[Sidenote: 1759.]
The city of Quebec when the British entered into possession
was little better than a shapeless mass of ruins, having been
reduced to that state by the guns of the fleet. The population
was thoroughly demoralised, and given over to theft and pillage;
liquor was abundant and the British soldier was thirsty; in fact it
needed all Murray's firmness to restore any kind of order.[331] In
December severe weather began in earnest, and the effects of bad
quarters, bad food, insufficient clothing and insufficient fuel
speedily made themselves felt. The sentries were relieved every
hour, yet it was impossible to keep them free of frost-bite. The
Highlanders despite their natural hardihood suffered more than
their comrades, the kilt being but a sorry protection against a
Canadian winter; and they were only relieved by a supply of long
woollen hose knitted for them, perhaps as much for decency's as for
charity's sake, by the nuns of the city. Still the men remained
cheerful, for they were kept constantly at work cutting fuel and
dragging it in sledges to their quarters, an errand on which they
set forth always with muskets as well as with axes, from fear
of Indians and bushrangers. Nevertheless their sufferings were
great. Fifty men were frost-bitten on a single day while employed
on this duty; three days later sixty-five more were similarly
afflicted, and before Christmas there were over a hundred and
fifty cases.[332] This, however, would have been a small matter
but for the more deadly scourge that was added to it. The garrison
was victualled entirely with salt provisions; it was impossible to
procure fresh meat for the men; and scurvy grew and increased until
there was hardly a soldier in the ranks, even among those reckoned
fit for duty, who was wholly free from the disease.
[Sidenote: 1760.]
With such a plague in his midst Murray might well feel apprehensive
for the safety of Quebec against the enemy without the walls,
for ever since the British occupation of the city the French had
made no secret of their intention to recapture it. Murray had
established two fortified posts a few miles to westward of Quebec
at Sainte Foy and Old Lorette; while the French had established
themselves at St. Augustine, only two days' march from the gates,
from which position it was soon necessary to expel them. Petty
skirmishes such as this were frequent, but ended always with so
easy advantage to the British that the troops began to think
themselves invincible. Repeated intelligence, however, still
arrived of French designs against Quebec, vague enough at first,
but, as the winter wore on, gradually assuming more definite form.
Lévis, the ablest officer left to the French since the fall of
Montcalm, was in fact straining every nerve to organise and equip
a force of overwhelming strength for the purpose. He had full
information of the state of Murray's army and knew that he had but
to bide his time for scurvy to do the best part of his work for
him. At the end of March he heard that half of the British were on
the sick-list, and the report was not far from the truth. By the
middle of April Murray had barely three thousand men fit for duty,
while no fewer than seven hundred were lying in the snow-drifts,
waiting till spring should unbind the frozen ground to give them a
grave.
[Sidenote: April 21.]
[Sidenote: April 26.]
[Sidenote: April 27.]
On the 17th of April Murray, learning that the preparations of the
French were complete, occupied the mouth of Cap Rouge River to
prevent a landing at that point. Four days later Lévis set out with
about seven thousand men, half of them regular troops, and a fleet
of bateaux escorted by two frigates and by several smaller craft.
The river was not yet free from ice, the weather was bad, and
navigation was difficult; but on the 26th the army, reinforced by
the garrisons of several outlying stations to nearly nine thousand
men, landed at St. Augustine and marched upon the British advanced
posts. The British at once fell back from Cap Rouge and Old Lorette
upon Sainte Foy. Lévis followed after them all night, despite the
difficulties of half-thawed ice and driving rain and tempest, and
at daybreak arrived before Sainte Foy to find every house occupied
by the British and their cannon playing on his columns as they
emerged from the forest. Murray, warned by the information of a
French gunner, who had been picked up half dead from the floating
ice in the St. Lawrence, had marched out with half of the garrison
to cover the retreat of his advanced parties. The position which
he occupied was strong, and Lévis being ignorant of the weakness
of his numbers would not venture to attack, but resolved to wait
until nightfall and then move round the British left flank. Murray
therefore was able to retire in safety to Quebec, while Lévis
occupied Sainte Foy and pushed his light troops forward to Sillery.
[Sidenote: April 28.]
Murray's position now was none of the pleasantest. The
fortifications of Quebec were in no condition to withstand an
energetic cannonade, and the ground was still frozen so hard that
it was impossible for him to throw up entrenchments, as he had
long desired, outside the walls. The only alternative open to him
was to sally out and fight Lévis, at odds of one against two, and
beat him if he could. Murray was young, daring and fired by the
example of Wolfe; his army was, as he said, in the habit of beating
the enemy;[333] and he had a fine train of artillery. He therefore
resolved to go out and fight. Accordingly at half-past six on the
morning of the 28th he marched out of Quebec at the head of all
the troops that he could muster, a bare three thousand men, with
three howitzers and twenty field-pieces, and drew them up on the
ground which Montcalm had occupied on the famous 13th of September.
The force was formed in one line of two brigades, the right or
Burton's brigade consisting, from right to left, of the Fifteenth,
Fifty-eighth, second battalion of the Sixtieth, and Forty-eighth
regiments; the left or Fraser's brigade of the Forty-third,
Forty-seventh, Fraser's Highlanders, and the Twenty-eighth. The
Thirty-fifth and third battalion of the Sixtieth were posted in
reserve in rear of the centre, while the Light Infantry and the
Provincial rangers stood wide on the right and left flanks. The
field-guns were distributed in pairs to each battalion.
Moving forward to reconnoitre, Murray perceived that the French
line was not yet formed. That Lévis had chosen his ground was
clear, for he had occupied two block-houses built by the British
above Anse du Foulon at the southern edge of the plateau, as well
as a house and a fortified windmill at the northern brink, and had
extended his vanguard along the ridge between these two points. But
the main body was still debouching in columns from Sillery Wood, a
mile or more in rear, and two brigades only were as yet deployed
by the block-house to form the French right wing. Thinking the
opportunity favourable, Murray ordered an immediate advance; and
his whole line moved forward, the men dragging their guns with them
in the intervals between battalions. The ground was for the most
part still covered with snow, which in some places was piled up in
drifts and everywhere soft and sodden with rain; and the tramp of
three thousand men soon turned the soil into a sea of mud. Arrived
at the ground where Wolfe's army had stood, the line halted, and
the guns unlimbering opened so destructive a fire on the French
columns that Lévis ordered the battalions of his left to fall back
to the woods. The manœuvre was not executed without confusion,
and Murray, elated by his apparent success, ordered the line to
renew its advance, inclining to its right. This movement, however,
brought Burton's brigade on to low ground, where the melting snow
was knee-deep and the guns could not be worked with effect. The
British Light Infantry attacked the windmill and houses on the
French left with great spirit, carried them in spite of a desperate
resistance, and pressed on in pursuit of the retreating French. But
now the battalions of the French left, no longer checked by the
fire of artillery, dashed out of the woods in skirmishing order
and falling on the rash pursuers fairly overwhelmed them. Over two
hundred of the Light Infantry were killed and wounded, and the
few survivors hurrying back in confusion upon Burton's brigade
prevented it from firing on the advancing enemy. The French seized
the opportunity to reform their broken ranks and the combat was
hotly maintained for more than an hour, until ammunition for the
British artillery failed, the tumbrils being immovably fixed in the
snow-drifts.
On Murray's left his hasty advance was little less disastrous.
The block-houses were indeed carried and held for a time, but
the French fell back into the woods only to advance again in
overwhelming force when the fire of the British artillery failed,
and to extend themselves along the British front and flank. The
two battalions of the reserve were called up and the fight was
maintained with indomitable stubbornness; but with both flanks
turned the efforts of the British were hopeless, and Murray gave
the word to fall back. The men, though but two in three of them
remained unhurt, were furious at the order. "Damn it, what is
falling back but retreating!" they said; but there was no help for
it. So first the left brigade and then the right retired, cursing
as they went. Some of the regiments tried to carry off their guns
with them, but finding this impossible owing to deep snow and mud
spiked and abandoned them. The French followed in pursuit, hoping
to cut them off from the city; but Lévis perceiving the orderliness
of the retreat judged it more prudent to recall his troops, and
Murray brought back the remnant of his force in safety to Quebec.
So ended the action of Sainte Foy after two hours of stern and
bloody work. The loss of the British amounted to a thousand
killed and wounded or a full third of the entire force. The
Fifteenth, Twenty-eighth, and Highlanders[334] were, after the
Light Infantry, the greatest sufferers, but in the attenuated
state of the battalions it is probable that in seven out of the
ten there fell at least one man in three. The loss of the French
was admitted to have exceeded eight hundred. Altogether it was
an unfortunate affair, though it cannot be called discreditable
to the troops. Murray was misled by overweening confidence in
his men and miscalculation of the spirit of the French. His past
experience doubtless partly excused the mistake; but even if
he had failed to grasp that Lévis was a man who could restore
confidence to demoralised troops, he might at least have guessed
that he would bring up fresh regiments, who had not learned to
fear the red-coats, to meet him. As things were, he sacrificed the
advantages of his position and of his superiority in artillery
and found himself shut up within the miserable fortifications
of Quebec, with his force reduced to twenty-four hundred men,
nominally fit for duty, but in reality, to use the expressive words
of one of them, "half-starved scorbutic skeletons."
[Sidenote: May 9.]
[Sidenote: May 16.]
Murray, however, rose to the emergency with a spirit worthy of a
British officer. The troops were at first inclined to break loose
from discipline, but Murray hanged the chief offender, staved in
all the rum-barrels of the sutlers and quickly restored order. Then
every soul of the garrison fell to work to strengthen the defences.
Officers yoked themselves to cannon and plied pickaxe and spade,
and the men with such an example before them strained themselves
to the utmost. In a short time one hundred and fifty guns were
mounted and at work on the walls of Quebec, while the French,
however they might toil at their trenches in the stubborn soil of
the plateau, had hardly brought up a single cannon to answer them.
None the less incessant labour and bad food were telling heavily
on the enfeebled strength of the garrison, when on the 9th of May
the _Lowestoft_ frigate sailed up to Quebec with the news that a
squadron was at the mouth of the river and would arrive within a
few days. The tidings put new heart into the besieged, though had
Lévis ventured on an assault they would have found it hard to repel
him. On the 15th two more British men-of-war arrived at Quebec,
and next morning two frigates sailed up above the city, attacked
and destroyed Lévis' ships and with them the French supplies of
food and ammunition. That same evening Lévis raised the siege and
retreated with precipitation, leaving behind him forty guns, the
whole of his material for the siege, and every man of his sick and
wounded. Murray marched at dawn to fall upon his rear, but though
he captured many stragglers failed to overtake the main body. Thus
Quebec was saved; and the advent of spring, together with a supply
of fresh provisions, soon turned Murray's sickly battalions into an
army fit for service in the field.
During these miserable months of cold, privation, and disease
Amherst had been maturing his plans for a decisive campaign. Pitt
had enjoined the capture of Montreal upon him as the principal
object, and had resolved to demolish the useless fortress of
Louisburg, thereby releasing the garrison for active service.[335]
The provincial assemblies were called upon once more to furnish
large contingents of troops for a supreme effort, and the final
blow was about to fall. Amherst's design was to invade Canada
simultaneously from east, west, and south. Murray was to ascend
the St. Lawrence from Quebec; Brigadier Haviland was to break in
by Lake Champlain; and Amherst himself was to lead the main army
down the St. Lawrence from Lake Ontario. Of the three lines of
advance Amherst's was not only the longest but the most difficult
and dangerous, owing to the rapids which obstruct the navigation
of the St. Lawrence; but on the other hand the movement would cut
off the retreat of the French army to westward and force it back
upon Montreal, where Haviland and Murray would close in upon it and
fairly throttle it. The plan was delicate in the extreme and called
for the greatest nicety of calculation, for the three armies must
start from three different points hundreds of miles apart without
possibility of inter-communication, and yet arrive at their goal
together, lest the French should concentrate and overwhelm Murray's
or Haviland's corps in detail. The principal French posts for
barring the lines of advance were Île aux Noix at the head of Lake
Ontario, Sorel on the eastern side of Montreal, and La Galette at
the head of the rapids of the St. Lawrence.
The year opened ill for Amherst. In March he was compelled to
send thirteen hundred men[336] to the south to quell a rising of
Cherokee Indians; and he had not long communicated his instructions
to Murray when he received tidings of the defeat of Sainte Foy. He
at once summoned two battalions from Louisburg to reinforce Murray,
but it was not until late in June that he was relieved by news
of the safety of Quebec. The provincial governments also were as
usual a sore trial and the cause of much vexatious delay;[337] but
Amherst was a man of tenacity and patience who never lost sight of
his object nor relaxed his industry for a moment. At length, when
midsummer was fully past, the net which he had woven began to close
round the French.
[Sidenote: July.]
[Sidenote: August 4.]
Murray was the first to move. His garrison had rapidly recovered
health and strength, and by July he was able to pick out twenty-two
hundred men for the advance on Montreal, while still leaving
seventeen hundred behind him for the garrison of Quebec. On the
14th of July his little column embarked in thirty-two vessels
with a number of boats and bateaux, and on the following day set
sail up the St. Lawrence, leaving Lord Rollo to follow with the
Twenty-second and Fortieth Regiments, which had arrived from
Louisburg. Murray advanced slowly, skirmishing with small parties
of the enemy which hovered about the flotilla on the shore, and
disarming the inhabitants as he passed. On the 4th of August
he reached Three Rivers, where lay a detachment of the French
army; but without delaying to attack it, he passed on to Sorel,
where Bourlamaque and M. Dumas with some four thousand men were
entrenched along both banks of the river. These officers had been
instructed to follow up the flotilla as it moved, so British and
French alike advanced towards Montreal, where Lévis lay with
the main French army. Murray, meanwhile, by rigour towards the
recalcitrant and lenity towards the submissive, persuaded half of
Bourlamaque's militia to yield up its arms and take an oath of
neutrality. By the 24th, being within nine leagues of Montreal, he
sent out a party to seek news of Haviland, and then moving up to
Île Sainte Thérése, just below Montreal, he encamped and awaited
the coming of his colleagues.
[Sidenote: August 27.]
Haviland, meanwhile, had embarked in the third week of August at
Crown Point, with two battalions of regulars, and with Provincials
and Indians sufficient to raise his force to thirty-four hundred
men. Four days brought him to Bougainville's position at Île aux
Noix, where he landed, erected batteries, and opened fire on the
fort; while at the same time a party of rangers dragged three guns
to the rear of the position and turned them upon Bougainville's
sloops of war, which got under way in all haste and stranded in the
next bend of the river. Thus Bougainville's communications with
the next post, St. John's, down the river Richelieu, were severed,
and, as Amherst had foreseen,[338] he was compelled to abandon
the island. He joined M. Roquemaure at St. John's with infinite
difficulty by a night march through the forest; and both officers
falling back from St. John's and Chambly waited with Bourlamaque on
the banks of the St. Lawrence, where their force melted away fast
through desertion. Haviland opened communications with Murray, and
both awaited the approach of Amherst.
[Sidenote: August 26.]
[Sidenote: Sept.]
[Sidenote: Sept. 5.]
The main army had assembled at Oswego during July, Amherst
himself arriving on the 9th, but it was not until the first week
of August that the last of the appointed regiments appeared at
the rendezvous. The force consisted of eight weak battalions of
British, numbering less than six thousand men, with four thousand
five hundred Provincials and seven hundred Indians, or about eleven
thousand in all. The flotilla for the transport of the army was
made up of nearly eight hundred whale-boats and bateaux, and was
escorted by gun-boats. On the 10th of August the entire force was
embarked and by the 15th it had reached Oswegatchie or La Galette,
on the site of the present Ogdensburg. Here a French brig of ten
guns was attacked and captured by the gun-boats, and the flotilla
pursued its way among the Thousand Islands. On an islet at the
head of the rapids stood a French post named Fort Lévis, with a
garrison of three hundred men, which Amherst forthwith invested,
and after three days' cannonade reduced to surrender. Repair of
the fort and of his boats detained him until the 30th, and on the
31st the expedition entered upon the most critical of its work, the
descent of the rapids. On the 1st of September the flotilla was
compelled to proceed in single file, but all went well until the
4th, when the most dangerous of the rapids was reached. On that
day over sixty boats were wrecked or damaged and eighty-four men
were drowned: but the passage was accomplished without molestation
from the enemy, though large numbers of Canadians were on the
watch on the banks. The next day was consumed in repairs, and on
the 6th, the last rapid having been passed, the boats glided down
to La Chine, nine miles from Montreal, on the left bank of the
St. Lawrence. Here the army landed unopposed, marched straight
upon Montreal and encamped beneath the walls on the eastern side:
while Haviland on the 8th arrived on the southern shore against
Amherst's camp. Amherst was a little late, having been delayed by
the resistance of Fort Lévis. Had he been content to ignore it and
simply to cut it off from Montreal, he, Murray and Haviland would
have met, punctual to a day, on the 29th of August. As it was the
junction was sufficiently complete, and the work of the campaign
was practically done.
[Sidenote: Sept. 8.]
Bougainville, Bourlamaque, and Roquemaure had crossed over to
Montreal with the few regular troops remaining with them, for the
whole of their militia had melted away, and even the regulars had
been greatly reduced by desertion. Thus the army assembled at
Montreal, the sole force that remained for the defence of Canada,
amounted to barely twenty-five hundred men, demoralised in order,
in spirit, and in discipline. Around the city lay an hostile army
of seventeen thousand men; the fortifications were contemptible
except for defence against Indians, and Amherst's cannon were
already moving up from La Chine. The French Governor called a
council of war, which resolved that resistance was hopeless.
Articles of capitulation were accordingly drawn up, and carried
on the 7th by Bougainville to Amherst. The condition on which the
French laid greatest stress was that they should march out with
the honours of war; but this Amherst flatly refused. The troops,
he said, must lay down their arms and serve no further during the
present war: the French had played so inhuman a part in stirring
up the Indians to treachery and barbarity of every kind, that he
was determined to make an example of them. It is probable that the
General referred only to the massacre of the wounded after the
defeats at Fort William Henry, Ticonderoga, and the Monongahela;
but the reckoning to be paid went back to earlier times. There
were the wrongs, the encroachment and the double-dealing of a full
century to be redressed; and the time for payment was come. In vain
the French pleaded for easier terms: Amherst, a man not easily
turned from his purpose, remained inflexible. Accordingly on the
8th of September, despite expostulation which rose almost to the
point of mutiny on the part of Lévis, the capitulation was signed,
and half a continent passed into the hands of Great Britain.
Meanwhile, as if to crown the whole work and to redeem all past
failings and misfortunes, the expedition against the Cherokee
Indians had been brilliantly successful. Trifling though the affair
may seem in comparison with Amherst's momentous operations in the
north, it marked the banishment of the panic fear of Indians which
had followed on the defeat of Braddock. The command was entrusted
to Colonel Montgomery, and the force committed to him was four
hundred of the First Royals, seven hundred of his own Highlanders,
and a strong body of Provincials. Starting from Charlestown,
Carolina, Montgomery marched up one hundred and fifty miles to the
township of Ninety-six, so called because it was supposed to be
ninety-six miles from the township of Keowee, and pushed forward
thence for four days through dense forest and mountainous country
without finding any sign of Indians. Concluding therefore that
the Cherokees were unaware of his advance, he left all tents and
baggage behind and made a forced march to surprise the savages
before they could escape. The main body of the Indians, however,
retired before he could reach them; and he could accomplish no
more than the destruction of crops and villages, after which he
returned to a fort on the frontier, having traversed no less than
sixty miles over a most difficult country without a halt. It was
then resolved to begin the work anew and to make a fresh advance
into the forest. On this occasion the Indians lay in wait for
the British in a wooded valley and burst upon them suddenly, as
they had upon Braddock, with hideous whooping and howling, and
a scattered but deadly fire of rifles. The grenadiers and Light
Infantry at once plunged into the forest to engage them, while the
Highlanders hastened round their rear to cut off their retreat; and
after a sharp action of an hour the Indians were put to flight with
great slaughter. This engagement cost the British over eighty men
killed and wounded, twice as many as Amherst had lost by lead and
steel during the whole of his advance from Oswego to Montreal. But
the mere comparison of casualties is of small moment. The really
weighty matter is that British officers had learned to face the
difficulties which had been fatal to Braddock, and to overcome them
with a light heart.
It now remained for Amherst to enforce the capitulation on the
French posts of the west. The occupation of Detroit, Miamis, and
Michillimackinac was entrusted to Rogers, the partisan, with his
rangers, who in the course of the winter hauled down the ensign
of the Bourbons and hoisted the British flag in its place. There
was still to be trouble with these remote stations, but it was not
to come immediately, nor directly from the French. The rest of
the General's work was principally administrative. Generous terms
were granted to the inhabitants, and every precaution was taken
to protect them against the Indian allies of the British. Amherst
issued a general order appealing to his troops not to disgrace
their victory by any unsoldierlike behaviour or appearance of
inhumanity; and the army responded to the appeal with a heartiness
which amazed the Canadians. A month after the capitulation the
General could report that British soldiers and Canadian peasants
were joining their provisions and messing together, and that when
he had ordered soldiers to leave their scattered quarters so as to
be closer to their companies, the people had begged that they might
not be moved.[339] Such was not the fashion in which the French
were wont to treat a captured territory.
Here then for the present we may take leave of Amherst. Pitt, as
shall presently be seen, had further tasks for him, which were to
be executed as usual quietly and thoroughly. The fame of the man
is lost in that of Wolfe, and yet it was he, not Wolfe, that was
the conqueror of Canada. The criticism usually passed upon him is
that he was sure but slow, and to some extent it is justified by
facts. Yet it should be remembered that, when he took over the
command, affairs in North America were in extreme confusion and
disorder, and that the work assigned to him was, on a far larger
and more formidable scale, that which had fallen to Cumberland in
1745. Braddock had started everything in the wrong direction. Not
only had he quarrelled with the Provincials and failed to instruct
his troops aright, but he had deliberately forced them to follow
wrong methods. Loudoun, again, had not improved relations with
the provincial assemblies either by his correspondence with them
or by his military operations. Finally Abercromby's imbecility at
Ticonderoga had sacrificed hundreds of valuable lives, disgusted
the colonists, and heightened the reputation gained by the French
at the Monongahela. Then Amherst took the whole of the confused
business in hand, and from that moment all went smoothly and well;
so smoothly indeed that people quite forgot that it had ever gone
otherwise. Yet his difficulties with the Provincials were not less
than those of his predecessors nor less trying to his patience
than to theirs; nay, even the good-will of the colonists was
sometimes as embarrassing to him as their obstruction. It must not
be forgotten, moreover, that the atmosphere of young communities,
such as were then the North American colonies, is most noxious to
discipline. Americans, as their latest military effort has proved,
do not yet understand the meaning of the term; the colonists of
Australia and New Zealand, which have no such religious traditions
as America, have but the vaguest conception of its significance.
Thus when Amherst returned from the conquest of Louisburg to
Boston, not all his efforts could prevent the inhabitants of that
godly city from filling his men with rum; and the same spirit of
indiscipline doubtless haunted the army through all the long and
dreary months of winter-quarters. There was, again, the additional
complication that in the matter of forest-fighting the British
had much to learn from the Provincials; and it fell to Amherst
to teach his troops greater freedom and independence in action
without simultaneous relaxation of discipline. He overcame all
these obstacles, however, in his quiet, methodical way. Discipline
never failed; for Amherst, though no martinet, could be inexorably
severe. Special corps of light troops and of marksmen were
organised, and the drill of the whole army was modified to suit
new conditions. It was in fact Amherst who showed the way to the
reform afterwards carried out by Sir John Moore at Shorncliffe, of
reducing the depth of the ranks to two men only. Such a formation
would have diminished Wolfe's difficulties and materially have
strengthened his dispositions on the plains of Abraham: but
apparently so important an innovation never occurred to him.
Amherst never fought a great action, so his improvements were never
put to the test; but this does not impair his credit as a soldier
of forethought and originality.
But the most remarkable quality in Amherst was his talent for
organisation. The difficulties of transport in the Canada of
his day were appalling. "Canada," says the American historian
Parkman, "was fortified with vast outworks of defence in the savage
forests, marshes, and mountains that encompassed her, where the
thoroughfares were streams choked with fallen trees and obstructed
by cataracts. Never was the problem of moving troops encumbered
by artillery and baggage a more difficult one. The question was
less how to fight an enemy than how to get at him." It was just
this problem which Amherst's industry and perseverance had power
to solve. We read of his launching forth on to Lake George with a
flotilla of eight hundred boats and an army of eleven thousand men,
and all sounds simple and straightforward enough. Yet these boats,
setting aside the original task of building and collecting them,
had to make several journeys to carry the necessary stores and
provisions from Albany to the head of the lake, while every one of
them, together with its load, required to be hauled overland from
three to six miles through forest and swamp from the carrying-place
on the Mohawk to Wood Creek. The same provision against the same
difficulties were necessary on a smaller scale for Prideaux's
attack on Niagara, and, under conditions of special embarrassment,
for Stanwix's advance to the Ohio; while over and above this,
there was marine transport and all necessaries for the expedition
to Quebec to be provided, so as to enable Wolfe to proceed on his
mission fully equipped and without delay. Add to this burden of
work endless correspondence with the various provinces, as well as
constant friction, obstruction, and general dilatoriness, and it
becomes apparent that for all his slowness Amherst accomplished no
small feat when he achieved the conquest of Canada in two campaigns.
The whole problem was in truth one of organisation, and Amherst was
the man to solve it, for he was a great military administrator.
Cautious undoubtedly he was in the field, but it would be absurd
to contend that a man who took ten thousand men down the rapids of
the St. Lawrence, with the dry comment that the said rapids were
"more frightful than dangerous,"[340] was wanting in enterprise
or audacity. His career as a general in the field was short,
and his crowning campaign, having achieved its end without a
general action, has little fame. Such is the penalty of bloodless
operations, though they be the masterpiece of a mighty genius.
Austerlitz is a name familiar to thousands who know nothing of the
capitulation of Ulm. So Amherst to the majority of Englishmen is
but a name: as though it were a small thing for a colonel taken
straight from the classic fields of Flanders to cross the Atlantic
to a savage wilderness, assume command of disheartened troops and
the direction of discordant colonists, and quietly and deliberately
to organise victory. He was the greatest military administrator
produced by England since the death of Marlborough, and remained
the greatest until the rise of Wellington.
AUTHORITIES.--The history of the French in Canada and of the
long struggle between them and the English for the mastery of
the continent has been admirably written in a series of volumes
by Francis Parkman. Following in his footsteps through the
original papers in the Record Office (C.O., _America and West
Indies_, vols. lxiii., lxv., lxxiv.-lxxvi., lxxxi.-xciv., xcix.;
W. O. _Orig. Corres._, vols. xiii.-xv.), through the _Bouquet
and Haldimand Papers_, and through other English material, I
have found little or nothing to glean, while the information
which he has gathered from American sources is most valuable.
The histories of Mante and Entick give a general account of the
operations. Knox's _Journal_ is one of the most valuable sources
of information. Other authorities will be found given in detail
by Parkman. Readers who are familiar with his works will have no
difficulty in apprehending my obligations to him, which I wish to
acknowledge to the full.