THE CONQUEST OF CANADA
[Sidenote: _The Seven Years' War._]
In May, 1756, Great Britain declared war against France. In June,
France declared war against Great Britain. The war between these two
nations formed part of the Seven Years' War, one of the most widely
extended and, in its results, one of the most decisive in history. In
the first number of the _Annual Register_, for the year 1758,[1]
Edmund Burke wrote: 'The war, into which all parties and interests
seem now to be so perfectly blended, arose from causes which
originally had not the least connexion, the uncertain limits of the
English and French territories in America, and the mutual claims of
the houses of Austria and Brandenburg on the Duchy of Silesia.' After
three years of the war, in September, 1759, Horace Walpole wrote in
his laughing style, 'I believe the world will come to be fought for
somewhere between the north of Germany and the back of Canada.'[2]
[Footnote 1: p. 2.]
[Footnote 2: _Letters of Horace Walpole_, vol. iii, p. 249 (Letter of
Sept. 13, 1759).]
[Sidenote: _Numerical superiority of the English in America._]
On the continent of Europe, Great Britain had Frederick of Prussia
for an ally; on the other side were France, Austria, Russia, and
Sweden. Beyond the Atlantic, a French population in Canada, Acadia,
and Louisiana of less than 90,000 souls was ranged against British
colonies with a population at least thirteen times as numerous. One
or other of the larger British colonies, taken alone, was better
peopled with white colonists than Canada.
{251} [Sidenote: _Official corruption in Canada._]
[Sidenote: _Bigot and his gang._]
Nor was want of numbers the only disadvantage under which Canada
laboured. The currency, principally paper money, was depreciated.
Provisions were scarce, seeing that the farmers were constantly
called away to fight, and that supplies from beyond the sea were
liable to be intercepted. The government was corrupt, and the high
officials cheated the King on the one hand and the _habitans_ on the
other with the greatest impartiality. Canadian history, all through
its course, as long as Canada was a province of France, was tainted
by official corruption. The officials were traders also, and the
public service was largely in the hands of commercial rings. What
happened in the mother country happened also in her greatest colony.
One official's wife became another official's mistress, and the
husband who gave up the wife was rewarded with pickings at the
expense of the public and of the Crown. The evil was at its worst in
the last days of New France. The Intendant was then Bigot, a clever
Frenchman who had come out in 1748, and round him gathered a gang of
unscrupulous adventurers, whose misdeeds were fully brought to light
after the crisis was over and the colony was lost. Among them were
Cadet, butcher and contractor, who was made Commissary-General; Pean,
Varin, and others, who, one at Quebec and another at Montreal, formed
stores and created monopolies, buying and selling at artificial
prices, sucking the life-blood of an extravagant Government in France
and of a poor community in America.
[Sidenote: _Vaudreuil._]
In past years, supreme authority in Canada had been shared between
the Governor and the Intendant, and quarrels in abundance had arisen
between the holders of the two offices; but, at the time when the
Seven Years' War began, the Governor and the Intendant were at one.
The Intendant Bigot, and the Governor De Vaudreuil, were on excellent
terms. Vaudreuil, son of a previous Governor-General of Canada,
received his appointment in 1755, having {252} already been Governor
of Louisiana. He was a vain man, of some but not great capacity,
called to high office in a difficult time, and not equal to the task
which was imposed upon him. Surrounded by cleverer and more
unscrupulous men of Bigot's type, he did nothing to check the evils
which were ruining Canada.
[Sidenote: _Division between Canadians and Frenchmen._]
[Sidenote: _Different classes of troops engaged in the war._]
The principal point to note about him is that he was a Canadian by
birth. This fact was the source of mischief. In lieu of the old feud
between the Governor and the Intendant, there came into being a new
line of cleavage, which tended to divide the mother country from the
colony. The Governor had always been supreme in military matters;
but, when war in North America grew to be more than a series of
border forays, it became necessary to send out skilled generals from
France. Dieskau was sent, and after him came a greater man, Montcalm.
Friction then arose between the Governor and the General, accentuated
in consequence of the Governor being a Canadian. All the Governors of
Canada, including Vaudreuil, had seen service, or had at any rate
been trained to war, but they were usually either sailors or
connected with the forces which were attached to the navy and under
the Minister of Marine. On both the English and the French side in
North America there were, at the time of the Seven Years' War, three
classes of troops engaged. On the English side there were the regular
regiments sent out from home, and brought up to strength by
recruiting in the colonies. There were also regiments entirely raised
in the colonies, but still royal regiments in the pay of the Crown,
such for instance as the four battalions of Royal Americans, first
raised by Loudoun's orders, and famous in after times as the 60th or
the King's Royal Rifle Corps.[3] Lastly, there were the purely
colonial levies. On {253} the French side there were in the first
place regiments of the line from France. In the second place there
were the _troupes de la Marine_, regiments or companies mainly raised
in France, but permanently stationed in Canada, to form a standing
garrison and to develop into military colonists. In the third place
there was the Canadian militia, including all the adult males between
the years of fifteen and sixty. Only the first of these three classes
of troops was under the direct command of the General from France.
After Montcalm's arrival they numbered rather over 4,000 men, about
one-fourth of whom were in garrison at Louisbourg. The _troupes de la
Marine_ amounted at most to about 2,500 men. The Canadian militia on
paper numbered 15,000, but very few of them were to be found in the
field at any given time or place. The General corresponded with the
Minister for War; when in action he took command of all the forces
present, but the nominal Commander-in-Chief was the Governor, who was
by way of directing the campaign, and who reported to the Minister of
Marine. Thus, both at home and in Canada, there was divided
responsibility at a time when all depended on the most complete
co-operation and single control.
[Footnote 3: They were originally the 62nd or Royal American Regiment
of foot. The men were chiefly German and Swiss Protestants, and about
one-third of the officers were of the same nationalities. On the
disbanding of Shirley's and Pepperell's Regiments, which were
numbered 50th and 51st, the Royal Americans became the 60th Regiment.
Their motto, 'Celer et audax,' is said, without much authority, to
have been first given them by Wolfe.]
[Sidenote: _The strength of Canada._]
The strength of Canada, on the other hand, consisted in the divisions
of her adversaries, the separate grumbling English colonies; in the
incompetence of the English Government at home; in the fact that the
routes for attack from Canada favoured quick movement from the base;
and most of all in the support which the Frenchmen received from the
red men, notably from the mission Indians. The Indians went hand in
hand with the Canadians; the one and the other loved irregular
warfare; the one and the other answered {254} to the call of the
Governor of Canada, rather than of the General who looked on war as
he had known it in Europe--more scientific, more continuous, better
controlled, and more humane than the savage outbursts of killing and
plundering which were the product of American backwoods.
[Sidenote: _Canadian raid on the route between Albany and Oswego._]
As winter turned into spring, in 1756, before war had been proclaimed
in Europe, and before Montcalm had come out, the Canadians made a
move. The most distant and isolated English outpost was Oswego on
Lake Ontario. Its communication with Albany depended on the two
little forts which, as told in the last chapter,[4] had been
constructed to guard the four miles' portage between the Mohawk river
and Wood Creek, the stream which feeds Lake Oneida. Towards the end
of March, a party of Canadians and Indians, sent by Vaudreuil and
commanded by an officer named De Lery, surprised the fort on the
latter river, Fort Bull, killed or captured the small garrison, and
destroyed the building with all its contents. The damage was repaired
by Shirley, in whose eyes Oswego was of supreme importance, and who,
in the winter of 1755, had formulated new schemes for a comprehensive
campaign against Canada, including as before the reduction of the
French forts on Lake Ontario.
[Footnote 4: See above, pp. 246, 247.]
[Sidenote: _Weakness of Oswego._]
[Sidenote: _Colonel Bradstreet._]
If this last object was to be achieved, it was absolutely necessary
that Oswego should be made so strong in men and munitions, as not
merely to hold its own, but to dominate the rival forts at Frontenac,
Toronto, and Niagara. These conditions were very far from being
fulfilled, and Shirley can hardly be acquitted of blame in the
matter. The garrison of Oswego was weakened by winter sickness, the
fortifications were hopelessly incomplete, the supplies were scanty
and uncertain. The French raid in March was followed by a
strengthening of the French positions on Lake Ontario, and Coulon de
Villiers, a well-known Canadian leader, took up new ground at Sandy
Creek to eastward of, and at no {255} great distance from, the
English fort. From Albany, early in the summer, Shirley sent up
supplies to Oswego in charge of a strong body of colonists under
Colonel John Bradstreet, a New Englander who did other good service
later in the war. Bradstreet reached his destination in safety, but
on his return up the Oswego river, at the beginning of July, was
attacked by Villiers, whom he beat off after heavy fighting and
considerable loss on either side.
[Sidenote: _French designs on Oswego._]
Vaudreuil was as determined to drive the English from Lake Ontario,
as Shirley was to secure for his countrymen control over the
navigation of the lake; and at the time that Bradstreet's fight took
place, Montcalm had already been some weeks in Canada. The French
knew from the reports of their scouts the weakness of Oswego, they
knew too that the English were concentrating in another direction for
an attack on Ticonderoga: an advance in force on Oswego was likely to
succeed: if not successful, it would at least draw off some of the
English troops from the main campaign. Accordingly, an expedition was
taken in hand, commanded by Montcalm in person.
[Sidenote: _Montcalm marches against it._]
In July, Montcalm was at Ticonderoga. Returning rapidly to Montreal,
he pushed up the St. Lawrence to Fort Frontenac; and early in August,
moving his troops by night, crossed Lake Ontario, at the outlet of
the St. Lawrence, passing to Wolfe Island, and thence to Sackett's
Harbour in the south-eastern corner of the lake. Here a force of
Canadians, including the remains of Villiers' troops, was awaiting
him; and he advanced with about 3,000 men, including three regiments
of the line, and an adequate supply of artillery, some of the guns
having been taken from General Braddock's force. Undiscovered by the
English, the expedition moved westward, the main body coasting the
shore, the Canadians marching on land, until at night time, on August
10, they took up a position at little more than a mile's distance
from Oswego.
{256} [Sidenote: _Position of Oswego._]
There were at this time, in consequence of Shirley's efforts, three
forts at Oswego or Chouaguen, as the French called it. The old fort
and trading house stood on the western bank of the Onondaga or Oswego
river, where it enters the lake. On the same side of the river, about
600 yards to the westward, was a 'small unfinished redoubt, badly
enough entrenched with earth on two sides.'[5] It was called a fort,
and pompously named Fort George, but, as a matter of fact, it was
used as, and was little better than, a cattle-pen. On the eastern
side of the river, over against the old fort, at a distance of 470
yards, was a newly-built, square-shaped blockhouse, known as Fort
Ontario. It was built wholly of timber; and, while strong enough to
resist such firearms as Indians could bring, it was of no avail
against artillery.
[Footnote 5: See 'Papers relating to Oswego,' in O'Callaghan's
_Documentary History of New York_, vol. i, pp. 488-503.]
[Sidenote: _The French attack._]
[Sidenote: _Oswego surrenders._]
The French prepared to bombard this eastern fort, but, before their
trenches were complete, it was evacuated, and the garrison was
withdrawn across the river. The abandonment was inevitable, but it
sealed the fate of the main fort, which, for protection on the lake
and river side, depended on Fort Ontario. One day's fighting saw the
conclusion of the matter. The French brought their guns into position
by the side of the abandoned fort; and, firing across the river,
riddled Fort Oswego. At the same time, Canadians and Indians forded
the river higher up, and attacked on the southern side. The English
commander, Colonel Mercer, was killed: the troops, consisting mainly
of convalescents and recruits, were not in condition for a stubborn
defence; women and children found no shelter from the enemy's fire;
the position was hopeless, and the garrison surrendered. The
prisoners, who were carried off, numbered about 1,600; guns, boats,
and supplies fell into the hands of the French, the forts were burnt
to the ground, and every vestige of British occupation was for the
time obliterated.
{257} [Sidenote: _Effect of the fall of Oswego._]
The news of the fall of Oswego, after so many years of British
occupation, caused consternation in England. Colonel Daniel Webb, who
at the time was bringing up reinforcements along the line of the
Mohawk and Wood Creek rivers, beat a hurried and discreditable
retreat, burning the forts at the Carrying Place[6] and blocking the
waterway with fallen timber. In England the blow followed on that of
the capture of Minorca, for which Byng was made a scapegoat. 'Minorca
is gone, Oswego gone, the nation is in a ferment,' wrote Horace
Walpole; and again, 'Oswego, of ten times more importance even than
Minorca, is so annihilated that we cannot learn the particulars.'[7]
It was in truth a great success for France, the result of a plan
boldly conceived and brilliantly executed. The garrison had been
taken completely by surprise; in four days from the date when
Montcalm landed within reach of the forts, he had achieved his
object, and left the English no foothold on Lake Ontario. The defeat
of Braddock had given to France command of the Ohio; the fall of
Oswego gave her undisputed mastery of the lakes. All the west, and
all the ways to the west, were now in her hands, and her forces could
be concentrated on the central line of advance to the south up Lake
Champlain. There already some way had been made, for, in addition to
holding Crown Point, the French were now firmly planted at
Ticonderoga.
[Footnote 6: Fort Williams was rebuilt in 1758, and named Fort
Stanwix. See below, p. 282.]
[Footnote 7: _Letters of Horace Walpole_, vol. iii, pp. 41, 42
(Letter of Nov. 4, 1756).]
Great as were the immediate material results of Montcalm's success,
the indirect moral advantage which the French derived from it was
greater still. Oswego, Burke reminds us in the _Annual Register_ for
1758,[8] was 'designed to cover the country of the Five Nations, to
secure the Indian trade, to interrupt the communication between the
{258} French northern and southern establishments, and to open a way
to our arms to attack the forts of Frontenac and Niagara.' A few
pages later, he describes the effect of the disaster in the following
words: 'Since Oswego had been taken, the French remained entirely
masters of all the lakes, and we could do nothing to obstruct their
collecting the Indians from all parts, and obliging them to act in
their favour. But our apprehensions (or what shall they be called?)
did more in favour of the French than their conquests. Not satisfied
with the loss of that important fortress, we ourselves abandoned to
the mercy of the enemy all the country of the Five Nations, the only
body of Indians who preserved even the appearance of friendship to
us. The forts we had at the Great Carrying Place were demolished,
Wood Creek was industriously stopped up and filled with logs, by
which it became evident to all those who knew that country that our
communication with our allied Indians was totally cut off, and, what
was worse, our whole frontier left perfectly uncovered to the
irruption of the enemy's savages.'
[Footnote 8: pp. 13, 29.]
[Sidenote: _The Iroquois discouraged._]
The effect of what had happened on the minds of the Five Nation
Indians was disastrous. Oswego had covered their cantons, it had been
the entrepot of trade between them and the west. They saw it swept
away with little or no resistance. They saw Webb hurry back towards
Albany, only anxious, as it seemed, to quit the country unmolested.
Hesitating constantly between the French and English alliance, they
had now every reason to prefer the former; and, had it not been for
Johnson's influence with the Mohawks, the Iroquois would, for the
time at any rate, have abandoned the English cause in disgust and
contempt.[9]
[Footnote 9: Sir William Johnson, writing to the Lords of Trade on
Sept. 10, 1756, says: 'Oswego in our hands, fortified and secured by
us, and our having a navigation on Lake Ontario, was not only a curb
to the power of the French that way, but esteemed by the Six Nations,
whenever they joined our arms, as a secure cover to them and their
habitations against the resentment of the French.' Later in the same
letter he speaks of the fort as 'the barrier of the Six Nations,' and
says that, in consequence of its capture, 'the spirit they had
recently shown in our favour was sunk and overawed by the success of
the French' (O'Callaghan's _Documentary History of New York_, vol.
ii, pp. 733, 734).]
{259} Moreover, the achievement differed in kind from the ordinary
Canadian raid. Troops had been moved, artillery brought up, transport
organized in rapid, skilful fashion, which betokened leadership of no
ordinary kind; the new General from France had at once made himself
felt, and friend and foe alike recognized that Canada was being
defended and the English colonies attacked by a soldier of high order
in the Marquis de Montcalm.
[Sidenote: _Montcalm._]
Few characters in colonial history are so interesting and attractive
as that of Montcalm. Interest attaches to him not only on account of
his own personality, but also because he illustrates the better side
of the soldier-aristocrats of France. Born in 1712, near Nimes in the
south of France, he came out in middle life to North America, having
seen hard fighting in various parts of the continent, and owing the
Canadian command to his own merits, not to Court influence. He was
the head of his family, owner of the ancestral estate, straitened in
means, and with ten children to provide for; loving his home, loving
his mother, his wife and children, following arms as his profession
for honour and for a livelihood. He was well educated, and in every
sense a gentleman of France, with a quick, impetuous Southern spirit,
but the heart of an affectionate and chivalrous man. His coming
lifted the war on the Canadian side to a higher plane; he used the
savage tools which he found to hand, but he did not love them,[10]
nor did he love the corruption and chicanery which made the
Government of New France a squalid {260} reproduction of the
Government at home. A great man--Champlain--brought New France to
birth; her end was ennobled by the death of Montcalm. Of his military
talent it would be difficult even for an expert to judge, for it must
always be a matter of doubt how far Montcalm, like Wolfe, may have
been 'felix opportunitate mortis.' Neither the one nor the other was
tried in the command of big battalions on European battlefields; but
in quick aggressive movement, such as resulted in the capture of
Oswego, as well as in the patient defensive tactics which he
displayed at Quebec, Montcalm proved himself to be a skilful
commander.
[Footnote 10: This is contrary to what Wolfe wrote, when before
Louisbourg, to Amherst. 'Montcalm has changed the very nature of war,
and has forced us, in some measure, to a deterring and dreadful
vengeance' (Wright's _Life of Wolfe_, pp. 440, 441). But none the
less it was the case that, with Montcalm's arrival, war on the French
side became what it never had been before, something more than a
series of semi-savage raids.]
[Sidenote: _Levis, Bourlamaque, and Bougainville._]
He was ably supported by his second in command, De Levis, who lived
to be a duke and a marshal of France, and a third good officer,
Bourlamaque, came out at the same time. Montcalm's own aide de camp
was De Bougainville, more famed in after years on sea than land. His
name stands first in the list of French navigators; he was the rival
and contemporary of Captain Cook. Good leaders France sent out to
America in the spring of 1756, but she sent few troops with them. The
campaign on the continent absorbed her strength, and New France was
lost in consequence.
[Sidenote: _The English leaders. Webb, Abercromby, and Loudoun._]
[Sidenote: _Recall of Shirley._]
Montcalm and his officers arrived in May; in June and July three
English commanders appeared on the scene--Colonel Daniel Webb,
General Abercromby, and Lord Loudoun. Of these three, Webb in a
subordinate command and Loudoun as Commander-in-Chief were failures.
Abercromby, possibly the best of the three, was not a success; he was
in Wolfe's opinion 'a heavy man.'[11] The trio were a type of the
soldiers that the English Government chose, while England, to quote
the Prussian King Frederick's words, was in labour, and before she
brought forth a man. While sending out inadequate officers from home,
the Government recalled William Shirley, who, whatever his faults may
have been, embodied more than any one man in America {261}
enterprising and heart-whole resistance to the national foe. He left
on the arrival of Loudoun, having to the last used all his influence
to prepare manfully for the coming campaign. Thus the summer of 1756
found the two sides ill matched in point of commanders; if the
chances of war were at all even, the forces led by Montcalm could not
fail to outwit and surprise the troops which were guided by the
slow-moving Scotch laird, the Earl of Loudoun.[12]
[Footnote 11: Wright's _Life of Wolfe_, p. 451.]
[Footnote 12: John Campbell, Earl of Loudoun, had served in the
Highland campaign of 1745. In America he appears to have shown
himself wanting in quickness, in tact, and in strategical ability.
Franklin accused him of indecision. The colonial saying about him was
that he was like the sign of St. George over an inn, always on
horseback but never moving on. There is a pleasant notice of him in
Boswell's _Life of Johnson_, when Boswell and Johnson dined at his
house on the tour to the Hebrides.]
[Sidenote: _Robert Rogers._]
Yet the English had some useful men among them, though not in the
first rank. William Johnson has already been noticed. John Winslow,
who had adequately commanded the New England contingent in Acadia,
was now in charge of the provincial troops at Fort William Henry,
near Johnson's old camping-ground at the southern end of Lake George.
In the same force was Robert Rogers, of New Hampshire, whose name is
still borne by a cliff on Lake George, known as 'Rogers' Rock.'
Rogers raised and commanded companies of New England scouts, known as
the Rangers, which were multiplied as the war went on, and as the
value of the men and their leader became more apparent. His journal
is a model of clear, concise military writing, recounting in
straightforward fashion feats of extraordinary daring and hardihood.
As Johnson in his mastery over the Indians rivalled and perhaps
excelled the French, so no Canadian partizan understood border
warfare better than Robert Rogers. We read that on one occasion, when
he had been reported as killed and the report proved false, the
Indians in the French interest, who had been committing atrocities,
repented from fear when they learnt that Rogers was still alive, and
blamed {262} the French for encouraging them, as they said, to do the
actions for which vengeance awaited them. It was something to have on
the English side men who, in the Canadian style of fighting, were as
good as or better than the Canadians themselves; and, in the absence
of competent generals, fighting backwoodsmen, like Robert Rogers, at
least served to remind Canada that the English colonies had a nasty
sting.
[Sidenote: _End of the campaign of 1756._]
The programme for 1756--Shirley's programme--had included an advance
to and from Oswego, and an advance from Fort William Henry against
Ticonderoga. When Loudoun arrived, he countermanded the first
movement, though he subsequently sent Webb too late up the Mohawk
river in order to reinforce Oswego. Montcalm's swift action then
disconcerted all English plans, Oswego was lost, the forward move
down Lake George was countermanded, and the summer ended with nothing
for the English to record but one crushing defeat.
[Sidenote: _Fruitless French attack on Fort William Henry._]
In November, the main body of the troops on either side went back
into winter quarters, and Fort William Henry was left in charge of a
small garrison of between 400 and 500 men, belonging to the 44th
Regiment and the Rangers, commanded by Major Eyre. In the early
spring of 1757, an attempt was made to surprise them by an expedition
sent up from Montreal under the command of Rigaud de Vaudreuil,
brother of the Governor of Canada. The attacking force started
towards the end of February, and on March 19 appeared before the
fort. The next day they offered terms of surrender, which were
refused; and, after vainly attempting to reduce the fort till the
twenty-fourth, they retreated down Lake George, having burnt some
boats and outbuildings, but otherwise inflicted little loss.
[Sidenote: _Loudoun's abortive expedition against Louisbourg._]
The spring came on, and the early summer, and Loudoun matured a plan,
which he had formed for attacking Louisbourg in force, as a
preliminary to a further attack on Quebec. {263} His plan was
accepted in London, and the Government determined to send out a
strong fleet to co-operate with him, the rendezvous to be the harbour
of Halifax. Like previous schemes of the same kind, the enterprise
failed through untoward delays. The fleet under Admiral Holborne,
consisting of fifteen ships of the line, and conveying transports
with from 5,000 to 6,000 men on board, did not sail till May 5, and
did not reach Halifax till early in July. Loudoun, meanwhile, had
drawn off the bulk of his troops, including Rogers and his Rangers,
from the New York frontier; and, after vainly waiting at New York for
news of the English Admiral, set sail for Halifax on June 20,
reaching his destination on the last day of that month.
The combined forces were nearly 12,000 strong, but the time for
attack had gone by. Hearing of the English preparations, the French
Government had sent a fleet at least as strong as Holborne's across
the Atlantic, under Admiral La Motte; and the English commanders
learnt that Louisbourg was being defended by ships as numerous as
their own, and by a garrison in which the troops of the line alone
were said to number 6,000 men. The enterprise was accordingly
abandoned. In the middle of August Loudoun re-embarked the majority
of his troops for New York. Holborne twice reconnoitred Louisbourg in
the hope of bringing on a sea-fight. The second time, in the middle
of September, a storm shattered his vessels, and the whole expedition
utterly collapsed.[13] 'It is time,' wrote Horace Walpole[14] in
despondent terms, 'for England to slip her own cables and float away
into some unknown ocean.' On {264} his way back to New York, Loudoun
was met with bad news--that Fort William Henry had fallen.
[Footnote 13: While Loudoun's troops were waiting at Halifax, he
employed them in raising vegetables. In consequence, Lord Charles
Hay, who was third in command, charged him with expending the
nation's wealth 'in making sham fights and planting cabbages.' Lord
Charles Hay was sent back to England, and a court-martial was held
upon him, but the incident served to bring ridicule on the
expedition.]
[Footnote 14: _Letters of Horace Walpole_, vol. iii, p. 103 (Letter
of Sept. 3, 1757, written before the final break-up of the fleet).]
[Sidenote: _Montcalm prepares to attack Fort William Henry._]
When he started for Louisbourg, he left Webb in command of the small
forces which remained to cover the New York frontier. He seems to
have thought that the troops were sufficient not only to hold the
French in check, but also to threaten Ticonderoga. Montcalm, on the
other hand, saw his opportunity and determined, while he had superior
numbers, to strike a blow which should rival his former achievement
at Oswego. Throughout July the French troops concentrated at
Ticonderoga, provisions were brought up, and a road was made past the
rapids, by which Lake George discharges into Lake Champlain. A number
of Indians were gathered from all quarters to join in the expedition,
mission Indians taught to kill the heretic English, and savages from
the wild and barbarous west. Scouting parties went forth, some along
Lake George, others up the parallel southern arm of Lake Champlain;
and, with Robert Rogers far away in Nova Scotia, they did much
damage, on one occasion killing or taking prisoners two out of three
hundred New Englanders. At the end of the month the main advance
began.
[Sidenote: _The fort and its surroundings._]
Fort William Henry was about thirty miles distant from the French
lines. It was a strong square fort, built near the southern edge of
Lake George, a little to the west of the spot where Sir William
Johnson two years before had formed his camp. The road from the fort
to Fort Edward ran for a short distance due east, skirting the shore
of the lake, and then turned inland to the south and south-east. On
rising ground to the east of the road, beyond the point where it took
the southward turn, the English had an entrenched camp, separated
from the fort by swampy ground. After the attack on the fort in the
preceding spring, Major Eyre and his troops had been replaced by
others under the command of Colonel Monro, the main body consisting
of 600 {265} men of the 35th, now the Sussex Regiment. When news came
that the French were on the point of advancing, Webb sent up 1,000
colonial troops from Fort Edward; and, when the attack began, Monro
had with him about 2,400 men, while Webb, who had only 1,600 men left
at Fort Edward, sent urgent messages to New York for reinforcements.
[Sidenote: _The French advance._]
On July 30, Levis moved forward with the French vanguard, marching
along the western shore of Lake George; the main body of troops under
Montcalm followed in boats on August 1, the whole force amounting to
between 7,000 and 8,000 men. Two detachments, one commanded by La
Corne, the other by Levis, marched round the fort, and took up
positions on its southern side, to cut off communication with Webb;
La Corne occupied the road to Fort Edward, while Levis encamped a
little further to the west. Montcalm landed his big guns at a little
inlet, still called Artillery Cove, about half a mile in a direct
line from the fort, and, after a summons to surrender on August 3,
began his trenches on the night of the fourth.
[Sidenote: _The fort surrenders._]
A far better defence was made than at Oswego. For four days the
garrison held out bravely, hoping for relief from the south. Their
guns were heard at Fort Edward; the urgency of their case was known;
but Webb, though some 2,000 militia had reached him, felt himself too
weak to make any advance. At length the situation became hopeless,
and on August 9 Monro surrendered. The terms of capitulation were
that the garrison should be escorted to Fort Edward, on condition
that they would not serve again for eighteen months, and that all
French prisoners taken in the war should be restored. The fort with
all that it contained was handed over to the French. The surrender
included the entrenched camp as well as the fort: the fort was
evacuated; and the whole garrison, with the exception of a few sick
and wounded, were gathered into the camp, retaining their arms, but
without ammunition.
{266} [Sidenote: _The massacre of Fort William Henry._]
Before night fell, the French Indians plundered the fort, and
butchered some of the sick. Early on the following morning, the
English troops began their march to Fort Edward; the Indians broke in
among them, seizing and stripping men, women, and children; and, at a
signal given by the Christian Abenakis from the Penobscot--Indians
who had known the teaching and training of men like Le Loutre--a
wholesale massacre began. Montcalm and his officers, however, used
every effort to protect the English, with the result that not more
than fifty were murdered, and 600 carried off, 400 of whom were
promptly recovered; and the broken band of fugitives in due course
found their way to Fort Edward.
[Sidenote: _Blame attaching to the French._]
This was the episode well known in colonial annals as the massacre of
Fort William Henry, told of in history and in romance.[15] The
horrors have no doubt been exaggerated, if, as appears to have been
the case, the death-roll did not exceed the number given above. Still
it was a horrible incident, and brought righteous discredit on the
French cause. Though Montcalm, when the mischief had begun, acted
with promptitude and vigour, it was well within his power to have
prevented the possibility of any such outrage. His Indians numbered
but 1,800, and he had 3,000 regular troops from France to hold them
in check. The Canadian militia, too, numbered 2,500 men; but probably
the seed of the evil lay in the disinclination of the colonial French
and their officers to interfere with their Indian allies. It had
become the tradition in Canada to live down to the Indians in matters
of war, to attach them and to hold them by humouring their savage
instincts; and it may well be believed that, if Canadian soldiers or
Canadian officers were concerned in seeing the terms of capitulation
carried out, they would prefer injuring the English to offending the
Indians. Three years later, in the advance on Montreal, we read of
{267} Sir William Johnson, under Amherst's orders, strongly
repressing the Iroquois' lust for French blood, and Amherst reporting
that not a peasant woman or child had been hurt, nor a house burnt,
since he entered the enemy's country. Better control of the savages
in their employ gave the English fewer friends among them, but in the
end it was one, and not the least, of the causes of their gaining the
supremacy in North America.
[Footnote 15: e.g. in Fennimore Cooper's _Last of the Mohicans_.]
[Sidenote: _Webb's conduct._]
It was disputed at the time, and is still matter of dispute, whether
Webb from Fort Edward might have saved the fort by the lake. The view
generally taken of his conduct was probably coloured by the memory of
his frightened retreat down the Mohawk river in the preceding year.
He could muster but 4,000 men all told; and, had he advanced and met
with disaster, no force would have been left to keep Montcalm from
marching on Albany, and possibly on New York itself. He risked
nothing, and possibly he was wise; but the catastrophe which happened
within his reach was in part, rightly or wrongly, debited to his
account, and the feeling deepened in England and in America that on
the English side leaders of men were sadly wanting.
[Sidenote: _The French raid the German Flats._]
One more success was scored by the French before the winter came on.
In October, Vaudreuil sent out from Montreal a raiding party of the
old type, consisting of about 300 Canadians and Indians under an
officer named Beletre. They went up the St. Lawrence into Lake
Ontario, landed on its southern shore, at some distance east of the
ruins of Oswego, crossed to the portage between the Mohawk and Wood
Creek, where the forts were no longer standing, and moved down the
Mohawk to raid the outlying settlements. Between the head waters of
the Mohawk and Schenectady, on the northern side of the river, was
the district known as the German Flats, where German colonists had
been planted about the year 1720. They came from the Palatinate, and
their group of houses bore the name of the settlement or village
{268} of the Palatines. In the second week of November, Beletre's
party broke in among them, burnt houses and barns, killed cattle,
horses, and some of the inhabitants, carried off over a hundred
prisoners, and retired in safety in face of a weak detachment from a
little English fort on the other side of the river, and of a stronger
body of troops whom Lord Howe brought up from Schenectady too late to
retrieve the disaster.
[Sidenote: _The French triumphant in North America._]
[Sidenote: _William Pitt._]
This was the end of the campaign, the high-water mark of French
successes in North America. At the end of 1757, the English had been
beaten at all points. They had failed to attack Louisbourg, they had
been driven from Lake George, the country of the Five Nation Indians
was nearly cut off, all hold on the rivers and the lakes was gone.
The outlook was dark in the extreme: it is always darkest before
dawn, and as a matter of fact dawn had already begun; for William
Pitt, who had been dismissed from office in April, was recalled by
the unanimous voice of the people of England before the end of June,
and, leaving to the incompetent Duke of Newcastle the name of Prime
Minister, controlled, as Secretary of State and Leader of the House
of Commons, the soldiers, the sailors, the subsidies and the foreign
policy of his country.[16]
[Footnote 16: Lord Chesterfield in a letter to his son dated May 18,
1758 (1775 ed., vol. iv, p. 137, Letter 298), wrote as follows of the
Newcastle-Pitt combination: 'The Duke of Newcastle and Mr. Pitt jog
on like man and wife, that is, seldom agreeing, often quarrelling,
but by mutual interest upon the whole not parting.']
[Sidenote: _Want of a leader on the English side._]
The wars of England have usually run the same course. They have begun
with blunders and reverses, but ended in success. The English do not
love war, and are rarely prepared for it. They begin fighting in
half-hearted fashion, before the nation makes up its mind that the
cause is worth a real effort and serious expenditure of money and
life. There is groping about for a leader, for some one who will say
distinctly what is to be done, and will prove as good as {269} his
word. If such a man is found, the people will follow; they forgive a
man who makes mistakes provided, as the saying is, that he makes
something. Then the resources of the country are concentrated and
utilized, and under articulate and sympathetic leadership the cause
of the nation prospers. If England in the year 1757 needed some one
controlling will, much more was the want felt in her North American
colonies. The demoralization caused by feeble ministries in England
had its baleful effect in America; nerveless government at home
strengthened the centrifugal tendencies of the colonies. Nothing but
common danger gave them any common life; and, though Pitt's advent to
power partially corrected the evil, Pitt was in England not in
America. To the end the uniting force came from without rather than
from within: the colonies followed the lead of Pitt and his generals,
but to the mother country not to the colonies was due the conquest of
Canada.
[Sidenote: _Distress in Canada._]
That Canada must be conquered, when England made her effort, was
inevitable. The French appeared triumphant; they had moved forward;
they had struck heavy blows; but behind the fighting line, even on
the surface, they were in straits. The garrison of Fort William Henry
had not been taken prisoners to Canada, because Canada could hardly
feed them;[17] and the winter of 1757, which followed the brilliant
campaign, was a winter of distress. Bread was wanting; horses were
eaten for meat; the troops were mutinous and only kept in order by
Levis' firmness and tact; the finances were in a ruinous condition;
there were winter gaieties and winter gambling, but Canada before its
conquest was in much the same condition as the mother country on the
brink of the Revolution.
[Footnote 17: Similarly, after the fall of Oswego, Horace Walpole
wrote, 'The massacre at Oswego happily proves a romance; part of the
two regiments that were made prisoners there are actually arrived at
Plymouth, the provisions at Quebec being too scanty to admit
additional numbers.' _Letters of Horace Walpole_, vol. iii, pp. 44,
45 (Letter of Nov. 13, 1756).]
{270} [Sidenote: _French plan of campaign for 1758._]
Both sides laid their plans for the coming year. The French scheme
included a movement by Levis from Fort Frontenac on Lake Ontario,
across to the site of Oswego, and thence, after securing the alliance
or the allegiance of the Iroquois, down the Mohawk valley, so as to
co-operate with the main army under Montcalm advancing from
Ticonderoga. The success of this project of Vaudreuil's, which was
never carried into effect, presupposed that the bulk of the English
troops would again be drawn off to attack Louisbourg, for it was
known or suspected in Canada that another attempt on Louisbourg was
in contemplation.
[Sidenote: _Pitt's plan._]
Pitt's plan of campaign was not new or original. The experience of
long years had painfully taught what were the points where Canada
must be attacked, if any permanent success was to be achieved. First
and foremost was Louisbourg. With Louisbourg in English hands, the
St. Lawrence could be blocked and Canada starved out. But the English
minister had no intention of denuding the inland frontier of the
British colonies, in order to take the French fortress in Cape
Breton. On the contrary, he laid his plans also for an advance on
Ticonderoga, and for the recovery of Fort Duquesne. He conceived no
new scheme, but into old schemes he put new life. The novelties which
he introduced were abundance of English troops, prompt instead of
dilatory movement, and above all capable leaders--inspired with his
own spirit, and in their turn inspiring the men whom they led. There
was to be an end of the 'delays, misfortunes, disappointments and
disgraces,'[18] which had so long been associated in the English mind
with war in America.
[Footnote 18: _Annual Register_ for 1758, p. 70.]
[Sidenote: _Strong English forces sent to America._]
On December 30, 1757, he addressed a circular letter to the Governors
of the North American colonies, asking for levies of 20,000 men. On
February 19, 1758, a strong fleet set sail for Halifax, to be
directed against Louisbourg, while other English squadrons blocked
the French ports {271} in Europe, and kept the enemy's ships from
crossing the Atlantic. It was a rare thing for an English expedition
for America to start betimes, instead of waiting for orders and
counter orders, until the season for active work was far spent. It
was unheard of, too, for so many English troops to be sent into the
New World. Twelve thousand soldiers, nearly all regulars, took part
in the Louisbourg expedition. Abercromby on Lake George commanded,
when summer came on, 15,000 men, of whom fully 6,000 were regulars.
Six thousand men took part in the march against Fort Duquesne, of
whom 1,600 were Imperial troops. Thus in the year 1758 England had
more than 20,000 regular soldiers employed in North America, enough
force, as Lord Chesterfield thought, when coupled with the colonial
troops, 'to eat up the French alive in Canada, Quebec, and
Louisbourg, if we have but skill and spirit enough to exert it
properly.'[19]
[Footnote 19: Lord Chesterfield to his son, Feb. 8, 1758 (1775 ed.,
vol. iv, p. 124; Letter 293).]
[Sidenote: _The English commanders._]
The skill and the spirit were forthcoming also, though not at once in
full measure, and not at all points. Loudoun was recalled. Abercromby
was left to take his place, but with him was placed as brigadier a
young officer of rare promise, Lord Howe. Jeffrey Amherst was picked
out to command the troops against Louisbourg, and of his three
brigadiers one was Lawrence, the Governor of Nova Scotia, and another
was Wolfe. In the further west, the command of the expedition against
Fort Duquesne was given to a resolute Scotch soldier, Forbes.
Gradually in his choice of officers Pitt sifted the chaff from the
grain, young men were brought to the front, merit was preferred to
seniority. Amherst was forty-one years of age, Wolfe was thirty-one,
Howe was thirty-three. Lord Chesterfield wrote of them in February,
1758, 'Abercromby is to be the sedentary and not the acting
commander. Amherst, Lord Howe, and Wolfe are to be the acting and I
hope the active officers. I wish they may agree.'[20]
[Footnote 20: Ibid.]
{272} [Sidenote: _The fleet sails for Louisbourg. Admiral Boscawen._]
The fleet which sailed for North America, carrying the hopes and the
fortunes of England, was commanded by Admiral Boscawen. He had seen
service in the East and West, off Cartagena and Pondicherry; and it
was he who in the year 1755, before France and England were at war,
had, as has already been told, attacked and taken the two French
ships, the _Alcide_ and the _Lys_, off the North American coast.[21]
He had Churchill blood in his veins, for Arabella Churchill was his
grandmother; and he was known as 'Old Dreadnought,' after a ship of
that name which he had commanded. He was a determined, hard-fighting
sailor, with little respect for neutrality in time or place if there
was a chance of striking a blow for England.
[Footnote 21: See above, p. 234.]
[Sidenote: _Amherst._]
His colleague, General Amherst, like Wolfe, was born in Kent. Joining
the Guards in 1731, he made his name on the Continent. He was present
at Dettingen and Fontenoy, and served on the Duke of Cumberland's
staff. Unlike most of the commanders of the time, he lived to be an
old man, and was Commander-in-Chief of the English army before he
died; but his good work was all done in America in the years 1758-60,
while he was still in early middle age, and when he conquered Canada.
He was a good soldier of the cautious type, not wanting either in
vigour or determination, but making sure of each point before he
moved further. What Carlyle says of the Parliamentary general, Lord
Essex, might be said of Amherst--he was a 'somewhat elephantine' man.
[Sidenote: _The first and second siege of Louisbourg compared._]
The ships took time to go over the sea, and did not reach Halifax
until well into May. On the second of June they sailed into Gabarus
Bay and came in sight of Louisbourg. The second siege and capture of
Louisbourg was very similar to the first, except that in 1758 much
larger forces were engaged on either side, and more military skill
was shown than in 1745. The earlier siege was, on the English side,
{273} as far as the land forces were concerned, purely a colonial
venture. On the later occasion very few colonial troops were
employed. The French had in garrison 3,000 regulars, and the
residents of the town who bore arms made up nearly another thousand,
the besiegers on land outnumbering the besieged in the proportion of
three to one. In harbour there were twelve French ships of war, with
a complement of 3,000 men--no match for Boscawen's overpowering
fleet. The fortifications of Louisbourg were strong, but not so
strong as they were reputed. It was stated that prior to 1755 nothing
had been done to repair the damage done in the first siege.[22] The
French had a good commander, the Chevalier de Drucour; and his wife,
according to the accounts of the time, was as brave as himself. In
1758 the English landed in the same place as in 1745; the siege took
almost exactly the same number of days; the Grand Battery on the
north shore of the harbour was, as before, evacuated by the French;
once more the English mounted guns on Lighthouse Point, from which
the French had retired, and battered to pieces the Island Battery,
which guarded the mouth of the harbour. Again, as in 1745, a small
force of Canadians and Indians tried to make a diversion from inland,
and again the attempt was quite ineffectual. The seas and the skies,
however, in spite of the time of year, were far less kind to the
besiegers on the later than on the earlier occasion.
[Footnote 22: In the _Annual Register_ for 1758, pp. 179-81, is given
a translation of a letter from Drucour, the French Governor of
Louisbourg, after he had been taken prisoner to England. It is dated
Andover, Oct. 1, 1758. Referring to the defences of Louisbourg, he
speaks of 'a fortification (if it could deserve the name) crumbling
down in every flank, face, and courtine, except the right flank of
the King's bastion, which was remounted the first year after my
arrival.']
[Sidenote: _Landing effected by Wolfe._]
The real difficulty was the initial difficulty, that of landing on an
awkward coast in bad weather, with an enemy lining the shore. The
French had made full preparations, and had {274} their men, guns, and
batteries ready along the fringe of Gabarus Bay; while, for nearly a
week, surf and fog made any attempt at landing impracticable. At
length, at daybreak on June 8, three strong parties under the three
brigadiers put out in boats from the transports, and rowed for the
shore at three separate points. The main effort was intended to be
made on the extreme left, at Freshwater Cove, by the party commanded
by Wolfe. As the boats neared the land, the French opened a heavy
fire, and Wolfe signalled a retreat; but, by happy accident or by
design, one or more of the boats misinterpreted the sign, and made
good their landing a little to the right of the cove, where the cliff
gave some slight shelter from the enemy's fire. The rest then
followed in support, and, with no slight loss of men and boats, the
English carried the French position, and drove their opponents back
within range of the Louisbourg guns.
[Sidenote: _The siege pressed._]
The disembarkation now went on under difficulties. On June 18 the
siege guns were landed, and gradually the English formed their
encampment, drew their lines, and opened their trenches, beleaguering
the fortress on the western side, where the peninsula on which the
town of Louisbourg stood joined the mainland. The lines started from
the sea at Flat Point cove, and extended in a semicircle for about
two miles inland. Meanwhile, on the twelfth of June, Wolfe had
marched round the harbour, and subsequently mounted his guns at
Lighthouse Point on the opposite side. By the twenty-fifth he had
silenced the Island Battery, and thus commanded the mouth of the
harbour, where the French in consequence sunk several of their ships
to bar any attack by Boscawen.
The town was now fully invested by land and sea; such French ships as
still remained were cooped up in the harbour, and the fall of
Louisbourg was merely a question of time. But the operations took
time. The besiegers had the same difficulty as had been experienced
in 1745, in advancing {275} across a belt of swamp. Day and night
passed in incessant work, under fire of the enemy's guns, and
interrupted by sorties of the garrison; but slowly and surely the
trenches were drawn nearer to the town. On the twenty-first of July
three out of the five remaining French ships took fire from a shell
and were destroyed, and on the twenty-fifth the two last were
successfully attacked by a detachment of English sailors, who rowed
into the harbour at night time, and among whom was James Cook, not
yet known to fame. One ship was grounded and burnt, the other was
towed off by its captors.
[Sidenote: _The town surrenders._]
[Sidenote: _Louisbourg dismantled._]
This bold feat brought matters to a climax. The land defences were in
ruins, the garrison was worn out, there was nothing to stop a general
assault by land and sea. On the twenty-sixth the French Governor
asked for terms. Unconditional surrender was demanded and refused;
but before the message of refusal reached the English camp, it was
withdrawn, at the instance, it was said, of the Intendant or
Commissary-General, who represented the civilian element in the town.
The articles of capitulation were signed, between 5,000 and 6,000
French soldiers and sailors became prisoners of war, and on July 27
the English forces entered Louisbourg. Two years later, in 1760, all
the fortifications were demolished, and the town was practically
blotted out. No chance was left of again handing back to France a
fortress which had so long threatened English interests in America.
Halifax was henceforth to be unrivalled on the coast; and at the
present day the once famous harbour of Louisbourg is in the keeping
of Cape Breton fishermen.
[Sidenote: _Wolfe's services at Louisbourg._]
[Sidenote: _Time lost by the English._]
The English Parliament voted thanks to Amherst and Boscawen; but to
Wolfe, who as a subordinate was not mentioned, the thanks of the
nation were mainly due. He 'shone extremely at Louisbourg,'[23] wrote
Horace Walpole, and Walpole owns that he did not love him. Had he
been {276} in supreme command, the siege would probably have ended
earlier, and greater results would have been achieved. His own view,
at any rate, as expressed in a private letter written after his
return to England, was that both during the siege and after it
valuable time was lost.[24] It is certain that when the expedition
was sent out, more was hoped from it than the capture of Louisbourg
alone. On May 18, 1758, Lord Chesterfield wrote: 'By this time I
believe the French are entertained in America with the loss of Cape
Breton, and, in consequence of that, Quebec; for we have a force
there equal to both those undertakings, and officers there now that
will execute what Lord L---- (Loudoun) never would so much as
attempt.'[25] The French on their side, as we learn from a subsequent
letter from Drucour, were aware of the importance of prolonging the
siege, in order to prevent Abercromby being reinforced, or an attack
being made on Quebec;[26] and all honour is due to the memory of the
brave {277} French commander for the determined stand which he made.
Before the siege ended, Abercromby had been beaten back from
Ticonderoga, and breathing time had been given to the defenders of
Canada.
[Footnote 23: _Letters of Horace Walpole_, vol. iii, p. 207 (Letter
of Feb. 9, 1759).]
[Footnote 24: 'We lost time at the siege, still more after the siege,
and blundered from the beginning to the end of the campaign' (from a
letter written Dec. 1, 1758; Wright's _Life of Wolfe_, p. 465).
Similarly, Wolfe wrote from the camp before Louisbourg, on July 27,
1758, the day after the capitulation: 'If this force had been
properly managed, there was an end of the French colony in North
America in one campaign' (Wright, p. 449).]
[Footnote 25: Lord Chesterfield to his son, May 18, 1758 (1775 ed.,
vol. iv, p. 136; Letter 298).]
[Footnote 26: See the letter already quoted above, p. 273, note.
Drucour is explaining why he would not allow the French ships to
leave Louisbourg harbour, 'It was our business to defer the
determination of our fate as long as possible. My accounts from
Canada assured me that M. de Montcalm was marching to the enemy and
would come up with them between July 15 and 20. I said then "if the
ships leave the harbour on June 10 (as they desire), the English
admiral will enter it immediately after," and we should have been
lost before the end of the month, which would have put it in the
power of the generals of the besiegers to have employed the months of
July and August in sending succours to the troops marching against
Canada, and to have entered the river St. Lawrence at the proper
season.' In a 'Scheme for taking Louisbourg,' which was submitted to
Pitt by Brigadier Waldo (who had been on Pepperell's expedition) on
Nov. 7, 1757, fourteen days were given to Louisbourg to hold out when
once duly invested, and an attack on Quebec was contemplated as the
immediate result of its fall (Brymer's _Report on Canadian Archives_,
1886, pp. 151-3).]
[Sidenote: _Wolfe returns to England._]
Yet it was but the end of July when Louisbourg fell, and, if Wolfe
had had his way, the ships would have gone on to Quebec. Even Amherst
might have gone on but for the bad news from Abercromby, which
confirmed his habitual caution, and retarded instead of quickening
his movements. One officer, Lord Rollo, was sent to reduce the Ile
St. Jean; another, Monckton, cleared the valley of the St. John river
on the mainland. Wolfe was dispatched to Gaspe Bay and the mouth of
the St. Lawrence, to harry the settlers and the fishermen; and when
he had accomplished his task, which was little to his taste, he
sailed for home angry and disappointed that more had not been done,
and that his advice had not been taken. Amherst, in the meantime, had
gone with six regiments to reinforce Abercromby at Lake George.
[Sidenote: _The Maritime Provinces finally secured to England._]
The capture of Louisbourg secured to England all that should have
been hers when the Treaty of Utrecht was being negotiated. The
English were now in full occupation of the Maritime Provinces of
Canada. More than half of the comparatively small French population
of Cape Breton was, at the people's own wish, shipped to France; and
of the residents in the Ile St. Jean, mainly Acadian refugees, a
large proportion was similarly transported, while others found their
way to Canada. Cape Breton was attached to Nova Scotia, to be
subsequently separated from that province and again rejoined. The Ile
St. Jean was placed under the same Government, and before the century
ended, in the year 1799, its name was changed to Prince Edward Island
in honour of the Duke of Kent, the father of Her late Majesty Queen
Victoria.
[Sidenote: _Abercromby's advance._]
By Loudoun's recall, Abercromby was left in chief command of the
British forces in North America. He had with him, {278} as one of his
brigadiers, Lord Howe, who commanded the 55th Regiment. In May, 1758,
he was at Albany preparing for the summer's work. In June he moved up
to the end of Lake George, where his force, amounting to 15,000 men,
gathered to drive the French back on Canada. The colonies had
answered well to Pitt's appeal, and contributed 9,000 men to the
total. On July 5 the army embarked in boats; on the sixth they landed
without opposition at the northern end of the lake, on the western
side of the water, and began their march on Ticonderoga through the
forest, having on their right the semicircular stream which connects
Lake George and Lake Champlain.
[Sidenote: _Lord Howe killed._]
The right centre column was led by Lord Howe, and, as the soldiers
groped their way through the dense thickets, they stumbled across a
party of French, who had been sent out to reconnoitre, had also lost
their way, and found their retreat cut off. A confused skirmish
followed, with more numerical loss to the French than to the English;
but Howe was shot dead, and his life by common consent meant the life
of the expedition. All night the army remained under arms in the
forest, and on the morning of the seventh marched back to the
landing-place.
[Sidenote: _The approach to the French position at Ticonderoga._]
It was a matter of very few miles to the French position. The river,
which carries the waters of Lake George into Lake Champlain, and
enters the latter lake at Ticonderoga, has a course of about eight
miles; but they are eight miles of a semicircle, and the distance in
a straight line from Lake George to Ticonderoga is much shorter. The
English had landed at the head of the river; about two miles lower
down rapids begin, and here was the portage leading from the head to
the bottom of the rapids, and forming the chord of an arc, the arc
being between three and four miles of broken water. The lower bridge
of the portage, where there was a sawmill, was well within two miles
of the French Fort Carillon. At the head of the rapids the French had
held an advanced {279} post, which was withdrawn on the approach of
Abercromby's army, and, when the main force of that army landed to
wander in the forest, a detachment was sent on down the river and
occupied the deserted position. On the seventh, while the main body
again was resting at the landing-place, Bradstreet was sent forward
to the post at the bottom of the rapids, which was also found to be
deserted, and here on the evening of the seventh the main body
encamped, the bridge being repaired, and the encampment being on the
same side of the river as Ticonderoga.
[Sidenote: _Montcalm's dispositions._]
Montcalm, who was joined by Levis on the night of the seventh, had
with him rather under 4,000 men, the majority of whom were regulars.
Outnumbered as he was by three or four to one, his position was
perilous in the extreme, for his retreat could easily be cut off. He
determined, however, to make a stand, and on rising ground on the
inland--the western--side of the little peninsula on which Fort
Carillon or Ticonderoga[27] was built, at a distance of rather over
half a mile from the fort, he formed at the eleventh hour
entrenchments of timber, fringed on the outside by a network of
'felled trees, the branches pointed outwards,'[28] and carefully laid
so as to entangle and annoy the enemy.
[Footnote 27: Ticonderoga, according to Rogers' _Journals_ (p. 22,
note), is an 'Indian name signifying the meeting or confluence of
three waters.']
[Footnote 28: Abercromby's dispatch to Pitt, July 12, 1758.]
[Sidenote: _The English repulse at Ticonderoga._]
[Sidenote: _Retreat of Abercromby._]
Against this position Abercromby ordered an attack on July 8. He had
been told by French prisoners that Montcalm's force was stronger than
it actually was, and that further reinforcements were shortly to
arrive. In consequence he hurried his movements, and without bringing
up any guns, which apparently he had left behind him, he determined,
thinking that the entrenchment had not been completed, to trust
entirely to the bayonet. The result was the inevitable result of a
frontal attack, delivered in the open, against an enemy fighting
under cover and undisturbed by {280} artillery fire. For four hours
charge after charge was made, and at the close of the day the English
had achieved nothing and had lost nearly 2,000 men. The casualties in
the Black Watch alone amounted to 500. Abercromby had still 13,000
men left, but he had no stomach for further fighting. On the
following day he ordered a retreat, and the whole force went back to
the southern end of Lake George.
[Sidenote: _Triumph of Montcalm._]
At Oswego and at Fort William Henry, Montcalm had shown how to
concentrate superior forces at a given point rapidly and effectively,
and how to use them when concentrated to the best possible advantage.
At Ticonderoga, he showed how to make the most of very inferior
numbers, by utilizing every natural and artificial advantage, and
every mistake of the foe. It was a great triumph for him; it produced
joy in Canada, and discouragement in England; but, as Mr. Parkman
points out, it is difficult to see how he could possibly have
succeeded, if Abercromby had taken any other course than the one
which he actually took. Wolfe summed up the matter aright, when, in
the following December, he referred in a private letter to 'the
famous post at Ticonderoga, where Mr. Abercromby by a little
soldiership and a little patience might, I think, have put an end to
the war in America.'[29]
[Footnote 29: Wright's _Life of Wolfe_, p. 469.]
[Sidenote: _Tribute to Lord Howe._]
Almost as disastrous as the repulse itself was the death of Lord
Howe, which preceded it. The eldest of three distinguished brothers,
the second of whom was the famous admiral, and the third the not so
successful general in the American War of Independence, he was not
thirty-four years old when he was killed, and had only landed in
America in the previous year. Yet he had lived long enough for all
men to speak well of him, and all to love him. In his dispatch giving
an account of the operations, Abercromby wrote: 'He was very
deservedly universally beloved and respected through {281} the whole
army.'[30] Pitt testified in more stilted phrases that 'he was by the
universal voice of army and people a character of ancient times, a
complete model of military virtue in all its branches.'[31] Wolfe
loved him dearly, and his letters show how highly he valued 'his
abilities, spirit and address.'[32] He writes of him as 'the very
best officer in the King's service,' as 'the noblest Englishman that
has appeared in my time,' as 'truly a great man.' 'This country has
produced nothing like him in my time; his death cannot be enough
lamented.' Similar testimony is given by Robert Rogers, the Ranger,
who was with the force when he fell: 'This noble and brave officer
being universally beloved by both officers and soldiers of the army,
his fall was not only most sincerely lamented, but seemed to produce
an almost universal consternation and langour through the whole.'[33]
But the most striking honour to his name and memory was paid by the
province of Massachusetts. In 1759 the Court of Assembly ordered a
monument to him to be placed in Westminster Abbey, which still
records 'the sense they had of his services and military virtues, and
of the affection their officers and soldiers bore to his command.'
Burke, in the _Annual Register_ for 1758,[34] gives the clue to the
affection with which the colonists regarded Lord Howe: 'From the
moment he landed in America he had wisely conformed, and made his
regiment conform, to the kind of service which the country required.'
Howe's life, he adds, was 'long enough for his honour, but not for
his country.' In truth, had he lived, and had Wolfe lived, the
history of the English in America might have been widely different.
Two men who in youth had so inspired their time, and so impressed
American colonists with the sense of leadership, might well {282}
have averted the War of Independence, or by military genius have
given it another issue.
[Footnote 30: Abercromby to Pitt, July 12, 1758.]
[Footnote 31: _Grenville Correspondence_, vol. i, p. 262.]
[Footnote 32: Wright, pp. 426, 448, 450, 465, 469.]
[Footnote 33: Rogers' _Journals_, p. 114, note.]
[Footnote 34 pp. 72, 73.]
[Sidenote: _Bradstreet takes Fort Frontenac._]
From July to October Abercromby remained at one end of Lake George,
and Montcalm, who had received heavy reinforcements, at the other.
Parties of Rangers and Canadians attacked each other on the Wood
Creek line, but the main bodies were inactive. The presence of the
English force had the advantage, however, of holding in their front
so large a number of the enemy that the latter were unable adequately
to protect other positions, and in consequence they lost Fort
Frontenac. That competent officer, Colonel Bradstreet, had already
proposed an expedition against this point, and when he renewed his
proposal after the battle of Ticonderoga, Abercromby gave his
consent, and spared him 3,600 men for the purpose, noting that 'he is
not only very active, but has great knowledge of the country.'[35]
[Footnote 35: Abercromby to Pitt, July 12, 1758.]
In August he moved up the Mohawk, took his troops past the Carrying
Place from that river, where, on the site of Fort Williams, General
Stanwix was busy building a new fort, reached the ruins of Oswego,
put out across the lake, and on August 25 landed close to Fort
Frontenac. By the twenty-seventh he had the fort at the mercy of his
guns, and the small garrison of a little over a hundred men
surrendered. The prisoners were sent on parole to Montreal, to be
exchanged for a corresponding number of English; the fort was burnt,
and guns, ships, and supplies were carried off or destroyed. It was
an excellent piece of work for the English side; 'a great stroke,' as
Wolfe wrote on hearing of it.[36] Great material damage was caused to
the French by, temporarily at any rate, cutting their communications
with the west, and intercepting supplies which had been intended for
{283} the forts on the Ohio and on the upper lakes. The moral effect
was greater still. The time-honoured French fort on Lake Ontario, the
earliest French post on the lakes, had been with little effort taken
and blotted out, reminding the waverers among the Five Nation Indians
that, in spite of reverses, the English arm was strong and
far-reaching, and the English alliance was for them a valuable asset.
[Footnote 36: Letter of Sept. 30, 1758 (Wright's _Life of Wolfe_, p.
457). In another letter (p. 465) he writes: 'Bradstreet's coup was
masterly. He is a very extraordinary man.']
[Sidenote: _Amherst becomes Commander-in-Chief in North America._]
Early in October Amherst came up to Abercromby's camp, and the two
generals decided not to make a further attempt on Ticonderoga until
the following year. 'General Amherst,' wrote Wolfe, 'thought the
entrenchments so improved as to require more ceremony in the second
attack than the season would allow of.'[37] The troops were
accordingly sent into winter quarters, and in November Abercromby
received a letter of recall. Amherst became in his stead
Commander-in-Chief of the British forces in North America.
[Footnote 37: Wright's _Life of Wolfe_, p. 469.]
[Sidenote: _The expedition against Fort Duquesne._]
By the end of October campaigning was over for the year in the east,
and in the centre; but it was not so in the west, where
Brigadier-General Forbes was marching on Fort Duquesne.
[Sidenote: _General Forbes._]
Forbes was an older man than the other English commanders, who
achieved success in the war; and he seems to have been over sixty in
the year 1758.[38] He proved himself to be a man of great fortitude
and resolution, tactful in dealing with colonists or Indians, a
brave, sure, and careful soldier. His task was to give security to
the harried frontiers of Virginia and Pennsylvania, and to clear the
French out of the Ohio valley. With this end he had to collect and
equip a force, the large majority of whom were provincials; to get
money and men out of two colonies, which were very jealous alike of
the mother country and of {284} each other; to make choice between
two conflicting routes, and to detach the Ohio Indians as far as
possible from the French cause.
[Footnote 38: For his age see Kingsford's _History of Canada_, vol.
iv, p. 192, note. He has been generally put down as a younger man.]
[Sidenote: _Reasons why the expedition made slow progress._]
A long time was taken over the preliminaries, and over the expedition
itself, the object of which was not attained until the end of
November; but the delays were not only the consequence of want of
transport, and of Forbes' own ill health, they were also the result
of design. The longer the English kept their enemies waiting to be
attacked, the fewer those enemies were likely to be; for the Indians,
and the militia of New France, did not love to keep the field for any
long time together. Moreover, as Forbes wrote to Pitt,[39] October
and November were the best hunting months for the Indians, which they
were therefore not willing to devote to war; while, on the other
hand, they were months when the leaves fell and left the backwoods
easier to reconnoitre and less easy for ambuscade.
[Footnote 39: Letter of Forbes to Pitt, Oct. 20, 1758.]
[Sidenote: _Preparation for advance._]
[Sidenote: _A new route taken._]
Forbes came to Philadelphia in April; and through the early summer
months his force gradually assembled, and moved to the front. When
the numbers were complete, they amounted to over 6,000 men, in the
main southern colonists, but including a strong regiment of
Highlanders. The second in command was a good man for the work,
Bouquet, one of the Swiss officers of the Royal Americans. The
advanced base was formed at Raestown, now Bedford, in Pennsylvania,
distant about ninety miles from Fort Duquesne. It was some thirty
miles north-east of Fort Cumberland, from which Braddock had started
on his disastrous march; and a keen controversy arose as to whether
the old route should be followed, or a new road taken. Opening a road
to the Ohio meant, when the fighting was over, giving to the State,
within or near whose boundaries the road ran, control of the trade.
Virginia accordingly pressed for the old and more southerly route,
Pennsylvania for the northern line. In spite {285} of Washington's
arguments, the latter was chosen; it was shorter and more direct, and
on the whole presented fewer natural difficulties than the other. The
first forty miles led due west over the main Alleghany range and the
Laurel hills, to a place called Loyalhannon; and by the end of August
Bouquet had a road cut to this place, a depot established, and
preparations made for carrying on the track through fifty miles of
less difficult country to Fort Duquesne.
[Sidenote: _An advance attack on Fort Duquesne repulsed with loss._]
[Sidenote: _The Ohio Indians desert the French._]
Every care was being taken by the commanders; but notwithstanding,
before the end came, there was in a smaller measure a repetition of
Braddock's reverse. In the middle of September, Major Grant, an
officer of the Highlanders, obtained permission from Bouquet to march
out from Loyalhannon with between 700 and 800 men,[40] for the
purpose of reconnoitring Fort Duquesne. He arrived at night time
close to the fort; intended a night attack, which miscarried;
repeated the attempt to attack on the following day, and having
broken up his force into small parties, was badly beaten and himself
taken prisoner. The total British casualties numbered about 280, the
survivors finding their way back to Bouquet at Loyalhannon. 'This was
a most terrible check to my small army,' wrote Forbes,[41] but the
reverse was more than counterbalanced shortly afterwards by a success
of a different kind. From the first Forbes had spared no pains to
secure the friendship of the Indians; and in October, in large
measure through the good offices of a Moravian missionary, a general
council was held, at which the tribes of the Ohio made their peace
with the English, deserting the French cause as rats leave a sinking
ship.
[Footnote 40: Forbes' own dispatch mentions 900.]
[Footnote 41: Forbes to Pitt, Raestown, Oct. 20, 1758.]
[Sidenote: _The final advance on Fort Duquesne._]
[Sidenote: _The fort abandoned by the French and occupied by the
English._]
It was November before Forbes joined Bouquet at Loyalhannon. He was
broken in body, but resolute to carry {286} through the expedition,
in spite of the lateness of the season. The road had been cut to
within easy reach of the French fort; and, on November 18, 2,500 men,
picked out of the force, advanced in three columns, carrying with
them only what was absolutely necessary in the way of supplies, and
their brave commander on a litter. At a day's march from Fort
Duquesne, it was reported that the fort had been evacuated and burnt;
and when the English reached it on the twenty-fifth, they found that
the news was true. Weakened by the desertion of the Indians, and by
having disbanded some of the militia, whom he could not feed, in want
of the provisions which Bradstreet had intercepted at Fort Frontenac,
the French commander, De Ligneris, saw no alternative but to blow up
the fort, and retreat more than a hundred miles up the Alleghany to
the junction of that river with French Creek, leaving the valley of
the Ohio in English hands, as events proved, for ever.
[Sidenote: _Foundation of Pittsburg._]
[Sidenote: _Death of Forbes._]
For the moment Forbes' chief care was to build at once on the site of
Fort Duquesne a temporary stockade, which could be held by a small
garrison through the winter. In the following year a permanent fort
was built. The name of Fort Duquesne was exchanged for that of Fort
Pitt, and the city of Pittsburg still recalls the statesman who
recovered for the British colonies the rich western lands which are
watered by the Ohio. 'I have used the freedom of giving your name to
Fort Duquesne,' wrote Forbes to Pitt two days after he had reached
the fort, 'as I hope it was in some measure the being actuated by
your spirit that now makes us masters of the place.'[42] The honest
soldier, whom the English minister sent to do the work, and who did
it when the colonies concerned should have done it for themselves,
did not long survive his success. Patient and suffering, John Forbes
was carried back to Philadelphia, where he {287} died in the
following March, having shown a steadfast, single-minded devotion to
duty, rare even in the rich record of British soldiers.
[Footnote 42: Forbes to Pitt, Pittsburg, Nov. 27, 1758.]
[Sidenote: _Results of the campaign of 1758._]
[Sidenote: _Canada receives little help from France._]
With the English occupation of Fort Duquesne, the campaigning of 1758
in North America came to an end. It been a long season, and for
England distinctly a successful though also to a certain extent a
disappointing one. 'I do not reckon that we have been fortunate this
year in America,' wrote Wolfe on December 1; 'our force was so
superior to the enemy's that we might hope for greater success.'[43]
He wrote in ignorance that Fort Duquesne had been taken, but,
notwithstanding, his view of the situation was the true one. At
Louisbourg, Fort Frontenac, Fort Duquesne, there had been great and
substantial successes. At Ticonderoga there had been a bad check; but
the French had made nothing of it afterwards. They were now on the
defensive and playing a losing game. Yet that more might and should
have been done by the English commanders with their great superiority
of numbers cannot be doubted. Had Wolfe been in Amherst's place, and
Lord Howe in Abercromby's, the year 1758 might well have been the
last year of French rule in North America. But the end was only
postponed for a short time, the resources of Canada in men and in
supplies were becoming insufficient to sustain the war: the country
was practically in a state of blockade; and Bougainville, who was
sent at the beginning of winter to France to plead the cause of
Canada, met with little success. A very few soldiers, some supplies,
and honours for the generals, were the result of his mission. France
was engrossed in the war in Europe, and not as many hundreds were
sent to North America as England sent thousands. Vaudreuil, in the
meantime, was intriguing against Montcalm, whose genius and
determination had prolonged the unequal {288} fight, and on whom,
with Levis and Bourlamaque, lay the heavy burden of defending a
ruined State, and checking, at this point and at that, the flowing
tide of English invasion.
[Footnote 43: Wright, p. 464.]
NOTE.--For the above see, among modern books,
KINGSFORD'S _History of Canada_, vols. iii and iv;
PARKMAN'S _Montcalm and Wolfe_; and
WRIGHT'S _Life of Wolfe_.
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