"Go to; the boy is a born generalissimo, and is destined to be a Marshal of
France," said M. Ricot, holding up his hands in amazement. The boy referred
to was a little fellow seven or eight years of age, by name Louis Joseph de
Saint Veran. M. Ricot was his tutor, and was led to express himself after
this fashion in consequence of some precocious criticisms of his pupil
on the tactics employed by Caius Julius Cæsar at a battle fought in
Transalpine Gaul fifty odd years before the advent of the Christian era.
It was evident to the critic's youthful mind that the battle ought to have
resulted differently, and that if the foes of "the mighty Julius" had
had the wit to take advantage of his indiscretion, certain pages of the
"Commentaries" might have been conceived in a less boastful spirit. Little
Louis Joseph had sketched a rough plan, showing the respective positions of
the opposing forces, and had then demanded of his tutor why _this_ had not
been done, why _that_ had been neglected, and why _the other_ had never
been even so much as thought of. M. Ricot, after carefully following out
the reasoning of his pupil, could find no weak point therein, and was fain
to admit that the Great Roman had been guilty of a huge blunder in
the arrangement of his forces. Fortunately for the General's military
reputation, the Gauls had been beaten in spite of his defective strategy,
and he himself had survived to transmit to posterity a rather egotistical
account of the affair. M. Ricot had been reading those "Commentaries"
all his life--reading them, as he supposed, critically--but he had never
lighted upon the discovery which his present pupil had made upon a first
perusal. Well might he exclaim, "Go to; the boy is a born generalissimo,
and is destined to be a marshal of France."
Such is the anecdote--preserved in an old volume of French memoirs--of the
childhood of him who subsequently became famous on two continents, and
who for more than a hundred years past has been accounted one of the most
redoubtable commanders of his age. If the story is true, certainly the
Marquis de Montcalm did not carry out the splendid promise of his boyhood.
He lived to fight the battles of his country with unflinching courage, with
a tolerable amount of military skill, and with a tenacity of purpose that
often achieved success against tremendous odds. But, unlike the great
general to whom, during the last few weeks of his life, it was his fortune
to be opposed, he never gave any evidence of possessing an original
military genius--such a genius as would seem to have been possessed by the
youth who figures in the foregoing anecdote. His chivalrous bravery, his
high-bred courtesy, and, more than all, his untimely death, have done much
to make his name famous in history, and to obscure certain features of
character which we are not usually accustomed to associate with greatness.
"History," says Cooper, "is like love, and is apt to surround her heroes
with an atmosphere of imaginary brightness. It is probable that Louis de
Saint Veran will be viewed by posterity only as the gallant defender of his
country, while his cruel apathy on the shores of the Oswego and the Horican
will be forgotten."
He was descended from a noble French family, and was born at the Chateau of
Candiac, near Nismes, in southern France, on the 28th of February, 1712.
Concerning his early years but few particulars have come down to us. He
seems to have entered the army before he had completed his fourteenth year,
and to have distinguished himself in various campaigns in Germany, Bohemia
and Italy during the war for the Austrian succession. At the disastrous
battle of Piacenza, in Italy, fought in the year 1746, he gained the
rank of colonel; and in 1749 he became a brigadier-general. Seven years
subsequent to the latter date he began to figure conspicuously in Canadian
history, and from that time forward we are able to trace his career
pretty closely. Early in 1756, having been elevated to the rank of a
Field-Marshal--thus verifying the prediction of his old tutor--he was
appointed successor to the Baron Dieskau in the chief command of the French
forces in this country. He sailed from France early in April, and arrived
at Quebec about a month afterwards. He was accompanied across the Atlantic
by a large reinforcement, consisting of nearly 14,000 regular troops, and
an ample supply of munitions of war. He at once began to set on foot those
active operations against the British in America which were followed
up with such unremitting vigilance throughout the greater part of the
following three years.
The state of affairs in Canada at this period may be briefly summarized
as follows:--The Government was administered by the Marquis de
Vaudreuil-Cavagnal, a man ill-fitted for so onerous a position in such
troublous times. The colony extended from the seaboard to the far west,
through the valley of the Ohio, and had a white population of about 80,000.
Previous to Montcalm's arrival there were 3,000 veteran French troops in
the country, in addition to a well-trained militia. The country, indeed,
was an essentially military settlement, and the people felt that they might
at any time be called upon to defend their frontiers. The countless tribes
and offshoots of the Huron-Algonquin Indians had cast in their lot with the
French, and were to contribute not a little to the success of many of their
warlike operations. The French, by means of their forts at Niagara, Toronto
and Frontenac (Kingston), held almost undisputed sovereignty over Lake
Ontario; and their forts at Crown Point and Ticonderoga enabled them to
control Lake Champlain.
Still, the French colonists laboured under some serious disadvantages,
which contributed eventually to decide the contest adversely to them. They
had given comparatively little attention to the cultivation of the soil,
and suffered from a chronic scarcity of food. They were subjected to feudal
exactions ill-suited to the condition of the country, and were further
impoverished by huge commercial monopolies. Every branch of the public
service was corrupt, and the peculations of the officials, if not shared
by the Governor himself, were at least winked at or sanctioned by him.
Montcalm, whatever may have been his shortcomings in some respects, was no
self-seeker, and was very properly disgusted with the mal-administration
which everywhere prevailed. His dissatisfaction with, and contempt for, the
Governor, had the effect of producing much internal dissention among the
Canadians, and of hastening the downfall of French dominion in the colony.
The population of the British colonies at this time was not much less than
three millions; but this population, unlike that of Canada, knew little of
military affairs. The British colonists had spent their time in commercial
and agricultural pursuits, and had not cast loose from the spirit of
puritanism which had animated the breasts of their forefathers. As compared
with the mother-country they were poor enough in all conscience, but they
were as a rule, frugal, industrious and intelligent; and, as compared with
their Canadian neighbours, they might almost be said to be in affluent
circumstances. They possessed in an eminent degree those qualities--energy,
endurance, and courage--which mark the Anglo-Saxon race in every quarter of
the globe. Such a foe, if once disciplined and roused to united action, was
not to be despised, even by the veteran battalions of France, and the most
Christian King showed his appreciation of this fact by sending against them
a general who was regarded as the most consummate soldier in Europe.
Having arrived at Quebec about the middle of May, Montcalm lost no time in
opening the campaign. One of his earliest proceedings was to lay siege to
Fort Oswego, which after a faint resistance, was compelled to surrender.
Articles of capitulation were signed, the British laid down their arms, and
the fort was delivered over to the conquerors. One hundred and thirty-four
cannon and a large quantity of specie and military stores became the spoil
of the victors, and more than 1,600 British subjects, including 120 women
and children, became prisoners of war.
Up to this epoch in his career the conduct of the Marquis de Montcalm
had been such as to deserve the unqualified admiration alike of his
contemporaries and of posterity. Though not past his prime, he had achieved
the highest military distinction which his sovereign could bestow. His
chivalrous courage had been signally displayed on many a hard-fought field,
and his urbanity, amiability, and generosity had made him the idol of
his soldiers. He had a manner at once grand and ingratiating, and in his
intercourse with others he manifested a _bonhomme_ that caused him to be
beloved alike by the simple soldier and the haughty _noblesse_ of his
native land. Considering his opportunities he had been a diligent student,
and had improved his mind by familiarity with the productions of many of
the greatest writers of ancient and modern times. By far the greater
part of his life had been spent in the service of his country, and when
compelled to endure the privations incidental to an active military life
in the midst of war, he had ever been ready to share his crust with the
humblest soldier in the ranks. Up to this time every action of his life
had seemed to indicate that he was a man of high principle and stainless
honour. If it had been his good fortune to die before the fall of Oswego
his name would have been handed down to future times as a perfect mirror of
chivalry--a knight without fear and without reproach. It is sad to think
that a career hitherto without a blot should have been marred with repeated
acts of cruelty and breaches of faith. On both counts of this indictment
the Marquis of Montcalm must be pronounced guilty; and in view of his
conduct at Oswego, and afterwards at Fort William Henry, the only
conclusion at which the impartial historian can arrive is that he was
lamentably deficient in the highest attributes of character.
Fort Oswego was surrendered on the 14th of August. By the terms of
capitulation the sick and wounded were specially entrusted to Montcalm,
whose word was solemnly pledged for their protection and safe conduct. How
was the pledge redeemed? No sooner were the British deprived of their arms
than the Indian allies of the French were permitted to swoop down upon the
defenceless prisoners and execute upon them their savage will. The sick and
wounded were scalped, slain, and barbarously mutilated before the eyes of
the Marshal of France, who had guaranteed that not a hair of their heads
should fall. Nay, more; a score of the prisoners were deliberately handed
over to the savages to be ruthlessly butchered, as an offering to the manes
of an equal number of Indians who had been slain during the siege.
Such are the unimpeachable facts of the massacre at Oswego. It is not
probable that these proceedings on the part of the Indians were agreeable
to the feelings of Montcalm, or that he consented to them with a very good
grace. The noble representative of the highest civilization in Europe
could scarcely have taken pleasure in witnessing the hideous massacre
of defenceless women and children. But he was anxious to retain the
co-operation of his red allies at any cost, and had not the moral greatness
to exercise his authority to restrain their savage lust for blood. It has
been contended by some defenders of his fame that he had no choice in the
matter--that the ferocity of the savages was aroused, and could not be
controlled. It is sufficient to say in reply that those who argue thus must
wilfully shut their eyes to the facts. Was it because he could not restrain
his allies that he, without remonstrance, delivered up to them twenty
British soldiers to be tortured, cut to pieces, and burned? Was he unable
to restrain them when he finally became sickened with their butchery and
personally interposed to prevent its further continuance? From the moment
when his will was unmistakably made known to the Indians the massacre
ceased; and if he had been true to himself and his solemnly-plighted word
from the beginning, that massacre would never have begun. By no specious
argument can he be held guiltless of the blood of those luckless victims
whose dismembered limbs were left to fester before the entrenchments at
Oswego.
With the surrender of Oswego Great Britain lost her last vestige of control
over Lake Ontario. The fort was demolished, and the French returned to
the eastern part of the Province. The result of the campaign of 1756 was
decidedly in favour of the French, and Montcalm's reputation as a military
commander rose rapidly, though his conduct at Oswego led to his being
looked upon with a sort of distrust that had never before attached to his
name. His courage and generalship, however, were unimpeachable, and his
vigilance never slept. During the following winter his spies scoured the
frontiers of the British settlements, and gained early intelligence of
every important movement of the forces. Among other information, he learned
that the British had a vast store of provisions and munitions of war at
Fort William Henry, at the southwestern extremity of Lake George. Early in
the spring, Montcalm resolved to capture this fort, and to possess himself
of the stores. On the 16th of March, 1757, he landed on the opposite side
of the lake, at a place called Long Point. Next day, having rounded the
head of the lake, he attacked the fort; but the garrison made a vigorous
defence, and he was compelled to retire to Fort Ticonderoga, at the foot of
the lake! For several months afterwards his attention was distracted from
Fort William Henry by operations in different parts of the Province; but
early in the month of August he renewed the attempt with a force consisting
of 7,000 French and Canadian troops, 2,000 Indians, and a powerful train of
artillery. The garrison consisted of 2,300 men, besides women and children.
To tell the story of the second siege and final surrender of Fort William
Henry would require pages. Suffice it to say that the dire tragedy of
Oswego was re-enacted on a much more extended scale. For six days the
garrison was valiantly defended by Lieutenant-Colonel Munro, a veteran of
the 35th Regiment of the line. Day after day did the gallant old soldier
defend his trust, waiting in vain for succours that never arrived. Finally,
when he learned that no succours were to be expected, and that to prolong
the strife would simply be to throw away the lives of his men, he had
an interview with the French commander and agreed to an honourable
capitulation.
Again did Montcalm pledge his sacred word for the safety of the garrison,
which was to be escorted to Fort Edward by a detatchment of French troops.
The sick and wounded were to be taken under his own protection until their
recovery, when they were to be permitted to return to their own camp.
Such were the terms of capitulation; terms which were honourable, to the
victor, and which the vanquished could accept without ignominy. How were
these terms carried out? No sooner were the garrison well clear of the fort
than the shrill war-whoop of the Indians was heard, and there ensued a
slaughter so terrible, so indiscriminate, and so inconceivably hideous in
all its details that even the history of pioneer warfare hardly furnishes
any parallel to it. Nearly a thousand victims were slain on the spot, and
hundreds more were carried away into hopeless captivity. No more graphic or
historically accurate description of that scene has ever been written than
is to be found in "The Last of the Mohicans," where we read that no sooner
had the war-whoop sounded than upwards of two thousand raging savages burst
from the forest and threw themselves across the plain with instinctive
alacrity. "Death was everywhere, in its most terrific and disgusting
aspects. Resistance only served to inflame the murderers, who inflicted
their furious blows long after their victims were beyond the reach of their
resentment. The flow of blood might be likened to the outbreaking of a
gushing torrent; and as the natives became heated and maddened by the
sight, many among them kneeled on the earth and drank; freely, exultingly,
hellishly, of the crimson tide. The trained bodies of the British troops
threw themselves quickly into solid masses, endeavouring to awe their
assailants by the imposing appearance of a military front. The experiment
in some measure succeeded, though many suffered their unloaded muskets to
be torn from their hands in the vain hope of appeasing the savages."
It has been alleged on Montcalm's behalf that when the slaughter began he
used his utmost endeavours to arrest it. His utmost endeavours! Why, even
if his command was insufficient to restrain his allies, he had seven
thousand regular troops with arms in their hands, at his back. Instead of
theatrically baring his breast, and calling upon the savages to slay him in
place of the English, for whom his honour was plighted, he would have done
well to have kept that honour unsullied by observing the plain terms of
capitulation, and providing a suitable escort. Instead of calling upon the
British--hampered as they were by the presence of their sick, and of their
women and children--to defend themselves, he should have called upon his
own troops to protect his honour and that of France. Had his promised
escort been provided no attempt would have been made by the Indians, and
the tragedy at Oswego might in process of time have come to be regarded as
a mere mischance. But no such excuse can now be of any avail. According to
some accounts of this second massacre, no escort whatever was furnished.
According to others, the escort was a mere mockery, consisting of a totally
inadequate number of French troops, who were very willing to see their
enemies butchered, and who did not even make any attempt to restrain their
allies. All that can be known for certain is, that if there was any escort
at all it was wholly ineffective; and, leaving humanity altogether out of
the question, this was in itself an express violation of the terms upon
which the garrison had been surrendered. The massacre at Fort William Henry
followed one short year after that at Oswego, and the two combined have
left a stain upon the memory of the man who permitted them which no time
can ever wash away.
Time and space alike fail us to describe at length the subsequent campaigns
of that and the following year. Montcalm's defence of Fort Ticonderoga on
the 8th of June, 1758, was a masterly piece of strategy, and was unmarred
by any incident to detract from the honour of his victory, which was
achieved against stupendous odds. Ticonderoga continued to be Montcalm's
headquarters until Quebec was threatened by the British under Wolfe; when
he at once abandoned the shores of Lake Champlain, and mustered all his
forces for the defence of the capital of the French colony.
The siege of Quebec has been described at length in a former sketch, and it
is unnecessary to add much to that description here. It will be remembered
how Wolfe landed at _L'Anse du Foulon_ in the darkness of the night of
September 12th, 1759, and how the British troops scaled the precipitous
heights leading to the Plains of Abraham. Intelligence of this momentous
event reached Montcalm, at his headquarters at Beauport, about daybreak on
the morning of the 13th. "Aha," said the General, "then they have at last
got to the weak side of this miserable garrison." He at once issued orders
to break up the camp, and led his army across the St. Charles River, past
the northern ramparts of the city, and thence on to the plains of Abraham,
where Wolfe and his forces were impatiently awaiting his arrival. The
battle was of short duration. The first deadly volley fired by the British
decided the fortunes of the day, and the French fled across the plains
in the direction of the citadel. Montcalm, who had himself received a
dangerous wound, rode hither and thither, and used his utmost endeavour to
rally his flying troops. While so engaged he received a mortal wound, and
sank to the ground. From that moment there was no attempt to oppose the
victorious British, whose general had likewise fallen in the conflict.
Montcalm's wound, though mortal, was not immediately so, and he survived
until the following day. When the surgeons proceeded to examine his wound
the general asked if it was mortal. They replied in the affirmative. "How
long before the end?" he calmly enquired. He was informed that the end was
not far off, and would certainly, arrive before many hours. "So much the
better," was the comment of the dying soldier--"I shall not live to see the
surrender of Quebec." The commander of the garrison asked for instructions
as to the further defence of the city, but Montcalm declined to occupy
himself any longer with worldly affairs. Still, even at this solemn moment,
the courteous urbanity by which he had always been distinguished did not
desert him. "To your keeping," he said, to De Ramesey, "I commend the
honour of France. I wish you all comfort, and that you may be happily
extricated from your present perplexities. As for me, my time is short, and
I have matters of more importance to attend to than the defence of Quebec
I shall pass the night with God, and prepare myself for death." Not long
afterwards he again spoke: "Since it was my misfortune to be discomfitted
and mortally wounded, it is a great consolation to me to be vanquished by
so great and generous an enemy. If I could survive this wound, I would
engage to beat three times the number of such forces as I commanded this
morning with a third of their number of British troops." His chaplain
arrived about this time, accompanied by the bishop of the colony, from
whom the dying man received the last sacred offices of the Roman Catholic
religion. He lingered for some hours afterwards, and finally passed away,
to all outward seeming, with calmness and resignation.
It seems like an ungrateful task to recur to the frailties of a brave and
chivalrous man, more especially when he dies in the odour of sanctity.
But as we ponder upon that final scene in the life of the gay, charming,
brilliant Marquis of Montcalm, we cannot avoid wondering whether the
"sheeted ghosts" of the wounded men, helpless women, and innocent babes who
were so ruthlessly slaughtered at Oswego and William Henry flitted around
his pillow in these last fleeting moments. Notwithstanding the fact that
his mind seemed to receive solace from the solemn rites in which he then
took part, we have never read the account of those last hours of Montcalm
without being reminded of the lines of the British Homer descriptive of the
death of him who fell "on Flodden's fatal field."
The exact place of Montcalm's death has never been definitely ascertained.
Various sites are indicated by different authorities, but no conclusive
evidence has been adduced in support of the claims of any of them. It is,
however, known for certain that his body was interred within the precincts
of the Ursuline Convent at Quebec, where a mural tablet was erected by
Lord Aylmer to his memory in 1832. The following is a translation of the
inscription:--
HONOUR TO MONTCALM!
FATE, IN DEPRIVING HIM OF VICTORY,
RECOMPENSED HIM BY A GLORIOUS DEATH.
A few years ago his remains were disinterred, and his skull, with its base
enclosed in a military collar, is religiously preserved in a glass case
on a table in the convent. The monument to the joint memory of Wolfe and
Montcalm has been referred to in a previous sketch.
Thus lived and died the Marquis of Montcalm. He was forty-seven years of
age at the time of his death, and was constitutionally younger than his
years would seem to indicate. A Canadian historian thus sums up the
brighter side of his character: "Trained from his youth in the art of war;
laborious, just, and self-denying, he offered a remarkable exception to the
venality of the public men of Canada at this period, and in the midst of
universal corruption made the general good his aim. Night, the rushing
tide, veteran discipline, and more brilliant genius had given his rival the
victory. Yet he was not the less great; and while the name of Wolfe will
never be forgotten, that of Montcalm is also engraved by its side on the
enduring scroll of human fame. The latter has been censured for not abiding
the chances of a siege, rather than risking a battle. But with a town
already in ruins, a garrison deficient in provisions and ammunition, and an
enemy to contend with possessed of a formidable siege-train, the fire of
which must speedily silence his guns, he acted wisely in staking the issue
on a battle, in which, if he found defeat, he met also an honourable and a
glorious death."