French saw a boat put out from the admiral's ship, bearing a flag of
truce. Four canoes went from the Lower Town, and met it midway. It
brought a subaltern officer, who announced himself as the bearer of a
letter from Sir William Phips to the French commander. He was taken into
one of the canoes and paddled to the quay, after being completely
blindfolded by a bandage which covered half his face. An officer named
Prevost, sent by Count Frontenac, received him as he landed, and ordered
two sergeants to take him by the arms and lead him to the governor. His
progress was neither rapid nor direct. They drew him hither and thither,
delighting to make him clamber in the dark over every possible
obstruction; while a noisy crowd hustled him, and laughing women called
him Colin Maillard, the name of the chief player in blindman's buff.
Amid a prodigious hubbub, intended to bewilder him and impress him with
a sense of immense warlike preparation, they dragged him over the three
barricades of Mountain Street, and brought him at last into a large room
of the chateau. Here they took the bandage from his eyes. He stood for a
moment with an air of astonishment and some confusion. The governor
stood before him, haughty and stern, surrounded by French and Canadian
officers, Maricourt, Sainte-Helene, Longueuil, Villebon, Valrenne,
Bienville, and many more, bedecked with gold lace and silver lace,
perukes and powder, plumes and ribbons, and all the martial foppery in
which they took delight, and regarding the envoy with keen, defiant
eyes. After a moment, he recovered his breath and his composure,
saluted Frontenac, and, expressing a wish that the duty assigned him had
been of a more agreeable nature, handed him the letter of Phips.
Frontenac gave it to an interpreter, who read it aloud in French that
all might hear. It ran thus:--
_"Sir William Phips, Knight, General and Commander-in-chief in
and over their Majesties' Forces of New England, by Sea and
Land, to Count Frontenac, Lieutenant-General and Governour for
the French King at Canada; or, in his absence, to his Deputy, or
him or them in chief command at Quebeck:_
"The war between the crowns of England and France doth not only
sufficiently warrant, but the destruction made by the French and
Indians, under your command and encouragement, upon the persons
and estates of their Majesties' subjects of New England, without
provocation on their part, hath put them under the necessity of
this expedition for their own security and satisfaction. And
although the cruelties and barbarities used against them by the
French and Indians might, upon the present opportunity, prompt
unto a severe revenge, yet, being desirous to avoid all inhumane
and unchristian-like actions, and to prevent shedding of blood
as much as may be,
"I, the aforesaid William Phips, Knight, do hereby, in the name
and in the behalf of their most excellent Majesties, William and
Mary, King and Queen of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland,
Defenders of the Faith, and by order of their said Majesties'
government of the Massachuset-colony in New England, demand a
present surrender of your forts and castles, undemolished, and
the King's and other stores, unimbezzled, with a seasonable
delivery of all captives; together with a surrender of all your
persons and estates to my dispose: upon the doing whereof, you
may expect mercy from me, as a Christian, according to what
shall be found for their Majesties' service and the subjects'
security. Which, if you refuse forthwith to do, I am come
provided, and am resolved, by the help of God, in whom I trust,
by force of arms to revenge all wrongs and injuries offered, and
bring you under subjection to the Crown of England, and, when
too late, make you wish you had accepted of the favour tendered.
"Your answer positive in an hour, returned by your own trumpet,
with the return of mine, is required upon the peril that will
ensue."
When the reading was finished, the Englishman pulled his watch from his
pocket, and handed it to the governor. Frontenac could not, or pretended
that he could not, see the hour. The messenger thereupon told him that
it was ten o'clock, and that he must have his answer before eleven. A
general cry of indignation arose; and Valrenne called out that Phips was
nothing but a pirate, and that his man ought to be hanged. Frontenac
contained himself for a moment, and then said to the envoy:--
"I will not keep you waiting so long. Tell your general that I do not
recognize King William; and that the Prince of Orange, who so styles
himself, is a usurper, who has violated the most sacred laws of blood in
attempting to dethrone his father-in-law. I know no king of England but
King James. Your general ought not to be surprised at the hostilities
which he says that the French have carried on in the colony of
Massachusetts; for, as the king my master has taken the king of England
under his protection, and is about to replace him on his throne by force
of arms, he might have expected that his Majesty would order me to make
war on a people who have rebelled against their lawful prince." Then,
turning with a smile to the officers about him: "Even if your general
offered me conditions a little more gracious, and if I had a mind to
accept them, does he suppose that these brave gentlemen would give
their consent, and advise me to trust a man who broke his agreement
with the governor of Port Royal, or a rebel who has failed in his duty
to his king, and forgotten all the favors he had received from him, to
follow a prince who pretends to be the liberator of England and the
defender of the faith, and yet destroys the laws and privileges of the
kingdom and overthrows its religion? The divine justice which your
general invokes in his letter will not fail to punish such acts
severely."
The messenger seemed astonished and startled; but he presently asked if
the governor would give him his answer in writing.
"No," returned Frontenac, "I will answer your general only by the mouths
of my cannon, that he may learn that a man like me is not to be summoned
after this fashion. Let him do his best, and I will do mine;" and he
dismissed the Englishman abruptly. He was again blindfolded, led over
the barricades, and sent back to the fleet by the boat that brought him.
Phips had often given proof of personal courage, but for the past three
weeks his conduct seems that of a man conscious that he is charged with
a work too large for his capacity. He had spent a good part of his time
in holding councils of war; and now, when he heard the answer of
Frontenac, he called another to consider what should be done. A plan of
attack was at length arranged. The militia were to be landed on the
shore of Beauport, which was just below Quebec, though separated from it
by the St. Charles. They were then to cross this river by a ford
practicable at low water, climb the heights of St. Genevieve, and gain
the rear of the town. The small vessels of the fleet were to aid the
movement by ascending the St. Charles as far as the ford, holding the
enemy in check by their fire, and carrying provisions, ammunition, and
intrenching tools, for the use of the land troops. When these had
crossed and were ready to attack Quebec in the rear, Phips was to
cannonade it in front, and land two hundred men under cover of his guns
to effect a diversion by storming the barricades. Some of the French
prisoners, from whom their captors appear to have received a great deal
of correct information, told the admiral that there was a place a mile
or two above the town where the heights might be scaled and the rear of
the fortifications reached from a direction opposite to that proposed.
This was precisely the movement by which Wolfe afterwards gained his
memorable victory; but Phips chose to abide by the original plan.
While the plan was debated, the opportunity for accomplishing it ebbed
away. It was still early when the messenger returned from Quebec; but,
before Phips was ready to act, the day was on the wane and the tide was
against him. He lay quietly at his moorings when, in the evening, a
great shouting, mingled with the roll of drums and the sound of fifes,
was heard from the Upper Town. The English officers asked their
prisoner, Granville, what it meant. "Ma foi, Messieurs," he replied,
"you have lost the game. It is the Governor of Montreal with the people
from the country above. There is nothing for you now but to pack and go
home." In fact, Callieres had arrived with seven or eight hundred men,
many of them regulars. With these were bands of _coureurs de bois_ and
other young Canadians, all full of fight, singing and whooping with
martial glee as they passed the western gate and trooped down St. Louis
Street.
The next day was gusty and blustering; and still Phips lay quiet,
waiting on the winds and the waves. A small vessel, with sixty men on
board, under Captain Ephraim Savage, ran in towards the shore of
Beauport to examine the landing, and stuck fast in the mud. The
Canadians plied her with bullets, and brought a cannon to bear on her.
They might have waded out and boarded her, but Savage and his men kept
up so hot a fire that they forbore the attempt; and, when the tide rose,
she floated again.
There was another night of tranquillity; but at about eleven on
Wednesday morning the French heard the English fifes and drums in full
action, while repeated shouts of "God save King William!" rose from all
the vessels. This lasted an hour or more; after which a great number of
boats, loaded with men, put out from the fleet and rowed rapidly towards
the shore of Beauport. The tide was low, and the boats grounded before
reaching the landing-place. The French on the rock could see the troops
through telescopes, looking in the distance like a swarm of black ants,
as they waded through mud and water, and formed in companies along the
strand. They were some thirteen hundred in number, and were commanded by
Major Walley. Frontenac had sent three hundred sharpshooters, under
Sainte-Helene, to meet them and hold them in check. A battalion of
troops followed; but, long before they could reach the spot,
Sainte-Helene's men, with a few militia from the neighboring parishes,
and a band of Huron warriors from Lorette, threw themselves into the
thickets along the front of the English, and opened a distant but
galling fire upon the compact bodies of the enemy. Walley ordered a
charge. The New England men rushed, in a disorderly manner, but with
great impetuosity, up the rising ground; received two volleys, which
failed to check them; and drove back the assailants in some confusion.
They turned, however, and fought in Indian fashion with courage and
address, leaping and dodging among trees, rocks, and bushes, firing as
they retreated, and inflicting more harm than they received. Towards
evening they disappeared; and Walley, whose men had been much scattered
in the desultory fight, drew them together as well as he could, and
advanced towards the St. Charles, in order to meet the vessels which
were to aid him in passing the ford. Here he posted sentinels, and
encamped for the night. He had lost four killed and about sixty wounded,
and imagined that he had killed twenty or thirty of the enemy. In fact,
however, their loss was much less, though among the killed was a
valuable officer, the Chevalier de Clermont, and among the wounded the
veteran captain of Beauport, Juchereau de Saint-Denis, more than
sixty-four years of age. In the evening, a deserter came to the English
camp, and brought the unwelcome intelligence that there were three
thousand armed men in Quebec.
Meanwhile, Phips, whose fault hitherto had not been an excess of
promptitude, grew impatient, and made a premature movement inconsistent
with the preconcerted plan. He left his moorings, anchored his largest
ships before the town, and prepared to cannonade it; but the fiery
veteran who watched him from the Chateau St. Louis anticipated him, and
gave him the first shot. Phips replied furiously, opening fire with
every gun that he could bring to bear; while the rock paid him back in
kind, and belched flame and smoke from all its batteries. So fierce and
rapid was the firing, that La Hontan compares it to volleys of musketry;
and old officers, who had seen many sieges, declared that they had never
known the like. The din was prodigious, reverberated from the
surrounding heights, and rolled back from the distant mountains in one
continuous roar. On the part of the English, however, surprisingly
little was accomplished beside noise and smoke. The practice of their
gunners was so bad that many of their shot struck harmlessly against the
face of the cliff. Their guns, too, were very light, and appear to have
been charged with a view to the most rigid economy of gunpowder; for the
balls failed to pierce the stone walls of the buildings, and did so
little damage that, as the French boasted, twenty crowns would have
repaired it all. Night came at length, and the turmoil ceased.
Phips lay quiet till daybreak, when Frontenac sent a shot to waken him,
and the cannonade began again. Sainte-Helene had returned from Beauport;
and he, with his brother Maricourt, took charge of the two batteries of
the Lower Town, aiming the guns in person, and throwing balls of
eighteen and twenty-four pounds with excellent precision against the
four largest ships of the fleet. One of their shots cut the flagstaff of
the admiral, and the cross of St. George fell into the river. It drifted
with the tide towards the north shore; whereupon several Canadians
paddled out in a birch canoe, secured it, and brought it back in
triumph. On the spire of the cathedral in the Upper Town had been hung a
picture of the Holy Family, as an invocation of divine aid. The Puritan
gunners wasted their ammunition in vain attempts to knock it down. That
it escaped their malice was ascribed to miracle, but the miracle would
have been greater if they had hit it.
At length, one of the ships, which had suffered most, hauled off and
abandoned the fight. That of the admiral had fared little better, and
now her condition grew desperate. With her rigging torn, her mainmast
half cut through, her mizzen-mast splintered, her cabin pierced, and
her hull riddled with shot, another volley seemed likely to sink her,
when Phips ordered her to be cut loose from her moorings, and she
drifted out of fire, leaving cable and anchor behind. The remaining
ships soon gave over the conflict, and withdrew to stations where they
could neither do harm nor suffer it.
Phips had thrown away nearly all his ammunition in this futile and
disastrous attack, which should have been deferred till the moment when
Walley, with his land force, had gained the rear of the town. Walley lay
in his camp, his men wet, shivering with cold, famished, and sickening
with the small-pox. Food, and all other supplies, were to have been
brought him by the small vessels, which should have entered the mouth of
the St. Charles and aided him to cross it. But he waited for them in
vain. Every vessel that carried a gun had busied itself in cannonading,
and the rest did not move. There appears to have been insubordination
among the masters of these small craft, some of whom, being owners or
part-owners of the vessels they commanded, were probably unwilling to
run them into danger. Walley was no soldier; but he saw that to attempt
the passage of the river without aid, under the batteries of the town
and in the face of forces twice as numerous as his own, was not an easy
task. Frontenac, on his part, says that he wished him to do so, knowing
that the attempt would ruin him. The New England men were eager to push
on; but the night of Thursday, the day of Phips's repulse, was so cold
that ice formed more than an inch in thickness, and the half-starved
militia suffered intensely. Six field-pieces, with their ammunition, had
been sent ashore; but they were nearly useless, as there were no means
of moving them. Half a barrel of musket powder, and one biscuit for
each man, were also landed; and with this meagre aid Walley was left to
capture Quebec. He might, had he dared, have made a dash across the ford
on the morning of Thursday, and assaulted the town in the rear while
Phips was cannonading it in front; but his courage was not equal to so
desperate a venture. The firing ceased, and the possible opportunity was
lost. The citizen soldier despaired of success; and, on the morning of
Friday, he went on board the admiral's ship to explain his situation.
While he was gone, his men put themselves in motion, and advanced along
the borders of the St. Charles towards the ford. Frontenac, with three
battalions of regular troops, went to receive them at the crossing;
while Sainte-Helene, with his brother Longueuil, passed the ford with a
body of Canadians, and opened fire on them from the neighboring
thickets. Their advance parties were driven in, and there was a hot
skirmish, the chief loss falling on the New England men, who were fully
exposed. On the side of the French, Sainte-Helene was mortally wounded,
and his brother was hurt by a spent ball. Towards evening, the Canadians
withdrew, and the English encamped for the night. Their commander
presently rejoined them. The admiral had given him leave to withdraw
them to the fleet, and boats were accordingly sent to bring them off;
but, as these did not arrive till about daybreak, it was necessary to
defer the embarkation till the next night.
At dawn, Quebec was all astir with the beating of drums and the ringing
of bells. The New England drums replied; and Walley drew up his men
under arms, expecting an attack, for the town was so near that the
hubbub of voices from within could plainly be heard. The noise gradually
died away; and, except a few shots from the ramparts, the invaders were
left undisturbed. Walley sent two or three companies to beat up the
neighboring thickets, where he suspected that the enemy was lurking. On
the way, they had the good luck to find and kill a number of cattle,
which they cooked and ate on the spot; whereupon, being greatly
refreshed and invigorated, they dashed forward in complete disorder, and
were soon met by the fire of the ambushed Canadians. Several more
companies were sent to their support, and the skirmishing became lively.
Three detachments from Quebec had crossed the river; and the militia of
Beauport and Beaupre had hastened to join them. They fought like
Indians, hiding behind trees or throwing themselves flat among the
bushes, and laying repeated ambuscades as they slowly fell back. At
length, they all made a stand on a hill behind the buildings and fences
of a farm; and here they held their ground till night, while the New
England men taunted them as cowards who would never fight except under
cover.
Walley, who with his main body had stood in arms all day, now called in
the skirmishers, and fell back to the landing-place, where, as soon as
it grew dark, the boats arrived from the fleet. The sick men, of whom
there were many, were sent on board, and then, amid floods of rain, the
whole force embarked in noisy confusion, leaving behind them in the mud
five of their cannon. Hasty as was their parting, their conduct on the
whole had been creditable; and La Hontan, who was in Quebec at the time,
says of them, "They fought vigorously, though as ill-disciplined as men
gathered together at random could be; for they did not lack courage,
and, if they failed, it was by reason of their entire ignorance of
discipline, and because they were exhausted by the fatigues of the
voyage." Of Phips he speaks with contempt, and says that he could not
have served the French better if they had bribed him to stand all the
while with his arms folded. Some allowance should, nevertheless, be made
him for the unmanageable character of the force under his command, the
constitution of which was fatal to military subordination.
On Sunday, the morning after the re-embarkation, Phips called a council
of officers, and it was resolved that the men should rest for a day or
two, that there should be a meeting for prayer, and that, if ammunition
enough could be found, another landing should be attempted; but the
rough weather prevented the prayer-meeting, and the plan of a new attack
was fortunately abandoned.
Quebec remained in agitation and alarm till Tuesday, when Phips weighed
anchor and disappeared, with all his fleet, behind the Island of
Orleans. He did not go far, as indeed he could not, but stopped four
leagues below to mend rigging, fortify wounded masts, and stop
shot-holes. Subercase had gone with a detachment to watch the retiring
enemy; and Phips was repeatedly seen among his men, on a scaffold at the
side of his ship, exercising his old trade of carpenter. This delay was
turned to good use by an exchange of prisoners. Chief among those in the
hands of the French was Captain Davis, late commander at Casco Bay; and
there were also two young daughters of Lieutenant Clark, who had been
killed at the same place. Frontenac himself had humanely ransomed these
children from the Indians; and Madame de Champigny, wife of the
intendant, had, with equal kindness, bought from them a little girl
named Sarah Gerrish, and placed her in charge of the nuns at the
Hotel-Dieu, who had become greatly attached to her, while she, on her
part, left them with reluctance. The French had the better in these
exchanges, receiving able-bodied men, and returning, with the exception
of Davis, only women and children.
The heretics were gone, and Quebec breathed freely again. Her escape had
been a narrow one; not that three thousand men, in part regular troops,
defending one of the strongest positions on the continent, and commanded
by Frontenac, could not defy the attacks of two thousand raw fishermen
and farmers, led by an ignorant civilian, but the numbers which were a
source of strength were at the same time a source of weakness. Nearly
all the adult males of Canada were gathered at Quebec, and there was
imminent danger of starvation. Cattle from the neighboring parishes had
been hastily driven into the town; but there was little other provision,
and before Phips retreated the pinch of famine had begun. Had he come a
week earlier or stayed a week later, the French themselves believed that
Quebec would have fallen, in the one case for want of men, and in the
other for want of food.
Phips returned crestfallen to Boston late in November; and one by one
the rest of the fleet came straggling after him, battered and
weather-beaten. Some did not appear till February, and three or four
never came at all. The autumn and early winter were unusually stormy.
Captain Rainsford, with sixty men, was wrecked on the Island of
Anticosti, where more than half their number died of cold and misery. In
the other vessels, some were drowned, some frost-bitten, and above two
hundred killed by small-pox and fever.
At Boston, all was dismay and gloom. The Puritan bowed before "this
awful frown of God," and searched his conscience for the sin that had
brought upon him so stern a chastisement. Massachusetts, already
impoverished, found herself in extremity. The war, instead of paying
for itself, had burdened her with an additional debt of fifty thousand
pounds. The sailors and soldiers were clamorous for their pay; and, to
satisfy them, the colony was forced for the first time in its history to
issue a paper currency. It was made receivable at a premium for all
public debts, and was also fortified by a provision for its early
redemption by taxation; a provision which was carried into effect in
spite of poverty and distress.
Massachusetts had made her usual mistake. She had confidently believed
that ignorance and inexperience could match the skill of a tried
veteran, and that the rude courage of her fishermen and farmers could
triumph without discipline or leadership. The conditions of her material
prosperity were adverse to efficiency in war. A trading republic,
without trained officers, may win victories; but it wins them either by
accident or by an extravagant outlay in money and life.
THE HEIGHTS OF ABRAHAM.
The early part of the Seven Years' War was disastrous to England. The
tide turned with the accession to power of the great war minister,
William Pitt. In 1759, he sent General James Wolfe with a combined
military and naval force to capture Quebec. The British troops numbered
somewhat less than nine thousand, while Montcalm and Vaudreuil were
posted to receive them, on positions almost impregnable, with an army of
regulars, Canadians, and Indians, amounting in all to about sixteen
thousand. The great height of the shores made the British ships of
little or no use for purposes of attack.