which joins the St. Lawrence

below Sorel, flowing from the direction of Vermont: and on the

Chaudière river over against Quebec, lest Arnold’s inroad by the

line of that river should be repeated.

[Sidenote: Border War.]

Nor was this all. As in Count Frontenac’s time, and with much the

same ruthlessness as in those earlier days, Canada was defended

by counter attacks upon the border settlements of the revolting

colonies, Loyalists and Indians dealing the blows and bearing the

penalties. In May and June of 1778, Brant harried the New York

frontier and burnt the town of Springfield; in July, in order, it

was said, to counteract American designs against Niagara, Colonel

John Butler, with a force of Rangers and Indians, carried war far

into the enemy’s country and uprooted the settlements at Wyoming,

on the eastern branch of the Susquehanna river within the borders

of Pennsylvania. Fact and fiction have combined to keep alive

the memories of the massacre at Wyoming; and, together with the

even more terrible tragedy of Cherry Valley which followed, it

stands to the discredit of England in the story of these most

barbarous border wars.[150] In September the Mohawk leader burnt to

the ground the houses and barns at the German Flatts, though the

settlers had been warned in time to take refuge in Fort Dayton.

In November Brant joined forces with Walter Butler, son of the

raider of Wyoming; and together they carried death and desolation

into the Cherry Valley settlement in Tryon county. In the following

year the Americans took a terrible revenge for these doings, and a

strong force under General John Sullivan turned the country of the

Six Nation Indians into a wilderness. ‘General Sullivan,’ wrote

Washington to Lafayette, ‘has completed the entire destruction of

the country of the Six Nations, driven all the inhabitants, men,

women, and children out of it’.

[Sidenote: George Rogers Clark in the West.]

Further west, in 1778 and 1779, the Illinois region and the

settlements on the middle Mississippi fell into American hands,

never to be regained, the leader of the backwoodsmen in this

quarter being George Rogers Clark, a young Virginian, one of the

pioneers of settlement in Kentucky, a most able leader and a hard

determined man. In July, 1778, Clark surprised and took the fort

and settlement of Kaskaskia standing on the river of that name a

little above its junction with the Mississippi, and immediately

afterwards he received the submission of the post at Vincennes on

the Wabash river. A few months later, in December, 1778, Vincennes

was re-occupied by Hamilton, Lieutenant-Governor of Detroit, with

a handful of men. Before the following February ended, Hamilton

was in turn attacked and overpowered by Clark who carried out a

daring winter march; and, being forced to surrender at discretion,

the English commander was, according to English accounts, treated

through long months of imprisonment with unmerited harshness. The

truth was that, as the war went on, bitterness increased, and when,

as in the West and on the border the combatants were backwoodsmen,

Rangers and Indians, the fighting became a series of ruthless

reprisals.

[Sidenote: Later raids from Canada.]

Later again, in 1780 and 1781, parties sent out from Canada

retraced the routes taken by Burgoyne and St. Leger, harried the

country at the southern end of Lakes George and Champlain, and laid

waste the settlements in the Mohawk valley. In one, commanded by

Major Carleton, brother of the late governor of Canada, Fort Anne

and Fort George were taken with their garrisons; in another, on the

line of the Mohawk, Major Ross, advancing from Oswego, inflicted

heavy loss on the Americans. In all these expeditions on either

side there was the same object, to prevent invasion by counter

invasion, to destroy stores, and to terrorize the adherents of the

enemy; but none of them, except the exploits of Clark, contributed

materially to the issue of the war.

[Sidenote: Fighting on the Penobscot.]

On or near the Atlantic coast-line of Canada, in 1779, fighting

took place which might well have had lasting results. An expedition

was sent in that year from Halifax to the Penobscot river,

commanded by Maclean, who had done good service under Carleton at

the time of the American invasion. In June he established himself

at Castine at the mouth of the Penobscot; and, inasmuch as the

place was then within the borders of Massachusetts, he was towards

the end of July attacked by a small squadron and a force of militia

sent from and paid for by that state. For between two or three

weeks the Americans besieged the British post until, towards the

end of the second week in August, British ships under Sir George

Collier appeared on the scene, and all the American vessels were

taken or destroyed. Maclean’s expedition was repeated with equal

success by Sir John Sherbrooke in the war of 1812, but neither

enterprise produced the permanent result of making the Penobscot

river, as it should have been, the boundary between Canada and the

United States.

[Sidenote: Carleton succeeded by Haldimand.]

It has been seen that in June, 1777, Carleton sent in his

resignation of the governorship of Canada. Burgoyne wrote privately

to Germain at the end of July, before he started on his expedition,

to decline the appointment in case it should be offered to him;

and in August, 1777, General Haldimand, who was then at home in

Switzerland, was nominated as Carleton’s successor. He was ordered

to go out as soon as possible in a ship which, as Germain wrote

to Carleton on the 19th of October, was to bring the latter home,

but did not leave England till the end of April or beginning of May

following, arriving at Quebec at the end of June, 1778. Carleton

then immediately returned to England, and was received with honour

by the King to the disgust of Lord George Germain.

[Sidenote: Haldimand’s government.]

General Haldimand, Sir Frederick Haldimand as he afterwards was,

governed Canada till the end of 1784, and he governed it, in

thankless times, strongly and well. In the year 1778 he was sixty

years of age, having been born in 1718. Like his great friend

Henry Bouquet, he was a Swiss. His birthplace was Yverdon at the

south-western end of the lake of Neuchâtel, and there he died in

1791, the year in which the Canada Act was passed. There is a

tablet to his memory in Henry VII’s Chapel in Westminster Abbey.

His career was that of a soldier of fortune. With Bouquet, he

served the Stadtholder of the Netherlands in a regiment of Swiss

Guards; and in 1754[151] the two officers entered the British

service as lieutenant-colonels of the newly-raised regiment of

Royal Americans. He fought under Abercromby at Ticonderoga, and

afterwards served under Amherst; and in 1759, while rebuilding

the fort at Oswego, he beat off a force of Canadians and Indians

commanded by St. Luc de la Corne, who in later days was a member

of his Legislative Council at Quebec. After the capitulation of

Montreal, being a French-speaking officer, he was selected by

Amherst to take possession of the city. He subsequently acted as

governor of Three Rivers, and when to his great grief Bouquet died

at Pensacola in 1765, Haldimand, in 1767, succeeded his friend in

the command in Florida. In 1773 he went to New York to act for

General Gage while the latter was on leave in England. In 1775 he

was brought back to England, and in 1778 he went out to govern

Canada.

Haldimand was a man of the Carleton type; and, before he left

London to take up his appointment, he wrote to Germain to the

effect that he should be given full discretion in military matters,

and, as civil governor, have the nomination to all appointments.

Like Carleton, he was attacked by the partisans of Congress in

Canada as a military despot, the enemy of civil liberties, the

best known case against him being that of Du Calvet,[152] a French

Protestant, who was in 1780 arrested and imprisoned for encouraging

and abetting treason, and who subsequently published his case

against the governor in London. That Du Calvet was a traitor there

seems to have been no doubt, but his charges against the governor

coloured the view which was commonly taken in after years of

Haldimand’s administration. None the less, whatever may have been

the technical merits of this and other individual cases, it is

beyond question that, at a time when England was badly served both

at home and abroad, in the most critical years, and in Canada where

the position was most difficult, she was conspicuously well served

by Carleton and Haldimand. Haldimand governed a community, in which

the minority, as in Carleton’s time, was largely disaffected, and

the loyalty of the majority was undermined by French appeals.

From day to day the danger of attack at this point or at that

was imminent, while there was constant risk that the supplies

which came over the sea would be intercepted by French ships or

American privateers. In England Haldimand’s master was still the

same self-willed, half-informed minister Germain. In Canada there

were few that he could trust. Yet solitary in public as in private

life--for he had no wife or child--he held the reins of government

with a firm and an honest hand, a good servant of England though

of foreign birth. If Canada at the present day be compared with

the province of Quebec which the Peace of 1763 gave into British

keeping, the three main elements in the evolution of the great

Dominion will be found to have been British immigration, canals,

and railways. Railways, opening the North-West and linking the two

oceans, date from long after Haldimand’s time; but he was governor

when the first steps were taken to improve the waterways of Canada,

and he watched over the incoming of the United Empire Loyalists.

[Sidenote: The Vermont negotiations.]

Not the least of Haldimand’s difficulties was that he had to

negotiate peace and wage war at the same time, for, while directing

or controlling border raids at other points on the Canadian

frontier, he had on his hands, from 1779 onwards, troublesome and

in the end abortive negotiations with the settlers in the present

state of Vermont. Of the character of these settlers he seems to

have had but a poor opinion, their lawless antecedents no doubt

not being to his mind. Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys

had not been animated by American patriotism alone when at the

beginning of the war they took Ticonderoga. They had in their minds

to put themselves in evidence and to vindicate their claim to be

free of New York. While the war went on, and after it ended, their

determination to be an independent state was as strong as ever;

and their negotiations with Canada were an intimation to Congress

that the price of their continued adhesion to the continental

cause must be recognition of their local independence. The policy

had the immediate merit of giving them a respite from Canadian

raids, and it left open a choice of future issues. The Vermont men

knew the value or the weakness of their geographical position as

regards Canada. It was patent then as it was in the later war of

1812. In a private letter to Lord North, dated the 24th of October,

1783,[153] Haldimand wrote, ‘Since the provisional treaty has been

made public, several persons of influence in the state of Vermont

have been here at different times, they all agree in describing

these people as very averse to Congress and its measures.... They

made no scruple of telling me that Vermont must either be annexed

to Canada or become mistress of it, as it is the only channel by

which the produce of their country can be conveyed to a market, but

they assured me that they rather wished the former.’ The Vermont

settlers were, in short, like many states and many individuals

before and since, on the fence; but in the end they were neither

annexed to Canada nor did they become mistress of her, for in 1791

Vermont became a state of the American Union, and Canada worked out

her own salvation.

Haldimand’s dispatches might have been written by Carleton. There

is the same point of view, almost the same turn of expression.

On the 25th of October, 1780, in a long dispatch to Lord George

Germain, giving an account of the general conditions of men

and things in Canada, he wrote, ‘As it is my duty, it has been

my business to inform myself of the state of the country, and

I coincide with the majority of the Legislative Council in

considering the Canadians as the people of the country, and think

that in making laws and regulations for the administration of

these laws, regard is to be paid to the sentiments and manner of

thinking of 60,000 rather than of 2,000--three-fourths of whom are

traders and cannot with propriety be considered as residents of

the province. In this point of view the Quebec Act was both just

and politic, though unfortunately for the British Empire it was

enacted ten years too late. It requires but little penetration to

discover that, had the system of government solicited by the old

subjects been adopted in Canada, this colony would in 1775 have

become one of the United States of America.’[154] Three years

later, when the war was over, in his letter to Lord North referred

to above, he wrote ‘This province can only be preserved by bringing

back the Canadians to a regular subordination, and by rendering

them useful as a well-disciplined militia. In order to effectuate

this, the authority of government must be strengthened and not

diminished’.[155]

Like Carleton and like Murray, Haldimand had it at heart to provide

the people of Canada with an upright and kindly administration.

Among the various grievances, real or alleged, which were

ventilated from time to time, one of the most substantial, so far

as the French Canadians were concerned, was the excessive amount

which was exacted from them by officials and lawyers in the form

of fees of office. In 1780 Haldimand assented to an ordinance

regulating the fees for two years, at the expiration of which time

he hoped that the Legislature would, from the experience gained

in the meantime, be able to draw up ‘a more perfect list of fees,

more permanent and less burthensome to the people’ for, he wrote,

‘the fees in general are by far too high and more than the people

of this province can bear.’[156] A favourite complaint of the

British minority, who had as little to complain of as they were

loud and persistent in complaining, was that there was no statutory

provision for the right of Habeas Corpus, which was supposed to

have been abolished by the Quebec Act. When peace was restored

and the step could safely be taken, Haldimand met this grievance

by passing, in 1784, an ordinance ‘for securing the liberty of

the subject and for the prevention of imprisonments out of this

province’.[157] When reporting the passing of the fees ordinance

Haldimand wrote, ‘Sir Guy Carleton had in the sessions 1775

proposed to regulate the fees of office, and had that business

very much at heart. Committees were appointed for that salutory

purpose and, though many obstacles were thrown in the way, great

progress was made. The ordinance was lost for that time by Sir

Guy Carleton’s putting an end to the session in consequence of

motions made in council by Mr. Livius and others’.[158] He himself

suffered from similar obstruction; his dispatch goes on to refer

to members of his council, ‘who, however willing they may be to

circumscribe the King’s authority in measures of general utility

to his service and the welfare of his people, are for carrying on

to the greatest height his prerogative to grant Letters Patent

for the emolument of individuals though to the oppression of the

people’. As the outcome of the Livius case, two additional Royal

Instructions had been issued to Haldimand, dated the 29th of

March, 1779. The first prohibited him from interpreting the words

in the general instructions ‘It is our further Will and Pleasure

that any five of the said council shall constitute a board of

council for transacting all business in which their advice and

consent may be requisite, acts of legislation only excepted’, as

Carleton had interpreted them, namely, as authorizing the governor

to select five particular members of the Legislative Council to

form an Executive or Privy Council; and it instructed him to

communicate this decision to the council. The second instructed

him to communicate to the council ‘such and so many of our said

instructions, wherein their advice and consent are made requisite,

with such others from time to time as you shall judge for our

service to be imparted to them’.[159] Haldimand did not at once

communicate these additional instructions to his council. He

thought that at the time it was not for the public interest to

do so, and he wrote to Germain to that effect, but only brought

upon himself a severe reprimand alike from Germain and from the

Board of Trade. Equally he thought it inadvisable, under existing

circumstances, to communicate to his council certain clauses in

the general instructions, in which the Home Government practically

invited the Quebec Legislative Council to modify the Quebec Act,

recommending the introduction to some extent of English civil law

and also statutory provision for Habeas Corpus. Like Carleton he

saw things face to face, as a soldier not as a constitutional

lawyer, and he gave advice according to existing conditions, which

were those of war and not of peace. These two governors may have

been technically wrong in this point or in that, but they had the

root of the matter in them, they governed with a single eye, a firm

hand, and with most generous and humane intent. ‘Party spirit,’

Haldimand wrote to Germain, ‘is the enemy of every private as well

as public virtue. Since my arrival in the province I have steered

clear of all parties and have taken great care not to enter into

the resentments of my predecessor or his friends, but this present

occasion obliges me to declare to your lordship that in general Mr.

Livius’ conduct has not impressed people with a favourable idea of

his moderation.’[160] There was no party spirit about Carleton, nor

yet about Haldimand. In a bad time, when partisanship was rife,

they stood for the good name of England, and for the substance of

sound and honest administration.

[Sidenote: Clinton succeeds Howe at Philadelphia and retreats to

New York.]

At the same time that Haldimand relieved Carleton, Sir Henry Clinton

took over from Howe the command of the army at Philadelphia. He

arrived there at the beginning of May, 1778, and at the end of the

month Howe left for England. The abandonment of Philadelphia had

been ordered from home, in view of the new complications produced by

the intervention of France in the war. All the available ships

carried off to New York, stores, baggage, and numbers of Loyalists,

while Clinton retreated with his army overland through New Jersey.

On the 18th of June he left Philadelphia, which was immediately

re-occupied by the Americans, and for a fortnight, closely followed

by Washington, he slowly made his way in the heat of the summer

through the enemy’s country. On the 28th of June in what is known as

the battle of Monmouth, near Freehold Court House, he fought a

rearguard action with Lee, who commanded the advance of Washington’s

army: and, thereby covering his retreat, reached Sandy Hook, and on

the 5th of July carried over his troops to New York.

[Sidenote: The French fleet.]

D’Estaing and a French squadron had now appeared on the scene,

threatened New York, and in co-operation with the American general

Sullivan attacked the English in Rhode Island. Bad weather, the

skill and seamanship of Admiral Howe, and the preparations made by

the English commander on shore, rendered the expedition abortive,

and the summer closed without decisive success on either side.

[Sidenote: Operations in the south.]

[Sidenote: Savannah taken by the English.]

[Sidenote: Clinton takes command in the south.]

Later in the year, an expedition under Colonel Campbell, was

dispatched to the south, and landing at the end of December near

Savannah, the capital of the colony of Georgia, by a skilful

movement took the town and captured the whole of the garrison

and stores. General Prevost, who arrived from Florida shortly

afterwards and took over command of the British troops in Georgia,

advanced into South Carolina and, in May, 1779, threatened

Charleston, but was compelled to retreat. In September D’Estaing’s

fleet appeared before Savannah; on the 9th of October a combined

French and American force attempted to re-take the town, but were

beaten off with heavy loss: and in the spring of 1780 Clinton

arrived with a large body of troops from New York to direct

operations in the southern states. A year and a half had passed

since he had brought off his army from Philadelphia, and little

had been done. There had been fighting on the Hudson, the coasts

of Virginia and the New England colonies had been harried, small

towns had been sacked and burnt, and stores and ships destroyed,

causing damage and distress to the Americans but also unwisely

embittering the war. Now the English garrison at Rhode Island had

been withdrawn and, while New York was still strongly held, the

main efforts on the British side were directed to re-conquering the

southern states, where Loyalist sympathies were strong and widely

spread.

[Sidenote: Taking of Charleston.]

[Sidenote: Cornwallis.]

[Sidenote: The battle of Camden.]

[Sidenote: King’s Mountain.]

Charleston was the main point of attack. It was bravely defended

for several weeks by General Lincoln, but his communications were

cut by Clinton’s stronger force, the investment was gradually

completed, and on the 12th of May, 1780, the town was surrendered

and the garrison became prisoners of war. This success was followed

by the annihilation of another small body of American troops, on

which occasion Tarleton, the British commander, was accused of

indiscriminate slaughter. Clinton having returned to New York, the

command in the south devolved on Cornwallis, whose campaigns in

1780 and 1781 were the closing scenes of the war. He began with a

great success. General Gates had been sent south to take command of

the American forces in the Carolinas, and, having collected an army

which largely outnumbered the troops at the disposal of Cornwallis,

marched to attack the latter at Camden to the north-west of

Charleston. Cornwallis resolved on a counter attack; and, after

a night march on either side, the two forces came into collision

near Camden at dawn on the 16th of August. After hard fighting

the Americans gave way before a British bayonet charge and a rout

ensued, which was supplemented by a further small victory gained

by Tarleton over the American general Sumter, who had previously

intercepted Cornwallis’ communications and captured a convoy and

some prisoners. Cornwallis now advanced into North Carolina, but

behind him the backwoodsmen gathered, and on the 7th of October

overwhelmed, after heavy fighting, a strong detachment of

Loyalists under Major Ferguson at a place called King’s Mountain.

This reverse had the same effect as the fights at Trenton or

Bennington. Cornwallis had to fall back, the American cause revived

in the south, and the extraordinary difficulty of dealing with

guerilla warfare in an immense territory was once more effectively

illustrated. In December Gates was superseded by an abler and more

trustworthy general, Nathaniel Greene.

In the north no decisive action took place during the year. The

English made an incursion into New Jersey, without producing any

effect. A French fleet and army under de Rochambeau arrived at

Rhode Island, where Clinton would have attacked them in force

but for want of co-operation on the part of the English admiral

Arbuthnot. The American cause received a heavy blow in the

treachery of Arnold, and on the other hand, before the close of the

year, the Dutch were added to the long list of enemies against whom

England was maintaining an unequal struggle.

[Sidenote: The campaign of 1781, Cornwallis moves north.]

[Sidenote: Cowpens.]

[Sidenote: Guilford Court House.]

[Sidenote: Cornwallis in Virginia.]

With the opening of the new year, 1781, Cornwallis moved

northwards. In the middle of January the light troops from his

force, who were under Tarleton’s command, were heavily defeated

by the American general Morgan, at Cowpens near the border line

between South and North Carolina. Having received reinforcements,

Cornwallis still advanced, Greene falling back before him until he

had collected a larger number of men than the English general had

at his disposal. The two forces met near Guilford Court House on

the 15th of March, under much the same conditions as had preceded

the fight at Camden; and after an even fight the English were

victorious, though with a loss of about one-third of their small

army. After the battle, Cornwallis fell back for a while towards

Wilmington, and, as the Americans were again active behind him in

South Carolina, debated whether to continue his efforts to stamp

out resistance in the south, or to march forward into Virginia

where there was now a strong British force, commanded at first by

Arnold and afterwards by Burgoyne’s colleague General Phillips, who

were opposed by Lafayette. He determined on the northward movement

and effected a junction with Phillips’ troops, their commander

having in the meantime died at Petersburg in Virginia late in May.

[Sidenote: Cornwallis takes up a position at Yorktown.]

The fighting went on in the Carolinas with varying success. On

the 25th of April Lord Rawdon, who was then in command, defeated

Greene at Hobkirk’s Hill. In September his successor Colonel

Stuart fought a drawn battle at Eutaw Springs, but the Americans

secured one point and another, and the balance of the campaign was

against the British cause. In Virginia Cornwallis and Lafayette

manœuvred against each other, the British operations being hampered

by the apprehension of a combined attack in force by the French

and Americans on New York, which led Clinton to order the return

of a part of the army in Virginia. The order was countermanded,

but Cornwallis was instructed to take up a defensive position in

touch with the sea, and in August he concentrated his troops at

Yorktown on the bank of the York river, where a peninsula is formed

by that river and the James flowing into the mouth of Chesapeake

Bay; the village of Gloucester on the opposite side of the York

river was also held. It was not a strong position, and all depended

on keeping command, of the water. For once the English lost the

command, and the consequence was the loss of the army.

[Sidenote: Naval operations. The French fleet under de Grasse comes

into touch with Washington and Lafayette.]

[Sidenote: Cornwallis besieged at Yorktown.]

At the end of March a strong French fleet under de Grasse sailed

from Brest for the West Indies. After a few weeks’ operations

among the islands, and taking Tobago, de Grasse made for Cap

François in Hayti and found dispatches from Washington. Taking

on board 3,500 French soldiers, he sailed for the North American

coast and reached the Chesapeake at the end of August. The object

was to co-operate with Washington and de Rochambeau in blockading

Cornwallis and compelling him to surrender. Meanwhile a French

squadron at Newport in Rhode Island, under de Barras, put out

to sea with a convoy containing the siege train, making a wide

circuit in order to escape detection by the English ships and join

de Grasse in Chesapeake Bay. On land Lafayette, strengthened by a

body of Pennsylvanians, already harassed Cornwallis, especially

charged to prevent as far as possible a retreat to the south; while

de Rochambeau from Rhode Island joined Washington who was facing

New York, and the combined army, after threatening an attack on

Clinton, crossed the Hudson in August, marched through New Jersey

to Philadelphia, and passing on to Virginia, with the help of

French transports appeared before Yorktown in the latter end of

September. Cornwallis was now besieged by 16,000 men on land and an

overwhelming fleet at sea.

[Sidenote: Ineffective movements of the English fleet.]

The movement had been well planned and skilfully executed. Clinton

at New York had been misled by a feint of attack, and on the sea

the English had been found wanting. When Rodney learnt that de

Grasse had left the West Indies for the North American coast, in

ill health himself and about to leave for England, he dispatched

Sir Samuel Hood in pursuit with fourteen ships of the line. A

stronger force was needed and had apparently been intended by

Rodney. Hood reached the Chesapeake three or four days before de

Grasse arrived, and passing on to New York came under the orders

of a senior officer, Admiral Graves, who had at the time but five

ships with him. The combined squadron sailed for the Chesapeake,

and found that de Grasse had forestalled them with a stronger

fleet. They attacked on the 5th of September, with no decisive

result on either side: for three or four days longer the two

fleets faced each other, then Graves returned to New York and de

Grasse went back to block Cornwallis, his manœuvres having enabled

de Barras in the meantime to bring in his ships in safety to the

Chesapeake.

[Sidenote: Cornwallis surrenders at Yorktown.]

Cornwallis was now in hopeless case, unless Clinton could relieve

him. Expectation of relief was given, the 5th of October being

named as the day on which the relieving force would probably

leave New York. On the night of the 5th the Americans began their

trenches, on the 9th the guns opened fire: after a week’s fighting,

on the 17th, Cornwallis treated for surrender; and on the 19th,

the day on which Clinton actually sailed from New York to bring

the promised aid, the British army laid down their arms, sickness

having reduced the number of fighting men from 7,000 to barely

4,000.

[Sidenote: Consequences of the surrender.]

[Sidenote: Carleton succeeds Clinton.]

[Sidenote: Negotiations for peace.]

[Sidenote: Peace concluded and the Independence of the United

States recognized.]

Four years had passed almost to the day since the similar disaster

at Saratoga. The second surrender practically finished the war,

though there was still some small fighting in the south, the

English being driven back to Charleston and Savannah. Savannah

was eventually evacuated in July, 1782, and Charleston in the

following December, by which date terms of peace between Great

Britain and the United States had already been signed. Meanwhile

in England Carleton had been nominated to take the place of

Clinton as Commander-in-Chief in America, Germain resigned, and

in March, 1782, Lord North’s ministry came to an end. The Whigs

came in pledged to make peace, Rockingham being Prime Minister and

Shelburne and Fox Secretaries of State. Within four months Lord

Rockingham died, and Shelburne became Prime Minister, Fox leaving

the Government, and the younger Pitt joining it as Chancellor of

the Exchequer. Already negotiations for peace were proceeding at

Paris, where Richard Oswald, a nominee of Shelburne’s, had been

treating with Franklin, complaisantly entertaining every American

demand. Rodney’s great victory over de Grasse in the battle of the

Saints, on the 12th of April, 1782, enabled England to speak with

a firmer voice. The failure in September of the combined efforts

of France and Spain to take Gibraltar again added strength: and

Shelburne’s ministry was enabled to conclude a peace, which, if it

contrasted sadly with the triumphant Treaty of 1763, was at least

far from being the capitulation of a ruined Power. On the 30th

of November, 1782, articles were signed between Oswald, on behalf

of Great Britain, and the Commissioners of the United States, ‘to

be inserted in and to constitute the treaty of Peace’ which was

to be concluded when Great Britain and France had come to terms.

On the 20th of January, 1783, Preliminary Articles of Peace were

signed between Great Britain and France on the one hand and between

Great Britain and Spain on the other; and on the following 3rd of

September the Peace of Versailles was finally concluded, treaties

being made by Great Britain with France, Spain, and the United

States, a treaty with the Netherlands having been signed on the

previous day. Under the first article of the treaty with the United

States the King of England acknowledged the thirteen colonies then

forming the United States to be ‘free sovereign and Independent

States’.

[Sidenote: Comparison of the American War of Independence with the

late war in South Africa.]

[Sidenote: Effect on war of submarine cables.]

At the time of the late war in South Africa an analogy was

sometimes drawn between that war and the War of American

Independence. In some respects there was similarity. In either

case a group of British colonies was primarily concerned, and in

either case the British Government was faced with the difficulty

of transporting large bodies of troops across the sea to a

distant scene of war, America in the eighteenth century before

the days of steam being for all practical purposes more remote

than South Africa in our own time. There were two distinct spheres

of operations in America in the earlier years of the war, Canada

and the Atlantic states, just as in South Africa the war was

divided between Natal and the Cape Colony; and the Boer invasion

of Natal and investment of Ladysmith to some extent recalls the

overrunning of Canada by Montgomery’s troops and the hemming up

of Carleton inside Quebec. In both cases there was the same kind

of half knowledge of the country and its conditions in the public

mind in Great Britain, and, curiously enough, in either case the

estimate seems to have been most at fault where fighting had been

most recent; in Natal, where less than twenty years had elapsed

since the previous Boer war, and on the line of Lake Champlain and

the Hudson, presumed to be well known to many who had served at a

somewhat shorter interval of time under Abercromby and Amherst,

and who encouraged Germain to give his confident instructions to

Burgoyne for a march to Albany. Distance, transport, supplies,

communications, rather than hard fighting, were the main elements

of either war; and the description of the American war given in the

_Annual Register_ for 1777, which has been already quoted,[161]

that it was ‘a war of posts, surprises, and skirmishes instead of a

war of battles’, would apply equally to the South African war. But

here the likeness ceases, and no real parallel can be drawn between

the two contests. The American war was a civil war, Englishmen were

fighting Englishmen. The war in South Africa was a war between

two rival races. In the earlier war the great forces which have

been embodied in British colonization, mental and physical vigour,

forwardness and tenacity, the forces of youth, which have the

keeping of the future, were in the main ranged against the mother

country: in the later war they contributed, as never before, to

the sum of national patriotism. In the earlier war foreign nations

intervened, with fatal effect, and the sea power of England was

crippled. In the later, the struggle was kept within its original

limits and British ships went unmolested to and from South Africa.

Not least of all, while on the former occasion ministers at home

tried to do the work of the generals on the spot, Carleton’s

bitter comments on the disastrous result, which have been quoted

above[162], could in no sense be applied to the later crisis. As

bearing on this last point, it is interesting to speculate what

would have happened had submarine cables existed in the days of

King George the Third. The telegraph invites and facilitates

interference from home. It tends to minimize the responsibility,

and to check the initiative, of the men on the spot: and if

the cables which now connect England and America, had been in

existence in the years 1776 and 1777, it might be supposed that the

commanders in America would have been even more hampered than they

were by the meddling of the King, and his ministers. But the evil

was that, in the absence of the telegraph, interference could not

be corrected, and co-operation could not be ensured. Germain laid

down a rigid plan: a second-rate man received precise instructions

which he felt bound to follow against his own judgement; and for

want of sure and speedy communication the cause was lost. It is

impossible to suppose that even the King and Germain would have

refused to modify their plans, had they known what was passing from

day to day or from week to week: in other words, the invention

which more than any other has opened a door to undue interference,

would probably in the case in point have done most to remedy the

ignorant meddling which was the prime cause of the disaster at

Saratoga.

[Sidenote: Effects of the American War of Independence on the

British Empire as a whole.]

The War of American Independence was ‘by far the most dangerous in

which the British nation was ever involved’.[163] It was seen at

the time that its issues would colour all future history and modify

for ever political and commercial systems, but no prophet seemed

to contemplate a colonial future for Great Britain, and Benjamin

Franklin said ‘he would furnish Mr. Gibbon with materials for

writing the history of the Decline of the British Empire’.[164] Yet

the present broad-based Imperial system of Great Britain was for

two reasons the direct outcome of that war. While the United States

were still colonial possessions of Great Britain, they overshadowed

all others; and, had they remained British possessions, their

preponderance would in all probability have steadily increased. It

is quite possible that the centre of the Empire might have been

shifted to the other side of the Atlantic; it is almost certain

that the colonial expansion of Great Britain would have been

mainly confined to North America. Nothing has been more marked and

nothing sounder in our recent colonial history than the comparative

uniformity of development in the British Empire. In those parts

of the world which have been settled and not merely conquered by

Europeans, and which are still British possessions, in British

North America, Australasia, and South Africa, there has been on the

whole parity of progress. No one of the three groups of colonies

has in wealth and population wholly out-distanced the others. This

fact has unquestionably made for strength and permanence in the

British Empire, and it is equally beyond question that the spread

of colonization within the Empire would have been wanting, had

Great Britain retained her old North American colonies. Unequalled

in history was the loss of such colonies, and yet by that loss, it

may fairly be said, Great Britain has achieved a more stable and a

more world-wide colonial dominion.

But this result would not have been attained had not the lesson

taught by the American war sunk deep into the minds of Englishmen.

It is true that for a while the moral drawn from this calamitous

war was that self-governing institutions should not be given to

colonies lest they should rebel, as did the Americans, and win

their independence: but, as the smart of defeat passed away and

men saw events and their causes in true perspective, as Englishmen

again multiplied out of England but in lands which belonged to

England, and as the old questions again pressed for solution,

the answer given in a wiser and a broader age was dictated by

remembrance of the American war, and Lord Durham’s report embodied

the principles, on which has been based the present colonial system

of Great Britain. It was seen--but it might not have been seen

had the United States not won their independence--that English

colonists, like the Greek colonists of old, go out on terms of

being equal not subordinate to those who are left behind, that

when they have effectively planted another and a distant land,

they must within the widest limits be left to rule themselves;

that, whether they are right or whether they are wrong, more

perhaps when they are wrong than when they are right, they cannot

be made amenable by force; that mutual good feeling, community of

interest, and abstention from pressing rightful claims to their

logical conclusion, can alone hold together a true colonial empire.

[Sidenote: Its effects on Canada.]

Though the United States, in the war and in the treaty which

followed it, attained in the fullest possible measure the objects

for which they had contended, it is a question whether, of all

the countries concerned in the war, Canada did not really gain

most, notwithstanding the hardship which she suffered in respect

of the boundary line between the Dominion and the United States.

For Canada to have a future as a nation, it was necessary, in the

first place, that she should be cut adrift from the French colonial

system as it existed in the eighteenth century. This was secured

as the result of the Seven Years’ War. In the second place, it was

necessary that she should not be absorbed by and among the British

colonies in North America. This end was attained, and could only be

attained by what actually happened, viz., by the British colonies

in North America ceasing to belong to Great Britain, while Canada

was kept within the circle of the British Empire. Had the United

States remained British possessions, Canada must eventually have

come into line with them, and been more or less lost among the

stronger and more populous provinces. The same result would have

followed, had the British Government entertained, as their emissary

Oswald did, Franklin’s proposal that Canada should be ceded to the

United States. It would have followed too, in all probability,

if Canada had been left at the time independent both of Great

Britain and of the United States, for she would have been too weak

to stand alone. The result of the war was to give prominence and

individuality to Canada as a component part of the British Empire;

to bring in a strong body of British colonists not displacing but

supplementing the French Canadians and antagonistic to the United

States from which they were refugees; to revive the instinct of

self-preservation which in old days had kept Canada alive, and

which is the mainspring of national sentiment, by again directly

confronting her with a foreign Power; and at the same time to give

her the advantage of protection by and political connexion with

what was still to be the greatest sea-going and colonizing nation

of the world. The result of the War of American Independence was

to make the United States a great nation; but it was a result

which, whether with England or without, they must in any case have

achieved. The war had also the effect, and no other cause could

have had a like effect, of making possible a national existence for

Canada, which possibility was to be converted into a living and a

potent fact by the second American war, the war of 1812.

FOOTNOTES:

[58] Shortt and Doughty, p. 195.

[59] Shortt and Doughty, pp. 196-9.

[60] Ib., pp. 205-7.

[61] Shortt and Doughty, pp. 227-8.

[62] Shortt and Doughty, p. 196.

[63] See above, p. 67 note.

[64] Shortt and Doughty, pp. 208-10.

[65] Letter to Shelburne, December 24, 1767, Shortt and Doughty, p.

203.

[66] Shortt and Doughty, p. 454. See also note to p. 377. Carleton

had a much better opinion than most people of the administration

of justice under the old French régime. In his examination before

the House of Commons on the Quebec Bill, he was asked, ‘Do you

know from the Canadians themselves, what sort of administration

of justice prevailed under the French Government, whether pure or

corrupt?’ His answer was, ‘Very pure in general. I never heard

complaints of the administration of justice under the French

Government.’ Egerton and Grant, pp. 56-7.

[67] See above, p. 79.

[68] Shortt and Doughty, p. 295.

[69] In 1775 the population of the whole of Canada was according to

Bouchette’s estimate 90,000 (see the _Census of Canada_, 1870-1,

vol. iv, _Statistics of Canada_). On the other hand Carleton, in

his evidence given before the House of Commons at the time when

the Quebec Act was being passed in 1774, estimated the number of

the ‘new subjects’ at ‘about 150,000 souls all Roman Catholics’ as

against less than 400 Protestants, excluding in the latter case

women and children. Egerton and Grant, pp. 51-2.

[70] Shortt and Doughty, pp. 410-11.

[71] Referred to by Carleton as ‘The Suffolk County Resolves in the

Massachusetts’. Shortt and Doughty, p. 413.

[72] Carleton, however, after the war broke out, sternly repressed

any attempt of the Indians to act except under close supervision

of white officers. See Colonel Cruikshank’s paper on Joseph Brant

in the American Revolution, April 3, 1897. _Transactions of the

Canadian Institute_, vol. v, p. 243, &c.

[73] Shortt and Doughty, pp. 412-14.

[74] See above, p. 67.

[75] Shortt and Doughty, pp. 450-2.

[76] See the letter and the note to it at p. 451 of Shortt and

Doughty. Sir William Johnson had died in July, 1774; his nephew and

son-in-law, Colonel Guy Johnson, had acted as his deputy for Indian

affairs, and continued to do so for a while after his death, but

in 1775 Major John Campbell was appointed Superintendent of Indian

affairs.

[77] The reference is to the raising of a body of 300 Canadians

in 1764 for service under Bradstreet in Pontiac’s war. See above

p. 24. It seems doubtful whether the complaint to which Carleton

refers had any foundation. See Kingsford, vol. v, p. 76.

[78] Carleton’s account of the above, given in a letter to

Dartmouth, dated Montreal, June 7, 1775, is that on May 19 he

received news from Gage of the outbreak of hostilities, i.e. the

fight at Lexington, coupled with a request that he would ‘send

the 7th Regiment with some companies of Canadians and Indians to

Crown Point, in order to make a diversion and favour his (Gage’s)

operations’. The next morning news reached Quebec ‘that one,

Benedict Arnold, said to be a native of Connecticut, and a horse

jockey, landed a considerable number of armed men at St. John’s:

distant from this town (Montreal) eight leagues, about eight in

the morning of the 18th, surprised the detachment of the 26th

doing duty there, consisting of a sergeant and ten men, and made

them prisoners, seized upon the King’s sloop, batteaus, and every

other military store, and a few hours after departed, carrying

off the craft, prisoners, and stores they had seized. From this

party we had the first information of the rebels being in arms

upon the lakes, and of their having, under the command of said

Arnold, surprised Ticonderoga, Crown Point, the detachment of the

26th doing duty at these two places, and all the craft employed

upon those lakes’.... ‘The same evening another express brought an

account of the rebels having landed at St. John’s a second time,

in the night, between the 18th and 19th.’ Shortt and Doughty, pp.

453-5.

[79] This seems to have been an under-estimate. There were

apparently at the time three British regiments in Canada, the 7th,

the 8th, and the 26th.

[80] Shortt and Doughty, pp. 453-5.

[81] Chief Justice Hey to the Lord Chancellor, August 28, 1775.

Shortt and Doughty, pp. 456-9.

[82] Chief Justice Hey saw what a strong position Canada held, from

a military point of view, in regard to the other North American

colonies. In his letter to the Lord Chancellor of August 28, 1775,

he wrote, ‘It appears to me that while England has a firm hold of

this country, which a good body of troops and nothing else will

give her, her cause with the colonies can never be desperate,

though she should not have an inch of ground in her possession in

any one of them: from this country they are more accessible, I mean

the New England people (paradoxical as it may seem), than even from

Boston itself.’ Shortt and Doughty, p. 457.

[83] ‘A few of the gentry, consisting principally of the youth,

residing in this place (Montreal) and its neighbourhood, formed a

small corps of volunteers under the command of Mr. Samuel Mackay,

and took post at St. John’s.’ (Letter from Carleton to Dartmouth as

above. Shortt and Doughty, p. 454.)

[84] Shortt and Doughty, p. 459.

[85] This may probably have been the Major Preston referred to in

Horace Walpole’s letter to the Countess of Upper Ossory, December

27, 1775. ‘Adam Smith told us t’other night at Beauclerk’s, that

Major Preston, one of two, but he is not sure which, would have

been an excellent commander some months since, if he had seen any

service.’

This and other quotations from Horace Walpole’s letters are taken

from Mrs. Paget Toynbee’s edition, Clarendon Press, 1904.

[86] The general view seems to have been that Chambly might have

held out longer, and that the commander, Major Stopford, was

shielded by his aristocratic connexions, but the _Annual Register_

for 1776 (p. 5) says that it ‘was in no very defensible condition’,

and Carleton seems to have found no fault with its surrender.

See the entry on p. 110 of Parliamentary Paper, Cd. 2201, 1904,

_Historical MS. Commission, Report on American manuscripts in the

Royal Institution of Great Britain_, vol. i. Sir Guy Carleton to

(Lord Barrington), May 21, 1777, ‘has nothing to charge either the

garrison of Chamblee or St. John’s with.’

[87] The _Annual Register_ for 1776, p. 12, makes Montgomery’s

advance from Montreal to Quebec a kind of repetition of Arnold’s

march. ‘Their march was in winter, through bad roads, in a severe

climate, beneath the fall of the first snows, and therefore made

under great hardships.’ He seems, on the contrary, to have come

down the river in the captured British vessels.

[88] There is or was a dispute about the date. Kingsford makes it

the night of December 31 to January 1, but there seems no doubt

that the attack took place on the previous night, that of December

30-1. See Sir James Le Moyne’s Paper on the Assault on Quebec in

1775, in the _Proceedings of the Royal Society of Canada_, 1899.

[89] Letter to Sir Horace Mann, June 5, 1776.

[90] Letter to Sir Horace Mann, August 11, 1776. It is not clear

why Horace Walpole thought poorly of Carleton’s writing. His

dispatches are as clear and straightforward as could be wished.

[91] Horace Walpole to Sir H. Mann, March 22, 1776.

[92] p. 15.

[93] _Parliamentary History of England_, vol. xxix, p. 379. Debate

of May 6, 1791.

[94] _Annual Register_ as above.

[95] The letter, in which Montgomery complained of personal

ill-treatment of himself by Carleton, concluded--‘Beware of

destroying stores of any kind, public or private, as you have done

in Montreal and in the river; if you do, by Heavens there will be

no mercy shown.’

[96] _Annual Register_ for 1776; _State Papers_, p. 255. Carleton’s

kindness to the American prisoners was so great that when some of

them returned on parole, they were not allowed to communicate with

the American troops serving at Crown Point for fear that they might

cause disaffection. See Stone’s _Life of Brant_ (1838), vol. i, p.

165.

[97] There is an interesting account of the incident at the Cedars

in Stone’s _Life of Brant_ (1838 ed.), vol. i, p. 153, &c. Stone

says that Forster had with him one company of regulars and nearly

600 Indians, led by Joseph Brant, the celebrated Mohawk chief. But

in spite of the note to p. 151 there seems no doubt that Brant,

who had gone to England on a visit in the previous autumn, did not

start on his return voyage till late in May or June, and did not

arrive at New York till July, long after the event at the Cedars.

See Colonel Cruikshank’s paper on ‘Joseph Brant in the American

Revolution’, April, 1897, _Transactions of the Canadian Institute_,

vol. v, pp. 243, &c., Colonel Cruikshank says that Brant sailed

from Falmouth early in June, 1776, and reached New York on July

29, where he fought under Howe. Probably the affair of the Cedars

was confounded with the fighting at St. John’s and the attack on

Montreal when Ethan Allen was taken prisoner in 1775. Brant seems

to have been present in these actions.

[98] See the letter of Ebenezer Sullivan abstracted in the 1890

_Report on Canadian Archives, State Papers_, p. 78.

[99] Ibid. p. 74.

[100] _Annual Register_ for 1777, p. 2.

[101] See Carleton’s letter to Germain of September 28, 1776,

quoting Germain’s of June 21, 1776. Shortt and Doughty, pp. 459-60.

[102] The letter is quoted in extenso at pp. 129-32 of the sixth

volume of Kingsford’s _History of Canada_.

[103] _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_, vol. iii,

1882 ed., chap. xii, p. 447.

[104] Clinton was named to act instead of Sir William Howe, in

the event of his succeeding Howe in command of the army; this

contingency happened, and he, and not Howe, acted as commissioner.

Under the Act any three of the five commissioners were empowered to

treat with the Americans.

[105] Howe was a pronounced Whig. Burgoyne was more or less neutral

until his later years, when he threw in his lot with Fox and his

friends. Clinton belonged to a Whig family, but seems to have been

a supporter of the Ministry; Cornwallis had voted with Lord Camden

against taxing the colonists.

[106] _Influence of Sea Power on History_, chap. ix, pp. 342-3.

[107] See above, pp. 90-1.

[108] It is given in Lord E. Fitzmaurice’s _Life of Lord Shelburne_.

[109] p. 20.

[110] As to Lady Betty Germain’s bequest of Drayton to Lord George

Sackville, see the letter from Lord Vere to Earl Temple of December

19, 1769, in the _Grenville Papers_ (edited by W. J. Smith, 1853,

John Murray), vol. iv, p. 491. See also various references in

Horace Walpole’s _Letters_ (Mrs. Paget Toynbee’s edition, Clarendon

Press, 1904). In a letter to George Montagu, July 23, 1763, Walpole

gives a description of Drayton, and refers to Lady Betty Germain

as ‘its divine old mistress’. Drayton belonged to the Earls of

Peterborough, the Mordaunt family. The daughter and heiress of the

last earl married Sir John Germain, and left him the property. He

married, as his second wife, Lady Elizabeth Berkeley, the Lady

Betty Germain in question, and left Drayton to her, expressing a

wish that if she had no children, she should leave it to one of the

Sackvilles, which she accordingly did. Lady Betty Germain, whose

father was Viceroy of Ireland, was a friend of Swift.

[111] Letter to Sir H. Mann, February 20, 1764. The other four were

Pitt (Lord Chatham), Charles Townshend, Conway, and Charles Yorke.

[112] ‘I think nobody can doubt of Lord George’s resolution since

he has exposed himself to the artillery of the whole town. Indeed

I always believed him brave and that he sacrificed himself to

sacrifice Prince Ferdinand.’ Letter to the Countess of Upper

Ossory, November 23, 1775. The letter was written just as Germain

was about to take office.

[113] To the Honourable Henry Seymour Conway and the Countess of

Ailesbury, January 15, 1775.

[114] Quoted by Horace Walpole in his letter to Sir Horace Mann of

March 5, 1777.

[115] Carleton’s letter was dated May 20, 1777. It is quoted in

full at p. 129 of the sixth volume of Kingsford’s _History of

Canada_, as well as in the _Report on the Canadian Archives_ for

1885.

[116] One reason alleged is that Carleton had given evidence

against Germain at the latter’s court-martial.

[117] This letter, with Carleton’s letter of May 20, 1777, will be

found in Mr. Brymner’s _Report on the Canadian Archives_ for 1885,

pp. cxxxii-vii, Note D.

[118] The note to p. 474 of _Documents relating to the

Constitutional History of Canada_ (Shortt and Doughty) condemns

Carleton’s conduct to Germain.

[119] Chief Justice Hey to the Lord Chancellor, August 28, 1775.

Shortt and Doughty, p. 458.

[120] Quoted in full at pp. 457-9 of the sixth volume of

Kingsford’s _History of Canada_.

[121] October 15, 1777. See _Canadian Archives Report_ for 1890, p.

101. It is not absolutely clear that the reference is to Livius.

[122] The records as to the dates of Livius’ appointment are

somewhat confusing. There is a printed pamphlet in the Colonial

Office Library giving Livius’ petition and the proceedings which

followed in England. It is dated 1779, and entitled ‘Proceedings

between Sir Guy Carleton, K.B., late Governor of the Province

of Quebec, and Peter Livius Esq., Chief Justice of the said

Province, &c. &c.’. The note to p. 476 of _Documents relating to

the Constitutional History of Canada_ (Shortt and Doughty) is

favourable to Livius and unfavourable to Carleton.

[123] See also below, p. 238.

[124] One cause which reduced their numbers was that in the

seventeenth century the Jesuits converted a considerable number of

Mohawks and induced them to settle in Canada. They were known as

the Caghnawagas.

[125] As regards the Six Nation Indians, Joseph Brant, and the

Border forays in the War of Independence, see Stone’s _Life of

Brant_, and two papers by Lt.-Col. Ernest Cruikshank, on ‘Joseph

Brant in the American Revolution’, in the _Transactions of the

Canadian Institute_, vol. v, 1898, p. 243, and vol. vii, 1904, p.

391. The papers were read in April, 1897, and April, 1902. See also

_The Old New York Frontier_, by F. W. Halsey. Scribners, New York,

1902.

[126] On Pownall’s map of 1776 is marked at the spot ‘The great

portage one mile’, but the distance between the two rivers was

rather greater.

[127] St. Leger’s dispatch to Burgoyne, dated Oswego, August 27,

1777, and written after his retreat, forms Appendix No. XIII to _A

State of the Expedition from Canada as laid before the House of

Commons by Lieutenant-General Burgoyne_. London, 1780.

[128] St. Leger reported it to be twelve miles distant.

[129] St. Leger says definitely, ‘Sir John Johnson put himself at

the head of this party.’ Stone, on the other hand, makes out that

Sir John Johnson remained behind in the camp and was at that part

of it which was surprised by Willett (See Stone’s _Life of Brant_,

1838 ed., vol. i, p. 235, note). St. Leger says that he ‘could not

send above 80 white men, Rangers and troops included, with the

whole corps of Indians’, but all the accounts seem to agree in

placing the number of Indians at 400 and no more.

[130] The details of the fighting at Oriskany, and Willett’s sortie

from the fort, are more confusing and contradictory even than those

of most battles and sieges. The American accounts make Oriskany an

American victory, and Willett’s sortie a taking possession of the

whole British camp, the contents of which, after the defenders had

been put to flight, were carried off to the fort in seven wagons

which made three trips between the fort and the camp. St. Leger, no

doubt minimizing what happened, reported that the sortie resulted

in no ‘further advantage than frightening some squaws and pilfering

the packs of the warriors which they left behind them’. From the

contemporary plan of the operations at Fort Stanwix it seems clear

that Willett surprised only the post at the lower landing-place and

not the whole British camp.

[131] See above pp. 96-7 and note.

[132] Junius to the Duke of Grafton, December 12, 1769.

[133] Walpole to the Honourable Henry Synan Conway, November 12,

1774.

[134] Letter to the Countess of Upper Ossory, June 14, 1787. See

also letter to the same, January 16, 1786. ‘General Burgoyne’s

_Heiress_, I hear, succeeded extremely well, and was besides

excellently acted.’

[135] Letter to the Rev. William Mason, October 5, 1777. In this

letter Horace Walpole, apparently without real ground, says that

Burgoyne was the natural son of Lord Bingley.

[136] Letters of August 8, August 11, and August 24, 1777.

[137] Not to be confounded with the Wood Creek mentioned above, p.

147, &c., which was a feeder of Lake Oneida.

[138] Letter to Sir H. Mann, September 1, 1777.

[139] See _State Papers_, p. 97, in Mr. Brymner’s _Report on

Canadian Archives_ for 1890.

[140] _State of the Expedition from Canada Narrative_, p. 12.

[141] Kingsford makes the number to have been 746: _History of

Canada_, vol. vi, p. 216, note.

[142] From Burgoyne’s dispatch it appears that Baum was beginning a

further advance when the attack was made. His words are, ‘Colonel

Baum was induced to proceed without sufficient knowledge of the

ground.’

[143] The American accounts put the British casualties at nearly

1,000.

[144] It may probably have been to the disaster at Bennington that

Horace Walpole referred when he wrote to the Countess of Upper

Ossory on September 29, 1777: ‘General Burgoyne has had but bad

sport in the woods.’

[145] Benjamin Lincoln was the American commander charged with the

duty of attacking Burgoyne’s communications. He was afterwards in

command at Charleston when it was taken by the English in May, 1780.

[146] It is not easy to make out the details of the fighting.

After the battle of September 19, the two armies were said to be

only about half a mile distant from each other, but on October

7, according to Burgoyne’s dispatch, after advancing for some

time he formed his troops within three-quarters of a mile of the

enemy. The advance was apparently not direct but diagonal against

the extreme left of the Americans. The main English camp near the

river, where there was a bridge of boats, does not seem to have

been at all molested, though it was presumably drawn back in the

following night. Breyman’s camp which was stormed is shown on the

plan appended to the _State of the Expedition from Canada_, as well

in the rear of the extreme right of the English line.

[147] Horace Walpole, writing to the Countess of Upper Ossory on

November 3, 1777, seems to be referring to reports of the battle

at Freeman’s Farm. ‘If your angel would be seeing, why did he not

put on his spectacles and hover over Arnold, who has beaten the

vapouring Burgoyne and destroyed his magazines? Carleton, who was

set aside for General Hurlothrumbo, is gone to save him and the

remains of his army if he can.’ On November 13 he writes to the

same, ‘General Swagger is said to be entrenched at Saratoga, but

I question whether he will be left at leisure to continue his

Commentaries: one Arnold is mighty apt to interrupt him.’ Authentic

news of Burgoyne’s surrender did not reach England till December

1. Writing to Sir Horace Mann on December 4, Walpole says: ‘On

Tuesday night came news from Carleton at Quebec, which indeed had

come from France earlier, announcing the total annihilation (as to

America) of Burgoyne’s army.... Burgoyne is said to be wounded in

three places, his vanquisher, Arnold, is supposed to be dead of

his wounds.’ It will be noted that Arnold is made the hero on the

American side, and that there is no mention of Walpole’s godson,

Gates. Walpole contemplated invasion of Canada and possible loss of

Quebec as the result of the disaster.

[148] The above account has been taken almost entirely from the

original dispatches, documents, and evidence published in _A State

of the Expedition from Canada as laid before the House of Commons

by Lieutenant-General Burgoyne_. London, 1780. Burgoyne, in a

private letter to Howe of 20th October, attributed the surrender in

part to the fact that his troops were not all British. See _Report

on American Manuscripts in the Royal Institution_ (1904), vol. i,

p. 140.

[149] Article 6 of the Treaty of Paris between France and the

United States, dated February 6, 1778, ran as follows: ‘The most

Christian King renounces for ever the possession of the islands of

Bermudas as well as of any part of the continent of America which

before the Treaty of Paris in 1763 or in virtue of that treaty were

acknowledged to belong to the Crown of Great Britain or to the

United States heretofore called British colonies or which are at

this time or have lately been under the Power of the King and Crown

of Great Britain.’ (_Annual Register_, 1778, p. 341.)

[150] Stone’s _Life of Brant_, and among recent books, Halsey’s

_Old New York Frontier_, give good accounts of this border war

from the American side. Fortunately the subject lies in the main

outside the scope of the present book. It would probably be fair

to say that there were undoubtedly great and horrible barbarities,

not confined to one side only, and on the other hand that there was

much exaggeration as, e.g. when Campbell in _Gertrude of Wyoming_

made Joseph Brant, who never took any part at all in the raid, one

of the monsters of the story.

The Wyoming valley had been colonized from Connecticut and was

claimed by and at the time actually incorporated with Connecticut,

though geographically within the state of Pennsylvania. The

settlers had sent a considerable contingent to Washington’s army

and their homes were in consequence but slenderly guarded.

On Pownall’s ‘map of the Middle British Colonies in North America’,

published March 25, 1776, on the western side of the east branch of

the Susquehanna river, appears the following: ‘Colony from Wioming

Connecticut.’

In the ‘Topographical Description’ attached to the above map there

is the following note at pp. 35-6: ‘This Place and the District

is now settled by a populous Colony, which swarmed and came forth

from Connecticut. The People of Connecticut say, that their Charter

and the grant of Lands under it was prior to that of Pennsylvania;

that the grant of Lands to them extended within the Latitudes of

their Grant (except where possessed by other powers at that Time)

to the South Seas. They allow New York and New Jersey to have

been so possessed at the time of their Grant, but say, that their

right emerges again at the West boundary of those Provinces. Mr.

Penn and the People of Pennsylvania who have taken Grants under

him say, that this District is in the very Heart of the Province

of Pennsylvania. On this State of Claims the Two Colonies are in

actual war, which they have not even remitted against each other

here, although united in arms against Great Britain 1775.’

The note is interesting as showing how very far from amicable

were the relations of the colonies to each other when the War of

Independence broke out, cf. the case of the Vermont settlers and

New York referred to at the beginning of this chapter.

[151] This is the date given on p. 10 of _Sir Frederick Haldimand_,

by Jean N. McIlwraith in the ‘Makers of Canada’ series. The notice

in the _Dictionary of National Biography_ gives the date as 1756.

The life states that Haldimand as a young man possibly took service

with the King of Sardinia, and certainly served under Frederick the

Great. The _Dictionary of National Biography_ states that there is

no record of his having been in the Prussian army.

[152] For Du Calvet’s case see Mr. Brymner’s Introduction to the

_Report on Canadian Archives_, 1888, p. xv, &c., and also Note D.

This valuable Introduction and the equally valuable Introduction to

the 1887 volume should be consulted for an estimate of Haldimand

and his administration, the Haldimand papers being catalogued in

these volumes.

[153] Shortt and Doughty, p. 497.

[154] Shortt and Doughty, p. 488.

[155] _Ibid._, p. 498.

[156] _Ibid._, p. 486. See also above, p. 92.

[157] 24 Geo. III, cap. 1, see Shortt and Doughty, pp. 499, 501 and

notes. See also above, p. 88, note.

[158] Shortt and Doughty, p. 486. ‘The session’ must have been a

later session than that of 1775, as Livius was not in the Council

in that year. See above, p. 141.

[159] Shortt and Doughty, pp. 476-7 and notes, also 487, 488-9 and

notes.

[160] Shortt and Doughty, p. 488. It will be remembered that Livius

was not in Canada at this time.

[161] See above, p. 134.

[162] See above, p. 182.

[163] Preface to _Annual Register_ for 1782.

[164] Horace Walpole to the Rev. William Mason, April 25, 1781.