THE PRELUDE TO THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR
The fifteen years from the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 to the
Peace of Paris in 1763 include the most stirring and picturesque
times in the history of Canada. They were masculine years, when, in
all parts of the world, great men did great things. They were the
years when Montcalm and Wolfe fought and died on the St. Lawrence;
when Robert Clive mastered India; when Chatham redeemed England from
littleness; and when Frederick of Prussia became known for all time
as Frederick the Great, by standing grimly foursquare against the
continent of Europe in the Seven Years' War.
[Sidenote: _The southern colonies drawn into the struggle with
France._]
The Seven Years' War only began in 1756; but before that date, before
war between France and England had formally been proclaimed, French
and English were fighting hard in North America. We have the same
sphere of war as before, and in large measure the same plans of
campaign, trouble and conflict in and on the borders of Acadia, siege
and capture of Louisbourg, attack up the St. Lawrence against
Quebec--at last a successful attack, and prolonged fighting along the
line of Lakes George and Champlain. The Five Nation Indians played
their part in the war, though a more subordinate part than in earlier
times; the cantons most within range of the English remaining under
English influence and being more adroitly managed than in earlier
days, while the westernmost tribes, the Senecas, inclined to the
French side. But a new feature came into the struggle, the {217}
result of the inevitable advance of white men on either side in the
course of years. The English colonies to the south of New York began
to take a more active part than formerly in the conflict with France.
The Virginians appeared on the scene, and among the Virginians was
prominent the name of George Washington. The great French scheme of
holding the rivers of North America and their basins implied that the
English colonies should not cross the Alleghany mountains. Great
schemes never allow for the ordinary every day work of nature and
man. It was certain that, as the English multiplied, they would go
further and further afield; and in due time, from Pennsylvania and
from Virginia, English traders and backwoodsmen made their way into
the valley of the Ohio.
[Sidenote: _The Ohio._]
[Sidenote: _Celeron de Bienville._]
The Ohio, which La Salle first made known to the world, is, as has
been pointed out, the connecting link on the inner line of the North
American waterways--starting from the confines of the St. Lawrence
basin near the shores of Lake Erie, and reaching the Mississippi
comparatively low down in its course. The outer line is much more
extensive, continuing along the great lakes until from Lake Michigan
the Mississippi is reached by the Wisconsin or the Illinois. Along
this outer line the French had hitherto worked. It took them more
directly to the far West; and, passing along it, they only skirted
instead of traversing the region where the Iroquois were in strength;
but, had they allowed the English to lay firm hold of the Ohio
valley, Canada and Louisiana would have been severed, and down the
Ohio would have come a challenge to French sovereignty over the West.
Thus it was that, in the year 1749, the year after the Peace of
Aix-la-Chapelle was signed, the Governor of Canada, the Marquis de la
Galissoniere, sent one of his officers, Celeron de Bienville, to
register the claims of France to the Ohio river and the lands which
it watered and drained.
[Sidenote: _His mission to the Ohio._]
Starting up the St. Lawrence from the island of Montreal, {218}
Celeron landed on the shores of Lake Erie; and, making a portage to
Lake Chautauqua, reached the head waters of the Ohio. Down stream he
went, into the Alleghany, down the Alleghany to where, meeting the
Monongahela, it becomes the Ohio, and down the Ohio to the confluence
of the Miami river, not far from the site of Cincinnati city. Here he
left the Ohio, and, ascending the Miami, crossed overland to the
Maumee river, on which there was a small French post. The Maumee
flows into the south-western end of Lake Erie, and down its stream he
returned to Canada.
[Sidenote: _English intrusion into the Ohio valley._]
At various points along the route he buried leaden plates, with
inscriptions asserting the title of the King of France to the lands
of the Ohio and its tributaries; and he affixed to trees the arms of
France on sheets of tin, to tell all comers that the French were
lords of the country. It was time that some assertion of French
claims was made in these regions. He found parties of English
traders, as he went, and the Indians showed no love for France. There
had been for some time past a migration of Indians into the Ohio
valley. Many of the Iroquois had settled there: and if among the
various races, notably among the Delawares, there were those whose
traditional sympathies were with the owners of Canada, there were
more who appreciated the present benefit of English trade. Prominent
among the friends of the English were the Indians of the Miami
confederacy, whose centre was at Pique Town or Pickawillany on the
Miami river.
[Sidenote: _The Ohio company._]
Celeron came and went. He had made a demonstration on behalf of
France, but not a demonstration in force. His expedition was
memorable as the prelude to coming events; but no definite action was
taken for about three years. La Galissoniere was succeeded as
Governor of Canada by the Marquis de la Jonquiere,[1] who died in
1752, and was {219} followed by the Marquis Duquesne. Meantime, an
Ohio company was formed on the English side, consisting mainly of
Virginians, and English traders and emissaries were active among the
Indians of the Ohio. Yet the English, like the French, achieved no
tangible results. Pennsylvania and Virginia were jealous of each
other, and the Legislature in each state opposed the Governor. Both
Assemblies were invited to build a fort at the junction of the
Alleghany and Monongahela rivers, which formed the key of the
position; but both refused.
[Footnote 1: De la Jonquiere had been named Governor of Canada in
1746, and made two unsuccessful attempts to reach Quebec, one in that
year on board D'Anville's fleet, and a second in 1747, when he was
taken prisoner in the fight off Cape Finisterre (see above, pp. 207,
208). He finally arrived in 1749.]
[Sidenote: _The French attack the Miamis._]
Thus matters drifted on until, in June, 1752, a Frenchman, Langlade,
came down from the lakes with a band of Indian warriors, attacked the
Miamis at Pickawillany, took the town, and killed its chief--who was
known to the French as La Demoiselle, and who was feared by them as a
warm friend of their English rivals. The place was a centre of
English trade, there were English traders in it when the attack was
made, and this French success was the beginning of action, on a
larger scale than had hitherto been attempted, for the conquest and
control of the Ohio valley.
[Sidenote: _Halifax._]
Founded in 1749, Halifax, on the coast of Nova Scotia, was, in 1752,
a town of 4,000 inhabitants. Had the settlement been made thirty
years earlier, immediately after the Peace of Utrecht instead of
after the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, the story of Acadia would have
been a different and probably a happier one. Mascarene at Annapolis,
and Shirley at Boston, saw the necessity of introducing English
settlers into the peninsula in order to balance the French
malcontents, and the British Government, when giving back Louisbourg
to France, recognized at length that steps must be taken to
strengthen the English hold on Nova Scotia. It was determined to
recruit the English, or at any rate the Protestant, {220} element in
the population from Europe, from the North American colonies, and
from the ranks of the men who were withdrawn from Louisbourg; and
Chebucto harbour on the Atlantic coast of the Nova Scotian peninsula
was selected as the scene of a new township to be well fortified and
strongly garrisoned.
[Sidenote: _The first settlers at Halifax._]
[Sidenote: _Cornwallis._]
Here was created the city of Halifax, called after the Earl of
Halifax, at the time 'First Lord of Trade and Plantations.' In
founding it, the English had regard to the methods by which the
French had established their colonies on the St. Lawrence. Halifax
was in its origin a military colony. The first settlers consisted
largely of officers and privates of the army and navy, who, when
peace was concluded, received their discharge and who were
supplemented by a certain number of labourers and artizans.
Parliament voted 40,000 pounds in aid of the initial expenses. Free
passages, free grants of land, and the cost of subsistence for a year
after landing were provided, privileges which secured a considerable
number of colonists; 1,400 immigrants were landed from the first
batch of transports at Chebucto harbour,[2] and others followed. A
good Governor was appointed, Colonel Edward Cornwallis, uncle of Lord
Cornwallis who surrendered at Yorktown and ruled India.
[Footnote 2: It is difficult to make out the numbers. The above
figure is given by Cornwallis in a letter to the Lords of Trade, July
24, 1749 (see Mr. Brymer's _Catalogue of Canadian Archives_, 'Nova
Scotia,' p. 142). On the other hand passages were taken for over
2,500 (p. 138). Haliburton says, 'in a short time 3,760 adventurers
with their families were entered for embarkation.' Parkman puts the
number at about 2,500, including women and children, Kingsford at
1,176 settlers with their families. Parliament for some years
continued to make annual grants for the colonization of Nova Scotia,
'which collected sums,' says Haliburton, 'amounted to the enormous
sum of 415,584 pounds 14_s_. 11_d_.']
[Sidenote: _The Lunenburg settlement._]
Old soldiers do not always make good colonists, and Cornwallis wrote
home complaining of their want of industry, contrasting the English
unfavourably with a few Swiss who were among the newcomers, and
suggesting that an effort {221} should be made to introduce
Protestant emigrants from Germany. Accordingly, German Lutherans were
brought over through an agent at Rotterdam, the majority of whom
were, in 1753, planted out at Lunenburg, a little to the south-west
of Halifax, on the same side of the peninsula. Thus the outer margin
of Nova Scotia was being sparsely colonized with English, Swiss, and
German Protestants, while on the side towards the mainland, along the
shores of the Bay of Fundy, the Roman Catholic Acadians remained
French in heart and sympathies.
[Sidenote: _The commissioners to fix the limits of Acadia._]
[Sidenote: _Designs of the French on Acadia._]
For three years following the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, the French
and English commissioners, appointed to determine the limits of the
French and English possessions in North America, wrangled at Paris,
William Shirley being one of the English delegates; but they never
came to any conclusion. The French now refused even to concede that
the whole of the Acadian peninsula belonged to England, and wished to
confine English sovereignty to its southern coasts. They were in fact
resolved by bluff or by force either to regain Acadia, or, in default
of attaining that object, to make its condition one of permanent
insecurity and unrest. As related in the last chapter,[3] immediately
after the Peace of Utrecht the intention of the French Government had
been to transplant the Acadians to French soil, to Cape Breton Island
and to Prince Edward Island, then known as Ile St. Jean. For this
policy they subsequently substituted the more dangerous plan of not
removing the Acadians, but encouraging them to consider themselves
still as French subjects while remaining under the British flag.
After the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle was signed, however, they reverted
to their project of transplantation, finding that the British
Government were resolved no longer to treat their subjects in Acadia
as neutrals, and realizing that the Governor had now force at his
back.
[Footnote 3: See above, p. 193.]
{222} [Sidenote: _Position of the Acadians._]
[Sidenote: _Attitude of Cornwallis._]
The Acadians claimed to be exempt from bearing arms in defence of
their country and their country's rulers, in other words against the
French and the Indian allies of the French. They were not free
agents; they were terrorized by the French Government and the French
priests, notorious among whom was a ruffian named Le Loutre,
Vicar-General of Acadia. Spiritual excommunication and Indian
hostility threatened them, if they acted with loyalty to the British
King, whose subjects they had been for nearly forty years. How
faithless and unscrupulous was the policy of the French is abundantly
shown by official dispatches, proving that the Canadian Governor, La
Jonquiere, with the sanction of the French Government at home,
accepted and endorsed Le Loutre's villainous schemes for preventing
the Acadians from taking the full oath of allegiance, and for
instigating the Indians of the peninsula to murder the English
settlers. Cornwallis treated the Acadians with kindly firmness. Some
of them asked to be allowed to leave the country, and he promised
permission to those who should obtain passports, when peace and
tranquillity were restored. For the moment he declined to allow them
to cross the frontier, as it would mean sending them among French and
Indians, who would compel them to bear arms against the English
Government.
[Sidenote: _Beaubassin occupied by English troops._]
[Sidenote: _Fort Lawrence._]
The frontier, as far as any line was provisionally recognized, was a
little stream on the isthmus of Chignecto. On the mainland side the
French had occupied a hill called Beausejour, on the Nova Scotian
side was the village of Beaubassin. In April, 1750, Cornwallis sent a
force of some 400 men under Major Lawrence to occupy a position at or
near Beaubassin, and to guard the isthmus. On his arrival, Lawrence
found Beaubassin in flames. Le Loutre and his Indians had set fire to
the place, and compelled the hapless residents to cross over to the
French lines. The English left, but returned in September in stronger
force; their landing was disputed by Le Loutre's savages, who were
driven off, {223} and a fort was built and garrisoned, called after
the name of the commander, Fort Lawrence.
[Sidenote: _Murder of Captain Howe._]
French and English now faced each other across a narrow stream, the
French completed their fort at Beausejour, and the temper of Le
Loutre's Indians was shown by a horrible incident, the murder of an
English officer, Captain Howe. Howe had gone out in answer to a flag
of truce, which appeared from the French lines; but the bearer of the
white flag was an Indian disguised in French uniform, who lured the
Englishman into an ambush, where he was mortally wounded. The French
themselves attributed this act of wanton wickedness to Le Loutre.
[Sidenote: _Colonel Lawrence._]
[Sidenote: _Acadian emigration._]
In 1752 Cornwallis returned to England, and was succeeded as Governor
of Acadia by Colonel Hopson, who had been in command at Louisbourg,
when that town was given back to France; the latter was, in the
autumn of 1753, succeeded by Colonel Lawrence. The Acadian
population, which in 1749 numbered between 12,000 and 13,000 souls,
five years later was reduced to little more than 9,000. The
emigration which caused the reduction in numbers was largely the
result of a French terror, and on the mainland, or in the Ile St.
Jean, the unfortunate emigrants endured misery unknown in their old
homes in Acadia. Those who find in the subsequent rooting up of
Acadian settlement an instance of English cruelty with little
parallel in history, would do well to remember that the process had
already been going on at the hands of the French; and the lot of the
Acadians under the French flag was in no wise preferable to the
fortunes of those who were carried, as it were, into captivity in the
English colonies.
[Sidenote: _De Vergor._]
[Sidenote: _Surrender of the French fort Beausejour._]
The catastrophe, of which so much has been made in prose and verse,
happened in the year 1755. It was not an isolated incident, but part
of a general plan--which for the time miscarried--of breaking the
French power in North America. The commandant of the French fort at
{224} Beausejour was De Vergor, son of Duchambon who surrendered
Louisbourg in 1745. He owed his position to Bigot, the notorious
Intendant of Canada. By his side, and with as much or more authority,
was Le Loutre, the evil genius of Acadia. The French contemplated
attack on the English: Lawrence, in communication with Shirley,
determined to forestall them. Some two thousand men came up from
Massachusetts, enlisted under John Winslow--a name which New
Englanders honoured--and, landing at the isthmus early in June,
joined the English garrison at Fort Lawrence, the whole force being
under Colonel Monckton. In a few days' time the bombardment of the
French fort began; but, before there had been any serious fighting,
De Vergor surrendered. The garrison marched out with the honours of
war, and Fort Beausejour was renamed Fort Cumberland.
[Sidenote: _The French driven from Acadia._]
[Sidenote: _End of Le Loutre._]
This success was speedily followed by the capitulation of another
French fort at Baie Verte, at the northern end of the isthmus, and by
the evacuation of a post on the mainland, at the mouth of the river
St. John. The whole of Acadia on both sides of the isthmus thus
passed into English hands. De Vergor some time afterwards was put on
trial at Quebec for his feeble and incapable conduct, but influential
friends procured his acquittal; and he remained in Canada to earn
further obloquy, as commandant of the French outpost which was
surprised by Wolfe in his memorable climb by night up to the Plains
of Abraham.[4] Le Loutre disappeared from the scene of his wickedness
in North America. He fled in disguise to Quebec, and, sailing for
France, was taken prisoner and spent eight years in captivity in the
island of Jersey. He seems to have died in his bed in France--a
better fate than he deserved.
[Footnote 4: See below, pp. 306, 307.]
[Sidenote: _The expulsion of the Acadians._]
The victory of the English arms was followed by the removal of the
bulk of the Acadian population from Acadia. This policy had been
determined upon as the only practicable {225} alternative to
unqualified obedience. Such obedience, until it was too late and the
die had already been cast, the Acadians refused to give. They would
not swear heart-whole allegiance to King George; they had abetted his
enemies year after year; many of them had actually borne arms against
the English; and with Louisbourg in threatening strength in the
immediate neighbourhood, with manifold other difficulties to
face--for before the actual expulsion Braddock's defeat and death on
the Monongahela river had occurred--it was absolutely necessary for
the English authorities to make the Nova Scotian peninsula
permanently safe. The time to strike was while there was an adequate
force on the spot, and before the Massachusetts contingent returned
to Boston.
Sternly and relentlessly Governor Lawrence took his measures; at
Beaubassin, at Annapolis, round the shores of the Basin of Mines,
where the most pleasing features of Acadian settlement were to be
found, the majority of able-bodied men were secured; and, as the
transports came up, groups of peasants were carried off to other
lands. In the actual work of expulsion, no unnecessary harshness
appears to have been used; families were as a rule kept together, and
went out hand in hand into exile; but they were taken, an ignorant
and bewildered crowd, from the homes of their childhood, and were
transported, helpless and hopeless, to distant countries, where there
was another religion and another race. The pity of it was that, after
forty years of so-called English government, the Acadians never
believed that that Government, when it threatened or decreed, would
be as good as its word. When therefore the blow came, it stunned a
people who had been bred in the belief that much would be said and
nothing would be done.
[Sidenote: _The number transported._]
[Sidenote: _Their fate._]
Some 6,000 in all were removed, out of a total population of a little
over 9,000. Of these, over 3,000 had had their homes round the Basin
of Mines, the majority of whom {226} were dwellers in the village and
district of Grand Pre. The others came from the isthmus, or from
Annapolis. They were dispersed abroad among the English colonies in
North America, from Massachusetts southwards; but the colonies were
not all willing to receive them, and from Virginia and South Carolina
many were sent on to England. Some, it is said, found their way to
Louisiana, while of those who had escaped transportation a certain
number took refuge at Quebec. A considerable remnant was left behind
in Acadia, and some of the exiles 'wandered back to their native land
to die in its bosom';[5] but those who were left behind in Acadia,
and those who returned, were not enough to leaven to any great extent
the future history of the peninsula.
[Footnote 5: From Longfellow's _Evangeline_.]
[Sidenote: _Different views as to the policy of expulsion._]
What judgment may fairly be passed upon this measure of expulsion?
The traditional view has been that the removal of the Acadians from
Acadia was an injustice and a crime--an arbitrary and cruel act,
parallel on a smaller scale to the earlier expulsion of the Huguenots
from France. According to this view the English were oppressors,
rooting out and carrying captive a harmless and innocent peasantry--
Men whose lives glided on like rivers that water the woodlands,
Darkened by shadows of earth but reflecting an image of heaven.
Longfellow has given us this picture in _Evangeline_, and it has been
drawn in similar outlines by various hands. In the foreground are
bands of terror-stricken peasants, driven on board ship amid mourning
and lamentation. In the background are burning homesteads, emptiness
where there had been plenty, desolation where yesterday the children
played.
A different view is given by later writers who have more closely
tested the facts. Their conclusion is that the expulsion of the
Acadians, stern and even cruel as it was, was more or less a
political necessity; that the Acadians {227} themselves were sinners
as well as sinned against; and that they were sinned against more by
men of their own race and religion than by the English.
This latter view is probably nearer the truth. There is always,
especially in England, a tendency to sympathize unreasonably with the
weak against the strong, and, when severe measures are taken, to
condemn those measures almost unheard. The Acadians, in their
primitive agricultural life, in their farms gathered round the
village church, were picturesque objects of sympathy; and, whenever a
fine or a punishment is inflicted on a whole district or on a whole
community, the innocent no doubt suffer with the guilty. But there
are conditions under which no lasting effect can be produced without
collective dealing, and the Acadians were not transported beyond the
sea until for many years half-measures had been tried, and tried in
vain. These farmers had been gently treated under English rule; many
of them had been born and brought up under it; a large proportion of
their number had requited the treatment by actively abetting or
tacitly conniving at the unceasing petty warfare, by which French
borderers and Indian savages year after year took English lives and
pillaged English homes. Was it unreasonable that, if they would not
be loyal subjects in Acadia, they should be moved elsewhere, and
that, instead of being sent to increase the hostile population of
Canada, they should be dispersed among the British colonies on the
North American coast?
It must be remembered that the tale of their sufferings has probably
not been minimized. French writers would naturally exaggerate what
actually occurred, and American accounts, until recent years, would
not be likely to be unduly friendly to England. It must be
remembered, too, that half as many as were transported by the English
had already been induced or forced by the French to emigrate to their
possessions; and we have it on French evidence that those who, {228}
when the sentence of expatriation was passed, took refuge in Canada,
suffered as much as or more than their compatriots suffered in the
English colonies.
[Sidenote: _True causes of the catastrophe._]
It is difficult to blame Colonel Lawrence for the step which he took
under the conditions of the time and place. On the other hand, it is
difficult to believe that the Acadians fully deserved their doom. The
responsibility for the wholesale misery, in which a small community
was involved, must be shared between the French Government and its
agents on the one hand, notably the priests, and on the other the
British Government in earlier years. Had the French been loyal to the
terms of the Treaty of Utrecht, had they ceased to instil the spirit
of disaffection into the minds of men who were no longer their
subjects, had they discountenanced instead of encouraging acts of
barbarity, had they not made religion a cloak for maliciousness, and
used the ministers of religion as political agitators of the worst
and most unscrupulous type, Acadia and the Acadians would have
prospered under the British Government as Canada and the Canadians
prospered in after years. Again if, when Acadia was ceded by the
treaty, Great Britain had recognized her responsibilities, had given
adequate protection and enforced the law, loyalty and obedience would
have brought happiness in its train, and a generation would have
grown up not attempting the impossible task of serving two masters.
The true verdict of history on the melancholy episode is this. The
misery which befell the Acadians was the result of not using force at
the right time, and of the evil potency of priestcraft.
[Sidenote: _French forts established on the route from the great
lakes to the Ohio._]
Before Acadia had been depopulated, much had happened in the west.
Always unready, the English colonies let slip the opportunity of
occupying the upper valley of the Ohio, and the French seized the
opening which their rivals might have closed. Early in 1753, the
Canadian Governor, Duquesne, sent a force of considerable strength
under an {229} old and tried officer, Marin, to establish
communication between the great lakes and the Ohio, and to hold the
route by a chain of forts. Launched upon Lake Erie, Marin and his men
held their way past the point where Celeron had landed; and, instead
of taking the portage to Chautauqua, disembarked further along the
southern shore of the lake at Presque Ile, where the town of Erie now
stands. Here a fort was built, and a road cut southwards through the
woods for about 21 miles to the Riviere aux Boeufs. This stream, now
known as French Creek, flows into the Alleghany river, and is
navigable for canoes when the water is high. Where the road struck
the river a second fort was built, called Fort Le Boeuf. Thus the way
was cleared from the lakes to the sources of the Ohio, and either end
of the portage was guarded by a blockhouse.
[Sidenote: _Distress of the French._]
So far the enterprise had succeeded, and success had produced the
usual effect upon the wavering Indian mind, inclining the tribes of
the Ohio to the side which took the initiative and gave outward and
visible signs of strength. But the French were only at the outset of
their enterprise. As the year wore on, their ranks were thinned by
disease; their commander, Marin, died; and, when winter came, but
three hundred men were left to hold the forts on Lake Erie and French
Creek. The intention had been to push down the latter river, and,
where it joined the Alleghany, to build a third fort. This fort in
turn was to be a starting-point for a further advance to the main
objective, the junction of the Alleghany and the Monongahela rivers.
[Sidenote: _The routes to the Ohio._]
[Sidenote: _Fort Cumberland._]
All through early Canadian history, we find the clue to the various
movements on either side is studying the waterways. As in the centre
of the two conflicting lines of advance, the English moved up the
Hudson and the French up the Richelieu, to find their battleground on
Lakes George and Champlain, so further to the west, in the region of
the Ohio, the Alleghany and its feeders brought the French down from
{230} Canada, while the English moved north along the line of the
Monongahela and its tributary the Youghiogany. These streams take
their rise amid the parallel ranges of the Alleghanies, in that
border country of the three States of Virginia, Maryland, and
Pennsylvania, which was the scene of the hardest fighting between
North and South in the American Civil War. Near where the Monongahela
starts on its northern course to the Ohio, but divided by mountains,
is the source of the northern branch of the Potomac, which runs into
the Atlantic. This latter river flows at first north-east between two
mountain ranges; and, where it turns to the east, cutting its way
through the hills, a small stream, known as Wills Creek, joins it
from the north. At this point was a station of the Ohio Company,
shortly afterwards called Fort Cumberland, after the English duke.
This was the base of the British advance; but mountains had to be
crossed to reach the Monongahela valley; it was easier to come down
from Canada to the Ohio than to march upon it from the Atlantic side.
[Sidenote: _Robert Dinwiddie._]
The Lieutenant-Governor of Virginia, in the year 1753, the titular
Governor being in England, was Robert Dinwiddie, a cross-grained
Scotchman. He had none of the arts of popularity, but none the less
was a watchful guardian of his country's interests. Like William
Shirley in Massachusetts, he was a determined opponent of French
pretensions; but he was less tactful than Shirley in managing a
colonial Legislature, and less happily placed, in that the
Legislatures of the southern provinces were far behind the New
Englanders in public spirit. Hearing of the French advance from Lake
Erie, he lost no time in making a counter claim, and sent a messenger
to Fort Le Boeuf to warn off foreign trespassers from what he
conceived to be the domain of the King of England. The messenger was
George Washington, just come to man's estate.
[Sidenote: _George Washington's first mission._]
[Sidenote: _Apathy of the southern colonies._]
In November, 1753, Washington left Wills Creek. In {231} January,
1754, he returned to Virginia, having in the depth of winter
traversed the frost-bound backwoods, and risked his life in crossing
the Alleghany river. His journey in either direction took him by the
old Indian town of Venango, at the confluence of the French Creek
with the Alleghany, where there had been an English trading house:
this was now occupied by a French outpost. There could be no doubt
that the Governor of Canada intended to be master of the Ohio. Still
the British colonies remained apathetic or half-hearted. Virginia
voted 10,000 pounds; North Carolina gave some money; a handful of
troops in Imperial pay was placed at Dinwiddie's disposal; but the
money and the men were utterly inadequate to the occasion, and
Pennsylvania, the state which, with Virginia, was most concerned, did
nothing at all. For Pennsylvania was the home of Quakers and Germans,
the former averse to war on principle, the latter indifferent to the
conflicting claims of alien races.
[Sidenote: _The French build Fort Duquesne._]
The crisis came on apace. In February, 1754, a month after
Washington's return, Dinwiddie sent a small detachment over the
mountains to build a fort at the junction of the Monongahela and
Alleghany. While the work was in hand, a strong Canadian force came
down in April from the north and overpowered the Virginians. A fort
was built, but it was a French fort, and became memorable in history
under the name of Fort Duquesne. Dinwiddie determined to drive the
French back, if possible, from this new position, and he set
Washington to the task--impossible to perform with the only available
troops, amounting to 300 or 400 men.
[Sidenote: _Washington marches on Fort Duquesne._]
[Sidenote: _Death of Jumonville._]
[Sidenote: _Surrender of Fort Necessity and retreat of Washington._]
From Wills Creek to Fort Duquesne was a distance of 120 to 140 miles,
with two ranges of mountains to be crossed, before half the journey
was accomplished, and the Monongahela reached. Making a road over the
first range, the main range of the Alleghanies, Washington, about the
end of May, reached open ground known as the Great Meadows, having
still in front of him the Laurel hills, through which {232} the two
branches of the Monongahela find their way to the Ohio. A few miles
further on, guided by Indian scouts, he surprised an advance party
sent out from Fort Duquesne, and killed their commander, Jumonville.
Assassination was the term which the French applied to the death of
this officer, claiming that he was the peaceful bearer of a summons
to the English to retire from the land; but there is no reason to
doubt that Washington was justified in using force, and that the
Frenchman was killed in fair fight. Returning to his camp, and
entrenching it under the suitable name of Fort Necessity, the English
commander awaited a counter attack. Small reinforcements reached him,
and he pushed on over the Laurel ridge; but, hearing that the French
were advancing in force, fell back again to Fort Necessity. Stronger
in numbers, the French, from their base at Fort Duquesne, marched
forward under Jumonville's brother, Coulon de Villiers; and, after a
nine hours' fight, Fort Necessity surrendered; the English, under the
terms of the surrender, retreated across the Alleghanies, and the
French returned in triumph to Fort Duquesne. For the time, they were
beyond dispute masters of the Ohio valley, and the young Virginian,
whose name now stands first in the great history of the United States
of America, crawled back over the mountains, defeated and undone.
American history is great as a whole, but the back records of its
component parts are full of what is mean and contemptible. We are
accustomed, in the chronicles of the English race, to trace the
errors of its rulers, and to find them put right by the good sense
and strong character of the people; but, if we turn to the provincial
annals of the American States, when the fate of the continent seemed
to be trembling in the balance, the rulers sent out from home must be
credited with patriotism and some measure of foresight, while the
peoples were or appeared to be selfish and blind. New England alone
stands out in a brighter light, ready to {233} sacrifice money and
men in the national cause. With the enemy on their borders, the New
Englanders knew what the danger was; further south the Alleghany
mountains bounded the horizon of the colonists. State Assemblies
squabbled with their Governors, each little province was passively
indifferent to or actively jealous of its neighbour, all alike were
with good reason suspicious of the mother country; while on the other
side the fighting strength of Canada, centralized under a despotic
Government, one in aim and sympathy, was menacing and dangerous out
of all proportion to the resources of the country or the numbers of
its people.
[Sidenote: _Movement towards union of the English colonies._]
Yet some attempt had been made at concerted action on the part of the
English colonies. It emanated from the Government at home. In
September, 1753, the Lords of Trade wrote round to the Governors of
the various North American provinces, directing them to invite their
respective Legislatures to adopt a uniform policy towards the
Indians. In consequence, a conference was held at Albany, at which
seven of the colonies were represented--Massachusetts, New Hampshire,
Rhode Island, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. The
Commissioners met representatives of the Five Nation Indians, whose
hereditary friendship for the English cause was fast turning into
hatred and contempt. They pacified the angry Indians to some extent,
and renewed the old covenant of friendship, then turned to
constitution-making, at the instance of Franklin, one of the
Commissioners from Pennsylvania.
[Sidenote: _Franklin's scheme._]
[Sidenote: _It is not accepted._]
Franklin had a scheme for North American union, comprising a
President appointed by the Crown, and a general Council elected by
the taxpayers of the colonies, the number of representatives of each
colony to be determined by the amount of taxes paid. Plenary powers
were to be given to the President and Council, including even power
to make war and peace. Had the scheme been carried out, North America
would have become one great self-governing colony, {234} in some
respects more independent, in others more restricted than the
self-governing colonies of Great Britain at the present day.
Franklin's proposals, though his fellow commissioners were inclined
to approve them, pleased neither the colonies nor the mother country.
They were premature. The colonies were too jealous of their local
liberties to accept the scheme. The mother country still distrusted
the colonies, and dreaded the strength which union would bring.
Moreover, the immediate necessity was united action, not
constitutional change. The French must first be driven back; and with
this object Dinwiddie made an earnest appeal to the ministry in
England.
[Sidenote: _Troops sent from England and from France._]
[Sidenote: _The 'Alcide' and the 'Lys' intercepted by Admiral
Boscawen._]
The appeal was not made in vain; two regiments of infantry, the 44th
and 48th, now the Essex and Northampton regiments, were ordered to
embark for Virginia, and sailed from Cork in January, 1755, with
Major-General Braddock in command. The French Government, taking
alarm, ordered out 3,000 men under Baron Dieskau, a German serving in
the French army; and at the beginning of May, 1755, eighteen French
ships sailed from Brest carrying to Canada the troops and their
commander, and taking out at the same time a new Governor-General,
the Marquis de Vaudreuil. Most of the vessels reached their
destination in safety; but two, the _Alcide_ and _Lys_, were
intercepted by the English Admiral Boscawen, off the coast of
Newfoundland, were fired into, and compelled to surrender.[6] There
was still supposed to be peace between Great Britain and France, but
the backwoods of America and the waters of the Atlantic echoed to the
sounds of war.
[Footnote 6: The _Alcide_ was overpowered by the _Dunkirk_, commanded
by the afterwards famous Admiral Lord Howe.]
[Sidenote: _Scheme of the English campaign against Canada._]
At four points, according to the English plan of campaign Canada was
to be threatened and the French advance was to be checked. Braddock,
with his two English regiments, was to march on Fort Duquesne. From
Albany the second and {235} the third expeditions were to start. One,
marching due north, was to master Crown Point on Lake Champlain; the
other, taking the route of the Five Nation cantons, and having for
its advanced base Oswego on Lake Ontario, was to reduce the French
fort at Niagara. The fourth effort was to be made in Acadia. This
last enterprise proved successful, as has already been seen, Shirley
having previously prepared the way by building a fort on the mainland
behind the peninsula, at the portage between the Kennebec and the
Chaudiere rivers. What fate befell the other expeditions must now be
told.
[Sidenote: _General Braddock._]
History has been unkind to General Braddock. His name is associated
for ever with a great disaster in North America, as the name of Wolfe
is linked to a crowning victory. Like Wolfe, Braddock was mortally
wounded on the field of battle; he was defeated, and obloquy was
heaped on his name. Wolfe triumphed, and all men spoke well of him.
The accounts of Braddock are largely derived from the spiteful gossip
collected by Horace Walpole, and from the writings of Franklin--never
a lover of the mother country, and, after the War of Independence,
glad, like others of his countrymen, to throw the blame of an English
defeat upon a commander sent out from England. We have a portrait
given us of a brutal, blustering, and incompetent soldier, a man of
coarse habits and broken fortunes, with little to recommend him but
personal honesty and courage. 'Braddock is a very Iroquois in
disposition,'[7] writes Horace Walpole. Before the fatal battle the
same writer tells us in the same letter, 'the duke (of Cumberland) is
much dissatisfied at the slowness of General Braddock, who does not
march as if he was at all impatient to be scalped.' After the
disaster he writes, 'Braddock's defeat still remains in the situation
of the longest battle that ever was fought with nobody.'[8] The {236}
Braddocks of England, with all their failings, have deserved better
of their country than the Horace Walpoles.
[Footnote 7: _Letters of Horace Walpole_ (Bohn's ed., 1861), vol. ii,
p. 459 (Letter of Aug. 25, 1755).]
[Footnote 8: Ibid. p. 473 (Letter of Sept. 30, 1755).]
Born in 1695, the son of an officer in the Coldstream Guards, and an
officer of the Guards himself, he was sixty years old when sent out
to America by the Duke of Cumberland. He had the reputation of being
a very severe disciplinarian, and yet we have Walpole's own admission
that while serving at Gibraltar, 'he made himself adored.'[9] He was
criticized by Franklin as being too self-confident, and as having too
high an opinion of European as compared with colonial troops; but, on
the other hand, the scanty colonial levies which reached him had not
shown high fighting qualities, and his care for transport and
supplies, together with his anxiety to conciliate and use the Indians
on the line of march, were evidence of prudence and military
forethought. Burke wrote of him as 'abounding too much in his own
sense for the degree of military knowledge he possessed';[10] but
probably Wolfe's judgement upon him was sound, that 'though not a
master of the difficult art of war, he was yet a man of sense and
courage,'[11] and we may reasonably infer that the shortcomings of
the colonists were unjustly visited on his head.
[Footnote 9: _Letters of Horace Walpole_, p. 461 (Letter of Aug. 28,
1755).]
[Footnote 10: _Annual Register_, 1758, p. 4.]
[Footnote 11: Wright's _Life of Wolfe_, p. 324.]
[Sidenote: _Braddock's march on Fort Duquesne._]
Late in February, 1755, the English troops and their commander
reached Hampton in Virginia, at the entrance of Chesapeake Bay. In
due course they were sent up the Potomac to Alexandria, where in
April Braddock met the Governors of the various colonies, including
Shirley, and settled with them the plan of campaign. He himself
prepared to march on Fort Duquesne by the route which Washington had
taken, but found endless difficulty in obtaining horses, wagons, and
supplies. Virginia and Pennsylvania were still half-hearted, and
inclined to think that the danger {237} of French invasion was a
scare created in the interests of the Ohio Company. It was not the
first time, and not the last, that a real crisis has been interpreted
as the work of a designing few. However, a base was established, as
before, at Fort Cumberland on Wills Creek, and early in June the
march began.
The force consisted of about 2,000 men, 1,350 of whom belonged to the
two regiments of the line. There were some 250 Virginia rangers, and
the rest were detachments from New York, Maryland, and the Carolinas.
The troops were formed in two brigades, under Sir Peter Halkett and
Colonel Dunbar. Washington, ill with fever, was attached to
Braddock's staff, by the General's own request. Steadily and well the
advance on Fort Duquesne was made; a road was cleared through forests
and over mountains; and every precaution was taken against surprise.
But progress was inevitably slow; and, at a distance of forty miles
from Fort Cumberland, Braddock, on Washington's advice, resolved to
push forward with the larger half of his troops, leaving the
remainder with the heavy baggage to follow under charge of Colonel
Dunbar. The object was to reach Fort Duquesne before reinforcements
could arrive from Canada.
[Sidenote: _The fight on the Monongahela._]
At the end of the first week in July, Braddock was eight miles
distant from the French fort, at a point where a little stream,
called Turtle Creek, flows into the Monongahela. He was on the same
side of the latter river as the fort, which stood on the right bank
of the Monongahela, in the angle which it forms with the Alleghany;
but the direct route passed through country suitable for ambuscade;
and he therefore resolved to make a short detour, crossing the
Monongahela, and recrossing it lower down the stream. On July 9, the
movement was successfully carried out; no opposition at either ford
being offered by the enemy. The troops moved on; and, early in the
afternoon, at a little distance from the river, as the line of march
crossed a shallow {238} forest-clad ravine, there was a sudden check;
a French officer sprang out in front of the advancing column, and
forthwith, in a moment, at his signal, the thickets were alive with
foes.
[Sidenote: _Rout of the English._]
The scene which followed was one not uncommon in the story of
colonial warfare. The first attack was answered by artillery fire;
the French commander, De Beaujeu, was killed, and many of the
Canadians fled. But the majority of the enemy, with whom the English
had to deal, were Indians, who dispersed on this side and on that,
hiding behind trees, and attacking either flank of the column, active
and noisy out of all proportion to their numbers. The English
vanguard fell back, the supports crowded up, the redcoated soldiers
stood in close formation, an easy mark for the invisible foe. They
fired at nothing, for nothing could be seen; all around was a hideous
din, from every side came bullets dealing death. The men were
bewildered, the ammunition began to fail, confusion turned into
panic, and, when at length the order for retreat was given, there was
a headlong flight.
[Sidenote: _Braddock mortally wounded._]
The survivors rushed across the river, taking with them the General
mortally wounded; no stand was made at the first crossing or at the
second; and when, in about two days' time, the fugitives reached
Dunbar's camp, many miles distant, they found panic prevailing there
also. The retreat was continued to Fort Cumberland, stores, guns, and
wagons being abandoned; and not many days after Fort Cumberland had
been reached, Dunbar marched off with the remains of the regular
troops to Philadelphia.
[Sidenote: _Death of Braddock._]
Braddock had shown conspicuous bravery, if not conspicuous judgment,
on the battlefield. He was shot through the lungs as the retreat
began, and bade his men leave him where he fell. They carried him,
however, from the fight; and for four days he lingered, reaching
Dunbar's camp, and dying at Great Meadows on July 13. Of 1,460 {239}
British and colonial officers and men who took part in the battle,
nearly 900 were killed or wounded. Those who escaped, escaped with
their lives alone. On the French side the numbers engaged appear not
to have exceeded 900, three-fourths of whom were Indians. The English
force included over 1,200 regulars; the battle therefore resulted in
a crushing defeat of troops of the line by a smaller number of
Indians, with a sprinkling of Frenchmen and Canadians, led by French
officers.
[Sidenote: _Blame for the disaster._]
The disaster was attributed to the incompetence of the General, and
the bad quality of the regular troops; it was said that the few
Virginians who were present fought well, in contrast to their English
comrades; that, knowing bush fighting, and taking cover, they were
driven into the open by Braddock, only to be shot down like the rest.
These accounts must be taken with reserve; the testimony of
Washington and others was prejudiced in favour of the colonial and
against the British soldier; Braddock did not live to give his own
version of the matter; and the two regular regiments, having been
brought up to strength since their arrival in America, included many
colonists in their ranks. Yet it must be supposed that, as the column
neared its destination unopposed, there was some slackening of
precaution, for which the General must be held to blame; while Wolfe
set down the defeat to the bad conduct of the infantry, writing in
strong terms of the want of military training in the English army, as
compared with the armies of the continent.[12]
[Footnote 12: Wright's _Life of Wolfe_, p. 324.]
[Sidenote: _Bad conduct of the colonies of Virginia and
Pennsylvania._]
But, even if the defeat and rout on the Monongahela was due to the
shortcomings of the English troops and their commander, we may well
ask why troops from the mother country were needed to protect the
frontiers of the two strong colonies of Virginia and Pennsylvania.
The whole story shows these colonies in the worst possible light.
They {240} had ample warning of the importance of securing Fort
Duquesne; they allowed it to fall into the hands of the French; they
threw on the mother country the onus of recovering it: they hindered
Braddock rather than helped him; and, when he failed, they debited
him and his men with the whole blame of failure. It was not wonderful
that soldiers fresh from England should be stampeded at their first
venture in forest warfare, but it was wonderful that the men on the
spot should be so utterly indifferent to the calls, both of
patriotism and of self-interest, as to contribute to the disaster.
[Sidenote: _They suffer in consequence._]
Bad as was the failure, it was a blessing in disguise. The colonies
concerned were for a time left to bear their own burdens; French and
Indians harried their frontiers; homesteads and villages were burnt;
women and children were butchered or carried into captivity. While
sleek Quakers and garrulous Assembly men prated of peace and local
liberties, the outlying settlements were given over to fire and
sword; until the southern colonists began to learn the lesson, which
New England had long since learnt, that the first duty of any
community is self-defence.
[Sidenote: _William Johnson._]
[Sidenote: _His influence with the Five Nation Indians._]
On the Mohawk river, about thirty miles to the north-west of Albany,
there lived a nephew of Sir Peter Warren, named William Johnson. He
had come out to America in 1738, when he was twenty-three years old,
to manage estates which his uncle had bought on the confines of the
Five Nation Indians. He lived a semi-savage life, in a house
constructed as a fort and named Fort Johnson or Mount Johnson, taking
to wife first a German woman, and then an Iroquois. His position
among the Indians was not unlike that which the Baron de Castin had
held in bygone years on the Penobscot. He knew and understood the
natives and their ways, he spoke their language, and his honest
dealings contrasted favourably with the rascalities of the border
traders. He was a type of man, more common on the French side than on
the English, {241} who lived within, not outside, the circle of
native life; and, having these versatile attributes, it is almost
superfluous to add that he was an Irishman. For the rest, Johnson was
a man of force and energy, whose tact and talents were by no means
confined to the backwoods. He did good service to his King and
country, and was not at all inclined to hide his light under a
bushel. His value to the English cause in North America cannot be
overestimated. His personal influence among the Mohawks
counterbalanced the influence of the Frenchman Joncaire among the
Senecas at the other end of the confederacy; and, being appointed
Superintendent of, or Commissioner for, Indian affairs, he, and he
alone, kept alive the old covenant of friendship between the English
and the Five Nation Indians.
[Sidenote: _He commands the expedition against Crown Point._]
[Sidenote: _Building of Fort Edward._]
When it was decided to send an expedition against Crown Point,
Shirley gave him the command, and Braddock confirmed the appointment.
He had no military experience, though he was a colonel of militia;
but the whole force under him consisted of colonists, preferring to
be led by a man who knew the country and its people than by a trained
soldier. Preparations were made for raising 6,000 to 7,000 men.
Massachusetts, as usual, contributed the largest levy; the other New
England colonies and New York sent or promised smaller forces, and
some 300 Mohawk Indians joined the expedition, finding that it was
commanded by the white man, whom of all others they trusted and
loved. The actual numbers engaged, however, did not much exceed 3,000
fighting men. In July they met at Albany and moved up the Hudson, for
about forty-five miles, to the 'Carrying Place,' the spot where the
portage begins to the waters which run to the St. Lawrence. Here, on
the eastern side of the Hudson, a beginning was made of a fort,
called for the time Fort Lyman, after Phineas Lyman, second in
command of the expedition, but a little later rechristened Fort
Edward.
[Sidenote: _Course of the Hudson._]
The Hudson river rises in the Adirondack mountains, to {242} the west
of Lake George, and flows in a south-easterly direction, until it
reaches a point south-west by south of the southern end of the lake.
Here for some miles it takes a due easterly course, at right angles
to the line of the lake, until, at Sandy Hill, near where Fort Edward
was founded, it turns due south, and flows due south into the
Atlantic. It appears to prolong to southward the line of Lake George
and Lake Champlain; but the watersheds are distinct, the two lakes in
question drain to the north, and eventually discharge through the
Richelieu river into the St. Lawrence.
[Sidenote: _Lakes George and Champlain._]
They form a long narrow basin running north and south between the
Adirondacks on the west and the Green mountains of Vermont on the
east. No stream of any size feeds Lake George; it stretches for
between thirty and forty miles from south-west to north-east,
overshadowed by the Adirondacks; and, narrowing at the northern end,
finds an outlet into Lake Champlain by a semicircular channel, which
enters the larger lake from west to east. This channel is broken by
rapids, and in the angle which it forms with Lake Champlain stands
Ticonderoga.
Lake Champlain is here a broad river rather than a lake, having
narrowed into the similitude of a river from where, fifteen miles
further north, the isthmus of Crown Point juts out on the western
side of the lake. But it does not end at Ticonderoga, where it meets
the waters of Lake George. It continues southwards in a direct line,
very roughly parallel to Lake George, still narrowing in its upward
course, through the marshes known as the Drowned Lands, past a little
subsidiary lake on the western side known as South Bay, over against
which now stands the small town of Whitehall, and ending in a stream
known as Wood Creek. The sources of Wood Creek are but a few miles
distant from the point, already noted, where the Hudson turns south
to form the central valley of New York State, and where Johnson, in
the summer of 1755, was busy constructing Fort Lyman.
{243} [Sidenote: _Johnson encamps at the end of Lake George._]
Johnson's objective was Crown Point; and to reach it he had a choice
of two parallel routes, either of which involved a portage from the
Hudson watershed to that of Lake Champlain. He could take either the
western line by Lake George, or the eastern line by Wood Creek. He
chose the former, and making a road for fourteen miles from Fort
Lyman to the head--the southern end--of Lake George, encamped there
at the end of August with over 2,000 men, leaving 500 men behind to
garrison Fort Lyman.
[Sidenote: _Dieskau at Crown Point._]
The French in the meantime had not been idle. When Dieskau arrived in
Canada with his troops, it was intended that he should operate on
Lake Ontario, and reduce the English outpost at Oswego; but, as soon
as news came of Johnson's expedition, the plan was changed, and he
hurried up the Richelieu with reinforcements to protect Crown Point.
By the time that Johnson reached Lake George, there were assembled at
Crown Point over 3,500 men--French soldiers, Canadians, and Indians.
[Sidenote: _He advances to Ticonderoga and up the southern arm of
Lake Champlain,_]
The two alternative routes from Fort Lyman to Crown Point converged
at Ticonderoga, or, as the French called it, Carillon. Dieskau
therefore moved forward to that place, to block the English advance.
He had not yet learnt that Johnson was encamped at Lake George, but
was under the impression that the advanced guard of the English,
instead of the rearguard, was at Fort Lyman. Accordingly, he laid his
plans to push rapidly up the southern arm of Lake Champlain, and to
take Fort Lyman before reinforcements could arrive; or, if Johnson
had already marched to Lake George, to cut the line of his
communications. French and English were in fact advancing, or
preparing to advance, south and north respectively, on parallel
lines.
[Sidenote: _and cuts Johnson's communications._]
A flying column of 1,500 men set out from Ticonderoga; the water
carried them as far as South Bay, where they left their boats, and
marching thence through the forest between Lake George and Wood
Creek, they struck the road which {244} Johnson had made from Fort
Lyman to the lake, at a point three miles from the fort, eleven from
the lake. They had thus intercepted Johnson's communications and cut
him off from his base of supplies. From prisoners Dieskau learnt the
disposition of Johnson's forces, and he took counsel whether to
attack the fort or the encampment by the lake. Capture of the fort
had been the original object of the march; but in deference to the
Indians, who little loved assault on fortified positions, it was
decided to take the second alternative and advance on the lake.
[Sidenote: _Johnson's counter plan._]
[Sidenote: _The English fall into an ambush._]
Meanwhile, warned of what had happened, Johnson prepared a
counter-stroke. What Dieskau had done, he could do also; if the
Frenchman had cut his communications, he in his turn could intercept
Dieskau's line of retreat; and, with this object, on the morning of
the eighth of September, a force of 1,000 men was sent out from the
camp to strike the French in the rear. The whole formed a pretty
picture of backwood manoeuvres; but, like the Boers in South Africa,
the Canadians proved themselves more mobile than the English, and
more skilful in ambuscade. At three miles distance from the camp,
after an hour's march, the English fell into a carefully-laid trap.
On the road in front were the French regulars; in the forest on
either flank Canadians and Indians lay in wait for their prey.
Advancing without due precaution, though they had a band of Mohawks
with them, the English were completely surprised; the head of the
column was driven in on the rear, the whole force became (in
Dieskau's words) like a pack of cards, and fell back with heavy loss
in rout to the camp, the retreat being partially covered by a
detachment sent out by Johnson on hearing of the engagement.
[Sidenote: _The French attack the camp and are defeated._]
[Sidenote: _Dieskau taken prisoner._]
At the camp hasty preparations were made for defence, behind wagons
and fallen trees, and in a short time the enemy appeared. The French
regulars attacked boldly and well, but the Canadians and Indians were
out of hand, the {245} commander of the Canadians, Legardeur de Saint
Pierre, having already been killed. For three or four hours there was
furious firing; but the English had artillery, the French had not,
and this advantage, coupled with the lines of defence, decided the
issue. Dieskau was disabled by a wound; the attack slackened; at
length the defenders left their entrenchments and charged their foes,
and late in the afternoon the whole French force was routed and fled,
leaving their wounded General in the hands of the enemy. Some of the
Canadians and Indians had already fallen back to the scene of the
morning's fight, intent on scalps and plunder. Here a scouting party
from Fort Lyman fell upon them, and, after a hard struggle, drove
them into further retreat.
Both sides lost heavily, but the balance of the day's fighting was
unquestionably in favour of the English. On the French side the
regulars showed to more advantage than their colonial and Indian
allies, and Dieskau deserved a better fate than wounds and captivity.
While lying wounded, we read, he was again shot by a French deserter,
and, when he was brought into the English camp, the Mohawks, whose
chief had been killed, threatened his life. Johnson, however, who had
himself been wounded, took every care of his prisoner; in due course
he was sent over to England; and eventually, disabled for further
service, he returned to France, where he died in 1767.
[Sidenote: _Results of the fight._]
[Sidenote: _Fort William Henry._]
The most was made of this repulse of the French. It came as a set-off
to the defeat of Braddock. Johnson was made a baronet and received
5,000 pounds. The Lac du Sacrement he had already renamed Lake
George, the encampment at the head of the lake blossomed out into
Fort William Henry, and another of the King's sons provided the name
of Fort Edward for the fort at the Carrying Place. Yet the object of
the expedition was not achieved; no attempt was made at a further
advance; the French were unmolested in their retreat, and retained
their hold on Crown Point and {246} Ticonderoga also. Johnson
remained encamped by the lake, with a force raised to a total of
3,600 men, until November was drawing to a close, when, a garrison
being left to hold Fort William Henry through the winter, the rest of
the army disbanded to their homes.
[Sidenote: _Shirley's advance to Lake Ontario._]
While Johnson was moving north from Albany to attack Crown Point,
William Shirley went west, with the intention of reducing the French
fort at Niagara and cutting off Canada from the upper lakes. He
started from Albany in July with some 1,500 men, mainly colonial
troops in Imperial pay, and took his way along the line of the Five
Nation cantons. He moved up the Mohawk river, past Schenectady and
past Johnson's home, made the portage from the Mohawk to the stream
called, like the feeder of Lake Champlain, Wood or Wood's Creek,
which runs into Lake Oneida, and by the outlet of that lake, now the
Oswego river, to Lake Ontario.
[Sidenote: _Oswego and Niagara._]
[Sidenote: _The expedition abandoned._]
Where the river joined Lake Ontario stood the small English fort of
Oswego, founded in 1727, and regarded with the utmost jealousy by the
French.[13] The French fort at Niagara was 130 to 140 miles to the
west of Oswego, while due north of the latter place, at a distance of
over fifty miles across Lake Ontario, was Fort Frontenac. The
garrisons of both the French forts had been reinforced on hearing of
Shirley's advance, and an attack on Fort Niagara involved the danger
of a counter attack on Oswego from Fort Frontenac. On the other hand,
Fort Frontenac was fully strong enough to repel any direct attempt to
take it. The English, moreover, experienced great difficulty in
collecting provisions or an adequate fleet of boats, and after some
weeks' delay it was resolved to abandon the expedition. Before
October ended, Shirley returned to Albany by the way he went, leaving
700 men to garrison Oswego and strengthen its defences,
communications with Albany being maintained by two blockhouses which
had been built at either end of the {247} four miles' portage between
the Mohawk river and Wood Creek--Fort Williams on the Mohawk river,
where the town of Rome now stands, and Fort Bull on Wood Creek.
[Footnote 13: See above, p. 196.]
[Sidenote: _Results of the year's campaign_]
Thus the campaigning of the busy year 1755 came to an end. The main
forces on either side disbanded, or went into garrison for the
winter; Washington and a few hundred Virginians tried to safeguard
the harried frontiers of the southern colonies; Robert Rogers,
boldest of New England rangers, went scouting up the line of Lake
George. The forts stood isolated in the wintry backwoods, waiting for
the stirring times which were coming on forthwith.
[Sidenote: _in favour of the French._]
Neither French nor English had much cause to boast of the results of
the year's fighting. On either side a General had been sent out from
Europe; the English General had been killed, the French General had
been wounded and taken prisoner. But, on the whole, the French had
undoubtedly gained and the English had lost. The English had taken
the offensive, they had planned attack all along the line, and in the
main their schemes had conspicuously failed. Only in the extreme east
had they achieved substantial success. Acadia had been permanently
secured, if there could be security as long as the fortress of
Louisbourg remained in French hands. In the extreme west they had
been badly beaten, and the French had acquired full control of the
Ohio valley. On Lake Ontario they had done nothing at all. On the
main central line of advance they had set out to take Crown Point,
and had to be content with repelling a counter attack by the French.
The more New England had been concerned in the war, the better the
English had fared; the further west or south they operated, the
greater was their want of success.
[Sidenote: _Effect of geography on the English side of the war._]
The most striking feature to notice in the events of the year is the
effect of distance, when not counteracted by steam and telegraphy. It
will be noted how far removed in every sense was America from Europe
in the middle of the {248} eighteenth century, and how far removed in
every sense were the American colonies from one another. Here was
fighting going on at all points on the border line of French and
English America, and yet France and England were nominally at peace.
New England was raising her levies with patriotism and spirit,
meeting a common foe with common feeling, and, it may be added, with
common sense. New York and Virginia could, on the other hand,
scarcely be prevailed upon to move; while Pennsylvania was as
indifferent as though the fighting had been on another continent. We
may and must put down much to political causes, to social and
religious prejudices; and Canada proved that, even in the eighteenth
century, long distances did not necessarily preclude concerted
action; but, where settlement had begun and continued for generations
at widely different points on the American continent, and on
absolutely separate and independent lines, war and peace were alike
localized, and there was little or no cohesion between the colonies
and the mother country, or between one colony and another. The
history of the English North American colonies had been the history
not of one but of many communities. No uniform system held them
together, no sentiment of the distant past was strong enough to
counteract geography. Only, as colonization spread in the long course
of years, the dwellers in one province came into contact with the
dwellers in another, and both the one and the other came face to face
with the French advance. Then the pressure of common danger made for
union, and the race instinct gathered strength. The mother country
sent out soldiers; colonists were enlisted in royal regiments to
supplement the provincial militias; and in clumsy, most imperfect
fashion, the English in North America began to shape themselves into
a nation.
One keen English observer, at any rate--General Wolfe--saw at once
the present defects of the English colonies in North America, and the
great future which lay before them. {249} 'These colonies,' he wrote
in 1758, 'are deeply tinged with the vices and bad qualities of the
mother country.' But he added, 'This will, some time hence, be a vast
empire, the seat of power and learning. Nature has refused them
nothing, and there will grow a people out of our little spot,
England, that will fill this vast space, and divide this great
portion of the globe with the Spaniards, who are possessed of the
other half.'[14]
[Footnote 14: Wolfe to his mother, Louisbourg, Aug. 11, 1758
(Wright's _Life of Wolfe_, p. 454).]
NOTE.--For the above see
KINGSFORD'S _History of Canada_, vol. iii, and
PARKMAN'S _Montcalm and Wolfe_.
The period dealt with in this and the two succeeding chapters is
covered by
A. G. BRADLEY'S recent work, _The Fight with France for North
America_ (1900).
{250}