initial commit of ebook 14517HEADmain

1 files changed, 28062 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/14517-8.txt b/14517-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2518740
--- /dev/null
+++ b/14517-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,28062 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of France and England in North America, Part VI: Montcalm and Wolfe, by Francis Parkman
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: France and England in North America, Part VI: Montcalm and Wolfe
+
+Author: Francis Parkman
+
+Release Date: December 29, 2004 [EBook #14517]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MONTCALM AND WOLFE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Curtis Weyant, Graeme Mackreth and the PG Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+FRANCIS PARKMAN
+
+MONTCALM AND WOLFE
+
+With a New Introduction by
+
+SAMUEL ELIOT MORISON
+
+
+
+
+COLLIER BOOKS
+
+NEW YORK, N.Y.
+
+This Collier Book is set from the 1884 edition
+
+Collier Books is a division of The Crowell-Collier Publishing Company
+
+First Collier Books Edition 1962
+
+
+
+
+Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 62:16974
+
+Copyright (c) 1962 by The Crowell-Collier Publishing Company All Rights
+Reserved Hecho en los E.E.U.U. Printed in the United States of America
+
+   To
+
+                            Harvard College,
+
+                the alma mater under whose influence the
+
+                   purpose of writing it was conceived,
+
+                               This Book
+
+                       is affectionately inscribed.
+
+
+
+Preface
+
+The names on the titlepage stand as representative of the two nations
+whose final contest for the control of North America is the subject of
+the book.
+
+A very large amount of unpublished material has been used in its
+preparation, consisting for the most part of documents copied from the
+archives and libraries of France and England, especially from the
+Archives de la Marine et des Colonies, the Archives de la Guerre, and
+the Archives Nationales at Paris, and the Public Record Office and the
+British Museum at London, the papers copied for the present work in
+France alone exceed six thousand folio pages of manuscript, additional
+and supplementary to the "Paris Documents" procured for the State of New
+York under the agency of Mr. Brodhead, the copies made in England form
+ten volumes, besides many English documents consulted in the original
+manuscript. Great numbers of autograph letters, diaries, and other
+writings of persons engaged in the war have also been examined on this
+side of the Atlantic.
+
+I owe to the kindness of the present Marquis de Montcalm the permission
+to copy all the letters written by his ancestor, General Montcalm, when
+in America, to members of his family in France. General Montcalm, from
+his first arrival in Canada to a few days before his death, also carried
+on an active correspondence with one of his chief officers, Bourlamaque,
+with whom he was on terms of intimacy. These autograph letters are now
+preserved in a private collection. I have examined them, and obtained
+copies of the whole. They form an interesting complement to the official
+correspondence of the writer, and throw the most curious side-lights on
+the persons and events of the time.
+
+Besides manuscripts, the printed matter in the form of books, pamphlets,
+contemporary newspapers, and other publications relating to the American
+part of the Seven Years' War, is varied and abundant; and I believe I
+may safely say that nothing in it of much consequence has escaped me.
+The liberality of some of the older States of the Union, especially New
+York and Pennsylvania, in printing the voluminous records of their
+colonial history, has saved me a deal of tedious labor.
+
+The whole of this published and unpublished mass of evidence has been
+read and collated with extreme care, and more than common pains have
+been taken to secure accuracy of statement. The study of books and
+papers, however, could not alone answer the purpose. The plan of the
+work was formed in early youth; and though various causes have long
+delayed its execution, it has always been kept in view. Meanwhile, I
+have visited and examined every spot where events of any importance in
+connection with the contest took place, and have observed with attention
+such scenes and persons as might help to illustrate those I meant to
+describe. In short, the subject has been studied as much from life and
+in the open air as at the library table.
+
+These two volumes are a departure from chronological sequence. The
+period between 1700 and 1748 has been passed over for a time. When this
+gap is filled, the series of "France and England in North America" will
+form a continuous history of the French occupation of the continent.
+
+BOSTON, Sept. 16, 1884.
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+Author's Introduction
+
+
+   CHAPTER I
+   1745-1755
+   The Combatants
+
+
+England in the Eighteenth Century. Her Political and Social Aspects. Her
+Military Condition. France. Her Power and Importance. Signs of Decay.
+The Court, the Nobles, the Clergy, the People. The King and Pompadour.
+The Philosophers. Germany. Prussia. Frederic II. Russia. State of
+Europe. War of the Austrian Succession. American Colonies of France and
+England. Contrasted Systems and their Results. Canada. Its Strong
+Military Position. French Claims to the Continent. British Colonies. New
+England. Virginia. Pennsylvania. New York, Jealousies, Divisions,
+Internal Disputes, Military Weakness.
+
+
+   CHAPTER 2
+   1749-1752
+   Céloron de Bienville
+
+
+La Galissonière. English Encroachment. Mission of Céloron. The Great
+West. Its European Claimants. Its Indian Population. English
+Fur-Traders. Céloron on the Alleghany. His Reception. His Difficulties.
+Descent of the Ohio. Covert Hostility. Ascent of the Miami. La
+Demoiselle. Dark Prospects for France. Christopher Gist. George Croghan.
+Their Western Mission. Pickawillany. English Ascendency. English
+Dissension and Rivalry. The Key of the Great West.
+
+
+   CHAPTER 3
+   1749-1753
+   Conflict for the West
+
+The Five Nations. Caughnawaga. Abbé Piquet. His Schemes. His Journey.
+Fort Frontenac. Toronto. Niagara. Oswego. Success of Piquet. Detroit. La
+Jonquiére. His Intrigues. His Trials. His Death. English Intrigues.
+Critical State of the West Pickawillany Destroyed. Duquesne. His Grand
+Enterprise.
+
+
+   CHAPTER 4
+   1710-1754
+   Conflict for Acadia
+
+Acadia ceded to England. Acadians swear Fidelity. Halifax founded.
+French Intrigue. Acadian Priests. Mildness of English Rule. Covert
+Hostility of Acadians. The New Oath. Treachery of Versailles. Indians
+incited to War. Clerical Agents of Revot. Abbé Le Loutre. Acadians
+impelled to emigrate. Misery of the Emigrants. Humanity of Cornwallis
+and Hopson. Fanaticism and Violence of Le Loutre. Capture of the "St.
+Francois." The English at Beaubassin. Le Loutre drives out the
+Inhabitants. Murder of Howe. Beauséjour. Insolence of Le Loutre. His
+Harshness to the Acadians. The Boundary Commission. Its Failure.
+Approaching War.
+
+
+   CHAPTER 5
+   1753, 1754
+   Washington
+
+The French occupy the Sources of the Ohio. Their Sufferings. Fort Le
+Boeuf. Legardeur de Saint-Pierre. Mission of Washington. Robert
+Dinwiddie. He opposes the French. His Dispute with the Burgesses. His
+Energy. His Appeals for Help. Fort Duquesne. Death of Jumonville.
+Washington at the Great Meadows. Coulon de Villiers. Fort Necessity.
+
+
+   CHAPTER 6
+   1754, 1755
+   The Signal of Battle
+
+Troubles of Dinwiddie. Gathering of the Burgesses. Virginian Society.
+Refractory Legislators. The Quaker Assembly It refuses to resist the
+French. Apathy of New York. Shirley and the General Court of
+Massachusetts. Short-sighted Policy. Attitude of Royal Governors. Indian
+Allies waver. Convention at Albany. Scheme of Union. It fails. Dinwiddie
+and Glen. Dinwiddie calls on England for Help. The Duke of Newcastle.
+Weakness of the British Cabinet. Attitude of France. Mutual
+Dissimulation. Both Powers send Troops to America. Collision. Capture of
+the "Alcide" and the "Lis."
+
+
+   CHAPTER 7
+   1755
+   Braddock
+
+Arrival of Braddock. His Character. Council at Alexandria. Plan of the
+Campaign. Apathy of the Colonists. Rage of Braddock. Franklin. Fort
+Cumberland. Composition of the Army. Offended Friends. The March. The
+French Fort. Savage Allies. The Captive. Beaujeu. He goes to meet the
+English. Passage of the Monongahela. The Surprise. The Battle. Rout of
+Braddock. His Death. Indian Ferocity. Reception of the Ill News.
+Weakness of Dunbar. The Frontier abandoned.
+
+
+   CHAPTER 8
+   1755-1763
+   Removal of the Acadians
+
+State of Acadia. Threatened Invasion. Peril of the English. Their Plans.
+French Forts to be attacked. Beauséjour and its Occupants. French
+Treatment of the Acadians. John Winslow. Siege and Capture of
+Beauséjour. Attitude of Acadians. Influence of their Priests. They
+refuse the Oath of Allegiance. Their Condition and Character. Pretended
+Neutrals. Moderation of English Authorities. The Acadians persist in
+their Refusal. Enemies or Subjects? Choice of the Acadians. The
+Consequence. Their Removal determined. Winslow at Grand Pré. Conference
+with Murray. Summons to the Inhabitants. Their Seizure. Their
+Embarkation. Their Fate. Their Treatment in Canada. Misapprehension
+concerning them.
+
+
+   CHAPTER 9
+   1755
+   Dieskau
+
+Expedition against Crown Point. William Johnson. Vaudreuil. Dieskau.
+Johnson and the Indians. The Provincial Army. Doubts and Delays. March
+to Lake George. Sunday in Camp. Advance of Dieskau. He changes Plan.
+Marches against Johnson. Ambush. Rout of Provincials. Battle of Lake
+George. Rout of the French. Rage of the Mohawks. Peril of Dieskau.
+Inaction of Johnson. The Homeward March. Laurels of Victory.
+
+
+   CHAPTER 10
+   1755, 1756
+   Shirley. Border War
+
+The Niagara Campaign. Albany. March to Oswego. Difficulties. The
+Expedition abandoned. Shirley and Johnson. Results of the Campaign. The
+Scourge of the Border. Trials of Washington. Misery of the Settlers.
+Horror of their Situation. Philadelphia and the Quakers. Disputes with
+the Penns. Democracy and Feudalism. Pennsylvanian Population. Appeals
+from the Frontier. Quarrel of Governor and Assembly. Help refused.
+Desperation of the Borderers. Fire and Slaughter. The Assembly alarmed.
+They pass a mock Militia Law. They are forced to yield.
+
+
+   CHAPTER 11
+   1712-1756
+   Montcalm
+
+War declared. State of Europe. Pompadour and Maria Theresa. Infatuation
+of the French Court. The European War. Montcalm to command in America.
+His early Life. An intractable Pupil. His Marriage. His Family. His
+Campaigns. Preparation for America. His Associates. Lévis, Bourlamaque,
+Bougainville. Embarkation. The Voyage. Arrival. Vaudreuil. Forces of
+Canada. Troops of the Line, Colony Troops, Militia, Indians. The
+Military Situation. Capture of Fort Bull. Montcalm at Ticonderoga.
+
+
+   CHAPTER 12
+   1756
+   Oswego
+
+The new Campaign. Untimely Change of Commanders. Eclipse of Shirley.
+Earl of Loudon. Muster of Provincials. New England Levies. Winslow at
+Lake George. Johnson and the Five Nations. Bradstreet and his Boatmen.
+Fight on the Onondaga. Pestilence at Oswego. Loudon and the Provincials.
+New England Camps. Army Chaplains. A sudden Blow. Montcalm attacks
+Oswego. Its Fall.
+
+
+   CHAPTER 13
+   1756, 1757
+   Partisan War
+
+Failure of Shirley's Plan. Causes. Loudon and Shirley. Close of the
+Campaign. The Western Border. Armstrong destroys Kittanning. The Scouts
+of Lake George War Parties from Ticonderoga. Robert Rogers. The Rangers.
+Their Hardihood and Daring. Disputes as to Quarters of Troops.
+Expedition of Rogers. A Desperate Bush-fight. Enterprise of Vaudreuil.
+Rigaud attacks Fort William Henry.
+
+
+   CHAPTER 14
+   1757
+   Montcalm and Vaudreuil
+
+The Seat of War. Social Life at Montreal. Familiar Correspondence of
+Montcalm. His Employments. His Impressions of Canada. His Hospitalities.
+Misunderstandings with the Governor. Character of Vaudreuil. His
+Accusations. Frenchmen and Canadians. Foibles of Montcalm. The opening
+Campaign. Doubts and Suspense. London's Plan. His Character. Fatal
+Delays. Abortive Attempt against Louisbourg. Disaster to the British
+Fleet.
+
+
+   CHAPTER 15
+   1757
+   Fort William Henry
+
+Another Blow. The War-song. The Army at Ticonderoga. Indian Allies. The
+War-feast. Treatment of Prisoners. Cannibalism. Surprise and Slaughter.
+The War Council. March of Lévis. The Army embarks. Fort William Henry.
+Nocturnal Scene. Indian Funeral. Advance upon the Fort. General Webb.
+His Difficulties. His Weakness. The Siege begun. Conduct of the Indians.
+The Intercepted Letter. Desperate Position of the Besieged.
+Capitulation. Ferocity of the Indians. Mission of Bougainville. Murder
+of Wounded Men. A Scene of Terror. The Massacre. Efforts of Montcalm.
+The Fort burned.
+
+
+   CHAPTER 16
+   1757, 1758
+   A Winter of Discontent
+
+Boasts of Loudon. A Mutinous Militia. Panic. Accusations of Vaudreuil.
+His Weakness. Indian Barbarities. Destruction of German Flats.
+Discontent of Montcalm. Festivities at Montreal. Montcalm's Relations
+with the Governor. Famine. Riots. Mutiny. Winter at Ticonderoga. A
+desperate Bush-fight. Defeat of the Rangers. Adventures of Roche and
+Pringle.
+
+
+   CHAPTER 17
+   1753-1760
+   Bigot
+
+His Life and Character. Canadian Society. Official Festivities. A Party
+of Pleasure. Hospitalities of Bigot. Desperate Gambling. Château Bigot.
+Canadian Ladies. Cadet. La Friponne. Official Rascality. Methods of
+Peculation. Cruel Frauds on the Acadians. Military Corruption. Péan.
+Love and Knavery. Varin and his Partners. Vaudreuil and the Peculators.
+He defends Bigot; praises Cadet and Péan. Canadian Finances. Peril of
+Bigot. Threats of the Minister. Evidence of Montcalm. Impending Ruin of
+the Confederates.
+
+
+    CHAPTER 18
+    1757, 1758
+    Pitt
+
+Frederic of Prussia. The Coalition against him. His desperate Position.
+Rossbach. Leuthen. Reverses of England. Weakness of the Ministry. A
+Change. Pitt and Newcastle. Character of Pitt. Sources of his Power. His
+Aims. Louis XV. Pompadour. She controls the Court, and directs the War.
+Gloomy Prospects of England. Disasters. The New Ministry. Inspiring
+Influence of Pitt. The Tide turns. British Victories. Pitt's Plans for
+America. Louisbourg, Ticonderoga, Duquesne. New Commanders. Naval
+Battles.
+
+
+   CHAPTER 19
+   1758
+   Louisbourg
+
+Condition of the Fortress. Arrival of the English. Gallantry of Wolfe.
+The English Camp. The Siege begun. Progress of the Besiegers. Sallies of
+the French. Madame Drucour. Courtesies of War. French Ships destroyed.
+Conflagration. Fury of the Bombardment. Exploit of English Sailors. The
+End near. The White Flag. Surrender. Reception of the News in England
+and America. Wolfe not satisfied. His Letters to Amherst. He destroys
+Gaspé. Returns to England.
+
+
+   CHAPTER 20
+   1758
+   Ticonderoga
+
+Activity of the Provinces. Sacrifices of Massachusetts. The Army at Lake
+George. Proposed Incursion of Lévis. Perplexities of Montcalm. His Plan
+of Defence. Camp of Abercromby. His Character. Lord Howe, His
+Popularity. Embarkation of Abercromby. Advance down Lake George.
+Landing. Forest Skirmish. Death of Howe. Its Effects. Position of the
+French. The Lines of Ticonderoga. Blunders of Abercromby. The Assault. A
+Frightful Scene. Incidents of the Battle. British Repulse. Panic.
+Retreat Triumph of Montcalm.
+
+
+    CHAPTER 21
+    1758
+    Fort Frontenac
+
+The Routed Army. Indignation at Abercromby. John Cleaveland and his
+Brother Chaplains. Regulars and Provincials. Provincial Surgeons. French
+Raids. Rogers defeats Marin. Adventures of Putnam. Expedition of
+Bradstreet. Capture of Fort Frontenac.
+
+
+   CHAPTER 22
+   1758
+   Fort Duquesne
+
+Dinwiddie and Washington. Brigadier Forbes. His Army. Conflicting Views.
+Difficulties. Illness of Forbes. His Sufferings. His Fortitude. His
+Difference with Washington. Sir John Sinclair. Troublesome Allies.
+Scouting Parties. Boasts of Vaudreuil. Forbes and the Indians. Mission
+of Christian Frederic Post. Council of Peace. Second Mission of Post.
+Defeat of Grant. Distress of Forbes. Dark Prospects. Advance of the
+Army. Capture of the French Fort. The Slain of Braddock's Field. Death
+of Forbes.
+
+
+    CHAPTER 23
+    1758, 1759
+    The Brink of Ruin
+
+Jealousy of Vaudreuil. He asks for Montcalm's Recall. His Discomfiture.
+Scene at the Governor's House. Disgust of Montcalm. The Canadians
+Despondent. Devices to encourage them. Gasconade of the Governor.
+Deplorable State of the Colony. Mission of Bougainville. Duplicity of
+Vaudreuil. Bougainville at Versailles. Substantial Aid refused to
+Canada. A Matrimonial Treaty. Return of Bougainville. Montcalm abandoned
+by the Court. His Plans of Defence. Sad News from Candiac. Promises of
+Vaudreuil.
+
+
+   CHAPTER 24
+   1758, 1759
+   Wolfe
+
+The Exiles of Fort Cumberland. Relief. The Voyage to Louisbourg. The
+British Fleet. Expedition against Quebec. Early Life of Wolfe. His
+Character. His Letters to his Parents. His Domestic Qualities. Appointed
+to command the Expedition. Sails for America.
+
+
+   CHAPTER 25
+   1759
+   Wolfe at Quebec
+
+French Preparation. Muster of Forces. Gasconade of Vaudreuil. Plan of
+Defence. Strength of Montcalm. Advance of Wolfe. British Sailors.
+Landing of the English. Difficulties before them. Storm. Fireships.
+Confidence of French Commanders. Wolfe occupies Point Levi. A Futile
+Night Attack. Quebec bombarded. Wolfe at the Montmorenci. Skirmishes.
+Danger of the English Position. Effects of the Bombardment. Desertion
+of Canadians. The English above Quebec. Severities of Wolfe. Another
+Attempt to burn the Fleet. Desperate Enterprise of Wolfe. The Heights of
+Montmorenci. Repulse of the English.
+
+
+   CHAPTER 26
+   1759
+   Amherst. Niagara
+
+Amherst on Lake George. Capture of Ticonderoga and Crown Point. Delays
+of Amherst. Niagara Expedition. La Corne attacks Oswego. His Repulse.
+Niagara besieged. Aubry comes to its Relief. Battle. Rout of the French.
+The Fort taken. Isle-aux-Noix. Amherst advances to attack it. Storm. The
+Enterprise abandoned, Rogers attacks St. Francis. Destroys the Town.
+Sufferings of the Rangers.
+
+
+    CHAPTER 27
+    1759
+    The Heights of Abraham
+
+Elation of the French. Despondency of Wolfe. The Parishes laid waste.
+Operations above Quebec. Illness of Wolfe. A New Plan of Attack. Faint
+Hope of Success. Wolfe's Last Despatch. Confidence of Vaudreuil. Last
+Letters of Montcalm. French Vigilance. British Squadron at Cap-Rouge.
+Last Orders of Wolfe. Embarkation. Descent of the St. Lawrence. The
+Heights scaled. The British Line. Last Night of Montcalm. The Alarm.
+March of French Troops. The Battle. The Rout. The Pursuit. Fall of Wolfe
+and of Montcalm.
+
+
+    CHAPTER 28
+    1759
+    Fall of Quebec
+
+After the Battle. Canadians resist the Pursuit. Arrival of Vaudreuil.
+Scene in the Redoubt. Panic. Movements of the Victors. Vaudreuil's
+Council of War. Precipitate Retreat of the French Army. Last Hours of
+Montcalm. His Death and Burial. Quebec abandoned to its Fate. Despair of
+the Garrison. Lévis joins the Army. Attempts to relieve the Town.
+Surrender. The British occupy Quebec. Slanders of Vaudreuil. Reception
+in England of the News of Wolfe's Victory and Death. Prediction of
+Jonathan Mayhew.
+
+
+    CHAPTER 29
+    1759, 1760
+    Sainte-Foy
+
+Quebec after the Siege. Captain Knox and the Nuns. Escape of French
+Ships. Winter at Quebec. Threats of Lévis. Attacks. Skirmishes. Feat of
+the Rangers. State of the Garrison. The French prepare to retake Quebec.
+Advance of Levis. The Alarm. Sortie of the English. Rash Determination
+of Murray. Battle of Ste.-Foy. Retreat of the English. Lévis besieges
+Quebec. Spirit of the Garrison. Peril of their Situation. Relief. Quebec
+saved. Retreat of Lévis. The News in England.
+
+
+   CHAPTER 30
+   1760
+   Fall of Canada
+
+Desperate Situation. Efforts of Vaudreuil and Lévis. Plans of Amherst. A
+Triple Attack. Advance of Murray. Advance of Haviland. Advance of
+Amherst. Capitulation of Montreal. Protest of Lévis. Injustice of Louis
+XV. Joy in the British Colonies. Character of the War.
+
+
+    CHAPTER 31
+    1758-1763
+    The Peace of Paris
+
+Exodus of Canadian Leaders. Wreck of the "Auguste." Trial of Bigot and
+his Confederates. Frederic of Prussia. His Triumphs. His Reverses. His
+Peril. His Fortitude. Death of George II. Change of Policy. Choiseul.
+His Overtures of Peace. The Family Compact. Fall of Pitt. Death of the
+Czarina. Frederic saved. War with Spain. Capture of Havana.
+Negotiations. Terms of Peace. Shall Canada be restored? Speech of Pitt.
+The Treaty signed. End of the Seven Years War.
+
+
+   CHAPTER 32
+   1763-1884
+   Conclusion
+
+Results of the War. Germany. France. England. Canada. The British
+Provinces.
+
+Appendix
+
+Index
+
+
+
+
+Author's Introduction
+
+It is the nature of great events to obscure the great events that came
+before them. The Seven Years War in Europe is seen but dimly through
+revolutionary convulsions and Napoleonic tempests; and the same contest
+in America is half lost to sight behind the storm-cloud of the War of
+Independence. Few at this day see the momentous issues involved in it,
+or the greatness of the danger that it averted. The strife that armed
+all the civilized world began here. "Such was the complication of
+political interests," says Voltaire, "that a cannon-shot fired in
+America could give the signal that set Europe in a blaze." Not quite. It
+was not a cannon-shot, but a volley from the hunting-pieces of a few
+backwoodsmen, commanded by a Virginian youth, George Washington.
+
+To us of this day, the result of the American part of the war seems a
+foregone conclusion. It was far from being so; and very far from being
+so regarded by our forefathers. The numerical superiority of the British
+colonies was offset by organic weaknesses fatal to vigorous and united
+action. Nor at the outset did they, or the mother-country, aim at
+conquering Canada, but only at pushing back her boundaries.
+Canada--using the name in its restricted sense--was a position of great
+strength; and even when her dependencies were overcome, she could hold
+her own against forces far superior. Armies could reach her only by
+three routes,--the Lower St. Lawrence on the east, the Upper St.
+Lawrence on the west, and Lake Champlain on the south. The first access
+was guarded by a fortress almost impregnable by nature, and the second
+by a long chain of dangerous rapids; while the third offered a series of
+points easy to defend. During this same war, Frederic of Prussia held
+his ground triumphantly against greater odds, though his kingdom was
+open on all sides to attack.
+
+It was the fatuity of Louis XV. and his Pompadour that made the conquest
+of Canada possible. Had they not broken the traditionary policy of
+France, allied themselves to Austria, her ancient enemy, and plunged
+needlessly into the European war, the whole force of the kingdom would
+have been turned, from the first, to the humbling of England and the
+defence of the French colonies. The French soldiers left dead on
+inglorious Continental battle-fields could have saved Canada, and
+perhaps made good her claim to the vast territories of the West.
+
+But there were other contingencies. The possession of Canada was a
+question of diplomacy as well as of war. If England conquered her, she
+might restore her, as she had lately restored Cape Breton. She had an
+interest in keeping France alive on the American continent. More than
+one clear eye saw, at the middle of the last century, that the
+subjection of Canada would lead to a revolt of the British colonies. So
+long as an active and enterprising enemy threatened their borders, they
+could not break with the mother-country, because they needed her help.
+And if the arms of France had prospered in the other hemisphere; if she
+had gained in Europe or Asia territories with which to buy back what she
+had lost in America, then, in all likelihood, Canada would have passed
+again into her hands.
+
+The most momentous and far-reaching question ever brought to issue on
+this continent was: Shall France remain here, or shall she not? If, by
+diplomacy or war, she had preserved but the half, or less than the half,
+of her American possessions, then a barrier would have been set to the
+spread of the English-speaking races; there would have been no
+Revolutionary War; and for a long time, at least, no independence. It
+was not a question of scanty populations strung along the banks of the
+St. Lawrence; it was--or under a government of any worth it would have
+been--a question of the armies and generals of France. America owes much
+to the imbecility of Louis XV. and the ambitious vanity and personal
+dislikes of his mistress.
+
+The Seven Years War made England what she is. It crippled the commerce
+of her rival, ruined France in two continents, and blighted her as a
+colonial power. It gave England the control of the seas and the mastery
+of North America and India, made her the first of commercial nations,
+and prepared that vast colonial system that has planted new Englands in
+every quarter of the globe. And while it made England what she is, it
+supplied to the United States the indispensable condition of their
+greatness, if not of their national existence.
+
+Before entering on the story of the great contest, we will look at the
+parties to it on both sides of the Atlantic.
+
+Montcalm and Wolfe
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 1
+
+1745-1755
+
+The Combatants
+
+
+The latter half of the reign of George II. was one of the most prosaic
+periods in English history. The civil wars and the Restoration had had
+their enthusiasms, religion and liberty on one side, and loyalty on the
+other; but the old fires declined when William III. came to the throne,
+and died to ashes under the House of Hanover. Loyalty lost half its
+inspiration when it lost the tenet of the divine right of kings; and
+nobody could now hold that tenet with any consistency except the
+defeated and despairing Jacobites. Nor had anybody as yet proclaimed the
+rival dogma of the divine right of the people. The reigning monarch held
+his crown neither of God nor of the nation, but of a parliament
+controlled by a ruling class. The Whig aristocracy had done a priceless
+service to English liberty. It was full of political capacity, and by no
+means void of patriotism; but it was only a part of the national life.
+Nor was it at present moved by political emotions in any high sense. It
+had done its great work when it expelled the Stuarts and placed William
+of Orange on the throne; its ascendency was now complete. The Stuarts
+had received their death-blow at Culloden; and nothing was left to the
+dominant party but to dispute on subordinate questions, and contend for
+office among themselves. The Troy squires sulked in their
+country-houses, hunted foxes, and grumbled against the reigning dynasty;
+yet hardly wished to see the nation convulsed by a counter-revolution
+and another return of the Stuarts.
+
+If politics had run to commonplace, so had morals; and so too had
+religion. Despondent writers of the day even complained that British
+courage had died out. There was little sign to the common eye that under
+a dull and languid surface, forces were at work preparing a new life,
+material, moral, and intellectual. As yet, Whitefield and Wesley had not
+wakened the drowsy conscience of the nation, nor the voice of William
+Pitt roused it like a trumpet-peal.
+
+It was the unwashed and unsavory England of Hogarth, Fielding, Smollett,
+and Sterne; of Tom Jones, Squire Western, Lady Bellaston, and Parson
+Adams; of the "Rake's Progress" and "Marriage à la Mode;" of the lords
+and ladies who yet live in the undying gossip of Horace Walpole,
+be-powdered, be-patched, and be-rouged, flirting at masked balls,
+playing cards till daylight, retailing scandal, and exchanging double
+meanings. Beau Nash reigned king over the gaming-tables of Bath; the
+ostrich-plumes of great ladies mingled with the peacock-feathers of
+courtesans in the rotunda at Ranelagh Gardens; and young lords in velvet
+suits and embroidered ruffles played away their patrimony at White's
+Chocolate-House or Arthur's Club. Vice was bolder than to-day, and
+manners more courtly, perhaps, but far more coarse.
+
+The humbler clergy were thought--sometimes with reason--to be no fit
+company for gentlemen, and country parsons drank their ale in the
+squire's kitchen. The passenger-wagon spent the better part of a
+fortnight in creeping from London to York. Travellers carried pistols
+against footpads and mounted highwaymen. Dick Turpin and Jack Sheppard
+were popular heroes. Tyburn counted its victims by scores; and as yet no
+Howard had appeared to reform the inhuman abominations of the prisons.
+
+The middle class, though fast rising in importance, was feebly and
+imperfectly represented in parliament. The boroughs were controlled by
+the nobility and gentry, or by corporations open to influence or
+bribery. Parliamentary corruption had been reduced to a system; and
+offices, sinecures, pensions, and gifts of money were freely used to
+keep ministers in power. The great offices of state were held by men
+sometimes of high ability, but of whom not a few divided their lives
+among politics, cards, wine, horse-racing, and women, till time and the
+gout sent them to the waters of Bath. The dull, pompous, and irascible
+old King had two ruling passions,--money, and his Continental dominions
+of Hanover. His elder son, the Prince of Wales, was a centre of
+opposition to him. His younger son, the Duke of Cumberland, a character
+far more pronounced and vigorous, had won the day at Culloden, and lost
+it at Fontenoy; but whether victor or vanquished, had shown the same
+vehement bull-headed courage, of late a little subdued by fast growing
+corpulency. The Duke of Newcastle, the head of the government, had
+gained power and kept it by his rank and connections, his wealth, his
+county influence, his control of boroughs, and the extraordinary
+assiduity and devotion with which he practised the arts of corruption.
+Henry Fox, grasping, unscrupulous, with powerful talents, a warm friend
+after his fashion, and a most indulgent father; Carteret, with his
+strong, versatile intellect and jovial intrepidity; the two Townshends,
+Mansfield, Halifax, and Chesterfield,--were conspicuous figures in the
+politics of the time. One man towered above them all. Pitt had many
+enemies and many critics. They called him ambitious, audacious,
+arrogant, theatrical, pompous, domineering; but what he has left for
+posterity is a loftiness of soul, undaunted courage, fiery and
+passionate eloquence, proud incorruptibility, domestic virtues rare in
+his day, unbounded faith in the cause for which he stood, and abilities
+which without wealth or strong connections were destined to place him on
+the height of power. The middle class, as yet almost voiceless, looked
+to him as its champion; but he was not the champion of a class. His
+patriotism was as comprehensive as it was haughty and unbending. He
+lived for England, loved her with intense devotion, knew her, believed
+in her, and made her greatness his own; or rather, he was himself
+England incarnate.
+
+The nation was not then in fighting equipment. After the peace of
+Aix-la-Chapelle, the army within the three kingdoms had been reduced to
+about eighteen thousand men. Added to these were the garrisons of
+Minorca and Gibraltar, and six or seven independent companies in the
+American colonies. Of sailors, less than seventeen thousand were left in
+the Royal Navy. Such was the condition of England on the eve of one of
+the most formidable wars in which she was ever engaged.
+
+Her rival across the Channel was drifting slowly and unconsciously
+towards the cataclysm of the Revolution; yet the old monarchy, full of
+the germs of decay, was still imposing and formidable. The House of
+Bourbon held the three thrones of France, Spain, and Naples; and their
+threatened union in a family compact was the terror of European
+diplomacy. At home France was the foremost of the Continental nations;
+and she boasted herself second only to Spain as a colonial power. She
+disputed with England the mastery of India, owned the islands of Bourbon
+and Mauritius, held important possessions in the West Indies, and
+claimed all North America except Mexico and a strip of sea-coast. Her
+navy was powerful, her army numerous, and well appointed; but she lacked
+the great commanders of the last reign. Soubise, Maillebois, Contades,
+Broglie, and Clermont were but weak successors of Condé, Turenne,
+Vendôme, and Villars. Marshal Richelieu was supreme in the arts of
+gallantry, and more famous for conquests of love than of war. The best
+generals of Louis XV. were foreigners. Lowendal sprang from the royal
+house of Denmark; and Saxe, the best of all, was one of the three
+hundred and fifty-four bastards of Augustus the Strong, Elector of
+Saxony and King of Poland. He was now, 1750, dying at Chambord, his iron
+constitution ruined by debaucheries.
+
+The triumph of the Bourbon monarchy was complete. The government had
+become one great machine of centralized administration, with a king for
+its head; though a king who neither could nor would direct it. All
+strife was over between the Crown and the nobles; feudalism was robbed
+of its vitality, and left the mere image of its former self, with
+nothing alive but its abuses, its caste privileges, its exactions, its
+pride and vanity, its power to vex and oppress. In England, the nobility
+were a living part of the nation, and if they had privileges, they paid
+for them by constant service to the state; in France, they had no
+political life, and were separated from the people by sharp lines of
+demarcation. From warrior chiefs, they had changed to courtiers. Those
+of them who could afford it, and many who could not, left their estates
+to the mercy of stewards, and gathered at Versailles to revolve about
+the throne as glittering satellites, paid in pomp, empty distinctions,
+or rich sinecures, for the power they had lost. They ruined their
+vassals to support the extravagance by which they ruined themselves.
+Such as stayed at home were objects of pity and scorn. "Out of your
+Majesty's presence," said one of them, "we are not only wretched, but
+ridiculous."
+
+Versailles was like a vast and gorgeous theatre, where all were actors
+and spectators at once; and all played their parts to perfection. Here
+swarmed by thousands this silken nobility, whose ancestors rode cased in
+iron. Pageant followed pageant. A picture of the time preserves for us
+an evening in the great hall of the Château, where the King, with piles
+of louis d'or before him, sits at a large oval green table, throwing the
+dice, among princes and princesses, dukes and duchesses, ambassadors,
+marshals of France, and a vast throng of courtiers, like an animated bed
+of tulips; for men and women alike wear bright and varied colors. Above
+are the frescos of Le Brun; around are walls of sculptured and inlaid
+marbles, with mirrors that reflect the restless splendors of the scene
+and the blaze of chandeliers, sparkling with crystal pendants. Pomp,
+magnificence, profusion, were a business and a duty at the Court.
+Versailles was a gulf into which the labor of France poured its
+earnings; and it was never full.
+
+Here the graces and charms were a political power. Women had prodigious
+influence, and the two sexes were never more alike. Men not only dressed
+in colors, but they wore patches and carried muffs. The robust qualities
+of the old nobility still lingered among the exiles of the provinces,
+while at Court they had melted into refinements tainted with corruption.
+Yet if the butterflies of Versailles had lost virility, they had not
+lost courage. They fought as gayly as they danced. In the halls which
+they haunted of yore, turned now into a historical picture-gallery, one
+sees them still, on the canvas of Lenfant, Lepaon, or Vernet, facing
+death with careless gallantry, in their small three-cornered hats,
+powdered perukes, embroidered coats, and lace ruffles. Their valets
+served them with ices in the trenches, under the cannon of besieged
+towns. A troop of actors formed part of the army-train of Marshal Saxe.
+At night there was a comedy, a ballet, or a ball, and in the morning a
+battle. Saxe, however, himself a sturdy German, while he recognized
+their fighting value, and knew well how to make the best of it,
+sometimes complained that they were volatile, excitable, and difficult
+to manage.
+
+The weight of the Court, with its pomps, luxuries, and wars, bore on the
+classes least able to support it. The poorest were taxed most; the
+richest not at all. The nobles, in the main, were free from imposts. The
+clergy, who had vast possessions, were wholly free, though they
+consented to make voluntary gifts to the Crown; and when, in a time of
+emergency, the minister Machault required them, in common with all
+others hitherto exempt, to contribute a twentieth of their revenues to
+the charges of government, they passionately refused, declaring that
+they would obey God rather than the King. The cultivators of the soil
+were ground to the earth by a threefold extortion,--the seigniorial
+dues, the tithes of the Church, and the multiplied exactions of the
+Crown, enforced with merciless rigor by the farmers of the revenue, who
+enriched themselves by wringing the peasant on the one hand, and
+cheating the King on the other. A few great cities shone with all that
+is most brilliant in society, intellect, and concentrated wealth; while
+the country that paid the costs lay in ignorance and penury, crushed and
+despairing. Of the inhabitants of towns, too, the demands of the
+tax-gatherer were extreme; but here the immense vitality of the French
+people bore up the burden. While agriculture languished, and intolerable
+oppression turned peasants into beggars or desperadoes; while the clergy
+were sapped by corruption, and the nobles enervated by luxury and ruined
+by extravagance, the middle class was growing in thrift and strength.
+Arts and commerce prospered, and the seaports were alive with foreign
+trade. Wealth tended from all sides towards the centre. The King did not
+love his capital; but he and his favorites amused themselves with
+adorning it. Some of the chief embellishments that make Paris what it is
+to-day--the Place de la Concorde, the Champs Elysées, and many of the
+palaces of the Faubourg St. Germain--date from this reign.
+
+One of the vicious conditions of the time was the separation in
+sympathies and interests of the four great classes of the
+nation,--clergy, nobles, burghers, and peasants; and each of these,
+again, divided itself into incoherent fragments. France was an aggregate
+of disjointed parts, held together by a meshwork of arbitrary power,
+itself touched with decay. A disastrous blow was struck at the national
+welfare when the Government of Louis XV. revived the odious persecution
+of the Huguenots. The attempt to scour heresy out of France cost her the
+most industrious and virtuous part of her population, and robbed her of
+those most fit to resist the mocking scepticism and turbid passions that
+burst out like a deluge with the Revolution.
+
+Her manifold ills were summed up in the King. Since the Valois, she had
+had no monarch so worthless. He did not want understanding, still less
+the graces of person. In his youth the people called him the
+"Well-beloved;" but by the middle of the century they so detested him
+that he dared not pass through Paris, lest the mob should execrate him.
+He had not the vigor of the true tyrant; but his langour, his hatred of
+all effort, his profound selfishness, his listless disregard of public
+duty, and his effeminate libertinism, mixed with superstitious devotion,
+made him no less a national curse. Louis XIII. was equally unfit to
+govern; but he gave the reins to the Great Cardinal. Louis XV. abandoned
+them to a frivolous mistress, content that she should rule on condition
+of amusing him. It was a hard task; yet Madame de Pompadour accomplished
+it by methods infamous to him and to her. She gained and long kept the
+power that she coveted: filled the Bastille with her enemies; made and
+unmade ministers; appointed and removed generals. Great questions of
+policy were at the mercy of her caprices. Through her frivolous vanity,
+her personal likes and dislikes, all the great departments of
+government--army, navy, war, foreign affairs, justice, finance--changed
+from hand to hand incessantly, and this at a time of crisis when the
+kingdom needed the steadiest and surest guidance. Few of the officers of
+state, except, perhaps, D'Argenson, could venture to disregard her. She
+turned out Orry, the comptroller-general, put her favorite, Machault,
+into his place, then made him keeper of the seals, and at last minister
+of marine. The Marquis de Puysieux, in the ministry of foreign affairs,
+and the Comte de St.-Florentin, charged with the affairs of the clergy,
+took their cue from her. The King stinted her in nothing. First and
+last, she is reckoned to have cost him thirty-six million
+francs,--answering now to more than as many dollars.
+
+The prestige of the monarchy was declining with the ideas that had given
+it life and strength. A growing disrespect for king, ministry, and
+clergy was beginning to prepare the catastrophe that was still some
+forty years in the future. While the valleys and low places of the
+kingdom were dark with misery and squalor, its heights were bright with
+a gay society,--elegant, fastidious, witty,--craving the pleasures of
+the mind as well as of the senses, criticising everything, analyzing
+everything, believing nothing. Voltaire was in the midst of it, hating,
+with all his vehement soul, the abuses that swarmed about him, and
+assailing them with the inexhaustible shafts of his restless and
+piercing intellect. Montesquieu was showing to a despot-ridden age the
+principles of political freedom. Diderot and D'Alembert were beginning
+their revolutionary Encyclopaedia. Rousseau was sounding the first notes
+of his mad eloquence,--the wild revolt of a passionate and diseased
+genius against a world of falsities and wrongs. The _salons_ of Paris,
+cloyed with other pleasures, alive to all that was racy and new,
+welcomed the pungent doctrines, and played with them as children play
+with fire, thinking no danger; as time went on, even embraced them in a
+genuine spirit of hope and goodwill for humanity. The Revolution began
+at the top,--in the world of fashion, birth, and intellect,--and
+propagated itself downwards. "We walked on a carpet of flowers," Count
+Ségur afterwards said, "unconscious that it covered an abyss;" till the
+gulf yawned at last, and swallowed them.
+
+Eastward, beyond the Rhine, lay the heterogeneous patchwork of the Holy
+Roman, or Germanic, Empire. The sacred bonds that throughout the Middle
+Ages had held together its innumerable fragments, had lost their
+strength. The Empire decayed as a whole; but not so the parts that
+composed it. In the south the House of Austria reigned over a formidable
+assemblage of states; and in the north the House of Brandenburg,
+promoted to royalty half a century before, had raised Prussia into an
+importance far beyond her extent and population. In her dissevered rags
+of territory lay the destinies of Germany. It was the late King, that
+honest, thrifty, dogged, headstrong despot, Frederic William, who had
+made his kingdom what it was, trained it to the perfection of drill, and
+left it to his son, Frederic II. the best engine of war in Europe.
+Frederic himself had passed between the upper and nether millstones of
+paternal discipline. Never did prince undergo such an apprenticeship.
+His father set him to the work of an overseer, or steward, flung plates
+at his head in the family circle, thrashed him with his rattan in
+public, bullied him for submitting to such treatment, and imprisoned him
+for trying to run away from it. He came at last out of purgatory; and
+Europe felt him to her farthest bounds. This bookish, philosophizing,
+verse-making cynic and profligate was soon to approve himself the first
+warrior of his time, and one of the first of all time.
+
+Another power had lately risen on the European world. Peter the Great,
+half hero, half savage, had roused the inert barbarism of Russia into a
+titanic life. His daughter Elizabeth had succeeded to his
+throne,--heiress of his sensuality, if not of his talents.
+
+Over all the Continent the aspect of the times was the same. Power had
+everywhere left the plains and the lower slopes, and gathered at the
+summits. Popular life was at a stand. No great idea stirred the nations
+to their depths. The religious convulsions of the sixteenth and
+seventeenth centuries were over, and the earthquake of the French
+Revolution had not begun. At the middle of the eighteenth century the
+history of Europe turned on the balance of power; the observance of
+treaties; inheritance and succession; rivalries of sovereign houses
+struggling to win power or keep it, encroach on neighbors, or prevent
+neighbors from encroaching; bargains, intrigue, force, diplomacy, and
+the musket, in the interest not of peoples but of rulers. Princes, great
+and small, brooded over some real or fancied wrong, nursed some dubious
+claim born of a marriage, a will, or an ancient covenant fished out of
+the abyss of time, and watched their moment to make it good. The general
+opportunity came when, in 1740, the Emperor Charles VI. died and
+bequeathed his personal dominions of the House of Austria to his
+daughter, Maria Theresa. The chief Powers of Europe had been pledged in
+advance to sustain the will; and pending the event, the veteran Prince
+Eugene had said that two hundred thousand soldiers would be worth all
+their guaranties together. The two hundred thousand were not there, and
+not a sovereign kept his word. They flocked to share the spoil, and
+parcel out the motley heritage of the young Queen. Frederic of Prussia
+led the way, invaded her province of Silesia, seized it, and kept it.
+The Elector of Bavaria and the King of Spain claimed their share, and
+the Elector of Saxony and the King of Sardinia prepared to follow the
+example. France took part with Bavaria, and intrigued to set the
+imperial crown on the head of the Elector, thinking to ruin her old
+enemy, the House of Austria, and rule Germany through an emperor too
+weak to dispense with her support. England, jealous of her designs,
+trembling for the balance of power, and anxious for the Hanoverian
+possessions of her king, threw herself into the strife on the side of
+Austria. It was now that, in the Diet at Presburg, the beautiful and
+distressed Queen, her infant in her arms, made her memorable appeal to
+the wild chivalry of her Hungarian nobles; and, clashing their swords,
+they shouted with one voice: "Let us die for our king, Maria Theresa;"
+_Moriamur pro rege nostro, Mariâ_,--one of the most dramatic scenes in
+history; not quite true, perhaps, but near the truth. Then came that
+confusion worse confounded called the war of the Austrian Succession,
+with its Mollwitz, its Dettingen, its Fontenoy, and its Scotch episode
+of Culloden. The peace of Aix-la-Chapelle closed the strife in 1748.
+Europe had time to breathe; but the germs of discord remained alive.
+
+The American Combatants
+
+The French claimed all America, from the Alleghanies to the Rocky
+Mountains, and from Mexico and Florida to the North Pole, except only
+the ill-defined possessions of the English on the borders of Hudson Bay;
+and to these vast regions, with adjacent islands, they gave the general
+name of New France. They controlled the highways of the continent, for
+they held its two great rivers. First, they had seized the St. Lawrence,
+and then planted themselves at the mouth of the Mississippi. Canada at
+the north, and Louisiana at the south, were the keys of a boundless
+interior, rich with incalculable possibilities. The English colonies,
+ranged along the Atlantic coast, had no royal road to the great inland,
+and were, in a manner, shut between the mountains and the sea. At the
+middle of the century they numbered in all, from Georgia to Maine, about
+eleven hundred and sixty thousand white inhabitants. By the census of
+1754 Canada had but fifty-five thousand.[1] Add those of Louisiana and
+Acadia, and the whole white population under the French flag might be
+something more than eighty thousand. Here is an enormous disparity; and
+hence it has been argued that the success of the English colonies and
+the failure of the French was not due to difference of religious and
+political systems, but simply to numerical preponderance. But this
+preponderance itself grew out of a difference of systems. We have said
+before, and it cannot be said too often, that in making Canada a citadel
+of the state religion--a holy of holies of exclusive Roman Catholic
+orthodoxy,--the clerical monitors of the Crown robbed their country of a
+trans-Atlantic empire. New France could not grow with a priest on guard
+at the gate to let in none but such as pleased him. One of the ablest of
+Canadian governors, La Galissonière, seeing the feebleness of the colony
+compared with the vastness of its claims, advised the King to send ten
+thousand peasants to occupy the valley of the Ohio, and hold back the
+British swarm that was just then pushing its advance-guard over the
+Alleghanies. It needed no effort of the King to people his waste domain,
+not with ten thousand peasants, but with twenty times ten thousand
+Frenchmen of every station,--the most industrious, most instructed, most
+disciplined by adversity and capable of self-rule, that the country
+could boast. While La Galissonière was asking for colonists, the agents
+of the Crown, set on by priestly fanaticism, or designing selfishness
+masked with fanaticism, were pouring volleys of musketry into Huguenot
+congregations, imprisoning for life those innocent of all but their
+faith,--the men in the galleys, the women in the pestiferous dungeons of
+Aigues Mortes,--hanging their ministers, kidnapping their children, and
+reviving, in short, the dragonnades. Now, as in the past century, many
+of the victims escaped to the British colonies, and became a part of
+them. The Huguenots would have hailed as a boon the permission to
+emigrate under the fleur-de-lis, and build up a Protestant France in the
+valleys of the West. It would have been a bane of absolutism, but a
+national glory; would have set bounds to English colonization, and
+changed the face of the continent. The opportunity was spurned. The
+dominant Church clung to its policy of rule and ruin. France built its
+best colony on a principle of exclusion, and failed; England reversed
+the system, and succeeded.
+
+[Footnote 1: _Censuses of Canada_, iv. 61. Rameau _(La France aux
+Colonies,_ ii. 81) estimates the Canadian population, in 1755, at
+sixty-six thousand, besides _voyageurs_, Indian traders, etc. Vaudreuil,
+in 1760, places it at seventy thousand.]
+
+I have shown elsewhere the aspects of Canada, where a rigid scion of the
+old European tree was set to grow in the wilderness. The military
+Governor, holding his miniature Court on the rock of Quebec; the feudal
+proprietors, whose domains lined the shores of the St. Lawrence; the
+peasant; the roving bushranger; the half-tamed savage, with crucifix and
+scalping-knife; priests; friars; nuns; and soldiers,--mingled to form a
+society the most picturesque on the continent. What distinguished it
+from the France that produced it was a total absence of revolt against
+the laws of its being,--an absolute conservatism, an unquestioning
+acceptance of Church and King. The Canadian, ignorant of everything but
+what the priest saw fit to teach him, had never heard of Voltaire; and
+if he had known him, would have thought him a devil. He had, it is true,
+a spirit of insubordination born of the freedom of the forest; but if
+his instincts rebelled, his mind and soul were passively submissive. The
+unchecked control of a hierarchy robbed him of the independence of
+intellect and character, without which, under the conditions of modern
+life, a people must resign itself to a position of inferiority. Yet
+Canada had a vigor of her own. It was not in spiritual deference only
+that she differed from the country of her birth. Whatever she had caught
+of its corruptions, she had caught nothing of its effeminacy. The mass
+of her people lived in a rude poverty,--not abject, like the peasant of
+old France, nor ground down by the tax-gatherer; while those of the
+higher ranks--all more or less engaged in pursuits of war or adventure,
+and inured to rough journeyings and forest exposures--were rugged as
+their climate. Even the French regular troops, sent out to defend the
+colony, caught its hardy spirit, and set an example of stubborn fighting
+which their comrades at home did not always emulate.
+
+Canada lay ensconced behind rocks and forests. All along her southern
+boundaries, between her and her English foes, lay a broad tract of
+wilderness, shaggy with primeval woods. Innumerable streams gurgled
+beneath their shadows; innumerable lakes gleamed in the fiery sunsets;
+innumerable mountains bared their rocky foreheads to the wind. These
+wastes were ranged by her savage allies, Micmacs, Etechémins, Abenakis,
+Caughnawagas; and no enemy could steal upon her unawares. Through the
+midst of them stretched Lake Champlain, pointing straight to the heart
+of the British settlement,--a watery thoroughfare of mutual attack, and
+the only approach by which, without a long _détour_ by wilderness or
+sea, a hostile army could come within striking distance of the colony.
+The French advanced post of Fort Frederic, called Crown Point by the
+English, barred the narrows of the lake, which thence spread northward
+to the portals of Canada guarded by Fort St. Jean. Southwestward, some
+fourteen hundred miles as a bird flies, and twice as far by the
+practicable routes of travel, was Louisiana, the second of the two heads
+of New France; while between lay the realms of solitude where the
+Mississippi rolled its sullen tide, and the Ohio wound its belt of
+silver through the verdant woodlands.
+
+To whom belonged this world of prairies and forests? France claimed it
+by right of discovery and occupation. It was her explorers who, after De
+Soto, first set foot on it. The question of right, it is true, mattered
+little; for, right or wrong, neither claimant would yield her
+pretensions so long as she had strength to uphold them; yet one point is
+worth a moment's notice. The French had established an excellent system
+in the distribution of their American lands. Whoever received a grant
+from the Crown was required to improve it, and this within reasonable
+time. If he did not, the land ceased to be his, and was given to another
+more able or industrious. An international extension of her own
+principle would have destroyed the pretensions of France to all the
+countries of the West. She had called them hers for three fourths of a
+century, and they were still a howling waste, yielding nothing to
+civilization but beaver-skins, with here and there a fort, trading-post,
+or mission, and three or four puny hamlets by the Mississippi and the
+Detroit. We have seen how she might have made for herself an
+indisputable title, and peopled the solitudes with a host to maintain
+it. She would not; others were at hand who both would and could; and the
+late claimant, disinherited and forlorn, would soon be left to count the
+cost of her bigotry.
+
+The thirteen British colonies were alike, insomuch as they all had
+representative governments, and a basis of English law. But the
+differences among them were great. Some were purely English; others were
+made up of various races, though the Anglo-Saxon was always predominant.
+Some had one prevailing religious creed; others had many creeds. Some
+had charters, and some had not. In most cases the governor was appointed
+by the Crown; in Pennsylvania and Maryland he was appointed by a feudal
+proprietor, and in Connecticut and Rhode Island he was chosen by the
+people. The differences of disposition and character were still greater
+than those of form.
+
+The four northern colonies, known collectively as New England, were an
+exception to the general rule of diversity. The smallest, Rhode Island,
+had features all its own; but the rest were substantially one in nature
+and origin. The principal among them, Massachusetts, may serve as the
+type of all. It was a mosaic of little village republics, firmly
+cemented together, and formed into a single body politic through
+representatives sent to the "General Court" at Boston. Its government,
+originally theocratic, now tended to democracy, ballasted as yet by
+strong traditions of respect for established worth and ability, as well
+as by the influence of certain families prominent in affairs for
+generations. Yet there were no distinct class-lines, and popular power,
+like popular education, was widely diffused. Practically Massachusetts
+was almost independent of the mother-country. Its people were purely
+English, of sound yeoman stock, with an abundant leaven drawn from the
+best of the Puritan gentry; but their original character had been
+somewhat modified by changed conditions of life. A harsh and exacting
+creed, with its stiff formalism and its prohibition of wholesome
+recreation; excess in the pursuit of gain--the only resource left to
+energies robbed of their natural play; the struggle for existence on a
+hard and barren soil; and the isolation of a narrow village
+life,--joined to produce, in the meaner sort, qualities which were
+unpleasant, and sometimes repulsive. Puritanism was not an unmixed
+blessing. Its view of human nature was dark, and its attitude towards it
+one of repression. It strove to crush out not only what is evil, but
+much that is innocent and salutary. Human nature so treated will take
+its revenge, and for every vice that it loses find another instead.
+Nevertheless, while New England Puritanism bore its peculiar crop of
+faults, it produced also many good and sound fruits. An uncommon vigor,
+joined to the hardy virtues of a masculine race, marked the New England
+type. The sinews, it is true, were hardened at the expense of blood and
+flesh,--and this literally as well as figuratively; but the staple of
+character was a sturdy conscientiousness, an undespairing courage,
+patriotism, public spirit, sagacity, and a strong good sense. A great
+change, both for better and for worse, has since come over it, due
+largely to reaction against the unnatural rigors of the past. That
+mixture, which is now too common, of cool emotions with excitable
+brains, was then rarely seen. The New England colonies abounded in high
+examples of public and private virtue, though not always under the most
+prepossessing forms. They were conspicuous, moreover, for intellectual
+activity, and were by no means without intellectual eminence.
+Massachusetts had produced at least two men whose fame had crossed the
+sea,--Edwards, who out of the grim theology of Calvin mounted to sublime
+heights of mystical speculation; and Franklin, famous already by his
+discoveries in electricity. On the other hand, there were few genuine
+New Englanders who, however personally modest, could divest themselves
+of the notion that they belonged to a people in an especial manner the
+object of divine approval; and this self-righteousness, along with
+certain other traits, failed to commend the Puritan colonies to the
+favor of their fellows. Then, as now, New England was best known to her
+neighbors by her worst side.
+
+In one point, however, she found general applause. She was regarded as
+the most military among the British colonies. This reputation was well
+founded, and is easily explained. More than all the rest, she lay open
+to attack. The long waving line of the New England border, with its
+lonely hamlets and scattered farms, extended from the Kennebec to beyond
+the Connecticut, and was everywhere vulnerable to the guns and
+tomahawks of the neighboring French and their savage allies. The
+colonies towards the south had thus far been safe from danger. New York
+alone was within striking distance of the Canadian war-parties. That
+province then consisted of a line of settlements up the Hudson and the
+Mohawk, and was little exposed to attack except at its northern end,
+which was guarded by the fortified town of Albany, with its outlying
+posts, and by the friendly and warlike Mohawks, whose "castles" were
+close at hand. Thus New England had borne the heaviest brunt of the
+preceding wars, not only by the forest, but also by the sea; for the
+French of Acadia and Cape Breton confronted her coast, and she was often
+at blows with them. Fighting had been a necessity with her, and she had
+met the emergency after a method extremely defective, but the best that
+circumstances would permit. Having no trained officers and no
+disciplined soldiers, and being too poor to maintain either, she
+borrowed her warriors from the workshop and the plough, and officered
+them with lawyers, merchants, mechanics, or farmers. To compare them
+with good regular troops would be folly; but they did, on the whole,
+better than could have been expected, and in the last war achieved the
+brilliant success of the capture of Louisburg. This exploit, due partly
+to native hardihood and partly to good luck, greatly enhanced the
+military repute of New England, or rather was one of the chief sources
+of it.
+
+The great colony of Virginia stood in strong contrast to New England. In
+both the population was English; but the one was Puritan with Roundhead
+traditions, and the other, so far as concerned its governing class,
+Anglican with Cavalier traditions. In the one, every man, woman, and
+child could read and write; in the other, Sir William Berkeley once
+thanked God that there were no free schools, and no prospect of any for
+a century. The hope had found fruition. The lower classes of Virginia
+were as untaught as the warmest friend of popular ignorance could wish.
+New England had a native literature more than respectable under the
+circumstances, while Virginia had none; numerous industries, while
+Virginia was all agriculture, with but a single crop; a homogeneous
+society and a democratic spirit, while her rival was an aristocracy.
+Virginian society was distinctively stratified. On the lowest level were
+the negro slaves, nearly as numerous as all the rest together; next, the
+indented servants and the poor whites, of low origin, good-humored, but
+boisterous, and some times vicious; next, the small and despised class
+of tradesmen and mechanics; next, the farmers and lesser planters, who
+were mainly of good English stock, and who merged insensibly into the
+ruling class of the great landowners. It was these last who represented
+the colony and made the laws. They may be described as English country
+squires transplanted to a warm climate and turned slave-masters. They
+sustained their position by entails, and constantly undermined it by the
+reckless profusion which ruined them at last. Many of them were well
+born, with an immense pride of descent, increased by the habit of
+domination. Indolent and energetic by turns; rich in natural gifts and
+often poor in book-learning, though some, in the lack of good teaching
+at home, had been bred in the English universities; high-spirited,
+generous to a fault; keeping open house in their capacious mansions,
+among vast tobacco-fields and toiling negroes, and living in a rude pomp
+where the fashions of St. James were somewhat oddly grafted on the
+roughness of the plantation,--what they wanted in schooling was supplied
+by an education which books alone would have been impotent to give, the
+education which came with the possession and exercise of political
+power, and the sense of a position to maintain, joined to a bold spirit
+of independence and a patriotic attachment to the Old Dominion. They
+were few in number; they raced, gambled, drank, and swore; they did
+everything that in Puritan eyes was most reprehensible; and in the day
+of need they gave the United Colonies a body of statesmen and orators
+which had no equal on the continent. A vigorous aristocracy favors the
+growth of personal eminence, even in those who are not of it, but only
+near it.
+
+The essential antagonism of Virginia and New England was afterwards to
+become, and to remain for a century, an element of the first influence
+in American history. Each might have learned much from the other; but
+neither did so till, at last, the strife of their contending principles
+shook the continent. Pennsylvania differed widely from both. She was a
+conglomerate of creeds and races,--English, Irish, Germans, Dutch, and
+Swedes; Quakers, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Romanists, Moravians, and a
+variety of nondescript sects. The Quakers prevailed in the eastern
+districts; quiet, industrious, virtuous, and serenely obstinate. The
+Germans were strongest towards the centre of the colony, and were
+chiefly peasants; successful farmers, but dull, ignorant, and
+superstitious. Towards the west were the Irish, of whom some were
+Celts, always quarrelling with their German neighbors, who detested
+them; but the greater part were Protestants of Scotch descent, from
+Ulster; a vigorous border population. Virginia and New England had each
+a strong distinctive character. Pennsylvania, with her heterogeneous
+population, had none but that which she owed to the sober neutral tints
+of Quaker existence. A more thriving colony there was not on the
+continent. Life, if monotonous, was smooth and contented. Trade and the
+arts grew. Philadelphia, next to Boston, was the largest town in British
+America; and was, moreover, the intellectual centre of the middle and
+southern colonies. Unfortunately, for her credit in the approaching war,
+the Quaker influence made Pennsylvania non-combatant. Politically, too,
+she was an anomaly; for, though utterly unfeudal in disposition and
+character, she was under feudal superiors in the persons of the
+representatives of William Penn, the original grantee.
+
+New York had not as yet reached the relative prominence which her
+geographical position and inherent strength afterwards gave her. The
+English, joined to the Dutch, the original settlers, were the dominant
+population; but a half-score of other languages were spoken in the
+province, the chief among them being that of the Huguenot French in the
+southern parts, and that of the Germans on the Mohawk. In religion, the
+province was divided between the Anglican Church, with government
+support and popular dislike, and numerous dissenting sects, chiefly
+Lutherans, Independents, Presbyterians, and members of the Dutch
+Reformed Church. The little city of New York, like its great successor,
+was the most cosmopolitan place on the continent, and probably the
+gayest. It had, in abundance, balls, concerts, theatricals, and evening
+clubs, with plentiful dances and other amusements, for the poorer
+classes. Thither in the winter months came the great hereditary
+proprietors on the Hudson; for the old Dutch feudality still held its
+own, and the manors of Van Renselaer, Cortland, and Livingston, with
+their seigniorial privileges, and the great estates and numerous
+tenantry of the Schuylers and other leading families, formed the basis
+of an aristocracy, some of whose members had done good service to the
+province, and were destined to do more. Pennsylvania was feudal in form,
+and not in spirit; Virginia in spirit, and not in form; New England in
+neither; and New York largely in both. This social crystallization had,
+it is true, many opponents. In politics, as in religion, there were
+sharp antagonisms and frequent quarrels. They centred in the city; for
+in the well-stocked dwellings of the Dutch farmers along the Hudson
+there reigned a tranquil and prosperous routine; and the Dutch border
+town of Albany had not its like in America for unruffled conservatism
+and quaint picturesqueness.
+
+Of the other colonies, the briefest mention will suffice: New Jersey,
+with its wholesome population of farmers; tobacco-growing Maryland,
+which, but for its proprietary government and numerous Roman Catholics,
+might pass for another Virginia, inferior in growth, and less decisive
+in features; Delaware, a modest appendage of Pennsylvania; wild and rude
+North Carolina; and, farther on, South Carolina and Georgia, too remote
+from the seat of war to take a noteworthy part in it. The attitude of
+these various colonies towards each other is hardly conceivable to an
+American of the present time. They had no political tie except a common
+allegiance to the British Crown. Communication between them was
+difficult and slow, by rough roads traced often through primeval
+forests. Between some of them there was less of sympathy than of
+jealousy kindled by conflicting interests or perpetual disputes
+concerning boundaries. The patriotism of the colonist was bounded by the
+lines of his government, except in the compact and kindred colonies of
+New England, which were socially united, through politically distinct.
+The country of the New Yorker was New York, and the country of the
+Virginian was Virginia. The New England colonies had once confederated;
+but, kindred as they were, they had long ago dropped apart. William Penn
+proposed a plan of colonial union wholly fruitless. James II. tried to
+unite all the northern colonies under one government; but the attempt
+came to naught. Each stood aloof, jealously independent. At rare
+intervals, under the pressure of an emergency, some of them would try to
+act in concert; and, except in New England, the results had been most
+discouraging. Nor was it this segregation only that unfitted them for
+war. They were all subject to popular legislatures, through whom alone
+money and men could be raised; and these elective bodies were sometimes
+factious and selfish, and not always either far-sighted or reasonable.
+Moreover, they were in a state of ceaseless friction with their
+governors, who represented the king, or, what was worse, the feudal
+proprietary. These disputes, though varying in intensity, were found
+everywhere except in the two small colonies which chose their own
+governors; and they were premonitions of the movement towards
+independence which ended in the war of Revolution. The occasion of
+difference mattered little. Active or latent, the quarrel was always
+present. In New York it turned on a question of the governor's salary;
+in Pennsylvania on the taxation of the proprietary estates; in Virginia
+on a fee exacted for the issue of land patents. It was sure to arise
+whenever some public crisis gave the representatives of the people an
+opportunity of extorting concessions from the representative of the
+Crown, or gave the representative of the Crown an opportunity to gain a
+point for prerogative. That is to say, the time when action was most
+needed was the time chosen for obstructing it.
+
+In Canada there was no popular legislature to embarrass the central
+power. The people, like an army, obeyed the word of command,--a military
+advantage beyond all price.
+
+Divided in government; divided in origin, feelings, and principles;
+jealous of each other, jealous of the Crown; the people at war with the
+executive, and, by the fermentation of internal politics, blinded to an
+outward danger that seemed remote and vague,--such were the conditions
+under which the British colonies drifted into a war that was to decide
+the fate of the continent.
+
+This war was the strife of a united and concentred few against a divided
+and discordant many. It was the strife, too, of the past against the
+future; of the old against the new; of moral and intellectual torpor
+against moral and intellectual life; of barren absolutism against a
+liberty, crude, incoherent, and chaotic, yet full of prolific vitality.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 2
+
+1749-1752
+
+Céleron de Bienville
+
+
+When the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle was signed, the Marquis de la
+Galissonière ruled over Canada. Like all the later Canadian governors,
+he was a naval officer; and, a few years after, he made himself famous
+by a victory, near Minorca, over the English admiral Byng,--an
+achievement now remembered chiefly by the fate of the defeated
+commander, judicially murdered as the scapegoat of an imbecile ministry.
+Galissonière was a humpback; but his deformed person was animated by a
+bold spirit and a strong and penetrating intellect. He was the chief
+representative of the American policy of France. He felt that, cost what
+it might, she must hold fast to Canada, and link her to Louisiana by
+chains of forts strong enough to hold back the British colonies, and
+cramp their growth by confinement within narrow limits; while French
+settlers, sent from the mother-country, should spread and multiply in
+the broad valleys of the interior. It is true, he said, that Canada and
+her dependencies have always been a burden; but they are necessary as a
+barrier against English ambition; and to abandon them is to abandon
+ourselves; for if we suffer our enemies to become masters in America,
+their trade and naval power will grow to vast proportions, and they will
+draw from their colonies a wealth that will make them preponderant in
+Europe.[2]
+
+[Footnote 2: La Galissonière, _Mémoire sur les Colonies de la France
+dans l'Amêrique septentrionale_.]
+
+The treaty had done nothing to settle the vexed question of boundaries
+between France and her rival. It had but staved off the inevitable
+conflict. Meanwhile, the English traders were crossing the mountains
+from Pennsylvania and Virginia, poaching on the domain which France
+claimed as hers, ruining the French fur-trade, seducing the Indian
+allies of Canada, and stirring them up against her. Worse still, English
+land speculators were beginning to follow. Something must be done, and
+that promptly, to drive back the intruders, and vindicate French rights
+in the valley of the Ohio. To this end the Governor sent Céloron de
+Bienville thither in the summer of 1749.
+
+He was a chevalier de St. Louis and a captain in the colony troops.
+Under him went fourteen officers and cadets, twenty soldiers, a hundred
+and eighty Canadians, and a band of Indians, all in twenty-three
+birch-bark canoes. They left La Chine on the fifteenth of June, and
+pushed up the rapids of the St. Lawrence, losing a man and damaging
+several canoes on the way. Ten days brought them to the mouth of the
+Oswegatchie, where Ogdensburg now stands. Here they found a Sulpitian
+priest, Abbé Piquet, busy at building a fort, and lodging for the
+present under a shed of bark like an Indian. This enterprising father,
+ostensibly a missionary, was in reality a zealous political agent, bent
+on winning over the red allies of the English, retrieving French
+prestige, and restoring French trade. Thus far he had attracted but two
+Iroquois to his new establishment; and these he lent to Céloron.
+
+Reaching Lake Ontario, the party stopped for a time at the French fort
+of Frontenac, but avoided the rival English post of Oswego, on the
+southern shore, where a trade in beaver skins, disastrous to French
+interests, was carried on, and whither many tribes, once faithful to
+Canada, now made resort. On the sixth of July Céloron reached Niagara.
+This, the most important pass of all the western wilderness, was guarded
+by a small fort of palisades on the point where the river joins the
+lake. Thence, the party carried their canoes over the portage road by
+the cataract, and launched them upon Lake Erie. On the fifteenth they
+landed on the lonely shore where the town of Portland now stands; and
+for the next seven days were busied in shouldering canoes and baggage up
+and down the steep hills, through the dense forest of beech, oak, ash,
+and elm, to the waters of Chautauqua Lake, eight or nine miles distant.
+Here they embarked again, steering southward over the sunny waters, in
+the stillness and solitude of the leafy hills, till they came to the
+outlet, and glided down the peaceful current in the shade of the tall
+forests that overarched it. This prosperity was short. The stream was
+low, in spite of heavy rains that had drenched them on the carrying
+place. Father Bonnecamp, chaplain of the expedition, wrote, in his
+Journal: "In some places--and they were but too frequent--the water was
+only two or three inches deep; and we were reduced to the sad necessity
+of dragging our canoes over the sharp pebbles, which, with all our care
+and precaution, stripped off large slivers of the bark. At last, tired
+and worn, and almost in despair of ever seeing La Belle Rivière, we
+entered it at noon of the 29th." The part of the Ohio, or "La Belle
+Rivière," which they had thus happily reached, is now called the
+Alleghany. The Great West lay outspread before them, a realm of wild and
+waste fertility.
+
+French America had two heads,--one among the snows of Canada, and one
+among the canebrakes of Louisiana; one communicating with the world
+through the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and the other through the Gulf of
+Mexico. These vital points were feebly connected by a chain of military
+posts,--slender, and often interrupted,--circling through the wilderness
+nearly three thousand miles. Midway between Canada and Louisiana lay the
+valley of the Ohio. If the English should seize it, they would sever the
+chain of posts, and cut French America asunder. If the French held it,
+and entrenched themselves well along its eastern limits, they would shut
+their rivals between the Alleghanies and the sea, control all the tribes
+of the West, and turn them, in case of war, against the English
+borders,--a frightful and insupportable scourge.
+
+The Indian population of the Ohio and its northern tributaries was
+relatively considerable. The upper or eastern half of the valley was
+occupied by mingled hordes of Delawares, Shawanoes, Wyandots, and
+Iroquois, or Indians of the Five Nations, who had migrated thither from
+their ancestral abodes within the present limits of the State of New
+York, and who were called Mingoes by the English traders. Along with
+them were a few wandering Abenakis, Nipissings, and Ottawas. Farther
+west, on the waters of the Miami, the Wabash, and other neighboring
+streams, was the seat of a confederacy formed of the various bands of
+the Miamis and their kindred or affiliated tribes. Still farther west,
+towards the Mississippi, were the remnants of the Illinois.
+
+France had done but little to make good her claims to this grand domain.
+East of the Miami she had no military post whatever. Westward, on the
+Maumee, there was a small wooden fort, another on the St. Joseph, and
+two on the Wabash. On the meadows of the Mississippi, in the Illinois
+country, stood Fort Chartres,--a much stronger work, and one of the
+chief links of the chain that connected Quebec with New Orleans. Its
+four stone bastions were impregnable to musketry; and, here in the
+depths of the wilderness, there was no fear that cannon would be brought
+against it. It was the centre and citadel of a curious little forest
+settlement, the only vestige of civilization through all this region. At
+Kaskaskia, extended along the borders of the stream, were seventy or
+eighty French houses; thirty or forty at Cahokia, opposite the site of
+St. Louis; and a few more at the intervening hamlets of St. Philippe and
+Prairie à la Roche,--a picturesque but thriftless population, mixed with
+Indians, totally ignorant, busied partly with the fur-trade, and partly
+with the raising of corn for the market of New Orleans. They
+communicated with it by means of a sort of row galley, of eighteen or
+twenty oars, which made the voyage twice a year, and usually spent ten
+weeks on the return up the river.[3]
+
+[Footnote 3: Gordon, _Journal_, 1766, appended to Pownall,
+_Topographical Description_. In the Dépôt des Cartes de la Marine at
+Paris, C. 4,040, are two curious maps of the Illinois colony, made a
+little after the middle of the century. In 1753 the Marquis Duquesne
+denounced the colonists as debauched and lazy.]
+
+The Pope and the Bourbons had claimed this wilderness for seventy years,
+and had done scarcely more for it than the Indians, its natural owners.
+Of the western tribes, even of those living at the French posts, the
+Hurons or Wyandots alone were Christian.[4] The devoted zeal of the
+early missionaries and the politic efforts of their successors had
+failed alike. The savages of the Ohio and the Mississippi, instead of
+being tied to France by the mild bonds of the faith, were now in a state
+which the French called defection or revolt; that is, they received and
+welcomed the English traders.
+
+[Footnote 4: "De toutes les nations domiciliées dans les postes des pays
+d'en haut, il n'y a que les hurons du détroit qui aient embrassé la
+Réligion chretienne." _Mémoirs du Roy pour servir d'instruction au S'r.
+Marqius de Lajonquière_.]
+
+These traders came in part from Virginia, but chiefly from Pennsylvania.
+Dinwiddie, governor of Virginia, says of them: "They appear to me to be
+in general a set of abandoned wretches;" and Hamilton, governor of
+Pennsylvania, replies: "I concur with you in opinion that they are a
+very licentious people.[5] Indian traders, of whatever nation, are
+rarely models of virtue; and these, without doubt, were rough and
+lawless men, with abundant blackguardism and few scruples. Not all of
+them, however, are to be thus qualified. Some were of a better stamp;
+among whom were Christopher Gist, William Trent, and George Croghan.
+These and other chief traders hired men on the frontiers, crossed the
+Alleghanies with goods packed on the backs of horses, descended into the
+valley of the Ohio, and journeyed from stream to stream and village to
+village along the Indian trails, with which all this wilderness was
+seamed, and which the traders widened to make them practicable. More
+rarely, they carried their goods on horses to the upper waters of the
+Ohio, and embarked them in large wooden canoes, in which they descended
+the main river, and ascended such of its numerous tributaries as were
+navigable. They were bold and enterprising; and French writers, with
+alarm and indignation, declare that some of them had crossed the
+Mississippi and traded with the distant Osages. It is said that about
+three hundred of them came over the mountains every year.
+
+[Footnote 5: _Dinwiddie to Hamilton, 21 May, 1753. Hamilton to
+Dinwiddie,--May, 1753._]
+
+On reaching the Alleghany, Céleron de Bienville entered upon the work
+assigned him, and began by taking possession of the country. The men
+were drawn up in order; Louis XV. was proclaimed lord of all that
+region, the arms of France, stamped on a sheet of tin, were nailed to a
+tree, a plate of lead was buried at its foot, and the notary of the
+expedition drew up a formal act of the whole proceeding. The leaden
+plate was inscribed as follows: "Year 1749, in the reign of Louis
+Fifteenth, King of France. We, Céleron, commanding the detachment sent
+by the Marquis de la Galissonière, commander-general of New France, to
+restore tranquillity in certain villages of these cantons, have buried
+this plate at the confluence of the Ohio and the Kanaouagon
+_[Conewango],_ this 29th July, as a token of renewal of possession
+heretofore taken of the aforesaid River Ohio, of all streams that fall
+into it, and all lands on both sides to the source of the aforesaid
+streams, as the preceding Kings of France have enjoyed or ought to have
+enjoyed it, and which they have upheld by force of arms and by treaties,
+notably by those of Ryswick, Utrecht, and Aix-la-Chapelle."
+
+This done, the party proceeded on its way, moving downward with the
+current, and passing from time to time rough openings in the forest,
+with clusters of Indian wigwams, the inmates of which showed a strong
+inclination to run off at their approach. To prevent this, Chabert de
+Joncaire was sent in advance, as a messenger of peace. He was himself
+half Indian, being the son of a French officer and a Seneca squaw,
+speaking fluently his maternal tongue, and, like his father, holding an
+important place in all dealings between the French and the tribes who
+spoke dialects of the Iroquois. On this occasion his success was not
+complete. It needed all his art to prevent the alarmed savages from
+taking to the woods. Sometimes, however, Céloron succeeded in gaining
+an audience; and at a village of Senecas called La Paille Coupée he read
+them a message from La Galissonière couched in terms sufficiently
+imperative: "My children, since I was at war with the English, I have
+learned that they have seduced you; and not content with corrupting your
+hearts, have taken advantage of my absence to invade lands which are not
+theirs, but mine; and therefore I have resolved to send you Monsieur de
+Céloron to tell you my intentions, which are that I will not endure the
+English on my land. Listen to me, children; mark well the word that I
+send you; follow my advice, and the sky will always be calm and clear
+over your villages. I expect from you an answer worthy of true
+children." And he urged them to stop all trade with the intruders, and
+send them back to whence they came. They promised compliance; "and,"
+says the chaplain, Bonnecamp, "we should all have been satisfied if we
+had thought them sincere; but nobody doubted that fear had extorted
+their answer."
+
+Four leagues below French Creek, by a rock scratched with Indian
+hieroglyphics, they buried another leaden plate. Three days after, they
+reached the Delaware village of Attiqué, at the site of Kittanning,
+whose twenty-two wigwams were all empty, the owners having fled. A
+little farther on, at an old abandoned village of Shawanoes, they found
+six English traders, whom they warned to begone, and return no more at
+their peril. Being helpless to resist, the traders pretended obedience;
+and Céloron charged them with a letter to the Governor of Pennsylvania,
+in which he declared that he was "greatly surprised" to find Englishmen
+trespassing on the domain of France. "I know," concluded the letter,
+"that our Commandant-General would be very sorry to be forced to use
+violence; but his orders are precise, to leave no foreign traders within
+the limits of his government."[6]
+
+[Footnote 6: Céloron, _Journal_. Compare the letter as translated in
+_N.Y. Col. Docs_., VI. 532; also _Colonial Records of Pa_., V. 325.]
+
+On the next day they reached a village of Iroquois under a female chief,
+called Queen Alequippa by the English, to whom she was devoted. Both
+Queen and subjects had fled; but among the deserted wigwams were six
+more Englishmen, whom Céloron warned off like the others, and who, like
+them, pretended to obey. At a neighboring town they found only two
+withered ancients, male and female, whose united ages, in the judgment
+of the chaplain, were full two centuries. They passed the site of the
+future Pittsburg; and some seventeen miles below approached Chininguée,
+called Logstown by the English, one of the chief places on the river.[7]
+Both English and French flags were flying over the town, and the
+inhabitants, lining the shore, greeted their visitors with a salute of
+musketry,--not wholly welcome, as the guns were charged will ball.
+Céloron threatened to fire on them if they did not cease. The French
+climbed the steep bank, and encamped on the plateau above, betwixt the
+forest and the village, which consisted of some fifty cabins and
+wigwams, grouped in picturesque squalor, and tenanted by a mixed
+population, chiefly of Delawares, Shawanoes, and Mingoes. Here, too,
+were gathered many fugitives from the deserted towns above. Céloron
+feared a night attack. The camp was encircled by a ring of sentries; the
+officers walked the rounds till morning; a part of the men were kept
+under arms, and the rest ordered to sleep in their clothes. Joncaire
+discovered through some women of his acquaintance that an attack was
+intended. Whatever the danger may have been, the precautions of the
+French averted it; and instead of a battle, there was a council. Céloron
+delivered to the assembled chiefs a message from the Governor more
+conciliatory than the former, "Through the love I bear you, my children,
+I send you Monsieur de Céloron to open your eyes to the designs of the
+English against your lands. The establishments they mean to make, and of
+which you are certainly ignorant, tend to your complete ruin. They hide
+from you their plans, which are to settle here and drive you away, if I
+let them. As a good father who tenderly loves his children, and though
+far away from them bears them always in his heart, I must warn you of
+the danger that threatens you. The English intend to rob you of your
+country; and that they may succeed, they begin by corrupting your minds.
+As they mean to seize the Ohio, which belongs to me, I send to warn them
+to retire."
+
+[Footnote 7: There was another Chiningué, the Shenango of the English,
+on the Alleghany.]
+
+The reply of the chiefs, though sufficiently humble, was not all that
+could be wished. They begged that the intruders might stay a little
+longer, since the goods they brought were necessary to them. It was in
+fact, these goods, cheap, excellent, and abundant as they were, which
+formed the only true bond between the English and the Western tribes.
+Logstown was one of the chief resorts of the English traders; and at
+this moment there were ten of them in the place. Céloron warned them
+off. "They agreed," says the chaplain, "to all that was demanded, well
+resolved, no doubt, to do the contrary as soon as our backs were
+turned."
+
+Having distributed gifts among the Indians, the French proceeded on
+their way, and at or near the mouth of Wheeling Creek buried another
+plate of lead. They repeated the same ceremony at the mouth of the
+Muskingum. Here, half a century later, when this region belonged to the
+United States, a party of boys, bathing in the river, saw the plate
+protruding from the bank where the freshets had laid it bare, knocked it
+down with a long stick, melted half of it into bullets, and gave what
+remained to a neighbor from Marietta, who, hearing of this mysterious
+relic, inscribed in an unknown tongue, came to rescue it from their
+hands.[8] It is now in the cabinet of the American Antiquarian
+Society.[9] On the eighteenth of August, Céloron buried yet another
+plate, at the mouth of the Great Kenawha. This, too, in the course of a
+century, was unearthed by the floods, and was found in 1846 by a boy at
+play, by the edge of the water.[10] The inscriptions on all these plates
+were much alike, with variations of date and place.
+
+[Footnote 8: O.H. Marshall, in _Magazine of American History, March,_
+1878.]
+
+[Footnote 9: For papers relating to it, see _Trans. Amer. Antiq. Soc_.,
+II.]
+
+[Footnote 10: For a facsimile of the inscription on this plate, see
+_Olden Time,_ I. 288. Céloron calls the Kenawha, _Chinodahichetha_. The
+inscriptions as given in his Journal correspond with those on the plates
+discovered.]
+
+The weather was by turns rainy and hot; and the men, tired and famished,
+were fast falling ill. On the twenty-second they approached Scioto,
+called by the French St. Yotoc, or Sinioto, a large Shawanoe town at the
+mouth of the river which bears the same name. Greatly doubting what
+welcome awaited them, they filled their powderhorns and prepared for the
+worst. Joncaire was sent forward to propitiate the inhabitants; but they
+shot bullets through the flag that he carried, and surrounded him,
+yelling and brandishing their knives. Some were for killing him at once;
+others for burning him alive. The interposition of a friendly Iroquois
+saved him; and at length they let him go. Céloron was very uneasy at the
+reception of his messenger. "I knew," he writes, "the weakness of my
+party, two thirds of which were young men who had never left home
+before, and would all have run at the sight of ten Indians. Still, there
+was nothing for me but to keep on; for I was short of provisions, my
+canoes were badly damaged, and I had no pitch or bark to mend them. So I
+embarked again, ready for whatever might happen. I had good officers,
+and about fifty men who could be trusted."
+
+As they neared the town, the Indians swarmed to the shore, and began the
+usual salute of musketry. "They fired," says Céloron, "full a thousand
+shots; for the English give them powder for nothing." He prudently
+pitched his camp on the farther side of the river, posted guards, and
+kept close watch. Each party distrusted and feared the other. At length,
+after much ado, many debates, and some threatening movements on the part
+of the alarmed and excited Indians, a council took place at the tent of
+the French commander; the chiefs apologized for the rough treatment of
+Joncaire, and Céloron replied with a rebuke, which would doubtless have
+been less mild, had he felt himself stronger. He gave them also a
+message from the Governor, modified, apparently, to suit the
+circumstances; for while warning them of the wiles of the English, it
+gave no hint that the King of France claimed mastery of their lands.
+Their answer was vague and unsatisfactory. It was plain that they were
+bound to the enemy by interest, if not by sympathy. A party of English
+traders were living in the place; and Céloron summoned them to withdraw,
+on pain of what might ensue. "My instructions," he says, "enjoined me to
+do this, and even to pillage the English; but I was not strong enough;
+and as these traders were established in the village and well supported
+by the Indians, the attempt would have failed, and put the French to
+shame." The assembled chiefs having been regaled with a cup of brandy
+each,--the only part of the proceeding which seemed to please
+them,--Céloron reimbarked, and continued his voyage.
+
+On the thirtieth they reached the Great Miami, called by the French,
+Rivière à la Roche; and here Céloron buried the last of his leaden
+plates. They now bade farewell to the Ohio, or, in the words of the
+chaplain, to "La Belle Rivière,--that river so little known to the
+French, and unfortunately too well known to the English." He speaks of
+the multitude of Indian villages on its shores, and still more on its
+northern branches. "Each, great or small, has one or more English
+traders, and each of these has hired men to carry his furs. Behold,
+then, the English well advanced upon our lands, and, what is worse,
+under the protection of a crowd of savages whom they have drawn over to
+them, and whose number increases daily."
+
+The course of the party lay up the Miami; and they toiled thirteen days
+against the shallow current before they reached a village of the Miami
+Indians, lately built at the mouth of the rivulet now called Loramie
+Creek. Over it ruled a chief to whom the French had given the singular
+name of La Demoiselle, but whom the English, whose fast friend he was,
+called Old Britain. The English traders who lived here had prudently
+withdrawn, leaving only two hired men in the place. The object of
+Cèloron was to induce the Demoiselle and his band to leave this new
+abode and return to their old villages near the French fort on the
+Maumee, where they would be safe from English seduction. To this end, he
+called them to a council, gave them ample gifts, and made them an
+harangue in the name of the Governor. The Demoiselle took the gifts,
+thanked his French father for his good advice, and promised to follow it
+at a more convenient time.[11] In vain Céloron insisted that he and his
+tribesmen should remove at once. Neither blandishments nor threats would
+prevail, and the French commander felt that his negotiation had failed.
+
+[Footnote 11: Céloron, _Journal_. Compare _A Message from the
+Twightwees_ (Miamis) in _Colonial Records of Pa_., V. 437, where they
+say that they refused the gifts.]
+
+He was not deceived. Far from leaving his village, the Demoiselle, who
+was Great Chief of the Miami Confederacy, gathered his followers to the
+spot, till, less than two years after the visit of Céloron, its
+population had increased eightfold. Pique Town, or Pickawillany, as the
+English called it, became one of the greatest Indian towns of the West,
+the centre of English trade and influence, and a capital object of
+French jealousy.
+
+Céloron burned his shattered canoes, and led his party across the long
+and difficult portage to the French post on the Maumee, where he found
+Raymond, the commander, and all his men, shivering with fever and ague.
+They supplied him with wooden canoes for his voyage down the river; and,
+early in October, he reached Lake Erie, where he was detained for a time
+by a drunken debauch of his Indians, who are called by the chaplain "a
+species of men made to exercise the patience of those who have the
+misfortune to travel with them." In a month more he was at Fort
+Frontenac; and as he descended thence to Montreal, he stopped at the
+Oswegatchie, in obedience to the Governor, who had directed him to
+report the progress made by the Sulpitian, Abbé Piquet, at his new
+mission. Piquet's new fort had been burned by Indians, prompted, as he
+thought, by the English of Oswego; but the priest, buoyant and
+undaunted, was still resolute for the glory of God and the confusion of
+the heretics.
+
+At length Céloron reached Montreal; and, closing his Journal, wrote
+thus: "Father Bonnecamp, who is a Jesuit and a great mathematician,
+reckons that we have travelled twelve hundred leagues; I and my officers
+think we have travelled more. All I can say is, that the nations of
+these countries are very ill-disposed towards the French, and devoted
+entirely to the English."[12] If his expedition had done no more, it had
+at least revealed clearly the deplorable condition of French interests
+in the West.
+
+[Footnote 12: _Journal de la Campagne que moy Céloron, Chevalier de
+l'Ordre Royal et Militaire de St. Louis, Capitaine Commandant un
+détachement envoyé dans la Belle Rivière par les ordres de M. le Marquis
+de La Galissonière_, etc.
+
+_Relation d'un voyage dans la Belle Rivière sous les ordres de M. de
+Céloron, par le Père Bonnecamp, en_ 1749.]
+
+While Céloron was warning English traders from the Ohio, a plan was on
+foot in Virginia for a new invasion of the French domain. An association
+was formed to settle the Ohio country; and a grant of five hundred
+thousand acres was procured from the King, on condition that a hundred
+families should be established upon it within seven years, a fort built,
+and a garrison maintained. The Ohio Company numbered among its members
+some of the chief men of Virginia, including two brothers of Washington;
+and it had also a London partner, one Hanbury, a person of influence,
+who acted as its agent in England. In the year after the expedition of
+Céloron, its governing committee sent the trader Christopher Gist to
+explore the country and select land. It must be "good level land," wrote
+the Committee; "we had rather go quite down to the Mississippi than take
+mean, broken land."[13] In November Gist reached Logstown, the Chiningué
+of Céleron, where he found what he calls a "parcel of reprobate Indian
+traders." Those whom he so stigmatizes were Pennsylvanians, chiefly
+Scotch-Irish, between whom and the traders from Virginia there was great
+jealousy. Gist was told that he "should never go home safe." He declared
+himself the bearer of a message from the King. This imposed respect, and
+he was allowed to proceed. At the Wyandot village of Muskingum he found
+the trader George Croghan, sent to the Indians by the Governor of
+Pennsylvania, to renew the chain of friendship.[14] "Croghan," he says,
+"is a mere idol among his countrymen, the Irish traders;" yet they met
+amicably, and the Pennsylvanian had with him a companion, Andrew
+Montour, the interpreter, who proved of great service to Gist. As
+Montour was a conspicuous person in his time, and a type of his class,
+he merits a passing notice. He was the reputed grandson of a French
+governor and an Indian squaw. His half-breed mother, Catharine Montour,
+was a native of Canada, whence she was carried off by the Iroquois, and
+adopted by them. She lived in a village at the head of Seneca Lake, and
+still held the belief, inculcated by the guides of her youth, that
+Christ was a Frenchman crucified by the English.[15] Her son Andrew is
+thus described by the Moravian Zinzendorf, who knew him: "His face is
+like that of a European, but marked with a broad Indian ring of
+bear's-grease and paint drawn completely round it. He wears a coat of
+fine cloth of cinnamon color, a black necktie with silver spangles, a
+red satin waistcoat, trousers over which hangs his shirt, shoes and
+stockings, a hat, and brass ornaments, something like the handle of a
+basket, suspended from his ears."[16] He was an excellent interpreter,
+and held in high account by his Indian kinsmen.
+
+[Footnote 13: Instructions to Gist, in appendix to Pownall,
+_Topographical Description of North America_.]
+
+[Footnote 14: _Mr. Croghan's Transactions with the Indians_, in _N.Y.
+Col. Docs.,_ VII. 267; _Croghan to Hamilton, 16 Dec_. 1750.]
+
+[Footnote 15: This is stated by Count Zinzendorf, who visited her among
+the Senecas. In a plan of the "Route of the Western Army," made in 1779,
+and of which a tracing is before me, the village where she lived is
+still called "French Catharine's Town."]
+
+[Footnote 16: Journal of Zinzendorf, quoted in Schweinitz, _Life of
+David Zeisberger, 112, note_.]
+
+After leaving Muskingum, Gist, Croghan, and Montour went together to a
+village on White Woman's Creek,--so called from one Mary Harris, who
+lived here. She was born in New England, was made prisoner when a child
+forty years before, and had since dwelt among her captors, finding such
+comfort as she might in an Indian husband and a family of young
+half-breeds. "She still remembers," says Gist, "that they used to be
+very religious in New England, and wonders how white men can be so
+wicked as she has seen them in these woods." He and his companions now
+journeyed southwestward to the Shawanoe town at the mouth of the
+Scioto, where they found a reception very different from that which had
+awaited Céloron. Thence they rode northwestward along the forest path
+that led to Pickawillany, the Indian town on the upper waters of the
+Great Miami. Gist was delighted with the country; and reported to his
+employers that "it is fine, rich, level land, well timbered with large
+walnut, ash, sugar trees and cherry trees; well watered with a great
+number of little streams and rivulets; full of beautiful natural
+meadows, with wild rye, blue-grass, and clover, and abounding with
+turkeys, deer, elks, and most sorts of game, particularly buffaloes,
+thirty or forty of which are frequently seen in one meadow." A little
+farther west, on the plains of the Wabash and the Illinois, he would
+have found them by thousands.
+
+They crossed the Miami on a raft, their horses swimming after them; and
+were met on landing by a crowd of warriors, who, after smoking with
+them, escorted them to the neighboring town, where they were greeted by
+a fusillade of welcome. "We entered with English colors before us, and
+were kindly received by their king, who invited us into his own house
+and set our colors upon the top of it; then all the white men and
+traders that were there came and welcomed us." This "king" was Old
+Britain, or La Demoiselle. Great were the changes here since Céleron, a
+year and a half before, had vainly enticed him to change his abode, and
+dwell in the shadow of the fleur-de-lis. The town had grown to four
+hundred families, or about two thousand souls; and the English traders
+had built for themselves and their hosts a fort of pickets, strengthened
+with logs.
+
+There was a series of councils in the long house, or town-hall. Croghan
+made the Indians a present from the Governor of Pennsylvania; and he and
+Gist delivered speeches of friendship and good advice, which the
+auditors received with the usual monosyllabic plaudits, ejected from the
+depths of their throats. A treaty of peace was solemnly made between the
+English and the confederate tribes, and all was serenity and joy; till
+four Ottawas, probably from Detroit, arrived with a French flag, a gift
+of brandy and tobacco, and a message from the French commandant inviting
+the Miamis to visit him. Whereupon the great war-chief rose, and, with
+"a fierce tone and very warlike air," said to the envoys: "Brothers the
+Ottawas, we let you know, by these four strings of wampum, that we will
+not hear anything the French say, nor do anything they bid us." Then
+addressing the French as if actually present: "Fathers, we have made a
+road to the sun-rising, and have been taken by the hand by our brothers
+the English, the Six Nations, the Delawares, Shawanoes, and
+Wyandots.[17] We assure you, in that road we will go; and as you
+threaten us with war in the spring, we tell you that we are ready to
+receive you." Then, turning again to the four envoys: "Brothers the
+Ottawas, you hear what I say. Tell that to your fathers the French, for
+we speak it from our hearts." The chiefs then took down the French flag
+which the Ottawas had planted in the town, and dismissed the envoys with
+their answer of defiance.
+
+[Footnote 17: Compare _Message of Miamis and Hurons to the Governor of
+Pennsylvania_ in _N.Y. Col. Docs_., VI. 594; and _Report of Croghan_ in
+_Colonial Records of Pa_., V. 522, 523.]
+
+On the next day the town-crier came with a message from the Demoiselle,
+inviting his English guests to a "feather dance," which Gist thus
+describes: "It was performed by three dancing-masters, who were painted
+all over of various colors, with long sticks in their hands, upon the
+ends of which were fastened long feathers of swans and other birds,
+neatly woven in the shape of a fowl's wing; in this disguise they
+performed many antic tricks, waving their sticks and feathers about with
+great skill, to imitate the flying and fluttering of birds, keeping
+exact time with their music." This music was the measured thumping of an
+Indian drum. From time to time, a warrior would leap up, and the drum
+and the dancers would cease as he struck a post with his tomahawk, and
+in a loud voice recounted his exploits. Then the music and the dance
+began anew, till another warrior caught the martial fire, and bounded
+into the circle to brandish his tomahawk and vaunt his prowess.
+
+On the first of March Gist took leave of Pickawillany, and returned
+towards the Ohio. He would have gone to the Falls, where Louisville now
+stands, but for a band of French Indians reported to be there, who would
+probably have killed him. After visiting a deposit of mammoth bones on
+the south shore, long the wonder of the traders, he turned eastward,
+crossed with toil and difficulty the mountains about the sources of the
+Kenawha, and after an absence of seven months reached his frontier home
+on the Yadkin, whence he proceeded to Roanoke with the report of his
+journey.[18]
+
+[Footnote 18: _Journal of Christopher Gist_, in appendix to Pownall,
+_Topographical Description. Mr. Croghan's Transactions with the Indians_
+in _N.Y. Col. Docs_., VII. 267.]
+
+All looked well for the English in the West; but under this fair outside
+lurked hidden danger. The Miamis were hearty in the English cause, and
+so perhaps were the Shawanoes; but the Delawares had not forgotten the
+wrongs that drove them from their old abodes east of the Alleghanies,
+while the Mingoes, or emigrant Iroquois, like their brethren of New
+York, felt the influence of Joncaire and other French agents, who spared
+no efforts to seduce them.[19] Still more baneful to British interests
+were the apathy and dissensions of the British colonies themselves. The
+Ohio Company had built a trading-house at Will's Creek, a branch of the
+Potomac, to which the Indians resorted in great numbers; whereupon the
+jealous traders of Pennsylvania told them that the Virginians meant to
+steal away their lands. This confirmed what they had been taught by the
+French emissaries, whose intrigues it powerfully aided. The governors of
+New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia saw the importance of Indian
+alliances, and felt their own responsibility in regard to them; but they
+could do nothing without their assemblies. Those of New York and
+Pennsylvania were largely composed of tradesmen and farmers, absorbed in
+local interests, and possessed by two motives,--the saving of the
+people's money, and opposition to the governor, who stood for the royal
+prerogative. It was Hamilton, of Pennsylvania, who had sent Croghan to
+the Miamis to "renew the chain of friendship;" and when the envoy
+returned, the Assembly rejected his report. "I was condemned," he says,
+"for bringing expense on the Government, and the Indians were
+neglected."[20]
+
+[Footnote 19: Joncaire made anti-English speeches to the Ohio Indians
+under the eyes of the English themselves, who did not molest him.
+_Journal of George Croghan_, 1751, in _Olden Time, I_. 136.]
+
+[Footnote 20: _Mr. Croghan's Transactions with the Indians, N.Y. Col.
+Docs.,_ VII. 267.]
+
+In the same year Hamilton again sent him over the mountains, with a
+present for the Mingoes and Delawares. Croghan succeeded in persuading
+them that it would be for their good if the English should build a
+fortified trading-house at the fork of the Ohio, where Pittsburg now
+stands; and they made a formal request to the Governor that it should be
+built accordingly. But, in the words of Croghan, the Assembly "rejected
+the proposal, and condemned me for making such a report." Yet this post
+on the Ohio was vital to English interests. Even the Penns,
+proprietaries of the province, never lavish of their money, offered four
+hundred pounds towards the cost of it, besides a hundred a year towards
+its maintenance; but the Assembly would not listen.[21] The Indians were
+so well convinced that a strong English trading-station in their country
+would add to their safety and comfort, that when Pennsylvania refused
+it, they repeated the proposal to Virginia; but here, too, it found for
+the present little favor.
+
+[Footnote 21: _Colonial Records of Pa_., V. 515, 529, 547. At a council
+at Logstown (1751), the Indians said to Croghan: "The French want to
+cheat us out of our country; but we will stop them, and, Brothers the
+English, you must help us. We expect that you will build a strong house
+on the River Ohio, that in case of war we may have a place to secure our
+wives and children, likewise our brothers that come to trade with us."
+_Report of Treaty at Logstown, Ibid_., V. 538.]
+
+The question of disputed boundaries had much to do with this most
+impolitic inaction. A large part of the valley of the Ohio, including
+the site of the proposed establishment, was claimed by both Pennsylvania
+and Virginia; and each feared that whatever money it might spend there
+would turn to the profit of the other. This was not the only evil that
+sprang from uncertain ownership. "Till the line is run between the two
+provinces," says Dinwiddie, governor of Virginia, "I cannot appoint
+magistrates to keep the traders in good order."[22] Hence they did what
+they pleased, and often gave umbrage to the Indians. Clinton, of New
+York, appealed to his Assembly for means to assist Pennsylvania in
+"securing the fidelity of the Indians on the Ohio," and the Assembly
+refused.[23] "We will take care of our Indians, and they may take care
+of theirs:" such was the spirit of their answer. He wrote to the various
+provinces, inviting them to send commissioners to meet the tribes at
+Albany, "in order to defeat the designs and intrigues of the French."
+All turned a deaf ear except Massachusetts, Connecticut, and South
+Carolina, who sent the commissioners, but supplied them very meagrely
+with the indispensable presents.[24] Clinton says further: "The Assembly
+of this province have not given one farthing for Indian affairs, nor for
+a year past have they provided for the subsistence of the garrison at
+Oswego, which is the key for the commerce between the colonies and the
+inland nations of Indians."[25]
+
+[Footnote 22: _Dinwiddie to the Lords of Trade, 6 Oct_. 1752.]
+
+[Footnote 23: _Journals of New York Assembly_, II. 283, 284. _Colonial
+Records of Pa_., V. 466.]
+
+[Footnote 24: _Clinton to Hamilton, 18 Dec. 1750. Clinton to Lords of
+Trade, 13 June, 1751; Ibid., 17 July_, 1751.]
+
+[Footnote 25: _Clinton to Bedford, 30 July_, 1750.]
+
+In the heterogeneous structure of the British colonies, their clashing
+interests, their internal disputes, and the misplaced economy of
+penny-wise and short-sighted assembly-men, lay the hope of France. The
+rulers of Canada knew the vast numerical preponderance of their rivals;
+but with their centralized organization they felt themselves more than a
+match for any one English colony alone. They hoped to wage war under the
+guise of peace, and to deal with the enemy in detail; and they at length
+perceived that the fork of the Ohio, so strangely neglected by the
+English, formed, together with Niagara, the key of the Great West. Could
+France hold firmly these two controlling passes, she might almost boast
+herself mistress of the continent.
+
+NOTE: The Journal of Céloron (Archives de la Marine) is very long and
+circumstantial, including the _procès verbaux_, and reports of councils
+with Indians. The Journal of the chaplain, Bonnecamp (Dépôt de la
+Marine), is shorter, but is the work of an intelligent and observing
+man. The author, a Jesuit, was skilled in mathematics, made daily
+observations, and constructed a map of the route, still preserved at the
+Dépôt de la Marine. Concurrently with these French narratives, one may
+consult the English letters and documents bearing on the same subjects,
+in the Colonial Records of Pennsylvania, the Archives of Pennsylvania,
+and the Colonial Documents of New York.
+
+Three of Céleron's leaden plates have been found,--the two mentioned in
+the text, and another which was never buried, and which the Indians, who
+regarded these mysterious tablets as "bad medicine," procured by a trick
+from Joncaire, or, according to Governor Clinton, stole from him. A
+Cayuga chief brought it to Colonel Johnson, on the Mohawk, who
+interpreted the "Devilish writing" in such a manner as best to inspire
+horror of French designs.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 3
+
+1749-1753
+
+Conflict for the West
+
+
+The Iroquois, or Five Nations, sometimes called Six Nations after the
+Tuscaroras joined them, had been a power of high importance in American
+international politics. In a certain sense they may be said to have held
+the balance between their French and English neighbors; but their
+relative influence had of late declined. So many of them had emigrated
+and joined the tribes of the Ohio, that the centre of Indian population
+had passed to that region. Nevertheless, the Five Nations were still
+strong enough in their ancient abodes to make their alliance an object
+of the utmost consequence to both the European rivals. At the western
+end of their "Long House," or belt of confederated villages, Joncaire
+intrigued to gain them for France; while in the east he was counteracted
+by the young colonel of militia, William Johnson, who lived on the
+Mohawk, and was already well skilled in managing Indians. Johnson
+sometimes lost his temper; and once wrote to Governor Clinton to
+complain of the "confounded wicked things the French had infused into
+the Indians' heads; among the rest that the English were determined, the
+first opportunity, to destroy them all. I assure your Excellency I had
+hard work to beat these and several other cursed villanous things, told
+them by the French, out of their heads."[26]
+
+[Footnote 26: _Johnson to Clinton, 28 April_, 1749.]
+
+In former times the French had hoped to win over the Five Nations in a
+body, by wholesale conversion to the Faith; but the attempt had failed.
+They had, however, made within their own limits an asylum for such
+converts as they could gain, whom they collected together at
+Caughnawaga, near Montreal, to the number of about three hundred
+warriors.[27] These could not be trusted to fight their kinsmen, but
+willingly made forays against the English borders. Caughnawaga, like
+various other Canadian missions, was divided between the Church, the
+army, and the fur-trade. It had a chapel, fortifications, and
+storehouses; two Jesuits, an officer, and three chief traders. Of these
+last, two were maiden ladies, the Demoiselles Desauniers; and one of the
+Jesuits, their friend Father Tournois, was their partner in business.
+They carried on by means of the Mission Indians, and in collusion with
+influential persons in the colony, a trade with the Dutch at Albany,
+illegal, but very profitable.[28]
+
+[Footnote 27: The estimate of a French official report, 1736, and of Sir
+William Johnson, 1763.]
+
+[Footnote 28: _La Jonquière au Ministre, 27 Fév. 1750. Ibid., 29 Oct.
+1751. Ordres du Roy et Dépêches des Ministres, 1751. Notice biographique
+de la Jonquière_. La Jonquifère, governor of Canada, at last broke up
+their contraband trade, and ordered Tournois to Quebec.]
+
+Besides this Iroquois mission, which was chiefly composed of Mohawks and
+Oneidas, another was now begun farther westward, to win over the
+Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas. This was the establishment of Father
+Piquet, which Céloron had visited in its infancy when on his way to the
+Ohio, and again on his return. Piquet was a man in the prime of life, of
+an alert, vivacious countenance, by no means unprepossessing;[29] an
+enthusiastic schemer, with great executive talents; ardent, energetic,
+vain, self-confident, and boastful. The enterprise seems to have been of
+his own devising; but it found warm approval from the Government.[30] La
+Présentation, as he called the new mission, stood on the bank of the
+River Oswegatchie where it enters the St. Lawrence. Here the rapids
+ceased, and navigation was free to Lake Ontario. The place commanded the
+main river, and could bar the way to hostile war-parties or contraband
+traders. Rich meadows, forests, and abundance of fish and game, made it
+attractive to Indians, and the Oswegatchie gave access to the Iroquois
+towns. Piquet had chosen his site with great skill. His activity was
+admirable. His first stockade was burned by Indian incendiaries; but it
+rose quickly from its ashes, and within a year or two the mission of La
+Présentation had a fort of palisades flanked with blockhouses, a chapel,
+a storehouse, a barn, a stable, ovens, a saw-mill, broad fields of corn
+and beans, and three villages of Iroquois, containing, in all,
+forty-nine bark lodges, each holding three or four families, more or
+less converted to the Faith; and, as time went on, this number
+increased. The Governor had sent a squad of soldiers to man the fort,
+and five small cannon to mount upon it. The place was as safe for the
+new proselytes as it was convenient and agreeable. The Pennsylvanian
+interpreter, Conrad Weiser, was told at Onondaga, the Iroquois capital,
+that Piquet had made a hundred converts from that place alone; and that,
+"having clothed them all in very fine clothes, laced with silver and
+gold, he took them down and presented them to the French Governor at
+Montreal, who received them very kindly, and made them large
+presents."[31]
+
+[Footnote 29: I once saw a contemporary portrait of him at the mission
+of Two Mountains, where he had been stationed.]
+
+[Footnote 30: _Rouillé à la Jonquière_, 1749. The Intendant Bigot gave
+him money and provisions. _N.Y. Col. Docs., X_. 204.]
+
+[Footnote 31: _Journal of Conrad Weiser,_ 1750.]
+
+Such were some of the temporal attractions of La Présentation. The
+nature of the spiritual instruction bestowed by Piquet and his
+fellow-priests may be partly inferred from the words of a proselyte
+warrior, who declared with enthusiasm that he had learned from the
+Sulpitian missionary that the King of France was the eldest son of the
+wife of Jesus Christ.[32] This he of course took in a literal sense, the
+mystic idea of the Church as the spouse of Christ being beyond his
+savage comprehension. The effect was to stimulate his devotion to the
+Great Onontio beyond the sea, and to the lesser Onontio who represented
+him as Governor of Canada.
+
+[Footnote 32: Lalande, _Notice de L'Abbé Piquet, in Lettres Édifiantes_.
+See also Tassé in _Revue Canadienne,_ 1870, p. 9.]
+
+Piquet was elated by his success; and early in 1752 he wrote to the
+Governor and Intendant: "It is a great miracle that, in spite of envy,
+contradiction, and opposition from nearly all the Indian villages, I
+have formed in less than three years one of the most flourishing
+missions in Canada. I find myself in a position to extend the empire of
+my good masters, Jesus Christ and the King, even to the extremities of
+this new world; and, with some little help from you, to do more than
+France and England have been able to do with millions of money and all
+their troops."[33]
+
+[Footnote 33: _Piquet à la Jonquière et Bigot, 8 Fév._ 1752. See
+Appendix A. In spite of Piquet's self-laudation, and in spite also of
+the detraction of the author of the _Mémoires sur le Canada,_ 1749-1760,
+there can be no doubt of his practical capacity and his fertility of
+resource. Duquesne, when governor of the colony, highly praises "ses
+talents et son activité pour le service de Sa Majesté."]
+
+The letter from which this is taken was written to urge upon the
+Government a scheme in which the zealous priest could see nothing
+impracticable. He proposed to raise a war-party of thirty-eight hundred
+Indians, eighteen hundred of whom were to be drawn from the Canadian
+missions, the Five Nations, and the tribes of the Ohio, while the
+remaining two thousand were to be furnished by the Flatheads, or
+Choctaws, who were at the same time to be supplied with missionaries.
+The united force was first to drive the English from the Ohio, and next
+attack the Dog Tribe, or Cherokees, who lived near the borders of
+Virginia, with the people of which they were on friendly terms. "If,"
+says Piquet, "the English of Virginia give any help to this last-named
+tribe,--which will not fail to happen,--they [_the war-party_] will do
+their utmost against them, through a grudge they bear them by reason of
+some old quarrels." In other words, the missionary hopes to set a host
+of savages to butchering English settlers in time of peace![34] His
+wild project never took effect, though the Governor, he says, at first
+approved it.
+
+[Footnote 34: Appendix A.]
+
+In the preceding year the "Apostle of the Iroquois," as he was called,
+made a journey to muster recruits for his mission, and kept a copious
+diary on the way. By accompanying him, one gets a clear view of an
+important part of the region in dispute between the rival nations. Six
+Canadians paddled him up the St. Lawrence, and five Indian converts
+followed in another canoe. Emerging from among the Thousand Islands,
+they stopped at Fort Frontenac, where Kingston now stands. Once the
+place was a great resort of Indians; now none were here, for the English
+post of Oswego, on the other side of the lake, had greater attractions.
+Piquet and his company found the pork and bacon very bad, and he
+complains that "there was not brandy enough in the fort to wash a
+wound." They crossed to a neighboring island, where they were soon
+visited by the chaplain of the fort, the storekeeper, his wife, and
+three young ladies, glad of an excursion to relieve the monotony of the
+garrison. "My hunters," says Piquet, "had supplied me with means of
+giving them a pretty good entertainment. We drank, with all our hearts,
+the health of the authorities, temporal and ecclesiastical, to the sound
+of our musketry, which was very well fired, and delighted the
+islanders." These islanders were a band of Indians who lived here.
+Piquet gave them a feast, then discoursed of religion, and at last
+persuaded them to remove to the new mission.
+
+During eight days he and his party coasted the northern shore of Lake
+Ontario, with various incidents, such as an encounter between his dog
+Cerberus and a wolf, to the disadvantage of the latter, and the meeting
+with "a very fine negro of twenty-two years, a fugitive from Virginia."
+On the twenty-sixth of June they reached the new fort of Toronto, which
+offered a striking contrast to their last stopping-place. "The wine here
+is of the best; there is nothing wanting in this fort; everything is
+abundant, fine, and good." There was reason for this. The Northern
+Indians were flocking with their beaver-skins to the English of Oswego;
+and in April, 1749, an officer named Portneuf had been sent with
+soldiers and workmen to build a stockaded trading-house at Toronto, in
+order to intercept them,--not by force, which would have been ruinous
+to French interests, but by a tempting supply of goods and brandy.[35]
+Thus the fort was kept well stocked, and with excellent effect. Piquet
+found here a band of Mississagas, who would otherwise, no doubt, have
+carried their furs to the English. He was strongly impelled to persuade
+them to migrate to La Présentation; but the Governor had told him to
+confine his efforts to other tribes; and lest, he says, the ardor of his
+zeal should betray him to disobedience, he reimbarked, and encamped six
+leagues from temptation.
+
+[Footnote 35: On Toronto, _La Jonquière et Bigot au Ministre, 1749. La
+Jonquière au Ministre, 30 Août, 1750. N.Y. Col. Docs. X_. 201, 246.]
+
+Two days more brought him to Niagara, where he was warmly received by
+the commandant, the chaplain, and the storekeeper,--the triumvirate who
+ruled these forest outposts, and stood respectively for then: three
+vital principles, war, religion, and trade. Here Piquet said mass; and
+after resting a day, set out for the trading-house at the portage of the
+cataract, recently built, like Toronto, to stop the Indians on their way
+to Oswego.[36] Here he found Joncaire, and here also was encamped a
+large band of Senecas; though, being all drunk, men, women, and
+children, they were in no condition to receive the Faith, or appreciate
+the temporal advantages that attended it. On the next morning, finding
+them partially sober, he invited them to remove to La Présentation; "but
+as they had still something left in their bottles, I could get no answer
+till the following day." "I pass in silence," pursues the missionary,
+"an infinity of talks on this occasion. Monsieur de Joncaire forgot
+nothing that could help me, and behaved like a great servant of God and
+the King. My recruits increased every moment. I went to say my breviary
+while my Indians and the Senecas, without loss of time, assembled to
+hold a council with Monsieur de Joncaire." The result of the council was
+an entreaty to the missionary not to stop at Oswego, lest evil should
+befall him at the hands of the English. He promised to do as they
+wished, and presently set out on his return to Fort Niagara, attended by
+Joncaire and a troop of his new followers. The journey was a triumphal
+progress. "Whenever was passed a camp or a wigwam, the Indians saluted
+me by firing their guns, which happened so often that I thought all the
+trees along the way were charged with gunpowder; and when we reached the
+fort, Monsieur de Becancour received us with great ceremony and the
+firing of cannon, by which my savages were infinitely flattered."
+
+[Footnote 36: _La Jonquière au Ministre, 23 Fév. 1750. Ibid., 6 Oct_.
+1751. Compare _Colonial Records of Pa_., V. 508.]
+
+His neophytes were gathered into the chapel for the first time in their
+lives, and there rewarded with a few presents. He now prepared to turn
+homeward, his flock at the mission being left in his absence without a
+shepherd; and on the sixth of July he embarked, followed by a swarm of
+canoes. On the twelfth they stopped at the Genesee, and went to visit
+the Falls, where the city of Rochester now stands. On the way, the
+Indians found a populous resort of rattlesnakes, and attacked the
+gregarious reptiles with great animation, to the alarm of the
+missionary, who trembled for his bare-legged retainers. His fears proved
+needless. Forty-two dead snakes, as he avers, requited the efforts of
+the sportsmen, and not one of them was bitten. When he returned to camp
+in the afternoon he found there a canoe loaded with kegs of brandy. "The
+English," he says, "had sent it to meet us, well knowing that this was
+the best way to cause disorder among my new recruits and make them
+desert me. The Indian in charge of the canoe, who had the look of a
+great rascal, offered some to me first, and then to my Canadians and
+Indians. I gave out that it was very probably poisoned, and immediately
+embarked again."
+
+He encamped on the fourteenth at Sodus Bay, and strongly advises the
+planting of a French fort there. "Nevertheless," he adds, "it would be
+still better to destroy Oswego, and on no account let the English build
+it again." On the sixteenth he came in sight of this dreaded post.
+Several times on the way he had met fleets of canoes going thither
+or returning, in spite of the rival attractions of Toronto and Niagara.
+No English establishment on the continent was of such ill omen to the
+French. It not only robbed them of the fur-trade, by which they lived,
+but threatened them with military and political, no less than commercial,
+ruin. They were in constant dread lest ships of war should be built
+here, strong enough to command Lake Ontario, thus separating Canada from
+Louisiana, and cutting New France asunder. To meet this danger, they
+soon after built at Fort Frontenac a large three-masted vessel, mounted
+with heavy cannon; thus, as usual, forestalling their rivals by
+promptness of action.[37] The ground on which Oswego stood was claimed
+by the Province of New York, which alone had control of it; but through
+the purblind apathy of the Assembly, and their incessant quarrels with
+the Governor, it was commonly left to take care of itself. For some
+time they would vote no money to pay the feeble little garrison; and
+Clinton, who saw the necessity of maintaining it, was forced to do so on
+his own personal credit.[38] "Why can't your Governor and your great men
+[_the Assembly_] agree?" asked a Mohawk chief of the interpreter, Conrad
+Weiser.[39]
+
+[Footnote 37: _Lieutenant Lindesay to Johnson, July, 1751._]
+
+[Footnote 38: _Clinton to Lords of Trade, 30 July, 1750._]
+
+[Footnote 39: _Journal of Conrad Weiser, 1750._]
+
+Piquet kept his promise not to land at the English fort; but he
+approached in his canoe, and closely observed it. The shores, now
+covered by the city of Oswego, were then a desolation of bare hills and
+fields, studded with the stumps of felled trees, and hedged about with a
+grim border of forests. Near the strand, by the mouth of the Onondaga,
+were the houses of some of the traders; and on the higher ground behind
+them stood a huge blockhouse with a projecting upper story. This
+building was surrounded by a rough wall of stone, with flankers at the
+angles, forming what was called the fort.[40] Piquet reconnoitred it
+from his canoe with the eye of a soldier. "It is commanded," he says,
+"on almost every side; two batteries, of three twelve-pounders each,
+would be more than enough to reduce it to ashes." And he enlarges on the
+evils that arise from it. "It not only spoils our trade, but puts the
+English into communication with a vast number of our Indians, far and
+near. It is true that they like our brandy better than English rum; but
+they prefer English goods to ours, and can buy for two beaver-skins at
+Oswego a better silver bracelet than we sell at Niagara for ten."
+
+[Footnote 40: Compare _Doc. Hist. N.Y._, I. 463.]
+
+The burden of these reflections was lightened when he approached Fort
+Frontenac. "Never was reception more solemn. The Nipissings and
+Algonkins, who were going on a war-party with Monsieur Belêtre, formed a
+line of their own accord, and saluted us with three volleys of musketry,
+and cries of joy without end. All our little bark vessels replied in the
+same way. Monsieur de Verchères and Monsieur de Valtry ordered the
+cannon of the fort to be fired; and my Indians, transported with joy at
+the honor done them, shot off their guns incessantly, with cries and
+acclamations that delighted everybody." A goodly band of recruits joined
+him, and he pursued his voyage to La Présentation, while the canoes of
+his proselytes followed in a swarm to their new home; "that
+establishment"--thus in a burst of enthusiasm he closes his
+Journal--"that establishment which I began two years ago, in the midst
+of opposition; that establishment which may be regarded as a key of the
+colony; that establishment which officers, interpreters, and traders
+thought a chamaera,--that establishment, I say, forms already a mission
+of Iroquois savages whom I assembled at first to the number of only six,
+increased last year to eighty-seven, and this year to three hundred and
+ninety-six, without counting more than a hundred and fifty whom Monsieur
+Chabert de Joncaire is to bring me this autumn. And I certify that thus
+far I have received from His Majesty--for all favor, grace, and
+assistance--no more than a half pound of bacon and two pounds of bread
+for daily rations; and that he has not yet given a pin to the chapel,
+which I have maintained out of my own pocket, for the greater glory of
+my masters, God and the King."[41]
+
+[Footnote 41: _Journal qui peut servir de Mémoire et de Relation du
+Voyage que j'ay fait sur le Lac Ontario pour attirer au nouvel
+Établissement de La Présentation les Sauvages Iroquois des Cinq Nations,
+1751_. The last passage given above is condensed in the rendering, as
+the original is extremely involved and ungrammatical.]
+
+In his late journey he had made the entire circuit of Lake Ontario.
+Beyond lay four other inland oceans, to which Fort Niagara was the key.
+As that all-essential post controlled the passage from Ontario to Erie,
+so did Fort Detroit control that from Erie to Huron, and Fort
+Michillimackinac that from Huron to Michigan; while Fort Ste. Marie, at
+the outlet of Lake Superior, had lately received a garrison, and changed
+from a mission and trading-station to a post of war.[42] This immense
+extent of inland navigation was safe in the hands of France so long as
+she held Niagara. Niagara lost, not only the lakes, but also the Valley
+of the Ohio was lost with it. Next in importance was Detroit. This was
+not a military post alone, but also a settlement; and, except the
+hamlets about Fort Chartres, the only settlement that France owned in
+all the West. There were, it is true, but a few families; yet the hope
+of growth seemed good; for to such as liked a wilderness home, no spot
+in America had more attraction. Father Bonnecamp stopped here for a day
+on his way back from the expedition of Céloron. "The situation," he
+says, "is charming. A fine river flows at the foot of the
+fortifications; vast meadows, asking only to be tilled, extend beyond
+the sight. Nothing can be more agreeable than the climate. Winter lasts
+hardly two months. European grains and fruits grow here far better than
+in many parts of France. It is the Touraine and Beauce of Canada."[43]
+The white flag of the Bourbons floated over the compact little
+palisaded town, with its population of soldiers and fur-traders; and
+from the blockhouses which served as bastions, one saw on either hand
+the small solid dwellings of the _habitants_, ranged at intervals along
+the margin of the water; while at a little distance three Indian
+villages--Ottawa, Pottawattamie, and Wyandot--curled their wigwam smoke
+into the pure summer air.[44]
+
+[Footnote 42: _La Jonquière au Ministre, 24 Août, 1750_.]
+
+[Footnote 43: _Relation du Voiage de la Belle Rivière, 1749_.]
+
+[Footnote 44: A plan of Detroit is before me, made about this time by
+the engineer Lery.]
+
+When Céloron de Bienville returned from the Ohio, he went, with a royal
+commission, sent him a year before, to command at Detroit.[45] His late
+chaplain, the very intelligent Father Bonnecamp, speaks of him as
+fearless, energetic, and full of resource; but the Governor calls him
+haughty and insubordinate. Great efforts were made, at the same time, to
+build up Detroit as a centre of French power in the West. The methods
+employed were of the debilitating, paternal character long familiar to
+Canada. All emigrants with families were to be carried thither at the
+King's expense; and every settler was to receive in free gift a gun, a
+hoe, an axe, a ploughshare, a scythe, a sickle, two augers, large and
+small, a sow, six hens, a cock, six pounds of powder, and twelve pounds
+of lead; while to these favors were added many others. The result was
+that twelve families were persuaded to go, or about a twentieth part of
+the number wanted.[46] Detroit was expected to furnish supplies to the
+other posts for five hundred miles around, control the neighboring
+Indians, thwart English machinations, and drive off English interlopers.
+
+[Footnote 45: _Le Ministre à la Jonquière et Bigot, 14 Mai, 1749. Le
+Ministre à Céloron, 23 Mai, 1749_.]
+
+[Footnote 46: _Ordonnance du 2 Jan. 1750. La Jonquière et Bigot au
+Ministre, 1750_. Forty-six persons of all ages and both sexes had been
+induced by La Galissonière to go the year before. _Lettres communes de
+la Jonquière et Bigot, 1749_. The total fixed population of Detroit and
+its neighborhood in 1750 is stated at four hundred and eighty-three
+souls. In the following two years, a considerable number of young men
+came of their own accord, and Céloron wrote to Montreal to ask for girls
+to marry them.]
+
+La Galissonière no longer governed Canada. He had been honorably
+recalled, and the Marquis de la Jonquière sent in his stead.[47] La
+Jonquière, like his predecessor, was a naval officer of high repute; he
+was tall and imposing in person, and of undoubted capacity and courage;
+but old and, according to his enemies, very avaricious.[48] The Colonial
+Minister gave him special instructions regarding that thorn in the side
+of Canada, Oswego. To attack it openly would be indiscreet, as the two
+nations were at peace; but there was a way of dealing with it less
+hazardous, if not more lawful. This was to attack it vicariously by
+means of the Iroquois. "If Abbé Piquet succeeds in his mission," wrote
+the Minister to the new Governor, "we can easily persuade these savages
+to destroy Oswego. This is of the utmost importance; but act with great
+caution."[49] In the next year the Minister wrote again: "The only means
+that can be used for such an operation in time of peace are those of the
+Iroquois. If by making these savages regard such an establishment
+[_Oswego_] as opposed to their liberty, and, so to speak, a usurpation
+by which the English mean to get possession of their lands, they could
+be induced to undertake its destruction, an operation of the sort is not
+to be neglected; but M. le Marquis de la Jonquière should feel with what
+circumspection such an affair should be conducted, and he should labor
+to accomplish it in a manner not to commit himself."[50] To this La
+Jonquière replies that it will need time; but that he will gradually
+bring the Iroquois to attack and destroy the English post. He received
+stringent orders to use every means to prevent the English from
+encroaching, but to act towards them at the same time "with the greatest
+politeness."[51] This last injunction was scarcely fulfilled in a
+correspondence which he had with Clinton, governor of New York, who had
+written to complain of the new post at the Niagara portage as an
+invasion of English territory, and also of the arrest of four English
+traders in the country of the Miamis. Niagara, like Oswego, was in the
+country of the Five Nations, whom the treaty of Utrecht declared
+"subject to the dominion of Great Britain."[52] This declaration,
+preposterous in itself, was binding on France, whose plenipotentiaries
+had signed the treaty. The treaty also provided that the subjects of the
+two Crowns "shall enjoy full liberty of going and coming on account of
+trade," and Clinton therefore demanded that La Jonquière should disavow
+the arrest of the four traders and punish its authors. The French
+Governor replied with great asperity, spurned the claim that the Five
+Nations were British subjects, and justified the arrest.[53] He
+presently went further. Rewards were offered by his officers for the
+scalps of Croghan and of another trader named Lowry.[54] When this
+reached the ears of William Johnson, on the Mohawk, he wrote to Clinton
+in evident anxiety for his own scalp: "If the French go on so, there is
+no man can be safe in his own house; for I can at any time get an Indian
+to kill any man for a small matter. Their going on in that manner is
+worse than open war."
+
+[Footnote 47: _Le Ministre à la Galissonière, 14 Mai, 1749_.]
+
+[Footnote 48: _Mémoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760_. The charges made here
+and elsewhere are denied, somewhat faintly, by a descendant of La
+Jonquière in his elaborate _Notice biographique_ of his ancestor.]
+
+[Footnote 49: _Le Ministre à La Jonquière, Mai, 1749_. The instructions
+given to La Jonquière before leaving France also urge the necessity of
+destroying Oswego.]
+
+[Footnote 50: _Ordres du Roy et Dépêches des Ministres; à MM. de la
+Jonquière et Bigot, 15 Avril, 1750_. See Appendix A. for original.]
+
+[Footnote 51: _Ordres du Roy et Dépêches des Ministres, 1750_.]
+
+[Footnote 52: Chalmers, _Collection of Treaties_, I. 382.]
+
+[Footnote 53: _La Jonquière à Clinton, 10 Août, 1751_.]
+
+[Footnote 54: Deposition of Morris Turner and Ralph Kilgore, in
+_Colonial Records of Pa._, V. 482. The deponents had been prisoners at
+Detroit.]
+
+The French on their side made counter-accusations. The captive traders
+were examined on oath before La Jonquière, and one of them, John Patton,
+is reported to have said that Croghan had instigated Indians to kill
+Frenchmen.[55] French officials declared that other English traders were
+guilty of the same practices; and there is very little doubt that the
+charge was true.
+
+[Footnote 55: _Précis des Faits, avec leurs Pièces justificatives_,
+100.]
+
+The dispute with the English was not the only source of trouble to the
+Governor. His superiors at Versailles would not adopt his views, and
+looked on him with distrust. He advised the building of forts near Lake
+Erie, and his advice was rejected. "Niagara and Detroit," he was told,
+"will secure forever our communications with Louisiana."[56] "His
+Majesty," again wrote the Colonial Minister, "thought that expenses
+would diminish after the peace; but, on the contrary, they have
+increased. There must be great abuses. You and the Intendant must look
+to it."[57] Great abuses there were; and of the money sent to Canada for
+the service of the King the larger part found its way into the pockets
+of peculators. The colony was eaten to the heart with official
+corruption; and the centre of it was François Bigot, the intendant. The
+Minister directed La Jonquière's attention to certain malpractices
+which had been reported to him; and the old man, deeply touched,
+replied: "I have reached the age of sixty-six years, and there is not a
+drop of blood in my veins that does not thrill for the service of my
+King. I will not conceal from you that the slightest suspicion on your
+part against me would cut the thread of my days."[58]
+
+[Footnote 56: _Ordres du Roy et Dépêches des Ministres_, 1750.]
+
+[Footnote 57: _Ibid., 6 Juin_, 1751.]
+
+[Footnote 58: _La Jonquière au Ministre, 19 Oct_. 1751.]
+
+Perplexities increased; affairs in the West grew worse and worse. La
+Jonquière ordered Céloron to attack the English at Pickawillany; and
+Céloron could not or would not obey. "I cannot express," writes the
+Governor, "how much this business troubles me; it robs me of sleep; it
+makes me ill." Another letter of rebuke presently came from Versailles.
+"Last year you wrote that you would soon drive the English from the
+Ohio; but private letters say that you have done nothing. This is
+deplorable. If not expelled, they will seem to acquire a right against
+us. Send force enough at once to drive them off, and cure them of all
+wish to return."[59] La Jonquière answered with bitter complaints
+against Céloron, and then begged to be recalled. His health, already
+shattered, was ruined by fatigue and vexation; and he took to his bed.
+Before spring he was near his end.[60] It is said that, though very
+rich, his habits of thrift so possessed his last hours that, seeing
+wax-candles burning in his chamber, he ordered others of tallow to be
+brought instead, as being good enough to die by. Thus frugally lighted
+on its way, his spirit fled; and the Baron de Longueuil took his place
+till a new governor should arrive.
+
+[Footnote 59: _Ordres du Roy et Dépêches des Ministres_, 1751.]
+
+[Footnote 60: He died on the sixth of March, 1752 (_Bigot au Ministre, 6
+Mai_); not on the seventeeth of May, as stated in the _Mémoires sur le
+Canada_, 1749-1760.]
+
+Sinister tidings came thick from the West. Raymond, commandant at the
+French fort on the Maumee, close to the centre of intrigue, wrote: "My
+people are leaving me for Detroit. Nobody wants to stay here and have
+his throat cut. All the tribes who go to the English at Pickawillany
+come back loaded with gifts. I am too weak to meet the danger. Instead
+of twenty men, I need five hundred.... We have made peace with the
+English, yet they try continually to make war on us by means of the
+Indians; they intend to be masters of all this upper country. The tribes
+here are leaguing together to kill all the French, that they may have
+nobody on their lands but their English brothers. This I am told by
+Coldfoot, a great Miami chief, whom I think an honest man, if there is
+any such thing among Indians.... If the English stay in this country we
+are lost. We must attack, and drive them out." And he tells of war-belts
+sent from tribe to tribe, and rumors of plots and conspiracies far and
+near.
+
+Without doubt, the English traders spared no pains to gain over the
+Indians by fair means or foul; sold them goods at low rates, made ample
+gifts, and gave gunpowder for the asking. Saint-Ange, who commanded at
+Vincennes, wrote that a storm would soon burst on the heads of the
+French. Joncaire reported that all the Ohio Indians sided with the
+English. Longueuil informed the Minister that the Miamis had scalped two
+soldiers; that the Piankishaws had killed seven Frenchmen; and that a
+squaw who had lived with one of the slain declared that the tribes of
+the Wabash and Illinois were leaguing with the Osages for a combined
+insurrection. Every letter brought news of murder. Small-pox had broken
+out at Detroit. "It is to be wished," says Longueuil, "that it would
+spread among our rebels; it would be fully as good as an army.... We are
+menaced with a general outbreak, and even Toronto is in danger....
+Before long the English on the Miami will gain over all the surrounding
+tribes, get possession of Fort Chartres, and cut our communications with
+Louisiana."[61]
+
+[Footnote 61: _Dépêches de Longueuil; Lettres de Raymond; Benoit de
+Saint-Clere à la Jonquière, Oct. 1751._]
+
+The moving spirit of disaffection was the chief called Old Britain, or
+the Demoiselle, and its focus was his town of Pickawillany, on the
+Miami. At this place it is said that English traders sometimes mustered
+to the number of fifty or more. "It is they," wrote Longueuil, "who are
+the instigators of revolt and the source of all our woes."[62] Whereupon
+the Colonial Minister reiterated his instructions to drive them off and
+plunder them, which he thought would "effectually disgust them," and
+bring all trouble to an end.[63]
+
+[Footnote 62: _Longueuil au Ministre, 21 Avril, 1752._]
+
+[Footnote 63: _Le Ministre à la Jonquière, 1752. Le Ministre à Duquesne,
+9 Juillet, 1752._]
+
+La Jonquière's remedy had been more heroic, for he had ordered Céleron
+to attack the English and their red allies alike; and he charged that
+officer with arrogance and disobedience because he had not done so. It
+is not certain that obedience was easy; for though, besides the garrison
+of regulars, a strong body of militia was sent up to Detroit to aid the
+stroke,[64] the Indians of that post, whose co-operation was thought
+necessary, proved half-hearted, intractable, and even touched with
+disaffection. Thus the enterprise languished till, in June, aid came
+from another quarter. Charles Langlade, a young French trader married to
+a squaw at Green Bay, and strong in influence with the tribes of that
+region, came down the lakes from Michillimackinac with a fleet of canoes
+manned by two hundred and fifty Ottawa and Ojibwa warriors; stopped a
+while at Detroit; then embarked again, paddled up the Maumee to
+Raymond's fort at the portage, and led his greased and painted rabble
+through the forest to attack the Demoiselle and his English friends.
+They approached Pickawillany at about nine o'clock on the morning of the
+twenty-first. The scared squaws fled from the cornfields into the town,
+where the wigwams of the Indians clustered about the fortified warehouse
+of the traders. Of these there were at the time only eight in the place.
+Most of the Indians also were gone on their summer hunt, though the
+Demoiselle remained with a band of his tribesmen. Great was the
+screeching of war-whoops and clatter of guns. Three of the traders were
+caught outside the fort. The remaining five closed the gate, and stood
+on their defence. The fight was soon over. Fourteen Miamis were shot
+down, the Demoiselle among the rest. The five white men held out till
+the afternoon, when three of them surrendered, and two, Thomas Burney
+and Andrew McBryer, made their escape. One of the English prisoners
+being wounded, the victors stabbed him to death. Seventy years of
+missionaries had not weaned them from cannibalism, and they boiled and
+eat the Demoiselle.[65]
+
+[Footnote 64: _La Jonquière à Céleron, 1 Oct. 1751._]
+
+[Footnote 65: On the attack of Pickawillany, _Longueuil au Ministre, 18
+Août, 1752; Duquesne au Ministre, 25 Oct. 1752; Colonial Records of
+Pa._, V. 599; _Journal of William Trent_, 1752. Trent was on the spot a
+few days after the affair.]
+
+The captive traders, plundered to the skin, were carried by Langlade to
+Duquesne, the new governor, who highly praised the bold leader of the
+enterprise, and recommended him to the Minister for such reward as
+befitted one of his station. "As he is not in the King's service, and
+has married a squaw, I will ask for him only a pension of two hundred
+francs, which will flatter him infinitely."
+
+The Marquis Duquesne, sprung from the race of the great naval commander
+of that name, had arrived towards midsummer; and he began his rule by a
+general review of troops and militia. His lofty bearing offended the
+Canadians; but he compelled their respect, and, according to a writer of
+the time, showed from the first that he was born to command. He
+presently took in hand an enterprise which his predecessor would
+probably have accomplished, had the Home Government encouraged him.
+Duquesne, profiting by the infatuated neglect of the British provincial
+assemblies, prepared to occupy the upper waters of the Ohio, and secure
+the passes with forts and garrisons. Thus the Virginian and
+Pennsylvanian traders would be debarred all access to the West, and the
+tribes of that region, bereft henceforth of English guns, knives,
+hatchets, and blankets, English gifts and English cajoleries, would be
+thrown back to complete dependence on the French. The moral influence,
+too, of such a movement would be incalculable; for the Indian respects
+nothing so much as a display of vigor and daring, backed by force. In
+short, the intended enterprise was a master-stroke, and laid the axe to
+the very root of disaffection. It is true that, under the treaty,
+commissioners had been long in session at Paris to settle the question
+of American boundaries; but there was no likelihood that they would come
+to agreement; and if France would make good her Western claims, it
+behooved her, while there was yet time, to prevent her rival from
+fastening a firm grasp on the countries in dispute.
+
+Yet the Colonial Minister regarded the plan with distrust. "Be on your
+guard," he wrote to Duquesne, "against new undertakings; private
+interests are generally at the bottom of them. It is through these that
+new posts are established. Keep only such as are indispensable, and
+suppress the others. The expenses of the colony are enormous; and they
+have doubled since the peace." Again, a little later: "Build on the Ohio
+such forts as are absolutely necessary, but no more. Remember that His
+Majesty suspects your advisers of interested views."[66]
+
+[Footnote 66: _Ordres du Roy et Dépêches des Ministres_, 1753.]
+
+No doubt there was justice in the suspicion. Every military movement,
+and above all the establishment of every new post, was an opportunity to
+the official thieves with whom the colony swarmed. Some band of favored
+knaves grew rich; while a much greater number, excluded from sharing the
+illicit profits, clamored against the undertaking, and wrote charges of
+corruption to Versailles. Thus the Minister was kept tolerably well
+informed; but was scarcely the less helpless, for with the Atlantic
+between, the disorders of Canada defied his control. Duquesne was
+exasperated by the opposition that met him on all hands, and wrote to
+the Minister: "There are so many rascals in this country that one is
+forever the butt of their attacks."[67]
+
+[Footnote 67: _Duquesne au Ministre, 29 Sept._ 1754.]
+
+It seems that unlawful gain was not the only secret spring of the
+movement. An officer of repute says that the Intendant, Bigot,
+enterprising in his pleasures as in his greed, was engaged in an
+intrigue with the wife of Chevalier Péan; and wishing at once to console
+the husband and to get rid of him, sought for him a high command at a
+distance from the colony. Therefore while Marin, an able officer, was
+made first in rank, Péan was made second. The same writer hints that
+Duquesne himself was influenced by similar motives in his appointment of
+leaders.[68]
+
+[Footnote 68: Pouchot, _Mémoire sur la dernière Guerre de l'Amérique
+septentrionale (ed._ 1781), I. 8.]
+
+He mustered the colony troops, and ordered out the Canadians. With the
+former he was but half satisfied; with the latter he was delighted; and
+he praises highly their obedience and alacrity. "I had not the least
+trouble in getting them to march. They came on the minute, bringing
+their own guns, though many people tried to excite them to revolt; for
+the whole colony opposes my operations." The expedition set out early in
+the spring of 1753. The whole force was not much above a thousand men,
+increased by subsequent detachments to fifteen hundred; but to the
+Indians it seemed a mighty host; and one of their orators declared that
+the lakes and rivers were covered with boats and soldiers from Montreal
+to Presquisle.[69] Some Mohawk hunters by the St. Lawrence saw them as
+they passed, and hastened home to tell the news to Johnson, whom they
+wakened at midnight, "whooping and hollowing in a frightful manner."[70]
+Lieutenant Holland at Oswego saw a fleet of canoes upon the lake, and
+was told by a roving Frenchman that they belonged to an army of six
+thousand men going to the Ohio, "to cause all the English to quit those
+parts."[71]
+
+[Footnote 69: _Duquesne au Ministre, 27 Oct._ 1753.]
+
+[Footnote 70: _Johnson to Clinton, 20 April_, 1753, in _N.Y. Col.
+Docs._, VI. 778.]
+
+[Footnote 71: _Holland to Clinton, 15 May_, 1753, in _N.Y. Col. Docs._,
+VI. 780.]
+
+The main body of the expedition landed at Presquisle, on the
+southeastern shore of Lake Erie, where the town of Erie now stands; and
+here for a while we leave them.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 4
+
+1710-1754
+
+Conflict for Acadia
+
+
+While in the West all the signs of the sky foreboded storm, another
+tempest was gathering the East, less in extent, but not less in peril.
+The conflict in Acadia has a melancholy interest, since it ended in a
+castastrophe which prose and verse have joined to commemorate, but of
+which the causes have not been understood.
+
+Acadia--that it to say, the peninsula of Nova Scotia, with the addition,
+as the English claimed, of the present New Brunswick and some adjacent
+country--was conquered by General Nicholson in 1710, and formally
+transferred by France to the British Crown, three years later, by the
+treaty of Utrecht. By that treaty it was "expressly provided" that such
+of the French inhabitants as "are willing to remain there and to be
+subject to the Kingdom of Great Britain, are to enjoy the free exercise
+of their religion according to the usage of the Church of Rome, as far
+as the laws of Great Britain do allow the same"; but that any who choose
+may remove, with their effects, if they do so within a year. Very few
+availed themselves of this right; and after the end of the year those
+who remained were required to take an oath of allegiance to King George.
+There is no doubt that in a little time they would have complied, had
+they been let alone; but the French authorities of Canada and Cape
+Breton did their utmost to prevent them, and employed agents to keep
+them hostile to England. Of these the most efficient were the French
+priests, who, in spite of the treaty, persuaded their flocks that they
+were still subjects of King Louis. Hence rose endless perplexity to the
+English commanders at Annapolis, who more than suspected that the Indian
+attacks with which they were harassed were due mainly to French
+instigation.[72] It was not till seventeen years after the treaty that
+the Acadians could be brought to take the oath without qualifications
+which made it almost useless. The English authorities seem to have shown
+throughout an unusual patience and forbearance. At length, about 1730,
+nearly all the inhabitants signed by crosses, since few of them could
+write, an oath recognizing George II as sovereign of Acadia, and
+promising fidelity and obedience to him.[73] This restored comparative
+quiet till the war of 1745, when some of the Acadians remained neutral,
+while some took arms against the English, and many others aided the
+enemy with information and supplies.
+
+[Footnote 72: See the numerous papers in _Selections from the Public
+Documents of the Province of Nova Scotia_ (Halifax, 1869), pp. 1-165; a
+Government publication of great value.]
+
+[Footnote 73: The oath was _literatim_ as follows: "Je Promets et Jure
+Sincerement en Foi de Chrétien que Je serai entierement Fidele, et
+Obeierai Vraiment Sa Majesté Le Roy George Second, qui (_sic_) Je
+reconnoi pour Le Souvrain Seigneur de l'Accadie ou Nouvelle Ecosse.
+Ainsi Dieu me Soit en Aide."]
+
+English power in Acadia, hitherto limited to a feeble garrison at
+Annapolis and a feebler one at Canseau, received at this time a great
+accession. The fortress of Louisbourg, taken by the English during the
+war, had been restored by the treaty; and the French at once prepared to
+make it a military and naval station more formidable than ever. Upon
+this the British Ministry resolved to establish another station as a
+counterpoise; and the harbor of Chebucto, on the south coast of Acadia,
+was chosen as the site of it. Thither in June, 1749, came a fleet of
+transports loaded with emigrants, tempted by offers of land and a home
+in the New World. Some were mechanics, tradesmen, farmers, and laborers;
+others were sailors, soldiers, and subaltern officers thrown out of
+employment by the peace. Including women and children, they counted in
+all about twenty-five hundred. Alone of all the British colonies on the
+continent, this new settlement was the offspring, not of private
+enterprise, but of royal authority. Yet is was free like the rest, with
+the same popular representation and local self-government. Edward
+Cornwallis, uncle of Lord Cornwallis of the Revolutionary War, was made
+governor and commander-in-chief. Wolfe calls him "a man of approved
+courage and fidelity"; and even the caustic Horace Walpole speaks of him
+as "a brave, sensible young man, of great temper and good nature."
+
+Before summer was over, the streets were laid out, and the building-lot
+of each settler was assigned to him; before winter closed, the whole
+were under shelter, the village was fenced with palisades and defended
+by redoubts of timber, and the battalions lately in garrison at
+Louisbourg manned the wooden ramparts. Succeeding years brought more
+emigrants, and in 1752 the population was above four thousand. Thus was
+born into the world the city of Halifax. Along with the crumbling old
+fort and miserably disciplined garrison at Annapolis, besides six or
+seven small detached posts to watch the Indians and Acadians, it
+comprised the whole British force on the peninsula; for Canseau had been
+destroyed by the French.
+
+The French had never reconciled themselves to the loss of Acadia, and
+were resolved, by diplomacy or force, to win it back again; but the
+building of Halifax showed that this was to be no easy task, and filled
+them at the same time with alarm for the safety of Louisbourg. On one
+point, at least, they saw their policy clear. The Acadians, though those
+of them who were not above thirty-five had been born under the British
+flag, must be kept French at heart, and taught that they were still
+French subjects. In 1748 they numbered eighty-eight hundred and fifty
+communicants, or from twelve to thirteen thousand souls; but an
+emigration, of which the causes will soon appear, had reduced them in
+1752 to but little more than nine thousand.[74] These were divided into
+six principal parishes, one of the largest being that of Annapolis.
+Other centres of population were Grand Pré, on the basin of Mines;
+Beaubassin, at the head of Chignecto Bay; Pisiquid, now Windsor; and
+Cobequid, now Truro. Their priests, who were missionaries controlled by
+the diocese of Quebec, acted also as their magistrates, ruling them for
+this world and the next. Bring subject to a French superior, and being,
+moreover, wholly French at heart, they formed in this British province a
+wheel within a wheel, the inner movement always opposing the outer.
+
+[Footnote 74: _Description de l'Acadie, avec le Nom des Paroisses et le
+Nombre des Habitants, 1748. Mémoire à présenter à la Cour sur la
+necessité de fixer les Limites de l'Acadie,_ par l'Abbé de l'Isle-Dieu,
+1753 (1754?). Compare the estimates in _Censuses of Canada_ (Ottawa,
+1876.)]
+
+Although, by the twelfth article of the treaty of Utrecht, France had
+solemnly declared the Acadians to be British subjects, the Government of
+Louis XV intrigued continually to turn them from subjects into enemies.
+Before me is a mass of English documents on Acadian affairs from the
+peace of Aix-la-Chapelle to the catastrophe of 1755, and above a
+thousand pages of French official papers from the archives of Paris,
+memorials, reports, and secret correspondence, relating to the same
+matters. With the help of these and some collateral lights, it is not
+difficult to make a correct diagnosis of the political disease that
+ravaged this miserable country. Of a multitude of proofs, only a few can
+be given here; but these will suffice.
+
+It was not that the Acadians had been ill-used by the English; the
+reverse was the case. They had been left in free exercise of their
+worship, as stipulated by treaty. It is true that, from time to time,
+there were loud complaints from French officials that religion was in
+danger, because certain priests had been rebuked, arrested, brought
+before the Council at Halifax, suspended from their functions, or
+required, on pain of banishment, to swear that they would do nothing
+against the interests of King George. Yet such action on the part of the
+provincial authorities seems, without a single exception, to have been
+the consequence of misconduct on the part of the priest, in opposing the
+Government and stirring his flock to disaffection. La Jonquière, the
+determined adversary of the English, reported to the bishop that they
+did not oppose the ecclesiastics in the exercise of their functions, and
+an order of Louis XV admits that the Acadians have enjoyed liberty of
+religion.[75] In a long document addressed in 1750 to the Colonial
+Minister at Versailles, Roma, an officer at Louisbourg, testifies thus
+to the mildness of British rule, though he ascribes it to interested
+motives. "The fear that the Acadians have of the Indians is the
+controlling motive which makes them side with the French. The English,
+having in view the conquest of Canada, wished to give the French of that
+colony, in their conduct towards the Acadians, a striking example of
+the mildness of their government. Without raising the fortune of any of
+the inhabitants, they have supplied them for more than thirty-five years
+with the necessaries of life, often on credit and with an excess of
+confidence, without troubling their debtors, without pressing them,
+without wishing to force them to pay. They have left them an appearance
+of liberty so excessive that they have not intervened in their disputes
+or even punished their crimes. They have allowed them to refuse with
+insolence certain moderate rents payable in grain and lawfully due. They
+have passed over in silence the contemptuous refusal of the Acadians to
+take titles from them for the new lands which they chose to occupy.[76]
+
+[Footnote 75: _La Jonquière à Évêque de Québec, 14 Juin, 1750. Mémoire
+du Roy pour servir d'Instruction au Comte de Raymond, commandant pour Sa
+Majesté à l'Isle Royale_ [Cape Breton], _24 Avril, 1751_.]
+
+[Footnote 76: See Appendix B.]
+
+"We know very well," pursues Roma, "the fruits of this conduct in the
+last war; and the English know it also. Judge then what will be the
+wrath and vengeance of this cruel nation." The fruits to which Roma
+alludes were the hostilities, open or secret, committed by the Acadians
+against the English. He now ventures the prediction that the enraged
+conquerors will take their revenge by drafting all the young Acadians on
+board their ships of war, and there destroying them by slow starvation.
+He proved, however, a false prophet. The English Governor merely
+required the inhabitants to renew their oath of allegiance, without
+qualification or evasion.
+
+It was twenty years since the Acadians had taken such an oath; and
+meanwhile a new generation had grown up. The old oath pledged them to
+fidelity and obedience; but they averred that Phillips, then governor of
+the province, had given them, at the same time, assurance that they
+should not be required to bear arms against either French or Indians. In
+fact, such service had not been demanded of them, and they would have
+lived in virtual neutrality, had not many of them broken their oaths and
+joined the French war-parties. For this reason Cornwallis thought it
+necessary that, in renewing the pledge, they should bind themselves to
+an allegiance as complete as that required of other British subjects.
+This spread general consternation. Deputies from the Acadian
+settlements appeared at Halifax, bringing a paper signed with the marks
+of a thousand persons. The following passage contains the pith of it.
+"The inhabitants in general, sir, over the whole extent of this country
+are resolved not to take the oath which your Excellency requires of us;
+but if your Excellency will grant us our old oath, with an exemption for
+ourselves and our heirs from taking up arms, we will accept it."[77] The
+answer of Cornwallis was by no means so stern as it has been
+represented.[78] After the formal reception he talked in private with
+the deputies; and "they went home in good humor, promising great
+things."[79]
+
+[Footnote 77: _Public Documents of Nova Scotia_, 173.]
+
+[Footnote 78: See _Ibid._, 174, where the answer is printed.]
+
+[Footnote 79: _Cornwallis to the Board of Trade, 11 Sept. 1749._]
+
+The refusal of the Acadians to take the required oath was not wholly
+spontaneous, but was mainly due to influence from without. The French
+officials of Cape Breton and Isle St. Jean, now Prince Edward Island,
+exerted themselves to the utmost, chiefly through the agency of the
+priests, to excite the people to refuse any oath that should commit them
+fully to British allegiance. At the same time means were used to induce
+them to migrate to the neighboring islands under French rule, and
+efforts were also made to set on the Indians to attack the English. But
+the plans of the French will best appear in a despatch sent by La
+Jonquière to the Colonial Minister in the autumn of 1749.
+
+"Monsieur Cornwallis issued an order on the tenth of the said month
+[_August_], to the effect that if the inhabitants will remain faithful
+subjects of the King of Great Britain, he will allow them priests and
+public exercise of their religion, with the understanding that no priest
+shall officiate without his permission or before taking an oath of
+fidelity to the King of Great Britain. Secondly, that the inhabitants
+shall not be exempted from defending their houses, their lands, and the
+Government. Thirdly, that they shall take an oath of fidelity to the
+King of Great Britain, on the twenty-sixth of this month, before
+officers sent them for that purpose."
+
+La Jonquière proceeds to say that on hearing these conditions the
+Acadians were filled with perplexity and alarm, and that he, the
+governor, had directed Boishébert, his chief officer on the Acadian
+frontier, to encourage them to leave their homes and seek asylum on
+French soil. He thus recounts the steps he has taken to harass the
+English of Halifax by means of their Indian neighbors. As peace had been
+declared, the operation was delicate; and when three of these Indians
+came to him from their missionary, Le Loutre, with letters on the
+subject, La Jonquière was discreetly reticent. "I did not care to give
+them any advice upon the matter, and confined myself to a promise that I
+would on no account abandon them; and I have provided for supplying them
+with everything, whether arms, ammunition, food, or other necessaries.
+It is to be desired that these savages should succeed in thwarting the
+designs of the English, and even their settlement at Halifax. They are
+bent on doing so; and if they can carry out their plans, it is certain
+that they will give the English great trouble, and so harass them that
+they will be a great obstacle in their path. These savages are to act
+alone; neither soldier nor French inhabitant is to join them; everything
+will be done of their own motion, and without showing that I had any
+knowledge of the matter. This is very essential; therefore I have
+written to the Sieur de Boishébert to observe great prudence in his
+measures, and to act very secretly, in order that the English may not
+perceive that we are providing for the needs of the said savages."
+
+"It will be the missionaries who will manage all the negotiation, and
+direct the movements of the savages, who are in excellent hands, as the
+Reverend Father Germain and Monsieur l'Abbé Le Loutre are very capable
+of making the most of them, and using them to the greatest advantage for
+our interests. They will manage their intrigue in such a way as not to
+appear in it."
+
+La Jonquière then recounts the good results which he expects from these
+measures: first, the English will be prevented from making any new
+settlements; secondly, we shall gradually get the Acadians out of their
+hands; and lastly, they will be so discouraged by constant Indian
+attacks that they will renounce their pretensions to the parts of the
+country belonging to the King of France. "I feel, Monseigneur,"--thus
+the Governor concludes his despatch,--"all the delicacy of this
+negotiation; be assured that I will conduct it with such precaution that
+the English will not be able to say that my orders had any part in
+it."[80]
+
+[Footnote 80: _La Jonquière au Ministre, 9 Oct. 1749_. See Appendix B.]
+
+He kept his word, and so did the missionaries. The Indians gave great
+trouble on the outskirts of Halifax, and murdered many harmless
+settlers; yet the English authorities did not at first suspect that they
+were hounded on by their priests, under the direction of the Governor
+of Canada, and with the privity of the Minister at Versailles. More than
+this; for, looking across the sea, we find royalty itself lending its
+august countenance to the machination. Among the letters read before the
+King in his cabinet in May, 1750, was one from Desherbiers, then
+commanding at Louisbourg, saying that he was advising the Acadians not
+to take the oath of allegiance to the King of England; another from Le
+Loutre, declaring that he and Father Germain were consulting together
+how to disgust the English with their enterprise of Halifax; and a third
+from the Intendant, Bigot, announcing that Le Loutre was using the
+Indians to harass the new settlement, and that he himself was sending
+them powder, lead, and merchandise, "to confirm them in their good
+designs."[81]
+
+[Footnote 81: _Resumé des Lettres lues au Travail du Roy, Mai, 1750_.]
+
+To this the Minister replies in a letter to Desherbiers: "His Majesty is
+well satisfied with all you have done to thwart the English in their new
+establishment. If the dispositions of the savages are such as they seem,
+there is reason to hope that in the course of the winter they will
+succeed in so harassing the settlers that some of them will become
+disheartened." Desherbiers is then told that His Majesty desires him to
+aid English deserters in escaping from Halifax.[82] Supplies for the
+Indians are also promised; and he is informed that twelve medals are
+sent him by the frigate "La Mutine," to be given to the chiefs who shall
+most distinguish themselves. In another letter Desherbiers is enjoined
+to treat the English authorities with great politeness.[83]
+
+[Footnote 82: In 1750 nine captured deserters from Phillips's regiment
+declared on their trial that the French had aided them and supplied them
+all with money. _Public Documents of Nova Scotia_, 193.]
+
+[Footnote 83: _Le Ministre à Desherbiers, 23 Mai, 1750; Ibid., 31 Mai,
+1750_.]
+
+When Count Raymond took command at Louisbourg, he was instructed, under
+the royal hand, to give particular attention to the affairs of Acadia,
+especially in two points,--the management of the Indians, and the
+encouraging of Acadian emigration to countries under French rule. "His
+Majesty," says the document, "has already remarked that the savages have
+been most favorably disposed. It is of the utmost importance that no
+means be neglected to keep them so. The missionaries among them are in a
+better position than anybody to contribute to this end, and His Majesty
+has reason to be satisfied with the pains they take therein. The Sieur
+de Raymond will excite these missionaries not to slacken their efforts;
+but he will warn them at the same time so to contain their zeal as not
+to compromise themselves with the English, and give just occasion of
+complaint."[84] That is, the King orders his representative to encourage
+the missionaries in instigating their flocks to butcher English
+settlers, but to see that they take care not to be found out. The
+injunction was hardly needed. "Monsieur Desherbiers," says a letter of
+earlier date, "has engaged Abbé Le Loutre to distribute the usual
+presents among the savages, and Monsieur Bigot has placed in his hands
+an additional gift of cloth, blankets, powder, and ball, to be given
+them in case they harass the English at Halifax. This missionary is to
+induce them to do so."[85] In spite of these efforts, the Indians began
+to relent in their hostilities; and when Longueuil became provisional
+governor of Canada, he complained to the Minister that it was very
+difficult to prevent them from making peace with the English, though
+Father Germain was doing his best to keep them on the war-path.[86]
+La Jonquière, too, had done his best, even to the point of departing
+from his original policy of allowing no soldier or Acadian to take part
+with them. He had sent a body of troops under La Corne, an able partisan
+officer, to watch the English frontier; and in the same vessel was sent
+a supply of "merchandise, guns, and munitions for the savages and the
+Acadians who may take up arms with them; and the whole is sent under
+pretext of trading in furs with the savages."[87] On another occasion
+La Jonquière wrote: "In order that the savages may do their part
+courageously, a few Acadians, dressed and painted in their way, could
+join them to strike the English. I cannot help consenting to what these
+savages do, because we have our hands tied [_by the peace_],
+and so can do nothing ourselves. Besides, I do not think that any
+inconvenience will come of letting the Acadians mingle among them,
+because if they [_the Acadians_] are captured, we shall say that they
+acted of their own accord."[88] In other words, he will encourage them
+to break the peace; and then, by means of a falsehood, have them
+punished as felons. Many disguised Acadians did in fact join the Indian
+war-parties; and their doing so was no secret to the English. "What we
+call here an Indian war," wrote Hopson, successor of Cornwallis, "is no
+other than a pretence for the French to commit hostilities on His
+Majesty's subjects."
+
+[Footnote 84: _Mémoire du Roy pour servir d'Instruction au Comte de
+Raymond, 24 Avril, 1751_.]
+
+[Footnote 85: _Lettre commune de Desherbiers et Bigot au Ministre, 15
+Août, 1749_.]
+
+[Footnote 86: _Longueuil au Ministre, 26 Avril, 1752_.]
+
+[Footnote 87: _Bigot au Ministre, 1749_.]
+
+[Footnote 88: _Dépêches de la Jonquière, 1 Mai, 1751_. See Appendix B.]
+
+At length the Indians made peace, or pretended to do so. The chief of Le
+Loutre's mission, who called himself Major Jean-Baptiste Cope, came to
+Halifax with a deputation of his tribe, and they all affixed their
+totems to a solemn treaty. In the next summer they returned with ninety
+or a hundred warriors, were well entertained, presented with gifts, and
+sent homeward in a schooner. On the way they seized the vessel and
+murdered the crew. This is told by Prévost, intendant at Louisbourg, who
+does not say that French instigation had any part in the treachery.[89]
+It is nevertheless certain that the Indians were paid for this or some
+contemporary murder; for Prévost, writing just four weeks later, says:
+"Last month the savages took eighteen English scalps, and Monsieur Le
+Loutre was obliged to pay them eighteen hundred livres, Acadian money,
+which I have reimbursed him."[90]
+
+[Footnote 89: _Prévost au Ministre, 12 Mars, 1753; Ibid., 17 July_,
+1753. Prévost was _ordonnateur_, or intendant, at Louisbourg. The treaty
+will be found in full in _Public Documents of Nova Scotia_, 683.]
+
+[Footnote 90: _Prévost au Ministre, 16 Août_, 1753.]
+
+From the first, the services of this zealous missionary had been beyond
+price. Prévost testifies that, though Cornwallis does his best to induce
+the Acadians to swear fidelity to King George, Le Loutre keeps them in
+allegiance to King Louis, and threatens to set his Indians upon them
+unless they declare against the English. "I have already," adds Prévost,
+"paid him 11,183 livres for his daily expenses; and I never cease
+advising him to be as economical as possible, and always to take care
+not to compromise himself with the English Government."[91] In
+consequence of "good service to religion and the state," Le Loutre
+received a pension of eight hundred livres, as did also Maillard, his
+brother missionary on Cape Breton. "The fear is," writes the Colonial
+Minister to the Governor of Louisbourg, "that their zeal may carry them
+too far. Excite them to keep the Indians in our interests, but do not
+let them compromise us. Act always so as to make the English appear as
+aggressors."[92]
+
+[Footnote 91: _Ibid., 22 Juillet_, 1750.]
+
+[Footnote 92: _Le Ministre au Comte de Raymond, 21 Juillet_, 1752. It is
+curious to compare these secret instructions, given by the Minister to
+the colonial officials, with a letter which the same Minister, Rouillé,
+wrote ostensibly to La Jonquière, but which was really meant for the eye
+of the British Minister at Versailles, Lord Albemarle, to whom it was
+shown in proof of French good faith. It was afterwards printed, long
+with other papers, in a small volume called _Précis des Faits, avec
+Pièces justificatives_ which was sent by the French Government to all
+the courts of Europe to show that the English alone were answerable for
+the war. The letter, it is needless to say, breathes the highest
+sentiments of international honor.]
+
+All the Acadian clergy, in one degree or another, seem to have used
+their influence to prevent the inhabitants from taking the oath, and to
+persuade them that they were still French subjects. Some were noisy,
+turbulent, and defiant; others were too tranquil to please the officers
+of the Crown. A missionary at Annapolis is mentioned as old, and
+therefore inefficient; while the curé at Grand Pré, also an elderly man,
+was too much inclined to confine himself to his spiritual functions. It
+is everywhere apparent that those who chose these priests, and sent them
+as missionaries into a British province, expected them to act as enemies
+of the British Crown. The maxim is often repeated that duty to religion
+is inseparable from the duty to the King of France. The Bishop of Quebec
+desired the Abbé de l'Isle-Dieu to represent to the court the need of
+more missionaries to keep the Acadians Catholic and French; but, he
+adds, there is danger that they (the missionaries) will be required to
+take an oath to do nothing contrary to the interests of the King of
+Great Britain.[93] It is a wonder that such a pledge was not always
+demanded. It was exacted in a few cases, notably in that of Girard,
+priest at Cobequid, who, on charges of instigating his flock to
+disaffection, had been sent prisoner to Halifax, but released on taking
+an oath in the above terms. Thereupon he wrote to Longueuil at Quebec
+that his parishioners wanted to submit to the English, and that he,
+having sworn to be true to the British King, could not prevent them.
+"Though I don't pretend to be a casuist," writes Longueuil, "I could not
+help answering him that he is not obliged to keep such an oath, and that
+he ought to labor in all zeal to preserve and increase the number of the
+faithful." Girard, to his credit, preferred to leave the colony, and
+retired to Isle St. Jean.[94]
+
+[Footnote 93: L'Isle-Dieu, _Mémoire sur l'État actuel des Missions,
+1753_ (1754?).]
+
+[Footnote 94: _Longueuil au Ministre, 27 Avril, 1752_.]
+
+Cornwallis soon discovered to what extent the clergy stirred their
+flocks to revolt; and he wrote angrily to the Bishop of Quebec: "Was it
+you who sent Le Loutre as a missionary to the Micmacs? and is it for
+their good that he excites these wretches to practise their cruelties
+against those who have shown them every kindness? The conduct of the
+priests of Acadia has been such that by command of his Majesty I have
+published an Order declaring that if any one of them presumes to
+exercise his functions without my express permission he shall be dealt
+with according to the laws of England."[95]
+
+[Footnote 95: _Cornwallis to the Bishop of Quebec, 1 Dec. 1749_.]
+
+The English, bound by treaty to allow the Acadians the exercise of their
+religion, at length conceived the idea of replacing the French priests
+by others to be named by the Pope at the request of the British
+Government. This, becoming known to the French, greatly alarmed them,
+and the Intendant at Louisbourg wrote to the Minister that the matter
+required serious attention.[96] It threatened, in fact, to rob them of
+their chief agents of intrigue; but their alarm proved needless, as the
+plan was not carried into execution.
+
+[Footnote 96: _Daudin, prêtre, à Prévost, 23 Oct. 1753. Prévost au
+Ministre, 24 Nov. 1753_.]
+
+The French officials would have been better pleased had the conduct of
+Cornwallis been such as to aid their efforts to alienate the Acadians;
+and one writer, while confessing the "favorable treatment" of the
+English towards the inhabitants, denounces it as a snare.[97] If so, it
+was a snare intended simply to reconcile them to English rule. Nor was
+it without effect. "We must give up altogether the idea of an
+insurrection in Acadia," writes an officer of Cape Breton. "The Acadians
+cannot be trusted; they are controlled by fear of the Indians, which
+leads them to breathe French sentiments, even when their inclinations
+are English. They will yield to their interests; and the English will
+make it impossible that they should either hurt them or serve us, unless
+we take measures different from those we have hitherto pursued."[98]
+
+[Footnote 97: _Mémoire à présenter à la Cour, 1753_.]
+
+[Footnote 98: _Roma au Ministre, 11 Mars, 1750_.]
+
+During all this time, constant efforts were made to stimulate Acadian
+emigration to French territory, and thus to strengthen the French
+frontier. In this work the chief agent was Le Loutre. "This priest,"
+says a French writer of the time, "urged the people of Les Mines, Port
+Royal [_Annapolis_], and other places, to come and join the French, and
+promised to all, in the name of the Governor, to settle and support them
+for three years, and even indemnify them for any losses they might
+incur; threatening if they did not do as he advised, to abandon them,
+deprive them of their priests, have their wives and children carried
+off, and their property laid waste by the Indians."[99] Some passed over
+the isthmus to the shores of the gulf, and others made their way to the
+Strait of Canseau. Vessels were provided to convey them, in the one case
+to Isle St. Jean, now Prince Edward Island, and in the other to Isle
+Royale, called by the English, Cape Breton. Some were eager to go; some
+went with reluctance; some would scarcely be persuaded to go at all.
+"They leave their homes with great regret," reports the Governor of Isle
+St. Jean, speaking of the people of Cobequid, "and they began to move
+their luggage only when the savages compelled them."[100] These savages
+were the flock of Abbé Le Loutre, who was on the spot to direct the
+emigration. Two thousand Acadians are reported to have left the
+peninsula before the end of 1751, and many more followed within the next
+two years. Nothing could exceed the misery of a great part of these
+emigrants, who had left perforce most of their effects behind. They
+became disheartened and apathetic. The Intendant at Louisbourg says that
+they will not take the trouble to clear the land, and that some of them
+live, like Indians, under huts of spruce-branches.[101] The Governor of
+Isle St. Jean declares that they are dying of hunger.[102] Girard, the
+priest who had withdrawn to this island rather than break his oath to
+the English, writes: "Many of them cannot protect themselves day or
+night from the severity of the cold. Most of the children are entirely
+naked; and when I go into a house they are all crouched in the ashes,
+close to the fire. They run off and hide themselves, without shoes,
+stockings, or shirts. They are not all reduced to this extremity but
+nearly all are in want."[103] Mortality among them was great, and would
+have been greater but for rations supplied by the French Government.
+
+[Footnote 99: _Mémoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760_.]
+
+[Footnote 100: _Bonaventure à Desherbiers, 26 Juin, 1751_.]
+
+[Footnote 101: _Prévost au Ministre, 25 Nov. 1750_.]
+
+[Footnote 102: _Bonaventure, ut supra_.]
+
+[Footnote 103: _Girard à (Bonaventure?), 27 Oct. 1753_.]
+
+During these proceedings, the English Governor, Cornwallis, seems to
+have justified the character of good temper given him by Horace Walpole.
+His attitude towards the Acadians remained on the whole patient and
+conciliatory. "My friends," he replied to a deputation of them asking a
+general permission to leave the province, "I am not ignorant of the fact
+that every means has been used to alienate the hearts of the French
+subjects of His Britannic Majesty. Great advantages have been promised
+you elsewhere, and you have been made to imagine that your religion was
+in danger. Threats even have been resorted to in order to induce you to
+remove to French territory. The savages are made use of to molest you;
+they are to cut the throats of all who remain in their native country,
+attached to their own interests and faithful to the Government. You know
+that certain officers and missionaries, who came from Canada last
+autumn, have been the cause of all our trouble during the winter. Their
+conduct has been horrible, without honor, probity, or conscience. Their
+aim is to embroil you with the Government. I will not believe that they
+are authorized to do so by the Court of France, that being contrary to
+good faith and the friendship established between the two Crowns."
+
+What foundation there was for this amiable confidence in the Court of
+Versailles has been seen already. "When you declared your desire to
+submit yourselves to another Government," pursues Cornwallis, "our
+determination was to hinder nobody from following what he imagined to be
+his interest. We know that a forced service is worth nothing, and that a
+subject compelled to be so against his will is not far from being an
+enemy. We confess, however, that your determination to go gives us pain.
+We are aware of your industry and temperance, and that you are not
+addicted to any vice or debauchery. This province is your country. You
+and your fathers have cultivated it; naturally you ought yourselves to
+enjoy the fruits of your labor. Such was the design of the King, our
+master. You know that we have followed his orders. You know that we have
+done everything to secure to you not only the occupation of your lands,
+but the ownership of them forever. We have given you also every possible
+assurance of the free and public exercise of the Roman Catholic
+religion. But I declare to you frankly that, according to our laws,
+nobody can possess lands or houses in the province who shall refuse to
+take the oath of allegiance to his King when required to do so. You know
+very well that there are ill-disposed and mischievous persons among you
+who corrupt the others. Your inexperience, your ignorance of the affairs
+of government, and your habit of following the counsels of those who
+have not your real interests at heart, make it an easy matter to seduce
+you. In your petitions you ask for a general leave to quit the province.
+The only manner in which you can do so is to follow the regulations
+already established, and provide yourselves with our passport. And we
+declare that nothing shall prevent us from giving such passports to all
+who ask for them, the moment peace and tranquillity are
+re-established."[104] He declares as his reason for not giving them at
+once, that on crossing the frontier "you will have to pass the French
+detachments and savages assembled there, and that they compel all the
+inhabitants who go there to take up arms" against the English. How well
+this reason was founded will soon appear.
+
+[Footnote 104: The above passages are from two address of Cornwallis,
+read to the Acadian deputies in April and May, 1750. The combined
+extracts here given convey the spirit of the whole. See _Public
+Documents of Nova Scotia_, 185-190.]
+
+Hopson, the next governor, described by the French themselves as a "mild
+and peaceable officer," was no less considerate in his treatment of the
+Acadians; and at the end of 1752 he issued the following order to his
+military subordinates: "You are to look on the French inhabitants in the
+same light as the rest of His Majesty's subjects, as to the protection
+of the laws and government; for which reason nothing is to be taken from
+them by force, or any price set upon their goods but what they
+themselves agree to. And if at any time the inhabitants should
+obstinately refuse to comply with what His Majesty's service may require
+of them, you are not to redress yourself by military force or in any
+unlawful manner, but to lay the case before the Governor and wait his
+orders thereon."[105] Unfortunately, the mild rule of Cornwallis and
+Hopson was not always maintained under their successor, Lawrence.
+
+[Footnote 105: _Public Documents of Nova Scotia_, 197.]
+
+Louis Joseph Le Loutre, vicar-general of Acadia and missionary to the
+Micmacs, was the most conspicuous person in the province, and more than
+any other man was answerable for the miseries that overwhelmed it. The
+sheep of which he was the shepherd dwelt, at a day's journey from
+Halifax, by the banks of the River Shubenacadie, in small cabins of
+logs, mixed with wigwams of birch-bark. They were not a docile flock;
+and to manage them needed address, energy, and money,--with all of which
+the missionary was provided. He fed their traditional dislike of the
+English, and fanned their fanaticism, born of the villanous counterfeit
+of Christianity which he and his predecessors had imposed on them. Thus
+he contrived to use them on the one hand to murder the English, and on
+the other to terrify the Acadians; yet not without cost to the French
+Government; for they had learned the value of money, and, except when
+their blood was up, were slow to take scalps without pay. Le Loutre was
+a man of boundless egotism, a violent spirit of domination, an intense
+hatred of the English, and a fanaticism that stopped at nothing. Towards
+the Acadians he was a despot; and this simple and superstitious people,
+extremely susceptible to the influence of their priests, trembled before
+him. He was scarcely less masterful in his dealings with the Acadian
+clergy; and, aided by his quality of the Bishop's vicar-general, he
+dragooned even the unwilling into aiding his schemes. Three successive
+governors of New France thought him invaluable, yet feared the
+impetuosity of his zeal, and vainly tried to restrain it within safe
+bounds. The bishop, while approving his objects, thought his medicines
+too violent, and asked in a tone of reproof: "Is it right for you to
+refuse the Acadians the sacraments, to threaten that they shall be
+deprived of the services of a priest, and that the savages shall treat
+them as enemies?"[106] "Nobody," says a French Catholic contemporary,
+"was more fit than he to carry discord and desolation into a
+country."[107] Cornwallis called him "a good-for-nothing scoundrel," and
+offered a hundred pounds for his head.[108]
+
+[Footnote 106: _L'Évêque de Québec à Le Loutre_; translation in _Public
+Documents of Nova Scotia_, 240.]
+
+[Footnote 107: _Mémoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760_.]
+
+[Footnote 108: On Le Loutre, compare _Public Documents of Nova Scotia_,
+178-180, _note_, with authorities there cited; _N.Y. Col. Docs._, X. 11;
+_Mémoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760_ (Quebec, 1838).]
+
+The authorities at Halifax, while exasperated by the perfidy practised
+on them, were themselves not always models of international virtue. They
+seized a French vessel in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, on the
+charge--probably true--that she was carrying arms and ammunition to the
+Acadians and Indians. A less defensible act was the capture of the armed
+brig "St. François," laden with supplies for a fort lately
+re-established by the French, at the mouth of the River St. John, on
+ground claimed by both nations. Captain Rous, a New England officer
+commanding a frigate in the Royal Navy, opened fire on the "St.
+François," took her after a short cannonade, and carried her into
+Halifax, where she was condemned by the court. Several captures of small
+craft, accused of illegal acts, were also made by the English. These
+proceedings, being all of an overt nature, gave the officers of Louis
+XV. precisely what they wanted,--an occasion for uttering loud
+complaints, and denouncing the English as breakers of the peace.
+
+But the movement most alarming to the French was the English occupation
+of Beaubassin,--an act perfectly lawful in itself, since, without
+reasonable doubt, the place was within the limits of Acadia, and
+therefore on English ground.[109] Beaubassin was a considerable
+settlement on the isthmus that joins the Acadian peninsula to the
+mainland. Northwest of the settlement lay a wide marsh, through which
+ran a stream called the Missaguash, some two miles beyond which rose a
+hill called Beauséjour. On and near this hill were stationed the troops
+and Canadians sent under Boishébert and La Corne to watch the English
+frontier. This French force excited disaffection among the Acadians
+through all the neighboring districts, and constantly helped them to
+emigrate. Cornwallis therefore resolved to send an English force to the
+spot; and accordingly, towards the end of April, 1750, Major Lawrence
+landed at Beaubassin with four hundred men. News of their approach had
+come before them, and Le Loutre was here with his Micmacs, mixed with
+some Acadians whom he had persuaded or bullied to join him. Resolved
+that the people of Beaubassin should not live under English influence,
+he now with his own hand set fire to the parish church, while his white
+and red adherents burned the houses of the inhabitants, and thus
+compelled them to cross to the French side of the river.[110] This was
+the first forcible removal of the Acadians. It was as premature as it
+was violent; since Lawrence, being threatened by La Corne, whose force
+was several times greater than his own, presently reimbarked. In the
+following September he returned with seventeen small vessels and about
+seven hundred men, and again attempted to land on the strand of
+Beaubassin. La Jonquière says that he could only be resisted indirectly,
+because he was on the English side of the river. This indirect
+resistance was undertaken by Le Loutre, who had thrown up a breastwork
+along the shore and manned it with his Indians and his painted and
+be-feathered Acadians. Nevertheless the English landed, and, with some
+loss, drove out the defenders. Le Loutre himself seems not to have been
+among them; but they kept up for a time a helter-skelter fight,
+encouraged by two other missionaries, Germain and Lalerne, who were near
+being caught by the English.[111] Lawrence quickly routed them, took
+possession of the cemetery, and prepared to fortify himself. The village
+of Beaubassin, consisting, it is said, of a hundred and forty houses,
+had been burned in the spring; but there were still in the neighborhood,
+on the English side, many hamlets and farms, with barns full of grain
+and hay. Le Loutre's Indians now threatened to plunder and kill the
+inhabitants if they did not take arms against the English. Few complied,
+and the greater part fled to the woods.[112] On this the Indians and
+their Acadian allies set the houses and barns on fire, and laid waste
+the whole district, leaving the inhabitants no choice but to seek food
+and shelter with the French.[113]
+
+[Footnote 109: La Jonquière himself admits that he thought so. "Cette
+partie là étant, à ce que je crois, dépendante de l'Acadie." _La
+Jonquière au Ministre, 3 Oct. 1750_.]
+
+[Footnote 110: It has been erroneously stated that Beaubassin was burned
+by its own inhabitants. "Laloutre, ayant vu que les Acadiens ne
+paroissoient pas fort pressés d'abandonner leurs biens, avoit lui-même
+mis le feu á l'Église, et l'avoit fait mettre aux maisons des habitants
+par quelques-uns de ceux qu'il avoit gagnés," etc. _Mémoires sur le
+Canada, 1749-1760_. "Les sauvages y mirent le feu." _Précis des Faits_,
+85. "Les sauvages mirent le feu aux maisons." _Prévost au Ministre, 22
+Juillet, 1750_.]
+
+[Footnote 111: La Vallière, _Journal de ce qui s'est passé à Chenitou_
+[Chignecto] _et autres parties des Frontières de l'Acadie, 1750-1751_.
+La Vallière was an officer on the spot.]
+
+[Footnote 112: _Prévost au Ministre, 27 Sept. 1750_.]
+
+[Footnote 113: "Les sauvages et Accadiens mirent le feu dans toutes les
+maisons et granges, pleines de bled et de fourrages, ce qui a causé une
+grande disette." La Vallière, _ut supra_.]
+
+The English fortified themselves on a low hill by the edge of the marsh,
+planted palisades, built barracks, and named the new work Fort Lawrence.
+Slight skirmishes between them and the French were frequent. Neither
+party respected the dividing line of the Missaguash, and a petty warfare
+of aggression and reprisal began, and became chronic. Before the end of
+the autumn there was an atrocious act of treachery. Among the English
+officers was Captain Edward Howe, an intelligent and agreeable person,
+who spoke French fluently, and had been long stationed in the province.
+Le Loutre detested him; dreading his influence over the Acadians, by
+many of whom he was known and liked. One morning, at about eight
+o'clock, the inmates of Fort Lawrence saw what seemed an officer from
+Beauséjour, carrying a flag, and followed by several men in uniform,
+wading through the sea of grass that stretched beyond the Missaguash.
+When the tide was out, this river was but an ugly trench of reddish mud
+gashed across the face of the marsh, with a thread of half-fluid slime
+lazily crawling along the bottom; but at high tide it was filled to the
+brim with an opaque torrent that would have overflowed, but for the
+dikes thrown up to confine it. Behind the dike on the farther bank stood
+the seeming officer, waving his flag in sign that he desired a parley.
+He was in reality no officer, but one of Le Loutre's Indians in
+disguise, Etienne Le Bâtard, or, as others say, the great chief,
+Jean-Baptiste Cope. Howe, carrying a white flag, and accompanied by a
+few officers and men, went towards the river to hear what he had to say.
+As they drew near, his looks and language excited their suspicion. But
+it was too late; for a number of Indians, who had hidden behind the dike
+during the night, fired upon Howe across the stream, and mortally
+wounded him. They continued their fire on his companions, but could not
+prevent them from carrying the dying man to the fort. The French
+officers, indignant at this villany, did not hesitate to charge it upon
+Le Loutre; "for," says one of them, "what is not a wicked priest capable
+of doing?" But Le Loutre's brother missionary, Maillard, declares that
+it was purely an effect of religious zeal on the part of the Micmacs,
+who, according to him, bore a deadly grudge against Howe because,
+fourteen years before, he had spoken words disrespectful to the Holy
+Virgin.[114] Maillard adds that the Indians were much pleased with what
+they had done. Finding, however, that they could effect little against
+the English troops, they changed their field of action, repaired to the
+outskirts of Halifax, murdered about thirty settlers, and carried off
+eight or ten prisoners.
+
+[Footnote 114: Maillard, _Les Missions Micmaques_. On the murder of
+Howe, _Public Documents of Nova Scotia_, 194, 195, 210; _Mémoires sur le
+Canada, 1749-1760_, where it is said that Le Loutre was present at the
+deed; La Vallière, _Journal_, who says that some Acadians took part in
+it; _Dépêches de la Jonquière_, who says "les sauvages de l'Abbé le
+Loutre l'ont tué par trahison;" and _Prévost au Ministre, 27 Oct.
+1750_.]
+
+Strong reinforcements came from Canada. The French began a fort on the
+hill of Beauséjour, and the Acadians were required to work at it with no
+compensation but rations. They were thinly clad, some had neither shoes
+nor stockings, and winter was begun. They became so dejected that it was
+found absolutely necessary to give them wages enough to supply their
+most pressing needs. In the following season Fort Beauséjour was in a
+state to receive a garrison. It stood on the crown of the hill, and a
+vast panorama stretched below and around it. In front lay the Bay of
+Chignecto, winding along the fertile shores of Chipody and Memeramcook.
+Far on the right spread the great Tantemar marsh; on the left lay the
+marsh of the Missaguash; and on a knoll beyond it, not three miles
+distant, the red flag of England waved over the palisades of Fort
+Lawrence, while hills wrapped in dark forests bounded the horizon.
+
+How the homeless Acadians from Beaubassin lived through the winter is
+not very clear. They probably found shelter at Chipody and its
+neighborhood, where there were thriving settlements of their countrymen.
+Le Loutre, fearing that they would return to their lands and submit to
+the English, sent some of them to Isle St. Jean. "They refused to go,"
+says a French writer; "but he compelled them at last, by threatening to
+make the Indians pillage them, carry off their wives and children, and
+even kill them before their eyes. Nevertheless he kept about him such as
+were most submissive to his will."[115] In the spring after the English
+occupied Beaubassin, La Jonquière issued a strange proclamation. It
+commanded all Acadians to take forthwith an oath of fidelity to the King
+of France, and to enroll themselves in the French militia, on pain of
+being treated as rebels.[116] Three years after, Lawrence, who then
+governed the province, proclaimed in his turn that all Acadians who had
+at any time sworn fidelity to the King of England, and who should be
+found in arms against him, would be treated as criminals.[117] Thus were
+these unfortunates ground between the upper and nether millstones. Le
+Loutre replied to this proclamation of Lawrence by a letter in which he
+outdid himself. He declared that any of the inhabitants who had crossed
+to the French side of the line, and who should presume to return to the
+English, would be treated as enemies by his Micmacs; and in the name of
+these, his Indian adherents, he demanded that the entire eastern half of
+the Acadian peninsula, including the ground on which Fort Lawrence
+stood, should be at once made over to their sole use and sovereign
+ownership,[118]--"which being read and considered," says the record of
+the Halifax Council, "the contents appeared too insolent and absurd to
+be answered."
+
+[Footnote 115: _Mémoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760_.]
+
+[Footnote 116: _Ordonnance du 12 Avril, 1751_.]
+
+[Footnote 117: _Écrit donné aux Habitants réfugiés à Beauséjour, 10
+Août, 1754_.]
+
+[Footnote 118: _Copie de la Lettre de M. l'Abbé Le Loutre, Prêtre
+Missionnaire des Sauvages de l'Accadie, à M. Lawrence à Halifax, 26
+Août, 1754_. There is a translation in _Public Documents of Nova
+Scotia_.]
+
+The number of Acadians who had crossed the line and were collected about
+Beauséjour was now large. Their countrymen of Chipody began to find them
+a burden, and they lived chiefly on Government rations. Le Loutre had
+obtained fifty thousand livres from the Court in order to dike in, for
+their use, the fertile marshes of Memeramcook; but the relief was
+distant, and the misery pressing. They complained that they had been
+lured over the line by false assurances, and they applied secretly to
+the English authorities to learn if they would be allowed to return to
+their homes. The answer was that they might do so with full enjoyment of
+religion and property, if they would take a simple oath of fidelity and
+loyalty to the King of Great Britain, qualified by an oral intimation
+that they would not be required for the present to bear arms.[119] When
+Le Loutre heard this, he mounted the pulpit, broke into fierce
+invectives, threatened the terrified people with excommunication, and
+preached himself into a state of exhaustion.[120] The military
+commandant at Beauséjour used gentler means of prevention; and the
+Acadians, unused for generations to think or act for themselves,
+remained restless, but indecisive, waiting till fate should settle for
+them the question, under which king?
+
+[Footnote 119: _Public Documents of Nova Scotia_, 205, 209.]
+
+[Footnote 120: Compare _Mémoires, 1749-1760_, and _Public Documents of
+Nova Scotia_, 229, 230.]
+
+Meanwhile, for the past three years, the commissioners appointed under
+the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle to settle the question of boundaries
+between France and England in America had been in session at Paris,
+waging interminable war on paper; La Galissonière and Silhouette for
+France, Shirley and Mildmay for England. By the treaty of Utrecht,
+Acadia belonged to England; but what was Acadia? According to the
+English commissioners, it comprised not only the peninsula now called
+Nova Scotia, but all the immense tract of land between the River St.
+Lawrence on the north, the Gulf of the same name on the east, the
+Atlantic on the south, and New England on the west.[121] The French
+commissioners, on their part, maintained that the name Acadia belonged
+of right only to about a twentieth part of this territory, and that it
+did not even cover the whole of the Acadian peninsula, but only its
+southern coast, with an adjoining belt of barren wilderness. When the
+French owned Acadia, they gave it boundaries as comprehensive as those
+claimed for it by the English commissioners; now that it belonged to a
+rival, they cut it down to a paring of its former self. The denial that
+Acadia included the whole peninsula was dictated by the need of a winter
+communication between Quebec and Cape Breton, which was possible only
+with the eastern portions in French hands. So new was this denial that
+even La Galissonière himself, the foremost in making it, had declared
+without reservation two years before that Acadia was the entire
+peninsula.[122] "If," says a writer on the question, "we had to do with
+a nation more tractable, less grasping, and more conciliatory, it would
+be well to insist also that Halifax should be given up to us." He thinks
+that, on the whole, it would be well to make the demand in any case, in
+order to gain some other point by yielding this one.[123] It is curious
+that while denying that the country was Acadia, the French invariably
+called the inhabitants Acadians. Innumerable public documents,
+commissions, grants, treaties, edicts, signed by French kings and
+ministers, had recognized Acadia as extending over New Brunswick and a
+part of Maine. Four censuses of Acadia while it belonged to the French
+had recognized the mainland as included in it; and so do also the early
+French maps. Its prodigious shrinkage was simply the consequence of its
+possession by an alien.
+
+[Footnote 121: The commission of De Monts, in 1603, defines Acadia as
+extending from the fortieth to the forty-sixth degrees of
+latitude,--that is, from central New Brunswick to southern Pennsylvania.
+Neither party cared to produce the document.]
+
+[Footnote 122: "L'Acadie suivant ses anciennes limites est la presquisle
+bornée par son isthme." _La Galissonière au Ministre, 25 Juillet, 1749_.
+The English commissioners were, of course, ignorant of this admission.]
+
+[Footnote 123: _Mémoire de l'Abbée de l'Isle-Dieu, 1753_ (1754?).]
+
+Other questions of limits, more important and equally perilous, called
+loudly for solution. What line should separate Canada and her western
+dependencies from the British colonies? Various principles of
+demarcation were suggested, of which the most prominent on the French
+side was a geographical one. All countries watered by streams falling
+into the St. Lawrence, the Great Lakes, and the Mississippi were to
+belong to her. This would have planted her in the heart of New York and
+along the crests of the Alleghanies, giving her all the interior of the
+continent, and leaving nothing to England but a strip of sea-coast. Yet
+in view of what France had achieved; of the patient gallantry of her
+explorers, the zeal of her missionaries, the adventurous hardihood of
+her bushrangers, revealing to civilized mankind the existence of this
+wilderness world, while her rivals plodded at their workshops, their
+farms, or their fisheries,--in view of all this, her pretensions were
+moderate and reasonable compared with those of England. The treaty of
+Utrecht had declared the Iroquois, or Five Nations, to be British
+subjects; therefore it was insisted that all countries conquered by them
+belonged to the British Crown. But what was an Iroquois conquest? The
+Iroquois rarely occupied the countries they overran. Their military
+expeditions were mere raids, great or small. Sometimes, as in the case
+of the Hurons, they made a solitude and called it peace; again, as in
+the case of the Illinois, they drove off the occupants of the soil, who
+returned after the invaders were gone. But the range of their
+war-parties was prodigious; and the English laid claim to every
+mountain, forest, or prairie where an Iroquois had taken a scalp. This
+would give them not only the country between the Alleghanies and the
+Mississippi, but also that between Lake Huron and the Ottawa, thus
+reducing Canada to the patch on the American map now represented by the
+province of Quebec,--or rather, by a part of it, since the extension of
+Acadia to the St. Lawrence would cut off the present counties of Gaspé,
+Rimouski, and Bonaventure. Indeed among the advocates of British claims
+there were those who denied that France had any rights whatever on the
+south side of the St. Lawrence.[124] Such being the attitude of the two
+contestants, it was plain that there was no resort but the last argument
+of kings. Peace must be won with the sword.
+
+[Footnote 124: The extent of British claims is best shown on two maps of
+the time, Mitchell's _Map of the British and French Dominions in North
+America_ and Huske's _New and Accurate Map of North America_; both are
+in the British Museum. Dr. John Mitchell, in his _Contest in America_
+(London, 1757) pushes the English claim to its utmost extreme, and
+denies that the French were rightful owners of anything in North
+America except the town of Quebec and the trading-post of Tadoussac.
+Besides the claim founded on the subjection of the Iroquois to the
+British Crown, the English somewhat inconsistently advanced others
+founded on titles obtained by treaty from these same tribes, and others
+still, founded on the original grants of some of the colonies, which ran
+indefinitely westward across the continent.]
+
+The commissioners at Paris broke up their sessions, leaving as the
+monument of their toils four quarto volumes of allegations, arguments,
+and documentary proofs.[125] Out of the discussion rose also a swarm of
+fugitive publications in French, English, and Spanish; for the question
+of American boundaries had become European. There was one among them
+worth notice from its amusing absurdity. It is an elaborate
+disquisition, under the title of _Roman politique_, by an author
+faithful to the traditions of European diplomacy, and inspired at the
+same time by the new philosophy of the school of Rousseau. He insists
+that the balance of power must be preserved in America as well as in
+Europe, because "Nature," "the aggrandizement of the human soul," and
+the "felicity of man" are unanimous in demanding it. The English
+colonies are more populous and wealthy than the French; therefore the
+French should have more land, to keep the balance. Nature, the human
+soul, and the felicity of man require that France should own all the
+country beyond the Alleghanies and all Acadia but a strip of the south
+coast, according to the "sublime negotiations" of the French
+commissioners, of which the writer declares himself a "religious
+admirer."[126]
+
+[Footnote 125: _Mémoires des Commissaires de Sa Majesté Très Chrétienne
+et de ceux de Sa Majesté Brittanique_. Paris, 1755. Several editions
+appeared.]
+
+[Footnote 126: _Roman politique sur l'État présent des Affaires de
+l'Amérique_ (Amsterdam, 1756). For extracts from French Documents, see
+Appendix B.]
+
+We know already that France had used means sharper than negotiation to
+vindicate her claim to the interior of the continent; had marched to the
+sources of the Ohio to entrench herself there, and hold the passes of
+the West against all comers. It remains to see how she fared in her bold
+enterprise.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 5
+
+1753, 1754
+
+Washington
+
+
+Towards the end of spring the vanguard of the expedition sent by
+Duquesne to occupy the Ohio landed at Presquisle, where Erie now stands.
+This route to the Ohio, far better than that which Céleron had followed,
+was a new discovery to the French; and Duquesne calls the harbor "the
+finest in nature." Here they built a fort of squared chestnut logs, and
+when it was finished they cut a road of several leagues through the
+woods to Rivière aux Boeufs, now French Creek. At the farther end of
+this road they began another wooden fort and called it Fort Le Boeuf.
+Thence, when the water was high, they could descend French Creek to the
+Allegheny, and follow that stream to the main current of the Ohio.
+
+It was heavy work to carry the cumbrous load of baggage across the
+portages. Much of it is said to have been superfluous, consisting of
+velvets, silks, and other useless and costly articles, sold to the King
+at enormous prices as necessaries of the expedition.[127] The weight of
+the task fell on the Canadians, who worked with cheerful hardihood, and
+did their part to admiration. Marin, commander of the expedition, a
+gruff, choleric old man of sixty-three, but full of force and capacity,
+spared himself so little that he was struck down with dysentery, and,
+refusing to be sent home to Montreal, was before long in a dying state.
+His place was taken by Péan, of whose private character there is little
+good to be said, but whose conduct as an officer was such that Duquesne
+calls him a prodigy of talents, resources, and zeal.[128] The subalterns
+deserve no such praise. They disliked the service, and made no secret of
+their discontent. Rumors of it filled Montreal; and Duquesne wrote to
+Marin: "I am surprised that you have not told me of this change. Take
+note of the sullen and discouraged faces about you. This sort are worse
+than useless. Rid yourself of them at once; send them to Montreal, that
+I may make an example of them."[129] Péan wrote at the end of September
+that Marin was in extremity; and the Governor, disturbed and alarmed,
+for he knew the value of the sturdy old officer, looked anxiously for a
+successor. He chose another veteran, Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, who had
+just returned from a journey of exploration towards the Rocky
+Mountains,[130] and whom Duquesne now ordered to the Ohio.
+
+[Footnote 127: Pouchot, _Mémoires sur la dernière Guerre de l'Amérique
+Septentrionale_, I. 8.]
+
+[Footnote 128: _Duquesne au Ministre, 2 Nov. 1753_; compare _Mémoire
+pour Michel-Jean Hugues Péan_.]
+
+[Footnote 129: _Duquesne à Marin, 27 Août, 1753_.]
+
+[Footnote 130: _Mémoire ou Journal sommaire du Voyage de Jacques
+Legardeur de Saint-Pierre._]
+
+Meanwhile the effects of the expedition had already justified it. At
+first the Indians of the Ohio had shown a bold front. One of them, a
+chief whom the English called the Half-King, came to Fort Le Boeuf and
+ordered the French to leave the country; but was received by Marin with
+such contemptuous haughtiness that he went home shedding tears of rage
+and mortification. The Western tribes were daunted. The Miamis, but
+yesterday fast friends of the English, made humble submission to the
+French, and offered them two English scalps to signalize their
+repentance; while the Sacs, Pottawattamies, and Ojibwas were loud in
+professions of devotion.[131] Even the Iroquois, Delawares, and
+Shawanoes on the Alleghany had come to the French camp and offered their
+help in carrying the baggage. It needed but perseverance and success in
+the enterprise to win over every tribe from the mountains to the
+Mississippi. To accomplish this and to curb the English, Duquesne had
+planned a third fort, at the junction of French Creek with the
+Alleghany, or at some point lower down; then, leaving the three posts
+well garrisoned, Péan was to descend the Ohio with the whole remaining
+force, impose terror on the wavering tribes, and complete their
+conversion. Both plans were thwarted; the fort was not built, nor did
+Péan descend the Ohio. Fevers, lung diseases, and scurvy made such
+deadly havoc among troops and Canadians, that the dying Marin saw with
+bitterness that his work must be left half done. Three hundred of the
+best men were kept to garrison Forts Presquisle and Le Boeuf; and then,
+as winter approached, the rest were sent back to Montreal. When they
+arrived, the Governor was shocked at their altered looks. "I reviewed
+them, and could not help being touched by the pitiable state to which
+fatigues and exposures had reduced them. Past all doubt, if these
+emaciated figures had gone down the Ohio as intended, the river would
+have been strewn with corpses, and the evil-disposed savages would not
+have failed to attack the survivors, seeing that they were but
+spectres."[132]
+
+[Footnote 131: _Rapports de Conseils avec les Sauvages à Montreal,
+Juillet, 1753. Duquesne au Ministre, 31 Oct. 1753_. Letter of Dr.
+Shuckburgh in _N.Y. Col. Docs._, VI. 806.]
+
+[Footnote 132: _Duquesne au Ministre, 29 Nov. 1753_. On this expedition,
+compare the letter of Duquesne in _N.Y. Col. Docs._, X. 255, and the
+deposition of Stephen Coffen, _Ibid._, VI. 835.]
+
+Legardeur de Saint-Pierre arrived at the end of autumn, and made his
+quarters at Fort Le Boeuf. The surrounding forests had dropped their
+leaves, and in gray and patient desolation bided the coming winter.
+Chill rains drizzled over the gloomy "clearing," and drenched the
+palisades and log-built barracks, raw from the axe. Buried in the
+wilderness, the military exiles resigned themselves as they might to
+months of monotonous solitude; when, just after sunset on the eleventh
+of December, a tall youth came out of the forest on horseback, attended
+by a companion much older and rougher than himself, and followed by
+several Indians and four or five white men with packhorses. Officers
+from the fort went out to meet the strangers; and, wading through mud
+and sodden snow, they entered at the gate. On the next day the young
+leader of the party, with the help of an interpreter, for he spoke no
+French, had an interview with the commandant, and gave him a letter from
+Governor Dinwiddie. Saint-Pierre and the officer next in rank, who knew
+a little English, took it to another room to study it at their ease; and
+in it, all unconsciously, they read a name destined to stand one of the
+noblest in the annals of mankind; for it introduced Major George
+Washington, Adjutant-General of the Virginia militia.[133]
+
+[Footnote 133: _Journal of Major Washington. Journal of Mr. Christopher
+Gist._]
+
+Dinwiddie, jealously watchful of French aggression, had learned through
+traders and Indians that a strong detachment from Canada had entered the
+territories of the King of England, and built forts on Lake Erie and on
+a branch of the Ohio. He wrote to challenge the invasion and summon the
+invaders to withdraw; and he could find none so fit to bear his message
+as a young man of twenty-one. It was this rough Scotchman who launched
+Washington on his illustrious career.
+
+Washington set out for the trading station of the Ohio Company on Will's
+Creek; and thence, at the middle of November, struck into the wilderness
+with Christopher Gist as a guide, Vanbraam, a Dutchman, as French
+interpreter, Davison, a trader, as Indian interpreter, and four woodsmen
+as servants. They went to the forks of the Ohio, and then down the river
+to Logstown, the Chiningué of Céloron de Bienville. There Washington had
+various parleys with the Indians; and thence, after vexatious delays, he
+continued his journey towards Fort Le Boeuf, accompanied by the friendly
+chief called the Half-King and by three of his tribesmen. For several
+days they followed the traders' path, pelted with unceasing rain and
+snow, and came at last to the old Indian town of Venango, where French
+Creek enters the Alleghany. Here there was an English trading-house; but
+the French had seized it, raised their flag over it, and turned it into
+a military outpost.[134] Joncaire was in command, with two subalterns;
+and nothing could exceed their civility. They invited the strangers to
+supper; and, says Washington, "the wine, as they dosed themselves pretty
+plentifully with it, soon banished the restraint which at first appeared
+in their conversation, and gave a license to their tongues to reveal
+their sentiments more freely. They told me that it was their absolute
+design to take possession of the Ohio, and, by G----, they would do it;
+for that although they were sensible the English could raise two men for
+their one, yet they knew their motions were too slow and dilatory to
+prevent any undertaking of theirs."[135]
+
+[Footnote 134: Marin had sent sixty men in August to seize the house,
+which belonged to the trader Fraser. _Dépêches de Duquesne_. They
+carried off two men whom they found here. Letter of Fraser in _Colonial
+Records of Pa._, V. 659.]
+
+[Footnote 135: _Journal of Washington_, as printed at Williamsburg, just
+after his return.]
+
+With all their civility, the French officers did their best to entice
+away Washington's Indians; and it was with extreme difficulty that he
+could persuade them to go with him. Through marshes and swamps, forests
+choked with snow, and drenched with incessant rain, they toiled on for
+four days more, till the wooden walls of Fort Le Boeuf appeared at last,
+surrounded by fields studded thick with stumps, and half-encircled by
+the chill current of French Creek, along the banks of which lay more
+than two hundred canoes, ready to carry troops in the spring. Washington
+describes Legardeur de Saint-Pierre as "an elderly gentleman with much
+the air of a soldier." The letter sent him by Dinwiddie expressed
+astonishment that his troops should build forts upon lands "so
+notoriously known to be the property of the Crown of Great Britain." "I
+must desire you," continued the letter, "to acquaint me by whose
+authority and instructions you have lately marched from Canada with an
+armed force, and invaded the King of Great Britain's territories. It
+becomes my duty to require your peaceable departure; and that you would
+forbear prosecuting a purpose so interruptive of the harmony and good
+understanding which His Majesty is desirous to continue and cultivate
+with the Most Christian King. I persuade myself you will receive and
+entertain Major Washington with the candor and politeness natural to
+your nation; and it will give me the greatest satisfaction if you return
+him with an answer suitable to my wishes for a very long and lasting
+peace between us."
+
+Saint-Pierre took three days to frame the answer. In it he said that he
+should send Dinwiddie's letter to the Marquis Duquesne and wait his
+orders; and that meanwhile he should remain at his post, according to
+the commands of his general. "I made it my particular care," so the
+letter closed, "to receive Mr. Washington with a distinction suitable to
+your dignity as well as his own quality and great merit."[136] No form
+of courtesy had, in fact, been wanting. "He appeared to be extremely
+complaisant," says Washington, "though he was exerting every artifice to
+set our Indians at variance with us. I saw that every stratagem was
+practised to win the Half-King to their interest." Neither gifts nor
+brandy were spared; and it was only by the utmost pains that Washington
+could prevent his red allies from staying at the fort, conquered by
+French blandishments.
+
+[Footnote 136: "La Distinction qui convient à votre Dignitté à sa
+Qualité et à son grand Mérite." Copy of original letter sent by
+Dinwiddie to Governor Hamilton.]
+
+After leaving Venango on his return, he found the horses so weak that,
+to arrive the sooner, he left them and their drivers in charge of
+Vanbraam and pushed forward on foot, accompanied by Gist alone. Each was
+wrapped to the throat in an Indian "matchcoat," with a gun in his hand
+and a pack at his back. Passing an old Indian hamlet called Murdering
+Town, they had an adventure which threatened to make good the name. A
+French Indian, whom they met in the forest, fired at them, pretending
+that his gun had gone off by chance. They caught him, and Gist would
+have killed him; but Washington interposed, and they let him go.[137]
+Then, to escape pursuit from his tribesmen, they walked all night and
+all the next day. This brought them to the banks of the Alleghany. They
+hoped to have found it dead frozen; but it was all alive and turbulent,
+filled with ice sweeping down the current. They made a raft, shoved out
+into the stream, and were soon caught helplessly in the drifting ice.
+Washington, pushing hard with his setting-pole, was jerked into the
+freezing river; but caught a log of the raft, and dragged himself out.
+By no efforts could they reach the farther bank, or regain that which
+they had left; but they were driven against an island, where they
+landed, and left the raft to its fate. The night was excessively cold,
+and Gist's feet and hands were badly frost-bitten. In the morning, the
+ice had set, and the river was a solid floor. They crossed it, and
+succeeded in reaching the house of the trader Fraser, on the
+Monongahela. It was the middle of January when Washington arrived at
+Williamsburg and made his report to Dinwiddie.
+
+[Footnote 137: _Journal of Mr. Christopher Gist_, in _Mass. Hist. Coll.,
+3rd Series_, V.]
+
+Robert Dinwiddie was lieutenant-governor of Virginia, in place of the
+titular governor, Lord Albermarle, whose post was a sinecure. He had
+been clerk in a government office in the West Indies; then surveyor of
+customs in the "Old Dominion,"--a position in which he made himself
+cordially disliked; and when he rose to the governorship he carried his
+unpopularity with him. Yet Virginia and all the British colonies owed
+him much; for, though past sixty, he was the most watchful sentinel
+against French aggression and its most strenuous opponent. Scarcely had
+Marin's vanguard appeared at Presquisle, when Dinwiddie warned the Home
+Government of the danger, and urged, what he had before urged in vain on
+the Virginian Assembly, the immediate building of forts on the Ohio.
+There came in reply a letter, signed by the King, authorizing him to
+build the forts at the cost of the Colony, and to repel force by force
+in case he was molested or obstructed. Moreover, the King wrote, "If you
+shall find that any number of persons shall presume to erect any fort or
+forts within the limits of our province of Virginia, you are first to
+require of them peaceably to depart; and if, notwithstanding your
+admonitions, they do still endeavor to carry out any such unlawful and
+unjustifiable designs, we do hereby strictly charge and command you to
+drive them off by force of arms."[138]
+
+[Footnote 138: _Instructions to Our Trusty and Well-beloved Robert
+Dinwiddie, Esq., 28 Aug. 1753._]
+
+The order was easily given; but to obey it needed men and money, and for
+these Dinwiddie was dependent on his Assembly, or House of Burgesses. He
+convoked them for the first of November, sending Washington at the same
+time with the summons to Saint-Pierre. The burgesses met. Dinwiddie
+exposed the danger, and asked for means to meet it.[139] They seemed
+more than willing to comply; but debates presently arose concerning the
+fee of a pistole, which the Governor had demanded on each patent of land
+issued by him. The amount was trifling, but the principle was doubtful.
+The aristocratic republic of Virginia was intensely jealous of the
+slightest encroachment on its rights by the Crown or its representative.
+The Governor defended the fee. The burgesses replied that "subjects
+cannot be deprived of the least part of their property without their
+consent," declared the fee unlawful, and called on Dinwiddie to confess
+it to be so. He still defended it. They saw in his demand for supplies a
+means of bringing him to terms, and refused to grant money unless he
+would recede from his position. Dinwiddie rebuked them for "disregarding
+the designs of the French, and disputing the rights of the Crown"; and
+he "prorogued them in some anger."[140]
+
+[Footnote 139: _Address of Lieutenant-Governor Dinwiddie to the Council
+and Burgesses, 1 Nov. 1753._]
+
+[Footnote 140: _Dinwiddie Papers._]
+
+Thus he was unable to obey the instructions of the King. As a temporary
+resource, he ventured to order a draft of two hundred men from the
+militia. Washington was to have command, with the trader, William Trent,
+as his lieutenant. His orders were to push with all speed to the forks
+of the Ohio, and there build a fort; "but in case any attempts are made
+to obstruct the works by any persons whatsoever, to restrain all such
+offenders, and, in case of resistance, to make prisoners of, or kill and
+destroy them."[141] The Governor next sent messengers to the Catawbas,
+Cherokees, Chickasaws, and Iroquois of the Ohio, inviting them to take
+up the hatchet against the French, "who, under pretence of embracing
+you, mean to squeeze you to death." Then he wrote urgent letters to the
+governors of Pennsylvania, the Carolinas, Maryland, and New Jersey,
+begging for contingents of men, to be at Wills Creeks in March at the
+latest. But nothing could be done without money; and trusting for a
+change of heart on the part of the burgesses, he summoned them to meet
+again on the fourteenth of February. "If they come in good temper," he
+wrote to Lord Fairfax, a nobleman settled in the colony, "I hope they
+will lay a fund to qualify me to send four or five hundred men more to
+the Ohio, which, with the assistance of our neighboring colonies, may
+make some figure."
+
+[Footnote 141: _Ibid. Instructions to Major George Washington, January,
+1754._]
+
+The session began. Again, somewhat oddly, yet forcibly, the Governor set
+before the Assembly the peril of the situation, and begged them to
+postpone less pressing questions to the exigency of the hour.[142] This
+time they listened; and voted ten thousand pounds in Virginia currency
+to defend the frontier. The grant was frugal, and they jealously placed
+its expenditure in the hands of a committee of their own.[143]
+Dinwiddie, writing to the Lords of Trade, pleads necessity as his excuse
+for submitting to their terms. "I am sorry," he says, "to find them too
+much in a republican way of thinking." What vexed him still more was
+their sending an agent to England to complain against him on the
+irrepressible question of the pistole fee; and he writes to his London
+friend, the merchant Hanbury: "I have had a great deal of trouble from
+the factious disputes and violent heats of a most impudent, troublesome
+party here in regard to that silly fee of a pistole. Surely every
+thinking man will make a distinction between a fee and a tax. Poor
+people! I pity their ignorance and narrow, ill-natured spirits. But, my
+friend, consider that I could by no means give up this fee without
+affronting the Board of Trade and the Council here who established it."
+His thoughts were not all of this harassing nature, and he ends his
+letter with the following petition: "Now, sir, as His Majesty is pleased
+to make me a military officer, please send for Scott, my tailor, to make
+me a proper suit of regimentals, to be here by His Majesty's birthday. I
+do not much like gayety in dress, but I conceive this necessary. I do
+not much care for lace on the coat, but a neat embroidered button-hole;
+though you do not deal that way, I know you have a good taste, that I
+may show my friend's fancy in that suit of clothes; a good laced hat and
+two pair stockings, one silk, the other fine thread."[144]
+
+[Footnote 142: _Speech of Lieutenant-Governor Dinwiddie to the Council
+and Burgesses 14 Feb., 1754._]
+
+[Footnote 143: See the bill in Hening, _Statutes of Virginia_, VI. 417.]
+
+[Footnote 144: _Dinwiddie to Hanbury, 12 March, 1754; Ibid., 10 May,
+1754._]
+
+If the Governor and his English sometimes provoke a smile, he deserves
+admiration for the energy with which he opposed the public enemy, under
+circumstances the most discouraging. He invited the Indians to meet him
+in council at Winchester, and, as bait to attract them, coupled the
+message with a promise of gifts. He sent circulars from the King to the
+neighboring governors, calling for supplies, and wrote letter upon
+letter to rouse them to effort. He wrote also to the more distant
+governors, Delancey of New York, and Shirley of Massachusetts, begging
+them to make what he called a "faint" against Canada, to prevent the
+French from sending so large a force to the Ohio. It was to the nearer
+colonies, from New Jersey to South Carolina, that he looked for direct
+aid; and their several governors were all more or less active to procure
+it; but as most of them had some standing dispute with their assemblies,
+they could get nothing except on terms with which they would not, and
+sometimes could not, comply. As the lands invaded by the French belonged
+to one of the two rival claimants, Virginia and Pennsylvania, the other
+colonies had no mind to vote money to defend them. Pennsylvania herself
+refused to move. Hamilton, her governor, could do nothing against the
+placid obstinacy of the Quaker non-combatants and the stolid obstinacy
+of the German farmers who chiefly made up his Assembly. North Carolina
+alone answered the appeal, and gave money enough to raise three or four
+hundred men. Two independent companies maintained by the King in New
+York, and one in South Carolina, had received orders from England to
+march to the scene of action; and in these, with the scanty levies of
+his own and the adjacent province, lay Dinwiddie's only hope. With men
+abundant and willing, there were no means to put them into the field,
+and no commander whom they would all obey.
+
+From the brick house at Williamsburg pompously called the Governor's
+Palace, Dinwiddie despatched letters, orders, couriers, to hasten the
+tardy reinforcements of North Carolina and New York, and push on the raw
+soldiers of the Old Dominion, who now numbered three hundred men. They
+were called the Virginia regiment; and Joshua Fry, an English gentleman,
+bred at Oxford, was made their colonel, with Washington as next in
+command. Fry was at Alexandria with half the so-called regiment, trying
+to get it into marching order; Washington, with the other half, had
+pushed forward to the Ohio Company's storehouse at Wills Creek, which
+was to form a base of operations. His men were poor whites, brave, but
+hard to discipline; without tents, ill armed, and ragged as Falstaff's
+recruits. Besides these, a band of backwoodsmen under Captain Trent had
+crossed the mountains in February to build a fort at the forks of the
+Ohio, where Pittsburg now stands,--a spot which Washington had examined
+when on his way to Fort Le Boeuf, and which he had reported as the best
+for the purpose. The hope was that Trent would fortify himself before
+the arrival of the French, and that Washington and Fry would join him in
+time to secure the position. Trent had begun the fort; but for some
+unexplained reason had gone back to Wills Creek leaving Ensign Ward with
+forty men at work upon it. Their labors were suddenly interrupted. On
+the seventeenth of April a swarm of bateaux and canoes came down the
+Alleghany, bringing, according to Ward, more than a thousand Frenchmen,
+though in reality not much above five hundred, who landed, planted
+cannon against the incipient stockade, and summoned the ensign to
+surrender, on pain of what might ensue.[145] He complied, and was
+allowed to depart with his men. Retracing his steps over the mountains,
+he reported his mishap to Washington; while the French demolished his
+unfinished fort, began a much larger and better one, and named it Fort
+Duquesne.
+
+[Footnote 145: See the summons in _Précis des Faits_, 101.]
+
+They had acted with their usual promptness. Their Governor, a practised
+soldier, knew the value of celerity, and had set his troops in motion
+with the first opening of spring. He had no refractory assembly to
+hamper him; no lack of money, for the King supplied it; and all Canada
+must march at his bidding. Thus, while Dinwiddie was still toiling to
+muster his raw recruits, Duquesne's lieutenant, Contrecoeur, successor
+of Saint-Pierre, had landed at Presquisle with a much greater force, in
+part regulars, and in part Canadians.
+
+Dinwiddie was deeply vexed when a message from Washington told him how
+his plans were blighted; and he spoke his mind to his friend Hanbury:
+"If our Assembly had voted the money in November which they did in
+February, it's more than probable the fort would have been built and
+garrisoned before the French had approached; but these things cannot be
+done without money. As there was none in our treasury, I have advanced
+my own to forward the expedition; and if the independent companies from
+New York come soon, I am in hopes the eyes of the other colonies will be
+opened; and if they grant a proper supply of men, I hope we shall be
+able to dislodge the French or build a fort on that river. I
+congratulate you on the increase of your family. My wife and two girls
+join in our most sincere respects to good Mrs. Hanbury."[146]
+
+[Footnote 146: _Dinwiddie to Hanbury, 10 May, 1754._]
+
+The seizure of a king's fort by planting cannon against it and
+threatening it with destruction was in his eyes a beginning of
+hostilities on the part of the French; and henceforth both he and
+Washington acted much as if war had been declared. From their station at
+Wills Creek, the distance by the traders' path to Fort Duquesne was
+about a hundred and forty miles. Midway was a branch of the Monongahela
+called Redstone Creek, at the mouth of which the Ohio Company had built
+another storehouse. Dinwiddie ordered all the forces to cross the
+mountains and assemble at this point, until they should be strong enough
+to advance against the French. The movement was critical in presence of
+an enemy as superior in discipline as he was in numbers, while the
+natural obstacles were great. A road for cannon and wagons must be cut
+through a dense forest and over two ranges of high mountains, besides
+countless hills and streams. Washington set all his force to the work,
+and they spent a fortnight in making twenty miles. Towards the end of
+May, however, Dinwiddie learned that he had crossed the main ridge of
+the Alleghanies, and was encamped with a hundred and fifty men near the
+parallel ridge of Laurel Hill, at a place called the Great Meadows.
+Trent's backwoodsmen had gone off in disgust; Fry, with the rest of the
+regiment, was still far behind; and Washington was daily expecting an
+attack. Close upon this, a piece of good news, or what seemed such, came
+over the mountains and gladdened the heart of the Governor. He heard
+that a French detachment had tried to surprise Washington, and that he
+had killed or captured the whole. The facts were as follows.
+
+Washington was on the Youghiogany, a branch of the Monongahela,
+exploring it in hopes that it might prove navigable, when a messenger
+came to him from his old comrade, the Half-King, who was on the way to
+join him. The message was to the effect that the French had marched from
+their fort, and meant to attack the first English they should meet. A
+report came soon after that they were already at the ford of the
+Youghiogany, eighteen miles distant. Washington at once repaired to the
+Great Meadows, a level tract of grass and bushes, bordered by wooded
+hills, and traversed in one part by a gully, which with a little labor
+the men turned into an entrenchment, at the same time cutting away the
+bushes and clearing what the young commander called "a charming field
+for an encounter." Parties were sent out to scour the woods, but they
+found no enemy. Two days passed; when, on the morning of the
+twenty-seventh, Christopher Gist, who had lately made a settlement on
+the farther side of Laurel Hill, twelve or thirteen miles distant, came
+to the camp with news that fifty Frenchmen had been at his house towards
+noon of the day before, and would have destroyed everything but for the
+intervention of two Indians whom he had left in charge during his
+absence. Washington sent seventy-five men to look for the party; but the
+search was vain, the French having hidden themselves so well as to
+escape any eye but that of an Indian. In the evening a runner came from
+the Half-King, who was encamped with a few warriors some miles distant.
+He had sent to tell Washington that he had found the tracks of two men,
+and traced them towards a dark glen in the forest, where in his belief
+all the French were lurking.
+
+Washington seems not to have hesitated a moment. Fearing a stratagem to
+surprise his camp, he left his main force to guard it, and at ten
+o'clock set out for the Half-King's wigwams at the head of forty men.
+The night was rainy, and the forest, to use his own words, "as black as
+pitch." "The path," he continues, "was hardly wide enough for one man;
+we often lost it, and could not find it again for fifteen or twenty
+minutes, and we often tumbled over each other in the dark[147]." Seven
+of his men were lost in the woods and left behind. The rest groped their
+way all night, and reached the Indian camp at sunrise. A council was
+held with the Half-King, and he and his warriors agreed to join in
+striking the French. Two of them led the way. The tracks of the two
+French scouts seen the day before were again found, and, marching in
+single file, the party pushed through the forest into the rocky hollow
+where the French were supposed to be concealed. They were there in fact;
+and they snatched their guns the moment they saw the English. Washington
+gave the word to fire. A short fight ensued. Coulon de Jumonville, an
+ensign in command, was killed, with nine others; twenty-two were
+captured, and none escaped but a Canadian who had fled at the beginning
+of the fray. After it was over, the prisoners told Washington that the
+party had been sent to bring him a summons from Contrecoeur, the
+commandant at Fort Duquesne.
+
+[Footnote 147: _Journal of Washington_ in _Précis des Faits_, 109. This
+Journal, which is entirely distinct from that before cited, was found by
+the French among the baggage left on the field after the defeat of
+Braddock in 1755, and a translation of it was printed by them as above.
+The original has disappeared.]
+
+Five days before, Contrecoeur had sent Jumonville to scour the country
+as far as the dividing ridge of the Alleghanies. Under him were another
+officer, three cadets, a volunteer, an interpreter, and twenty-eight
+men. He was provided with a written summons, to be delivered to any
+English he might find. It required them to withdraw from the domain of
+the King of France, and threatened compulsion by force of arms in case
+of refusal. But before delivering the summons Jumonville was ordered to
+send two couriers back with all speed to Fort Duquesne to inform the
+commandant that he had found the English, and to acquaint him when he
+intended to communicate with them.[148] It is difficult to imagine any
+object for such an order except that of enabling Contrecoeur to send to
+the spot whatever force might be needed to attack the English on their
+refusal to withdraw. Jumonville had sent the two couriers, and had
+hidden himself, apparently to wait the result. He lurked nearly two days
+within five miles of Washington's camp, sent out scouts to reconnoitre
+it, but gave no notice of his presence; played to perfection the part of
+a skulking enemy, and brought destruction on himself by conduct which
+can only be ascribed to a sinister motive on the one hand, or to extreme
+folly on the other. French deserters told Washington that the party came
+as spies, and were to show the summons only if threatened by a superior
+force. This last assertion is confirmed by the French officer Pouchot,
+who says that Jumonville, seeing himself the weaker party, tried to show
+the letter he had brought.[149]
+
+[Footnote 148: The summons and the instructions to Jumonville are in
+_Précis des Faits_.]
+
+[Footnote 149: Pouchot, _Mémoire sur la dernière Guerre_.]
+
+French writers say that, on first seeing the English, Jumonville's
+interpreter called out that he had something to say to them; but
+Washington, who was at the head of his men, affirms this to be
+absolutely false. The French say further that Jumonville was killed in
+the act of reading the summons. This is also denied by Washington, and
+rests only on the assertion of the Canadian who ran off at the outset,
+and on the alleged assertion of Indians who, if present at all, which is
+unlikely, escaped like the Canadian before the fray began. Druillon, an
+officer with Jumonville, wrote two letters to Dinwiddie after his
+capture, to claim the privileges of the bearer of a summons; but while
+bringing forward every other circumstance in favor of the claim, he does
+not pretend that the summons was read or shown either before or during
+the action. The French account of the conduct of Washington's Indians is
+no less erroneous. "This murder," says a chronicler of the time,
+"produced on the minds of the savages an effect very different from that
+which the cruel Washington had promised himself. They have a horror of
+crime; and they were so indignant at that which had just been
+perpetrated before their eyes, that they abandoned him, and offered
+themselves to us in order to take vengeance."[150] Instead of doing
+this, they boasted of their part in the fight, scalped all the dead
+Frenchmen, sent one scalp to the Delawares as an invitation to take up
+the hatchet for the English, and distributed the rest among the various
+Ohio tribes to the same end.
+
+[Footnote 150: Poulin de Lumina, _Histoire de la Guerre contre les
+Anglois_, 15.]
+
+Coolness of judgment, a profound sense of public duty, and a strong
+self-control, were even then the characteristics of Washington; but he
+was scarcely twenty-two, was full of military ardor, and was vehement
+and fiery by nature. Yet it is far from certain that, even when age and
+experience had ripened him, he would have forborne to act as he did, for
+there was every reason for believing that the designs of the French were
+hostile; and though by passively waiting the event he would have thrown
+upon them the responsibility of striking the first blow, he would have
+exposed his small party to capture or destruction by giving them time to
+gain reinforcements from Fort Duquesne. It was inevitable that the
+killing of Jumonville should be greeted in France by an outcry of real
+or assumed horror; but the Chevalier de Lévis, second in command to
+Montcalm, probably expresses the true opinion of Frenchmen best fitted
+to judge when he calls it "a pretended assassination."[151] Judge it as
+we may, this obscure skirmish began the war that set the world on
+fire.[152]
+
+[Footnote 151: Lévis, _Mémoire sur la Guerre du Canada_.]
+
+[Footnote 152: On this affair, Sparks, _Writings of Washington_, II.
+25-48, 447. _Dinwiddie Papers. Letter of Contrecoeur_ in _Précis des
+Faits. Journal of Washington, Ibid. Washington to Dinwiddie, 3 June,
+1754_. Dussieux, _Le Canada sous la Domination Française_, 118. Gaspé,
+_Anciens Canadiens, appendix_, 396. The assertion of Abbé de
+l'Isle-Dieu, that Jumonville showed a flag of truce, is unsupported.
+Adam Stephen, who was in the fight, says that the guns of the English
+were so wet that they had to trust mainly to the bayonet. The Half-King
+boasted that he killed Jumonville with his tomahawk. Dinwiddie highly
+approved Washington's conduct.
+
+In 1755 the widow of Jumonville received a pension of one hundred and
+fifty francs. In 1775 his daughter, Charlotte Aimable, wishing to become
+a nun, was given by the King six hundred francs for her "trousseau" on
+entering the convent. _Dossier de Jumonville et de sa Veuve, 22 Mars,
+1755_. _Mémoire pour Mlle. de Jumonville, 10 Juillet, 1775_. _Résponse
+du Garde des Sceaux, 25 Juillet, 1775_.]
+
+Washington returned to the camp at the Great Meadows; and, expecting
+soon to be attacked, sent for reinforcements to Colonel Fry, who was
+lying dangerously ill at Wills Creek. Then he set his men to work at an
+entrenchment, which he named Fort Necessity, and which must have been of
+the slightest, as they finished it within three days.[153] The Half-King
+now joined him, along with the female potentate known as Queen
+Alequippa, and some thirty Indian families. A few days after, Gist came
+from Wills Creek with news that Fry was dead. Washington succeeded to
+the command of the regiment, the remaining three companies of which
+presently appeared and joined their comrades, raising the whole number
+to three hundred. Next arrived the independent company from South
+Carolina; and the Great Meadows became an animated scene, with the
+wigwams of the Indians, the camp-sheds of the rough Virginians, the
+cattle grazing on the tall grass or drinking at the lazy brook that
+traversed it; the surrounding heights and forests; and over all, four
+miles away the lofty green ridge of Laurel Hill.
+
+[Footnote 153: _Journal of Washington_ in _Précis des Faits_.]
+
+The presence of the company of regulars was a doubtful advantage.
+Captain Mackay, its commander, holding his commission from the King,
+thought himself above any officer commissioned by the Governor. There
+was great courtesy between him and Washington; but Mackay would take no
+orders, nor even the countersign, from the colonel of volunteers. Nor
+would his men work, except for an additional shilling a day. To give
+this was impossible, both from want of money, and from the discontent it
+would have bred in the Virginians, who worked for nothing besides their
+daily pay of eightpence. Washington, already a leader of men, possessed
+himself in a patience extremely difficult to his passionate temper; but
+the position was untenable, and the presence of the military drones
+demoralized his soldiers. Therefore, leaving Mackay at the Meadows, he
+advanced towards Gist's settlement, cutting a wagon road as he went.
+
+On reaching the settlement the camp was formed and an entrenchment
+thrown up. Deserters had brought news that strong reinforcements were
+expected at Fort Duquesne, and friendly Indians repeatedly warned
+Washington that he would soon be attacked by overwhelming numbers. Forty
+Indians from the Ohio came to the camp, and several days were spent in
+councils with them; but they proved for the most part to be spies of the
+French. The Half-King stood fast by the English, and sent out three of
+his young warriors as scouts. Reports of attack thickened. Mackay and
+his men were sent for, and they arrived on the twenty-eighth of June. A
+council of war was held at Gist's house; and as the camp was commanded
+by neighboring heights, it was resolved to fall back. The horses were so
+few that the Virginians had to carry much of the baggage on their backs,
+and drag nine swivels over the broken and rocky road. The regulars,
+though they also were raised in the provinces, refused to give the
+slightest help. Toiling on for two days, they reached the Great Meadows
+on the first of July. The position, though perhaps the best in the
+neighborhood, was very unfavorable, and Washington would have retreated
+farther, but for the condition of his men. They were spent with fatigue,
+and there was no choice but to stay and fight.
+
+Strong reinforcements had been sent to Fort Duquesne in the spring, and
+the garrison now consisted of about fourteen hundred men. When news of
+the death of Jumonville reached Montreal, Coulon de Villiers, brother of
+the slain officer, was sent to the spot with a body of Indians from all
+the tribes in the colony. He made such speed that at eight o'clock on
+the morning of the twenty-sixth of June he reached the fort with his
+motley following. Here he found that five hundred Frenchmen and a few
+Ohio Indians were on the point of marching against the English, under
+Chevalier Le Mercier; but in view of his seniority in rank and his
+relationship to Jumonville, the command was now transferred to Villiers.
+Hereupon, the march was postponed; the newly-arrived warriors were
+called to council, and Contrecoeur thus harangued them: "The English
+have murdered my children, my heart is sick; to-morrow I shall send my
+French soldiers to take revenge. And now, men of the Saut St. Louis, men
+of the Lake of Two Mountains, Hurons, Abenakis, Iroquois of La
+Présentation, Nipissings, Algonquins, and Ottawas,--I invite you all by
+this belt of wampum to join your French father and help him to crush the
+assassins. Take this hatchet, and with it two barrels of wine for a
+feast." Both hatchet and wine were cheerfully accepted. Then Contrecoeur
+turned to the Delawares, who were also present: "By these four strings
+of wampum I invite you, if you are true children of Onontio, to follow
+the example of your brethren;" and with some hesitation they also took
+up the hatchet.
+
+The next day was spent by the Indians in making moccasons for the march,
+and by the French in preparing for an expedition on a larger scale than
+had been at first intended. Contrecoeur, Villiers, Le Mercier, and
+Longueuil, after deliberating together, drew up a paper to the effect
+that "it was fitting (_convenable_) to march against the English with
+the greatest possible number of French and savages, in order to avenge
+ourselves and chastise them for having violated the most sacred laws of
+civilized nations;" that, thought their conduct justified the French in
+disregarding the existing treaty of peace, yet, after thoroughly
+punishing them, and compelling them to withdraw from the domain of the
+King, they should be told that, in pursuance of his royal orders, the
+French looked on them as friends. But it was further agreed that should
+the English have withdrawn to their own side of the mountains, "they
+should be followed to their settlements to destroy them and treat them
+as enemies, till that nation should give ample satisfaction and
+completely change its conduct."[154]
+
+[Footnote 154: _Journal de Campagne de M. de Villiers depuis son Arrivée
+au Fort Duquesne jusqu'à son Retour au dit Fort_. These and other
+passages are omitted in the Journal as printed in _Précis des Faits_.
+Before me is a copy from the original in the Archives de la Marine.]
+
+The party set out on the next morning, paddled their canoes up the
+Monongahela, encamped, heard Mass; and on the thirtieth reached the
+deserted storehouse of the Ohio Company at the mouth of Redstone Creek.
+It was a building of solid logs, well loopholed for musketry. To please
+the Indians by asking their advice, Villiers called all the chiefs to
+council; which, being concluded to their satisfaction, he left a
+sergeant's guard at the storehouse to watch the canoes, and began his
+march through the forest. The path was so rough that at the first halt
+the chaplain declared he could go no farther, and turned back for the
+storehouse, though not till he had absolved the whole company in a body.
+Thus lightened of their sins, they journeyed on, constantly sending out
+scouts. On the second of July they reached the abandoned camp of
+Washington at Gist's settlement; and here they bivouacked, tired, and
+drenched all night by rain. At daybreak they marched again, and passed
+through the gorge of Laurel Hill. It rained without ceasing; but
+Villiers pushed his way through the dripping forest to see the place,
+half a mile from the road, where his brother had been killed, and where
+several bodies still lay unburied. They had learned from a deserter the
+position of the enemy, and Villiers filled the woods in front with a
+swarm of Indian scouts. The crisis was near. He formed his men in
+column, and ordered every officer to his place.
+
+Washington's men had had a full day at Fort Necessity; but they spent it
+less in resting from their fatigue than in strengthening their rampart
+with logs. The fort was a simple square enclosure, with a trench said by
+a French writer to be only knee deep. On the south, and partly on the
+west, there was an exterior embankment, which seems to have been made,
+like a rifle-pit, with the ditch inside. The Virginians had but little
+ammunition, and no bread whatever, living chiefly on fresh beef. They
+knew the approach of the French, who were reported to Washington as nine
+hundred strong, besides Indians. Towards eleven o'clock a wounded
+sentinel came in with news that they were close at hand; and they
+presently appeared at the edge of the woods, yelling, and firing from
+such a distance that their shot fell harmless. Washington drew up his
+men on the meadow before the fort, thinking, he says, that the enemy,
+being greatly superior in force, would attack at once; and choosing for
+some reason to meet them on the open plain. But Villiers had other
+views. "We approached the English," he writes, "as near as possible,
+without uselessly exposing the lives of the King's subjects;" and he and
+his followers made their way through the forest till they came opposite
+the fort, where they stationed themselves on two densely wooded hills,
+adjacent, though separated by a small brook. One of these was about a
+hundred paces from the English, and the other about sixty. Their
+position was such that the French and Indians, well sheltered by trees
+and bushes, and with the advantage of higher ground, could cross their
+fire upon the fort and enfilade a part of it. Washington had meanwhile
+drawn his followers within the entrenchment; and the firing now began on
+both sides. Rain fell all day. The raw earth of the embankment was
+turned to soft mud, and the men in the ditch of the outwork stood to the
+knee in water. The swivels brought back from the camp at Gist's farm
+were mounted on the rampart; but the gunners were so ill protected that
+the pieces were almost silenced by the French musketry. The fight lasted
+nine hours. At times the fire on both sides was nearly quenched by the
+showers, and the bedrenched combatants could do little but gaze at each
+other through a gray veil of mist and rain. Towards night, however, the
+fusillade revived, and became sharp again until dark. At eight o'clock
+the French called out to propose a parley.
+
+Villiers thus gives his reason for these overtures. "As we had been wet
+all day by the rain, as the soldiers were very tired, as the savages
+said that they would leave us the next morning, and as there was a
+report that drums and the firing of cannon had been heard in the
+distance, I proposed to M. Le Mercier to offer the English a
+conference." He says further that ammunition was falling short, and that
+he thought the enemy might sally in a body and attack him.[155] The
+English, on their side, were in a worse plight. They were half starved,
+their powder was nearly spent, their guns were foul, and among them all
+they had but two screw-rods to clean them. In spite of his desperate
+position, Washington declined the parley, thinking it a pretext to
+introduce a spy; but when the French repeated their proposal and
+requested that he would send an officer to them, he could hesitate no
+longer. There were but two men with him who knew French, Ensign
+Peyroney, who was disabled by a wound, and the Dutchman, Captain
+Vanbraam. To him the unpalatable errand was assigned. After a long
+absence he returned with articles of capitulation offered by Villiers;
+and while the officers gathered about him in the rain, he read and
+interpreted the paper by the glimmer of a sputtering candle kept alight
+with difficulty. Objection was made to some of the terms, and they were
+changed. Vanbraam, however, apparently anxious to get the capitulation
+signed and the affair ended, mistranslated several passages, and
+rendered the words _l'assassinat du Sieur de Jumonville_ as _the death
+of the Sieur de Jumonville_.[156] As thus understood, the articles were
+signed about midnight. They provided that the English should march out
+with drums beating and the honors of war, carrying with them one of
+their swivels and all their other property; that they should be
+protected against insult from French or Indians; that the prisoners
+taken in the affair of Jumonville should be set free; and that two
+officers should remain as hostages for their safe return to Fort
+Duquesne. The hostages chosen were Vanbraam and a brave but eccentric
+Scotchman, Robert Stobo, an acquaintance of the novelist Smollett, said
+to be the original of his Lismahago.
+
+[Footnote 155: _Journal de Villiers_, original. Omitted in the Journal
+as printed by the French Government. A short and very incorrect abstract
+of this Journal will be found in _N.Y. Col. Docs._, X.]
+
+[Footnote 156: See Appendix C. On the fight at Great Meadows, compare
+Sparks, _Writings of Washington_, II. 456-468; also a letter of Colonel
+Innes to Governor Hamilton, written a week after the event, in _Colonial
+Records of Pa._, VI. 50, and a letter of Adam Stephen in _Pennsylvania
+Gazette, 1754_.]
+
+Washington reports that twelve of the Virginians were killed on the
+spot, and forty-three wounded, while on the casualties in Mackay's
+company no returns appear. Villiers reports his own loss at only twenty
+in all.[157] The numbers engaged are uncertain. The six companies of the
+Virginia regiment counted three hundred and five men and officers, and
+Mackay's company one hundred; but many were on the sick list, and some
+had deserted. About three hundred and fifty may have taken part in the
+fight. On the side of the French, Villiers says that the detachment as
+originally formed consisted of five hundred white men. These were
+increased after his arrival at Fort Duquesne, and one of the party
+reports that seven hundred marched on the expedition.[158] The number of
+Indians joining them is not given; but as nine tribes and communities
+contributed to it, and as two barrels of wine were required to give the
+warriors a parting feast, it must have been considerable. White men and
+red, it seems clear that the French force was more than twice that of
+the English, while they were better posted and better sheltered, keeping
+all day under cover, and never showing themselves on the open meadow.
+There were no Indians with Washington. Even the Half-King held aloof;
+though, being of a caustic turn, he did not spare his comments on the
+fight, telling Conrad Weiser, the provincial interpreter, that the
+French behaved like cowards, and the English like fools.[159]
+
+[Footnote 157: Dinwiddie writes to the Lords of Trade that thirty in all
+were killed, and seventy wounded, on the English side; and the
+commissary Varin writes to Bigot that the French lost seventy-two
+killed and wounded.]
+
+[Footnote 158: _A Journal had from Thomas Forbes, lately a Private
+Soldier in the King of France's Service_. (Public Record Office.) Forbes
+was one of Villiers' soldiers. The commissary Varin puts the number of
+French at six hundred, besides Indians.]
+
+[Footnote 159: _Journal of Conrad Weiser_, in _Colonial Records of Pa._,
+VI. 150. The Half-King also remarked that Washington "was a good-natured
+man, but had no experience, and would by no means take advice from the
+Indians, but was always driving them on to fight by his directions; that
+he lay at one place from one full moon to the other, and made no
+fortifications at all, except that little thing upon the meadow, where
+he thought the French would come up to him in open field."]
+
+In the early morning the fort was abandoned and the retreat began. The
+Indians had killed all the horses and cattle, and Washington's men were
+so burdened with the sick and wounded, whom they were obliged to carry
+on their backs, that most of the baggage was perforce left behind. Even
+then they could march but a few miles, and then encamped to wait for
+wagons. The Indians increased the confusion by plundering, and
+threatening an attack. They knocked to pieces the medicine-chest, thus
+causing great distress to the wounded, two of whom they murdered and
+scalped. For a time there was danger of panic; but order was restored,
+and the wretched march began along the forest road that led over the
+Alleghanies, fifty-two miles to the station at Wills Creek. Whatever may
+have been the feelings of Washington, he has left no record of them. His
+immense fortitude was doomed to severer trials in the future; yet
+perhaps this miserable morning was the darkest of his life. He was
+deeply moved by sights of suffering; and all around him were wounded men
+borne along in torture, and weary men staggering under the living load.
+His pride was humbled, and his young ambition seemed blasted in the bud.
+It was the fourth of July. He could not foresee that he was to make that
+day forever glorious to a new-born nation hailing him as its father.
+
+The defeat at Fort Necessity was doubly disastrous to the English, since
+it was a new step and a long one towards the ruin of their interest with
+the Indians; and when, in the next year, the smouldering war broke into
+flame, nearly all the western tribes drew their scalping-knives for
+France.
+
+Villiers went back exultant to Fort Duquesne, burning on his way the
+buildings of Gist's settlement and the storehouse at Redstone Creek. Not
+an English flag now waved beyond the Alleghanies.[160]
+
+[Footnote 160: See Appendix C.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 6
+
+1754, 1755
+
+The Signal of Battle
+
+
+The defeat of Washington was a heavy blow to the Governor, and he
+angrily ascribed it to the delay of the expected reinforcements. The
+King's companies from New York had reached Alexandria, and crawled
+towards the scene of action with thin ranks, bad discipline, thirty
+women and children, no tents, no blankets, no knapsacks, and for
+munitions one barrel of spoiled gunpowder.[161] The case was still worse
+with the regiment from North Carolina. It was commanded by Colonel
+Innes, a countryman and friend of Dinwiddie, who wrote to him: "Dear
+James, I now wish that we had none from your colony but yourself, for I
+foresee nothing but confusion among them." The men were, in fact,
+utterly unmanageable. They had been promised three shillings a day,
+while the Virginians had only eightpence; and when they heard on the
+march that their pay was to be reduced, they mutinied, disbanded, and
+went home.
+
+[Footnote 161: _Dinwiddie to the Lords of Trade, 24 July, 1754. Ibid. to
+Delancey, 20 June, 1754._]
+
+"You may easily guess," says Dinwiddie to a London correspondent, "the
+great fatigue and trouble I have had, which is more than I ever went
+through in my life." He rested his hopes on the session of his Assembly,
+which was to take place in August; for he thought that the late disaster
+would move them to give him money for defending the colony. These
+meetings of the burgesses were the great social as well as political
+event of the Old Dominion, and gave a gathering signal to the Virginian
+gentry scattered far and wide on their lonely plantations. The capital
+of the province was Williamsburg, a village of about a thousand
+inhabitants, traversed by a straight and very wide street, and adorned
+with various public buildings, conspicuous among which was William and
+Mary College, a respectable structure, unjustly likened by Jefferson to
+a brick kiln with a roof. The capitol, at the other end of the town, had
+been burned some years before, and had just risen from its ashes. Not
+far distant was the so-called Governor's Palace, where Dinwiddie with
+his wife and two daughters exercised such official hospitality as his
+moderate salary and Scottish thrift would permit.[162]
+
+[Footnote 162: For a contemporary account of Williamsburg, Burnaby,
+_Travels in North America_, 6. Smyth, _Tour in America_, I. 17,
+describes it some years later.]
+
+In these seasons of festivity the dull and quiet village was
+transfigured. The broad, sandy street, scorching under a southern sun,
+was thronged with coaches and chariots brought over from London at heavy
+cost in tobacco, though soon to be bedimmed by Virginia roads and negro
+care; racing and hard-drinking planters; clergymen of the Establishment,
+not much more ascetic than their boon companions of the laity; ladies,
+with manners a little rusted by long seclusion; black coachmen and
+footmen, proud of their masters and their liveries; young cavaliers,
+booted and spurred, sitting their thoroughbreds with the careless grace
+of men whose home was the saddle. It was a proud little provincial
+society, which might seem absurd in its lofty self-appreciation, had it
+not soon approved itself so prolific in ability and worth.[163]
+
+[Footnote 163: The English traveller Smyth, in his _Tour_, gives a
+curious and vivid picture of Virginian life. For the social condition of
+this and other colonies before the Revolution, one cannot do better than
+to consult Lodge's _Short History of the English Colonies_.]
+
+The burgesses met, and Dinwiddie made them an opening speech, inveighing
+against the aggressions of the French, their "contempt of treaties," and
+"ambitious views for universal monarchy;" and he concluded: "I could
+expatiate very largely on these affairs, but my heart burns with
+resentment at their insolence. I think there is no room for many
+arguments to induce you to raise a considerable supply to enable me to
+defeat the designs of these troublesome people and enemies of mankind."
+The burgesses in their turn expressed the "highest and most becoming
+resentment," and promptly voted twenty thousand pounds; but on the third
+reading of the bill they added to it a rider which touched the old
+question of the pistole fee, and which, in the view of the Governor, was
+both unconstitutional and offensive. He remonstrated in vain; the
+stubborn republicans would not yield, nor would he; and again he
+prorogued them. This unexpected defeat depressed him greatly. "A
+governor," he wrote, "is really to be pitied in the discharge of his
+duty to his king and country, in having to do with such obstinate,
+self-conceited people.... I cannot satisfy the burgesses unless I
+prostitute the rules of government. I have gone through monstrous
+fatigues. Such wrong-headed people, I thank God, I never had to do with
+before."[164] A few weeks later he was comforted; for, having again
+called the burgesses, they gave him the money, without trying this time
+to humiliate him.[165]
+
+[Footnote 164: _Dinwiddie to Hamilton, 6 Sept., 1754. Ibid. to J.
+Abercrombie, 1 Sept., 1754._]
+
+[Footnote 165: Hening, VI. 435.]
+
+In straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel, aristocratic Virginia was
+far outdone by democratic Pennsylvania. Hamilton, her governor, had laid
+before the Assembly a circular letter from the Earl of Holdernesse
+directing him, in common with other governors, to call on his province
+for means to repel any invasion which might be made "within the
+undoubted limits of His Majesty's dominion."[166] The Assembly of
+Pennsylvania was curiously unlike that of Virginia, as half and often
+more than half of its members were Quaker tradesmen in sober raiment and
+broad-brimmed hats; while of the rest, the greater part were Germans who
+cared little whether they lived under English rule or French, provided
+that they were left in peace upon their farms. The House replied to the
+Governor's call: "It would be highly presumptuous in us to pretend to
+judge of the undoubted limits of His Majesty's dominions;" and they
+added: "the Assemblies of this province are generally composed of a
+majority who are constitutionally principled against war, and represent
+a well-meaning, peaceable people."[167] They then adjourned, telling the
+Governor that, "As those our limits have not been clearly ascertained to
+our satisfaction, we fear the precipitate call upon us as the province
+invaded cannot answer any good purpose at this time."
+
+[Footnote 166: _The Earl of Holdernesse to the Governors in America, 28
+Aug. 1753._]
+
+[Footnote 167: _Colonial Records of Pa._, V. 748.]
+
+In the next month they met again, and again Hamilton asked for means to
+defend the country. The question was put, Should the Assembly give money
+for the King's use? and the vote was feebly affirmative. Should the sum
+be twenty thousand pounds? The vote was overwhelming in the negative.
+Fifteen thousand, ten thousand, and five thousand, were successively
+proposed, and the answer was always, No. The House would give nothing
+but five hundred pounds for a present to the Indians; after which they
+adjourned "to the sixth of the month called May."[168] At their next
+meeting they voted to give the Governor ten thousand pounds; but under
+conditions which made them for some time independent of his veto, and
+which, in other respects, were contrary to his instructions from the
+King, as well as from the proprietaries of the province, to whom he had
+given bonds to secure his obedience. He therefore rejected the bill, and
+they adjourned. In August they passed a similar vote, with the same
+result. At their October meeting they evaded his call for supplies. In
+December they voted twenty thousand pounds, hampered with conditions
+which were sure to be refused, since Morris, the new governor, who had
+lately succeeded Hamilton, was under the same restrictions as his
+predecessor. They told him, however, that in the present case they felt
+themselves bound by no Act of Parliament, and added: "We hope the
+Governor, notwithstanding any penal bond he may have entered into, will
+on reflection think himself at liberty and find it consistent with his
+safety and honor to give his assent to this bill." Morris, who had taken
+the highest legal advice on the subject in England, declined to
+compromise himself, saying: "Consider, gentlemen, in what light you will
+appear to His Majesty while, instead of contributing towards your own
+defence, you are entering into an ill-timed controversy concerning the
+validity of royal instructions which may be delayed to a more convenient
+time without the least injury to the rights of the people."[169] They
+would not yield, and told him "that they had rather the French should
+conquer them than give up their privileges."[170] "Truly," remarks
+Dinwiddie, "I think they have given their senses a long holiday."
+
+[Footnote 168: _Pennsylvania Archives_, II. 235. _Colonial Records of
+Pa._, VI. 22-26. _Works of Franklin,_ III. 265.]
+
+[Footnote 169: _Colonial Records of Pa._, VI. 215.]
+
+[Footnote 170: _Morris to Penn, 1 Jan. 1755._]
+
+New York was not much behind her sisters in contentious stubbornness. In
+answer to the Governor's appeal, the Assembly replied: "It appears that
+the French have built a fort at a place called French Creek, at a
+considerable distance from the River Ohio, which may, but does not by
+any evidence or information appear to us to be an invasion of any of His
+Majesty's colonies."[171] So blind were they as yet to "manifest
+destiny!" Afterwards, however, on learning the defeat of Washington,
+they gave five thousand pounds to aid Virginia.[172] Maryland, after
+long delay, gave six thousand. New Jersey felt herself safe behind the
+other colonies, and would give nothing. New England, on the other hand,
+and especially Massachusetts, had suffered so much from French
+war-parties that they were always ready to fight. Shirley, the governor
+of Massachusetts, had returned from his bootless errand to settle the
+boundary question at Paris. His leanings were strongly monarchical; yet
+he believed in the New Englanders, and was more or less in sympathy with
+them. Both he and they were strenuous against the French, and they had
+mutually helped each other to reap laurels in the last war. Shirley was
+cautious of giving umbrage to his Assembly, and rarely quarrelled with
+it, except when the amount of his salary was in question. He was not
+averse to a war with France; for though bred a lawyer, and now past
+middle life, he flattered himself with hopes of a high military command.
+On the present occasion, making use of a rumor that the French were
+seizing the carrying-place between the Chaudière and the Kennebec, he
+drew from the Assembly a large grant of money, and induced them to call
+upon him to march in person to the scene of danger. He accordingly
+repaired to Falmouth (now Portland); and, though the rumor proved false,
+sent eight hundred men under Captain John Winslow to build two forts on
+the Kennebec as a measure of precaution.[173]
+
+[Footnote 171: _Address of the Assembly to Lieutenant-Governor Delancey,
+23 April, 1754. Lords of Trade to Delancey, 5 July, 1754_.]
+
+[Footnote 172: _Delancey to Lords of Trade, 8 Oct. 1754_.]
+
+[Footnote 173: _Massachusetts Archives, 1754_. Hutchinson, III. 26.
+_Conduct of Major-General Shirley briefly stated. Journals of the Board
+of Trade, 1754_.]
+
+While to these northern provinces Canada was an old and pestilent enemy,
+those towards the south scarcely knew her by name; and the idea of
+French aggression on their borders was so novel and strange that they
+admitted it with difficulty. Mind and heart were engrossed in strife
+with their governors: the universal struggle for virtual self-rule. But
+the war was often waged with a passionate stupidity. The colonist was
+not then an American; he was simply a provincial, and a narrow one. The
+time was yet distant when these dissevered and jealous communities
+should weld themselves into one broad nationality, capable, at need, of
+the mightiest efforts to purge itself of disaffection and vindicate its
+commanding unity.
+
+In the interest of that practical independence which they had so much at
+heart, two conditions were essential to the colonists. The one was a
+field for expansion, and the other was mutual help. Their first
+necessity was to rid themselves of the French, who, by shutting them
+between the Alleghanies and the sea, would cramp them into perpetual
+littleness. With France on their backs, growing while they had no room
+to grow, they must remain in helpless wardship, dependent on England,
+whose aid they would always need; but with the West open before them,
+their future was their own. King and Parliament would respect perforce
+the will of a people spread from the ocean to the Mississippi, and
+united in action as in aims. But in the middle of the last century the
+vision of the ordinary colonist rarely reached so far. The immediate
+victory over a governor, however slight the point at issue, was more
+precious in his eyes than the remote though decisive advantage which he
+saw but dimly.
+
+The governors, representing the central power, saw the situation from
+the national point of view. Several of them, notably Dinwiddie and
+Shirley, were filled with wrath at the proceedings of the French; and
+the former was exasperated beyond measure at the supineness of the
+provinces. He had spared no effort to rouse them, and had failed. His
+instincts were on the side of authority; but, under the circumstances,
+it is hardly to be imputed to him as a very deep offence against human
+liberty that he advised the compelling of the colonies to raise men and
+money for their own defence, and proposed, in view of their "intolerable
+obstinacy and disobedience to his Majesty's commands," that Parliament
+should tax them half-a-crown a head. The approaching war offered to the
+party of authority temptations from which the colonies might have saved
+it by opening their purse-strings without waiting to be told.
+
+The Home Government, on its part, was but half-hearted in the wish that
+they should unite in opposition to the common enemy. It was very willing
+that the several provinces should give money and men, but not that they
+should acquire military habits and a dangerous capacity of acting
+together. There was one kind of union, however, so obviously necessary,
+and at the same time so little to be dreaded, that the British Cabinet,
+instructed by the governors, not only assented to it, but urged it. This
+was joint action in making treaties with the Indians. The practice of
+separate treaties, made by each province in its own interest, had bred
+endless disorders. The adhesion of all the tribes had been so shaken,
+and the efforts of the French to alienate them were so vigorous and
+effective, that not a moment was to be lost. Joncaire had gained over
+most of the Senecas, Piquet was drawing the Onondagas more and more to
+his mission, and the Dutch of Albany were alienating their best friends,
+the Mohawks, by encroaching on their lands. Their chief, Hendrick, came
+to New York with a deputation of the tribe to complain of their wrongs;
+and finding no redress, went off in anger, declaring that the covenant
+chain was broken.[174] The authorities in alarm called William Johnson
+to their aid. He succeeded in soothing the exasperated chief, and then
+proceeded to the confederate council at Onondaga, where he found the
+assembled sachems full of anxieties and doubts. "We don't know what you
+Christians, English and French, intend," said one of their orators. "We
+are so hemmed in by you both that we have hardly a hunting-place left.
+In a little while, if we find a bear in a tree, there will immediately
+appear an owner of the land to claim the property and hinder us from
+killing it, by which we live. We are so perplexed between you that we
+hardly know what to say or think."[175] No man had such power over the
+Five Nations as Johnson. His dealings with them were at once honest,
+downright, and sympathetic. They loved and trusted him as much as they
+detested the Indian commissioners at Albany, whom the province of New
+York had charged with their affairs, and who, being traders, grossly
+abused their office.
+
+[Footnote 174: _N.Y. Col. Docs._, VI. 788. _Colonial Records of Pa._ V.
+625.]
+
+[Footnote 175: _N.Y. Col. Docs._, VI. 813.]
+
+It was to remedy this perilous state of things that the Lords of Trade
+and Plantations directed the several governors to urge on their
+assemblies the sending of commissioners to make a joint treaty with the
+wavering tribes.[176] Seven of the provinces, New York, Pennsylvania,
+Maryland, and the four New England colonies, acceded to the plan, and
+sent to Albany, the appointed place of meeting, a body of men who for
+character and ability had never had an equal on the continent, but whose
+powers from their respective assemblies were so cautiously limited as to
+preclude decisive action. They met in the court-house of the little
+frontier city. A large "chain-belt" of wampum was provided, on which the
+King was symbolically represented, holding in his embrace the colonies,
+the Five Nations, and all their allied tribes. This was presented to the
+assembled warriors, with a speech in which the misdeeds of the French
+were not forgotten. The chief, Hendrick, made a much better speech in
+reply. "We do now solemnly renew and brighten the covenant chain. We
+shall take the chain-belt to Onondaga, where our council-fire always
+burns, and keep it so safe that neither thunder nor lightning shall
+break it." The commissioners had blamed them for allowing so many of
+their people to be drawn away to Piquet's mission. "It is true," said
+the orator, "that we live disunited. We have tried to bring back our
+brethren, but in vain; for the Governor of Canada is like a wicked,
+deluding spirit. You ask why we are so dispersed. The reason is that you
+have neglected us for these three years past." Here he took a stick and
+threw it behind him. "You have thus thrown us behind your back; whereas
+the French are a subtle and vigilant people, always using their utmost
+endeavors to seduce and bring us over to them." He then told them that
+it was not the French alone who invaded the country of the Indians. "The
+Governor of Virginia and the Governor of Canada are quarrelling about
+lands which belong to us, and their quarrel may end in our destruction."
+And he closed with a burst of sarcasm. "We would have taken Crown Point
+[_in the last war_], but you prevented us. Instead, you burned your own
+fort at Saratoga and ran away from it,--which was a shame and a scandal
+to you. Look about your country and see: you have no fortifications; no,
+not even in this city. It is but a step from Canada hither, and the
+French may come and turn you out of doors. You desire us to speak from
+the bottom of our hearts, and we shall do it. Look at the French: they
+are men; they are fortifying everywhere. But you are all like women,
+bare and open, without fortifications."[177]
+
+[Footnote 176: _Circular Letter of Lords of Trade to Governors in
+America, 18 Sept. 1753. Lords of Trade to Sir Danvers Osborne, in N.Y.
+Col. Docs._, VI. 800.]
+
+[Footnote 177: _Proceedings of the Congress at Albany, N.Y. Col. Docs._,
+VI. 853. A few verbal changes, for the sake of brevity, are made in the
+above extracts.]
+
+Hendrick's brother Abraham now took up the word, and begged that Johnson
+might be restored to the management of Indian affairs, which he had
+formerly held; "for," said the chief, "we love him and he us and he has
+always been our good and trusty friend." The commissioners had not power
+to grant the request, but the Indians were assured that it should not be
+forgotten; and they returned to their villages soothed, but far from
+satisfied. Nor were the commissioners empowered to take any effective
+steps for fortifying the frontier.
+
+The congress now occupied itself with another matter. Its members were
+agreed that great danger was impending; that without wise and just
+treatment of the tribes, the French would gain them all, build forts
+along the back of the British colonies, and, by means of ships and
+troops from France, master them one by one, unless they would combine
+for mutual defence. The necessity of some form of union had at length
+begun to force itself upon the colonial mind. A rough woodcut had lately
+appeared in the _Pennsylvania Gazette_, figuring the provinces under the
+not very flattering image of a snake cut to pieces, with the motto,
+"Join, or die." A writer of the day held up the Five Nations for
+emulation, observing that if ignorant savages could confederate, British
+colonists might do as much.[178] Franklin, the leading spirit of the
+congress, now laid before it his famous project of union, which has been
+too often described to need much notice here. Its fate is well known.
+The Crown rejected it because it gave too much power to the colonies;
+the colonies, because it gave too much power to the Crown, and because
+it required each of them to transfer some of its functions of
+self-government to a central council. Another plan was afterwards
+devised by the friends of prerogative, perfectly agreeable to the King,
+since it placed all power in the hands of a council of governors, and
+since it involved compulsory taxation of the colonists, who, for the
+same reasons, would have doggedly resisted it, had an attempt been made
+to carry it into effect.[179]
+
+[Footnote 178: Kennedy, _Importance of gaining and preserving the
+Friendship of the Indians_.]
+
+[Footnote 179: On the Albany plan of union, _Franklin's Works_, I. 177.
+Shirley thought it "a great strain upon the prerogative of the Crown,"
+and was for requiring the colonies to raise money and men "without
+farther consulting them upon any points whatever." _Shirley to Robinson,
+24 Dec. 1754_.]
+
+Even if some plan of union had been agreed upon, long delay must have
+followed before its machinery could be set in motion; and meantime there
+was need of immediate action. War-parties of Indians from Canada, set
+on, it was thought, by the Governor, were already burning and murdering
+among the border settlements of New York and New Hampshire. In the south
+Dinwiddie grew more and more alarmed, "for the French are like so many
+locusts; they are collected in bodies in a most surprising manner; their
+number now on the Ohio is from twelve hundred to fifteen hundred." He
+writes to Lord Granville that, in his opinion, they aim to conquer the
+continent, and that "the obstinacy of this stubborn generation" exposes
+the country "to the merciless rage of a rapacious enemy." What vexed him
+even more than the apathy of the assemblies was the conduct of his
+brother-governor, Glen of South Carolina, who, apparently piqued at the
+conspicuous part Dinwiddie was acting, wrote to him in a "very
+dictatorial style," found fault with his measures, jested at his
+activity in writing letters, and even questioned the right of England to
+lands on the Ohio; till he was moved at last to retort: "I cannot help
+observing that your letters and arguments would have been more proper
+from a French officer than from one of His Majesty's governors. My
+conduct has met with His Majesty's gracious approbation; and I am sorry
+it has not received yours." Thus discouraged, even in quarters where he
+had least reason to expect it, he turned all his hopes to the Home
+Government; again recommended a tax by Act of Parliament, and begged, in
+repeated letters, for arms, munitions, and two regiments of
+infantry.[180] His petition was not made in vain.
+
+[Footnote 180: _Dinwiddie Papers_; letters to Granville, Albemarle,
+Halifax, Fox, Holdernesse, Horace Walpole, and Lords of Trade.]
+
+England at this time presented the phenomenon of a prime minister who
+could not command the respect of his own servants. A more preposterous
+figure than the Duke of Newcastle never stood at the head of a great
+nation. He had a feverish craving for place and power, joined to a total
+unfitness for both. He was an adept in personal politics, and was so
+busied with the arts of winning and keeping office that he had no
+leisure, even if he had had ability, for the higher work of government.
+He was restless, quick in movement, rapid and confused in speech, lavish
+of worthless promises, always in a hurry, and at once headlong, timid,
+and rash. "A borrowed importance and real insignificance," says Walpole,
+who knew him well, "gave him the perpetual air of a solicitor.... He had
+no pride, though infinite self-love. He loved business immoderately; yet
+was only always doing it, never did it. When left to himself, he always
+plunged into difficulties, and then shuddered for the consequences."
+Walpole gives an anecdote showing the state of his ideas on colonial
+matters. General Ligonier suggested to him that Annapolis ought to be
+defended. "To which he replied with his lisping, evasive hurry:
+'Annapolis, Annapolis! Oh, yes, Annapolis must be defended,--where is
+Annapolis?'"[181] Another contemporary, Smollett, ridicules him in his
+novel of _Humphrey Clinker_, and tells a similar story, which, founded
+in fact or not, shows in what estimation the minister was held: "Captain
+C. treated the Duke's character without any ceremony. 'This wiseacre,'
+said he, 'is still abed; and I think the best thing he can do is to
+sleep on till Christmas; for when he gets up he does nothing but expose
+his own folly. In the beginning of the war he told me in a great fright
+that thirty thousand French had marched from Acadia to Cape Breton.
+Where did they find transports? said I.--Transports! cried he, I tell
+you they marched by land.--By land to the island of Cape Breton!--What,
+is Cape Breton an island?--Certainly.--Ha! are you sure of that?--When I
+pointed it out on the map, he examined it earnestly with his spectacles;
+then, taking me in his arms,--My dear C., cried he, you always bring us
+good news. Egad! I'll go directly and tell the King that Cape Breton is
+an island.'"
+
+[Footnote 181: Walpole, _George II._, I. 344.]
+
+His wealth, county influence, flagitious use of patronage, and
+long-practised skill in keeping majorities in the House of Commons by
+means that would not bear the light, made his support necessary to Pitt
+himself, and placed a fantastic political jobber at the helm of England
+in a time when she needed a patriot and a statesman. Newcastle was the
+growth of the decrepitude and decay of a great party, which had
+fulfilled its mission and done its work. But if the Whig soil had become
+poor for a wholesome crop, it was never so rich for toadstools.
+
+Sir Thomas Robinson held the Southern Department, charged with the
+colonies; and Lord Mahon remarks of him that the Duke had achieved the
+feat of finding a secretary of state more incapable than himself. He had
+the lead of the House of Commons. "Sir Thomas Robinson lead us!" said
+Pitt to Henry Fox; "the Duke might as well send his jackboot to lead
+us." The active and aspiring Halifax was at the head of the Board of
+Trade and Plantations. The Duke of Cumberland commanded the army,--an
+indifferent soldier, though a brave one; harsh, violent, and headlong.
+Anson, the celebrated navigator, was First Lord of the Admiralty,--a
+position in which he disappointed everybody.
+
+In France the true ruler was Madame de Pompadour, once the King's
+mistress, now his procuress, and a sort of feminine prime minister.
+Machault d'Arnouville was at the head of the Marine and Colonial
+Department. The diplomatic representatives of the two Crowns were more
+conspicuous for social than for political talents. Of Mirepoix, French
+ambassador at London, Marshal Saxe had once observed: "It is a good
+appointment; he can teach the English to dance." Walpole says concerning
+him: "He could not even learn to pronounce the names of our games of
+cards,--which, however, engaged most of the hours of his negotiation. We
+were to be bullied out of our colonies by an apprentice at whist!" Lord
+Albemarle, English ambassador at Versailles, is held up by Chesterfield
+as an example to encourage his son in the pursuit of the graces: "What
+do you think made our friend Lord Albemarle colonel of a regiment of
+Guards, Governor of Virginia, Groom of the Stole, and ambassador to
+Paris,--amounting in all to sixteen or seventeen thousand pounds a year?
+Was it his birth? No; a Dutch gentleman only. Was it his estate? No; he
+had none. Was it his learning, his parts, his political abilities and
+application? You can answer these questions as easily and as soon as I
+can ask them. What was it then? Many people wondered; but I do not, for
+I know, and will tell you,--it was his air, his address, his manners,
+and his graces."
+
+The rival nations differed widely in military and naval strength.
+England had afloat more than two hundred ships of war, some of them of
+great force; while the navy of France counted little more than half the
+number. On the other hand, England had reduced her army to eighteen
+thousand men, and France had nearly ten times as many under arms. Both
+alike were weak in leadership. That rare son of the tempest, a great
+commander, was to be found in neither of them since the death of Saxe.
+
+In respect to the approaching crisis, the interests of the two Powers
+pointed to opposite courses of action. What France needed was time. It
+was her policy to put off a rupture, wreathe her face in diplomatic
+smiles, and pose in an attitude of peace and good faith, while
+increasing her navy, reinforcing her garrisons in America, and
+strengthening her positions there. It was the policy of England to
+attack at once, and tear up the young encroachments while they were yet
+in the sap, before they could strike root and harden into stiff
+resistance.
+
+When, on the fourteenth of November, the King made his opening speech to
+the Houses of Parliament, he congratulated them on the prevailing peace,
+and assured them that he should improve it to promote the trade of his
+subjects, "and protect those possessions which constitute one great
+source of their wealth." America was not mentioned; but his hearers
+understood him, and made a liberal grant for the service of the
+year.[182] Two regiments, each of five hundred men, had already been
+ordered to sail for Virginia, where their numbers were to be raised by
+enlistment to seven hundred.[183] Major-General Braddock, a man after
+the Duke of Cumberland's own heart, was appointed to the chief command.
+The two regiments--the forty-fourth and the forty-eighth--embarked at
+Cork in the middle of January. The soldiers detested the service, and
+many had deserted. More would have done so had they foreseen what
+awaited them.
+
+[Footnote 182: Entick, _Late War_, I. 118.]
+
+[Footnote 183: _Robinson to Lords of the Admiralty, 30 Sept. 1754.
+Ibid., to Board of Ordnance, 10 Oct. 1754. Ibid., Circular Letter to
+American Governors, 26 Oct. 1754. Instructions to our Trusty and
+Well-beloved Edward Braddock, 25 Nov. 1754_.]
+
+This movement was no sooner known at Versailles than a counter
+expedition was prepared on a larger scale. Eighteen ships of war were
+fitted for sea at Brest and Rochefort, and the six battalions of La
+Reine, Bourgogne, Languedoc, Guienne, Artois, and Béarn, three thousand
+men in all, were ordered on board for Canada. Baron Dieskau, a German
+veteran who had served under Saxe, was made their general; and with him
+went the new governor of French America, the Marquis de Vaudreuil,
+destined to succeed Duquesne, whose health was failing under the
+fatigues of his office. Admiral Dubois de la Motte commanded the fleet;
+and lest the English should try to intercept it, another squadron of
+nine ships, under Admiral Macnamara, was ordered to accompany it to a
+certain distance from the coast. There was long and tedious delay.
+Doreil, commissary of war, who had embarked with Vaudreuil and Dieskau
+in the same ship, wrote from the harbor of Brest on the twenty-ninth of
+April: "At last I think we are off. We should have been outside by four
+o'clock this morning, if M. de Macnamara had not been obliged to ask
+Count Dubois de la Motte to wait till noon to mend some important part
+of the rigging (I don't know the name of it) which was broken. It is
+precious time lost, and gives the English the advantage over us of two
+tides. I talk of these things as a blind man does of colors. What is
+certain is that Count Dubois de la Motte is very impatient to get away,
+and that the King's fleet destined for Canada is in very able and
+zealous hands. It is now half-past two. In half an hour all may be
+ready, and we may get out of the harbor before night." He was again
+disappointed; it was the third of May before the fleet put to sea.[184]
+
+[Footnote 184: _Lettres de Cremille, de Rostaing, et de Doreil au
+Ministre, Avril 18, 24, 28, 29, 1755. Liste des Vaisseaux de Guerre qui
+composent l'Escadre armée à Brest, 1755. Journal of M. de Vaudreuil's
+Voyage to Canada_, in _N.Y. Col. Docs._, X. 297. Pouchot, I. 25.]
+
+During these preparations there was active diplomatic correspondence
+between the two Courts. Mirepoix demanded why British troops were sent
+to America. Sir Thomas Robinson answered that there was no intention to
+disturb the peace or offend any Power whatever; yet the secret orders to
+Braddock were the reverse of pacific. Robinson asked on his part the
+purpose of the French armament at Brest and Rochefort; and the answer,
+like his own, was a protestation that no hostility was meant. At the
+same time Mirepoix in the name of the King proposed that orders should
+be given to the American governors on both sides to refrain from all
+acts of aggression. But while making this proposal the French Court
+secretly sent orders to Duquesne to attack and destroy Fort Halifax, one
+of the two forts lately built by Shirley on the Kennebec,--a river
+which, by the admission of the French themselves, belonged to the
+English. But, in making this attack, the French Governor was expressly
+enjoined to pretend that he acted without orders.[185] He was also told
+that, if necessary, he might make use of the Indians to harass the
+English.[186] Thus there was good faith on neither part; but it is clear
+through all the correspondence that the English expected to gain by
+precipitating an open rupture, and the French by postponing it. Projects
+of convention were proposed on both sides, but there was no agreement.
+The English insisted as a preliminary condition that the French should
+evacuate all the western country as far as the Wabash. Then ensued a
+long discussion of their respective claims, as futile as the former
+discussion at Paris on Acadian boundaries.[187]
+
+[Footnote 185: _Machault à Duquesne, 17 Fév. 1755_. The letter of
+Mirepoix proposing mutual abstinence from aggression, is dated on the
+6th of the same month. The French dreaded Fort Halifax, because they
+thought it prepared the way for an advance on Quebec by way of the
+Chaudière.]
+
+[Footnote 186: _Ibid._]
+
+[Footnote 187: This correspondence is printed among the _Pièces
+justificatives_ of the _Précis des Faits_.]
+
+The British Court knew perfectly the naval and military preparations of
+the French. Lord Albemarle had died at Paris in December; but the
+secretary of the embassy, De Cosne, sent to London full information
+concerning the fleet at Brest and Rochefort.[188] On this, Admiral
+Boscawen, with eleven ships of the line and one frigate, was ordered to
+intercept it; and as his force was plainly too small, Admiral Melbourne,
+with seven more ships, was sent, nearly three weeks after, to join him
+if he could. Their orders were similar,--to capture or destroy any
+French vessels bound to North America.[189] Boscawen, who got to sea
+before La Motte, stationed himself near the southern coast of
+Newfoundland to cut him off; but most of the French squadron eluded him,
+and safely made their way, some to Louisbourg, and the others to Quebec.
+Thus the English expedition was, in the main, a failure. Three of the
+French ships, however, lost in fog and rain, had become separated from
+the rest, and lay rolling and tossing on an angry sea not far from Cape
+Race. One of them was the "Alcide," commanded by Captain Hocquart; the
+others were the "Lis" and the "Dauphin." The wind fell; but the fogs
+continued at intervals; till, on the afternoon of the seventh of June,
+the weather having cleared, the watchman on the maintop saw the distant
+ocean studded with ships. It was the fleet of Boscawen. Hocquart, who
+gives the account, says that in the morning they were within three
+leagues of him, crowding all sail in pursuit. Towards eleven o'clock one
+of them, the "Dunkirk," was abreast of him to windward, within short
+speaking distance; and the ship of the Admiral, displaying a red flag as
+a signal to engage, was not far off. Hocquart called out: "Are we at
+peace, or war?" He declares that Howe, captain of the "Dunkirk," replied
+in French: "La paix, la paix." Hocquart then asked the name of the
+British admiral; and on hearing it said: "I know him; he is a friend of
+mine." Being asked his own name in return, he had scarcely uttered it
+when the batteries of the "Dunkirk" belched flame and smoke, and
+volleyed a tempest of iron upon the crowded decks of the "Alcide." She
+returned the fire, but was forced at length to strike her colors.
+Rostaing, second in command of the troops, was killed; and six other
+officers, with about eighty men, were killed or wounded.[190] At the
+same time the "Lis" was attacked and overpowered. She had on board eight
+companies of the battalions of La Reine and Languedoc. The third French
+ship, the "Dauphin," escaped under cover of a rising fog.[191]
+
+[Footnote 188: Particulars in Entick, I. 121.]
+
+[Footnote 189: _Secret Instructions for our Trusty and Well-beloved
+Edward Boscawen, Esq., Vice-Admiral of the Blue, 16 April, 1755. Most
+secret Instructions for Francis Holbourne, Esq., Rear-Admiral of the
+Blue, 9 May, 1755. Robinson to Lords of the Admiralty, 8 May, 1755_.]
+
+[Footnote 190: _Liste des Officiers tués et blessés dans le Combat de
+l'Alcide et du Lis_.]
+
+[Footnote 191: Hocquart's account is given in full by Pichon, _Lettres
+et Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire du Cap-Breton_. The short account
+in _Précis des Faits_, 272, seems, too, to be drawn from Hocquart. Also
+_Boscawen to Robinson, 22 June, 1755. Vaudreuil au Ministre, 24 Juillet,
+1755_, Entick, I. 137.
+
+Some English accounts say that Captain Howe, in answer to the question,
+"Are we at peace, or war?" returned, "I don't know; but you had better
+prepare for war." Boscawen places the action on the 10th, instead of the
+8th, and puts the English loss at seven killed and twenty-seven
+wounded.]
+
+Here at last was an end to negotiation. The sword was drawn and
+brandished in the eyes of Europe.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 7
+
+1755
+
+Braddock
+
+
+"I have the pleasure to acquaint you that General Braddock came to my
+house last Sunday night," writes Dinwiddie, at the end of February, to
+Governor Dobbs of North Carolina. Braddock had landed at Hampton from
+the ship "Centurion," along with young Commodore Keppel, who commanded
+the American squadron. "I am mighty glad," again writes Dinwiddie, "that
+the General is arrived, which I hope will give me some ease; for these
+twelve months past I have been a perfect slave." He conceived golden
+opinions of his guest. "He is, I think, a very fine officer, and a
+sensible, considerate gentleman. He and I live in great harmony."
+
+Had he known him better, he might have praised him less. William
+Shirley, son of the Governor of Massachusetts, was Braddock's secretary;
+and after an acquaintance of some months wrote to his friend Governor
+Morris: "We have a general most judiciously chosen for being
+disqualified for the service he is employed in in almost every respect.
+He may be brave for aught I know, and he is honest in pecuniary
+matters."[192] The astute Franklin, who also had good opportunity of
+knowing him, says: "This general was, I think, a brave man, and might
+probably have made a good figure in some European war. But he had too
+much self-confidence; too high an opinion of the validity of regular
+troops; too mean a one of both Americans and Indians."[193] Horace
+Walpole, in his function of gathering and immortalizing the gossip of
+his time, has left a sharply drawn sketch of Braddock in two letters to
+Sir Horace Mann, written in the summer of this year: "I love to give you
+an idea of our characters as they rise upon the stage of history.
+Braddock is a very Iroquois in disposition. He had a sister who, having
+gamed away all her little fortune at Bath, hanged herself with a truly
+English deliberation, leaving only a note upon the table with those
+lines: 'To die is landing on some silent shore,' etc. When Braddock was
+told of it, he only said: 'Poor Fanny! I always thought she would play
+till she would be forced to _tuck herself up_.'" Under the name of Miss
+Sylvia S----, Goldsmith, in his life of Nash, tells the story of this
+unhappy woman. She was a rash but warm-hearted creature, reduced to
+penury and dependence, not so much by a passion for cards as by her
+lavish generosity to a lover ruined by his own follies, and with whom
+her relations are said to have been entirely innocent. Walpole
+continues: "But a more ridiculous story of Braddock, and which is
+recorded in heroics by Fielding in his _Covent Garden Tragedy,_ was an
+amorous discussion he had formerly with a Mrs. Upton, who kept him. He
+had gone the greatest lengths with her pin-money, and was still craving.
+One day, that he was very pressing, she pulled out her purse and showed
+him that she had but twelve or fourteen shillings left. He twitched it
+from her: 'Let me see that.' Tied up at the other end he found five
+guineas. He took them, tossed the empty purse in her face, saying: 'Did
+you mean to cheat me?' and never went near her more. Now you are
+acquainted with General Braddock."
+
+[Footnote 192: _Shirley the younger to Morris, 23 May, 1755_.]
+
+[Footnote 193: Franklin, _Autobiography_.]
+
+"He once had a duel with Colonel Gumley, Lady Bath's brother, who had
+been his great friend. As they were going to engage, Gumley, who had
+good-humor and wit (Braddock had the latter), said: 'Braddock, you are a
+poor dog! Here, take my purse; if you kill me, you will be forced to run
+away, and then you will not have a shilling to support you.' Braddock
+refused the purse, insisted on the duel, was disarmed, and would not
+even ask his life. However, with all his brutality, he has lately been
+governor of Gibraltar, where he made himself adored, and where scarce
+any governor was endured before."[194]
+
+[Footnote 194: _Letters of Horace Walpole_ (1866), II. 459, 461. It is
+doubtful if Braddock was ever governor of Gibraltar; though, as Mr.
+Sargent shows, he once commanded a regiment there.]
+
+Another story is told of him by an accomplished actress of the time,
+George Anne Bellamy, whom Braddock had known from girlhood, and with
+whom his present relations seem to have been those of an elderly adviser
+and friend. "As we were walking in the Park one day, we heard a poor
+fellow was to be chastised; when I requested the General to beg off the
+offender. Upon his application to the general officer, whose name was
+Dury, he asked Braddock how long since he had divested himself of the
+brutality and insolence of his manners? To which the other replied: 'You
+never knew me insolent to my inferiors. It is only to such rude men as
+yourself that I behave with the spirit which I think they deserve.'"
+
+Braddock made a visit to the actress on the evening before he left
+London for America. "Before we parted," she says, "the General told me
+that he should never see me more; for he was going with a handful of men
+to conquer whole nations; and to do this they must cut their way through
+unknown woods. He produced a map of the country, saying at the same
+time: 'Dear Pop, we are sent like sacrifices to the altar,'"[195]--a
+strange presentiment for a man of his sturdy temper.
+
+[Footnote 195: _Apology for the Life of George Anne Bellamy, written by
+herself_, II. 204 (London, 1786).]
+
+Whatever were his failings, he feared nothing, and his fidelity and
+honor in the discharge of public trusts were never questioned.
+"Desperate in his fortune, brutal in his behavior, obstinate in his
+sentiments," again writes Walpole, "he was still intrepid and
+capable."[196] He was a veteran in years and in service, having entered
+the Coldstream Guards as ensign in 1710.
+
+[Footnote 196: Walpole, _George II._, I. 390.]
+
+The transports bringing the two regiments from Ireland all arrived
+safely at Hampton, and were ordered to proceed up the Potomac to
+Alexandria, where a camp was to be formed. Thither, towards the end of
+March, went Braddock himself, along with Keppel and Dinwiddie, in the
+Governor's coach; while his aide-de-camp, Orme, his secretary, Shirley,
+and the servants of the party followed on horseback. Braddock had sent
+for the elder Shirley and other provincial governors to meet him in
+council; and on the fourteenth of April they assembled in a tent of the
+newly formed encampment. Here was Dinwiddie, who thought his troubles at
+an end, and saw in the red-coated soldiery the near fruition of his
+hopes. Here, too, was his friend and ally, Dobbs of North Carolina; with
+Morris of Pennsylvania, fresh from Assembly quarrels; Sharpe of
+Maryland, who, having once been a soldier, had been made a sort of
+provisional commander-in-chief before the arrival of Braddock; and the
+ambitious Delancey of New York, who had lately led the opposition
+against the Governor of that province, and now filled the office
+himself,--a position that needed all his manifold adroitness. But, next
+to Braddock, the most noteworthy man present was Shirley, governor of
+Massachusetts. There was a fountain of youth in this old lawyer. A few
+years before, when he was boundary commissioner in Paris, he had had the
+indiscretion to marry a young Catholic French girl, the daughter of his
+landlord; and now, when more than sixty years old, he thirsted for
+military honors, and delighted in contriving operations of war. He was
+one of a very few in the colonies who at this time entertained the idea
+of expelling the French from the continent. He held that Carthage must
+be destroyed; and, in spite of his Parisian marriage, was the foremost
+advocate of the root-and-branch policy. He and Lawrence, governor of
+Nova Scotia, had concerted an attack on the French fort of Beauséjour;
+and, jointly with others in New England, he had planned the capture of
+Crown Point, the key of Lake Champlain. By these two strokes and by
+fortifying the portage between the Kennebec and the Chaudière, he
+thought that the northern colonies would be saved from invasion, and
+placed in a position to become themselves invaders. Then, by driving the
+enemy from Niagara, securing that important pass, and thus cutting off
+the communication between Canada and her interior dependencies, all the
+French posts in the West would die of inanition.[197] In order to
+commend these schemes to the Home Government, he had painted in gloomy
+colors the dangers that beset the British colonies. Our Indians, he
+said, will all desert us if we submit to French encroachment. Some of
+the provinces are full of negro slaves, ready to rise against their
+masters, and of Roman Catholics, Jacobites, indented servants, and other
+dangerous persons, who would aid the French in raising a servile
+insurrection. Pennsylvania is in the hands of Quakers, who will not
+fight, and of Germans, who are likely enough to join the enemy. The
+Dutch of Albany would do anything to save their trade. A strong force of
+French regulars might occupy that place without resistance, then descend
+the Hudson, and, with the help of a naval force, capture New York and
+cut the British colonies asunder.[198]
+
+[Footnote 197: _Correspondence of Shirley, 1754, 1755_.]
+
+[Footnote 198: _Shirley to Robinson, 24 Jan. 1755_.]
+
+The plans against Crown Point and Beauséjour had already found the
+approval of the Home Government and the energetic support of all the New
+England colonies. Preparation for them was in full activity; and it was
+with great difficulty that Shirley had disengaged himself from these
+cares to attend the council at Alexandria. He and Dinwiddie stood in the
+front of opposition to French designs. As they both defended the royal
+prerogative and were strong advocates of taxation by Parliament, they
+have found scant justice from American writers. Yet the British colonies
+owed them a debt of gratitude, and the American States owe it still.
+
+Braddock, laid his instructions before the Council, and Shirley found
+them entirely to his mind; while the General, on his part, fully
+approved the schemes of the Governor. The plan of the campaign was
+settled. The French were to be attacked at four points at once. The two
+British regiments lately arrived were to advance on Fort Duquesne; two
+new regiments, known as Shirley's and Pepperell's, just raised in the
+provinces, and taken into the King's pay, were to reduce Niagara; a body
+of provincials from New England, New York, and New Jersey was to seize
+Crown Point; and another body of New England men to capture Beauséjour
+and bring Acadia to complete subjection. Braddock himself was to lead
+the expedition against Fort Duquesne. He asked Shirley, who, though a
+soldier only in theory, had held the rank of colonel since the last war,
+to charge himself with that against Niagara; and Shirley eagerly
+assented. The movement on Crown Point was intrusted to Colonel William
+Johnson, by reason of his influence over the Indians and his reputation
+for energy, capacity, and faithfulness. Lastly, the Acadian enterprise
+was assigned to Lieutenant-Colonel Monckton, a regular officer of merit.
+
+To strike this fourfold blow in time of peace was a scheme worthy of
+Newcastle and of Cumberland. The pretext was that the positions to be
+attacked were all on British soil; that in occupying them the French had
+been guilty of invasion; and that to expel the invaders would be an act
+of self-defence. Yet in regard to two of these positions, the French, if
+they had no other right, might at least claim one of prescription. Crown
+Point had been twenty-four years in their undisturbed possession, while
+it was three quarters of a century since they first occupied Niagara;
+and, though New York claimed the ground, no serious attempt had been
+made to dislodge them.
+
+Other matters now engaged the Council. Braddock, in accordance with his
+instructions, asked the governors to urge upon their several assemblies
+the establishment of a general fund for the service of the campaign; but
+the governors were all of opinion that the assemblies would
+refuse,--each being resolved to keep the control of its money in its own
+hands; and all present, with one voice, advised that the colonies should
+be compelled by Act of Parliament to contribute in due proportion to the
+support of the war. Braddock next asked if, in the judgment of the
+Council, it would not be well to send Colonel Johnson with full powers
+to treat with the Five Nations, who had been driven to the verge of an
+outbreak by the misconduct of the Dutch Indian commissioners at Albany.
+The measure was cordially approved, as was also another suggestion of
+the General, that vessels should be built at Oswego to command Lake
+Ontario. The Council then dissolved.
+
+Shirley hastened back to New England, burdened with the preparation for
+three expeditions and the command of one of them. Johnson, who had been
+in the camp, though not in the Council, went back to Albany, provided
+with a commission as sole superintendent of Indian affairs, and charged,
+besides, with the enterprise against Crown Point; while an express was
+despatched to Monckton at Halifax, with orders to set at once to his
+work of capturing Beauséjour.[199]
+
+[Footnote 199: _Minutes of a Council held at the Camp at Alexandria, in
+Virginia, April 14, 1755. Instructions to Major-General Braddock, 25
+Nov. 1754. Secret Instructions to Major-General Braddock, same date.
+Napier to Braddock, written by Order of the Duke of Cumberland, 25 Nov.
+1754,_ in _Précis des Faits, Pièces justificatives,_ 168. Orme,
+_Journal of Braddock's Expedition. Instructions to Governor Shirley.
+Correspondence of Shirley. Correspondence of Braddock_ (Public Record
+Office). _Johnson Papers. Dinwiddie Papers. Pennsylvania Archives_, II.]
+
+In regard to Braddock's part of the campaign, there had been a serious
+error. If, instead of landing in Virginia and moving on Fort Duquesne
+by the long and circuitous route of Wills Creek, the two regiments had
+disembarked at Philadelphia and marched westward, the way would have
+been shortened, and would have lain through one of the richest and most
+populous districts on the continent, filled with supplies of every kind.
+In Virginia, on the other hand, and in the adjoining province of
+Maryland, wagons, horses, and forage were scarce. The enemies of the
+Administration ascribed this blunder to the influence of the Quaker
+merchant, John Hanbury, whom the Duke of Newcastle had consulted as a
+person familiar with American affairs. Hanbury, who was a prominent
+stockholder in the Ohio Company, and who traded largely in Virginia, saw
+it for his interest that the troops should pass that way; and is said to
+have brought the Duke to this opinion.[200] A writer of the time thinks
+that if they had landed in Pennsylvania, forty thousand pounds would
+have been saved in money, and six weeks in time.[201]
+
+[Footnote 200: _Shebbeare's Tracts_, Letter I. Dr. Shebbeare was a
+political pamphleteer, pilloried by one ministry, and rewarded by the
+next. He certainly speaks of Hanbury, though he does not give his name.
+Compare Sargent, 107, 162.]
+
+[Footnote 201: _Gentleman's Magazine, Aug_. 1755.]
+
+Not only were supplies scarce, but the people showed such unwillingness
+to furnish them, and such apathy in aiding the expedition, that even
+Washington was provoked to declare that "they ought to be
+chastised."[202] Many of them thought that the alarm about French
+encroachment was a device of designing politicians; and they did not
+awake to a full consciousness of the peril till it was forced upon them
+by a deluge of calamities, produced by the purblind folly of their own
+representatives, who, instead of frankly promoting the expedition,
+displayed a perverse and exasperating narrowness which chafed Braddock
+to fury. He praises the New England colonies, and echoes Dinwiddie's
+declaration that they have shown a "fine martial spirit," and he
+commends Virginia as having done far better than her neighbors; but for
+Pennsylvania he finds no words to express his wrath.[203] He knew
+nothing of the intestine war between proprietaries and people, and hence
+could see no palliation for a conduct which threatened to ruin both the
+expedition and the colony. Everything depended on speed, and speed was
+impossible; for stores and provisions were not ready, though notice to
+furnish them had been given months before. The quartermaster-general,
+Sir John Sinclair, "stormed like a lion rampant," but with small
+effect.[204] Contracts broken or disavowed, want of horses, want of
+wagons, want of forage, want of wholesome food, or sufficient food of
+any kind, caused such delay that the report of it reached England, and
+drew from Walpole the comment that Braddock was in no hurry to be
+scalped. In reality he was maddened with impatience and vexation.
+
+[Footnote 202: _Writings of Washington_, II. 78. He speaks of the people
+of Pennsylvania.]
+
+[Footnote 203: _Braddock to Robinson, 18 March, 19 April, 5 June, 1755_,
+etc. On the attitude of Pennsylvania, _Colonial Records of Pa_., VI.,
+_passim_.]
+
+[Footnote 204: _Colonial Records of Pa_., VI. 368.]
+
+A powerful ally presently came to his aid in the shape of Benjamin
+Franklin, then postmaster-general of Pennsylvania. That sagacious
+personage,--the sublime of common-sense, about equal in his instincts
+and motives of character to the respectable average of the New England
+that produced him, but gifted with a versatile power of brain rarely
+matched on earth,--was then divided between his strong desire to repel a
+danger of which he saw the imminence, and his equally strong antagonism
+to the selfish claims of the Penns, proprietaries of Pennsylvania. This
+last motive had determined his attitude towards their representative,
+the Governor, and led him into an opposition as injurious to the
+military good name of the province as it was favorable to its political
+longings. In the present case there was no such conflict of
+inclinations; he could help Braddock without hurting Pennsylvania. He
+and his son had visited the camp, and found the General waiting
+restlessly for the report of the agents whom he had sent to collect
+wagons. "I stayed with him," says Franklin, "several days, and dined
+with him daily. When I was about to depart, the returns of wagons to be
+obtained were brought in, by which it appeared that they amounted only
+to twenty-five, and not all of these were in serviceable condition." On
+this the General and his officers declared that the expedition was at an
+end, and denounced the Ministry for sending them into a country void of
+the means of transportation. Franklin remarked that it was a pity they
+had not landed in Pennsylvania, where almost every farmer had his wagon.
+Braddock caught eagerly at his words, and begged that he would use his
+influence to enable the troops to move. Franklin went back to
+Pennsylvania, issued an address to the farmers appealing to their
+interest and their fears, and in a fortnight procured a hundred and
+fifty wagons, with a large number of horses.[205] Braddock, grateful to
+his benefactor, and enraged at everybody else, pronounced him "Almost
+the only instance of ability and honesty I have known in these
+provinces."[206] More wagons and more horses gradually arrived, and at
+the eleventh hour the march began.
+
+[Footnote 205: Franklin, _Autobiography. Advertisement of B. Franklin
+for Wagons; Address to the Inhabitants of the Counties of York,
+Lancaster, and Cumberland, Pennsylvania Archives,_II.294]
+
+[Footnote 206: _Braddock to Robinson,5 June_,1755. The letters of
+Braddock here cited are the originals in the Public Record Office]
+
+On the tenth of May Braddock reached Wills Creek, where the whole force
+was now gathered, having marched thither by detachments along the banks
+of the Potomac. This old trading-station of the Ohio Company had been
+transformed into a military post and named Fort Cumberland. During the
+past winter the independent companies which had failed Washington in his
+need had been at work here to prepare a base of operations for Braddock.
+Their axes had been of more avail than their muskets. A broad wound had
+been cut in the bosom of the forest, and the murdered oaks and chestnuts
+turned into ramparts, barracks, and magazines. Fort Cumberland was an
+enclosure of logs set upright in the ground, pierced with loopholes, and
+armed with ten small cannon. It stood on a rising ground near the point
+where Wills Creek joined the Potomac, and the forest girded it like a
+mighty hedge, or rather like a paling of gaunt brown stems upholding a
+canopy of green. All around spread illimitable woods, wrapping hill,
+valley, and mountain. The spot was an oasis in a desert of leaves,--if
+the name oasis can be given to anything so rude and harsh. In this
+rugged area, or "clearing," all Braddock's force was now assembled,
+amounting, regulars, provincials, and sailors, to about twenty-two
+hundred men. The two regiments, Halket's and Dunbar's, had been
+completed by enlistment in Virginia to seven hundred men each. Of
+Virginians there were nine companies of fifty men, who found no favor in
+the eyes of Braddock or his officers. To Ensign Allen of Halket's
+regiment was assigned the duty of "making them as much like soldiers as
+possible."[207]--that is, of drilling them like regulars. The General
+had little hope of them, and informed Sir Thomas Robinson that "their
+slothful and languid disposition renders them very unfit for military
+service,"--a point on which he lived to change his mind. Thirty sailors,
+whom Commodore Keppel had lent him, were more to his liking, and were in
+fact of value in many ways. He had now about six hundred baggage-horses,
+besides those of the artillery, all weakening daily on their diet of
+leaves; for no grass was to be found. There was great show of
+discipline, and little real order. Braddock's executive capacity seems
+to have been moderate, and his dogged, imperious temper, rasped by
+disappointments, was in constant irritation. "He looks upon the country,
+I believe," writes Washington, "as void of honor or honesty. We have
+frequent disputes on this head, which are maintained with warmth on both
+sides, especially on his, as he is incapable of arguing without it, or
+giving up any point he asserts, be it ever so incompatible with reason
+or common sense."[208] Braddock's secretary, the younger Shirley,
+writing to his friend Governor Morris, spoke thus irreverently of his
+chief: "As the King said of a neighboring governor of yours [_Sharpe_],
+when proposed for the command of the American forces about a twelvemonth
+ago, and recommended as a very honest man, though not remarkably able,
+'a little more ability and a little less honesty upon the present
+occasion might serve our turn better.' It is a joke to suppose that
+secondary officers can make amends for the defects of the first; the
+mainspring must be the mover. As to the others, I don't think we have
+much to boast; some are insolent and ignorant, others capable, but
+rather aiming at showing their own abilities than making a proper use of
+them. I have a very great love for my friend Orme, and think it
+uncommonly fortunate for our leader that he is under the influence of so
+honest and capable a man; but I wish for the sake of the public he had
+some more experience of business, particularly in America. I am greatly
+disgusted at seeing an expedition (as it is called), so ill-concerted
+originally in England, so improperly conducted since in America."[209]
+
+[Footnote 207: Orme, _Journal_.]
+
+[Footnote 208: _Writings of Washington_, II. 77.]
+
+[Footnote 209: _Shirley the younger to Morris, 23 May, 1755_, in
+_Colonial Records of Pa._, VI. 404.]
+
+Captain Robert Orme, of whom Shirley speaks, was aide-de-camp to
+Braddock, and author of a copious and excellent Journal of the
+expedition, now in the British Museum.[210] His portrait, painted at
+full length by Sir Joshua Reynolds, hangs in the National Gallery at
+London. He stands by his horse, a gallant young figure, with a face
+pale, yet rather handsome, booted to the knee, his scarlet coat, ample
+waistcoat, and small three-cornered hat all heavy with gold lace. The
+General had two other aides-de-camp, Captain Roger Morris and Colonel
+George Washington, whom he had invited, in terms that do him honor, to
+become one of his military family.
+
+[Footnote 210: Printed by Sargent, in his excellent monograph of
+Braddock's Expedition.]
+
+It has been said that Braddock despised not only provincials, but
+Indians. Nevertheless he took some pains to secure their aid, and
+complained that Indian affairs had been so ill conducted by the
+provinces that it was hard to gain their confidence. This was true; the
+tribes had been alienated by gross neglect. Had they been protected from
+injustice and soothed by attentions and presents, the Five Nations,
+Delawares, and Shawanoes would have been retained as friends. But their
+complaints had been slighted, and every gift begrudged. The trader
+Croghan brought, however, about fifty warriors, with as many women and
+children, to the camp at Fort Cumberland. They were objects of great
+curiosity to the soldiers, who gazed with astonishment on their faces,
+painted red, yellow, and black, their ears slit and hung with pendants,
+and their heads close shaved, except the feathered scalp-lock at the
+crown. "In the day," says an officer, "they are in our camp, and in the
+night they go into their own, where they dance and make a most horrible
+noise." Braddock received them several times in his tent, ordered the
+guard to salute them, made them speeches, caused cannon to be fired and
+drums and fifes to play in their honor, regaled them with rum, and gave
+them a bullock for a feast; whereupon, being much pleased, they danced a
+war-dance, described by one spectator as "droll and odd, showing how
+they scalp and fight;" after which, says another, "they set up the most
+horrid song or cry that ever I heard."[211] These warriors, with a few
+others, promised the General to join him on the march; but he apparently
+grew tired of them, for a famous chief, called Scarroyaddy, afterwards
+complained: "He looked upon us as dogs, and would never hear anything
+that we said to him." Only eight of them remained with him to the
+end.[212]
+
+[Footnote 211: _Journal of a Naval Officer_, in Sargent. _The Expedition
+of Major-General Braddock, being Extracts of Letters from an Officer_
+(London, 1755).]
+
+[Footnote 212: _Statement of George Croghan_, in Sargent, appendix iii.]
+
+Another ally appeared at the camp. This was a personage long known in
+Western fireside story as Captain Jack, the Black Hunter, or the Black
+Rifle. It was said of him that, having been a settler on the farthest
+frontier, in the Valley of the Juniata, he returned one evening to his
+cabin and found it burned to the ground by Indians, and the bodies of
+his wife and children lying among the ruins. He vowed undying vengeance,
+raised a band of kindred spirits, dressed and painted like Indians, and
+became the scourge of the red man and the champion of the white. But he
+and his wild crew, useful as they might have been, shocked Braddock's
+sense of military fitness; and he received them so coldly that they left
+him.[213]
+
+[Footnote 213: See several traditional accounts and contemporary letters
+in _Hazard's Pennsylvania Register_, IV. 389, 390, 416; V. 191.]
+
+It was the tenth of June before the army was well on its march. Three
+hundred axemen led the way, to cut and clear the road; and the long
+train of packhorses, wagons, and cannon toiled on behind, over the
+stumps, roots, and stones of the narrow track, the regulars and
+provincials marching in the forest close on either side. Squads of men
+were thrown out on the flanks, and scouts ranged the woods to guard
+against surprise; for, with all his scorn of Indians and Canadians,
+Braddock did not neglect reasonable precautions. Thus, foot by foot,
+they advanced into the waste of lonely mountains that divided the
+streams flowing to the Atlantic from those flowing to the Gulf of
+Mexico,--a realm of forests ancient as the world. The road was but
+twelve feet wide, and the line of march often extended four miles. It
+was like a thin, long party-colored snake, red, blue, and brown,
+trailing slowly through the depth of leaves, creeping round inaccessible
+heights, crawling over ridges, moving always in dampness and shadow, by
+rivulets and waterfalls, crags and chasms, gorges and shaggy steps. In
+glimpses only, through jagged boughs and flickering leaves, did this
+wild primeval world reveal itself, with its dark green mountains,
+flecked with the morning mist, and its distant summits pencilled in
+dreamy blue. The army passed the main Alleghany, Meadow Mountain, and
+Great Savage Mountain, and traversed the funereal pine-forest afterwards
+called the Shades of Death. No attempt was made to interrupt their
+march, though the commandant of Fort Duquesne had sent out parties for
+that purpose. A few French and Indians hovered about them, now and then
+scalping a straggler or inscribing filthy insults on trees; while others
+fell upon the border settlements which the advance of the troops had
+left defenceless. Here they were more successful, butchering about
+thirty persons, chiefly women and children.
+
+It was the eighteenth of June before the army reached a place called the
+Little Meadows, less than thirty miles from Fort Cumberland. Fever and
+dysentery among the men, and the weakness and worthlessness of many of
+the horses, joined to the extreme difficulty of the road, so retarded
+them that they could move scarcely more than three miles a day. Braddock
+consulted with Washington, who advised him to leave the heavy baggage
+to follow as it could, and push forward with a body of chosen troops.
+This counsel was given in view of a report that five hundred regulars
+were on the way to reinforce Fort Duquesne. It was adopted. Colonel
+Dunbar was left to command the rear division, whose powers of movement
+were now reduced to the lowest point. The advance corps, consisting of
+about twelve hundred soldiers, besides officers and drivers, began its
+march on the nineteenth with such artillery as was thought
+indispensable, thirty wagons, and a large number of packhorses. "The
+prospect," writes Washington to his brother, "conveyed infinite delight
+to my mind, though I was excessively ill at the time. But this prospect
+was soon clouded, and my hopes brought very low indeed when I found
+that, instead of pushing on with vigor without regarding a little rough
+road, they were halting to level every mole-hill, and to erect bridges
+over every brook, by which means we were four days in getting twelve
+miles." It was not till the seventh of July that they neared the mouth
+of Turtle Creek, a stream entering the Monongahela about eight miles
+from the French fort. The way was direct and short, but would lead them
+through a difficult country and a defile so perilous that Braddock
+resolved to ford the Monongahela to avoid this danger, and then ford it
+again to reach his destination.
+
+Fort Duquesne stood on the point of land where the Alleghany and the
+Monongahela join to form the Ohio, and where now stands Pittsburg, with
+its swarming population, its restless industries, the clang of its
+forges, and its chimneys vomiting foul smoke into the face of heaven. At
+that early day a white flag fluttering over a cluster of palisades and
+embankments betokened the first intrusion of civilized men upon a scene
+which, a few months before, breathed the repose of a virgin wilderness,
+voiceless but for the lapping of waves upon the pebbles, or the note of
+some lonely bird. But now the sleep of ages was broken, and bugle and
+drum told the astonished forest that its doom was pronounced and its
+days numbered. The fort was a compact little work, solidly built and
+strong, compared with others on the continent. It was a square of four
+bastions, with the water close on two sides, and the other two protected
+by ravelins, ditch, glacis, and covered way. The ramparts on these sides
+were of squared logs, filled in with earth, and ten feet or more thick.
+The two water sides were enclosed by a massive stockade of upright logs,
+twelve feet high, mortised together and loopholed. The armament
+consisted of a number of small cannon mounted on the bastions. A gate
+and drawbridge on the east side gave access to the area within, which
+was surrounded by barracks for the soldiers, officers' quarters, the
+lodgings of the commandant, a guardhouse, and a storehouse, all built
+partly of logs and partly of boards. There were no casemates, and the
+place was commanded by a high woody hill beyond the Monongahela. The
+forest had been cleared away to the distance of more than a musket shot
+from the ramparts, and the stumps were hacked level with the ground.
+Here, just outside the ditch, bark cabins had been built for such of the
+troops and Canadians as could not find room within; and the rest of the
+open space was covered with Indian corn and other crops.[214]
+
+[Footnote 214: _M'Kinney's Description of Fort Duquesne, 1756_, in
+_Hazard's Pennsylvania Register_, VIII. 318. _Letters of Robert Stobo,
+Hostage at Fort Duquesne, 1754_, in _Colonial Records of Pa._ VI. 141,
+161. Stobo's _Plan of Fort Duquesne, 1754. Journal of Thomas Forbes,
+1755. Letter of Captain Haslet, 1758_, in _Olden Time_, I. 184. _Plan of
+Fort Duquesne_ in Public Record Office.]
+
+The garrison consisted of a few companies of the regular troops
+stationed permanently in the colony, and to these were added a
+considerable number of Canadians. Contrecoeur still held the
+command.[215] Under him were three other captains, Beaujeu, Dumas, and
+Ligneris. Besides the troops and Canadians, eight hundred Indian
+warriors, mustered from far and near, had built their wigwams and
+camp-sheds on the open ground, or under the edge of the neighboring
+woods,--very little to the advantage of the young corn. Some were
+baptized savages settled in Canada,--Caughnawagas from Saut St. Louis,
+Abenakis from St. Francis, and Hurons from Lorette, whose chief bore the
+name of Anastase, in honor of that Father of the Church. The rest were
+unmitigated heathen,--Pottawattamies and Ojibwas from the northern lakes
+under Charles Langlade, the same bold partisan who had led them, three
+years before, to attack the Miamis at Pickawillany; Shawanoes and
+Mingoes from the Ohio; and Ottawas from Detroit, commanded, it is said,
+by that most redoubtable of savages, Pontiac. The law of the survival of
+the fittest had wrought on this heterogeneous crew through countless
+generations; and with the primitive Indian, the fittest was the
+hardiest, fiercest, most adroit, and most wily. Baptized and heathen
+alike they had just enjoyed a diversion greatly to their taste. A young
+Pennsylvanian named James Smith, a spirited and intelligent boy of
+eighteen, had been waylaid by three Indians on the western borders of
+the province and led captive to the fort. When the party came to the
+edge of the clearing, his captors, who had shot and scalped his
+companion, raised the scalp-yell; whereupon a din of responsive whoops
+and firing of guns rose from all the Indian camps, and their inmates
+swarmed out like bees, while the French in the fort shot off muskets and
+cannon to honor the occasion. The unfortunate boy, the object of this
+obstreperous rejoicing, presently saw a multitude of savages, naked,
+hideously bedaubed with red, blue, black, and brown, and armed with
+sticks or clubs, ranging themselves in two long parallel lines, between
+which he was told that he must run, the faster the better, as they would
+beat him all the way. He ran with his best speed, under a shower of
+blows, and had nearly reached the end of the course, when he was knocked
+down. He tried to rise, but was blinded by a handful of sand thrown into
+his face; and then they beat him till he swooned. On coming to his
+senses he found himself in the fort, with the surgeon opening a vein in
+his arm and a crowd of French and Indians looking on. In a few days he
+was able to walk with the help of a stick; and, coming out from his
+quarters one morning, he saw a memorable scene.[216]
+
+[Footnote 215: See Appendix D.]
+
+[Footnote 216: _Account of Remarkable Occurrences in the Life of Colonel
+James Smith, written by himself_. Perhaps the best of all the numerous
+narratives of captives among the Indians.]
+
+Three days before, an Indian had brought the report that the English
+were approaching; and the Chevalier de la Perade was sent out to
+reconnoitre.[217] He returned on the next day, the seventh, with news
+that they were not far distant. On the eighth the brothers Normanville
+went out, and found that they were within six leagues of the fort. The
+French were in great excitement and alarm; but Contrecoeur at length
+took a resolution, which seems to have been inspired by Beaujeu.[218] It
+was determined to meet the enemy on the march, and ambuscade them if
+possible at the crossing of the Monongahela, or some other favorable
+spot. Beaujeu proposed the plan to the Indians, and offered them the
+war-hatchet; but they would not take it. "Do you want to die, my father,
+and sacrifice us besides?" That night they held a council, and in the
+morning again refused to go. Beaujeu did not despair. "I am determined,"
+he exclaimed, "to meet the English. What! will you let your father go
+alone?"[219] The greater part caught fire at his words, promised to
+follow him and put on their war-paint. Beaujeu received the communion,
+then dressed himself like a savage, and joined the clamorous throng.
+Open barrels of gunpowder and bullets were set before the gate of the
+fort, and James Smith, painfully climbing the rampart with the help of
+his stick, looked down on the warrior rabble as, huddling together, wild
+with excitement, they scooped up the contents to fill their powder-horns
+and pouches. Then, band after band, they filed off along the forest
+track that led to the ford of the Monongahela. They numbered six hundred
+and thirty-seven; and with them went thirty-six French officers and
+cadets, seventy-two regular soldiers, and a hundred and forty-six
+Canadians, or about nine hundred in all.[220] At eight o'clock the
+tumult was over. The broad clearing lay lonely and still, and
+Contrecoeur, with what was left of his garrison, waited in suspense for
+the issue.
+
+[Footnote 217: _Relation de Godefroy_, in Shea, _Bataille du
+Malangueulé_ (Monongahela).]
+
+[Footnote 218: Dumas, however, declares that Beaujeu adopted the plan at
+his suggestion. _Dumas au Ministre, 24 Juillet, 1756_.]
+
+[Footnote 219: _Relation depuis le Départ des Trouppes de Québec
+jusqu'au 30 du Mois de Septembre, 1755_.]
+
+[Footnote 220: _Liste des Officiers, Cadets, Soldats, Miliciens, et
+Sauvages qui composaient le Détachement qui a été au devant d'un Corps
+de 2,000 Anglois à 3 Lieues du Fort Duquesne, le 9 Juillet, 1755; joint
+à la Lettre de M. Bigot du 6 Août, 1755_.]
+
+It was near one o'clock when Braddock crossed the Monongahela for the
+second time. If the French made a stand anywhere, it would be, he
+thought, at the fording-place; but Lieutenant-Colonel Gage, whom he sent
+across with a strong advance-party, found no enemy, and quietly took
+possession of the farther shore. Then the main body followed. To impose
+on the imagination of the French scouts, who were doubtless on the
+watch, the movement was made with studied regularity and order. The sun
+was cloudless, and the men were inspirited by the prospect of near
+triumph. Washington afterwards spoke with admiration of the
+spectacle.[221] The music, the banners, the mounted officers, the troop
+of light cavalry, the naval detachment, the red-coated regulars, the
+blue-coated Virginians, the wagons and tumbrils, cannon, howitzers, and
+coehorns, the train of packhorses, and the droves of cattle, passed in
+long procession through the rippling shallows, and slowly entered the
+bordering forest. Here, when all were over, a short halt was ordered for
+rest and refreshment.
+
+[Footnote 221: Compare the account of another eye-witness, Dr. Walker,
+in _Hazard's Pennsylvania Register_, VI. 104.]
+
+Why had not Beaujeu defended the ford? This was his intention in the
+morning; but he had been met by obstacles, the nature of which is not
+wholly clear. His Indians, it seems, had proved refractory. Three
+hundred of them left him, went off in another direction, and did not
+rejoin him till the English had crossed the river.[222] Hence perhaps it
+was that, having left Fort Duquesne at eight o'clock, he spent half the
+day in marching seven miles, and was more than a mile from the
+fording-place when the British reached the eastern shore. The delay,
+from whatever cause arising, cost him the opportunity of laying an
+ambush either at the ford or in the gullies and ravines that channelled
+the forest through which Braddock was now on the point of marching.
+
+[Footnote 222: _Relation de Godefroy_, in Shea, _Bataille du
+Malangueulé_.]
+
+Not far from the bank of the river, and close by the British line of
+march, there was a clearing and a deserted house that had once belonged
+to the trader Fraser. Washington remembered it well. It was here that he
+found rest and shelter on the winter journey homeward from his mission
+to Fort Le Boeuf. He was in no less need of rest at this moment; for
+recent fever had so weakened him that he could hardly sit his horse.
+From Fraser's house to Fort Duquesne the distance was eight miles by a
+rough path, along which the troops were now beginning to move after
+their halt. It ran inland for a little; then curved to the left, and
+followed a course parallel to the river along the base of a line of
+steep hills that here bordered the valley. These and all the country
+were buried in dense and heavy forest, choked with bushes and the
+carcases of fallen trees. Braddock has been charged with marching
+blindly into an ambuscade; but it was not so. There was no ambuscade;
+and had there been one, he would have found it. It is true that he did
+not reconnoitre the woods very far in advance of the head of the column;
+yet, with this exception, he made elaborate dispositions to prevent
+surprise. Several guides, with six Virginian light horsemen, led the
+way. Then, a musket-shot behind, came the vanguard; then three hundred
+soldiers under Gage; then a large body of axemen, under Sir John
+Sinclair, to open the road; then two cannon with tumbrils and
+tool-wagons; and lastly the rear-guard, closing the line, while
+flanking-parties ranged the woods on both sides. This was the
+advance-column. The main body followed with little or no interval. The
+artillery and wagons moved along the road, and the troops filed through
+the woods close on either hand. Numerous flanking-parties were thrown
+out a hundred yards and more to right and left; while, in the space
+between them and the marching column, the pack horses and cattle, with
+their drivers, made their way painfully among the trees and thickets;
+since, had they been allowed to follow the road, the line of march would
+have been too long for mutual support. A body of regulars and
+provincials brought up the rear.
+
+Gage, with his advance-column, had just passed a wide and bushy ravine
+that crossed their path, and the van of the main column was on the point
+of entering it, when the guides and light horsemen in the front suddenly
+fell back; and the engineer, Gordon, then engaged in marking out the
+road, saw a man, dressed like an Indian, but wearing the gorget of an
+officer, bounding forward along the path.[223] He stopped when he
+discovered the head of the column, turned, and waved his hat. The forest
+behind was swarming with French and savages. At the signal of the
+officer, who was probably Beaujeu, they yelled the war-whoop, spread
+themselves to right and left, and opened a sharp fire under cover of the
+trees. Gage's column wheeled deliberately into line, and fired several
+volleys with great steadiness against the now invisible assailants. Few
+of them were hurt; the trees caught the shot, but the noise was
+deafening under the dense arches of the forest. The greater part of the
+Canadians, to borrow the words of Dumas, "fled shamefully, crying 'Sauve
+qui peut!'"[224] Volley followed volley, and at the third Beaujeu
+dropped dead. Gage's two cannon were now brought to bear, on which the
+Indians, like the Canadians, gave way in confusion, but did not, like
+them, abandon the field. The close scarlet ranks of the English were
+plainly to be seen through the trees and the smoke; they were moving
+forward, cheering lustily, and shouting "God save the King." Dumas, now
+chief in command, thought that all was lost. "I advanced," he says,
+"with the assurance that comes from despair, exciting by voice and
+gesture the few soldiers that remained. The fire of my platoon was so
+sharp that the enemy seemed astonished." The Indians, encouraged, began
+to rally. The French officers who commanded them showed admirable
+courage and address; and while Dumas and Ligneris, with the regulars and
+what was left of the Canadians, held the ground in front, the savage
+warriors, screeching their war-cries, swarmed through the forest along
+both flanks of the English, hid behind trees, bushes, and fallen trunks,
+or crouched in gullies and ravines, and opened a deadly fire on the
+helpless soldiery, who, themselves completely visible, could see no
+enemy, and wasted volley after volley on the impassive trees. The most
+destructive fire came from a hill on the English right, where the
+Indians lay in multitudes, firing from their lurking-places on the
+living target below. But the invisible death was everywhere, in front,
+flank, and rear. The British cheer was heard no more. The troops broke
+their ranks and huddled together in a bewildered mass, shrinking from
+the bullets that cut them down by scores.
+
+[Footnote 223: _Journal of the Proceeding of the Detachment of Seamen_,
+in Sargent.]
+
+[Footnote 224: _Dumas au Ministre, 24 Juillet, 1756. Contrecoeur à
+Vaudreuil, 14 Juillet, 1755_. See Appendix D, where extracts are given.]
+
+When Braddock heard the firing in the front, he pushed forward with the
+main body to the support of Gage, leaving four hundred men in the rear,
+under Sir Peter Halket, to guard the baggage. At the moment of his
+arrival Gage's soldiers had abandoned their two cannon, and were falling
+back to escape the concentrated fire of the Indians. Meeting the
+advancing troops, they tried to find cover behind them. This threw the
+whole into confusion. The men of the two regiments became mixed
+together; and in a short time the entire force, except the Virginians
+and the troops left with Halket, were massed in several dense bodies
+within a small space of ground, facing some one way and some another,
+and all alike exposed without shelter to the bullets that pelted them
+like hail. Both men and officers were new to this blind and frightful
+warfare of the savage in his native woods. To charge the Indians in
+their hiding-places would have been useless. They would have eluded
+pursuit with the agility of wildcats, and swarmed back, like angry
+hornets, the moment that it ceased. The Virginians alone were equal to
+the emergency. Fighting behind trees like the Indians themselves, they
+might have held the enemy in check till order could be restored, had not
+Braddock, furious at a proceeding that shocked all his ideas of courage
+and discipline, ordered them, with oaths, to form into line. A body of
+them under Captain Waggoner made a dash for a fallen tree lying in the
+woods, far out towards the lurking-places of the Indians, and, crouching
+behind the huge trunk, opened fire; but the regulars, seeing the smoke
+among the bushes, mistook their best friends for the enemy, shot at them
+from behind, killed many, and forced the rest to return. A few of the
+regulars also tried in their clumsy way to fight behind trees; but
+Braddock beat them with his sword, and compelled them to stand with the
+rest, an open mark for the Indians. The panic increased; the soldiers
+crowded together, and the bullets spent themselves in a mass of human
+bodies. Commands, entreaties, and threats were lost upon them. "We would
+fight," some of them answered, "if we could see anybody to fight with."
+Nothing was visible but puffs of smoke. Officers and men who had stood
+all the afternoon under fire afterwards declared that they could not be
+sure they had seen a single Indian. Braddock ordered Lieutenant-Colonel
+Burton to attack the hill where the puffs of smoke were thickest, and
+the bullets most deadly. With infinite difficulty that brave officer
+induced a hundred men to follow him; but he was soon disabled by a
+wound, and they all faced about. The artillerymen stood for some time by
+their guns, which did great damage to the trees and little to the enemy.
+The mob of soldiers, stupefied with terror, stood panting, their
+foreheads beaded with sweat, loading and firing mechanically, sometimes
+into the air, sometimes among their own comrades, many of whom they
+killed. The ground, strewn with dead and wounded men, the bounding of
+maddened horses, the clatter and roar of musketry and cannon, mixed with
+the spiteful report of rifles and the yells that rose from the
+indefatigable throats of six hundred unseen savages, formed a chaos of
+anguish and terror scarcely paralleled even in Indian war. "I cannot
+describe the horrors of that scene," one of Braddock's officers wrote
+three weeks after; "no pen could do it. The yell of the Indians is fresh
+on my ear, and the terrific sound will haunt me till the hour of my
+dissolution."[225]
+
+[Footnote 225: _Leslie to a Merchant of Philadelphia, 30 July, 1755_, in
+_Hazard's Pennsylvania Register_, V. 191. Leslie was a lieutenant of the
+Forty-fourth.]
+
+Braddock showed a furious intrepidity. Mounted on horseback, he dashed
+to and fro, storming like a madman. Four horses were shot under him, and
+he mounted a fifth. Washington seconded his chief with equal courage; he
+too no doubt using strong language, for he did not measure words when
+the fit was on him. He escaped as by miracle. Two horses were killed
+under him, and four bullets tore his clothes. The conduct of the British
+officers was above praise. Nothing could surpass their undaunted
+self-devotion; and in their vain attempts to lead on the men, the havoc
+among them was frightful. Sir Peter Halket was shot dead. His son, a
+lieutenant in his regiment, stooping to raise the body of his father,
+was shot dead in turn. Young Shirley, Braddock's secretary, was pierced
+through the brain. Orme and Morris, his aides-de-camp, Sinclair, the
+quartermaster-general, Gates and Gage, both afterwards conspicuous on
+opposite sides in the War of the Revolution, and Gladwin, who, eight
+years later, defended Detroit against Pontiac, were all wounded. Of
+eighty-six officers, sixty-three were killed or disabled;[226] while out
+of thirteen hundred and seventy-three noncommissioned officers and
+privates, only four hundred and fifty-nine came off unharmed.[227]
+
+[Footnote 226: _A List of the Officers who were present, and of those
+killed and wounded, in the Action on the Banks of the Monongahela, 9
+July, 1755_ (Public Record Office, _America and West Indies_, LXXXII).]
+
+[Footnote 227: Statement of the engineer, Mackellar. By another account,
+out of a total, officers and men, of 1,460, the number of all ranks who
+escaped was 583. Braddock's force, originally 1,200, was increased, a
+few days before the battle, by detachments from Dunbar.]
+
+Braddock saw that all was lost. To save the wreck of his force from
+annihilation, he at last commanded a retreat; and as he and such of his
+officers as were left strove to withdraw the half-frenzied crew in some
+semblance of order, a bullet struck him down. The gallant bulldog fell
+from his horse, shot through the arm into the lungs. It is said, though
+on evidence of no weight, that the bullet came from one of his own men.
+Be this as it may, there he lay among the bushes, bleeding, gasping,
+unable even to curse. He demanded to be left where he was. Captain
+Stewart and another provincial bore him between them to the rear.
+
+It was about this time that the mob of soldiers, having been three hours
+under fire, and having spent their ammunition, broke away in a blind
+frenzy, rushed back towards the ford, "and when," says Washington, "we
+endeavored to rally them, it was with as much success as if we had
+attempted to stop the wild bears of the mountains." They dashed across,
+helter-skelter, plunging through the water to the farther bank, leaving
+wounded comrades, cannon, baggage, the military chest, and the General's
+papers, a prey to the Indians. About fifty of these followed to the edge
+of the river. Dumas and Ligneris, who had now only about twenty
+Frenchmen with them, made no attempt to pursue, and went back to the
+fort, because, says Contrecoeur, so many of the Canadians had "retired
+at the first fire." The field, abandoned to the savages, was a
+pandemonium of pillage and murder.[228]
+
+[Footnote 228: "Nous prîmes le parti de nous retirer en vue de rallier
+notre petite armée." _Dumas au Ministre, 24 Juillet, 1756_.
+
+On the defeat of Braddock, besides authorities already cited,--_Shirley
+to Robinson, 5 Nov. 1755_, accompanying the plans of the battle
+reproduced in this volume (Public Record Office, _America and West
+Indies_, LXXXIL). The plans were drawn at Shirley's request by Patrick
+Mackellar, chief engineer of the expedition, who was with Gage in the
+advance column when the fight began. They were examined and fully
+approved by the chief surviving officers, and they closely correspond
+with another plan made by the aide-de-camp Orme,--which, however, shows
+only the beginning of the affair.
+
+_Report of the Court of Inquiry into the Behavior of the Troops at the
+Monongahela. Letters of Dinwiddie. Letters of Gage. Burd to Morris, 25
+July, 1755. Sinclair to Robinson, 3 Sept. Rutherford to----, 12 July.
+Writings of Washington_, II. 68-93. _Review of Military Operations in
+North America_. Entick, I. 145. _Gentleman's Magazine_ (1755), 378, 426.
+_Letter to a Friend on the Ohio Defeat_ (Boston, 1755).
+
+_Contrecoeur à Vaudreuil, 14 Juillet, 1755. Estat de l'Artillerie, etc.,
+qui se sont trouvés sur le Champ de Bataille. Vaudreuil au Ministre, 5
+Août, 1755. Bigot au Ministre, 27 Août. Relation du Combat du 9 Juillet.
+Relation depuis le Départ des Trouppes de Québec jusqu'au 30 du Mois de
+Septembre. Lotbinière à d'Argenson, 24 Oct. Relation officielle imprimée
+au Louvre. Relation de Godefroy_ (Shea). _Extraits du Registre du Fort
+Duquesne_ (_Ibid._). _Relation de diverses Mouvements_ (_Ibid._).
+Pouchot, I. 37.]
+
+James Smith, the young prisoner at Fort Duquesne, had passed a day of
+suspense, waiting the result. "In the afternoon I again observed a great
+noise and commotion in the fort, and, though at that time I could not
+understand French, I found it was the voice of joy and triumph, and
+feared that they had received what I called bad news. I had observed
+some of the old-country soldiers speak Dutch; as I spoke Dutch, I went
+to one of them and asked him what was the news. He told me that a runner
+had just arrived who said that Braddock would certainly be defeated;
+that the Indians and French had surrounded him, and were concealed
+behind trees and in gullies, and kept a constant fire upon the English;
+and that they saw the English falling in heaps; and if they did not take
+the river, which was the only gap, and make their escape, there would
+not be one man left alive before sundown. Some time after this, I heard
+a number of scalp-halloos, and saw a company of Indians and French
+coming in. I observed they had a great number of bloody scalps,
+grenadiers' caps, British canteens, bayonets, etc., with them. They
+brought the news that Braddock was defeated. After that another company
+came in, which appeared to be about one hundred, and chiefly Indians;
+and it seemed to me that almost every one of this company was carrying
+scalps. After this came another company with a number of wagon-horses,
+and also a great many scalps. Those that were coming in and those that
+had arrived kept a constant firing of small arms, and also the great
+guns in the fort, which were accompanied with the most hideous shouts
+and yells from all quarters, so that it appeared to me as though the
+infernal regions had broke loose."
+
+"About sundown I beheld a small party coming in with about a dozen
+prisoners, stripped naked, with their hands tied behind their backs and
+their faces and part of their bodies blacked; these prisoners they
+burned to death on the bank of Alleghany River, opposite the fort. I
+stood on the fort wall until I beheld them begin to burn one of these
+men; they had him tied to a stake, and kept touching him with
+firebrands, red-hot irons, etc., and he screaming in a most doleful
+manner, the Indians in the meantime yelling like infernal spirits. As
+this scene appeared too shocking for me to behold, I retired to my
+lodging, both sore and sorry. When I came into my lodgings I saw
+Russel's _Seven Sermons_, which they had brought from the field of
+battle, which a Frenchman made a present of to me."
+
+The loss of the French was slight, but fell chiefly on the officers,
+three of whom were killed, and four wounded. Of the regular soldiers,
+all but four escaped untouched. The Canadians suffered still less in
+proportion to their numbers, only five of them being hurt. The Indians,
+who won the victory, bore the principal loss. Of those from Canada,
+twenty-seven were killed and wounded; while the casualties among the
+Western tribes are not reported.[229] All of these last went off the
+next morning with their plunder and scalps, leaving Contrecoeur in great
+anxiety lest the remnant of Braddock's troops, reinforced by the
+division under Dunbar, should attack him again. His doubts would have
+vanished had he known the condition of his defeated enemy.
+
+[Footnote 229: _Liste des Officiers, Soldats, Miliciens, et Sauvages de
+Canada qui out été tués et blessés le 9 Juillet, 1755_.]
+
+In the pain and languor of a mortal wound, Braddock showed unflinching
+resolution. His bearers stopped with him at a favorable spot beyond the
+Monongahela; and here he hoped to maintain his position till the arrival
+of Dunbar. By the efforts of the officers about a hundred men were
+collected around him; but to keep them there was impossible. Within an
+hour they abandoned him, and fled like the rest. Gage, however,
+succeeded in rallying about eighty beyond the other fording-place; and
+Washington, on an order from Braddock, spurred his jaded horse towards
+the camp of Dunbar to demand wagons, provisions, and hospital stores.
+
+Fright overcame fatigue. The fugitives toiled on all night, pursued by
+spectres of horror and despair; hearing still the war-whoops and the
+shrieks; possessed with the one thought of escape from the wilderness of
+death. In the morning some order was restored. Braddock was placed on a
+horse; then, the pain being insufferable, he was carried on a litter,
+Captain Orme having bribed the carriers by the promise of a guinea and a
+bottle of rum apiece. Early in the succeeding night, such as had not
+fainted on the way reached the deserted farm of Gist. Here they met
+wagons and provisions, with a detachment of soldiers sent by Dunbar,
+whose camp was six miles farther on; and Braddock ordered them to go to
+the relief of the stragglers left behind.
+
+At noon of that day a number of wagoners and packhorse-drivers had come
+to Dunbar's camp with wild tidings of rout and ruin. More fugitives
+followed; and soon after a wounded officer was brought in upon a sheet.
+The drums beat to arms. The camp was in commotion; and many soldiers and
+teamsters took to flight, in spite of the sentinels, who tried in vain
+to stop them.[230] There was a still more disgraceful scene on the next
+day, after Braddock, with the wreck of his force, had arrived. Orders
+were given to destroy such of the wagons, stores, and ammunition as
+could not be carried back at once to Fort Cumberland. Whether Dunbar or
+the dying General gave these orders is not clear; but it is certain that
+they were executed with shameful alacrity. More than a hundred wagons
+were burned; cannon, coehorns, and shells were burst or buried; barrels
+of gunpowder were staved, and the contents thrown into a brook;
+provisions were scattered through the woods and swamps. Then the whole
+command began its retreat over the mountains to Fort Cumberland, sixty
+miles distant. This proceeding, for which, in view of the condition of
+Braddock, Dunbar must be held answerable, excited the utmost
+indignation among the colonists. If he could not advance, they thought,
+he might at least have fortified himself and held his ground till the
+provinces could send him help; thus covering the frontier, and holding
+French war-parties in check.
+
+[Footnote 230: _Depositions of Matthew Laird, Michael Hoover, and Jacob
+Hoover, Wagoners_, in _Colonial Records of Pa._, VI. 482.]
+
+Braddock's last moment was near. Orme, who, though himself severely
+wounded, was with him till his death, told Franklin that he was totally
+silent all the first day, and at night said only, "Who would have
+thought it?" that all the next day he was again silent, till at last he
+muttered, "We shall better know how to deal with them another time," and
+died a few minutes after. He had nevertheless found breath to give
+orders at Gist's for the succor of the men who had dropped on the road.
+It is said, too, that in his last hours "he could not bear the sight of
+a red coat," but murmured praises of "the blues," or Virginians, and
+said that he hoped he should live to reward them.[231] He died at about
+eight o'clock in the evening of Sunday, the thirteenth. Dunbar had begun
+his retreat that morning, and was then encamped near the Great Meadows.
+On Monday the dead commander was buried in the road; and men, horses,
+and wagons passed over his grave, effacing every sign of it, lest the
+Indians should find and mutilate the body.
+
+[Footnote 231: _Bolling to his Son, 13 Aug. 1755_. Bolling was a
+Virginian gentleman whose son was at school in England.]
+
+Colonel James Innes, commanding at Fort Cumberland, where a crowd of
+invalids with soldiers' wives and other women had been left when the
+expedition marched, heard of the defeat, only two days after it
+happened, from a wagoner who had fled from the field on horseback. He at
+once sent a note of six lines to Lord Fairfax: "I have this moment
+received the most melancholy news of the defeat of our troops, the
+General killed, and numbers of our officers; our whole artillery taken.
+In short, the account I have received is so very bad, that as, please
+God, I intend to make a stand here, 'tis highly necessary to raise the
+militia everywhere to defend the frontiers." A boy whom he sent out on
+horseback met more fugitives, and came back on the fourteenth with
+reports as vague and disheartening as the first. Innes sent them to
+Dinwiddie.[232] Some days after, Dunbar and his train arrived in
+miserable disorder, and Fort Cumberland was turned into a hospital for
+the shattered fragments of a routed and ruined army.
+
+[Footnote 232: _Innes to Dinwiddie, 14 July, 1755_.]
+
+On the sixteenth a letter was brought in haste to one Buchanan at
+Carlisle, on the Pennsylvanian frontier:--
+
+     Sir,--I thought it proper to let you know that I was in the battle
+     where we were defeated. And we had about eleven hundred and fifty
+     private men, besides officers and others. And we were attacked the
+     ninth day about twelve o'clock, and held till about three in the
+     afternoon, and then we were forced to retreat, when I suppose we
+     might bring off about three hundred whole men, besides a vast many
+     wounded. Most of our officers were either wounded or killed;
+     General Braddock is wounded, but I hope not mortal; and Sir John
+     Sinclair and many others, but I hope not mortal. All the train is
+     cut off in a manner. Sir Peter Halket and his son, Captain Polson,
+     Captain Gethan, Captain Rose, Captain Tatten killed, and many
+     others. Captain Ord of the train is wounded, but I hope not mortal.
+     We lost all our artillery entirely, and everything else.
+
+     To Mr. John Smith and Buchannon, and give it to the next post, and
+     let him show this to Mr. George Gibson in Lancaster, and Mr.
+     Bingham, at the sign of the Ship, and you'll oblige,
+
+     Yours to command,
+
+     JOHN CAMPBELL, _Messenger_.[233]
+
+[Footnote 233: _Colonial Records of Pa._, VI. 481.]
+
+The evil tidings quickly reached Philadelphia, where such confidence had
+prevailed that certain over-zealous persons had begun to collect money
+for fireworks to celebrate the victory. Two of these, brother physicians
+named Bond, came to Franklin and asked him to subscribe; but the sage
+looked doubtful. "Why, the devil!" said one of them, "you surely don't
+suppose the fort will not be taken?" He reminded them that war is always
+uncertain; and the subscription was deferred.[234]The Governor laid the
+news of the disaster before his Council, telling them at the same time
+that his opponents in the Assembly would not believe it, and had
+insulted him in the street for giving it currency.[235]
+
+[Footnote 234: _Autobiography of Franklin_.]
+
+[Footnote 235: _Colonial Records of Pa._, VI. 480.]
+
+Dinwiddie remained tranquil at Williamsburg, sure that all would go
+well. The brief note of Innes, forwarded by Lord Fairfax, first
+disturbed his dream of triumph; but on second thought he took comfort.
+"I am willing to think that account was from a deserter who, in a great
+panic, represented what his fears suggested. I wait with impatience for
+another express from Fort Cumberland, which I expect will greatly
+contradict the former." The news got abroad, and the slaves showed signs
+of excitement. "The villany of the negroes on any emergency is what I
+always feared," continues the Governor. "An example of one or two at
+first may prevent these creatures entering into combinations and wicked
+designs."[236] And he wrote to Lord Halifax: "The negro slaves have been
+very audacious on the news of defeat on the Ohio. These poor creatures
+imagine the French will give them their freedom. We have too many here;
+but I hope we shall be able to keep them in proper subjection." Suspense
+grew intolerable. "It's monstrous they should be so tardy and dilatory
+in sending down any farther account." He sent Major Colin Campbell for
+news; when, a day or two later, a courier brought him two letters, one
+from Orme, and the other from Washington, both written at Fort
+Cumberland on the eighteenth. The letter of Orme began thus: "My dear
+Governor, I am so extremely ill in bed with the wound I have received
+that I am under the necessity of employing my friend Captain Dobson as
+my scribe." Then he told the wretched story of defeat and humiliation.
+"The officers were absolutely sacrificed by their unparalleled good
+behavior; advancing before their men sometimes in bodies, and sometimes
+separately, hoping by such an example to engage the soldiers to follow
+them; but to no purpose. Poor Shirley was shot through the head, Captain
+Morris very much wounded. Mr. Washington had two horses shot under him,
+and his clothes shot through in several places; behaving the whole time
+with the greatest courage and resolution."
+
+[Footnote 236: _Dinwiddie to Colonel Charles Carter, 18 July, 1755_.]
+
+Washington wrote more briefly, saying that, as Orme was giving a full
+account of the affair, it was needless for him to repeat it. Like many
+others in the fight, he greatly underrated the force of the enemy, which
+he placed at three hundred, or about a third of the actual number,--a
+natural error, as most of the assailants were invisible. "Our poor
+Virginians behaved like men, and died like soldiers; for I believe that
+out of three companies that were there that day, scarce thirty were left
+alive. Captain Peronney and all his officers down to a corporal were
+killed. Captain Polson shared almost as hard a fate, for only one of his
+escaped. In short, the dastardly behavior of the English soldiers
+exposed all those who were inclined to do their duty to almost certain
+death. It is imagined (I believe with great justice, too) that two
+thirds of both killed and wounded received their shots from our own
+cowardly dogs of soldiers, who gathered themselves into a body, contrary
+to orders, ten and twelve deep, would then level, fire, and shoot down
+the men before them."[237]
+
+[Footnote 237: These extracts are taken from the two letters preserved
+in the Public Record Office, _America and West Indies_, LXXIV, LXXXII.]
+
+To Orme, Dinwiddie replied: "I read your letter with tears in my eyes;
+but it gave me much pleasure to see your name at the bottom, and more so
+when I observed by the postscript that your wound is not dangerous. But
+pray, dear sir, is it not possible by a second attempt to retrieve the
+great loss we have sustained? I presume the General's chariot is at the
+fort. In it you may come here, and my house is heartily at your command.
+Pray take care of your valuable health; keep your spirits up, and I
+doubt not of your recovery. My wife and girls join me in most sincere
+respects and joy at your being so well, and I always am, with great
+truth, dear friend, your affectionate humble servant."
+
+To Washington he is less effusive, though he had known him much longer.
+He begins, it is true, "Dear Washington," and congratulates him on his
+escape; but soon grows formal, and asks: "Pray, sir, with the number of
+them remaining, is there no possibility of doing something on the other
+side of the mountains before the winter months? Surely you must mistake.
+Colonel Dunbar will not march to winter-quarters in the middle of
+summer, and leave the frontiers exposed to the invasions of the enemy!
+No; he is a better officer, and I have a different opinion of him. I
+sincerely wish you health and happiness, and am, with great respect,
+sir, your obedient, humble servant."
+
+Washington's letter had contained the astonishing announcement that
+Dunbar meant to abandon the frontier and march to Philadelphia.
+Dinwiddie, much disturbed, at once wrote to that officer, though without
+betraying any knowledge of his intention. "Sir, the melancholy account
+of the defeat of our forces gave me a sensible and real concern"--on
+which he enlarges for a while; then suddenly changes style: "Dear
+Colonel, is there no method left to retrieve the dishonor done to the
+British arms? As you now command all the forces that remain, are you not
+able, after a proper refreshment of your men, to make a second attempt?
+You have four months now to come of the best weather of the year for
+such an expedition. What a fine field for honor will Colonel Dunbar have
+to confirm and establish his character as a brave officer." Then, after
+suggesting plans of operation, and entering into much detail, the fervid
+Governor concludes: "It gives me great pleasure that under our great
+loss and misfortunes the command devolves on an officer of so great
+military judgment and established character. With my sincere respect and
+hearty wishes for success to all your proceedings, I am, worthy sir,
+your most obedient, humble servant."
+
+Exhortation and flattery were lost on Dunbar. Dinwiddie received from
+him in reply a short, dry note, dated on the first of August, and
+acquainting him that he should march for Philadelphia on the second.
+This, in fact, he did, leaving the fort to be defended by invalids and a
+few Virginians. "I acknowledge," says Dinwiddie, "I was not brought up
+to arms; but I think common sense would have prevailed not to leave the
+frontiers exposed after having opened a road over the mountains to the
+Ohio, by which the enemy can the more easily invade us.... Your great
+colonel," he writes to Orme, "is gone to a peaceful colony, and left our
+frontiers open.... The whole conduct of Colonel Dunbar appears to me
+monstrous.... To march off all the regulars, and leave the fort and
+frontiers to be defended by four hundred sick and wounded, and the poor
+remains of our provincial forces, appears to me absurd."[238]
+
+[Footnote 238: Dinwiddie's view of Dunbar's conduct is fully justified
+by the letters of Shirley, Governor Morris, and Dunbar himself.]
+
+He found some comfort from the burgesses, who gave him forty thousand
+pounds, and would, he thinks, have given a hundred thousand if another
+attempt against Fort Duquesne had been set afoot. Shirley, too, whom the
+death of Braddock had made commander-in-chief, approved the Governor's
+plan of renewing offensive operations, and instructed Dunbar to that
+effect; ordering him, however, should they prove impracticable, to march
+for Albany in aid of the Niagara expedition.[239] The order found him
+safe in Philadelphia. Here he lingered for a while; then marched to join
+the northern army, moving at a pace which made it certain that he could
+not arrive in time to be of the least use.
+
+[Footnote 239: _Orders for Colonel Thomas Dunbar, 12 Aug. 1755_. These
+supersede a previous order of August 6, by which Shirley had directed
+Dunbar to march northward at once.]
+
+Thus the frontier was left unguarded; and soon, as Dinwiddie had
+foreseen, there burst upon it a storm of blood and fire.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 8
+
+1755-1763
+
+Removal of the Acadians
+
+
+By the plan which the Duke of Cumberland had ordained and Braddock had
+announced in the Council at Alexandria, four blows were to be struck at
+once to force back the French boundaries, lop off the dependencies of
+Canada, and reduce her from a vast territory to a petty province. The
+first stroke had failed, and had shattered the hand of the striker; it
+remains to see what fortune awaited the others.
+
+It was long since a project of purging Acadia of French influence had
+germinated in the fertile mind of Shirley. We have seen in a former
+chapter the condition of that afflicted province. Several thousands of
+its inhabitants, wrought upon by intriguing agents of the French
+Government, taught by their priests that fidelity to King Louis was
+inseparable from fidelity to God, and that to swear allegiance to the
+British Crown was eternal perdition; threatened with plunder and death
+at the hands of the savages whom the ferocious missionary, Le Loutre,
+held over them in terror,--had abandoned, sometimes willingly, but
+oftener under constraint, the fields which they and their fathers had
+tilled, and crossing the boundary line of the Missaguash, had placed
+themselves under the French flag planted on the hill of Beauséjour.[240]
+Here, or in the neighborhood, many of them had remained, wretched and
+half starved; while others had been transported to Cape Breton, Isle St.
+Jean, or the coasts of the Gulf,--not so far, however, that they could
+not on occasion be used to aid in an invasion of British Acadia.[241]
+Those of their countrymen who still lived under the British flag were
+chiefly the inhabitants of the district of Mines and of the valley of
+the River Annapolis, who, with other less important settlements,
+numbered a little more than nine thousand souls. We have shown already,
+by the evidence of the French themselves, that neither they nor their
+emigrant countrymen had been oppressed or molested in matters temporal
+or spiritual, but that the English authorities, recognizing their value
+as an industrious population, had labored to reconcile them to a change
+of rulers which on the whole was to their advantage. It has been shown
+also how, with a heartless perfidy and a reckless disregard of their
+welfare and safety, the French Government and its agents labored to keep
+them hostile to the Crown of which it had acknowledged them to be
+subjects. The result was, that though they did not, like their emigrant
+countrymen, abandon their homes, they remained in a state of restless
+disaffection, refused to supply English garrisons with provisions,
+except at most exorbitant rates, smuggled their produce to the French
+across the line, gave them aid and intelligence, and sometimes disguised
+as Indians, robbed and murdered English settlers. By the new-fangled
+construction of the treaty of Utrecht which the French boundary
+commissioners had devised,[242] more than half the Acadian peninsula,
+including nearly all the cultivated land and nearly all the population
+of French descent, was claimed as belonging to France, though England
+had held possession of it more than forty years. Hence, according to the
+political ethics adopted at the time by both nations, it would be lawful
+for France to reclaim it by force. England, on her part, it will be
+remembered, claimed vast tracts beyond the isthmus; and, on the same
+pretext, held that she might rightfully seize them and capture
+Beauséjour, with the other French garrisons that guarded them.
+
+[Footnote 240: See _ante_, Chapter 4.]
+
+[Footnote 241: Rameau (_La France aux Colonies_, I. 63), estimates the
+total emigration from 1748 to 1755 at 8,600 souls,--which number seems
+much too large. This writer, though vehemently anti-English, gives the
+following passage from a letter of a high French official: "que les
+Acadiens émigrés et en grande misère comptaient se retirer à Québec et
+demander des terres, mais il conviendrait mieux qu'ils restent où ils
+sont, afin d'avoir le voisinage de l'Acadie bien peuplé et défriché,
+pour approvisionner l'Isle Royale [_Cape Breton_] et tomber en cas de
+guerre sur l'Acadie." Rameau, I. 133.]
+
+[Footnote 242: _Supra_, p. 102.]
+
+On the part of France, an invasion of the Acadian peninsula seemed more
+than likely. Honor demanded of her that, having incited the Acadians to
+disaffection, and so brought on them the indignation of the English
+authorities, she should intervene to save them from the consequences.
+Moreover the loss of the Acadian peninsula had been gall and wormwood to
+her; and in losing it she had lost great material advantages. Its
+possession was necessary to connect Canada with the Island of Cape
+Breton and the fortress of Louisbourg. Its fertile fields and
+agricultural people would furnish subsistence to the troops and
+garrisons in the French maritime provinces, now dependent on supplies
+illicitly brought by New England traders, and liable to be cut off in
+time of war when they were needed most. The harbors of Acadia, too,
+would be invaluable as naval stations from which to curb and threaten
+the northern English colonies. Hence the intrigues so assiduously
+practised to keep the Acadians French at heart, and ready to throw off
+British rule at any favorable moment. British officers believed that
+should a French squadron with a sufficient force of troops on board
+appear in the Bay of Fundy, the whole population on the Basin of Mines
+and along the Annapolis would rise in arms, and that the emigrants
+beyond the isthmus, armed and trained by French officers, would come to
+their aid. This emigrant population, famishing in exile, looked back
+with regret to the farms they had abandoned; and, prevented as they were
+by Le Loutre and his colleagues from making their peace with the
+English, they would, if confident of success, have gladly joined an
+invading force to regain their homes by reconquering Acadia for Louis
+XV. In other parts of the continent it was the interest of France to put
+off hostilities; if Acadia alone had been in question, it would have
+been her interest to precipitate them.
+
+Her chances of success were good. The French could at any time send
+troops from Louisbourg or Quebec to join those maintained upon the
+isthmus; and they had on their side of the lines a force of militia and
+Indians amounting to about two thousand, while the Acadians within the
+peninsula had about an equal number of fighting men who, while calling
+themselves neutrals, might be counted on to join the invaders. The
+English were in no condition to withstand such an attack. Their regular
+troops were scattered far and wide through the province, and were
+nowhere more than equal to the local requirement; while of militia,
+except those of Halifax, they had few or none whom they dared to trust.
+Their fort at Annapolis was weak and dilapidated, and their other posts
+were mere stockades. The strongest place in Acadia was the French fort
+of Beauséjour, in which the English saw a continual menace. Their
+apprehensions were well grounded. Duquesne, governor of Canada, wrote to
+Le Loutre, who virtually shared the control of Beauséjour with Vergor,
+its commandant: "I invite both yourself and M. Vergor to devise a
+plausible pretext for attacking them [_the English_] vigorously."[243]
+Three weeks after this letter was written, Lawrence, governor of Nova
+Scotia, wrote to Shirley from Halifax: "Being well informed that the
+French have designs of encroaching still farther upon His Majesty's
+rights in this province, and that they propose, the moment they have
+repaired the fortifications of Louisbourg, to attack our fort at
+Chignecto [_Fort Lawrence_], I think it high time to make some effort to
+drive them from the north side of the Bay of Fundy."[244] This letter
+was brought to Boston by Lieutenant-Colonel Monckton, who was charged by
+Lawrence to propose to Shirley the raising of two thousand men in New
+England for the attack of Beauséjour and its dependent forts. Almost at
+the moment when Lawrence was writing these proposals to Shirley, Shirley
+was writing with the same object to Lawrence, enclosing a letter from
+Sir Thomas Robinson, concerning which he said: "I construe the contents
+to be orders to us to act in concert for taking _any_ advantages to
+drive the French of Canada out of Nova Scotia. If that is your sense of
+them, and your honor will be pleased to let me know whether you want any
+and what assistance to enable you to execute the orders, I will endeavor
+to send you such assistance from this province as you shall want."[245]
+
+[Footnote 243: _Duquesne à Le Loutre, 15 Oct. 1754_; extract in _Public
+Documents of Nova Scotia_, 239.]
+
+[Footnote 244: _Lawrence to Shirley, 5 Nov. 1754. Instructions of
+Lawrence to Monckton, 1 Nov. 1754_.]
+
+[Footnote 245: _Shirley to Lawrence, 7 Nov. 1754_.]
+
+The letter of Sir Thomas Robinson, of which a duplicate had already been
+sent to Lawrence, was written in answer to one of Shirley informing the
+Minister that the Indians of Nova Scotia, prompted by the French, were
+about to make an attack on all the English settlements east of the
+Kennebec; whereupon Robinson wrote: "You will without doubt have given
+immediate intelligence thereof to Colonel Lawrence, and will have
+concerted the properest measures with him for taking all possible
+advantage in Nova Scotia itself from the absence of those Indians, in
+case Mr. Lawrence shall have force enough to attack the forts erected by
+the French in those parts, without exposing the English settlements; and
+I am particularly to acquaint you that if you have not already entered
+into such a concert with Colonel Lawrence, it is His Majesty's pleasure
+that you should immediately proceed thereupon."[246]
+
+[Footnote 246: _Robinson to Shirley, 5 July, 1754_.]
+
+The Indian raid did not take place; but not the less did Shirley and
+Lawrence find in the Minister's letter their authorization for the
+attack of Beauséjour. Shirley wrote to Robinson that the expulsion of
+the French from the forts on the isthmus was a necessary measure of
+self-defence; that they meant to seize the whole country as far as Mines
+Basin, and probably as far as Annapolis, to supply their Acadian rebels
+with land; that of these they had, without reckoning Indians, fourteen
+hundred fighting men on or near the isthmus, and two hundred and fifty
+more on the St. John, with whom, aided by the garrison of Beauséjour,
+they could easily take Fort Lawrence; that should they succeed in this,
+the whole Acadian population would rise in arms, and the King would lose
+Nova Scotia. We should anticipate them, concludes Shirley, and strike
+the first blow.[247]
+
+[Footnote 247: _Shirley to Robinson, 8 Dec. 1754. Ibid., 24 Jan. 1755_.
+The Record Office contains numerous other letters of Shirley on the
+subject. "I am obliged to your Honor for communicating to me the French
+Mémoire, which, with other reasons, puts it out of doubt that the French
+are determined to begin an offensive war on the peninsula as soon as
+ever they shall think themselves strengthened enough to venture up it,
+and that they have thoughts of attempting it in the ensuing spring. I
+enclose your Honor extracts from two letters from Annapolis Royal, which
+show that the French inhabitants are in expectation of its being begun
+in the spring." _Shirley to Lawrence, 6 Jan. 1755_.]
+
+He opened his plans to his Assembly in secret session, and found them of
+one mind with himself. Preparation was nearly complete, and the men
+raised for the expedition, before the Council at Alexandria, recognized
+it as a part of a plan of the summer campaign.
+
+The French fort of Beauséjour, mounted on its hill between the marshes
+of Missaguash and Tantemar, was a regular work, pentagonal in form, with
+solid earthern ramparts, bomb-proofs, and an armament of twenty-four
+cannon and one mortar. The commandant, Duchambon de Vergor, a captain in
+the colony regulars, was a dull man of no education, of stuttering
+speech, unpleasing countenance, and doubtful character. He owed his
+place to the notorious Intendant, Bigot, who it is said, was in his debt
+for disreputable service in an affair of gallantry, and who had ample
+means of enabling his friends to enrich themselves by defrauding the
+King. Beauséjour was one of those plague-spots of official corruption
+which dotted the whole surface of New France. Bigot, sailing for Europe
+in the summer of 1754, wrote thus to his confederate: "Profit by your
+place, my dear Vergor; clip and cut--you are free to do what you
+please--so that you can come soon to join me in France and buy an estate
+near me."[248] Vergor did not neglect his opportunities. Supplies in
+great quantities were sent from Quebec for the garrison and the emigrant
+Acadians. These last got but a small part of them. Vergor and his
+confederates sent the rest back to Quebec, or else to Louisbourg, and
+sold them for their own profit to the King's agents there, who were
+also in collusion with him.
+
+[Footnote 248: _Mémoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760_. This letter is also
+mentioned in another contemporary document, _Mémoire sur les Fraudes
+commises dans la Colonie_.]
+
+Vergor, however, did not reign alone. Le Loutre, by force of energy,
+capacity, and passionate vehemence, held him in some awe, and divided
+his authority. The priest could count on the support of Duquesne, who
+had found, says a contemporary, that "he promised more than he could
+perform, and that he was a knave," but who nevertheless felt compelled
+to rely upon him for keeping the Acadians on the side of France. There
+was another person in the fort worthy of notice. This was Thomas Pichon,
+commissary of stores, a man of education and intelligence, born in
+France of an English mother. He was now acting the part of a traitor,
+carrying on a secret correspondence with the commandant of Fort
+Lawrence, and acquainting him with all that passed at Beauséjour. It was
+partly from this source that the hostile designs of the French became
+known to the authorities of Halifax, and more especially the proceedings
+of "Moses," by which name Pichon always designated Le Loutre, because he
+pretended to have led the Acadians from the land of bondage.[249]
+
+[Footnote 249: Pichon, called also Tyrrell from the name of his mother,
+was author of _Genuine Letters and Memoirs relating to Cape Breton_,--a
+book of some value. His papers are preserved at Halifax, and some of
+them are printed in the _Public Documents of Nova Scotia_.]
+
+These exiles, who cannot be called self-exiled, in view of the
+outrageous means used to force most of them from their homes, were in a
+deplorable condition. They lived in constant dread of Le Loutre, backed
+by Vergor and his soldiers. The savage missionary, bad as he was, had in
+him an ingredient of honest fanaticism, both national and religious;
+though hatred of the English held a large share in it. He would gladly,
+if he could, have forced the Acadians into a permanent settlement on the
+French side of the line, not out of love for them, but in the interest
+of the cause with which he had identified his own ambition. His efforts
+had failed. There was not land enough for their subsistence and that of
+the older settlers; and the suffering emigrants pined more and more for
+their deserted farms. Thither he was resolved that they should not
+return. "If you go," he told them, "you will have neither priests nor
+sacraments, but will die like miserable wretches."[250] The assertion
+was false. Priests and sacraments had never been denied them. It is
+true that Daudin, priest of Pisiquid, had lately been sent to Halifax
+for using insolent language to the commandant, threatening him with an
+insurrection of the inhabitants, and exciting them to sedition; but on
+his promise to change conduct, he was sent back to his parishioners.[251]
+Vergor sustained Le Loutre, and threatened to put in irons any of the
+exiles who talked of going back to the English. Some of them bethought
+themselves of an appeal to Duquesne, and drew up a petition asking leave
+to return home. Le Loutre told the signers that if they did not efface
+their marks from the paper they should have neither sacraments in this
+life nor heaven in the next. He nevertheless allowed two of them to go
+to Quebec as deputies, writing at the same time to the Governor, that
+his mind might be duly prepared. Duquesne replied: "I think that the
+two rascals of deputies whom you sent me will not soon recover from the
+fright I gave them, notwithstanding the emollient I administered after
+my reprimand; and since I told them that they were indebted to you for
+not being allowed to rot in a dungeon, they have promised me to comply
+with your wishes."[252]
+
+[Footnote 250: _Pichon to Captain Scott, 14 Oct. 1754_, in _Public
+Documents of Nova Scotia_, 229.]
+
+[Footnote 251: _Public Documents of Nova Scotia_, 223, 224, 226, 227,
+238.]
+
+[Footnote 252: _Public Documents of Nova Scotia_, 239.]
+
+An entire heartlessness marked the dealings of the French authorities
+with the Acadians. They were treated as mere tools of policy, to be
+used, broken, and flung away. Yet, in using them, the sole condition of
+their efficiency was neglected. The French Government, cheated of
+enormous sums by its own ravenous agents, grudged the cost of sending a
+single regiment to the Acadian border. Thus unsupported, the Acadians
+remained in fear and vacillation, aiding the French but feebly, though a
+ceaseless annoyance and menace to the English.
+
+This was the state of affairs at Beauséjour while Shirley and Lawrence
+were planning its destruction. Lawrence had empowered his agent,
+Monckton, to draw without limit on two Boston merchants, Apthorp and
+Hancock. Shirley, as commander-in-chief of the province of
+Massachusetts, commissioned John Winslow to raise two thousand
+volunteers. Winslow was sprung from the early governors of Plymouth
+colony; but, though well-born, he was ill-educated, which did not
+prevent him from being both popular and influential. He had strong
+military inclinations, had led a company of his own raising in the
+luckless attack on Carthagena, had commanded the force sent in the
+preceding summer to occupy the Kennebec, and on various other occasions
+had left his Marshfield farm to serve his country. The men enlisted
+readily at his call, and were formed into a regiment, of which Shirley
+made himself the nominal colonel. It had two battalions, of which
+Winslow, as lieutenant-colonel, commanded the first, and George Scott
+the second, both under the orders of Monckton. Country villages far and
+near, from the western borders of the Connecticut to uttermost Cape Cod,
+lent soldiers to the new regiment. The muster-rolls preserve their
+names, vocations, birthplaces, and abode. Obadiah, Nehemiah, Jedediah,
+Jonathan, Ebenezer, Joshua, and the like Old Testament names abound upon
+the list. Some are set down as "farmers," "yeomen," or "husbandmen;"
+others as "shopkeepers," others as "fishermen," and many as "laborers;"
+while a great number were handicraftsmen of various trades, from
+blacksmiths to wig-makers. They mustered at Boston early in April, where
+clothing, haversacks, and blankets were served out to them at the charge
+of the King; and the crooked streets of the New England capital were
+filled with staring young rustics. On the next Saturday the following
+mandate went forth: "The men will behave very orderly on the Sabbath
+Day, and either stay on board their transports, or else go to church,
+and not stroll up and down the streets." The transports, consisting of
+about forty sloops and schooners, lay at Long Wharf; and here on Monday
+a grand review took place,--to the gratification, no doubt, of a
+populace whose amusements were few. All was ready except the muskets,
+which were expected from England, but did not come. Hence the delay of a
+month, threatening to ruin the enterprise. When Shirley returned from
+Alexandria he found, to his disgust, that the transports still lay at
+the wharf where he had left them on his departure.[253] The muskets
+arrived at length, and the fleet sailed on the twenty-second of May.
+Three small frigates, the "Success," the "Mermaid," and the "Siren,"
+commanded by the ex-privateersman, Captain Rous, acted as convoy; and on
+the twenty-sixth the whole force safely reached Annapolis. Thence after
+some delay they sailed up the Bay of Fundy, and at sunset on the first
+of June anchored within five miles of the hill of Beauséjour.
+
+[Footnote 253: _Shirley to Robinson, 20 June, 1755._]
+
+At two o'clock on the next morning a party of Acadians from Chipody
+roused Vergor with the news. In great alarm, he sent a messenger to
+Louisbourg to beg for help, and ordered all the fighting men of the
+neighborhood to repair to the fort. They counted in all between twelve
+and fifteen hundred;[254] but they had no appetite for war. The force
+of the invaders daunted them; and the hundred and sixty regulars who
+formed the garrison of Beauséjour were too few to revive their
+confidence. Those of them who had crossed from the English side dreaded
+what might ensue should they be caught in arms; and, to prepare an
+excuse beforehand, they begged Vergor to threaten them with punishment
+if they disobeyed his order. He willingly complied, promised to have
+them killed if they did not fight, and assured them at the same time
+that the English could never take the fort.[255] Three hundred of them
+thereupon joined the garrison, and the rest, hiding their families in
+the woods, prepared to wage guerilla war against the invaders.
+
+[Footnote 254: _Mémoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760._ An English document,
+_State of the English and French Forts in Nova Scotia_, says 1,200 to
+1,400.]
+
+[Footnote 255: _Mémoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760._]
+
+Monckton, with all his force, landed unopposed, and encamped at night on
+the fields around Fort Lawrence, whence he could contemplate Fort
+Beauséjour at his ease. The regulars of the English garrison joined the
+New England men; and then, on the morning of the fourth, they marched to
+the attack. Their course lay along the south bank of the Missaguash to
+where it was crossed by a bridge called Pont-à-Buot. This bridge had
+been destroyed; and on the farther bank there was a large blockhouse and
+a breastwork of timber defended by four hundred regulars, Acadians, and
+Indians. They lay silent and unseen till the head of the column reached
+the opposite bank; then raised a yell and opened fire, causing some
+loss. Three field-pieces were brought up, the defenders were driven out,
+and a bridge was laid under a spattering fusillade from behind bushes,
+which continued till the English had crossed the stream. Without further
+opposition, they marched along the road to Beauséjour, and, turning to
+the right, encamped among the woody hills half a league from the fort.
+That night there was a grand illumination, for Vergor set fire to the
+church and all the houses outside the ramparts.[256]
+
+[Footnote 256: Winslow, _Journal and Letter Book. Mémoires sur le
+Canada, 1749-1760_. Letters from officers on the spot in _Boston Evening
+Post_ and _Boston News Letter. Journal of Surgeon John Thomas_.]
+
+The English spent some days in preparing their camp and reconnoitring
+the ground. Then Scott, with five hundred provincials, seized upon a
+ridge within easy range of the works. An officer named Vannes came out
+to oppose him with a hundred and eighty men, boasting that he would do
+great things; but on seeing the enemy, quietly returned, to become the
+laughing-stock of the garrison. The fort fired furiously, but with
+little effect. In the night of the thirteenth, Winslow, with a part of
+his own battalion, relieved Scott, and planted in the trenches two small
+mortars, brought to the camp on carts. On the next day they opened fire.
+One of them was disabled by the French cannon, but Captain Hazen brought
+up two more, of larger size, on ox-wagons; and, in spite of heavy rain,
+the fire was brisk on both sides.
+
+Captain Rous, on board his ship in the harbor, watched the bombardment
+with great interest. Having occasion to write to Winslow, he closed his
+letter in a facetious strain. "I often hear of your success in plunder,
+particularly a coach.[257] I hope you have some fine horses for it, at
+least four, to draw it, that it may be said a New England colonel [_rode
+in_] his coach and four in Nova Scotia. If you have any good
+saddle-horses in your stable, I should be obliged to you for one to ride
+round the ship's deck on for exercise, for I am not likely to have any
+other."
+
+[Footnote 257: "11 June. Capt. Adams went with a Company of Raingers,
+and Returned at 11 Clock with a Coach and Sum other Plunder." _Journal
+of John Thomas_.]
+
+Within the fort there was little promise of a strong defence. Le Loutre,
+it is true, was to be seen in his shirt-sleeves, with a pipe in his
+mouth, directing the Acadians in their work of strengthening the
+fortifications.[258] They, on their part, thought more of escape than of
+fighting. Some of them vainly begged to be allowed to go home; others
+went off without leave,--which was not difficult, as only one side of
+the place was attacked. Even among the officers there were some in whom
+interest was stronger than honor, and who would rather rob the King than
+die for him. The general discouragement was redoubled when, on the
+fourteenth, a letter came from the commandant of Louisbourg to say that
+he could send no help, as British ships blocked the way. On the morning
+of the sixteenth, a mischance befell, recorded in these words in the
+diary of Surgeon John Thomas: "One of our large shells fell through what
+they called their bomb-proof, where a number of their officers were
+sitting, killed six of them dead, and one Ensign Hay, which the Indians
+had took prisoner a few days agone and carried to the fort." The party
+was at breakfast when the unwelcome visitor burst in. Just opposite was
+a second bomb-proof, where was Vergor himself, with Le Loutre, another
+priest, and several officers, who felt that they might at any time share
+the same fate. The effect was immediate. The English, who had not yet
+got a single cannon into position, saw to their surprise a white flag
+raised on the rampart. Some officers of the garrison protested against
+surrender; and Le Loutre, who thought that he had everything to fear at
+the hands of the victors, exclaimed that it was better to be buried
+under the ruins of the fort than to give it up; but all was in vain, and
+the valiant Vannes was sent out to propose terms of capitulation. They
+were rejected, and others offered, to the following effect: the garrison
+to march out with the honors of war and to be sent to Louisbourg at the
+charge of the King of England, but not to bear arms in America for the
+space of six months. The Acadians to be pardoned the part they had just
+borne in the defence, "seeing that they had been compelled to take arms
+on pain of death." Confusion reigned all day at Beauséjour. The Acadians
+went home loaded with plunder. The French officers were so busy in
+drinking and pillaging that they could hardly be got away to sign the
+capitulation. At the appointed hour, seven in the evening, Scott marched
+in with a body of provincials, raised the British flag on the ramparts,
+and saluted it by a general discharge of the French cannon, while Vergor
+as a last act of hospitality gave a supper to the officers.[259]
+
+[Footnote 258: _Journal of Pichon_, cited by Beamish Murdoch.]
+
+[Footnote 259: On the capture of Beauséjour, _Mémoires sur le Canada,
+1749-1760_; Pichon, _Cape Breton_, 318; _Journal of Pichon_, cited by
+Murdoch; and the English accounts already mentioned.]
+
+Le Loutre was not to be found; he had escaped in disguise with his box
+of papers, and fled to Baye Verte to join his brother missionary,
+Manach. Thence he made his way to Quebec, where the Bishop received him
+with reproaches. He soon embarked for France; but the English captured
+him on the way, and kept him eight years in Elizabeth Castle, on the
+Island of Jersey. Here on one occasion a soldier on guard made a dash at
+the father, tried to stab him with his bayonet, and was prevented with
+great difficulty. He declared that, when he was with his regiment in
+Acadia, he had fallen into the hands of Le Loutre, and narrowly escaped
+being scalped alive, the missionary having doomed him to this fate, and
+with his own hand drawn a knife round his head as a beginning of the
+operation. The man swore so fiercely that he would have his revenge,
+that the officer in command transferred him to another post.[260]
+
+[Footnote 260: Knox, _Campaigns in North America_, I. 114, _note_. Knox,
+who was stationed in Nova Scotia, says that Le Loutre left behind him "a
+most remarkable character for inhumanity."]
+
+Throughout the siege, the Acadians outside the fort, aided by Indians,
+had constantly attacked the English, but were always beaten off with
+loss. There was an affair of this kind on the morning of the surrender,
+during which a noted Micmac chief was shot, and being brought into the
+camp, recounted the losses of his tribe; "after which, and taking a dram
+or two, he quickly died," writes Winslow in his Journal.
+
+Fort Gaspereau, at Baye Verte, twelve miles distant, was summoned by
+letter to surrender. Villeray, its commandant, at once complied; and
+Winslow went with a detachment to take possession.[261] Nothing remained
+but to occupy the French post at the mouth of the St. John. Captain
+Rous, relieved at last from inactivity, was charged with the task; and
+on the thirtieth he appeared off the harbor, manned his boats, and rowed
+for shore. The French burned their fort, and withdrew beyond his
+reach.[262] A hundred and fifty Indians, suddenly converted from enemies
+to pretended friends, stood on the strand, firing their guns into the
+air as a salute, and declaring themselves brothers of the English. All
+Acadia was now in British hands. Fort Beausejour became Fort
+Cumberland,--the second fort in America that bore the name of the royal
+Duke.
+
+[Footnote 261: Winslow, _Journal. Villeray au Ministre, 20 Sept. 1755._]
+
+[Footnote 262: _Drucour au Ministre, 1 Déc. 1755._]
+
+The defence had been of the feeblest. Two years later, on pressing
+demands from Versailles, Vergor was brought to trial, as was also
+Villeray. The Governor, Vaudreuil, and the Intendant, Bigot, who had
+returned to Canada, were in the interest of the chief defendant. The
+court-martial was packed; adverse evidence was shuffled out of sight;
+and Vergor, acquitted and restored to his rank, lived to inflict on New
+France another and a greater injury.[263]
+
+[Footnote 263: _Memoire sur les Fraudes commises dans la Colonie_, 1759.
+_Memoires sur le Canada_, 1749-1760.]
+
+Now began the first act of a deplorable drama. Monckton, with his small
+body of regulars, had pitched their tents under the walls of
+Beauséjour. Winslow and Scott, with the New England troops, lay not far
+off. There was little intercourse between the two camps. The British
+officers bore themselves towards those of the provincials with a
+supercilious coldness common enough on their part throughout the war.
+July had passed in what Winslow calls "an indolent manner," with prayers
+every day in the Puritan camp, when, early in August, Monckton sent for
+him, and made an ominous declaration. "The said Monckton was so free as
+to acquaint me that it was determined to remove all the French
+inhabitants out of the province, and that he should send for all the
+adult males from Tantemar, Chipody, Aulac, Beauséjour, and Baye Verte to
+read the Governor's orders; and when that was done, was determined to
+retain them all prisoners in the fort. And this is the first conference
+of a public nature I have had with the colonel since the reduction of
+Beauséjour; and I apprehend that no officer of either corps has been
+made more free with."
+
+Monckton sent accordingly to all the neighboring settlements, commanding
+the male inhabitants to meet him at Beauséjour. Scarcely a third part of
+their number obeyed. These arrived on the tenth, and were told to stay
+all night under the guns of the fort. What then befell them will appear
+from an entry in the diary of Winslow under date of August eleventh:
+"This day was one extraordinary to the inhabitants of Tantemar, Oueskak,
+Aulac, Baye Verte, Beauséjour, and places adjacent; the male
+inhabitants, or the principal of them, being collected together in Fort
+Cumberland to hear the sentence, which determined their property, from
+the Governor and Council of Halifax; which was that they were declared
+rebels, their lands, goods, and chattels forfeited to the Crown, and
+their bodies to be imprisoned. Upon which the gates of the fort were
+shut, and they all confined, to the amount of four hundred men and
+upwards." Parties were sent to gather more, but caught very few, the
+rest escaping to the woods.
+
+Some of the prisoners were no doubt among those who had joined the
+garrison at Beauséjour, and had been pardoned for doing so by the terms
+of the capitulation. It was held, however, that, though forgiven this
+special offence, they were not exempted from the doom that had gone
+forth against the great body of their countrymen. We must look closely
+at the motives and execution of this stern sentence.
+
+At any time up to the spring of 1755 the emigrant Acadians were free to
+return to their homes on taking the ordinary oath of allegiance required
+of British subjects. The English authorities of Halifax used every means
+to persuade them to do so; yet the greater part refused. This was due
+not only to Le Loutre and his brother priests, backed by the military
+power, but also to the Bishop of Quebec, who enjoined the Acadians to
+demand of the English certain concessions, the chief of which were that
+the priests should exercise their functions without being required to
+ask leave of the Governor, and that the inhabitants should not be called
+upon for military service of any kind. The Bishop added that the
+provisions of the treaty of Utrecht were insufficient, and that others
+ought to be exacted.[264] The oral declaration of the English
+authorities, that for the present the Acadians should not be required to
+bear arms, was not thought enough. They, or rather their prompters,
+demanded a written pledge.
+
+[Footnote 264: _L'Evéque de Quebec à Le Loutre, Nov_. 1754, in _Public
+Documents of Nova Scotia_, 240.]
+
+The refusal to take the oath without reservation was not confined to the
+emigrants. Those who remained in the peninsula equally refused it,
+though most of them were born and had always lived under the British
+flag. Far from pledging themselves to complete allegiance, they showed
+continual signs of hostility. In May three pretended French deserters
+were detected among them inciting them to take arms against the
+English.[265]
+
+[Footnote 265: _Ibid_., 242.]
+
+On the capture of Beauséjour the British authorities found themselves in
+a position of great difficulty. The New England troops were enlisted for
+the year only, and could not be kept in Acadia. It was likely that the
+French would make a strong effort to recover the province, sure as they
+were of support from the great body of its people. The presence of this
+disaffected population was for the French commanders a continual
+inducement to invasion; and Lawrence was not strong enough to cope at
+once with attack from without and insurrection from within.
+
+Shirley had held for some time that there was no safety for Acadia but
+in ridding it of the Acadians. He had lately proposed that the lands of
+the district of Chignecto, abandoned by their emigrant owners, should be
+given to English settlers, who would act as a check and a counterpoise
+to the neighboring French population. This advice had not been acted
+upon. Nevertheless Shirley and his brother Governor of Nova Scotia were
+kindred spirits, and inclined to similar measures. Colonel Charles
+Lawrence had not the good-nature and conciliatory temper which marked
+his predecessors, Cornwallis and Hopson. His energetic will was not apt
+to relent under the softer sentiments, and the behavior of the Acadians
+was fast exhausting his patience. More than a year before, the Lords of
+Trade had instructed him that they had no right to their lands if they
+persisted in refusing the oath.[266] Lawrence replied, enlarging on
+their obstinacy, treachery, and "ingratitude for the favor, indulgence,
+and protection they have at all times so undeservedly received from His
+Majesty's Government;" declaring at the same time that, "while they
+remain without taking the oaths, and have incendiary French priests
+among them, there are no hopes of their amendment;" and that "it would
+be much better, if they refuse the oaths, that they were away."[267] "We
+were in hopes," again wrote the Lords of Trade, "that the lenity which
+had been shown to those people by indulging them in the free exercise of
+their religion and the quiet possession of their lands, would by degrees
+have gained their friendship and assistance, and weaned their affections
+from the French; but we are sorry to find that this lenity has had so
+little effect, and that they still hold the same conduct, furnishing
+them with labor, provisions, and intelligence, and concealing their
+designs from us." In fact, the Acadians, while calling themselves
+neutrals, were an enemy encamped in the heart of the province. These are
+the reasons which explain and palliate a measure too harsh and
+indiscriminate to be wholly justified.
+
+[Footnote 266: _Lords of Trade to Lawrence, 4 March_, 1754.]
+
+[Footnote 267: _Lawrence to Lords of Trade, 1 Aug_. 1754.]
+
+Abbé Raynal, who never saw the Acadians, has made an ideal picture of
+them,[268] since copied and improved in prose and verse, till Acadia has
+become Arcadia. The plain realities of their condition and fate are
+touching enough to need no exaggeration. They were a simple and very
+ignorant peasantry, industrious and frugal till evil days came to
+discourage them; living aloof from the world, with little of that spirit
+of adventure which an easy access to the vast fur-bearing interior had
+developed in their Canadian kindred; having few wants, and those of the
+rudest; fishing a little and hunting in the winter, but chiefly employed
+in cultivating the meadows along the River Annapolis, or rich marshes
+reclaimed by dikes from the tides of the Bay of Fundy. The British
+Government left them entirely free of taxation. They made clothing of
+flax and wool of their own raising, hats of similar materials, and shoes
+or moccasons of moose and seal skin. They bred cattle, sheep, hogs, and
+horses in abundance; and the valley of the Annapolis, then as now, was
+known for the profusion and excellence of its apples. For drink, they
+made cider or brewed spruce-beer. French officials describe their
+dwellings as wretched wooden boxes, without ornaments or conveniences,
+and scarcely supplied with the most necessary furniture.[269] Two or
+more families often occupied the same house; and their way of life,
+though simple and virtuous, was by no means remarkable for cleanliness.
+Such as it was, contentment reigned among them, undisturbed by what
+modern America calls progress. Marriages were early, and population grew
+apace. This humble society had its disturbing elements; for the
+Acadians, like the Canadians, were a litigious race, and neighbors often
+quarrelled about their boundaries. Nor were they without a bountiful
+share of jealousy, gossip, and backbiting, to relieve the monotony of
+their lives; and every village had its turbulent spirits, sometimes by
+fits, though rarely long, contumacious even toward the curé, the guide,
+counsellor, and ruler of his flock. Enfeebled by hereditary mental
+subjection, and too long kept in leading-strings to walk alone, they
+needed him, not for the next world only, but for this; and their
+submission, compounded of love and fear, was commonly without bounds. He
+was their true government; to him they gave a frank and full allegiance,
+and dared not disobey him if they would. Of knowledge he gave them
+nothing; but he taught them to be true to their wives and constant at
+confession and Mass, to stand fast for the Church and King Louis, and to
+resist heresy and King George; for, in one degree or another, the
+Acadian priest was always the agent of a double-headed foreign
+power,--the Bishop of Quebec allied with the Governor of Canada.[270]
+
+[Footnote 268: _Histoire philosophique et politique_, VI. 242 (ed.
+1772).]
+
+[Footnote 269: _Beauharnois et Hocquart au Comte de Maurepas_, 12 Sept.
+1745._]
+
+[Footnote 270: Franquet, _Journal_, 1751, says of the Acadians: "Ils
+aiment l'argent, n'ont dans toute leur conduite que leur intérêt pour
+objet, sont, indifféremment des deux sexes, d'une inconsidération dans
+leurs discours qui dénote de la méchanceté." Another observer,
+Dieréville, gives a more favorable picture.]
+
+When Monckton and the Massachusetts men laid siege to Beauséjour,
+Governor Lawrence thought the moment favorable for exacting an
+unqualified oath of allegiance from the Acadians. The presence of a
+superior and victorious force would help, he thought, to bring them to
+reason; and there were some indications that this would be the result. A
+number of Acadian families, who at the promptings of Le Loutre had
+emigrated to Cape Breton, had lately returned to Halifax, promising to
+be true subjects of King George if they could be allowed to repossess
+their lands. They cheerfully took the oath; on which they were
+reinstated in their old homes, and supplied with food for the
+winter.[271] Their example unfortunately found few imitators.
+
+[Footnote 271: _Public Documents of Nova Scotia_, 228.]
+
+Early in June the principal inhabitants of Grand Pré and other
+settlements about the Basin of Mines brought a memorial, signed with
+their crosses, to Captain Murray, the military commandant in their
+district, and desired him to send it to Governor Lawrence, to whom it
+was addressed. Murray reported that when they brought it to him they
+behaved with the greatest insolence, though just before they had been
+unusually submissive. He thought that this change of demeanor was caused
+by a report which had lately got among them of a French fleet in the Bay
+of Fundy; for it had been observed that any rumor of an approaching
+French force always had a similar effect. The deputies who brought the
+memorial were sent with it to Halifax, where they laid it before the
+Governor and Council. It declared that the signers had kept the
+qualified oath they had taken, "in spite of the solicitations and
+dreadful threats of another power," and that they would continue to
+prove "an unshaken fidelity to His Majesty, provided that His Majesty
+shall allow us the same liberty that he has _[hitherto]_ granted us."
+Their memorial then demanded, in terms highly offensive to the Council,
+that the guns, pistols, and other weapons, which they had lately been
+required to give up, should be returned to them. They were told in reply
+that they had been protected for many years in the enjoyment of their
+lands, though they had not complied with the terms on which the lands
+were granted; "that they had always been treated by the Government with
+the greatest lenity and tenderness, had enjoyed more privileges than
+other English subjects, and had been indulged in the free exercise of
+their religion;" all which they acknowledged to be true. The Governor
+then told them that their conduct had been undutiful and ungrateful;
+"that they had discovered a constant disposition to assist His Majesty's
+enemies and to distress his subjects; that they had not only furnished
+the enemy with provisions and ammunition, but had refused to supply the
+[_English_] inhabitants or Government, and when they did supply them,
+had exacted three times the price for which they were sold at other
+markets." The hope was then expressed that they would no longer obstruct
+the settlement of the province by aiding the Indians to molest and kill
+English settlers; and they were rebuked for saying in their memorial
+that they would be faithful to the King only on certain conditions. The
+Governor added that they had some secret reason for demanding _their_
+weapons, and flattered themselves that French troops were at hand to
+support their insolence. In conclusion, they were told that now was a
+good opportunity to prove their sincerity by taking the oath of
+allegiance, in the usual form, before the Council. They replied that
+they had not made up their minds on that point, and could do nothing
+till they had consulted their constituents. Being reminded that the oath
+was personal to themselves, and that six years had already been given
+them to think about it, they asked leave to retire and confer together.
+This was granted, and at the end of an hour they came back with the same
+answer as before; whereupon they were allowed till ten o'clock on the
+next morning for a final decision.[272]
+
+[Footnote 272: _Minutes of Council at Halifax, 3 July, 1755_, in _Public
+Documents of Nova Scotia_, 247-255.]
+
+At the appointed time the Council again met, and the deputies were
+brought in. They persisted stubbornly in the same refusal. "They were
+then informed," says the record, "that the Council could no longer look
+on them as subjects to His Britannic Majesty, but as subjects to the
+King of France, and as such they must hereafter be treated; and they
+were ordered to withdraw." A discussion followed in the Council. It was
+determined that the Acadians should be ordered to send new deputies to
+Halifax, who should answer for them, once for all, whether they would
+accept the oath or not; that such as refused it should not thereafter be
+permitted to take it; and "that effectual measures ought to be taken to
+remove all such recusants out of the province."
+
+The deputies, being then called in and told this decision, became
+alarmed, and offered to swear allegiance in the terms required. The
+answer was that it was too late; that as they had refused the oath under
+persuasion, they could not be trusted when they took it under
+compulsion. It remained to see whether the people at large would profit
+by their example.
+
+"I am determined," wrote Lawrence to the Lords of Trade, "to bring the
+inhabitants to a compliance, or rid the province of such perfidious
+subjects."[273] First, in answer to the summons of the Council, the
+deputies from Annapolis appeared, declaring that they had always been
+faithful to the British Crown, but flatly refusing the oath. They were
+told that, far from having been faithful subjects, they had always
+secretly aided the Indians, and that many of them had been in arms
+against the English; that the French were threatening the province; and
+that its affairs had reached a crisis when its inhabitants must either
+pledge themselves without equivocation to be true to the British Crown,
+or else must leave the country. They all declared that they would lose
+their lands rather than take the oath. The Council urged them to
+consider the matter seriously, warning them that, if they now persisted
+in refusal, no farther choice would be allowed them; and they were given
+till ten o'clock on the following Monday to make their final answer.
+
+[Footnote 273: _Lawrence to Lords of Trade, 18 July, 1755._]
+
+When that day came, another body of deputies had arrived from Grand Pré
+and the other settlements of the Basin of Mines; and being called before
+the Council, both they and the former deputation absolutely refused to
+take the oath of allegiance. These two bodies represented nine tenths of
+the Acadian population within the peninsula. "Nothing," pursues the
+record of the Council, "now remained to be considered but what measures
+should be taken to send the inhabitants away, and where they should be
+sent to." If they were sent to Canada, Cape Breton, or the neighboring
+islands, they would strengthen the enemy, and still threaten the
+province. It was therefore resolved to distribute them among the various
+English colonies, and to hire vessels for the purpose with all
+despatch.[274]
+
+[Footnote 274: _Minutes of Council, 4 July--28 July_, in _Public
+Documents of Nova Scotia_, 255-267. Copies of these and other parts of
+the record were sent at the time to England, and are now in the Public
+Record Office, along with the letters of Lawrence.]
+
+The oath, the refusal of which had brought such consequences, was a
+simple pledge of fidelity and allegiance to King George II. and his
+successors. Many of the Acadians had already taken an oath of fidelity,
+though with the omission of the word "allegiance," and, as they
+insisted, with a saving clause exempting them from bearing arms. The
+effect of this was that they did not regard themselves as British
+subjects, and claimed, falsely as regards most of them, the character
+of neutrals. It was to put an end to this anomalous state of things that
+the oath without reserve had been demanded of them. Their rejection of
+it, reiterated in full view of the consequences, is to be ascribed
+partly to a fixed belief that the English would not execute their
+threats, partly to ties of race and kin, but mainly to superstition.
+They feared to take part with heretics against the King of France, whose
+cause, as already stated, they had been taught to regard as one with the
+cause of God; they were constrained by the dread of perdition. "If the
+Acadians are miserable, remember that the priests are the cause of it,"
+writes the French officer Boishébert to the missionary Manach.[275]
+
+[Footnote 275: On the oath and his history, compare a long note by Mr.
+Akin in _Public Documents of Nova Scotia_, 263-267. Winslow in his
+Journal gives an abstract of a memorial sent him by the Acadians, in
+which they say that they had refused the oath, and so forfeited their
+lands, from motives of religion. I have shown in a former chapter that
+the priests had been the chief instruments in preventing them from
+accepting the English government. Add the following:--
+
+"Les malheurs des Accadiens sont beaucoup moins leur ouvrage que le
+fruit des sollicitations et des démarches des missionnaires." _Vaudreuil
+au Ministre, 6 Mai, 1760_.
+
+"Si nous avons la guerre, et si les Accadiens sont misérables, souvenez
+vous que ce sont les prêtres qui en sont la cause." _Boishébert á
+Manach, 21 Fév. 1760_. Both these writers had encouraged the priests in
+their intrigues so long as there were likely to profit the French
+Government, and only blamed them after they failed to accomplished what
+was expected of them.
+
+"Nous avons six missionnaires dont l'occupation perpetuelle est de
+porter les esprits au fanatisme et à la vengeance.... Je ne puis
+supporter dans nos prêtres ces odieuses déclamations qu'ils font tous
+les jours aux sauvages: 'Les Anglois sont les ennemis de Dieu, les
+compagnons du Diable.'" Pichon, _Lettres et Mémoires pour servir à
+l'Histoire du Cap-Breton_, 160, 161. (La Haye, 1760.)]
+
+The Council having come to a decision, Lawrence acquainted Monckton with
+the result, and ordered him to seize all the adult males in the
+neighborhood of Beauséjour; and this, as we have seen, he promptly did.
+It remains to observe how the rest of the sentence was carried into
+effect.
+
+Instructions were sent to Winslow to secure the inhabitants on or near
+the Basin of Mines and place them on board transports, which, he was
+told, would soon arrive from Boston. His orders were stringent: "If you
+find that fair means will not do with them, you must proceed by the most
+vigorous measures possible, not only in compelling them to embark, but
+in depriving those who shall escape of all means of shelter or support,
+by burning their houses and by destroying everything that may afford
+them the means of subsistence in the country." Similar orders were given
+to Major Handfield, the regular officer in command at Annapolis.
+
+On the fourteenth of August Winslow set out from his camp at Fort
+Beauséjour, or Cumberland, on his unenviable errand. He had with him but
+two hundred and ninety-seven men. His mood of mind was not serene. He
+was chafed because the regulars had charged his men with stealing sheep;
+and he was doubly vexed by an untoward incident that happened on the
+morning of his departure. He had sent forward his detachment under
+Adams, the senior captain, and they were marching by the fort with drums
+beating and colors flying, when Monckton sent out his aide-de-camp with
+a curt demand that the colors should be given up, on the ground that
+they ought to remain with the regiment. Whatever the soundness of the
+reason, there was no courtesy in the manner of enforcing it. "This
+transaction raised my temper some," writes Winslow in his Diary; and he
+proceeds to record his opinion that "it is the most ungenteel,
+ill-natured thing that ever I saw." He sent Monckton a quaintly
+indignant note, in which he observed that the affair "looks odd, and
+will appear so in future history;" but his commander, reckless of the
+judgments of posterity, gave him little satisfaction.
+
+Thus ruffled in spirit, he embarked with his men and sailed down
+Chignecto Channel to the Bay of Fundy. Here, while they waited the turn
+of the tide to enter the Basin of Mines, the shores of Cumberland lay
+before them dim in the hot and hazy air, and the promontory of Cape
+Split, like some misshapen monster of primeval chaos, stretched its
+portentous length along the glimmering sea, with head of yawning rock,
+and ridgy back bristled with forests. Borne on the rushing flood, they
+soon drifted through the inlet, glided under the rival promontory of
+Cape Blomedon, passed the red sandstone cliffs of Lyon's Cove, and
+descried the mouths of the rivers Canard and Des Habitants, where
+fertile marshes, diked against the tide, sustained a numerous and
+thriving population. Before them spread the boundless meadows of Grand
+Pré, waving with harvests or alive with grazing cattle; the green slopes
+behind were dotted with the simple dwellings of the Acadian farmers, and
+the spire of the village church rose against a background of woody
+hills. It was a peaceful, rural scene, soon to become one of the most
+wretched spots on earth. Winslow did not land for the present, but held
+his course to the estuary of the River Pisiquid, since called the Avon.
+Here, where the town of Windsor now stands, there was a stockade called
+Fort Edward, where a garrison of regulars under Captain Alexander Murray
+kept watch over the surrounding settlements. The New England men pitched
+their tents on shore, while the sloops that had brought them slept on
+the soft bed of tawny mud left by the fallen tide.
+
+Winslow found a warm reception, for Murray and his officers had been
+reduced too long to their own society not to welcome the coming of
+strangers. The two commanders conferred together. Both had been ordered
+by Lawrence to "clear the whole country of such bad subjects;" and the
+methods of doing so had been outlined for their guidance. Having come to
+some understanding with his brother officer concerning the duties
+imposed on both, and begun an acquaintance which soon grew cordial on
+both sides, Winslow embarked again and retraced his course to Grand Pré,
+the station which the Governor had assigned him. "Am pleased," he wrote
+to Lawrence, "with the place proposed by your Excellency for our
+reception [_the village church_]. I have sent for the elders to remove
+all sacred things, to prevent their being defiled by heretics." The
+church was used as a storehouse and place of arms; the men pitched their
+tents between it and the graveyard; while Winslow took up his quarters
+in the house of the priest, where he could look from his window on a
+tranquil scene. Beyond the vast tract of grassland to which Grand Pré
+owed its name, spread the blue glistening breast of the Basin of Mines;
+beyond this again, the distant mountains of Cobequid basked in the
+summer sun; and nearer, on the left, Cape Blomedon reared its bluff head
+of rock and forest above the sleeping waves.
+
+As the men of the settlement greatly outnumbered his own, Winslow set
+his followers to surrounding the camp with a stockade. Card-playing was
+forbidden, because it encouraged idleness, and pitching quoits in camp,
+because it spoiled the grass. Presently there came a letter from
+Lawrence expressing a fear that the fortifying of the camp might alarm
+the inhabitants. To which Winslow replied that the making of the
+stockade had not alarmed them in the least, since they took it as a
+proof that the detachment was to spend the winter with them; and he
+added, that as the harvest was not yet got in, he and Murray had agreed
+not to publish the Governor's commands till the next Friday. He
+concludes: "Although it is a disagreeable part of duty we are put upon,
+I am sensible it is a necessary one, and shall endeavor strictly to obey
+your Excellency's orders."
+
+On the thirtieth, Murray, whose post was not many miles distant, made
+him a visit. They agreed that Winslow should summon all the male
+inhabitants about Grand Pré to meet him at the church and hear the
+King's orders, and that Murray should do the same for those around Fort
+Edward. Winslow then called in his three captains,--Adams, Hobbs, and
+Osgood,--made them swear secrecy, and laid before them his instructions
+and plans; which latter they approved. Murray then returned to his post,
+and on the next day sent Winslow a note containing the following: "I
+think the sooner we strike the stroke the better, therefore will be glad
+to see you here as soon as conveniently you can. I shall have the orders
+for assembling ready written for your approbation, only the day blank,
+and am hopeful everything will succeed according to our wishes. The
+gentlemen join me in our best compliments to you and the Doctor."
+
+On the next day, Sunday, Winslow and the Doctor, whose name was
+Whitworth, made the tour of the neighborhood, with an escort of fifty
+men, and found a great quantity of wheat still on the fields. On Tuesday
+Winslow "set out in a whale-boat with Dr. Whitworth and Adjutant
+Kennedy, to consult with Captain Murray in this critical conjuncture."
+They agreed that three in the afternoon of Friday should be the time of
+assembling; then between them they drew up a summons to the inhabitants,
+and got one Beauchamp, a merchant, to "put it into French." It ran as
+follows:--
+
+     By John Winslow, Esquire, Lieutenant-Colonel and Commander of His
+     Majesty's troops at Grand Pré, Mines, River Canard, and places
+     adjacent.
+
+     To the inhabitants of the districts above named, as well ancients
+     as young men and lads.
+
+     Whereas His Excellency the Governor has instructed us of his last
+     resolution respecting the matters proposed lately to the
+     inhabitants, and has ordered us to communicate the same to the
+     inhabitants in general in person, His Excellency being desirous
+     that each of them should be fully satisfied of His Majesty's
+     intentions, which he has also ordered us to communicate to you,
+     such as they have been given him.
+
+     We therefore order and strictly enjoin by these presents to all the
+     inhabitants, as well of the above-named districts as of all the
+     other districts, both old men and young men, as well as all the
+     lads of ten years of age, to attend at the church in Grand Pré on
+     Friday, the fifth instant, at three of the clock in the afternoon,
+     that we may impart what we are ordered to communicate to them;
+     declaring that no excuse will be admitted on any pretence
+     whatsoever, on pain of forfeiting goods and chattels in default.
+
+     Given at Grand Pré, the second of September, in the twenty-ninth
+     year of His Majesty's reign, A.D. 1755.
+
+A similar summons was drawn up in the name of Murray for the inhabitants
+of the district of Fort Edward.
+
+Captain Adams made a reconnoissance of the rivers Canard and Des
+Habitants, and reported "a fine country and full of inhabitants, a
+beautiful church, and abundance of the goods of the world." Another
+reconnoissance by Captains Hobbs and Osgood among the settlements behind
+Grand Pré brought reports equally favorable. On the fourth, another
+letter came from Murray: "All the people quiet, and very busy at their
+harvest; if this day keeps fair, all will be in here in their barns. I
+hope to-morrow will crown all our wishes." The Acadians, like the bees,
+were to gather a harvest for others to enjoy. The summons was sent out
+that afternoon. Powder and ball were served to the men, and all were
+ordered to keep within the lines.
+
+On the next day the inhabitants appeared at the hour appointed, to the
+number of four hundred and eighteen men. Winslow ordered a table to be
+set in the middle of the church, and placed on it his instructions and
+the address he had prepared. Here he took his stand in his laced
+uniform, with one or two subalterns from the regulars at Fort Edward,
+and such of the Massachusetts officers as were not on guard duty;
+strong, sinewy figures, bearing, no doubt, more or less distinctly, the
+peculiar stamp with which toil, trade, and Puritanism had imprinted the
+features of New England. Their commander was not of the prevailing type.
+He was fifty-three years of age, with double chin, smooth forehead,
+arched eyebrows, close powdered wig, and round, rubicund face, from
+which the weight of an odious duty had probably banished the smirk of
+self-satisfaction that dwelt there at other times.[276] Nevertheless, he
+had manly and estimable qualities. The congregation of peasants, clad in
+rough homespun, turned their sunburned faces upon him, anxious and
+intent; and Winslow "delivered them by interpreters the King's orders in
+the following words," which, retouched in orthography and syntax, ran
+thus:--
+
+     GENTLEMEN,--I have received from His Excellency, Governor Lawrence,
+     the King's instructions, which I have in my hand. By his orders you
+     are called together to hear His Majesty's final resolution
+     concerning the French inhabitants of this his province of Nova
+     Scotia, who for almost half a century have had more indulgence
+     granted them than any of his subjects in any part of his dominions.
+     What use you have made of it you yourselves best know.
+
+     The duty I am now upon, though necessary, is very disagreeable to
+     my natural make and temper, as I know it must be grievous to you,
+     who are of the same species. But it is not my business to
+     animadvert on the orders I have received, but to obey them; and
+     therefore without hesitation I shall deliver to you His Majesty's
+     instructions and commands, which are that your lands and tenements
+     and cattle and live-stock of all kinds are forfeited to the Crown,
+     with all your other effects, except money and household goods, and
+     that you yourselves are to be removed from this his province.
+
+     The peremptory orders of His Majesty are that all the French
+     inhabitants of these districts be removed; and through His
+     Majesty's goodness I am directed to allow you the liberty of
+     carrying with you your money and as many of your household goods as
+     you can take without overloading the vessels you go in. I shall do
+     everything in my power that all these goods be secured to you, and
+     that you be not molested in carrying them away, and also that whole
+     families shall go in the same vessel; so that this removal, which I
+     am sensible must give you a great deal of trouble, may be made as
+     easy as His Majesty's service will admit; and I hope that in
+     whatever part of the world your lot may fall, you may be faithful
+     subjects, and a peaceable and happy people.
+
+     I must also inform you that it is His Majesty's pleasure that you
+     remain in security under the inspection and direction of the troops
+     that I have the honor to command.
+
+[Footnote 276: See his portrait, at the rooms of the Massachusetts
+Historical Society.]
+
+He then declared them prisoners of the King. "They were greatly struck,"
+he says, "at this determination, though I believe they did not imagine
+that they were actually to be removed." After delivering the address, he
+returned to his quarters at the priest's house, whither he was followed
+by some of the elder prisoners, who begged leave to tell their families
+what had happened, "since they were fearful that the surprise of their
+detention would quite overcome them." Winslow consulted with his
+officers, and it was arranged that the Acadians should choose twenty of
+their number each day to revisit their homes, the rest being held
+answerable for their return.
+
+A letter, dated some days before, now came from Major Handfield at
+Annapolis, saying that he had tried to secure the men of that
+neighborhood, but that many of them had escaped to the woods. Murray's
+report from Fort Edward came soon after, and was more favorable: "I have
+succeeded finely, and have got a hundred and eighty-three men into my
+possession." To which Winslow replies: "I have the favor of yours of
+this day, and rejoice at your success, and also for the smiles that have
+attended the party here." But he adds mournfully: "Things are now very
+heavy on my heart and hands." The prisoners were lodged in the church,
+and notice was sent to their families to bring them food. "Thus," says
+the Diary of the commander, "ended the memorable fifth of September, a
+day of great fatigue and trouble."
+
+There was one quarter where fortune did not always smile. Major Jedediah
+Preble, of Winslow's battalion, wrote to him that Major Frye had just
+returned from Chipody, whither he had gone with a party of men to
+destroy the settlements and bring off the women and children. After
+burning two hundred and fifty-three buildings he had reimbarked, leaving
+fifty men on shore at a place called Peticodiac to give a finishing
+stroke to the work by burning the "Mass House," or church. While thus
+engaged, they were set upon by three hundred Indians and Acadians, led
+by the partisan officer Boishébert. More than half their number were
+killed, wounded, or taken. The rest ensconced themselves behind the
+neighboring dikes, and Frye, hastily landing with the rest of his men,
+engaged the assailants for three hours, but was forced at last to
+reimbark.[277] Captain Speakman, who took part in the affair, also sent
+Winslow an account of it, and added: "The people here are much concerned
+for fear your party should meet with the same fate (being in the heart
+of a numerous devilish crew), which I pray God avert."
+
+[Footnote 277: Also _Boishébert à Drucourt, 10 Oct. 1755_, an
+exaggerated account. _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 18 Oct. 1755_, sets
+Boishébert's force at one hundred and twenty-five men.]
+
+Winslow had indeed some cause for anxiety. He had captured more Acadians
+since the fifth; and had now in charge nearly five hundred able-bodied
+men, with scarcely three hundred to guard them. As they were allowed
+daily exercise in the open air, they might by a sudden rush get
+possession of arms and make serious trouble. On the Wednesday after the
+scene in the church some unusual movements were observed among them, and
+Winslow and his officers became convinced that they could not safely be
+kept in one body. Five vessels, lately arrived from Boston, were lying
+within the mouth of the neighboring river. It was resolved to place
+fifty of the prisoners on board each of these, and keep them anchored in
+the Basin. The soldiers were all ordered under arms, and posted on an
+open space beside the church and behind the priest's house. The
+prisoners were then drawn up before them, ranked six deep,--the young
+unmarried men, as the most dangerous, being told off and placed on the
+left, to the number of a hundred and forty-one. Captain Adams, with
+eighty men, was then ordered to guard them to the vessels. Though the
+object of the movement had been explained to them, they were possessed
+with the idea that they were to be torn from their families and sent
+away at once; and they all, in great excitement, refused to go. Winslow
+told them that there must be no parley or delay; and as they still
+refused, a squad of soldiers advanced towards them with fixed bayonets;
+while he himself, laying hold of the foremost young man, commanded him
+to move forward. "He obeyed; and the rest followed, though slowly, and
+went off praying, singing, and crying, being met by the women and
+children all the way (which is a mile and a half) with great
+lamentation, upon their knees, praying." When the escort returned, about
+a hundred of the married men were ordered to follow the first party;
+and, "the ice being broken," they readily complied. The vessels were
+anchored at a little distance from shore, and six soldiers were placed
+on board each of them as a guard. The prisoners were offered the King's
+rations, but preferred to be supplied by their families, who, it was
+arranged, should go in boats to visit them every day; "and thus," says
+Winslow, "ended this troublesome job." He was not given to effusions of
+feeling, but he wrote to Major Handfield: "This affair is more grievous
+to me than any service I was ever employed in."[278]
+
+[Footnote 278: Haliburton, who knew Winslow's Journal only by imperfect
+extracts, erroneously states that the men put on board the vessels were
+sent away immediately. They remained at Grand Pré several weeks, and
+were then sent off at intervals with their families.]
+
+Murray sent him a note of congratulation: "I am extremely pleased that
+things are so clever at Grand Pré, and that the poor devils are so
+resigned. Here they are more patient than I could have expected for
+people in their circumstances; and what surprises me still more is the
+indifference of the women, who really are, or seem, quite unconcerned. I
+long much to see the poor wretches embarked and our affair a little
+settled; and then I will do myself the pleasure of meeting you and
+drinking their good voyage."
+
+This agreeable consummation was still distant. There was a long and
+painful delay. The provisions for the vessels which were to carry the
+prisoners did not come; nor did the vessels themselves, excepting the
+five already at Grand Pré. In vain Winslow wrote urgent letters to
+George Saul, the commissary, to bring the supplies at once. Murray, at
+Fort Edward, though with less feeling than his brother officer, was
+quite as impatient of the burden of suffering humanity on his hands. "I
+am amazed what can keep the transports and Saul. Surely our friend at
+Chignecto is willing to give us as much of our neighbors' company as he
+well can."[279] Saul came at last with a shipload of provisions; but the
+lagging transports did not appear. Winslow grew heart-sick at the daily
+sight of miseries which he himself had occasioned, and wrote to a friend
+at Halifax: "I know they deserve all and more than they feel; yet it
+hurts me to hear their weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. I am
+in hopes our affairs will soon put on another face, and we get
+transports, and I rid of the worst piece of service that ever I was in."
+
+[Footnote 279: _Murray to Winslow, 26 Sept. 1755_.]
+
+After weeks of delay, seven transports came from Annapolis; and Winslow
+sent three of them to Murray, who joyfully responded: "Thank God, the
+transports are come at last. So soon as I have shipped off my rascals,
+I will come down and settle matters with you, and enjoy ourselves a
+little."
+
+Winslow prepared for the embarkation. The Acadian prisoners and their
+families were divided into groups answering to their several villages,
+in order that those of the same village might, as far as possible, go in
+the same vessel. It was also provided that the members of each family
+should remain together; and notice was given them to hold themselves in
+readiness. "But even now," he writes, "I could not persuade the people I
+was in earnest." Their doubts were soon ended. The first embarkation
+took place on the eighth of October, under which date the Diary contains
+this entry: "Began to embark the inhabitants who went off very
+solentarily [_sic_] and unwillingly, the women in great distress,
+carrying off their children in their arms; others carrying their
+decrepit parents in their carts, with all their goods; moving in great
+confusion, and appeared a scene of woe and distress."[280]
+
+[Footnote 280: In spite of Winslow's care, some cases of separation of
+families occurred; but they were not numerous.]
+
+Though a large number were embarked on this occasion, still more
+remained; and as the transports slowly arrived, the dismal scene was
+repeated at intervals, with more order than at first, as the Acadians
+had learned to accept their fate as a certainty. So far as Winslow was
+concerned, their treatment seems to have been as humane as was possible
+under the circumstances; but they complained of the men, who disliked
+and despised them. One soldier received thirty lashes for stealing fowls
+from them; and an order was issued forbidding soldiers or sailors, on
+pain of summary punishment, to leave their quarters without permission,
+"that an end may be put to distressing this distressed people." Two of
+the prisoners, however, while trying to escape, were shot by a
+reconnoitring party.
+
+At the beginning of November Winslow reported that he had sent off
+fifteen hundred and ten persons, in nine vessels, and that more than six
+hundred still remained in his district.[281] The last of these were not
+embarked till late in December. Murray finished his part of the work at
+the end of October, having sent from the district of Fort Edward eleven
+hundred persons in four frightfully crowded transports.[282] At the
+close of that month sixteen hundred and sixty-four had been sent from
+the district of Annapolis, where many others escaped to the woods.[283]
+A detachment which was ordered to seize the inhabitants of the district
+of Cobequid failed entirely, finding the settlements abandoned. In the
+country about Fort Cumberland, Monckton, who directed the operation in
+person, had very indifferent success, catching in all but little more
+than a thousand.[284] Le Guerne, missionary priest in this neighborhood,
+gives a characteristic and affecting incident of the embarkation. "Many
+unhappy women, carried away by excessive attachment to their husbands,
+whom they had been allowed to see too often, and closing their ears to
+the voice of religion and their missionary, threw themselves blindly and
+despairingly into the English vessels. And now was seen the saddest of
+spectacles; for some of these women, solely from a religious motive,
+refused to take with them their grown-up sons and daughters."[285] They
+would expose their own souls to perdition among heretics, but not those
+of their children.
+
+[Footnote 281: _Winslow to Monckton, 3 Nov. 1755_.]
+
+[Footnote 282: _Ibid._]
+
+[Footnote 283: _Captain Adams to Winslow, 29 Nov. 1755_; see also Knox,
+I. 85, who exactly confirms Adams's figures.]
+
+[Footnote 284: _Monckton to Winslow, 7 Oct. 1755_.]
+
+[Footnote 285: _Le Guerne à Prévost, 10 Mars, 1756_.]
+
+When all, or nearly all, had been sent off from the various points of
+departure, such of the houses and barns as remained standing were
+burned, in obedience to the orders of Lawrence, that those who had
+escaped might be forced to come in and surrender themselves. The whole
+number removed from the province, men, women, and children, was a little
+above six thousand. Many remained behind; and while some of these
+withdrew to Canada, Isle St. Jean, and other distant retreats, the rest
+lurked in the woods or returned to their old haunts, whence they waged,
+for several years a guerilla warfare against the English. Yet their
+strength was broken, and they were no longer a danger to the province.
+
+Of their exiled countrymen, one party overpowered the crew of the vessel
+that carried them, ran her ashore at the mouth of the St. John, and
+escaped.[286] The rest were distributed among the colonies from
+Massachusetts to Georgia, the master of each transport having been
+provided with a letter from Lawrence addressed to the Governor of the
+province to which he was bound, and desiring him to receive the
+unwelcome strangers. The provincials were vexed at the burden imposed
+upon them; and though the Acadians were not in general ill-treated,
+their lot was a hard one. Still more so was that of those among them who
+escaped to Canada. The chronicle of the Ursulines of Quebec, speaking of
+these last, says that their misery was indescribable, and attributes it
+to the poverty of the colony. But there were other causes. The exiles
+found less pity from kindred and fellow Catholics than from the heretics
+of the English colonies. Some of them who had made their way to Canada
+from Boston, whither they had been transported, sent word to a gentleman
+of that place who had befriended them, that they wished to return.[287]
+Bougainville, the celebrated navigator, then aide-de-camp to Montcalm,
+says concerning them: "They are dying by wholesale. Their past and
+present misery, joined to the rapacity of the Canadians, who seek only
+to squeeze out of them all the money they can, and then refuse them the
+help so dearly bought, are the cause of this mortality." "A citizen of
+Quebec," he says farther on, "was in debt to one of the partners of the
+Great Company [_Government officials leagued for plunder_]. He had no
+means of paying. They gave him a great number of Acadians to board and
+lodge. He starved them with hunger and cold, got out of them what money
+they had, and paid the extortioner. _Quel pays! Quels moeurs_!"[288]
+
+[Footnote 286: _Lettre commune de Drucour et Prévost au Ministre, 6
+Avril, 1756. Vaudreuil au Ministre, 1 Juin, 1756_.]
+
+[Footnote 287: Hutchinson, _Hist. Mass._, III. 42, _note_.]
+
+[Footnote 288: Bougainville, _Journal, 1756-1758_. His statements are
+sustained by _Mémoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760_.]
+
+Many of the exiles eventually reached Louisiana, where their descendants
+now form a numerous and distinct population. Some, after incredible
+hardship, made their way back to Acadia, where, after the peace, they
+remained unmolested, and, with those who had escaped seizure, became the
+progenitors of the present Acadians, now settled in various parts of the
+British maritime provinces, notably at Madawaska, on the upper St. John,
+and at Clare, in Nova Scotia. Others were sent from Virginia to England;
+and others again, after the complete conquest of the country, found
+refuge in France.
+
+In one particular the authors of the deportation were disappointed in
+its results. They had hoped to substitute a loyal population for a
+disaffected one; but they failed for some time to find settlers for the
+vacated lands. The Massachusetts soldiers, to whom they were offered,
+would not stay in the province; and it was not till five years later
+that families of British stock began to occupy the waste fields of the
+Acadians. This goes far to show that a longing to become their heirs had
+not, as has been alleged, any considerable part in the motives for their
+removal.
+
+New England humanitarianism, melting into sentimentality at a tale of
+woe, has been unjust to its own. Whatever judgment may be passed on the
+cruel measure of wholesale expatriation, it was not put in execution
+till every resource of patience and persuasion had been tried in vain.
+The agents of the French Court, civil, military, and ecclesiastical, had
+made some act of force a necessity. We have seen by what vile practices
+they produced in Acadia a state of things intolerable, and impossible of
+continuance. They conjured up the tempest; and when it burst on the
+heads of the unhappy people, they gave no help. The Government of Louis
+XV. began with making the Acadians its tools, and ended with making them
+its victims.[289]
+
+[Footnote 289: It may not be remembered that the predecessor of Louis
+XV., without the slightest provocation or the pretence of any, gave
+orders that the whole Protestant population of the colony of New York,
+amounting to about eighteen thousand, should be seized, despoiled of
+their property, placed on board his ships and dispersed among the other
+British colonies in such a way that they could not reunite. Want of
+power alone prevented the execution of the order.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 9
+
+1755
+
+Dieskau
+
+
+The next stroke of the campaign was to be the capture of Crown Point,
+that dangerous neighbor which, for a quarter of a century, had
+threatened the northern colonies. Shirley, in January, had proposed an
+attack on it to the Ministry; and in February, without waiting their
+reply, he laid the plan before his Assembly. They accepted it, and
+voted money for the pay and maintenance of twelve hundred men, provided
+the adjacent colonies would contribute in due proportion.[290]
+Massachusetts showed a military activity worthy of the reputation she
+had won. Forty-five hundred of her men, or one in eight of her adult
+males, volunteered to fight the French, and enlisted for the various
+expeditions, some in the pay of the province, and some in that of the
+King.[291] It remained to name a commander for the Crown Point
+enterprise. Nobody had power to do so, for Braddock was not yet come;
+but that time might not be lost, Shirley, at the request of his
+Assembly, took the responsibility on himself. If he had named a
+Massachusetts officer, it would have roused the jealousy of the other
+New England colonies; and he therefore appointed William Johnson of New
+York, thus gratifying that important province and pleasing the Five
+Nations, who at this time looked on Johnson with even more than usual
+favor. Hereupon, in reply to his request, Connecticut voted twelve
+hundred men, New Hampshire five hundred, and Rhode Island four hundred,
+all at their own charge; while New York, a little later, promised eight
+hundred more. When, in April, Braddock and the Council at Alexandria
+approved the plan and the commander, Shirley gave Johnson the commission
+of major-general of the levies of Massachusetts; and the governors of
+the other provinces contributing to the expedition gave him similar
+commissions for their respective contingents. Never did general take the
+field with authority so heterogeneous.
+
+[Footnote 290: _Governor Shirley's Message to his Assembly, 13 Feb.
+1755. Resolutions of the Assembly of Massachusetts, 18 Feb. 1755_.
+Shirley's original idea was to build a fort on a rising ground near
+Crown Point, in order to command it. This was soon abandoned for the
+more honest and more practical plan of direct attack.]
+
+[Footnote 291: _Correspondence of Shirley, Feb. 1755_. The number was
+much increased later in the season.]
+
+He had never seen service, and knew nothing of war. By birth he was
+Irish, of good family, being nephew of Admiral Sir Peter Warren, who,
+owning extensive wild lands on the Mohawk, had placed the young man in
+charge of them nearly twenty years before. Johnson was born to prosper.
+He had ambition, energy, an active mind, a tall, strong person, a rough,
+jovial temper, and a quick adaptation to his surroundings. He could
+drink flip with Dutch boors, or Madeira with royal governors. He liked
+the society of the great, would intrigue and flatter when he had an end
+to gain, and foil a rival without looking too closely at the means; but
+compared with the Indian traders who infested the border, he was a model
+of uprightness. He lived by the Mohawk in a fortified house which was a
+stronghold against foes and a scene of hospitality to friends, both
+white and red. Here--for his tastes were not fastidious--presided for
+many years a Dutch or German wench whom he finally married; and after
+her death a young Mohawk squaw took her place. Over his neighbors, the
+Indians of the Five Nations, and all others of their race with whom he
+had to deal, he acquired a remarkable influence. He liked them, adopted
+their ways, and treated them kindly or sternly as the case required, but
+always with a justice and honesty in strong contrast with the
+rascalities of the commission of Albany traders who had lately managed
+their affairs, and whom they so detested that one of their chiefs called
+them "not men, but devils." Hence, when Johnson was made Indian
+superintendent there was joy through all the Iroquois confederacy. When,
+in addition, he was made a general, he assembled the warriors in council
+to engage them to aid the expedition.
+
+This meeting took place at his own house, known as Fort Johnson; and as
+more than eleven hundred Indians appeared at his call, his larder was
+sorely taxed to entertain them. The speeches were interminable. Johnson,
+as master of Indian rhetoric, knew his audience too well not to contest
+with them the palm of insufferable prolixity. The climax was reached on
+the fourth day, and he threw down the war-belt. An Oneida chief took it
+up; Stevens, the interpreter, began the war-dance, and the assembled
+warriors howled in chorus. Then a tub of punch was brought in, and they
+all drank the King's health.[292] They showed less alacrity, however, to
+fight his battles, and scarcely three hundred of them would take the
+war-path. Too many of their friends and relatives were enlisted for the
+French.
+
+[Footnote 292: _Report of Conference between Major-General Johnson and
+the Indians, June, 1755_.]
+
+While the British colonists were preparing to attack Crown Point, the
+French of Canada were preparing to defend it. Duquesne, recalled from
+his post, had resigned the government to the Marquis de Vaudreuil, who
+had at his disposal the battalions of regulars that had sailed in the
+spring from Brest under Baron Dieskau. His first thought was to use them
+for the capture of Oswego; but the letters of Braddock, found on the
+battle-field, warned him of the design against Crown Point; while a
+reconnoitring party which had gone as far as the Hudson brought back
+news that Johnson's forces were already in the field. Therefore the plan
+was changed, and Dieskau was ordered to lead the main body of his
+troops, not to Lake Ontario, but to Lake Champlain. He passed up the
+Richelieu, and embarked in boats and canoes for Crown Point. The veteran
+knew that the foes with whom he had to deal were but a mob of
+countrymen. He doubted not of putting them to rout, and meant never to
+hold his hand till he had chased them back to Albany.[293] "Make all
+haste," Vaudreuil wrote to him; "for when you return we shall send you
+to Oswego to execute our first design."[294]
+
+[Footnote 293: _Bigot au Ministre, 27 Août, 1755. Ibid., 5 Sept. 1755_.]
+
+[Footnote 294: _Mémoire pour servir d'Instruction à M. le Baron de
+Dieskau, Maréchal des Camps et Armées du Roy, 15 Août, 1755_.]
+
+Johnson on his part was preparing to advance. In July about three
+thousand provincials were encamped near Albany, some on the "Flats"
+above the town, and some on the meadows below. Hither, too, came a swarm
+of Johnson's Mohawks,--warriors, squaws, and children. They adorned the
+General's face with war-paint, and he danced the war-dance; then with
+his sword he cut the first slice from the ox that had been roasted
+whole for their entertainment. "I shall be glad," wrote the surgeon of a
+New England regiment, "if they fight as eagerly as they ate their ox and
+drank their wine."
+
+Above all things the expedition needed promptness; yet everything moved
+slowly. Five popular legislatures controlled the troops and the
+supplies. Connecticut had refused to send her men till Shirley promised
+that her commanding officer should rank next to Johnson. The whole
+movement was for some time at a deadlock because the five governments
+could not agree about their contributions of artillery and stores.[295]
+The New Hampshire regiment had taken a short cut for Crown Point across
+the wilderness of Vermont; but had been recalled in time to save them
+from probable destruction. They were now with the rest in the camp at
+Albany, in such distress for provisions that a private subscription was
+proposed for their relief.[296]
+
+[Footnote 295: _The Conduct of Major-General Shirley briefly stated_
+(London, 1758).]
+
+[Footnote 296: _Blanchard to Wentworth, 28 Aug. 1755_, in _Provincial
+Papers of New Hampshire_, VI. 429.]
+
+Johnson's army, crude as it was, had in it good material. Here was
+Phineas Lyman, of Connecticut, second in command, once a tutor at Yale
+College, and more recently a lawyer,--a raw soldier, but a vigorous and
+brave one; Colonel Moses Titcomb, of Massachusetts, who had fought with
+credit at Louisbourg; and Ephraim Williams, also colonel of a
+Massachusetts regiment, a tall and portly man, who had been a captain in
+the last war, member of the General Court, and deputy-sheriff. He made
+his will in the camp at Albany, and left a legacy to found the school
+which has since become Williams College. His relative, Stephen Williams,
+was chaplain of his regiment, and his brother Thomas was its surgeon.
+Seth Pomeroy, gunsmith at Northampton, who, like Titcomb, had seen
+service at Louisbourg, was its lieutenant-colonel. He had left a wife at
+home, an excellent matron, to whom he was continually writing
+affectionate letters, mingling household cares with news of the camp,
+and charging her to see that their eldest boy, Seth, then in college at
+New Haven, did not run off to the army. Pomeroy had with him his brother
+Daniel; and this he thought was enough. Here, too, was a man whose name
+is still a household word in New England,--the sturdy Israel Putnam,
+private in a Connecticut regiment; and another as bold as he, John
+Stark, lieutenant in the New Hampshire levies, and the future victor of
+Bennington.
+
+The soldiers were no soldiers, but farmers and farmers' sons who had
+volunteered for the summer campaign. One of the corps had a blue uniform
+faced with red. The rest wore their daily clothing. Blankets had been
+served out to them by the several provinces, but the greater part
+brought their own guns; some under the penalty of a fine if they came
+without them, and some under the inducement of a reward.[297] They had
+no bayonets, but carried hatchets in their belts as a sort of
+substitute.[298] At their sides were slung powder-horns, on which, in
+the leisure of the camp, they carved quaint devices with the points of
+their jack-knives. They came chiefly from plain New England
+homesteads,--rustic abodes, unpainted and dingy, with long well-sweeps,
+capacious barns, rough fields of pumpkins and corn, and vast kitchen
+chimneys, above which in winter hung squashes to keep them from frost,
+and guns to keep them from rust.
+
+[Footnote 297: _Proclamation of Governor Shirley, 1755_.]
+
+[Footnote 298: _Second Letter to a Friend on the Battle of Lake
+George_.]
+
+As to the manners and morals of the army there is conflict of evidence.
+In some respects nothing could be more exemplary. "Not a chicken has
+been stolen," says William Smith, of New York; while, on the other hand,
+Colonel Ephraim Williams writes to Colonel Israel Williams, then
+commanding on the Massachusetts frontier: "We are a wicked, profane
+army, especially the New York and Rhode Island troops. Nothing to be
+heard among a great part of them but the language of Hell. If Crown
+Point is taken, it will not be for our sakes, but for those good people
+left behind."[299] There was edifying regularity in respect to form.
+Sermons twice a week, daily prayers, and frequent psalm-singing
+alternated with the much-needed military drill.[300] "Prayers among us
+night and morning," writes Private Jonathan Caswell, of Massachusetts,
+to his father. "Here we lie, knowing not when we shall march for Crown
+Point; but I hope not long to tarry. Desiring your prayers to God for me
+as I am going to war, I am Your Ever Dutiful son."[301]
+
+[Footnote 299: _Papers of Colonel Israel Williams_.]
+
+[Footnote 300: _Massachusetts Archives_.]
+
+[Footnote 301: _Jonathan Caswell to John Caswell, 6 July, 1755_.]
+
+To Pomeroy and some of his brothers in arms it seemed that they were
+engaged in a kind of crusade against the myrmidons of Rome. "As you have
+at heart the Protestant cause," he wrote to his friend Israel Williams,
+"so I ask an interest in your prayers that the Lord of Hosts would go
+forth with us and give us victory over our unreasonable, encroaching,
+barbarous, murdering enemies."
+
+Both Williams the surgeon and Williams the colonel chafed at the
+incessant delays. "The expedition goes on very much as a snail runs,"
+writes the former to his wife; "it seems we may possibly see Crown Point
+this time twelve months." The Colonel was vexed because everything was
+out of joint in the department of transportation: wagoners mutinous for
+want of pay; ordnance stores, camp-kettles, and provisions left behind.
+"As to rum," he complains, "it won't hold out nine weeks. Things appear
+most melancholy to me." Even as he was writing, a report came of the
+defeat of Braddock; and, shocked at the blow, his pen traced the words:
+"The Lord have mercy on poor New England!"
+
+Johnson had sent four Mohawk scouts to Canada. They returned on the
+twenty-first of August with the report that the French were all astir
+with preparation, and that eight thousand men were coming to defend
+Crown Point. On this a council of war was called; and it was resolved to
+send to the several colonies for reinforcements.[302] Meanwhile the main
+body had moved up the river to the spot called the Great Carrying Place,
+where Lyman had begun a fortified storehouse, which his men called Fort
+Lyman, but which was afterwards named Fort Edward. Two Indian trails led
+from this point to the waters of Lake Champlain, one by way of Lake
+George, and the other by way of Wood Creek. There was doubt which course
+the army should take. A road was begun to Wood Creek; then it was
+countermanded, and a party was sent to explore the path to Lake George.
+"With submission to the general officers," Surgeon Williams again
+writes, "I think it a very grand mistake that the business of
+reconnoitring was not done months agone." It was resolved at last to
+march for Lake George; gangs of axemen were sent to hew out the way; and
+on the twenty-sixth two thousand men were ordered to the lake, while
+Colonel Blanchard, of New Hampshire, remained with five hundred to
+finish and defend Fort Lyman.
+
+[Footnote 302: _Minutes of Council of War, 22 Aug. 1755. Ephraim
+Williams to Benjamin Dwight, 22 Aug. 1755_.]
+
+The train of Dutch wagons, guarded by the homely soldiery, jolted slowly
+over the stumps and roots of the newly made road, and the regiments
+followed at their leisure. The hardships of the way were not without
+their consolations. The jovial Irishman who held the chief command made
+himself very agreeable to the New England officers. "We went on about
+four or five miles," says Pomeroy in his Journal, "then stopped, ate
+pieces of broken bread and cheese, and drank some fresh lemon-punch and
+the best of wine with General Johnson and some of the field-officers."
+It was the same on the next day. "Stopped about noon and dined with
+General Johnson by a small brook under a tree; ate a good dinner of cold
+boiled and roast venison; drank good fresh lemon-punch and wine."
+
+That afternoon they reached their destination, fourteen miles from Fort
+Lyman. The most beautiful lake in America lay before them; then more
+beautiful than now, in the wild charm of untrodden mountains and virgin
+forests. "I have given it the name of Lake George," wrote Johnson to the
+Lords of Trade, "not only in honor of His Majesty, but to ascertain his
+undoubted dominion here." His men made their camp on a piece of rough
+ground by the edge of the water, pitching their tents among the stumps
+of the newly felled trees. In their front was a forest of pitch-pine; on
+their right, a marsh, choked with alders and swamp-maples; on their
+left, the low hill where Fort George was afterwards built; and at their
+rear, the lake. Little was done to clear the forest in front, though it
+would give excellent cover to an enemy. Nor did Johnson take much pains
+to learn the movements of the French in the direction of Crown Point,
+though he sent scouts towards South Bay and Wood Creek. Every day stores
+and bateaux, or flat boats, came on wagons from Fort Lyman; and
+preparation moved on with the leisure that had marked it from the first.
+About three hundred Mohawks came to the camp, and were regarded by the
+New England men as nuisances. On Sunday the gray-haired Stephen Williams
+preached to these savage allies a long Calvinistic sermon, which must
+have sorely perplexed the interpreter whose business it was to turn it
+into Mohawk; and in the afternoon young Chaplain Newell, of Rhode
+Island, expounded to the New England men the somewhat untimely text,
+"Love your enemies." On the next Sunday, September seventh, Williams
+preached again, this time to the whites from a text in Isaiah. It was a
+peaceful day, fair and warm, with a few light showers; yet not wholly a
+day of rest, for two hundred wagons came up from Fort Lyman, loaded with
+bateaux. After the sermon there was an alarm. An Indian scout came in
+about sunset, and reported that he had found the trail of a body of men
+moving from South Bay towards Fort Lyman. Johnson called for a volunteer
+to carry a letter of warning to Colonel Blanchard, the commander. A
+wagoner named Adams offered himself for the perilous service, mounted,
+and galloped along the road with the letter. Sentries were posted, and
+the camp fell asleep.
+
+While Johnson lay at Lake George, Dieskau prepared a surprise for him.
+The German Baron had reached Crown Point at the head of three thousand
+five hundred and seventy-three men, regulars, Canadians, and
+Indians.[303] He had no thought of waiting there to be attacked. The
+troops were told to hold themselves ready to move at a moment's notice.
+Officers--so ran the order--will take nothing with them but one spare
+shirt, one spare pair of shoes, a blanket, a bearskin, and provisions
+for twelve days; Indians are not to amuse themselves by taking scalps
+till the enemy is entirely defeated, since they can kill ten men in the
+time required to scalp one.[304] Then Dieskau moved on, with nearly all
+his force, to Carillon, or Ticonderoga, a promontory commanding both the
+routes by which alone Johnson could advance, that of Wood Creek and that
+of Lake George.
+
+[Footnote 303: _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 25 Sept. 1755_.]
+
+[Footnote 304: _Livre d'Ordres, Août, Sept. 1755_.]
+
+The Indians allies were commanded by Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, the
+officer who had received Washington on his embassy to Fort Le Boeuf.
+These unmanageable warriors were a constant annoyance to Dieskau, being
+a species of humanity quite new to him. "They drive us crazy," he says,
+"from morning till night. There is no end to their demands. They have
+already eaten five oxen and as many hogs, without counting the kegs of
+brandy they have drunk. In short, one needs the patience of an angel to
+get on with these devils; and yet one must always force himself to seem
+pleased with them."[305]
+
+[Footnote 305: _Dieskau à Vaudreuil, 1 Sept. 1755_.]
+
+They would scarcely even go out as scouts. At last, however, on the
+fourth of September, a reconnoitring party came in with a scalp and an
+English prisoner caught near Fort Lyman. He was questioned under the
+threat of being given to the Indians for torture if he did not tell the
+truth; but, nothing daunted, he invented a patriotic falsehood; and
+thinking to lure his captors into a trap, told them that the English
+army had fallen back to Albany, leaving five hundred men at Fort Lyman,
+which he represented as indefensible. Dieskau resolved on a rapid
+movement to seize the place. At noon of the same day, leaving a part of
+his force at Ticonderoga, he embarked the rest in canoes and advanced
+along the narrow prolongation of Lake Champlain that stretched southward
+through the wilderness to where the town of Whitehall now stands. He
+soon came to a point where the lake dwindled to a mere canal, while two
+mighty rocks, capped with stunted forests, faced each other from the
+opposing banks. Here he left an officer named Roquemaure with a
+detachment of troops, and again advanced along a belt of quiet water
+traced through the midst of a deep marsh, green at that season with
+sedge and water-weeds, and known to the English as the Drowned Lands.
+Beyond, on either hand, crags feathered with birch and fir, or hills
+mantled with woods, looked down on the long procession of canoes.[306]
+As they neared the site of Whitehall, a passage opened on the right, the
+entrance to a sheet of lonely water slumbering in the shadow of woody
+mountains, and forming the lake then, as now, called South Bay. They
+advanced to its head, landed where a small stream enters it, left the
+canoes under a guard, and began their march through the forest. They
+counted in all two hundred and sixteen regulars of the battalions of
+Languedoc and La Reine, six hundred and eighty-four Canadians, and above
+six hundred Indians.[307] Every officer and man carried provisions for
+eight days in his knapsack. They encamped at night by a brook, and in
+the morning, after hearing Mass, marched again. The evening of the next
+day brought them near the road that led to Lake George. Fort Lyman was
+but three miles distant. A man on horseback galloped by; it was Adams,
+Johnson's unfortunate messenger. The Indians shot him, and found the
+letter in his pocket. Soon after, ten or twelve wagons appeared in
+charge of mutinous drivers, who had left the English camp without
+orders. Several of them were shot, two were taken, and the rest ran off.
+The two captives declared that, contrary to the assertion of the
+prisoner at Ticonderoga, a large force lay encamped at the lake. The
+Indians now held a council, and presently gave out that they would not
+attack the fort, which they thought well supplied with cannon, but that
+they were willing to attack the camp at Lake George. Remonstrance was
+lost upon them. Dieskau was not young, but he was daring to rashness,
+and inflamed to emulation by the victory over Braddock. The enemy were
+reported greatly to outnumber him; but his Canadian advisers had assured
+him that the English colony militia were the worst troops on the face of
+the earth. "The more there are," he said to the Canadians and Indians,
+"the more we shall kill;" and in the morning the order was given to
+march for the lake.
+
+[Footnote 306: I passed this way three weeks ago. There are some points
+where the scene is not much changed since Dieskau saw it.]
+
+[Footnote 307: _Mémoire sur l'Affaire du 8 Septembre_.]
+
+They moved rapidly on through the waste of pines, and soon entered the
+rugged valley that led to Johnson's camp. On their right was a gorge
+where, shadowed in bushes, gurgled a gloomy brook; and beyond rose the
+cliffs that buttressed the rocky heights of French Mountain, seen by
+glimpses between the boughs. On their left rose gradually the lower
+slopes of West Mountain. All was rock, thicket, and forest; there was no
+open space but the road along which the regulars marched, while the
+Canadians and Indians pushed their way through the woods in such order
+as the broken ground would permit.
+
+They were three miles from the lake, when their scouts brought in a
+prisoner who told them that a column of English troops was approaching.
+Dieskau's preparations were quickly made. While the regulars halted on
+the road, the Canadians and Indians moved to the front, where most of
+them hid in the forest along the slopes of West Mountain, and the rest
+lay close among the thickets on the other side. Thus, when the English
+advanced to attack the regulars in front, they would find themselves
+caught in a double ambush. No sight or sound betrayed the snare; but
+behind every bush crouched a Canadian or a savage, with gun cocked and
+ears intent, listening for the tramp of the approaching column.
+
+The wagoners who escaped the evening before had reached the camp about
+midnight, and reported that there was a war-party on the road near Fort
+Lyman. Johnson had at this time twenty-two hundred effective men,
+besides his three hundred Indians.[308] He called a council of war in
+the morning, and a resolution was taken which can only be explained by a
+complete misconception as to the force of the French. It was determined
+to send out two detachments of five hundred men each, one towards Fort
+Lyman, and the other towards South Bay, the object being, according to
+Johnson "to catch the enemy in their retreat."[309] Hendrick, chief of
+the Mohawks, a brave and sagacious warrior, expressed his dissent after
+a fashion of his own. He picked up a stick and broke it; then he picked
+up several sticks, and showed that together they could not be broken.
+The hint was taken, and the two detachments were joined in one. Still
+the old savage shook his head. "If they are to be killed," he said,
+"they are too many; if they are to fight, they are too few."
+Nevertheless, he resolved to share their fortunes; and mounting on a
+gun-carriage, he harangued his warriors with a voice so animated and
+gestures so expressive, that the New England officers listened in
+admiration, though they understood not a word. One difficulty remained.
+He was too old and fat to go afoot; but Johnson lent him a horse, which
+he bestrode, and trotted to the head of the column, followed by two
+hundred of his warriors as fast as they could grease, paint, and
+befeather themselves.
+
+[Footnote 308: _Wraxall to Lieutenant-Governor Delancey, 10 Sept. 1755_.
+Wraxall was Johnson's aide-de-camp and secretary. The _Second Letter to
+a Friend_ says twenty-one hundred whites and two hundred or three
+hundred Indians. Blodget, who was also on the spot, sets the whites at
+two thousand.]
+
+[Footnote 309: _Letter to the Governors of the several Colonies, 9 Sept.
+1755_.]
+
+Captain Elisha Hawley was in his tent, finishing a letter which he had
+just written to his brother Joseph; and these were the last words: "I am
+this minute agoing out in company with five hundred men to see if we can
+intercept 'em in their retreat, or find their canoes in the Drowned
+Lands; and therefore must conclude this letter." He closed and directed
+it; and in an hour received his death-wound.
+
+It was soon after eight o'clock when Ephraim Williams left the camp with
+his regiment, marched a little distance, and then waited for the rest of
+the detachment under Lieutenant-Colonel Whiting. Thus Dieskau had full
+time to lay his ambush. When Whiting came up, the whole moved on
+together, so little conscious of danger that no scouts were thrown out
+in front or flank; and, in full security, they entered the fatal snare.
+Before they were completely involved in it, the sharp eye of old
+Hendrick detected some sign of an enemy. At that instant, whether by
+accident or design, a gun was fired from the bushes. It is said that
+Dieskau's Iroquois, seeing Mohawks, their relatives, in the van, wished
+to warn them of danger. If so, the warning came too late. The thickets
+on the left blazed out a deadly fire, and the men fell by scores. In the
+words of Dieskau, the head of the column "was doubled up like a pack of
+cards." Hendrick's horse was shot down, and the chief was killed with a
+bayonet as he tried to rise. Williams, seeing a rising ground on his
+right, made for it, calling on his men to follow; but as he climbed the
+slope, guns flashed from the bushes, and a shot through the brain laid
+him dead. The men in the rear pressed forward to support their comrades,
+when a hot fire was suddenly opened on them from the forest along their
+right flank. Then there was a panic; some fled outright, and the whole
+column recoiled. The van now became the rear, and all the force of the
+enemy rushed upon it, shouting and screeching. There was a moment of
+total confusion; but a part of Williams's regiment rallied under command
+of Whiting, and covered the retreat, fighting behind trees like Indians,
+and firing and falling back by turns, bravely aided by some of the
+Mohawks and by a detachment which Johnson sent to their aid. "And a very
+handsome retreat they made," writes Pomeroy; "and so continued till they
+came within about three quarters of a mile of our camp. This was the
+last fire our men gave our enemies, which killed great numbers of them;
+they were seen to drop as pigeons." So ended the fray long known in New
+England fireside story as the "bloody morning scout." Dieskau now
+ordered a halt, and sounded his trumpets to collect his scattered men.
+His Indians, however, were sullen and unmanageable, and the Canadians
+also showed signs of wavering. The veteran who commanded them all,
+Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, had been killed. At length they were
+persuaded to move again, the regulars leading the way.
+
+About an hour after Williams and his men had begun their march, a
+distant rattle of musketry was heard at the camp; and as it grew nearer
+and louder, the listeners knew that their comrades were on the retreat.
+Then, at the eleventh hour, preparations were begun for defence. A sort
+of barricade was made along the front of the camp, partly of wagons, and
+partly of inverted bateaux, but chiefly of the trunks of trees hastily
+hewn down in the neighboring forest and laid end to end in a single row.
+The line extended from the southern slopes of the hill on the left
+across a tract of rough ground to the marshes on the right. The forest,
+choked with bushes and clumps of rank ferns, was within a few yards of
+the barricade, and there was scarcely time to hack away the intervening
+thickets. Three cannon were planted to sweep the road that descended
+through the pines, and another was dragged up to the ridge of the hill.
+The defeated party began to come in; first, scared fugitives both white
+and red, then, gangs of men bringing the wounded; and at last, an hour
+and a half after the first fire was heard, the main detachment was seen
+marching in compact bodies down the road.
+
+Five hundred men were detailed to guard the flanks of the camp. The rest
+stood behind the wagons or lay flat behind the logs and inverted
+bateaux, the Massachusetts men on the right, and the Connecticut men on
+the left. Besides Indians, this actual fighting force was between
+sixteen and seventeen hundred rustics, very few of whom had been under
+fire before that morning. They were hardly at their posts when they saw
+ranks of white-coated soldiers moving down the road, and bayonets that
+to them seemed innumerable glittering between the boughs. At the same
+time a terrific burst of war-whoops rose along the front; and, in the
+words of Pomeroy, "the Canadians and Indians, helter-skelter, the woods
+full of them, came running with undaunted courage right down the hill
+upon us, expecting to make us flee."[310] Some of the men grew uneasy;
+while the chief officers, sword in hand, threatened instant death to any
+who should stir from their posts.[311] If Dieskau had made an assault at
+that instant, there could be little doubt of the result.
+
+[Footnote 310: _Seth Pomeroy to his Wife, 10 Sept. 1755_.]
+
+[Footnote 311: _Dr. Perez Marsh to William Williams, 25 Sept. 1755_.]
+
+This he well knew; but he was powerless. He had his small force of
+regulars well in hand; but the rest, red and white, were beyond control,
+scattering through the woods and swamps, shouting, yelling, and firing
+from behind trees. The regulars advanced with intrepidity towards the
+camp where the trees were thin, deployed, and fired by platoons, till
+Captain Eyre, who commanded the artillery, opened on them with grape,
+broke their ranks, and compelled them to take to cover. The fusillade
+was now general on both sides, and soon grew furious. "Perhaps," Seth
+Pomeroy wrote to his wife, two days after, "the hailstones from heaven
+were never much thicker than their bullets came; but, blessed be God!
+that did not in the least daunt or disturb us." Johnson received a
+flesh-wound in the thigh, and spent the rest of the day in his tent.
+Lyman took command; and it is a marvel that he escaped alive, for he was
+four hours in the heat of the fire, directing and animating the men. "It
+was the most awful day my eyes ever beheld," wrote Surgeon Williams to
+his wife; "there seemed to be nothing but thunder and lightning and
+perpetual pillars of smoke." To him, his colleague Doctor Pynchon, one
+assistant, and a young student called "Billy," fell the charge of the
+wounded of his regiment. "The bullets flew about our ears all the time
+of dressing them; so we thought best to leave our tent and retire a few
+rods behind the shelter of a log-house." On the adjacent hill stood one
+Blodget, who seems to have been a sutler, watching, as well as bushes,
+trees, and smoke would let him, the progress of the fight, of which he
+soon after made and published a curious bird's-eye view. As the wounded
+men were carried to the rear, the wagoners about the camp took their
+guns and powder-horns, and joined in the fray. A Mohawk, seeing one of
+these men still unarmed, leaped over the barricade, tomahawked the
+nearest Canadian, snatched his gun, and darted back unhurt. The brave
+savage found no imitators among his tribesmen, most of whom did nothing
+but utter a few war-whoops, saying that they had come to see their
+English brothers fight. Some of the French Indians opened a distant
+flank fire from the high ground beyond the swamp on the right, but were
+driven off by a few shells dropped among them.
+
+Dieskau had directed his first attack against the left and center of
+Johnson's position. Making no impression here, he tried to force the
+right, where lay the regiments of Titcomb, Ruggles, and Williams. The
+fire was hot for about an hour. Titcomb was shot dead, a rod in front of
+the barricade, firing from behind a tree like a common soldier. At
+length Dieskau, exposing himself within short range of the English line,
+was hit in the leg. His adjutant, Montreuil, himself wounded, came to
+his aid, and was washing the injured limb with brandy, when the
+unfortunate commander was again hit in the knee and thigh. He seated
+himself behind a tree, while the Adjutant called two Canadians to carry
+him to the rear. One of them was instantly shot down. Montreuil took his
+place; but Dieskau refused to be moved, bitterly denounced the Canadians
+and Indians, and ordered the Adjutant to leave him and lead the regulars
+in a last effort against the camp.
+
+It was too late. Johnson's men, singly or in small squads, already
+crossing their row of logs; and in a few moments the whole dashed
+forward with a shout, falling upon the enemy with hatchets and the butts
+of their guns. The French and their allies fled. The wounded General
+still sat helpless by the tree, when he saw a soldier aiming at him. He
+signed to the man not to fire; but he pulled trigger, shot him across
+the hips, leaped upon him, and ordered him in French to surrender. "I
+said," writes Dieskau, "'You rascal, why did you fire? You see a man
+lying in his blood on the ground, and you shoot him!' He answered: 'How
+did I know that you had not got a pistol? I had rather kill the devil
+than have the devil kill me.' 'You are a Frenchman?' I asked. 'Yes,' he
+replied; 'it is more than ten years since I left Canada;' whereupon
+several others fell on me and stripped me. I told them to carry me to
+their general, which they did. On learning who I was, he sent for
+surgeons, and, though wounded himself, refused all assistance till my
+wounds were dressed."[312]
+
+[Footnote 312: _Dialogue entre le Maréchal de Saxe et le Baron de
+Dieskau aux Champs Élysées_. This paper is in the Archives de la Guerre,
+and was evidently written or inspired by Dieskau himself. In spite of
+its fanciful form, it is a sober statement of the events of the
+campaign. There is a translation of it in _N.Y. Col. Docs._, X. 340.]
+
+It was near five o'clock when the final rout took place. Some time
+before, several hundred of the Canadians and Indians had left the field
+and returned to the scene of the morning fight, to plunder and scalp the
+dead. They were resting themselves near a pool in the forest, close
+beside the road, when their repose was interrupted by a volley of
+bullets. It was fired by a scouting party from Fort Lyman, chiefly
+backwoodsmen, under Captains Folsom and McGinnis. The assailants were
+greatly outnumbered; but after a hard fight the Canadians and Indians
+broke and fled. McGinnis was mortally wounded. He continued to give
+orders till the firing was over; then fainted, and was carried, dying,
+to the camp. The bodies of the slain, according to tradition, were
+thrown into the pool, which bears to this day the name of Bloody Pond.
+
+The various bands of fugitives rejoined each other towards night, and
+encamped in the forest; then made their way round the southern shoulder
+of French Mountain, till, in the next evening, they reached their
+canoes. Their plight was deplorable; for they had left their knapsacks
+behind, and were spent with fatigue and famine.
+
+Meanwhile their captive general was not yet out of danger. The Mohawks
+were furious at their losses in the ambush of the morning, and above all
+at the death of Hendrick. Scarcely were Dieskau's wounds dressed, when
+several of them came into the tent. There was a long and angry dispute
+in their own language between them and Johnson, after which they went
+out very sullenly. Dieskau asked what they wanted. "What do they want?"
+returned Johnson. "To burn you, by God, eat you, and smoke you in their
+pipes, in revenge for three or four of their chiefs that were killed.
+But never fear; you shall be safe with me, or else they shall kill us
+both."[313] The Mohawks soon came back, and another talk ensued, excited
+at first, and then more calm; till at length the visitors, seemingly
+appeased, smiled, gave Dieskau their hands in sign of friendship, and
+quietly went out again. Johnson warned him that he was not yet safe; and
+when the prisoner, fearing that his presence might incommode his host,
+asked to be removed to another tent, a captain and fifty men were
+ordered to guard him. In the morning an Indian, alone and apparently
+unarmed, loitered about the entrance, and the stupid sentinel let him
+pass in. He immediately drew a sword from under a sort of cloak which he
+wore, and tried to stab Dieskau; but was prevented by the Colonel to
+whom the tent belonged, who seized upon him, took away his sword, and
+pushed him out. As soon as his wounds would permit, Dieskau was carried
+on a litter, strongly escorted, to Fort Lyman, whence he was sent to
+Albany, and afterwards to New York. He is profuse in expressions of
+gratitude for the kindness shown him by the colonial officers, and
+especially by Johnson. Of the provincial soldiers he remarked soon after
+the battle that in the morning they fought like good boys, about noon
+like men, and in the afternoon like devils.[314] In the spring of 1757
+he sailed for England, and was for a time at Falmouth; whence Colonel
+Matthew Sewell, fearing that he might see and learn too much, wrote to
+the Earl of Holdernesse: "The Baron has great penetration and quickness
+of apprehension. His long service under Marshal Saxe renders him a man
+of real consequence, to be cautiously observed. His circumstances
+deserve compassion, for indeed they are very melancholy, and I much
+doubt of his being ever perfectly cured." He was afterwards a long time
+at Bath, for the benefit of the waters. In 1760 the famous Diderot met
+him at Paris, cheerful and full of anecdote, though wretchedly shattered
+by his wounds. He died a few years later.
+
+[Footnote 313: See the story as told by Dieskau to the celebrated
+Diderot, at Paris, in 1760. _Mémoires de Diderot_, I. 402 (1830).
+Compare _N.Y. Col. Docs._, X. 343.]
+
+[Footnote 314: _Dr. Perez Marsh to William Williams, 25 Sept. 1755_.]
+
+On the night after the battle the yeomen warriors felt the truth of the
+saying that, next to defeat, the saddest thing is victory. Comrades and
+friends by scores lay scattered through the forest. As soon as he could
+snatch a moment's leisure, the overworked surgeon sent the dismal
+tidings to his wife: "My dear brother Ephraim was killed by a ball
+through his head; poor brother Josiah's wound I fear will prove mortal;
+poor Captain Hawley is yet alive, though I did not think he would live
+two hours after bringing him in." Daniel Pomeroy was shot dead; and his
+brother Seth wrote the news to his wife Rachel, who was just delivered
+of a child: "Dear Sister, this brings heavy tidings; but let not your
+heart sink at the news, though it be your loss of a dear husband. Monday
+the eighth instant was a memorable day; and truly you may say, had not
+the Lord been on our side, we must all have been swallowed up. My
+brother, being one that went out in the first engagement, received a
+fatal shot through the middle of the head." Seth Pomeroy found a moment
+to write also to his own wife, whom he tells that another attack is
+expected; adding, in quaintly pious phrase: "But as God hath begun to
+show mercy, I hope he will go on to be gracious." Pomeroy was employed
+during the next few days with four hundred men in what he calls "the
+melancholy piece of business" of burying the dead. A letter-writer of
+the time does not approve what was done on this occasion. "Our people,"
+he says, "not only buried the French dead, but buried as many of them as
+might be without the knowledge of our Indians, to prevent their being
+scalped. This I call an excess of civility;" his reason being that
+Braddock's dead soldiers had been left to the wolves.
+
+The English loss in killed, wounded, and missing was two hundred and
+sixty-two;[315] and that of the French by their own account, two hundred
+and twenty-eight,[316]--a somewhat modest result of five hours'
+fighting. The English loss was chiefly in the ambush of the morning,
+where the killed greatly outnumbered the wounded, because those who fell
+and could not be carried away were tomahawked by Dieskau's Indians. In
+the fight at the camp, both Indians and Canadians kept themselves so
+well under cover that it was very difficult for the New England men to
+pick them off, while they on their part lay close behind their row of
+logs. On the French side, the regular officers and troops bore the brunt
+of the battle and suffered the chief loss, nearly all of the former and
+nearly half of the latter being killed or wounded.
+
+[Footnote 315: _Return of Killed, Wounded, and Missing at the Battle of
+Lake George_.]
+
+[Footnote 316: _Doreil au Ministre, 20 Oct. 1755_. Surgeon Williams
+gives the English loss as two hundred and sixteen killed, and ninety-six
+wounded. Pomeroy thinks that the French lost four or five hundred.
+Johnson places their loss at four hundred.]
+
+Johnson did not follow up his success. He says that his men were tired.
+Yet five hundred of them had stood still all day, and boats enough for
+their transportation were lying on the beach. Ten miles down the lake, a
+path led over a gorge of the mountains to South Bay, where Dieskau had
+left his canoes and provisions. It needed but a few hours to reach and
+destroy them; but no such attempt was made. Nor, till a week after, did
+Johnson send out scouts to learn the strength of the enemy at
+Ticonderoga. Lyman strongly urged him to make an effort to seize that
+important pass; but Johnson thought only of holding his own position. "I
+think," he wrote, "we may expect very shortly a more formidable attack."
+He made a solid breastwork to defend his camp; and as reinforcements
+arrived, set them at building a fort on a rising ground by the lake. It
+is true that just after the battle he was deficient in stores, and had
+not bateaux enough to move his whole force. It is true, also, that he
+was wounded, and that he was too jealous of Lyman to delegate the
+command to him; and so the days passed till, within a fortnight, his
+nimble enemy were entrenched at Ticonderoga in force enough to defy him.
+
+The Crown Point expedition was a failure disguised under an incidental
+success. The northern provinces, especially Massachusetts and
+Connecticut, did what they could to forward it, and after the battle
+sent a herd of raw recruits to the scene of action. Shirley wrote to
+Johnson from Oswego; declared that his reasons for not advancing were
+insufficient, and urged him to push for Ticonderoga at once. Johnson
+replied that he had not wagons enough, and that his troops were
+ill-clothed, ill-fed, discontented, insubordinate and sickly. He
+complained that discipline was out of the question, because the officers
+were chosen by popular election; that many of them were no better than
+the men, unfit for command, and like so many "heads of a mob."[317] The
+reinforcements began to come in, till, in October there were thirty-six
+hundred men in the camp; and as most of them wore summer clothing and
+had but one thin domestic blanket, they were half frozen in the chill
+autumn nights.
+
+[Footnote 317: _Shirley to Johnson, 19 Sept. 1755. Ibid., 24 Sept. 1755.
+Johnson to Shirley, 22 Sept. 1755. Johnson to Phipps, 10 Oct. 1755_
+(Massachusetts Archives).]
+
+Johnson called a council of war; and as he was suffering from inflamed
+eyes, and was still kept in his tent by his wound, he asked Lyman to
+preside,--not unwilling, perhaps, to shift the responsibility upon him.
+After several sessions and much debate, the assembled officers decided
+that it was inexpedient to proceed.[318] Yet the army lay more than a
+month longer at the lake, while the disgust of the men increased daily
+under the rains, frosts, and snows of a dreary November. On the
+twenty-second, Chandler, chaplain of one of the Massachusetts regiments,
+wrote in the interleaved almanac that served him as a diary: "The men
+just ready to mutiny. Some clubbed their firelocks and marched, but
+returned back. Very rainy night. Miry water standing the tents. Very
+distressing time among the sick." The men grew more and more unruly, and
+went off in squads without asking leave. A difficult question arose: Who
+should stay for the winter to garrison the new forts, and who should
+command them? It was settled at last that a certain number of soldiers
+from each province should be assigned to this ungrateful service, and
+that Massachusetts should have the first officer, Connecticut the
+second, and New York the third. Then the camp broke up. "Thursday the
+27th," wrote the chaplain in his almanac, "we set out about ten of the
+clock, marched in a body, about three thousand, the wagons and baggage
+in the centre, our colonel much insulted by the way." The soldiers
+dispersed to their villages and farms, where in blustering winter
+nights, by the blazing logs of New England hearth-stones, they told
+their friends and neighbors the story of the campaign.
+
+[Footnote 318: _Reports of Council of War, 11-21 Oct. 1755_.]
+
+The profit of it fell to Johnson. If he did not gather the fruits of
+victory, at least he reaped its laurels. He was a courtier in his rough
+way. He had changed the name of Lac St. Sacrement to Lake George, in
+compliment to the King.
+
+He now changed that of Fort Lyman to Fort Edward, in compliment to one
+of the King's grandsons; and, in compliment to another, called his new
+fort at the lake, William Henry. Of General Lyman he made no mention in
+his report of the battle, and his partisans wrote letters traducing
+that brave officer; though Johnson is said to have confessed in private
+that he owed him the victory. He himself found no lack of eulogists;
+and, to quote the words of an able but somewhat caustic and prejudiced
+opponent, "to the panegyrical pen of his secretary, Mr. Wraxall, and the
+_sic volo sic jubeo_ of Lieutenant-Governor Delancey, is to be ascribed
+that mighty renown which echoed through the colonies, reverberated to
+Europe, and elevated a raw, inexperienced youth into a kind of second
+Marlborough.[319] Parliament gave him five thousand pounds, and the King
+made him a baronet."
+
+[Footnote 319: _Review of Military Operations in North America, in a
+Letter to a Nobleman_ (ascribed to William Livingston).
+
+On the Battle of Lake George a mass of papers will be found in the _N.Y.
+Col. Docs._, Vols. VI. and X. Those in Vol. VI., taken chiefly from the
+archives of New York, consist of official and private letters, reports,
+etc., on the English side. Those in Vol. X. are drawn chiefly from the
+archives of the French War Department, and include the correspondence of
+Dieskau and his adjutant Montreuil. I have examined most of them in the
+original. Besides these I have obtained from the Archives de la Marine
+and other sources a number of important additional papers, which have
+never been printed, including Vaudreuil's reports to the Minister of
+War, and his strictures on Dieskau, whom he accuses of disobeying orders
+by dividing his force; also the translation of an English journal of the
+campaign found in the pocket of a captured officer, and a long account
+of the battle sent by Bigot to the Minister of Marine, 4 Oct. 1755.
+
+I owe to the kindness of Theodore Pomeroy, Esq., a copy of the Journal
+of Lieutenant-Colonel Seth Pomeroy, whose letters are full of interest;
+as are those of Surgeon Williams, from the collection of William L.
+Stone, Esq. The papers of Colonel Israel Williams, in the Library of the
+Massachusetts Historical Society, contain many other curious letters
+relating to the campaign, extracts from some of which are given in the
+text. One of the most curious records of the battle is _A
+Prospective-Plan of the Battle near Lake George, with an Explanation
+thereof, containing a full, though short, History of that important
+Affair, by Samuel Blodget, occasionally at the Camp when the Battle was
+fought_. It is an engraving, printed at Boston soon after the fight, of
+which it gives a clear idea. Four years after, Blodget opened a shop in
+Boston, where, as appears by his advertisements in the newspapers, he
+sold "English Goods, also English Hatts, etc." The engraving is
+reproduced in the _Documentary History of New York_, IV., and
+elsewhere. The _Explanation thereof_ is only to be found complete in the
+original. This, as well as the anonymous _Second Letter to a Friend_,
+also printed at Boston in 1755, is excellent for the information it
+gives as to the condition of the ground where the conflict took place,
+and the position of the combatants. The unpublished Archives of
+Massachusetts; the correspondence of Sir William Johnson; the _Review of
+Military Operations in North America_; Dwight, _Travels in New England
+and New York_, III.; and Hoyt, _Antiquarian Researches on Indian
+Wars,_--should also be mentioned. Dwight and Hoyt drew their information
+from aged survivors of the battle. I have repeatedly examined the
+localities.
+
+In the odd effusion of the colonial muse called _Tilden's Poems, chiefly
+to Animate and Rouse the Soldiers, printed 1756_, is a piece styled _The
+Christian Hero, or New England's Triumphs_, beginning with the
+invocation,--
+
+
+    "O Heaven, indulge my feeble Muse,
+    Teach her what numbers for to choose!"
+
+
+and containing the following stanza:--
+
+
+    "Their Dieskau we from them detain,
+    While Canada aloud complains
+    And counts the numbers of their slain
+      and makes a dire complaint;
+    The Indians to their demon gods;
+    And with the French there's little odds,
+    While images receive their nods,
+    Invoking rotten saints."]
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 10
+
+1755, 1756
+
+Shirley. Border War
+
+
+
+The capture of Niagara was to finish the work of the summer. This alone
+would have gained for England the control of the valley of the Ohio, and
+made Braddock's expedition superfluous. One marvels at the
+short-sightedness, the dissensions, the apathy which had left this key
+of the interior so long in the hands of France without an effort to
+wrest it from her. To master Niagara would be to cut the communications
+of Canada with the whole system of French forts and settlements in the
+West, and leave them to perish like limbs of a girdled tree.
+
+Major-General Shirley, in the flush of his new martial honors, was to
+try his prentice hand at the work. The lawyer-soldier could plan a
+campaign boldly and well. It remained to see how he would do his part
+towards executing it. In July he arrived at Albany, the starting-point
+of his own expedition as well as that of Johnson. This little Dutch city
+was an outpost of civilization. The Hudson, descending from the northern
+wilderness, connected it with the lakes and streams that formed the
+thoroughfare to Canada; while the Mohawk, flowing from the west, was a
+liquid pathway to the forest homes of the Five Nations. Before the war
+was over, a little girl, Anne MacVicar, daughter of a Highland officer,
+was left at Albany by her father, and spent several years there in the
+house of Mrs. Schuyler, aunt of General Schuyler of the Revolution. Long
+after, married and middle-aged, she wrote down her recollections of the
+place,--the fort on the hill behind; the great street, grassy and broad,
+that descended thence to the river, with market, guardhouse, town hall,
+and two churches in the middle, and rows of quaint Dutch-built houses on
+both sides, each detached from its neighbors, each with its well,
+garden, and green, and its great overshadowing tree. Before every house
+was a capacious porch, with seats where the people gathered in the
+summer twilight; old men at one door, matrons at another, young men and
+girls mingling at a third; while the cows with their tinkling bells came
+from the common at the end of the town, each stopping to be milked at
+the door of its owner; and children, porringer in hand, sat on the
+steps, watching the process and waiting their evening meal.
+
+Such was the quiet picture painted on the memory of Anne MacVicar, and
+reproduced by the pen of Mrs. Ann Grant.[320] The patriarchal,
+semi-rural town had other aspects, not so pleasing. The men were mainly
+engaged in the fur-trade, sometimes legally with the Five Nations, and
+sometimes illegally with the Indians of Canada,--an occupation which by
+no means tends to soften the character. The Albany Dutch traders were a
+rude, hard race, loving money, and not always scrupulous as to the means
+of getting it. Coming events, too, were soon to have their effect on
+this secluded community. Regiments, red and blue, trumpets, drums,
+banners, artillery trains, and all the din of war transformed its
+peaceful streets, and brought some attaint to domestic morals hitherto
+commendable; for during the next five years Albany was to be the
+principal base of military operations on the continent.
+
+[Footnote 320: _Memoirs of an American Lady_ (Mrs. Schuyler), Chap. VI.
+A genuine picture of colonial life, and a charming book, though far from
+being historically trustworthy. Compare the account of Albany in Kalm,
+II. 102.]
+
+Shirley had left the place, and was now on his way up the Mohawk. His
+force, much smaller than at first intended, consisted of the New Jersey
+regiment, which mustered five hundred men, known as the Jersey Blues,
+and of the fiftieth and fifty-first regiments, called respectively
+Shirley's and Pepperell's. These, though paid by the King and counted as
+regulars, were in fact raw provincials, just raised in the colonies, and
+wearing their gay uniforms with an awkward, unaccustomed air. How they
+gloried in them may be gathered from a letter of Sergeant James Gray, of
+Pepperell's, to his brother John: "I have two Holland shirts, found me
+by the King, and two pair of shoes and two pair of worsted stockings; a
+good silver-laced hat (the lace I could sell for four dollars); and my
+clothes is as fine scarlet broadcloth as ever you did see. A sergeant
+here in the King's regiment is counted as good as an ensign with you;
+and one day in every week we must have our hair or wigs powdered."[321]
+Most of these gorgeous warriors were already on their way to Oswego,
+their first destination.
+
+[Footnote 321: _James Gray to John Gray, 11 July, 1755_.]
+
+Shirley followed, embarking at the Dutch village of Schenectady, and
+ascending the Mohawk with about two hundred of the so-called regulars in
+bateaux. They passed Fort Johnson, the two villages of the Mohawks, and
+the Palatine settlement of German Flats; left behind the last trace of
+civilized man, rowed sixty miles through wilderness, and reached the
+Great Carrying Place, which divided the waters that flow to the Hudson
+from those that flow to Lake Ontario. Here now stands the city which the
+classic zeal of its founders has adorned with the name of Rome. Then all
+was swamp and forest, traversed by a track that led to Wood
+Creek,--which is not to be confounded with the Wood Creek of Lake
+Champlain. Thither the bateaux were dragged on sledges and launched on
+the dark and tortuous stream, which, fed by a decoction of forest leaves
+that oozed from the marshy shores, crept in shadow through depths of
+foliage, with only a belt of illumined sky gleaming between the jagged
+tree-tops. Tall and lean with straining towards the light, their rough,
+gaunt stems trickling with perpetual damps, stood on either hand the
+silent hosts of the forest. The skeletons of their dead, barkless,
+blanched, and shattered, strewed the mudbanks and shallows; others lay
+submerged, like bones of drowned mammoths, thrusting lank, white limbs
+above the sullen water; and great trees, entire as yet, were flung by
+age or storms athwart the current,--a bristling barricade of matted
+boughs. There was work for the axe as well as for the oar; till at
+length Lake Oneida opened before them, and they rowed all day over its
+sunny breast, reached the outlet, and drifted down the shallow eddies of
+the Onondaga, between walls of verdure, silent as death, yet haunted
+everywhere with ambushed danger. It was twenty days after leaving
+Schenectady when they neared the mouth of the river; and Lake Ontario
+greeted them, stretched like a sea to the pale brink of the northern
+sky, while on the bare hill at their left stood the miserable little
+fort of Oswego.
+
+Shirley's whole force soon arrived; but not the needful provisions and
+stores. The machinery of transportation and the commissariat was in the
+bewildered state inevitable among a peaceful people at the beginning of
+a war; while the news of Braddock's defeat produced such an effect on
+the boatmen and the draymen at the carrying-places, that the greater
+part deserted. Along with these disheartening tidings, Shirley learned
+the death of his eldest son, killed at the side of Braddock. He had with
+him a second son, Captain John Shirley, a vivacious young man, whom his
+father and his father's friends in their familiar correspondence always
+called "Jack." John Shirley's letters give a lively view of the
+situation.
+
+"I have sat down to write to you,"--thus he addresses Governor Morris,
+of Pennsylvania, who seems to have had a great liking for him,--"because
+there is an opportunity of sending you a few lines; and if you will
+promise to excuse blots, interlineations, and grease (for this is
+written in the open air, upon the head of a pork-barrel, and twenty
+people about me), I will begin another half-sheet. We are not more than
+about fifteen hundred men fit for duty; but that I am pretty sure, if we
+can go in time in our sloop, schooner, row-galleys, and whaleboats, will
+be sufficient to take Frontenac; after which we may venture to go upon
+the attack of Niagara, but not before. I have not the least doubt with
+myself of knocking down both these places yet this fall, if we can get
+away in a week. If we take or destroy their two vessels at Frontenac,
+and ruin their harbor there, and destroy the two forts of that and
+Niagara, I shall think we have done great things. Nobody holds it out
+better than my father and myself. We shall all of us relish a good house
+over our heads, being all encamped, except the General and some few
+field-officers, who have what are called at Oswego houses; but they
+would in other countries be called only sheds, except the fort, where my
+father is. Adieu, dear sir; I hope my next will be directed from
+Frontenac. Yours most affectionately, John Shirley."[322]
+
+[Footnote 322: The young author of this letter was, like his brother, a
+victim of the war.
+
+"Permit me, good sir, to offer you my hearty condolence upon the death
+of my friend Jack, whose worth I admired, and feel for him more than I
+can express.... Few men of his age had so many friends." _Governor
+Morris to Shirley, 27 Nov. 1755_.
+
+"My heart bleeds for Mr. Shirley. He must be overwhelmed with Grief when
+he hears of Capt. John Shirley's Death, of which I have an Account by
+the last Post from New York, where he died of a Flux and Fever that he
+had contracted at Oswego. The loss of Two Sons in one Campaign scarcely
+admits of Consolation. I feel the Anguish of the unhappy Father, and mix
+my Tears very heartily with his. I have had an intimate Acquaintance
+with Both of Them for many Years, and know well their inestimable
+Value." _Morris to Dinwiddie, 29 Nov. 1755_.]
+
+Fort Frontenac lay to the northward, fifty miles or more across the
+lake. Niagara lay to the westward, at the distance of four or five days
+by boat or canoe along the south shore. At Frontenac there was a French
+force of fourteen hundred regulars and Canadians.[323] They had vessels
+and canoes to cross the lake and fall upon Oswego as soon as Shirley
+should leave it to attack Niagara; for Braddock's captured papers had
+revealed to them the English plan. If they should take it, Shirley would
+be cut off from his supplies and placed in desperate jeopardy, with the
+enemy in his rear. Hence it is that John Shirley insists on taking
+Frontenac before attempting Niagara. But the task was not easy; for the
+French force at the former place was about equal in effective strength
+to that of the English at Oswego. At Niagara, too, the French had, at
+the end of August, nearly twelve hundred Canadians and Indians from Fort
+Duquesne and the upper lakes.[324] Shirley was but imperfectly informed
+by his scouts of the unexpected strength of the opposition that awaited
+him; but he knew enough to see that his position was a difficult one.
+His movement on Niagara was stopped, first by want of provisions, and
+secondly because he was checkmated by the troops at Frontenac. He did
+not despair. Want of courage was not among his failings, and he was but
+too ready to take risks. He called a council of officers, told them that
+the total number of men fit for duty was thirteen hundred and
+seventy-six, and that as soon as provisions enough should arrive he
+would embark for Niagara with six hundred soldiers and as many Indians
+as possible, leaving the rest to defend Oswego against the expected
+attack from Fort Frontenac.[325]
+
+[Footnote 323: _Bigot au Ministre, 27 Août, 1755_.]
+
+[Footnote 324: _Bigot au Ministre, 5 Sept. 1755_.]
+
+[Footnote 325: _Minutes of a Council of War at Oswego, 18 Sept. 1755_.]
+
+"All I am uneasy about is our provisions," writes John Shirley to his
+friend Morris; "our men have been upon half allowance of bread these
+three weeks past, and no rum given to 'em. My father yesterday called
+all the Indians together and made 'em a speech on the subject of General
+Johnson's engagement, which he calculated to inspire them with a spirit
+of revenge." After the speech he gave them a bullock for a feast, which
+they roasted and ate, pretending that they were eating the Governor of
+Canada! Some provisions arriving, orders were given to embark on the
+next day; but the officers murmured their dissent. The weather was
+persistently bad, their vessels would not hold half the party, and the
+bateaux, made only for river navigation, would infallibly founder on the
+treacherous and stormy lake. "All the field-officers," says John
+Shirley, "think it too rash an attempt; and I have heard so much of it
+that I think it my duty to let my father know what I hear." Another
+council was called; and the General, reluctantly convinced of the
+danger, put the question whether to go or not. The situation admitted
+but one reply. The council was of opinion that for the present the
+enterprise was impracticable; that Oswego should be strengthened, more
+vessels built, and preparation made to renew the attempt as soon as
+spring opened.[326] All thoughts of active operations were now
+suspended, and during what was left of the season the troops exchanged
+the musket for the spade, saw, and axe. At the end of October, leaving
+seven hundred men at Oswego, Shirley returned to Albany, and narrowly
+escaped drowning on the way, while passing a rapid in a whale-boat, to
+try the fitness of that species of craft for river navigation.[327]
+
+[Footnote 326: _Minutes of a Council of War at Oswego, 27 Sept._ 1755.]
+
+[Footnote 327: On the Niagara expedition, _Braddock's Instructions to
+Major-General Shirley. Correspondence of Shirley_, 1755. _Conduct of
+Major-General Shirley_ (London, 1758). Letters of John Shirley in
+_Pennsylvania Archives_, II. _Bradstreet to Shirley, 17 Aug._ 1755. MSS.
+in Massachusetts Archives, _Review of Military Operations in North
+America. Gentleman's Magazine_, 1757, p. 73. _London Magazine,_ 1759, p.
+594. Trumbull, _Hist. Connecticut_, II. 370.]
+
+Unfortunately for him, he had fallen out with Johnson, whom he had made
+what he was, but who now turned against him,--a seeming ingratitude not
+wholly unprovoked. Shirley had diverted the New Jersey regiment,
+destined originally for Crown Point, to his own expedition against
+Niagara. Naturally inclined to keep all the reins in his own hands, he
+had encroached on Johnson's new office of Indian superintendent, held
+conferences with the Five Nations, and employed agents of his own to
+deal with them. These agents were persons obnoxious to Johnson, being
+allied with the clique of Dutch traders at Albany, who hated him because
+he had supplanted them in the direction of Indian affairs; and in a
+violent letter to the Lords of Trade, he inveighs against their
+"licentious and abandoned proceedings," "villanous conduct," "scurrilous
+falsehoods," and "base and insolent behavior."[328] "I am considerable
+enough," he says, "to have enemies and to be envied;"[329] and he
+declares he has proof that Shirley told the Mohawks that he, Johnson,
+was an upstart of his creating, whom he had set up and could pull down.
+Again, he charges Shirley's agents with trying to "debauch the Indians
+from joining him;" while Shirley, on his side, retorts the same
+complaint against his accuser.[330] When, by the death of Braddock,
+Shirley became commander-in-chief, Johnson grew so restive at being
+subject to his instructions that he declined to hold the management of
+Indian affairs unless it was made independent of his rival. The dispute
+became mingled with the teapot-tempest of New York provincial politics.
+The Lieutenant-Governor, Delancey, a politician of restless ambition and
+consummate dexterity, had taken umbrage at Shirley, of whose rising
+honors, not borne with remarkable humility, he appears to have been
+jealous. Delancey had hitherto favored the Dutch faction in the
+Assembly, hostile to Johnson; but he now changed attitude, and joined
+hands with him against the object of their common dislike. The one was
+strong in the prestige of a loudly-trumpeted victory, and the other had
+means of influence over the Ministry. Their coalition boded ill to
+Shirley, and he soon felt its effects.[331]
+
+[Footnote 328: _Johnson to the Lords of Trade,_ 3 Sept. 1755.]
+
+[Footnote 329: _Johnson to the Lords of Trade, 17 Jan_. 1756.]
+
+[Footnote 330: _John Shirley to Governor Morris, 12 Aug_. 1755.]
+
+[Footnote 331: On this affair, see various papers in _N.Y. Col. Docs_.,
+VI., VII. Smith, _Hist. New York_, Part II., Chaps. IV. V. _Review of
+Military Operations in North America_. Both Smith and Livingston, the
+author of the _Review_, were personally cognizant of the course of the
+dispute.]
+
+The campaign was now closed,--a sufficiently active one, seeing that the
+two nations were nominally at peace. A disastrous rout on the
+Monongahela, failure at Niagara, a barren victory at Lake George, and
+three forts captured in Acadia, were the disappointing results on the
+part of England. Nor had her enemies cause to boast. The Indians, it is
+true, had won a battle for them: but they had suffered mortifying defeat
+from a raw militia; their general was a prisoner; and they had lost
+Acadia past hope.
+
+The campaign was over; but not its effects. It remains to see what
+befell from the rout of Braddock and the unpardonable retreat of Dunbar
+from the frontier which it was his duty to defend. Dumas had replaced
+Contrecoeur in the command of Fort Duquesne; and his first care was to
+set on the Western tribes to attack the border settlements. His success
+was triumphant. The Delawares and Shawanoes, old friends of the English,
+but for years past tending to alienation through neglect and ill-usage,
+now took the lead against them. Many of the Mingoes, or Five Nation
+Indians on the Ohio, also took up the hatchet, as did various remoter
+tribes. The West rose like a nest of hornets, and swarmed in fury
+against the English frontier. Such was the consequence of the defeat of
+Braddock aided by the skilful devices of the French commander. "It is by
+means such as I have mentioned," says Dumas, "varied in every form to
+suit the occasion, that I have succeeded in ruining the three adjacent
+provinces, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, driving off the
+inhabitants, and totally destroying the settlements over a tract of
+country thirty leagues wide, reckoning from the line of Fort Cumberland.
+M. de Contrecoeur had not been gone a week before I had six or seven
+different war-parties in the field at once, always accompanied by
+Frenchmen. Thus far, we have lost only two officers and a few soldiers;
+but the Indian villages are full of prisoners of every age and sex. The
+enemy has lost far more since the battle than on the day of his
+defeat."[332]
+
+[Footnote 332: _Dumas au Ministre, 24 Juillet, 1756._]
+
+Dumas, required by the orders of his superiors to wage a detestable
+warfare against helpless settlers and their families, did what he could
+to temper its horrors, and enjoined the officers who went with the
+Indians to spare no effort to prevent them from torturing
+prisoners.[333] The attempt should be set down to his honor; but it did
+not avail much. In the record of cruelties committed this year on the
+borders, we find repeated instances of children scalped alive. "They
+kill all they meet," writes a French priest; "and after having abused
+the women and maidens, they slaughter or burn them."[334]
+
+[Footnote 333: _Mémoires de Famille de l'Abbé Casgrain_, cited in _Le
+Foyer Canadien,_ III. 26, where an extract is given from an order of
+Dumas to Baby, a Canadian officer. Orders of Contrecoeur and Ligneris to
+the same effect are also given. A similar order, signed by Dumas, was
+found in the pocket of Douville, an officer killed by the English on the
+Frontier. _Writings of Washington_, II. 137, _note_.]
+
+[Footnote 334: _Rec. Claude Godefroy Cocquard, S.J., à son Frère, Mars
+(?)_, 1757.]
+
+Washington was now in command of the Virginia regiment, consisting of a
+thousand men, raised afterwards to fifteen hundred. With these he was to
+protect a frontier of three hundred and fifty miles against more
+numerous enemies, who could choose their time and place of attack. His
+headquarters were at Winchester. His men were an ungovernable crew,
+enlisted chiefly on the turbulent border, and resenting every kind of
+discipline as levelling them with negroes; while the sympathizing House
+of Burgesses hesitated for months to pass any law for enforcing
+obedience, lest it should trench on the liberties of free white men. The
+service was to the last degree unpopular. "If we talk of obliging men to
+serve their country," wrote London Carter, "we are sure to hear a fellow
+mumble over the words 'liberty' and 'property' a thousand times."[335]
+The people, too, were in mortal fear of a slave insurrection, and
+therefore dared not go far from home.[336] Meanwhile a panic reigned
+along the border. Captain Waggoner, passing a gap in the Blue Ridge,
+could hardly make his way for the crowd of fugitives. "Every day,"
+writes Washington, "we have accounts of such cruelties and barbarities
+as are shocking to human nature. It is not possible to conceive the
+situation and danger of this miserable country. Such numbers of French
+and Indians are all around that no road is safe."
+
+[Footnote 335: Extract in _Writings of Washington_, II. 145, _note._]
+
+[Footnote 336: _Letters of Dinwiddie_, 1755.]
+
+These frontiers had always been at peace. No forts of refuge had thus
+far been built, and the scattered settlers had no choice but flight.
+Their first impulse was to put wife and children beyond reach of the
+tomahawk. As autumn advanced, the invading bands grew more and more
+audacious. Braddock had opened a road for them by which they could cross
+the mountains at their ease; and scouts from Fort Cumberland reported
+that this road was beaten by as many feet as when the English army
+passed last summer. Washington was beset with difficulties. Men and
+officers alike were unruly and mutinous. He was at once blamed for their
+disorders and refused the means of repressing them. Envious detractors
+published slanders against him. A petty Maryland captain, who had once
+had a commission from the King, refused to obey his orders, and stirred
+up factions among his officers. Dinwiddie gave him cold support. The
+temper of the old Scotchman, crabbed at the best, had been soured by
+disappointment, vexation, weariness, and ill-health. He had, besides, a
+friend and countryman, Colonel Innes, whom, had he dared, he would
+gladly have put in Washington's place. He was full of zeal in the common
+cause, and wanted to direct the defence of the borders from his house at
+Williamsburg, two hundred miles distant. Washington never hesitated to
+obey; but he accompanied his obedience by a statement of his own
+convictions and his reasons for them, which, though couched in terms the
+most respectful, galled his irascible chief. The Governor acknowledged
+his merit; but bore him no love, and sometimes wrote to him in terms
+which must have tried his high temper to the utmost. Sometimes, though
+rarely, he gave words to his emotion.
+
+"Your Honor," he wrote in April, "may see to what unhappy straits the
+distressed inhabitants and myself are reduced. I see inevitable
+destruction in so clear a light, that unless vigorous measures are taken
+by the Assembly, and speedy assistance sent from below, the poor
+inhabitants that are now in forts must unavoidably fall, while the
+remainder are flying before the barbarous foe. In fine, the melancholy
+situation of the people; the little prospect of assistance; the gross
+and scandalous abuse cast upon the officers in general, which is
+reflecting upon me in particular for suffering misconduct of such
+extraordinary kinds; and the distant prospect, if any, of gaining honor
+and reputation in the service,--cause me to lament the hour that gave me
+a commission, and would induce me at any other time than this of
+imminent danger to resign, without one hesitating moment, a command from
+which I never expect to reap either honor or benefit, but, on the
+contrary, have almost an absolute certainty of incurring displeasure
+below, while the murder of helpless families may be laid to my account
+here."
+
+
+"The supplicating tears of the women and moving petitions of the men
+melt me into such deadly sorrow, that I solemnly declare, if I know my
+own mind, I could offer myself a willing sacrifice to the butchering
+enemy, provided that would contribute to the people's ease."[337]
+
+[Footnote 337: _Writings of Washington_, II. 143.]
+
+In the turmoil around him, patriotism and public duty seemed all to be
+centred in the breast of one heroic youth. He was respected and
+generally beloved, but he did not kindle enthusiasm. His were the
+qualities of an unflagging courage, an all-enduring fortitude, and a
+deep trust. He showed an astonishing maturing of character, and the kind
+of mastery over others which begins with mastery over self. At
+twenty-four he was the foremost man, and acknowledged as such, along the
+whole long line of the western border.
+
+To feel the situation, the nature of these frontiers must be kept in
+mind. Along the skirts of the southern and middle colonies ran for six
+or seven hundred miles a loose, thin, dishevelled fringe of population,
+the half-barbarous pioneers of advancing civilization. Their rude
+dwellings were often miles apart. Buried in woods, the settler lived in
+an appalling loneliness. A low-browed cabin of logs, with moss stuffed
+in the chinks to keep out the wind, roof covered with sheets of bark,
+chimney of sticks and clay, and square holes closed by a shutter in
+place of windows; an unkempt matron, lean with hard work, and a brood of
+children with bare heads and tattered garments eked out by
+deer-skin,--such was the home of the pioneer in the remoter and wilder
+districts. The scene around bore witness to his labors. It was the
+repulsive transition from savagery to civilization, from the forest to
+the farm. The victims of his axe lay strewn about the dismal "clearing"
+in a chaos of prostrate trunks, tangled boughs, and withered leaves,
+waiting for the fire that was to be the next agent in the process of
+improvement; while around, voiceless and grim, stood the living forest,
+gazing on the desolation, and biding its own day of doom. The owner of
+the cabin was miles away, hunting in the woods for the wild turkey and
+venison which were the chief food of himself and his family till the
+soil could be tamed into the bearing of crops.
+
+Towards night he returned; and as he issued from the forest shadows he
+saw a column of blue smoke rising quietly in the still evening air. He
+ran to the spot; and there, among the smouldering logs of his dwelling,
+lay, scalped and mangled, the dead bodies of wife and children. A
+war-party had passed that way. Breathless, palpitating, his brain on
+fire, he rushed through the thickening night to carry the alarm to his
+nearest neighbor, three miles distant.
+
+Such was the character and the fate of many incipient settlements of the
+utmost border. Farther east, they had a different aspect. Here, small
+farms with well-built log-houses, cattle, crops of wheat and Indian
+corn, were strung at intervals along some woody valley of the lower
+Alleghanies: yesterday a scene of hardy toil; to-day swept with
+destruction from end to end. There was no warning; no time for concert,
+perhaps none for flight. Sudden as the leaping panther, a pack of human
+wolves burst out of the forest, did their work, and vanished.
+
+If the country had been an open one, like the plains beyond the
+Mississippi, the situation would have been less frightful; but the
+forest was everywhere, rolled over hill and valley in billows of
+interminable green,--a leafy maze, a mystery of shade, a universal
+hiding-place, where murder might lurk unseen at its victim's side, and
+Nature seemed formed to nurse the mind with wild and dark imaginings.
+The detail of blood is set down in the untutored words of those who saw
+and felt it. But there was a suffering that had no record,--the mortal
+fear of women and children in the solitude of their wilderness homes,
+haunted, waking and sleeping, with nightmares of horror that were but
+the forecast of an imminent reality. The country had in past years been
+so peaceful, and the Indians so friendly, that many of the settlers,
+especially on the Pennsylvanian border, had no arms, and were doubly in
+need of help from the Government. In Virginia they had it, such as it
+was. In Pennsylvania they had for months none whatever; and the Assembly
+turned a deaf ear to their cries.
+
+Far to the east, sheltered from danger, lay staid and prosperous
+Philadelphia, the home of order and thrift. It took its stamp from the
+Quakers, its original and dominant population, set apart from the other
+colonists not only in character and creed, but in the outward symbols of
+a peculiar dress and a daily sacrifice of grammar on the altar of
+religion. The even tenor of their lives counteracted the effects of
+climate, and they are said to have been perceptibly more rotund in
+feature and person than their neighbors. Yet, broad and humanizing as
+was their faith, they were capable of extreme bitterness towards
+opponents, clung tenaciously to power, and were jealous for the
+ascendency of their sect, which had begun to show signs of wavering. On
+other sects they looked askance; and regarded the Presbyterians in
+particular with a dislike which in moments of crisis rose to
+detestation.[338] They held it sin to fight, and above all to fight
+against Indians.
+
+[Footnote 338: See a crowd of party pamphlets, Quaker against
+Presbyterian, which appeared in Philadelphia in 1764, abusively
+acrimonious on both sides.]
+
+Here was one cause of military paralysis. It was reinforced by another.
+The old standing quarrel between governor and assembly had grown more
+violent than ever; and this as a direct consequence of the public
+distress, which above all things demanded harmony. The dispute turned
+this time on a single issue,--that of the taxation of the proprietary
+estates. The estates in question consisted of vast tracts of wild land,
+yielding no income, and at present to a great extent worthless, being
+overrun by the enemy.[339] The Quaker Assembly had refused to protect
+them; and on one occasion had rejected an offer of the proprietaries to
+join them in paying the cost of their defence.[340] But though they
+would not defend the land, they insisted on taxing it; and farther
+insisted that the taxes upon it should be laid by the provincial
+assessors. By a law of the province, these assessors were chosen by
+popular vote; and in consenting to this law, the proprietaries had
+expressly provided that their estates should be exempted from all taxes
+to be laid by officials in whose appointment they had no voice.[341]
+Thomas and Richard Penn, the present proprietaries, had debarred their
+deputy, the Governor, both by the terms of his commission and by special
+instruction, from consenting to such taxation, and had laid him under
+heavy bonds to secure his obedience. Thus there was another side to the
+question than that of the Assembly; though our American writers have
+been slow to acknowledge it.
+
+[Footnote 339: The productive estates of the proprietaries were taxed
+through the tenants.]
+
+[Footnote 340: The proprietaries offered to contribute to the cost of
+building and maintaining a fort on the spot where the French soon after
+built Fort Duquesne. This plan, vigorously executed, would have saved
+the province from a deluge of miseries. One of the reasons assigned by
+the Assembly for rejecting it was that it would irritate the enemy. See
+_supra_, p. 63.]
+
+[Footnote 341: _A Brief View of the Conduct of Pennsylvania for the year
+1755_.]
+
+Benjamin Franklin was leader in the Assembly and shared its views. The
+feudal proprietorship of the Penn family was odious to his democratic
+nature. It was, in truth, a pestilent anomaly, repugnant to the genius
+of the people; and the disposition and character of the present
+proprietaries did not tend to render it less vexatious. Yet there were
+considerations which might have tempered the impatient hatred with which
+the colonists regarded it. The first proprietary, William Penn, had used
+his feudal rights in the interest of a broad liberalism; and through
+them had established the popular institutions and universal tolerance
+which made Pennsylvania the most democratic province in America, and
+nursed the spirit of liberty which now revolted against his heirs. The
+one absorbing passion of Pennsylvania was resistance of their deputy,
+the Governor. The badge of feudalism, though light, was insufferably
+irritating; and the sons of William Penn were moreover detested by the
+Quakers as renegades from the faith of their father. Thus the immediate
+political conflict engrossed mind and heart; and in the rancor of their
+quarrel with the proprietaries, the Assembly forgot the French and
+Indians.
+
+In Philadelphia and the eastern districts the Quakers could ply their
+trades, tend their shops, till their farms, and discourse at their ease
+on the wickedness of war. The midland counties, too, were for the most
+part tolerably safe. They were occupied mainly by crude German peasants,
+who nearly equalled in number all the rest of the population, and who,
+gathered at the centre of the province, formed a mass politically
+indigestible. Translated from servitude to the most ample liberty, they
+hated the thought of military service, which reminded them of former
+oppression, cared little whether they lived under France or England,
+and, thinking themselves out of danger, had no mind to be taxed for the
+defence of others. But while the great body of the Germans were
+sheltered from harm, those of them who lived farther westward were not
+so fortunate. Here, mixed with Scotch Irish Presbyterians and Celtic
+Irish Catholics, they formed a rough border population, the discordant
+elements of which could rarely unite for common action; yet, though
+confused and disjointed, they were a living rampart to the rest of the
+colony. Against them raged the furies of Indian war; and, maddened with
+distress and terror, they cried aloud for help.
+
+Petition after petition came from the borders for arms and ammunition,
+and for a militia law to enable the people to organize and defend
+themselves. The Quakers resisted. "They have taken uncommon pains,"
+writes Governor Morris to Shirley, "to prevent the people from taking up
+arms."[342] Braddock's defeat, they declared, was a just judgment on him
+and his soldiers for molesting the French in their settlements on the
+Ohio.[343] A bill was passed by the Assembly for raising fifty thousand
+pounds for the King's use by a tax which included the proprietary lands.
+The Governor, constrained by his instructions and his bonds, rejected
+it. "I can only say," he told them, "that I will readily pass a bill for
+striking any sum in paper money the present exigency may require,
+provided funds are established for sinking the same in five years."
+Messages long and acrimonious were exchanged between the parties. The
+Assembly, had they chosen, could easily have raised money enough by
+methods not involving the point in dispute; but they thought they saw in
+the crisis a means of forcing the Governor to yield. The Quakers had an
+alternative motive: if the Governor gave way, it was a political
+victory; if he stood fast, their non-resistance principles would
+triumph, and in this triumph their ascendency as a sect would be
+confirmed. The debate grew every day more bitter and unmannerly. The
+Governor could not yield; the Assembly would not. There was a complete
+deadlock. The Assembly requested the Governor "not to make himself the
+hateful instrument of reducing a free people to the abject state of
+vassalage."[344] As the raising of money and the control of its
+expenditure was in their hands; as he could not prorogue or dissolve
+them, and as they could adjourn on their own motion to such time as
+pleased them; as they paid his support, and could withhold it if he
+offended them,--which they did in the present case,--it seemed no easy
+task for him to reduce them to vassalage. "What must we do," pursued the
+Assembly, "to please this kind governor, who takes so much pains to
+render us obnoxious to our sovereign and odious to our fellow-subjects?
+If we only tell him that the difficulties he meets with are not owing to
+the causes he names,--which indeed have no existence,--but to his own
+want of skill and abilities for his station, he takes it extremely
+amiss, and say 'we forget all decency to those in authority.' We are apt
+to think there is likewise some decency due to the Assembly as a part of
+the government; and though we have not, like the Governor, had a courtly
+education, but are plain men, and must be very imperfect in our
+politeness, yet we think we have no chance of improving by his
+example."[345] Again, in another Message, the Assembly, with a thrust at
+Morris himself, tell him that colonial governors have often been
+"transient persons, of broken fortunes, greedy of money, destitute of
+all concern for those they govern, often their enemies, and endeavoring
+not only to oppress, but to defame them."[346] In such unseemly fashion
+was the battle waged. Morris, who was himself a provincial, showed more
+temper and dignity; though there was not too much on either side. "The
+Assembly," he wrote to Shirley, "seem determined to take advantage of
+the country's distress to get the whole power of government into their
+own hands." And the Assembly proclaimed on their part that the Governor
+was taking advantage of the country's distress to reduce the province to
+"Egyptian bondage."
+
+[Footnote 342: _Morris to Shirley, 16 Aug. 1755_.]
+
+[Footnote 343: _Morris to Sir Thomas Robinson, 28 Aug. 1755._]
+
+[Footnote 344: _Colonial Records of Pa_., VI. 584.]
+
+[Footnote 345: _Message of the Assembly to the Governor, 29 Sept. 1755_
+(written by Franklin), in _Colonial Records of Pa._, VI. 631, 632.]
+
+[Footnote 346: _Writings of Franklin_, III. 447. The Assembly at first
+suppressed this paper, but afterwards printed it.]
+
+Petitions poured in from the miserable frontiersmen. "How long will
+those in power, by their quarrels, suffer us to be massacred?" demanded
+William Trent, the Indian trader. "Two and forty bodies have been buried
+on Patterson's Creek; and since they have killed more, and keep on
+killing."[347] Early in October news came that a hundred persons had
+been murdered near Fort Cumberland. Repeated tidings followed of murders
+on the Susquehanna; then it was announced that the war-parties had
+crossed that stream, and were at their work on the eastern side. Letter
+after letter came from the sufferers, bringing such complaints as this:
+"We are in as bad circumstances as ever any poor Christians were ever
+in; for the cries of widowers, widows, fatherless and motherless
+children, are enough to pierce the most hardest of hearts. Likewise it's
+a very sorrowful spectacle to see those that escaped with their lives
+with not a mouthful to eat, or bed to lie on, or clothes to cover their
+nakedness, or keep them warm, but all they had consumed into ashes.
+These deplorable circumstances cry aloud for your Honor's most wise
+consideration; for it is really very shocking for the husband to see the
+wife of his bosom her head cut off, and the children's blood drunk like
+water, by these bloody and cruel savages."[348]
+
+[Footnote 347: _Trent to James Burd, 4 Oct. 1755_.]
+
+[Footnote 348: _Adam Hoops to Governor Morris, 3 Nov. 1755._]
+
+Morris was greatly troubled. "The conduct of the Assembly," he wrote to
+Shirley, "is to me shocking beyond parallel." "The inhabitants are
+abandoning their plantations, and we are in a dreadful situation," wrote
+John Harris from the east bank of the Susquehanna. On the next day he
+wrote again: "The Indians are cutting us off every day, and I had a
+certain account of about fifteen hundred Indians, besides French, being
+on their march against us and Virginia, and now close on our borders,
+their scouts scalping our families on our frontiers daily." The report
+was soon confirmed; and accounts came that the settlements in the valley
+called the Great Cove had been completely destroyed. All this was laid
+before the Assembly. They declared the accounts exaggerated, but
+confessed that outrages had been committed; hinted that the fault was
+with the proprietaries; and asked the Governor to explain why the
+Delawares and Shawanoes had become unfriendly. "If they have suffered
+wrongs," said the Quakers, "we are resolved to do all in our power to
+redress them, rather than entail upon ourselves and our posterity the
+calamities of a cruel Indian war." The Indian records were searched, and
+several days spent in unsuccessful efforts to prove fraud in a late
+land-purchase.
+
+Post after post still brought news of slaughter. The upper part of
+Cumberland County was laid waste. Edward Biddle wrote from Reading: "The
+drum is beating and bells ringing, and all the people under arms. This
+night we expect an attack. The people exclaim against the Quakers." "We
+seem to be given up into the hands of a merciless enemy," wrote John
+Elder from Paxton. And he declares that more than forty persons have
+been killed in that neighborhood, besides numbers carried off. Meanwhile
+the Governor and Assembly went on fencing with words and exchanging
+legal subtleties; while, with every cry of distress that rose from the
+west, each hoped that the other would yield.
+
+On the eighth of November the Assembly laid before Morris for his
+concurrence a bill for emitting bills of credit to the amount of sixty
+thousand pounds, to be sunk in four years by a tax including the
+proprietary estates.[349] "I shall not," he replied, "enter into a
+dispute whether the proprietaries ought to be taxed or not. It is
+sufficient for me that they have given me no power in that case; and I
+cannot think it consistent either with my duty or safety to exceed the
+powers of my commission, much less to do what that commission expressly
+prohibits."[350] He stretched his authority, however, so far as to
+propose a sort of compromise by which the question should be referred to
+the King; but they refused it; and the quarrel and the murders went on
+as before. "We have taken," said the Assembly, "every step in our power
+consistent with the just rights of the freemen of Pennsylvania, for the
+relief of the poor distressed inhabitants; and we have reason to believe
+that they themselves would not wish us to go farther. Those who would
+give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve
+neither liberty nor safety."[351] Then the borderers deserved neither;
+for, rather than be butchered, they would have let the proprietary lands
+lie untaxed for another year. "You have in all," said the Governor,
+"proposed to me five money bills, three of them rejected because
+contrary to royal instructions; the other two on account of the unjust
+method proposed for taxing the proprietary estate. If you are disposed
+to relieve your country, you have many other ways of granting money to
+which I shall have no objection. I shall put one proof more both of your
+sincerity and mine in our professions of regard for the public, by
+offering to agree to any bill in the present exigency which it is
+consistent with my duty to pass; lest, before our present disputes can
+be brought to an issue, we should neither have a privilege to dispute
+about, nor a country to dispute in."[352] They stood fast; and with an
+obstinacy for which the Quakers were chiefly answerable, insisted that
+they would give nothing, except by a bill taxing real estate, and
+including that of the proprietaries.
+
+[Footnote 349: _Colonial Records of Pa_., VI. 682.]
+
+[Footnote 350: _Message of the Governor to the Assembly, 8 Nov. 1755_,
+in _Colonial Records of Pa._, VI. 684.]
+
+[Footnote 351: _Message of the Assembly to the Governor, 11 Nov. Ibid._
+VI. 692. The words are Franklin's.]
+
+[Footnote 352: _Message of the Governor to the Assembly, 22 Nov. 1755_,
+in _Colonial Records of Pa._, VI. 714.]
+
+But now the Assembly began to feel the ground shaking under their feet.
+A paper, called a "Representation," signed by some of the chief
+citizens, was sent to the House, calling for measures of defence. "You
+will forgive us, gentlemen," such was its language, "if we assume
+characters somewhat higher than that of humble suitors praying for the
+defence of our lives and properties as a matter of grace or favor on
+your side. You will permit us to make a positive and immediate demand of
+it."[353] This drove the Quakers mad. Preachers, male and female,
+harangued in the streets, denouncing the iniquity of war. Three of the
+sect from England, two women and a man, invited their brethren of the
+Assembly to a private house, and fervently exhorted them to stand firm.
+Some of the principal Quakers joined in an address to the House, in
+which they declared that any action on its part "inconsistent with the
+peaceable testimony we profess and have borne to the world appears to us
+in its consequences to be destructive of our religious liberties."[354]
+And they protested that they would rather "suffer" than pay taxes for
+such ends. Consistency, even in folly, has in it something respectable;
+but the Quakers were not consistent. A few years after, when heated
+with party-passion and excited by reports of an irruption of incensed
+Presbyterian borderers, some of the pacific sectaries armed for battle;
+and the streets of Philadelphia beheld the curious conjunction of musket
+and broad-brimmed hat.[355]
+
+[Footnote 353: _Pennsylvania Archives_, II. 485.]
+
+[Footnote 354: _Ibid_., II. 487.]
+
+[Footnote 355: See _Conspiracy of Pontiac_, Chaps. 24 and 25.]
+
+The mayor, aldermen, and common council next addressed the Assembly,
+adjuring them, "in the most solemn manner, before God and in the name of
+all our fellow-citizens," to provide for defending the lives and
+property of the people.[356] A deputation from a band of Indians on the
+Susquehanna, still friendly to the province, came to ask whether the
+English meant to fight or not; for, said their speaker, "if they will
+not stand by us, we will join the French." News came that the settlement
+of Tulpehocken, only sixty miles distant, had been destroyed; and then
+that the Moravian settlement of Gnadenhütten was burned, and nearly all
+its inmates massacred. Colonel William Moore wrote to the Governor that
+two thousand men were coming from Chester County to compel him and the
+Assembly to defend the province; and Conrad Weiser wrote that more were
+coming from Berks on the same errand. Old friends of the Assembly began
+to cry out against them. Even the Germans, hitherto their fast allies,
+were roused from their attitude of passivity, and four hundred of them
+came in procession to demand measures of war. A band of frontiersmen
+presently arrived, bringing in a wagon the bodies of friends and
+relatives lately murdered, displaying them at the doors of the Assembly,
+cursing the Quakers, and threatening vengeance.[357]
+
+[Footnote 356: _A Remonstrance_, etc., in _Colonial Records of Pa._, VI.
+734.]
+
+[Footnote 357: Mante, 47; Entick, I. 377.]
+
+Finding some concession necessary, the House at length passed a militia
+law,--probably the most futile ever enacted. It specially exempted the
+Quakers, and constrained nobody; but declared it lawful, for such as
+chose, to form themselves into companies and elect officers by ballot.
+The company officers thus elected might, if they saw fit, elect, also
+by ballot, colonels, lieutenant-colonels, and majors. These last might
+then, in conjunction with the Governor, frame articles of war; to which,
+however, no officer or man was to be subjected unless, after three days'
+consideration, he subscribed them in presence of a justice of the peace,
+and declared his willingness to be bound by them.[358]
+
+[Footnote 358: This remarkable bill, drawn by Franklin, was meant for
+political rather than military effect. It was thought that Morris would
+refuse to pass it, and could therefore be accused of preventing the
+province from defending itself; but he avoided the snare by signing it.]
+
+This mockery could not appease the people; the Assembly must raise money
+for men, arms, forts, and all the detested appliances of war. Defeat
+absolute and ignominious seemed hanging over the House, when an incident
+occurred which gave them a decent pretext for retreat. The Governor
+informed them that he had just received a letter from the proprietaries,
+giving to the province five thousand pounds sterling to aid in its
+defence, on condition that the money should be accepted as a free gift,
+and not as their proportion of any tax that was or might be laid by the
+Assembly. They had not learned the deplorable state of the country, and
+had sent the money in view of the defeat of Braddock and its probable
+consequences. The Assembly hereupon yielded, struck out from the bill
+before them the clause taxing the proprietary estates, and, thus
+amended, presented it to the Governor, who by his signature made it a
+law.[359]
+
+[Footnote 359: _Minutes of Council, 27 Nov. 1755_.]
+
+The House had failed to carry its point. The result disappointed
+Franklin, and doubly disappointed the Quakers. His maxim was: Beat the
+Governor first, and then beat the enemy; theirs: Beat the Governor, and
+let the enemy alone. The measures that followed, directed in part by
+Franklin himself, held the Indians in check, and mitigated the distress
+of the western counties; yet there was no safety for them throughout the
+two or three years when France was cheering on her hell-hounds against
+this tormented frontier.
+
+As in Pennsylvania, so in most of the other colonies there was conflict
+between assemblies and governors, to the unspeakable detriment of the
+public service. In New York, though here no obnoxious proprietary stood
+between the people and the Crown, the strife was long and severe. The
+point at issue was an important one,--whether the Assembly should
+continue their practice of granting yearly supplies to the Governor, or
+should establish a permanent fund for the ordinary expenses of
+government,--thus placing him beyond their control. The result was a
+victory for the Assembly.
+
+Month after month the great continent lay wrapped in snow. Far along the
+edge of the western wilderness men kept watch and ward in lonely
+blockhouses, or scoured the forest on the track of prowling war-parties.
+The provincials in garrison at forts Edward, William Henry, and Oswego
+dragged out the dreary winter; while bands of New England rangers,
+muffled against the piercing cold, caps of fur on their heads, hatchets
+in their belts, and guns in the mittened hands, glided on skates along
+the gleaming ice-floor of Lake George, to spy out the secrets of
+Ticonderoga, or seize some careless sentry to tell them tidings of the
+foe. Thus the petty war went on; but the big war was frozen into torpor,
+ready, like a hibernating bear, to wake again with the birds, the bees,
+and the flowers.[360]
+
+[Footnote 360: On Pennsylvanian disputes,--_A Brief State of the
+Province of Pennsylvania_ (London, 1755). _A Brief View of the Conduct
+of Pennsylvania_ (London, 1756). These are pamphlets on the Governor's
+side, by William Smith, D.D., Provost of the College of Pennsylvania.
+_An Answer to an invidious Pamphlet, intituled a Brief State_, etc.
+(London, 1755). Anonymous. _A True and Impartial State of the Province
+of Pennsylvania_ (Philadelphia, 1759). Anonymous. The last two works
+attack the first two with great vehemence. _The True and Impartial
+State_ is an able presentation of the case of the Assembly, omitting,
+however, essential facts. But the most elaborate work on the subject is
+the _Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of
+Pennsylvania_, inspired and partly written by Franklin. It is hotly
+partisan, and sometimes sophistical and unfair. Articles on the quarrel
+will also be found in the provincial newspapers, especially the _New
+York Mercury,_ and in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for 1755 and 1756. But
+it is impossible to get any clear and just view of it without wading
+through the interminable documents concerning it in the _Colonial
+Records of Pennsylvania_ and the _Pennsylvania Archives_.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 11
+
+1712-1756
+
+Montcalm
+
+
+On the eighteenth of May, 1756, England, after a year of open hostility,
+at length declared war. She had attacked France by land and sea, turned
+loose her ships to prey on French commerce, and brought some three
+hundred prizes into her ports. It was the act of a weak Government,
+supplying by spasms of violence what it lacked in considerate
+resolution. France, no match for her amphibious enemy in the game of
+marine depredation, cried out in horror; and to emphasize her complaints
+and signalize a pretended good faith which her acts had belied,
+ostentatiously released a British frigate captured by her cruisers. She
+in her turn declared war on the ninth of June: and now began the most
+terrible conflict of the eighteenth century; one that convulsed Europe
+and shook America, India, the coasts of Africa, and the islands of the
+sea.
+
+In Europe the ground was trembling already with the coming earthquake.
+Such smothered discords, such animosities, ambitions, jealousies,
+possessed the rival governments; such entanglements of treaties and
+alliances, offensive or defensive, open or secret,--that a blow at one
+point shook the whole fabric. Hanover, like the heel of Achilles, was
+the vulnerable part for which England was always trembling. Therefore
+she made a defensive treaty with Prussia, by which each party bound
+itself to aid the other, should its territory be invaded. England thus
+sought a guaranty against France, and Prussia against Russia. She had
+need. Her King, Frederic the Great, had drawn upon himself an avalanche.
+Three women--two empresses and a concubine--controlled the forces of the
+three great nations, Austria, Russia, and France; and they all hated
+him: Elizabeth of Russia, by reason of a distrust fomented by secret
+intrigue and turned into gall by the biting tongue of Frederic himself,
+who had jibed at her amours, compared her to Messalina, and called her
+"_infâme catin du Nord_;" Maria Theresa of Austria, because she saw in
+him a rebellious vassal of the Holy Roman Empire, and, above all,
+because he had robbed her of Silesia; Madame de Pompadour, because when
+she sent him a message of compliment, he answered, "_Je ne la connais
+pas_," forbade his ambassador to visit her, and in his mocking wit
+spared neither her nor her royal lover. Feminine pique, revenge, or
+vanity had then at their service the mightiest armaments of Europe.
+
+The recovery of Silesia and the punishment of Frederic for his audacity
+in seizing it, possessed the mind of Maria Theresa with the force of a
+ruling passion. To these ends she had joined herself in secret league
+with Russia; and now at the prompting of her minister Kaunitz she
+courted the alliance of France. It was a reversal of the hereditary
+policy of Austria; joining hands with an old and deadly foe, and
+spurning England, of late her most trusty ally. But France could give
+powerful aid against Frederic; and hence Maria Theresa, virtuous as she
+was high-born and proud, stooped to make advances to the all-powerful
+mistress of Louis XV., wrote her flattering letters, and addressed her,
+it is said, as "_Ma chère cousine_." Pompadour was delighted, and could
+hardly do enough for her imperial friend. She ruled the King, and could
+make and unmake ministers at will. They hastened to do her pleasure,
+disguising their subserviency by dressing it out in specious reasons of
+state. A conference at her summer-house, called Babiole, "Bawble,"
+prepared the way for a treaty which involved the nation in the
+anti-Prussian war, and made it the instrument of Austria in the attempt
+to humble Frederic,--an attempt which if successful would give the
+hereditary enemy of France a predominance over Germany. France engaged
+to aid the cause with twenty-four thousand men; but in the zeal of her
+rulers began with a hundred thousand. Thus the three great Powers stood
+leagued against Prussia. Sweden and Saxony joined them; and the Empire
+itself, of which Prussia was a part, took arms against its obnoxious
+member.
+
+Never in Europe had power been more centralized, and never in France had
+the reins been held by persons so pitiful, impelled by motives so
+contemptible. The levity, vanity, and spite of a concubine became a
+mighty engine to influence the destinies of nations. Louis XV.,
+enervated by pleasures and devoured by _ennui_, still had his emotions;
+he shared Pompadour's detestation of Frederic, and he was tormented at
+times by a lively fear of damnation. But how damn a king who had entered
+the lists as champion of the Church? England was Protestant, and so was
+Prussia; Austria was supremely Catholic. Was it not a merit in the eyes
+of God to join her in holy war against the powers of heresy? The King of
+the Parc-aux-Cerfs would propitiate Heaven by a new crusade.
+
+Henceforth France was to turn her strength against her European foes;
+and the American war, the occasion of the universal outbreak, was to
+hold in her eyes a second place. The reasons were several: the vanity of
+Pompadour, infatuated by the advances of the Empress-Queen, and eager to
+secure her good graces; the superstition of the King; the anger of both
+against Frederic; the desire of D'Argenson, minister of war, that the
+army, and not the navy, should play the foremost part; and the passion
+of courtiers and nobles, ignorant of the naval service, to win laurels
+in a continental war,--all conspired to one end. It was the interest of
+France to turn her strength against her only dangerous rival; to
+continue as she had begun, in building up a naval power that could face
+England on the seas and sustain her own rising colonies in America,
+India, and the West Indies: for she too might have multiplied herself,
+planted her language and her race over all the globe, and grown with the
+growth of her children, had she not been at the mercy of an effeminate
+profligate, a mistress turned procuress, and the favorites to whom they
+delegated power.
+
+Still, something must be done for the American war; at least there must
+be a new general to replace Dieskau. None of the Court favorites wanted
+a command in the backwoods, and the minister of war was free to choose
+whom he would. His choice fell on Louis Joseph, Marquis de
+Montcalm-Gozon de Saint-Véran.
+
+Montcalm was born in the south of France, at the Château of Candiac,
+near Nimes, on the twenty-ninth of February, 1712. At the age of six he
+was placed in the charge of one Dumas, a natural son of his grandfather.
+This man, a conscientious pedant, with many theories of education, ruled
+his pupil stiffly; and, before the age of fifteen, gave him a good
+knowledge of Latin, Greek, and history. Young Montcalm had a taste for
+books, continued his reading in such intervals of leisure as camps and
+garrisons afforded, and cherished to the end of his life the ambition of
+becoming a member of the Academy. Yet, with all his liking for study, he
+sometimes revolted against the sway of the pedagogue who wrote letters
+of complaint to his father protesting against the "judgments of the
+vulgar, who, contrary to the experience of ages, say that if children
+are well reproved they will correct their faults." Dumas, however, was
+not without sense, as is shown by another letter to the elder Montcalm,
+in which he says that the boy had better be ignorant of Latin and Greek
+"than know them as he does without knowing how to read, write, and speak
+French well." The main difficulty was to make him write a good hand,--a
+point in which he signally failed to the day of his death. So refractory
+was he at times, that his master despaired. "M. de Montcalm," Dumas
+informs the father, "has great need of docility, industry, and
+willingness to take advice. What will become of him?" The pupil, aware
+of these aspersions, met them by writing to his father his own ideas of
+what his aims should be. "First, to be an honorable man, of good
+morals, brave, and a Christian. Secondly, to read in moderation; to know
+as much Greek and Latin as most men of the world; also the four rules of
+arithmetic, and something of history, geography, and French and Latin
+_belles-lettres_, as well as to have a taste for the arts and sciences.
+Thirdly, and above all, to be obedient, docile, and very submissive to
+your orders and those of my dear mother; and also to defer to the advice
+of M. Dumas. Fourthly, to fence and ride as well as my small abilities
+will permit."[361]
+
+[Footnote 361: This passage is given by Somervogel from the original
+letter.]
+
+If Louis de Montcalm failed to satisfy his preceptor, he had a brother
+who made ample amends. Of this infant prodigy it is related that at six
+years he knew Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and had some acquaintance with
+arithmetic, French history, geography, and heraldry. He was destined for
+the Church, but died at the age of seven; his precocious brain having
+been urged to fatal activity by the exertions of Dumas.
+
+Other destinies and a more wholesome growth were the lot of young Louis.
+At fifteen he joined the army as ensign in the regiment of Hainaut. Two
+years after, his father bought him a captaincy, and he was first under
+fire at the siege of Philipsbourg. His father died in 1735, and left him
+heir to a considerable landed estate, much embarrassed by debt. The
+Marquis de la Fare, a friend of the family, soon after sought for him an
+advantageous marriage to strengthen his position and increase his
+prospects of promotion; and he accordingly espoused Mademoiselle
+Angélique Louise Talon du Boulay,--a union which brought him influential
+alliances and some property. Madame de Montcalm bore him ten children,
+of whom only two sons and four daughters were living in 1752. "May God
+preserve them all," he writes in his autobiography, "and make them
+prosper for this world and the next! Perhaps it will be thought that the
+number is large for so moderate a fortune, especially as four of them
+are girls; but does God ever abandon his children in their need?"
+
+   "'Aux petits des oiseaux il donne la pâture,
+   Et sa bonté s'étend sur toute la nature.'"
+
+He was pious in his soldierly way, and ardently loyal to Church and
+King.
+
+His family seat was Candiac; where, in the intervals of campaigning, he
+found repose with his wife, his children, and his mother, who was a
+woman of remarkable force of character and who held great influence over
+her son. He had a strong attachment to this home of his childhood; and
+in after years, out of the midst of the American wilderness, his
+thoughts turned longingly towards it. "_Quand reverrai-je mon cher
+Candiac_!"
+
+In 1741 Montcalm took part in the Bohemian campaign. He was made colonel
+of the regiment of Auxerrois two years later, and passed unharmed
+through the severe campaign of 1744. In the next year he fought in Italy
+under Maréchal de Maillebois. In 1746, at the disastrous action under
+the walls of Piacenza, where he twice rallied his regiment, he received
+five sabre-cuts,--two of which were in the head,--and was made prisoner.
+Returning to France on parole, he was promoted in the year following to
+the rank of brigadier; and being soon after exchanged, rejoined the
+army, and was again wounded by a musket-shot. The peace of
+Aix-la-Chapelle now gave him a period of rest.[362] At length, being on
+a visit to Paris late in the autumn of 1755, the minister, D'Argenson,
+hinted to him that he might be appointed to command the troops in
+America. He heard no more of the matter till, after his return home, he
+received from D'Argenson a letter dated at Versailles the twenty-fifth
+of January, at midnight. "Perhaps, Monsieur," it began, "you did not
+expect to hear from me again on the subject of the conversation I had
+with you the day you came to bid me farewell at Paris. Nevertheless I
+have not forgotten for a moment the suggestion I then made you; and it
+is with the greatest pleasure that I announce to you that my views have
+prevailed. The King has chosen you to command his troops in North
+America, and will honor you on your departure with the rank of
+major-general."
+
+[Footnote 362: The account of Montcalm up to this time is chiefly from
+his unpublished autobiography, preserved by his descendants, and
+entitled _Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire de ma Vie_. Somervogel,
+_Comme on servait autrefois_; Bonnechose, _Montcalm et le Canada;_
+Martin, _Le Marquis de Montcalm; Éloge de Montcalm; Autre Éloge de
+Montcalm; Mémoires sur le Canada_, 1749-1760, and other writings in
+print and manuscript have also been consulted.]
+
+The Chevalier de Lévis, afterwards Marshal of France, was named as his
+second in command, with the rank of brigadier, and the Chevalier de
+Bourlamaque as his third, with the rank of colonel; but what especially
+pleased him was the appointment of his eldest son to command a regiment
+in France. He set out from Candiac for the Court, and occupied himself
+on the way with reading Charlevoix. "I take great pleasure in it," he
+writes from Lyons to his mother; "he gives a pleasant account of Quebec.
+But be comforted; I shall always be glad to come home." At Paris he
+writes again: "Don't expect any long letter from me before the first of
+March; all my business will be done by that time, and I shall begin to
+breathe again. I have not yet seen the Chevalier de Montcalm [_his
+son_]. Last night I came from Versailles, and am going back to-morrow.
+The King gives me twenty-five thousand francs a year, as he did to M.
+Dieskau, besides twelve thousand for my equipment, which will cost me
+above a thousand crowns more; but I cannot stop for that. I embrace my
+dearest and all the family." A few days later his son joined him. "He is
+as thin and delicate as ever, but grows prodigiously tall."
+
+On the second of March he informs his mother, "My affairs begin to get
+on. A good part of the baggage went off the day before yesterday in the
+King's wagons; an assistant-cook and two liverymen yesterday. I have got
+a good cook. Estève, my secretary, will go on the eighth; Joseph and
+Déjean will follow me. To-morrow evening I go to Versailles till Sunday,
+and will write from there to Madame de Montcalm [_his wife_]. I have
+three aides-de-camp; one of them, Bougainville, a man of parts, pleasant
+company. Madame Mazade was happily delivered on Wednesday; in extremity
+on Friday with a malignant fever; Saturday and yesterday, reports
+favorable. I go there twice a day, and am just going now. She has a
+girl. I embrace you all." Again, on the fifteenth: "In a few hours I set
+out for Brest. Yesterday I presented my son, with whom I am well
+pleased, to all the royal family. I shall have a secretary at Brest, and
+will write more at length." On the eighteenth he writes from Rennes to
+his wife: "I arrived, dearest, this morning, and stay here all day. I
+shall be at Brest on the twenty-first. Everything will be on board on
+the twenty-sixth. My son has been here since yesterday for me to coach
+him and get him a uniform made, in which he will give thanks for his
+regiment at the same time that I take leave in my embroidered coat.
+Perhaps I shall leave debts behind. I wait impatiently for the bills.
+You have my will; I wish you would get it copied, and send it to me
+before I sail."
+
+Reaching Brest, the place of embarkation, he writes to his mother: "I
+have business on hand still. My health is good, and the passage will be
+a time of rest. I embrace you, and my dearest, and my daughters. Love to
+all the family. I shall write up to the last moment."
+
+No translation can give an idea of the rapid, abrupt, elliptical style
+of this familiar correspondence, where the meaning is sometimes
+suggested by a single word, unintelligible to any but those for whom it
+is written.
+
+At the end of March Montcalm, with all his following, was ready to
+embark; and three ships of the line, the "Léopard," the "Héros," and the
+"Illustre," fitted out as transports, were ready to receive the troops;
+while the General, with Lévis and Bourlamaque, were to take passage in
+the frigates "Licorne," "Sauvage," and "Sirène." "I like the Chevalier
+de Lévis," says Montcalm, "and I think he likes me." His first
+aide-de-camp, Bougainville, pleased him, if possible, still more. This
+young man, son of a notary, had begun life as an advocate in the
+Parliament of Paris, where his abilities and learning had already made
+him conspicuous, when he resigned the gown for the sword, and became a
+captain of dragoons. He was destined in later life to win laurels in
+another career, and to become one of the most illustrious of French
+navigators. Montcalm, himself a scholar, prized his varied talents and
+accomplishments, and soon learned to feel for him a strong personal
+regard.
+
+The troops destined for Canada were only two battalions, one belonging
+to the regiment of La Sarre, and the other to that of Royal Roussillon.
+Louis XV. and Pompadour sent a hundred thousand men to fight the battles
+of Austria, and could spare but twelve hundred to reinforce New France.
+These troops marched into Brest at early morning, breakfasted in the
+town, and went at once on board the transports, "with an incredible
+gayety," says Bougainville. "What a nation is ours! Happy he who
+commands it, and commands it worthily!"[363] Montcalm and he embarked in
+the "Licorne," and sailed on the third of April, leaving Lévis and
+Bourlamaque to follow a few days after.[364]
+
+[Footnote 363: _Journal de Bougainville_. This is a fragment; his
+Journal proper begins a few weeks later.]
+
+[Footnote 364: _Lévis à----, 5 Avril_, 1756.]
+
+The voyage was a rough one. "I have been fortunate," writes Montcalm to
+his wife, "in not being ill nor at all incommoded by the heavy gale we
+had in Holy Week. It was not so with those who were with me, especially
+M. Estève, my secretary, and Joseph, who suffered cruelly,--seventeen
+days without being able to take anything but water. The season was very
+early for such a hard voyage, and it was fortunate that the winter has
+been so mild. We had very favorable weather till Monday the twelfth; but
+since then till Saturday evening we had rough weather, with a gale that
+lasted ninety hours, and put us in real danger. The forecastle was
+always under water, and the waves broke twice over the quarter-deck.
+From the twenty-seventh of April to the evening of the fourth of May we
+had fogs, great cold, and an amazing quantity of icebergs. On the
+thirtieth, when luckily the fog lifted for a time, we counted sixteen of
+them. The day before, one drifted under the bowsprit, grazed it, and
+might have crushed us if the deck-officer had not called out quickly,
+_Luff_. After speaking of our troubles and sufferings, I must tell you
+of our pleasures, which were fishing for cod and eating it. The taste is
+exquisite. The head, tongue, and liver are morsels worthy of an epicure.
+Still, I would not advise anybody to make the voyage for their sake. My
+health is as good as it has been for a long time. I found it a good plan
+to eat little and take no supper; a little tea now and then, and plenty
+of lemonade. Nevertheless I have taken very little liking for the sea,
+and think that when I shall be so happy as to rejoin you I shall end my
+voyages there. I don't know when this letter will go. I shall send it by
+the first ship that returns to France, and keep on writing till then. It
+is pleasant, I know, to hear particulars about the people one loves, and
+I thought that my mother and you, my dearest and most beloved, would be
+glad to read all these dull details. We heard Mass on Easter Day. All
+the week before, it was impossible, because the ship rolled so that I
+could hardly keep my legs. If I had dared, I think I should have had
+myself lashed fast. I shall not soon forget that Holy Week."
+
+This letter was written on the eleventh of May, in the St. Lawrence,
+where the ship lay at anchor, ten leagues below Quebec, stopped by ice
+from proceeding farther. Montcalm made his way to the town by land, and
+soon after learned with great satisfaction that the other ships were
+safe in the river below. "I see," he writes again, "that I shall have
+plenty of work. Our campaign will soon begin. Everything is in motion.
+Don't expect details about our operations; generals never speak of
+movements till they are over. I can only tell you that the winter has
+been quiet enough, though the savages have made great havoc in
+Pennsylvania and Virginia, and carried off, according to their custom,
+men, women, and children. I beg you will have High Mass said at
+Montpellier or Vauvert to thank God for our safe arrival and ask for
+good success in future."[365]
+
+[Footnote 365: These extracts are translated from copies of the original
+letters, in possession of the present Marquis de Montcalm.]
+
+Vaudreuil, the governor-general, was at Montreal, and Montcalm sent a
+courier to inform him of his arrival. He soon went thither in person,
+and the two men met for the first time. The new general was not welcome
+to Vaudreuil, who had hoped to command the troops himself, and had
+represented to the Court that it was needless and inexpedient to send
+out a general officer from France.[366] The Court had not accepted his
+views;[367] and hence it was with more curiosity than satisfaction that
+he greeted the colleague who had been assigned him. He saw before him a
+man of small stature, with a lively countenance, a keen eye, and, in
+moments of animation, rapid, vehement utterance, and nervous
+gesticulation. Montcalm, we may suppose, regarded the Governor with no
+less attention. Pierre François Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil, who had
+governed Canada early in the century; and he himself had been governor
+of Louisiana. He had not the force of character which his position
+demanded, lacked decision in times of crisis; and though tenacious of
+authority, was more jealous in asserting than self-reliant in exercising
+it. One of his traits was a sensitive egotism, which made him forward to
+proclaim his own part in every success, and to throw on others the
+burden of every failure. He was facile by nature, and capable of being
+led by such as had skill and temper for the task. But the impetuous
+Montcalm was not of their number; and the fact that he was born in
+France would in itself have thrown obstacles in his way to the good
+graces of the Governor. Vaudreuil, Canadian by birth, loved the colony
+and its people, and distrusted Old France and all that came out of it.
+He had been bred, moreover, to the naval service; and, like other
+Canadian governors, his official correspondence was with the minister of
+marine, while that of Montcalm was with the minister of war. Even had
+Nature made him less suspicious, his relations with the General would
+have been critical. Montcalm commanded the regulars from France, whose
+very presence was in the eyes of Vaudreuil an evil, though a necessary
+one. Their chief was, it is true, subordinate to him in virtue of his
+office of governor;[368] yet it was clear that for the conduct of the
+war the trust of the Government was mainly in Montcalm; and the Minister
+of War had even suggested that he should have the immediate command, not
+only of the troops from France, but of the colony regulars and the
+militia. An order of the King to this effect was sent to Vaudreuil, with
+instructions to communicate it to Montcalm or withhold it, as he should
+think best.[369] He lost no time in replying that the General "ought to
+concern himself with nothing but the command of the troops from France;"
+and he returned the order to the minister who sent it.[370] The Governor
+and the General represented the two parties which were soon to divide
+Canada,--those of New France and of Old.
+
+[Footnote 366: _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 30 Oct. 1755._]
+
+[Footnote 367: _Ordres du Roy et Dépêches des Ministres, Fév. 1756._]
+
+[Footnote 368: _Le Ministre à Vaudreuil, 15 Mars, 1756. Commission du
+Marquis de Montcalm. Mémoire du Roy pour servir d'Instruction au Marquis
+de Montcalm_.]
+
+[Footnote 369: _Ordres du Roy et Dépêches des Ministres, 1756. Le
+Ministre à Vaudreuil, 15 Mars, 1756_.]
+
+[Footnote 370: _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 16 Juin, 1756_. "Qu'il ne se mêle
+que du commandement des troupes de terre."]
+
+A like antagonism was seen in the forces commanded by the two chiefs.
+These were of three kinds,--the _troupes de terre,_ troops of the line,
+or regulars from France; the _troupes de la marine_, or colony regulars;
+and lastly the militia. The first consisted of the four battalions that
+had come over with Dieskau and the two that had come with Montcalm,
+comprising in all a little less than three thousand men.[371] Besides
+these, the battalions of Artois and Bourgogne, to the number of eleven
+hundred men, were in garrison at Louisbourg. All these troops wore a
+white uniform, faced with blue, red, yellow, or violet,[372] a black
+three-cornered hat, and gaiters, generally black, from the foot to the
+knee. The subaltern officers in the French service were very numerous,
+and were drawn chiefly from the class of lesser nobles. A well-informed
+French writer calls them "a generation of _petits-maîtres,_ dissolute,
+frivolous, heedless, light-witted; but brave always, and ready to die
+with their soldiers, though not to suffer with them."[373] In fact the
+course of the war was to show plainly that in Europe the regiments of
+France were no longer what they had once been. It was not so with those
+who fought in America. Here, for enduring gallantry, officers and men
+alike deserve nothing but praise.
+
+[Footnote 371: Of about twelve hundred who came with Montcalm, nearly
+three hundred were now in hospital. The four battalions that came with
+Dieskau are reported at the end of May to have sixteen hundred and
+fifty-three effective men. _État de la Situation actuelle des
+Bataillons,_ appended to Montcalm's despatch of 12 June. Another
+document, _Dêtail de ce qui s'est passé en Canada, Juin, 1755, jusqu'à
+Juin_, 1756, sets the united effective strength of the battalions in
+Canada at twenty-six hundred and seventy-seven, which was increased by
+recruits which arrived from France about midsummer.]
+
+[Footnote 372: Except perhaps, the battalion of Béarn, which formerly
+wore, and possibly wore still, a uniform of light blue.]
+
+[Footnote 373: Susane, _Ancienne Infanterie Française_. In the atlas of
+this work are colored plates of the uniforms of all the regiments of
+foot.]
+
+The _troupes de la marine_ had for a long time formed the permanent
+military establishment of Canada. Though attached to the naval
+department, they served on land, and were employed as a police within
+the limits of the colony, or as garrisons of the outlying forts, where
+their officers busied themselves more with fur-trading than with their
+military duties. Thus they had become ill-disciplined and inefficient,
+till the hard hand of Duquesne restored them to order. They originally
+consisted of twenty-eight independent companies, increased in 1750 to
+thirty companies, at first of fifty, and afterwards of sixty-five men
+each, forming a total of nineteen hundred and fifty rank and file. In
+March, 1757, ten more companies were added. Their uniform was not unlike
+that of the troops attached to the War Department, being white, with
+black facings. They were enlisted for the most part in France; but when
+their term of service expired, and even before, in time of peace, they
+were encouraged to become settlers in the colony, as was also the case
+with their officers, of whom a great part were of European birth. Thus
+the relations of the _troupes de la marine_ with the colony were close;
+and formed a sort of connecting link between the troops of the line and
+the native militia.[374] Besides these colony regulars, there was a
+company of colonial artillery, consisting this year of seventy men, and
+replaced in 1757 by two companies of fifty men each.
+
+[Footnote 374: On the _troupes de la marine,--Mémoire pour servir
+d'Instruction a MM. Jonquière et Bigot, 30 Avril, 1749. Ordres du Roy et
+Dépêches des Ministres, 1750. Ibid., 1755. Ibid., 1757. Instruction
+pour Vaudreuil, 22 Mars, 1755. Ordonnance pour l'Augmentation de
+Soldats dans les Compagnies de Canada, 14 Mars, 1755. Duquesne au
+Ministre, 26 Oct. 1753. Ibid., 30 Oct. 1753. Ibid., 29 Fév. 1754.
+Duquesne à Marin, 27 Août, 1753. Atlas de Susane._]
+
+All the effective male population of Canada, from fifteen years to
+sixty, was enrolled in the militia, and called into service at the will
+of the Governor. They received arms, clothing, equipment, and rations
+from the King, but no pay; and instead of tents they made themselves
+huts of bark or branches. The best of them were drawn from the upper
+parts of the colony, where habits of bushranging were still in full
+activity. Their fighting qualities were much like those of the Indians,
+whom they rivalled in endurance and in the arts of forest war. As
+bush-fighters they had few equals; they fought well behind earthworks,
+and were good at a surprise or sudden dash; but for regular battle on
+the open field they were of small account, being disorderly, and apt to
+break and take to cover at the moment of crisis. They had no idea of the
+great operations of war. At first they despised the regulars for their
+ignorance of woodcraft, and thought themselves able to defend the colony
+alone; while the regulars regarded them in turn with a contempt no less
+unjust. They were excessively given to gasconade, and every true
+Canadian boasted himself a match for three Englishmen at least. In 1750
+the militia of all ranks counted about thirteen thousand; and eight
+years later the number had increased to about fifteen thousand.[375]
+Until the last two years of the war, those employed in actual warfare
+were but few. Even in the critical year 1758 only about eleven hundred
+were called to arms, except for two or three weeks in summer;[376]
+though about four thousand were employed in transporting troops and
+supplies, for which service they received pay.
+
+[Footnote 375: _Récapitulation des Milices du Gouvernement de Canada_,
+1750. _Dénombrement des Milices_, 1758, 1759. On the militia, see also
+Bougainville in Margry, _Rélations et Mémoires inédits_, 60, and _N.Y.
+Col. Docs._, X. 680.]
+
+[Footnote 376: _Montcalm au Ministre_, _1 Sept. 1758._]
+
+To the white fighting force of the colony are to be added the red men.
+The most trusty of them were the Mission Indians, living within or near
+the settled limits of Canada, chiefly the Hurons of Lorette, the
+Abenakis of St. Francis and Batiscan, the Iroquois of Caughnawaga and La
+Présentation, and the Iroquois and Algonkins at the Two Mountains on the
+Ottawa. Besides these, all the warriors of the west and north, from Lake
+Superior to the Ohio, and from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, were
+now at the beck of France. As to the Iroquois or Five Nations who still
+remained in their ancient seats within the present limits of New York,
+their power and pride had greatly fallen; and crowded as they were
+between the French and the English, they were in a state of vacillation,
+some leaning to one side, some to the other, and some to each in turn.
+As a whole, the best that France could expect from them was neutrality.
+
+Montcalm at Montreal had more visits than he liked from his red allies.
+"They are _vilains messieurs_," he informs his mother, "even when fresh
+from their toilet, at which they pass their lives. You would not believe
+it, but the men always carry to war, along with their tomahawk and gun,
+a mirror to daub their faces with various colors, and arrange feathers
+on their heads and rings in their ears and noses. They think it a great
+beauty to cut the rim of the ear and stretch it till it reaches the
+shoulder. Often they wear a laced coat, with no shirt at all. You would
+take them for so many masqueraders or devils. One needs the patience of
+an angel to get on with them. Ever since I have been here, I have had
+nothing but visits, harangues, and deputations of these gentry. The
+Iroquois ladies, who always take part in their government, came also,
+and did me the honor to bring me belts of wampum, which will oblige me
+to go to their village and sing the war-song. They are only a little way
+off. Yesterday we had eighty-three warriors here, who have gone out to
+fight. They make war with astounding cruelty, sparing neither men,
+women, nor children, and take off your scalp very neatly,--an operation
+which generally kills you."
+
+"Everything is horribly dear in this country; and I shall find it hard
+to make the two ends of the year meet, with the twenty-five thousand
+francs the King gives me. The Chevalier de Lévis did not join me till
+yesterday. His health is excellent. In a few days I shall send him to
+one camp, and M. de Bourlamaque to another; for we have three of them:
+one at Carillon, eighty leagues from here, towards the place where M. de
+Dieskau had his affair last year; another at Frontenac, sixty leagues;
+and the third at Niagara, a hundred and forty leagues. I don't know when
+or whither I shall go myself; that depends on the movements of the
+enemy. It seems to me that things move slowly in this new world; and I
+shall have to moderate my activity accordingly. Nothing but the King's
+service and the wish to make a career for my son could prevent me from
+thinking too much of my expatriation, my distance from you, and the dull
+existence here, which would be duller still if I did not manage to keep
+some little of my natural gayety."
+
+The military situation was somewhat perplexing. Iroquois spies had
+brought reports of great preparations on the part of the English. As
+neither party dared offend these wavering tribes, their warriors could
+pass with impunity from one to the other, and were paid by each for
+bringing information, not always trustworthy. They declared that the
+English were gathering in force to renew the attempt made by Johnson the
+year before against Crown Point and Ticonderoga, as well as that made by
+Shirley against forts Frontenac and Niagara. Vaudreuil had spared no
+effort to meet the double danger. Lotbinière, a Canadian engineer, had
+been busied during the winter in fortifying Ticonderoga, while Pouchot,
+a captain in the battalion of Béarn, had rebuilt Niagara, and two French
+engineers were at work in strengthening the defences of Frontenac. The
+Governor even hoped to take the offensive, anticipate the movements of
+the English, capture Oswego, and obtain the complete command of Lake
+Ontario. Early in the spring a blow had been struck which materially
+aided these schemes.
+
+The English had built two small forts to guard the Great Carrying Place
+on the route to Oswego. One of these, Fort Williams, was on the Mohawk;
+the other, Fort Bull, a mere collection of storehouses surrounded by a
+palisade, was four miles distant, on the bank of Wood Creek. Here a
+great quantity of stores and ammunition had imprudently been collected
+against the opening campaign. In February Vaudreuil sent Léry, a colony
+officer, with three hundred and sixty-two picked men, soldiers,
+Canadians, and Indians, to seize these two posts. Towards the end of
+March, after extreme hardship, they reached the road that connected
+them, and at half-past five in the morning captured twelve men going
+with wagons to Fort Bull. Learning from them the weakness of that place,
+they dashed forward to surprise it. The thirty provincials of Shirley's
+regiment who formed the garrison had barely time to shut the gate, while
+the assailants fired on them through the loopholes, of which they got
+possession in the tumult. Léry called on the defenders to yield; but
+they refused, and pelted the French for an hour with bullets and
+hand-grenades. The gate was at last beat down with axes, and they were
+summoned again; but again refused, and fired hotly through the opening.
+The French rushed in, shouting _Vive le roi_, and a frightful struggle
+followed. All the garrison were killed, except two or three who hid
+themselves till the slaughter was over; the fort was set on fire and
+blown to atoms by the explosion of the magazines; and Léry then
+withdrew, not venturing to attack Fort Williams. Johnson, warned by
+Indians of the approach of the French, had pushed up the Mohawk with
+reinforcements; but came too late.[377]
+
+[Footnote 377: _Bigot au Ministre, 12 Avril, 1756. Vaudreuil au
+Ministre, 1 Juin, 1756. Ibid., 8 Juin, 1756. Journal de ce qui s'est
+passé en Canada depuis le Mois d'Octobre, 1755, jusqu'au Mois de Juin,
+1756. Shirley to Fox, 7 May, 1756. Conduct of Major-General Shirley
+briefly stated. Information of Captain John Vicars, of the Fiftieth
+(Shirley's) Regiment. _Eastburn_, _Faithful Narrative_. Entick, I. 471.
+The French accounts place the number of English at sixty or eighty.]
+
+Vaudreuil, who always exaggerates any success in which he has had part,
+says that besides bombs, bullets, cannon-balls, and other munitions,
+forty-five thousand pounds of gunpowder were destroyed on this occasion.
+It is certain that damage enough was done to retard English operations
+in the direction of Oswego sufficiently to give the French time for
+securing all their posts on Lake Ontario. Before the end of June this
+was in good measure done. The battalion of Béarn lay encamped before the
+now strong fort of Niagara, and the battalions of Guienne and La Sarre,
+with a body of Canadians, guarded Frontenac against attack. Those of La
+Reine and Languedoc had been sent to Ticonderoga, while the Governor,
+with Montcalm and Lévis, still remained at Montreal watching the turn of
+events.[378] Hither, too, came the intendant François Bigot, the most
+accomplished knave in Canada, yet indispensable for his vigor and
+executive skill; Bougainville, who had disarmed the jealousy of
+Vaudreuil, and now stood high in his good graces; and the
+Adjutant-General, Montreuil, clearly a vain and pragmatic personage,
+who, having come to Canada with Dieskau the year before, thought it
+behooved him to give the General the advantage of his experience. "I
+like M. de Montcalm very much," he writes to the minister, "and will do
+the impossible to deserve his confidence. I have spoken to him in the
+same terms as to M. Dieskau; thus: 'Trust only the French regulars for
+an expedition, but use the Canadians and Indians to harass the enemy.
+Don't expose yourself; send me to carry your orders to points of
+danger.' The colony officers do not like those from France. The
+Canadians are independent, spiteful, lying, boastful; very good for
+skirmishing, very brave behind a tree, and very timid when not under
+cover. I think both sides will stand on the defensive. It does not seem
+to me that M. de Montcalm means to attack the enemy; and I think he is
+right. In this country a thousand men could stop three thousand."[379]
+
+[Footnote 378: _Correspondance de Montcalm, Vaudreuil, et Lévis._]
+
+[Footnote 379: _Montreuil au Ministre, 12 Juin, 1756_. The original is
+in cipher.] "M. de Vaudreuil overwhelms me with civilities," Montcalm
+writes to the Minister of War. "I think that he is pleased with my
+conduct towards him, and that it persuades him there are general
+officers in France who can act under his orders without prejudice or
+ill-humor."[380] "I am on good terms with him," he says again; "but not
+in his confidence, which he never gives to anybody from France. His
+intentions are good, but he is slow and irresolute."[381]
+
+[Footnote 380: _Montcalm au Ministre, 12 Juin, 1756._]
+
+[Footnote 381: _Ibid., 19 Juin, 1756._ "Je suis bien avec luy, sans sa
+confiance, qu'il ne donne jamais à personne de la France." Erroneously
+rendered in _N.Y. Col. Docs._, X. 421.]
+
+Indians presently brought word that ten thousand English were coming to
+attack Ticonderoga. A reinforcement of colony regulars was at once
+despatched to join the two battalions already there; a third battalion,
+Royal Roussillon, was sent after them. The militia were called out and
+ordered to follow with all speed, while both Montcalm and Lévis hastened
+to the supposed scene of danger.[382] They embarked in canoes on the
+Richelieu, coasted the shore of Lake Champlain, passed Fort Frederic or
+Crown Point, where all was activity and bustle, and reached Ticonderoga
+at the end of June. They found the fort, on which Lotbinière had been at
+work all winter, advanced towards completion. It stood on the crown of
+the promontory, and was a square with four bastions, a ditch, blown in
+some parts out of the solid rock, bomb-proofs, barracks of stone, and a
+system of exterior defences as yet only begun. The rampart consisted of
+two parallel walls ten feet apart, built of the trunks of trees, and
+held together by transverse logs dovetailed at both ends, the space
+between being filled with earth and gravel well packed.[383] Such was
+the first Fort Ticonderoga, or Carillon,--a structure quite distinct
+from the later fort of which the ruins still stand on the same spot. The
+forest had been hewn away for some distance around, and the tents of the
+regulars and huts of the Canadians had taken its place; innumerable bark
+canoes lay along the strand, and gangs of men toiled at the unfinished
+works.
+
+[Footnote 382: _Montcalm au Ministre, 26 Juin, 1756. Détail de ce qui
+s'est passé, Oct. 1755 Juin, 1756._]
+
+[Footnote 383: _Lotbinière au Ministre, 31 Oct. 1756. Montcalm au
+Ministre, 20 Juillet, 1756._]
+
+Ticonderoga was now the most advanced position of the French, and Crown
+Point, which had before held that perilous honor, was in the second
+line. Lévis, to whom had been assigned the permanent command of this
+post of danger, set out on foot to explore the neighboring woods and
+mountains, and slept out several nights before he reappeared at the
+camp. "I do not think," says Montcalm, "that many high officers in
+Europe would have occasion to take such tramps as this. I cannot speak
+too well of him. Without being a man of brilliant parts, he has good
+experience, good sense, and a quick eye; and, though I had served with
+him before, I never should have thought that he had such promptness and
+efficiency. He has turned his campaigns to good account."[384] Lévis
+writes of his chief with equal warmth. "I do not know if the Marquis de
+Montcalm is pleased with me, but I am sure that I am very much so with
+him, and shall always be charmed to serve under his orders. It is not
+for me, Monseigneur, to speak to you of his merit and his talents. You
+know him better than anybody else; but I may have the honor of assuring
+you that he has pleased everybody in this colony, and manages affairs
+with the Indians extremely well."[385]
+
+[Footnote 384: _Montcalm au Ministre, 20 Juillet, 1756._]
+
+[Footnote 385: _Lévis au Ministre, 17 Juillet, 1756._]
+
+The danger from the English proved to be still remote, and there was
+ample leisure in the camp. Duchat, a young captain in the battalion of
+Languedoc, used it in writing to his father a long account of what he
+saw about him,--the forests full of game; the ducks, geese, and
+partridges; the prodigious flocks of wild pigeons that darkened the air,
+the bears, the beavers; and above all the Indians, their canoes, dress,
+ball-play, and dances. "We are making here," says the military prophet,
+"a place that history will not forget. The English colonies have ten
+times more people than ours; but these wretches have not the least
+knowledge of war, and if they go out to fight, they must abandon wives,
+children, and all that they possess. Not a week passes but the French
+send them a band of _hairdressers_, whom they would be very glad to
+dispense with. It is incredible what a quantity of scalps they bring us.
+In Virginia they have committed unheard-of cruelties, carried off
+families, burned a great many houses, and killed an infinity of people.
+These miserable English are in the extremity of distress, and repent too
+late the unjust war they began against us. It is a pleasure to make war
+in Canada. One is troubled neither with horses nor baggage; the King
+provides everything. But it must be confessed that if it costs no money,
+one pays for it in another way, by seeing nothing but pease and bacon on
+the mess-table. Luckily the lakes are full of fish, and both officers
+and soldiers have to turn fishermen."[386]
+
+[Footnote 386: _Relation de M. Duchat, Capitaine au Régiment de
+Languedoc, écrite au Camp de Carillon, 15 Juillet, 1756._]
+
+Meanwhile, at the head of Lake George, the raw bands of ever-active New
+England were mustering for the fray.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 12
+
+1756
+
+Oswego
+
+
+When, at the end of the last year, Shirley returned from his bootless
+Oswego campaign, he called a council of war at New York and laid before
+it his scheme for the next summer's operations. It was a comprehensive
+one: to master Lake Ontario by an overpowering naval force and seize the
+French forts upon it, Niagara, Frontenac, and Toronto; attack
+Ticonderoga and Crown Point on the one hand, and Fort Duquesne on the
+other, and at the same time perplex and divide the enemy by an inroad
+down the Chaudière upon the settlements about Quebec.[387] The council
+approved the scheme; but to execute it the provinces must raise at least
+sixteen thousand men. This they refused to do. Pennsylvania and Virginia
+would take no active part, and were content with defending themselves.
+The attack on Fort Duquesne was therefore abandoned, as was also the
+diversion towards Quebec. The New England colonies were discouraged by
+Johnson's failure to take Crown Point, doubtful of the military
+abilities of Shirley, and embarrassed by the debts of the last campaign;
+but when they learned that Parliament would grant a sum of money in
+partial compensation for their former sacrifices,[388] they plunged into
+new debts without hesitation, and raised more men than the General had
+asked; though, with their usual jealousy, they provided that their
+soldiers should be employed for no other purpose than the attack on
+Ticonderoga and Crown Point. Shirley chose John Winslow to command them,
+and gave him a commission to that effect; while he, to clinch his
+authority, asked and obtained supplementary commissions from every
+government that gave men to the expedition.[389] For the movement
+against the fort of Lake Ontario, which Shirley meant to command in
+person, he had the remains of his own and Pepperell's regiments, the two
+shattered battalions brought over by Braddock, the "Jersey Blues," four
+provincial companies from North Carolina, and the four King's companies
+of New York. His first care was to recruit their ranks and raise them to
+their full complement; which, when effected, would bring them up to the
+insufficient strength of about forty-four hundred men.
+
+[Footnote 387: _Minutes of Council of War held at New York, 12 and 13
+Dec. 1755. Shirley to Robinson, 19 Dec. 1755. The Conduct of
+Major-General Shirley briefly stated. Review of Military Operations in
+North America._]
+
+[Footnote 388: _Lords of Trade to Lords of the Treasury, 12 Feb. 1756.
+Fox to American Governors, 13 March, 1756. Shirley to Phipps, 15 June,
+1756._ The sum was £115,000, divided in proportion to the expense
+incurred by the several colonies; Massachusetts having £54,000,
+Connecticut £26,000, and New York £15,000, the rest being given to New
+Hampshire, Rhode Island, and New Jersey.]
+
+[Footnote 389: _Letter and Order Books of General Winslow, 1756._]
+
+While he was struggling with contradictions and cross purposes, a
+withering blow fell upon him; he learned that he was superseded in the
+command. The cabal formed against him, with Delancey at its head, had
+won over Sir Charles Hardy, the new governor of New York, and had
+painted Shirley's conduct in such colors that the Ministry removed him.
+It was essential for the campaign that a successor should be sent at
+once, to form plans on the spot and make preparations accordingly. The
+Ministry were in no such haste. It was presently announced that Colonel
+Daniel Webb would be sent to America, followed by General James
+Abercromby; who was to be followed in turn by the Earl of Loudon, the
+destined commander-in-chief. Shirley was to resign his command to Webb,
+Webb to Abercromby, and Abercromby to Loudon.[390] It chanced that the
+two former arrived in June at about the same time, while the Earl came
+in July; and meanwhile it devolved on Shirley to make ready for them.
+Unable to divine what their plans would be, he prepared the campaign in
+accordance with his own.
+
+[Footnote 390: _Fox to Shirley, 13 March, 1756. Ibid., 31 March, 1756.
+Order to Colonel Webb, 31 March, 1756. Order to Major-General
+Abercromby, 1 April, 1756. Halifax to Shirley, 1 April, 1756. Shirley to
+Fox, 13 June, 1756._]
+
+His star, so bright a twelvemonth before, was now miserably dimmed. In
+both his public and private life he was the butt of adversity. He had
+lost two promising sons; he had made a mortifying failure as a soldier;
+and triumphant enemies were rejoicing in his fall. It is to the credit
+of his firmness and his zeal in the cause that he set himself to his
+task with as much vigor as if he, and not others, were to gather the
+fruits. His chief care was for his favorite enterprise in the direction
+of Lake Ontario. Making Albany his headquarters, he rebuilt the fort at
+the Great Carrying Place destroyed in March by the French, sent troops
+to guard the perilous route to Oswego, and gathered provisions and
+stores at the posts along the way.
+
+Meanwhile the New England men, strengthened by the levies of New York,
+were mustering at Albany for the attack of Crown Point. At the end of
+May they moved a short distance up the Hudson, and encamped at a place
+called Half-Moon, where the navigation was stopped by rapids. Here and
+at the posts above were gathered something more than five thousand men,
+as raw and untrained as those led by Johnson in the summer before.[391]
+The four New England colonies were much alike in their way of raising
+and equipping men, and the example of Massachusetts may serve for them
+all. The Assembly or "General Court" voted the required number, and
+chose a committee of war authorized to impress provisions, munitions,
+stores, clothing, tools, and other necessaries, for which fair prices
+were to be paid within six months. The Governor issued a proclamation
+calling for volunteers. If the full number did not appear within the
+time named, the colonels of militia were ordered to muster their
+regiments, and immediately draft out of them men enough to meet the
+need. A bounty of six dollars was offered this year to stimulate
+enlistment, and the pay of a private soldier was fixed at one pound six
+shillings a month, Massachusetts currency. If he brought a gun, he had
+an additional bounty of two dollars. A powderhorn, bullet-pouch,
+blanket, knapsack, and "wooden bottle," or canteen, were supplied by the
+province; and if he brought no gun of his own, a musket was given him,
+for which, as for the other articles, he was to account at the end of
+the campaign. In the next year it was announced that the soldier should
+receive, besides his pay, "a coat and soldier's hat." The coat was of
+coarse blue cloth, to which breeches of red or blue were afterwards
+added. Along with his rations, he was promised a gill of rum each day, a
+privilege of which he was extremely jealous, deeply resenting every
+abridgment of it. He was enlisted for the campaign, and could not be
+required to serve above a year at farthest.
+
+[Footnote 391: _Letter and Order Books of Winslow, 1756._]
+
+The complement of a regiment was five hundred, divided into companies of
+fifty; and as the men and officers of each were drawn from the same
+neighborhood, they generally knew each other. The officers, though
+nominally appointed by the Assembly, were for the most part the virtual
+choice of the soldiers themselves, from whom they were often
+indistinguishable in character and social standing. Hence discipline was
+weak. The pay--or, as it was called, the wages--of a colonel was twelve
+pounds sixteen shillings, Massachusetts currency, a month; that of a
+captain, five pounds eight shillings,--an advance on the pay of the last
+year; and that of a chaplain, six pounds eight shillings.[392] Penalties
+were enacted against "irreligion, immorality, drunkenness, debauchery,
+and profaneness." The ordinary punishments were the wooden horse, irons,
+or, in bad cases, flogging.
+
+[Footnote 392: _Vote of General Court, 26 Feb. 1756._]
+
+Much difficulty arose from the different rules adopted by the various
+colonies for the regulation of their soldiers. Nor was this the only
+source of trouble. Besides its war committee, the Assembly of each of
+the four New England colonies chose another committee "for clothing,
+arming, paying, victualling, and transporting" its troops. They were to
+go to the scene of operations, hire wagons, oxen, and horses, build
+boats and vessels, and charge themselves with the conveyance of all
+supplies belonging to their respective governments. They were to keep in
+correspondence with the committee of war at home, to whom they were
+responsible; and the officer commanding the contingent of their colony
+was required to furnish them with guards and escorts. Thus four
+independent committees were engaged in the work of transportation at the
+same time, over the same roads, for the same object. Each colony chose
+to keep the control of its property in its own hands. The inconveniences
+were obvious: "I wish to God," wrote Lord Loudon to Winslow, "you could
+persuade your people to go all one way." The committees themselves did
+not always find their task agreeable. One of their number, John Ashley,
+of Massachusetts, writes in dudgeon to Governor Phipps: "Sir, I am apt
+to think that things have been misrepresented to your Honor, or else I
+am certain I should not suffer in my character, and be styled a damned
+rascal, and ought to be put in irons, etc., when I am certain I have
+exerted myself to the utmost of my ability to expedite the business
+assigned me by the General Court." At length, late in the autumn, Loudon
+persuaded the colonies to forego this troublesome sort of independence,
+and turn over their stores to the commissary-general, receipts being
+duly given.[393]
+
+[Footnote 393: The above particulars are gathered from the voluminous
+papers in the State House at Boston, _Archives, Military_, Vols. LXXV.,
+LXXVI. These contain the military acts of the General Court,
+proclamations, reports of committees, and other papers relating to
+military affairs in 1755 and 1756. The _Letter and Order Books of
+Winslow_, in the Library of the Massachusetts Historical Society, have
+supplied much concurrent matter. See also _Colonial Records of R.I._,
+V., and _Provincial Papers of N.H._, VI.]
+
+From Winslow's headquarters at Half-Moon a road led along the banks of
+the Hudson to Stillwater, whence there was water carriage to Saratoga.
+Here stores were again placed in wagons and carried several miles to
+Upper Falls; thence by boat to Fort Edward; and thence, fourteen miles
+across country, to Fort William Henry at Lake George, where the army was
+to embark for Ticonderoga. Each of the points of transit below Fort
+Edward was guarded by a stockade and two or more companies of
+provincials. They were much pestered by Indians, who now and then
+scalped a straggler, and escaped with their usual nimbleness. From time
+to time strong bands of Canadians and Indians approached by way of South
+Bay or Wood Creek, and threatened more serious mischief. It is
+surprising that some of the trains were not cut off, for the escorts
+were often reckless and disorderly to the last degree. Sometimes the
+invaders showed great audacity. Early in June Colonel Fitch at Albany
+scrawls a hasty note to Winslow: "Friday, 11 o'clock: Sir, about half an
+hour since, a party of near fifty French and Indians had the impudence
+to come down to the river opposite to this city and captivate two men;"
+and Winslow replies with equal quaintness: "We daily discover the
+Indians about us; but not yet have been so happy as to obtain any of
+them."[394]
+
+[Footnote 394: Vaudreuil, in his despatch of 12 August, gives
+particulars of these raids, with an account of the scalps taken on each
+occasion. He thought the results disappointing.]
+
+Colonel Jonathan Bagley commanded at Fort William Henry, where gangs of
+men were busied under his eye in building three sloops and making
+several hundred whaleboats to carry the army of Ticonderoga. The season
+was advancing fast, and Winslow urged him to hasten on the work; to
+which the humorous Bagley answered; "Shall leave no stone unturned;
+every wheel shall go that rum and human flesh can move."[395] A
+fortnight after he reports: "I must really confess I have almost wore
+the men out, poor dogs. Pray where are the committee, or what are they
+about?" He sent scouts to watch the enemy, with results not quite
+satisfactory. "There is a vast deal of news here; every party brings
+abundance, but all different." Again, a little later: "I constantly keep
+out small scouting parties to the eastward and westward of the lake, and
+make no discovery but the tracks of small parties who are plaguing us
+constantly; but what vexes me most, we can't catch one of the sons
+of----. I have sent out skulking parties some distance from the sentries
+in the night, to lie still in the bushes to intercept them; but the
+flies are so plenty, our people can't bear them."[396] Colonel David
+Wooster, at Fort Edward, was no more fortunate in his attempts to take
+satisfaction on his midnight visitors; and reports that he has not thus
+far been able "to give those villains a dressing."[397] The English,
+however, were fast learning the art of forest war, and the partisan
+chief, Captain Robert Rogers, began already to be famous. On the
+seventeenth of June he and his band lay hidden in the bushes within the
+outposts of Ticonderoga, and made a close survey of the fort and
+surrounding camps.[398] His report was not cheering. Winslow's so-called
+army had now grown to nearly seven thousand men; and these, it was
+plain, were not too many to drive the French from their stronghold.
+
+[Footnote 395: _Bagley to Winslow, 2 July, 1756._]
+
+[Footnote 396: _Ibid., 15 July, 1756._]
+
+[Footnote 397: _Wooster to Winslow, 2 June, 1756._]
+
+[Footnote 398: _Report of Rogers, 19 June, 1756._ Much abridged in his
+published _Journals_.]
+
+While Winslow pursued his preparations, tried to settle disputes of rank
+among the colonels of the several colonies, and strove to bring order
+out of the little chaos of his command, Sir William Johnson was engaged
+in a work for which he was admirably fitted. This was the attaching of
+the Five Nations to the English interest. Along with his patent of
+baronetcy, which reached him about this time, he received, direct from
+the Crown, the commission of "Colonel, Agent, and Sole Superintendent of
+the Six Nations and other Northern Tribes."[399] Henceforth he was
+independent of governors and generals, and responsible to the Court
+alone. His task was a difficult one. The Five Nations would fain have
+remained neutral, and let the European rivals fight it out; but, on
+account of their local position, they could not. The exactions and lies
+of the Albany traders, the frauds of land-speculators, the contradictory
+action of the different provincial governments, joined to English
+weakness and mismanagement in the last war, all conspired to alienate
+them and to aid the efforts of the French agents, who cajoled and
+threatened them by turns. But for Johnson these intrigues would have
+prevailed. He had held a series of councils with them at Fort Johnson
+during the winter, and not only drew from them a promise to stand by the
+English, but persuaded all the confederated tribes, except the Cayugas,
+to consent that the English should build forts near their chief towns,
+under the pretext of protecting them from the French.[400]
+
+[Footnote 399: _Fox to Johnson, 13 March, 1756. Papers of Sir William
+Johnson._]
+
+[Footnote 400: _Conferences between Sir William Johnson and the Indians,
+Dec. 1755, to Feb. 1756_, in _N.Y. Col. Docs._, VII. 44-74. _Account of
+Conferences held and Treaties made between Sir William Johnson, Bart.,
+and the Indian Nations of North America_ (London, 1756).]
+
+In June he went to Onondaga, well escorted, for the way was dangerous.
+This capital of the Confederacy was under a cloud. It had just lost one
+Red Head, its chief sachem; and first of all it behooved the baronet to
+condole their affliction. The ceremony was long, with compliments,
+lugubrious speeches, wampum-belts, the scalp of an enemy to replace the
+departed, and a final glass of rum for each of the assembled mourners.
+The conferences lasted a fortnight; and when Johnson took his leave, the
+tribes stood pledged to lift the hatchet for the English.[401]
+
+[Footnote 401: _Minutes of Councils of Onondaga, 19 June to 3 July,
+1756_, in _N.Y. Col. Docs._, VII. 134-150.]
+
+When he returned to Fort Johnson a fever seized him, and he lay helpless
+for a time; then rose from his sick bed to meet another congregation of
+Indians. These were deputies of the Five Nations, with Mohegans from the
+Hudson, and Delawares and Shawanoes from the Susquehanna, whom he had
+persuaded to visit him in hope that he might induce them to cease from
+murdering the border settlers. All their tribesmen were in arms against
+the English; but he prevailed at last, and they accepted the war-belt at
+his hands. The Delawares complained that their old conquerors, the Five
+Nations, had forced them "to wear the petticoat," that is, to be counted
+not as warriors but as women. Johnson, in presence of all the Assembly,
+now took off the figurative garment, and pronounced them henceforth men.
+A grand war-dance followed. A hundred and fifty Mohawks, Oneidas,
+Onondagas, Delawares, Shawanoes, and Mohegans stamped, whooped, and
+yelled all night.[402] In spite of Piquet, the two Joncaires, and the
+rest of the French agents, Johnson had achieved a success. But would the
+Indians keep their word? It was more than doubtful. While some of them
+treated with him on the Mohawk, others treated with Vaudreuil at
+Montreal.[403] A display of military vigor on the English side, crowned
+by some signal victory, would alone make their alliance sure.
+
+[Footnote 402: _Minutes of Councils at Fort Johnson, 9 July to 12 July_,
+in _N.Y. Col. Docs._, VII. 152-160.]
+
+[Footnote 403: _Conferences between M. de Vaudreuil and the Five
+Nations, 28 July to 20 Aug._, in _N.Y. Col. Docs._, X. 445-453.]
+
+It was not the French only who thwarted the efforts of Johnson; for
+while he strove to make friends of the Delawares and Shawanoes, Governor
+Morris of Pennsylvania declared war against them, and Governor Belcher
+of New Jersey followed his example; though persuaded at last to hold his
+hand till the baronet had tried the virtue of pacific measures.[404]
+
+[Footnote 404: _Johnson to Lords of Trade, 28 May, 1756. Ibid., 17 July,
+1756. Johnson to Shirley, 24 April, 1756. Colonial Records of Pa._, VII.
+75, 88, 194.]
+
+What Shirley longed for was the collecting of a body of Five Nation
+warriors at Oswego to aid him in his cherished enterprise against
+Niagara and Frontenac. The warriors had promised him to come; but there
+was small hope that they would do so. Meanwhile he was at Albany
+pursuing his preparations, posting his scanty force in the forts newly
+built on the Mohawk and the Great Carrying Place, and sending forward
+stores and provisions. Having no troops to spare for escorts, he
+invented a plan which, like everything he did, was bitterly criticised.
+He took into pay two thousand boatmen, gathered from all parts of the
+country, including many whale-men from the eastern coasts of New
+England, divided them into companies of fifty, armed each with a gun and
+a hatchet, and placed them under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel John
+Bradstreet.[405] Thus organized, they would, he hoped, require no
+escort. Bradstreet was a New England officer who had been a captain in
+the last war, somewhat dogged and self-opinioned, but brave, energetic,
+and well fitted for this kind of service.
+
+[Footnote 405: _Shirley to Fox, 7 May, 1756. Shirley to Abercromby, 27
+June, 1756. London to Fox, 19 Aug. 1756._]
+
+In May Vaudreuil sent Coulon de Villiers with eleven hundred soldiers,
+Canadians, and Indians, to harass Oswego and cut its communications with
+Albany.[406] Nevertheless Bradstreet safely conducted a convoy of
+provisions and military stores to the garrison; and on the third of July
+set out on his return with the empty boats. The party were pushing their
+way up the river in three divisions. The first of these, consisting of a
+hundred boats and three hundred men, with Bradstreet at their head, were
+about nine miles from Oswego, when, at three in the afternoon, they
+received a heavy volley from the forest on the east bank. It was fired
+by a part of Villiers' command, consisting, by English accounts, of
+about seven hundred men. A considerable number of the boatmen were
+killed or disabled, and the others made for the shelter of the western
+shore. Some prisoners were taken in the confusion; and if the French had
+been content to stop here, they might fairly have claimed a kind of
+victory; but, eager to push their advantage, they tried to cross under
+cover of an island just above. Bradstreet saw the movement, and landed
+on the island with six or eight followers, among whom was young Captain
+Schuyler, afterwards General Schuyler of the Revolution. Their fire kept
+the enemy in check till others joined them, to the number of about
+twenty. These a second and a third time beat back the French, who now
+gave over the attempt, and made for another ford at some distance above.
+Bradstreet saw their intention; and collecting two hundred and fifty
+men, was about to advance up the west bank to oppose them, when Dr.
+Kirkland, a surgeon, came to tell him that the second division of boats
+had come up, and that the men had landed. Bradstreet ordered them to
+stay where they were, and defend the lower crossing: then hastened
+forward; but when he reached the upper ford, the French had passed the
+river, and were ensconced in a pine-swamp near the shore. Here he
+attacked them; and both parties fired at each other from behind trees
+for an hour, with little effect. Bradstreet at length encouraged his men
+to make a rush at the enemy, who were put to flight and driven into the
+river, where many were shot or drowned as they tried to cross. Another
+party of the French had meanwhile passed by a ford still higher up to
+support their comrades; but the fight was over before they reached the
+spot, and they in their turn were set upon and driven back across the
+stream. Half an hour after, Captain Patten arrived from Onondaga with
+the grenadiers of Shirley's regiment; and late in the evening two
+hundred men came from Oswego to reinforce the victors. In the morning
+Bradstreet prepared to follow the French to their camp, twelve miles
+distant; but was prevented by a heavy rain which lasted all day. On the
+Monday following, he and his men reached Albany, bringing two prisoners,
+eighty French muskets, and many knapsacks picked up in the woods. He had
+lost between sixty and seventy killed, wounded, and taken.[407]
+
+[Footnote 406: _Détail de ce qui s'est passé en Canada, Oct. 1755 Juin,
+1756_.]
+
+[Footnote 407: _Letter of J. Choate, Albany, 12 July, 1756_, in
+Massachusetts Archives, LV. _Three Letters from Albany, July, Aug.
+1756_, in _Doc. Hist, of N.Y._, I. 482. _Review of Military Operations.
+Shirley to Fox, 26 July, 1756. Abercromby to Sir Charles Hardy, 11 July,
+1756_. Niles, in _Mass. His. Coll., Fourth Series_, V. 417. Lossing,
+_Life of Schuyler_, I. 121 (1860). Mante, 60. Bradstreet's conduct on
+this occasion afterwards gained for him the warm praises of Wolfe.]
+
+This affair was trumpeted through Canada as a victory of the French.
+Their notices of it are discordant, though very brief. One of them says
+that Villiers had four hundred men. Another gives him five hundred, and
+a third eight hundred, against fifteen hundred English, of whom they
+killed eight hundred, or an Englishman apiece. A fourth writer boasts
+that six hundred Frenchmen killed nine hundred English. A fifth contents
+himself with four hundred; but thinks that forty more would have been
+slain if the Indians had not fired too soon. He says further that there
+were three hundred boats; and presently forgetting himself, adds that
+five hundred were taken or destroyed. A sixth announces a great capture
+of stores and provisions, though all the boats were empty. A seventh
+reports that the Canadians killed about three hundred, and would have
+killed more but for the bad quality of their tomahawks. An eighth, with
+rare modesty, puts the English loss at fifty or sixty. That of Villiers
+is given in every proportion of killed or wounded, from one up to ten.
+Thus was Canada roused to martial ardor, and taught to look for future
+triumphs cheaply bought.[408]
+
+[Footnote 408: _Nouvelles du Camp établi au Portage de Chouaguen,
+première Relation. Ibid., Séconde Relation, 10 Juillet, 1756_.
+Bougainville, _Journal_, who gives the report as he heard it _Lettre du
+R.P. Cocquard, S.J., 1756. Vaudreuil au Ministre, 10 Juillet, 1756.
+Ursulines de Québec_, II. 292. _N.Y. Col. Docs._, X. 434, 467, 477, 483.
+Some prisoners taken in the first attack were brought to Montreal, where
+their presence gave countenance to these fabrications.]
+
+The success of Bradstreet silenced for a time the enemies of Shirley.
+His cares, however, redoubled. He was anxious for Oswego, as the two
+prisoners declared that the French meant to attack it, instead of
+waiting to be attacked from it. Nor was the news from that quarter
+reassuring. The engineer, Mackellar, wrote that the works were incapable
+of defence; and Colonel Mercer, the commandant, reported general
+discontent in the garrison.[409] Captain John Vicars, an invalid officer
+of Shirley's regiment, arrived at Albany with yet more deplorable
+accounts. He had passed the winter at Oswego, where he declared the
+dearth of food to have been such that several councils of war had been
+held on the question of abandoning the place from sheer starvation. More
+than half his regiment died of hunger or disease; and, in his own words,
+"had the poor fellows lived they must have eaten one another." Some of
+the men were lodged in barracks, though without beds, while many lay all
+winter in huts on the bare ground. Scurvy and dysentery made frightful
+havoc. "In January," says Vicars, "we were informed by the Indians that
+we were to be attacked. The garrison was then so weak that the strongest
+guard we proposed to mount was a subaltern and twenty men; but we were
+seldom able to mount more than sixteen or eighteen, and half of those
+were obliged to have sticks in their hands to support them. The men were
+so weak that the sentries often fell down on their posts, and lay there
+till the relief came and lifted them up." His own company of fifty was
+reduced to ten. The other regiment of the garrison, Pepperell's, or the
+fifty-first, was quartered at Fort Ontario, on the other side of the
+river; and being better sheltered, suffered less.
+
+[Footnote 409: _Mackellar to Shirley, June, 1756. Mercer to Shirley, 2
+July, 1756._]
+
+The account given by Vicars of the state of the defences was scarcely
+more flattering. He reported that the principal fort had no cannon on
+the side most exposed to attack. Two pieces had been mounted on the
+trading-house in the centre; but as the concussion shook down the stones
+from the wall whenever they were fired, they had since been removed. The
+second work, called Fort Ontario, he had not seen since it was finished,
+having been too ill to cross the river. Of the third, called New Oswego,
+or "Fort Rascal," he testifies thus: "It never was finished, and there
+were no loopholes in the stockades; so that they could not fire out of
+the fort but by opening the gate and firing out of that."[410]
+
+[Footnote 410: _Information of Captain John Vicars, of the Fiftieth
+(Shirley's) Regiment,_ enclosed with a despatch of Lord Loudon. Vicars
+was a veteran British officer who left Oswego with Bradstreet on the
+third of July. _Shirley to Loudon, 5 Sept. 1756._]
+
+Through the spring and early summer Shirley was gathering recruits,
+often of the meanest quality, and sending them to Oswego to fill out the
+two emaciated regiments. The place must be defended at any cost. Its
+fall would ruin not only the enterprise against Niagara and Frontenac,
+but also that against Ticonderoga and Crown Point; since, having nothing
+more to fear on Lake Ontario, the French could unite their whole force
+on Lake Champlain, whether for defence or attack.
+
+Towards the end of June Abercromby and Webb arrived at Albany, bringing
+a reinforcement of nine hundred regulars, consisting of Otway's
+regiment, or a part of it, and a body of Highlanders. Shirley resigned
+his command, and Abercromby requested him to go to New York, wait there
+till Lord Loudon arrived, and lay before him the state of affairs.[411]
+Shirley waited till the twenty-third of July, when the Earl at length
+appeared. He was a rough Scotch lord, hot and irascible; and the
+communications of his predecessor, made, no doubt, in a manner somewhat
+pompous and self-satisfied, did not please him. "I got from
+Major-General Shirley," he says, "a few papers of very little use; only
+he insinuated to me that I would find everything prepared, and have
+nothing to do but to pull laurels; which I understand was his constant
+conversation before my arrival."[412]
+
+[Footnote 411: _Shirley to Fox, 4 July, 1756._]
+
+[Footnote 412: _Loudon (to Fox?), 19 Aug. 1756._]
+
+Loudon sailed up the Hudson in no placid mood. On reaching Albany he
+abandoned the attempt against Niagara and Frontenac; and had resolved to
+turn his whole force against Ticonderoga, when he was met by an obstacle
+that both perplexed and angered him. By a royal order lately issued,
+all general and field officers with provincial commissions were to take
+rank only as eldest captains when serving in conjunction with regular
+troops.[413] Hence the whole provincial army, as Winslow observes, might
+be put under the command of any British major.[414] The announcement of
+this regulation naturally caused great discontent. The New England
+officers held a meeting, and voted with one voice that in their belief
+its enforcement would break up the provincial army and prevent the
+raising of another. Loudon, hearing of this, desired Winslow to meet him
+at Albany for a conference on the subject. Thither Winslow went with
+some of his chief officers. The Earl asked them to dinner, and there was
+much talk, with no satisfactory result; whereupon, somewhat chafed, he
+required Winslow to answer in writing, yes or no, whether the provincial
+officers would obey the commander-in-chief and act in conjunction with
+the regulars. Thus forced to choose between acquiescence and flat
+mutiny, they declared their submission to his orders, at the same time
+asking as a favor that they might be allowed to act independently; to
+which Loudon gave for the present an unwilling assent. Shirley, who, in
+spite of his removal from command, had the good of the service deeply at
+heart, was much troubled at this affair, and wrote strong letters to
+Winslow in the interest of harmony.[415]
+
+[Footnote 413: _Order concerning the Rank of Provincial General and
+Field Officers in North America. Given at our Court at Kensington, 12
+May, 1756._]
+
+[Footnote 414: _Winslow to Shirley, 21 Aug. 1756._]
+
+[Footnote 415: _Correspondence of Loudon, Abercromby, and Shirley, July,
+Aug. 1756. Record of Meeting of Provincial Officers, July, 1756. Letter
+and Order Books of Winslow._]
+
+Loudon next proceeded to examine the state of the provincial forces, and
+sent Lieutenant-Colonel Burton, of the regulars, to observe and report
+upon it. Winslow by this time had made a forward movement, and was now
+at Lake George with nearly half his command, while the rest were at Fort
+Edward under Lyman, or in detachments at Saratoga and the other small
+posts below. Burton found Winslow's men encamped with their right on
+what are now the grounds of Fort William Henry Hotel, and their left
+extending southward between the mountain in their front and the marsh in
+their rear. "There are here," he reports, "about twenty-five hundred
+men, five hundred of them sick, the greatest part of them what they
+call poorly; they bury from five to eight daily, and officers in
+proportion; extremely indolent, and dirty to a degree." Then, in
+vernacular English, he describes the infectious condition of the fort,
+which was full of the sick. "Their camp," he proceeds, "is nastier than
+anything I could conceive; their----, kitchens, graves, and places for
+slaughtering cattle all mixed through their encampment; a great waste of
+provisions, the men having just what they please; no great command kept
+up. Colonel Gridley governs the general; not in the least alert; only
+one advanced guard of a subaltern and twenty-four men. The cannon and
+stores in great confusion." Of the camp at Fort Edward he gives a better
+account. "It is much cleaner than at Fort William Henry, but not
+sufficiently so to keep the men healthy; a much better command kept up
+here. General Lyman very ready to order out to work and to assist the
+engineers with any number of men they require, and keeps a succession of
+scouting-parties out towards Wood Creek and South Bay."[416]
+
+[Footnote 416: _Burton to Loudon, 27 Aug. 1756_.]
+
+The prejudice of the regular officer may have colored the picture, but
+it is certain that the sanitary condition of the provincial camps was
+extremely bad. "A grievous sickness among the troops," writes a
+Massachusetts surgeon at Fort Edward; "we bury five or six a day. Not
+more than two thirds of our army fit for duty. Long encampments are the
+bane of New England men."[417] Like all raw recruits, they did not know
+how to take care of themselves; and their officers had not the
+experience, knowledge, or habit of command to enforce sanitary rules.
+The same evils were found among the Canadians when kept long in one
+place. Those in the camp of Villiers are reported at this time as nearly
+all sick.[418]
+
+[Footnote 417: _Dr. Thomas Williams to Colonel Israel Williams, 28 Aug.
+1756_.]
+
+[Footnote 418: Bougainville, _Journal_.]
+
+Another penman, very different from the military critic, was also on the
+spot, noting down every day what he saw and felt. This was John Graham,
+minister of Suffield, in Connecticut, and now chaplain of Lyman's
+regiment. His spirit, by nature far from buoyant, was depressed by
+bodily ailments, and still more by the extremely secular character of
+his present surroundings. It appears by his Diary that he left home
+"under great exercise of mind," and was detained at Albany for a time,
+being, as he says, taken with an ague-fit and a quinsy; but at length he
+reached the camp at Fort Edward, where deep despondency fell upon him.
+"Labor under great discouragements," says the Diary, under date of July
+twenty-eighth; "for find my business but mean in the esteem of many, and
+think there's not much for a chaplain to do." Again, Tuesday, August
+seventeenth: "Breakfasted this morning with the General. But a graceless
+meal; never a blessing asked, nor thanks given. At the evening sacrifice
+a more open scene of wickedness. The General and head officers, with
+some of the regular officers, in General Lyman's tent, within four rods
+of the place of public prayers. None came to prayers; but they fixed a
+table without the door of the tent, where a head colonel was posted to
+make punch in the sight of all, they within drinking, talking, and
+laughing during the whole of the service, to the disturbance and
+disaffection of most present. This was not only a bare neglect, but an
+open contempt, of the worship of God by the heads of this army. 'Twas
+but last Sabbath that General Lyman spent the time of divine service in
+the afternoon in his tent, drinking in company with Mr. Gordon, a
+regular officer. I have oft heard cursing and swearing in his presence
+by some provincial field-officers, but never heard a reproof nor so much
+as a check to them come from his mouth, though he never uses such
+language himself. Lord, what is man! Truly, the May-game of Fortune!
+Lord, make me know my duty, and what I ought to do!"
+
+That night his sleep was broken and his soul troubled by angry voices
+under his window, where one Colonel Glasier was berating, in unhallowed
+language, the captain of the guard; and here the chaplain's Journal
+abruptly ends.[419]
+
+[Footnote 419: I owe to my friend George S. Hale, Esq., the opportunity
+of examining the autograph Journal; it has since been printed in the
+_Magazine of American History_ for March, 1882.]
+
+A brother minister, bearing no likeness to the worthy Graham, appeared
+on the same spot some time after. This was Chaplain William Crawford, of
+Worcester, who, having neglected to bring money to the war, suffered
+much annoyance, aggravated by what he thought a want of due
+consideration for his person and office. His indignation finds vent in a
+letter to his townsman, Timothy Paine, member of the General Court: "No
+man can reasonably expect that I can with any propriety discharge the
+duty of a chaplain when I have nothing either to eat or drink, nor any
+conveniency to write a line other than to sit down upon a stump and put
+a piece of paper upon my knee. As for Mr. Weld [_another chaplain_], he
+is easy and silent whatever treatment he meets with, and I suppose they
+thought to find me the same easy and ductile person; but may the wide
+yawning earth devour me first! The state of the camp is just such as one
+at home would guess it to be,--nothing but a hurry and confusion of vice
+and wickedness, with a stygian atmosphere to breathe in."[420] The vice
+and wickedness of which he complains appear to have consisted in a
+frequent infraction of the standing order against "Curseing and
+Swareing," as well as of that which required attendance on daily
+prayers, and enjoined "the people to appear in a decent manner, clean
+and shaved," at the two Sunday sermons.[421]
+
+[Footnote 420: The autograph letter is in Massachusetts Archives, LVI.
+no. 142. The same volume contains a letter from Colonel Frye, of
+Massachusetts, in which he speaks of the forlorn condition in which
+Chaplain Weld reached the camp. Of Chaplain Crawford, he says that he
+came decently clothed, but without bed or blanket, till he, Frye, lent
+them to him, and got Captain Learned to take him into his tent.
+Chaplains usually had a separate tent, or shared that of the colonel.]
+
+[Footnote 421: _Letter and Order Books of Winslow_.]
+
+At the beginning of August Winslow wrote to the committees of the
+several provinces: "It looks as if it won't be long before we are fit
+for a remove,"--that is, for an advance on Ticonderoga. On the twelfth
+Loudon sent Webb with the forty-fourth regiment and some of Bradstreet's
+boatmen to reinforce Oswego.[422] They had been ready for a month; but
+confusion and misunderstanding arising from the change of command had
+prevented their departure.[423] Yet the utmost anxiety had prevailed for
+the safety of that important post, and on the twenty-eighth Surgeon
+Thomas Williams wrote: "Whether Oswego is yet ours is uncertain. Would
+hope it is, as the reverse would be such a terrible shock as the country
+never felt, and may be a sad omen of what is coming upon poor sinful New
+England. Indeed we can't expect anything but to be severely chastened
+till we are humbled for our pride and haughtiness."[424]
+
+[Footnote 422: _Loudon (to Fox?), 19 Aug. 1756_.]
+
+[Footnote 423: _Conduct of Major-General Shirley briefly stated. Shirley
+to Loudon, 4 Sept. 1756. Shirley to Fox, 16 Sept. 1756_.]
+
+[Footnote 424: _Thomas Williams to Colonel Israel Williams, 28 Aug.
+1756_.]
+
+His foreboding proved true. Webb had scarcely reached the Great Carrying
+Place, when tidings of disaster fell upon him like a thunderbolt. The
+French had descended in force upon Oswego, taken it with all its
+garrison; and, as report ran, were advancing into the province, six
+thousand strong. Wood Creek had just been cleared, with great labor, of
+the trees that choked it. Webb ordered others to be felled and thrown
+into the stream to stop the progress of the enemy; then, with shameful
+precipitation, he burned the forts of the Carrying Place, and retreated
+down the Mohawk to German Flats. Loudon ordered Winslow to think no more
+of Ticonderoga, but to stay where he was and hold the French in check.
+All was astonishment and dismay at the sudden blow. "Oswego has changed
+masters, and I think we may justly fear that the whole of our country
+will soon follow, unless a merciful God prevent, and awake a sinful
+people to repentance and reformation." Thus wrote Dr. Thomas Williams to
+his wife from the camp at Fort Edward. "Such a shocking affair has never
+found a place in English annals," wrote the surgeon's young relative,
+Colonel William Williams. "The loss is beyond account; but the dishonor
+done His Majesty's arms is infinitely greater."[425] It remains to see
+how the catastrophe befell.
+
+[Footnote 425: _Colonel William Williams to Colonel Israel Williams, 30
+Aug. 1756_.]
+
+Since Vaudreuil became chief of the colony he had nursed the plan of
+seizing Oswego, yet hesitated to attempt it. Montcalm declares that he
+confirmed the Governor's wavering purpose; but Montcalm himself had
+hesitated. In July, however, there came exaggerated reports that the
+English were moving upon Ticonderoga in greatly increased numbers; and
+both Vaudreuil and the General conceived that a feint against Oswego
+would draw off the strength of the assailants, and, if promptly and
+secretly executed, might even be turned successfully into a real attack.
+Vaudreuil thereupon recalled Montcalm from Ticonderoga.[426] Leaving the
+post in the keeping of Lévis and three thousand men, he embarked on Lake
+Champlain, rowed day and night, and reached Montreal on the nineteenth.
+Troops were arriving from Quebec, and Indians from the far west. A band
+of Menomonies from beyond Lake Michigan, naked, painted, plumed,
+greased, stamping, uttering sharp yelps, shaking feathered lances,
+brandishing tomahawks, danced the war-dance before the Governor, to the
+thumping of the Indian drum. Bougainville looked on astonished, and
+thought of the Pyrrhic dance of the Greeks.
+
+[Footnote 426: _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 12 Août, 1756. Montcalm à sa
+Femme, 20 Juillet, 1756_.]
+
+Montcalm and he left Montreal on the twenty-first, and reached Fort
+Frontenac in eight days. Rigaud, brother of the Governor, had gone
+thither some time before, and crossed with seven hundred Canadians to
+the south side of the lake, where Villiers was encamped at Niaouré Bay,
+now Sackett's Harbor, with such of his detachment as war and disease had
+spared. Rigaud relieved him, and took command of the united bands. With
+their aid the engineer, Descombles, reconnoitred the English forts, and
+came back with the report that success was certain.[427] It was but a
+confirmation of what had already been learned from deserters and
+prisoners, who declared that the main fort was but a loopholed wall held
+by six or seven hundred men, ill fed, discontented, and mutinous.[428]
+Others said that they had been driven to desert by the want of good
+food, and that within a year twelve hundred men had died of disease at
+Oswego.[429]
+
+[Footnote 427: _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 4 Août, 1756. Vaudreuil à
+Bourlamaque, Juin, 1756_.]
+
+[Footnote 428: Bougainville, _Journal_.]
+
+[Footnote 429: _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 10 Juillet, 1756. Résumé des
+Nouvelles du Canada, Sept. 1756_.]
+
+The battalions of La Sarre, Guienne, and Béarn, with the colony
+regulars, a body of Canadians, and about two hundred and fifty Indians,
+were destined for the enterprise. The whole force was a little above
+three thousand, abundantly supplied with artillery. La Sarre and Guienne
+were already at Fort Frontenac. Béarn was at Niagara, whence it arrived
+in a few days, much buffeted by the storms of Lake Ontario. On the
+fourth of August all was ready. Montcalm embarked at night with the
+first division, crossed in darkness to Wolf Island, lay there hidden all
+day, and embarking again in the evening, joined Rigaud at Niaouré Bay at
+seven o'clock in the morning of the sixth. The second division followed,
+with provisions, hospital train, and eighty artillery boats; and on the
+eighth all were united at the bay. On the ninth Rigaud, covered by the
+universal forest, marched in advance to protect the landing of the
+troops. Montcalm followed with the first division; and, coasting the
+shore in bateaux, landed at midnight of the tenth within half a league
+of the first English fort. Four cannon were planted in battery upon the
+strand, and the men bivouacked by their boats. So skilful were the
+assailants and so careless the assailed that the English knew nothing of
+their danger, till in the morning, a reconnoitring canoe discovered the
+invaders. Two armed vessels soon came to cannonade them; but their light
+guns were no match for the heavy artillery of the French, and they were
+forced to keep the offing.
+
+Descombles, the engineer, went before dawn to reconnoitre the fort, with
+several other officers and a party of Indians. While he was thus
+employed, one of these savages, hungry for scalps, took him in the gloom
+for an Englishman, and shot him dead. Captain Pouchot, of the battalion
+of Béarn, replaced him; and the attack was pushed vigorously. The
+Canadians and Indians, swarming through the forest, fired all day on the
+fort under cover of the trees. The second division came up with
+twenty-two more cannon; and at night the first parallel was marked out
+at a hundred and eighty yards from the rampart. Stumps were grubbed up,
+fallen trunks shoved aside, and a trench dug, sheltered by fascines,
+gabions, and a strong abattis.
+
+Fort Ontario, counted as the best of the three forts at Oswego, stood on
+a high plateau at the east or right side of the river where it entered
+the lake. It was in the shape of a star, and was formed of trunks of
+trees set upright in the ground, hewn flat on two sides, and closely
+fitted together,--an excellent defence against musketry or swivels, but
+worthless against cannon. The garrison, three hundred and seventy in
+all, were the remnant of Pepperell's regiment, joined to raw recruits
+lately sent up to fill the places of the sick and dead. They had eight
+small cannon and a mortar, with which on the next day, Friday, the
+thirteenth, they kept up a brisk fire till towards night; when, after
+growing more rapid for a time, it ceased, and the fort showed no sign of
+life. Not a cannon had yet opened on them from the trenches; but it was
+certain that with the French artillery once in action, their wooden
+rampart would be shivered to splinters. Hence it was that Colonel
+Mercer, commandant at Oswego, thinking it better to lose the fort than
+to lose both fort and garrison, signalled to them from across the river
+to abandon their position and join him on the other side. Boats were
+sent to bring them off; and they passed over unmolested, after spiking
+their cannon and firing off their ammunition or throwing it into the
+well.
+
+The fate of Oswego was now sealed. The principal work, called Old
+Oswego, or Fort Pepperell, stood at the mouth of the river on the west
+side, nearly opposite Fort Ontario, and less than five hundred yards
+distant from it. The trading-house, which formed the centre of the
+place, was built of rough stone laid in clay, and the wall which
+enclosed it was of the same materials; both would crumble in an instant
+at the touch of a twelve-pound shot. Towards the west and south they had
+been protected by an outer line of earthworks, mounted with cannon, and
+forming an entrenched camp; while the side towards Fort Ontario was left
+wholly exposed, in the rash confidence that this work, standing on the
+opposite heights, would guard against attack from that quarter. On a
+hill, a fourth of a mile beyond Old Oswego, stood the unfinished
+stockade called New Oswego, Fort George, or, by reason of its
+worthlessness, Fort Rascal. It had served as a cattle pen before the
+French appeared, but was now occupied by a hundred and fifty Jersey
+provincials. Old Oswego with its outwork was held by Shirley's regiment,
+chiefly invalids and raw recruits, to whom were now joined the garrison
+of Fort Ontario and a number of sailors, boatmen, and laborers.
+
+Montcalm lost no time. As soon as darkness set in he began a battery at
+the brink of the height on which stood the captured fort. His whole
+force toiled all night, digging, setting gabions, and dragging up
+cannon, some of which had been taken from Braddock. Before daybreak
+twenty heavy pieces had been brought to the spot, and nine were already
+in position. The work had been so rapid that the English imagined their
+enemies to number six thousand at least. The battery soon opened fire.
+Grape and round shot swept the intrenchment and crashed through the
+rotten masonry. The English, says a French officer, "were exposed to
+their shoe-buckles." Their artillery was pointed the wrong way, in
+expectation of an attack, not from the east, but from the west. They now
+made a shelter of pork-barrels, three high and three deep, planted
+cannon behind them, and returned the French fire with some effect.
+
+Early in the morning Montcalm had ordered Rigaud to cross the river with
+the Canadians and Indians. There was a ford three quarters of a league
+above the forts;[430] and here they passed over unopposed, the English
+not having discovered the movement.[431] The only danger was from the
+river. Some of the men were forced to swim, others waded to the waist,
+others to the neck; but they all crossed safely, and presently showed
+themselves at the edge of the woods, yelling and firing their guns, too
+far for much execution, but not too far to discourage the garrison.
+
+[Footnote 430: Bougainville, _Journal_.]
+
+[Footnote 431: Pouchot, I. 76.]
+
+The garrison were already disheartened. Colonel Mercer, the soul of the
+defence, had just been cut in two by a cannon-shot while directing the
+gunners. Up to this time the defenders had behaved with spirit; but
+despair now seized them, increased by the screams and entreaties of the
+women, of whom there were more than a hundred in the place. There was a
+council of officers, and then the white flag was raised. Bougainville
+went to propose terms of capitulation. "The cries, threats, and hideous
+howling of our Canadians and Indians," says Vaudreuil, "made them
+quickly decide." "This," observes the Reverend Father Claude Godefroy
+Cocquard, "reminds me of the fall of Jericho before the shouts of the
+Israelites." The English surrendered prisoners of war, to the number,
+according to the Governor, of sixteen hundred,[432] which included the
+sailors, laborers, and women. The Canadians and Indians broke through
+all restraint, and fell to plundering. There was an opening of
+rum-barrels and a scene of drunkenness, in which some of the prisoners
+had their share; while others tried to escape in the confusion, and were
+tomahawked by the excited savages. Many more would have been butchered,
+but for the efforts of Montcalm, who by unstinted promises succeeded in
+appeasing his ferocious allies, whom he dared not offend. "It will cost
+the King," he says, "eight or ten thousand livres in presents."[433]
+
+[Footnote 432: _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 20 Août, 1756_. He elsewhere
+makes the number somewhat greater. That the garrison, exclusive of
+civilians, did not exceed at the utmost fourteen hundred, is shown by
+_Shirley to Loudon, 5 Sept. 1756_. Loudon had charged Shirley with
+leaving Oswego weakly garrisoned; and Shirley replies by alleging that
+the troops there were in the number as above. It was of course his
+interest to make them appear as numerous as possible. In the printed
+_Conduct of Major-General Shirley briefly stated_, they are put at only
+ten hundred and fifty.]
+
+[Footnote 433: Several English writers say, however, that fifteen or
+twenty young men were given up to the Indians to be adopted in place of
+warriors lately killed.]
+
+The loss on both sides is variously given. By the most trustworthy
+accounts, that of the English did not reach fifty killed, and that of
+the French was still less. In the forts and vessels were found above a
+hundred pieces of artillery, most of them swivels and other light guns,
+with a large quantity of powder, shot, and shell. The victors burned the
+forts and the vessels on the stocks, destroyed such provisions and
+stores as they could not carry away, and made the place a desert. The
+priest Piquet, who had joined the expedition, planted amid the ruin a
+tall cross, graven with the words, _In hoc signo vincunt_; and near it
+was set a pole bearing the arms of France, with the inscription,
+_Manibus date lilia plenis_. Then the army decamped, loaded with
+prisoners and spoil, descended to Montreal, hung the captured flags in
+the churches, and sang Te Deum in honor of their triumph.
+
+It was the greatest that the French arms had yet achieved in America.
+The defeat of Braddock was an Indian victory; this last exploit was the
+result of bold enterprise and skilful tactics. With its laurels came its
+fruits. Hated Oswego had been laid in ashes, and the would-be assailants
+forced to a vain and hopeless defence. France had conquered the
+undisputed command of Lake Ontario, and her communications with the West
+were safe. A small garrison at Niagara and another at Frontenac would
+now hold those posts against any effort that the English could make this
+year; and the whole French force could concentrate at Ticonderoga, repel
+the threatened attack, and perhaps retort it by seizing Albany. If the
+English, on the other side, had lost a great material advantage, they
+had lost no less in honor. The news of the surrender was received with
+indignation in England and in the colonies. Yet the behaviour of the
+garrison was not so discreditable as it seemed. The position was
+indefensible, and they could have held out at best but a few days more.
+They yielded too soon; but unless Webb had come to their aid, which was
+not to be expected, they must have yielded at last.
+
+The French had scarcely gone, when two English scouts, Thomas Harris and
+James Conner, came with a party of Indians to the scene of desolation.
+The ground was strewn with broken casks and bread sodden with rain. The
+remains of burnt bateaux and whaleboats were scattered along the shore.
+The great stone trading-house in the old fort was a smoking ruin; Fort
+Rascal was still burning on the neighboring hill; Fort Ontario was a
+mass of ashes and charred logs, and by it stood two poles on which were
+written words which the visitors did not understand. They went back to
+Fort Johnson with their story; and Oswego reverted for a time to the
+bears, foxes, and wolves.[434]
+
+[Footnote 434: On the capture of Oswego, the authorities examined have
+been very numerous, and only the best need be named. _Livre d'Ordres,
+Campagne de 1756_, contains all orders from headquarters. _Mémoires pour
+servir d'Instruction à M. le Marquis de Montcalm, 21 Juillet; 1756,
+signé Vaudreuil_. Bougainville, _Journal. Vaudreuil au Ministre, 15
+Juin, 1756_ (designs against Oswego). _Ibid., 13 Août, 1755. Ibid., 30
+Août_. Pouchot, I. 67-81. _Relation de la Prise des Forts de Chouaguen.
+Bigot au Ministre, 3 Sept. 1756 Journal du Siége de Chouaguen. Précis
+des Événements, 1756. Montcalm au Ministre, 20 Juillet, 1756. Ibid., 28
+Août, 1756. Desandrouins à----, même date. Montcalm à sa Femme, 30
+Août_. Translations of several of the above papers, along with others
+less important, will be found in _N.Y. Col. Docs._, X., and _Doc. Hist.
+N.Y._, I.
+
+_State of Facts relating to the Loss of Oswego_, in _London Magazine_
+for 1757, p. 14. _Correspondence of Shirley. Correspondence of Loudon.
+Littlehales to Loudon, 30 Aug. 1756. Hardy to Lords of Trade, 5 Sept.
+1756. Conduct of Major-General Shirley briefly stated. Declaration of
+some Soldiers of Shirley's Regiment_, in _N.Y. Col. Docs._, VII. 126.
+Letter from an officer present, in _Boston Evening Post_ of _16 May,
+1757_. The published plans and drawings of Oswego at this time are very
+inexact.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 13
+
+1756, 1757
+
+Partisan War
+
+
+Shirley's grand scheme for cutting New France in twain had come to
+wreck. There was an element of boyishness in him. He made bold plans
+without weighing too closely his means of executing them. The year's
+campaign would in all likelihood have succeeded if he could have acted
+promptly; if he had had ready to his hand a well-trained and
+well-officered force, furnished with material of war and means of
+transportation, and prepared to move as soon as the streams and lakes of
+New York were open, while those of Canada were still sealed with ice.
+But timely action was out of his power. The army that should have moved
+in April was not ready to move till August. Of the nine discordant
+semi-republics whom he asked to join in the work, three or four refused,
+some of the others were lukewarm, and all were slow. Even Massachusetts,
+usually the foremost, failed to get all her men into the field till the
+season was nearly ended. Having no military establishment, the colonies
+were forced to improvise a new army for every campaign. Each of them
+watched its neighbors, or, jealous lest it should do more than its just
+share, waited for them to begin. Each popular assembly acted under the
+eye of a frugal constituency, who, having little money, were as chary of
+it as their descendants are lavish; and most of them were shaken by
+internal conflicts, more absorbing than the great question on which hung
+the fate of the continent. Only the four New England colonies were fully
+earnest for the war, and one, even of these, was ready to use the crisis
+as a means of extorting concessions from its Governor in return for
+grants of money and men. When the lagging contingents came together at
+last, under a commander whom none of them trusted, they were met by
+strategical difficulties which would have perplexed older soldiers and
+an abler general; for they were forced to act on the circumference of a
+vast semicircle, in a labyrinth of forests, without roads, and choked
+with every kind of obstruction.
+
+Opposed to them was a trained army, well organized and commanded,
+focused at Montreal, and moving for attack or defence on two radiating
+lines,--one towards Lake Ontario, and the other towards Lake
+Champlain,--supported by a martial peasantry, supplied from France with
+money and material, dependent on no popular vote, having no will but
+that of its chief, and ready on the instant to strike to right or left
+as the need required. It was a compact military absolutism confronting a
+heterogeneous group of industrial democracies, where the force of
+numbers was neutralized by diffusion and incoherence. A long and dismal
+apprenticeship waited them before they could hope for success; nor could
+they ever put forth their full strength without a radical change of
+political conditions and an awakened consciousness of common interests
+and a common cause. It was the sense of powerlessness arising from the
+want of union that, after the fall of Oswego, spread alarm through the
+northern and middle colonies, and drew these desponding words from
+William Livingston, of New Jersey: "The colonies are nearly exhausted,
+and their funds already anticipated by expensive unexecuted projects.
+Jealous are they of each other; some ill-constituted, others shaken with
+intestine divisions, and, if I may be allowed the expression,
+parsimonious even to prodigality. Our assemblies are diffident of their
+governors, governors despise their assemblies; and both mutually
+misrepresent each other to the Court of Great Britain." Military
+measures, he proceeds, demand secrecy and despatch; but when so many
+divided provinces must agree to join in them, secrecy and despatch are
+impossible. In conclusion he exclaims: "Canada must be demolished,
+--_Delenda est Carthago_,--or we are undone."[435] But Loudon
+was not Scipio, and cis-Atlantic Carthage was to stand for some time
+longer.
+
+[Footnote 435: _Review of Military Operations_, 187, 189 (Dublin,
+1757).]
+
+The Earl, in search of a scapegoat for the loss of Oswego, naturally
+chose Shirley, attacked him savagely, told him that he was of no use in
+America, and ordered him to go home to England without delay.[436]
+Shirley, who was then in Boston, answered this indecency with dignity
+and effect.[437] The chief fault was with Loudon himself, whose late
+arrival in America had caused a change of command and of plans in the
+crisis of the campaign. Shirley well knew the weakness of Oswego; and in
+early spring had sent two engineers to make it defensible, with
+particular instructions to strengthen Fort Ontario.[438] But they,
+thinking that the chief danger lay on the west and south, turned all
+their attention thither, and neglected Ontario till it was too late.
+Shirley was about to reinforce Oswego with a strong body of troops when
+the arrival of Abercromby took the control out of his hands and caused
+ruinous delay. He cannot, however, be acquitted of mismanagement in
+failing to supply the place with wholesome provisions in the preceding
+autumn, before the streams were stopped with ice. Hence came the ravages
+of disease and famine which, before spring, reduced the garrison to a
+hundred and forty effective men. Yet there can be no doubt that the
+change of command was a blunder. This is the view of Franklin, who knew
+Shirley well, and thus speaks of him: "He would in my opinion, if
+continued in place, have made a much better campaign than that of
+Loudon, which was frivolous, expensive, and disgraceful to our nation
+beyond conception. For though Shirley was not bred a soldier, he was
+sensible and sagacious in himself, and attentive to good advice from
+others, capable of forming judicious plans, and quick and active in
+carrying them into execution."[439] He sailed for England in the autumn,
+disappointed and poor; the bull-headed Duke of Cumberland had been
+deeply prejudiced against him, and it was only after long waiting that
+this strenuous champion of British interests was rewarded in his old age
+with the petty government of the Bahamas.
+
+[Footnote 436: _Loudon to Shirley, 6 Sept. 1756_.]
+
+[Footnote 437: The correspondence on both sides is before me, copied
+from the originals in the Public Record Office.]
+
+[Footnote 438: "The principal thing for which I sent Mr. Mackellar to
+Oswego was to strengthen Fort Ontario as much as he possibly could."
+_Shirley to Loudon, 4 Sept. 1756._]
+
+[Footnote 439: _Works of Franklin_, I. 220.]
+
+Loudon had now about ten thousand men at his command, though not all fit
+for duty. They were posted from Albany to Lake George. The Earl himself
+was at Fort Edward, while about three thousand of the provincials still
+lay, under Winslow, at the lake. Montcalm faced them at Ticonderoga,
+with five thousand three hundred regulars and Canadians, in a position
+where they could defy three times their number.[440] "The sons of Belial
+are too strong for me," jocosely wrote Winslow;[441] and he set himself
+to intrenching his camp; then had the forest cut down for the space of a
+mile from the lake to the mountains, so that the trees, lying in what he
+calls a "promiscuous manner," formed an almost impenetrable abatis. An
+escaped prisoner told him that the French were coming to visit him with
+fourteen thousand men;[442] but Montcalm thought no more of stirring
+than Loudon himself; and each stood watching the other, with the lake
+between them, till the season closed.
+
+[Footnote 440: "Nous sommes tant à Carillon qu'aux postes avancés 5,300
+hommes." Bougainville, _Journal_.]
+
+[Footnote 441: _Winslow to Loudon, 29 Sept. 1756_.]
+
+[Footnote 442: _Examination of Sergeant James Archibald_.]
+
+Meanwhile the western borders were still ravaged by the tomahawk. New
+York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia all writhed under
+the infliction. Each had made a chain of blockhouses and wooden forts to
+cover its frontier, and manned them with disorderly bands, lawless, and
+almost beyond control.[443] The case was at the worst in Pennsylvania,
+where the tedious quarrelling of Governor and Assembly, joined to the
+doggedly pacific attitude of the Quakers, made vigorous defence
+impossible. Rewards were offered for prisoners and scalps, so bountiful
+that the hunting of men would have been a profitable vocation, but for
+the extreme wariness and agility of the game.[444] Some of the forts
+were well built stockades; others were almost worthless; but the enemy
+rarely molested even the feeblest of them, preferring to ravage the
+lonely and unprotected farms. There were two or three exceptions. A
+Virginian fort was attacked by a war-party under an officer named
+Douville, who was killed, and his followers were put to flight.[445] The
+assailants were more fortunate at a small stockade called Fort
+Granville, on the Juniata. A large body of French and Indians attacked
+it in August while most of the garrison were absent protecting the
+farmers at their harvest; they set it on fire, and, in spite of a most
+gallant resistance by the young lieutenant left in command, took it, and
+killed all but one of the defenders.[446]
+
+[Footnote 443: In the public Record Office, _America and West Indies_,
+LXXXII., is a manuscript map showing the positions of such of these
+posts as were north of Virginia. They are thirty-five in number, from
+the head of James River to a point west of Esopus, on the Hudson.]
+
+[Footnote 444: _Colonial Records of Pa._, VII. 76.]
+
+[Footnote 445: _Washington to Morris,--April, 1756_.]
+
+[Footnote 446: _Colonial Records of Pa._, VII. 232, 242; _Pennsylvania
+Archives_, II. 744.]
+
+What sort of resistance the Pennsylvanian borderers would have made
+under political circumstances less adverse may be inferred from an
+exploit of Colonel John Armstrong, a settler of Cumberland. After the
+loss of Fort Granville the Governor of the province sent him with three
+hundred men to attack the Delaware town of Kittanning, a populous nest
+of savages on the Alleghany, between the two French posts of Duquesne
+and Venango. Here most of the war-parties were fitted out, and the place
+was full of stores and munitions furnished by the French. Here, too,
+lived the redoubted chief called Captain Jacobs, the terror of the
+English border. Armstrong set out from Fort Shirley, the farthest
+outpost, on the last of August, and, a week after, was within six miles
+of the Indian town. By rapid marching and rare good luck, his party had
+escaped discovery. It was ten o'clock at night, with a bright moon. The
+guides were perplexed, and knew neither the exact position of the place
+nor the paths that led to it. The adventurers threaded the forest in
+single file, over hills and through hollows, bewildered and anxious,
+stopping to watch and listen. At length they heard in the distance the
+beating of an Indian drum and the whooping of warriors in the war-dance.
+Guided by the sounds, they cautiously moved forward, till those in the
+front, scrambling down a rocky hill, found themselves on the banks of
+the Alleghany, about a hundred rods below Kittanning. The moon was near
+setting; but they could dimly see the town beyond a great intervening
+field of corn. "At that moment," says Armstrong, "an Indian whistled in
+a very singular manner, about thirty perches from our front, in the foot
+of the cornfield." He thought they were discovered; but one Baker, a
+soldier well versed in Indian ways, told him that it was only some
+village gallant calling to a young squaw. The party then crouched in the
+bushes, and kept silent. The moon sank behind the woods, and fires soon
+glimmered through the field, kindled to drive off mosquitoes by some of
+the Indians who, as the night was warm, had come out to sleep in the
+open air. The eastern sky began to redden with the approach of day. Many
+of the party, spent with a rough march of thirty miles, had fallen
+asleep. They were now cautiously roused; and Armstrong ordered nearly
+half of them to make their way along the ridge of a bushy hill that
+overlooked the town, till they came opposite to it, in order to place it
+between two fires. Twenty minutes were allowed them for the movement;
+but they lost their way in the dusk, and reached their station too late.
+When the time had expired, Armstrong gave the signal to those left with
+him, who dashed into the cornfield, shooting down the astonished savages
+or driving them into the village, where they turned and made desperate
+fight.
+
+It was a cluster of thirty log-cabins, the principal being that of the
+chief, Jacobs, which was loopholed for musketry, and became the centre
+of resistance. The fight was hot and stubborn. Armstrong ordered the
+town to be set on fire, which was done, though not without loss; for the
+Delawares at this time were commonly armed with rifles, and used them
+well. Armstrong himself was hit in the shoulder. As the flames rose and
+the smoke grew thick, a warrior in one of the houses sang his
+death-song, and a squaw in the same house was heard to cry and scream.
+Rough voices silenced her, and then the inmates burst out, but were
+instantly killed. The fire caught the house of Jacobs, who, trying to
+escape through an opening in the roof, was shot dead. Bands of Indians
+were gathering beyond the river, firing from the other bank, and even
+crossing to help their comrades; but the assailants held to their work
+till the whole place was destroyed. "During the burning of the houses,"
+says Armstrong, "we were agreeably entertained by the quick succession
+of charged guns, gradually firing off as reached by the fire; but much
+more so with the vast explosion of sundry bags and large kegs of
+gunpowder, wherewith almost every house abounded; the prisoners
+afterwards informing us that the Indians had frequently said they had a
+sufficient stock of ammunition for ten years' war with the English."
+
+These prisoners were eleven men, women, and children, captured in the
+border settlements, and now delivered by their countrymen. The day was
+far spent when the party withdrew, carrying their wounded on Indian
+horses, and moving perforce with extreme slowness, though expecting an
+attack every moment. None took place; and they reached the settlements
+at last, having bought their success with the loss of seventeen killed
+and thirteen wounded.[447] A medal was given to each officer, not by the
+Quaker-ridden Assembly, but by the city council of Philadelphia.
+
+[Footnote 447: _Report of Armstrong to Governor Denny, 14 Sept. 1756_,
+in _Colonial Records of Pa._, VII. 257,--a modest yet very minute
+account. _A list of the Names of the Persons killed, wounded, and
+missing in the late Expedition against the Kittanning_. Hazard,
+_Pennsylvania Register_, I. 366.]
+
+The report of this affair made by Dumas, commandant at Fort Duquesne, is
+worth noting. He says that Attiqué, the French name of Kittanning, was
+attacked by "le Général Wachinton," with three or four hundred men on
+horseback; that the Indians gave way; but that five or six Frenchmen who
+were in the town held the English in check till the fugitives rallied;
+that Washington and his men then took to flight, and would have been
+pursued but for the loss of some barrels of gunpowder which chanced to
+explode during the action. Dumas adds that several large parties are now
+on the track of the enemy, and he hopes will cut them to pieces. He then
+asks for a supply of provisions and merchandise to replace those which
+the Indians of Attiqué had lost by a fire.[448] Like other officers of
+the day, he would admit nothing but successes in the department under
+his command.
+
+[Footnote 448: _Dumas à Vaudreuil, 9 Sept. 1756_, cited in _Bigot au
+Ministre, 6 Oct. 1756_, and in Bougainville, _Journal_.]
+
+Vaudreuil wrote singular despatches at this time to the minister at
+Versailles. He takes credit to himself for the number of war-parties
+that his officers kept always at work, and fills page after page with
+details of the _coups_ they had struck; how one brought in two English
+scalps, another three, another one, and another seven. He owns that they
+committed frightful cruelties, mutilating and sometimes burning their
+prisoners; but he expresses no regret, and probably felt none, since he
+declares that the object of this murderous warfare was to punish the
+English till they longed for peace.[449]
+
+[Footnote 449: _Dépêches de Vaudreuil, 1756._]
+
+The waters and mountains of Lake George, and not the western borders,
+were the chief centre of partisan war. Ticonderoga was a hornet's nest,
+pouring out swarms of savages to infest the highways and byways of the
+wilderness. The English at Fort William Henry, having few Indians, could
+not retort in kind; but they kept their scouts and rangers in active
+movement. What they most coveted was prisoners, as sources of
+information. One Kennedy, a lieutenant of provincials, with five
+followers, white and red, made a march of rare audacity, passed all the
+French posts, took a scalp and two prisoners on the Richelieu, and
+burned a magazine of provisions between Montreal and St. John. The party
+were near famishing on the way back; and Kennedy was brought into Fort
+William Henry in a state of temporary insanity from starvation.[450]
+Other provincial officers, Peabody, Hazen, Waterbury, and Miller, won a
+certain distinction in this adventurous service, though few were so
+conspicuous as the blunt and sturdy Israel Putnam. Winslow writes in
+October that he has just returned from the best "scout" yet made, and
+that, being a man of strict truth, he may be entirely trusted.[451]
+Putnam had gone with six followers down Lake George in a whale-boat to a
+point on the east side, opposite the present village of Hague, hid the
+boat, crossed northeasterly to Lake Champlain, three miles from the
+French fort, climbed the mountain that overlooks it, and made a complete
+reconnoissance; then approached it, chased three Frenchmen, who escaped
+within the lines, climbed the mountain again, and moving westward along
+the ridge, made a minute survey of every outpost between the fort and
+Lake George.[452] These adventures were not always fortunate. On the
+nineteenth of September Captain Hodges and fifty men were ambushed a few
+miles from Fort William Henry by thrice their number of Canadians and
+Indians, and only six escaped. Thus the record stands in the _Letter
+Book_ of Winslow.[453] By visiting the encampments of Ticonderoga, one
+may learn how the blow was struck.
+
+[Footnote 450: _Minute of Lieutenant Kennedy's Scout. Winslow to Loudon,
+20 Sept. 1756._]
+
+[Footnote 451: _Winslow to Loudon, 16 Oct. 1756._]
+
+[Footnote 452: _Report of a Scout to Ticonderoga, Oct. 1756_, signed
+Israel Putnam.]
+
+[Footnote 453: Compare Massachusetts Archives, LXXVI. 81.]
+
+After much persuasion, much feasting, and much consumption of tobacco
+and brandy, four hundred Indians, Christians from the Missions and
+heathen from the far west, were persuaded to go on a grand war-party
+with the Canadians. Of these last there were a hundred,--a wild crew,
+bedecked and bedaubed like their Indian companions. Perière, an officer
+of colony regulars, had nominal command of the whole; and among the
+leaders of the Canadians was the famous bushfighter, Marin. Bougainville
+was also of the party. In the evening of the sixteenth they all embarked
+in canoes at the French advance-post commanded by Contrecoeur, near the
+present steamboat-landing, passed in the gloom under the bare steeps of
+Rogers Rock, paddled a few hours, landed on the west shore, and sent
+scouts to reconnoitre. These came back with their reports on the next
+day, and an Indian crier called the chiefs to council. Bougainville
+describes them as they stalked gravely to the place of meeting, wrapped
+in colored blankets, with lances in their hands. The accomplished young
+aide-de-camp studied his strange companions with an interest not unmixed
+with disgust. "Of all caprice," he says, "Indian caprice is the most
+capricious." They were insolent to the French, made rules for them which
+they did not observe themselves, and compelled the whole party to move
+when and whither they pleased. Hiding the canoes, and lying close in the
+forest by day, they all held their nocturnal course southward, by the
+lofty heights of Black Mountain, and among the islets of the Narrows,
+till the eighteenth. That night the Indian scouts reported that they had
+seen the fires of an encampment on the west shore; on which the whole
+party advanced to the attack, an hour before dawn, filing silently under
+the dark arches of the forest, the Indians nearly naked, and streaked
+with their war-paint of vermilion and soot. When they reached the spot
+they found only the smouldering fires of a deserted bivouac. Then there
+was a consultation; ending, after much dispute, with the choice by the
+Indians of a hundred and ten of their most active warriors to attempt
+some stroke in the neighborhood of the English fort. Marin joined them
+with thirty Canadians, and they set out on their errand; while the rest
+encamped to await the result. At night the adventurers returned, raising
+the death-cry and firing their guns; somewhat depressed by losses they
+had suffered, but boasting that they had surprised fifty-three English,
+and killed or taken all but one. It was a modest and perhaps an
+involuntary exaggeration. "The very recital of the cruelties they
+committed on the battle-field is horrible," writes Bougainville. "The
+ferocity and insolence of these black-souled barbarians makes one
+shudder. It is an abominable kind of war. The air one breathes is
+contagious of insensibility and hardness."[454] This was but one of the
+many such parties sent out from Ticonderoga this year.
+
+[Footnote 454: Bougainville, _Journal_.]
+
+Early in September a band of New England rangers came to Winslow's camp,
+with three prisoners taken within the lines of Ticonderoga. Their
+captain was Robert Rogers, of New Hampshire,--a strong, well-knit
+figure, in dress and appearance more woodsman than soldier, with a
+clear, bold eye, and features that would have been good but for the
+ungainly proportions of the nose.[455] He had passed his boyhood in the
+rough surroundings of a frontier village. Growing to manhood, he engaged
+in some occupation which, he says, led him to frequent journeyings in
+the wilderness between the French and English settlements, and gave him
+a good knowledge of both.[456] It taught him also to speak a little
+French. He does not disclose the nature of this mysterious employment;
+but there can be little doubt that it was a smuggling trade with Canada.
+His character leaves much to be desired. He had been charged with
+forgery, or complicity in it, seems to have had no scruple in matters of
+business, and after the war was accused of treasonable dealings with the
+French and Spaniards in the west.[457] He was ambitious and violent, yet
+able in more ways than one, by no means uneducated, and so skilled in
+woodcraft, so energetic and resolute, that his services were invaluable.
+In recounting his own adventures, his style is direct, simple, without
+boasting, and to all appearance without exaggeration. During the past
+summer he had raised a band of men, chiefly New Hampshire borderers, and
+made a series of daring excursions which gave him a prominent place in
+this hardy by-play of war. In the spring of the present year he raised
+another company, and was commissioned as its captain, with his brother
+Richard as his first lieutenant, and the intrepid John Stark as his
+second. In July still another company was formed, and Richard Rogers was
+promoted to command it. Before the following spring there were seven
+such; and more were afterwards added, forming a battalion dispersed on
+various service, but all under the orders of Robert Rogers, with the
+rank of major.[458] These rangers wore a sort of woodland uniform, which
+varied in the different companies, and were armed with smooth-bore guns,
+loaded with buckshot, bullets, or sometimes both.
+
+[Footnote 455: A large engraved portrait of him, nearly at full length,
+is before me, printed at London in 1776.]
+
+[Footnote 456: Rogers, _Journals, Introduction_ (1765).]
+
+[Footnote 457: _Provincial Papers of New Hampshire_, VI. 364.
+_Correspondence of Gage, 1766. N.Y. Col. Docs._, VII. 990. Caleb Stark,
+_Memoir and Correspondence of John Stark_, 386.]
+
+[Footnote 458: Rogers, _Journals. Report of the Adjutant-General of New
+Hampshire_ (1866), II. 158, 159.]
+
+The best of them were commonly employed on Lake George; and nothing can
+surpass the adventurous hardihood of their lives. Summer and winter, day
+and night, were alike to them. Embarked in whaleboats or birch-canoes,
+they glided under the silent moon or in the languid glare of a
+breathless August day, when islands floated in dreamy haze, and the hot
+air was thick with odors of the pine; or in the bright October, when the
+jay screamed from the woods, squirrels gathered their winter hoard, and
+congregated blackbirds chattered farewell to their summer haunts; when
+gay mountains basked in light, maples dropped leaves of rustling gold,
+sumachs glowed like rubies under the dark green of the unchanging
+spruce, and mossed rocks with all their painted plumage lay double in
+the watery mirror: that festal evening of the year, when jocund Nature
+disrobes herself, to wake again refreshed in the joy of her undying
+spring. Or, in the tomb-like silence of the winter forest, with breath
+frozen on his beard, the ranger strode on snow-shoes over the spotless
+drifts; and, like Dürer's knight, a ghastly death stalked ever at his
+side. There were those among them for whom this stern life had a
+fascination that made all other existence tame.
+
+Rogers and his men had been in active movement since midwinter. In
+January they skated down Lake George, passed Ticonderoga, hid themselves
+by the forest-road between that post and Crown Point, intercepted two
+sledges loaded with provisions, and carried the drivers to Fort William
+Henry. In February they climbed a hill near Crown Point and made a plan
+of the works; then lay in ambush by the road from the fort to the
+neighboring village, captured a prisoner, burned houses and barns,
+killed fifty cattle, and returned without loss. At the end of the month
+they went again to Crown Point, burned more houses and barns, and
+reconnoitred Ticonderoga on the way back. Such excursions were repeated
+throughout the spring and summer. The reconnoissance of Ticonderoga and
+the catching of prisoners there for the sake of information were always
+capital objects. The valley, four miles in extent, that lay between the
+foot of Lake George and the French fort, was at this time guarded by
+four distinct outposts or fortified camps. Watched as it was at all
+points, and ranged incessantly by Indians in the employ of France,
+Rogers and his men knew every yard of the ground. On a morning in May he
+lay in ambush with eleven followers on a path between the fort and the
+nearest camp. A large body of soldiers passed; the rangers counted a
+hundred and eighteen, and lay close in their hiding-place. Soon after
+came a party of twenty-two. They fired on them, killed six, captured
+one, and escaped with him to Fort William Henry. In October Rogers was
+passing with twenty men in two whaleboats through the seeming solitude
+of the Narrows when a voice called to them out of the woods. It was that
+of Captain Shepherd, of the New Hampshire regiment, who had been
+captured two months before, and had lately made his escape. He told them
+that the French had the fullest information of the numbers and movements
+of the English; that letters often reached them from within the English
+lines; and that Lydius, a Dutch trader at Albany, was their principal
+correspondent.[459] Arriving at Ticonderoga, Rogers cautiously
+approached the fort, till, about noon, he saw a sentinel on the road
+leading thence to the woods. Followed by five of his men, he walked
+directly towards him. The man challenged, and Rogers answered in French.
+Perplexed for a moment, the soldier suffered him to approach; till,
+seeing his mistake, he called out in amazement, "_Qui êtes vous_?"
+"Rogers," was the answer; and the sentinel was seized, led in hot haste
+to the boats, and carried to the English fort, where he gave important
+information.
+
+[Footnote 459: _Letter and Order Books of Winslow_. "One Lydiass ...
+whom we suspect for a French spy; he lives better than anybody, without
+any visible means, and his daughters have had often presents from Mr.
+Vaudreuil." _Loudon_ (_to Fox?_), _19 Aug. 1756_.]
+
+An exploit of Rogers towards midsummer greatly perplexed the French. He
+embarked at the end of June with fifty men in five whaleboats, made
+light and strong, expressly for this service, rowed about ten miles down
+Lake George, landed on the east side, carried the boats six miles over a
+gorge of the mountains, launched them again in South Bay, and rowed down
+the narrow prolongation of Lake Champlain under cover of darkness. At
+dawn they were within six miles of Ticonderoga. They landed, hid their
+boats, and lay close all day. Embarking again in the evening, they rowed
+with muffled oars under the shadow of the eastern shore, and passed so
+close to the French fort that they heard the voices of the sentinels
+calling the watchword. In the morning they had left it five miles
+behind. Again they hid in the woods; and from their lurking-place saw
+bateaux passing, some northward, and some southward, along the narrow
+lake.
+
+Crown Point was ten or twelve miles farther on. They tried to pass it
+after nightfall, but the sky was too clear and the stars too bright; and
+as they lay hidden the next day, nearly a hundred boats passed before
+them on the way to Ticonderoga. Some other boats which appeared about
+noon landed near them, and they watched the soldiers at dinner, within a
+musket-shot of their lurking-place. The next night was more favorable.
+They embarked at nine in the evening, passed Crown Point unseen, and hid
+themselves as before, ten miles below. It was the seventh of July.
+Thirty boats and a schooner passed them, returning towards Canada. On
+the next night they rowed fifteen miles farther, and then sent men to
+reconnoitre, who reported a schooner at anchor about a mile off. They
+were preparing to board her, when two sloops appeared, coming up the
+lake at but a short distance from the land. They gave them a volley, and
+called on them to surrender; but the crews put off in boats and made
+for the opposite shore. They followed and seized them. Out of twelve men
+their fire had killed three and wounded two, one of whom, says Rogers in
+his report, "could not march, therefore we put an end to him, to prevent
+discovery."[460] They sank the vessels, which were laden with wine,
+brandy, and flour, hid their boats on the west shore, and returned on
+foot with their prisoners.[461]
+
+[Footnote 460: _Report of Rogers to Sir William Johnson, July, 1756._
+This incident is suppressed in the printed _Journals_, which merely say
+that the man "soon died."]
+
+[Footnote 461: _Rogers, Journals, 20. Shirley to Fox, 26 July, 1756._
+"This afternoon Capt. Rogers came down with 4 scalps and 8 prisoners
+which he took on Lake Champlain, between 20 and 30 miles beyond Crown
+Point." _Surgeon Williams to his Wife, 16 July_, 1756.]
+
+Some weeks after, Rogers returned to the place where he had left the
+boats, embarked in them, reconnoitred the lake nearly to St. John, hid
+them again eight miles north of Crown Point, took three prisoners near
+that post, and carried them to Fort William Henry. In the next month the
+French found several English boats in a small cove north of Crown Point.
+Bougainville propounds five different hypotheses to account for their
+being there; and exploring parties were sent out in the vain attempt to
+find some water passage by which they could have reached the spot
+without passing under the guns of two French forts.[462]
+
+[Footnote 462: Bougainville, _Journal_.]
+
+The French, on their side, still kept their war-parties in motion, and
+Vaudreuil faithfully chronicled in his despatches every English scalp
+they brought in. He believed in Indians, and sent them to Ticonderoga in
+numbers that were sometimes embarrassing. Even Pottawattamies from Lake
+Michigan were prowling about Winslow's camp and silently killing his
+sentinels with arrows, while their "medicine men" remained at
+Ticonderoga practising sorcery and divination to aid the warriors or
+learn how it fared with them. Bougainville writes in his Journal on the
+fifteenth of October: "Yesterday the old Pottawattamies who have stayed
+here 'made medicine' to get news of their brethren. The lodge trembled,
+the sorcerer sweated drops of blood, and the devil came at last and told
+him that the warriors would come back with scalps and prisoners. A
+sorcerer in the medicine lodge is exactly like the Pythoness on the
+tripod or the witch Canidia invoking the shades." The diviner was not
+wholly at fault. Three days after, the warriors came back with a
+prisoner.[463]
+
+[Footnote 463: This kind of divination was practised by Algonkin tribes
+from the earliest times.]
+
+Till November, the hostile forces continued to watch each other from the
+opposite ends of Lake George. Loudon repeated his orders to Winslow to
+keep the defensive, and wrote sarcastically to the Colonial Minister: "I
+think I shall be able to prevent the provincials doing anything very
+rash, without their having it in their power to talk in the language of
+this country that they could have taken all Canada if they had not been
+prevented by the King's servants." Winslow tried to console himself for
+the failure of the campaign, and wrote in his odd English to Shirley:
+"Am sorry that this years' performance has not succeeded as was
+intended; have only to say I pushed things to the utmost of my power to
+have been sooner in motion, which was the only thing that should have
+carried us to Crown Point; and though I am sensible that we are doing
+our duty in acting on the defensive, yet it makes no _eclate_ [_sic_],
+and answers to little purpose in the eyes of my constituents."
+
+On the first of the month the French began to move off towards Canada,
+and before many days Ticonderoga was left in the keeping of five or six
+companies.[464] Winslow's men followed their example. Major Eyre, with
+four hundred regulars, took possession of Fort William Henry, and the
+provincials marched for home, their ranks thinned by camp diseases and
+small-pox.[465] In Canada the regulars were quartered on the
+inhabitants, who took the infliction as a matter of course. In the
+English provinces the question was not so simple. Most of the British
+troops were assigned to Philadelphia, New York, and Boston; and Loudon
+demanded free quarters for them, according to usage then prevailing in
+England during war. Nor was the demand in itself unreasonable, seeing
+that the troops were sent over to fight the battles of the colonies. In
+Philadelphia lodgings were given them in the public-houses, which,
+however, could not hold them all. A long dispute followed between the
+Governor, who seconded Loudon's demand, and the Assembly, during which
+about half the soldiers lay on straw in outhouses and sheds till near
+midwinter, many sickening, and some dying from exposure. Loudon grew
+furious, and threatened, if shelter were not provided, to send Webb with
+another regiment and billet the whole on the inhabitants; on which the
+Assembly yielded, and quarters were found.[466]
+
+[Footnote 464: Bougainville, _Journal_. Malartic, _Journal_.]
+
+[Footnote 465: _Letter and Order Books of Winslow. Winslow to Halifax,
+30 Dec. 1756._]
+
+[Footnote 466: _Loudon to Denny, 28 Oct. 1756. Colonial Records of Pa_.,
+VII. 358-380. _Loudon to Pitt, 10 March, 1757. Notice of Colonel
+Bouquet_, in _Pennsylvania Magazine_, III. 124. _The Conduct of a Noble
+Commander in America impartially reviewed_ (1758).]
+
+In New York the privates were quartered in barracks, but the officers
+were left to find lodging for themselves. Loudon demanded that provision
+should be made for them also. The city council hesitated, afraid of
+incensing the people if they complied. Cruger, the mayor, came to
+remonstrate. "God damn my blood!" replied the Earl; "if you do not
+billet my officers upon free quarters this day, I'll order here all the
+troops in North America, and billet them myself upon this city." Being
+no respecter of persons, at least in the provinces, he began with Oliver
+Delancey, brother of the late acting Governor, and sent six soldiers to
+lodge under his roof. Delancey swore at the unwelcome guests, on which
+Loudon sent him six more. A subscription was then raised among the
+citizens, and the required quarters were provided.[467] In Boston there
+was for the present less trouble. The troops were lodged in the barracks
+of Castle William, and furnished with blankets, cooking utensils, and
+other necessaries.[468]
+
+[Footnote 467: Smith, _Hist. of N.Y._, Part II. 242. _William Carry to
+Johnson, 15 Jan. 1757_, in Stone, _Life of Sir William Johnson_, II. 24,
+_note. Loudon to Hardy, 21 Nov. 1756._]
+
+[Footnote 468: Massachusetts Archives, LXXVI. 153.]
+
+Major Eyre and his soldiers, in their wilderness exile by the borders of
+Lake George, whiled the winter away with few other excitements than the
+evening howl of wolves from the frozen mountains, or some nocturnal
+savage shooting at a sentinel from behind a stump on the moonlit fields
+of snow. A livelier incident at last broke the monotony of their lives.
+In the middle of January Rogers came with his rangers from Fort Edward,
+bound on a scouting party towards Crown Point. They spent two days at
+Fort William Henry in making snow-shoes and other preparation, and set
+out on the seventeenth. Captain Spikeman was second in command, with
+Lieutenants Stark and Kennedy, several other subalterns, and two
+gentlemen volunteers enamoured of adventure. They marched down the
+frozen lake and encamped at the Narrows. Some of them, unaccustomed to
+snow-shoes, had become unfit for travel, and were sent back, thus
+reducing the number to seventy-four. In the morning they marched again,
+by icicled rocks and ice-bound waterfalls, mountains gray with naked
+woods and fir-trees bowed down with snow. On the nineteenth they reached
+the west shore, about four miles south of Rogers Rock, marched west of
+north eight miles, and bivouacked among the mountains. On the next
+morning they changed their course, marched east of north all day, passed
+Ticonderoga undiscovered, and stopped at night some five miles beyond
+it. The weather was changing, and rain was coming on. They scraped away
+the snow with their snow-shoes, piled in it a bank around them, made
+beds of spruce-boughs, built fires, and lay down to sleep, while the
+sentinels kept watch in the outer gloom. In the morning there was a
+drizzling rain, and the softened snow stuck to their snow-shoes. They
+marched eastward three miles through the dripping forest, til they
+reached the banks of Lake Champlain, near what is now called Five Mile
+Point, and presently saw a sledge, drawn by horses, moving on the ice
+from Ticonderoga towards Crown Point. Rogers sent Stark along the shore
+to the left to head it off, while he with another party, covered by the
+woods, moved in the opposite direction to stop its retreat. He soon saw
+eight or ten more sledges following the first, and sent a messenger to
+prevent Stark from showing himself too soon; but Stark was already on
+the ice.
+
+All the sledges turned back in hot haste. The rangers ran in pursuit and
+captured three of them, with seven men and six horses, while the rest
+escaped to Ticonderoga. The prisoners, being separately examined, told
+an ominous tale. There were three hundred and fifty regulars at
+Ticonderoga; two hundred Canadians and forty-five Indians had lately
+arrived there, and more Indians were expected that evening,--all
+destined to waylay the communications between the English forts, and all
+prepared to march at a moment's notice. The rangers were now in great
+peril. The fugitives would give warning of their presence, and the
+French and Indians, in overwhelming force, would no doubt cut off their
+retreat.
+
+Rogers at once ordered his men to return to their last night's
+encampment, rekindle the fires, and dry their guns, which were wet by
+the rain of the morning. Then they marched southward in single file
+through the snow-encumbered forest, Rogers and Kennedy in the front,
+Spikeman in the centre, and Stark in the rear. In this order they moved
+on over broken and difficult ground till two in the afternoon, when they
+came upon a valley, or hollow, scarcely a musket-shot wide, which ran
+across their line of march, and, like all the rest of the country, was
+buried in thick woods. The front of the line had descended the first
+hill, and was mounting that on the farther side, when the foremost men
+heard a low clicking sound, like the cocking of a great number of guns;
+and in an instant a furious volley blazed out of the bushes on the ridge
+above them. Kennedy was killed outright, as also was Gardner, one of the
+volunteers. Rogers was grazed in the head by a bullet, and others were
+disabled or hurt. The rest returned the fire, while a swarm of French
+and Indians rushed upon them from the ridge and the slopes on either
+hand, killing several more, Spikeman among the rest, and capturing
+others. The rangers fell back across the hollow and regained the hill
+they had just descended. Stark with the rear, who were at the top when
+the fray began, now kept the assailants in check by a brisk fire till
+their comrades joined them. Then the whole party, spreading themselves
+among the trees that covered the declivity, stubbornly held their ground
+and beat back the French in repeated attempts to dislodge them. As the
+assailants were more than two to one, what Rogers had most to dread was
+a movement to outflank him and get into his rear. This they tried twice,
+and were twice repulsed by a party held in reserve for the purpose. The
+fight lasted several hours, during which there was much talk between the
+combatants. The French called out that it was a pity so many brave men
+should be lost, that large reinforcements were expected every moment,
+and that the rangers would then be cut to pieces without mercy; whereas
+if they surrendered at once they should be treated with the utmost
+kindness. They called to Rogers by name, and expressed great esteem for
+him. Neither threats nor promises had any effect, and the firing went on
+till darkness stopped it. Towards evening Rogers was shot through the
+wrist; and one of the men, John Shute, used to tell in his old age how
+he saw another ranger trying to bind the captain's wound with the ribbon
+of his own queue.
+
+As Ticonderoga was but three miles off, it was destruction to stay where
+they were; and they withdrew under cover of night, reduced to
+forty-eight effective and six wounded men. Fourteen had been killed, and
+six captured. Those that were left reached Lake George in the morning,
+and Stark, with two followers, pushed on in advance to bring a sledge
+for the wounded. The rest made their way to the Narrows, where they
+encamped, and presently descried a small dark object on the ice far
+behind them. It proved to be one of their own number, Sergeant Joshua
+Martin, who had received a severe wound in the fight, and was left for
+dead; but by desperate efforts had followed on their tracks, and was now
+brought to camp in a state of exhaustion. He recovered, and lived to an
+advanced age. The sledge sent by Stark came in the morning, and the
+whole party soon reached the fort. Abercromby, on hearing of the affair,
+sent them a letter of thanks for gallant conduct.
+
+Rogers reckons the number of his assailants at about two hundred and
+fifty in all. Vaudreuil says that they consisted of eighty-nine regulars
+and ninety Canadians and Indians. With his usual boastful exaggeration,
+he declares that forty English were left dead on the field, and that
+only three reached Fort William Henry alive. He says that the fight was
+extremely hot and obstinate, and admits that the French lost
+thirty-seven killed and wounded. Rogers makes the number much greater.
+That it was considerable is certain, as Lusignan, commandant at
+Ticonderoga, wrote immediately for reinforcements.[469]
+
+[Footnote 469: Rogers, _Journals_, 38-44. Caleb Stark, _Memoir and
+Correspondence of John Stark_, 18, 412. _Return of Killed, Wounded, and
+Missing in the Action near Ticonderoga, Jan. 1757_; all the names are
+here given. James Abercromby, aide-de-camp to his uncle, General
+Abercromby, wrote to Rogers from Albany: "You cannot imagine how all
+ranks of people here are pleased with your conduct and your men's
+behavior."
+
+The accounts of the French writers differ from each other, but agree in
+placing the English force at from seventy to eighty, and their own much
+higher. The principal report is that of _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 19
+Avril, 1757_ (his second letter of this date). Bougainville, Montcalm,
+Malartic, and Montreuil all speak of the affair, placing the English
+loss much higher than is shown by the returns. The story, repeated in
+most of the French narratives, that only three of the rangers reached
+Fort William Henry, seems to have arisen from the fact that Stark with
+two men went thither in advance of the rest. As regards the antecedents
+of the combat, the French and English accounts agree.]
+
+The effects of his wound and an attack of small-pox kept Rogers quiet
+for a time. Meanwhile the winter dragged slowly away, and the ice of
+Lake George, cracking with change of temperature, uttered its strange
+cry of agony, heralding that dismal season when winter begins to relax
+its grip, but spring still holds aloof; when the sap stirs in the
+sugar-maples, but the buds refuse to swell, and even the catkins of the
+willows will not burst their brown integuments; when the forest is
+patched with snow, though on its sunny slopes one hears in the stillness
+the whisper of trickling waters that ooze from the half-thawed soil and
+saturated beds of fallen leaves; when clouds hang low on the darkened
+mountains, and cold mists entangle themselves in the tops of the pines;
+now a dull rain, now a sharp morning frost, and now a storm of snow
+powdering the waste, and wrapping it again in the pall of winter.
+
+In this cheerless season, on St. Patrick's Day, the seventeenth of
+March, the Irish soldiers who formed a part of the garrison of Fort
+William Henry were paying homage to their patron saint in libations of
+heretic rum, the product of New England stills; and it is said that John
+Stark's rangers forgot theological differences in their zeal to share
+the festivity. The story adds that they were restrained by their
+commander, and that their enforced sobriety proved the saving of the
+fort. This may be doubted; for without counting the English soldiers of
+the garrison who had no special call to be drunk that day, the fort was
+in no danger till twenty-four hours after, when the revellers had had
+time to rally from their pious carouse. Whether rangers or British
+soldiers, it is certain that watchmen were on the alert during the night
+between the eighteenth and nineteenth, and that towards one in the
+morning they heard a sound of axes far down the lake, followed by the
+faint glow of a distant fire. The inference was plain, that an enemy was
+there, and that the necessity of warming himself had overcome his
+caution. Then all was still for some two hours, when, listening in the
+pitchy darkness, the watchers heard the footsteps of a great body of men
+approaching on the ice, which at the time was bare of snow. The garrison
+were at their posts, and all the cannon on the side towards the lake
+vomited grape and round-shot in the direction of the sound, which
+thereafter was heard no more.
+
+Those who made it were a detachment, called by Vaudreuil an army, sent
+by him to seize the English fort. Shirley had planned a similar stroke
+against Ticonderoga a year before; but the provincial levies had come in
+so slowly, and the ice had broken up so soon, that the scheme was
+abandoned. Vaudreuil was more fortunate. The whole force, regulars,
+Canadians, and Indians, was ready to his hand. No pains were spared in
+equipping them. Overcoats, blankets, bear-skins to sleep on, tarpaulins
+to sleep under, spare moccasons, spare mittens, kettles, axes, needles,
+awls, flint and steel, and many miscellaneous articles were provided, to
+be dragged by the men on light Indian sledges, along with provisions for
+twelve days. The cost of the expedition is set at a million francs,
+answering to more than as many dollars of the present time. To the
+disgust of the officers from France, the Governor named his brother
+Rigaud for the chief command; and before the end of February the whole
+party was on its march along the ice of Lake Champlain. They rested
+nearly a week at Ticonderoga, where no less than three hundred short
+scaling-ladders, so constructed that two or more could be joined in one,
+had been made for them; and here, too, they received a reinforcement,
+which raised their number to sixteen hundred. Then, marching three days
+along Lake George, they neared the fort on the evening of the
+eighteenth, and prepared for a general assault before daybreak.
+
+The garrison, including rangers, consisted of three hundred and
+forty-six effective men.[470] The fort was not strong, and a resolute
+assault by numbers so superior must, it seems, have overpowered the
+defenders; but the Canadians and Indians who composed most of the
+attacking force were not suited for such work; and, disappointed in his
+hope of a surprise, Rigaud withdrew them at daybreak, after trying in
+vain to burn the buildings outside. A few hours after, the whole body
+reappeared, filing off to surround the fort, on which they kept up a
+brisk but harmless fire of musketry. In the night they were heard again
+on the ice, approaching as if for an assault; and the cannon, firing
+towards the sound, again drove them back. There was silence for a while,
+till tongues of flame lighted up the gloom, and two sloops, ice-bound in
+the lake, and a large number of bateaux on the shore were seen to be on
+fire. A party sallied to save them; but it was too late. In the morning
+they were all consumed, and the enemy had vanished.
+
+[Footnote 470: _Strength of the Garrison of Fort William Henry when the
+Enemy came before it_, enclosed in the letter of _Major Eyre to Loudon,
+26 March, 1757_. There were also one hundred and twenty-eight invalids.]
+
+It was Sunday, the twentieth. Everything was quiet till noon, when the
+French filed out of the woods and marched across the ice in procession,
+ostentatiously carrying their scaling-ladders, and showing themselves to
+the best effect. They stopped at a safe distance, fronting towards the
+fort, and several of them advanced, waving a red flag. An officer with a
+few men went to meet them, and returned bringing Le Mercier, chief of
+the Canadian artillery, who, being led blindfold into the fort,
+announced himself as bearer of a message from Rigaud. He was conducted
+to the room of Major Eyre, where all the British officers were
+assembled; and, after mutual compliments, he invited them to give up the
+place peaceably, promising the most favorable terms, and threatening a
+general assault and massacre in case of refusal. Eyre said that he
+should defend himself to the last; and the envoy, again blindfolded, was
+led back to whence he came.
+
+The whole French force now advanced as if to storm the works, and the
+garrison prepared to receive them. Nothing came of it but a fusillade,
+to which the British made no reply. At night the French were heard
+advancing again, and each man nerved himself for the crisis. The real
+attack, however, was not against the fort, but against the buildings
+outside, which consisted of several storehouses, a hospital, a saw-mill,
+and the huts of the rangers, besides a sloop on the stocks and piles of
+planks and cord-wood. Covered by the night, the assailants crept up with
+fagots of resinous sticks, placed them against the farther side of the
+buildings, kindled them, and escaped before the flame rose; while the
+garrison, straining their ears in the thick darkness, fired wherever
+they heard a sound. Before morning all around them was in a blaze, and
+they had much ado to save the fort barracks from the shower of burning
+cinders. At ten o'clock the fires had subsided, and a thick fall of snow
+began, filling the air with a restless chaos of large moist flakes. This
+lasted all day and all the next night, till the ground and the ice were
+covered to a depth of three feet and more. The French lay close in their
+camps till a little before dawn on Tuesday morning, when twenty
+volunteers from the regulars made a bold attempt to burn the sloop on
+the stocks, with several storehouses and other structures, and several
+hundred scows and whaleboats which had thus far escaped. They were only
+in part successful; but they fired the sloop and some buildings near it,
+and stood far out on the ice watching the flaming vessel, a superb
+bonfire amid the wilderness of snow. The spectacle cost the volunteers a
+fourth of their number killed and wounded.
+
+On Wednesday morning the sun rose bright on a scene of wintry splendor,
+and the frozen lake was dotted with Rigaud's retreating followers
+toiling towards Canada on snow-shoes. Before they reached it many of
+them were blinded for a while by the insufferable glare, and their
+comrades led them homewards by the hand.[471]
+
+[Footnote 471: _Eyre to Loudon, 24 March, 1757. Ibid., 25 March_,
+enclosed in Loudon's despatch of 25 April, 1757. _Message of Rigaud to
+Major Eyre, 20 March, 1757. Letter from Fort William Henry, 26 March,
+1757_, in _Boston Gazette_, No. 106, and _Boston Evening Post_, No.
+1,128. _Abstract of Letters from Albany_, in _Boston News Letter_, No.
+2,860. Caleb Stark, _Memoir and Correspondence of John Stark_, 22, a
+curious mixture of truth and error. _Relation de la Campagne sur le Lac
+St. Sacrement pendant l'Hiver, 1757._ Bougainville, _Journal_. Malartic,
+_Journal. Montcalm au Ministre, 24 Avril, 1757. Montreuil au Ministre,
+23 Avril, 1757. Montcalm à sa Mère, 1 Avril, 1757. Mémoires sur le
+Canada, 1749-1760._
+
+The French loss in killed and wounded is set by Montcalm at eleven. That
+of the English was seven, slightly wounded, chiefly in sorties. They
+took three prisoners. Stark was touched by a bullet, for the only time
+in his adventurous life.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 14
+
+1757
+
+Montcalm and Vaudreuil
+
+
+Spring came at last, and the Dutch burghers of Albany heard, faint from
+the far height, the clamor of the wild-fowl, streaming in long files
+northward to their summer home. As the aerial travellers winged their
+way, the seat of war lay spread beneath them like a map. First the blue
+Hudson, slumbering among its forests, with the forts along its banks,
+Half-Moon, Stillwater, Saratoga, and the geometric lines and earthen
+mounds of Fort Edward. Then a broad belt of dingy evergreen; and beyond,
+released from wintry fetters, the glistening breast of Lake George, with
+Fort William Henry at its side, amid charred ruins and a desolation of
+prostrate forests. Hence the lake stretched northward, like some broad
+river, trenched between mountain ranges still leafless and gray. Then
+they looked down on Ticonderoga, with the flag of the Bourbons, like a
+flickering white speck, waving on its ramparts; and next on Crown Point
+with its tower of stone. Lake Champlain now spread before them, widening
+as they flew: on the left, the mountain wilderness of the Adirondacks,
+like a stormy sea congealed; on the right, the long procession of the
+Green Mountains; and, far beyond, on the dim verge of the eastern sky,
+the White Mountains throned in savage solitude. They passed over the
+bastioned square of Fort St. John, Fort Chambly guarding the rapids of
+the Richelieu, and the broad belt of the St. Lawrence, with Montreal
+seated on its bank. Here we leave them, to build their nests and hatch
+their brood among the fens of the lonely North.
+
+Montreal, the military heart of Canada, was in the past winter its
+social centre also, where were gathered conspicuous representatives both
+of Old France and of New; not men only, but women. It was a sparkling
+fragment of the reign of Louis XV. dropped into the American wilderness.
+Montcalm was here with his staff and his chief officers, now pondering
+schemes of war, and now turning in thought to his beloved Château of
+Candiac, his mother, children, and wife, to whom he sent letters with
+every opportunity. To his wife he writes: "Think of me affectionately;
+give love to my girls. I hope next year I may be with you all. I love
+you tenderly, dearest." He says that he has sent her a packet of
+marten-skins for a muff, "and another time I shall send some to our
+daughter; but I should like better to bring them myself." Of this eldest
+daughter he writes in reply to a letter of domestic news from Madame de
+Montcalm: "The new gown with blonde trimmings must be becoming, for she
+is pretty." Again, "There is not an hour in the day when I do not think
+of you, my mother and my children." He had the tastes of a country
+gentleman, and was eager to know all that was passing on his estate.
+Before leaving home he had set up a mill to grind olives for oil, and
+was well pleased to hear of its prosperity. "It seems to be a good
+thing, which pleases me very much. Bougainville and I talk a great deal
+about the oil-mill." Some time after, when the King sent him the coveted
+decoration of the _cordon rouge_, he informed Madame de Montcalm of the
+honor done him, and added: "But I think I am better pleased with what
+you tell me of the success of my oil-mill."
+
+To his mother he writes of his absorbing occupations, and says: "You can
+tell my dearest that I have no time to occupy myself with the ladies,
+even if I wished to." Nevertheless he now and then found leisure for
+some little solace in his banishment; for he writes to Bourlamaque,
+whom he had left at Quebec, after a visit which he had himself made
+there early in the winter: "I am glad you sometimes speak of me to the
+three ladies in the Rue du Parloir; and I am flattered by their
+remembrance, especially by that of one of them, in whom I find at
+certain moments too much wit and too many charms for my tranquillity."
+These ladies of the Rue du Parloir are several times mentioned in his
+familiar correspondence with Bourlamaque.
+
+His station obliged him to maintain a high standard of living, to his
+great financial detriment, for Canadian prices were inordinate. "I must
+live creditably, and so I do; sixteen persons at table every day. Once a
+fortnight I dine with the Governor-General and with the Chevalier de
+Lévis, who lives well too. He has given three grand balls. As for me, up
+to Lent I gave, besides dinners, great suppers, with ladies, three times
+a week. They lasted till two in the morning; and then there was dancing,
+to which company came uninvited, but sure of a welcome from those who
+had been at supper. It is very expensive, not very amusing, and often
+tedious. At Quebec, where we spent a month, I gave receptions or
+parties, often at the Intendant's house. I like my gallant Chevalier de
+Lévis very much. Bourlamaque was a good choice; he is steady and cool,
+with good parts. Bougainville has talent, a warm head, and warm heart;
+he will ripen in time. Write to Madame Cornier that I like her husband;
+he is perfectly well, and as impatient for peace as I am. Love to my
+daughters, and all affection and respect to my mother. I live only in
+the hope of joining you all again. Nevertheless, Montreal is as good a
+place as Alais even in time of peace, and better now, because the
+Government is here; for the Marquis de Vaudreuil, like me, spent only a
+month at Quebec. As for Quebec, it is as good as the best cities of
+France, except ten or so. Clear sky, bright sun; neither spring nor
+autumn, only summer and winter. July, August, and September, hot as in
+Languedoc: winter insupportable; one must keep always indoors. The
+ladies _spirituelles, galantes, dévotes_. Gambling at Quebec, dancing
+and conversation at Montreal. My friends the Indians, who are often
+unbearable, and whom I treat with perfect tranquillity and patience, are
+fond of me. If I were not a sort of general, though very subordinate to
+the Governor, I could gossip about the plans of the campaign, which it
+is likely will begin on the tenth or fifteenth of May. I worked at the
+plan of the last affair [_Rigaud's expedition to Fort William Henry_],
+which might have turned out better, though good as it was. I wanted
+only eight hundred men. If I had had my way, Monsieur de Lévis or
+Monsieur de Bougainville would have had charge of it. However, the thing
+was all right, and in good hands. The Governor, who is extremely civil
+to me, gave it to his brother; he thought him more used to winter
+marches. Adieu, my heart; I adore and love you!"
+
+To meet his manifold social needs, he sends to his wife orders for
+prunes, olives, anchovies, muscat wine, capers, sausages, confectionery,
+cloth for liveries, and many other such items; also for scent-bags of
+two kinds, and perfumed pomatum for presents; closing in postscript with
+an injunction not to forget a dozen pint-bottles of English lavender.
+Some months after, he writes to Madame de Saint-Véran: "I have got
+everything that was sent me from Montpellier except the sausages. I have
+lost a third of what was sent from Bordeaux. The English captured it on
+board the ship called 'La Superbe;' and I have reason to fear that
+everything sent from Paris is lost on board 'La Liberté.' I am running
+into debt here. Pshaw! I must live. I do not worry myself. Best love to
+you, my mother."
+
+When Rigaud was about to march with his detachment against Fort William
+Henry, Montcalm went over to La Prairie to see them. "I reviewed them,"
+he writes to Bourlamaque, "and gave the officers a dinner, which, if
+anybody else had given it, I should have said was a grand affair. There
+were two tables, for thirty-six persons in all. On Wednesday there was
+an Assembly at Madame Varin's; on Friday the Chevalier de Lévis gave a
+ball. He invited sixty-five ladies, and got only thirty, with a great
+crowd of men. Rooms well lighted, excellent order, excellent service,
+plenty of refreshments of every sort all through the night; and the
+company stayed till seven in the morning. As for me, I went to bed
+early. I had had that day eight ladies at a supper given to Madame
+Varin. To-morrow I shall have half-a-dozen at another supper, given to I
+don't know whom, but incline to think it will be La Roche Beaucour. The
+gallant Chevalier is to give us still another ball."
+
+Lent put a check on these festivities. "To-morrow," he tells
+Bourlamaque, "I shall throw myself into devotion with might and main (_à
+corps perdu_). It will be easier for me to detach myself from the world
+and turn heavenward here at Montreal than it would be at Quebec." And,
+some time after, "Bougainville spent Monday delightfully at Isle Ste.
+Hélène, and Tuesday devoutly with the Sulpitian Fathers at the Mountain.
+I was there myself at four o'clock, and did them the civility to sup in
+their refectory at a quarter before six."
+
+In May there was a complete revival of social pleasures, and Montcalm
+wrote to Bourlamaque: "Madame de Beaubassin's supper was very gay. There
+were toasts to the Rue du Parloir and to the General. To-day I must give
+a dinner to Madame de Saint-Ours, which will be a little more serious.
+Péan is gone to establish himself at La Chine, and will come back with
+La Barolon, who goes thither with a husband of hers, bound to the Ohio
+with Villejoin and Louvigny. The Chevalier de Lévis amuses himself very
+much here. He and his friends spend all their time with Madame de
+Lenisse."
+
+Under these gayeties and gallantries there were bitter heart-burnings.
+Montcalm hints at some of them in a letter to Bourlamaque, written at
+the time of the expedition to Fort William Henry, which, in the words of
+Montcalm, who would have preferred another commander, the Governor had
+ordered to march "under the banners of brother Rigaud." "After he got my
+letter on Sunday evening," says the disappointed General, "Monsieur de
+Vaudreuil sent me his secretary with the instructions he had given his
+brother," which he had hitherto withheld. "This gave rise after dinner
+to a long conversation with him; and I hope for the good of the service
+that his future conduct will prove the truth of his words. I spoke to
+him with frankness and firmness of the necessity I was under of
+communicating to him my reflections; but I did not name any of the
+persons who, to gain his good graces, busy themselves with destroying
+his confidence in me. I told him that he would always find me disposed
+to aid in measures tending to our success, even should his views, which
+always ought to prevail, be different from mine; but that I dared
+flatter myself that he would henceforward communicate his plans to me
+sooner; for, though his knowledge of the country gave greater weight to
+his opinions, he might rest satisfied that I should second him in
+methods and details. This explanation passed off becomingly enough, and
+ended with a proposal to dine on a moose's nose [_an estimed morsel_]
+the day after to-morrow. I burn your letters, Monsieur, and I beg you to
+do the same with mine, after making a note of anything you may want to
+keep." But Bourlamaque kept all the letters, and bound them in a volume,
+which still exists.[472]
+
+[Footnote 472: The preceding extracts are from _Lettres de Montcalm à
+Madame de Saint-Véran, sa Mère, et à Madame de Montcalm, sa Femme_,
+1756, 1757 (_Papiers de Famille_); and _Lettres de Montcalm à
+Bourlamaque_, 1757. See Appendix E.]
+
+Montcalm was not at this time fully aware of the feeling of Vaudreuil
+towards him. The touchy egotism of the Governor and his jealous
+attachment to the colony led him to claim for himself and the Canadians
+the merit of every achievement and to deny it to the French troops and
+their general. Before the capture of Oswego was known, he wrote to the
+naval minister that Montcalm would never have dared attack that place if
+he had not encouraged him and answered his timid objections.[473] "I am
+confident that I shall reduce it," he adds; "my expedition is sure to
+succeed if Monsieur de Montcalm follows the directions I have given
+him." When the good news came he immediately wrote again, declaring that
+the victory was due to his brother Rigaud and the Canadians, who, he
+says, had been ill-used by the General, and not allowed either to enter
+the fort or share the plunder, any more than the Indians, who were so
+angry at the treatment they had met that he had great difficulty in
+appeasing them. He hints that the success was generally ascribed to him.
+"There has been a great deal of talk here; but I will not do myself the
+honor of repeating it to you, especially as it relates to myself. I know
+how to do violence to my self-love. The measures I took assured our
+victory, in spite of opposition. If I had been less vigilant and firm,
+Oswego would still be in the hands of the English. I cannot sufficiently
+congratulate myself on the zeal which my brother and the Canadians and
+Indians showed on this occasion; for without them my orders would have
+been given in vain. The hopes of His Britannic Majesty have vanished,
+and will hardly revive again; for I shall take care to crush them in the
+bud."[474]
+
+[Footnote 473: _Vaudreuil au Ministre de la Marine_, 13 _Août_, 1756.]
+
+[Footnote 474: _Vaudreuil au Ministre de la Marine_, 1 _Sept._ 1756.]
+
+The pronouns "I" and "my" recur with monotonous frequency in his
+correspondence. "I have laid waste all the British provinces." "By
+promptly uniting my forces at Carillon, I have kept General Loudon in
+check, though he had at his disposal an army of about twenty thousand
+men;"[475] and so without end, in all varieties of repetition. It is no
+less characteristic that he here assigns to his enemies double their
+actual force.
+
+[Footnote 475: _Ibid._, 6 _Nov._ 1756.]
+
+He has the faintest of praise for the troops from France. "They are
+generally good, but thus far they have not absolutely distinguished
+themselves. I do justice to the firmness they showed at Oswego; but it
+was only the colony troops, Canadians, and Indians who attacked the
+forts. Our artillery was directed by the Chevalier Le Mercier and M.
+Frémont [_colony officers_], and was served by our colony troops and our
+militia. The officers from France are more inclined to defence than
+attack. Far from spending the least thing here, they lay by their pay.
+They saved the money allowed them for refreshments, and had it in pocket
+at the end of the campaign. They get a profit, too, out of their
+provisions, by having certificates made under borrowed names, so that
+they can draw cash for them on their return. It is the same with the
+soldiers, who also sell their provisions to the King and get paid for
+them. In conjunction with M. Bigot, I labor to remedy all these abuses;
+and the rules we have established have saved the King a considerable
+expense. M. de Montcalm has complained very much of these rules." The
+Intendant Bigot, who here appears as a reformer, was the centre of a
+monstrous system of public fraud and robbery; while the charges against
+the French officers are unsupported. Vaudreuil, who never loses an
+opportunity of disparaging them, proceeds thus:--
+
+"The troops from France are not on very good terms with our Canadians.
+What can the soldiers think of them when they see their officers
+threaten them with sticks or swords? The Canadians are obliged to carry
+these gentry on their shoulders, through the cold water, over rocks that
+cut their feet; and if they make a false step they are abused. Can
+anything be harder? Finally, Monsieur de Montcalm is so quick-tempered
+that he goes to the length of striking the Canadians. How can he
+restrain his officers when he cannot restrain himself? Could any example
+be more contagious? This is the way our Canadians are treated. They
+deserve something better." He then enlarges on their zeal, hardihood,
+and bravery, and adds that nothing but their blind submission to his
+commands prevents many of them from showing resentment at the usage they
+had to endure. The Indians, he goes on to say, are not so gentle and
+yielding; and but for his brother Rigaud and himself, might have gone
+off in a rage. "After the campaign of Oswego they did not hesitate to
+tell me that they would go wherever I sent them, provided I did not put
+them under the orders of M. de Montcalm. They told me positively that
+they could not bear his quick temper. I shall always maintain the most
+perfect union and understanding with M. le Marquis de Montcalm, but I
+shall be forced to take measures which will assure to our Canadians and
+Indians treatment such as their zeal and services merit."[476]
+
+[Footnote 476: _Vaudreuil au Ministre de la Marine, 23 Oct. 1756_. The
+above extracts are somewhat condensed in the translation. See the letter
+in Dussieux, 279.]
+
+To the subject of his complaints Vaudreuil used a different language;
+for Montcalm says, after mentioning that he had had occasion to punish
+some of the Canadians at Oswego: "I must do Monsieur de Vaudreuil the
+justice to say that he approved my proceedings." He treated the General
+with the blandest politeness. "He is a good-natured man," continues
+Montcalm, "mild, with no character of his own, surrounded by people who
+try to destroy all his confidence in the general of the troops from
+France. I am praised excessively, in order to make him jealous, excite
+his Canadian prejudices, and prevent him from dealing with me frankly,
+or adopting my views when he can help it."[477] He elsewhere complains
+that Vaudreuil gave to both him and Lévis orders couched in such
+equivocal terms that he could throw the blame on them in case of
+reverse.[478] Montcalm liked the militia no better than the Governor
+liked the regulars. "I have used them with good effect, though not in
+places exposed to the enemy's fire. They know neither discipline nor
+subordination, and think themselves in all respects the first nation on
+earth." He is sure, however, that they like him: "I have gained the
+utmost confidence of the Canadians and Indians; and in the eyes of the
+former, when I travel or visit their camps, I have the air of a tribune
+of the people."[479] "The affection of the Indians for me is so strong
+that there are moments when it astonishes the Governor."[480] "The
+Indians are delighted with me," he says in another letter; "the
+Canadians are pleased with me; their officers esteem and fear me, and
+would be glad if the French troops and their general could be dispensed
+with; and so should I."[481] And he writes to his mother: "The part I
+have to play is unique: I am a general-in-chief subordinated; sometimes
+with everything to do, and sometimes nothing; I am esteemed, respected,
+beloved, envied, hated; I pass for proud, supple, stiff, yielding,
+polite, devout, gallant, etc.; and I long for peace."[482]
+
+[Footnote 477: _Montcalm au Ministre de la Guerre, 11 Juillet, 1757._]
+
+[Footnote 478: _Montcalm au Ministre de la Guerre, 1 Nov. 1756._]
+
+[Footnote 479: _Ibid., 18 Sept. 1757._]
+
+[Footnote 480: _Ibid., 4 Nov. 1757._]
+
+[Footnote 481: _Ibid., 28 Août, 1756._]
+
+[Footnote 482: _Montcalm à Madame de Saint-Véran, 23 Sept. 1757._]
+
+The letters of the Governor and those of the General, it will be seen,
+contradict each other flatly at several points. Montcalm is sustained by
+his friend Bougainville, who says that the Indians had a great liking
+for him, and that he "knew how to manage them as well as if he had been
+born in their wigwams."[483] And while Vaudreuil complains that the
+Canadians are ill-used by Montcalm, Bougainville declares that the
+regulars are ill-used by Vaudreuil. "One must be blind not to see that
+we are treated as the Spartans treated the Helots." Then he comments on
+the jealous reticence of the Governor. "The Marquis de Montcalm has not
+the honor of being consulted; and it is generally through public rumor
+that he first hears of Monsieur de Vaudreuil's military plans." He calls
+the Governor "a timid man, who can neither make a resolution nor keep
+one;" and he gives another trait of him, illustrating it, after his
+usual way, by a parallel from the classics: "When V. produces an idea he
+falls in love with it, as Pygmalion did with his statue. I can forgive
+Pygmalion, for what he produced was a masterpiece."[484]
+
+[Footnote 483: _Bougainville à Saint-Laurens, 19 Août, 1757._]
+
+[Footnote 484: Bougainville, _Journal_.]
+
+The exceeding touchiness of the Governor was sorely tried by certain
+indiscretions on the part of the General, who in his rapid and vehement
+utterances sometimes forgot the rules of prudence. His anger, though not
+deep, was extremely impetuous; and it is said that his irritation
+against Vaudreuil sometimes found escape in the presence of servants and
+soldiers.[485] There was no lack of reporters, and the Governor was told
+everything. The breach widened apace, and Canada divided itself into two
+camps: that of Vaudreuil with the colony officers, civil and military,
+and that of Montcalm with the officers from France. The principal
+exception was the Chevalier de Lévis. This brave and able commander had
+an easy and adaptable nature, which made him a sort of connecting link
+between the two parties. "One should be on good terms with everybody,"
+was a maxim which he sometimes expressed, and on which he shaped his
+conduct with notable success. The Intendant Bigot also, an adroit and
+accomplished person, had the skill to avoid breaking with either side.
+
+[Footnote 485: _Événements de la Guerre en Canada, 1759, 1760._]
+
+But now the season of action was near, and domestic strife must give
+place to efforts against the common foe. "God or devil!" Montcalm wrote
+to Bourlamaque, "we must do something and risk a fight. If we succeed,
+we can, all three of us [_you, Lévis, and I_], ask for promotion. Burn
+this letter." The prospects, on the whole, were hopeful. The victory at
+Oswego had wrought marvels among the Indians, inspired the faithful,
+confirmed the wavering, and daunted the ill-disposed. The whole West was
+astir, ready to pour itself again in blood and fire against the English
+border; and even the Cherokees and Choctaws, old friends of the British
+colonies, seemed on the point of turning against them.[486] The Five
+Nations were half won for France. In November a large deputation of them
+came to renew the chain of friendship at Montreal. "I have laid Oswego
+in ashes," said Vaudreuil; "the English quail before me. Why do you
+nourish serpents in your bosom? They mean only to enslave you." The
+deputies trampled under foot the medals the English had given them, and
+promised the "Devourer of Villages," for so they styled the Governor,
+that they would never more lift the hatchet against his children. The
+chief difficulty was to get rid of them; for, being clothed and fed at
+the expense of the King, they were in no haste to take leave; and
+learning that New Year's Day was a time of visits, gifts, and
+health-drinking, they declared that they would stay to share its
+pleasures; which they did, to their own satisfaction and the annoyance
+of those who were forced to entertain them and their squaws.[487] An
+active siding with France was to be expected only from the western bands
+of the Confederacy. Neutrality alone could be hoped for from the others,
+who were too near the English safely to declare against them; while from
+one of the tribes, the Mohawks, even neutrality was doubtful.
+
+[Footnote 486: _Vaudreuil au Ministre de la Marine, 19 Avril, 1757_.]
+
+[Footnote 487: _Montcalm au Ministre de la Guerre, 24 Avril, 1757;
+Relation de l'Ambassade des Cinq Nations à Montreal, jointe á la lettre
+précédente. Procès-verbal de différentes Entrevues entre M. de Vaudreuil
+et les Deputés des Nations sauvages du 13 au 30 Déc. 1756. Malartic,
+Journal. Montcalm á Madame de Saint-Véran, 1 Avril, 1757_.]
+
+Vaudreuil, while disliking the French regulars, felt that he could not
+dispense with them, and had asked for a reinforcement. His request was
+granted; and the Colonial Minister informed him that twenty-four hundred
+men had been ordered to Canada to strengthen the colony regulars and the
+battalions of Montcalm.[488] This, according to the estimate of the
+Minister, would raise the regular force in Canada to sixty-six hundred
+rank and file.[489] The announcement was followed by another, less
+agreeable. It was to the effect that a formidable squadron was fitting
+out in British ports. Was Quebec to be attacked, or Louisbourg?
+Louisbourg was beyond reach of succor from Canada; it must rely on its
+own strength and on help from France. But so long as Quebec was
+threatened, all the troops in the colony must be held ready to defend
+it, and the hope of attacking England in her own domains must be
+abandoned. Till these doubts were solved, nothing could be done; and
+hence great activity in catching prisoners for the sake of news. A few
+were brought in, but they knew no more of the matter than the French
+themselves; and Vaudreuil and Montcalm rested for a while in suspense.
+
+[Footnote 488: _Ordres du Roy et Dépêches des Ministres, Mars, 1757._]
+
+[Footnote 489: _Ministerial Minute on the Military Force in Canada,
+1757,_ in _N.Y. Col. Docs_., X. 523.]
+
+The truth, had they known it, would have gladdened their hearts. The
+English preparations were aimed at Louisbourg. In the autumn before,
+Loudon, prejudiced against all plans of his predecessor, Shirley,
+proposed to the Ministry a scheme of his own, involving a possible
+attack on Quebec, but with the reduction of Louisbourg as its immediate
+object,--an important object, no doubt, but one that had no direct
+bearing on the main question of controlling the interior of the
+continent. Pitt, then for a brief space at the head of the Government,
+accepted the suggestion, and set himself to executing it; but he was
+hampered by opposition, and early in April was forced to resign. Then,
+followed a contest of rival claimants to office; and the war against
+France was made subordinate to disputes of personal politics. Meanwhile
+one Florence Hensey, a spy at London, had informed the French Court that
+a great armament was fitting out for America, though he could not tell
+its precise destination. Without loss of time three French squadrons
+were sent across the Atlantic, with orders to rendezvous at Louisbourg,
+the conjectured point of attack.
+
+The English were as tardy as their enemies were prompt. Everything
+depended on speed; yet their fleet, under Admiral Holbourne, consisting
+of fifteen ships of the line and three frigates, with about five
+thousand troops on board, did not get to sea till the fifth of May, when
+it made sail for Halifax, where Loudon was to meet it with additional
+forces.
+
+Loudon had drawn off the best part of the troops from the northern
+frontier, and they were now at New York waiting for embarkation. That
+the design might be kept secret, he laid an embargo on colonial
+shipping,--a measure which exasperated the colonists without answering
+its purpose. Now ensued a long delay, during which the troops, the
+provincial levies, the transports destined to carry them, and the ships
+of war which were to serve as escort, all lay idle. In the interval
+Loudon showed great activity in writing despatches and other avocations
+more or less proper to a commander, being always busy, without,
+according to Franklin, accomplishing anything. One Innis, who had come
+with a message from the Governor of Pennsylvania, and had waited above a
+fortnight for the General's reply, remarked of him that he was like St.
+George on a tavern sign, always on horseback, and never riding on.[490]
+Yet nobody longed more than he to reach the rendezvous at Halifax. He
+was waiting for news of Holbourne, and he waited in vain. He knew only
+that a French fleet had been seen off the coast strong enough to
+overpower his escort and sink all his transports.[491] But the season
+was growing late; he must act quickly if he was to act at all. He and
+Sir Charles Hardy agreed between them that the risk must be run; and on
+the twentieth of June the whole force put to sea. They met no enemy, and
+entered Halifax harbor on the thirtieth. Holbourne and his fleet had not
+yet appeared; but his ships soon came straggling in, and before the
+tenth of July all were at anchor before the town. Then there was more
+delay. The troops, nearly twelve thousand in all, were landed, and weeks
+were spent in drilling them and planting vegetables for their
+refreshment. Sir Charles Hay was put under arrest for saying that the
+nation's money was spent in sham battles and raising cabbages. Some
+attempts were made to learn the state of Louisbourg; and Captain Gorham,
+of the rangers, who reconnoitred it from a fishing vessel, brought back
+an imperfect report, upon which, after some hesitation, it was resolved
+to proceed to the attack. The troops were embarked again, and all was
+ready, when, on the fourth of August, a sloop came from Newfoundland,
+bringing letters found on board a French vessel lately captured. From
+these it appeared that all three of the French squadrons were united in
+the harbor of Louisbourg, to the number of twenty-two ships of the line,
+besides several frigates, and that the garrison had been increased to a
+total force of seven thousand men, ensconced in the strongest fortress
+of the continent. So far as concerned the naval force, the account was
+true. La Motte, the French admiral, had with him a fleet carrying an
+aggregate of thirteen hundred and sixty cannon, anchored in a sheltered
+harbor under the guns of the town. Success was now hopeless, and the
+costly enterprise was at once abandoned. Loudon with his troops sailed
+back for New York, and Admiral Holbourne, who had been joined by four
+additional ships, steered for Louisbourg, in hopes that the French fleet
+would come out and fight him. He cruised off the port; but La Motte did
+not accept the challenge.
+
+[Footnote 490: _Works of Franklin_, I. 219. Franklin intimates that
+while Loudon was constantly writing, he rarely sent off despatches. This
+is a mistake; there is abundance of them, often tediously long, in the
+Public Record Office.]
+
+[Footnote 491: _Loudon to Pitt_, 30 _May_, 1757. He had not learned
+Pitt's resignation.]
+
+The elements declared for France. A September gale, of fury rare even on
+that tempestuous coast, burst upon the British fleet. "It blew a perfect
+hurricane," says the unfortunate Admiral, "and drove us right on shore."
+One ship was dashed on the rocks, two leagues from Louisbourg. A
+shifting of the wind in the nick of time saved the rest from total
+wreck. Nine were dismasted; others threw their cannon into the sea. Not
+one was left fit for immediate action; and had La Motte sailed out of
+Louisbourg, he would have had them all at his mercy.
+
+Delay, the source of most of the disasters that befell England and her
+colonies at this dismal epoch, was the ruin of the Louisbourg
+expedition. The greater part of La Motte's fleet reached its destination
+a full month before that of Holbourne. Had the reverse taken place, the
+fortress must have fallen. As it was, the ill-starred attempt, drawing
+off the British forces from the frontier, where they were needed most,
+did for France more than she could have done for herself, and gave
+Montcalm and Vaudreuil the opportunity to execute a scheme which they
+had nursed since the fall of Oswego.[492]
+
+[Footnote 492: _Despatches of Loudon, Feb. to Aug_. 1757. Knox,
+_Campaigns in North America, I_. 6-28. Knox was in the expedition.
+_Review of Mr. Pitt's Administration_ (London, 1763). _The Conduct of a
+Noble Commander in America impartially reviewed_ (London, 1758).
+Beatson, _Naval and Military Memoirs_, II. 49-59. _Answer to the Letter
+to two Great Men_ (London, 1760). Entick, II. 168, 169. _Holbourne to
+Loudon_, 4 _Aug_. 1757. _Holbourne to Pitt, 29 Sept._ 1757. _Ibid_., 30
+_Sept_. 1757. _Holbourne to Pownall, 2 Nov._ 1757. Mante, 86, 97.
+_Relation du Désastre arrivé à la Flotte Anglaise commandée par l'Amiral
+Holbourne_. Chevalier Johnstone, _Campaign of Louisbourg. London
+Magazine_, 1757, 514. _Gentleman's Magazine_, 1757, 463, 476. _Ibid_.,
+1758, 168-173.
+
+It has been said that Loudon was scared from his task by false reports
+of the strength of the French at Louisbourg. This was not the case. The
+_Gazette de France_, 621, says that La Motte had twenty-four ships of
+war. Bougainville says that as early as the ninth of June there were
+twenty-one ships of war, including five frigates, at Louisbourg. To this
+the list given by Knox closely answers.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 15
+
+1757
+
+Fort William Henry
+
+
+"I am going on the ninth to sing the war-song at the Lake of Two
+Mountains, and on the next day at Saut St. Louis,--a long, tiresome,
+ceremony. On the twelfth I am off; and I count on having news to tell
+you by the end of this month or the beginning of next." Thus Montcalm
+wrote to his wife from Montreal early in July. All doubts had been
+solved. Prisoners taken on the Hudson and despatches from Versailles had
+made it certain that Loudon was bound to Louisbourg, carrying with him
+the best of the troops that had guarded the New York frontier. The time
+was come, not only to strike the English on Lake George, but perhaps to
+seize Fort Edward and carry terror to Albany itself. Only one difficulty
+remained, the want of provisions. Agents were sent to collect corn and
+bacon among the inhabitants; the curés and militia captains were ordered
+to aid in the work; and enough was presently found to feed twelve
+thousand men for a month.[493]
+
+[Footnote 493: Vaudreuil, _Lettres circulates aux Curés et aux
+Capitaines de Milice des Paroisses du Gouvernement de Montreal, 16 Juin,
+1757._]
+
+The emissaries of the Governor had been busy all winter among the tribes
+of the West and North; and more than a thousand savages, lured by
+prospect of gifts, scalps, and plunder, were now encamped at Montreal.
+Many of them had never visited a French settlement before. All were
+eager to see Montcalm, whose exploit in taking Oswego had inflamed their
+imagination; and one day, on a visit of ceremony, an orator from
+Michillimackinac addressed the General thus: "We wanted to see this
+famous man who tramples the English under his feet. We thought we should
+find him so tall that his head would be lost in the clouds. But you are
+a little man, my Father. It is when we look into your eyes that we see
+the greatness of the pine-tree and the fire of the eagle."[494]
+
+[Footnote 494: Bougainville, _Journal_.]
+
+It remained to muster the Mission Indians settled in or near the limits
+of the colony; and it was to this end that Montcalm went to sing the
+war-song with the converts of the Two Mountains. Rigaud, Bougainville,
+young Longueuil, and others were of the party; and when they landed, the
+Indians came down to the shore, their priests at their head, and greeted
+the General with a volley of musketry; then received him after dark in
+their grand council-lodge, where the circle of wild and savage visages,
+half seen in the dim light of a few candles, suggested to Bougainville a
+midnight conclave of wizards. He acted vicariously the chief part in the
+ceremony. "I sang the war-song in the name of M. de Montcalm, and was
+much applauded. It was nothing but these words: 'Let us trample the
+English under our feet,' chanted over and over again, in cadence with
+the movements of the savages." Then came the war-feast, against which
+occasion Montcalm had caused three oxen to be roasted.[495] On the next
+day the party went to Caughnawaga, or Saut St. Louis, where the ceremony
+was repeated; and Bougainville, who again sang the war-song in the name
+of his commander, was requited by adoption into the clan of the Turtle.
+Three more oxen were solemnly devoured, and with one voice the warriors
+took up the hatchet.
+
+[Footnote 495: Bougainville describes a ceremony in the Mission Church
+of the Two Mountains in which warriors and squaws sang in the choir.
+Ninety-nine years after, in 1856, I was present at a similar ceremony on
+the same spot, and heard the descendants of the same warriors and squaws
+sing like their ancestors. Great changes have since taken place at this
+old mission.]
+
+Meanwhile troops, Canadians and Indians, were moving by detachments up
+Lake Champlain. Fleets of bateaux and canoes followed each other day by
+day along the capricious lake, in calm or storm, sunshine or rain, till,
+towards the end of July, the whole force was gathered at Ticonderoga,
+the base of the intended movement. Bourlamaque had been there since May
+with the battalions of Béarn and Royal Roussillon, finishing the fort,
+sending out war-parties, and trying to discover the force and designs of
+the English at Fort William Henry.
+
+Ticonderoga is a high rocky promontory between Lake Champlain on the
+north and the mouth of the outlet of Lake George on the south. Near its
+extremity and close to the fort were still encamped the two battalions
+under Bourlamaque, while bateaux and canoes were passing incessantly up
+the river of the outlet. There were scarcely two miles of navigable
+water, at the end of which the stream fell foaming over a high ledge of
+rock that barred the way. Here the French were building a saw-mill; and
+a wide space had been cleared to form an encampment defended on all
+sides by an abattis, within which stood the tents of the battalions of
+La Reine, La Sarre, Languedoc, and Guienne, all commanded by Lévis.
+Above the cascade the stream circled through the forest in a series of
+beautiful rapids, and from the camp of Lévis a road a mile and a half
+long had been cut to the navigable water above. At the end of this road
+there was another fortified camp, formed of colony regulars, Canadians,
+and Indians, under Rigaud. It was scarcely a mile farther to Lake
+George, where on the western side there was an outpost, chiefly of
+Canadians and Indians; while advanced parties were stationed at Bald
+Mountain, now called Rogers Rock, and elsewhere on the lake, to watch
+the movements of the English. The various encampments just mentioned
+were ranged along a valley extending four miles from Lake Champlain to
+Lake George, and bordered by mountains wooded to the top.
+
+Here was gathered a martial population of eight thousand men, including
+the brightest civilization and the darkest barbarism: from the
+scholar-soldier Montcalm and his no less accomplished aide-de-camp; from
+Lévis, conspicuous for graces of person; from a throng of courtly young
+officers, who would have seemed out of place in that wilderness had they
+not done their work so well in it; from these to the foulest man eating
+savage of the uttermost northwest.
+
+Of Indian allies there were nearly two thousand. One of their tribes,
+the Iowas, spoke a language which no interpreter understood; and they
+all bivouacked where they saw fit: for no man could control them. "I see
+no difference," says Bougainville, "in the dress, ornaments, dances, and
+songs of the various western nations. They go naked, excepting a strip
+of cloth passed through a belt, and paint themselves black, red, blue,
+and other colors. Their heads are shaved and adorned with bunches of
+feathers, and they wear rings of brass wire in their ears. They wear
+beaver-skin blankets, and carry lances, bows and arrows, and quivers
+made of the skins of beasts. For the rest they are straight, well made,
+and generally very tall. Their religion is brute paganism. I will say it
+once for all, one must be the slave of these savages, listen to them day
+and night, in council and in private, whenever the fancy takes them, or
+whenever a dream, a fit of the vapors, or their perpetual craving for
+brandy, gets possession of them; besides which they are always wanting
+something for their equipment, arms, or toilet, and the general of the
+army must give written orders for the smallest trifle,--an eternal,
+wearisome detail, of which one has no idea in Europe."
+
+It was not easy to keep them fed. Rations would be served to them for a
+week; they would consume them in three days, and come for more. On one
+occasion they took the matter into their own hands, and butchered and
+devoured eighteen head of cattle intended for the troops; nor did any
+officer dare oppose this "St. Bartholomew of the oxen," as Bougainville
+calls it. "Their paradise is to be drunk," says the young officer. Their
+paradise was rather a hell; for sometimes, when mad with brandy, they
+grappled and tore each other with their teeth like wolves. They were
+continually "making medicine," that is, consulting the Manitou, to whom
+they hung up offerings, sometimes a dead dog, and sometimes the
+belt-cloth which formed their only garment.
+
+The Mission Indians were better allies than these heathen of the west;
+and their priests, who followed them to the war, had great influence
+over them. They were armed with guns, which they well knew how to use.
+Their dress, though savage, was generally decent, and they were not
+cannibals; though in other respects they retained all their traditional
+ferocity and most of their traditional habits. They held frequent
+war-feasts, one of which is described by Roubaud, Jesuit missionary of
+the Abenakis of St. Francis, whose flock formed a part of the company
+present.
+
+"Imagine," says the father, "a great assembly of savages adorned with
+every ornament most suited to disfigure them in European eyes, painted
+with vermilion, white, green, yellow, and black made of soot and the
+scrapings of pots. A single savage face combines all these different
+colors, methodically laid on with the help of a little tallow, which
+serves for pomatum. The head is shaved except at the top, where there is
+a small tuft, to which are fastened feathers, a few beads of wampum, or
+some such trinket. Every part of the head has its ornament. Pendants
+hang from the nose and also from the ears, which are split in infancy
+and drawn down by weights till they flap at last against the shoulders.
+The rest of the equipment answers to this fantastic decoration: a shirt
+bedaubed with vermilion, wampum collars, silver bracelets, a large knife
+hanging on the breast, moose-skin moccasons, and a belt of various
+colors always absurdly combined. The sachems and war-chiefs are
+distinguished from the rest: the latter by a gorget, and the former by a
+medal, with the King's portrait on one side, and on the other Mars and
+Bellona joining hands, with the device, _Virtues et Honor_."
+
+Thus attired, the company sat in two lines facing each other, with
+kettles in the middle filled with meat chopped for distribution. To a
+dignified silence succeeded songs, sung by several chiefs in succession,
+and compared by the narrator to the howling of wolves. Then followed a
+speech from the chief orator, highly commended by Roubaud, who could not
+help admiring this effort of savage eloquence. "After the harangue," he
+continues, "they proceeded to nominate the chiefs who were to take
+command. As soon as one was named he rose and took the head of some
+animal that had been butchered for the feast. He raised it aloft so that
+all the company could see it, and cried: 'Behold the head of the enemy!'
+Applause and cries of joy rose from all parts of the assembly. The
+chief, with the head in his hand, passed down between the lines, singing
+his war-song, bragging of his exploits, taunting and defying the enemy,
+and glorifying himself beyond all measure. To hear his self-laudation in
+these moments of martial transport one would think him a conquering hero
+ready to sweep everything before him. As he passed in front of the other
+savages, they would respond by dull broken cries jerked up from the
+depths of their stomachs, and accompanied by movements of their bodies
+so odd that one must be well used to them to keep countenance. In the
+course of his song the chief would utter from time to time some
+grotesque witticism; then he would stop, as if pleased with himself, or
+rather to listen to the thousand confused cries of applause that greeted
+his ears. He kept up his martial promenade as long as he liked the
+sport; and when he had had enough, ended by flinging down the head of
+the animal with an air of contempt, to show that his warlike appetite
+craved meat of another sort."[496] Others followed with similar songs
+and pantomime, and the festival was closed at last by ladling out the
+meat from the kettles, and devouring it.
+
+[Footnote 496: _Lettre du Père_ ...(Roubaud), _Missionnaire chez les
+Abnakis, 21 Oct_. 1757, in _Lettres Edifiantes et Curieuses_, VI. 189
+(1810).]
+
+Roubaud was one day near the fort, when he saw the shore lined with a
+thousand Indians, watching four or five English prisoners, who, with the
+war-party that had captured them, were approaching in a boat from the
+farther side of the water. Suddenly the whole savage crew broke away
+together and ran into the neighboring woods, whence they soon emerged,
+yelling diabolically, each armed with a club. The wretched prisoners
+were to be forced to "run the gauntlet" which would probably have killed
+them. They were saved by the chief who commanded the war-party, and who,
+on the persuasion of a French officer, claimed them as his own and
+forbade the game; upon which, according to rule in such cases, the rest
+abandoned it. On this same day the missionary met troops of Indians
+conducting several bands of English prisoners along the road that led
+through the forest from the camp of Lévis. Each of the captives was held
+by a cord made fast about the neck; and the sweat was starting from
+their brows in the extremity of their horror and distress. Roubaud's
+tent was at this time in the camp of the Ottawas. He presently saw a
+large number of them squatted about a fire, before which meat was
+roasting on sticks stuck in the ground; and, approaching, he saw that it
+was the flesh of an Englishman, other parts of which were boiling in a
+kettle, while near by sat eight or ten of the prisoners, forced to see
+their comrade devoured. The horror-stricken priest began to remonstrate;
+on which a young savage fiercely replied in broken French: "You have
+French taste; I have Indian. This is good meat for me;" and the feasters
+pressed him to share it.
+
+Bougainville says that this abomination could not be prevented; which
+only means that if force had been used to stop it, the Ottawas would
+have gone home in a rage. They were therefore left to finish their meal
+undisturbed. Having eaten one of their prisoners, they began to treat
+the rest with the utmost kindness, bringing them white bread, and
+attending to all their wants--a seeming change of heart due to the fact
+that they were a valuable commodity, for which the owners hoped to get a
+good price at Montreal. Montcalm wished to send them thither at once, to
+which after long debate the Indians consented, demanding, however, a
+receipt in full, and bargaining that the captives should be supplied
+with shoes and blankets.[497]
+
+[Footnote 497: _Journal de l'Expédition contre le Fort George_ [William
+Henry] _du 12 Juillet au 16 Août_, 1757. Bougainville, _Journal. Lettre
+du P. Roubaud_.]
+
+These unfortunates belonged to a detachment of three hundred
+provincials, chiefly New Jersey men, sent from Fort William Henry under
+command of Colonel Parker to reconnoitre the French outposts. Montcalm's
+scouts discovered them; on which a band of Indians, considerably more
+numerous, went to meet them under a French partisan named Corbière, and
+ambushed themselves not far from Sabbath Day Point. Parker had rashly
+divided his force; and at daybreak of the twenty-sixth of July three of
+his boats fell into the snare, and were captured without a shot. Three
+others followed, in ignorance of what had happened, and shared the fate
+of the first. When the rest drew near, they were greeted by a deadly
+volley from the thickets, and a swarm of canoes darted out upon them.
+The men were seized with such a panic that some of them jumped into the
+water to escape, while the Indians leaped after them and speared them
+with their lances like fish. "Terrified," says Bougainville, "by the
+sight of these monsters, their agility, their firing, and their yells,
+they surrendered almost without resistance." About a hundred, however,
+made their escape. The rest were killed or captured, and three of the
+bodies were eaten on the spot. The journalist adds that the victory so
+elated the Indians that they became insupportable; "but here in the
+forests of America we can no more do without them than without cavalry
+on the plain."[498]
+
+[Footnote 498: Bougainville, _Journal_. Malartic, _Journal. Montcalm à
+Vaudreuil, 27 Juillet, 1757. Webb to Loudon, 1 Aug. 1757. Webb to
+Delancey, 30 July, 1757. Journal de l'Expédition contre le Fort George.
+London Magazine_, 1757, 457. Miles, _French and Indian Wars. Boston
+Gazette, 15 Aug. 1757._]
+
+Another success at about the same time did not tend to improve their
+manners. A hundred and fifty of them, along with a few Canadians under
+Marin, made a dash at Fort Edward, killed or drove in the pickets, and
+returned with thirty-two scalps and a prisoner. It was found, however,
+that the scalps were far from representing an equal number of heads, the
+Indians having learned the art of making two or three out of one by
+judicious division.[499]
+
+[Footnote 499: This affair was much exaggerated at the time. I follow
+Bougainville, who had the facts from Marin. According to him, the
+thirty-two scalps represented eleven killed; which exactly answers to
+the English loss as stated by Colonel Frye in a letter from Fort
+Edward.]
+
+Preparations were urged on with the utmost energy. Provisions, camp
+equipage, ammunition, cannon, and bateaux were dragged by gangs of men
+up the road from the camp of Lévis to the head of the rapids. The work
+went on through heat and rain, by day and night, till, at the end of
+July, all was done. Now, on the eve of departure, Montcalm, anxious for
+harmony among his red allies, called them to a grand council near the
+camp of Rigaud. Forty-one tribes and sub-tribes, Christian and heathen,
+from the east and from the west, were represented in it. Here were the
+mission savages,--Iroquois of Caughnawaga, Two Mountains, and La
+Présentation; Hurons of Lorette and Detroit; Nipissings of Lake
+Nipissing; Abenakis of St. Francis, Becancour, Missisqui, and the
+Penobscot; Algonkins of Three Rivers and Two Mountains; Micmacs and
+Malecites from Acadia: in all eight hundred chiefs and warriors. With
+these came the heathen of the west,--Ottawas of seven distinct bands;
+Ojibwas from Lake Superior, and Mississagas from the region of Lakes
+Erie and Huron; Pottawattamies and Menomonies from Lake Michigan; Sacs,
+Foxes, and Winnebagoes from Wisconsin; Miamis from the prairies of
+Illinois, and Iowas from the banks of the Des Moines: nine hundred and
+seventy-nine chiefs and warriors, men of the forests and men of the
+plains, hunters of the moose and hunters of the buffalo, bearers of
+steel hatchets and stone war-clubs, of French guns and of flint-headed
+arrows. All sat in silence, decked with ceremonial paint, scalp-locks,
+eagle plumes, or horns of buffalo; and the dark and wild assemblage was
+edged with white uniforms of officers from France, who came in numbers
+to the spectacle. Other officers were also here, all belonging to the
+colony. They had been appointed to the command of the Indian allies,
+over whom, however, they had little or no real authority. First among
+them was the bold and hardy Saint-Luc de la Corne, who was called
+general of the Indians; and under him were others, each assigned to some
+tribe or group of tribes,--the intrepid Marin; Charles Langlade, who had
+left his squaw wife at Michillimackinac to join the war; Niverville,
+Langis, La Plante, Hertel, Longueuil, Herbin, Lorimier, Sabrevois, and
+Fleurimont; men familiar from childhood with forests and savages. Each
+tribe had its interpreter, often as lawless as those with whom he had
+spent his life; and for the converted tribes there were three
+missionaries,--Piquet for the Iroquois, Mathevet for the Nipissings, who
+were half heathen, and Roubaud for the Abenakis.[500]
+
+[Footnote 500: The above is chiefly from _Tableau des Sauvages qui se
+trouvent à l'Armée du Marquis de Montcalm, le 28 Juillet, 1757_.
+Forty-one tribes and sub-tribes are here named, some, however,
+represented by only three or four warriors. Besides those set down under
+the head of Christians, it is stated that a few of the Ottawas of
+Detroit and Michillimackinac still retained the faith.]
+
+There was some complaint among the Indians because they were crowded
+upon by the officers who came as spectators. This difficulty being
+removed, the council opened, Montcalm having already explained his plans
+to the chiefs and told them the part he expected them to play.
+
+Pennahouel, chief of the Ottawas, and senior of all the Assembly, rose
+and said: "My father, I, who have counted more moons than any here,
+thank you for the good words you have spoken. I approve them. Nobody
+ever spoke better. It is the Manitou of War who inspires you."
+
+Kikensick, chief of the Nipissings, rose in behalf of the Christian
+Indians, and addressed the heathen of the west. "Brothers, we thank you
+for coming to help us defend our lands against the English. Our cause is
+good. The Master of Life is on our side. Can you doubt it, brothers,
+after the great blow you have just struck? It covers you with glory. The
+lake, red with the blood of Corlaer [_the English_] bears witness
+forever to your achievement. We too share your glory, and are proud of
+what you have done." Then, turning to Montcalm: "We are even more glad
+than you, my father, who have crossed the great water, not for your own
+sake, but to obey the great King and defend his children. He has bound
+us all together by the most solemn of ties. Let us take care that
+nothing shall separate us."
+
+The various interpreters, each in turn, having explained this speech to
+the Assembly, it was received with ejaculations of applause; and when
+they had ceased, Montcalm spoke as follows: "Children, I am delighted to
+see you all joined in this good work. So long as you remain one, the
+English cannot resist you. The great King has sent me to protect and
+defend you; but above all he has charged me to make you happy and
+unconquerable, by establishing among you the union which ought to
+prevail among brothers, children of one father, the great Onontio." Then
+he held out a prodigious wampum belt of six thousand beads: "Take this
+sacred pledge of his word. The union of the beads of which it is made is
+the sign of your united strength. By it I bind you all together, so that
+none of you can separate from the rest till the English are defeated and
+their fort destroyed."
+
+Pennahouel took up the belt and said: "Behold, brothers, a circle drawn
+around us by the great Onontio. Let none of us go out from it; for so
+long as we keep in it, the Master of Life will help all our
+undertakings." Other chiefs spoke to the same effect, and the council
+closed in perfect harmony.[501] Its various members bivouacked together
+at the camp by the lake, and by their carelessness soon set it on fire;
+whence the place became known as the Burned Camp. Those from the
+missions confessed their sins all day; while their heathen brothers hung
+an old coat and a pair of leggings on a pole as tribute to the Manitou.
+This greatly embarrassed the three priests, who were about to say Mass,
+but doubted whether they ought to say it in presence of a sacrifice to
+the devil. Hereupon they took counsel of Montcalm. "Better say it so
+than not at all," replied the military casuist. Brandy being prudently
+denied them, the allies grew restless; and the greater part paddled up
+the lake to a spot near the place where Parker had been defeated. Here
+they encamped to wait the arrival of the army, and amused themselves
+meantime with killing rattlesnakes, there being a populous "den" of
+those reptiles among the neighboring rocks.
+
+[Footnote 501: Bougainville, _Journal_.]
+
+Montcalm sent a circular letter to the regular officers, urging them to
+dispense for a while with luxuries, and even comforts. "We have but few
+bateaux, and these are so filled with stores that a large division of
+the army must go by land;" and he directed that everything not
+absolutely necessary should be left behind, and that a canvas shelter to
+every two officers should serve them for a tent, and a bearskin for a
+bed. "Yet I do not forbid a mattress," he adds. "Age and infirmities may
+make it necessary to some; but I shall not have one myself, and make no
+doubt that all who can will willingly imitate me."[502]
+
+[Footnote 502: _Circulaire du Marquis de Montcalm, 25 Juillet, 1757._]
+
+The bateaux lay ready by the shore, but could not carry the whole force;
+and Lévis received orders to march by the side of the lake with
+twenty-five hundred men, Canadians, regulars, and Iroquois. He set out
+at daybreak of the thirtieth of July, his men carrying nothing but their
+knapsacks, blankets, and weapons. Guided by the unerring Indians, they
+climbed the steep gorge at the side of Rogers Rock, gained the valley
+beyond, and marched southward along a Mohawk trail which threaded the
+forest in a course parallel to the lake. The way was of the roughest;
+many straggled from the line, and two officers completely broke down.
+The first destination of the party was the mouth of Ganouskie Bay, now
+called Northwest Bay, where they were to wait for Montcalm, and kindle
+three fires as a signal that they had reached the rendezvous.[503]
+
+[Footnote 503: _Guerre du Canada, par le Chevalier de Lévis_. This
+manuscript of Lévis is largely in the nature of a journal.]
+
+Montcalm left a detachment to hold Ticonderoga; and then, on the first
+of August, at two in the afternoon, he embarked at the Burned Camp with
+all his remaining force. Including those with Lévis, the expedition
+counted about seven thousand six hundred men, of whom more than sixteen
+hundred were Indians.[504] At five in the afternoon they reached the
+place where the Indians, having finished their rattlesnake hunt, were
+smoking their pipes and waiting for the army. The red warriors embarked,
+and joined the French flotilla; and now, as evening drew near, was seen
+one of those wild pageantries of war which Lake George has often
+witnessed. A restless multitude of birch canoes, filled with painted
+savages, glided by shores and islands, like troops of swimming
+water-fowl. Two hundred and fifty bateaux came next, moved by sail and
+oar, some bearing the Canadian militia, and some the battalions of Old
+France in trim and gay attire: first, La Reine and Languedoc; then the
+colony regulars; then La Sarre and Guienne; then the Canadian brigade of
+Courtemanche; then the cannon and mortars, each on a platform sustained
+by two bateaux lashed side by side, and rowed by the militia of
+Saint-Ours; then the battalions of Béarn and Royal Roussillon; then the
+Canadians of Gaspé, with the provision-bateaux and the field-hospital;
+and, lastly, a rear guard of regulars closed the line. So, under the
+flush of sunset, they held their course along the romantic lake, to play
+their part in the historic drama that lends a stern enchantment to its
+fascinating scenery. They passed the Narrows in mist and darkness; and
+when, a little before dawn, they rounded the high promontory of Tongue
+Mountain, they saw, far on the right, three fiery sparks shining through
+the gloom. These were the signal-fires of Lévis, to tell them that he
+had reached the appointed spot.[505]
+
+[Footnote 504: _État de l'Armée Française devant le Fort George,
+autrement Guillaume-Henri, le 3 Août, 1757. Tableau des Sauvages qui se
+trouvent à l'Armée du Marquis de Montcalm, le 28 Juillet, 1757_. This
+gives a total of 1,799 Indians, of whom some afterwards left the army.
+_État de l'Armée du Roi en Canada, sur le Lac St. Sacrement et dans les
+Camps de Carillon, le 29 Juillet, 1757_. This gives a total of 8,019
+men, of whom about four hundred were left in garrison at Ticonderoga.]
+
+[Footnote 505: The site of the present village of Bolton.]
+
+Lévis had arrived the evening before, after his hard march through the
+sultry midsummer forest. His men had now rested for a night, and at ten
+in the morning he marched again. Montcalm followed at noon, and coasted
+the western shore, till, towards evening, he found Lévis waiting for him
+by the margin of a small bay not far from the English fort, though
+hidden from it by a projecting point of land. Canoes and bateaux were
+drawn up on the beach, and the united forces made their bivouac
+together.
+
+The earthen mounds of Fort William Henry still stand by the brink of
+Lake George; and seated at the sunset of an August day under the pines
+that cover them, one gazes on a scene of soft and soothing beauty, where
+dreamy waters reflect the glories of the mountains and the sky. As it
+is to-day, so it was then; all breathed repose and peace. The splash of
+some leaping trout, or the dipping wing of a passing swallow, alone
+disturbed the summer calm of that unruffled mirror.
+
+About ten o'clock at night two boats set out from the fort to
+reconnoitre. They were passing a point of land on their left, two miles
+or more down the lake, when the men on board descried through the gloom
+a strange object against the bank; and they rowed towards it to learn
+what it might be. It was an awning over the bateaux that carried Roubaud
+and his brother missionaries. As the rash oarsmen drew near, the
+bleating of a sheep in one of the French provision-boats warned them of
+danger; and turning, they pulled for their lives towards the eastern
+shore. Instantly more than a thousand Indians threw themselves into
+their canoes and dashed in hot pursuit, making the lake and the
+mountains ring with the din of their war-whoops. The fugitives had
+nearly reached land when their pursuers opened fire. They replied; shot
+one Indian dead, and wounded another; then snatched their oars again,
+and gained the beach. But the whole savage crew was upon them. Several
+were killed, three were taken, and the rest escaped in the dark
+woods.[506] The prisoners were brought before Montcalm, and gave him
+valuable information of the strength and position of the English.[507]
+
+[Footnote 506: _Lettre du Père Roubaud, 21 Oct. 1757_. Roubaud, who saw
+the whole, says that twelve hundred Indians joined the chase, and that
+their yells were terrific.]
+
+[Footnote 507: The remains of Fort William Henry are now--1882--crowded
+between a hotel and the wharf and station of a railway. While I write, a
+scheme is on foot to level the whole for other railway structures. When
+I first knew the place the ground was in much the same state as in the
+time of Montcalm.]
+
+The Indian who was killed was a noted chief of the Nipissings; and his
+tribesmen howled in grief for their bereavement. They painted his face
+with vermilion, tied feathers in his hair, hung pendants in his ears and
+nose, clad him in a resplendent war-dress, put silver bracelets on his
+arms, hung a gorget on his breast with a flame colored ribbon, and
+seated him in state on the top of a hillock, with his lance in his hand,
+his gun in the hollow of his arm, his tomahawk in his belt, and his
+kettle by his side. Then they all crouched about him in lugubrious
+silence. A funeral harangue followed; and next a song and solemn dance
+to the booming of the Indian drum. In the gray of the morning they
+buried him as he sat, and placed food in the grave for his journey to
+the land of souls.[508]
+
+[Footnote 508: _Lettre du Père Roubaud_.]
+
+As the sun rose above the eastern mountains the French camp was all
+astir. The column of Lévis, with Indians to lead the way, moved through
+the forest towards the fort, and Montcalm followed with the main body;
+then the artillery boats rounded the point that had hid them from the
+sight of the English, saluting them as they did so with musketry and
+cannon; while a host of savages put out upon the lake, ranged their
+canoes abreast in a line from shore to shore, and advanced slowly, with
+measured paddle-strokes and yells of defiance.
+
+The position of the enemy was full in sight before them. At the head of
+the lake, towards the right, stood the fort, close to the edge of the
+water. On its left was a marsh; then the rough piece of ground where
+Johnson had encamped two years before; then a low, flat, rocky hill,
+crowned with an entrenched camp; and, lastly, on the extreme left,
+another marsh. Far around the fort and up the slopes of the western
+mountain the forest had been cut down and burned, and the ground was
+cumbered with blackened stumps and charred carcasses and limbs of fallen
+trees, strewn in savage disorder one upon another.[509] This was the
+work of Winslow in the autumn before. Distant shouts and war-cries, the
+clatter of musketry, white puffs of smoke in the dismal clearing and
+along the scorched edge of the bordering forest, told that Lévis'
+Indians were skirmishing with parties of the English, who had gone out
+to save the cattle roaming in the neighborhood, and burn some
+out-buildings that would have favored the besiegers. Others were taking
+down the tents that stood on a plateau near the foot of the mountain on
+the right, and moving them to the entrenchment on the hill. The garrison
+sallied from the fort to support their comrades, and for a time the
+firing was hot.
+
+[Footnote 509: _Précis des Événements de la Campagne de 1757 en la
+Nouvelle France._]
+
+Fort William Henry was an irregular bastioned square, formed by
+embankments of gravel surmounted by a rampart of heavy logs, laid in
+tiers crossed one upon another, the interstices filled with earth. The
+lake protected it on the north, the marsh on the east, and ditches with
+_chevaux-de-frise_ on the south and west. Seventeen cannon, great and
+small, besides several mortars and swivels, were mounted upon it;[510]
+and a brave Scotch veteran, Lieutenant-Colonel Monro, of the
+thirty-fifth regiment, was in command.
+
+[Footnote 510: _État des Effets et Munitions de Guerre qui se sont
+trouvés au Fort Guillaume-Henri._ There were six more guns in the
+entrenched camp.]
+
+General Webb lay fourteen miles distant at Fort Edward, with twenty-six
+hundred men, chiefly provincials. On the twenty-fifth of July he had
+made a visit to Fort William Henry, examined the place, given some
+orders, and returned on the twenty-ninth. He then wrote to the Governor
+of New York, telling him that the French were certainly coming, begging
+him to send up the militia, and saying: "I am determined to march to
+Fort William Henry with the whole army under my command as soon as I
+shall hear of the farther approach of the enemy." Instead of doing so he
+waited three days, and then sent up a detachment of two hundred regulars
+under Lieutenant-Colonel Young, and eight hundred Massachusetts men
+under Colonel Frye. This raised the force at the lake to two thousand
+and two hundred, including sailors and mechanics, and reduced that of
+Webb to sixteen hundred, besides half as many more distributed at Albany
+and the intervening forts.[511] If, according to his spirited intention,
+he should go to the rescue of Monro, he must leave some of his troops
+behind him to protect the lower posts from a possible French inroad by
+way of South Bay. Thus his power of aiding Monro was slight, so rashly
+had Loudon, intent on Louisburg, left this frontier open to attack. The
+defect, however, was as much in Webb himself as in his resources. His
+conduct in the past year had raised doubts of his personal courage; and
+this was the moment for answering them. Great as was the disparity of
+numbers, the emergency would have justified an attempt to save Monro at
+any risk. That officer sent him a hasty note, written at nine o'clock on
+the morning of the third, telling him that the French were in sight on
+the lake; and, in the next night, three rangers came to Fort Edward,
+bringing another short note, dated at six in the evening, announcing
+that the firing had begun, and closing with the words: "I believe you
+will think it proper to send a reinforcement as soon as possible." Now,
+if ever, was the time to move, before the fort was invested and access
+cut off. But Webb lay quiet, sending expresses to New England for help
+which could not possibly arrive in time. On the next night another note
+came from Monro to say that the French were upon him in great numbers,
+well supplied with artillery, but that the garrison were all in good
+spirits. "I make no doubt," wrote the hardpressed officer, "that you
+will soon send us a reinforcement;" and again on the same day: "We are
+very certain that a part of the enemy have got between you and us upon
+the high road, and would therefore be glad (if it meets with your
+approbation) the whole army was marched."[512] But Webb gave no
+sign.[513]
+
+[Footnote 511: Frye, _Journal of the Attack of Fort William Henry. Webb
+to Loudon, 1 Aug. 1757. Ibid., 5 Aug. 1757._]
+
+[Footnote 512: _Copy of four Letters from Lieutenant-Colonel Monro to
+Major-General Webb, enclosed in the General's Letter of the fifth of
+August to the Earl of Loudon_.]
+
+[Footnote 513: "The number of troops remaining under my Command at this
+place [_Fort Edward_], excluding the Posts on Hudson's River, amounts to
+but sixteen hundred men fit for duty, with which Army, so much inferior
+to that of the enemy, I did not think it prudent to pursue my first
+intentions of Marching to their Assistance." _Webb to Loudon, 5 Aug.
+1757._]
+
+When the skirmishing around the fort was over, La Corne, with a body of
+Indians, occupied the road that led to Fort Edward, and Lévis encamped
+hard by to support him, while Montcalm proceeded to examine the ground
+and settle his plan of attack. He made his way to the rear of the
+entrenched camp and reconnoitred it, hoping to carry it by assault; but
+it had a breastwork of stones and logs, and he thought the attempt too
+hazardous. The ground where he stood was that where Dieskau had been
+defeated; and as the fate of his predecessor was not of flattering
+augury, he resolved to besiege the fort in form.
+
+He chose for the site of his operations the ground now covered by the
+village of Caldwell. A little to the north of it was a ravine, beyond
+which he formed his main camp, while Lévis occupied a tract of dry
+ground beside the marsh, whence he could easily move to intercept
+succors from Fort Edward on the one hand, or repel a sortie from Fort
+William Henry on the other. A brook ran down the ravine and entered the
+lake at a small cove protected from the fire of the fort by a point of
+land; and at this place, still called Artillery Cove, Montcalm prepared
+to debark his cannon and mortars.
+
+Having made his preparations, he sent Fontbrune, one of his
+aides-de-camp, with a letter to Monro. "I owe it to humanity," he wrote,
+"to summon you to surrender. At present I can restrain the savages, and
+make them observe the terms of a capitulation, as I might not have power
+to do under other circumstances; and an obstinate defence on your part
+could only retard the capture of the place a few days, and endanger an
+unfortunate garrison which cannot be relieved, in consequence of the
+dispositions I have made. I demand a decisive answer within an hour."
+Monro replied that he and his soldiers would defend themselves to the
+last. While the flags of truce were flying, the Indians swarmed over the
+fields before the fort; and when they learned the result, an Abenaki
+chief shouted in broken French: "You won't surrender, eh! Fire away
+then, and fight your best; for if I catch you, you shall get no
+quarter." Monro emphasized his refusal by a general discharge of his
+cannon.
+
+The trenches were opened on the night of the fourth,--a task of extreme
+difficulty, as the ground was covered by a profusion of half-burned
+stumps, roots, branches, and fallen trunks. Eight hundred men toiled
+till daylight with pick, spade, and axe, while the cannon from the fort
+flashed through the darkness, and grape and round-shot whistled and
+screamed over their heads. Some of the English balls reached the camp
+beyond the ravine, and disturbed the slumbers of the officers off duty,
+as they lay wrapped in their blankets and bear-skins. Before daybreak
+the first parallel was made; a battery was nearly finished on the left,
+and another was begun on the right. The men now worked under cover, safe
+in their burrows; one gang relieved another, and the work went on all
+day.
+
+The Indians were far from doing what was expected of them. Instead of
+scouting in the direction of Fort Edward to learn the movements of the
+enemy and prevent surprise, they loitered about the camp and in the
+trenches, or amused themselves by firing at the fort from behind stumps
+and logs. Some, in imitation of the French, dug little trenches for
+themselves, in which they wormed their way towards the rampart, and now
+and then picked off an artillery-man, not without loss on their own
+side. On the afternoon of the fifth, Montcalm invited them to a council,
+gave them belts of wampum, and mildly remonstrated with them. "Why
+expose yourselves without necessity? I grieve bitterly over the losses
+that you have met, for the least among you is precious to me. No doubt
+it is a good thing to annoy the English; but that is not the main point.
+You ought to inform me of everything the enemy is doing, and always
+keep parties on the road between the two forts." And he gently hinted
+that their place was not in his camp, but in that of Lévis, where
+missionaries were provided for such of them as were Christians, and food
+and ammunition for them all. They promised, with excellent docility, to
+do everything he wished, but added that there was something on their
+hearts. Being encouraged to relieve themselves of the burden, they
+complained that they had not been consulted as to the management of the
+siege, but were expected to obey orders like slaves. "We know more about
+fighting in the woods than you," said their orator; "ask our advice, and
+you will be the better for it."[514]
+
+[Footnote 514: Bougainville, _Journal_.]
+
+Montcalm assured them that if they had been neglected, it was only
+through the hurry and confusion of the time; expressed high appreciation
+of their talents for bush-fighting, promised them ample satisfaction,
+and ended by telling them that in the morning they should hear the big
+guns. This greatly pleased them, for they were extremely impatient for
+the artillery to begin. About sunrise the battery of the left opened
+with eight heavy cannon and a mortar, joined, on the next morning, by
+the battery of the right, with eleven pieces more. The fort replied with
+spirit. The cannon thundered all day, and from a hundred peaks and crags
+the astonished wilderness roared back the sound. The Indians were
+delighted. They wanted to point the guns; and to humor them, they were
+now and then allowed to do so. Others lay behind logs and fallen trees,
+and yelled their satisfaction when they saw the splinters fly from the
+wooden rampart.
+
+Day after day the weary roar of the distant cannonade fell on the ears
+of Webb in his camp at Fort Edward. "I have not yet received the least
+reinforcement," he writes to Loudon; "this is the disagreeable situation
+we are at present in. The fort, by the heavy firing we hear from the
+lake, is still in our possession; but I fear it cannot long hold out
+against so warm a cannonading if I am not reinforced by a sufficient
+number of militia to march to their relief." The militia were coming;
+but it was impossible that many could reach him in less than a week.
+Those from New York alone were within call, and two thousand of them
+arrived soon after he sent Loudon the above letter. Then, by stripping
+all the forts below, he could bring together forty-five hundred men;
+while several French deserters assured him that Montcalm had nearly
+twelve thousand. To advance to the relief of Monro with a force so
+inferior, through a defile of rocks, forests, and mountains, made by
+nature for ambuscades,--and this too with troops who had neither the
+steadiness of regulars nor the bush-fighting skill of Indians,--was an
+enterprise for firmer nerve than his.
+
+He had already warned Monro to expect no help from him. At midnight of
+the fourth, Captain Bartman, his aide-de-camp, wrote: "The General has
+ordered me to acquaint you he does not think it prudent to attempt a
+junction or to assist you till reinforced by the militia of the
+colonies, for the immediate march of which repeated expresses have been
+sent." The letter then declared that the French were in complete
+possession of the road between the two forts, that a prisoner just
+brought in reported their force in men and cannon to be very great, and
+that, unless the militia came soon, Monro had better make what terms he
+could with the enemy.[515]
+
+[Footnote 515: Frye, in his _Journal_, gives the letter in full. A
+spurious translation of it is appended to a piece called _Jugement
+impartial sur les Opérations militaires en Canada_.]
+
+The chance was small that this letter would reach its destination; and
+in fact the bearer was killed by La Corne's Indians, who, in stripping
+the body, found the hidden paper, and carried it to the General.
+Montcalm kept it several days, till the English rampart was half
+battered down; and then, after saluting his enemy with a volley from all
+his cannon, he sent it with a graceful compliment to Monro. It was
+Bougainville who carried it, preceded by a drummer and a flag. He was
+met at the foot of the glacis, blindfolded, and led through the fort and
+along the edge of the lake to the entrenched camp, where Monro was at
+the time. "He returned many thanks," writes the emissary in his Diary,
+"for the courtesy of our nation, and protested his joy at having to do
+with so generous an enemy. This was his answer to the Marquis de
+Montcalm. Then they led me back, always with eyes blinded; and our
+batteries began to fire again as soon as we thought that the English
+grenadiers who escorted me had had time to re-enter the fort. I hope
+General Webb's letter may induce the English to surrender the
+sooner."[516]
+
+[Footnote 516: Bougainville, _Journal. Bougainville au Ministre, 19
+Août, 1757._]
+
+By this time the sappers had worked their way to the angle of the lake,
+where they were stopped by a marshy hollow, beyond which was a tract of
+high ground, reaching to the fort and serving as the garden of the
+garrison.[517] Logs and fascines in large quantities were thrown into
+the hollow, and hurdles were laid over them to form a causeway for the
+cannon. Then the sap was continued up the acclivity beyond, a trench was
+opened in the garden, and a battery begun, not two hundred and fifty
+yards from the fort. The Indians, in great number, crawled forward among
+the beans, maize, and cabbages, and lay there ensconced. On the night of
+the seventh, two men came out of the fort, apparently to reconnoitre,
+with a view to a sortie, when they were greeted by a general volley and
+a burst of yells which echoed among the mountains; followed by
+responsive whoops pealing through the darkness from the various camps
+and lurking-places of the savage warriors far and near.
+
+[Footnote 517: Now (1882) the site of Fort William Henry Hotel, with its
+grounds. The hollow is partly filled by the main road of Caldwell.]
+
+The position of the besieged was now deplorable. More than three hundred
+of them had been killed and wounded; small-pox was raging in the fort;
+the place was a focus of infection, and the casemates were crowded with
+the sick. A sortie from the entrenched camp and another from the fort
+had been repulsed with loss. All their large cannon and mortars had been
+burst, or disabled by shot; only seven small pieces were left fit for
+service;[518] and the whole of Montcalm's thirty-one cannon and fifteen
+mortars and howitzers would soon open fire, while the walls were already
+breached, and an assault was imminent. Through the night of the eighth
+they fired briskly from all their remaining pieces. In the morning the
+officers held a council, and all agreed to surrender if honorable terms
+could be had. A white flag was raised, a drum was beat, and
+Lieutenant-Colonel Young, mounted on horseback, for a shot in the foot
+had disabled him from walking, went, followed by a few soldiers, to the
+tent of Montcalm.
+
+[Footnote 518: Frye, _Journal_.]
+
+It was agreed that the English troops should march out with the honors
+of war, and be escorted to Fort Edward by a detachment of French troops;
+that they should not serve for eighteen months; and that all French
+prisoners captured in America since the war began should be given up
+within three months. The stores, munitions, and artillery were to be the
+prize of the victors, except one field-piece, which the garrison were to
+retain in recognition of their brave defence.
+
+Before signing the capitulation Montcalm called the Indian chiefs to
+council, and asked them to consent to the conditions, and promise to
+restrain their young warriors from any disorder. They approved
+everything and promised everything. The garrison then evacuated the
+fort, and marched to join their comrades in the entrenched camp, which
+was included in the surrender. No sooner were they gone than a crowd of
+Indians clambered through the embrasures in search of rum and plunder.
+All the sick men unable to leave their beds were instantly
+butchered.[519] "I was witness of this spectacle," says the missionary
+Roubaud; "I saw one of these barbarians come out of the casemates with a
+human head in his hand, from which the blood ran in streams, and which
+he paraded as if he had got the finest prize in the world." There was
+little left to plunder; and the Indians, joined by the more lawless of
+the Canadians, turned their attention to the entrenched camp, where all
+the English were now collected.
+
+[Footnote 519: _Attestation of William Arbuthnot, Captain in Frye's
+Regiment._]
+
+The French guard stationed there could not or would not keep out the
+rabble. By the advice of Montcalm the English stove their rum-barrels;
+but the Indians were drunk already with homicidal rage, and the glitter
+of their vicious eyes told of the devil within. They roamed among the
+tents, intrusive, insolent, their visages besmirched with war-paint;
+grinning like fiends as they handled, in anticipation of the knife, the
+long hair of cowering women, of whom, as well as of children, there were
+many in the camp, all crazed with fright. Since the last war the New
+England border population had regarded Indians with a mixture of
+detestation and horror. Their mysterious warfare of ambush and surprise,
+their midnight onslaughts, their butcheries, their burnings, and all
+their nameless atrocities, had been for years the theme of fireside
+story; and the dread they excited was deepened by the distrust and
+dejection of the time. The confusion in the camp lasted through the
+afternoon. "The Indians," says Bougainville, "wanted to plunder the
+chests of the English; the latter resisted; and there was fear that
+serious disorder would ensue. The Marquis de Montcalm ran thither
+immediately, and used every means to restore tranquillity: prayers,
+threats, caresses, interposition of the officers and interpreters who
+have some influence over these savages."[520] "We shall be but too happy
+if we can prevent a massacre. Detestable position! of which nobody who
+has not been in it can have any idea, and which makes victory itself a
+sorrow to the victors. The Marquis spared no efforts to prevent the
+rapacity of the savages and, I must say it, of certain persons
+associated with them, from resulting in something worse than plunder.
+At last, at nine o'clock in the evening, order seemed restored. The
+Marquis even induced the Indians to promise that, besides the escort
+agreed upon in the capitulation, two chiefs for each tribe should
+accompany the English on their way to Fort Edward."[521] He also ordered
+La Corne and the other Canadian officers attached to the Indians to see
+that no violence took place. He might well have done more. In view of
+the disorders of the afternoon, it would not have been too much if he
+had ordered the whole body of regular troops, whom alone he could trust
+for the purpose, to hold themselves ready to move to the spot in case of
+outbreak, and shelter their defeated foes behind a hedge of bayonets.
+
+[Footnote 520: _Bougainville au Ministre, 19 Août, 1757._]
+
+[Footnote 521: Bougainville, _Journal_.]
+
+Bougainville was not to see what ensued; for Montcalm now sent him to
+Montreal, as a special messenger to carry news of the victory. He
+embarked at ten o'clock. Returning daylight found him far down the lake;
+and as he looked on its still bosom flecked with mists, and its quiet
+mountains sleeping under the flush of dawn, there was nothing in the
+wild tranquillity of the scene to suggest the tragedy which even then
+was beginning on the shore he had left behind.
+
+The English in their camp had passed a troubled night, agitated by
+strange rumors. In the morning something like a panic seized them; for
+they distrusted not the Indians only, but the Canadians. In their haste
+to be gone they got together at daybreak, before the escort of three
+hundred regulars had arrived. They had their muskets, but no ammunition;
+and few or none of the provincials had bayonets. Early as it was, the
+Indians were on the alert; and, indeed, since midnight great numbers of
+them had been prowling about the skirts of the camp, showing, says
+Colonel Frye, "more than usual malice in their looks." Seventeen wounded
+men of his regiment lay in huts, unable to join the march. In the
+preceding afternoon Miles Whitworth, the regimental surgeon, had passed
+them over to the care of a French surgeon, according to an agreement
+made at the time of the surrender; but, the Frenchman being absent, the
+other remained with them attending to their wants. The French surgeon
+had caused special sentinels to be posted for their protection. These
+were now removed, at the moment when they were needed most; upon which,
+about five o'clock in the morning, the Indians entered the huts,
+dragged out the inmates, and tomahawked and scalped them all, before the
+eyes of Whitworth, and in presence of La Corne and other Canadian
+officers, as well as of a French guard stationed within forty feet of
+the spot; and, declares the surgeon under oath, "none, either officer or
+soldier, protected the said wounded men."[522] The opportune butchery
+relieved them of a troublesome burden.
+
+[Footnote 522: _Affidavit of Miles Whitworth_. See Appendix F.]
+
+A scene of plundering now began. The escort had by this time arrived,
+and Monro complained to the officers that the capitulation was broken;
+but got no other answer than advice to give up the baggage to the
+Indians in order to appease them. To this the English at length agreed;
+but it only increased the excitement of the mob. They demanded rum; and
+some of the soldiers, afraid to refuse, gave it to them from their
+canteens, thus adding fuel to the flame. When, after much difficulty,
+the column at last got out of the camp and began to move along the road
+that crossed the rough plain between the entrenchment and the forest,
+the Indians crowded upon them, impeded their march, snatched caps,
+coats, and weapons from men and officers, tomahawked those that
+resisted, and, seizing upon shrieking women and children, dragged them
+off or murdered them on the spot. It is said that some of the
+interpreters secretly fomented the disorder.[523] Suddenly there rose
+the screech of the war-whoop. At this signal of butchery, which was
+given by Abenaki Christians from the mission of the Penobscot,[524] a
+mob of savages rushed upon the New Hampshire men at the rear of the
+column, and killed or dragged away eighty of them.[525] A frightful
+tumult ensued, when Montcalm, Lévis, Bourlamaque, and many other French
+officers, who had hastened from their camp on the first news of
+disturbance, threw themselves among the Indians, and by promises and
+threats tried to allay their frenzy. "Kill me, but spare the English who
+are under my protection," exclaimed Montcalm. He took from one of them a
+young officer whom the savage had seized; upon which several other
+Indians immediately tomahawked their prisoners, lest they too should be
+taken from them. One writer says that a French grenadier was killed and
+two wounded in attempting to restore order; but the statement is
+doubtful. The English seemed paralyzed, and fortunately did not attempt
+a resistance, which, without ammunition as they were, would have ended
+in a general massacre. Their broken column straggled forward in wild
+disorder, amid the din of whoops and shrieks, till they reached the
+French advance-guard, which consisted of Canadians; and here they
+demanded protection from the officers, who refused to give it, telling
+them that they must take to the woods and shift for themselves. Frye was
+seized by a number of Indians, who, brandishing spears and tomahawks,
+threatened him with death and tore off his clothing, leaving nothing but
+breeches, shoes, and shirt. Repelled by the officers of the guard, he
+made for the woods. A Connecticut soldier who was present says of him
+that he leaped upon an Indian who stood in his way, disarmed and killed
+him, and then escaped; but Frye himself does not mention the incident.
+Captain Burke, also of the Massachusetts regiment, was stripped, after a
+violent struggle, of all his clothes; then broke loose, gained the
+woods, spent the night shivering in the thick grass of a marsh, and on
+the next day reached Fort Edward. Jonathan Carver, a provincial
+volunteer, declares that, when the tumult was at its height, he saw
+officers of the French army walking about at a little distance and
+talking with seeming unconcern. Three or four Indians seized him,
+brandished their tomahawks over his head, and tore off most of his
+clothes, while he vainly claimed protection from a sentinel, who called
+him an English dog, and violently pushed him back among his tormentors.
+Two of them were dragging him towards the neighboring swamp, when an
+English officer, stripped of everything but his scarlet breeches, ran
+by. One of Carver's captors sprang upon him, but was thrown to the
+ground; whereupon the other went to the aid of his comrade and drove his
+tomahawk into the back of the Englishman. As Carver turned to run, an
+English boy, about twelve years old, clung to him and begged for help.
+They ran on together for a moment, when the boy was seized, dragged from
+his protector, and, as Carver judged by his shrieks, was murdered. He
+himself escaped to the forest, and after three days of famine reached
+Fort Edward.
+
+[Footnote 523: This is stated by Pouchot and Bougainville; the latter of
+whom confirms the testimony of the English witnesses, that Canadian
+officers present did nothing to check the Indians.]
+
+[Footnote 524: See note, end of chapter.]
+
+[Footnote 525: Belknap, _History of New Hampshire_, says that eighty
+were killed. Governor Wentworth, writing immediately after the event,
+says "killed or captivated."]
+
+The bonds of discipline seem for the time to have been completely
+broken; for while Montcalm and his chief officers used every effort to
+restore order, even at the risk of their lives, many other officers,
+chiefly of the militia, failed atrociously to do their duty. How many
+English were killed it is impossible to tell with exactness. Roubaud
+says that he saw forty or fifty corpses scattered about the field. Lévis
+says fifty; which does not include the sick and wounded before murdered
+in the camp and fort. It is certain that six or seven hundred persons
+were carried off, stripped, and otherwise maltreated. Montcalm succeeded
+in recovering more than four hundred of them in the course of the day;
+and many of the French officers did what they could to relieve their
+wants by buying back from their captors the clothing that had been torn
+from them. Many of the fugitives had taken refuge in the fort, whither
+Monro himself had gone to demand protection for his followers; and here
+Roubaud presently found a crowd of half-frenzied women, crying in
+anguish for husbands and children. All the refugees and redeemed
+prisoners were afterwards conducted to the entrenched camp, where food
+and shelter were provided for them and a strong guard set for their
+protection until the fifteenth, when they were sent under an escort to
+Fort Edward. Here cannon had been fired at intervals to guide those who
+had fled to the woods, whence they came dropping in from day to day,
+half dead with famine.
+
+On the morning after the massacre the Indians decamped in a body and set
+out for Montreal, carrying with them their plunder and some two hundred
+prisoners, who, it is said, could not be got out of their hands. The
+soldiers were set to the work of demolishing the English fort; and the
+task occupied several days. The barracks were torn down, and the huge
+pine-logs of the rampart thrown into a heap. The dead bodies that filled
+the casemates were added to the mass, and fire was set to the whole. The
+mighty funeral pyre blazed all night. Then, on the sixteenth, the army
+reimbarked. The din of ten thousand combatants, the rage, the terror,
+the agony, were gone; and no living thing was left but the wolves that
+gathered from the mountains to feast upon the dead.[526]
+
+[Footnote 526: The foregoing chapter rests largely on evidence never
+before brought to light, including the minute _Journal_ of
+Bougainville,--document which can hardly be commended too much,--the
+correspondence of Webb, a letter of Colonel Frye, written just after the
+massacre, and a journal of the siege, sent by him to Governor Pownall as
+his official report. Extracts from these, as well as from the affidavit
+of Dr. Whitworth, which is also new evidence, are given in Appendix F.
+
+The Diary of Malartic and the correspondence of Montcalm, Lévis,
+Vaudreuil, and Bigot, also throw light on the campaign, as well as
+numerous reports of the siege, official and semi-official. The long
+letter of the Jesuit Roubaud, printed anonymously in the _Lettres
+Édifiantes et Curieuses_, gives a remarkably vivid account of what he
+saw. He was an intelligent person, who may be trusted where he has no
+motive for lying. Curious particulars about him will be found in a paper
+called, _The deplorable Case of Mr. Roubaud_, printed in the _Historical
+Magazine, Second Series_, VIII. 282. Compare Verreau, _Report on
+Canadian Archives_, 1874.
+
+Impressions of the massacre at Fort William Henry have hitherto been
+derived chiefly from the narrative of Captain Jonathan Carver, in his
+_Travels_. He has discredited himself by his exaggeration of the number
+killed; but his account of what he himself saw tallies with that of the
+other witnesses. He is outdone in exaggeration by an anonymous French
+writer of the time, who seems rather pleased at the occurrence, and
+affirms that all the English were killed except seven hundred, these
+last being captured, so that none escaped (_Nouvelles du Canada envoyées
+de Montréal, Août_, 1757). Carver puts killed and captured together at
+fifteen hundred. Vaudreuil, who always makes light of Indian
+barbarities, goes to the other extreme, and avers that no more than five
+or six were killed. Lévis and Roubaud, who saw everything, and were
+certain not to exaggerate the number, give the most trustworthy evidence
+on this point. The capitulation, having been broken by the allies of
+France, was declared void by the British Government.
+
+_The Signal of Butchery_. Montcalm, Bougainville, and several others say
+that the massacre was begun by the Abenakis of Panaouski. Father Martin,
+in quoting the letter in which Montcalm makes this statement, inserts
+the word _idolâtres_, which is not in the original. Dussieux and
+O'Callaghan give the passage correctly. This Abenaki band, ancestors of
+the present Penobscots, were no idolaters, but had been converted more
+than half a century. In the official list of the Indian allies they are
+set down among the Christians. Roubaud, who had charge of them during
+the expedition, speaks of these and other converts with singular candor:
+"Vous avez dû vous apercevoir ... que nos sauvages, pour être Chrétiens,
+n'en sont pas plus irrépréhensibles dans leur conduite."]
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 16
+
+1757, 1758
+
+A Winter of Discontent
+
+
+Loudon, on his way back from Halifax, was at sea off the coast of Nova
+Scotia when a despatch-boat from Governor Pownall of Massachusetts
+startled him with news that Fort William Henry was attacked; and a few
+days after he learned by another boat that the fort was taken and the
+capitulation "inhumanly and villanously broken." On this he sent Webb
+orders to hold the enemy in check without risking a battle till he
+should himself arrive. "I am on the way," these were his words, "with a
+force sufficient to turn the scale, with God's assistance; and then I
+hope we shall teach the French to comply with the laws of nature and
+humanity. For although I abhor barbarity, the knowledge I have of Mr.
+Vaudreuil's behavior when in Louisiana, from his own letters in my
+possession, and the murders committed at Oswego and now at Fort William
+Henry, will oblige me to make those gentlemen sick of such inhuman
+villany whenever it is in my power." He reached New York on the last day
+of August, and heard that the French had withdrawn. He nevertheless sent
+his troops up the Hudson, thinking, he says, that he might still attack
+Ticonderoga; a wild scheme, which he soon abandoned, if he ever
+seriously entertained it.[527]
+
+[Footnote 527: _Loudon to Webb, 20 Aug. 1757. London to Holdernesse,
+Oct. 1757. Loudon to Pownall, 16_ [_18?_] _Aug. 1757_. A passage in this
+last letter, in which Loudon says that he shall, if prevented by
+head-winds from getting into New York, disembark the troops on Long
+Island, is perverted by that ardent partisan, William Smith, the
+historian of New York, into the absurd declaration "that he should
+encamp on Long Island for the defence of the continent."]
+
+Webb had remained at Fort Edward in mortal dread of attack. Johnson had
+joined him with a band of Mohawks; and on the day when Fort William
+Henry surrendered there had been some talk of attempting to throw
+succors into it by night. Then came the news of its capture; and now,
+when it was too late, tumultuous mobs of militia came pouring in from
+the neighboring provinces. In a few days thousands of them were
+bivouacked on the fields about Fort Edward, doing nothing, disgusted
+and mutinous, declaring that they were ready to fight, but not to lie
+still without tents, blankets, or kettles. Webb writes on the fourteenth
+that most of those from New York had deserted, threatening to kill their
+officers if they tried to stop them. Delancey ordered them to be fired
+upon. A sergeant was shot, others were put in arrest, and all was
+disorder till the seventeenth; when Webb, learning that the French were
+gone, sent them back to their homes.[528]
+
+[Footnote 528: _Delancey to_ [_Holdernesse?_], _24 Aug. 1757._]
+
+Close on the fall of Fort William Henry came crazy rumors of disaster,
+running like wildfire through the colonies. The number and ferocity of
+the enemy were grossly exaggerated; there was a cry that they would
+seize Albany and New York itself;[529] while it was reported that Webb,
+as much frightened as the rest, was for retreating to the Highlands of
+the Hudson.[530] This was the day after the capitulation, when a part
+only of the militia had yet appeared. If Montcalm had seized the moment,
+and marched that afternoon to Fort Edward, it is not impossible that in
+the confusion he might have carried it by a _coup-de-main._
+
+[Footnote 529: _Captain Christie to Governor Wentworth, 11 Aug. 1757.
+Ibid., to Governor Pownall, same date._]
+
+[Footnote 530: Smith, _Hist. N.Y._, Part II. 254.]
+
+Here was an opportunity for Vaudreuil, and he did not fail to use it.
+Jealous of his rival's exploit, he spared no pains to tarnish it;
+complaining that Montcalm had stopped half way on the road to success,
+and, instead of following his instructions, had contented himself with
+one victory when he should have gained two. But the Governor had
+enjoined upon him as a matter of the last necessity that the Canadians
+should be at their homes before September to gather the crops, and he
+would have been the first to complain had the injunction been
+disregarded. To besiege Fort Edward was impossible, as Montcalm had no
+means of transporting cannon thither; and to attack Webb without them
+was a risk which he had not the rashness to incur.
+
+It was Bougainville who first brought Vaudreuil the news of the success
+on Lake George. A day or two after his arrival, the Indians, who had
+left the army after the massacre, appeared at Montreal, bringing about
+two hundred English prisoners. The Governor rebuked them for breaking
+the capitulation, on which the heathen savages of the West declared that
+it was not their fault, but that of the converted Indians, who, in
+fact, had first raised the war-whoop. Some of the prisoners were
+presently bought from them at the price of two kegs of brandy each; and
+the inevitable consequences followed.
+
+"I thought," writes Bougainville, "that the Governor would have told
+them they should have neither provisions nor presents till all the
+English were given up; that he himself would have gone to their huts and
+taken the prisoners from them; and that the inhabitants would be
+forbidden, under the severest penalties, from selling or giving them
+brandy. I saw the contrary; and my soul shuddered at the sights my eyes
+beheld. On the fifteenth, at two o'clock, in the presence of the whole
+town, they killed one of the prisoners, put him into the kettle, and
+forced his wretched countrymen to eat of him." The Intendant Bigot, the
+friend of the Governor, confirms this story; and another French writer
+says that they "compelled mothers to eat the flesh of their
+children."[531] Bigot declares that guns, canoes, and other presents
+were given to the Western tribes before they left Montreal; and he adds,
+"they must be sent home satisfied at any cost." Such were the pains
+taken to preserve allies who were useful chiefly through the terror
+inspired by their diabolical cruelties. This time their ferocity cost
+them dear. They had dug up and scalped the corpses in the graveyard of
+Fort William Henry, many of which were remains of victims of the
+small-pox; and the savages caught the disease, which is said to have
+made great havoc among them.[532]
+
+[Footnote 531: "En chemin faisant et même en entrant à Montréal ils les
+ont mangés et fait manger aux autres prisonniers." _Bigot au Ministre,
+24 Août, 1757._
+
+"Des sauvages out fait manger aux mères la chair de leurs enfants."
+_Jugement impartial sur les Opérations militaires en Canada_. A French
+diary kept in Canada at this time, and captured at sea, is cited by
+Hutchinson as containing similar statements.]
+
+[Footnote 532: One of these corpses was that of Richard Rogers, brother
+of the noted partisan Robert Rogers. He had died of small-pox some time
+before. Rogers, _Journals_, 55, _note_.]
+
+Vaudreuil, in reporting what he calls "my capture of Fort William
+Henry," takes great credit to himself for his "generous procedures"
+towards the English prisoners; alluding, it seems, to his having bought
+some of them from the Indians with the brandy which was sure to cause
+the murder of others.[533] His obsequiousness to his red allies did not
+cease with permitting them to kill and devour before his eyes those whom
+he was bound in honor and duty to protect. "He let them do what they
+pleased," says a French contemporary; "they were seen roaming about
+Montreal, knife in hand, threatening everybody, and often insulting
+those they met. When complaint was made, he said nothing. Far from it;
+instead of reproaching them, he loaded them with gifts, in the belief
+that their cruelty would then relent."[534]
+
+[Footnote 533: _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 15 Sept. 1757._]
+
+[Footnote 534: _Mémoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760._]
+
+Nevertheless, in about a fortnight all, or nearly all, the surviving
+prisoners were bought out of their clutches; and then, after a final
+distribution of presents and a grand debauch at La Chine, the whole
+savage rout paddled for their villages.
+
+The campaign closed in November with a partisan exploit on the Mohawk.
+Here, at a place called German Flats, on the farthest frontier, there
+was a thriving settlement of German peasants from the Palatinate, who
+were so ill-disposed towards the English that Vaudreuil had had good
+hope of stirring them to revolt, while at the same time persuading their
+neighbors, the Oneida Indians, to take part with France.[535] As his
+measures to this end failed, he resolved to attack them. Therefore, at
+three o'clock in the morning of the twelfth of November, three hundred
+colony troops, Canadians and Indians, under an officer named Belêtre,
+wakened the unhappy peasants by a burst of yells, and attacked the small
+picket forts which they had built as places of refuge. These were taken
+one by one and set on fire. The sixty dwellings of the settlement, with
+their barns and outhouses, were all burned, forty or fifty of the
+inhabitants were killed, and about three times that number, chiefly
+women and children, were made prisoners, including Johan Jost Petrie,
+the magistrate of the place. Fort Herkimer was not far off, with a
+garrison of two hundred men under Captain Townshend, who at the first
+alarm sent out a detachment too weak to arrest the havoc; while Belêtre,
+unable to carry off his booty, set on his followers to the work of
+destruction, killed a great number of hogs, sheep, cattle, and horses,
+and then made a hasty retreat. Lord Howe, pushing up the river from
+Schenectady with troops and militia, found nothing but an abandoned
+slaughter-field. Vaudreuil reported the affair to the Court, and summed
+up the results with pompous egotism: "I have ruined the plans of the
+English; I have disposed the Five Nations to attack them; I have carried
+consternation and terror into all those parts."[536]
+
+[Footnote 535: _Dépêches de Vaudreuil, 1757._]
+
+[Footnote 536: _Loudon to Pitt, 14 Feb. 1758. Vaudreuil au Ministre, 12
+Fév. 1758. Ibid., 28 Nov. 1758._ Bougainville, _Journal. Summary of M.
+de Belêtre's Campaign_, in _N.Y. Col. Docs._, X. 672. Extravagant
+reports of the havoc made were sent to France. It was pretended that
+three thousand cattle, three thousand sheep (Vaudreuil says four
+thousand), and from five hundred to fifteen hundred horses were
+destroyed, with other personal property to the amount of 1,500,000
+livres. These official falsehoods are contradicted in a letter from
+Quebec, _Daine au Maréchal de Belleisle, 19 Mai, 1758_. Levis says that
+the whole population of the settlement, men, women, and children, was
+not above three hundred.]
+
+Montcalm, his summer work over, went to Montreal; and thence in
+September to Quebec, a place more to his liking. "Come as soon as you
+can," he wrote to Bourlamaque, "and I will tell a certain fair lady how
+eager you are." Even Quebec was no paradise for him; and he writes again
+to the same friend: "My heart and my stomach are both ill at ease, the
+latter being the worse." To his wife he says: "The price of everything
+is rising. I am ruining myself; I owe the treasurer twelve thousand
+francs. I long for peace and for you. In spite of the public distress,
+we have balls and furious gambling." In February he returned to Montreal
+in a sleigh on the ice of the St. Lawrence,--a mode of travelling which
+he describes as cold but delicious. Montreal pleased him less than ever,
+especially as he was not in favor at what he calls the Court, meaning
+the circle of the Governor-General. "I find this place so amusing," he
+writes ironically to Bourlamaque, "that I wish Holy Week could be
+lengthened, to give me a pretext for neither making nor receiving
+visits, staying at home, and dining there almost alone. Burn all my
+letters, as I do yours." And in the next week: "Lent and devotion have
+upset my stomach and given me a cold; which does not prevent me from
+having the Governor-General at dinner to-day to end his lenten fast,
+according to custom here." Two days after he announces: "To-day a grand
+dinner at Martel's; twenty-three persons, all big-wigs (_les grosses
+perruques_); no ladies. We still have got to undergo those of Péan,
+Deschambault, and the Chevalier de Lévis. I spend almost every evening
+in my chamber, the place I like best, and where I am least bored."
+
+With the opening spring there were changes in the modes of amusement.
+Picnics began, Vaudreuil and his wife being often of the party, as too
+was Lévis. The Governor also made visits of compliment at the houses of
+the seigniorial proprietors along the river; "very much," says Montcalm,
+as "Henri IV. did to the bourgeois notables of Paris. I live as usual,
+fencing in the morning, dining, and passing the evening at home or at
+the Governor's. Péan has gone up to La Chine to spend six days with the
+reigning sultana [_Péan's wife, mistress of Bigot_]. As for me, my
+_ennui_ increases. I don't know what to do, or say, or read, or where to
+go; and I think that at the end of the next campaign I shall ask
+bluntly, blindly, for my recall, only because I am bored."[537]
+
+[Footnote 537: _Montcalm à Bourlamaque_, 22 _Mai_, 1758.]
+
+His relations with Vaudreuil were a constant annoyance to him,
+notwithstanding the mask of mutual civility. "I never," he tells his
+mother, "ask for a place in the colony troops for anybody. You need not
+be an Oedipus to guess this riddle. Here are four lines from
+Corneille:--
+
+   "'Mon crime véritable est d'avoir aujourd'hui
+    Plus de nom que ... [_Vaudreuil_], plus de vertus que lui,
+    Et c'est de là que part cette secrète haine
+    Que le temps ne rendra que plus forte et plus pleine.'
+
+Nevertheless I live here on good terms with everybody, and do my best to
+serve the King. If they could but do without me; if they could but
+spring some trap on me, or if I should happen to meet with some check!"
+
+Vaudreuil meanwhile had written to the Court in high praise of Lévis,
+hinting that he, and not Montcalm, ought to have the chief command.[538]
+
+[Footnote 538: _Vaudreuil au Ministre de la Marine, 16 Sept. 1757.
+Ibid., au Ministre de la Guerre, même date_.]
+
+Under the hollow gayeties of the ruling class lay a great public
+distress, which broke at last into riot. Towards midwinter no flour was
+to be had in Montreal; and both soldiers and people were required to
+accept a reduced ration, partly of horse-flesh. A mob gathered before
+the Governor's house, and a deputation of women beset him, crying out
+that the horse was the friend of man, and that religion forbade him to
+be eaten. In reply he threatened them with imprisonment and hanging; but
+with little effect, and the crowd dispersed, only to stir up the
+soldiers quartered in the houses of the town. The colony regulars,
+ill-disciplined at the best, broke into mutiny, and excited the
+battalion of Béarn to join them. Vaudreuil was helpless; Montcalm was in
+Quebec; and the task of dealing with the mutineers fell upon Lévis, who
+proved equal to the crisis, took a high tone, threatened death to the
+first soldier who should refuse horse-flesh, assured them at the same
+time that he ate it every day himself, and by a characteristic mingling
+of authority and tact, quelled the storm.[539]
+
+[Footnote 539: Bougainville, _Journal. Montcalm à Mirepoix, 20 Avril,
+1758_. Lévis, _Journal de la Guerre du Canada_.]
+
+The prospects of the next campaign began to open. Captain Pouchot had
+written from Niagara that three thousand savages were waiting to be let
+loose against the English borders. "What a scourge!" exclaims
+Bougainville. "Humanity groans at being forced to use such monsters.
+What can be done against an invisible enemy, who strikes and vanishes,
+swift as the lightning? It is the destroying angel." Captain Hebecourt
+kept watch and ward at Ticonderoga, begirt with snow and ice, and much
+plagued by English rangers, who sometimes got into the ditch
+itself.[540] This was to reconnoitre the place in preparation for a
+winter attack which Loudon had planned, but which, like the rest of his
+schemes, fell to the ground.[541] Towards midwinter a band of these
+intruders captured two soldiers and butchered some fifteen cattle close
+to the fort, leaving tied to the horns of one of them a note addressed
+to the commandant in these terms: "I am obliged to you, sir, for the
+rest you have allowed me to take and the fresh meat you have sent me. I
+shall take good care of my prisoners. My compliments to the Marquis of
+Montcalm." Signed, Rogers.[542]
+
+[Footnote 540: _Montcalm à Bourlamaque, 28 Mars, 1758_.]
+
+[Footnote 541: _Loudon to Pitt, 14 Feb. 1758_.]
+
+[Footnote 542: _Journal de ce qui s'est passé en Canada, 1757, 1758_.
+Compare Rogers, _Journals_, 72-75.]
+
+A few weeks later Hebecourt had his revenge. About the middle of March a
+report came to Montreal that a large party of rangers had been cut to
+pieces a few miles from Ticonderoga, and that Rogers himself was among
+the slain. This last announcement proved false; but the rangers had
+suffered a crushing defeat. Colonel Haviland, commanding at Fort Edward,
+sent a hundred and eighty of them, men and officers, on a scouting party
+towards Ticonderoga; and Captain Pringle and Lieutenant Roche, of the
+twenty-seventh regiment, joined them as volunteers, no doubt through a
+love of hardy adventure, which was destined to be fully satisfied.
+Rogers commanded the whole. They passed down Lake George on the ice
+under cover of night, and then, as they neared the French outposts,
+pursued their way by land behind Rogers Rock and the other mountains of
+the western shore. On the preceding day, the twelfth of March, Hebecourt
+had received a reinforcement of two hundred Mission Indians and a body
+of Canadians. The Indians had no sooner arrived than, though nominally
+Christians, they consulted the spirits, by whom they were told that the
+English were coming. On this they sent out scouts, who came back
+breathless, declaring that they had found a great number of snow-shoe
+tracks. The superhuman warning being thus confirmed, the whole body of
+Indians, joined by a band of Canadians and a number of volunteers from
+the regulars, set out to meet the approaching enemy, and took their way
+up the valley of Trout Brook, a mountain gorge that opens from the west
+upon the valley of Ticonderoga.
+
+Towards three o'clock on the afternoon of that day Rogers had reached a
+point nearly west of the mountain that bears his name. The rough and
+rocky ground was buried four feet in snow, and all around stood the gray
+trunks of the forest, bearing aloft their skeleton arms and tangled
+intricacy of leafless twigs. Close on the right was a steep hill, and at
+a little distance on the left was the brook, lost under ice and snow. A
+scout from the front told Rogers that a party of Indians was approaching
+along the bed of the frozen stream, on which he ordered his men to halt,
+face to that side, and advance cautiously. The Indians soon appeared,
+and received a fire that killed some of them and drove back the rest in
+confusion.
+
+Not suspecting that they were but an advance-guard, about half the
+rangers dashed in pursuit, and were soon met by the whole body of the
+enemy. The woods rang with yells and musketry. In a few minutes some
+fifty of the pursuers were shot down, and the rest driven back in
+disorder upon their comrades. Rogers formed them all on the slope of the
+hill; and here they fought till sunset with stubborn desperation, twice
+repulsing the overwhelming numbers of the assailants, and thwarting all
+their efforts to gain the heights in the rear. The combatants were often
+not twenty yards apart, and sometimes they were mixed together. At
+length a large body of Indians succeeded in turning the right flank of
+the rangers. Lieutenant Phillips and a few men were sent by Rogers to
+oppose the movement; but they quickly found themselves surrounded, and
+after a brave defence surrendered on a pledge of good treatment. Rogers
+now advised the volunteers, Pringle and Roche, to escape while there was
+time, and offered them a sergeant as guide; but they gallantly resolved
+to stand by him. Eight officers and more than a hundred rangers lay dead
+and wounded in the snow. Evening was near and the forest was darkening
+fast, when the few survivors broke and fled. Rogers with about twenty
+followers escaped up the mountain; and gathering others about him, made
+a running fight against the Indian pursuers, reached Lake George, not
+without fresh losses, and after two days of misery regained Fort Edward
+with the remnant of his band. The enemy on their part suffered heavily,
+the chief loss falling on the Indians; who, to revenge themselves,
+murdered all the wounded and nearly all the prisoners, and tying
+Lieutenant Phillips and his men to trees, hacked them to pieces.
+
+Captain Pringle and Lieutenant Roche had become separated from the other
+fugitives; and, ignorant of woodcraft, they wandered by moonlight amid
+the desolation of rocks and snow, till early in the night they met a man
+whom they knew as a servant of Rogers, and who said that he could guide
+them to Fort Edward. One of them had lost his snow-shoes in the fight;
+and, crouching over a miserable fire of broken sticks, they worked till
+morning to make a kind of substitute with forked branches, twigs, and a
+few leather strings. They had no hatchet to cut firewood, no blankets,
+no overcoats, and no food except part of a Bologna sausage and a little
+ginger which Pringle had brought with him. There was no game; not even a
+squirrel was astir; and their chief sustenance was juniper-berries and
+the inner bark of trees. But their worst calamity was the helplessness
+of their guide. His brain wandered; and while always insisting that he
+knew the country well, he led them during four days hither and thither
+among a labyrinth of nameless mountains, clambering over rocks, wading
+through snowdrifts, struggling among fallen trees, till on the fifth day
+they saw with despair that they had circled back to their own
+starting-point. On the next morning, when they were on the ice of Lake
+George, not far from Rogers Rock, a blinding storm of sleet and snow
+drove in their faces. Spent as they were, it was death to stop; and
+bending their heads against the blast, they fought their way forward,
+now on the ice, and now in the adjacent forest, till in the afternoon
+the storm ceased, and they found themselves on the bank of an unknown
+stream. It was the outlet of the lake; for they had wandered into the
+valley of Ticonderoga, and were not three miles from the French fort.
+In crossing the torrent Pringle lost his gun, and was near losing his
+life. All three of the party were drenched to the skin; and, becoming
+now for the first time aware of where they were, they resolved on
+yielding themselves prisoners to save their lives. Night, however, again
+found them in the forest. Their guide became delirious, saw visions of
+Indians all around, and, murmuring incoherently, straggled off a little
+way, seated himself in the snow, and was soon dead. The two officers,
+themselves but half alive, walked all night round a tree to keep the
+blood in motion. In the morning, again toiling on, they presently saw
+the fort across the intervening snowfields, and approached it, waving a
+white handkerchief. Several French officers dashed towards them at full
+speed, and reached them in time to save them from the clutches of the
+Indians, whose camps were near at hand. They were kindly treated,
+recovered from the effects of their frightful ordeal, and were
+afterwards exchanged. Pringle lived to old age, and died in 1800, senior
+major-general of the British army.[543]
+
+[Footnote 543: Rogers, two days after reaching Fort Edward, made a
+detailed report of the fight, which was printed in the _New Hampshire
+Gazette_ and other provincial papers. It is substantially incorporated
+in his published _Journals_, which also contain a long letter from
+Pringle to Colonel Haviland, dated at Carillon (Ticonderoga), 28 March,
+and giving an excellent account of his and Roche's adventures. It was
+sent by a flag of truce, which soon after arrived from Fort Edward with
+a letter for Vaudreuil. The French accounts of the fight are _Hebecourt
+à [Vaudreuil?], 15 Mars, 1758. Montcalm au Ministre de la Guerre, 10
+Avril, 1758_. Bougainville, _Journal. Relation de l'Affaire de Roger, 19
+Mars_, 1758. _Autre Relation, même date_. Lévis, _Journal_. According to
+Lévis, the French force consisted of 250 Indians and Canadians, and a
+number of officers, cadets, and soldiers. Roger puts it at 700. Most of
+the French writers put the force of the rangers, correctly, at about
+180. Rogers reports his loss at 125. None of the wounded seem to have
+escaped, being either murdered after the fight, or killed by exposure in
+the woods. The Indians brought in 144 scalps, having no doubt divided
+some of them, after their ingenious custom. Rogers threw off his
+overcoat during the fight, and it was found on the field, with his
+commission in the pocket; whence the report of his death. There is an
+unsupported tradition that he escaped by sliding on his snow-shoes down
+a precipice of Rogers Rock.]
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 17
+
+1753-1760
+
+Bigot
+
+
+At this stormy epoch of Canadian history the sinister figure of the
+Intendant Bigot moves conspicuous on the scene. Not that he was
+answerable for all the manifold corruption that infected the colony, for
+much of it was rife before his time, and had a vitality of its own; but
+his office and character made him the centre of it, and, more than any
+other man, he marshalled and organized the forces of knavery.
+
+In the dual government of Canada the Governor represented the King and
+commanded the troops; while the Intendant was charged with trade,
+finance, justice, and all other departments of civil administration. In
+former times the two functionaries usually quarrelled; but between
+Vaudreuil and Bigot there was perfect harmony.
+
+François Bigot, in the words of his biographer, was "born in the bosom
+of the magistracy," both his father and his grandfather having held
+honorable positions in the parliament of Bordeaux.[544] In appearance he
+was not prepossessing, though his ugly, pimpled face was joined with
+easy and agreeable manners. In spite of indifferent health, he was
+untiring both in pleasure and in work, a skilful man of business, of
+great official experience, energetic, good-natured, free-handed, ready
+to oblige his friends and aid them in their needs at the expense of the
+King, his master; fond of social enjoyments, lavish in hospitality.
+
+[Footnote 544: _Procès de Bigot, Cadet, et autres, Mémoire pour Messire
+François Bigot, accusé, contre Monsieur le Procureur-Général du Roi,
+accusateur._]
+
+A year or two before the war began, the engineer Franquet was sent from
+France to strengthen Louisbourg and inspect the defences of Canada. He
+kept a copious journal, full of curious observation, and affording
+bright glimpses not only of the social life of the Intendant, but of
+Canadian society in the upper or official class. Thus, among various
+matters of the kind, he gives us the following. Bigot, who was in
+Quebec, had occasion to go to Montreal to meet the Governor; and this
+official journey was turned into a pleasure excursion, of which the King
+paid all the costs. Those favored with invitations, a privilege highly
+prized, were Franquet, with seven or eight military officers and a
+corresponding number of ladies, including the wife of Major Pean, of
+whom Bigot was enamoured. A chief steward, cooks, servants, and other
+attendants, followed the party. The guests had been requested to send
+their portmanteaus to the Intendant's Palace six days before, that they
+might be sent forward on sledges along with bedding, table, service,
+cooking utensils, and numberless articles of comfort and luxury. Orders
+were given to the inhabitants along the way, on pain of imprisonment, to
+level the snowdrifts and beat the road smooth with ox-teams, as also to
+provide relays of horses. It is true that they were well paid for this
+last service; so well that the hire of a horse to Montreal and back
+again would cost the King the entire value of the animal. On the eighth
+of February the party met at the palace; and after a grand dinner set
+out upon their journey in twenty or more sleighs, some with two guests
+and a driver, and the rest with servants and attendants. The procession
+passed at full trot along St. Vallier street amid the shouts of an
+admiring crowd, stopped towards night at Pointe-aux-Trembles, where each
+looked for lodging; and then they all met and supped with the Intendant.
+The militia captain of the place was ordered to have fresh horses ready
+at seven in the morning, when Bigot regaled his friends with tea,
+coffee, and chocolate, after which they set out again, drove to
+Cap-Santé, and stopped two hours at the house of the militia captain to
+breakfast and warm themselves. In the afternoon they reached Ste.
+Anne-de-la-Pérade, when Bigot gave them a supper at the house in which
+he lodged, and they spent the evening at cards.
+
+The next morning brought them to Three Rivers, where Madame Marin,
+Franquet's travelling companion, wanted to stop to see her sister, the
+wife of Rigaud, who was then governor of the place. Madame de Rigaud,
+being ill, received her visitors in bed, and ordered an ample dinner to
+be provided for them; after which they returned to her chamber for
+coffee and conversation. Then they all set out again, saluted by the
+cannon of the fort.
+
+Their next stopping-place was Isle-au-Castor, where, being seated at
+cards before supper, they were agreeably surprised by the appearance of
+the Governor, who had come down from Montreal to meet them with four
+officers, Duchesnaye, Marin, Le Mercier, and Péan. Many were the
+embraces and compliments; and in the morning they all journeyed on
+together, stopping towards night at the largest house they could find,
+where their servants took away the partitions to make room, and they sat
+down to a supper, followed by the inevitable game of cards. On the next
+night they reached Montreal and were lodged at the intendency, the
+official residence of the hospitable Bigot. The succeeding day was spent
+in visiting persons of eminence and consideration, among whom are to be
+noted the names, soon to become notorious, of Varin, naval commissary,
+Martel, King's storekeeper, Antoine Penisseault, and François Maurin. A
+succession of festivities followed, including the benediction of three
+flags for a band of militia on their way to the Ohio. All persons of
+quality in Montreal were invited on this occasion, and the Governor gave
+them a dinner and a supper. Bigot, however, outdid him in the plenitude
+of his hospitality, since, in the week before Lent, forty guests supped
+every evening at his table, and dances, masquerades, and cards consumed
+the night.[545]
+
+[Footnote 545: Franquet, _Journal_.]
+
+His chief abode was at Quebec, in the capacious but somewhat ugly
+building known as the Intendant's Palace. Here it was his custom during
+the war to entertain twenty persons at dinner every day; and there was
+also a hall for dancing, with a gallery to which the citizens were
+admitted as spectators.[546] The bounteous Intendant provided a separate
+dancing-hall for the populace; and, though at the same time he plundered
+and ruined them, his gracious demeanor long kept him a place in their
+hearts. Gambling was the chief feature of his entertainments, and the
+stakes grew deeper as the war went on. He played desperately himself,
+and early in 1758 lost two hundred and four thousand francs,--a loss
+which he will knew how to repair. Besides his official residence on the
+banks of the St. Charles, he had a country house about five miles
+distant, a massive old stone building in the woods at the foot of the
+mountain of Charlebourg; its ruins are now known as Chateau Bigot. In
+its day it was called the Hermitage; though the uses to which it was
+applied savored nothing of asceticism. Tradition connects it and its
+owner with a romantic, but more than doubtful, story of love, jealousy,
+and murder.
+
+[Footnote 546: De Gaspé, _Mémoires_, 119.]
+
+The chief Canadian families were so social in their habits and so
+connected by intermarriage that, along with the French civil and
+military officers of the colonial establishment, they formed a society
+whose members all knew each other, like the corresponding class in
+Virginia. There was among them a social facility and ease rare in
+democratic communities; and in the ladies of Quebec and Montreal were
+often seen graces which visitors from France were astonished to find at
+the edge of a wilderness. Yet this small though lively society had
+anomalies which grew more obtrusive towards the close of the war.
+Knavery makes strange companions; and at the tables of high civil
+officials and colony officers of rank sat guests as boorish in manners
+as they were worthless in character.
+
+Foremost among these was Joseph Cadet, son of a butcher at Quebec, who
+at thirteen went to sea as a pilot's boy, then kept the cows of an
+inhabitant of Charlebourg, and at last took up his father's trade and
+prospered in it.[547] In 1756 Bigot got him appointed commissary-general,
+and made a contract with him which flung wide open the doors of peculation.
+In the next two years Cadet and his associates,Péan, Maurin, Corpron, and
+Penisseault, sold to the King, for about twenty-three million francs,
+provisions which cost them eleven millions, leaving a net profit of about
+twelve millions. It was not legally proved that the Intendant shared
+Cadet's gains; but there is no reasonable doubt that he did so.
+Bigot's chief profits rose, however, from other sources. It was his
+business to see that the King's storehouses for the supply of troops,
+militia, and Indians were kept well stocked. To this end he and Bréard,
+naval comptroller at Quebec, made a partnership with the commercial house
+of Gradis and Son at Bordeaux. He next told the Colonial Minister that
+there were stores enough already in Canada to last three years, and that it
+would be more to the advantage of the King to buy them in the colony than
+to take the risk of sending them from France.[548] Gradis and Son then
+shipped them to Canada in large quantities, while Bréard or his agent
+declared at the custom-house that they belonged to the King, and so
+escaped the payment of duties. Theywere then, as occasion rose, sold to
+the King at a huge profit, always under fictitious names. Often they were
+sold to some favored merchant or speculator, who sold them in turn to
+Bigot's confederate, the King's storekeeper; and sometimes they passed
+through several successive hands, till the price rose to double or triple
+the first cost, the Intendant and his partners sharing the gains with
+friends and allies. They would let nobody else sell to the King; and
+thus a grinding monopoly was established, to the great profit of those
+who held it.[549]
+
+[Footnote 547: _Procès de Bigot, Cadet, et autres, Mémoire pour Messire
+François Bigot_. Compare _Mémoires sur le Canada_, 1749-1760.]
+
+[Footnote 548: _Bigot au Ministre, 8 Oct. 1749._]
+
+[Footnote 549: _Procés de Bigot, Cadet, et autres. Mémoire sur les
+Fraudes commises dans la Colonie._ Compare _Mémoires sur le Canada,
+1749-1760_.]
+
+Under the name of a trader named Claverie, Bigot, some time before the
+war, set up a warehouse on land belonging to the King and not far from
+his own palace. Here the goods shipped from Bordeaux were collected, to
+be sold in retail to the citizens, and in wholesale to favored merchants
+and the King. This establishment was popularly known as La Friponne, at
+Montreal, which was leagued with that of Quebec, and received goods from
+it.
+
+Bigot and his accomplices invented many other profitable frauds. Thus he
+was charged with the disposal of the large quantity of furs belonging to
+his master, which it was his duty to sell at public auction, after due
+notice, to the highest bidder. Instead of this, he sold them privately
+at a low price to his own confederates. It was also his duty to provide
+transportation for troops, artillery, provisions, and stores, in which
+he made good profit by letting to the King, at high prices, boats or
+vessels which he had himself bought or hired for the purpose.[550]
+
+[Footnote 550: _Jugement rendu souverainement dans l'Affaire du
+Canada._]
+
+Yet these and other illicit gains still left him but the second place as
+public plunderer. Cadet, the commissary-general, reaped an ampler
+harvest, and became the richest man in the colony. One of the operations
+of this scoundrel, accomplished with the help of Bigot, consisted in
+buying for six hundred thousand francs a quantity of stores belonging to
+the King, and then selling them back to him for one million four hundred
+thousand.[551] It was further shown on his trial that in 1759 he
+received 1,614,354 francs for stores furnished at the post of
+Miramichi, while the value of those actually furnished was but 889,544
+francs; thus giving him a fraudulent profit of more than seven hundred
+and twenty-four thousand.[552] Cadet's chief resource was the
+falsification of accounts. The service of the King in Canada was fenced
+about by rigid formalities. When supplies were wanted at any of the
+military posts, the commandant made a requisition specifying their
+nature and quantity, while, before pay could be drawn for them, the
+King's storekeeper, the local commissary, and the inspector must set
+their names as vouchers to the list, and finally Bigot must sign
+it.[553] But precautions were useless where all were leagued to rob the
+King. It appeared on Cadet's trial that by gifts of wine, brandy, or
+money he had bribed the officers, both civil and military, at all the
+principal forts to attest the truth of accounts in which the supplies
+furnished by him were set at more than twice their true amount. Of the
+many frauds charged against him there was one peculiarly odious. Large
+numbers of refugee Acadians were to be supplied with rations to keep
+them alive. Instead of wholesome food, mouldered and unsalable salt cod
+was sent them, and paid for by the King at inordinate prices.[554] It
+was but one of many heartless outrages practised by Canadian officials
+on this unhappy people.
+
+[Footnote 551: _Procès de Bigot, Cadet, et autres, Requête du
+Procureur-Général, 19 Dec_. 1761.]
+
+[Footnote 552: _Procès de Bigot, Cadet, et autres, Mémoire pour Messire
+François Bigot_.]
+
+[Footnote 553: _Mémoire sur le Canada_ (Archives Nationales).]
+
+[Footnote 554: _Mémoires sur le Canada_, 1749-1760.]
+
+Cadet told the Intendant that the inhabitants were hoarding their grain,
+and got an order from him requiring them to sell it at a low fixed
+price, on pain of having it seized. Thus nearly the whole fell into his
+hands. Famine ensued; and he then sold it at a great profit, partly to
+the King, and partly to its first owners. Another of his devices was to
+sell provisions to the King which, being sent to the outlying forts,
+were falsely reported as consumed; on which he sold them to the King a
+second time. Not without reason does a writer of the time exclaim: "This
+is the land of abuses, ignorance, prejudice, and all that is monstrous
+in government. Peculation, monopoly, and plunder have become a
+bottomless abyss."[555]
+
+[Footnote 555: _Considérations sur l'État présent du Canada_.]
+
+The command of a fort brought such opportunities of making money that,
+according to Bougainville, the mere prospect of appointment to it for
+the usual term of three years was thought enough for a young man to
+marry upon. It was a favor in the gift of the Governor, who was accused
+of sharing the profits. These came partly from the fur-trade, and still
+more from frauds of various kinds. For example, a requisition was made
+for supplies as gifts to the Indians in order to keep them friendly or
+send them on the war-path; and their number was put many times above the
+truth in order to get more goods, which the commandant and his
+confederates then bartered for furs on their own account, instead of
+giving them as presents. "And," says a contemporary, addressing the
+Colonial Minister, "those who treat the savages so basely are officers
+of the King, depositaries of his authority, ministers of that Great
+Onontio whom they call their father."[556] At the post of Green Bay, the
+partisan officer Marin, and Rigaud, the Governor's brother, made in a
+short time a profit of three hundred and twelve thousand francs.[557]
+"Why is it," asks Bougainville, "that of all which the King sends to the
+Indians two thirds are stolen, and the rest sold to them instead of
+being given?"[558]
+
+[Footnote 556: _Considérations sur l'État présent du Canada_.]
+
+[Footnote 557: _Mémoire sur les Fraudes commises dans la Colonie_.
+Bougainville, _Mémoire sur l'État de la Nouvelle France_.]
+
+[Footnote 558: Bougainville, _Journal_.]
+
+The transportation of military stores gave another opportunity of
+plunder. The contractor would procure from the Governor or the local
+commandant an order requiring the inhabitants to serve him as boatmen,
+drivers, or porters, under a promise of exemption that year from duty as
+soldiers. This saved him his chief item of expense, and the profits of
+his contract rose in proportion.
+
+A contagion of knavery ran through the official life of the colony; and
+to resist it demanded no common share of moral robustness. The officers
+of the troops of the line were not much within its influence; but those
+of the militia and colony regulars, whether of French or Canadian birth,
+shared the corruption of the civil service. Seventeen of them, including
+six chevaliers of St. Louis and eight commandants of forts, were
+afterwards arraigned for fraud and malversation, though some of the
+number were acquitted. Bougainville gives the names of four other
+Canadian officers as honorable exceptions to the general
+demoralization,--Benoît, Repentigny, Lainé, and Le Borgne; "not enough,"
+he observes, "to save Sodom."
+
+Conspicuous among these military thieves was Major Péan, whose qualities
+as a soldier have been questioned, but who nevertheless had shown almost
+as much vigor in serving the King during the Ohio campaign of 1753 as
+he afterwards displayed effrontery in cheating him. "Le petit Péan" had
+married a young wife, Mademoiselle Desméloizes, Canadian like himself,
+well born, and famed for beauty, vivacity, and wit. Bigot, who was near
+sixty, became her accepted lover; and the fortune of Péan was made. His
+first success seems to have taken him by surprise. He had bought as a
+speculation a large quantity of grain, with money of the King lent him
+by the Intendant. Bigot, officially omnipotent, then issued an order
+raising the commodity to a price far above that paid by Péan, who thus
+made a profit of fifty thousand crowns.[559] A few years later his
+wealth was estimated at from two to four million francs. Madame Péan
+became a power in Canada, the dispenser of favors and offices; and all
+who sought opportunity to rob the King hastened to pay her their court.
+Péan, jilted by his own wife, made prosperous love to the wife of his
+partner, Penisseault; who, though the daughter of a Montreal tradesman,
+had the air of a woman of rank, and presided with dignity and grace at a
+hospitable board where were gathered the clerks of Cadet and other
+lesser lights of the administrative hierarchy. It was often honored by
+the presence of the Chevalier de Lévis, who, captivated by the charms of
+the hostess, condescended to a society which his friends condemned as
+unworthy of his station. He succeeded Péan in the graces of Madame
+Penisseault, and after the war took her with him to France; while the
+aggrieved husband found consolation in the wives of the small
+functionaries under his orders.[560]
+
+[Footnote 559: _Mémoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760. Mémoire sur les
+Fraudes_, etc. Compare Pouchot, I. 8.]
+
+[Footnote 560: _Mémoires sur le Canada_, 1749-1760.]
+
+Another prominent name on the roll of knavery was that of Varin,
+commissary of marine, and Bigot's deputy at Montreal, a Frenchman of low
+degree, small in stature, sharp witted, indefatigable, conceited,
+arrogant, headstrong, capricious, and dissolute. Worthless as he was, he
+found a place in the Court circle of the Governor, and aspired to
+supplant Bigot in the intendancy. To this end, as well as to save
+himself from justice, he had the fatuity to turn informer and lay bare
+the sins of his confederates, though forced at the same time to betray
+his own. Among his comrades and allies may be mentioned Deschenaux, son
+of a shoemaker at Quebec, and secretary to the Intendant; Martel, King's
+storekeeper at Montreal; the humpback Maurin, who is not to be
+confounded with the partisan officer Marin; and Corpron, a clerk whom
+several tradesmen had dismissed for rascality, but who was now in the
+confidence of Cadet, to whom he made himself useful, and in whose
+service he grew rich.
+
+Canada was the prey of official jackals,--true lion's providers, since
+they helped to prepare a way for the imperial beast, who, roused at last
+from his lethargy, was gathering his strength to seize her for his own.
+Honesty could not be expected from a body of men clothed with arbitrary
+and ill-defined powers, ruling with absolute sway an unfortunate people
+who had no voice in their own destinies, and answerable only to an
+apathetic master three thousand miles away. Nor did the Canadian Church,
+though supreme, check the corruptions that sprang up and flourished
+under its eye. The Governor himself was charged with sharing the
+plunder; and though he was acquitted on his trial, it is certain that
+Bigot had him well in hand, that he was intimate with the chief robbers,
+and that they found help in his weak compliances and wilful blindness.
+He put his stepson, Le Verrier, in command at Michillimackinac, where,
+by fraud and the connivance of his stepfather, the young man made a
+fortune.[561] When the Colonial Minister berated the Intendant for
+maladministration, Vaudreuil became his advocate, and wrote thus in his
+defence: "I cannot conceal from you, Monseigneur, how deeply M. Bigot
+feels the suspicions expressed in your letters to him. He does not
+deserve them, I am sure. He is full of zeal for the service of the King;
+but as he is rich, or passes as such, and as he has merit, the
+ill-disposed are jealous, and insinuate that he has prospered at the
+expense of His Majesty. I am certain that it is not true, and that
+nobody is a better citizen than he, or has the King's interest more at
+heart."[562] For Cadet, the butcher's son, the Governor asked a patent
+of nobility as a reward for his services.[563] When Péan went to France
+in 1758, Vaudreuil wrote to the Colonial Minister: "I have great
+confidence in him. He knows the colony and its needs. You can trust all
+he says. He will explain everything in the best manner. I shall be
+extremely sensible to any kindness you may show him, and hope that when
+you know him you will like him as much as I do."[564]
+
+[Footnote 561: _Mémoires sur le Canada_, 1749-1760.]
+
+[Footnote 562: _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 15 Oct. 1759._]
+
+[Footnote 563: _Ibid., 7 Nov. 1759._]
+
+[Footnote 564: _Ibid., 6 Août, 1758._]
+
+Administrative corruption was not the only bane of Canada. Her financial
+condition was desperate. The ordinary circulating medium consisted of
+what was known as card money, and amounted to only a million of francs.
+This being insufficient, Bigot, like his predecessor Hocquart, issued
+promissory notes on his own authority, and made them legal tender. They
+were for sums from one franc to a hundred, and were called
+_ordonnances_. Their issue was blamed at Versailles as an encroachment
+on the royal prerogative, though they were recognized by the Ministry in
+view of the necessity of the case. Every autumn those who held them to
+any considerable amount might bring them to the colonial treasurer, who
+gave in return bills of exchange on the royal treasury in France. At
+first these bills were promptly paid; then delays took place, and the
+notes depreciated; till in 1759 the Ministry, aghast at the amount,
+refused payment, and the utmost dismay and confusion followed.[565]
+
+[Footnote 565: _Réflections sommaires sur le Commerce qui s'est fait en
+Canada. État présent du Canada_. Compare Stevenson, _Card Money of
+Canada_, in _Transactions of the Historical Society of Quebec_,
+1873-1875.]
+
+The vast jarring, discordant mechanism of corruption grew
+incontrollable; it seized upon Bigot, and dragged him, despite himself,
+into perils which his prudence would have shunned. He was becoming a
+victim to the rapacity of his own confederates, whom he dared not offend
+by refusing his connivance and his signature of frauds which became more
+and more recklessly audacious. He asked leave to retire from office, in
+the hope that his successor would bear the brunt of the ministerial
+displeasure. Péan had withdrawn already, and with the fruits of his
+plunder bought land in France, where he thought himself safe. But though
+the Intendant had long been an object of distrust, and had often been
+warned to mend his ways,[566] yet such was his energy, his executive
+power, and his fertility of resource, that in the crisis of the war it
+was hard to dispense with him. Neither his abilities, however, nor his
+strong connections in France, nor an ally whom he had secured in the
+bureau of the Colonial Minister himself, could avail him much longer;
+and the letters from Versailles became appalling in rebuke and menace.
+
+[Footnote 566: _Ordres du Roy et Dépêches des Ministres, 1751-1758._]
+
+"The ship 'Britannia,'" wrote the Minister, Berryer, "laden with goods
+such as are wanted in the colony, was captured by a privateer from St.
+Malo, and brought into Quebec. You sold the whole cargo for eight
+hundred thousand francs. The purchasers made a profit of two millions.
+You bought back a part for the King at one million, or two hundred
+thousand more than the price which you sold the whole. With conduct like
+this it is no wonder that the expenses of the colony become
+insupportable. The amount of your drafts on the treasury is frightful.
+The fortunes of your subordinates throw suspicion on your
+administration." And in another letter on the same day: "How could it
+happen that the small-pox among the Indians cost the King a million
+francs? What does this expense mean? Who is answerable for it? Is it the
+officers who command the posts, or is it the storekeepers? You give me
+no particulars. What has become of the immense quantity of provisions
+sent to Canada last year? I am forced to conclude that the King's stores
+are set down as consumed from the moment they arrive, and then sold to
+His Majesty at exorbitant prices. Thus the King buys stores in France,
+and then buys them again in Canada. I no longer wonder at the immense
+fortunes made in the colony."[567] Some months later the Minister
+writes: "You pay bills without examination, and then find an error in
+your accounts of three million six hundred thousand francs. In the
+letters from Canada I see nothing but incessant speculation in
+provisions and goods, which are sold to the King for ten times more than
+they cost in France. For the last time, I exhort you to give these
+things your serious attention, for they will not escape from mine."[568]
+
+[Footnote 567: _Le Ministre à Bigot, 19 Jan. 1759._]
+
+[Footnote 568: _Ibid., 29 Août, 1759._]
+
+"I write, Monsieur, to answer your last two letters, in which you tell
+me that instead of sixteen millions, your drafts on the treasury for
+1758 will reach twenty-four millions, and that this year they will rise
+to from thirty-one to thirty-three millions. It seems, then, that there
+are no bounds to the expenses of Canada. They double almost every year,
+while you seem to give yourself no concern except to get them paid. Do
+you suppose that I can advise the King to approve such an
+administration? or do you think that you can take the immense sum of
+thirty-three millions out of the royal treasury by merely assuring me
+that you have signed drafts for it? This, too, for expenses incurred
+irregularly, often needlessly, always wastefully; which make the fortune
+of everybody who has the least hand in them, and about which you know
+so little that after reporting them at sixteen millions, you find two
+months after that they will reach twenty-four. You are accused of having
+given the furnishing of provisions to one man, who under the name of
+commissary-general, has set what prices he pleased; of buying for the
+King at second or third hand what you might have got from the producer
+at half the price; of having in this and other ways made the fortunes of
+persons connected with you; and of living in splendor in the midst of a
+public misery, which all the letters from the colony agree in ascribing
+to bad administration, and in charging M. de Vaudreuil with weakness in
+not preventing."[569]
+
+[Footnote 569: _Le Ministre à Bigotû, 29 Août, 1759_ (second letter of
+this date).]
+
+These drastic utterances seem to have been partly due to a letter
+written by Montcalm in cipher to the Maréchal de Belleisle, then
+minister of war. It painted the deplorable condition of Canada, and
+exposed without reserve the peculations and robberies of those intrusted
+with its interests. "It seems," said the General, "as if they were all
+hastening to make their fortunes before the loss of the colony; which
+many of them perhaps desire as a veil to their conduct." He gives among
+other cases that of Le Mercier, chief of Canadian artillery, who had
+come to Canada as a private soldier twenty years before, and had so
+prospered on fraudulent contracts that he would soon be worth nearly a
+million. "I have often," continues Montcalm, "spoken of these
+expenditures to M. de Vaudreuil and M. Bigot; and each throws the blame
+on the other."[570] And yet at the same time Vaudreuil was assuring the
+Minister that Bigot was without blame.
+
+[Footnote 570: _Montcalm au Ministre de la Guerre, Lettre
+confidentielle, 12 Avril,_ 1759.]
+
+Some two months before Montcalm wrote this letter, the Minister,
+Berryer, sent a despatch to the Governor and Intendant which filled them
+with ire and mortification. It ordered them to do nothing without
+consulting the general of the French regulars, not only in matters of
+war, but in all matters of administration touching the defence and
+preservation of the colony. A plainer proof of confidence on one hand
+and distrust on the other could not have been given.[571]
+
+[Footnote 571: _Le Ministre à Vaudreuil et Bigot, 20 Fév. 1759._]
+
+One Querdisien-Tremais was sent from Bordeaux as an agent of Government
+to make investigation. He played the part of detective, wormed himself
+into the secrets of the confederates, and after six months of patient
+inquisition traced out four distinct combinations for public plunder.
+Explicit orders were now given to Bigot, who, seeing no other escape,
+broke with Cadet, and made him disgorge two millions of stolen money.
+The Commissary-General and his partners became so terrified that they
+afterwards gave up nearly seven millions more.[572] Stormy events
+followed, and the culprits found shelter for a time amid the tumults of
+war. Peculation did not cease, but a day of reckoning was at hand.
+
+[Footnote 572: _Procès de Bigot, Cadet, et autres, Mémoirs pour François
+Bigot, 3'me partie_.]
+
+NOTE: The printed documents of the trial of Bigot and the other
+peculators include the defence of Bigot, of which the first part
+occupies 303 quarto pages, and the second part 764. Among the other
+papers are the arguments for Péan, Varin, Saint-Blin, Boishébert,
+Martel, Joncaire-Chabert and several more, along with the elaborate
+_Jugement rendue_, the _Requêtes du Procureur-Général,_ the _Réponse aux
+Mémoires de M. Bigot et du Sieur Péan,_ etc., forming together five
+quarto volumes, all of which I have carefully examined. These are in the
+Library of Harvard University. There is another set, also of five
+volumes, in the Library of the Historical Society of Quebec, containing
+most of the papers just mentioned, and, bound with them, various others
+in manuscript, among which are documents in defence of Vaudreuil
+(printed in part); Estèbe, Corpron, Penisseault, Maurin, and Bréard. I
+have examined this collection also. The manuscript _Ordres du Roy et
+Dépêches des Ministres_, 1757-1760, as well as the letters of Vaudreuil,
+Bougainville, Daine, Doreil, and Montcalm throw much light on the
+maladministration of the time; as do many contemporary documents,
+notably those entitled _Mémoire sur les Fraudes commises dans la
+Colonie, État présent du Canada,_ and _Mémoire sur le Canada_ (Archives
+Nationales). The remarkable anonymous work printed by the Historical
+Society of Quebec under the title _Mémoires sur le Canada depuis 1749
+jusqu'àé 1760, is full of curious matter concerning Bigot and his
+associates which squares well with other evidence. This is the source
+from which Smith, in his _History of Canada_ (Quebec, 1815), drew most
+of his information on the subject. A manuscript which seems to be the
+original draft of this valuable document was preserved at the Bastile,
+and, with other papers, was thrown into the street when that castle was
+destroyed. They were gathered up, and afterwards bought by a Russian
+named Dubrowski, who carried them to St. Petersburg. Lord Dufferin, when
+minister there, procured a copy of the manuscript in question, which is
+now in the keeping of Abbé H. Verreau at Montreal, to whose kindness I
+owe the opportunity of examining it. In substance it differs little from
+the printed work, though the language and the arrangement often vary
+from it. The author, whoever he may have been, was deeply versed in
+Canadian affairs of the time, and though often caustic, is generally
+trustworthy.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 18
+
+1757, 1758
+
+Pitt
+
+
+The war kindled in the American forest was now raging in full
+conflagration among the kingdoms of Europe; and in the midst stood
+Frederic of Prussia, a veritable fire-king. He had learned through
+secret agents that he was to be attacked, and that the wrath of Maria
+Theresa with her two allies, Pompadour and the Empress of Russia, was
+soon to wreak itself upon him. With his usual prompt audacity he
+anticipated his enemies, marched into Saxony, and began the Continental
+war. His position seemed desperate. England, sundered from Austria, her
+old ally, had made common cause with him; but he had no other friend
+worth the counting. France, Russia, Austria, Sweden, Saxony, the
+collective Germanic Empire, and most of the smaller German States had
+joined hands for his ruin, eager to crush him and divide the spoil,
+parcelling out his dominions among themselves in advance by solemn
+mutual compact. Against the five millions of Prussia were arrayed
+populations of more than a hundred million. The little kingdom was open
+on all sides to attack, and her enemies were spurred on by the bitterest
+animosity. It was thought that one campaign would end the war. The war
+lasted seven years, and Prussia came out of it triumphant. Such a
+warrior as her indomitable king Europe has rarely seen. If the Seven
+Years War made the maritime and colonial greatness of England, it also
+raised Prussia to the rank of a first-class Power.
+
+Frederic began with a victory, routing the Austrians in one of the
+fiercest of recorded conflicts, the battle of Prague. Then in his turn
+he was beaten at Kolin. All seemed lost. The hosts of the coalition were
+rolling in upon him like a deluge. Surrounded by enemies, in the jaws of
+destruction, hoping for little but to die in battle, this strange hero
+solaced himself with an exhaustless effusion of bad verses, sometimes
+mournful, sometimes cynical, sometimes indignant, and sometimes
+breathing a dauntless resolution; till, when his hour came, he threw
+down his pen to achieve those feats of arms which stamp him one of the
+foremost soldiers of the world.
+
+The French and Imperialists, in overwhelming force, thought to crush him
+at Rosbach. He put them to shameful rout; and then, instead of bonfires
+and Te Deums, mocked at them in doggerel rhymes of amazing indecency.
+While he was beating the French, the Austrians took Silesia from him. He
+marched to recover it, found them strongly posted at Leuthen, eighty
+thousand men against thirty thousand, and without hesitation resolved to
+attack them. Never was he more heroic than on the eve of this, his
+crowning triumph. "The hour is at hand," he said to his generals. "I
+mean, in spite of the rules of military art, to attack Prince Karl's
+army, which is nearly thrice our own. This risk I must run, or all is
+lost. We must beat him or die, all of us, before his batteries." He
+burst unawares upon the Austrian left, and rolled their whole host
+together, corps upon corps, in a tumult of irretrievable ruin.
+
+While her great ally was reaping a full harvest of laurels, England,
+dragged into the Continental war because that apple of discord, Hanover,
+belonged to her King, found little but humiliation. Minorca was wrested
+from her, and the Ministry had an innocent man shot to avert from
+themselves the popular indignation; while the same Ministry, scared by a
+phantom of invasion, brought over German troops to defend British soil.
+But now an event took place pregnant with glorious consequence. The
+reins of power fell into the hands of William Pitt. He had already held
+them for a brief space, forced into office at the end of 1756 by popular
+clamor, in spite of the Whig leaders and against the wishes of the King.
+But the place was untenable. Newcastle's Parliament would not support
+him; the Duke of Cumberland opposed him; the King hated him; and in
+April 1757, he was dismissed. Then ensued eleven weeks of bickering and
+dispute, during which, in the midst of a great war, England was left
+without a government. It became clear that none was possible without
+Pitt; and none with him could be permanent and strong unless joined with
+those influences which had thus far controlled the majorities of
+Parliament. Therefore an extraordinary union was brought about; Lord
+Chesterfield acting as go-between to reconcile the ill-assorted pair.
+One of them brought to the alliance the confidence and support of the
+people; the other, Court management, borough interest, and parliamentary
+connections. Newcastle was made First Lord of the Treasury, and Pitt,
+the old enemy who had repeatedly browbeat and ridiculed him, became
+Secretary of State, with the lead of the House of Commons and full
+control of the war and foreign affairs. It was a partnership of magpie
+and eagle. The dirty work of government, intrigue, bribery, and all the
+patronage that did not affect the war, fell to the share of the old
+politician. If Pitt could appoint generals, admirals, and ambassadors,
+Newcastle was welcome to the rest. "I will borrow the Duke's majorities
+to carry on the government," said the new secretary; and with the
+audacious self-confidence that was one of his traits, he told the Duke
+of Devonshire, "I am sure that I can save this country, and that nobody
+else can." England hailed with one acclaim the undaunted leader who
+asked for no reward but the honor of serving her. The hour had found the
+man. For the next four years this imposing figure towers supreme in
+British history.
+
+He had glaring faults, some of them of a sort not to have been expected
+in him. Vanity, the common weakness of small minds, was the most
+disfiguring foible of this great one. He had not the simplicity which
+becomes greatness so well. He could give himself theatrical airs, strike
+attitudes, and dart stage lightnings from his eyes; yet he was
+formidable even in his affectations. Behind his great intellectual
+powers lay a burning enthusiasm, a force of passion and fierce intensity
+of will, that gave redoubled impetus to the fiery shafts of his
+eloquence; and the haughty and masterful nature of the man had its share
+in the ascendency which he long held over Parliament. He would blast the
+labored argument of an adversary by a look of scorn or a contemptuous
+wave of the hand.
+
+The Great Commoner was not a man of the people in the popular sense of
+that hackneyed phrase. Though himself poor, being a younger son, he came
+of a rich and influential family; he was patrician at heart; both his
+faults and his virtues, his proud incorruptibility and passionate,
+domineering patriotism, bore the patrician stamp. Yet he loved liberty
+and he loved the people, because they were the English people. The
+effusive humanitarianism of to-day had no part in him, and the democracy
+of to-day would detest him. Yet to the middle-class England of his own
+time, that unenfranchised England which had little representation in
+Parliament, he was a voice, an inspiration, and a tower of strength. He
+would not flatter the people; but, turning with contempt from the tricks
+and devices of official politics, he threw himself with a confidence
+that never wavered on their patriotism and public spirit. They answered
+him with a boundless trust, asked but to follow his lead, gave him
+without stint their money and their blood, loved him for his domestic
+virtues and his disinterestedness, believed him even in his
+self-contradiction, and idolized him even in his bursts of arrogant
+passion. It was he who waked England from her lethargy, shook off the
+spell that Newcastle and his fellow-enchanters had cast over her, and
+taught her to know herself again. A heart that beat in unison with all
+that was British found responsive throbs in every corner of the vast
+empire that through him was to become more vast. With the instinct of
+his fervid patriotism he would join all its far-extended members into
+one, not by vain assertions of parliamentary supremacy, but by bonds of
+sympathy and ties of a common freedom and a common cause.
+
+The passion for power and glory subdued in him all the sordid parts of
+humanity, and he made the power and glory of England one with his own.
+He could change front through resentment or through policy; but in
+whatever path he moved, his objects were the same: not to curb the power
+of France in America, but to annihilate it; crush her navy, cripple her
+foreign trade, ruin her in India, in Africa, and wherever else, east or
+west, she had found foothold; gain for England the mastery of the seas,
+open to her the great highways of the globe, make her supreme in
+commerce and colonization; and while limiting the activities of her
+rival to the European continent, give to her the whole world for a
+sphere.
+
+To this British Roman was opposed the pampered Sardanapalus of
+Versailles, with the silken favorite who by calculated adultery had
+bought the power to ruin France. The Marquise de Pompadour, who began
+life as Jeanne Poisson,--Jane Fish,--daughter of the head clerk of a
+banking house, who then became wife of a rich financier, and then, as
+mistress of the King, rose to a pinnacle of gilded ignominy, chose this
+time to turn out of office the two ministers who had shown most ability
+and force,--Argenson, head of the department of war, and Machault, head
+of the marine and colonies; the one because he was not subservient to
+her will, and the other because he had unwittingly touched the self-love
+of her royal paramour. She aspired to a share in the conduct of the war,
+and not only made and unmade ministers and generals, but discussed
+campaigns and battles with them, while they listened to her prating with
+a show of obsequious respect, since to lose her favor was to risk losing
+all. A few months later, when blows fell heavy and fast, she turned a
+deaf ear to representations of financial straits and military disasters,
+played the heroine, affected a greatness of soul superior to misfortune,
+and in her perfumed boudoir varied her tiresome graces by posing as a
+Roman matron. In fact she never wavered in her spite against Frederic,
+and her fortitude was perfect in bearing the sufferings of others and
+defying dangers that could not touch her.
+
+When Pitt took office it was not over France, but over England that the
+clouds hung dense and black. Her prospects were of the gloomiest.
+"Whoever is in or whoever is out," wrote Chesterfield, "I am sure we are
+undone both at home and abroad: at home by our increasing debt and
+expenses; abroad by our ill-luck and incapacity. We are no longer a
+nation." And his despondency was shared by many at the beginning of the
+most triumphant Administration in British history. The shuffling
+weakness of his predecessors had left Pitt a heritage of tribulation.
+From America came news of Loudon's manifold failures; from Germany that
+of the miscarriage of the Duke of Cumberland, who, at the head of an
+army of Germans in British pay, had been forced to sign the convention
+of Kloster-Zeven, by which he promised to disband them. To these
+disasters was added a third, of which the new Government alone had to
+bear the burden. At the end of summer Pitt sent a great expedition to
+attack Rochefort; the military and naval commanders disagreed, and the
+consequence was failure. There was no light except from far-off India,
+where Clive won the great victory of Plassey, avenged the Black Hole of
+Calcutta, and prepared the ruin of the French power and the undisputed
+ascendency of England.
+
+If the English had small cause as yet to rejoice in their own successes,
+they found comfort in those of their Prussian allies. The rout of the
+French at Rossbach and of the Austrians at Leuthen spread joy through
+their island. More than this, they felt that they had found at last a
+leader after their own heart; and the consciousness regenerated them.
+For the paltering imbecility of the old Ministry they had the
+unconquerable courage, the iron purpose, the unwavering faith, the
+inextinguishable hope, of the new one. "England has long been in labor,"
+said Frederic of Prussia, "and at last she has brought forth a man." It
+was not only that instead of weak commanders Pitt gave her strong ones;
+the same men who had served her feebly under the blight of the Newcastle
+Administration served her manfully and well under his robust impulsion.
+"Nobody ever entered his closet," said Colonel Barre, "who did not come
+out of it a braver man." That inspiration was felt wherever the British
+flag waved. Zeal awakened with the assurance that conspicuous merit was
+sure of its reward, and that no officer who did his duty would now be
+made a sacrifice, like Admiral Byng, to appease public indignation at
+ministerial failures. As Nature, languishing in chill vapors and dull
+smothering fogs, revives at the touch of the sun, so did England spring
+into fresh life under the kindling influence of one great man.
+
+With the opening of the year 1758 her course of Continental victories
+began. The Duke of Cumberland, the King's son, was recalled in disgrace,
+and a general of another stamp, Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, was
+placed in command of the Germans in British pay, with the contingent of
+English troops now added to them. The French, too, changed commanders.
+The Duke of Richelieu, a dissolute old beau, returned to Paris to spend
+in heartless gallantries the wealth he had gained by plunder; and a
+young soldier-churchman, the Comte de Clermont, took his place. Prince
+Ferdinand pushed him hard with an inferior force, drove him out of
+Hanover, and captured eleven thousand of his soldiers. Clermont was
+recalled, and was succeeded by Contades, another incapable. One of his
+subordinates won for him the battle; of Lutterberg; but the generalship
+of Ferdinand made it a barren victory, and the campaign remained a
+success for the English. They made descents on the French coasts,
+captured; St.-Servan, a suburb of St.-Malo, and burned three ships of
+the line, twenty-four privateers, and sixty merchantmen; then entered
+Cherbourg, destroyed the forts, carried off or spiked the cannon, and
+burned twenty-seven vessels,--a success partially offset by a failure on
+the coast of Brittany, where they were repulsed with some loss. In
+Africa they drove the French from the Guinea coast, and seized their
+establishment at Senegal.
+
+It was towards America that Pitt turned his heartiest efforts. His first
+aim was to take Louisbourg, as a step towards taking Quebec; then
+Ticonderoga, that thorn in the side of the northern colonies; and lastly
+Fort Duquesne, the Key of the Great West. He recalled Loudon, for whom
+he had a fierce contempt; but there were influences which he could not
+disregard, and Major-General Abercromby, who was next in order of rank,
+an indifferent soldier, though a veteran in years, was allowed to
+succeed him, and lead in person the attack on Ticonderoga.[573] Pitt
+hoped that Brigadier Lord Howe, an admirable officer, who was joined
+with Abercromby, would be the real commander, and make amends for all
+short-comings of his chief. To command the Louisbourg expedition,
+Colonel Jeffrey Amherst was recalled from the German war, and made at
+one leap a major-general.[574] He was energetic and resolute, somewhat
+cautious and slow, but with a bulldog tenacity of grip. Under him were
+three brigadiers, Whitmore, Lawrence, and Wolfe, of whom the youngest is
+the most noteworthy. In the luckless Rochefort expedition, Colonel James
+Wolfe was conspicuous by a dashing gallantry that did not escape the eye
+of Pitt, always on the watch for men to do his work. The young officer
+was ardent, headlong, void of fear, often rash, almost fanatical in his
+devotion to military duty, and reckless of life when the glory of
+England or his own was at stake. The third expedition, that against Fort
+Duquesne, was given to Brigadier John Forbes, whose qualities well
+fitted him for the task.
+
+[Footnote 573: _Order, War Office, 19 Dec. 1757._]
+
+[Footnote 574: _Pitt to Abercromby, 27 Jan. 1758. Instructions for our
+Trusty and Well-beloved Jeffrey Amherst, Esq., Major-General of our
+Forces in North America, 3 March, 1758._]
+
+During his first short term of office, Pitt had given a new species of
+troops to the British army. These were the Scotch Highlanders, who had
+risen against the House of Hanover in 1745, and would raise against it
+again should France accomplish her favorite scheme of throwing a force
+into Scotland to excite another insurrection for the Stuarts. But they
+would be useful to fight the French abroad, though dangerous as their
+possible allies at home; and two regiments of them were now ordered to
+America.
+
+Delay had been the ruin of the last year's attempt against Louisbourg.
+This time preparation was urged on apace; and before the end of winter
+two fleets had put to sea: one, under Admiral Boscawen, was destined for
+Louisbourg; while the other, under Admiral Osborn, sailed for the
+Mediterranean to intercept the French fleet of Admiral La Clue, who was
+about to sail from Toulon for America. Osborn, cruising between the
+coasts of Spain and Africa, barred the way to the Straits of Gibraltar,
+and kept his enemy imprisoned. La Clue made no attempt to force a
+passage; but several combats of detached ships took place, one of which
+is too remarkable to pass unnoticed. Captain Gardiner of the "Monmouth,"
+a ship of four hundred and seventy men and sixty-four guns, engaged the
+French ship "Foudroyant," carrying a thousand men and eighty-four guns
+of heavier metal than those of the Englishman. Gardiner had lately been
+reproved by Anson, First Lord of the Admiralty, for some alleged
+misconduct or shortcoming, and he thought of nothing but retrieving his
+honor. "We must take her," he said to his crew as the "Foudroyant" hove
+in sight. "She looks more than a match for us, but I will not quit her
+while this ship can swim or I have a soul left alive;" and the sailors
+answered with cheers. The fight was long and furious. Gardiner was
+killed by a musket shot, begging his first lieutenant with his dying
+breath not to haul down his flag. The lieutenant nailed it to the mast.
+At length the "Foudroyant" ceased from thundering, struck her colors,
+and was carried a prize to England.[575]
+
+[Footnote 575: Entick, III. 56-60.]
+
+The typical British naval officer of that time was a rugged sea-dog, a
+tough and stubborn fighter, though no more so than the politer
+generations that followed, at home on the quarter-deck, but no ornament
+to the drawing-room, by reason of what his contemporary, Entick, the
+strenuous chronicler of the war, calls, not unapprovingly, "the ferocity
+of his manners." While Osborn held La Clue imprisoned at Toulon, Sir
+Edward Hawke, worthy leader of such men, sailed with seven ships of the
+line and three frigates to intercept a French squadron from Rochefort
+convoying a fleet of transports with troops for America. The French
+ships cut their cables and ran for the shore, where most of them
+stranded in the mud, and some threw cannon and munitions overboard to
+float themselves. The expedition was broken up. Of the many ships fitted
+out this year for the succor of Canada and Louisbourg, comparatively few
+reached their destination, and these for the most part singly or by twos
+and threes.
+
+Meanwhile Admiral Boscawen with his fleet bore away for Halifax, the
+place of rendezvous, and Amherst, in the ship "Dublin," followed in his
+wake.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 19
+
+1758
+
+Louisbourg
+
+
+The stormy coast of Cape Breton is indented by a small land-locked bay,
+between which and the ocean lies a tongue of land dotted with a few
+grazing sheep, and intersected by rows of stone that mark more or less
+distinctly the lines of what once were streets. Green mounds and
+embankments of earth enclose the whole space, and beneath the highest of
+them yawn arches and caverns of ancient masonry. This grassy solitude
+was once the "Dunkirk of America;" the vaulted caverns where the sheep
+find shelter from the ram were casemates where terrified women sought
+refuge from storms of shot and shell, and the shapeless green mounds
+were citadel, bastion, rampart, and glacis. Here stood Louisbourg; and
+not all the efforts of its conquerors, nor all the havoc of succeeding
+times, have availed to efface it. Men in hundreds toiled for months with
+lever, spade, and gunpowder in the work of destruction, and for more
+than a century it has served as a stone quarry; but the remains of its
+vast defences still tell their tale of human valor and human woe.
+
+Stand on the mounds that were once the King's Bastion. The glistening
+sea spreads eastward three thousand miles, and its waves meet their
+first rebuff against this iron coast. Lighthouse Point is white with
+foam; jets of spray spout from the rocks of Goat Island; mist curls in
+clouds from the seething surf that lashes the crags of Black Point, and
+the sea boils like a caldron among the reefs by the harbor's mouth; but
+on the calm water within, the small fishing vessels rest tranquil at
+their moorings. Beyond lies a hamlet of fishermen by the edge of the
+water, and a few scattered dwellings dot the rough hills, bristled with
+stunted firs, that gird the quiet basin; while close at hand, within the
+precinct of the vanished fortress, stand two small farmhouses. All else
+is a solitude of ocean, rock, marsh, and forest.[576]
+
+[Footnote 576: Louisbourg is described as I saw it ten days before
+writing the above, after an easterly gale.]
+
+At the beginning of June, 1758, the place wore another aspect. Since the
+peace of Aix-la-Chapelle vast sums had been spent in repairing and
+strengthening it; and Louisbourg was the strongest fortress in French or
+British America. Nevertheless it had its weaknesses. The original plan
+of the works had not been fully carried out; and owing, it is said, to
+the bad quality of the mortar, the masonry of the ramparts was in so
+poor a condition that it had been replaced in some parts with fascines.
+The circuit of the fortifications was more than a mile and a half, and
+the town contained about four thousand inhabitants. The best buildings
+in it were the convent, the hospital, the King's storehouses, and the
+chapel and governor's quarters, which were under the same roof. Of the
+private houses, only seven or eight were of stone, the rest being humble
+wooden structures, suited to a population of fishermen. The garrison
+consisted of the battalions of Artois, Bourgogne, Cambis, and
+Volontaires Étrangers, with two companies of artillery and twenty-four
+of colony troops from Canada,--in all three thousand and eighty regular
+troops, besides officers;[577] and to these were added a body of armed
+inhabitants and a band of Indians. In the harbor were five ships of the
+line and seven frigates, carrying in all five hundred and forty-four
+guns and about three thousand men.[578] Two hundred and nineteen cannon
+and seventeen mortars were mounted on the walls and outworks.[579] Of
+these last the most important were the Grand Battery on the shore of the
+harbor opposite its mouth, and the Island Battery on the rocky islet at
+its entrance.
+
+[Footnote 577: _Journal du Siége de Louisbourg_. Twenty-nine hundred
+regulars were able to bear arms when the siege began. _Houllière,
+Commandant des Troupes, au Ministre, 6 Août_, 1758.]
+
+[Footnote 578: Le Prudent, 74 guns; Entreprenant, 74; Capricieux, 64;
+Célèbre, 64; Bienfaisant, 64; Apollon, 50; Chèvre, 22; Biche, 18;
+Fidèle, 22; Écho, 26; Aréthuse, 36; Comète, 30. The Bizarre, 64, sailed
+for France on the eighth of June, and was followed by the Comète.]
+
+[Footnote 579: _État d'Artillerie_, appended to the Journal of Drucour.
+There were also forty-four cannon in reserve.]
+
+The strongest front of the works was on the land side, along the base of
+the peninsular triangle on which the town stood. This front, about
+twelve hundred yards in extent, reached from the sea on the left to the
+harbor on the right, and consisted of four bastions with then-connecting
+curtains, the Princess's, the Queen's, the King's, and the Dauphin's.
+The King's Bastion formed part of the citadel. The glacis before it
+sloped down to an extensive marsh, which, with an adjacent pond,
+completely protected this part of the line. On the right, however,
+towards the harbor, the ground was high enough to offer advantages to an
+enemy, as was also the case, to a less degree, on the left, towards the
+sea. The best defence of Louisbourg was the craggy shore, that, for
+leagues on either hand, was accessible only at a few points, and even
+there with difficulty. All these points were vigilantly watched.
+
+There had been signs of the enemy from the first opening of spring. In
+the intervals of fog, rain, and snow-squalls, sails were seen hovering
+on the distant sea; and during the latter part of May a squadron of nine
+ships cruised off the mouth of the harbor, appearing and disappearing,
+sometimes driven away by gales, sometimes lost in fogs, and sometimes
+approaching to within cannon-shot of the batteries. Their object was to
+blockade the port,--in which they failed; for French ships had come in
+at intervals, till, as we have seen, twelve of them lay safe anchored
+in the harbor, with more than a year's supply of provisions for the
+garrison.
+
+At length, on the first of June, the southeastern horizon was white with
+a cloud of canvas. The long-expected crisis was come. Drucour, the
+governor, sent two thousand regulars, with about a thousand militia and
+Indians, to guard the various landing-places; and the rest, aided by the
+sailors, remained to hold the town.[580]
+
+[Footnote 580: _Rapport de Grucour. Journal du Siége_.]
+
+At the end of May Admiral Boscawen was at Halifax with twenty-three
+ships of the line, eighteen frigates and fireships, and a fleet of
+transports, on board of which were eleven thousand and six hundred
+soldiers, all regulars, except five hundred provincial rangers.[581]
+Amherst had not yet arrived, and on the twenty-eighth, Boscawen, in
+pursuance of his orders and to prevent loss of time, put to sea without
+him; but scarcely had the fleet sailed out of Halifax, when they met the
+ship that bore the expected general. Amherst took command of the troops;
+and the expedition held its way till the second of June, when they saw
+the rocky shore-line of Cape Breton, and descried the masts of the
+French squadron in the harbor of Louisbourg.
+
+[Footnote 581: Of this force, according to Mante, only 9,900 were fit
+for duty. The table printed by Knox (I. 127) shows a total of 11,112,
+besides officers, artillery, and rangers. The _Authentic Account of the
+Reduction of Louisbourg, by a Spectator_, puts the force at 11,326 men,
+besides officers. Entick makes the whole 11,936.]
+
+Boscawen sailed into Gabarus Bay. The sea was rough; but in the
+afternoon Amherst, Lawrence, and Wolfe, with a number of naval officers,
+reconnoitred the shore in boats, coasting it for miles, and approaching
+it as near as the French batteries would permit. The rocks were white
+with surf, and every accessible point was strongly guarded. Boscawen saw
+little chance of success. He sent for his captains, and consulted them
+separately. They thought, like him, that it would be rash to attempt a
+landing, and proposed a council of war. One of them alone, an old sea
+officer named Ferguson advised his commander to take the responsibility
+himself, hold no council, and make the attempt at every risk. Boscawen
+took his advice, and declared that he would not leave Gabarus Bay till
+he had fulfilled his instructions and set the troops on shore.[582]
+
+[Footnote 582: Entick, III. 224.]
+
+West of Louisbourg there were three accessible places, Freshwater Cove,
+four miles from the town, and Flat Point, and White Point, which were
+nearer, the last being within a mile of the fortifications. East of the
+town there was an inlet called Lorambec, also available for landing. In
+order to distract the attention of the enemy, it was resolved to
+threaten all these places, and to form the troops into three divisions,
+two of which, under Lawrence and Whitmore, were to advance towards Flat
+Point and White Point, while a detached regiment was to make a feint at
+Lorambec. Wolfe, with the third division, was to make the real attack
+and try to force a landing at Freshwater Cove, which, as it proved, was
+the most strongly defended of all. When on shore Wolfe was an habitual
+invalid, and when at sea every heave of the ship made him wretched; but
+his ardor was unquenchable. Before leaving England he wrote to a friend:
+"Being of the profession of arms, I would seek all occasions to serve;
+and therefore have thrown myself in the way of the American war, though
+I know that the very passage threatens my life, and that my constitution
+must be utterly ruined and undone."
+
+On the next day, the third, the surf was so high that nothing could be
+attempted. On the fourth there was a thick fog and a gale. The frigate
+"Trent" struck on a rock, and some of the transports were near being
+stranded. On the fifth there was another fog and a raging surf. On the
+sixth there was fog, with rain in the morning and better weather towards
+noon, whereupon the signal was made and the troops entered the boats;
+but the sea rose again, and they were ordered back to the ships. On the
+seventh more fog and more surf till night, when the sea grew calmer, and
+orders were given for another attempt. At two in the morning of the
+eighth the troops were in the boats again. At daybreak the frigates of
+the squadron, anchoring before each point of real or pretended attack,
+opened a fierce cannonade on the French intrenchments; and, a quarter of
+an hour after, the three divisions rowed towards the shore. That of the
+left, under Wolfe, consisted of four companies of grenadiers, with the
+light infantry and New England rangers, followed and supported by
+Fraser's Highlanders and eight more companies of grenadiers. They pulled
+for Freshwater Cove. Here there was a crescent-shaped beach, a quarter
+of a mile long, with rocks at each end. On the shore above, about a
+thousand Frenchmen, under Lieutenant-Colonel de Saint-Julien, lay behind
+entrenchments covered in front by spruce and fir trees, felled and laid
+on the ground with the tops outward.[583] Eight cannon and swivels were
+planted to sweep every part of the beach and its approaches, and these
+pieces were masked by young evergreens stuck in the ground before them.
+
+[Footnote 583: Drucour reports 985 soldiers as stationed here under
+Saint-Julien there were also some Indians. Freshwater Cove, otherwise
+Kennington Cove, was called La Cormorandière by the French.]
+
+The English were allowed to come within close range unmolested. Then the
+batteries opened, and a deadly storm of grape and musketry was poured
+upon the boats. It was clear in an instant that to advance farther would
+be destruction; and Wolfe waved his hand as a signal to sheer off. At
+some distance on the right, and little exposed to the fire, were three
+boats of light infantry under Lieutenants Hopkins and Brown and Ensign
+Grant; who, mistaking the signal or wilfully misinterpreting it, made
+directly for the shore before them. It was a few roads east of the
+beach; a craggy coast and a strand strewn with rocks and lashed with
+breakers, but sheltered from the cannon by a small projecting point. The
+three officers leaped ashore, followed by their men. Wolfe saw the
+movement, and hastened to support it. The boat of Major Scott, who
+commanded the light infantry and rangers, next came up, and was stove in
+an instant; but Scott gained the shore, climbed the crags, and found
+himself with ten men in front of some seventy French and Indians. Half
+his followers were killed and wounded, and three bullets were shot
+through his clothes; but with admirable gallantry he held his ground
+till others came to his aid.[584] The remaining boats now reached the
+landing. Many were stove among the rocks, and others were overset; some
+of the men were dragged back by the surf and drowned; some lost their
+muskets, and were drenched to the skin: but the greater part got safe
+ashore. Among the foremost was seen the tall, attenuated form of
+Brigadier Wolfe, armed with nothing but a cane, as he leaped into the
+surf and climbed the crags with his soldiers. As they reached the top
+they formed in compact order, and attacked and carried with the bayonet
+the nearest French battery, a few rods distant. The division of
+Lawrence soon came up; and as the attention of the enemy was now
+distracted, they made their landing with little opposition at the
+farther end of the beach whither they were followed by Amherst himself.
+The French, attacked on right and left, and fearing, with good reason,
+that they would be cut off from the town, abandoned all their cannon and
+fled into the woods. About seventy of them were captured and fifty
+killed. The rest, circling among the hills and around the marshes, made
+their way to Louisbourg, and those at the intermediate posts joined
+their flight. The English followed through a matted growth of firs till
+they reached the cleared ground; when the cannon, opening on them from
+the ramparts, stopped the pursuit. The first move of the great game was
+played and won.[585]
+
+[Footnote 584: Pichon, _Mémoires du Cap-Breton_, 284.]
+
+[Footnote 585: _Journal of Amherst_, in Mante, 117. _Amherst to Pitt, 11
+June, 1758_. _Authentic Account of the Reduction of Louisbourg, by a
+Spectator_, 11. _General Orders of Amherst, 3-7 June, 1759. Letter from
+an Officer_, in Knox, I. 191; Entick, III. 225. The French accounts
+generally agree in essentials with the English. The English lost one
+hundred and nine, killed, wounded, and drowned.]
+
+Amherst made his camp just beyond range of the French cannon, and Flat
+Point Cove was chosen as the landing-place of guns and stores. Clearing
+the ground, making roads, and pitching tents filled the rest of the day.
+At night there was a glare of flames from the direction of the town. The
+French had abandoned the Grand Battery after setting fire to the
+buildings in it and to the houses and fish-stages along the shore of the
+harbor. During the following days stores were landed as fast as the surf
+would permit: but the task was so difficult that from first to last more
+than a hundred boats were stove in accomplishing it; and such was the
+violence of the waves that none of the siege-guns could be got ashore
+till the eighteenth. The camp extended two miles along a stream that
+flowed down to the Cove among the low, woody hills that curved around
+the town and harbor. Redoubts were made to protect its front, and
+blockhouses to guard its left and rear from the bands of Acadians known
+to be hovering in the woods.
+
+Wolfe, with twelve hundred men, made his way six or seven miles round
+the harbor, took possession of the battery at Lighthouse Point which the
+French had abandoned, planted guns and mortars, and opened fire on the
+Island Battery that guarded the entrance. Other guns were placed at
+different points along the shore, and soon opened on the French ships.
+The ships and batteries replied. The artillery fight raged night and
+day; till on the twenty-fifth the island guns were dismounted and
+silenced. Wolfe then strengthened his posts, secured his communications,
+and returned to the main army in front of the town.
+
+Amherst had reconnoitred the ground and chosen a hillock at the edge of
+the marsh, less than half a mile from the ramparts, as the point for
+opening his trenches. A road with an epaulement to protect it must first
+be made to the spot; and as the way was over a tract of deep mud
+covered with water-weeds and moss, the labor was prodigious. A thousand
+men worked at it day and night under the fire of the town and ships.
+
+When the French looked landward from their ramparts they could see
+scarcely a sign of the impending storm. Behind them Wolfe's cannon were
+playing busily from Lighthouse Point and the heights around the harbor;
+but, before them, the broad flat marsh and the low hills seemed almost a
+solitude. Two miles distant, they could descry some of the English
+tents; but the greater part were hidden by the inequalities of the
+ground. On the right, a prolongation of the harbor reached nearly half a
+mile beyond the town, ending in a small lagoon formed by a projecting
+sandbar, and known as the Barachois. Near this bar lay moored the little
+frigate "Aréthuse," under a gallant officer named Vauquelin. Her
+position was a perilous one; but so long as she could maintain it she
+could sweep with her fire the ground before the works, and seriously
+impede the operations of the enemy. The other naval captains were less
+venturous; and when the English landed, they wanted to leave the harbor
+and save their ships. Drucour insisted that they should stay to aid the
+defence, and they complied; but soon left their moorings and anchored as
+close as possible under the guns of the town, in order to escape the
+fire of Wolfe's batteries. Hence there was great murmuring among the
+military officers, who would have had them engage the hostile guns at
+short range. The frigate "Écho," under cover of a fog, had been sent to
+Quebec for aid; but she was chased and captured; and, a day or two
+after, the French saw her pass the mouth of the harbor with an English
+flag at her mast-head.
+
+When Wolfe had silenced the Island Battery, a new and imminent danger
+threatened Louisbourg. Boscawen might enter the harbor, overpower the
+French naval force, and cannonade the town on its weakest side.
+Therefore Drucour resolved to sink four large ships at the entrance; and
+on a dark and foggy night this was successfully accomplished. Two more
+vessels were afterwards sunk, and the harbor was then thought safe.
+
+The English had at last finished their preparations, and were urging on
+the siege with determined vigor. The landward view was a solitude no
+longer. They could be seen in multitudes piling earth and fascines
+beyond the hillock at the edge of the marsh. On the twenty-fifth they
+occupied the hillock itself, and fortified themselves there under a
+shower of bombs. Then they threw up earth on the right, and pushed
+their approaches towards the Barachois, in spite of a hot fire from the
+frigate "Aréthuse." Next they appeared on the left towards the sea about
+a third of a mile from the Princess's Bastion. It was Wolfe, with a
+strong detachment, throwing up a redoubt and opening an entrenchment.
+Late on the night of the ninth of July six hundred French troops sallied
+to interrupt the work. The English grenadiers in the trenches fought
+stubbornly with bayonet and sword, but were forced back to the second
+line, where a desperate conflict in the dark took place; and after
+severe loss on both sides the French were driven back. Some days before,
+there had been another sortie on the opposite side, near the Barachois,
+resulting in a repulse of the French and the seizure by Wolfe of a more
+advanced position.
+
+Various courtesies were exchanged between the two commanders. Drucour,
+on occasion of a flag of truce, wrote to Amherst that there was a
+surgeon of uncommon skill in Louisbourg, whose services were at the
+command of any English officer who might need them. Amherst on his part
+sent to his enemy letters and messages from wounded Frenchmen in his
+hands, adding his compliments to Madame Drucour, with an expression of
+regret for the disquiet to which she was exposed, begging her at the
+same time to accept a gift of pineapples from the West Indies. She
+returned his courtesy by sending him a basket of wine; after which
+amenities the cannon roared again. Madame Drucour was a woman of heroic
+spirit. Every day she was on the ramparts, where her presence roused the
+soldiers to enthusiasm; and every day with her own hand she fired three
+cannon to encourage them.
+
+The English lines grew closer and closer, and their fire more and more
+destructive. Desgouttes, the naval commander, withdrew the "Aréthuse"
+from her exposed position, where her fire had greatly annoyed the
+besiegers. The shot-holes in her sides were plugged up, and in the dark
+night of the fourteenth of July she was towed through the obstructions
+in the mouth of the harbor, and sent to France to report the situation
+of Louisbourg. More fortunate than her predecessor, she escaped the
+English in a fog. Only five vessels now remained afloat in the harbor,
+and these were feebly manned, as the greater part of their officers and
+crews had come ashore, to the number of two thousand, lodging under
+tents in the town, amid the scarcely suppressed murmurs of the army
+officers.
+
+On the eighth of July news came that the partisan Boishébert was
+approaching with four hundred Acadians, Canadians, and Micmacs to
+attack the English outposts and detachments. He did little or nothing,
+however, besides capturing a few stragglers. On the sixteenth, early in
+the evening, a party of English, led by Wolfe, dashed forward, drove off
+a band of French volunteers, seized a rising ground called
+Hauteur-de-la-Potence, or Gallows Hill, and began to entrench themselves
+scarcely three hundred yards from the Dauphin's Bastion. The town opened
+on them furiously with grapeshot; but in the intervals of the firing the
+sound of their picks and spades could plainly be heard. In the morning
+they were seen throwing up earth like moles as they burrowed their way
+forward; and on the twenty-first they opened another parallel, within
+two hundred yards of the rampart. Still their sappers pushed on. Every
+day they had more guns in position, and on right and left their fire
+grew hotter. Their pickets made a lodgment along the foot of the glacis,
+and fired up the slope at the French in the covered way.
+
+The twenty-first was a memorable day. In the afternoon a bomb fell on
+the ship "Célèbre" and set her on fire. An explosion followed. The few
+men on board could not save her, and she drifted from her moorings. The
+wind blew the flames into the rigging of the "Entreprenant," and then
+into that of the "Capricieux." At night all three were in full blaze;
+for when the fire broke out the English batteries turned on them a
+tempest of shot and shell to prevent it from being extinguished. The
+glare of the triple conflagration lighted up the town, the trenches, the
+harbor, and the surrounding hills, while the burning ships shot off
+their guns at random as they slowly drifted westward, and grounded at
+last near the Barachois. In the morning they were consumed to the
+water's edge; and of all the squadron the "Prudent" and the
+"Bienfaisant" alone were left.
+
+In the citadel, of which the King's Bastion formed the front, there was
+a large oblong stone building containing the chapel, lodgings for men
+and officers, and at the southern end the quarters of the Governor. On
+the morning after the burning of the ships a shell fell through the roof
+among a party of soldiers in the chamber below, burst, and set the place
+on fire. In half an hour the chapel and all the northern part of the
+building were in flames; and no sooner did the smoke rise above the
+bastion than the English threw into it a steady shower of missiles. Yet
+soldiers, sailors, and inhabitants hastened to the spot, and labored
+desperately to check the fire. They saved the end occupied by Drucour
+and his wife, but all the rest was destroyed. Under the adjacent
+rampart were the casemates, one of which was crowded with wounded
+officers, and the rest with women and children seeking shelter in these
+subterranean dens. Before the entrances there was a long barrier of
+timber to protect them from exploding shells; and as the wind blew the
+flames towards it, there was danger that it would take fire and
+suffocate those within. They rushed out, crazed with fright, and ran
+hither and thither with outcries and shrieks amid the storm of iron.
+
+In the neighboring Queen's Bastion was a large range of barracks built
+of wood by the New England troops after their capture of the fortress in
+1745. So flimsy and combustible was it that the French writers call it a
+"house of cards" and "a paper of matches." Here were lodged the greater
+part of the garrison: but such was the danger of fire, that they were
+now ordered to leave it; and they accordingly lay in the streets or
+along the foot of the ramparts, under shelters of timber which gave some
+little protection against bombs. The order was well timed; for on the
+night after the fire in the King's Bastion, a shell filled with
+combustibles set this building also in flames. A fearful scene ensued.
+All the English batteries opened upon it. The roar of mortars and
+cannon, the rushing and screaming of round-shot and grape, the hissing
+of fuses and the explosion of grenades and bombs mingled with a storm of
+musketry from the covered way and trenches; while, by the glare of the
+conflagration, the English regiments were seen drawn up in battle array,
+before the ramparts, as if preparing for an assault.
+
+Two days after, at one o'clock in the morning, a burst of loud cheers
+was heard in the distance, followed by confused cries and the noise of
+musketry, which lasted but a moment. Six hundred English sailors had
+silently rowed into the harbor and seized the two remaining ships, the
+"Prudent" and the "Bienfaisant." After the first hubbub all was silent
+for half an hour. Then a light glowed through the thick fog that covered
+the water. The "Prudent" was burning. Being aground with the low tide,
+her captors had set her on fire, allowing the men on board to escape to
+the town in her boats. The flames soon wrapped her from stem to stern;
+and as the broad glare pierced the illumined mists, the English sailors,
+reckless of shot and shell, towed her companion-ship, with all on board,
+to a safe anchorage under Wolfe's batteries.
+
+The position of the besieged was deplorable. Nearly a fourth of their
+number were in the hospitals; while the rest, exhausted with incessant
+toil, could find no place to snatch an hour of sleep; "and yet," says an
+officer, "they still show ardor." "To-day," he again says, on the
+twenty-fourth, "the fire of the place is so weak that it is more like
+funeral guns than a defence." On the front of the town only four cannon
+could fire at all. The rest were either dismounted or silenced by the
+musketry from the trenches. The masonry of the ramparts had been shaken
+by the concussion of their own guns; and now, in the Dauphin's and
+King's bastions, the English shot brought it down in masses. The
+trenches had been pushed so close on the rising grounds at the right
+that a great part of the covered way was enfiladed, while a battery on a
+hill across the harbor swept the whole front with a flank fire. Amherst
+had ordered the gunners to spare the houses of the town; but, according
+to French accounts, the order had little effect, for shot and shell fell
+everywhere. "There is not a house in the place," says the Diary just
+quoted, "that has not felt the effects of this formidable artillery.
+From yesterday morning till seven o'clock this evening we reckon that a
+thousand or twelve hundred bombs, great and small, have been thrown into
+the town, accompanied all the time by the fire of forty pieces of
+cannon, served with an activity not often seen. The hospital and the
+houses around it, which also serve as hospitals, are attacked with
+cannon and mortar. The surgeon trembles as he amputates a limb amid
+cries of _Gare la bombe!_ and leaves his patient in the midst of the
+operation, lest he should share his fate. The sick and wounded,
+stretched on mattresses, utter cries of pain, which do not cease till a
+shot or the bursting of a shell ends them."[586] On the twenty-sixth the
+last cannon was silenced in front of the town, and the English batteries
+had made a breach which seemed practicable for assault.
+
+[Footnote 586: Early in the siege Drucour wrote to Amherst asking that
+the hospitals should be exempt from fire. Amherst answered that shot and
+shell might fall on any part of so small a town, but promised to insure
+the sick and wounded from molestation if Drucour would send them either
+to the island at the mouth of the harbor, or to any of the ships, if
+anchored apart from the rest. The offer was declined, for reasons not
+stated. Drucour gives the correspondence in his Diary.]
+
+On the day before, Drucour, with his chief officers and the engineer,
+Franquet, had made the tour of the covered way, and examined the state
+of the defences. All but Franquet were for offering to capitulate. Early
+on the next morning a council of war was held, at which were present
+Drucour, Franquet, Desgouttes, naval commander, Houllière, commander of
+the regulars, and the several chiefs of battalions. Franquet presented a
+memorial setting forth the state of the fortifications. As it was he who
+had reconstructed and repaired them, he was anxious to show the quality
+of his work in the best light possible; and therefore, in the view of
+his auditors, he understated the effects of the English fire. Hence an
+altercation arose, ending in a unanimous decision to ask for terms.
+Accordingly, at ten o'clock, a white flag was displayed over the breach
+in the Dauphin's Bastion, and an officer named Loppinot was sent out
+with offers to capitulate. The answer was prompt and stern: the garrison
+must surrender as prisoners of war; a definite reply must be given
+within an hour; in case of refusal the place will be attacked by land
+and sea.[587]
+
+[Footnote 587: Mante and other English writers give the text of this
+reply.]
+
+Great was the emotion in the council; and one of its members,
+D'Anthonay, lieutenant-colonel of the battalion of Volontaires
+Étrangers, was sent to propose less rigorous terms. Amherst would not
+speak with him; and jointly with Boscawen despatched this note to the
+Governor:--
+
+     Sir,--We have just received the reply which it has pleased your
+     Excellency to make as to the conditions of the capitulation offered
+     you. We shall not change in the least our views regarding them. It
+     depends on your Excellency to accept them or not; and you will have
+     the goodness to give your answer, yes or no, within half an hour.
+     We have the honor to be, etc.,
+
+     E. BOSCAWEN.
+
+     J. AMHERST.[588]
+
+
+     Drucour answered as follows:--
+
+     Gentlemen,--To reply to your Excellencies in as few words as
+     possible, I have the honor to repeat that my position also remains
+     the same, and that I persist in my first resolution.
+
+     I have the honor to be, etc.,
+
+     The Chevalier de Drucour
+
+[Footnote 588: Translated from the Journal of Drucour.]
+
+In other words, he refused the English terms, and declared his purpose
+to abide the assault. Loppinot was sent back to the English camp with
+this note of defiance. He was no sooner gone than Prévost, the
+intendant, an officer of functions purely civil, brought the Governor a
+memorial which, with or without the knowledge of the military
+authorities, he had drawn up in anticipation of the emergency. "The
+violent resolution which the council continues to hold," said this
+document, "obliges me, for the good of the state, the preservation of
+the King's subjects, and the averting of horrors shocking to humanity,
+to lay before your eyes the consequences that may ensue. What will
+become of the four thousand souls who compose the families of this town,
+of the thousand or twelve hundred sick in the hospitals, and the
+officers and crews of our unfortunate ships? They will be delivered over
+to carnage and the rage of an unbridled soldiery, eager for plunder, and
+impelled to deeds of horror by pretended resentment at what has formerly
+happened in Canada. Thus they will all be destroyed, and the memory of
+their fate will live forever in our colonies.... It remains, Monsieur,"
+continues the paper, "to remind you that the councils you have held thus
+far have been composed of none but military officers. I am not surprised
+at their views. The glory of the King's arm and the honor of their
+several corps have inspired them. You and I alone are charged with the
+administration of the colony and the care of the King's subjects who
+compose it. These gentlemen, therefore, have had no regard for them.
+They think only of themselves and their soldiers, whose business it is
+to encounter the utmost extremity of peril. It is at the prayer of an
+intimidated people that I lay before you the considerations specified in
+this memorial."
+
+"In view of these considerations," writes Drucour, "joined to the
+impossibility of resisting an assault, M. le Chevalier de Courserac
+undertook in my behalf to run after the bearer of my answer to the
+English commander and bring it back." It is evident that the bearer of
+the note had been in no hurry to deliver it, for he had scarcely got
+beyond the fortifications when Courserac overtook and stopped him.
+D'Anthonay, with Duvivier, major of the battalion of Artois, and
+Loppinot, the first messenger, was then sent to the English camp,
+empowered to accept the terms imposed. An English spectator thus
+describes their arrival: "A lieutenant-colonel came running out of the
+garrison, making signs at a distance, and bawling out as loud as he
+could, '_We accept! We accept!_' He was followed by two others; and they
+were all conducted to General Amherst's headquarters."[589] At eleven
+o'clock at night they returned with the articles of capitulation and the
+following letter:--
+
+     Sir,--We have the honor to send your Excellency the articles of
+     capitulation signed.
+
+     Lieutenant-Colonel D'Anthonay has not failed to speak in behalf of
+     the inhabitants of the town; and it is nowise our intention to
+     distress them, but to give them all the aid in our power.
+
+     Your Excellency will have the goodness to sign a duplicate of the
+     articles and send it to us.
+
+     It only remains to assure your Excellency that we shall with great
+     pleasure seize every opportunity to convince your Excellency that
+     we are with the most perfect consideration,
+
+     Sir, your Excellency's most obedient servants,
+
+     E. BOSCAWEN. J. AMHERST.
+
+[Footnote 589: _Authentic Account of the Siege of Louisbourg, by a
+Spectator_.]
+
+The articles stipulated that the garrison should be sent to England,
+prisoners of war, in British ships; that all artillery, arms, munitions,
+and stores, both in Louisbourg and elsewhere on the Island of Cape
+Breton, as well as on Isle St.-Jean, now Prince Edward's Island, should
+be given up intact; that the gate of the Dauphin's Bastion should be
+delivered to the British troops at eight o'clock in the morning; and
+that the garrison should lay down their arms at noon. The victors, on
+their part, promised to give the French sick and wounded the same care
+as their own, and to protect private property from pillage.
+
+Drucour signed the paper at midnight, and in the morning a body of
+grenadiers took possession of the Dauphin's Gate. The rude soldiery
+poured in, swarthy with wind and sun, and begrimed with smoke and dust;
+the garrison, drawn up on the esplanade, flung down their muskets and
+marched from the ground with tears of rage; the cross of St. George
+floated over the shattered rampart; and Louisbourg, with the two great
+islands that depended on it, passed to the British Crown. Guards were
+posted, a stern discipline was enforced, and perfect order maintained.
+The conquerors and the conquered exchanged greetings, and the English
+general was lavish of courtesies to the brave lady who had aided the
+defence so well. "Every favor she asked was granted," says a Frenchman
+present.
+
+Drucour and his garrison had made a gallant defence. It had been his aim
+to prolong the siege till it should be too late for Amherst to
+co-operate with Abercromby in an attack on Canada; and in this, at
+least, he succeeded.
+
+Five thousand six hundred and thirty-seven officers, soldiers, and
+sailors were prisoners in the hands of the victors. Eighteen mortars and
+two hundred and twenty-one cannon were found in the town, along with a
+great quantity of arms, munitions, and stores.[590] At the middle of
+August such of the prisoners as were not disabled by wounds or sickness
+were embarked for England, and the merchants and inhabitants were sent
+to France. Brigadier Whitmore, as governor of Louisbourg, remained with
+four regiments to hold guard over the desolation they had made.
+
+[Footnote 590: _Account of the Guns, Mortars, Shot, Shell, etc., found
+in the Town of Louisbourg upon its Surrender this day_, signed _Jeffrey
+Amherst, 27 July, 1758._]
+
+The fall of the French stronghold was hailed in England with noisy
+rapture. Addresses of congratulation to the King poured in from all the
+cities of the kingdom, and the captured flags were hung in St. Paul's
+amid the roar of cannon and the shouts of the populace. The provinces
+shared these rejoicings. Sermons of thanksgiving resounded from
+countless New England pulpits. At Newport there were fireworks and
+illuminations; and, adds the pious reporter, "We have reason to believe
+that Christians will make wise and religious improvement of so signal a
+favor of Divine Providence." At Philadelphia a like display was seen,
+with music and universal ringing of bells. At Boston "a stately bonfire
+like a pyramid was kindled on the top of Fort Hill, which made a lofty
+and prodigious blaze;" though here certain jealous patriots protested
+against celebrating a victory won by British regulars, and not by New
+England men. At New York there was a grand official dinner at the
+Province Arms in Broadway, where every loyal toast was echoed by the
+cannon of Fort George; and illuminations and fireworks closed the
+day.[591] In the camp of Abercromby at Lake George, Chaplain Cleaveland,
+of Bagley's Massachusetts regiment, wrote: 'The General put out orders
+that the breastwork should be lined with troops, and to fire three
+rounds for joy, and give thanks to God in a religious way."[592] But
+nowhere did the tidings find a warmer welcome than in the small detached
+forts scattered through the solitudes of Nova Scotia, where the military
+exiles, restless from inaction, listened with greedy ears for every word
+from the great world whence they were banished. So slow were their
+communications with it that the fall of Louisbourg was known in England
+before it had reached them, all. Captain John Knox, then in garrison at
+Annapolis, tells how it was greeted there more than five weeks after the
+event. It was the sixth of September. A sloop from Boston was seen
+coming up the bay. Soldiers and officers ran down to the wharf to ask
+for news. "Every soul," says Knox, "was impatient, yet shy of asking; at
+length, the vessel being come near enough to be spoken to, I called out,
+'What news from Louisbourg?' To which the master simply replied, and
+with some gravity, 'Nothing strange.' This answer, which was so coldly
+delivered, threw us all into great consternation, and we looked at each
+other without being able to speak; some of us even turned away with an
+intent to return to the fort. At length one of our soldiers, not yet
+satisfied, called out with some warmth: 'Damn you, Pumpkin, isn't
+Louisbourg taken yet?' The poor New England man then answered: 'Taken,
+yes, above a month ago, and I have been there since; but if you have
+never heard it before, I have got a good parcel of letters for you now.'
+If our apprehensions were great at first, words are insufficient to
+express our transports at this speech, the latter part of which we
+hardly waited for; but instantly all hats flew off, and we made the
+neighboring woods resound with our cheers and huzzas for almost half an
+hour. The master of the sloop was amazed beyond expression, and declared
+he thought we had heard of the success of our arms eastward before, and
+had sought to banter him."[593] At night there was a grand bonfire and
+universal festivity in the fort and village.
+
+[Footnote 591: These particulars are from the provincial newspapers.]
+
+[Footnote 592: Cleaveland, _Journal_.]
+
+[Footnote 593: Knox, _Historical Journal_, I. 158.]
+
+Amherst proceeded to complete his conquest by the subjection of all the
+adjacent possessions of France. Major Dalling was sent to occupy Port
+Espagnol, now Sydney. Colonel Monckton was despatched to the Bay of
+Fundy and the River St. John with an order "to destroy the vermin who
+are settled there."[594] Lord Rollo, with the thirty-fifth regiment and
+two battalions of the sixtieth, received the submission of Isle
+St.-Jean, and tried to remove the inhabitants,--with small success; for
+out of more than four thousand he could catch but seven hundred.[595]
+
+[Footnote 594: _Orders of Amherst to Wolfe, 15 Aug. 1758; Ibid, to
+Monckton, 24 Aug. 1758; Report of Monckton, 12 Nov. 1758._]
+
+[Footnote 595: _Villejouin, commandant à l'Isle St.-Jean, au Ministre, 8
+Sept. 1758._]
+
+The ardent and indomitable Wolfe had been the life of the siege.
+Wherever there was need of a quick eye, a prompt decision, and a bold
+dash, there his lank figure was always in the front. Yet he was only
+half pleased with what had been done. The capture of Louisbourg, he
+thought, should be but the prelude of greater conquests; and he had
+hoped that the fleet and army would sail up the St. Lawrence and attack
+Quebec. Impetuous and impatient by nature, and irritable with disease,
+he chafed at the delay that followed the capitulation, and wrote to his
+father a few days after it: "We are gathering strawberries and other
+wild fruits of the country, with a seeming indifference about what is
+doing in other parts of the world. Our army, however, on the continent
+wants our help." Growing more anxious, he sent Amherst a note to ask his
+intentions; and the General replied, "What I most wish to do is to go
+to Quebec. I have proposed it to the Admiral, and yesterday he seemed to
+think it impracticable." On which Wolfe wrote again: "If the Admiral
+will not carry us to Quebec, reinforcements should certainly be sent to
+the continent without losing a moment. This damned French garrison take
+up our time and attention, which might be better bestowed. The
+transports are ready, and a small convoy would carry a brigade to Boston
+or New York. With the rest of the troops we might make an offensive and
+destructive war in the Bay of Fundy and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. I beg
+pardon for this freedom, but I cannot look coolly upon the bloody
+inroads of those hell-hounds, the Canadians; and if nothing further is
+to be done, I must desire leave to quit the army."
+
+Amherst answered that though he had meant at first to go to Quebec with
+the whole army, late events on the continent made it impossible; and
+that he now thought it best to go with five or six regiments to the aid
+of Abercromby. He asked Wolfe to continue to communicate his views to
+him, and would not hear for a moment of his leaving the army; adding, "I
+know nothing that can tend more to His Majesty's service than your
+assisting in it." Wolfe again wrote to his commander, with whom he was
+on terms of friendship: "An offensive, daring kind of war will awe the
+Indians and ruin the French. Blockhouses and a trembling defensive
+encourage the meanest scoundrels to attack us. If you will attempt to
+cut up New France by the roots, I will come with pleasure to assist."
+
+Amherst, with such speed as his deliberate nature would permit, sailed
+with six regiments for Boston to reinforce Abercromby at Lake George,
+while Wolfe set out on an errand but little to his liking. He had orders
+to proceed to Gaspé, Miramichi, and other settlements on the Gulf of St.
+Lawrence, destroy them, and disperse their inhabitants; a measure of
+needless and unpardonable rigor, which, while detesting it, he executed
+with characteristic thoroughness. "Sir Charles Hardy and I," he wrote to
+his father, "are preparing to rob the fishermen of their nets and burn
+their huts. When that great exploit is at an end, I return to
+Louisbourg, and thence to England." Having finished the work, he wrote
+to Amherst: "Your orders were carried into execution. We have done a
+great deal of mischief, and spread the terror of His Majesty's arms
+through the Gulf, but have added nothing to the reputation of them." The
+destruction of property was great; yet, as Knox writes, "he would not
+suffer the least barbarity to be committed upon the persons of the
+wretched inhabitants."[596]
+
+[Footnote 596: "Les Anglais ont très-bien traités les prisonniers qu'ils
+ont faits dans cette partie" [_Gaspé_, etc]. _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 4
+Nov. 1758._]
+
+He returned to Louisbourg, and sailed for England to recruit his
+shattered health for greater conflicts.
+
+NOTE. Four long and minute French diaries of the siege of Louisbourg are
+before me. The first, that of Drucour, covers a hundred and six folio
+pages, and contains his correspondence with Amherst, Boscawen, and
+Desgouttes. The second is that of the naval captain Tourville, commander
+of the ship "Capricieux," and covers fifty pages. The third is by an
+officer of the garrison whose name does not appear. The fourth, of about
+a hundred pages, is by another officer of the garrison, and is also
+anonymous. It is an excellent record of what passed each day, and of the
+changing conditions, moral and physical, of the besieged. These four
+Journals, though clearly independent of each other, agree in nearly all
+essential particulars. I have also numerous letters from the principal
+officers, military, naval, and civil, engaged in the defence,--Drucour,
+Desgouttes, Houllière, Beaussier, Marolles, Tourville, Courserac,
+Franquet, Villejouin, Prévost, and Querdisien. These, with various other
+documents relating to the siege, were copied from the originals in the
+Archives de la Marine. Among printed authorities on the French side may
+be mentioned Pichon, _Lettres et Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire du
+Cap-Breton,_ and the _Campaign of Louisbourg_, by the Chevalier
+Johnstone, a Scotch Jacobite serving under Drucour.
+
+The chief authorities on the English side are the official Journal of
+Amherst, printed in the _London Magazine_ and in other contemporary
+periodicals, and also in Mante, _History of the Late War;_ five letters
+from Amherst to Pitt, written during the siege (Public Record Office);
+an excellent private Journal called _An Authentic Account of the
+Reduction of Louisbourg, by a Spectator_, parts of which have been
+copied verbatim by Entick without acknowledgement; the admirable Journal
+of Captain John Knox, which contains numerous letters and orders
+relating to the siege; and the correspondence of Wolfe contained in his
+Life by Wright. Before me is the Diary of a captain or subaltern in the
+army of Amherst at Louisbourg, found in the garret of an old house at
+Windsor, Nova Scotia, on an estate belonging in 1760 to Chief Justice
+Deschamps. I owe the use of it to the kindness of George Wiggins, Esq.,
+of Windsor, N.S. Mante gives an excellent plan of the siege operations,
+and another will be found in Jefferys, _Natural and Civil History of
+French Dominions in North America_.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 20
+
+1758
+
+Ticonderoga
+
+
+In the last year London called on the colonists for four thousand men.
+This year Pitt asked them for twenty thousand, and promised that the
+King would supply arms, ammunition, tents, and provisions, leaving to
+the provinces only the raising, clothing, and pay of their soldiers; and
+he added the assurance that Parliament would be asked to make some
+compensation even for these.[597] Thus encouraged, cheered by the
+removal of Loudon, and animated by the unwonted vigor of British
+military preparation, the several provincial assemblies voted men in
+abundance, though the usual vexatious delays took place in raising,
+equipping, and sending them to the field. In this connection, an able
+English writer has brought against the colonies, and especially against
+Massachusetts, charges which deserve attention. Viscount Bury says: "Of
+all the colonies, Massachusetts was the first which discovered the
+designs of the French and remonstrated against their aggressions; of all
+the colonies she most zealously promoted measures of union for the
+common defence, and made the greatest exertions in furtherance of her
+views." But he adds that there is a reverse to the picture, and that
+"this colony, so high-spirited, so warlike, and apparently so loyal,
+would never move hand or foot in her own defence till certain of
+repayment by the mother country."[598] The groundlessness of this charge
+is shown by abundant proofs, one of which will be enough. The Englishman
+Pownall, who had succeeded Shirley as royal governor of the province,
+made this year a report of its condition to Pitt. Massachusetts, he
+says, "has been the frontier and advanced guard of all the colonies
+against the enemy in Canada," and has always taken the lead in military
+affairs. In the three past years she has spent on the expeditions of
+Johnson, Winslow, and Loudon £242,356, besides about £45,000 a year to
+support the provincial government, at the same time maintaining a number
+of forts and garrisons, keeping up scouting-parties, and building,
+equipping, and manning a ship of twenty guns for the service of the
+King. In the first two months of the present year, 1758, she made a
+further military outlay of £172,239. Of all these sums she has received
+from Parliament a reimbursement of only £70,117, and hence she is deep
+in debt; yet, in addition, she has this year raised, paid, maintained,
+and clothed seven thousand soldiers placed under the command of General
+Abercromby, besides above twenty-five hundred more serving the King by
+land or sea; amounting in all to about one in four of her able-bodied
+men.
+
+[Footnote 597: _Pitt to the Colonial Governors, 30 Dec. 1757._]
+
+[Footnote 598: Bury, _Exodus of the Western Nations_, II, 250, 251.]
+
+Massachusetts was extremely poor by the standards of the present day,
+living by fishing, farming, and a trade sorely hampered by the British
+navigation laws. Her contributions of money and men were not ordained by
+an absolute king, but made by the voluntary act of a free people.
+Pownall goes on to say that her present war-debt, due within three
+years, is 366,698 pounds sterling, and that to meet it she has imposed
+on her self taxes amounting, in the town of Boston, to thirteen
+shillings and twopence to every pound of income from real and personal
+estate; that her people are in distress, that she is anxious to continue
+her efforts in the public cause, but that without some further
+reimbursement she is exhausted and helpless.[599] Yet in the next year
+she incurred a new and heavy debt. In 1760 Parliament repaid her
+£59,575.[600] Far from being fully reimbursed, the end of the war found
+her on the brink of bankruptcy. Connecticut made equal sacrifices in the
+common cause,--highly to her honor, for she was little exposed to
+danger, being covered by the neighboring provinces; while impoverished
+New Hampshire put one in three of her able-bodied men into the
+field.[601]
+
+[Footnote 599: _Pownall to Pitt, 30 Sept. 1758_ (Public Record Office,
+_America and West Indies_, LXXI.) "The province of Massachusetts Bay has
+exerted itself with great zeal and at vast expense for the public
+service." _Registers of Privy Council, 26 July, 1757._]
+
+[Footnote 600: _Bollan, Agent of Massachusetts, to Speaker of Assembly,
+20 March, 1760._ It was her share of £200,000 granted to all the
+colonies in the proportion of their respective efforts.]
+
+[Footnote 601: _Address to His Majesty from the Governor, Council, and
+Assembly of New Hampshire, Jan. 1759._]
+
+In June the combined British and provincial force which Abercromby was
+to lead against Ticonderoga was gathered at the head of Lake George;
+while Montcalm lay at its outlet around the walls of the French
+stronghold, with an army not one fourth so numerous. Vaudreuil had
+devised a plan for saving Ticonderoga by a diversion into the valley of
+the Mohawk under Lévis, Rigaud, and Longueuil, with sixteen hundred
+men, who were to be joined by as many Indians. The English forts of that
+region were to be attacked, Schenectady threatened, and the Five Nations
+compelled to declare for France.[602] Thus, as the Governor gave out,
+the English would be forced to cease from aggression, leave Montcalm in
+peace, and think only of defending themselves.[603] "This," writes
+Bougainville on the fifteenth of June, "is what M. de Vaudreuil thinks
+will happen, because he never doubts anything. Ticonderoga, which is the
+point really threatened, is abandoned without support to the troops of
+the line and their general. It would even be wished that they might meet
+a reverse, if the consequences to the colony would not be too
+disastrous."
+
+[Footnote 602: _Lévis au Ministre, 17 Juin, 1758. Doreil au Ministre, 16
+Juin, 1758. Montcalm à sa Femme, 18 Avril, 1758._]
+
+[Footnote 603: _Correspondance de Vaudreuil, 1758. Livre d'Ordres, Juin,
+1758._]
+
+The proposed movement promised, no doubt, great advantages; but it was
+not destined to take effect. Some rangers taken on Lake George by a
+partisan officer named Langy declared with pardonable exaggeration that
+twenty-five or thirty thousand men would attack Ticonderoga in less than
+a fortnight. Vaudreuil saw himself forced to abandon his Mohawk
+expedition, and to order Lévis and his followers, who had not yet left
+Montreal, to reinforce Montcalm.[604] Why they did not go at once is not
+clear. The Governor declares that there were not boats enough. From
+whatever cause, there was a long delay, and Montcalm was left to defend
+himself as he could.
+
+[Footnote 604: _Bigot au Ministre, 21 Juillet, 1758._]
+
+He hesitated whether he should not fall back to Crown Point. The
+engineer, Lotbinière, opposed the plan, as did also Le Mercier.[605] It
+was but a choice of difficulties, and he stayed at Ticonderoga. His
+troops were disposed as they had been in the summer before; one
+battalion, that of Berry, being left near the fort, while the main body,
+under Montcalm himself, was encamped by the saw-mill at the Falls, and
+the rest, under Bourlamaque, occupied the head of the portage, with a
+small advanced force at the landing-place on Lake George. It remained to
+determine at which of these points he should concentrate them and make
+his stand against the English. Ruin threatened him in any case; each
+position had its fatal weakness or its peculiar danger, and his best
+hope was in the ignorance or blundering of his enemy. He seems to have
+been several days in a state of indecision.
+
+[Footnote 605: _N.Y. Col. Docs._, X 893. Lotbinière's relative,
+Vaudreuil, confirms the statement. Montcalm had not, as has been said,
+begun already to fall back.]
+
+In the afternoon of the fifth of July the partisan Langy, who had again
+gone out to reconnoitre towards the head of Lake George, came back in
+haste with the report that the English were embarked in great force.
+Montcalm sent a canoe down Lake Champlain to hasten Lévis to his aid,
+and ordered the battalion of Berry to begin a breastwork and abattis on
+the high ground in front of the fort. That they were not begun before
+shows that he was in doubt as to his plan of defence; and that his whole
+army was not now set to work at them shows that his doubt was still
+unsolved.
+
+It was nearly a month since Abercromby had begun his camp at the head of
+Lake George. Here, on the ground where Johnson had beaten Dieskau, where
+Montcalm had planted his batteries, and Monro vainly defended the wooden
+ramparts of Fort William Henry, were now assembled more than fifteen
+thousand men; and the shores, the foot of the mountains, and the broken
+plains between them were studded thick with tents. Of regulars there
+were six thousand three hundred and sixty-seven, officers and soldiers,
+and of provincials nine thousand and thirty-four.[606] To the New
+England levies, or at least to their chaplains, the expedition seemed a
+crusade against the abomination of Babylon; and they discoursed in their
+sermons of Moses sending forth Joshua against Amalek. Abercromby, raised
+to his place by political influence, was little but the nominal
+commander. "A heavy man," said Wolfe in a letter to his father; "an aged
+gentleman, infirm in body and mind," wrote William Parkman, a boy of
+seventeen, who carried a musket in a Massachusetts regiment, and kept in
+his knapsack a dingy little notebook, in which he jotted down what
+passed each day.[607] The age of the aged gentleman was fifty-two.
+
+[Footnote 606: _Abercromby to Pitt, 12 July, 1758._]
+
+[Footnote 607: Great-uncle of the writer, and son of the Rev. Ebenezer
+Parkman, a graduate of Harvard, and minister of Westborough, Mass.]
+
+Pitt meant that the actual command of the army should be in the hands of
+Brigadier Lord Howe,[608] and he was in fact its real chief; "the
+noblest Englishman that has appeared in my time, and the best soldier in
+the British army," says Wolfe.[609] And he elsewhere speaks of him as
+"that great man." Abercromby testifies to the universal respect and love
+with which officers and men regarded him, and Pitt calls him "a
+character of ancient times; a complete model of military virtue."[610]
+High as this praise is, it seems to have been deserved. The young
+nobleman, who was then in his thirty-fourth year, had the qualities of a
+leader of men. The army felt him, from general to drummer-boy. He was
+its soul; and while breathing into it his own energy and ardor, and
+bracing it by stringent discipline, he broke through the traditions of
+the service and gave it new shapes to suit the time and place. During
+the past year he had studied the art of forest warfare, and joined
+Rogers and his rangers in their scouting-parties, sharing all their
+hardships and making himself one of them. Perhaps the reforms that he
+introduced were fruits of this rough self-imposed schooling. He made
+officers and men throw off all useless incumbrances, cut their hair
+close, wear leggings to protect them from briers, brown the barrels of
+their muskets, and carry in their knapsacks thirty pounds of meal, which
+they cooked for themselves; so that, according to an admiring Frenchman,
+they could live a month without their supply-trains.[611] "You would
+laugh to see the droll figure we all make," writes an officer. "Regulars
+as well as provincials have cut their coats so as scarcely to reach
+their waists. No officer or private is allowed to carry more than one
+blanket and a bearskin. A small portmanteau is allowed each officer. No
+women follow the camp to wash our linen. Lord Howe has already shown an
+example by going to the brook and washing his own."[612]
+
+[Footnote 608: Chesterfield, _Letters_, IV. 260 (ed. Mahon).]
+
+[Footnote 609: _Wolfe to his Father, 7 Aug. 1758_, in Wright, 450.]
+
+[Footnote 610: _Pitt to Grenville, 22 Aug. 1758_, in _Grenville Papers_,
+I. 262.]
+
+[Footnote 611: Pouchot, _Dernière Guerre de l'Amérique_, I. 140.]
+
+[Footnote 612: _Letter from Camp, 12 June, 1758_, in _Boston Evening
+Post._ Another, in _Boston News Letter_, contains similar statements.]
+
+Here, as in all things, he shared the lot of the soldier, and required
+his officers to share it. A story is told of him that before the army
+embarked he invited some of them to dinner in his tent, where they found
+no seats but logs, and no carpet but bear-skins. A servant presently
+placed on the ground a large dish of pork and peas, on which his
+lordship took from his pocket a sheath containing a knife and fork and
+began to cut the meat. The guests looked on in some embarrassment; upon
+which he said: "Is it possible, gentlemen, that you have come on this
+campaign without providing yourselves with what is necessary?" And he
+gave each of them a sheath, with a knife and fork, like his own.
+
+Yet this Lycurgus of the camp, as a contemporary calls him, is described
+as a man of social accomplishments rare even in his rank. He made
+himself greatly beloved by the provincial officers, with many of whom he
+was on terms of intimacy, and he did what he could to break down the
+barriers between the colonial soldiers and the British regulars. When he
+was at Alban, sharing with other high officers the kindly hospitalities
+of Mrs. Schuyler, he so won the heart of that excellent matron that she
+loved him like a son; and, though not given to such effusion, embraced
+him with tears on the morning when he left her to lead his division to
+the lake.[613] In Westminster Abbey may be seen the tablet on which
+Massachusetts pays grateful tribute to his virtues, and commemorates
+"the affection her officers and soldiers bore to his command."
+
+[Footnote 613: Mrs. Grant, _Memoirs of an American Lady_, 226 (ed.
+1876).]
+
+On the evening of the fourth of July, baggage, stores, and ammunition
+were all on board the boats, and the whole army embarked on the morning
+of the fifth. The arrangements were perfect. Each corps marched without
+confusion to its appointed station on the beach, and the sun was
+scarcely above the ridge of French Mountain when all were afloat. A
+spectator watching them from the shore says that when the fleet was
+three miles on its way, the surface of the lake at that distance was
+completely hidden from sight.[614] There were nine hundred bateaux, a
+hundred and thirty-five whaleboats, and a large number of heavy
+flatboats carrying the artillery. The whole advanced in three divisions,
+the regulars in the centre, and the provincials on the flanks. Each
+corps had its flags and its music. The day was fair and men and officers
+were in the highest spirits.
+
+[Footnote 614: _Letter from Lake George_, in _Boston News Letter_.]
+
+Before ten o'clock they began to enter the Narrows; and the boats of the
+three divisions extended themselves into long files as the mountains
+closed on either hand upon the contracted lake. From front to rear the
+line was six miles long. The spectacle was superb: the brightness of the
+summer day; the romantic beauty of the scenery; the sheen and sparkle of
+those crystal waters; the countless islets, tufted with pine, birch, and
+fir; the bordering mountains, with their green summits and sunny crags;
+the flash of oars and glitter of weapons; the banners, the varied
+uniforms, and the notes of bugle, trumpet, bagpipe, and drum, answered
+and prolonged by a hundred woodland echoes. "I never beheld so
+delightful a prospect," wrote a wounded officer at Albany a fortnight
+after.
+
+Rogers with the rangers, and Gage with the light infantry, led the way
+in whaleboats, followed by Bradstreet with his corps of boatmen, armed
+and drilled as soldiers. Then came the main body. The central column of
+regulars was commanded by Lord Howe, his own regiment, the fifty-fifth,
+in the van, followed by the Royal Americans, the twenty-seventh,
+forty-fourth, forty-sixth, and eightieth infantry, and the Highlanders
+of the forty-second, with their major, Duncan Campbell of Inverawe,
+silent and gloomy amid the general cheer, for his soul was dark with
+foreshadowings of death.[615] With this central column came what are
+described as two floating castles, which were no doubt batteries to
+cover the landing of the troops. On the right hand and the left were the
+provincials, uniformed in blue, regiment after regiment, from
+Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Rhode Island.
+Behind them all came the bateaux, loaded with stores and baggage, and
+the heavy flatboats that carried the artillery, while a rear-guard of
+provincials and regulars closed the long procession.[616]
+
+[Footnote 615: See Appendix G.]
+
+[Footnote 616: _Letter from Lake George_, in _Boston News Letter_. Even
+Rogers, the ranger, speaks of the beauty of the scene.]
+
+At five in the afternoon they reached Sabbath-Day Point, twenty-five
+miles down the lake, where they stopped till late in the evening,
+waiting for the baggage and artillery, which had lagged behind; and here
+Lord Howe, lying on a bearskin by the side of the ranger, John Stark,
+questioned him as to the position of Ticonderoga and its best points of
+approach. At about eleven o'clock they set out again, and at daybreak
+entered what was then called the Second Narrows; that is to say, the
+contraction of the lake where it approaches its outlet. Close on their
+left, ruddy in the warm sunrise, rose the vast bare face of Rogers Rock,
+whence a French advanced party, under Langy and an officer named
+Trepezec, was watching their movements. Lord Howe, with Rogers and
+Bradstreet, went in whaleboats to reconnoitre the landing. At the place
+which the French called the Burnt Camp, where Montcalm had embarked the
+summer before, they saw a detachment of the enemy too weak to oppose
+them. Their men landed and drove them off. At noon the whole army was on
+shore. Rogers, with a party of rangers, was ordered forward to
+reconnoitre, and the troops were formed for the march.
+
+From this part of the shore[617] a plain covered with forest stretched
+northwestward half a mile or more to the mountains behind which lay the
+valley of Trout Brook. On this plain the army began its march in four
+columns, with the intention of passing round the western bank of the
+river of the outlet, since the bridge over it had been destroyed.
+Rogers, with the provincial regiments of Fitch and Lyman, led the way,
+at some distance before the rest. The forest was extremely dense and
+heavy, and so obstructed with undergrowth that it was impossible to see
+more than a few yards in any direction, while the ground was encumbered
+with fallen trees in every stage of decay. The ranks were broken, and
+the men struggled on as they could in dampness and shade, under a canopy
+of boughs that the sun could scarcely pierce. The difficulty increased
+when, after advancing about a mile, they came upon undulating and broken
+ground. They were now not far from the upper rapids of the outlet. The
+guides became bewildered in the maze of trunks and boughs; the marching
+columns were confused, and fell in one upon the other. They were in the
+strange situation of an army lost in the woods.
+
+[Footnote 617: Between the old and new steamboat-landings, and parts
+adjacent.]
+
+The advanced party of French under Langy and Trepezec, about three
+hundred and fifty in all, regulars and Canadians, had tried to retreat;
+but before they could do so, the whole English army had passed them,
+landed, and placed itself between them and their countrymen. They had no
+resource but to take to the woods. They seem to have climbed the steep
+gorge at the side of Rogers Rock and followed the Indian path that led
+to the valley of Trout Brook, thinking to descend it, and, by circling
+along the outskirts of the valley of Ticonderoga, reach Montcalm's camp
+at the saw-mill. Langy was used to bushranging; but he too became
+perplexed in the blind intricacies of the forest. Towards the close of
+the day he and his men had come out from the valley of Trout Brook, and
+were near the junction of that stream with the river of the outlet, in a
+state of some anxiety, for they could see nothing but brown trunks and
+green boughs. Could any of them have climbed one of the great pines that
+here and there reared their shaggy spires high above the surrounding
+forest, they would have discovered where they were, but would have
+gained not the faintest knowledge of the enemy. Out of the woods on the
+right they would have seen a smoke rising from the burning huts of the
+French camp at the head of the portage, which Bourlamaque had set on
+fire and abandoned. At a mile or more in front, the saw-mill at the
+Falls might perhaps have been descried, and, by glimpses between the
+trees, the tents of the neighboring camp where Montcalm still lay with
+his main force. All the rest seemed lonely as the grave; mountain and
+valley lay wrapped in primeval woods, and none could have dreamed that,
+not far distant, an army was groping its way, buried in foliage; no
+rumbling of wagons and artillery trains, for none were there; all silent
+but the cawing of some crow flapping his black wings over the sea of
+tree-tops.
+
+Lord Howe, with Major Israel Putnam and two hundred rangers, was at the
+head of the principal column, which was a little in advance of the three
+others. Suddenly the challenge, _Qui vive!_ rang sharply from the
+thickets in front. _Français!_ was the reply. Langy's men were not
+deceived; they fired out of the bushes. The shots were returned; a hot
+skirmish followed; and Lord Howe dropped dead, shot through the breast.
+All was confusion. The dull, vicious reports of musketry in thick woods,
+at first few and scattering, then in fierce and rapid volleys, reached
+the troops behind. They could hear, but see nothing. Already harassed
+and perplexed, they became perturbed. For all they knew, Montcalm's
+whole army was upon them. Nothing prevented a panic but the steadiness
+of the rangers, who maintained the fight alone till the rest came back
+to their senses. Rogers, with his reconnoitring party, and the regiments
+of Fitch and Lyman, were at no great distance in front. They all turned
+on hearing the musketry, and thus the French were caught between two
+fires. They fought with desperation. About fifty of them at length
+escaped; a hundred and forty-eight were captured, and the rest killed or
+drowned in trying to cross the rapids. The loss of the English was small
+in numbers, but immeasurable in the death of Howe. "The fall of this
+noble and brave officer," says Rogers, "seemed to produce an almost
+general languor and consternation through the whole army." "In Lord
+Howe," writes another contemporary, Major Thomas Mante, "the soul of
+General Abercromby's army seemed to expire. From the unhappy moment the
+General was deprived of his advice, neither order nor discipline was
+observed, and a strange kind of infatuation usurped the place of
+resolution." The death of one man was the ruin of fifteen thousand.
+
+The evil news was despatched to Albany, and in two or three days the
+messenger who bore it passed the house of Mrs. Schuyler on the meadows
+above the town. "In the afternoon," says her biographer, "a man was seen
+coming from the north galloping violently without his hat. Pedrom, as he
+was familiarly called, Colonel Schuyler's only surviving brother, was
+with her, and ran instantly to inquire, well knowing that he rode
+express. The man galloped on, crying out that Lord Howe was killed. The
+mind of our good aunt had been so engrossed by her anxiety and fears for
+the event impending, and so impressed with the merit and magnanimity of
+her favorite hero, that her wonted firmness sank under the stroke, and
+she broke out into bitter lamentations. This had such an effect on her
+friends and domestics that shrieks and sobs of anguish echoed through
+every part of the house."
+
+The effect of the loss was seen at once. The army was needlessly kept
+under arms all night in the forest, and in the morning was ordered back
+to the landing whence it came.[618] Towards noon, however, Bradstreet
+was sent with a detachment of regulars and provincials to take
+possession of the saw-mill at the Falls, which Montcalm had abandoned
+the evening before. Bradstreet rebuilt the bridges destroyed by the
+retiring enemy, and sent word to his commander that the way was open; on
+which Abercromby again put his army in motion, reached the Falls late in
+the afternoon, and occupied the deserted encampment of the French.
+
+[Footnote 618: _Abercromby to Pitt, 12 July, 1758._]
+
+Montcalm with his main force had held this position at the Falls through
+most of the preceding day, doubtful, it seems, to the last whether he
+should not make his final stand there. Bourlamaque was for doing so; but
+two old officers, Bernès and Montguy, pointed out the danger that the
+English would occupy the neighboring heights;[619] whereupon Montcalm at
+length resolved to fall back. The camp was broken up at five o'clock.
+Some of the troops embarked in bateaux, while others marched a mile and
+a half along the forest road, passed the place where the battalion of
+Berry was still at work on the breastwork begun in the morning, and made
+their bivouac a little farther on, upon the cleared ground that
+surrounded the fort.
+
+[Footnote 619: Pouchot, I. 145.]
+
+The peninsula of Ticonderoga consists of a rocky plateau, with low
+grounds on each side, bordering Lake Champlain on the one hand, and the
+outlet of Lake George on the other. The fort stood near the end of the
+peninsula, which points towards the southeast. Thence, as one goes
+westward, the ground declines a little, and then slowly rises, till,
+about half a mile from the fort, it reaches its greatest elevation, and
+begins still more gradually to decline again. Thus a ridge is formed
+across the plateau between the steep declivities that sink to the low
+grounds on right and left. Some weeks before, a French officer named
+Hugues had suggested the defence of this ridge by means of an
+abattis.[620] Montcalm approved his plan; and now, at the eleventh hour,
+he resolved to make his stand here. The two engineers, Pontleroy and
+Desandrouin, had already traced the outline of the works, and the
+soldiers of the battalion of Berry had made some progress in
+constructing them. At dawn of the seventh, while Abercromby, fortunately
+for his enemy, was drawing his troops back to the landing-place, the
+whole French army fell to their task.
+
+[Footnote 620: _N.Y. Col. Docs._, X. 708.]
+
+The regimental colors were planted along the line, and the officers,
+stripped to the shirt, took axe in hand and labored with their men. The
+trees that covered the ground were hewn down by thousands, the tops
+lopped off, and the trunks piled one upon another to form a massive
+breastwork. The line followed the top of the ridge, along which it
+zig-zagged in such a manner that the whole front could be swept by
+flank-fires of musketry and grape. Abercromby describes the wall of logs
+as between eight and nine feet high;[621] in which case there must have
+been a rude _banquette_, or platform to fire from, on the inner side. It
+was certainly so high that nothing could be seen over it but the crowns
+of the soldiers' hats. The upper tier was formed of single logs, in
+which notches were cut to serve as loopholes; and in some places sods
+and bags of sand were piled along the top, with narrow spaces to fire
+through.[622] From the central part of the line the ground sloped away
+like a natural glacis; while at the sides, and especially on the left,
+it was undulating and broken. Over this whole space, to the distance of
+a musket-shot from the works, the forest was cut down, and the trees
+left lying where they fell among the stumps, with tops turned outwards,
+forming one vast abattis, which, as a Massachusetts officer says, looked
+like a forest laid flat by a hurricane.[623] But the most formidable
+obstruction was immediately along the front of the breastwork, where the
+ground was covered with heavy boughs, overlapping and interlaced, with
+sharpened points bristling into the face of the assailant like the
+quills of a porcupine. As these works were all of wood, no vestige of
+them remains. The earthworks now shown to tourists as the lines of
+Montcalm are of later construction; and though on the same ground, are
+not on the same plan.[624]
+
+[Footnote 621: _Abercromby to Harrington, 12 July, 1758._ "At least
+eight feet high." Rogers, _Journals_, 116.]
+
+[Footnote 622: A Swiss officer of the Royal Americans, writing on the
+14th, says that there were two, and in some parts three, rows of
+loopholes. See the letter in _Pennsylvania Archives_, III. 472.]
+
+[Footnote 623: _Colonel Oliver Partridge to his Wife, 12 July, 1758._]
+
+[Footnote 624: A new line of works was begun four days after the battle,
+to replace the log breastwork. Malartic, _Journal. Travaux faits à
+Carillon, 1758_.]
+
+Here, then, was a position which, if attacked in front with musketry
+alone, might be called impregnable. But would Abercromby so attack it?
+He had several alternatives. He might attempt the flank and rear of his
+enemy by way of the low grounds on the right and left of the plateau, a
+movement which the precautions of Montcalm had made difficult, but not
+impossible. Or, instead of leaving his artillery idle on the strand of
+Lake George, he might bring it to the front and batter the breastwork,
+which, though impervious to musketry, was worthless against heavy
+cannon. Or he might do what Burgoyne did with success a score of years
+later, and plant a battery on the heights of Rattlesnake Hill, now
+called Mount Defiance, which commanded the position of the French, and
+whence the inside of their breastwork could be scoured with round-shot
+from end to end. Or, while threatening the French front with a part of
+his army, he could march the rest a short distance through the woods on
+his left to the road which led from Ticonderoga to Crown Point, and
+which would soon have brought him to the place called Five-Mile Point,
+where Lake Champlain narrows to the width of an easy rifle-shot, and
+where a battery of field-pieces would have cut off all Montcalm's
+supplies and closed his only way of retreat. As the French were
+provisioned for but eight days, their position would thus have been
+desperate. They plainly saw the danger; and Doreil declares that had the
+movement been made, their whole army must have surrendered.[625]
+Montcalm had done what he could; but the danger of his position was
+inevitable and extreme. His hope lay in Abercromby; and it was a hope
+well founded. The action of the English general answered the utmost
+wishes of his enemy.
+
+[Footnote 625: _Doreil au Ministre, 28 Juillet, 1758._ The Chevalier
+Johnstone thought that Montcalm was saved by Abercromby's ignorance of
+the ground. A _Dialogue in Hades_ (Quebec Historical Society).]
+
+Abercromby had been told by his prisoners that Montcalm had six thousand
+men, and that three thousand more were expected every hour. Therefore he
+was in haste to attack before these succors could arrive. As was the
+general, so was the army. "I believe," writes an officer, "we were one
+and all infatuated by a notion of carrying every obstacle by a mere
+_coup de mousqueterie_."[626] Leadership perished with Lord Howe, and
+nothing was left but blind, headlong valor.
+
+[Footnote 626: See the letter in Knox, I. 148.]
+
+Clerk, chief engineer, was sent to reconnoitre the French works from
+Mount Defiance; and came back with the report that, to judge from what
+he could see, they might be carried by assault. Then, without waiting to
+bring up his cannon, Abercromby prepared to storm the lines.
+
+The French finished their breastwork and abattis on the evening of the
+seventh, encamped behind them, slung their kettles, and rested after
+their heavy toil. Lévis had not yet appeared; but at twilight one of his
+officers, Captain Pouchot, arrived with three hundred regulars, and
+announced that his commander would come before morning with a hundred
+more. The reinforcement, though small, was welcome, and Lévis was a host
+in himself. Pouchot was told that the army was half a mile off. Thither
+he repaired, made his report to Montcalm, and looked with amazement at
+the prodigious amount of work accomplished in one day.[627] Lévis
+himself arrived in the course of the night, and approved the arrangement
+of the troops. They lay behind their lines till daybreak; then the drums
+beat, and they formed in order of battle.[628] The battalions of La
+Sarre and Languedoc were posted on the left, under Bourlamaque, the
+first battalion of Berry with that of Royal Roussillon in the centre,
+under Montcalm, and those of La Reine, Béarn, and Guienne on the right,
+under Lévis. A detachment of volunteers occupied the low grounds between
+the breastwork and the outlet of Lake George; while, at the foot of the
+declivity on the side towards Lake Champlain, were stationed four
+hundred and fifty colony regulars and Canadians, behind an abattis which
+they had made for themselves; and as they were covered by the cannon of
+the fort, there was some hope that they would check any flank movement
+which the English might attempt on that side. Their posts being thus
+assigned, the men fell to work again to strengthen their defences.
+Including those who came with Lévis, the total force of effective
+soldiers was now thirty-six hundred.[629]
+
+[Footnote 627: Pouchot, I. 137.]
+
+[Footnote 628: _Livre d'Ordres, Disposition de Défense des
+Retranchements, 8 Juillet, 1758_.]
+
+[Footnote 629: Montcalm, _Relation de la Victoire remportée à Carillon,
+8 Juillet, 1758_. Vaudreuil puts the number at 4,760, besides officers,
+which includes the garrison and laborers at the fort. _Vaudreuil au
+Ministre, 28 Juillet, 1758_.]
+
+Soon after nine o'clock a distant and harmless fire of small-arms began
+on the slopes of Mount Defiance. It came from a party of Indians who had
+just arrived with Sir William Johnson, and who, after amusing themselves
+in this manner for a time, remained for the rest of the day safe
+spectators of the fight. The soldiers worked undisturbed till noon, when
+volleys of musketry were heard from the forest in front. It was the
+English light troops driving in the French pickets. A cannon was fired
+as a signal to drop tools and form for battle. The white uniforms lined
+the breastwork in a triple row, with the grenadiers behind them as a
+reserve, and the second battalion of Berry watching the flanks and rear.
+
+Meanwhile the English army had moved forward from its camp by the
+saw-mill. First came the rangers, the light infantry, and Bradstreet's
+armed boatmen, who, emerging into the open space, began a spattering
+fire. Some of the provincial troops followed, extending from left to
+right, and opening fire in turn; then the regulars, who had formed in
+columns of attack under cover of the forest, advanced their solid red
+masses into the sunlight, and passing through the intervals between the
+provincial regiments, pushed forward to the assault. Across the rough
+ground, with its maze of fallen trees whose leaves hung withering in the
+July sun, they could see the top of the breastwork, but not the men
+behind it; when, in an instant, all the line was obscured by a gush of
+smoke, a crash of exploding firearms tore the air, and grapeshot and
+musket-balls swept the whole space like a tempest; "a damnable fire,"
+says an officer who heard them screaming about his ears. The English had
+been ordered to carry the works with the bayonet; but their ranks were
+broken by the obstructions through which they struggled in vain to force
+their way, and they soon began to fire in turn. The storm raged in full
+fury for an hour. The assailants pushed close to the breastwork; but
+there they were stopped by the bristling mass of sharpened branches,
+which they could not pass under the murderous cross-fires that swept
+them from front and flank. At length they fell back, exclaiming that the
+works were impregnable. Abercromby, who was at the saw-mill, a mile and
+a half in the rear, sent order to attack again, and again they came on
+as before.
+
+The scene was frightful: masses of infuriated men who could not go
+forward and would not go back; straining for an enemy they could not
+reach, and firing on an enemy they could not see; caught in the
+entanglement of fallen trees; tripped by briers, stumbling over logs,
+tearing through boughs; shouting, yelling, cursing, and pelted all the
+while with bullets that killed them by scores, stretched them on the
+ground, or hung them on jagged branches in strange attitudes of death.
+The provincials supported the regulars with spirit, and some of them
+forced their way to the foot of the wooden wall.
+
+The French fought with the intrepid gayety of their nation, and shouts
+of _Vive le Roi!_ and _Vive notre General!_ mingled with the din of
+musketry. Montcalm, with his coat off, for the day was hot, directed the
+defence of the centre, and repaired to any part of the line where the
+danger for the time seemed greatest. He is warm in praise of his enemy,
+and declares that between one and seven o'clock they attacked him six
+successive times. Early in the action Abercromby tried to turn the
+French left by sending twenty bateaux, filled with troops, down the
+outlet of Lake George. They were met by the fire of the volunteers
+stationed to defend the low grounds on that side, and, still advancing,
+came within range of the cannon of the fort, which sank two of them and
+drove back the rest.
+
+A curious incident happened during one of the attacks. De Bassignac, a
+captain in the battalion of Royal Roussillon, tied his handkerchief to
+the end of a musket and waved it over the breastwork in defiance. The
+English mistook it for a sign of surrender, and came forward with all
+possible speed, holding their muskets crossed over their heads in both
+hands, and crying _Quarter_. The French made the same mistake; and
+thinking that their enemies were giving themselves up as prisoners,
+ceased firing, and mounted on the top of the breastwork to receive them.
+Captain Pouchot, astonished, as he says, to see them perched there,
+looked out to learn the cause, and saw that the enemy meant anything but
+surrender. Whereupon he shouted with all his might: "_Tirez! Tirez! Ne
+voyez-vous pas que ces gens-là vont vous enlever?_" The soldiers, still
+standing on the breastwork, instantly gave the English a volley, which
+killed some of them, and sent back the rest discomfited.[630]
+
+[Footnote 630: Pouchot, I. 153. Both Niles and Entick mention the
+incident.]
+
+This was set to the account of Gallic treachery. "Another deceit the
+enemy put upon us," says a military letter-writer: "they raised their
+hats above the breastwork, which our people fired at; they, having
+loopholes to fire through, and being covered by the sods, we did them
+little damage, except shooting their hats to pieces."[631] In one of the
+last assaults a soldier of the Rhode Island regiment, William Smith,
+managed to get through all obstructions and ensconce himself close under
+the breastwork, where in the confusion he remained for a time unnoticed,
+improving his advantages meanwhile by shooting several Frenchmen. Being
+at length observed, a soldier fired vertically down upon him and wounded
+him severely, but not enough to prevent his springing up, striking at
+one of his enemies over the top of the wall, and braining him with his
+hatchet. A British officer who saw the feat, and was struck by the
+reckless daring of the man, ordered two regulars to bring him off;
+which, covered by a brisk fire of musketry, they succeeded in doing. A
+letter from the camp two or three weeks later reports him as in a fair
+way to recover, being, says the writer, much braced and invigorated by
+his anger against the French, on whom he was swearing to have his
+revenge.[632]
+
+[Footnote 631: _Letter from Saratoga, 12 July, 1758_, in _New Hampshire
+Gazette_. Compare _Pennsylvania Archives_, III. 474.]
+
+[Footnote 632: _Letter from Lake George, 26 July, 1758_, in _Boston
+Gazette_. The story is given, without much variation, in several other
+letters.]
+
+Toward five o'clock two English columns joined in a most determined
+assault on the extreme right of the French, defended by the battalions
+of Guienne and Béarn. The danger for a time was imminent. Montcalm
+hastened to the spot with the reserves. The assailants hewed their way
+to the foot of the breastwork; and though again and again repulsed, they
+again and again renewed the attack. The Highlanders fought with stubborn
+and unconquerable fury. "Even those who were mortally wounded," writes
+one of their lieutenants, "cried to their companions not to lose a
+thought upon them, but to follow their officers and mind the honor of
+their country. Their ardor was such that it was difficult to bring them
+off."[633] Their major, Campbell of Inverawe, found his foreboding true.
+He received a mortal shot, and his clansmen bore him from the field.
+Twenty-five of their officers were killed or wounded, and half the men
+fell under the deadly fire that poured from the loopholes. Captain John
+Campbell and a few followers tore their way through the abattis, climbed
+the breastwork, leaped down among the French, and were bayoneted
+there.[634]
+
+[Footnote 633: _Letter of Lieutenant William Grant_, in _Maclachlan's
+Highlands_, II. 340 (ed. 1875).]
+
+[Footnote 634: _Ibid._, II. 339.]
+
+As the colony troops and Canadians on the low ground were left
+undisturbed, Lévis sent them an order to make a sortie and attack the
+left flank of the charging columns. They accordingly posted themselves
+among the trees along the declivity, and fired upwards at the enemy, who
+presently shifted their position to the right, out of the line of shot.
+The assault still continued, but in vain; and at six there was another
+effort, equally fruitless. From this time till half-past seven a
+lingering fight was kept up by the rangers and other provincials, firing
+from the edge of the woods and from behind the stumps, bushes, and
+fallen trees in front of the lines. Its only objects were to cover their
+comrades, who were collecting and bringing off the wounded, and to
+protect the retreat of the regulars, who fell back in disorder to the
+Falls. As twilight came on, the last combatant withdrew, and none were
+left but the dead. Abercromby had lost in killed, wounded, and missing,
+nineteen hundred and forty-four officers and men.[635] The loss of the
+French, not counting that of Langy's detachment, was three hundred and
+seventy-seven. Bourlamaque was dangerously wounded; Bougainville
+slightly; and the hat of Lévis was twice shot through.[636]
+
+[Footnote 635: See Appendix G.]
+
+[Footnote 636: _Lévis au Ministre, 13 Juillet, 1758_.]
+
+Montcalm, with a mighty load lifted from his soul, passed along the
+lines, and gave the tired soldiers the thanks they nobly deserved. Beer,
+wine, and food were served out to them, and they bivouacked for the
+night on the level ground between the breastwork and the fort. The enemy
+had met a terrible rebuff; yet the danger was not over. Abercromby still
+had more than thirteen thousand men, and he might renew the attack with
+cannon. But, on the morning of the ninth, a band of volunteers who had
+gone out to watch him brought back the report that he was in full
+retreat. The saw-mill at the Falls was on fire, and the last English
+soldier was gone. On the morning of the tenth, Lévis, with a strong
+detachment, followed the road to the landing-place, and found signs that
+a panic had overtaken the defeated troops. They had left behind several
+hundred barrels of provisions and a large quantity of baggage; while in
+a marshy place that they had crossed was found a considerable number of
+their shoes, which had stuck in the mud, and which they had not stopped
+to recover. They had embarked on the morning after the battle, and
+retreated to the head of the lake in a disorder and dejection wofully
+contrasted with the pomp of their advance. A gallant army was sacrificed
+by the blunders of its chief.
+
+Montcalm announced his victory to his wife in a strain of exaggeration
+that marks the exaltation of his mind. "Without Indians, almost without
+Canadians or colony troops,--I had only four hundred,--alone with Lévis
+and Bourlamaque and the troops of the line, thirty-one hundred fighting
+men, I have beaten an army of twenty-five thousand. They repassed the
+lake precipitately, with a loss of at least five thousand. This glorious
+day does infinite honor to the valor of our battalions. I have no time
+to write more. I am well, my dearest, and I embrace you." And he wrote
+to his friend Doreil: "The army, the too-small army of the King, has
+beaten the enemy. What a day for France! If I had had two hundred
+Indians to send out at the head of a thousand picked men under the
+Chevalier de Lévis, not many would have escaped. Ah, my dear Doreil,
+what soldiers are ours! I never saw the like. Why were they not at
+Louisbourg?"
+
+On the morrow of his victory he caused a great cross to be planted on
+the battle-field, inscribed with these lines, composed by the
+soldier-scholar himself,--
+
+   "Quid dux? quid miles? quid strata ingentia ligna?
+   En Signum! en victor! Deus hîc, Deus ipse triumphat."
+
+   "Soldier and chief and rampart's strength are nought;
+   Behold the conquering Cross! 'T is God the triumph wrought."[637]
+
+[Footnote 637: Along with the above paraphrase I may give that of
+Montcalm himself, which was also inscribed on the cross:--
+
+   "Chrétien! ce ne fut point Montcalm et la prudence,
+     Ces arbres renversés, ces héros, leurs exploits,
+   Qui des Anglais confus ont brisé l'espérance;
+     C'est le bras de ton Dieu, vainqueur sur cette croix."
+
+In the same letter in which Montcalm sent these lines to his mother he
+says: "Je vous envoie, pour vous amuser, deux chansons sur le combat du
+8 Juillet, dont l'une est en style des poissardes de Paris." One of
+these songs, which were written by soldiers after the battle, begins,--
+
+   "Je chante des François
+   La valeur et la gloire,
+   Qui toujours sur l'Anglois
+   Remportent la victoire.
+   Ce sont des héros,
+   Tous nos généraux,
+   Et Montcalm et Lévis,
+   Et Bourlamaque aussi."
+
+   "Mars, qui les engendra
+   Pour l'honneur de la France,
+   D'abord les anima
+   De sa haute vaillance,
+   Et les transporta
+   Dans le Canada,
+   Où l'on voit les François
+   Culbuter les Anglois."
+
+The other effusion of the military muse is in a different strain, "en
+style des poissardes de Paris." The following a specimen, given
+_literatim_:--
+
+   "L'aumônier fit l'exhortation,
+   Puis il donnit l'absolution;
+   Aisément cela se peut croire.
+   Enfants, dit-il, animez-vous!
+   L'bon Dieu, sa mère, tout est pour vous.
+   _S--é! j'sommes catholiques. Les Anglois sont des hérétiques._
+
+"Ce sont des chiens; à coups d'pieds, a coups d'poings faut leur casser
+la gueule et la mâchoire."
+
+   "Soldats, officiers, généraux,
+   Chacun en ce jour fut héros.
+   Aisément cela se peut croire.
+   Montcalm, comme défunt Annibal,
+   S'montroit soldat et général.
+   _S--é! sil y avoit quelqu'un qui ne l'aimit point!_"
+
+"Je veux être un chien; à coups d'pieds, a coups d'poings, j'lui
+cass'rai la gueule et la mâchoire."
+
+This is an allusion to Vaudreuil. On the battle of Ticonderoga, see
+Appendix G]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 21
+
+1758
+
+Fort Frontenac
+
+
+The rashness of Abercromby before the fight was matched by his
+poltroonery after it. Such was his terror that on the evening of his
+defeat he sent an order to Colonel Cummings, commanding at Fort William
+Henry, to send all the sick and wounded and all the heavy artillery to
+New York without delay.[638] He himself followed so closely upon this
+disgraceful missive that Cummings had no time to obey it.
+
+[Footnote 638: _Cunningham, aide-de-camp of Abercromby, to Cummings, 8
+July, 1758_.]
+
+The defeated and humbled troops proceeded to reoccupy the ground they
+had left a few days before in the flush of confidence and pride; and
+young Colonel Williams, of Massachusetts, lost no time in sending the
+miserable story to his uncle Israel. His letter, which is dated "Lake
+George (sorrowful situation), July ye 11th," ends thus: "I have told
+facts; you may put the epithets upon them. In one word, what with
+fatigue, want of sleep, exercise of mind, and leaving the place we went
+to capture, the best part of the army is unhinged. I have told enough to
+make you sick, if the relation acts on you as the facts have on me."
+
+In the routed army was the sturdy John Cleaveland, minister of Ipswich,
+and now chaplain of Bagley's Massachusetts regiment, who regarded the
+retreat with a disgust that was shared by many others. "This day," he
+writes in his Diary, at the head of Lake George, two days after the
+battle, "wherever I went I found people, officers and soldiers,
+astonished that we left the French ground, and commenting on the strange
+conduct in coming off." From this time forth the provincials called
+their commander Mrs. Nabbycromby.[639] He thought of nothing but
+fortifying himself. "Towards evening," continues the chaplain, "the
+General, with his Rehoboam counsellors, came over to line out a fort on
+the rocky hill where our breastwork was last year. Now we begin to think
+strongly that the grand expedition against Canada is laid aside, and a
+foundation made totally to impoverish our country." The whole army was
+soon intrenched. The chaplain of Bagley's, with his brother Ebenezer,
+chaplain of another regiment, one day walked round the camp and
+carefully inspected it. The tour proved satisfactory to the militant
+divines, and John Cleaveland reported to his wife: "We have built an
+extraordinary good breastwork, sufficient to defend ourselves against
+twenty thousand of the enemy, though at present we have not above a
+third part of that number fit for duty." Many of the troops had been
+sent to the Mohawk, and others to the Hudson.
+
+[Footnote 639: Trumbull, _Hist. Connecticut_, II. 392. "Nabby" (Abigail)
+was then a common female name in New England.]
+
+In the regiment of which Cleaveland was chaplain there was a young
+surgeon from Danvers, Dr. Caleb Rea, who also kept a copious diary, and,
+being of a serious turn, listened with edification to the prayers and
+exhortations to which the yeoman soldiery were daily summoned. In his
+zeal, he made an inquest among them for singers, and chose the most
+melodious to form a regimental choir, "the better to carry on the daily
+service of singing psalms;" insomuch that the New England camp was vocal
+with rustic harmony, sincere, if somewhat nasal. These seemly
+observances were not inconsistent with a certain amount of disorder
+among the more turbulent spirits, who, removed from the repressive
+influence of tight-laced village communities, sometimes indulged in
+conduct which grieved the conscientious surgeon. The rural New England
+of that time, with its narrowness, its prejudices, its oddities, its
+combative energy, and rugged, unconquerable strength, is among the
+things of the past, or lingers in remote corners where the whistle of
+the locomotive is never heard. It has spread itself in swarming millions
+over half a continent, changing with changing conditions; and even the
+part of it that clings to the ancestral hive has transformed and
+continues to transform itself.
+
+The provincials were happy in their chaplains, among whom there reigned
+a marvellous harmony, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and
+Congregationalists meeting twice a week to hold prayer-meetings
+together. "A rare instance indeed," says Dr. Rea, "and perhaps scarce
+ever was an army blessed with such a set of chaplains before." On one
+occasion, just before the fatal expedition, nine of them, after prayers
+and breakfast, went together to call upon the General. "He treated us
+very kindly," says the chaplain of Bagley's, "and told us that he hoped
+we would teach the people to do their duty and be courageous; and told
+us a story of a chaplain in Germany, where he was, who just before the
+action told the soldiers he had not time to say much, and therefore
+should only say: 'Be courageous; for no cowards go to heaven.' The
+General treated us to a bowl of punch and a bottle of wine, and then we
+took our leave of him."[640]
+
+[Footnote 640: For the use of the Diary of Chaplain Cleaveland, as well
+as of his letters to his wife, I am indebted to the kindness of Miss
+Abby E. Cleaveland, his descendant.]
+
+When Cleaveland and the more gifted among his brethren preached of a
+Sunday, officers and men of the regulars, no less than the provincials,
+came to listen; yet that pious Sabbatarian, Dr. Rea, saw much to afflict
+his conscience. "Sad, sad it is to see how the Sabbath is profaned in
+the camp," above all by "the horrid custom of swearing, more especially
+among the regulars; and I can't but charge our defeat on this sin."
+
+It would have been well had the harmony that prevailed among the
+chaplains found its counterpart among the men of the sword; but between
+the British regular officers and those of the provinces there was
+anything but an equal brotherhood. It is true that Pitt, in the spirit
+of conciliation which he always showed towards the colonies, had
+procured a change in the regulations concerning the relative rank of
+British and provincial officers, thus putting them in a position much
+nearer equality; but this, while appeasing the provincials, seems to
+have annoyed the others. Till the campaign was nearly over, not a single
+provincial colonel had been asked to join in a council of war; and,
+complains Cleaveland, "they know no more of what is to be done than a
+sergeant, till the orders come out." Of the British officers, the
+greater part had seen but little active service. Most of them were men
+of family, exceedingly prejudiced and insular, whose knowledge of the
+world was limited to certain classes of their own countrymen, and who
+looked down on all others, whether domestic or foreign. Towards the
+provincials their attitude was one of tranquil superiority, though its
+tranquillity was occasionally disturbed by what they regarded as absurd
+pretension on the part of the colony officers. One of them gave vent to
+his feelings in an article in the _London Chronicle_, in which he
+advanced the very reasonable proposition that "a farmer is not to be
+taken from the plough and made an officer in a day;" and he was answered
+wrathfully, at great length, in the _Boston Evening Post_, by a writer
+signing himself "A New England Man." The provincial officers, on the
+other hand, and especially those of New England, being no less narrow
+and prejudiced, filled with a sensitive pride and a jealous local
+patriotism, and bred up in a lofty appreciation of the merits and
+importance of their country, regarded British superciliousness with a
+resentment which their strong love for England could not overcome. This
+feeling was far from being confined to the officers. A provincial
+regiment stationed at Half-Moon, on the Hudson, thought itself affronted
+by Captain Cruikshank, a regular officer; and the men were so incensed
+that nearly half of them went off in a body. The deportment of British
+officers in the Seven Years War no doubt had some part in hastening on
+the Revolution.
+
+What with levelling Montcalm's siege works, planting palisades, and
+grubbing up stumps in their bungling and laborious way, the regulars
+found abundant occupation. Discipline was stiff and peremptory. The
+wooden horse and the whipping-post were conspicuous objects in the camp,
+and often in use. Caleb Rea, being tender-hearted, never went to see the
+lash laid on; for, as he quaintly observes, "the cries were satisfactory
+to me, without the sight of the strokes." He and the rest of the doctors
+found active exercise for such skill as they had, since fever and
+dysentery were making scarcely less havoc than the bullets at
+Ticonderoga. This came from the bad state of the camps and unwholesome
+food. The provincial surgeons seem to have been very little impressed
+with the importance of sanitary regulations, and to have thought it
+their business not to prevent disease, but only to cure it. The one
+grand essential in their eyes was a well-stocked medicine-chest, rich in
+exhaustless stores of rhubarb, ipecacuanha, and calomel. Even this
+sometimes failed. Colonel Williams reports "the sick destitute of
+everything proper for them; medicine-chest empty; nothing but their
+dirty blankets for beds; Dr. Ashley dead, Dr. Wright gone home, low
+enough; Bille worn off his legs,--such is our case. I have near a
+hundred sick. Lost a sergeant and a private last night."[641] Chaplain
+Cleaveland himself, though strong of frame, did not escape; but he found
+solace in his trouble from the congenial society of a brother chaplain,
+Mr. Emerson, of New Hampshire, "a right-down hearty Christian minister,
+of savory conversation," who came to see him in his tent, breakfasted
+with him, and joined him in prayer. Being somewhat better, he one day
+thought to recreate himself with the apostolic occupation of fishing.
+The sport was poor; the fish bit slowly; and as he lay in his boat,
+still languid with his malady, he had leisure to reflect on the
+contrasted works of Providence and man,--the bright lake basking amid
+its mountains, a dream of wilderness beauty, and the swarms of harsh
+humanity on the shore beside him, with their passions, discords, and
+miseries. But it was with the strong meat of Calvinistic theology, and
+not with reveries like these, that he was accustomed to nourish his
+military flock.
+
+[Footnote 641: _Colonel William Williams to Colonel Israel Williams, 4
+Sept. 1758_.]
+
+While at one end of the lake the force of Abercromby was diminished by
+detachments and disease, that of Montcalm at the other was so increased
+by reinforcements that a forward movement on his part seemed possible.
+He contented himself, however, with strengthening the fort,
+reconstructing the lines that he had defended so well, and sending out
+frequent war-parties by way of Wood Creek and South Bay, to harass
+Abercromby's communications with Fort Edward. These parties, some of
+which consisted of several hundred men, were generally more or less
+successful; and one of them, under La Corne, surprised and destroyed a
+large wagon train escorted by forty soldiers. When Abercromby heard of
+it, he ordered Rogers, with a strong detachment of provincials, light
+infantry, and rangers, to go down the lake in boats, cross the mountains
+to the narrow waters of Lake Champlain, and cut off the enemy. But
+though Rogers set out at two in the morning, the French retreated so
+fast that he arrived too late. As he was on his way back, he was met by
+a messenger from the General with orders to intercept other French
+parties reported to be hovering about Fort Edward. On this he retraced
+his steps, marched through the forest to where Whitehall now stands, and
+thence made his way up Wood Creek to old Fort Anne, a relic of former
+wars, abandoned and falling to decay. Here, on the neglected "clearing"
+that surrounded the ruin, his followers encamped. They counted seven
+hundred in all, and consisted of about eighty rangers, a body of
+Connecticut men under Major Putnam, and a small regular force, chiefly
+light infantry, under Captain Dalzell, the brave officer who was
+afterwards killed by Pontiac's warriors at Detroit.
+
+Up to this time Rogers had observed his usual caution, commanding
+silence on the march, and forbidding fires at night; but, seeing no
+signs of an enemy, he forgot himself; and on the following morning, the
+eighth of August, he and Lieutenant Irwin, of the light infantry, amused
+themselves by firing at a mark on a wager. The shots reached the ears of
+four hundred and fifty French and Indians under the famous partisan
+Marin, who at once took steps to reconnoitre and ambuscade his rash
+enemy. For nearly a mile from the old fort the forest had formerly been
+cut down and burned; and Nature had now begun to reassert herself,
+covering the open tract with a dense growth of bushes and saplings
+almost impervious to anything but a wild-cat, had it not been traversed
+by a narrow Indian path. Along this path the men were forced to march in
+single file. At about seven o'clock, when the two marksmen had decided
+their bet, and before the heavy dew of the night was dried upon the
+bushes, the party slung their packs and set out. Putnam was in the front
+with his Connecticut men; Dalzell followed with the regulars; and
+Rogers, with his rangers, brought up the rear of the long and slender
+line. Putnam himself led the way, shouldering through the bushes, gun in
+hand; and just as the bluff yeoman emerged from them to enter the
+forest-growth beyond, the air was rent with yells, the thickets before
+him were filled with Indians, and one of them, a Caughnawaga chief,
+sprang upon him, hatchet in hand. He had time to cock his gun and snap
+it at the breast of his assailant; but it missed fire, and he was
+instantly seized and dragged back into the forest, as were also a
+lieutenant named Tracy and three private men. Then the firing began. The
+French and Indians, lying across the path in a semicircle, had the
+advantage of position and surprise. The Connecticut men fell back among
+the bushes in disorder; but soon rallied, and held the enemy in check
+while Dalzell and Rogers--the latter of whom was nearly a mile
+behind--were struggling through briers and thickets to their aid. So
+close was the brushwood that it was full half an hour before they could
+get their followers ranged in some kind of order in front of the enemy;
+and even then each man was forced to fight for himself as best he could.
+Humphreys, the biographer of Putnam, blames Rogers severely for not
+coming at once to the aid of the Connecticut men; but two of their
+captains declare that he came with all possible speed; while a regular
+officer present highly praised him to Abercromby for cool and
+officer-like conduct.[642] As a man his deserts were small; as a
+bushfighter he was beyond reproach.
+
+[Footnote 642: _Letter from the Camp at Lake George, 5 Sept. 1758_,
+signed by Captains Maynard and Giddings, and printed in the _Boston
+Weekly Advertiser_. "Rogers deserves much to be commended." _Abercromby
+to Pitt, 19 Aug. 1758_.]
+
+Another officer recounts from hearsay the remarkable conduct of an
+Indian, who sprang into the midst of the English and killed two of them
+with his hatchet; then mounted on a log and defied them all. One of the
+regulars tried to knock him down with the butt of his musket; but though
+the blow made him bleed, he did not fall, and would have killed his
+assailant if Rogers had not shot him dead.[643] The firing lasted about
+two hours. At length some of the Canadians gave way, and the rest of the
+French and Indians followed.[644] They broke into small parties to elude
+pursuit, and reuniting towards evening, made their bivouac on a spot
+surrounded by impervious swamps.
+
+[Footnote 643: _Thomas Barnsley to Bouquet, 7 Sept. 1758_.]
+
+[Footnote 644: _Doreil au Ministre, 31 Août, 1757_.]
+
+Rogers remained on the field and buried all his own dead, forty-nine in
+number. Then he resumed his march to Fort Edward, carrying the wounded
+on litters of branches till the next day, when he met a detachment
+coming with wagons to his relief. A party sent out soon after for the
+purpose reported that they had found and buried more than a hundred
+French and Indians. From this time forward the war-parties from
+Ticonderoga greatly relented in their activity.
+
+The adventures of the captured Putnam were sufficiently remarkable. The
+Indians, after dragging him to the rear, lashed him fast to a tree so
+that he could not move a limb, and a young savage amused himself by
+throwing a hatchet at his head, striking it into the wood as close as
+possible to the mark without hitting it. A French petty officer then
+thrust the muzzle of his gun violently against the prisoner's body,
+pretended to fire it at him, and at last struck him in the face with the
+butt; after which dastardly proceeding he left him. The French and
+Indians being forced after a time to fall back, Putnam found himself
+between the combatants and exposed to bullets from both sides; but the
+enemy, partially recovering the ground they had lost, unbound him, and
+led him to a safe distance from the fight. When the retreat began, the
+Indians hurried him along with them, stripped of coat, waistcoat, shoes,
+and stockings, his back burdened with as many packs of the wounded as
+could be piled upon it, and his wrists bound so tightly together that
+the pain became intense. In his torment he begged them to kill him; on
+which a French officer who was near persuaded them to untie his hands
+and take off some of the packs, and the chief who had captured him gave
+him a pair of moccasons to protect his lacerated feet. When they
+encamped at night, they prepared to burn him alive, stripped him naked,
+tied him to a tree, and gathered dry wood to pile about him. A sudden
+shower of rain interrupted their pastime; but when it was over they
+began again, and surrounded him with a circle of brushwood which they
+set on fire. As they were yelling and dancing their delight at the
+contortions with which he tried to avoid the rising flames, Marin,
+hearing what was going on forward, broke through the crowd, and with a
+courageous humanity not too common among Canadian officers, dashed aside
+the burning brush, untied the prisoner, and angrily upbraided his
+tormentors. He then restored him to the chief who had captured him, and
+whose right of property in his prize the others had failed to respect.
+The Caughnawaga treated him at first with kindness; but, with the help
+of his tribesmen, took effectual means to prevent his escape, by laying
+him on his back, stretching his arms and legs in the form of a St.
+Andrew's cross, and binding the wrists and ankles fast to the stems of
+young trees. This was a mode of securing prisoners in vogue among
+Indians from immemorial time; but, not satisfied with it, they placed
+brushwood upon his body, and then laid across it the long slender stems
+of saplings, on the ends of which several warriors lay down to sleep, so
+that the slightest movement on his part would rouse them. Thus he passed
+a night of misery, which did not prevent him from thinking of the
+ludicrous figure he made in the hands of the tawny Philistines.
+
+On the next night, after a painful march, he reached Ticonderoga, where
+he was questioned by Montcalm, and afterwards sent to Montreal in charge
+of a French officer, who showed him the utmost kindness. On arriving,
+wofully tattered, bruised, scorched, and torn, he found a friend in
+Colonel Schuyler, himself a prisoner on parole, who helped him in his
+need, and through whose good offices the future major-general of the
+Continental Army was included in the next exchange of prisoners.[645]
+
+[Footnote 645: On Putnam's adventures, Humphreys, 57 (1818). He had the
+story from Putnam himself, and seems to give it with substantial
+correctness, though his account of the battle is at several points
+erroneous. The "Molang" of his account is Marin. On the battle, besides
+authorities already cited, _Recollections of Thomson Maxwell_, a soldier
+present (_Essex Institute_, VII. 97). Rogers, _Journals_, 117. Letter
+from camp in _Boston Gazette_, no. 117. Another in _New Hampshire
+Gazette_, no. 104. _Gentleman's Magazine, 1758_, p. 498. Malartic,
+_Journal du Régiment de Béarn_. Lévis, _Journal de la Guerre en Canada_.
+The French notices of the affair are few and brief. They admit a
+defeat, but exaggerate the force and the losses of the English, and
+underrate their own. Malartic, however, says that Marin set out with
+four hundred men, and was soon after joined by an additional number of
+Indians; which nearly answers to the best English accounts.]
+
+The petty victory over Marin was followed by a more substantial success.
+Early in September Abercromby's melancholy camp was cheered with the
+tidings that the important French post of Fort Frontenac, which
+controlled Lake Ontario, which had baffled Shirley in his attempt
+against Niagara, and given Montcalm the means of conquering Oswego, had
+fallen into British hands. "This is a glorious piece of news, and may
+God have all the glory of the same!" writes Chaplain Cleaveland in his
+Diary. Lieutenant-Colonel Bradstreet had planned the stroke long before,
+and proposed it first to Loudon, and then to Abercromby. Loudon accepted
+it; but his successor received it coldly, though Lord Howe was warm in
+its favor. At length, under the pressure of a council of war, Abercromby
+consented that the attempt should be made, and gave Bradstreet three
+thousand men, nearly all provincials. With these he made his way, up the
+Mohawk and down the Onondaga, to the lonely and dismal spot where Oswego
+had once stood. By dint of much persuasion a few Oneidas joined him;
+though, like most of the Five Nations, they had been nearly lost to the
+English through the effects of the defeat at Ticonderoga. On the
+twenty-second of August his fleet of whaleboats and bateaux pushed out
+on Lake Ontario; and, three days after, landed near the French fort. On
+the night of the twenty-sixth Bradstreet made a lodgment within less
+than two hundred yards of it; and early in the morning De Noyan, the
+commandant, surrendered himself and his followers, numbering a hundred
+and ten soldiers and laborers, prisoners of war. With them were taken
+nine armed vessels, carrying from eight to eighteen guns, and forming
+the whole French naval force on Lake Ontario. The crews escaped. An
+enormous quantity of provisions, naval stores, munitions, and Indian
+goods intended for the supply of the western posts fell into the hands
+of the English, who kept what they could carry off, and burned the rest.
+In the fort were found sixty cannon and sixteen mortars, which the
+victors used to batter down the walls; and then, reserving a few of the
+best, knocked off the trunnions of the others. The Oneidas were bent on
+scalping some of the prisoners. Bradstreet forbade it. They begged that
+he would do as the French did,--turn his back and shut his eyes; but he
+forced them to abstain from all violence, and consoled them by a lion's
+share of the plunder. In accordance with the orders of Abercromby, the
+fort was dismantled, and all the buildings in or around it burned, as
+were also the vessels, except the two largest, which were reserved to
+carry off some of the captured goods. Then, with boats deeply laden, the
+detachment returned to Oswego; where, after unloading and burning the
+two vessels, they proceeded towards Albany, leaving a thousand of their
+number at the new fort which Brigadier Stanwix was building at the Great
+Carrying Place of the Mohawk.
+
+Next to Louisbourg, this was the heaviest blow that the French had yet
+received. Their command of Lake Ontario was gone. New France was cut in
+two; and unless the severed parts could speedily reunite, all the posts
+of the interior would be in imminent jeopardy. If Bradstreet had been
+followed by another body of men to reoccupy and rebuild Oswego, thus
+recovering a harbor on Lake Ontario, all the captured French vessels
+could have been brought thither, and the command of this inland sea
+assured at once. Even as it was, the advantages were immense. A host of
+savage warriors, thus far inclined to France or wavering between the two
+belligerents, stood henceforth neutral, or gave themselves to England;
+while Fort Duquesne, deprived of the supplies on which it depended,
+could make but faint resistance to its advancing enemy.
+
+Amherst, with five regiments from Louisbourg, came, early in October, to
+join Abercromby at Lake George, and the two commanders discussed the
+question of again attacking Ticonderoga. Both thought the season too
+late. A fortnight after, a deserter brought news that Montcalm was
+breaking up his camp. Abercromby followed his example. The opposing
+armies filed off each to its winter quarters, and only a few scouting
+parties kept alive the embers of war on the waters and mountains of Lake
+George.
+
+Meanwhile Brigadier Forbes was climbing the Alleghanies, hewing his way
+through the forests of western Pennsylvania, and toiling inch by inch
+towards his goal of Fort Duquesne.[646]
+
+[Footnote 646: On the capture of Fort Frontenac, _Bradstreet to
+Abercromby_, _31 Aug. 1758_. _Impartial Account of Lieutenant-Colonel
+Bradstreet's Expedition, by a Volunteer in the Expedition_ (London,
+1759). Letter from a New York officer to his colonel, in _Boston
+Gazette_, no. 182. Several letters from persons in the expedition, in
+_Boston Evening Post_, no. 1,203, _New Hampshire Gazette_, no. 104, and
+_Boston News Letter_, no. 2,932. _Abercromby to Pitt_, _25 Nov. 1758_.
+_Lieutenant Macauley to Horatio Gates_, _30 Aug. 1758._ _Vaudreuil au
+Ministre_, _30 Oct. 1758_. Pouchot, I. 162. _Mémoires sur le Canada_,
+1749-1760.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 22
+
+1758
+
+Fort Duquesne
+
+
+During the last year Loudon, filled with vain schemes against
+Louisbourg, had left the French scalping-parties to their work of havoc
+on the western borders. In Virginia Washington still toiled at his
+hopeless task of defending with a single regiment a forest frontier of
+more than three hundred miles, and in Pennsylvania the Assembly thought
+more of quarrelling with their governor than of protecting the tormented
+settlers. Fort Duquesne, the source of all the evil, was left
+undisturbed. In vain Washington urged the futility of defensive war, and
+the necessity of attacking the enemy in his stronghold. His position,
+trying at the best, was made more so by the behavior of Dinwiddie. That
+crusty Scotchman had conceived a dislike to him, and sometimes treated
+him in a manner that must have been unspeakably galling to the proud and
+passionate young man, who nevertheless, unconquerable in his sense of
+public duty, curbed himself to patience, or the semblance of it.
+
+Dinwiddie was now gone, and a new governor had taken his place. The
+conduct of the war, too, had changed, and in the plans of Pitt the
+capture of Fort Duquesne held an important place. Brigadier John Forbes
+was charged with it. He was a Scotch veteran, forty-eight years of age,
+who had begun life as a student of medicine, and who ended it as an able
+and faithful soldier. Though a well-bred man of the world, his tastes
+were simple; he detested ceremony, and dealt frankly and plainly with
+the colonists, who both respected and liked him. In April he was in
+Philadelphia waiting for his army, which as yet had no existence; for
+the provincials were not enlisted, and an expected battalion of
+Highlanders had not arrived. It was the end of June before they were all
+on the march; and meanwhile the General was attacked with a painful and
+dangerous malady, which would have totally disabled a less resolute man.
+
+His force consisted of provincials from Pennsylvania, Virginia,
+Maryland, and North Carolina, with twelve hundred Highlanders of
+Montgomery's regiment and a detachment of Royal Americans, amounting in
+all, with wagoners and camp followers, to between six and seven thousand
+men. The Royal American regiment was a new corps raised, in the
+colonies, largely from among the Germans of Pennsylvania. Its officers
+were from Europe; and conspicuous among them was Lieutenant-Colonel
+Henry Bouquet, a brave and accomplished Swiss, who commanded one of the
+four battalions of which the regiment was composed. Early in July he was
+encamped with the advance-guard at the hamlet of Raystown, now the town
+of Bedford, among the eastern heights of the Alleghanies. Here his tents
+were pitched in an opening of the forest by the banks of a small stream;
+and Virginians in hunting-shirts, Highlanders in kilt and plaid, and
+Royal Americans in regulation scarlet, labored at throwing up
+intrenchments and palisades, while around stood the silent mountains in
+their mantles of green.
+
+Now rose the question whether the army should proceed in a direct course
+to Fort Duquesne, hewing a new road through the forest, or march
+thirty-four miles to Fort Cumberland, and thence follow the road made by
+Braddock. It was the interest of Pennsylvania that Forbes should choose
+the former route, and of Virginia that he should choose the latter. The
+Old Dominion did not wish to see a highway cut for her rival to those
+rich lands of the Ohio which she called her own. Washington, who was
+then at Fort Cumberland with a part of his regiment, was earnest for the
+old road; and in an interview with Bouquet midway between that place and
+Raystown, he spared no effort to bring him to the same opinion. But the
+quartermaster-general, Sir John Sinclair, who was supposed to know the
+country, had advised the Pennsylvania route; and both Bouquet and Forbes
+were resolved to take it. It was shorter, and when once made would
+furnish readier and more abundant supplies of food and forage; but to
+make it would consume a vast amount of time and labor. Washington
+foretold the ruin of the expedition unless it took Braddock's road.
+Ardent Virginian as he was, there is no cause to believe that his
+decision was based on any but military reasons; but Forbes thought
+otherwise, and found great fault with him. Bouquet did him more justice.
+"Colonel Washington," he writes to the General, "is filled with a
+sincere zeal to aid the expedition, and is ready to march with equal
+activity by whatever way you choose."
+
+The fate of Braddock had impressed itself on all the army, and inspired
+a caution that was but too much needed; since, except Washington's men
+and a few others among the provincials, the whole, from general to
+drummer-boy, were total strangers to that insidious warfare of the
+forest in which their enemies, red and white, had no rival. Instead of
+marching, like Braddock, at one stretch for Fort Duquesne, burdened with
+a long and cumbrous baggage-train, it was the plan of Forbes to push on
+by slow stages, establishing fortified magazines as he went, and at
+last, when within easy distance of the fort, to advance upon it with all
+his force, as little impeded as possible with wagons and packhorses. He
+bore no likeness to his predecessor, except in determined resolution,
+and he did not hesitate to embrace military heresies which would have
+driven Braddock to fury. To Bouquet, in whom he placed a well-merited
+trust, he wrote, "I have been long in your opinion of equipping numbers
+of our men like the savages, and I fancy Colonel Burd, of Virginia, has
+most of his best people equipped in that manner. In this country we must
+learn the art of war from enemy Indians, or anybody else who has seen it
+carried on here."
+
+His provincials displeased him, not without reason; for the greater part
+were but the crudest material for an army, unruly, and recalcitrant to
+discipline. Some of them came to the rendezvous at Carlisle with old
+province muskets, the locks tied on with a string; others brought
+fowling-pieces of their own, and others carried nothing but
+walking-sticks; while many had never fired a gun in their lives.[647]
+Forbes reported to Pitt that their officers, except a few in the higher
+ranks, were "an extremely bad collection of broken inn-keepers,
+horse-jockeys, and Indian traders;" nor is he more flattering towards
+the men, though as to some of them he afterwards changed his mind.[648]
+
+[Footnote 647: _Correspondence of Forbes and Bouquet, July, August,
+1758_.]
+
+[Footnote 648: _Forbes to Pitt, 6 Sept. 1758_.]
+
+While Bouquet was with the advance at Raystown, Forbes was still in
+Philadelphia, trying to bring the army into shape, and collecting
+provisions, horses, and wagons; much vexed meantime by the Assembly,
+whose tedious disputes about taxing the proprietaries greatly obstructed
+the service. "No sergeant or quartermaster of a regiment," he says, "is
+obliged to look into more details than I am; and if I did not see to
+everything myself, we should never get out of this town." July had begun
+before he could reach the frontier village of Carlisle, where he found
+everything in confusion. After restoring some order, he wrote to
+Bouquet: "I have been and still am but poorly, with a cursed flux, but
+shall move day after to-morrow." He was doomed to disappointment; and it
+was not till the ninth of August that he sent another letter from the
+same place to the same military friend. "I am now able to write after
+three weeks of a most violent and tormenting distemper, which, thank
+God, seems now much abated as to pain, but has left me as weak as a
+new-born infant. However, I hope to have strength enough to set out from
+this place on Friday next." The disease was an inflammation of the
+stomach and other vital organs; and when he should have been in bed,
+with complete repose of body and mind, he was racked continually with
+the toils and worries of a most arduous campaign.
+
+He left Carlisle on the eleventh, carried on a kind of litter made of a
+hurdle slung between two horses; and two days later he wrote from
+Shippensburg: "My journey here from Carlisle raised my disorder and
+pains to so intolerable a degree that I was obliged to stop, and may not
+get away for a day or two." Again, on the eighteenth: "I am better, and
+partly free from the excruciating pain I suffered; but still so weak
+that I can scarce bear motion." He lay helpless at Shippensburg till
+September was well advanced. On the second he says: "I really cannot
+describe how I have suffered both in body and mind of late, and the
+relapses have been worse as the disappointment was greater;" and on the
+fourth, still writing to Bouquet, who in the camp at Raystown was
+struggling with many tribulations: "I am sorry you have met with so many
+cross accidents to vex you, and have such a parcel of scoundrels as the
+provincials to work with; _mais le vin est tiré_, and you must drop a
+little of the gentleman and treat them as they deserve. Seal and send
+off the enclosed despatch to Sir John by some sure hand. He is a very
+odd man, and I am sorry it has been my fate to have any concern with
+him. I am afraid our army will not admit of division, lest one half meet
+with a check; therefore I would consult Colonel Washington, though
+perhaps not follow his advice, as his behavior about the roads was
+noways like a soldier. I thank my good cousin for his letter, and have
+only to say that I have all my life been subject to err; but I now
+reform, as I go to bed at eight at night, if able to sit up so late."
+
+Nobody can read the letters of Washington at this time without feeling
+that the imputations of Forbes were unjust, and that here, as elsewhere,
+his ruling motive was the public good.[649] Forbes himself, seeing the
+rugged and difficult nature of the country, began to doubt whether after
+all he had not better have chosen the old road of Braddock. He soon had
+an interview with its chief advocates, the two Virginia colonels,
+Washington and Burd, and reported the result to Bouquet, adding: "I told
+them that, whatever they thought, I had acted on the best information to
+be had, and could safely say for myself, and believed I might answer for
+you, that the good of the service was all we had at heart, not valuing
+provincial interest, jealousies, or suspicions on single twopence." It
+must be owned that, considering the slow and sure mode of advance which
+he had wisely adopted, the old soldier was probably right in his choice;
+since before the army could reach Fort Duquesne, the autumnal floods
+would have made the Youghiogany and the Monongahela impassable.
+
+[Footnote 649: Besides the printed letters, there is an autograph
+collection of his correspondence with Bouquet in 1758 (forming vol.
+21,641, _Additional Manuscripts_, British Museum). Copies of the whole
+are before me.]
+
+The Sir John mentioned by Forbes was the quartermaster-general, Sir John
+Sinclair, who had gone forward with Virginians and other troops from the
+camp of Bouquet to make the road over the main range of the Alleghanies,
+whence he sent back the following memorandum of his requirements:
+"Pickaxes, crows, and shovels; likewise more whiskey. Send me the
+newspapers, and tell my black to send me a candlestick and half a loaf
+of sugar." He was extremely inefficient; and Forbes, out of all patience
+with him, wrote confidentially to Bouquet that his only talent was for
+throwing everything into confusion. Yet he found fault with everybody
+else, and would discharge volleys of oaths at all who met his
+disapproval. From this cause or some other, Lieutenant-Colonel Stephen,
+of the Virginians, told him that he would break his sword rather than be
+longer under his orders. "As I had not sufficient strength," says
+Sinclair, "to take him by the neck from among his own men, I was obliged
+to let him have his own way, that I might not be the occasion of
+bloodshed." He succeeded at last in arresting him, and Major Lewis, of
+the same regiment, took his place.
+
+The aid of Indians as scouts and skirmishers was of the last importance
+to an army so weak in the arts of woodcraft, and efforts were made to
+engage the services of the friendly Cherokees and Catawbas, many of whom
+came to the camp, where their caprice, insolence, and rapacity tried to
+the utmost the patience of the commanders. That of Sir John Sinclair had
+already been overcome by his dealings with the provincial authorities;
+and he wrote in good French, at the tail of a letter to the Swiss
+colonel: "Adieu, my dear Bouquet. The greatest curse that our Lord can
+pronounce against the worst of sinners is to give them business to do
+with provincial commissioners and friendly Indians." A band of sixty
+warriors told Colonel Burd that they would join the army on condition
+that it went by Braddock's road. "This," wrote Forbes, on hearing of the
+proposal, "is a new system of military discipline truly, and shows that
+my good friend Burd is either made a cat's-foot of himself, or little
+knows me if he imagines that sixty scoundrels are to direct me in my
+measures."[650] Bouquet, with a pliant tact rarely seen in the born
+Briton, took great pains to please these troublesome allies, and went so
+far as to adopt one of them as his son.[651] A considerable number
+joined the army; but they nearly all went off when the stock of presents
+provided for them was exhausted.
+
+[Footnote 650: The above extracts are from the _Bouquet and Haldimand
+Papers_, British Museum.]
+
+[Footnote 651: _Bouquet to Forbes, 3 June, 1758._]
+
+Forbes was in total ignorance of the strength and movements of the
+enemy. The Indians reported their numbers to be at least equal to his
+own; but nothing could be learned from them with certainty, by reason of
+their inveterate habit of lying. Several scouting-parties of whites were
+therefore sent forward, of which the most successful was that of a young
+Virginian officer, accompanied by a sergeant and five Indians. At a
+little distance from the French fort, the Indians stopped to paint
+themselves and practise incantations. The chief warrior of the party
+then took certain charms from an otter-skin bag and tied them about the
+necks of the other Indians. On that of the officer he hung the
+otter-skin itself; while to the sergeant he gave a small packet of paint
+from the same mystic receptacle. "He told us," reports the officer,
+"that none of us could be shot, for those things would turn the balls
+from us; and then shook hands with us, and told us to go and fight like
+men." Thus armed against fate, they mounted the high ground afterwards
+called Grant's Hill, where, covered by trees and bushes, they had a good
+view of the fort, and saw plainly that the reports of the French force
+were greatly exaggerated.[652]
+
+[Footnote 652: _Journal of a Reconnoitring Party, Aug. 1758._ The writer
+seems to have been Ensign Chew, of Washington's regiment.]
+
+Meanwhile Bouquet's men pushed on the heavy work of road-making up the
+main range of the Alleghanies, and, what proved far worse, the parallel
+mountain ridge of Laurel Hill, hewing, digging, blasting, laying
+fascines and gabions to support the track along the sides of steep
+declivities, or worming their way like moles through the jungle of swamp
+and forest. Forbes described the country to Pitt as an "immense
+uninhabited wilderness, overgrown everywhere with trees and brushwood,
+so that nowhere can one see twenty yards." In truth, as far as eye or
+mind could reach, a prodigious forest vegetation spread its impervious
+canopy over hill, valley, and plain, and wrapped the stern and awful
+waste in the shadows of the tomb.
+
+Having secured his magazines at Raystown, and built a fort there named
+Fort Bedford, Bouquet made a forward movement of some forty miles,
+crossed the main Alleghany and Laurel Hill, and, taking post on a stream
+called Loyalhannon Creek, began another depot of supplies as a base for
+the final advance on Fort Duquesne, which was scarcely fifty miles
+distant.
+
+Vaudreuil had learned from prisoners the march of Forbes, and, with his
+usual egotism, announced to the Colonial Minister what he had done in
+consequence. "I have provided for the safety for Fort Duquesne." "I have
+sent reinforcements to M. de Ligneris, who commands there." "I have done
+the impossible to supply him with provisions, and I am now sending them
+in abundance, in order that the troops I may perhaps have occasion to
+send to drive off the English may not be delayed." "A stronger fort is
+needed on the Ohio; but I cannot build one till after the peace; then I
+will take care to build such a one as will thenceforth keep the English
+out of that country." Some weeks later he was less confident, and very
+anxious for news from Ligneris. He says that he has sent him all the
+succors he could, and ordered troops to go to his aid from Niagara,
+Detroit, and Illinois, as well as the militia of Detroit, with the
+Indians there and elsewhere in the West,--Hurons, Ottawas,
+Pottawattamies, Miamis, and other tribes. What he fears is that the
+English will not attack the fort till all these Indians have grown tired
+of waiting, and have gone home again.[653] This was precisely the
+intention of Forbes, and the chief object of his long delays.
+
+[Footnote 653: _Vaudreuil au Ministre, Juillet, Août, Octobre 1758._]
+
+He had another good reason for making no haste. There was hope that the
+Delawares and Shawanoes, who lived within easy reach of Fort Duquesne,
+and who for the past three years had spread havoc throughout the English
+border, might now be won over from the French alliance. Forbes wrote to
+Bouquet from Shippensburg: "After many intrigues with Quakers, the
+Provincial Commissioners, the Governor, etc., and by the downright
+bullying of Sir William Johnson, I hope I have now brought about a
+general convention of the Indians."[654] The convention was to include
+the Five Nations, the Delawares, the Shawanoes, and other tribes, who
+had accepted wampum belts of invitation, and promised to meet the
+Governor and Commissioners of the various provinces at the town of
+Easton, before the middle of September. This seeming miracle was wrought
+by several causes. The Indians in the French interest, always greedy for
+presents, had not of late got enough to satisfy them. Many of those
+destined for them had been taken on the way from France by British
+cruisers, and the rest had passed through the hands of official knaves,
+who sold the greater part for their own profit. Again, the goods
+supplied by French fur-traders were few and dear; and the Indians
+remembered with regret the abundance and comparative cheapness of those
+they had from the English before the war. At the same time it was
+reported among them that a British army was marching to the Ohio strong
+enough to drive out the French from all that country; and the Delawares
+and Shawanoes of the West began to waver in their attachment to the
+falling cause. The eastern Delawares, living at Wyoming and elsewhere on
+the upper Susquehanna, had made their peace with the English in the
+summer before; and their great chief, Teedyuscung, thinking it for his
+interest that the tribes of the Ohio should follow his example, sent
+them wampum belts, inviting them to lay down the hatchet. The Five
+Nations, with Johnson at one end of the Confederacy and Joncaire at the
+other,--the one cajoling them in behalf of England, and the other in
+behalf of France,--were still divided in counsel; but even among the
+Senecas, the tribe most under Joncaire's influence, there was a party so
+far inclined to England that, like the Delaware chief, they sent wampum
+to the Ohio, inviting peace. But the influence most potent in reclaiming
+the warriors of the West was of a different kind. Christian Frederic
+Post, a member of the Moravian brotherhood, had been sent at the
+instance of Forbes as an envoy to the hostile tribes from the Governor
+and Council of Pennsylvania. He spoke the Delaware language, knew the
+Indians well, had lived among them, had married a converted squaw, and,
+by his simplicity of character, directness, and perfect honesty, gained
+their full confidence. He now accepted his terrible mission, and calmly
+prepared to place himself in the clutches of the tiger. He was a plain
+German, upheld by a sense of duty and a single-hearted trust in God;
+alone, with no great disciplined organization to impel and support him,
+and no visions and illusions such as kindled and sustained the splendid
+heroism of the early Jesuit martyrs. Yet his errand was no whit less
+perilous. And here we may notice the contrast between the mission
+settlements of the Moravians in Pennsylvania and those which the later
+Jesuits and the Sulpitians had established at Caughnawaga, St. Francis,
+La Présentation, and other places. The Moravians were apostles of peace,
+and they succeeded to a surprising degree in weaning their converts from
+their ferocious instincts and warlike habits; while the Mission Indians
+of Canada retained all their native fierceness, and were systematically
+impelled to use their tomahawks against the enemies of the Church. Their
+wigwams were hung with scalps, male and female, adult and infant; and
+these so-called missions were but nests of baptized savages, who wore
+the crucifix instead of the medicine-bag, and were encouraged by the
+Government for purposes of war.[655]
+
+[Footnote 654: _Forbes to Bouquet, 18 Aug. 1758._]
+
+[Footnote 655: Of the Hurons of the mission of Lorette, Bougainville
+says: "Ils sont toujours sauvages autant que ceux qui sont les moins
+apprivoisés." And yet they had been converts under Jesuit control for
+more than four generations. The case was no better at the other
+missions; and at St Francis it seems to have been worse.]
+
+The Moravian envoy made his way to the Delaware town of Kushkushkee, on
+Beaver Creek, northwest of Fort Duquesne, where the three chiefs known
+as King Beaver, Shingas, and Delaware George received him kindly, and
+conducted him to another town on the same stream. Here his reception was
+different. A crowd of warriors, their faces distorted with rage,
+surrounded him, brandishing knives and threatening to kill him; but
+others took his part, and, order being at last restored, he read them
+his message from the Governor, which seemed to please them. They
+insisted, however, that he should go with them to Fort Duquesne, in
+order that the Indians assembled there might hear it also. Against this
+dangerous proposal he protested in vain. On arriving near the fort, the
+French demanded that he should be given up to them, and, being refused,
+offered a great reward for his scalp; on which his friends advised him
+to keep close by the camp-fire, as parties were out with intent to kill
+him. "Accordingly," says Post, "I stuck to the fire as if I had been
+chained there. On the next day the Indians, with a great many French
+officers, came out to hear what I had to say. The officers brought with
+them a table, pens, ink, and paper. I spoke in the midst of them with a
+free conscience, and perceived by their looks that they were not pleased
+with what I said." The substance of his message was an invitation to the
+Indians to renew the old chain of friendship, joined with a warning that
+an English army was on its way to drive off the French, and that they
+would do well to stand neutral.
+
+He addressed an audience filled with an inordinate sense of their own
+power and importance, believing themselves greater and braver than
+either of the European nations, and yet deeply jealous of both. "We have
+heard," they said, "that the French and English mean to kill all the
+Indians and divide the land among themselves." And on this string they
+harped continually. If they had known their true interest, they would
+have made no peace with the English, but would have united as one man to
+form a barrier of fire against their farther progress; for the West in
+English hands meant farms, villages, cities, the ruin of the forest, the
+extermination of the game, and the expulsion of those who lived on it;
+while the West in French hands meant but scattered posts of war and
+trade, with the native tribes cherished as indispensable allies.
+
+After waiting some days, the three tribes of the Delawares met in
+council, and made their answer to the message brought by Post. It was
+worthy of a proud and warlike race, and was to the effect that since
+their brothers of Pennsylvania wished to renew the old peace-chain, they
+on their part were willing to do so, provided that the wampum belt
+should be sent them in the name, not of Pennsylvania alone, but of the
+rest of the provinces also.
+
+Having now accomplished his errand, Post wished to return home; but the
+Indians were seized with an access of distrust, and would not let him
+go. This jealousy redoubled when they saw him writing in his notebook.
+"It is a troublesome cross and heavy yoke to draw this people," he says;
+"they can punish and squeeze a body's heart to the utmost. There came
+some together and examined me about what I had wrote yesterday. I told
+them I writ what was my duty. 'Brothers, I tell you I am not afraid of
+you. I have a good conscience before God and man. I tell you, brothers,
+there is a bad spirit in your hearts, which breeds jealousy, and will
+keep you ever in fear.'" At last they let him go; and, eluding a party
+that lay in wait for his scalp, he journeyed twelve days through the
+forest, and reached Fort Augusta with the report of his mission.[656]
+
+[Footnote 656: _Journal of Christian Frederic Post, July, August,
+September, 1758._]
+
+As the result of it, a great convention of white men and red was held at
+Easton in October. The neighboring provinces had been asked to send
+their delegates, and some of them did so; while belts of invitation were
+sent to the Indians far and near. Sir William Johnson, for reasons best
+known to himself, at first opposed the plan; but was afterwards led to
+favor it and to induce tribes under his influence to join in the grand
+pacification. The Five Nations, with the smaller tribes lately admitted
+into their confederacy, the Delawares of the Susquehanna, the Mohegans,
+and several kindred bands, all had their representatives at the meeting.
+The conferences lasted nineteen days, with the inevitable formalities of
+such occasions, and the weary repetition of conventional metaphors and
+long-winded speeches. At length, every difficulty being settled, the
+Governor of Pennsylvania, in behalf of all the English, rose with a
+wampum belt in his hand, and addressed the tawny congregation thus: "By
+this belt we heal your wounds; we remove your grief; we take the hatchet
+out of your heads; we make a hole in the earth, and bury it so deep that
+nobody can dig it up again." Then, laying the first belt before them, he
+took another, very large, made of white wampum beads, in token of peace:
+"By this belt we renew all our treaties; we brighten the chain of
+friendship; we put fresh earth to the roots of the tree of peace, that
+it may bear up against every storm, and live and nourish while the sun
+shines and the rivers run." And he gave them the belt with the request
+that they would send it to their friends and allies, and invite them to
+take hold also of the chain of friendship. Accordingly all present
+agreed on a joint message of peace to the tribes of the Ohio.[657]
+
+[Footnote 657: _Minutes of Conferences at Easton, October, 1758._]
+
+Frederic Post, with several white and Indian companions, was chosen to
+bear it. A small escort of soldiers that attended him as far as the
+Alleghany was cut to pieces on its return by a band of the very warriors
+to whom he was carrying his offers of friendship; and other tenants of
+the grim and frowning wilderness met the invaders of their domain with
+inhospitable greetings. "The wolves made a terrible music this night,"
+he writes at his first bivouac after leaving Loyalhannon. When he
+reached the Delaware towns his reception was ominous. The young warriors
+said: "Anybody can see with half an eye that the English only mean to
+cheat us. Let us knock the messengers in the head." Some of them had
+attacked an English outpost, and had been repulsed; hence, in the words
+of Post, "They were possessed with a murdering spirit, and with bloody
+vengeance were thirsty and drunk. I said: 'As God has stopped the mouths
+of the lions that they could not devour Daniel, so he will preserve us
+from their fury.'" The chiefs and elders were of a different mind from
+their fierce and capricious young men. They met during the evening in
+the log-house where Post and his party lodged; and here a French officer
+presently arrived with a string of wampum from the commandant, inviting
+them to help him drive back the army of Forbes. The string was
+scornfully rejected. "They kicked it from one to another as if it were a
+snake. Captain Peter took a stick, and with it flung the string from one
+end of the room to the other, and said: 'Give it to the French captain;
+he boasted of his fighting, now let us see him fight. We have often
+ventured our lives for him, and got hardly a loaf of bread in return;
+and now he thinks we shall jump to serve him.' Then we saw the French
+captain mortified to the uttermost. He looked as pale as death. The
+Indians discoursed and joked till midnight, and the French captain sent
+messengers at midnight to Fort Duquesne."
+
+There was a grand council, at which the French officer was present; and
+Post delivered the peace message from the council at Easton, along with
+another with which Forbes had charged him. "The messages pleased all the
+hearers except the French captain. He shook his head in bitter grief,
+and often changed countenance. Isaac Still [_an Indian_] ran him down
+with great boldness, and pointed at him, saying, 'There he sits!' They
+all said: 'The French always deceived us!' pointing at the French
+captain; who, bowing down his head, turned quite pale, and could look no
+one in the face. All the Indians began to mock and laugh at him. He
+could hold it no longer, and went out."[658]
+
+[Footnote 658: _Journal of Christian Frederic Post, October, November,
+1758._]
+
+The overtures of peace were accepted, and the Delawares, Shawanoes, and
+Mingoes were no longer enemies of the English. The loss was the more
+disheartening to the French, since, some weeks before, they had gained a
+success which they hoped would confirm the adhesion of all their
+wavering allies. Major Grant, of the Highlanders, had urged Bouquet to
+send him to reconnoitre Fort Duquesne, capture prisoners, and strike a
+blow that would animate the assailants and discourage the assailed.
+Bouquet, forgetting his usual prudence, consented; and Grant set out
+from the camp at Loyalhannon with about eight hundred men, Highlanders,
+Royal Americans, and provincials. On the fourteenth of September, at two
+in the morning, he reached the top of the rising ground thenceforth
+called Grant's Hill, half a mile or more from the French fort. The
+forest and the darkness of the night hid him completely from the enemy.
+He ordered Major Lewis, of the Virginians, to take with him half the
+detachment, descend to the open plain before the fort, and attack the
+Indians known to be encamped there; after which he was to make a feigned
+retreat to the hill, where the rest of the troops were to lie in ambush
+and receive the pursuers. Lewis set out on his errand, while Grant
+waited anxiously for the result. Dawn was near, and all was silent; till
+at length Lewis returned, and incensed his commander by declaring that
+his men had lost their way in the dark woods, and fallen into such
+confusion that the attempt was impracticable. The morning twilight now
+began, but the country was wrapped in thick fog. Grant abandoned his
+first plan, and sent a few Highlanders into the cleared ground to burn a
+warehouse that had been seen there. He was convinced that the French and
+their Indians were too few to attack him, though their numbers in fact
+were far greater than his own.[659] Infatuated with this idea, and bent
+on taking prisoners, he had the incredible rashness to divide his force
+in such a way that the several parts could not support each other.
+Lewis, with two hundred men, was sent to guard the baggage two miles in
+the rear, where a company of Virginians, under Captain Bullitt, was
+already stationed. A hundred Pennsylvanians were posted far off on the
+right, towards the Alleghany, while Captain Mackenzie, with a detachment
+of Highlanders, was sent to the left, towards the Monongahela. Then, the
+fog having cleared a little, Captain Macdonald, with another company of
+Highlanders, was ordered into the open plain to reconnoitre the fort and
+make a plan of it, Grant himself remaining on the hill with a hundred
+of his own regiment and a company of Maryland men. "In order to put on a
+good countenance," he says, "and convince our men they had no reason to
+be afraid, I gave directions to our drums to beat the reveille. The
+troops were in an advantageous post, and I must own I thought we had
+nothing to fear." Macdonald was at this time on the plain, midway
+between the woods and the fort, and in full sight of it. The roll of the
+drums from the hill was answered by a burst of war-whoops, and the
+French came swarming out like hornets, many of them in their shirts,
+having just leaped from their beds. They all rushed upon Macdonald and
+his men, who met them with a volley that checked their advance; on which
+they surrounded him at a distance, and tried to cut off his retreat. The
+Highlanders broke through, and gained the woods, with the loss of their
+commander, who was shot dead. A crowd of French followed close, and soon
+put them to rout, driving them and Mackenzie's party back to the hill
+where Grant was posted. Here there was a hot fight in the forest,
+lasting about three quarters of an hour. At length the force of numbers,
+the novelty of the situation, and the appalling yells of the Canadians
+and Indians, completely overcame the Highlanders, so intrepid in the
+ordinary situations of war. They broke away in a wild and disorderly
+retreat. "Fear," says Grant, "got the better of every other passion; and
+I trust I shall never again see such a panic among troops."
+
+[Footnote 659: _Grant to Forbes, no date._ "Les rapports sur le nombre
+des Français varient de 3,000 à 1,200." _Bouquet à Forbes, 17 Sept.
+1758._ Bigot says that 3,500 daily rations were delivered at Fort
+Duquesne throughout the summer. _Bigot au Ministre, 22 Nov. 1758._ In
+October the number had fallen to 1,180, which included Indians.
+_Ligneris à Vaudreuil, 18 Oct. 1758._]
+
+His only hope was in the detachment he had sent to the rear under Lewis
+to guard the baggage. But Lewis and his men, when they heard the firing
+in front, had left their post and pushed forward to help their comrades,
+taking a straight course through the forest; while Grant was retreating
+along the path by which he had advanced the night before. Thus they
+missed each other; and when Grant reached the spot where he expected to
+find Lewis, he saw to his dismay that nobody was there but Captain
+Bullitt and his company. He cried in despair that he was a ruined man;
+not without reason, for the whole body of French and Indians was upon
+him. Such of his men as held together were forced towards the
+Alleghany, and, writes Bouquet, "would probably have been cut to pieces
+but for Captain Bullitt and his Virginians, who kept up the fight
+against the whole French force till two thirds of them were killed."
+They were offered quarter, but refused it; and the survivors were driven
+at last into the Alleghany, where some were drowned, and others swam
+over and escaped. Grant was surrounded and captured, and Lewis, who
+presently came up, was also made prisoner, along with some of his men,
+after a stiff resistance. Thus ended this mismanaged affair, which cost
+the English two hundred and seventy three killed, wounded, and taken.
+The rest got back safe to Loyalhannon.[660]
+
+[Footnote 660: On Grant's defeat, _Grant to Forbes, no date_, a long and
+minute report, written while a prisoner. _Bouquet à Forbes, 17 Sept.
+1758. Forbes to Pitt, 20 Oct. 1758. Vaudreuil au Ministre, 1 Nov. 1758._
+Letters from camp in _Boston Evening Post, Boston Weekly Advertiser,
+Boston News Letter_, and other provincial newspapers of the time. _List
+of Killed, Wounded, and Missing in the Action of Sept. 14. Gentleman's
+Magazine_, XXIX. 173. _Hazard's Pennsylvania Register_, VIII. 141.
+_Olden Time_, I. 179. Vaudreuil, with characteristic exaggeration,
+represents all Grant's party as killed or taken, except a few who died
+of starvation. The returns show that 540 came back safe, out of 813.]
+
+The invalid General was deeply touched by this reverse, yet expressed
+himself with a moderation that does him honor. He wrote to Bouquet from
+Raystown: "Your letter of the seventeenth I read with no less surprise
+than concern, as I could not believe that such an attempt would have
+been made without my knowledge and concurrence. The breaking in upon our
+fair and flattering hopes of success touches me most sensibly. There are
+two wounded Highland officers just now arrived, who give so lame an
+account of the matter that one can draw nothing from them, only that my
+friend Grant most certainly lost his wits, and by his thirst of fame
+brought on his own perdition, and ran great risk of ours."[661]
+
+[Footnote 661: _Forbes to Bouquet, 23 Sept. 1758._]
+
+The French pushed their advantage with spirit. Early in October a large
+body of them hovered in the woods about the camp at Loyalhannon, drove
+back a detachment sent against them, approached under cover of the
+trees, and, though beaten off, withdrew deliberately, after burying
+their dead and killing great numbers of horses and cattle.[662] But,
+with all their courageous energy, their position was desperate. The
+militia of Louisiana and the Illinois left the fort in November and went
+home; the Indians of Detroit and the Wabash would stay no longer; and,
+worse yet, the supplies destined for Fort Duquesne had been destroyed by
+Bradstreet at Fort Frontenac. Hence Ligneris was compelled by
+prospective starvation to dismiss the greater part of his force, and
+await the approach of his enemy with those that remained.
+
+[Footnote 662: _Burd to Bouquet, 12 Oct. 1758. Bouquet à Forbes, 13 Oct.
+1758. Forbes to Pitt, 20 Oct. 1758. Letter from Loyalhannon, 14 Oct._,
+in _Olden Time_, I. 180. _Letters from camp_, in _Boston News Letter.
+Ligneris à Vaudreuil, 18 Oct. 1758. Vaudreuil au Ministre, 20 Nov.
+1758._]
+
+His enemy was in a plight hardly better than his own. Autumnal rains,
+uncommonly heavy and persistent, had ruined the newly-cut road. On the
+mountains the torrents tore it up, and in the valleys the wheels of the
+wagons and cannon churned it into soft mud. The horses, overworked and
+underfed, were fast breaking down. The forest had little food for them,
+and they were forced to drag their own oats and corn, as well as
+supplies for the army, through two hundred miles of wilderness. In the
+wretched condition of the road this was no longer possible. The
+magazines of provisions formed at Raystown and Loyalhannon to support
+the army on its forward march were emptied faster than they could be
+filled. Early in October the elements relented; the clouds broke, the
+sky was bright again, and the sun shone out in splendor on mountains
+radiant in the livery of autumn. A gleam of hope revisited the heart of
+Forbes. It was but a flattering illusion. The sullen clouds returned,
+and a chill, impenetrable veil of mist and rain hid the mountains and
+the trees. Dejected Nature wept and would not be comforted. Above,
+below, around, all was trickling, oozing, pattering, gushing. In the
+miserable encampments the starved horses stood steaming in the rain, and
+the men crouched, disgusted, under their dripping tents, while the
+drenched picket-guard in the neighboring forest paced dolefully through
+black mire and spongy mosses. The rain turned to snow; the descending
+flakes clung to the many-colored foliage, or melted from sight in the
+trench of half-liquid clay that was called a road. The wheels of the
+wagons sank in it to the hub, and to advance or retreat was alike
+impossible.
+
+Forbes from his sick bed at Raystown wrote to Bouquet: "Your description
+of the road pierces me to the very soul." And a few days later to Pitt:
+"I am in the greatest distress, occasioned by rains unusual at this
+season, which have rendered the clay roads absolutely impracticable. If
+the weather does not favor, I shall be absolutely locked up in the
+mountains. I cannot form any judgment how I am to extricate myself as
+everything depends on the weather, which snows and rains frightfully."
+There was no improvement. In the next week he writes to Bouquet: "These
+four days of constant rain have completely ruined the road. The wagons
+would cut it up more in an hour than we could repair in a week. I have
+written to General Abercromby, but have not had one scrape of a pen from
+him since the beginning of September; so it looks as if we were either
+forgot or left to our fate."[663] Wasted and tortured by disease, the
+perplexed commander was forced to burden himself with a multitude of
+details which would else have been neglected, and to do the work of
+commissary and quartermaster as well as general. "My time," he writes,
+"is disagreeably spent between business and medicine."
+
+[Footnote 663: _Forbes to Bouquet, 15 Oct. 1758. Ibid., 25 Oct. 1758.
+Forbes to Pitt, 20 Oct. 1758._]
+
+In the beginning of November he was carried to Loyalhannon, where the
+whole army was then gathered. There was a council of officers, and they
+resolved to attempt nothing more that season; but, a few days later,
+three prisoners were brought in who reported the defenceless condition
+of the French, on which Forbes gave orders to advance again. The wagons
+and all the artillery, except a few light pieces, were left behind; and
+on the eighteenth of November twenty-five hundred picked men marched for
+Fort Duquesne, without tents or baggage, and burdened only with
+knapsacks and blankets. Washington and Colonel Armstrong, of the
+Pennsylvanians, had opened a way for them by cutting a road to within a
+day's march of the French fort. On the evening of the twenty-fourth, the
+detachment encamped among the hills of Turkey Creek; and the men on
+guard heard at midnight a dull and heavy sound booming over the western
+woods. Was it a magazine exploded by accident, or were the French
+blowing up their works? In the morning the march was resumed, a strong
+advance-guard leading the way. Forbes came next, carried in his litter;
+and the troops followed in three parallel columns, the Highlanders in
+the centre under Montgomery, their colonel, and the Royal Americans and
+provincials on the right and left, under Bouquet and Washington.[664]
+Thus, guided by the tap of the drum at the head of each column, they
+moved slowly through the forest, over damp, fallen leaves, crisp with
+frost, beneath an endless entanglement of bare gray twigs that sighed
+and moaned in the bleak November wind. It was dusk when they emerged
+upon the open plain and saw Fort Duquesne before them, with its
+background of wintry hills beyond the Monongahela and the Alleghany.
+During the last three miles they had passed the scattered bodies of
+those slain two months before at the defeat of Grant; and it is said
+that, as they neared the fort, the Highlanders were goaded to fury at
+seeing the heads of their slaughtered comrades stuck on poles, round
+which the kilts were hung derisively, in imitation of petticoats. Their
+rage was vain; the enemy was gone. Only a few Indians lingered about the
+place, who reported that the garrison, to the number of four or five
+hundred, had retreated, some down the Ohio, some overland towards
+Presquisle, and the rest, with their commander, up the Alleghany to
+Venango, called by the French, Fort Machault. They had burned the
+barracks and storehouses, and blown up the fortifications.
+
+[Footnote 664: _Letter from a British Officer in the Expedition, 25 Feb.
+1759, Gentleman's Magazine_, XXIX. 171.]
+
+The first care of the victors was to provide defence and shelter for
+those of their number on whom the dangerous task was to fall of keeping
+what they had won. A stockade was planted around a cluster of traders'
+cabins and soldiers' huts, which Forbes named Pittsburg, in honor of the
+great minister. It was not till the next autumn that General Stanwix
+built, hard by, the regular fortified work called Fort Pitt.[665]
+Captain West, brother of Benjamin West, the painter, led a detachment of
+Pennsylvanians, with Indian guides, through the forests of the
+Monongahela, to search for the bones of those who had fallen under
+Braddock. In the heart of the savage wood they found them in abundance,
+gnawed by wolves and foxes, and covered with the dead leaves of four
+successive autumns. Major Halket, of Forbes' staff, had joined the
+party; and, with the help of an Indian who was in the fight, he
+presently found two skeletons lying under a tree. In one of them he
+recognized, by a peculiarity of the teeth, the remains of his father,
+Sir Peter Halket, and in the other he believed that he saw the bones of
+a brother who had fallen at his father's side. The young officer fainted
+at the sight. The two skeletons were buried together, covered with a
+Highland plaid, and the Pennsylvanian woodsmen fired a volley over the
+grave. The rest of the bones were undistinguishable; and, being
+carefully gathered up, they were all interred in a deep trench dug in
+the freezing ground.[666]
+
+[Footnote 665: _Stanwix to Pitt, 20 Nov. 1759_.]
+
+[Footnote 666: Galt, _Life of Benjamin West_, I. 64 (ed. 1820).]
+
+The work of the new fort was pushed on apace, and the task of holding it
+for the winter was assigned to Lieutenant-Colonel Mercer, of the
+Virginians, with two hundred provincials. The number was far too small.
+It was certain that, unless vigorously prevented by a counter attack,
+the French would gather in early spring from all their nearer western
+posts, Niagara, Detroit, Presquisle, Le Boeuf, and Venango, to retake
+the place; but there was no food for a larger garrison, and the risk
+must be run.
+
+The rest of the troops, with steps quickened by hunger, began their
+homeward march early in December. "We would soon make M. de Ligneris
+shift his quarters at Venango," writes Bouquet just after the fort was
+taken, "if we only had provisions; but we are scarcely able to maintain
+ourselves a few days here. After God, the success of this expedition is
+entirely due to the General, who, by bringing about the treaty with the
+Indians at Easton, struck the French a stunning blow, wisely delayed our
+advance to wait the effects of that treaty, secured all our posts and
+left nothing to chance, and resisted the urgent solicitation to take
+Braddock's road, which would have been our destruction. In all his
+measures he has shown the greatest prudence, firmness, and
+ability."[667] No sooner was his work done, than Forbes fell into a
+state of entire prostration, so that for a time he could neither write a
+letter nor dictate one. He managed, however, two days after reaching
+Fort Duquesne, to send Amherst a brief notice of his success, adding: "I
+shall leave this place as soon as I am able to stand; but God knows when
+I shall reach Philadelphia, if I ever do."[668] On the way back, a hut
+with a chimney was built for him at each stopping-place, and on the
+twenty-eighth of December Major Halket writes from "Tomahawk Camp:" "How
+great was our disappointment, on coming to this ground last night, to
+find that the chimney was unlaid, no fire made, nor any wood cut that
+would burn. This distressed the General to the greatest degree, by
+obliging him after his long journey to sit above two hours without any
+fire, exposed to a snowstorm, which had very near destroyed him
+entirely; but with great difficulty, by the assistance of some cordials,
+he was brought to."[669] At length, carried all the way in his litter,
+he reached Philadelphia, where, after lingering through the winter, he
+died in March, and was buried with military honors in the chancel of
+Christ Church.
+
+[Footnote 667: _Bouquet to Chief Justice Allen, 15 Nov. 1758._]
+
+[Footnote 668: _Forbes to Amherst, 26 Nov. 1758._]
+
+[Footnote 669: _Halket to Bouquet, 28 Dec. 1758._]
+
+If his achievement was not brilliant, its solid value was above price.
+It opened the Great West to English enterprise, took from France half
+her savage allies, and relieved the western borders from the scourge of
+Indian war. From southern New York to North Carolina, the frontier
+populations had cause to bless the memory of the steadfast and
+all-enduring soldier.
+
+So ended the campaign of 1758. The centre of the French had held its own
+triumphantly at Ticonderoga; but their left had been forced back by the
+capture of Louisbourg, and their right by that of Fort Duquesne, while
+their entire right wing had been well nigh cut off by the destruction of
+Fort Frontenac. The outlook was dark. Their own Indians were turning
+against them. "They have struck us," wrote Doreil to the Minister of
+War; "they have seized three canoes loaded with furs on Lake Ontario,
+and murdered the men in them: sad forerunner of what we have to fear!
+Peace, Monseigneur, give us peace! Pardon me, but I cannot repeat that
+word too often."
+
+NOTE: The _Bouquet and Haldimand Papers_ in the British Museum contain a
+mass of curious correspondence of the principal persons engaged in the
+expedition under Forbes; copies of it all are before me. The Public
+Record Office, _America and West Indies_, has also furnished much
+material, including the official letters of Forbes. The _Writings of
+Washington_, the _Archives_ and _Colonial Records_ of Pennsylvania, and
+the magazines and newspapers of the time may be mentioned among the
+sources of information, along with a variety of miscellaneous
+contemporary letters. The Journals of Christian Frederic Post are
+printed in full in the _Olden Time_ and elsewhere.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 23
+
+1758, 1759
+
+The Brink of Ruin
+
+
+"Never was general in a more critical position than I was: God has
+delivered me; his be the praise! He gives me health, though I am worn
+out with labor, fatigue, and miserable dissensions that have determined
+me to ask for my recall. Heaven grant that I may get it!"
+
+Thus wrote Montcalm to his mother after his triumph at Ticonderoga. That
+great exploit had entailed a train of vexations, for it stirred the envy
+of Vaudreuil, more especially as it was due to the troops of the line,
+with no help from Indians, and very little from Canadians. The Governor
+assured the Colonial Minister that the victory would have bad results,
+though he gives no hint what these might be; that Montcalm had
+mismanaged the whole affair; that he would have been beaten but for the
+manifest interposition of Heaven;[670] and, finally, that he had failed
+to follow his (Vaudreuil's) directions, and had therefore enabled the
+English to escape. The real directions of the Governor, dictated,
+perhaps, by dread lest his rival should reap laurels, were to avoid a
+general engagement; and it was only by setting them at nought that
+Abercromby had been routed. After the battle a sharp correspondence
+passed between the two chiefs. The Governor, who had left Montcalm to
+his own resources before the crisis, sent him Canadians and Indians in
+abundance after it was over; while he cautiously refrained from
+committing himself by positive orders, repeated again and again that if
+these reinforcements were used to harass Abercromby's communications,
+the whole English army would fall back to the Hudson, and leave baggage
+and artillery a prey to the French. These preposterous assertions and
+tardy succors were thought by Montcalm to be a device for giving color
+to the charge that he had not only failed to deserve victory, but had
+failed also to make use of it.[671] He did what was possible, and sent
+strong detachments to act in the English rear; which, though they did
+not, and could not, compel the enemy to fall back, caused no slight
+annoyance, till Rogers checked them by the defeat of Marin. Nevertheless
+Vaudreuil pretended on one hand that Montcalm had done nothing with the
+Canadians and Indians sent him, and on the other that these same
+Canadians and Indians had triumphed over the enemy by their mere
+presence at Ticonderoga. "It was my activity in sending these succors to
+Carillon [_Ticonderoga_] that forced the English to retreat. The Marquis
+de Montcalm might have made their retreat difficult; but it was in vain
+that I wrote to him, in vain that the colony troops, Canadians and
+Indians, begged him to pursue the enemy."[672] The succors he speaks of
+were sent in July and August, while the English did not fall back till
+the first of November. Neither army left its position till the season
+was over, and Abercromby did so only when he learned that the French
+were setting the example. Vaudreuil grew more and more bitter. "As the
+King has intrusted this colony to me, I cannot help warning you of the
+unhappy consequences that would follow if the Marquis de Montcalm should
+remain here. I shall keep him by me till I receive your orders. It is
+essential that they reach me early." "I pass over in silence all the
+infamous conduct and indecent talk he has held or countenanced; but I
+should be wanting in my duty to the King if I did not beg you to ask for
+his recall."[673]
+
+[Footnote 670: _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 8 Août, 1758_.]
+
+[Footnote 671: Much of the voluminous correspondence on these matters
+will be found in _N.Y. Col. Docs._, X.]
+
+[Footnote 672: _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 8 Avril, 1759._]
+
+[Footnote 673: _Ibid._]
+
+He does not say what is meant by infamous conduct and indecent talk; but
+the allusion is probably to irreverent utterances touching the Governor
+in which the officers from France were apt to indulge, not always
+without the knowledge of their chief. Vaudreuil complained of this to
+Montcalm, adding, "I am greatly above it, and I despise it."[674] To
+which the General replied: "You are right to despise gossip, supposing
+that there has been any. For my part, though I hear that I have been
+torn to pieces without mercy in your presence, I do not believe
+it."[675]
+
+[Footnote 674: _Vaudreuil à Montcalm, 1 Août, 1758._]
+
+[Footnote 675: _Montcalm à Vaudreuil, 6 Août, 1758._]
+
+In these infelicities Bigot figures as peacemaker, though with no
+perceptible success. Vaudreuil's cup of bitterness was full when letters
+came from Versailles ordering him to defer to Montcalm on all questions
+of war, or of civil administration bearing up war.[676] He had begged
+hard for his rival's recall, and in reply his rival was set over his
+head.
+
+[Footnote 676: _Ordres du Roy et Dépêches des Ministres, 1758, 1759_.]
+
+The two yokefellows were excellently fitted to exasperate each other:
+Montcalm, with his southern vivacity of emotion and an impetuous,
+impatient volubility that sometimes forgot prudence; and Vaudreuil,
+always affable towards adherents, but full of suspicious egotism and
+restless jealousy that bristled within him at the very thought of his
+colleague. Some of the by-play of the quarrel may be seen in Montcalm's
+familiar correspondence with Bourlamaque. One day the Governor, in his
+own house, brought up the old complaint that Montcalm, after taking Fort
+William Henry, did not take Fort Edward also. The General, for the
+twentieth time, gave good reasons for not making the attempt. "I ended,"
+he tells Bourlamaque, "by saying quietly that when I went to war I did
+the best I could; and that when one is not pleased with one's
+lieutenants, one had better take the field in person. He was very much
+moved, and muttered between his teeth that perhaps he would; at which I
+said that I should be delighted to serve under him. Madame de Vaudreuil
+wanted to put in her word. I said: 'Madame, saving due respect, permit
+me to have the honor to say that ladies ought not to talk war.' She kept
+on. I said: 'Madame, saving due respect, permit me to have the honor to
+say that if Madame de Montcalm were here, and heard me talking war with
+Monsieur le Marquis de Vaudreuil, she would remain silent.' This scene
+was in presence of eight officers, three of them belonging to the colony
+troops; and a pretty story they will make of it."
+
+These letters to Bourlamaque, in their detestable handwriting, small,
+cramped, confused, without stops, and sometimes almost indecipherable,
+betray the writer's state of mind. "I should like as well as anybody to
+be Marshal of France; but to buy the honor with the life I am leading
+here would be too much." He recounts the last news from Fort Duquesne,
+just before its fall. "Mutiny among the Canadians, who want to come
+home; the officers busy with making money, and stealing like mandarins.
+Their commander sets the example, and will come back with three or four
+hundred thousand francs; the pettiest ensign, who does not gamble, will
+have ten, twelve, or fifteen thousand. The Indians don't like Ligneris,
+who is drunk every day. Forgive the confusion of this letter; I have not
+slept all night with thinking of the robberies and mismanagement and
+folly. _Pauvre Roi, pauvre France, cara patria!_" "Oh, when shall we get
+out of this country! I think I would give half that I have to go home.
+Pardon this digression to a melancholy man. It is not that I have not
+still some remnants of gayety; but what would seem such in anybody else
+is melancholy for a Languedocian. Burn my letter, and never doubt my
+attachment." "I shall always say, Happy he who is free from the proud
+yoke to which I am bound. When shall I see my château of Candiac, my
+plantations, my chestnut grove, my oil-mill, my mulberry-trees? _O bon
+Dieu! Bon soir; brûlez ma lettre."_[677]
+
+[Footnote 677: The above extracts are from letters of 5 and 27 Nov. and
+9 Dec. 1758, and 18 and 23 March, 1759.]
+
+Never was dispute more untimely than that between these ill-matched
+colleagues. The position of the colony was desperate. Thus far the
+Canadians had never lost heart, but had obeyed with admirable alacrity
+the Governor's call to arms, borne with patience the burdens and
+privations of the war, and submitted without revolt to the exactions and
+oppressions of Cadet and his crew; loyal to their native soil, loyal to
+their Church, loyal to the wretched government that crushed and
+belittled them. When the able-bodied were ordered to the war, where four
+fifths of them were employed in the hard and tedious work of
+transportation, the women, boys and old men tilled the fields and raised
+a scanty harvest, which always might be, and sometimes was, taken from
+them in the name of the King. Yet the least destitute among them were
+forced every winter to lodge soldiers in their houses, for each of whom
+they were paid fifteen france a month, in return for substance devoured
+and wives and daughters debauched.[678]
+
+[Footnote 678: _Mémoire sur le moyen d'entretenir 10,000 Hommes de
+Troupes dans les Colonies, 1759._]
+
+No pains had been spared to keep up the courage of the people and feed
+them with flattering illusions. When the partisan officer Boishébert was
+tried for peculation, his counsel met the charge by extolling the manner
+in which he had fulfilled the arduous duty of encouraging the Acadians,
+"putting on an air of triumph even in defeat; using threats, caresses,
+stratagems; painting our victories in vivid colors; hiding the strength
+and successes of the enemy; promising succors that did not and could not
+come; inventing plausible reasons why they did not come, and making new
+promises to set off the failure of the old; persuading a starved people
+to forget their misery; taking from some to give to others; and doing
+all this continually in the face of a superior enemy, that this country
+might be snatched from England and saved to France."[679] What
+Boishébert was doing in Acadia, Vaudreuil was doing on a larger scale in
+Canada. By indefatigable lying, by exaggerating every success and
+covering over every reverse, he deceived the people and in some measure
+himself. He had in abundance the Canadian gift of gasconade, and boasted
+to the Colonial Minister that one of his countrymen was a match for from
+three to ten Englishmen. It is possible that he almost believed it; for
+the midnight surprise of defenceless families and the spreading of
+panics among scattered border settlements were inseparable from his idea
+of war. Hence the high value he set on Indians, who in such work outdid
+the Canadians themselves. Sustained by the intoxication of flattering
+falsehoods, and not doubting that the blunders and weakness of the first
+years of the war gave the measure of English efficiency, the colonists
+had never suspected that they could be subdued.
+
+[Footnote 679: _Procès de Bigot, Cadet, et autres, Mémoire pour le Sieur
+de Boishébert._]
+
+But now there was a change. The reverses of the last campaign, hunger,
+weariness, and possibly some incipient sense of atrocious misgovernment,
+began to produce their effect; and some, especially in the towns, were
+heard to murmur that further resistance was useless. The Canadians,
+though brave and patient, needed, like Frenchmen, the stimulus of
+success. "The people are alarmed," said the modest Governor, "and would
+lose courage if my firmness did not rekindle their zeal to serve the
+King."[680]
+
+[Footnote 680: _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 10 Avril, 1759._]
+
+"Rapacity, folly, intrigue, falsehood, will soon ruin this colony which
+has cost the King so dear," wrote Doreil to the Minister of War. "We
+must not flatter ourselves with vain hope; Canada is lost if we do not
+have peace this winter." "It has been saved by miracle in these past
+three years; nothing but peace can save it now, in spite of all the
+efforts and the talents of M. de Montcalm."[681] Vaudreuil himself
+became thoroughly alarmed, and told the Court in the autumn of 1758 that
+food, arms, munitions, and everything else were fast failing, and that
+without immediate peace or heavy reinforcements all was lost.
+
+[Footnote 681: _Doreil au Ministre, 31 Juillet, 1758. Ibid. 12 Août,
+1758. Ibid. 31 Août, 1758. Ibid. 1 Sept. 1758._]
+
+The condition of Canada was indeed deplorable. The St. Lawrence was
+watched by British ships; the harvest was meagre; a barrel of flour cost
+two hundred francs; most of the cattle and many of the horses had been
+killed for food. The people lived chiefly on a pittance of salt cod or
+on rations furnished by the King; all prices were inordinate; the
+officers from France were starving on their pay; while a legion of
+indigenous and imported scoundrels fattened on the general distress.
+"What a country!" exclaims Montcalm. "Here all the knaves grow rich, and
+the honest men are ruined." Yet he was resolved to stand by it to the
+last, and wrote to the Minister of War that he would bury himself under
+its ruins. "I asked for my recall after the glorious affair of the
+eighth of July; but since the state of the colony is so bad, I must do
+what I can to help it and retard its fall." The only hope was in a
+strong appeal to the Court; and he thought himself fortunate in
+persuading Vaudreuil to consent that Bougainville should be commissioned
+to make it, seconded by Doreil. They were to sail in different ships, in
+order that at least one of them might arrive safe.
+
+Vaudreuil gave Bougainville a letter introducing him to the Colonial
+Minister in high terms of praise: "He is in all respects better fitted
+than anybody else to inform you of the state of the colony. I have given
+him my instructions, and you can trust entirely in what he tells
+you."[682] Concerning Doreil he wrote to the Minister of War: "I have
+full confidence in him, and he may be entirely trusted. Everybody here
+likes him."[683] While thus extolling the friends of his rival, the
+Governor took care to provide against the effects of his politic
+commendations, and wrote thus to his patron, the Colonial Minister: "In
+order to condescend to the wishes of M. de Montcalm, and leave no means
+untried to keep in harmony with him, I have given letters to MM. Doreil
+and Bougainville; but I have the honor to inform you, Monseigneur, that
+they do not understand the colony, and to warn you that they are
+creatures of M. de Montcalm."[684]
+
+[Footnote 682: _Vaudreuil au Ministre de la Marine, 4 Nov. 1758._]
+
+[Footnote 683: _Vaudreuil au Ministre de la Guerre, 11 Oct. 1758._]
+
+[Footnote 684: _Vaudreuil au Ministre de la Marine, 3 Nov. 1758._]
+
+The two envoys had sailed for France. Winter was close at hand, and the
+harbor of Quebec was nearly empty. One ship still lingered, the last of
+the season, and by her Montcalm sent a letter to his mother: "You will
+be glad to have me write to you up to the last moment to tell you for
+the hundredth time that, occupied as I am with the fate of New France,
+the preservation of the troops, the interest of the state, and my own
+glory, I think continually of you all. We did our best in 1756, 1757,
+and 1758; and so, God helping, we will do in 1759, unless you make peace
+in Europe." Then, shut from the outer world for half a year by barriers
+of ice, he waited what returning spring might bright forth.
+
+Both Bougainville and Doreil escaped the British cruisers and safely
+reached Versailles, where, in the slippery precincts of the Court, as
+new to him as they were treacherous, the young aide-de-camp justified
+all the confidence of his chief. He had interviews with the ministers,
+the King, and, more important than all, with Madame de Pompadour, whom
+he succeeded in propitiating, though not, it seems, without difficulty
+and delay. France, unfortunate by land and sea, with finances ruined and
+navy crippled, had gained one brilliant victory, and she owed it to
+Montcalm. She could pay for it in honors, if in nothing else. Montcalm
+was made lieutenant-general, Lévis major-general, Bourlamaque brigadier,
+and Bougainville colonel and chevalier of St. Louis; while Vaudreuil was
+solaced with the grand cross of that order.[685] But when the two envoys
+asked substantial aid for the imperilled colony, the response was
+chilling. The Colonial Minister, Berryer, prepossessed against
+Bougainville by the secret warning of Vaudreuil, received him coldly,
+and replied to his appeal for help: "Eh, Monsieur, when the house is on
+fire one cannot occupy one's self with the stable." "At least, Monsieur,
+nobody will say that you talk like a horse," was the irreverent answer.
+
+[Footnote 685: _Ordres du Roy et Dépêches des Ministres, Janvier,
+Février, 1759._]
+
+Bougainville laid four memorials before the Court, in which he showed
+the desperate state of the colony and its dire need of help. Thus far,
+he said, Canada has been saved by the dissensions of the English
+colonies; but now, for the first time, they are united against her, and
+prepared to put forth their strength. And he begged for troops, arms,
+munitions, food, and a squadron to defend the mouth of the St.
+Lawrence.[686] The reply, couched in a letter to Montcalm, was to the
+effect that it was necessary to concentrate all the strength of the
+kingdom for a decisive operation in Europe; that, therefore, the aid
+required could not be sent; and that the King trusted everything to his
+zeal and generalship, joined with the valor of the victors of
+Ticonderoga.[687] All that could be obtained was between three and four
+hundred recruits for the regulars, sixty engineers, sappers, and
+artillerymen, and gunpowder, arms, and provisions sufficient, along with
+the supplies brought over by the contractor, Cadet, to carry the colony
+through the next campaign.[688]
+
+[Footnote 686: _Mémoire remis au Ministre par M. de Bougainville,
+Décembre, 1758_.]
+
+[Footnote 687: _Le Ministre à Montcalm, 3 Fév. 1759_.]
+
+[Footnote 688: _Ordres du Roy et Dépêches des Ministres, Février,
+1759_.]
+
+Montcalm had intrusted Bougainville with another mission, widely
+different. This was no less than the negotiating of suitable marriages
+for the eldest son and daughter of his commander, with whom, in the
+confidence of friendship, he had had many conversations on the matter.
+"He and I," Montcalm wrote to his mother, Madame de Saint-Véran, "have
+two ideas touching these marriages,--the first, romantic and chimerical;
+the second, good, practicable."[689] Bougainville, invoking the aid of a
+lady of rank, a friend of the family, acquitted himself well of his
+delicate task. Before he embarked for Canada, in early spring, a treaty
+was on foot for the marriage of the young Comte de Montcalm to an
+heiress of sixteen; while Mademoiselle de Montcalm had already become
+Madame d'Espineuse. "Her father will be delighted," says the successful
+negotiator.[690]
+
+[Footnote 689: _Montcalm à Madame de Saint-Véran, 24 Sept. 1758_.]
+
+[Footnote 690: _Lettres de Bougainville à Madame de Saint-Véran, 1758,
+1759_.]
+
+Again he crossed the Atlantic and sailed up the St. Lawrence as the
+portentous spring of 1759 was lowering over the dissolving snows of
+Canada. With him came a squadron bearing the supplies and the petty
+reinforcement which the Court had vouchsafed. "A little is precious to
+those who have nothing," said Montcalm on receiving them. Despatches
+from the ministers gave warning of a great armament fitted out in
+English ports for the attack of Quebec, while a letter to the General
+from the Maréchal de Belleisle, minister of war, told what was expected
+of him, and why he and the colony were abandoned to their fate. "If we
+sent a large reinforcement of troops," said Belleisle, "there would be
+great fear that the English would intercept them on the way; and as the
+King could never send you forces equal to those which the English are
+prepared to oppose to you, the attempt would have no other effect than
+to excite the Cabinet of London to increased efforts for preserving its
+superiority on the American continent."
+
+"As we must expect the English to turn all their force against Canada,
+and attack you on several sides at once, it is necessary that you limit
+your plans of defence to the most essential points and those most
+closely connected, so that, being concentrated within a smaller space,
+each part may be within reach of support and succor from the rest. How
+small soever may be the space you are able to hold, it is indispensable
+to keep a footing in North America; for if we once lose the country
+entirely, its recovery will be almost impossible. The King counts on
+your zeal, courage, and persistency to accomplish this object, and
+relies on you to spare no pains and no exertions. Impart this
+resolution to your chief officers, and join with them to inspire your
+soldiers with it. I have answered for you to the King; I am confident
+that you will not disappoint me, and that for the glory of the nation,
+the good of the state, and your own preservation, you will go to the
+utmost extremity rather than submit to conditions as shameful as those
+imposed at Louisbourg, the memory of which you will wipe out."[691] "We
+will save this unhappy colony, or perish," was the answer of Montcalm.
+
+[Footnote 691: _Belleisle à Montcalm, 19 Fév_. 1759.]
+
+It was believed that Canada would be attacked with at least fifty
+thousand men. Vaudreuil had caused a census to be made of the
+governments of Montreal, Three Rivers, and Quebec. It showed a little
+more than thirteen thousand effective men.[692] To these were to be
+added thirty-five hundred troops of the line, including the late
+reinforcement, fifteen hundred colony troops, a body of irregulars in
+Acadia, and the militia and _coureurs-de-bois_ of Detroit and the other
+upper posts, along with from one to two thousand Indians who could still
+be counted on. Great as was the disparity of numbers, there was good
+hope that the centre of the colony could be defended; for the only
+avenues by which an enemy could approach were barred by the rock of
+Quebec, the rapids of the St. Lawrence, and the strong position of
+Isle-aux-Noix, at the outlet of Lake Champlain. Montcalm had long
+inclined to the plan of concentration enjoined on him by the Minister of
+War. Vaudreuil was of another mind; he insisted on still occupying
+Acadia and the forts of the upper country: matters on which he and the
+General exchanged a correspondence that widened the breach between them.
+
+[Footnote 692: _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 8 Avril_, 1759. The _Mémoires sur
+le Canada,_ 1749-1760, says 15,229 effective men.]
+
+Should every effort of resistance fail, and the invaders force their way
+into the heart of Canada, Montcalm proposed the desperate resort of
+abandoning the valley of the St. Lawrence, descending the Mississippi
+with his troops and as many as possible of the inhabitants, and making a
+last stand for France among the swamps of Louisiana.[693]
+
+[Footnote 693: Mémoire sur le Canada remis au Ministre, 27 Déc. 1758._]
+
+In April, before Bougainville's return, he wrote to his wife: "Can we
+hope for another miracle to save us? I trust in God; he fought for us on
+the eighth of July. Come what may, his will be done! I wait the news
+from France with impatience and dread. We have had none for eight
+months; and who knows if much can reach us at all this year? How dearly
+I have to pay for the dismal privilege of figuring two or three times in
+the gazettes!" A month later, after Bougainvile had come: "Our daughter
+is well married. I think I would renounce every honor to join you again;
+but the King must be obeyed. The moment when I see you once more will be
+the brightest of my life. Adieu, my heart! I believe that I love you
+more than ever."
+
+Bougainville had brought sad news. He had heard before sailing from
+France that one of Montcalm's daughters was dead, but could not learn
+which of them. "I think," says the father, "that it must be poor Mirète,
+who was like me, and whom I loved very much." He was never to know if
+this conjecture was true.
+
+To Vaudreuil came a repetition of the detested order that he should
+defer to Montcalm on all questions of war; and moreover that he should
+not take command in person except when the whole body of the militia was
+called out; nor, even then, without consulting his rival.[694] His ire
+and vexation produced an access of jealous self-assertion, and drove him
+into something like revolt against the ministerial command. "If the
+English attack Quebec, I shall always hold myself free to go thither
+myself with most of the troops and all the militia and Indians I can
+assemble. On arriving I shall give battle to the enemy; and I shall do
+so again and again, till I have forced him to retire, or till he has
+entirely crushed me by excessive superiority of numbers. My obstinacy in
+opposing his landing will be the more _à propos_, as I have not the
+means of sustaining a siege. If I succeed as I wish, I shall next march
+to Carillon to arrest him there. You see, Monseigneur, that the
+slightest change in my arrangements would have the most unfortunate
+consequences."[695]
+
+[Footnote 694: _Ordres du Roy et Dépêches des Ministres, Lettre à
+Vaudreuil, 3 Fév. 1759._]
+
+[Footnote 695: _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 8 Avril, 1759._]
+
+Whether he made good this valorous declaration will presently be seen.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NOTE. The Archives de la Guerre and the Archives de la Marine contain a
+mass of letters and documents on the subjects treated in the above
+chapter; these I have carefully read and collated. The other principal
+authorities are the correspondence of Montcalm with Bourlamaque and with
+his own family; the letters of Vaudreuil preserved in the Archives
+Nationales; and the letters of Bougainville and Doreil to Montcalm and
+Madame de Saint-Véran while on their mission to France. For copies of
+these last I am indebted to the present Marquis de Montcalm.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 24
+
+1758, 1759
+
+Wolfe
+
+
+Captain John Knox, of the forty-third regiment, had spent the winter in
+garrison at Fort Cumberland, on the hill of Beauséjour. For nearly two
+years he and his comrades had been exiles amid the wilds of Nova Scotia,
+and the monotonous inaction was becoming insupportable. The great marsh
+of Tantemar on the one side, and that of Missaguash on the other, two
+vast flat tracts of glaring snow, bounded by dark hills of spruce and
+fir, were hateful to their sight. Shooting, fishing, or skating were a
+dangerous relief; for the neighborhood was infested by "vermin," as they
+called the Acadians and their Micmac allies. In January four soldiers
+and a ranger were waylaid not far from the fort, disabled by bullets,
+and then scalped alive. They were found the next morning on the snow,
+contorted in the agonies of death, and frozen like marble statues. St.
+Patrick's Day brought more cheerful excitements. The Irish officers of
+the garrison gave their comrades a feast, having laid in during the
+autumn a stock of frozen provisions, that the festival of their saint
+might be duly honored. All was hilarity at Fort Cumberland, where it is
+recorded that punch to the value of twelve pounds sterling, with a
+corresponding supply of wine and beer, was consumed on this joyous
+occasion.[696]
+
+[Footnote 696: Knox, _Historical Journal_, I. 228.]
+
+About the middle of April a schooner came up the bay, bringing letters
+that filled men and officers with delight. The regiment was ordered to
+hold itself ready to embark for Louisbourg and join an expedition to the
+St. Lawrence, under command of Major-General Wolfe. All that afternoon
+the soldiers were shouting and cheering in their barracks; and when they
+mustered for the evening roll-call, there was another burst of huzzas.
+They waited in expectancy nearly three weeks, and then the transports
+which were to carry them arrived, bringing the provincials who had been
+hastily raised in New England to take their place. These Knox describes
+as a mean-looking set of fellows, of all ages and sizes, and without any
+kind of discipline; adding that their officers are sober, modest men,
+who, though of confined ideas, talk very clearly and sensibly, and make
+a decent appearance in blue, faced with scarlet, though the privates
+have no uniform at all.
+
+At last the forty-third set sail, the cannon of the fort saluting them,
+and the soldiers cheering lustily, overjoyed to escape from their long
+imprisonment. A gale soon began; the transports became separated; Knox's
+vessel sheltered herself for a time in Passamaquoddy Bay; then passed
+the Grand Menan, and steered southward and eastward along the coast of
+Nova Scotia. A calm followed the gale; and they moved so slowly that
+Knox beguiled the time by fishing over the stern, and caught a halibut
+so large that he was forced to call for help to pull it in. Then they
+steered northeastward, now lost in fogs, and now tossed mercilessly on
+those boisterous waves; till, on the twenty-fourth of May, they saw a
+rocky and surf-lashed shore, with a forest of masts rising to all
+appearance out of it. It was the British fleet in the land-locked harbor
+of Louisbourg.
+
+On the left, as they sailed through the narrow passage, lay the town,
+scarred with shot and shell, the red cross floating over its battered
+ramparts; and around in a wide semicircle rose the bristling back of
+rugged hills, set thick with dismal evergreens. They passed the great
+ships of the fleet, and anchored among the other transports towards the
+head of the harbor. It was not yet free from ice; and the floating
+masses lay so thick in some parts that the reckless sailors, returning
+from leave on shore, jumped from one to another to regain their ships.
+There was a review of troops, and Knox went to see it; but it was over
+before he reached the place, where he was presently told of a
+characteristic reply just made by Wolfe to some officers who had
+apologized for not having taught their men the new exercise. "Poh,
+poh!--new exercise--new fiddlestick. If they are otherwise well
+disciplined, and will fight, that's all I shall require of them."
+
+Knox does not record his impressions of his new commander, which must
+have been disappointing. He called him afterwards a British Achilles;
+but in person at least Wolfe bore no likeness to the son of Peleus, for
+never was the soul of a hero cased in a frame so incongruous. His face,
+when seen in profile, was singular as that of the Great Condé. The
+forehead and chin receded; the nose, slightly upturned, formed with the
+other features the point of an obtuse triangle; the mouth was by no
+means shaped to express resolution; and nothing but the clear, bright,
+and piercing eye bespoke the spirit within. On his head he wore a black
+three-cornered hat; his red hair was tied in a queue behind; his narrow
+shoulders, slender body, and long, thin limbs were cased in a scarlet
+frock, with broad cuffs and ample skirts that reached the knee; while on
+his left arm he wore a band of crape in mourning for his father, of
+whose death he had heard a few days before.
+
+James Wolfe was in his thirty-third year. His father was an officer of
+distinction, Major-General Edward Wolfe, and he himself, a delicate and
+sensitive child, but an impetuous and somewhat headstrong youth, had
+served the King since the age of fifteen. From childhood he had dreamed
+of the army and the wars. At sixteen he was in Flanders, adjutant of his
+regiment, discharging the duties of the post in a way that gained him
+early promotion and, along with a painstaking assiduity, showing a
+precocious faculty for commanding men. He passed with credit through
+several campaigns, took part in the victory of Dettingen, and then went
+to Scotland to fight at Culloden. Next we find him at Stirling, Perth,
+and Glasgow, always ardent and always diligent, constant in military
+duty, and giving his spare hours to mathematics and Latin. He presently
+fell in love; and being disappointed, plunged into a variety of
+dissipations, contrary to his usual habits, which were far above the
+standard of that profligate time.
+
+At twenty-three he was a lieutenant-colonel, commanding his regiment in
+the then dirty and barbarous town of Inverness, amid a disaffected and
+turbulent population whom it was his duty to keep in order: a difficult
+task, which he accomplished so well as to gain the special commendation
+of the King, and even the goodwill of the Highlanders themselves. He
+was five years among these northern hills, battling with ill-health, and
+restless under the intellectual barrenness of his surroundings. He felt
+his position to be in no way salutary, and wrote to his mother: "The
+fear of becoming a mere ruffian and of imbibing the tyrannical
+principles of an absolute commander, or giving way insensibly to the
+temptations of power till I became proud, insolent, and
+intolerable,--these considerations will make me wish to leave the
+regiment before next winter; that by frequenting men above myself I may
+know my true condition, and by discoursing with the other sex may learn
+some civility and mildness of carriage." He got leave of absence, and
+spent six months in Paris, where he was presented at Court and saw much
+of the best society. This did not prevent him from working hard to
+perfect himself in French, as well as in horsemanship, fencing, dancing,
+and other accomplishments, and from earnestly seeking an opportunity to
+study the various armies of Europe. In this he was thwarted by the
+stupidity and prejudice of the commander-in-chief; and he made what
+amends he could by extensive reading in all that bore on military
+matters.
+
+His martial instincts were balanced by strong domestic inclinations. He
+was fond of children; and after his disappointment in love used to say
+that they were the only true inducement to marriage. He was a most
+dutiful son, and wrote continually to both his parents. Sometimes he
+would philosophize on the good and ill of life; sometimes he held
+questionings with his conscience; and once he wrote to his mother in a
+strain of self-accusation not to be expected from a bold and determined
+soldier. His nature was a compound of tenderness and fire, which last
+sometimes showed itself in sharp and unpleasant flashes. His excitable
+temper was capable almost of fierceness, and he could now and then be
+needlessly stern; but towards his father, mother, and friends he was a
+model of steady affection. He made friends readily, and kept them, and
+was usually a pleasant companion though subject to sallies of imperious
+irritability which occasionally broke through his strong sense of good
+breeding. For this his susceptible constitution was largely answerable,
+for he was a living barometer, and his spirits rose and fell with every
+change of weather. In spite of his impatient outbursts, the officers
+whom he had commanded remained attached to him for life; and, in spite
+of his rigorous discipline, he was beloved by his soldiers, to whose
+comfort he was always attentive. Frankness, directness, essential good
+feeling, and a high integrity atoned for all his faults.
+
+In his own view, as expressed to his mother, he was a person of very
+moderate abilities, aided by more than usual diligence; but this modest
+judgment of himself by no means deprived him of self-confidence, nor,
+in time of need, of self-assertion. He delighted in every kind of
+hardihood; and, in his contempt for effeminacy, once said to his mother:
+"Better be a savage of some use than a gentle, amorous puppy, obnoxious
+to all the world." He was far from despising fame; but the controlling
+principles of his life were duty to his country and his profession,
+loyalty to the King, and fidelity to his own ideal of the perfect
+soldier. To the parent who was the confidant of his most intimate
+thoughts he said: "All that I wish for myself is that I may at all times
+be ready and firm to meet that fate we cannot shun, and to die
+gracefully and properly when the hour comes." Never was wish more
+signally fulfilled. Again he tells her: "My utmost desire and ambition
+is to look steadily upon danger;" and his desire was accomplished. His
+intrepidity was complete. No form of death had power to daunt him. Once
+and again, when bound on some deadly enterprise of war, he calmly counts
+the chances whether or not he can compel his feeble body to bear him on
+till the work is done. A frame so delicately strung could not have been
+insensible to danger; but forgetfulness of self, and the absorption of
+every faculty in the object before him, shut out the sense of fear. He
+seems always to have been at his best in the thick of battle; most
+complete in his mastery over himself and over others.
+
+But it is in the intimacies of domestic life that one sees him most
+closely, and especially in his letters to his mother, from whom he
+inherited his frail constitution, without the beauty that distinguished
+her. "The greatest happiness that I wish for here is to see you happy."
+"If you stay much at home I will come and shut myself up with you for
+three weeks or a month, and play at piquet from morning till night; and
+you shall laugh at my short red hair as much as you please." The playing
+at piquet was a sacrifice to filial attachment; for the mother loved
+cards, and the son did not. "Don't trouble yourself about my room or my
+bedclothes; too much care and delicacy at this time would enervate me
+and complete the destruction of a tottering constitution. Such as it is,
+it must serve me now, and I'll make the best of it while it holds." At
+the beginning of the war his father tried to dissuade him from offering
+his services on board the fleet; and he replies in a letter to Mrs.
+Wolfe: "It is no time to think of what is convenient or agreeable; that
+service is certainly the best in which we are the most useful. For my
+part, I am determined never to give myself a moment's concern about the
+nature of the duty which His Majesty is pleased to order us upon. It
+will be a sufficient comfort to you two, as far as my person is
+concerned,--at least it will be a reasonable consolation,--to reflect
+that the Power which has hitherto preserved me may, if it be his
+pleasure, continue to do so; if not, that it is but a few days or a few
+years more or less, and that those who perish in their duty and in the
+service of their country die honorably." Then he proceeds to give
+particular directions about his numerous dogs, for the welfare of which
+in his absence he provides with anxious solicitude, especially for "my
+friend Caesar, who has great merit and much good-humor."
+
+After the unfortunate expedition against Rochefort, when the board of
+general officers appointed to inquire into the affair were passing the
+highest encomiums upon his conduct, his parents were at Bath, and he
+took possession of their house at Blackheath, whence he wrote to his
+mother: "I lie in your chamber, dress in the General's little parlor,
+and dine where you did. The most perceptible difference and change of
+affairs (exclusive of the bad table I keep) is the number of dogs in the
+yard; but by coaxing Ball [_his father's dog_] and rubbing his back with
+my stick, I have reconciled him with the new ones, and put them in some
+measure under his protection."
+
+When about to sail on the expedition against Louisbourg, he was anxious
+for his parents, and wrote to his uncle, Major Wolfe, at Dublin: "I
+trust you will give the best advice to my mother, and such assistance,
+if it should be wanted, as the distance between you will permit. I
+mention this because the General seems to decline apace, and narrowly
+escaped being carried off in the spring. She, poor woman, is in a bad
+state of health, and needs the care of some friendly hand. She has long
+and painful fits of illness, which by succession and inheritance are
+likely to devolve on me, since I feel the early symptoms of them." Of
+his friends Guy Carleton, afterwards Lord Dorchester, and George Warde,
+the companion of his boyhood, he also asks help for his mother in his
+absence.
+
+His part in the taking of Louisbourg greatly increased his reputation.
+After his return he went to Bath to recruit his health; and it seems to
+have been here that he wooed and won Miss Katherine Lowther, daughter of
+an ex-Governor of Barbadoes, and sister of the future Lord Lonsdale. A
+betrothal took place, and Wolfe wore her portrait till the night before
+his death. It was a little before this engagement that he wrote to his
+friend Lieutenant-Colonel Rickson: "I have this day signified to Mr.
+Pitt that he may dispose of my slight carcass as he pleases, and that I
+am ready for any undertaking within the compass of my skill and
+cunning. I am in a very bad condition both with the gravel and
+rheumatism; but I had much rather die than decline any kind of service
+that offers. If I followed my own taste it would lead me into Germany.
+However, it is not our part to choose, but to obey. My opinion is that I
+shall join the army in America."
+
+Pitt chose him to command the expedition then fitting out against
+Quebec; made him a major-general, though, to avoid giving offence to
+older officers, he was to hold that rank in America alone; and permitted
+him to choose his own staff. Appointments made for merit, and not
+through routine and patronage, shocked the Duke of Newcastle, to whom a
+man like Wolfe was a hopeless enigma; and he told George II. that Pitt's
+new general was mad. "Mad is he?" returned the old King; "then I hope he
+will bite some others of my generals."
+
+At the end of January the fleet was almost ready, and Wolfe wrote to his
+uncle Walter: "I am to act a greater part in this business than I
+wished. The backwardness of some of the older officers has in some
+measure forced the Government to come down so low. I shall do my best,
+and leave the rest to fortune, as perforce we must when there are not
+the most commanding abilities. We expect to sail in about three weeks. A
+London life and little exercise disagrees entirely with me, but the sea
+still more. If I have health and constitution enough for the campaign, I
+shall think myself a lucky man; what happens afterwards is of no great
+consequence." He sent to his mother an affectionate letter of farewell,
+went to Spithead, embarked with Admiral Saunders in the ship "Neptune,"
+and set sail on the seventeenth of February. In a few hours the whole
+squadron was at sea, the transports, the frigates, and the great
+line-of-battle ships, with their ponderous armament and their freight of
+rude humanity armed and trained for destruction; while on the heaving
+deck of the "Neptune," wretched with sea-sickness and racked with pain,
+stood the gallant invalid who was master of it all.
+
+The fleet consisted of twenty-two ships of the line, with frigates,
+sloops-of-war, and a great number of transports. When Admiral Saunders
+arrived with his squadron off Louisbourg, he found the entrance blocked
+by ice, and was forced to seek harborage at Halifax. The squadron of
+Admiral Holmes, which had sailed a few days earlier, proceeded to New
+York to take on board troops destined for the expedition, while the
+squadron of Admiral Durell steered for the St. Lawrence to intercept the
+expected ships from France. In May the whole fleet, except the ten ships
+with Durell, was united in the harbor of Louisbourg. Twelve thousand
+troops were to have been employed for the expedition; but several
+regiments expected from the West Indies were for some reason
+countermanded, while the accessions from New York and the Nova Scotia
+garrisons fell far short of the looked-for numbers. Three weeks before
+leaving Louisbourg, Wolfe writes to his uncle Walter that he has an army
+of nine thousand men. The actual number seems to have been somewhat
+less.[697] "Our troops are good," he informs Pitt; "and if valor can
+make amends for the want of numbers, we shall probably succeed."
+
+[Footnote 697: See _Grenville Correspondence,_ I. 305.]
+
+Three brigadiers, all in the early prime of life, held command under
+him: Monckton, Townshend, and Murray. They were all his superiors in
+birth, and one of them, Townshend, never forgot that he was so. "George
+Townshend," says Walpole, "has thrust himself again into the service;
+and, as far as wrongheadedness will go, is very proper for a hero."[698]
+The same caustic writer says further that he was of "a proud, sullen,
+and contemptuous temper," and that he "saw everything in an ill-natured
+and ridiculous light."[699] Though his perverse and envious disposition
+made him a difficult colleague, Townshend had both talents and energy;
+as also had Monckton, the same officer who commanded at the capture of
+Beauséjour in 1755. Murray, too, was well matched to the work in hand,
+in spite of some lingering remains of youthful rashness.
+
+[Footnote 698: Horace Walpole, _Letters_ III. 207 (ed. Cunningham,
+1857).]
+
+[Footnote 699: Ibid. _George II._, II. 345.]
+
+On the sixth of June the last ship of the fleet sailed out of
+Louisbourg harbor, the troops cheering and the officers drinking to the
+toast, "British colors on every French fort, port, and garrison in
+America." The ships that had gone before lay to till the whole fleet was
+reunited, and then all steered together for the St. Lawrence. From the
+headland of Cape Egmont, the Micmac hunter, gazing far out over the
+shimmering sea, saw the horizon flecked with their canvas wings, as they
+bore northward on their errand of havoc.
+
+NOTE: For the material of the foregoing sketch of Wolfe I am indebted to
+Wright's excellent Life of him and the numerous letters contained in it.
+Several autograph letters which have escaped the notice of Mr. Wright
+are preserved in the Public Record Office. The following is a
+characteristic passage from one of these, written on board the
+"Neptune," at sea, on the sixth of June, the day when the fleet sailed
+from Louisbourg. It is directed to a nobleman of high rank in the army,
+whose name does not appear, the address being lost (War Office Records:
+_North America, various,_ 1756-1763): "I have had the honour to receive
+two letters from your Lordship, one of an old date, concerning my stay
+in this country [_after the capture of Louisbourg,_] in answer to which
+I shall only say that the Marshal told me I was to return at the end of
+the campaign; and as General Amherst had no other commands than to send
+me to winter at Halifax under the orders of an officer _[Brigadier
+Lawrence]_ who was but a few months before put over my head, I thought
+it was much better to get into the way of service and out of the way of
+being insulted; and as the style of your Lordship's letter is pretty
+strong, I must take the liberty to inform you that ... rather than
+receive orders in the Government [_of Nova Scotia_] from an officer
+younger than myself (though a very worthy man), I should certainly have
+desired leave to resign my commission; for as I neither ask nor expect
+any favour, so I never intend to submit to any ill-usage whatsoever."
+
+Many other papers in the Public Record Office have been consulted in
+preparing the above chapter, including the secret instructions of the
+King to Wolfe and to Saunders, and the letters of Amherst to Wolfe and
+to Pitt. Other correspondence touching the same subjects is printed in
+_Selections from the Public Documents of Nova Scotia,_ 441-450. Knox,
+Mante, and Entick are the best contemporary printed sources.
+
+A story has gained currency respecting the last interview of Wolfe with
+Pitt, in which he is said to have flourished his sword and boasted of
+what he would achieve. This anecdote was told by Lord Temple, who was
+present at the interview, to Mr. Grenville, who, many years after, told
+it to Earl Stanhope, by whom it was made public. That the incident
+underwent essential changes in the course of these transmissions,--which
+extended over more than half a century, for Earl Stanhope was not born
+till 1805,--can never be doubted by one who considers the known
+character of Wolfe, who may have uttered some vehement expression, but
+who can never be suspected of gasconade.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 25
+
+1759
+
+Wolfe at Quebec
+
+
+In early spring the chiefs of Canada met at Montreal to settle a plan of
+defence. What at first they most dreaded was an advance of the enemy by
+way of Lake Champlain. Bourlamaque, with three battalions, was ordered
+to take post at Ticonderoga, hold it if he could, or, if overborne by
+numbers, fall back to Isle-aux-Noix, at the outlet of the lake. La Corne
+was sent with a strong detachment to intrench himself at the head of the
+rapids of the St. Lawrence, and oppose any hostile movement from Lake
+Ontario. Every able-bodied man in the colony, and every boy who could
+fire a gun, was to be called to the field. Vaudreuil sent a circular
+letter to the militia captains of all the parishes, with orders to read
+it to the parishioners. It exhorted them to defend their religion, their
+wives, their children, and their goods from the fury of the heretics;
+declared that he, the Governor, would never yield up Canada on any terms
+whatever; and ordered them to join the army at once, leaving none behind
+but the old, the sick, the women, and the children.[700] The Bishop
+issued a pastoral mandate: "On every side, dearest brethren, the enemy
+is making immense preparations. His forces, at least six times more
+numerous than ours, are already in motion. Never was Canada in a state
+so critical and full of peril. Never were we so destitute, or threatened
+with an attack so fierce, so general, and so obstinate. Now, in truth,
+we may say, more than ever before, that our only resource is in the
+powerful succor of our Lord. Then, dearest brethren, make every effort
+to deserve it. 'Seek first the kingdom of God; and all these things
+shall be added unto you.'" And he reproves their sins, exhorts them to
+repentance, and ordains processions, masses, and prayers.[701]
+
+[Footnote 700: _Mémoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760_.]
+
+[Footnote 701: I am indebted for a copy of this mandate to the kindness
+of Abbé Bois. As printed by Knox, it is somewhat different, though the
+spirit is the same.]
+
+Vaudreuil bustled and boasted. In May he wrote to the Minister: "The
+zeal with which I am animated for the service of the King will always
+make me surmount the greatest obstacles. I am taking the most proper
+measures to give the enemy a good reception whenever he may attack us. I
+keep in view the defence of Quebec. I have given orders in the parishes
+below to muster the inhabitants who are able to bear arms, and place
+women, children, cattle, and even hay and grain, in places of safety.
+Permit me, Monseigneur, to beg you to have the goodness to assure His
+Majesty that, to whatever hard extremity I may be reduced, my zeal will
+be equally ardent and indefatigable, and that I shall do the impossible
+to prevent our enemies from making progress in any direction, or, at
+least, to make them pay extremely dear for it."[702] Then he writes
+again to say that Amherst with a great army will, as he learns, attack
+Ticonderoga; that Bradstreet, with six thousand men, will advance to
+Lake Ontario; and that six thousand more will march to the Ohio.
+"Whatever progress they may make," he adds, "I am resolved to yield them
+nothing, but hold my ground even to annihilation." He promises to do his
+best to keep on good terms with Montcalm, and ends with a warm eulogy of
+Bigot.[703]
+
+[Footnote 702: _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 8 Mai, 1759._]
+
+[Footnote 703: _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 20_ [_?_] _Mai, 1759._]
+
+It was in the midst of all these preparations that Bougainville arrived
+from France with news that a great fleet was on its way to attack
+Quebec. The town was filled with consternation mixed with surprise, for
+the Canadians had believed that the dangerous navigation of the St.
+Lawrence would deter their enemies from the attempt. "Everybody," writes
+one of them, "was stupefied at an enterprise that seemed so bold." In a
+few days a crowd of sails was seen approaching. They were not enemies,
+but friends. It was the fleet of the contractor Cadet, commanded by
+officer named Kanon, and loaded with supplies for the colony. They
+anchored in the harbor, eighteen sail in all, and their arrival spread
+universal joy. Admiral Durell had come too late to intercept them,
+catching but three stragglers that had lagged behind the rest. Still
+others succeeded in eluding him, and before the first of June five more
+ships had come safely into port.
+
+When the news brought by Bougainville reached Montreal, nearly the whole
+force of the colony, except the detachments of Bourlamaque and La Corne,
+was ordered to Quebec. Montcalm hastened thither, and Vaudreuil
+followed. The Governor-General wrote to the Minister in his usual
+strain, as if all the hope of Canada rested in him. Such, he says, was
+his activity, that, though very busy, he reached Quebec only a day and a
+half after Montcalm; and, on arriving, learned from his scouts that
+English ships-of-war had already appeared at Isle-aux-Coudres. These
+were the squadron of Durell. "I expect," Vaudreuil goes on, "to be
+sharply attacked, and that our enemies will make their most powerful
+efforts to conquer this colony; but there is no ruse, no resource, no
+means which my zeal does not suggest to lay snares for them, and
+finally, when the exigency demands it, to fight them with an ardor, and
+even a fury, which exceeds the range of their ambitious designs. The
+troops, the Canadians, and the Indians are not ignorant of the
+resolution I have taken, and from which I shall not recoil under any
+circumstance whatever. The burghers of this city have already put their
+goods and furniture in places of safety. The old men, women, and
+children hold themselves ready to leave town. My firmness is generally
+applauded. It has penetrated every heart; and each man says aloud:
+'Canada, our native land, shall bury us under its ruins before we
+surrender to the English!' This is decidedly my own determination, and I
+shall hold to it inviolably." He launches into high praise of the
+contractor Cadet, whose zeal for the service of the King and the defence
+of the colony he declares to be triumphant over every difficulty. It is
+necessary, he adds, that ample supplies of all kinds should be sent out
+in the autumn, with the distribution of which Cadet offers to charge
+himself, and to account for them at their first cost; but he does not
+say what prices his disinterested friend will compel the destitute
+Canadians to pay for them.[704]
+
+[Footnote 704: _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 28 Mai, 1759_.]
+
+Five battalions from France, nearly all the colony troops, and the
+militia from every part of Canada poured into Quebec, along with a
+thousand or more Indians, who, at the call of Vaudreuil, came to lend
+their scalping-knives to the defence. Such was the ardor of the people
+that boys of fifteen and men of eighty were to be seen in the camp.
+Isle-aux-Coudres and Isle d'Orléans were ordered to be evacuated, and an
+excited crowd on the rock of Quebec watched hourly for the approaching
+fleet. Days passed and weeks passed, yet it did not appear. Meanwhile
+Vaudreuil held council after council to settle a plan of defence, They
+were strange scenes: a crowd of officers of every rank, mixed pell-mell
+in a small room, pushing, shouting, elbowing each other, interrupting
+each other; till Montcalm in despair, took each aside after the meeting
+was over, and made him give his opinion in writing.[705]
+
+[Footnote 705: _Journal du Siége de Québec déposé à la Bibliothêque de
+Hartwell, en Angleterre_. (Printed at Quebec, 1836.)]
+
+He himself had at first proposed to encamp the army on the plains of
+Abraham and the meadows of the St. Charles, making that river his line
+of defence;[706] but he changed his plan, and, with the concurrence of
+Vaudreuil, resolved to post his whole force on the St. Lawrence below
+the city, with his right resting on the St. Charles, and his left on the
+Montmorenci. Here, accordingly, the troops and militia were stationed as
+they arrived. Early in June, standing at the northeastern brink of the
+rock of Quebec, one could have seen the whole position at a glance. On
+the curving shore from the St. Charles to the rocky gorge of the
+Montmorenci, a distance of seven or eight miles, the whitewashed
+dwellings of the parish of Beauport stretched down the road in a double
+chain, and the fields on both sides were studded with tents, huts, and
+Indian wigwams. Along the borders of the St. Lawrence, as far as the eye
+could distinguish them, gangs of men were throwing up redoubts,
+batteries, and lines of intrenchment. About midway between the two
+extremities of the encampment ran the little river of Beauport; and on
+the rising ground just beyond it stood a large stone house, round which
+the tents were thickly clustered; for here Montcalm had made his
+headquarters.
+
+[Footnote 706: _Livre d'Ordres, Disposition pour s'opposer à la
+Descente_.]
+
+A boom of logs chained together was drawn across the mouth of the St.
+Charles, which was further guarded by two hulks mounted with cannon. The
+bridge of boats that crossed the stream nearly a mile above, formed the
+chief communication between the city and the camp. Its head towards
+Beauport was protected by a strong and extensive earthwork; and the
+banks of the stream on the Quebec side were also intrenched, to form a
+second line of defence in case the position at Beauport should be
+forced.
+
+In the city itself every gate, except the Palace Gate, which gave access
+to the bridge, was closed and barricaded. A hundred and six cannon were
+mounted on the walls.[707] A floating battery of twelve heavy pieces, a
+number of gunboats, eight fireships, and several firerafts formed the
+river defences. The largest merchantmen of Kanon's fleet were sacrificed
+to make the fireships; and the rest, along with the frigates that came
+with them, were sent for safety up the St. Lawrence beyond the River
+Richelieu, whence about a thousand of their sailors returned to man the
+batteries and gunboats.
+
+[Footnote 707: This number was found after the siege. Knox, II. 151.
+Some French writers make it much greater.]
+
+In the camps along the Beauport shore were about fourteen thousand men,
+besides Indians. The regulars held the centre; the militia of Quebec and
+Three Rivers were on the right, and those of Montreal on the left. In
+Quebec itself there was a garrison of between one and two thousand men
+under the Chevalier de Ramesay. Thus the whole number, including
+Indians, amounted to more than sixteen thousand;[708] and though the
+Canadians who formed the greater part of it were of little use in the
+open field, they could be trusted to fight well behind intrenchments.
+Against this force, posted behind defensive works, on positions almost
+impregnable by nature, Wolfe brought less than nine thousand men
+available for operations on land.[709] The steep and lofty heights that
+lined the river made the cannon of the ships for the most part useless,
+while the exigencies of the naval service forbade employing the sailors
+on shore. In two or three instances only, throughout the siege, small
+squads of them landed to aid in moving and working cannon; and the
+actual fighting fell to the troops alone.
+
+[Footnote 708: See Appendix H.]
+
+[Footnote 709: Ibid.]
+
+Vaudreuil and Bigot took up their quarters with the army. The
+Governor-General had delegated the command of the land-forces to
+Montcalm, whom, in his own words, he authorized "to give orders
+everywhere, provisionally." His relations with him were more than ever
+anomalous and critical; for while Vaudreuil, in virtue of his office,
+had a right to supreme command, Montcalm, now a lieutenant-general, held
+a military grade far above him; and the Governor, while always writing
+himself down in his despatches as the head and front of every movement,
+had too little self-confidence not to leave the actual command in the
+hands of his rival.
+
+Days and weeks wore on, and the first excitement gave way to restless
+impatience. Why did not the English come? Many of the Canadians thought
+that Heaven would interpose and wreck the English fleet, as it had
+wrecked that of Admiral Walker half a century before. There were
+processions, prayers, and vows towards this happy consummation. Food was
+scarce. Bigot and Cadet lived in luxury; fowls by thousands were
+fattened with wheat for their tables, while the people were put on
+rations of two ounces of bread a day.[710] Durell and his ships were
+reported to be still at Isle-aux-Coudres. Vaudreuil sent thither a party
+of Canadians, and they captured three midshipmen, who, says Montcalm,
+had gone ashore _pour polissonner,_ that is, on a lark. These youths
+were brought to Quebec, where they increased the general anxiety by
+grossly exaggerating the English force.
+
+[Footnote 710: _Mémoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760._]
+
+At length it became known that eight English vessels were anchored in
+the north channel of Orleans, and on the twenty-first of June the masts
+of three of them could plainly be seen. One of the fireships was
+consumed in a vain attempt to burn them, and several firerafts and a
+sort of infernal machine were tried with no better success; the
+unwelcome visitors still held their posts.
+
+Meanwhile the whole English fleet had slowly advanced, piloted by Denis
+de Vitré, a Canadian of good birth, captured at sea some time before,
+and now compelled to serve, under a threat of being hanged if he
+refused.[711] Nor was he alone; for when Durell reached the place where
+the river pilots were usually taken on board, he raised a French flag to
+his mast-head, causing great rejoicings among the Canadians on shore,
+who thought that a fleet was come to their rescue, and that their
+country was saved. The pilots launched their canoes and came out to the
+ships, where they were all made prisoners; then the French flag was
+lowered, and the red cross displayed in its stead. The spectators on
+shore turned from joy to despair; and a priest who stood watching the
+squadron with a telescope is said to have dropped dead with the
+revulsion of feeling.
+
+[Footnote 711: _Mémorial de Jean-Denis de Vitré au Très-honorable
+William Pitt._]
+
+Towards the end of June the main fleet was near the mountain of Cape
+Tourmente. The passage called the Traverse, between the Cape and the
+lower end of the Island of Orleans, was reputed one of the most
+dangerous parts of the St. Lawrence; and as the ships successively came
+up, the captive pilots were put on board to carry them safely through,
+on pain of death. One of these men was assigned to the transport
+"Goodwill," in which was Captain Knox, who spoke French, and who reports
+thus in his Diary: "He gasconaded at a most extravagant rate, and gave
+us to understand that it was much against his will that he was become an
+English pilot. The poor fellow assumed great latitude in his
+conversation, and said 'he made no doubt that some of the fleet would
+return to England, but they should have a dismal tale to carry with
+them; for Canada should be the grave of the whole army, and he expected
+in a short time to see the walls of Quebec ornamented with English
+scalps.' Had it not been in obedience to the Admiral, who gave orders
+that he should not be ill-used, he would certainly have been thrown
+overboard." The master of the transport was an old sailor named Killick,
+who despised the whole Gallic race, and had no mind to see his ship in
+charge of a Frenchman. "He would not let the pilot speak," continues
+Knox, "but fixed his mate at the helm, charged him not to take orders
+from any person but himself, and going forwards with his trumpet to the
+forecastle, gave the necessary instructions. All that could be said by
+the commanding officer and the other gentlemen on board was to no
+purpose; the pilot declared we should be lost, for that no French ship
+ever presumed to pass there without a pilot. 'Ay, ay, my dear,' replied
+our son of Neptune, 'but, damn me, I'll convince you that an Englishman
+shall go where a Frenchman dare not show his nose.' The "Richmond"
+frigate being close astern of us, the commanding officer called out to
+the captain and told him our case; he inquired who the master was, and
+was answered from the forecastle by the man himself, who told him 'he
+was old Killick, and that was enough.' I went forward with this
+experienced mariner, who pointed out the channel to me as we passed;
+showing me by the ripple and color of the water where there was any
+danger, and distinguishing the places where there were ledges of rocks
+(to me invisible) from banks of sand, mud, or gravel. He gave his orders
+with great unconcern, joked with the sounding-boats which lay off on
+each side with different colored flags for our guidance; and when any of
+them called to him and pointed to the deepest water, he answered: 'Ay,
+ay, my dear, chalk it down, a damned dangerous navigation, eh! If you
+don't make a sputter about it you'll get no credit in England.' After we
+had cleared this remarkable place, where the channel forms a complete
+zigzag, the master called to his mate to give the helm to somebody else,
+saying, 'Damn me if there are not a thousand places in the Thames fifty
+times more hazardous than this; I am ashamed that Englishmen should make
+such a rout about it.' The Frenchman asked me if the captain had not
+been there before. I assured him in the negative; upon which he viewed
+him with great attention, lifting at the same time his hands and eyes to
+heaven with astonishment and fervency."[712]
+
+[Footnote 712: Others, as well as the pilot, were astonished. "The enemy
+passed sixty ships of war where we hardly dared risk a vessel of a
+hundred tons." "Notwithstanding all our precautions, the English,
+without any accident, by night, as well as by day, passed through it
+[_the Traverse_] their ships of seventy and eighty guns, and even many
+of them together." _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 22 Oct. 1759_.]
+
+Vaudreuil was blamed for not planting cannon at a certain plateau on the
+side of the mountain of Cape Tourmente, where the gunners would have
+been inaccessible, and whence they could have battered every passing
+ship with a plunging fire. As it was, the whole fleet sailed safely
+through. On the twenty-sixth they were all anchored off the south shore
+of the Island of Orleans, a few miles from Quebec; and, writes Knox,
+"here we are entertained with a most agreeable prospect of a delightful
+country on every side; windmills, watermills, churches, chapels, and
+compact farmhouses, all built with stone, and covered, some with wood,
+and others with straw. The lands appear to be everywhere well
+cultivated; and with the help of my glass I can discern that they are
+sowed with flax, wheat, barley, peas, etc., and the grounds are enclosed
+with wooden pales. The weather to-day is agreeably warm. A light fog
+sometimes hangs over the highlands, but in the river we have a fine
+clear air. In the curve of the river, while we were under sail, we had a
+transient view of a stupendous natural curiosity called the waterfall of
+Montmorenci."
+
+That night Lieutenant Meech, with forty New England rangers, landed on
+the Island of Orleans, and found a body of armed inhabitants, who tried
+to surround him. He beat them off, and took possession of a neighboring
+farmhouse, where he remained till daylight; then pursued the enemy, and
+found that they had crossed to the north shore. The whole army now
+landed, and were drawn up on the beach. As they were kept there for some
+time, Knox and several brother officers went to visit the neighboring
+church of Saint-Laurent, where they found a letter from the parish
+priest, directed to "The Worthy Officers of the British Army," praying
+that they would protect the sacred edifice, and also his own adjoining
+house, and adding, with somewhat needless civility, that he wished they
+had come sooner, that they might have enjoyed the asparagus and radishes
+of his garden, now unhappily going to seed. The letter concluded with
+many compliments and good wishes, in which the Britons to whom they were
+addressed saw only "the frothy politeness so peculiar to the French."
+The army marched westward and encamped. Wolfe, with his chief engineer,
+Major Mackellar, and an escort of light infantry, advanced to the
+extreme point of the island.
+
+Here he could see, in part, the desperate nature of the task he had
+undertaken. Before him, three or four miles away, Quebec sat perched
+upon her rock, a congregation of stone houses, churches, palaces,
+convents, and hospitals; the green trees of the Seminary garden and the
+spires of the Cathedral, the Ursulines, the Recollets, and the Jesuits.
+Beyond rose the loftier height of Cape Diamond, edged with palisades and
+capped with redoubt and parapet. Batteries frowned everywhere; the
+Chateau battery, the Clergy battery, the Hospital battery, on the rock
+above, and the Royal, Dauphin's, and Queen's batteries on the strand,
+where the dwellings and warehouses of the lower town clustered beneath
+the cliff.
+
+Full in sight lay the far-extended camp of Montcalm, stretching from the
+St. Charles, beneath the city walls, to the chasm and cataract of the
+Montmorenci. From the cataract to the river of Beauport, its front was
+covered by earthworks along the brink of abrupt and lofty heights; and
+from the river of Beauport to the St. Charles, by broad flats of mud
+swept by the fire of redoubts, intrenchments, a floating battery, and
+the city itself. Above the city, Cape Diamond hid the view; but could
+Wolfe have looked beyond it, he would have beheld a prospect still more
+disheartening. Here, mile after mile, the St. Lawrence was walled by a
+range of steeps, often inaccessible, and always so difficult that a few
+men at the top could hold an army in check; while at Cap-Rouge, about
+eight miles distant, the high plateau was cleft by the channel of a
+stream which formed a line of defence as strong as that of the
+Montmorenci. Quebec was a natural fortress. Bougainville had long before
+examined the position, and reported that "by the help of intrenchments,
+easily and quickly made, and defended by three or four thousand men, I
+think the city would be safe. I do not believe that the English will
+make any attempt against it; but they may have the madness to do so, and
+it is well to be prepared against surprise."
+
+Not four thousand men, but four times four thousand, now stood in its
+defence; and their chiefs wisely resolved not to throw away the
+advantages of their position. Nothing more was heard of Vaudreuil's bold
+plan of attacking the invaders at their landing; and Montcalm had
+declared that he would play the part, not of Hannibal, but of Fabius.
+His plan was to avoid a general battle, run no risks, and protract the
+defence till the resources of the enemy were exhausted, or till
+approaching winter forced them to withdraw. Success was almost certain
+but for one contingency. Amherst, with a force larger than that of
+Wolfe, was moving against Ticonderoga. If he should capture it, and
+advance into the colony, Montcalm would be forced to weaken his army by
+sending strong detachments to oppose him. Here was Wolfe's best hope.
+This failing, his only chance was in audacity. The game was desperate;
+but, intrepid gamester as he was in war, he was a man, in the last
+resort, to stake everything on the cast of the dice.
+
+The elements declared for France. On the afternoon of the day when
+Wolfe's army landed, a violent squall swept over the St. Lawrence,
+dashed the ships together, drove several ashore, and destroyed many of
+the flatboats from which the troops had just disembarked. "I never saw
+so much distress among shipping in my whole life," writes an officer to
+a friend in Boston. Fortunately the storm subsided as quickly as it
+rose. Vaudreuil saw that the hoped-for deliverance had failed; and as
+the tempest had not destroyed the British fleet, he resolved to try the
+virtue of his fireships. "I am afraid," says Montcalm, "that they have
+cost us a million, and will be good for nothing after all." This
+remained to be seen. Vaudreuil gave the chief command of them to a naval
+officer named Delouche; and on the evening of the twenty-eighth, after
+long consultation and much debate among their respective captains, they
+set sail together at ten o'clock. The night was moonless and dark. In
+less than an hour they were at the entrance of the north channel.
+Delouche had been all enthusiasm; but as he neared the danger his nerves
+failed, and he set fire to his ship half an hour too soon, the rest
+following his example.[713]
+
+[Footnote 713: Foligny, _Journal mémoratif. Vaudreuil au Ministre, 5
+Oct. 1759. Journal du Siége_ (Bibliothêque de Hartwell).]
+
+There was an English outpost at the Point of Orleans; and, about eleven
+o'clock, the sentries descried through the gloom the ghostly outlines of
+the approaching ships. As they gazed, these mysterious strangers began
+to dart tongues of flame; fire ran like lightning up their masts and
+sails, and then they burst out like volcanoes. Filled as they were with
+pitch, tar, and every manner of combustible, mixed with fireworks,
+bombs, grenades, and old cannon, swivels, and muskets loaded to the
+throat, the effect was terrific. The troops at the Point, amazed at the
+sudden eruption, the din of the explosions, and the showers of grapeshot
+that rattled among the trees, lost their wits and fled. The blazing
+dragons hissed and roared, spouted sheets of fire, vomited smoke in
+black, pitchy volumes and vast illumined clouds, and shed their infernal
+glare on the distant city, the tents of Montcalm, and the long red lines
+of the British army, drawn up in array of battle, lest the French should
+cross from their encampments to attack them in the confusion. Knox calls
+the display "the grandest fireworks that can possibly be conceived." Yet
+the fireships did no other harm than burning alive one of their own
+captains and six or seven of his sailors who failed to escape in their
+boats. Some of them ran ashore before reaching the fleet; the others
+were seized by the intrepid English sailors, who, approaching in their
+boats, threw grappling-irons upon them and towed them towards land, till
+they swung round and stranded. Here, after venting their fury for a
+while, they subsided into quiet conflagration, which lasted till
+morning. Vaudreuil watched the result of his experiment from the steeple
+of the church at Beauport; then returned, dejected, to Quebec.
+
+Wolfe longed to fight his enemy; but his sagacious enemy would not
+gratify him. From the heights of Beauport, the rock of Quebec, or the
+summit of Cape Diamond, Montcalm could look down on the river and its
+shores as on a map, and watch each movement of the invaders. He was
+hopeful, perhaps confident; and for a month or more he wrote almost
+daily to Bourlamaque at Ticonderoga, in a cheerful, and often a jocose
+vein, mingling orders and instructions with pleasantries and bits of
+news. Yet his vigilance was unceasing. "We pass every night in bivouac,
+or else sleep in our clothes. Perhaps you are doing as much, my dear
+Bourlamaque."[714]
+
+[Footnote 714: _Montcalm à Bourlamaque, 27 Juin, 1759._ All these
+letters are before me.]
+
+Of the two commanders, Vaudreuil was the more sanguine, and professed
+full faith that all would go well. He too corresponded with Bourlamaque,
+to whom he gave his opinion, founded on the reports of deserters, that
+Wolfe had no chance of success unless Amherst should come to his aid.
+This he pronounced impossible; and he expressed a strong desire that the
+English would attack him, "so that we may rid ourselves of them at
+once."[715] He was courageous, except in the immediate presence of
+danger, and failed only when the crisis came.
+
+[Footnote 715: _Vaudreuil à Bourlamaque, 8 Juillet, 1759._]
+
+Wolfe, held in check at every other point, had one movement in his
+power. He could seize the heights of Point Levi, opposite the city; and
+this, along with his occupation of the Island of Orleans, would give him
+command of the Basin of Quebec. Thence also he could fire on the place
+across the St. Lawrence, which is here less than a mile wide. The
+movement was begun on the afternoon of the twenty-ninth, when, shivering
+in a north wind and a sharp frost, a part of Monckton's brigade was
+ferried over to Beaumont, on the south shore, and the rest followed in
+the morning. The rangers had a brush with a party of Canadians, whom
+they drove off, and the regulars then landed unopposed. Monckton ordered
+a proclamation, signed by Wolfe, to be posted on the door of the parish
+church. It called on the Canadians, in peremptory terms, to stand
+neutral in the contest, promised them, if they did so, full protection
+in property and religion, and threatened that, if they presumed to
+resist the invaders, their houses, goods, and harvests should be
+destroyed, and their churches despoiled. As soon as the troops were out
+of sight the inhabitants took down the placard and carried it to
+Vaudreuil.
+
+The brigade marched along the river road to Point Levi, drove off a body
+of French and Indians posted in the church, and took possession of the
+houses and the surrounding heights. In the morning they were intrenching
+themselves, when they were greeted by a brisk fire from the edge of the
+woods. It came from a party of Indians, whom the rangers presently put
+to flight, and, imitating their own ferocity, scalped nine of them.
+Wolfe came over to the camp on the next day, went with an escort to the
+heights opposite Quebec, examined it with a spy-glass, and chose a
+position from which to bombard it. Cannon and mortars were brought
+ashore, fascines and gabions made, intrenchments thrown up, and
+batteries planted. Knox came over from the main camp, and says that he
+had "a most agreeable view of the city of Quebec. It is a very fair
+object for our artillery, particularly the lower town." But why did
+Wolfe wish to bombard it? Its fortifications were but little exposed to
+his fire, and to knock its houses, convents, and churches to pieces
+would bring him no nearer to his object. His guns at Point Levi could
+destroy the city, but could not capture it; yet doubtless they would
+have good moral effect, discourage the French, and cheer his own
+soldiers with the flattering belief that they were achieving something.
+
+The guns of Quebec showered balls and bombs upon his workmen; but they
+still toiled on, and the French saw the fatal batteries fast growing to
+completion. The citizens, alarmed at the threatened destruction, begged
+the Governor for leave to cross the river and dislodge their assailants.
+At length he consented. A party of twelve or fifteen hundred was made up
+of armed burghers, Canadians from the camp, a few Indians, some pupils
+of the Seminary, and about a hundred volunteers from the regulars.
+Dumas, an experienced officer, took command of them; and, going up to
+Sillery, they crossed the river on the night of the twelfth of July.
+They had hardly climbed the heights of the south shore when they grew
+exceedingly nervous, though the enemy was still three miles off. The
+Seminary scholars fired on some of their own party, whom they mistook
+for English; and the same mishap was repeated a second and a third time.
+A panic seized the whole body, and Dumas could not control them. They
+turned and made for their canoes, rolling over each other as they rushed
+down the heights, and reappeared at Quebec at six in the morning,
+overwhelmed with despair and shame.[716]
+
+[Footnote 716: _Événements de la Guerre en Canada_ (Hist. Soc. Quebec,
+1861). _Mémoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760. Vaudreuil au Ministre, 5 Oct.
+1759. L'Abeille_, II. No. 14 (a publication of the Quebec Seminary).
+_Journal du Siége de Québec_ (Bibliothêque de Hartwell). Panet, _Journal
+du Siége_. Foligny, _Journal mémoratif. Memoirs of the Siege of Quebec,
+by John Johnson, Clerk and Quartermaster-Sergeant to the Fifty-eighth
+Regiment_.]
+
+The presentiment of the unhappy burghers proved too true. The English
+batteries fell to their work, and the families of the town fled to the
+country for safety. In a single day eighteen houses and the cathedral
+were burned by exploding shells; and fiercer and fiercer the storm of
+fire and iron hailed upon Quebec.
+
+Wolfe did not rest content with distressing his enemy. With an ardor and
+a daring that no difficulties could cool, he sought means to strike an
+effective blow. It was nothing to lay Quebec in ruins if he could not
+defeat the army that protected it. To land from boats and attack
+Montcalm in front, through the mud of the Beauport flats or up the
+heights along the neighboring shore, was an enterprise too rash even for
+his temerity. It might, however, be possible to land below the cataract
+of Montmorenci, cross that stream higher up, and strike the French army
+in flank or rear; and he had no sooner secured his positions at the
+points of Levi and Orleans, than he addressed himself to this attempt.
+
+On the eighth several frigates and a bomb-ketch took their stations
+before the camp of the Chevalier de Lévis, who, with his division of
+Canadian militia, occupied the heights along the St. Lawrence just above
+the cataract. Here they shelled and cannonaded him all day; though, from
+his elevated position, with very little effect. Towards evening the
+troops on the Point of Orleans broke up their camp. Major Hardy, with a
+detachment of marines, was left to hold that post, while the rest
+embarked at night in the boats of the fleet. They were the brigades of
+Townshend and Murray, consisting of five battalions, with a body of
+grenadiers, light infantry, and rangers,--in all three thousand men.
+They landed before daybreak in front of the parish of L'Ange Gardien, a
+little below the cataract. The only opposition was from a troop of
+Canadians and Indians, whom they routed, after some loss, climbed the
+heights, gained the plateau above, and began to intrench themselves. A
+company of rangers, supported by detachments of regulars, was sent into
+the neighboring forest to protect the parties who were cutting fascines,
+and apparently, also, to look for a fording-place.
+
+Lévis, with his Scotch-Jacobite aide-de-camp, Johnstone, had watched the
+movements of Wolfe from the heights across the cataract. Johnstone says
+that he asked his commander if he was sure there was no ford higher up
+on the Montmorenci, by which the English could cross. Lévis averred that
+there was none, and that he himself had examined the stream to its
+source; on which a Canadian who stood by whispered to the aide-de-camp:
+"The General is mistaken; there is a ford." Johnstone told this to
+Lévis, who would not believe it, and so browbeat the Canadian that he
+dared not repeat what he had said. Johnstone, taking him aside, told him
+to go and find somebody who had lately crossed the ford, and bring him
+at once to the General's quarters; whereupon he soon reappeared with a
+man who affirmed that he had crossed it the night before with a sack of
+wheat on his back. A detachment was immediately sent to the place, with
+orders to intrench itself, and Repentigny, lieutenant of Lévis, was
+posted not far off with eleven hundred Canadians.
+
+Four hundred Indians passed the ford under the partisan Langlade,
+discovered Wolfe's detachment, hid themselves, and sent their commander
+to tell Repentigny that there was a body of English in the forest, who
+might all be destroyed if he would come over at once with his Canadians.
+Repentigny sent for orders to Lévis, and Lévis sent for orders to
+Vaudreuil, whose quarters were three or four miles distant. Vaudreuil
+answered that no risk should be run, and that he would come and see to
+the matter himself. It was about two hours before he arrived; and
+meanwhile the Indians grew impatient, rose from their hiding-place,
+fired on the rangers, and drove them back with heavy loss upon the
+regulars, who stood their ground, and at last repulsed the assailants.
+The Indians recrossed the ford with thirty-six scalps. If Repentigny had
+advanced, and Lévis had followed with his main body, the consequences to
+the English might have been serious; for, as Johnstone remarks, "a
+Canadian in the woods is worth three disciplined soldiers, as a soldier
+in a plain is worth three Canadians." Vaudreuil called a council of war.
+The question was whether an effort should be made to dislodge Wolfe's
+main force. Montcalm and the Governor were this time of one mind, and
+both thought it inexpedient to attack, with militia, a body of regular
+troops whose numbers and position were imperfectly known. Bigot gave his
+voice for the attack. He was overruled, and Wolfe was left to fortify
+himself in peace.[717]
+
+[Footnote 717: The above is from a comparison of the rather discordant
+accounts of Johnstone, the _Journal tenu à l'Armée,_ the _Journal_ of
+Panet, and that of the Hartwell Library. The last says that Lévis
+crossed the Montmorenci. If so, he accomplished nothing. This affair
+should not be confounded with a somewhat similar one which took place on
+the 26th.]
+
+His occupation of the heights of Montmorenci exposed him to great risks.
+The left wing of his army at Point Levi was six miles from its right
+wing at the cataract, and Major Hardy's detachment on the Point of
+Orleans was between them, separated from each by a wide arm of the St.
+Lawrence. Any one of the three camps might be overpowered before the
+others could support it; and Hardy with his small force was above all in
+danger of being cut to pieces. But the French kept persistently on the
+defensive; and after the failure of Dumas to dislodge the English from
+Point Levi, Vaudreuil would not hear of another such attempt. Wolfe was
+soon well intrenched; but it was easier to defend himself than to strike
+at his enemy. Montcalm, when urged to attack him, is said to have
+answered: "Let him amuse himself where he is. If we drive him off he may
+go to some place where he can do us harm." His late movement, however,
+had a discouraging effect on the Canadians, who now for the first time
+began to desert. His batteries, too, played across the chasm of
+Montmorenci upon the left wing of the French army with an effect
+extremely annoying.
+
+The position of the hostile forces was a remarkable one. They were
+separated by the vast gorge that opens upon the St. Lawrence; an
+amphitheatre of lofty precipices, their brows crested with forests, and
+their steep brown sides scantily feathered with stunted birch and fir.
+Into this abyss leaps the Montmorenci with one headlong plunge of nearly
+two hundred and fifty feet, a living column of snowy white, with its
+spray, its foam, its mists, and its rainbows; then spreads itself in
+broad thin sheets over a floor of rock and gravel, and creeps tamely to
+the St. Lawrence. It was but a gunshot across the gulf, and the
+sentinels on each side watched each other over the roar and turmoil of
+the cataract. Captain Knox, coming one day from Point Levi to receive
+orders from Wolfe, improved a spare hour to visit this marvel of nature.
+"I had very nigh paid dear for my inquisitiveness; for while I stood on
+the eminence I was hastily called to by one of our sentinels, when,
+throwing my eyes about, I saw a Frenchman creeping under the eastern
+extremity of their breastwork to fire at me. This obliged me to retire
+as fast as I could out of his reach, and, making up to the sentry to
+thank him for his attention, he told me the fellow had snapped his piece
+twice, and the second time it flashed in the pan at the instant I turned
+away from the Fall." Another officer, less fortunate, had a leg broken
+by a shot from the opposite cliffs.
+
+Day after day went by, and the invaders made no progress. Flags of truce
+passed often between the hostile camps. "You will demolish the town, no
+doubt," said the bearer of one of them, "but you shall never get inside
+of it." To which Wolfe replied: "I will have Quebec if I stay here till
+the end of November." Sometimes the heat was intense, and sometimes
+there were floods of summer rain that inundated the tents. Along the
+river, from the Montmorenci to Point Levi, there were ceaseless
+artillery fights between gunboats, frigates, and batteries on shore.
+Bands of Indians infested the outskirts of the camps, killing sentries
+and patrols. The rangers chased them through the woods; there were brisk
+skirmishes, and scalps lost and won. Sometimes the regulars took part in
+these forest battles; and once it was announced, in orders of the day,
+that "the General has ordered two sheep and some rum to Captain Cosnan's
+company of grenadiers for the spirit they showed this morning in pushing
+those scoundrels of Indians." The Indians complained that the British
+soldiers were learning how to fight, and no longer stood still in a mass
+to be shot at, as in Braddock's time. The Canadian _coureurs-de-bois_
+mixed with their red allies and wore their livery. One of them was
+caught on the eighteenth. He was naked, daubed red and blue, and adorned
+with a bunch of painted feathers dangling from the top of his head. He
+and his companions used the scalping-knife as freely as the Indians
+themselves; nor were the New England rangers much behind them in this
+respect, till an order came from Wolfe forbidding "the inhuman practice
+of scalping, except when the enemy are Indians, or Canadians dressed
+like Indians."
+
+A part of the fleet worked up into the Basin, beyond the Point of
+Orleans; and here, on the warm summer nights, officers and men watched
+the cannon flashing and thundering from the heights of Montmorenci on
+one side, and those of Pont Levi on the other, and the bombs sailing
+through the air in fiery semicircles. Often the gloom was lighted up by
+the blaze of the burning houses of Quebec, kindled by incendiary shells.
+Both the lower and the upper town were nearly deserted by the
+inhabitants, some retreating into the country, and some into the suburb
+of St. Roch; while the Ursulines and Hospital nuns abandoned their
+convents to seek harborage beyond the range of shot. The city was a prey
+to robbers, who pillaged the empty houses, till an order came from
+headquarters promising the gallows to all who should be caught. News
+reached the French that Niagara was attacked, and that the army of
+Amherst was moving against Ticonderoga. The Canadians deserted more and
+more. They were disheartened by the defensive attitude in which both
+Vaudreuil and Montcalm steadily persisted; and accustomed as they were
+to rapid raids, sudden strokes, and a quick return to their homes, they
+tired of long weeks of inaction. The English patrols caught one of them
+as he was passing the time in fishing. "He seemed to be a subtle old
+rogue," says Knox, "of seventy years of age, as he told us. We plied him
+well with port wine, and then his heart was more open; and seeing that
+we laughed at the exaggerated accounts he had given us, he said he
+'wished the affair was well over, one way or the other; that his
+countrymen were all discontented, and would either surrender, or
+disperse and act a neutral part, if it were not for the persuasions of
+their priests and the fear of being maltreated by the savages, with whom
+they are threatened on all occasions.'" A deserter reported on the
+nineteenth of July that nothing but dread of the Indians kept the
+Canadians in the camp.
+
+Wolfe's proclamation, at first unavailing, was now taking effect. A
+large number of Canadian prisoners, brought in on the twenty-fifth,
+declared that their countrymen would gladly accept his offers but for
+the threats of their commanders that if they did so the Indians should
+be set upon them. The prisoners said further that "they had been under
+apprehension for several days past of having a body of four hundred
+barbarians sent to rifle their parish and habitations."[718] Such
+threats were not wholly effectual. A French chronicler of the time says:
+"The Canadians showed their disgust every day, and deserted at every
+opportunity, in spite of the means taken to prevent them." "The people
+were intimidated, seeing all our army kept in one body and solely on the
+defensive; while the English, though far less numerous, divided their
+forces, and undertook various bold enterprises without meeting
+resistance."[719]
+
+[Footnote 718: Knox, I. 347; compare pp. 339, 341, 346.]
+
+[Footnote 719: _Journal du Siége_ (Bibliothêque de Hartwell).]
+
+On the eighteenth the English accomplished a feat which promised
+important results. The French commanders had thought it impossible for
+any hostile ship to pass the batteries of Quebec; but about eleven
+o'clock at night, favored by the wind, and covered by a furious
+cannonade from Point Levi, the ship "Sutherland," with a frigate and
+several small vessels, sailed safely by and reached the river above the
+town. Here they at once attacked and destroyed a fireship and some small
+craft that they found there, Now, for the first time, it became
+necessary for Montcalm to weaken his army at Beauport by sending six
+hundred men, under Dumas, to defend the accessible points in the line of
+precipices between Quebec and Cap-Rouge. Several hundred more were sent
+on the next day, when it became known that the English had dragged a
+fleet of boats over Point Levi, launched them above the town, and
+despatched troops to embark in them. Thus a new feature was introduced
+into the siege operations, and danger had risen on a side where the
+French thought themselves safe. On the other hand, Wolfe had become more
+vulnerable than ever. His army was now divided, not into three parts,
+but into four, each so far from the rest that, in case of sudden attack,
+it must defend itself alone. That Montcalm did not improve his
+opportunity was apparently due to want of confidence in his militia.
+
+The force above the town did not lie idle. On the night of the
+twentieth, Colonel Carleton, with six hundred men, rowed eighteen miles
+up the river, and landed at Pointe-aux-Trembles, on the north shore.
+Here some of the families of Quebec had sought asylum; and Wolfe had
+been told by prisoners that not only were stores in great quantity to be
+found here, but also letters and papers throwing light on the French
+plans. Carleton and his men drove off a band of Indians who fired on
+them, and spent a quiet day around the parish church; but found few
+papers, and still fewer stores. They withdrew towards evening, carrying
+with them nearly a hundred women, children, and old men; any they were
+no sooner gone than the Indians returned to plunder the empty houses of
+their unfortunate allies. The prisoners were treated with great
+kindness. The ladies among them were entertained at supper by Wolfe, who
+jested with them on the caution of the French generals, saying: "I have
+given good chances to attack me, and am surprised that they have not
+profited by them."[720] On the next day the prisoners were all sent to
+Quebec under a flag of truce.
+
+[Footnote 720: _Journal tenu à l'Armée que commandoit feu M. le Marquis
+de Montcalm._]
+
+Thus far Wolfe had refrained from executing the threats he had affixed
+the month before to the church of Beaumont. But now he issued another
+proclamation. It declared that the Canadians had shown themselves
+unworthy of the offers he had made them, and that he had therefore
+ordered his light troops to ravage their country and bring them
+prisoners to his camp. Such of the Canadian militia as belonged to the
+parishes near Quebec were now in a sad dilemma; for Montcalm threatened
+them on one side, and Wolfe on the other. They might desert to their
+homes, or they might stand by their colors; in the one case their houses
+were to be burned by French savages, and in the other by British light
+infantry.
+
+Wolfe at once gave orders in accord with his late proclamation; but he
+commanded that no church should be profaned, and no woman or child
+injured. The first effects of his stern policy are thus recorded by
+Knox: "Major Dalling's light infantry brought in this afternoon to our
+camp two hundred and fifty male and female prisoners. Among this number
+was a very respectable looking priest, and about forty men fit to bear
+arms. There was almost an equal number of black cattle, with about
+seventy sheep and lambs, and a few horses. Brigadier Monckton
+entertained the reverend father and some other fashionable personages in
+his tent, and most humanely ordered refreshments to all the rest of the
+captives; which noble example was followed by the soldiery, who
+generously crowded about those unhappy people, sharing the provisions,
+rum, and tobacco with them. They were sent in the evening on board of
+transports in the river." Again, two days later: "Colonel Fraser's
+detachment returned this morning, and presented us with more scenes of
+distress and the dismal consequences of war, by a great number of
+wretched families, whom they brought in prisoners, with some of their
+effects, and near three hundred black cattle, sheep, hogs, and horses."
+
+On the next night the attention of the excellent journalist was
+otherwise engaged. Vaudreuil tried again to burn the English fleet.
+"Late last night," writes Knox, under date of the twenty-eighth, "the
+enemy sent down a most formidable fireraft, which consisted of a parcel
+of schooners, shallops, and stages chained together. It could not be
+less than a hundred fathoms in length, and was covered with grenades,
+old swivels, gun and pistol barrels loaded up to their muzzles, and
+various other inventions and combustible matters. This seemed to be
+their last attempt against our fleet, which happily miscarried, as
+before; for our gallant seamen, with their usual expertness, grappled
+them before they got down above a third part of the Basin, towed them
+safe to shore, and left them at anchor, continually repeating, _All's
+well_. A remarkable expression from some of these intrepid souls to
+their comrades on this occasion I must not omit, on account of its
+singular uncouthness; namely: 'Damme, Jack, didst thee ever take hell in
+tow before?'"
+
+According to a French account, this aquatic infernal machine consisted
+of seventy rafts, boats, and schooners. Its failure was due to no
+shortcoming on the part of its conductors; who, under a brave Canadian
+named Courval, acted with coolness and resolution. Nothing saved the
+fleet but the courage of the sailors, swarming out in their boats to
+fight the approaching conflagration.
+
+It was now the end of July. More than half the summer was gone, and
+Quebec seemed as far as ever beyond the grasp of Wolfe. Its buildings
+were in ruins, and the neighboring parishes were burned and ravaged; but
+its living rampart, the army of Montcalm, still lay in patient defiance
+along the shores of Beauport, while above the city every point where a
+wildcat could climb the precipices was watched and guarded, and Dumas
+with a thousand men held the impregnable heights of Cap-Rouge. Montcalm
+persisted in doing nothing that his enemy wished him to do. He would not
+fight on Wolfe's terms, and Wolfe resolved at last to fight him on his
+own; that is, to attack his camp in front.
+
+The plan was desperate; for, after leaving troops enough to hold Point
+Levi and the heights of Montmorenci, less than five thousand men would
+be left to attack a position of commanding strength, where Montcalm at
+an hour's notice could collect twice as many to oppose them. But Wolfe
+had a boundless trust in the disciplined valor of his soldiers, and an
+utter scorn of the militia who made the greater part of his enemy's
+force.
+
+Towards the Montmorenci the borders of the St. Lawrence are, as we have
+seen, extremely high and steep. At a mile from the gorge of the cataract
+there is, at high tide, a strand, about the eighth of a mile wide,
+between the foot of these heights and the river; and beyond this strand
+the receding tide lays bare a tract of mud nearly half a mile wide. At
+the edge of the dry ground the French had built a redoubt mounted with
+cannon, and there were other similar works on the strand a quarter of a
+mile nearer the cataract. Wolfe could not see from the river that these
+redoubts were commanded by the musketry of the intrenchments along the
+brink of the heights above. These intrenchments were so constructed that
+they swept with cross-fires the whole face of the declivity, which was
+covered with grass, and was very steep. Wolfe hoped that, if he attacked
+one of the redoubts, the French would come down to defend it, and so
+bring on a general engagement; or, if they did not, that he should gain
+an opportunity of reconnoitring the heights to find some point where
+they could be stormed with a chance of success.
+
+In front of the gorge of the Montmorenci there was a ford during several
+hours of low tide, so that troops from the adjoining English camp might
+cross to co-operate with their comrades landing in boats from Point Levi
+and the Island of Orleans. On the morning of the thirty-first of July,
+the tide then being at the flood, the French saw the ship "Centurion,"
+of sixty-four guns, anchor near the Montmorenci and open fire on the
+redoubts. Then two armed transports, each of fourteen guns, stood in as
+close as possible to the first redoubt and fired upon it, stranding as
+the tide went out, till in the afternoon they lay bare upon the mud. At
+the same time a battery of more than forty heavy pieces, planted on the
+lofty promontory beyond the Montmorenci, began a furious cannonade upon
+the flank of the French intrenchments. It did no great harm, however,
+for the works were protected by a great number of traverses, which
+stopped the shot; and the Canadians, who manned this part of the lines,
+held their ground with excellent steadiness.
+
+About eleven o'clock a fleet of boats filled with troops, chiefly from
+Point Levi, appeared in the river and hovered off the shore west of the
+parish church of Beauport, as if meaning to land there. Montcalm was
+perplexed, doubting whether the real attack was to be made here, or
+toward the Montmorenci. Hour after hour the boats moved to and fro, to
+increase his doubts and hide the real design; but he soon became
+convinced that the camp of Lévis at the Montmorenci was the true object
+of his enemy; and about two o'clock he went thither, greeted as he rode
+along the lines by shouts of _Vive notre Général!_ Lévis had already
+made preparations for defence with his usual skill. His Canadians were
+reinforced by the battalions of Béarn, Guienne, and Royal Roussillon;
+and, as the intentions of Wolfe became certain, the right of the camp
+was nearly abandoned, the main strength of the army being gathered
+between the river of Beauport and the Montmorenci, where, according to a
+French writer, there were, towards the end of the afternoon, about
+twelve thousand men.[721]
+
+[Footnote 721: Panet, _Journal_.]
+
+At half-past five o'clock the tide was out, and the crisis came. The
+batteries across the Montmorenci, the distant batteries of Point Levi,
+the cannon of the "Centurion," and those of the two stranded ships, all
+opened together with redoubled fury. The French batteries replied; and,
+amid this deafening roar of artillery, the English boats set their
+troops ashore at the edge of the broad tract of sedgy mud that the
+receding river had left bare. At the same time a column of two thousand
+men was seen, a mile away, moving in perfect order across the
+Montmorenci ford. The first troops that landed from the boats were
+thirteen companies of grenadiers and a detachment of Royal Americans.
+They dashed swiftly forward; while at some distance behind came
+Monckton's brigade, composed of the fifteenth, or Amherst's regiment,
+and the seventy-eighth, or Fraser's Highlanders. The day had been fair
+and warm; but the sky was now thick with clouds, and large rain-drops
+began to fall, the precursors of a summer storm.
+
+With the utmost precipitation, without orders, and without waiting for
+Monckton's brigade to come up, the grenadiers in front made a rush for
+the redoubt near the foot of the hill. The French abandoned it; but the
+assailants had no sooner gained their prize than the thronged heights
+above blazed with musketry, and a tempest of bullets fell among them.
+Nothing daunted, they dashed forward again, reserving their fire, and
+struggling to climb the steep ascent; while, with yells and shouts of
+_Vive le Roi!_ the troops and Canadians at the top poured upon them a
+hailstorm of musket-balls and buckshot, and dead and wounded in numbers
+rolled together down the slope. At that instant the clouds burst, and
+the rain fell in torrents. "We could not see half way down the hill,"
+says the Chevalier Johnstone, who was at this part of the line.
+Ammunition was wet on both sides, and the grassy steeps became so
+slippery that was impossible to climb them. The English say that the
+storm saved the French; the French, with as much reason, that it saved
+the English.
+
+The baffled grenadiers drew back into the redoubt. Wolfe saw the madness
+of persisting, and ordered a retreat. The rain ceased, and troops of
+Indians came down the heights to scalp the fallen. Some of them ran
+towards Lieutenant Peyton, of the Royal Americans, as he lay disabled by
+a musket-shot. With his double-barrelled gun he brought down two of his
+assailants, when a Highland sergeant snatched him in his arms, dragged
+him half a mile over the mud-flats, and placed him in one of the boats.
+A friend of Peyton, Captain Ochterlony, had received a mortal wound, and
+an Indian would have scalped him but for the generous intrepidity of a
+soldier of the battalion of Guienne; who, seizing the enraged savage,
+held him back till several French officers interposed, and had the dying
+man carried to a place of safety.
+
+The English retreated in good order, after setting fire to the two
+stranded vessels. Those of the grenadiers and Royal Americans who were
+left alive rowed for the Point of Orleans; the fifteenth regiment rowed
+for Point Levi; and the Highlanders, led by Wolfe himself, joined the
+column from beyond the Montmorenci, placing themselves in its rear as it
+slowly retired along the flats and across the ford, the Indians yelling
+and the French shouting from the heights, while the British waved their
+hats, daring them to come down and fight.
+
+The grenadiers and the Royal Americans, who had borne the brunt of the
+fray, bore also nearly all the loss; which, in proportion to their
+numbers, was enormous. Knox reports it at four hundred and forty-three,
+killed, wounded, and missing, including one colonel, eight captains,
+twenty-one lieutenants, and three ensigns.
+
+Vaudreuil, delighted, wrote to Bourlamaque an account of the affair. "I
+have no more anxiety about Quebec. M. Wolfe, I can assure you, will make
+no progress. Luckily for him, his prudence saved him from the
+consequences of his mad enterprise, and he contented himself with losing
+about five hundred of his best soldiers. Deserters say that he will try
+us again in a few days. That is what we want; he'll find somebody to
+talk to (_il trouvera à qui parler_)."
+
+NOTE: Among the killed in this affair was Edward Botwood, sergeant in
+the grenadiers of the forty-seventh, or Lascelles' regiment. "Ned
+Botwood" was well known among his comrades as a poet; and the following
+lines of his, written on the eve of the expedition to Quebec, continued
+to be favorites with the British troops during the War of the Revolution
+(see _Historical Magazine_, II., First Series, 164). It may be observed
+here that the war produced a considerable quantity of indifferent verse
+on both sides. On that of the English it took the shape of occasional
+ballads, such as "Bold General Wolfe," printed on broadsides, or of
+patriotic effusions scattered through magazines and newspapers, while
+the French celebrated all their victories with songs.
+
+HOT STUFF.
+
+Air,--Lilies of France.
+
+
+    Come, each death-doing dog who dares venture his neck,
+    Come, follow the hero that goes to Quebec;
+    Jump aboard of the transports, and loose every sail,
+    Pay your debts at the tavern by giving leg-bail;
+    And ye that love fighting shall soon have enough:
+    Wolfe commands us, my boys; we shall give them Hot Stuff.
+
+    Up the River St. Lawrence our troops shall advance,
+    To the Grenadiers' March we will teach them to dance.
+    Cape Breton we have taken, and next we will try
+    At their capital to give them another black eye.
+    Vaudreuil 't is in vain you pretend to look gruff,--
+    Those are coming who know how to give you Hot Stuff.
+
+    With powder in his periwig, and snuff in his nose,
+    Monsieur will run down our descent to oppose;
+    And the Indians will come: but the light infantry
+    Will soon oblige _them_ to betake to a tree.
+    From such rascals as these may we fear a rebuff?
+    Advance, grenadiers, and let fly your Hot Stuff!
+
+    When the forty-seventh regiment is dashing ashore,
+    While bullets are whistling and cannons do roar,
+    Says Montcalm: "Those are Shirley's--I know the lappels."
+    "You lie," says Ned Botwood, "we belong to Lascelles'!
+    Tho' our cloathing is changed, yet we scorn a powder-puff;
+    So at you, ye b----s, here's give you Hot Stuff."
+P/
+
+On the repulse at Montmorenci, _Wolfe to Pitt, 2 Sept. 1759. Vaudreuil
+au Ministre, 5 Oct. 1759_. Panet, _Journal du Siége_. Johnstone,
+_Dialogue in Hades. Journal tenu à l'Armée, etc. Journal of the Siege of
+Quebec, by a Gentleman in an eminent Station on the Spot. Mémoires sur
+le Canada, 1749-1760_. Fraser, _Journal of the Siege. Journal du Siége
+d'après un MS. déposé à la Bibliothêque Hartwell_. Foligny, _Journal
+mémoratif. Journal of Transactions at the Siege of Quebec_, in _Notes
+and Queries_, XX. 164. John Johnson, _Memoirs of the Siege of Quebec.
+Journal of an Expedition on the River St. Lawrence. An Authentic Account
+of the Expedition against Quebec, by a Volunteer on that Expedition. J.
+Gibson to Governor Lawrence, 1 Aug. 1759_. Knox, I. 354. Mante, 244.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 26
+
+1759
+
+Amherst. Niagara
+
+
+Pitt had directed that, while Quebec was attacked, an attempt should be
+made to penetrate into Canada by way of Ticonderoga and Crown Point.
+Thus the two armies might unite in the heart of the colony, or, at
+least, a powerful diversion might be effected in behalf of Wolfe. At the
+same time Oswego was to be re-established, and the possession of Fort
+Duquesne, or Pittsburg, secured by reinforcements and supplies; while
+Amherst, the commander-in-chief, was further directed to pursue any
+other enterprise which in his opinion would weaken the enemy, without
+detriment to the main objects of the campaign.[722] He accordingly
+resolved to attempt the capture of Niagara. Brigadier Prideaux was
+charged with this stroke; Brigadier Stanwix was sent to conduct the
+operations for the relief of Pittsburg; and Amherst himself prepared to
+lead the grand central advance against Ticonderoga, Crown Point, and
+Montreal.[723]
+
+[Footnote 722: _Pitt to Amherst, 23 Jan., 10 March, 1759_.]
+
+[Footnote 723: _Amherst to Pitt, 19 June, 1759. Amherst to Stanwix, 6
+May, 1759_.]
+
+Towards the end of June he reached that valley by the head of Lake
+George which for five years past had been the annual mustering-place of
+armies. Here were now gathered about eleven thousand men, half regulars
+and half provincials,[724] drilling every day, firing by platoons,
+firing at marks, practising manoeuvres in the woods; going out on
+scouting parties, bathing parties, fishing parties; gathering wild herbs
+to serve for greens, cutting brushwood and meadow hay to make hospital
+beds. The sick were ordered on certain mornings to repair to the
+surgeon's tent, there, in prompt succession, to swallow such doses as he
+thought appropriate to their several ailments; and it was further
+ordered that "every fair day they that can walk be paraded together and
+marched down to the lake to wash their hands and faces." Courts-martial
+were numerous; culprits were flogged at the head of each regiment in
+turn, and occasionally one was shot. A frequent employment was the
+cutting of spruce tops to make spruce beer. This innocent beverage was
+reputed sovereign against scurvy; and such was the fame of its virtues
+that a copious supply of the West Indian molasses used in concocting it
+was thought indispensable to every army or garrison in the wilderness.
+Throughout this campaign it is repeatedly mentioned in general orders,
+and the soldiers are promised that they shall have as much of it as they
+want at a halfpenny a quart.[725]
+
+[Footnote 724: Mante, 210.]
+
+[Footnote 725: _Orderly Book of Commissary Wilson in the Expedition
+against Ticonderoga, 1759. Journal of Samuel Warner, a Massachusetts
+Soldier, 1759. General and Regimental Orders, Army of Major-General
+Amherst, 1759. Diary of Sergeant Merriman, of Ruggles's Regiment, 1759._
+I owe to William L. Stone, Esq., the use of the last two curious
+documents.]
+
+The rear of the-army was well protected from insult. Fortified posts
+were built at intervals of three or four miles along the road to Fort
+Edward, and especially at the station called Half-way Brook; while, for
+the whole distance, a broad belt of wood on both sides was cut down and
+burned, to deprive a skulking enemy of cover. Amherst was never long in
+one place without building a fort there. He now began one, which proved
+wholly needless, on that flat rocky hill where the English made their
+intrenched camp during the siege of Fort William Henry. Only one bastion
+of it was ever finished, and this is still shown to tourists under the
+name of Fort George.
+
+The army embarked on Saturday, the twenty-first of July. The Reverend
+Benjamin Pomeroy watched their departure in some concern, and wrote on
+Monday to Abigail, his wife: "I could wish for more appearance of
+dependence on God than was observable among them; yet I hope God will
+grant deliverance unto Israel by them." There was another military
+pageant, another long procession of boats and banners, among the
+mountains and islands of Lake George. Night found them near the outlet;
+and here they lay till morning, tossed unpleasantly on waves ruffled by
+a summer gale. At daylight they landed, beat back a French detachment,
+and marched by the portage road to the saw-mill at the waterfall. There
+was little resistance. They occupied the heights, and then advanced to
+the famous line of intrenchment against which the army of Abercromby had
+hurled itself in vain. These works had been completely reconstructed,
+partly of earth, and partly of logs. Amherst's followers were less
+numerous than those of his predecessor, while the French commander,
+Bourlamaque, had a force nearly equal to that of Montcalm in the summer
+before; yet he made no attempt to defend the intrenchment, and the
+English, encamping along its front, found it an excellent shelter from
+the cannon of the fort beyond.
+
+Amherst brought up his artillery and began approaches in form, when, on
+the night of the twenty-third, it was found that Bourlamaque had retired
+down Lake Champlain, leaving four hundred men under Hebecourt to defend
+the place as long as possible. This was in obedience to an order from
+Vaudreuil, requiring him on the approach of the English to abandon both
+Ticonderoga and Crown Point, retreat to the outlet of Lake Champlain,
+take post at Isle-aux-Noix, and there defend himself to the last
+extremity;[726] a course unquestionably the best that could have been
+taken, since obstinacy in holding Ticonderoga might have involved the
+surrender of Bourlamaque's whole force, while Isle-aux-Noix offered rare
+advantages for defence.
+
+[Footnote 726: _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 8 Nov. 1759. Instructions pour M.
+de Bourlamaque, 20 Mai, 1759, signé Vaudreuil. Montcalm à Bourlamaque, 4
+Juin, 1759_.]
+
+The fort fired briskly; a cannon-shot killed Colonel Townshend, and a
+few soldiers were killed and wounded by grape and bursting shells; when,
+at dusk on the evening of the twenty-sixth, an unusual movement was seen
+among the garrison, and, about ten o'clock, three deserters came in
+great excitement to the English camp. They reported that Hebecourt and
+his soldiers were escaping in their boats, and that a match was burning
+in the magazine to blow Ticonderoga to atoms. Amherst offered a hundred
+guineas to any one of them who would point out the match, that it might
+be cut; but they shrank from the perilous venture. All was silent till
+eleven o'clock, when a broad, fierce glare burst on the night, and a
+roaring explosion shook the promontory; then came a few breathless
+moments, and then the fragments of Fort Ticonderoga fell with clatter
+and splash on the water and the land. It was but one bastion, however,
+that had been thus hurled skyward. The rest of the fort was little
+hurt, though the barracks and other combustible parts were set on fire,
+and by the light the French flag was seen still waving on the
+rampart.[727] A sergeant of the light infantry, braving the risk of
+other explosions, went and brought it off. Thus did this redoubted
+stronghold of France fall at last into English hands, as in all
+likelihood it would have done a year sooner, if Amherst had commanded in
+Abercromby's place; for, with the deliberation that marked all his
+proceedings, he would have sat down before Montcalm's wooden wall and
+knocked it to splinters with his cannon.
+
+[Footnote 727: _Journal of Colonel Amherst_ (brother of General
+Amherst). _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 8 Nov. 1759. Amherst to Prideaux, 28
+July, 1759. Amherst to Pitt, 27 July, 1759_. Mante, 213. Knox, I.,
+397-403. _Vaudreuil à Bourlamaque, 19 Juin, 1759_.]
+
+He now set about repairing the damaged works and making ready to advance
+on Crown Point; when on the first of August his scouts told him that the
+enemy had abandoned this place also, and retreated northward down the
+lake.[728] Well pleased, he took possession of the deserted fort, and,
+in the animation of success, thought for a moment of keeping the promise
+he had given to Pitt "to make an irruption into Canada with the utmost
+vigor and despatch."[729] Wolfe, his brother in arms and his friend, was
+battling with the impossible under the rocks of Quebec, and every
+motive, public and private, impelled Amherst to push to his relief, not
+counting costs, or balancing risks too nicely. He was ready enough to
+spur on others, for he wrote to Gage: "We must all be alert and active
+day and night; if we all do our parts the French must fall;"[730] but,
+far from doing his, he set the army to building a new fort at Crown
+Point, telling them that it would "give plenty, peace, and quiet to His
+Majesty's subjects for ages to come."[731] Then he began three small
+additional forts, as outworks to the first, sent two parties to explore
+the sources of the Hudson; one party to explore Otter Creek; another to
+explore South Bay, which was already well known; another to make a road
+across what is now the State of Vermont, from Crown Point to
+Charlestown, or "Number Four," on the Connecticut; and another to widen
+and improve the old French road between Crown Point and Ticonderoga. His
+industry was untiring; a great deal of useful work was done: but the
+essential task of making a diversion to aid the army of Wolfe was
+needlessly postponed.
+
+[Footnote 728: _Amherst to Pitt, 5 Aug. 1759_.]
+
+[Footnote 729: _Ibid., 19 June, 1759_.]
+
+[Footnote 730: _Amherst to Gage, 1 Aug. 1759_.]
+
+[Footnote 731: _General Orders, 13 Aug. 1759_.]
+
+It is true that some delay was inevitable. The French had four armed
+vessels on the lake, and this made it necessary to provide an equal or
+superior force to protect the troops on their way to Isle-aux-Noix.
+Captain Loring, the English naval commander, was therefore ordered to
+build a brigantine; and, this being thought insufficient, he was
+directed to add a kind of floating battery, moved by sweeps. Three weeks
+later, in consequence of farther information concerning the force of the
+French vessels, Amherst ordered an armed sloop to be put on the stocks;
+and this involved a long delay. The saw-mill at Ticonderoga was to
+furnish planks for the intended navy; but, being overtasked in sawing
+timber for the new works at Crown Point, it was continually breaking
+down. Hence much time was lost, and autumn was well advanced before
+Loring could launch his vessels.[732]
+
+[Footnote 732: _Amherst to Pitt, 22 Oct. 1759_. This letter, which is in
+the form of a journal, covers twenty-one folio pages.]
+
+Meanwhile news had come from Prideaux and the Niagara expedition. That
+officer had been ordered to ascend the Mohawk with five thousand
+regulars and provincials, leave a strong garrison at Fort Stanwix, on
+the Great Carrying Place, establish posts at both ends of Lake Oneida,
+descend the Onondaga to Oswego, leave nearly half his force there under
+Colonel Haldimand, and proceed with the rest to attack Niagara.[733]
+These orders he accomplished. Haldimand remained to reoccupy the spot
+that Montcalm had made desolate three years before; and, while preparing
+to build a fort, he barricaded his camp with pork and flour barrels,
+lest the enemy should make a dash upon him from their station at the
+head of the St. Lawrence Rapids. Such an attack was probable; for if the
+French could seize Oswego, the return of Prideaux from Niagara would be
+cut off, and when his small stock of provisions had failed, he would be
+reduced to extremity. Saint-Luc de la Corne left the head of the Rapids
+early in July with a thousand French and Canadians and a body of
+Indians, who soon made their appearance among the stumps and bushes that
+surrounded the camp at Oswego. The priest Piquet was of the party; and
+five deserters declared that he solemnly blessed them, and told them to
+give the English no quarter.[734] Some valuable time was lost in
+bestowing the benediction; yet Haldimand's men were taken by surprise.
+Many of them were dispersed in the woods, cutting timber for the
+intended fort; and it might have gone hard with them had not some of La
+Corne's Canadians become alarmed and rushed back to their boats,
+oversetting Father Piquet on the way.[735] These being rallied, the
+whole party ensconced itself in a tract of felled trees so far from the
+English that their fire did little harm. They continued it about two
+hours, and resumed it the next morning; when, three cannon being brought
+to bear on them, they took to their boats and disappeared, having lost
+about thirty killed and wounded, including two officers and La Corne
+himself, who was shot in the thigh. The English loss was slight.
+
+[Footnote 733: _Instructions of Amherst to Prideaux, 17 May, 1759.
+Prideaux to Haldimand, 30 June, 1759_.]
+
+[Footnote 734: _Journal of Colonel Amherst_.]
+
+[Footnote 735: Pouchot, II. 130. _Compare Mémoires sur le Canada,
+1749-1760_; _N.Y. Col. Docs._, VII. 395; and _Letter from Oswego_, in
+_Boston Evening Post_, No. 1,248.]
+
+Prideaux safely reached Niagara, and laid siege to it. It was a strong
+fort, lately rebuilt in regular form by an excellent officer, Captain
+Pouchot, of the battalion of Béarn, who commanded it. It stood where the
+present fort stands, in the angle formed by the junction of the River
+Niagara with Lake Ontario, and was held by about six hundred men, well
+supplied with provisions and munitions of war.[736] Higher up the river,
+a mile and a half above the cataract, there was another fort, called
+Little Niagara, built of wood, and commanded by the half-breed officer,
+Joncaire-Chabert, who with his brother, Joncaire-Clauzonne, and a
+numerous clan of Indian relatives, had so long thwarted the efforts of
+Johnson to engage the Five Nations in the English cause. But recent
+English successes had had their effect. Joncaire's influence was waning,
+and Johnson was now in Prideaux's camp with nine hundred Five Nation
+warriors pledged to fight the French. Joncaire, finding his fort
+untenable, burned it, and came with his garrison and his Indian friends
+to reinforce Niagara.[737]
+
+[Footnote 736: Pouchot says 515, besides 60 men from Little Niagara;
+Vaudreuil gives a total of 589.]
+
+[Footnote 737: Pouchot, II. 52, 59. _Procès de Bigot, Cadet, et autres,
+Mémoire pour Daniel de Joncaire-Chabert._]
+
+Pouchot had another resource, on which he confidently relied. In
+obedience to an order from Vaudreuil, the French population of the
+Illinois, Detroit, and other distant posts, joined with troops of
+Western Indians, had come down the Lakes to recover Pittsburg, undo the
+work of Forbes, and restore French ascendency on the Ohio. Pittsburg had
+been in imminent danger; nor was it yet safe, though General Stanwix was
+sparing no effort to succor it.[738] These mixed bands of white men and
+red, bushrangers and savages, were now gathered, partly at Le Boeuf and
+Venango, but chiefly at Presquisle, under command of Aubry, Ligneris,
+Marin, and other partisan chiefs, the best in Canada. No sooner did
+Pouchot learn that the English were coming to attack him than he sent a
+messenger to summon them all to his aid.[739]
+
+[Footnote 738: _Letters of Colonel Hugh Mercer, commanding at Pittsburg,
+January-June, 1759. Letters of Stanwix, May-July, 1759. Letter from
+Pittsburg_, in _Boston News Letter_, No. 3,023. _Narrative of John
+Ormsby._]
+
+[Footnote 739: Pouchot, II. 46.]
+
+The siege was begun in form, though the English engineers were so
+incompetent that the trenches, as first laid out, were scoured by the
+fire of the place, and had to be made anew.[740] At last the batteries
+opened fire. A shell from a coehorn burst prematurely, just as it left
+the mouth of the piece, and a fragment striking Prideaux on the head,
+killed him instantly. Johnson took command in his place, and made up in
+energy what he lacked in skill. In two or three weeks the fort was in
+extremity. The rampart was breached, more than a hundred of the garrison
+were killed or disabled, and the rest were exhausted with want of sleep.
+Pouchot watched anxiously for the promised succors; and on the morning
+of the twenty-fourth of July a distant firing told him that they were at
+hand.
+
+[Footnote 740: _Rutherford to Haldimand, 14 July, 1759._ Prideaux was
+extremely disgusted. _Prideaux to Haldimand, 13 July, 1759_. Allan
+Macleane, of the Highlanders, calls the engineers "fools and blockheads,
+G--d d--n them." _Macleane to Haldimand, 21 July, 1759._]
+
+Aubry and Ligneris, with their motley following, had left Presquisle a
+few days before, to the number, according to Vaudreuil, of eleven
+hundred French and two hundred Indians.[741] Among them was a body of
+colony troops; but the Frenchmen of the party were chiefly traders and
+bushrangers from the West, connecting links between civilization and
+savagery; some of them indeed were mere white Indians, imbued with the
+ideas and morals of the wigwam, wearing hunting-shirts of smoked
+deer-skin embroidered with quills of the Canada porcupine, painting
+their faces black and red, tying eagle feathers in their long hair, or
+plastering it on their temples with a compound of vermilion and glue.
+They were excellent woodsmen, skilful hunters, and perhaps the best
+bush-fighters in all Canada.
+
+[Footnote 741: "Il n'y avoit que 1,100 François et 200 sauvages."
+_Vaudreuil au Ministre, 30 Oct. 1759._ Johnson says "1,200 men, with a
+number of Indians." _Johnson to Amherst, 25 July, 1759._ Portneuf,
+commanding at Presquisle, wrote to Pouchot that there were 1,600 French
+and 1,200 Indians. Pouchot, II. 94. A letter from Aubry to Pouchot put
+the whole at 2,500, half of them Indians. _Historical Magazine_, V.,
+Second Series, 199.]
+
+When Pouchot heard the firing, he went with a wounded artillery officer
+to the bastion next the river; and as the forest had been cut away for a
+great distance, they could see more than a mile and a half along the
+shore. There, by glimpses among trees and bushes, they descried bodies
+of men, now advancing, and now retreating; Indians in rapid movement,
+and the smoke of guns, the sound of which reached their ears in heavy
+volleys, or a sharp and angry rattle. Meanwhile the English cannon had
+ceased their fire, and the silent trenches seemed deserted, as if their
+occupants were gone to meet the advancing foe. There was a call in the
+fort for volunteers to sally and destroy the works; but no sooner did
+they show themselves along the covered way than the seemingly abandoned
+trenches were thronged with men and bayonets, and the attempt was given
+up. The distant firing lasted half an hour, then ceased, and Pouchot
+remained in suspense; till, at two in the afternoon, a friendly
+Onondaga, who had passed unnoticed through the English lines, came to
+him with the announcement that the French and their allies had been
+routed and cut to pieces. Pouchot would not believe him.
+
+Nevertheless his tale was true. Johnson, besides his Indians, had with
+him about twenty-three hundred men, whom he was forced to divide into
+three separate bodies,--one to guard the bateaux, one to guard the
+trenches, and one to fight Aubry and his band. This last body consisted
+of the provincial light infantry and the pickets, two companies of
+grenadiers, and a hundred and fifty men of the forty-sixth regiment, all
+under command of Colonel Massey.[742] They took post behind an abattis
+at a place called La Belle Famille, and the Five Nation warriors placed
+themselves on their flanks. These savages had shown signs of
+disaffection; and when the enemy approached, they opened a parley with
+the French Indians, which, however, soon ended, and both sides raised
+the war-whoop. The fight was brisk for a while; but at last Aubry's men
+broke away in a panic. The French officers seem to have made desperate
+efforts to retrieve the day, for nearly all of them were killed or
+captured; while their followers, after heavy loss, fled to their canoes
+and boats above the cataract, hastened back to Lake Erie, burned
+Presquisle, Le Boeuf, and Venango, and, joined by the garrisons of those
+forts, retreated to Detroit, leaving the whole region of the upper Ohio
+in undisputed possession of the English.
+
+[Footnote 742: _Johnson to Amherst, 25 July, 1759._ Knox, II. 135.
+_Captain Delancey to----, 25 July, 1759._ This writer commanded the
+light infantry in the fight.]
+
+At four o'clock on the day of the battle, after a furious cannonade on
+both sides, a trumpet sounded from the trenches, and an officer
+approached the fort with a summons to surrender. He brought also a paper
+containing the names of the captive French officers, though some of them
+were spelled in a way that defied recognition. Pouchot, feigning
+incredulity, sent an officer of his own to the English camp, who soon
+saw unanswerable proof of the disaster; for here, under a shelter of
+leaves and boughs near the tent of Johnson, sat Ligneris, severely
+wounded, with Aubry, Villiers, Montigny, Marin, and their companions in
+misfortune,--in all, sixteen officers, four cadets, and a surgeon.[743]
+
+[Footnote 743: Johnson gives the names in his private _Diary_, printed
+in Stone, _Life of Johnson_, II. 394. Compare Pouchot, II. 105, 106.
+_Letter from Niagara_, in _Boston Evening Post_, No. 1,250. _Vaudreuil
+au Ministre, 30 Oct. 1759._]
+
+Pouchot had now no choice but surrender. By the terms of the
+capitulation, the garrison were to be sent prisoners to New York, though
+honors of war were granted them in acknowledgment of their courageous
+conduct. There was a special stipulation that they should be protected
+from the Indians, of whom they stood in the greatest terror, lest the
+massacre of Fort William Henry should be avenged upon them. Johnson
+restrained his dangerous allies, and, though the fort was pillaged, no
+blood was shed.
+
+The capture of Niagara was an important stroke. Thenceforth Detroit,
+Michillimackinac, the Illinois, and all the other French interior posts,
+were severed from Canada, and left in helpless isolation; but Amherst
+was not yet satisfied. On hearing of Prideaux's death he sent Brigadier
+Gage to supersede Johnson and take command on Lake Ontario, directing
+him to descend the St. Lawrence, attack the French posts at the head of
+the rapids, and hold them if possible for the winter. The attempt was
+difficult; for the French force on the St. Lawrence was now greater than
+that which Gage could bring against it, after providing for the safety
+of Oswego and Niagara. Nor was he by nature prone to dashing and
+doubtful enterprise. He reported that the movement was impossible, much
+to the disappointment of Amherst, who seemed to expect from subordinates
+an activity greater than his own.[744]
+
+[Footnote 744: _Amherst to Gage, 28 July, 1 Aug., 14 Aug., 11 Sept.
+1759. Diary of Sir William Johnson_, in Stone, _Life of Johnson_, II.
+394-429.]
+
+He, meanwhile, was working at his fort at Crown Point, while the season
+crept away, and Bourlamaque lay ready to receive him at Isle-aux-Noix.
+"I wait his coming with impatience," writes the French commander,
+"though I doubt if he will venture to attack a post where we are
+intrenched to the teeth, and armed with a hundred pieces of
+cannon."[745] Bourlamaque now had with him thirty-five hundred men, in a
+position of great strength. Isle-aux-Noix, planted in mid-channel of the
+Richelieu soon after it issues from Lake Champlain, had been diligently
+fortified since the spring. On each side of it was an arm of the river,
+closed against an enemy with _chevaux-de-frise_. To attack it in front
+in the face of its formidable artillery would be a hazardous attempt,
+and the task of reducing it was likely to be a long one. The French
+force in these parts had lately received accessions. After the fall of
+Niagara the danger seemed so great, both in the direction of Lake
+Ontario and that of Lake Champlain, that Lévis had been sent up from
+Quebec with eight hundred men to command the whole department of
+Montreal.[746] A body of troops and militia was encamped opposite that
+town, ready to march towards either quarter, as need might be, while
+the abundant crops of the neighboring parishes were harvested by armed
+bands, ready at a word to drop the sickle for the gun.
+
+[Footnote 745: _Bourlamaque à_ (_Bernetz?_), _22 Sept. 1759._]
+
+[Footnote 746: _Montcalm à Bourlamaque, 9 Août, 1759. Rigaud à
+Bourlamaque, 14 Août, 1759. Lévis à Bourlamaque, 25 Août, 1759._]
+
+Thus the promised advance of Amherst into Canada would be not without
+its difficulties, even when his navy, too tardily begun, should be ready
+to act its part. But if he showed no haste in succoring Wolfe, he at
+least made some attempts to communicate with him. Early in August he
+wrote him a letter, which Ensign Hutchins, of the rangers, carried to
+him in about a month by the long and circuitous route of the Kennebec,
+and which, after telling the news of the campaign, ended thus: "You may
+depend on my doing all I can for effectually reducing Canada. Now is the
+time!"[747] Amherst soon after tried another expedient, and sent
+Captains Kennedy and Hamilton with a flag of truce and a message of
+peace to the Abenakis of St. Francis, who, he thought, won over by these
+advances, might permit the two officers to pass unmolested to Quebec.
+But the Abenakis seized them and carried them prisoners to Montreal; on
+which Amherst sent Major Robert Rogers and a band of rangers to destroy
+their town.[748]
+
+[Footnote 747: _Amherst to Wolfe, 7 Aug. 1759._]
+
+[Footnote 748: _Amherst to Pitt, 22 Oct. 1759._ Rogers, _Journals_,
+144.]
+
+It was the eleventh of October before the miniature navy of Captain
+Loring--the floating battery, the brig, and the sloop that had been
+begun three weeks too late--was ready for service. They sailed at once
+to look for the enemy. The four French vessels made no resistance. One
+of them succeeded in reaching Isle-aux-Noix; one was run aground; and
+two were sunk by their crews, who escaped to the shore. Amherst,
+meanwhile, leaving the provincials to work at the fort, embarked with
+the regulars in bateaux, and proceeded on his northern way till, on the
+evening of the twelfth, a head-wind began to blow, and, rising to a
+storm, drove him for shelter into Ligonier Bay, on the west side of the
+lake.[749] On the thirteenth, it blew a gale. The lake raged like an
+angry sea, and the frail bateaux, fit only for smooth water, could not
+have lived a moment. Through all the next night the gale continued, with
+floods of driving rain. "I hope it will soon change," wrote Amherst on
+the fifteenth, "for I have no time to lose." He was right. He had waited
+till the season of autumnal storms, when nature was more dangerous than
+man. On the sixteenth there was frost, and the wind did not abate. On
+the next morning it shifted to the south, but soon turned back with
+violence to the north, and the ruffled lake put on a look of winter,
+"which determined me," says the General, "not to lose time by striving
+to get to the Isle-aux-Noix, where I should arrive too late to force the
+enemy from their post, but to return to Crown Point and complete the
+works there." This he did, and spent the remnant of the season in the
+congenial task of finishing the fort, of which the massive remains still
+bear witness to his industry.
+
+[Footnote 749: _Orderly Book of Commissary Wilson_.]
+
+When Lévis heard that the English army had fallen back, he wrote, well
+pleased, to Bourlamaque: "I don't know how General Amherst will excuse
+himself to his Court, but I am very glad he let us alone, because the
+Canadians are so backward that you could count on nobody but the
+regulars."[750]
+
+[Footnote 750: _Lévis à Bourlamaque, 1 Nov. 1759._]
+
+Concerning this year's operations on the Lakes, it may be observed that
+the result was not what the French feared, or what the British colonists
+had cause to hope. If, at the end of winter, Amherst had begun, as he
+might have done, the building of armed vessels at the head of the
+navigable waters of Lake Champlain, where Whitehall now stands, he would
+have had a navy ready to his hand before August, and would have been
+able to follow the retreating French without delay, and attack them at
+Isle-aux-Noix before they had finished their fortifications. And if, at
+the same time, he had directed Prideaux, instead of attacking Niagara,
+to co-operate with him by descending the St. Lawrence towards Montreal,
+the prospect was good that the two armies would have united at the
+place, and ended the campaign by the reduction of all Canada. In this
+case Niagara and all the western posts would have fallen without a blow.
+
+Major Robert Rogers, sent in September to punish the Abenakis of St.
+Francis, had addressed himself to the task with his usual vigor. These
+Indians had been settled for about three quarters of a century on the
+River St. Francis, a few miles above its junction with the St. Lawrence.
+They were nominal Christians, and had been under the control of their
+missionaries for three generations; but though zealous and sometimes
+fanatical in their devotion to the forms of Romanism, they remained
+thorough savages in dress, habits, and character. They were the scourge
+of the New England borders, where they surprised and burned farmhouses
+and small hamlets, killed men, women, and children without distinction,
+carried others prisoners to their village, subjected them to the torture
+of "running the gantlet," and compelled them to witness dances of
+triumph around the scalps of parents, children, and friends.
+
+Amherst's instructions to Rogers contained the following: "Remember the
+barbarities that have been committed by the enemy's Indian scoundrels.
+Take your revenge, but don't forget that, though those dastardly
+villains have promiscuously murdered women and children of all ages, it
+is my order that no women or children be killed or hurt."
+
+Rogers and his men set out in whaleboats, and, eluding the French armed
+vessels, then in full activity, came, on the tenth day, to Missisquoi
+Bay, at the north end of Lake Champlain. Here he hid his boats, leaving
+two friendly Indians to watch them from a distance, and inform him
+should the enemy discover them. He then began his march for St. Francis,
+when, on the evening of the second day, the two Indians overtook him
+with the startling news that a party of about four hundred French had
+found the boats, and that half of them were on his tracks in hot
+pursuit. It was certain that the alarm would soon be given, and other
+parties sent to cut him off. He took the bold resolution of outmarching
+his pursuers, pushing straight for St. Francis, striking it before
+succors could arrive, and then returning by Lake Memphremagog and the
+Connecticut. Accordingly he despatched Lieutenant McMullen by a
+circuitous route back to Crown Point, with a request to Amherst that
+provisions should be sent up the Connecticut to meet him on the way
+down. Then he set his course for the Indian town, and for nine days more
+toiled through the forest with desperate energy. Much of the way was
+through dense spruce swamps, with no dry resting-place at night. At
+length the party reached the River St. Francis, fifteen miles above the
+town, and, hooking their arms together for mutual support, forded it
+with extreme difficulty. Towards evening, Rogers climbed a tree, and
+descried the town three miles distant. Accidents, fatigue, and illness
+had reduced his followers to a hundred and forty-two officers and men.
+He left them to rest for a time, and, taking with him Lieutenant Turner
+and Ensign Avery, went to reconnoitre the place; left his two
+companions, entered it disguised in an Indian dress, and saw the
+unconscious savages yelling and signing in the full enjoyment of a grand
+dance. At two o'clock in the morning he rejoined his party, and at three
+led them to the attack, formed them in a semicircle, and burst in upon
+the town half an hour before sunrise. Many of the warriors were absent,
+and the rest were asleep. Some were killed in their beds, and some shot
+down in trying to escape. "About seven o'clock in the morning," he says,
+"the affair was completely over, in which time we had killed at least
+two hundred Indians and taken twenty of their women and children
+prisoners, fifteen of whom I let go their own way, and five I brought
+with me, namely, two Indian boys and three Indian girls. I likewise
+retook five English captives."
+
+English scalps in hundreds were dangling from poles over the doors of
+the houses.[751] The town was pillaged and burned, not excepting the
+church, where ornaments of some value were found. On the side of the
+rangers, Captain Ogden and six men were wounded, and a Mohegan Indian
+from Stockbridge was killed. Rogers was told by his prisoners that a
+party of three hundred French and Indians was encamped on the river
+below, and that another party of two hundred and fifteen was not far
+distant. They had been sent to cut off the retreat of the invaders, but
+were doubtful as to their designs till after the blow was struck. There
+was no time to lose. The rangers made all haste southward, up the St.
+Francis, subsisting on corn from the Indian town; till, near the eastern
+borders of Lake Memphremagog, the supply failed, and they separated into
+small parties, the better to sustain life by hunting. The enemy followed
+close, attacked Ensign Avery's party, and captured five of them; then
+fell upon a band of about twenty, under Lieutenants Dunbar and Turner,
+and killed or captured nearly all. The other bands eluded their
+pursuers, turned southeastward, reached the Connecticut, some here, some
+there, and, giddy with fatigue and hunger, toiled wearily down the wild
+and lonely stream to the appointed rendezvous at the mouth of the
+Amonoosuc.
+
+[Footnote 751: Rogers says "about six hundred." Other accounts say six
+or seven hundred. The late Abbé Maurault, missionary of the St. Francis
+Indians, and their historian, adopts the latter statement, though it is
+probably exaggerated.]
+
+This was the place to which Rogers had requested that provisions might
+be sent; and the hope of finding them there had been the breath of life
+to the famished wayfarers. To their horror, the place was a solitude.
+There were fires still burning, but those who made them were gone.
+Amherst had sent Lieutenant Stephen up the river from Charlestown with
+an abundant supply of food; but finding nobody at the Amonoosuc, he had
+waited there two days, and then returned, carrying the provisions back
+with him; for which outrageous conduct he was expelled from the service.
+"It is hardly possible," says Rogers, "to describe our grief and
+consternation." Some gave themselves up to despair. Few but their
+indomitable chief had strength to go father. There was scarcely any
+game, and the barren wilderness yielded no sustenance but a few lily
+bulbs and the tubers of the climbing plant called in New England the
+ground-nut. Leaving his party to these miserable resources, and
+promising to send then relief within ten days, Rogers made a raft of dry
+pine logs, and drifted on it down the stream, with Captain Ogden, a
+ranger, and one of the captive Indian boys. They were stopped on the
+second day by rapids, and gained the shore with difficulty. At the foot
+of the rapids, while Ogden and the ranger went in search of squirrels,
+Rogers set himself to making another raft; and having no strength to use
+the axe, he burned down the trees, which he then divided into logs by
+the same process. Five days after leaving his party he reached the first
+English settlement, Charlestown, or "Number Four," and immediately sent
+a canoe with provisions to the relief of the sufferers, following
+himself with other canoes two days later. Most of the men were saved,
+though some died miserably of famine and exhaustion. Of the few who had
+been captured, we are told by French contemporary that they "became
+victims of the fury of the Indian women," from whose clutches the
+Canadians tried in vain to save them.[752]
+
+[Footnote 752: _Événements de la Guerre en Canada,_ 1759, 1760. Compare
+_N.Y. Col. Docs.,_ X. 1042.]
+
+NOTE: On the day after he reached "Number Four," Rogers wrote a report
+of his expedition to Amherst. This letter is printed in his _Journals_,
+in which he gives also a supplementary account, containing further
+particulars. The _New Hampshire Gazette, Boston Evening Post,_ and other
+newspapers of the time recount the story in detail. Hoyt (_Indian Wars,_
+302) repeats it, with a few additions drawn from the recollections of
+survivors, long after. There is another account, very short and
+unsatisfactory, by Thompson Maxwell, who says that he was of the party,
+which is doubtful. Mante (223) gives horrible details of the sufferings
+of the rangers. An old chief of the St. Francis Indians, said to be one
+of those who pursued Rogers after the town was burned, many years ago
+told Mr. Jesse Pennoyer, a government land surveyor, that Rogers laid an
+ambush for the pursuers, and defeated them with great loss. This, the
+story says, took place near the present town of Sherbrooke; and minute
+details are given, with high praise of the skill and conduct of the
+famous partisan. If such an incident really took place, it is scarcely
+possible that Rogers would not have made some mention of it. On the
+other hand, it is equally incredible that the Indians would have
+invented the tale of their own defeat. I am indebted for Pennoyer's
+puzzling narrative to the kindness of R.A. Ramsay, Esq., of Montreal. It
+was printed, in 1869, in the _History of the Eastern Townships,_ by
+Mrs. C.M. Day. All things considered, it is probably groundless.
+
+Vaudreuil describes the destruction of the village in a letter to the
+Minister dated October 26, and says that Rogers had a hundred and fifty
+men; that St. Francis was burned to ashes; that the head chief and
+others were killed; that he (Vaudreuil), hearing of the march of the
+rangers, sent the most active of the Canadians to oppose them, and that
+Longueuil sent all the Canadians and Indians he could muster to pursue
+them on their retreat; that forty-six rangers were killed, and ten
+captured; that he thinks all the rest will starve to death; and,
+finally, that the affair is very unfortunate.
+
+I once, when a college student, followed on foot the route of Rogers
+from Lake Memphremagog to the Connecticut.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 27
+
+1759
+
+The Heights of Abraham
+
+
+Wolfe was deeply moved by the disaster at the heights of Montmorenci,
+and in a General Order on the next day he rebuked the grenadiers for
+their precipitation. "Such impetuous, irregular, and unsoldierlike
+proceedings destroy all order, make it impossible for the commanders to
+form any disposition for an attack, and put it out of the general's
+power to execute his plans. The grenadiers could not suppose that they
+could beat the French alone."
+
+The French were elated by their success. "Everybody," says the
+commissary Berniers, "thought that the campaign was as good as ended,
+gloriously for us." They had been sufficiently confident even before
+their victory; and the bearer of a flag of truce told the English
+officers that he had never imagined they were such fools as to attack
+Quebec with so small a force. Wolfe, on the other hand, had every reason
+to despond. At the outset, before he had seen Quebec and learned the
+nature of the ground, he had meant to begin the campaign by taking post
+on the Plains of Abraham, and thence laying siege to the town; but he
+soon discovered that the Plains of Abraham were hardly more within his
+reach than was Quebec itself. Such hope as was left him lay in the
+composition of Montcalm's army. He respected the French commander, and
+thought his disciplined soldiers not unworthy of the British steel; but
+he held his militia in high scorn, and could he but face them in the
+open field, he never doubted the result. But Montcalm also distrusted
+them, and persisted in refusing the coveted battle.
+
+Wolfe, therefore, was forced to the conviction that his chances were of
+the smallest. It is said that, despairing of any decisive stroke, he
+conceived the idea of fortifying Isle-aux-Coudres, and leaving a part of
+his troops there when he sailed for home, against another attempt in the
+spring. The more to weaken the enemy and prepare his future conquest, he
+began at the same time a course of action which for his credit one would
+gladly wipe from the record; for, though far from inhuman, he threw
+himself with extraordinary intensity into whatever work he had in hand,
+and, to accomplish it, spared others scarcely more than he spared
+himself. About the middle of August he issued a third proclamation to
+the Canadians, declaring that as they had refused his offers of
+protection and "had made such ungrateful returns in practising the most
+unchristian barbarities against his troops on all occasions, he could no
+longer refrain in justice to himself and his army from chastising them
+as they deserved." The barbarities in question consisted in the frequent
+scalping and mutilating of sentinels and men on outpost duty,
+perpetrated no less by Canadians than by Indians. Wolfe's object was
+twofold: first, to cause the militia to desert, and, secondly, to
+exhaust the colony. Rangers, light infantry, and Highlanders were sent
+to waste the settlements far and wide. Wherever resistance was offered,
+farmhouses and villages were laid in ashes, though churches were
+generally spared. St. Paul, far below Quebec, was sacked and burned, and
+the settlements of the opposite shore were partially destroyed. The
+parishes of L'Ange Gardien, Château Richer, and St. Joachim were wasted
+with fire and sword. Night after night the garrison of Quebec could see
+the light of burning houses as far down as the mountain of Cape
+Tourmente. Near St. Joachim there was a severe skirmish, followed by
+atrocious cruelties. Captain Alexander Montgomery, of the forty-third
+regiment, who commanded the detachment, and who has been most unjustly
+confounded with the revolutionary general, Richard Montgomery, ordered
+the prisoners to be shot in cold blood, to the indignation of his own
+officers.[753] Robineau de Portneuf, curé of St. Joachim, placed himself
+at the head of thirty parishioners and took possession of a large stone
+house in the adjacent parish of Château Richer, where for a time he held
+the English at bay. At length he and his followers were drawn out into
+ambush, where they were surrounded and killed; and, being disguised as
+Indians, the rangers scalped them all.[754]
+
+[Footnote 753: Fraser _Journal_. Fraser was an officer under Montgomery,
+of whom he speaks with anger and disgust.]
+
+[Footnote 754: Knox, II. 32. Most of the contemporary journals mention
+the incident.]
+
+Most of the French writers of the time mention these barbarities without
+much comment, while Vaudreuil loudly denounces them. Yet he himself was
+answerable for atrocities incomparably worse, and on a far larger scale.
+He had turned loose his savages, red and white, along a frontier of six
+hundred miles, to waste, burn, and murder at will. "Women and children,"
+such were the orders of Wolfe, "are to be treated with humanity; if any
+violence is offered to a woman, the offender shall be punished with
+death." These orders were generally obeyed. The English, with the single
+exception of Montgomery, killed none but armed men in the act of
+resistance or attack; Vaudreuil's war-parties spared neither age nor
+sex.
+
+Montcalm let the parishes burn, and still lay fast intrenched in his
+lines of Beauport. He would not imperil all Canada to save a few hundred
+farmhouses; and Wolfe was as far as ever from the battle that he
+coveted. Hitherto, his attacks had been made chiefly below the town;
+but, these having failed, he now changed his plan and renewed on a
+larger scale the movements begun above it in July. With every fair wind,
+ships and transports passed the batteries of Quebec, favored by a hot
+fire from Point Levi, and generally succeeded, with more or less damage,
+in gaining the upper river. A fleet of flatboats was also sent thither,
+and twelve hundred troops marched overland to embark in them, under
+Brigadier Murray. Admiral Holmes took command of the little fleet now
+gathered above the town, and operations in that quarter were
+systematically resumed.
+
+To oppose them, Bougainville was sent from the camp at Beauport with
+fifteen hundred men. His was a most arduous and exhausting duty. He must
+watch the shores for fifteen or twenty miles, divide his force into
+detachments, and subject himself and his followers to the strain of
+incessant vigilance and incessant marching. Murray made a descent at
+Pointe-aux-Trembles, and was repulsed with loss. He tried a second time
+at another place, was met before landing by a body of ambushed
+Canadians, and was again driven back, his foremost boats full of dead
+and wounded. A third time he succeeded, landed at Deschambault, and
+burned a large building filled with stores and all the spare baggage of
+the French regular officers. The blow was so alarming that Montcalm
+hastened from Beauport to take command in person; but when he arrived
+the English were gone.
+
+Vaudreuil now saw his mistake in sending the French frigates up the
+river out of harm's way, and withdrawing their crews to serve the
+batteries of Quebec. Had these ships been there, they might have
+overpowered those of the English in detail as they passed the town. An
+attempt was made to retrieve the blunder. The sailors were sent to man
+the frigates anew and attack the squadron of Holmes. It was too late.
+Holmes was already too strong for them, and they were recalled. Yet the
+difficulties of the English still seemed insurmountable. Dysentery and
+fever broke out in their camps, the number of their effective men was
+greatly reduced, and the advancing season told them that their work must
+be done quickly, or not done at all.
+
+On the other side, the distress of the French grew greater every day.
+Their army was on short rations. The operations of the English above the
+town filled the camp of Beauport with dismay, for troops and Canadians
+alike dreaded the cutting off of their supplies. These were all drawn
+from the districts of Three Rivers and Montreal; and, at best, they were
+in great danger, since when brought down in boats at night they were apt
+to be intercepted, while the difficulty of bringing them by land was
+extreme, through scarcity of cattle and horses. Discipline was relaxed,
+disorder and pillage were rife, and the Canadians deserted so fast, that
+towards the end of August two hundred of them, it is said, would
+sometimes go off in one night. Early in the month the disheartening news
+came of the loss of Ticonderoga and Crown Point, the retreat of
+Bourlamaque, the fall of Niagara, and the expected advance of Amherst
+on Montreal. It was then that Levis was despatched to the scene of
+danger; and Quebec was deplorably weakened by his absence. About this
+time the Lower Town was again set on fire by the English batteries, and
+a hundred and sixty-seven houses were burned in a night. In the front of
+the Upper Town nearly every building was a ruin. At the General
+Hospital, which was remote enough to be safe from the bombardment, every
+barn, shed, and garret, and even the chapel itself, were crowded with
+sick and wounded, with women and children from the town, and the nuns of
+the Ursulines and the Hôtel-Dieu, driven thither for refuge. Bishop
+Pontbriand, though suffering from a mortal disease, came almost daily to
+visit and console them from his lodging in the house of the curé at
+Charlesbourg.
+
+Towards the end of August the sky brightened again. It became known that
+Amherst was not moving on Montreal, and Bourlamaque wrote that his
+position at Isle-aux-Noix was impregnable. On the twenty-seventh a
+deserter from Wolfe's army brought the welcome assurance that the
+invaders despaired of success, and would soon sail for home; while there
+were movements in the English camps and fleet that seemed to confirm
+what he said. Vaudreuil breathed more freely, and renewed hope and
+confidence visited the army of Beauport.
+
+Meanwhile a deep cloud fell on the English. Since the siege began, Wolfe
+had passed with ceaseless energy from camp to camp, animating the
+troops, observing everything, and directing everything; but now the pale
+face and tall lean form were seen no more, and the rumor spread that the
+General was dangerously ill. He had in fact been seized by an access of
+the disease that had tortured him for some time past; and fever had
+followed. His quarters were at a French farmhouse in the camp at
+Montmorenci; and here, as he lay in an upper chamber, helpless in bed,
+his singular and most unmilitary features haggard with disease and drawn
+with pain, no man could less have looked the hero. But as the needle,
+though quivering, points always to the pole, so, through torment and
+languor and the heats of fever, the mind of Wolfe dwelt on the capture
+of Quebec. His illness, which began before the twentieth of August, had
+so far subsided on the twenty-fifth that Knox wrote in his Diary of that
+day: "His Excellency General Wolfe is on the recovery, to the
+inconceivable joy of the whole army." On the twenty-ninth he was able
+to write or dictate a letter to the three brigadiers, Monckton,
+Townshend, and Murray: "That the public service may not suffer by the
+General's indisposition, he begs the brigadiers will meet and consult
+together for the public utility and advantage, and consider of the best
+method to attack the enemy." The letter then proposes three plans, all
+bold to audacity. The first was to send a part of the army to ford the
+Montmorenci eight or nine miles above its mouth, march through the
+forest, and fall on the rear of the French at Beauport, while the rest
+landed and attacked them in front. The second was to cross the ford at
+the mouth of the Montmorenci and march along the strand, under the
+French intrenchments, till a place could be found where the troops might
+climb the heights. The third was to make a general attack from boats at
+the Beauport flats. Wolfe had before entertained two other plans, one of
+which was to scale the heights at St. Michel, about a league above
+Quebec; but this he had abandoned on learning that the French were there
+in force to receive him. The other was to storm the Lower Town; but this
+also he had abandoned, because the Upper Town, which commanded it, would
+still remain inaccessible.
+
+The brigadiers met in consultation, rejected the three plans proposed in
+the letter, and advised that an attempt should be made to gain a footing
+on the north shore above the town, place the army between Montcalm and
+his base of supply, and so force him to fight or surrender. The scheme
+was similar to that of the heights of St. Michel. It seemed desperate,
+but so did all the rest; and if by chance it should succeed, the gain
+was far greater than could follow any success below the town. Wolfe
+embraced it at once.
+
+Not that he saw much hope in it. He knew that every chance was against
+him. Disappointment in the past and doom in the future, the pain and
+exhaustion of disease, toils, and anxieties "too great," in the words of
+Burke, "to be supported by a delicate constitution, and a body unequal
+to the vigorous and enterprising soul that it lodged," threw him at
+times into deep dejection. By those intimate with him he was heard to
+say that he would not go back defeated, "to be exposed to the censure
+and reproach of an ignorant populice." In other moods he felt that he
+ought not to sacrifice what was left of his diminished army in vain
+conflict with hopeless obstacles. But his final resolve once taken, he
+would not swerve from it. His fear was that he might not be able to
+lead his troops in person. "I know perfectly well you cannot cure me,"
+he said to his physician; "but pray make me so that I may be without
+pain for a few days, and able to do my duty: that is all I want."
+
+In a despatch which Wolfe had written to Pitt, Admiral Saunders
+conceived that he had ascribed to the fleet more than its just share in
+the disaster at Montmorenci; and he sent him a letter on the subject.
+Major Barré kept it from the invalid till the fever had abated. Wolfe
+then wrote a long answer, which reveals his mixed dejection and resolve.
+He owns the justice of what Saunders had said, but adds: "I cannot leave
+out that part of my letter to Mr. Pitt which you object to. I am
+sensible of my own errors in the course of the campaign, see clearly
+wherein I have been deficient, and think a little more or less blame to
+a man that must necessarily be ruined, of little or no consequences. I
+take the blame of that unlucky day entirely upon my own shoulders, and I
+expect to suffer for it." Then, speaking of the new project of an attack
+above Quebec, he says despondingly: "My ill state of health prevents me
+from executing my own plan; it is of too desperate a nature to order
+others to execute." He proceeds, however, to give directions for it. "It
+will be necessary to run as many small craft as possible above the town,
+with provisions for six weeks, for about five thousand, which is all I
+intend to take. My letters, I hope, will be ready to-morrow, and I hope
+I shall have strength to lead these men to wherever we can find the
+enemy."
+
+On the next day, the last of August, he was able for the first time to
+leave the house. It was on this same day that he wrote his last letter
+to his mother: "My writing to you will convince you that no personal
+evils worse than defeats and disappointments have fallen upon me. The
+enemy puts nothing to risk, and I can't in conscience put the whole army
+to risk. My antagonist has wisely shut himself up in inaccessible
+intrenchments, so that I can't get at him without spilling a torrent of
+blood, and that perhaps to little purpose. The Marquis de Montcalm is at
+the head of a great number of bad soldiers, and I am at the head of a
+small number of good ones, that wish for nothing so much as to fight
+him; but the wary old fellow avoids an action, doubtful of the behavior
+of his army. People must be of the profession to understand the
+disadvantages and difficulties we labor under, arising from the uncommon
+natural strength of the country."
+
+On the second of September a vessel was sent to England with his last
+despatch to Pitt. It begins thus: "The obstacles we have met with in the
+operations of the campaign are much greater than we had reason to expect
+or could foresee; not so much from the number of the enemy (though
+superior to us) as from the natural strength of the country, which the
+Marquis of Montcalm seems wisely to depend upon. When I learned that
+succors of all kinds had been thrown into Quebec; that five battalions
+of regular troops, completed from the best inhabitants of the country,
+some of the troops of the colony, and every Canadian that was able to
+bear arms, besides several nations of savages, had taken the field in a
+very advantageous situation,--I could not flatter myself that I should
+be able to reduce the place. I sought, however, an occasion to attack
+their army, knowing well that with these troops I was able to fight, and
+hoping that a victory might disperse them." Then, after recounting the
+events of the campaign with admirable clearness, he continues: "I found
+myself so ill, and am still so weak, that I begged the general officers
+to consult together for the general utility. They are all of opinion
+that, as more ships and provisions are now got above the town, they
+should try, by conveying up a corps of four or five thousand men (which
+is nearly the whole strength of the army after the Points of Levi and
+Orleans are left in a proper state of defence), to draw the enemy from
+their present situation and bring them to an action. I have acquiesced
+in the proposal, and we are preparing to put it into execution." The
+letter ends thus: "By the list of disabled officers, many of whom are of
+rank, you may perceive that the army is much weakened. By the nature of
+the river, the most formidable part of this armament is deprived of the
+power of acting; yet we have almost the whole force of Canada to oppose.
+In this situation there is such a choice of difficulties that I own
+myself at a loss how to determine. The affairs of Great Britain, I know,
+require the most vigorous measures; but the courage of a handful of
+brave troops should be exerted only when there is some hope of a
+favorable event; however, you may be assured that the small part of the
+campaign which remains shall be employed, as far as I am able, for the
+honor of His Majesty and the interest of the nation, in which I am sure
+of being well seconded by the Admiral and by the generals; happy if our
+efforts here can contribute to the success of His Majesty's arms in any
+other parts of America."
+
+Some days later, he wrote to the Earl of Holdernesse: "The Marquis of
+Montcalm has a numerous body of armed men (I cannot call it an army),
+and the strongest country perhaps in the world. Our fleet blocks up the
+river above and below the town, but can give no manner of aid in an
+attack upon the Canadian army. We are now here [_off Cap-Rouge_] with
+about thirty-six hundred men, waiting to attack them when and wherever
+they can best be got at. I am so far recovered as to do business; but my
+constitution is entirely ruined, without the consolation of doing any
+considerable service to the state, and without any prospect of it." He
+had just learned, through the letter brought from Amherst by Ensign
+Hutchins, that he could expect no help from that quarter.
+
+Perhaps he was as near despair as his undaunted nature was capable of
+being. In his present state of body and mind he was a hero without the
+light and cheer of heroism. He flattered himself with no illusions, but
+saw the worst and faced it all. He seems to have been entirely without
+excitement. The languor of disease, the desperation of the chances, and
+the greatness of the stake may have wrought to tranquillize him. His
+energy was doubly tasked: to bear up his own sinking frame, and to
+achieve an almost hopeless feat of arms.
+
+Audacious as it was, his plan cannot be called rash if we may accept the
+statement of two well-informed writers on the French side. They say that
+on the tenth of September the English naval commanders held a council on
+board the flagship, in which it was resolved that the lateness of the
+season required the fleet to leave Quebec without delay. They say
+further that Wolfe then went to the Admiral, told him that he had found
+a place where the heights could be scaled, that he would send up a
+hundred and fifty picked men to feel the way, and that if they gained a
+lodgment at the top, the other troops should follow; if, on the other
+hand, the French were there in force to oppose them, he would not
+sacrifice the army in a hopeless attempt, but embark them for home,
+consoled by the thought that all had been done that man could do. On
+this, concludes the story, the Admiral and his officers consented to
+wait the result.[755]
+
+[Footnote 755: This statement is made by the Chevalier Johnstone, and,
+with some variation, by the author of the valuable _Journal tenu à
+l'Armée que commandoit feu M. le Marquis de Montcalm._ Bigot says that,
+after the battle, he was told by British officers that Wolfe meant to
+risk only an advance party of two hundred men, and to reimbark if they
+were repulsed.]
+
+As Wolfe had informed Pitt, his army was greatly weakened. Since the end
+of June his loss in killed and wounded was more than eight hundred and
+fifty, including two colonels, two majors, nineteen captains, and
+thirty-four subalterns; and to these were to be added a greater number
+disabled by disease.
+
+The squadron of Admiral Holmes above Quebec had now increased to
+twenty-two vessels, great and small. One of the last that went up was a
+diminutive schooner, armed with a new swivels, and jocosely named the
+"Terror of France." She sailed by the town in broad daylight, the
+French, incensed at her impudence, blazing at her from all their
+batteries; but she passed unharmed, anchored by the Admiral's ship, and
+saluted him triumphantly with her swivels.
+
+Wolfe's first move towards executing his plan was the critical one of
+evacuating the camp at Montmorenci. This was accomplished on the third
+of September. Montcalm sent a strong force to fall on the rear of the
+retiring English. Monckton saw the movement from Point Levi, embarked
+two battalions in the boats of the fleet, and made a feint of landing at
+Beauport. Montcalm recalled his troops to repulse the threatened attack;
+and the English withdrew from Montmorenci unmolested, some to the Point
+of Orleans, others to Point Levi. On the night of the fourth a fleet of
+flatboats passed above the town with the baggage and stores. On the
+fifth, Murray, with four battalions, marched up to the River Etechemin,
+and forded it under a hot fire from the French batteries at Sillery.
+Monckton and Townshend followed with three more battalions, and the
+united force, of about thirty-six hundred men, was embarked on board the
+ships of Holmes, where Wolfe joined them on the same evening.
+
+These movements of the English filled the French commanders with
+mingled perplexity, anxiety, and hope. A deserter told them that Admiral
+Saunders was impatient to be gone. Vaudreuil grew confident. "The
+breaking up of the camp at Montmorenci," he says, "and the abandonment
+of the intrenchments there, the reimbarkation on board the vessels above
+Quebec of the troops who had encamped on the south bank, the movements
+of these vessels, the removal of the heaviest pieces of artillery from
+the batteries of Point Levi,--these and the lateness of the season all
+combined to announce the speedy departure of the fleet, several vessels
+of which had even sailed down the river already. The prisoners and the
+deserters who daily came in told us that this was the common report in
+their army."[756] He wrote to Bourlamaque on the first of September:
+"Everything proves that the grand design of the English has failed."
+
+[Footnote 756: _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 5 Oct. 1759._]
+
+Yet he was ceaselessly watchful. So was Montcalm; and he, too, on the
+night of the second, snatched a moment to write to Bourlamaque from his
+headquarters in the stone house, by the river of Beauport: "The night is
+dark; it rains; our troops are in their tents, with clothes on, ready
+for an alarm; I in my boots; my horses saddled. In fact, this is my
+usual way. I wish you were here; for I cannot be everywhere, though I
+multiply myself, and have not taken off my clothes since the
+twenty-third of June." On the eleventh of September he wrote his last
+letter to Bourlamaque, and probably the last that his pen ever traced.
+"I am overwhelmed with work, and should often lose temper, like you, if
+I did not remember that I am paid by Europe for not losing it. Nothing
+new since my last. I give the enemy another month, or something less, to
+stay here." The more sanguine Vaudreuil would hardly give them a week.
+
+Meanwhile, no precaution was spared. The force under Bougainville above
+Quebec was raised to three thousand men.[757] He was ordered to watch
+the shore as far as Jacques-Cartier, and follow with his main body every
+movement of Holmes's squadron. There was little fear for the heights
+near the town; they were thought inaccessible.[758] Even Montcalm
+believed them safe, and had expressed himself to that effect some time
+before. "We need not suppose," he wrote to Vaudreuil, "that the enemy
+have wings;" and again, speaking of the very place where Wolfe
+afterwards landed, "I swear to you that a hundred men posted there would
+stop their whole army."[759] He was right. A hundred watchful and
+determined men could have held the position long enough for
+reinforcements to come up.
+
+[Footnote 757: _Journal du Siége_ (Bibliothêque de Hartwell). _Journal
+tenu à l'Armée, etc. Vaudreuil au Ministre, 5 Oct._ 1759.]
+
+[Footnote 758: Pontbriand, _Jugement impartial._]
+
+[Footnote 759: _Montcalm à Vaudreuil, 27 Juillet. Ibid., 29 Juillet,
+1759_.] The hundred men were there. Captain de Vergor, of the colony
+troops, commanded them, and reinforcements were within his call; for the
+battalion of Guienne had been ordered to encamp close at hand on the
+Plains of Abraham.[760] Vergor's post, called Anse du Foulon, was a mile
+and a half from Quebec. A little beyond it, by the brink of the cliffs,
+was another post, called Samos, held by seventy men with four cannon;
+and, beyond this again, the heights of Sillery were guarded by a hundred
+and thirty men, also with cannon.[761] These were outposts of
+Bougainville, whose headquarters were at Cap-Rouge, six miles above
+Sillery, and whose troops were in continual movement along the
+intervening shore. Thus all was vigilance; for while the French were
+strong in the hope of speedy delivery, they felt that there was no
+safety till the tents of the invader had vanished from their shores and
+his ships from their river. "What we knew," says one of them, "of the
+character of M. Wolfe, that impetuous, bold, and intrepid warrior,
+prepared us for a last attack before he left us."
+
+[Footnote 760: Foligny, _Journal mémoratif. Journal tenu à l'Armée_,
+etc.]
+
+[Footnote 761: _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 5 Oct._ 1759.]
+
+Wolfe had been very ill on the evening of the fourth. The troops knew
+it, and their spirits sank; but, after a night of torment, he grew
+better, and was soon among them again, rekindling their ardor, and
+imparting a cheer that he could not share. For himself he had no pity;
+but when he heard of the illness of two officers in one of the ships, he
+sent them a message of warm sympathy, advised them to return to Point
+Levi, and offered them his own barge and an escort. They thanked him,
+but replied that, come what might, they would see the enterprise to an
+end. Another officer remarked in his hearing that one of the invalids
+had a very delicate constitution. "Don't tell me of constitution," said
+Wolfe; "he has good spirit, and good spirit will carry a man through
+everything."[762] An immense moral force bore up his own frail body and
+forced it to its work.
+
+[Footnote 762: Knox, II. 61, 65.]
+
+Major Robert Stobo, who, five years before, had been given as a hostage
+to the French at the capture of Fort Necessity, arrived about this time
+in a vessel from Halifax. He had long been a prisoner at Quebec, not
+always in close custody, and had used his opportunities to acquaint
+himself with the neighborhood. In the spring of this year he and an
+officer of rangers named Stevens had made their escape with
+extraordinary skill and daring; and he now returned to give his
+countrymen the benefit of his local knowledge.[763] His biographer says
+that it was he who directed Wolfe in the choice of a landing-place.[764]
+Be this as it may, Wolfe in person examined the river and the shores as
+far as Pointe-aux-Trembles; till at length, landing on the south side a
+little above Quebec, and looking across the water with a telescope, he
+descried a path that ran with a long slope up the face of the woody
+precipice, and saw at the top a cluster of tents. They were those of
+Vergor's guard at the Anse du Foulon, now called Wolfe's Cove. As he
+could see but ten or twelve of them, he thought that the guard could not
+be numerous, and might be overpowered. His hope would have been stronger
+if he had known that Vergor had once been tried for misconduct and
+cowardice in the surrender of Beauséjour, and saved from merited
+disgrace by the friendship of Bigot and the protection of
+Vaudreuil.[765]
+
+[Footnote 763: Letters in _Boston Post Boy,_ No. 97, and _Boston Evening
+Post,_ No. 1,258.]
+
+[Footnote 764: _Memoirs of Major Robert Stobo._ Curious, but often
+inexact.]
+
+[Footnote 765: See _supra_, p. 186.]
+
+The morning of the seventh was fair and warm, and the vessels of Holmes,
+their crowded decks gay with scarlet uniforms, sailed up the river to
+Cap-Rouge. A lively scene awaited them; for here were the headquarters
+of Bougainville, and here lay his principal force, while the rest
+watched the banks above and below. The cove into which the little river
+runs was guarded by floating batteries; the surrounding shore was
+defended by breastworks; and a large body of regulars, militia, and
+mounted Canadians in blue uniforms moved to and fro, with restless
+activity, on the hills behind. When the vessels came to anchor, the
+horsemen dismounted and formed in line with the infantry; then, with
+loud shouts, the whole rushed down the heights to man their works at the
+shore. That true Briton, Captain Knox, looked on with a critical eye
+from the gangway of his ship, and wrote that night in his Diary that
+they had made a ridiculous noise. "How different!" he exclaims, "how
+nobly awful and expressive of true valor is the customary silence of the
+British troops!"
+
+In the afternoon the ships opened fire, while the troops entered the
+boats and rowed up and down as if looking for a landing-place. It was
+but a feint of Wolfe to deceive Bougainville as to his real design. A
+heavy easterly rain set in on the next morning, and lasted two days
+without respite. All operations were suspended, and the men suffered
+greatly in the crowded transports. Half of them were therefore landed on
+the south shore, where they made their quarters in the village of St.
+Nicholas, refreshed themselves, and dried their wet clothing, knapsacks,
+and blankets.
+
+For several successive days the squadron of Holmes was allowed to drift
+up the river with the flood tide and down with the ebb, thus passing and
+repassing incessantly between the neighborhood of Quebec on one hand,
+and a point high above Cap-Rouge on the other; while Bougainville,
+perplexed, and always expecting an attack, followed the ships to and fro
+along the shore, by day and by night, till his men were exhausted with
+ceaseless forced marches.[766]
+
+[Footnote 766: Joannès, Major de Quebec, _Mémoire sur la Campagne de_
+1759.]
+
+At last the time for action came. On Wednesday, the twelfth, the troops
+at St. Nicholas were embarked again, and all were told to hold
+themselves in readiness. Wolfe, from the flagship "Sutherland," issued
+his last general orders. "The enemy's force is now divided, great
+scarcity of provisions in their camp, and universal discontent among the
+Canadians. Our troops below are in readiness to join us; all the light
+artillery and tools are embarked at the Point of Levi; and the troops
+will land where the French seem least to expect it. The first body that
+gets on shore is to march directly to the enemy and drive them from any
+little post they may occupy; the officers must be careful that the
+succeeding bodies do not by any mistake fire on those who go before
+them. The battalions must form on the upper ground with expedition, and
+be ready to charge whatever presents itself. When the artillery and
+troops are landed, a corps will be left to secure the landing-place,
+while the rest march on and endeavor to bring the Canadians and French
+to a battle. The officers and men will remember what their country
+expects from them, and what a determined body of soldiers inured to war
+is capable of doing against five weak French battalions mingled with a
+disorderly peasantry."
+
+The spirit of the army answered to that of its chief. The troops loved
+and admired their general, trusted their officers, and were ready for
+any attempt. "Nay, how could it be otherwise," quaintly asks honest
+Sergeant John Johnson, of the fifty-eighth regiment, "being at the heels
+of gentlemen whose whole thirst, equal with their general, was for
+glory? We had seen them tried, and always found them sterling. We knew
+that they would stand by us to the last extremity."
+
+Wolfe had thirty-six hundred men and officers with him on board the
+vessels of Holmes; and he now sent orders to Colonel Burton at Point
+Levi to bring to his aid all who could be spared from that place and the
+Point of Orleans. They were to march along the south bank, after
+nightfall, and wait further orders at a designated spot convenient for
+embarkation. Their number was about twelve hundred, so that the entire
+forced destined for the enterprise was at the utmost forty-eight
+hundred.[767] With these, Wolfe meant to climb the heights of Abraham in
+the teeth of an enemy who, though much reduced, were still twice as
+numerous as their assailants.[768]
+
+[Footnote 767: See Note, end of chapter.]
+
+[Footnote 768: Including Bougainville's command. An escaped prisoner
+told Wolfe, a few days before, that Montcalm still had fourteen thousand
+men. _Journal of an Expedition on the River St. Lawrence._ This meant
+only those in the town and the camps of Beauport. "I don't believe their
+whole army amounts to that number," wrote Wolfe to Colonel Burton, on
+the tenth. He knew, however, that if Montcalm could bring all his troops
+together, the French would outnumber him more than two to one.]
+
+Admiral Saunders lay with the main fleet in the Basin of Quebec. This
+excellent officer, whatever may have been his views as to the necessity
+of a speedy departure, aided Wolfe to the last with unfailing energy and
+zeal. It was agreed between them that while the General made the real
+attack, the Admiral should engage Montcalm's attention by a pretended
+one. As night approached, the fleet ranged itself along the Beauport
+shore; the boats were lowered and filled with sailors, marines, and the
+few troops that had been left behind; while ship signalled to ship,
+cannon flashed and thundered, and shot ploughed the beach, as if to
+clear a way for assailants to land. In the gloom of the evening the
+effect was imposing. Montcalm, who thought that the movements of the
+English above the town were only a feint, that their main force was
+still below it, and that their real attack would be made there, was
+completely deceived, and massed his troops in front of Beauport to repel
+the expected landing. But while in the fleet of Saunders all was uproar
+and ostentatious menace, the danger was ten miles away, where the
+squadron of Holmes lay tranquil and silent at its anchorage off
+Cap-Rouge.
+
+It was less tranquil than it seemed. All on board knew that a blow would
+be struck that night, though only a few high officers knew where.
+Colonel Howe, of the light infantry, called for volunteers to lead the
+unknown and desperate venture, promising, in the words of one of them,
+"that if any of us survived we might depend on being recommended to the
+General."[769] As many as were wanted--twenty-four in all--soon came
+forward. Thirty large bateaux and some boats belonging to the squadron
+lay moored alongside the vessels; and late in the evening the troops
+were ordered into them, the twenty-four volunteers taking their place in
+the foremost. They held in all about seventeen hundred men. The rest
+remained on board.
+
+[Footnote 769: _Journal of the Particular Transactions during the Siege
+of Quebec_. The writer, a soldier in the light infantry, says he was one
+of the first eight who came forward. See _Notes and Queries_, XX. 370.]
+
+
+Bougainville could discern the movement, and misjudged it, thinking that
+he himself was to be attacked. The tide was still flowing; and, the
+better to deceive him, the vessels and boats were allowed to drift
+upward with it for a little distance, as if to land above Cap-Rouge.
+
+The day had been fortunate for Wolfe. Two deserters came from the camp
+of Bougainville with intelligence that, at ebb tide on the next night,
+he was to send down a convoy of provisions to Montcalm. The necessities
+of the camp at Beauport, and the difficulties of transportation by land,
+had before compelled the French to resort to this perilous means of
+conveying supplies; and their boats, drifting in darkness under the
+shadows of the northern shore, had commonly passed in safety. Wolfe saw
+at once that, if his own boats went down in advance of the convoy, he
+could turn the intelligence of the deserters to good account.
+
+He was still on board the "Sutherland." Every preparation was made, and
+every order given; it only remained to wait the turning of the tide.
+Seated with him in the cabin was the commander of the sloop-of-war
+"Porcupine," his former school-fellow, John Jervis, afterwards Earl St.
+Vincent. Wolfe told him that he expected to die in the battle of the
+next day; and taking from his bosom a miniature of Miss Lowther, his
+betrothed, he gave it to him with a request that he would return it to
+her if the presentiment should prove true.[770]
+
+[Footnote 770: Tucker, _Life of Earl St. Vincent_, I. 19. (London,
+1844.)]
+
+Towards two o'clock the tide began to ebb, and a fresh wind blew down
+the river. Two lanterns were raised into the maintop shrouds of the
+"Sutherland." It was the appointed signal; the boats cast off and fell
+down with the current, those of the light infantry leading the way. The
+vessels with the rest of the troops had orders to follow a little later.
+
+To look for a moment at the chances on which this bold adventure hung.
+First, the deserters told Wolfe that provision-boats were ordered to go
+down to Quebec that night; secondly, Bougainville countermanded them;
+thirdly, the sentries posted along the heights were told of the order,
+but not of the countermand;[771] fourthly, Vergor at the Anse du Foulon
+had permitted most of his men, chiefly Canadians from Lorette, to go
+home for a time and work at their harvesting, on condition, it is said,
+that they should afterwards work in a neighboring field of his own;[772]
+fifthly, he kept careless watch, and went quietly to bed; sixthly, the
+battalion of Guienne, ordered to take post on the Plains of Abraham,
+had, for reasons unexplained, remained encamped by the St. Charles;[773]
+and lastly, when Bougainville saw Holmes's vessels drift down the
+stream, he did not tax his weary troops to follow them, thinking that
+they would return as usual with the flood tide.[774] But for these
+conspiring circumstances New France might have lived a little longer,
+and the fruitless heroism of Wolfe would have passed, with countless
+other heroisms, into oblivion.
+
+[Footnote 771: _Journal tenu à l'Armée_, etc.]
+
+[Footnote 772: _Mémoires sur le Canada_, 1749-1760.]
+
+[Footnote 773: Foligny, _Journal mémoratif. Journal à l'Armée_, etc.]
+
+[Footnote 774: Johnstone, _Dialogue. Vaudreuil au Ministre, 5
+Oct._1759.]
+
+For full two hours the procession of boats, borne on the current,
+steered silently down the St. Lawrence. The stars were visible, but the
+night was moonless and sufficiently dark. The General was in one of the
+foremost boats, and near him was a young midshipman, John Robison,
+afterwards professor of natural philosophy in the University of
+Edinburgh. He used to tell in his later life how Wolfe, with a low
+voice, repeated Gray's _Elegy in a Country Churchyard_ to the officers
+about him. Probably it was to relieve the intense strain of his
+thoughts. Among the rest was the verse which his own fate was soon to
+illustrate,--
+
+
+    "The paths of glory lead but to the grave."
+P/
+
+"Gentlemen," he said, as his recital ended, "I would rather have written
+those lines than take Quebec." None were there to tell him that the hero
+is greater than the poet.
+
+As they neared their destination, the tide bore them in towards the
+shore, and the mighty wall of rock and forest towered in darkness on
+their left. The dead stillness was suddenly broken by the sharp _Qui
+vive!_ of a French sentry, invisible in the thick gloom. _France!_
+answered a Highland officer of Fraser's regiment from one of the boats
+of the light infantry. He had served in Holland and spoke French
+fluently.
+
+_À quel régiment?_
+
+_De la Reine_, replied the Highlander. He knew that a part of that corps
+was with Bougainville. The sentry, expecting the convoy of provisions,
+was satisfied, and did not ask for the password.
+
+Soon after, the foremost boats were passing the heights of Samos, when
+another sentry challenged them, and they could see him through the
+darkness running down to the edge of the water, within range of a
+pistol-shot. In answer to his questions, the same officer replied, in
+French: "Provision-boats. Don't make a noise; the English will hear
+us."[775] In fact, the sloop-of-war "Hunter" was anchored in the stream
+not far off. This time, again, the sentry let them pass. In a few
+moments they rounded the headland above the Anse du Foulon. There was no
+sentry there. The strong current swept the boats of the light infantry a
+little below the intended landing-place.[776] They disembarked on a
+narrow strand at the foot of heights as steep as a hill covered with
+trees can be. The twenty-four volunteers led the way, climbing with what
+silence they might, closely followed by a much larger body. When they
+reached the top they saw in the dim light a cluster of tents at a short
+distance, and immediately made a dash at them. Vergor leaped from bed
+and tried to run off, but was shot in the heel and captured. His men,
+taken by surprise, made little resistance. One or two were caught, the
+rest fled.
+
+[Footnote 775: See a note of Smollett, _History of England_, V. 56 (ed.
+1805). Sergeant Johnson, Vaudreuil, Foligny, and the _Journal of
+Particular Transactions_ give similar accounts.]
+
+[Footnote 776: _Saunders to Pitt_, 20 Sept. _Journal of Sergeant
+Johnson_. Compare Knox, II. 67.]
+
+The main body of troops waited in their boats by the edge of the strand.
+The heights near by were cleft by a great ravine choked with forest
+trees; and in its depths ran a little brook called Ruisseau St.-Denis,
+which, swollen by the late rains, fell plashing in the stillness over a
+rock. Other than this no sound could reach the strained ear of Wolfe but
+the gurgle of the tide and the cautious climbing of his advance-parties
+as they mounted the steeps at some little distance from where he sat
+listening. At length from the top came a sound of musket-shots, followed
+by loud huzzas, and he knew that his men were masters of the position.
+The word was given; the troops leaped from the boats and scaled the
+heights, some here, some there, clutching at trees and bushes, their
+muskets slung at their backs. Tradition still points out the place,
+near the mouth of the ravine, where the foremost reached the top. Wolfe
+said to an officer near him: "You can try it, but I don't think you'll
+get up." He himself, however, found strength to drag himself up with the
+rest. The narrow slanting path on the face of the heights had been made
+impassable by trenches and abattis; but all obstructions were soon
+cleared away, and then the ascent was easy. In the gray of the morning
+the long file of red-coated soldiers moved quickly upward, and formed in
+order on the plateau above.
+
+Before many of them had reached the top, cannon were heard close on the
+left. It was the battery at Samos firing on the boats in the rear and
+the vessels descending from Cap-Rouge. A party was sent to silence it;
+this was soon effected, and the more distant battery at Sillery was next
+attacked and taken. As fast as the boats were emptied they returned for
+the troops left on board the vessels and for those waiting on the
+southern shore under Colonel Burton.
+
+The day broke in clouds and threatening rain. Wolfe's battalions were
+drawn up along the crest of the heights. No enemy was in sight, though a
+body of Canadians had sallied from the town and moved along the strand
+towards the landing-place, whence they were quickly driven back. He had
+achieved the most critical part of his enterprise; yet the success that
+he coveted placed him in imminent danger. On one side was the garrison
+of Quebec and the army of Beauport, and Bougainville was on the other.
+Wolfe's alternative was victory or ruin; for if he should be overwhelmed
+by a combined attack, retreat would be hopeless. His feelings no man can
+know; but it would be safe to say that hesitation or doubt had no part
+in them.
+
+He went to reconnoitre the ground, and soon came to the Plains of
+Abraham, so called from Abraham Martin, a pilot known as Maître Abraham,
+who had owned a piece of land here in the early times of the colony. The
+Plains were a tract of grass, tolerably level in most parts, patched
+here and there with cornfields, studded with clumps of bushes, and
+forming a part of the high plateau at the eastern end of which Quebec
+stood. On the south it was bounded by the declivities along the St.
+Lawrence; on the north, by those along the St. Charles, or rather along
+the meadows through which that lazy stream crawled like a writhing
+snake. At the place that Wolfe chose for his battle-field the plateau
+was less than a mile wide.
+
+Thither the troops advanced, marched by files till they reached the
+ground, and then wheeled to form their line of battle, which stretched
+across the plateau and faced the city. It consisted of six battalions
+and the detached grenadiers from Louisbourg, all drawn up in ranks three
+deep. Its right wing was near the brink of the heights along the St.
+Lawrence; but the left could not reach those along the St. Charles. On
+this side a wide space was perforce left open, and there was danger of
+being outflanked. To prevent this, Brigadier Townshend was stationed
+here with two battalions, drawn up at right angles with the rest, and
+fronting the St. Charles. The battalion of Webb's regiment, under
+Colonel Burton, formed the reserve; the third battalion of Royal
+Americans was left to guard the landing; and Howe's light infantry
+occupied a wood far in the rear. Wolfe, with Monckton and Murray,
+commanded the front line, on which the heavy fighting was to fall, and
+which, when all the troops had arrived, numbered less than thirty-five
+hundred men.[777]
+
+[Footnote 777: See Note, end of chapter.]
+
+Quebec was not a mile distant, but they could not see it; for a ridge of
+broken ground intervened, called Buttes-à-Neveu, about six hundred paces
+off. The first division of troops had scarcely come up when, about six
+o'clock, this ridge was suddenly thronged with white uniforms. It was
+the battalion of Guienne, arrived at the eleventh hour from its camp by
+the St. Charles. Some time after there was hot firing in the rear. It
+came from a detachment of Bougainville's command attacking a house where
+some of the light infantry were posted. The assailants were repulsed,
+and the firing ceased. Light showers fell at intervals, besprinkling the
+troops as they stood patiently waiting the event.
+
+Montcalm had passed a troubled night. Through all the evening the cannon
+bellowed from the ships of Saunders, and the boats of the fleet hovered
+in the dusk off the Beauport shore, threatening every moment to land.
+Troops lined intrenchments till day, while the General walked the field
+that adjoined his headquarters till one in the morning, accompanied by
+the Chevalier Johnstone and Colonel Poulariez. Johnstone says that he
+was in great agitation, and took no rest all night. At daybreak he heard
+the sound of cannon above the town. It was the battery at Samos firing
+on the English ships. He had sent an officer to the quarters of
+Vaudreuil, which were much nearer Quebec, with orders to bring him word
+at once should anything unusual happen. But no word came, and about six
+o'clock he mounted and rode thither with Johnstone. As they advanced,
+the country behind the town opened more and more upon their sight; till
+at length, when opposite Vaudreuil's house, they saw across the St.
+Charles, some two miles away, the red ranks of British soldiers on the
+heights beyond.
+
+"This is a serious business," Montcalm said; and sent off Johnstone at
+full gallop to bring up the troops from the centre and left of the camp.
+Those of the right were in motion already, doubtless by the Governor's
+order. Vaudreuil came out of the house. Montcalm stopped for a few words
+with him; then set spurs to his horse, and rode over the bridge of the
+St. Charles to the scene of danger.[778] He rode with a fixed look,
+uttering not a word.[779]
+
+[Footnote 778: Johnstone, _Dialogue_.]
+
+[Footnote 779: _Malartic à Bourlamaque,--Sept_. 1759.]
+
+The army followed in such order as it might, crossed the bridge in hot
+haste, passed under the northern rampart of Quebec, entered at the
+Palace Gate, and pressed on in headlong march along the quaint narrow
+streets of the warlike town: troops of Indians in scalp-locks and
+war-paint, a savage glitter in their deep-set eyes; bands of Canadians
+whose all was at stake,--faith, country, and home; the colony regulars;
+the battalions of Old France, a torrent of white uniforms and gleaming
+bayonets, La Sarre, Languedoc, Roussillon, Béarn,--victors of Oswego,
+William Henry, and Ticonderoga. So they swept on, poured out upon the
+plain, some by the gate of St. Louis, and some by that of St. John, and
+hurried, breathless, to where the banners of Guienne still fluttered on
+the ridge.
+
+Montcalm was amazed at what he saw. He had expected a detachment, and he
+found an army. Full in sight before him stretched the lines of Wolfe:
+the close ranks of the English infantry, a silent wall of red, and the
+wild array of the Highlanders, with their waving tartans, and bagpipes
+screaming defiance. Vaudreuil had not come; but not the less was felt
+the evil of a divided authority and the jealousy of the rival chiefs.
+Montcalm waited long for the forces he had ordered to join him from the
+left wing of the army. He waited in vain. It is said that the Governor
+had detained them, lest the English should attack the Beauport shore.
+Even if they did so, and succeeded, the French might defy them, could
+they but put Wolfe to rout on the Plains of Abraham. Neither did the
+garrison of Quebec come to the aid of Montcalm. He sent to Ramesay, its
+commander, for twenty-five field-pieces which were on the Palace
+battery. Ramesay would give him only three, saying that he wanted them
+for his own defence. There were orders and counter-orders;
+misunderstanding, haste, delay, perplexity.
+
+Montcalm and his chief officers held a council of war. It is said that
+he and they alike were for immediate attack. His enemies declare that he
+was afraid lest Vaudreuil should arrive and take command; but the
+Governor was not a man to assume responsibility at such a crisis. Others
+say that his impetuosity overcame his better judgment; and of this
+charge it is hard to acquit him. Bougainville was but a few miles
+distant, and some of his troops were much nearer; a messenger sent by
+way of Old Lorette could have reached him in an hour and a half at most,
+and a combined attack in front and rear might have been concerted with
+him. If, moreover, Montcalm could have come to an understanding with
+Vaudreuil, his own force might have been strengthened by two or three
+thousand additional men from the town and the camp of Beauport; but he
+felt that there was no time to lose, for he imagined that Wolfe would
+soon be reinforced, which was impossible, and he believed that the
+English were fortifying themselves, which was no less an error. He has
+been blamed not only for fighting too soon, but for fighting at all. In
+this he could not choose. Fight he must, for Wolfe was now in a position
+to cut off all his supplies. His men were full of ardor, and he resolved
+to attack before their ardor cooled. He spoke a few words to them in his
+keen, vehement way. "I remember very well how he looked," one of the
+Canadians, then a boy of eighteen, used to say in his old age; "he rode
+a black or dark bay horse along the front of our lines, brandishing his
+sword, as if to excite us to do our duty. He wore a coat with wide
+sleeves, which fell back as he raised his arm, and showed the white
+linen of the wristband."[780]
+
+[Footnote 780: _Recollections of Joseph Trahan_, in _Revue Canadienne_,
+IV.]
+
+The English waited the result with a composure which, if not quite real,
+was at least well feigned. The three field-pieces sent by Ramesay plied
+them with canister-shot, and fifteen hundred Canadians and Indians
+fusilladed them in front and flank. Over all the plain, from behind
+bushes and knolls and the edge of cornfields, puffs of smoke sprang
+incessantly from the guns of these hidden marksmen. Skirmishers were
+thrown out before the lines to hold them in check, and the soldiers were
+ordered to lie on the grass to avoid the shot. The firing was liveliest
+on the English left, where bands of sharpshooters got under the edge of
+the declivity, among thickets, and behind scattered houses, whence they
+killed and wounded a considerable number of Townshend's men. The light
+infantry were called up from the rear. The houses were taken and
+retaken, and one or more of them was burned.
+
+Wolfe was everywhere. How cool he was, and why his followers loved him,
+is shown by an incident that happened in the course of the morning. One
+of his captains was shot through the lungs; and on recovering
+consciousness he saw the General standing at his side. Wolfe pressed his
+hand, told him not to despair, praised his services, promised him early
+promotion, and sent an aide-de-camp to Monckton to beg that officer to
+keep the promise if he himself should fall.[781]
+
+[Footnote 781: Sir Denis Le Marchant, cited by Wright, 579. Le Marchant
+knew the captain in his old age. Monckton kept Wolfe's promise.]
+
+It was towards ten o'clock when, from the high ground on the right of
+the line, Wolfe saw that the crisis was near. The French on the ridge
+had formed themselves into three bodies, regulars in the centre,
+regulars and Canadians on right and left. Two field-pieces, which had
+been dragged up the heights at Anse du Foulon, fired on them with
+grapeshot, and the troops, rising from the ground, prepared to receive
+them. In a few moments more they were in motion. They came on rapidly,
+uttering loud shouts, and firing as soon as they were within range.
+Their ranks, ill ordered at the best, were further confused by a number
+of Canadians who had been mixed among the regulars, and who, after
+hastily firing, threw themselves on the ground to reload.[782] The
+British advanced a few rods; then halted and stood still. When the
+French were within forty paces the word of command rang out, and a crash
+of musketry answered all along the line. The volley was delivered with
+remarkable precision. In the battalions of the centre, which had
+suffered least from the enemy's bullets, the simultaneous explosion was
+afterwards said by French officers to have sounded like a cannon-shot.
+Another volley followed, and then a furious clattering fire that lasted
+but a minute or two. When the smoke rose, a miserable sight was
+revealed: the ground cumbered with dead and wounded, the advancing
+masses stopped short and turned into a frantic mob, shouting, cursing,
+gesticulating. The order was given to charge. Then over the field rose
+the British cheer, mixed with the fierce yell of the Highland slogan.
+Some of the corps pushed forward with the bayonet; some advanced
+firing. The clansmen drew their broadswords and dashed on, keen and
+swift as bloodhounds. At the English right, though the attacking column
+was broken to pieces, a fire was still kept up, chiefly, it seems, by
+sharpshooters from the bushes and cornfields, where they had lain for an
+hour or more. Here Wolfe himself led the charge, at the head of the
+Louisbourg grenadiers. A shot shattered his wrist. He wrapped his
+handkerchief about it and kept on. Another shot struck him, and he still
+advanced, when a third lodged in his breast. He staggered, and sat on
+the ground. Lieutenant Brown, of the grenadiers, one Henderson, a
+volunteer in the same company, and a private soldier, aided by an
+officer of artillery who ran to join them, carried him in their arms to
+the rear. He begged them to lay him down. They did so, and asked if he
+would have a surgeon. "There's no need," he answered; "it's all over
+with me." A moment after, one of them cried out: "They run; see how they
+run!" "Who run?" Wolfe demanded, like a man roused from sleep. "The
+enemy, sir. Egad, they give way everywhere!" "Go one of you, to Colonel
+Burton," returned the dying man; "tell him to march Webb's regiment down
+to Charles River, to cut off their retreat from the bridge." Then,
+turning on his side, he murmured, "Now, God be praised, I will die in
+peace!" and in a few moments his gallant soul had fled.
+
+[Footnote 782: "Les Canadiens, qui étaient mêlés dans les bataillons, se
+passèrent de tirer et, dès qu'ils l'eussent fait, de mettre ventre a
+terre pour charger, ce qui rompit tout l'ordre." _Malartic a
+Bourlamaque, 25 Sept._ 1759.]
+
+Montcalm, still on horseback, was borne with the tide of fugitives
+towards the town. As he approached the walls a shot passed through his
+body. He kept his seat; two soldiers supported him, one on each side,
+and led his horse through the St. Louis Gate. On the open space within,
+among the excited crowd, were several women, drawn, no doubt, by
+eagerness to know the result of the fight. One of them recognized him,
+saw the streaming blood, and shrieked, "_O mon Dieu! mon Dieu! le
+Marquis est tué!_" "It's nothing, it's nothing," replied the
+death-stricken man; "don't be troubled for me, my good friends." _("Ce
+n'est rien, ce n'est rien; ne vous affligez pas pour moi, mes bonnes
+amies.")_
+
+NOTE: There are several contemporary versions of the dying words of
+Wolfe. The report of Knox, given above, is by far the best attested.
+Knox says that he took particular pains at the time to learn them
+accurately from those who were with Wolfe when they were uttered.
+
+The anecdote of Montcalm is due to the late Hon. Malcolm Fraser, of
+Quebec. He often heard it in his youth from an old woman, who, when a
+girl, was one of the group who saw the wounded general led by, and to
+whom the words were addressed.
+
+_Force of the English and French at the Battle of Quebec._--The tabular
+return given by Knox shows the number of officers and men in each corps
+engaged. According to this, the battalions as they stood on the Plains
+of Abraham before the battle varied in strength from 322 (Monckton's) to
+683 (Webb's), making a total of 4,828, including officers. But another
+return, less specific, signed _George Townshend, Brigadier,_ makes the
+entire number only 4,441. Townshend succeeded Wolfe in the command; and
+this return, which is preserved in the Public Record Office, was sent to
+London a few days after the battle. Some French writers present put the
+number lower, perhaps for the reason that Webb's regiment and the third
+battalion of Royal Americans took no part in the fight, the one being in
+the rear as a reserve, and the other invisible, guarding the landing
+place. Wolfe's front line, which alone met and turned the French attack,
+was made up as follows, the figures including officers and men:--
+
+/$
+Thirty-fifth Regiment   .... 519     Twenty-eighth Regiment   421
+Fifty-eighth     "      .... 335     Forty-seventh    "    .  360
+Seventy-eighth   "      .... 662     Forty-third      "    .. 327
+Louisbourg Grenadiers        241     Light Infantry  ........ 400
+Making a total of 3,265.
+$/
+
+The French force engaged cannot be precisely given. Knox, on
+information received from "an intelligent Frenchman," states the
+number, corps by corps, the aggregate being 7,520. This, on examination,
+plainly appears exaggerated. Fraser puts it at 5,000; Townshend
+at 4,470, including militia. Bigot says, 3,500, which may
+perhaps be as many as actually advanced to the attack, since
+some of the militia held back. Including Bougainville's command,
+the militia and the artillerymen left in the Beauport camp, the
+sailors at the town batteries, and the garrison of Quebec, at least
+as many of the French were out of the battle as were in it; and
+the numbers engaged on each side seem to have been about equal.
+
+For authorities of the foregoing chapter, see Appendix I.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 28
+
+1759
+
+Fall of Quebec
+
+
+"Never was rout more complete than that of our army,"
+says a French official.[783] It was the more so because Montcalm
+held no troops in reserve, but launched his whole force at
+once against the English. Nevertheless there was some resistance
+to the pursuit. It came chiefly from the Canadians, many of whom had
+not advanced with the regulars to the attack. Those on the right wing,
+instead of doing so, threw themselves into an extensive tract of
+bushes that lay in front of the English left; and from this cover
+they opened a fire, too distant for much effect, till the victors
+advanced in their turn, when the shot of the hidden marksmen told
+severely upon them. Two battalions, therefore, deployed before the
+bushes, fired volleys into them, and drove their occupants out.
+
+[Footnote 783: _Daine au Ministre, 9 Oct. 1759_.]
+
+Again, those of the Canadians who, before the main battle
+began, attacked the English left from the brink of the plateau
+towards the St. Charles, withdrew when the rout took place,
+and ran along the edge of the declivity till, at the part of it
+called Côte Ste.-Geneviève, they came to a place where it
+was overgrown with thickets. Into these they threw themselves;
+and were no sooner under cover than they faced about to fire upon
+the Highlanders, who presently came up. As many of these mountaineers,
+according to their old custom, threw down their muskets when they
+charged, and had no weapons but their broadswords, they tried in vain
+to dislodge the marksmen, and suffered greatly in the attempt. Other
+troops came to their aid, cleared the thickets, after stout resistance,
+and drove their occupants across the meadow to the bridge of boats.
+The conduct of the Canadians at the Côte Ste.-Geneviève went far to
+atone for the short-comings of some of them on the battle-field.
+
+A part of the fugitives escaped into the town by the gates
+of St. Louis and St. John, while the greater number fled along
+the front of the ramparts, rushed down the declivity to the
+suburb of St. Roch, and ran over the meadows to the bridge,
+protected by the cannon of the town and the two armed hulks
+in the river. The rout had but just begun when Vaudreuil
+crossed the bridge from the camp of Beauport. It was four
+hours since he first heard the alarm, and his quarters were
+not much more than two miles from the battle-field. He does
+not explain why he did not come sooner; it is certain that his
+coming was well timed to throw the blame on Montcalm in
+case of defeat, or to claim some of the honor for himself in
+case of victory. "Monsieur the Marquis of Montcalm," he
+says, "unfortunately made his attack before I had joined
+him."[784] His joining him could have done no good; for though
+he had at last brought with him the rest of the militia from
+the Beauport camp, they had come no farther than the bridge
+over the St. Charles, having, as he alleges, been kept there by
+an unauthorized order from the chief of staff, Montreuil.[785]
+He declares that the regulars were in such a fright that he
+could not stop them; but that the Canadians listened to his
+voice, and that it was he who rallied them at the Côte Ste.-Geneviève.
+Of this the evidence is his own word. From other accounts it would
+appear that the Canadians rallied themselves. Vaudreuil lost no time
+in recrossing the bridge and joining the militia in the redoubt at
+the farther end, where a crowd of fugitives soon poured in after him.
+
+[Footnote 784: _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 21 Sept. 1759_.]
+
+[Footnote 785: _Ibid., 5 Oct. 1759_.]
+
+The aide-de-camp Johnstone, mounted on horseback, had
+stopped for a moment in what is now the suburb of St. John
+to encourage some soldiers who were trying to save a cannon
+that had stuck fast in a marshy hollow; when, on spurring
+his horse to the higher ground, he saw within musket-shot
+a long line of British troops, who immediately fired upon him.
+The bullets whistled about his ears, tore his clothes, and
+wounded his horse; which, however, carried him along the
+edge of the declivity to a windmill, near which was a roadway
+to a bakehouse on the meadow below. He descended, crossed the
+meadow, reached the bridge, and rode over it to the great redoubt
+or hornwork that guarded its head.
+
+The place was full of troops and Canadians in a wild panic.
+"It is impossible," says Johnstone, "to imagine the disorder
+and confusion I found in the hornwork. Consternation was
+general. M. de Vaudreuil listened to everybody, and was always
+of the opinion of him who spoke last. On the appearance
+of the English troops on the plain by the bakehouse,
+Montguet and La Motte, two old captains in the regiment of
+Béarn, cried out with vehemence to M. de Vaudreuil 'that
+the hornwork would be taken in an instant by assault, sword
+in hand; that we all should be cut to pieces without quarter;
+and that nothing would save us but an immediate and general
+capitulation of Canada, giving it up to the English.'"[786] Yet
+the river was wide and deep, and the hornwork was protected
+on the water side by strong palisades, with cannon. Nevertheless
+there rose a general cry to cut the bridge of boats. By
+doing so more than half the army, who had not yet crossed,
+would have been sacrificed. The axemen were already at work,
+when they were stopped by some officers who had not lost
+their wits.
+
+[Footnote 786: Confirmed by _Journal tenu à l'Armée,_ etc. "Divers
+officiers des troupes de terre n'hésitèrent point à dire, tout haut
+en présence du soldat, qu'il ne nous restoit d'autre ressource que
+celle de capituler promptement pour toute la colonie," etc.]
+
+"M. de Vaudreuil," pursues Johnstone, "was closeted in a
+house in the inside of the hornwork with the Intendant and
+some other persons. I suspected they were busy drafting the
+articles for a general capitulation, and I entered the house,
+where I had only time to see the Intendant, with a pen in his
+hand, writing upon a sheet of paper, when M. de Vaudreuil
+told me I had no business there. Having answered him that
+what he had said was true, I retired immediately, in wrath
+to see them intent on giving up so scandalously a dependency
+for the preservation of which so much blood and treasure had
+been expended." On going out he met Lieutenant-colonels
+Dalquier and Poulariez, whom he begged to prevent the apprehended
+disgrace; and, in fact, if Vaudreuil really meant to capitulate for
+the colony, he was presently dissuaded by firmer spirits than his own.
+
+Johnstone, whose horse could carry him no farther, set out
+on foot for Beauport, and, in his own words, "continued
+sorrowfully jogging on, with a very heavy heart for the loss
+of my dear friend M. de Montcalm, sinking with weariness,
+and lost in reflection upon the changes which Providence had
+brought about in the space of three or four hours."
+
+Great indeed were these changes. Montcalm was dying;
+his second in command, the Brigadier Senezergues, was
+mortally wounded; the army, routed and demoralized, was
+virtually without a head; and the colony, yesterday cheered as
+on the eve of deliverance, was plunged into sudden despair.
+"Ah, what a cruel day!" cries Bougainville; "how fatal to all
+that was dearest to us! My heart is torn in its most tender
+parts. We shall be fortunate if the approach of winter saves
+the country from total ruin."[787]
+
+[Footnote 787: _Bougainville à Bourlamaque, 18 Sept. 1759_.]
+
+The victors were fortifying themselves on the field of battle.
+Like the French, they had lost two generals; for Monckton,
+second in rank, was disabled by a musket-shot, and the command
+had fallen upon Townshend at the moment when the enemy were in full
+flight. He had recalled the pursuers, and formed them again in line
+of battle, knowing that another foe was at hand. Bougainville, in
+fact, appeared at noon from Cap-Rouge with about two thousand men;
+but withdrew on seeing double that force prepared to receive him.
+He had not heard till eight o'clock that the English were on the
+Plains of Abraham; and the delay of his arrival was no doubt
+due to his endeavors to collect as many as possible of his
+detachments posted along the St. Lawrence for many miles
+towards Jacques-Cartier.
+
+Before midnight the English had made good progress in
+their redoubts and intrenchments, had brought cannon up
+the heights to defend them, planted a battery on the Côte
+Ste.-Geneviève, descended into the meadows of the St. Charles,
+and taken possession of the General Hospital, with its crowds
+of sick and wounded. Their victory had cost them six hundred
+and sixty-four of all ranks, killed, wounded, and missing. The
+French loss is placed by Vaudreuil at about six hundred and forty,
+and by the English official reports at about fifteen hundred.
+Measured by the numbers engaged, the battle of Quebec was but a
+heavy skirmish; measured by results, it was one of the great battles
+of the world.
+
+Vaudreuil went from the hornwork to his quarters on the
+Beauport road and called a council of war. It was a tumultuous
+scene. A letter was despatched to Quebec to ask for advice of Montcalm.
+The dying General sent a brief message to the effect that there was a
+threefold choice,--to fight again, retreat to Jacques-Cartier, or give
+up the colony. There was much in favor of fighting. When Bougainville
+had gathered all his force from the river above, he would have three
+thousand men; and these, joined to the garrison of Quebec, the
+sailors at the batteries, and the militia and artillerymen of the
+Beauport camp, would form a body of fresh soldiers more
+than equal to the English then on the Plains of Abraham.
+Add to these the defeated troops, and the victors would be
+greatly outnumbered.[788] Bigot gave his voice for fighting. Vaudreuil
+expressed himself to the same effect; but he says that all
+the officers were against him. "In vain I remarked to these
+gentlemen that we were superior to the enemy, and should
+beat them if we managed well. I could not at all change their
+opinion, and my love for the service and for the colony made
+me subscribe to the views of the council. In fact, if I had
+attacked the English against the advice of all the principal
+officers, their ill-will would have exposed me to the risk of
+losing the battle and the colony also."[789]
+
+[Footnote 788: Bigot, as well as Vaudreuil, sets Bougainville's force
+at three thousand. "En réunissant le corps M. de Bougainville, les
+bataillons de Montréal _[laissés au camp de Beauport]_ et la garrison
+de la ville, il nous restoit encore près de 5,000 hommes de troupes
+fraîches." _Journal tenu à l'Armée._ Vaudreuil says that there were
+fifteen hundred men in garrison at Quebec who did not take part
+in the battle. If this is correct, the number of fresh troops after
+it was not five thousand, but more than six thousand; to whom
+the defeated force is to be added, making, after deducting killed
+and wounded, some ten thousand in all.]
+
+[Footnote 789: _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 5 Oct._ 1759.]
+
+It was said at the time that the officers voted for retreat
+because they thought Vaudreuil unfit to command an army,
+and, still more, to fight a battle.[790] There was no need, however,
+to fight at once. The object of the English was to take
+Quebec, and that of Vaudreuil should have been to keep it.
+By a march of a few miles he could have joined Bougainville;
+and by then intrenching himself at or near Ste.-Foy he would
+have placed a greatly superior force in the English rear, where
+his position might have been made impregnable. Here he might be
+easily furnished with provisions, and from hence he could readily
+throw men and supplies into Quebec, which the English were too few
+to invest. He could harass the besiegers, or attack them, should
+opportunity offer, and either raise the siege or so protract it
+that they would be forced by approaching winter to sail homeward,
+robbed of the fruit of their victory.
+
+[Footnote 790: _Memoires sur le Canada,_ 1749-1760.]
+
+At least he might have taken a night for reflection. He was
+safe behind the St. Charles. The English, spent by fighting,
+toil, and want of sleep, were in no condition to disturb him.
+A part of his own men were in deadly need of rest; the night
+would have brought refreshment, and the morning might have brought
+wise counsel. Vaudreuil would not wait, and orders were given at
+once for retreat.[791] It began at nine o'clock that evening. Quebec
+was abandoned to its fate. The cannon were left in the lines of
+Beauport, the tents in the encampments, and provisions enough in
+the storehouses to supply the army for a week. "The loss of the
+Marquis de Montcalm," says a French officer then on the spot, "robbed
+his successors of their senses, and they thought of nothing but flight;
+such was their fear that the enemy would attack the intrenchments
+the next day. The army abandoned the camp in such disorder
+that the like was never known."[792] "It was not a retreat," says
+Johnstone, who himself a part of it, "but an abominable
+flight, with such disorder and confusion that, had the English
+known it, three hundred men sent after us would have been
+sufficient to cut all our army to pieces. The soldiers were all
+mixed, and scattered, dispersed, and running as hard as they
+could, as if the English army were at their heels." They
+passed Charlesbourg, Lorette, and St. Augustin, till, on the
+fifteenth, they found rest on the impregnable hill of Jacques-Cartier,
+by the brink of the St. Lawrence, thirty miles from danger.
+
+[Footnote 791: _Livre d'Ordres, Ordre du 13 Sept_. 1759.]
+
+[Footnote 792: Foligny, _Journal mémoratif._]
+
+In the night of humiliation when Vaudreuil abandoned
+Quebec, Montcalm was breathing his last within its walls.
+When he was brought wounded from the field, he was placed
+in the house of the Surgeon Arnoux, who was then with Bourlamaque
+at Isle-aux-Noix, but whose younger brother, also a surgeon,
+examined the wound and pronounced it mortal. "I am glad of it,"
+Montcalm said quietly; and then asked how long he had to live.
+"Twelve hours, more or less," was the reply. "So much the better,"
+he returned. "I am happy that I shall not live to see the surrender
+of Quebec." He is reported to have said that since he had lost the battle
+it consoled him to have been defeated by so brave an enemy;
+and some of his last words were in praise of his successor,
+Lévis, for whose talents and fitness for command he expressed
+high esteem. When Vaudreuil sent to ask his opinion, he gave
+it; but when Ramesay, commandant of the garrison, came to
+receive his orders, he replied: "I will neither give orders nor
+interfere any further. I have much business that must be
+attended to, of greater moment than your ruined garrison
+and this wretched country. My time is very short; therefore
+pray leave me. I wish you all comfort, and to be happily extricated
+from your present perplexities." Nevertheless he thought to the last
+of those who had been under his command, and sent the following note
+to Brigadier Townshend: "Monsieur, the humanity of the English sets
+my mind at peace concerning the fate of the French prisoners and the
+Canadians. Feel towards them as they have caused me to feel. Do not
+let them perceive that they have changed masters. Be their protector
+as I have been their father."[793]
+
+[Footnote 793: I am indebted to Abbé Bois for a copy of this note. The
+last words of Montcalm, as above, are reported partly by Johnstone,
+and partly by Knox.]
+
+Bishop Pontbriand, himself fast sinking with mortal disease,
+attended his deathbed and administered the last sacraments.
+He died peacefully at four o'clock on the morning of the
+fourteenth. He was in his forty-eighth year.
+
+In the confusion of the time no workman could be found
+to make a coffin, and an old servant of the Ursulines, known
+as Bonhomme Michel, gathered a few boards and nailed them together
+so as to form a rough box. In it was laid the body of the dead
+soldier; and late in the evening of the same day he was carried
+to his rest. There was no tolling of bells or firing of cannon.
+The officers of the garrison followed the bier, and some of the
+populace, including women and children, joined the procession as
+it moved in dreary silence along the dusky street, shattered with
+cannon-ball and bomb, to the chapel of the Ursuline convent. Here
+a shell, bursting under the floor, had made a cavity which had been
+hollowed into a grave. Three priests of the Cathedral, several nuns,
+Ramesay with his officers, and a throng of townspeople were
+present at the rite. After the service and the chant, the
+body was lowered into the grave by the light of torches; and
+then, says the chronicle, "the tears and sobs burst forth. It
+seemed as if the last hope of the colony were buried with the
+remains of the General."[794] In truth, the funeral of Montcalm
+was the funeral of New France.[795]
+
+[Footnote 794: _Ursulines de Québec,_ III. 10.]
+
+[Footnote 795: See Appendix J.]
+
+It was no time for grief. The demands of the hour were
+too exigent and stern. When, on the morning after the battle,
+the people of Quebec saw the tents standing in the camp of
+Beauport, they thought the army still there to defend them.[796]
+Ramesay knew that the hope was vain. On the evening before,
+Vaudreuil had sent two hasty notes to tell him of his flight.
+"The position of the enemy," wrote the Governor, "becomes stronger
+every instant; and this, with other reasons, obliges me to retreat."
+"I have received all your letters. As I set out this moment, I pray
+you not to write again. You shall hear from me to-morrow. I wish
+you good evening." With these notes came the following order:
+"M. de Ramesay is not to wait till the enemy carries the town by
+assault. As soon as provisions fail, he will raise the white flag."
+This order was accompanied by a memorandum of terms which Ramesay
+was to ask of the victors.[797]
+
+[Footnote 796: _Mémoire du Sieur de Ramesay._]
+
+[Footnote 797: _Mémoire pour servir d'Instruction à M. de Ramesay, 13 Sept.
+_ 1759. Appended, with the foregoing notes, to the _Mémoire de
+Ramesay._]
+
+"What a blow for me," says the unfortunate commandant,
+"to find myself abandoned so soon by the army, which alone
+could defend the town!" His garrison consisted of between
+one and two hundred troops of the line, some four or five
+hundred colony troops, a considerable number of sailors, and
+the local militia.[798] These last were in a state of despair. The
+inhabitants who, during the siege, had sought refuge in the
+suburb of St. Roch, had returned after the battle, and there
+were now twenty-six hundred women and children, with about a
+housand invalids and other non-combatants to be supported, though
+the provisions in the town, even at half rations, would hardly last
+a week. Ramesay had not been informed that a good supply was left in
+the camps of Beauport; and when he heard at last that it was there,
+and sent out parties to get it, they found that the Indians and the
+famished country people had carried it off.
+
+[Footnote 798: The English returns give a total of 615 French regulars in
+the place besides sailors and militia.]
+
+"Despondency," he says again, "was complete; discouragement
+extreme and universal. Murmurs and complaints against the army that
+had abandoned us rose to a general outcry. I could not prevent the
+merchants, all of whom were officers of the town militia, from meeting
+at the house of M. Daine, the mayor. There they declared for capitulating,
+and presented me a petition to that effect, signed by M. Daine and
+all the principal citizens."
+
+Ramesay called a council of war. One officer alone, Piedmont,
+captain of artillery, was for reducing the rations still
+more, and holding out to the last. All the others gave their
+voices for capitulation.[799] Ramesay might have yielded without
+dishonor; but he still held out till an event fraught with
+new hope took place at Jacques-Cartier.
+
+[Footnote 799: _Copie du Conseil de Guerre term par M. de Ramesay à Québec,
+15 Sept_. 1759.]
+
+This event was the arrival of Lévis. On the afternoon of
+the battle Vaudreuil took one rational step; he sent a courier
+to Montreal to summon that able officer to his aid.[800] Lévis
+set out at once, reached Jacques-Cartier, and found his worst
+fears realized. "The great number of fugitives that I began
+to meet at Three Rivers prepared me for the disorder in
+which I found the army. I never in my life knew the like of
+it. They left everything behind in the camp at Beauport; tents,
+baggage, and kettles."
+
+[Footnote 800: _Lévis à Bourlamaque, 15 Sept_. 1759. Lévis,
+_Guerre du Canada._]
+
+He spoke his mind freely; loudly blamed the retreat, and
+urged Vaudreuil to march back with all speed to whence he
+came.[801] The Governor, stiff at ordinary times, but pliant at
+a crisis, welcomed the firmer mind that decided for him, consented
+that the troops should return, and wrote afterwards in his despatch
+to the Minister: "I was much charmed to find M. de Lévis disposed
+to march with the army towards Quebec."[802]
+
+[Footnote 801: _Bigot au Ministre, 15 Oct. 1759. Malartic à Bourlamaque, 28
+Sept_. 1759.]
+
+[Footnote 802: "Je fus bien charmé," etc. _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 5 Oct.
+_ 1759.]
+
+Lévis, on his part, wrote: "The condition in which I found
+the army, bereft of everything, did not discourage me, because
+M. de Vaudreuil told me that Quebec was not taken, and that he had
+left there a sufficiently numerous garrison; I therefore resolved,
+in order to repair the fault that had been committed, to engage
+M. de Vaudreuil to march the army back to the relief of the place.
+I represented to him that this was the only way to prevent the complete
+defection of the Canadians and Indians; that our knowledge of the country
+would enable us to approach very near the enemy, whom we
+knew to be intrenching themselves on the heights of Quebec
+and constructing batteries to breach the walls; that if we
+found their army ill posted, we could attack them, or, at any
+rate, could prolong the siege by throwing men and supplies
+into the town; and that if we could not save it, we could
+evacuate and burn it, so that the enemy could not possibly
+winter there."[803]
+
+[Footnote 803: _Lévis au Ministre, 10 Nov_. 1759.]
+
+Lévis quickly made his presence felt in the military chaos
+about him. Bigot bestirred himself with his usual vigor to collect
+provisions; and before the next morning all was ready.[804]
+Bougainville had taken no part in the retreat, but sturdily
+held his ground at Cap-Rouge while the fugitive mob swept
+by him. A hundred of the mounted Canadians who formed part of his
+command were now sent to Quebec, each with a bag of biscuit across
+his saddle. They were to circle round to the Beauport side, where
+there was no enemy, and whence they could cross the St. Charles in
+canoes to the town. Bougainville followed close with a larger supply.
+Vaudreuil sent Ramesay a message, revoking his order to surrender if
+threatened with assault, telling him to hold out to the last, and
+assuring him that the whole army was coming to his relief.
+Lévis hastened to be gone; but first he found time to write a
+few lines to Bourlamaque. "We have had a very great loss,
+for we have lost M. de Montcalm. I regret him as my general
+and my friend. I found our army here. It is now on the march to
+retrieve our fortunes. I can trust you to hold your position; as I
+have not M. de Montcalm's talents, I look to you to second me and
+advise me. Put a good face on it. Hide this business as long as you
+can. I am mounting my horse this moment. Write me all the news."[805]
+
+[Footnote 804: _Livre d'Ordres, Ordre du 17-18 Sept_. 1759.]
+
+[Footnote 805: _Lévis a Bourlamaque, 18 Sept_. 1759.]
+
+The army marched that morning, the eighteenth. In the
+evening it reached St. Augustin; and here it was stopped by
+the chilling news that Quebec had surrendered. Utter confusion had
+reigned in the disheartened garrison. Men deserted hourly, some to
+the country, and some to the English camp; while Townshend pushed
+his trenches nearer and nearer to the walls, in spite of the cannonade
+with which Piedmont and his artillerymen tried to check them. On the
+evening of the seventeenth, the English ships of war moved
+towards the Lower Town, and a column of troops was seen
+approaching over the meadows of the St. Charles, as if to
+storm the Palace Gate. The drums beat the alarm; but the
+militia refused to fight. Their officers came to Ramesay in
+a body; declared that they had no mind to sustain an assault;
+that they knew he had orders against it; that they would carry
+their guns back to the arsenal; that they were no longer
+soldiers, but citizens; that if the army had not abandoned
+them they would fight with as much spirit as ever; but that
+they would not get themselves killed to no purpose. The town-major,
+Joannès, in a rage, beat two of them with the flat of his sword.
+
+The white flag was raised; Joannès pulled it down, thinking,
+or pretending to think, that it was raised without authority;
+but Ramesay presently ordered him to go to the English camp and
+get what terms he could. He went, through driving rain, to the
+quarters of Townshend, and, in hope of the promised succor, spun
+out the negotiation to the utmost, pretended that he had no power
+to yield certain points demanded, and was at last sent back to confer
+with Ramesay, under a promise from the English commander that, if Quebec
+were not given up before eleven o'clock, he would take it by
+storm. On this Ramesay signed the articles, and Joannes
+carried them back within the time prescribed. Scarcely had
+he left the town, when the Canadian horsemen appeared with
+their sacks of biscuit and a renewed assurance that help was
+near; but it was too late. Ramesay had surrendered, and
+would not break his word. He dreaded an assault, which he
+knew he could not withstand, and he but half believed in the
+promised succor. "How could I trust it"? he asks. "The army
+had not dared to face the enemy before he had fortified himself;
+and could I hope that it would come to attack him in an intrenched
+camp, defended by a formidable artillery?" Whatever may be thought
+of his conduct, it was to Vaudreuil, and not to him, that the loss
+of Quebec was due.
+
+The conditions granted were favorable, for Townshend
+knew the danger of his position, and was glad to have Quebec
+on any terms. The troops and sailors of the garrison were
+to march out of the place with the honors of war, and to be
+carried to France. The inhabitants were to have protection
+in person and property, and free exercise of religion.[806]
+
+[Footnote 806: _Articles de Capitulation, 18 Sept_. 1759.]
+
+In the afternoon a company of artillerymen with a field-piece
+entered the town, and marched to the place of arms, followed by a
+body of infantry. Detachments took post at all the gates. The
+British flag was raised on the heights near the top of Mountain
+Street, and the capital of New France passed into the hands of its
+hereditary foes. The question remained, should they keep, or destroy
+it? It was resolved to keep it at every risk. The marines, the
+grenadiers from Louisbourg, and some of the rangers were to reimbark
+in the fleet; while the ten battalions, with the artillery and one company
+of rangers, were to remain behind, bide the Canadian winter,
+and defend the ruins of Quebec against the efforts of Lévis.
+Monckton, the oldest brigadier, was disabled by his wound,
+and could not stay; while Townshend returned home, to parade his laurels
+and claim more than his share of the honors of victory.[807] The command,
+therefore, rested with Murray.
+
+[Footnote 807: _Letter to an Honourable Brigadier-General_ [Townshend],
+printed in 1760. A _Refutation_ soon after appeared, angry, but
+not conclusive. Other replies will be found in the _Imperial Magazine
+_for 1760.]
+
+The troops were not idle. Levelling their own field-works,
+repairing the defences of the town, storing provisions sent
+ashore from the fleet, making fascines, and cutting firewood,
+busied them through the autumn days bright with sunshine,
+or dark and chill with premonition of the bitter months to
+come. Admiral Saunders put off his departure longer than he
+had once thought possible; and it was past the middle of
+October when he fired a parting salute, and sailed down the
+river with his fleet. In it was the ship "Royal William," carrying
+the embalmed remains of Wolfe.
+
+Montcalm lay in his soldier's grave before the humble
+altar of the Ursulines, never more to see the home for which
+he yearned, the wife, mother, and children whom he loved,
+the olive-trees and chestnut-groves of his beloved Candiac.
+He slept in peace among triumphant enemies, who respected
+his memory, though they hardly knew his resting-place. It
+was left for a fellow-countryman--a colleague and a brother-in-arms--to
+belittle his achievements and blacken his name. The jealous spite
+of Vaudreuil pursued him even in death. Leaving Lévis to command
+at Jacques-Cartier, whither the army had again withdrawn, the
+Governor retired to Montreal, whence he wrote a series of despatches
+to justify himself at the expense of others, and above all of the
+slain general, against whom his accusations were never so bitter as now,
+when the lips were cold that could have answered them. First,
+he threw on Ramesay all the blame of the surrender of Quebec. Then
+he addressed himself to his chief task, the defamation of his unconscious
+rival. "The letter that you wrote in cipher, on the tenth of February,
+to Monsieur the Marquis of Montcalm and me, in common,[808] flattered his
+self-love to such a degree that, far from seeking conciliation,
+he did nothing but try to persuade the public that his authority
+surpassed mine. From the moment of Monsieur de Montcalm's arrival in this
+colony, down to that of his death, he did not cease to sacrifice everything
+to his boundless ambition. He sowed dissension among the troops, tolerated
+the most indecent talk against the government, attached to himself
+the most disreputable persons, used means to corrupt the
+most virtuous, and, when he could not succeed, became their
+cruel enemy. He wanted to be Governor-General. He privately
+flattered with favors and promises of patronage every officer of the
+colony troops who adopted his ideas. He spared no pains to gain over
+the people of whatever calling, and persuade them of his attachment;
+while, either by himself or by means of the troops of the line, he
+made them bear the most frightful yoke _(le joug le plus affreux)._
+He defamed honest people, encouraged insubordination, and closed his
+eyes to the rapine of his soldiers."
+
+[Footnote 808: See _Supra_, p. 462.]
+
+This letter was written to Vaudreuil's official superior and
+confidant, the Minister of the Marine and Colonies. In another
+letter, written about the same time to the Minister of War, who held
+similar relations to his rival, he declares that he "greatly regretted
+Monsieur de Montcalm."[809]
+
+[Footnote 809: _Vaudreuil au Ministre de la Guerre, 1 Nov_. 1759.]
+
+His charges are strange ones from a man who was by turns
+the patron, advocate, and tool of the official villains who
+cheated the King and plundered the people. Bigot, Cadet, and
+the rest of the harpies that preyed on Canada looked to Vaudreuil
+for support, and found it. It was but three or four weeks since he
+had written to the Court in high eulogy of Bigot and effusive praise
+of Cadet, coupled with the request that a patent of nobility should
+be given to that notorious public thief.[810] The corruptions which
+disgraced his government were rife, not only in the civil
+administration, but also among the officers of the colony troops,
+over whom he had complete control. They did not, as has been seen
+already, extend to the officers of the line, who were outside the circle
+of peculation. It was these who were the habitual associates
+of Montcalm; and when Vaudreuil charges him with "attaching
+to himself the most disreputable persons, and using means
+to corrupt the most virtuous," the true interpretation of his
+words is that the former were disreputable because they disliked
+him (the Governor), and the latter virtuous because they were his
+partisans.
+
+[Footnote 810: See _Supra_, p. 374.]
+
+Vaudreuil continues thus: "I am in despair, Monseigneur,
+to be under the necessity of painting you such a portrait after
+death of Monsieur the Marquis of Montcalm. Though it contains
+the exact truth, I would have deferred it if his personal
+hatred to me were alone to be considered; but I feel too
+deeply the loss of the colony to hide from you the cause of
+it. I can assure you that if I had been the sole master, Quebec
+would still belong to the King, and that nothing is so disadvantageous
+in a colony as a division of authority and the mingling of troops
+of the line with marine _[colony]_ troops. Thoroughly knowing
+Monsieur de Montcalm, I did not doubt in the least that unless I
+condescended to all his wishes, he would succeed in ruining Canada
+and wrecking all my plans."
+
+He then charges the dead man with losing the battle of
+Quebec by attacking before he, the Governor, arrived to take
+command; and this, he says, was due to Montcalm's absolute
+determination to exercise independent authority, without
+caring whether the colony was saved or lost. "I cannot hide
+from you, Monseigneur, that if he had had his way in past
+years Oswego and Fort George _[William Henry]_ would never
+have been attacked or taken; and he owed the success at Ticonderoga
+to the orders I had given him."[811] Montcalm, on the other hand,
+declared at the time that Vaudreuil had ordered him not to risk a
+battle, and that it was only through his disobedience that
+Ticonderoga was saved.
+
+[Footnote 811: _Vaudreuil au Ministre de la Marine,_ 30 _Oct. 1759._]
+
+Ten days later Vaudreuil wrote again: "I have already had
+the honor, by my letter written in cipher on the thirteenth of
+last month, to give you a sketch of the character of Monsieur
+the Marquis of Montcalm; but I have just been informed of
+a stroke so black that I think, Monseigneur, that I should
+fail in my duty to you if I did not tell you of it." He goes
+on to say that, a little before his death, and "no doubt in
+fear of the fate that befell him," Montcalm placed in the
+hands of Father Roubaud, missionary at St. Francis, two
+packets of papers containing remarks on the administration
+of the colony, and especially on the manner in which the
+military posts were furnished with supplies; that these observations
+were accompanied by certificates; and that they involved
+charges against him, the Governor, of complicity inpeculation.
+Roubaud, he continues, was to send these papersto France; "but now,
+Monseigneur, that you are informed about them, I feel no anxiety,
+and I am sure that the King will receive no impression from them
+without acquainting himself with their truth or falsity."
+
+Vaudreuil's anxiety was natural; and so was the action of
+Montcalm in making known to the Court the outrageous abuses that
+threatened the King's service with ruin. His doing so was necessary
+both for his own justification and for the public good; and afterwards,
+when Vaudreuil and others were brought to trial at Paris, and when
+one of the counselfor the defence charged the late general with
+slanderously accusing his clients, the Court ordered the charge to
+be struck from the record.[812] The papers the existence of which, if they
+did exist, so terrified Vaudreuil, have thus far escaped research.
+But the correspondence of the two rivals with the chiefs of the
+departments on which they severally depended is in large measure
+preserved; and while that of the Governor is filled with defamation
+of Montcalm and praise of himself, that of the General is neither
+egotistic nor abusive. The faults of Montcalm have sufficiently appeared.
+They were those of an impetuous, excitable, and impatient nature, by
+no means free from either ambition or vanity; but they were
+never inconsistent with the character of a man of honor. His
+impulsive utterances, reported by retainers and sycophants,
+kept Vaudreuil in a state of chronic rage; and, void as he
+was of all magnanimity, gnawed with undying jealousy, and
+mortally in dread of being compromised by the knaveries to
+which he had lent his countenance, he could not contain
+himself within the bounds of decency or sense. In another
+letter he had the baseness to say that Montcalm met his death
+in trying to escape from the English.
+
+[Footnote 812: _Procès de Bigot, Cadet, et autres._]
+
+Among the Governor's charges are some which cannot be
+flatly denied. When he accuses his rival of haste and precipitation
+in attacking the English army, he touches a fair subject
+of criticism; but, as a whole, he is as false in his detraction
+of Montcalm as in his praises of Bigot and Cadet.
+
+The letter which Wolfe sent to Pitt a few days before his
+death, written in what may be called a spirit of resolute
+despair, and representing success as almost hopeless, filled
+England with a dejection that found utterance in loud grumblings
+against the Ministry. Horace Walpole wrote the bad news to his friend
+Mann, ambassador at Florence: "Two days ago came letters from Wolfe,
+despairing as much as heroes can despair. Quebec is well victualled,
+Amherst is not arrived, and fifteen thousand men are encamped to defend
+it. We have lost many men by the enemy, and some by our
+friends; that is, we now call our nine thousand only seven
+thousand. How this little army will get away from a much
+larger, and in this season, in that country, I don't guess: yes,
+I do."
+
+Hardly were these lines written when tidings came that
+Montcalm was defeated, Quebec taken, and Wolfe killed. A
+flood of mixed emotions swept over England. Even Walpole
+grew half serious as he sent a packet of newspapers to his
+friend the ambassador. "You may now give yourself what airs you please.
+An ambassador is the only man in the world whom bullying becomes.
+All precedents are on your side: Persians, Greeks, Romans, always
+insulted their neighbors when they took Quebec. Think how pert the
+French would have been on such an occasion! What a scene! An army in
+the night dragging itself up a precipice by stumps of trees
+to assault a town and attack an enemy strongly intrenched
+and double in numbers! The King is overwhelmed with addresses
+on our victories; he will have enough to paper his palace."[813]
+
+[Footnote 813: _Letters of Horace Walpole_, III. 254, 257 (ed. Cunningham
+1857).]
+
+When, in soberer mood, he wrote the annals of his time,
+and turned, not for the better, from the epistolary style to
+the historical, he thus described the impression made on the
+English public by the touching and inspiring story of Wolfe's
+heroism and death: "The incidents of dramatic fiction could
+not be conducted with more address to lead an audience from
+despondency to sudden exaltation than accident prepared to
+excite the passions of a whole people. They despaired, they
+triumphed, and they wept; for Wolfe had fallen in the hour
+of victory. Joy, curiosity, astonishment, was painted on every
+countenance. The more they inquired, the more their admiration
+rose. Not an incident but was heroic and affecting."[814]
+England blazed with bonfires. In one spot alone all was dark and
+silent; for here a widowed mother mourned for a loving and devoted
+son, and the people forbore to profane her grief with the clamor
+of their rejoicings.
+
+[Footnote 814: Walpole, _Memoirs of George II._, II. 384.]
+
+New England had still more cause of joy than Old, and
+she filled the land with jubilation. The pulpits resounded with
+sermons of thanksgiving, some of which were worthy of the
+occasion that called them forth. Among the rest, Jonathan
+Mayhew, a young but justly celebrated minister of Boston,
+pictured with enthusiasm the future greatness of the British-American
+colonies, with the continent thrown open before them, and foretold that,
+"with the continued blessing of Heaven, they will become, in another
+century or two, a mighty empire;" adding in cautious parenthesis,
+"_I do not mean an independent one_." He read Wolfe's victory aright,
+and divined its far-reaching consequence.
+
+NOTE: The authorities of this chapter are, in the main, the
+same as those of the preceding, with some additions, the principal
+of which is the _Mémoire du Sieur de Ramezay, Chevalier de
+l'Ordre royal et militaire de St.-Louis, cy-devant Lieutenant pour
+le Roy commandant à Québec, au sujet de la Reddition de cette
+Ville, qui a été suivie de la Capitulation du 18 7bre 1759_ (Archives
+de la Marine). To this document are appended a number of important
+"pièces justificatives." These, with the _Mémoire_, have been
+printed by the Quebec Historical Society. The letters of Vaudreuil
+cited in this chapter are chiefly from the Archives Nationales.
+
+If Montcalm, as Vaudreuil says, really intrusted papers to the
+care of the Jesuit missionary Roubaud, he was not fortunate in
+his choice of a depositary. After the war Roubaud renounced his
+Order, adjured his faith, and went over to the English. He gave
+various and contradictory accounts of the documents said to be
+in his hands. On one occasion he declared that Montcalm's effects
+left with him at his mission of St. Francis had been burned to
+prevent their falling into the hands of the enemy (see Verreau,
+_Report on Canadian Archives_, 1874, p. 183). Again, he says that
+he had placed in the hands of the King of England certain letters
+of Montcalm (see _Mr. Roubaud's Deplorable Case, humbly submitted
+to Lord North's Consideration_, in _Historical Magazine_,
+Second Series, VIII. 283). Yet again, he speaks of these same
+letters as "pretended" (Verreau, _as above_). He complains that
+some of them had been published, without his consent, "by a
+Lord belonging to His Majesty's household" (_Mr. Roubaud's
+Deplorable Case_).
+
+The allusion here is evidently to a pamphlet printed in London,
+in 1777, in French and English, and entitled, _Lettres de Monsieur
+le Marquis de Montcalm, Gouverneur-Général en Canada, à
+Messieurs de Berryer et de la Molé, écrites dans les Années 1757,
+1758, et 1759, avec une Version Angloise_. They profess to be
+observations by Montcalm on the English colonies, their political
+character, their trade, and their tendency to independence. They
+bear the strongest marks of being fabricated to suit the times,
+the colonies being then in revolt. The principal letter is one
+addressed to Molé, and bearing date Quebec, Aug. 24, 1759. It
+foretells the loss of her colonies as a consequence to England
+of her probable conquest of Canada. I laid before the Massachusetts
+Historical Society my reasons for believing this letter, like
+the rest, an imposture (see the _Proceedings_ of that Society for
+1869-1870, pp. 112-128). To these reasons it may be added that
+at the date assigned to the letter all correspondence was stopped
+between Canada and France. From the arrival of the English fleet,
+at the end of spring, till its departure, late in autumn, communication
+was completely cut off. It was not till towards the end of
+November, when the river was clear of English ships, that the
+naval commander Kanon ran by the batteries of Quebec and
+carried to France the first news from Canada. Some of the letters
+thus sent were dated a month before, and had waited in Canada
+till Kanon's departure.
+
+Abbé Verreau--a high authority on questions of Canadian history--tells
+me a comparison of the handwriting has convinced him that these pretended
+letters of Montcalm are the work of Roubaud.
+
+On the burial of Montcalm, see Appendix J.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 29
+
+1759, 1760
+
+Sainte-Foy
+
+
+The fleet was gone; the great river was left a solitude; and
+the chill days of a fitful November passed over Quebec in
+alternations of rain and frost, sunshine and snow. The troops,
+driven by cold from their encampment on the Plains, were all
+gathered within the walls. Their own artillery had so battered
+the place that it was not easy to find shelter. The Lower Town
+was a wilderness of scorched and crumbling walls. As you
+ascend Mountain Street, the Bishop's Palace, on the right, was
+a skeleton of tottering masonry, and the buildings on the left
+were a mass of ruin, where ragged boys were playing at seesaw
+among the fallen planks and timbers.[815] Even in the Upper
+Town few of the churches and public buildings had escaped.
+The Cathedral was burned to a shell. The solid front of the
+College of the Jesuits was pockmarked by numberless cannon-balls,
+and the adjacent church of the Order was wofully shattered.
+The church of the Recollects suffered still more. The bombshells
+that fell through the roof had broken into the pavement, and as
+they burst had thrown up the bones and skulls of the dead from
+the graves beneath.[816] Even the more distant Hôtel-Dieu was
+pierced by fifteen projectiles, some of which had exploded in the
+halls and chambers.[817]
+
+[Footnote 815: Drawings made on the spot by Richard Short. These drawings,
+twelve in number, were engraved and published in 1761.]
+
+[Footnote 816: Short's _Views in Quebec_, 1759. Compare Pontbriand,
+in _N.Y. Col. Docs._, X. 1,057.]
+
+[Footnote 817: Casgrain, _Hôtel-Dieu de Québec_, 445.]
+
+The Commissary-General, Berniers, thus describes to
+Bourlamaque the state of the town: "Quebec is nothing but
+a shapeless mass of ruins. Confusion, disorder, pillage reign
+even among the inhabitants, for the English make examples of
+severity every day. Everybody rushes hither and thither, without
+knowing why. Each searches for his possessions, and, not
+finding his own, seizes those of other people. English and
+French, all is chaos alike. The inhabitants, famished and
+destitute, escape to the country. Never was there seen such a
+sight."[818]
+
+[Footnote 818: _Berniers à Bourlamaque, 27 Sept. 1759_.]
+
+Quebec swarmed with troops. There were guardhouses at
+twenty different points; sentinels paced the ramparts, squads
+of men went the rounds, soldiers off duty strolled the streets,
+some in mitre caps and some black three-cornered hats; while
+a ceaseless rolling of drums and a rigid observance of military
+forms betrayed the sense of a still imminent danger. While
+some of the inhabitants left town, others remained, having no
+refuge elsewhere. They were civil to the victors, but severe
+towards their late ruler. "The citizens," says Knox, "particularly
+the females, reproach M. Vaudreuil upon every occasion,
+and give full scope to bitter invectives." He praises the agreeable
+manners and cheerful spirit of the Canadian ladies, concerning
+whom another officer also writes: "It is very surprising
+with what ease the gayety of their tempers enables them to
+bear misfortunes which to us would be insupportable. Families
+whom the calamities of war have reduced from the height of
+luxury to the want of common necessaries laugh, dance, and
+sing, comforting themselves with this reflection--_Fortune de
+guerre_. Their young ladies take the utmost pains to teach our
+officers French; with what view I know not, if it is not that
+they may hear themselves praised, flattered, and courted without
+loss of time."[819]
+
+[Footnote 819: _Alexander Campbell to John Floyd, 22 Oct. 1759_. Campbell
+was a lieutenant of the Highlanders; Lloyd was a Connecticut
+merchant.]
+
+Knox was quartered in a small stable, with a hayloft above
+and a rack and manger at one end: a lodging better than fell
+to the lot of many of his brother officers; and, by means of a
+stove and some help from a carpenter, he says that he made
+himself tolerably comfortable. The change, however, was an
+agreeable one when he was ordered for a week to the General
+Hospital, a mile out of the town, where he was to command
+the guard stationed to protect the inmates and watch the
+enemy. Here were gathered the sick and wounded of both armies,
+nursed with equal care by the nuns, of whom Knox speaks with gratitude
+and respect. "When our poor fellows were ill and ordered to be removed
+from their odious regimental hospital to this general receptacle, they
+were indeed rendered inexpressibly happy. Each patient has his bed, with
+curtains, allotted to him, and a nurse to attend him. Every sick
+or wounded officer has an apartment to himself, and is attended
+by one of these religious sisters, who in general are young,
+handsome, courteous, rigidly reserved, and very respectful.
+Their office of nursing the sick furnishes them with opportunities
+of taking great latitudes if they are so disposed; but I
+never heard any of them charged with the least levity." The
+nuns, on their part, were well pleased with the conduct of
+their new masters, whom one of them describes as the "most
+moderate of all conquerors."
+
+"I lived here," Knox continues, "at the French King's table,
+with an agreeable, polite society of officers, directors, and commissaries.
+Some of the gentlemen were married, and their ladies honored us with their
+company. They were generally cheerful, except when we discoursed on
+the late revolution and the affairs of the campaign; then they seemingly
+gave way to grief, uttered by profound sighs, followed by an _O mon
+Dieu!_" He walked in the garden with the French officers,
+played at cards with them, and passed the time so pleasantly
+that his short stay at the hospital seemed an oasis in his hard
+life of camp and garrison.
+
+Mère de Sainte-Claude, the Superior, a sister of Ramesay,
+late commandant of Quebec, one morning sent him a note of
+invitation to what she called an English breakfast; and though
+the repast answered to nothing within his experience, he says
+that he "fared exceedingly well, and passed near two hours
+most agreeably in the society of this ancient lady and her
+virgin sisters."
+
+The excellent nuns of the General Hospital are to-day what
+their predecessors were, and the scene of their useful labors
+still answers at many points to that described by the careful
+pen of their military guest. Throughout the war they and the
+nuns of the Hôtel-Dieu had been above praise in their assiduous
+devotion to the sick and wounded.
+
+Brigadier Murray, now in command of Quebec, was a gallant
+soldier, upright, humane, generous, eager for distinction,
+and more daring than prudent. He befriended the Canadians,
+issued strict orders against harming them in person or property,
+hanged a soldier who had robbed a citizen of Quebec, and
+severely punished others for slighter offences of the same sort.
+In general the soldiers themselves showed kindness towards the
+conquered people; during harvest they were seen helping them
+to reap their fields, without compensation, and sharing with
+them their tobacco and rations. The inhabitants were disarmed,
+and required to take the oath of allegiance. Murray reported
+in the spring that the whole country, from Cap-Rouge downward,
+was in subjection to the British Crown.[820]
+
+[Footnote 820: _Murray to Pitt, 25 May, 1760_. Murray, _Journal,
+1759, 1760_.]
+
+Late in October it was rumored that some of the French
+ships in the river above Quebec were preparing to run by the
+batteries. This was the squadron which had arrived in the
+spring with supplies, and had lain all summer at Batiscan, in
+the Richelieu, and at other points beyond reach of the English.
+After nearly a month of expectancy, they at length appeared,
+anchored off Sillery on the twenty-first of November, and tried
+to pass the town on the dark night of the twenty-fourth. Seven
+or eight of them succeeded; four others ran aground and were
+set on fire by their crews, excepting one which was stranded
+on the south shore and abandoned. Captain Miller, with a lieutenant
+and above forty men, boarded her; when, apparently through their
+own carelessness, she blew up.[821] Most of the party were killed
+by the explosion, and the rest, including the two officers, were
+left in a horrible condition between life and death. Thus they
+remained till a Canadian, venturing on board in search of plunder,
+found them, called his neighbors to his aid, carried them to his
+own house, and after applying, with the utmost kindness, what simple
+remedies he knew, went over to Quebec and told of the disaster.
+Fortunately for themselves, the sufferers soon died.
+
+[Footnote 821: _Murray to Amherst, 25 Jan. 1760_. Not, as some believed, by
+a train laid by the French.]
+
+December came, and brought the Canadian winter, with
+its fierce light and cold, glaring snowfields, and piercing blasts
+that scorch the cheek like a firebrand. The men were frost-bitten
+as they dug away the dry, powdery drifts that the wind had piled
+against the rampart. The sentries were relieved every hour; yet feet
+and fingers were continually frozen. The clothing of the troops was
+ill-suited to the climate, and, though stoves had been placed in the
+guard and barrack rooms, the supply of fuel constantly fell short.
+The cutting and dragging of wood was the chief task of the garrison
+for many weeks. Parties of axemen, strongly guarded, were always at work in
+the forest of Ste.-Foy, four or five miles from Quebec, and the
+logs were brought to town on sledges dragged by the soldiers.
+Eight of them were harnessed in pairs to each sledge; and as
+there was always danger from Indians and bushrangers, every
+man carried his musket slung at his back. The labor was prodigious;
+for frequent snowstorms made it necessary again and again to beat a
+fresh track through the drifts. The men bore their hardships with
+admirable good humor; and once a party of them on their return, dragging
+their load through the street, met a Canadian, also with a load of wood,
+which was drawn by a team of dogs harnessed much like themselves. They
+accosted them as yoke-fellows, comrades, and brothers; asked
+them what allowance of pork and rum they got; and invited
+them and their owner to mess at the regimental barracks.
+
+The appearance of the troops on duty within the town, as
+described by Knox, was scarcely less eccentric. "Our guards
+on the grand parade make a most grotesque appearance in
+their different dresses; and our inventions to guard us against
+the extreme rigor of this climate are various beyond imagination.
+The uniformity as well as nicety of the clean, methodical
+soldier is buried in the rough, fur-wrought garb of the frozen
+Laplander; and we rather resemble a masquerade than a body
+of regular troops, insomuch that I have frequently been accosted
+by my acquaintances, whom, though their voices were familiar to me,
+I could not discover, or conceive who they were. Besides, every man
+seems to be in a continual hurry; for instead of walking soberly
+through the streets, we are obliged to observe a running or trotting pace."
+
+Early in January there was a storm of sleet, followed by
+severe frost, which glazed the streets with ice. Knox, being
+ordered to mount guard in the Lower Town, found the descent
+of Mountain Street so slippery that it was impossible to walk
+down with safety, especially as the muskets of the men were
+loaded; and the whole party, seating themselves on the ground,
+slid one after another to the foot of the hill. The Highlanders,
+in spite of their natural hardihood, suffered more from the cold
+than the other troops, as their national costume was but a
+sorry defence against the Canadian winter. A detachment of
+these breechless warriors being on guard at the General
+Hospital, the nuns spent their scanty leisure in knitting for
+them long woollen hose, which they gratefully accepted, though
+at a loss to know whether modesty or charity inspired the gift.
+
+From the time when the English took possession of Quebec,
+reports had come in through deserters that Lévis meant to attack
+and recover it. Early in November there was a rumor that he was about
+to march upon it with fifteen thousand men. In December word came
+that he was on his way, resolved to storm it on or about the twenty-second,
+and dine within the walls, under the French flag, on Christmas Day.
+He failed to appear; but in January a deserter said that he had prepared
+scaling-ladders, and was training his men to use them by assaults
+on mock ramparts of snow. There was more tangible evidence
+that the enemy was astir. Murray had established two fortified outposts,
+one at Ste.-Foy, and the other farther on, at Old Lorette. War-parties
+hovered round both, and kept the occupants in alarm. A large body of
+French grenadiers appearedat the latter place in February, and drove
+off a herd of cattle; when a detachment of rangers, much inferior in
+number, set upon them, put them to flight, and recovered the plunder.
+At the same time a party of regulars, Canadians, andIndians took up a
+strong position near the church at Point Levi, and sent a message to the
+English officers that a large company of expert hairdressers were ready
+to wait upon them whenever they required their services. The allusion
+was of course to the scalp-lifting practices of the Indians and
+bushrangers.
+
+The river being now hard frozen, Murray sent over a detachment
+of light infantry under Major Dalling. A sharp fight ensued on the snow,
+around the church, and in the neighboringforest, where the English
+soldiers, taught to use snow-shoes by the rangers, routed the enemy, and
+killed or captured a considerable number. A third post was then established
+at the church and the priest's house adjacent. Some days after, the
+French came back in large numbers, fortified themselves with
+felled trees, and then attacked the English position. The firing
+being heard at Quebec, the light infantry went over to the
+scene of action, and Murray himself followed on the ice, with
+the Highlanders and other troops. Before he came up, the
+French drew off and retreated to their breastwork, where they
+were attacked and put to flight, the nimble Highlanders capturing
+a few, while the greater part made their escape.
+
+As it became known that the French held a strong post at
+Le Calvaire, near St. Augustin, two days' march from Quebec,
+Captain Donald MacDonald was sent with five hundred men
+to attack it. He found the enemy behind a breastwork of logs
+protected by an abattis. The light infantry advanced and
+poured in a brisk fire; on which the French threw down their
+arms and fled. About eighty of them were captured; but their
+commander, Herbin, escaped, leaving to the victors his watch,
+hat and feather, wine, liquor-case, and mistress. The English
+had six men wounded and nearly a hundred frost-bitten.[822]
+
+[Footnote 822: Knox, II. 275. Murray, _Journal_. Fraser, _Journal_.
+Vaudreuil, in his usual way, multiplies the English force by three.]
+
+Captain Hazen and his rangers soon after had a notable
+skirmish. They were posted in a house not far from the station
+at Lorette. A scout came in with news that a large party of
+the enemy was coming to attack them; on which Hazen left a
+sergeant and fourteen men in the house, and set out for Lorette
+with the rest to ask a reinforcement. On the way he met the
+French, who tried to surround him; and he told his men to
+fall back to the house. They remonstrated, saying that they
+"felt spry," and wanted to show the regulars that provincials
+could fight as well as red-coats. Thereupon they charged the
+enemy, gave them a close volley of buckshot and bullets, and
+put them to flight; but scarcely had they reloaded their guns
+when they were fired upon from behind. Another body of assailants had
+got into their rear, in order to cut them off. Theyfaced about,
+attacked them, and drove them back like the first. The two French
+parties then joined forces, left Hazen topursue his march, and
+attacked the fourteen rangers in the house, who met them with a
+brisk fire. Hazen and his men heard the noise; and, hastening back,
+fell upon the rear of the French, while those in the house sallied
+and attacked them infront. They were again routed; and the rangers
+chased them two miles, killing six of them and capturing seven. Knox,
+in whose eyes provincials usually find no favor, launches this
+time into warm commendation of "our simply honest New England men."
+
+Fresh reports came in from time to time that the French
+were gathering all their strength to recover Quebec; and late
+in February these stories took a definite shape. A deserter from
+Montreal brought Murray a letter from an officer of rangers,
+who was a prisoner at that place, warning him that eleven
+thousand men were on the point of marching to attack him.
+Three other deserters soon after confirmed the news, but
+added that the scheme had met with a check; for as it was intended
+to carry the town by storm, a grand rehearsal had taken
+place, with the help of scaling-ladders planted against the wall
+of a church; whereupon the Canadians rushed with such zeal
+to the assault that numerous broken legs, arms, and heads
+ensued, along with ruptures, sprains, bruises, and dislocations;
+insomuch, said the story, that they became disgusted with the
+attempt. All remained quiet till after the middle of April, when
+the garrison was startled by repeated assurances that at the first
+breaking-up of the ice all Canada would be upon them. Murray
+accordingly ordered the French inhabitants to leave the town
+within three days.[823]
+
+[Footnote 823: _Ordonnance faite à Québec le 21 Avril, 1760, par son
+Excellence, Jacques Murray_.]
+
+In some respects the temper of the troops was excellent. In
+the petty warfare of the past winter they had generally been
+successful, proving themselves a match for the bushrangers
+and Indians on their own ground; so that, as Sergeant Johnson
+remarks, in his odd way, "Very often a small number of our
+men would put to flight a considerable party of those Cannibals."
+They began to think themselves invincible; yet they had
+the deepest cause for anxiety. The effective strength of the garrison
+was reduced to less than half, and of those that remained
+fit for duty, hardly a man was entirely free from scurvy. The
+rank and file had no fresh provisions; and, in spite of every
+precaution, this malignant disease, aided by fever and dysentery,
+made no less havoc among them than among the crews of Jacques Cartier
+at this same place two centuries before. Of about seven thousand men
+left at Quebec in the autumn, scarcely more than three thousand were
+fit for duty on the twenty-fourth of April.[824] About seven hundred
+had found temporary burial in the snowdrifts, as the frozen ground was
+impenetrable as a rock.
+
+[Footnote 824: _Return of the present State of His Majesty's Forces
+in Garrison at Quebec, 24 April, 1760_ (Public Record Office).]
+
+Meanwhile Vaudreuil was still at Montreal, where he says
+that he "arrived just in time to take the most judicious measures
+and prevent General Amherst from penetrating into thecolony."[825]
+During the winter some of the French regulars were kept in garrison
+at the outposts, and the rest quartered on the inhabitants; while the
+Canadians were dismissed to theirhomes, subject to be mustered again
+at the call of the Governor. Both he and Lévis were full of the hope
+of retaking Quebec. He had spies and agents among Murray's soldiers;
+and though the citizens had sworn allegiance to King George,
+some of them were exceedingly useful to his enemies. Vaudreuil
+had constant information of the state of the garrison. He knew that
+the scurvy was his active and powerful ally, and that the hospitals
+and houses of Quebec were crowded withthe sick. At the end of March
+he was informed that more than half the British were on the sick-list;
+and it was presentlyrumored that Murray had only two thousand men able
+to bear arms.[826] With every allowance for exaggeration in these reports,
+it was plain that the French could attack their invaders in
+overwhelming force.
+
+[Footnote 825: _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 30 Oct. 1759_.]
+
+[Footnote 826: _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 15 Avril, 1760_.]
+
+The difficulty was to find means of transportation. The depth
+of the snow and the want of draught animals made it necessary
+to wait till the river should become navigable; but preparation
+was begun at once. Lévis was the soul of the enterprise. Provisions
+were gathered from far and near; cannon, mortars, and munitions of
+war were brought from the frontier posts, and butcher-knives were
+fitted to the muzzles of guns to servethe Canadians in place of
+bayonets. All the workmen aboutMontreal were busied in making tools
+and gun-carriages. Stores were impressed from the merchants; and
+certain articles, which could not otherwise be had, were smuggled,
+with extraordinary address, out of Quebec itself.[827] Early in
+spring the militia received orders to muster for the march. There
+were doubts and discontent; but, says a contemporary, "sensible
+people dared not speak, for if they did they were set down as
+English." Some there were who in secret called the scheme
+"Lévis' folly;" yet it was perfectly rational, well conceived,
+and conducted with vigor and skill. Two frigates, two sloops-of-war,
+and a number of smaller craft still remained in the river, under
+command of Vauquelin, the brave officer who haddistinguished himself
+at the siege of Louisbourg. The storesand cannon were placed on
+board these vessels, the army embarkedin a fleet of bateaux, and on
+the twentieth of April thewhole set out together for the scene of
+action. They comprised eight battalions of troops of the line and
+two of colony troops; with the colonial artillery, three thousand
+Canadians, and four hundred Indians. When they left Montreal, their
+effective strength, besides Indians, is said by Lévis to have been six
+thousand nine hundred and ten, a number which was increased
+as he advanced by the garrisons of Jacques-Cartier, Déschambault,
+and Pointe-aux-Trembles, as well as by the Canadians on both side
+of the St. Lawrence below Three Rivers; forVaudreuil had ordered
+the militia captains to join his standard, with all their followers,
+armed and equipped, on pain of death.[828] These accessions appear
+to have raised his force to between eight and nine thousand.
+
+[Footnote 827: __Vaudreuil au Ministre, 23 Avril, 1760_.]
+
+[Footnote 828: _Vaudreuil aux Capitaines de Milice, 16 Avril, 1760_. I am
+indebted to Abbé H.R. Casgrain for a copy of this letter.]
+
+The ice still clung to the river banks, the weather was bad,
+and the navigation difficult; but on the twenty-sixth the army
+landed at St. Augustin, crossed the river of Cap-Rouge on
+bridges of their own making, and moved upon the English outpost
+at Old Lorette. The English abandoned it and fell backto Ste.-Foy.
+Lévis followed. Night came on, with a gale from the southeast, a
+driving rain, and violent thunder, unusual at that season. The road,
+a bad and broken one, led through themarsh called La Suède. Causeways
+and bridges broke down under the weight of the marching columns and
+plunged the men into water, mud, and half-thawed ice. "It was a
+frightful night," says Lévis; "so dark that but for the flashes of
+lightning we should have been forced to stop." The break of day found
+the vanguard at the edge of the woods bordering the farther
+side of the marsh. The storm had abated; and they saw before
+them, a few hundred yards distant, through the misty air, a
+ridge of rising ground on which stood the parish church of
+Ste.-Foy, with a row of Canadian houses stretching far to
+right and left. This ridge was the declivity of the plateau of
+Quebec; the same which as it approaches the town, some five
+or six miles towards the left, takes the names of Côte d'Abraham
+and Côte Ste.-Geneviève. The church and the houses were occupied by
+British troops, who, as the French debouchedfrom the woods, opened
+on them with cannon, and compelledthem to fall back. Though the ridge
+at this point is not steep, the position was a strong one; but had
+Lévis known how fewwere as yet there to oppose him, he might have
+carried it byan assault in front. As it was, he resolved to wait
+till night, and then flank the enemy by a march to the right along
+the border of the wood.
+
+It was the morning of Sunday, the twenty-seventh. Till late
+in the night before, Murray and the garrison of Quebec were
+unaware of the immediate danger; and they learned it at last
+through a singular stroke of fortune. Some time after midnight
+the watch on board the frigate "Racehorse," which hadwintered in
+the dock at the Lower Town, heard a feeble cryof distress from the
+midst of the darkness that covered the St. Lawrence. Captain Macartney
+was at once informed of it; and, through an impulse of humanity,
+he ordered a boat to put outamid the drifting ice that was sweeping
+up the river with thetide. Guided by the faint cries, the sailors
+found a man lying on a large cake of ice, drenched, and half dead
+with cold; and, taking him with difficulty into their boat, they
+carried him to the ship. It was long before he was able to speak
+intelligibly; but at last, being revived by cordials and other remedies,
+he found strength to tell his benefactors that he was a sergeant of
+artillery in the army that had come to retake Quebec; that in
+trying to land a little above Cap-Rouge, his boat had been
+overset, his companions drowned, and he himself saved by
+climbing upon the cake of ice where they had discovered him;
+that he had been borne by the ebb tide down to the Island of
+Orleans, and then brought up to Quebec by the flow; and,
+finally, that Lévis was marching on the town with twelve
+thousand men at his back.
+
+He was placed in a hammock and carried up Mountain
+Street to the quarters of the General, who was roused from
+sleep at three o'clock in the morning to hear his story. The
+troops were ordered under arms; and soon after daybreak
+Murray marched out with ten pieces of cannon and more than
+half the garrison. His principal object was to withdraw the
+advanced posts at Ste.-Foy, Cap-Rouge, Sillery, and Anse du
+Foulon. The storm had turned to a cold, drizzling rain, and the
+men, as they dragged their cannon through snow and mud,
+were soon drenched to the skin. On reaching Ste.-Foy, they
+opened a brisk fire from the heights upon the woods which now
+covered the whole army of Lévis; and being rejoined by the
+various outposts, returned to Quebec in the afternoon, after
+blowing up the church, which contained a store of munitions
+that they had no means of bringing off. When they entered
+Quebec a gill of rum was served out to each man; several
+houses in the suburb of St. Roch were torn down to supply
+them with firewood for drying their clothes; and they were left
+to take what rest they could against the morrow. The French,
+meanwhile, took possession of the abandoned heights; and
+while some filled the houses, barns, and sheds of Ste.-Foy and
+its neighborhood, others, chiefly Canadians, crossed the
+plateau to seek shelter in the village of Sillery.
+
+Three courses were open to Murray. He could defend Quebec,
+fortify himself outside the walls on the Buttes-à-Neveu,
+or fight Lévis at all risks. The walls of Quebec could not withstand
+a cannonade, and he had long intended to intrench his army on the
+Buttes, as a better position of defence; but the ground, frozen like
+a rock, had thus far made the plan impracticable. Even now, though
+he surface was thawed, the soil beneath was still frost-bound, making
+the task of fortificationextremely difficult, if indeed the French
+would give him time for it. Murray was young in years, and younger
+still in impulse. He was ardent, fearless, ambitious, and emulous
+of the fame of Wolfe. "The enemy," he soon after wrote to Pitt, "was
+greatly superior in number, it is true; but when I considered
+that our little army was in the habit of beating the enemy, and
+had a very fine train of field artillery; that shutting ourselves
+at once within the walls was putting all upon the single chance
+of holding out for a considerable time a wretched fortification,
+I resolved to give them battle; and, half an hour after six in
+the morning, we marched with all the force I could muster,
+namely, three thousand men."[829] Some of these had left the
+hospitals of their own accord in their eagerness to take part in
+the fray.
+
+[Footnote 829: _Murray to Pitt, 25 May, 1760_.]
+
+The rain had ceased; but as the column emerged from St.
+Louis Gate, the scene before them was a dismal one. As yet
+there was no sign of spring. Each leafless bush and tree was
+dark with clammy moisture; patches of bare earth lay oozy and
+black on the southern slopes: but elsewhere the ground was
+still covered with snow, in some places piled in drifts, and
+everywhere sodden with rain; while each hollow and depression
+was full of that half-liquid, lead-colored mixture of snow and
+water which new England schoolboys call "slush," for all
+drainage was stopped by the frozen subsoil. The troops had
+with them two howitzers and twenty field-pieces, which had
+been captured when Quebec surrendered, and had formed a
+part of that very battery which Ramesay refused to Montcalm
+at the battle of the autumn before. As there were no horses, the
+cannon were dragged by some of the soldiers, while others
+carried picks and spades; for as yet Murray seems not to have
+made up his mind whether to fortify or fight. Thus they advanced
+nearly half a mile; till reaching the Buttes-à-Neveu, they formed
+in order of battle along their farther slopes, on thesame ground
+that Montcalm had occupied on the morning of his death.
+
+Murray went forward to reconnoitre. Immediately before
+him was a rising ground, and, beyond it, a tract of forest called
+Sillery Wood, a mile or more distant. Nearer, on the left, he
+could see two blockhouses built by the English in the last
+autumn, not far from the brink of the plateau above the Anse
+du Foulon where Wolfe climbed the heights. On the right, at
+the opposite brink of the plateau, was a house and a fortified
+wind mill belonging to one Dumont. The blockhouses, the mill,
+and the rising ground between them were occupied by the
+vanguard of Lévis' army; while, behind, he could descry the
+main body moving along the road from Ste.-Foy, then turning,
+battalion after battalion, and rapidly marching across the
+plateau along the edge of Sillery Wood. The two brigades of
+the leading column had already reached the blockhouses by
+the Anse du Foulon, and formed themselves as the right wing
+of the French line of battle; but those behind were not yet in
+position.
+
+Murray, kindling at the sight, thought that so favorable a
+moment was not to be lost, and ordered an advance. His line
+consisted of eight battalions, numbering a little above two
+thousand. In the intervals between them the cannon were
+dragged through slush and mud by five hundred men; and, at
+a little distance behind, the remaining two battalions followed
+as a reserve. The right flank was covered by Dalling's light
+infantry; the left by Hazen's company of rangers and a hundred
+volunteers under Major MacDonald. They all moved forward
+till they were on nearly the same ground where Wolfe's army had
+been drawn up. Then the cannon unlimbered, andopened on the French
+with such effect that Lévis, who was on horseback in the middle
+of the field, sent orders to the corpsof his left to fall back
+to the cover of the woods. The movement caused some disorder.
+Murray mistook it for retreat, and commanded a farther advance.
+The whole British line, extending itself towards the right, pushed
+eagerly forward: in doing which it lost the advantage of the
+favorable position it had occupied; and the battalions of the
+right soon found themselves on low grounds, wading in half-melted
+snow, which in some parts was knee deep. Here the cannon could no
+longer be worked with effect. Just in front, a small brook ran along
+the hollow, through soft mud and saturated snowdrifts, then
+gurgled down the slope on the right, to lose itself in the
+meadows of the St. Charles. A few rods before this brook
+stood the house and windmill of Dumont, occupied by five
+companies of French grenadiers. The light infantry at once
+attacked them. A furious struggle ensued, till at length the
+French gave way, and the victors dashed forward to follow
+up their advantage. Their ardor cost them dear. The corps on
+the French left, which had fallen back into the woods, now
+advanced again as the cannon ceased to play, rushing on without
+order but with the utmost impetuosity, led by a gallant old
+officer, Colonel Dalquier, of the battalion of Béarn. A bullet in
+the body could not stop him. The light infantry were overwhelmed;
+and such of them as were left alive were driven back in confusion
+upon the battalions behind them, along the front of which they
+remained dispersed for some minutes, preventing the troops from
+firing on the advancing French, whothus had time to reform their
+ranks. At length the light infantrygot themselves out of the way
+and retired to the rear, where, having lost nearly all their officers,
+they remained during the rest of the fight. Another struggle followed
+for the house and mill of Dumont, of which the French again got
+possession, to be again driven out; and it remained, as if by mutual
+consent, unoccupied for some time by either party. For above an hour
+more the fight was hot and fierce. "We drove them back as
+long as we had ammunition for our cannon," says Sergeant
+Johnson; but now it failed, and no more was to be had, because,
+in the eccentric phrase of the sergeant, the tumbrils were "bogged
+in deep pits of snow."
+
+While this was passing on the English right, it fared still
+worse with them on the left. The advance of the line was no
+less disastrous here than there. It brought the troops close to
+the woods which circled round to this point from the French
+rear, and from which the Canadians, covered by the trees, now
+poured on them a deadly fire. Here, as on the right, Lévis had
+ordered his troops to fall back for a time; but when the fire of
+the English cannon ceased, they advanced again, and their
+artillery, though consisting of only three pieces, played its part
+with good effect. Hazen's rangers and MacDonald's volunteers
+attacked and took the two adjacent blockhouses, but could not
+hold them. Hazen was wounded, MacDonald killed, and their
+party overpowered. The British battalions held their ground
+till the French, whose superior numbers enabled them to extend
+themselves on both sides beyond the English line, made a
+furious attack on the left wing, in front and flank. The reserves
+were ordered up, and the troops stood for a time in sullen
+desperation under the storm of bullets; but they were dropping
+fast in the blood-stained snow, and the order came at length
+to fall back. They obeyed with curses: "Damn it, what is falling
+back but retreating?"[830] The right wing, also outflanked,
+followed the example of the left. Some of the corps tried to
+drag off their cannon; but being prevented by the deep mud
+and snow they spiked the pieces and abandoned them. The
+French followed close, hoping to cut off the fugitives from
+the gates of Quebec; till Lévis, seeing that the retreat, though
+precipitate, was not entirely without order, thought best to
+stop the pursuit.
+
+[Footnote 830: Knox, II. 295.]
+
+The fight lasted about two hours, and did credit to both
+sides. The Canadians not only showed their usual address and
+courage when under cover of woods, but they also fought well
+in the open field; and the conduct of the whole French force
+proved how completely they had recovered from the panic of
+the last autumn. From the first they were greatly superior in
+number, and at the middle and end of the affair, when they
+had all reached the field, they were more than two against
+one.[831] The English, on the other hand, besides the opportunity
+of attacking before their enemies had completely formed, had
+a vastly superior artillery and a favorable position, both which
+advantages they lost after their second advance.
+
+[Footnote 831: See Appendix K.]
+
+Some curious anecdotes are told of the retreat. Colonel
+Fraser, of the Highlanders, received a bullet which was no
+doubt half spent, and which, with excellent precision, hit the
+base of his queue, so deadening the shock that it gave him no
+other inconvenience than a stiff neck. Captain Hazen, of the
+rangers, badly wounded, was making his way towards the gate,
+supported by his servant, when he saw at a great distance
+a French officer leading a file of men across a rising ground;
+whereupon he stopped and told the servant to give him his
+gun. A volunteer named Thompson, who was near by and who
+tells the story, thought that he was out of his senses; but Hazen
+persisted, seated himself on the ground, took a long aim, fired,
+and brought down his man. Thompson congratulated him. "A
+chance shot may kill the devil," replied Hazen; and resigning
+himself again to the arms of his attendant, he reached the
+town, recovered from his wound, and lived to be a general of
+the Revolution.[832]
+
+[Footnote 832: Thompson, deceived by Hazen's baptismal name, Moses,
+thought that he was a Jew. (_Revue Canadienne_, IV, 865.) He was,
+however, of an old New England Puritan family. See the Hazen
+genealogy in _Historic-Genealogical Register_, XXXIII.]
+
+The English lost above a thousand, or more than a third
+of their whole number, killed, wounded, and missing.[833] They
+carried off some of their wounded, but left others behind;
+and the greater part of these were murdered, scalped, and
+mangled by the Indians, all of whom were converts from the
+mission villages. English writers put the French loss at two
+thousand and upwards, which is no doubt a gross exaggeration.
+Lévis declares that the number did not exceed six or eight hundred;
+but afterwards gives a list which makes it eight hundred and
+thirty-three.
+
+[Footnote 833: _Return of Killed, Wounded, and Missing_, signed J. Murray.]
+
+Murray had left three or four hundred men to guard Quebec
+when the rest marched out; and adding them to those who had returned
+scathless from the fight, he now had about twenty-four hundred rank
+and file fit for duty. Yet even the troops that were rated as effective
+were in so bad a condition that the hyperbolical Sergeant Johnson
+calls them "half-starved, scorbutic skeletons." That worthy soldier,
+commonly a model of dutiful respect to those above him, this time so
+far forgets himself as to criticise his general for the "mad,
+enthusiastic zeal" by which he nearly lost the fruits of Wolfe's
+victory. In fact, the fate of Quebec trembled in the balance.
+"We were too few and weak to stand an assault," continues
+Johnson, "and we were almost in as deep a distress as we
+could be." At first there was some drunkenness and some
+plundering of private houses; but Murray stopped the one by
+staving the rum-barrels of the sutlers, and the other by hanging
+the chief offender. Within three days order, subordination,
+hope, and almost confidence were completely restored. Not
+a man was idle. The troops left their barracks and lay in tents
+close to their respective alarm posts. On the open space by
+St. Louis Gate a crowd of convalescents were busy in filling
+sand-bags to strengthen the defences, while the sick and
+wounded in the hospitals made wadding for the cannon. The
+ramparts were faced with fascines, of which a large stock
+had been provided in the autumn; _chevaux-de-frise_ were
+planted in exposed places; an outwork was built to protect
+St. Louis Gate; embrasures were cut along the whole length
+of the walls; and the French cannon captured when the town
+was taken were planted against their late owners. Every man
+was tasked to the utmost of his strength; and the garrison,
+gaunt, worn, besmirched with mud, looked less like soldiers
+than like overworked laborers.
+
+The conduct of the officers troubled the spirit of Sergeant
+Johnson. It shocked his sense of the fitness of things to see
+them sharing the hard work of the private men, and he thus
+gives utterance to his feelings: "None but those who were
+present on the spot can imagine the grief of heart the soldiers
+felt to see their officers yoked in the harness, dragging up
+cannon from the Lower Town; to see gentlemen, who were set over them
+by His Majesty to command and keep them to their duty, working at
+the batteries with the barrow, pickaxe, and spade." The effect,
+however, was admirable. The spirit of the men rose to the crisis.
+Murray, no less than his officers, had all their confidence; for if
+he had fallen into a fatal error, he atoned for it now by unconquerable
+resolution and exhaustless fertility of resource. Deserters said that
+Lévis would assault the town; and the soldiers replied: "Let him come on;
+he will catch a Tartar."
+
+Lévis and his army were no less busy in digging trenches
+along the stony back of the Buttes-à-Neveu. Every day the
+English fire grew hotter; till at last nearly a hundred and fifty
+cannon vomited iron upon them from the walls of Quebec,
+and May was well advanced before they could plant a single
+gun to reply. Their vessels had landed artillery at the Anse
+du Foulon; but their best hope lay in the succors they daily
+expected from the river below. In the autumn Lévis, with a
+view to his intended enterprise, had sent a request to Versailles
+that a ship laden with munitions and heavy siege-guns should be sent
+from France in time to meet him at Quebec in April; while he looked
+also for another ship, which had wintered at Gaspé, and which therefore
+might reach him as soon as navigation opened. The arrival of these
+vessels would have made the position of the English doubly critical; and,
+on the other hand, should an English squadron appear first,
+Lévis would be forced to raise the siege. Thus each side
+watched the river with an anxiety that grew constantly more
+intense; and the English presently descried signals along the
+shore which seemed to say that French ships were moving
+up the St. Lawrence. Meantime, while doing their best to
+compass each other's destruction, neither side forgot the
+courtesies of war. Lévis heard that Murray liked spruce-beer
+for his table, and sent him a flag of truce with a quantity of
+spruce-boughs and a message of compliment; Murray responded
+with a Cheshire cheese, and Lévis rejoined with a present of
+partridges.
+
+Bad and scanty fare, excessive toil, and broken sleep were
+telling ominously on the strength of the garrison when, on the
+ninth of May, Murray, as he sat pondering over the fire at
+his quarters in St. Louis Street, was interrupted by an officer
+who came to tell him that there was a ship-of-war in the
+Basin beating up towards the town. Murray started from his
+revery, and directed that British colors should be raised immediately
+on Cape Diamond.[834] The halyards being out of order, a sailor
+climbed the staff and drew up the flag to its place. The news had
+spread; men and officers, divided between hope and fear, crowded
+to the rampart by the Château, where Durham Terrace now overlooks
+the St. Lawrence, and every eye was strained on the approaching ship,
+eager to see whether she would show the red flag of England or the
+white one of France. Slowly her colors rose to the mast-head and
+unfurled to the wind the red cross of St. George. It was the
+British frigate "Lowestoffe." She anchored before the Lower
+Town, and saluted the garrison with twenty-one guns. "The
+gladness of the troops," says Knox, "is not to be expressed.
+Both officers and soldiers mounted the parapet in the face
+of the enemy and huzzaed with their hats in the air for almost
+an hour. The garrison, the enemy's camp, the bay, and circumjacent
+country resounded with our shouts and the thunder of our artillery;
+for the gunners were so elated that they did nothing but load and
+fire for a considerable time. In short, the general satisfaction
+is not to be conceived, except by a person who had suffered the
+extremities of a siege, and been destined, with his brave friends
+and countrymen, to the scalping-knives of a faithless conqueror
+and his barbarious allies." The "Lowestoffe" brought news that a
+British squadron was at the mouth of the St. Lawrence, and would
+reach Quebec in a few days.
+
+[Footnote 834: Thompson in _Revue Canadienne_, IV. 866.]
+
+Lévis, in ignorance of this, still clung to the hope that
+French ships would arrive strong enough to overpower the
+unwelcome stranger. His guns, being at last in position,
+presently opened fire upon a wall that was not built to bear
+the brunt of heavy shot; but an artillery better and more
+numerous than his own almost silenced them, and his gunners
+were harassed by repeated sallies. The besiegers had now no
+real chance of success unless they could carry the place by
+storm, to which end they had provided abundant scaling-ladders
+as well as petards to burst in the gates. They made, however, no
+attempt to use them. A week passed, when, on the evening of the
+fifteenth, the ship of the line "Vanguard" and the frigate "Diana"
+sailed into the harbor; and on the next morning the "Diana" and
+the "Lowestoffe" passed the town to attack the French vessels
+in the river above. These were six in all,--two frigates, two
+smaller armed ships, and two schooners; the whole under command
+of the gallant Vauquelin. He did not belie his reputation; fought
+his ship with persistent bravery till his ammunition was spent,
+refused even then to strike his flag, and being made prisoner,
+was treated by his captors with distinguished honor. The
+other vessels made little or no resistance. One of them threw
+her guns overboard and escaped; the rest ran ashore and
+were burned.
+
+The destruction of his vessels was a death-blow to the
+hopes of Lévis, for they contained his stores of food and
+ammunition. He had passed the preceding night in great agitation;
+and when the cannonade on the river ceased, he hastened to raise the
+siege. In the evening deserters from hiscamp told Murray that the
+French were in full retreat; on which all the English batteries
+opened, firing at random through the darkness, and sending cannon-balls
+_en ricochet_, bowling by scores together, over the Plains of
+Abraham on the heels of the retiring enemy. Murray marched out at
+dawn of day to fall upon their rear; but, with a hundred and
+fifty cannon bellowing behind them, they had made such speed that,
+though he pushed over the marsh to Old Lorette, he could not overtake
+them; they had already crossed the river of Cap-Rouge. Why, with
+numbers still superior, they went off in such haste, it is hard to
+say. They left behind them thirty-four cannon and six mortars, with
+petards, scaling-ladders, tents, ammunition, baggage, intrenching
+tools, many of their muskets, and all their sick and wounded.
+
+The effort to recover Quebec did great honor to the enterprise
+of the French; but it availed them nothing, served only
+to waste resources that seemed already at the lowest ebb,
+and gave fresh opportunity of plunder to Cadet and his crew,
+who failed not to make use of it.
+
+After the battle of Ste.-Foy Murray sent the frigate "Racehorse"
+to Halifax with news of his defeat, and from Halifax it was sent
+to England. The British public were taken by surprise. "Who the
+deuce was thinking of Quebec?" says Horace Walpole. "America was
+like a book one has read and done with; but here we are on a
+sudden reading our book backwards." Ten days passed, and then
+came word that the siege was raised and that the French were gone;
+upon which Walpole wrote to General Conway: "Well, Quebec is
+come to life again. Last night I went to see the Holdernesses.
+I met my Lady in a triumphal car, drawn by a Manx horse,
+thirteen little fingers high, with Lady Emily. Mr. Milbank
+was walking by himself in ovation after the car, and they
+were going to see the bonfire at the alehouse at the corner.
+The whole procession returned with me; and from the Countess's
+dressing-room we saw a battery fired before the house, the mob crying,
+'God bless the good news!' These are all the particulars I know of the
+siege. My Lord would have showed me the journal; but we amused ourselves
+much better in going to eat peaches from the new Dutch stoves
+[_hothouses_]."
+
+NOTE: On the battle of Ste.-Foy and the subsequent siege,
+Lévis, _Guerre du Canada. Relation de la seconde Bataille de
+Québec et du Siége de cette Ville_ (there are several copies of this
+paper, with different titles and some variation). _Murray to Amherst,
+30 April, 1760_. Murray, _Journal kept at Quebec from Sept.
+18, 1759, to May 17, 1760_ (Public Record Office, _America and
+West Indies_, XCIX.). _Murray to Pitt, 25 May, 1760_. _Letter from
+an Officer of the Royal Americans at Quebec, 24 May, 1760_ (in
+_London Magazine_ and several periodical papers of the time).
+Fraser, _Journal_ (Quebec Hist. Soc.); Johnstone, _Campaign of
+1760_ (Ibid.). _Relation de ce qui s'est passé au Siége de Québec,
+par une Religieuse de l'Hôpital Général_ (Ibid.). _Memoirs of the
+Siege of Quebec_, by Sergeant John Johnson. _Mémoires sur le
+Canada, 1749-1760_. Letters of Lévis, Bourlamaque, and Vaudreuil,
+May, June, 1760. Several letters from officers at Quebec
+in provincial newspapers. Knox, II. 292-322. _Plan of the Battle
+and Situation of the British and French on the Heights of Abraham,
+the 28th of April, 1760_,--an admirable plan, attached to
+the great plan of operations at Quebec before mentioned, and
+necessary to an understanding of the position and movements of
+the two armies (British Museum, King's Maps).
+
+The narratives of Mante, Entick, Wynne, Smith, and other
+secondary writers give no additional light. On the force engaged
+on each side, see Appendix K.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 30
+
+1760
+
+Fall of Canada
+
+
+The retreat of Lévis left Canada little hope but in a speedy
+peace. This hope was strong, for a belief widely prevailed
+that, even if the colony should be subdued, it would be restored
+to France by treaty. Its available force did not exceed
+eight or ten thousand men, as most of the Canadians below
+the district of Three Rivers had sworn allegiance to King
+George; and though many of them had disregarded the oath
+to join the standard of Lévis, they could venture to do so no
+longer. The French had lost the best of their artillery, their
+gunpowder was falling short, their provisions would barely
+carry them to harvest time, and no more was to be hoped
+for, since a convoy of ships which had sailed from France
+at the end of winter, laden with supplies of all kinds, had
+been captured by the English. The blockade of the St. Lawrence
+was complete. The Western Indians would not fight, and even those
+of the mission villages were wavering and insolent.
+
+Yet Vaudreuil and Lévis exerted themselves for defence
+with an energy that does honor to them both. "Far from
+showing the least timidity," says the ever-modest Governor,
+"I have taken positions such as may hide our weakness from
+the enemy."[835] He stationed Rochbeaucourt with three hundred
+men at Pointe-aux-Trembles; Repentigny with two hundred
+at Jacques-Cartier; and Dumas with twelve hundred at
+Deschambault to watch the St. Lawrence and, if possible,
+prevent Murray from moving up the river. Bougainville was
+stationed at Isle-aux-Noix to bar the approach from Lake
+Champlain, and a force under La Corne was held ready to
+defend the rapids above Montreal, should the English attempt
+that dangerous passage. Prisoners taken by war parties near
+Crown Point gave exaggerated reports of hostile preparation,
+and doubled and trebled the forces that were mustering against
+Canada.
+
+[Footnote 835: _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 22 Juin, 1760_.]
+
+These forces were nevertheless considerable. Amherst had
+resolved to enter the colony by all its three gates at once,
+and, advancing from east, west, and south, unite at Montreal
+and crush it as in the jaws of a vice. Murray was to ascend
+the St. Lawrence from Quebec, while Brigadier Haviland forced an
+entrance by way of Lake Champlain, and Amherst himself led the
+main army down the St. Lawrence from Lake Ontario. This last
+route was long, circuitous, difficult, andfull of danger from
+the rapids that obstructed the river. His choice of it for his
+chief line of operation, instead of the shorter and easier way
+of Lake Champlain, was meant, no doubt, to prevent the French
+army from escaping up the Lakes to Detroit and the other wilderness
+posts, where it might have protracted the war for an indefinite
+time; while the plan adopted, if successful, would make its capture
+certain. The plan was a critical one. Three armies advancing
+from three different points, hundreds of miles apart, by routes
+full of difficulty, and with no possibility of intercommunication,
+were to meet at the same place at the same time, or, failing to do
+so, run the risk of being destroyed in detail. If the French troops
+could be kept together, and if the small army of Murray or of
+Haviland should reach Montreal a few days before the co-operating
+forces appeared, it might be separately attacked and overpowered.
+In this lay the hope of Vaudreuil and Lévis.[836]
+
+[Footnote 836: _Lévis à Bourlamaque, Juillet, Août, 1760_.]
+
+After the siege of Quebec was raised, Murray had an
+effective force of about twenty-five hundred rank and file.[837]
+As the spring opened the invalids were encamped on the Island of
+Orleans, where fresh air, fresh provisions, and the change from
+the pestiferous town hospitals wrought such wonders on the scorbutic
+patients, that in a few weeks a considerable number of them were
+again fit for garrison duty, if not for the field. Thus it happened
+that on the second of July twenty-four hundred and fifty men and
+officers received orders to embark for Montreal; and on the fifteenth
+they set sail, in thirty-two vessels, with a number of boats and
+bateaux.[838] They were followed some time after by Lord Rollo,
+with thirteen hundred additional men just arrived from Louisbourg,
+the King having ordered that fortress to be abandoned and dismantled.
+They advanced slowly, landing from time to time, skirmishing with
+detachments of the enemy who followed them along the shore, or
+more frequently trading with the farmers who brought them vegetables,
+poultry, eggs, and fresh meat. They passed the fortified hill of
+Jacques-Cartier, whence they were saluted with shot and shell,
+stopped at various parishes, disarmed the inhabitants, administered
+oaths of neutrality, which were taken without much apparent reluctance,
+and on the fourth of August came within sight of Three Rivers, then
+occupied by a body of troops expecting an attack. "But," says Knox,
+"a delay here would be absurd, as that wretched place must share the
+fate of Montreal. Our fleet sailed this morning. The French
+troops, apparently about two thousand, lined their different
+works, and were in general clothed as regulars, except a very
+few Canadians and about fifty naked Picts or savages, their
+bodies being painted of a reddish color and their faces of
+different colors, which I plainly discerned with my glass.
+Their light cavalry, who paraded along shore, seemed to be
+well appointed, clothed in blue, faced with scarlet; but their
+officers had white uniforms. In fine, their troops, batteries,
+fair-looking houses; their situation on the banks of a delightful
+river; our fleet sailing triumphantly before them, with our
+floating batteries drawn up in line of battle; the country on
+both sides interspersed with neat settlements, together with
+the verdure of the fields and trees and the clear, pleasant
+weather, afforded as agreeable a prospect as the most lively
+imagination can conceive."
+
+[Footnote 837: _Return of the Present State of His Majesty's Forces
+in Garrison at Quebec, 21 May, 1760_.]
+
+[Footnote 838: Knox, II. 344, 348.]
+
+This excellent lover of the picturesque was still more delighted
+as the fleet sailed among the islands of St. Peter. "I think nothing
+could equal the beauties of our navigation this morning: the meandering
+course of the narrow channel; the awfulness and solemnity of the dark
+forests with which these islands are covered; the fragrancy of the
+spontaneous fruits, shrubs, and flowers; the verdure of the water by
+the reflection of the neighboring woods; the wild chirping notes of the
+feathered inhabitants; the masts and sails of ships appearing
+as if among the trees, both ahead and astern: formed altogether
+an enchanting diversity."
+
+The evening recalled him from dreams to realities; for
+towards seven o'clock they reached the village of Sorel, where
+they found a large body of troops and militia intrenched
+along the strand. Bourlamaque was in command here with two or three
+thousand men, and Dumas, with another body, was on the northern shore.
+Both had orders to keep abreast of the fleet as it advanced; and thus
+French and English alike drew slowly towards Montreal, where lay the
+main French force under Lévis, ready to unite with Bourlamaque
+and Dumas, and fall upon Murray at the first opportunity.
+Montreal was now but a few leagues distant, and the situation
+was becoming delicate. Murray sent five rangers towards
+Lake Champlain to get news of Haviland, and took measures
+at the same time to cause the desertion of the Canadians,
+who formed the largest part of the opposing force. He sent
+a proclamation among the parishes, advising the inhabitants
+to remain peacefully at home, promising that those who did
+so should be safe in person and property, and threatening to
+burn every house from which the men of the family were absent.
+These were not idle words. A detachment sent for the purpose destroyed
+a settlement near Sorel, the owners of which were in arms under
+Bourlamaque. "I was under the cruel necessity of burning the greatest
+part of these poor unhappy people's houses," wrote Murray. "I pray God
+this example may suffice, for my nature revolts when this becomes
+a necessary part of my duty."[839] On the other hand, he treated
+with great kindness all who left the army and returned to
+their families. The effect was soon felt. The Canadians came
+in by scores and by hundreds to give up their arms and take
+the oath of neutrality, till, before the end of August, half
+Bourlamaque's force had disappeared. Murray encamped on
+Isle Ste.-Thérèse, just below Montreal, and watched and
+waited for Haviland and Amherst to appear.[840]
+
+[Footnote 839: _Murray to Pitt, 24 Aug. 1760_.]
+
+[Footnote 840: Knox, II. 382, 384. Mante, 340.]
+
+Vaudreuil on his part was not idle. He sent a counter-proclamation
+through the parishes as an antidote to that of Murray. "I have been
+compelled," he writes to the Minister, "to decree the pain of
+death to the Canadians who are so dastardly as to desert or give
+up their arms to the enemy, and to order that the houses of those
+who do not join our army shall be burned."[841] Execution was to be
+summary, without court-martial.[842] Yet desertion increased daily.
+The Canadians felt themselves doubly ruined, for it became known that
+the Court had refused to redeem the paper that formed the whole
+currency of the colony; and, in their desperation, they preferred
+to trust the tried clemency of the enemy rather than exasperate him
+by persisting in a vain defence. Vaudreuil writes in his usual strain:
+"I am taking the most just measures to unite our forces, and, if our
+situation permits, fight a battle, or several battles. It is to be
+feared that we shall go down before an enemy so numerous and strong;
+but, whatever may be the event, we will save the honor of the King's
+arms. I have the honor to repeat to you, Monseigneur, that
+if any resource were left me, whatever the progress the English
+might make, I would maintain myself in some part of the colony with my
+remaining troops, after having fought with the greatest obstinacy; but
+I am absolutely without the least remnant of the necessary means. In
+these unhappy circumstances I shall continue to use every manoeuvre and
+device to keep the enemy in check; but if we succumb in the
+battles we shall fight, I shall apply myself to obtaining a capitulation
+which may avert the total ruin of a people who will remain forever French,
+and who could not survive their misfortunes but for the hope of being
+restored by the treaty of peace to the rule of His Most Christian
+Majesty. It is with this view that I shall remain in this town, the
+Chevalier de Lévis having represented to me that it would be an evil
+to the colonists past remedy if any accident should happen to me."
+Lévis was willing to go very far in soothing the susceptibilities
+of the Governor; but it may be suspected this time that he
+thought him more useful within four walls than in the open
+field.
+
+[Footnote 841: _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 29 Août, 1760_.]
+
+[Footnote 842: _Lévis à Bourlamaque, 25 Août, 1760_.]
+
+There seemed good hope of stopping the advance of Haviland.
+To this end Vaudreuil had stationed Bougainville at Isle-aux-Noix
+with seventeen hundred men, and Roquemaure at St. John, a few
+miles distant, with twelve or fifteen hundred more, besides all
+the Indians.[843] Haviland embarked at Crown Point with thirty-four
+hundred regulars, provincials, and Indians.[844] Four days brought
+him to Isle-aux-Noix; he landed, planted cannon in the swamp, and
+opened fire. Major Darby with the light infantry, and Rogers with
+the rangers, dragged three light pieces through the forest, and
+planted them on the river-bank in the rear of Bougainville's position,
+where lay the French naval force, consisting of three armed
+vessels and several gunboats. The cannon were turned upon
+the principal ship; a shot cut her cable, and a strong west
+wind drove her ashore into the hands of her enemies. The
+other vessels and gunboats made all sail for St. John, but
+stranded in a bend of the river, where the rangers, swimming
+out with their tomahawks, boarded and took one of them,
+and the rest soon surrendered. It was a fatal blow to Bougainville,
+whose communications with St. John were now cut off. In accordance
+with instructions from Vaudreuil, he abandoned the island on the
+night of the twenty-seventh of August, and, making his way with
+infinite difficulty through the dark forest, joined Roquemaure
+at St. John, twelve miles below. Haviland followed, the rangers
+leading the way. Bougainville and Roquemaure fell back, abandoned
+St. John and Chambly, and joined Bourlamaque on the banks of the
+St. Lawrence, where the united force at first outnumbered that of
+Haviland, though fast melted away by discouragement and desertion.
+Haviland opened communication with Murray, and they both
+looked daily for the arrival of Amherst, whose approach was
+rumored by prisoners and deserters.[845]
+
+[Footnote 843: _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 29 Août, 1760_.]
+
+[Footnote 844: _A List of the Forces employed in the Expedition against
+Canada, 1760_. Compare Mante, 340, Knox, II. 392, and Rogers,
+188. Chevalier Johnstone, who was with Bougainville, says "about
+four thousand," which Vaudreuil multiplies to twelve thousand.]
+
+[Footnote 845: Rogers, _Journals. Diary of a Sergeant in the Army of
+Haviland_. Johnstone, _Campaign of 1760. Bigot au Ministre, 29 Août,
+1760_.]
+
+The army of Amherst had gathered at Oswego in July. On
+the tenth of August it was all afloat on Lake Ontario, to the
+number of ten thousand one hundred and forty-two men, besides about
+seven hundred Indians under Sir William Johnson.[846]Before the
+fifteenth the whole had reached La Présentation, otherwise called
+Oswegatchie or La Galette, the seat of Father Piquet's mission. Near
+by was a French armed brig, the "Ottawa," with ten cannon and a hundred
+men, threatening destruction to Amherst's bateaux and whaleboats.
+Five gunboats attacked and captured her. Then the army advanced again,
+and were presently joined by two armed vessels of their own which had
+lingered behind, bewildered among the channels of the Thousand Islands.
+
+[Footnote 846: _A List of the Forces employed in the Expedition against
+Canada_. Compare Mante, 301, and Knox, II. 403.]
+
+Near the head of the rapids, a little below La Galette,
+stood Fort Lévis, built the year before on an islet in mid-channel.
+Amherst might have passed its batteries with slight loss, continuing
+his voyage without paying it the honor of a siege; and this was what
+the French commanders feared that he would do. "We shall be fortunate,"
+Lévis wrote to Bourlamaque, "if the enemy amuse themselves with capturing
+it. My chief anxiety is lest Amherst should reach Montreal
+so soon that we may not have time to unite our forces to attack Haviland
+or Murray." If he had better known the English commander, Lévis would
+have seen that he was not the man to leave a post of the enemy in his
+rear under any circumstances; and Amherst had also another reason for
+wishing to get the garrison into his hands, for he expected to
+find among them the pilots whom he needed to guide his boats down the
+rapids. He therefore invested the fort, and, on the twenty-third,
+cannonaded it from his vessels, the mainland, and the neighboring
+islands. It was commanded by Pouchot, the late commandant of Niagara,
+made prisoner in the last campaign, and since exchanged. As the rocky
+islet had but little earth, the defences, though thick and
+strong, were chiefly of logs, which flew in splinters under the
+bombardment. The French, however, made a brave resistance.
+The firing lasted all day, was resumed in the morning, and
+continued two days more; when Pouchot, whose works were
+in ruins, surrendered himself and his garrison. On this, Johnson's
+Indians prepared to kill the prisoners; and, being compelled
+to desist, three fourths of them went home in a rage.[847]
+
+[Footnote 847: On the capture of Fort Lévis, _Amherst to Pitt, 26 Aug.
+1760. Amherst to Monckton, same date_. Pouchot, II. 264-282. Knox,
+II. 405-413. Mante, 303-306. _All Canada in the Hands of the
+English_ (Boston, 1760). _Journal of Colonel Nathaniel Woodhull_.]
+
+Now began the critical part of the expedition, the descent
+of the rapids. The Galops, the Rapide Plat, the Long Saut,
+the Côteau du Lac were passed in succession, with little loss,
+till they reached the Cedars, the Buisson, and the Cascades,
+where the reckless surges dashed and bounded in the sun,
+beautiful and terrible as young tigers at play. Boat after boat,
+borne on their foaming crests, rushed madly down the torrent.
+Forty-six were totally wrecked, eighteen were damaged, and eighty-four
+men were drowned.[848] La Corne was watching the rapids with a
+considerable body of Canadians; and it is difficult to see why this
+bold and enterprising chief allowed the army to descend undisturbed
+through passes so dangerous. At length the last rapid was left behind;
+and the flotilla, gliding in peace over the smooth breast of Lake
+St. Louis, landed at Isle Perrot, a few leagues from Montreal. In
+the morning, September sixth, the troops embarked again, landed
+unopposed at La Chine, nine miles from the city, marched on
+without delay, and encamped before its walls.
+
+[Footnote 848: _Amherst to Pitt, 8 Sept. 1760_.]
+
+The Montreal of that time was a long, narrow assemblage
+of wooden or stone houses, one or two stories high, above
+which rose the peaked towers of the Seminary, the spires of
+three churches, the walls of four convents, with the trees of
+their adjacent gardens, and, conspicuous at the lower end,
+a high mound of earth, crowned by a redoubt, where a few
+cannon were mounted. The whole was surrounded by a shallow
+moat and a bastioned stone wall, made for defenceagainst Indians,
+and incapable of resisting cannon.[849]
+
+[Footnote 849: _An East View of Montreal, drawn on the Spot by Thomas
+Patten_ (King's Maps, British Museum), _Plan of Montreal, 1759.
+A Description of Montreal_, in several magazines of the time. The
+recent Canadian publication called _Le Vieux Montréal_, is exceedingly
+incorrect as to the numbers of the British troops and the
+position of their camps.]
+
+On the morning after Amherst encamped above the place,
+Murray landed to encamp below it; and Vaudreuil, looking
+across the St. Lawrence, could see the tents of Haviland's
+little army on the southern shore. Bourlamaque, Bougainville,
+and Roquemaure, abandoned by all their militia, had crossed
+to Montreal with the few regulars that remained with them.
+The town was crowded with non-combatant refugees. Here,
+too, was nearly all the remaining force of Canada, consisting
+of twenty-two hundred troops of the line and some two hundred
+colony troops; for all the Canadians had by this time gone home.
+Many of the regulars, especially of the colony troops, had also
+deserted; and the rest were so broken in discipline that their
+officers were forced to use entreaties instead of commands. The
+three armies encamped around the city amounted to seventeen
+thousand men;[850] Amherst was bringing up his cannon from La
+Chine, and the town wall would have crumbled before them in an hour.
+
+[Footnote 850: _A List of the Forces employed in the Expedition
+against Canada_. See Smith, _History of Canada_, I. Appendix xix.
+Vaudreuil writes to Charles Langlade, on the ninth, that the three
+armies amount to twenty thousand, and raises the number to thirty-two
+thousand in a letter to the Minister on the next day. Berniers says
+twenty thousand; Lévis, for obvious reasons, exaggerates the
+number to forty thousand.]
+
+On the night when Amherst arrived, the Governor called
+a council of war.[851] It was resolved that since all the militia
+and many of the regulars had abandoned the army, and the
+Indian allies of France had gone over to the enemy, further
+resistance was impossible. Vaudreuil laid before the assembled
+officers a long paper that he had drawn up, containing fifty-five
+articles of capitulation to be proposed to the English;
+and these were unanimously approved.[852] In the morning
+Bougainville carried them to the tent of Amherst. He granted
+the greater part, modified some, and flatly refused others.
+That which the French officers thought more important than
+all the rest was the provision that the troops should march
+out with arms, cannon, and the honors of war; to which it
+was replied: "The whole garrison of Montreal and all other
+French troops in Canada must lay down their arms, and shall not
+serve during the present war." This demand was felt to be intolerable.
+The Governor sent Bougainville back to remonstrate; but Amherst was
+inflexible. Then Lévis tried to shake his resolution, and sent him an
+officer with the following note: "I send your Excellency M. de la
+Pause, Assistant Quartermaster-General of the Army, on the subject of
+the too rigorous article which you dictate to the troops by the
+capitulation, to which it would not be possible for us to subscribe."
+Amherst answered the envoy: "I am fully resolved, for the infamous part
+the troops of France have acted in exciting the savages to perpetrate the
+most horrid and unheard of barbarities in the whole progress of the war,
+and for other open treacheries and flagrant breaches of faith, to manifest
+to all the world by this capitulation my detestation of such practices;"
+and he dismissed La Pause with a short note, refusing to change the
+conditions.
+
+[Footnote 851: _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 10 Sept. 1760_.]
+
+[Footnote 852: _Procès-verbal de la Déliberation du Conseil de Guerre tenu
+à Montréal, 6 Sept. 1760_.]
+
+On the next morning, September eighth, Vaudreuil yielded,
+and signed the capitulation. By it Canada and all its dependencies
+passed to the British Crown. French officers, civil and
+military, with French troops and sailors, were to be sent to
+France in British ships. Free exercise of religion was assured
+to the people of the colony, and the religious communities
+were to retain their possessions, rights, and privileges. All
+persons who might wish to retire to France were allowed to
+do so, and the Canadians were to remain in full enjoyment
+of feudal and other property, including negro and Indian
+slaves.[853]
+
+[Footnote 853: _Articles of Capitulation, 8 Sept. 1760. Amherst to Pitt,
+same date_.]
+
+The greatest alarm had prevailed among the inhabitants
+lest they should suffer violence from the English Indians, and
+Vaudreuil had endeavored to provide that these dangerous
+enemies should be sent back at once to their villages. This
+was refused, with the remark: "There never have been any
+cruelties committed by the Indians of our army." Strict precautions
+were taken at the same time, not only against the few savages whom the
+firm conduct of Johnson at Fort Lévis had not driven away, but also
+against the late allies of the French, now become a peril to them. In
+consequence, not a man, woman, or child was hurt. Amherst, in general
+orders, expressed his confidence "that the troops will not disgrace
+themselves by the least appearance of inhumanity, or by any
+unsoldierlike behavior in seeking for plunder; and that as the
+Canadians are now become British subjects, they will feel the
+good effects of His Majesty's protection." They were in fact
+treated with a kindness that seemed to surprise them.
+
+Lévis was so incensed at the demand that the troops should
+lay down their arms and serve no longer during the war that,
+before the capitulation was signed, he made a formal protest[854]
+in his own name and that of the officers from France, and
+insisted that the negotiation should be broken off. "If," he
+added, "the Marquis de Vaudreuil, through political motives,
+thinks himself obliged to surrender the colony at once, we
+ask his permission to withdraw with the troops of the line to
+the Island of St. Helen, in order to uphold there, on our own
+behalf, the honor of the King's arms." The proposal was of
+course rejected, as Lévis knew that it would be, and he and
+his officers were ordered to conform to the capitulation. When
+Vaudreuil reached France, three months after, he had the
+mortification to receive from the Colonial Minister a letter
+containing these words: "Though His Majesty was perfectly
+aware of the state of Canada, nevertheless, after the assurances
+you had given to make the utmost efforts to sustain the
+honor of his arms, he did not expect to hear so soon of the
+surrender of Montreal and the whole colony. But, granting
+that capitulation was a necessity, his Majesty was not the less
+surprised and ill pleased at the conditions, so little honorable,
+to which you submitted, especially after the representations
+made you by the Chevalier de Lévis."[855] The brother of
+Vaudreuil complained to the Minister of the terms of this
+letter, and the Minister replied: "I see with regret, Monsieur,
+that you are pained by the letter I wrote your brother; but
+I could not help telling him what the King did me the honor
+to say to me; and it would have been unpleasant for him to
+hear it from anybody else."[856]
+
+[Footnote 854: _Protêt de M. de Lévis à M. de Vaudreuil contre la Clause
+dans les Articles de Capitulation qui exige que les Troupes mettront
+bas les Armes, avec l'Ordre de M. de Vaudreuil au Chevalier
+de Lévis de se conformer à la Capitulation proposée. Vaudreuil
+au Ministre de la Marine, 10 Sept. 1760. Lévis au Ministre de la
+Guerre, 27 Nov. 1760_.]
+
+[Footnote 855: _Le Ministre à Vaudreuil, 5 Déc. 1760_.]
+
+[Footnote 856: _Le Ministre au Vicomte de Vaudreuil, Frère du Gouverneur,
+21 Déc. 1760_.]
+
+It is true that Vaudreuil had in some measure drawn this
+reproach upon himself by his boastings about the battles he
+would fight; yet the royal displeasure was undeserved. The
+Governor had no choice but to give up the colony; for Amherst had
+him in his power, and knew that he could exact what terms he pleased.
+Further resistance could only have ended in surrender at the discretion
+of the victor, and the protest of Lévis was nothing but a device to save
+his own reputation and that of his brother officers from France.
+Vaudreuil had served the King and the colony in some respects
+with ability, always with an unflagging zeal; and he loved
+the land of his birth with a jealous devotion that goes far
+towards redeeming his miserable defects. The King himself,
+and not the servants whom he abandoned to their fate, was
+answerable for the loss of New France.
+
+Half the continent had changed hands at the scratch of a
+pen. Governor Bernard, of Massachusetts, proclaimed a day
+of thanksgiving for the great event, and the Boston newspapers
+recount how the occasion was celebrated with a parade of the cadets
+and other volunteer corps, a grand dinner in Faneuil Hall, music,
+bonfires, illuminations, firing of cannon, and, above all, by sermons
+in every church of the province; for the heart of early New England
+always found voice through her pulpits. Before me lies a bundle of
+these sermons, rescued from sixscore years of dust, scrawled on their
+title-pages with names of owners dead long ago, worm-eaten,
+dingy, stained with the damps of time, and uttering in quaint
+old letterpress the emotions of a buried and forgotten past.
+Triumph, gratulation, hope, breathe in every line, but no
+ill-will against a fallen enemy. Thomas Foxcroft, pastor of
+the "Old Church in Boston," preaches from the text, "The
+Lord hath done great things for us, whereof we are glad."
+"Long," he says, "had it been the common opinion, _Delenda
+est Carthago_, Canada must be conquered, or we could hope
+for no lasting quiet in these parts; and now, through the good
+hand of our God upon us, we see the happy day of its accomplishment.
+We behold His Majesty's victorious troops treading upon the high
+places of the enemy, their last fortress delivered up, and their
+whole country surrendered to the King of Britain in the person of
+his general, the intrepid, the serene, the successful Amherst."
+
+The loyal John Mellen, pastor of the Second Church in
+Lancaster, exclaims, boding nothing of the tempest to come:
+"Let us fear God and honor the King, and be peaceable subjects
+of an easy and happy government. And may the blessing of Heaven be
+ever upon those enemies of our country that have now submitted to
+the English Crown, and according to the oath they have taken lead
+quiet lives in all godliness and honesty." Then he ventures to
+predict that America, now thrown open to British colonists, will
+be peopled in a century and a half with sixty million souls: a
+prophecy likely to be more than fulfilled.
+
+"God has given us to sing this day the downfall of New
+France, the North American Babylon, New England's rival,"
+cries Eli Forbes to his congregation of sober farmers and
+staid matrons at the rustic village of Brookfield. Like many of
+his flock, he had been to the war, having served two years
+as chaplain of Ruggles's Massachusetts regiment; and something
+of a martial spirit breathes through his discourse. He passes in
+review the events of each campaign down to their triumphant close.
+"Thus God was our salvation and our strength; yet he who directs
+the great events of war suffered not our joy to be uninterrupted,
+for we had to lament the fall of the valiant and good General Wolfe,
+whose death demands a tear from every British eye, a sigh from every
+Protestant heart. Is he dead? I recall myself. Such heroes are immortal;
+he lives on every loyal tongue; he lives in every grateful
+breast; and charity bids me give him a place among the princes
+of heaven." Nor does he forget the praises of Amherst, "the
+renowned general, worthy of that most honorable of all titles,
+the Christian hero; for he loves his enemies, and while he
+subdues them he makes them happy. He transplants British
+liberty to where till now it was unknown. He acts the General,
+the Briton, the Conqueror, and the Christian. What fair hopes
+arise from the peaceful and undisturbed enjoyment of this
+good land, and the blessing of our gracious God with it! Methinks
+I see towns enlarged, settlements increased, and this howling
+wilderness become a fruitful field which the Lord hath blessed;
+and, to complete the scene, I see churches rise and flourish in
+every Christian grace where has been the seat of Satan and Indian
+idolatry."
+
+Nathaniel Appleton, of Cambridge, hails the dawning of a
+new era. "Who can tell what great and glorious things God
+is about to bring forward in the world, and in this world of
+America in particular? Oh, may the time come when these
+deserts, which for ages unknown have been regions of darkness
+and habitations of cruelty, shall be illuminated with the
+light of the glorious Gospel, and when this part of the world,
+which till the later ages was utterly unknown, shall be the
+glory and joy of the whole earth!"
+
+On the American continent the war was ended, and the
+British colonists breathed for a space, as they drifted unwittingly
+towards a deadlier strife. They had learned hard and useful lessons.
+Their mutual jealousies and disputes, the quarrels of their governors
+and assemblies, the want of any general military organization, and
+the absence, in most of them, of military habits, joined to narrow
+views of their own interest, had unfitted them to the last degree for
+carrying on offensive war. Nor were the British troops sent for their
+support remarkable in the beginning for good discipline or
+efficient command. When hostilities broke out, the army of
+Great Britain was so small as to be hardly worth the name.
+A new one had to be created; and thus the inexperienced
+Shirley and the incompetent Loudon, with the futile Newcastle
+behind them, had, besides their own incapacity, the disadvantage of
+raw troops and half-formed officers; while against them stood an
+enemy who, though weak in numbers, was strong in a centralized military
+organization, skilful leaders armed with untrammelled and absolute
+authority, practised soldiers, and a population not only brave, but in
+good part inured to war.
+
+The nature of the country was another cause that helped
+to protract the contest. "Geography," says Von Moltke, "is
+three fourths of military science;" and never was the truth
+of his words more fully exemplified. Canada 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
+with baggage and artillery, a more difficult one. The question was
+less how to fight the enemy than how to get at him. If a few
+practicable roads had crossed this broad tract of wilderness, the
+war would have been shortened and its character changed.
+
+From these and other reasons, the numerical superiority
+of the English was to some extent made unavailing. This
+superiority, though exaggerated by French writers, was nevertheless
+immense if estimated by the number of men called to arms; but only
+a part of these could be employed in offensive operations. The rest
+garrisoned forts and blockhouses and guarded the far reach of frontier
+from Nova Scotia to South Carolina, where a wily enemy, silent and
+secret as fate, choosing their own time and place of attack,
+and striking unawares at every unguarded spot, compelled thousands
+of men, scattered at countless points of defence, to keep unceasing
+watch against a few hundred savage marauders. Full half the
+levies of the colonies, and many of the regulars, were used
+in service of this kind.
+
+In actual encounters the advantage of numbers was often
+with the French, through the comparative ease with which
+they could concentrate their forces at a given point. Of the
+ten considerable sieges or battles of the war, five, besides the
+great bushfight in which the Indians defeated Braddock, were
+victories for France; and in four of these--Oswego, Fort
+William Henry, Montmorenci, and Ste.-Foy--the odds were
+greatly on her side.
+
+Yet in this the most picturesque and dramatic of American
+wars, there is nothing more noteworthy than the skill with
+which the French and Canadian leaders used their advantages;
+the indomitable spirit with which, slighted and abandoned as
+they were, they grappled with prodigious difficulties, and the
+courage with which they were seconded by regulars and militia alike.
+In spite of occasional lapses, the defence of Canada deserves a tribute
+of admiration.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 31
+
+1758-1763
+
+The Peace of Paris
+
+
+In accordance with the terms of the capitulation of Montreal,
+the French military officers, with such of the soldiers as could
+be kept together, as well as all the chief civil officers of the
+colony, sailed for France in vessels provided by the conquerors.
+They were voluntarily followed by the principal members of the
+Canadian _noblesse_, and by many of the merchants who had
+no mind to swear allegiance to King George. The peasants and poorer
+colonists remained at home to begin a new life under a new flag.
+
+Though this exodus of the natural leaders of Canada was
+in good part deferred till the next year, and though the number
+of persons to be immediately embarked was reduced by the desertion
+of many French soldiers who had married Canadian wives, yet the
+English authorities were sorely perplexed to find vessels enough
+for the motley crowd of passengers. When at last they were all on
+their way, a succession of furious autumnal storms fell upon them.
+The ship that carried Lévis barely escaped wreck, and that which bore
+Vaudreuil and his wife fared little better.[857] Worst of all was the
+fate of the "Auguste," on board of which was the bold but
+ruthless partisan, Saint-Luc de la Corne, his brother, his children,
+and a party of Canadian officers, together with ladies,
+merchants, and soldiers. A worthy ecclesiastical chronicler
+paints the unhappy vessel as a floating Babylon, and sees in
+her fate the stern judgment of Heaven.[858] It is true that New
+France ran riot in the last years of her existence; but before
+the "Auguste" was well out of the St. Lawrence she was so
+tossed and buffeted, so lashed with waves and pelted with rain,
+that the most alluring forms of sin must have lost their charm,
+and her inmates passed days rather of penance than transgression.
+There was a violent storm as the ship entered the Gulf; then a calm,
+during which she took fire in the cook's galley. The crew and passengers
+subdued the flames after desperate efforts; but their only food
+thenceforth was dry biscuit. Off the coast of Cape Breton another gale
+rose. They lost their reckoning and lay tossing blindly amid the tempest.
+The exhausted sailors took, in despair, to their hammocks,
+from which neither commands nor blows could rouse them,
+while amid shrieks, tears, prayers, and vows to Heaven, the
+"Auguste" drove towards the shore, struck, and rolled over
+on her side. La Corne with six others gained the beach; and
+towards night they saw the ship break asunder, and counted
+a hundred and fourteen corpses strewn along the sand. Aided
+by Indians and by English officers, La Corne made his way
+on snow-shoes up the St. John, and by a miracle of enduring
+hardihood reached Quebec before the end of winter.[859]
+
+[Footnote 857: _Lévis à Belleisle, 27 Nov. 1760_.]
+
+[Footnote 858: Faillon, _Vie de Mademoiselle Le Ber_, 363-370.]
+
+[Footnote 859: _Journal du Voyage de M. Saint-Luc de la Corne_. This is his
+own narrative.]
+
+The other ships weathered the November gales, and landed
+their passengers on the shores of France, where some of them
+found a dismal welcome, being seized and thrown into the
+Bastille. These were Vaudreuil, Bigot, Cadet, Péan, Bréard,
+Varin, Le Mercier, Penisseault, Maurin, Corpron, and others
+accused of the frauds and peculations that had helped to ruin
+Canada. In the next year they were all put on trial, whether
+as an act of pure justice or as a device to turn public indignation
+from the Government. In December, 1761, judges commissioned
+for the purpose began their sessions at the Châtelet, and a
+prodigious mass of evidence was laid before them. Cadet, with
+brazen effrontery, at first declared himself innocent, but ended
+with full and unblushing confession. Bigot denied everything till
+silenced point by point with papers bearing his own signature.
+The prisoners defended themselves by accusing each other. Bigot
+and Vaudreuil brought mutual charges, while all agreed in denouncing
+Cadet. Vaudreuil, as before mentioned, was acquitted. Bigot was banished
+from France for life, his property was confiscated, and he was condemned
+to pay fifteen hundred thousand francs by way of restitution. Cadet was
+banished for nine years from Paris and required to refund six millions;
+while others were sentenced in sums varying from thirty thousand to
+eight hundred thousand francs, and were ordered to be held in prison
+till the money was paid. Of twenty-one persons brought to trial ten
+were condemned, six were acquitted, three received an admonition,
+and two were dismissed for want of evidence. Thirty-four failed to appear,
+of whom seven were sentenced in default, and judgment was reserved in
+the case of the rest.[860] Even those who escaped from justice profited
+little by their gains, for unless they had turned them betimes into land
+or other substantial values, they lost them in a discredited paper
+currency and dishonored bills of exchange.
+
+[Footnote 860: _Jugement rendu souverainement et en dernier Ressort dans
+l'Affaire du Canada_. Papers at the Châtelet of Paris, cited by
+Dussieux.]
+
+While on the American continent the last scenes of the war
+were drawing to their close, the contest raged in Europe with
+unabated violence. England was in the full career of success;
+but her great ally, Frederic of Prussia, seemed tottering to his
+ruin. In the summer of 1758 his glory was at its height.
+French, Austrians, and Russians had all fled before him. But
+the autumn brought reverses; and the Austrian general, Daun,
+at the head of an overwhelming force, gained over him a
+partial victory, which his masterly strategy robbed of its
+fruits. It was but a momentary respite. His kingdom was exhausted
+by its own triumphs. His best generals were dead, his best soldiers
+killed or disabled, his resources almost spent, the very chandeliers
+of his palace melted into coin; and all Europe was in arms against him.
+The disciplined valor of the Prussian troops and the supreme leadership
+of their undespairing King had thus far held the invading hosts at bay;
+but now the end seemed near. Frederic could not be everywhere at once;
+and while he stopped one leak the torrent poured in at another.
+The Russians advanced again, defeated General Wedell, whom
+he sent against them, and made a junction with the Austrians.
+In August, 1759, he attacked their united force at Kunersdorf,
+broke their left wing to pieces, took a hundred and eighty
+cannon, forced their centre to give ground, and after hours of
+furious fighting was overwhelmed at last. In vain he tried to
+stop the rout. The bullets killed two horses under him, tore his
+clothes, and crushed a gold snuff-box in his waistcoat pocket.
+"Is there no b---- of a shot that can hit me, then?" he cried
+in his bitterness, as his aides-de-camp forced him from the
+field. For a few days he despaired; then rallied to his forlorn
+task, and with smiles on his lip and anguish at his heart
+watched, manoeuvred, and fought with cool and stubborn desperation.
+To his friend D'Argens he wrote soon after his defeat: "Death is sweet
+in comparison to such a life as mine. Have pity on me and it; believe
+that I still keep to myself a great many evil things, not wishing to
+afflict or disgust anybody with them, and that I would not counsel
+you to fly these unlucky countries if I had any ray of hope; Adieu,
+mon cher!" It was well for him and for Prussia that he had strong allies in
+the dissensions and delays of his enemies. But his cup was not
+yet full. Dresden was taken from him, eight of his remaining
+generals and twelve thousand men were defeated and captured
+at Maxen, and "this infernal campaign," as he calls it, closed
+in thick darkness.
+
+"I wrap myself in my stoicism as best I can," he writes to
+Voltaire. "If you saw me you would hardly know me: I am
+old, broken, gray-headed, wrinkled. If this goes on there will
+be nothing left of me but the mania of making verses and an
+inviolable attachment to my duties and to the few virtuous
+men I know. But you will not get a peace signed by my hand
+except on conditions honorable to my nation. Your people,
+blown up with conceit and folly, may depend on this."
+
+The same stubborn conflict with overmastering odds, the
+same intrepid resolution, the same subtle strategy, the same
+skill in eluding the blow and lightning-like quickness in retorting
+it, marked Frederic's campaign of 1760. At Liegnitz three
+armies, each equal to his own, closed round him, and he put
+them all to flight. While he was fighting in Silesia, the Allies
+marched upon Berlin, took it, and held it three days, but
+withdrew on his approach. For him there was no peace. "Why
+weary you with the details of my labors and my sorrows?"
+he wrote again to his faithful D'Argens. "My spirits have
+forsaken me; all gayety is buried with the loved noble ones to
+whom my heart was bound." He had lost his mother and his
+devoted sister Wilhelmina. "You as a follower of Epicurus
+put a value upon life; as for me, I regard death from the Stoic
+point of view. I have told you, and I repeat it, never shall my
+hand sign a humiliating peace. Finish this campaign I will,
+resolved to dare all, to succeed, or find a glorious end." Then
+came the victory of Torgau, the last and one of the most
+desperate of his battles: a success dearly bought, and bringing
+neither rest nor safety. Once more he wrote to D'Argens:
+"Adieu, dear Marquis; write to me sometimes. Don't forget a
+poor devil who curses his fatal existence ten times a day."
+"I live like a military monk. Endless business, and a little consolation
+from my books. I don't know if I shall outlive this war, but if I do
+I am firmly resolved to pass the rest of my life in solitude in the
+bosom of philosophy and friendship. Your nation, you see, is blinder
+than you thought. These fools will lose their Canada and Pondicherry
+to please the Queen of Hungary and the Czarina."
+
+The campaign of 1761 was mainly defensive on the part of
+Frederic. In the exhaustion of his resources he could see no
+means of continuing the struggle. "It is only Fortune," says
+the royal sceptic, "that can extricate me from the situation
+I am in. I escape out of it by looking at the universe on the
+great scale like an observer from some distant planet. All then
+seems to be so infinitely small that I could almost pity my
+enemies for giving themselves so much trouble about so very
+little. I read a great deal, I devour my books. But for them
+I think hypochondria would have had me in Bedlam before
+now. In fine, dear Marquis, we live in troublous times and
+desperate situations. I have all the properties of a stage hero;
+always in danger, always on the point of perishing."[861] And in
+another mood: "I begin to feel that, as the Italians say, revenge
+is a pleasure for the gods. My philosophy is worn out by
+suffering. I am no saint, and I will own that I should die content
+if only I could first inflict a part of the misery that I
+endure."
+
+[Footnote 861: The above extracts are as translated by Carlyle in his
+_History of Frederick II. of Prussia_.]
+
+While Frederic was fighting for life and crown, an event
+took place in England that was to have great influence on the
+war. Walpole recounts it thus, writing to George Montagu on
+the twenty-fifth of October, 1760: "My man Harry tells me
+all the amusing news. He first told me of the late Prince of
+Wales's death, and to-day of the King's; so I must tell you all
+I know of departed majesty. He went to bed well last night,
+rose at six this morning as usual, looked, I suppose, if all his
+money was in his purse, and called for his chocolate. A little
+after seven he went into the closet; the German _valet-de-chambre_
+heard a noise, listened, heard something like a groan, ran in, and
+found the hero of Oudenarde and Dettingen on the floor with a gash
+on his right temple by falling against the corner of a bureau. He
+tried to speak, could not, and expired. The great ventricle of the
+heart had burst. What an enviable death!"
+
+The old King was succeeded by his grandson, George III.,
+a mirror of domestic virtues, conscientious, obstinate, narrow.
+His accession produced political changes that had been preparing
+for some time. His grandfather was German at heart, loved his
+Continental kingdom of Hanover, and was eager for all measures that
+looked to its defence and preservation. Pitt, too, had of late
+vigorously supported the Continental war, saying that he would conquer
+America in Germany. Thus with different views the King and the Minister
+had concurred in the same measures. But George III. was English by
+birth, language, and inclination. His ruling passion was the
+establishment and increase of his own authority. He disliked Pitt, the
+representative of the people. He was at heart averse to a war,
+the continuance of which would make the Great Commoner necessary,
+and therefore powerful, and he wished for a peace that would give
+free scope to his schemes for strengthening the prerogative. He was
+not alone in his pacific inclinations. The enemies of the haughty
+Minister, who had ridden roughshod over men far above him in rank,
+were tired of his ascendency, and saw no hope of ending it but by ending
+the war. Thus a peace party grew up, and the young King became
+its real, though not at first its declared, supporter.
+
+The Tory party, long buried, showed signs of resurrection.
+There were those among its members who, even in a king of
+the hated line of Hanover, could recognize and admire the
+same spirit of arbitrary domination that had marked their
+fallen idols, the Stuarts; and they now joined hands with the
+discontented Whigs in opposition to Pitt. The horrors of war,
+the blessings of peace, the weight of taxation, the growth of
+the national debt, were the rallying cries of the new party; but
+the mainspring of their zeal was hostility to the great Minister.
+Even his own colleagues chafed under his spirit of mastery;
+the chiefs of the Opposition longed to inherit his power; and
+the King had begun to hate him as a lion in his path. Pitt held
+to his purpose regardless of the gathering storm. That purpose,
+as proclaimed by his adherents, was to secure a solid and lasting peace,
+which meant the reduction of France to so low an estate that she
+could no more be a danger to her rival. In this he had the sympathy
+of the great body of the nation.
+
+Early in 1761 the King, a fanatic for prerogative, set his
+enginery in motion. The elections for the new Parliament were
+manipulated in his interest. If he disliked Pitt as the representative
+of the popular will, he also disliked his colleague, the
+shuffling and uncertain Newcastle, as the representative of a
+too powerful nobility. Elements hostile to both were introduced into
+the Cabinet and the great offices. The King'sfavorite, the Earl of Bute,
+supplanted Holdernesse as Secretary of State for the Northern Department;
+Charles Townshend, an opponent of Pitt, was made Secretary of War; Legge,
+Chancellor of the Exchequer, was replaced by Viscount Barrington, who was
+sure for the King; while a place in the Cabinet was also given to the Duke
+of Bedford, one of the few men who dared face the formidable Minister.
+It was the policy of the King and his following to abandon Prussia,
+hitherto supported by British subsidies, make friends with Austria and
+Russia at her expense, and conclude a separate peace with France.
+
+France was in sore need of peace. The infatuation that had
+turned her from her own true interest to serve the passions
+of Maria Theresa and the Czarina Elizabeth had brought military
+humiliation and financial ruin. Abbé de Bernis, Minister of Foreign
+Affairs, had lost the favor of Madame de Pompadour, and had been
+supplanted by the Duc de Choiseul. The new Minister had gained his
+place by pleasing the favorite; but he kept it through his own ability
+and the necessities of the time. The Englishman Stanley, whom Pitt
+sent to negotiate with him, drew this sketch of his character: "Though
+he may have his superiors, not only in experience of business,
+but in depth and refinement as a statesman, he is a person
+of as bold and daring a spirit as any man whatever in our
+country or in his own. Madame Pompadour has ever been looked upon by
+all preceding courtiers and ministers as their tutelary deity, under
+whose auspices only they could exist, and who was as much out of
+their reach as if she were of a superior class of beings; but this
+Minister is so far from being in subordination to her influence that
+he seized the first opportunity of depriving her not of an equality,
+but of any share of power, reducing her to the necessity of applying
+to him even for those favors that she wants for herself and her dependents.
+He has effected this great change, which every other man
+would have thought impossible, in the interior of the Court,
+not by plausibility, flattery, and address, but with a high hand,
+with frequent railleries and sarcasms which would have ruined any other,
+and, in short, by a clear superiority of spirit and resolution."[862]
+
+[Footnote 862: _Stanley to Pitt, 6 Aug. 1761_, in _Grenville
+Correspondence_, I. 367, _note_.]
+
+Choiseul was vivacious, brilliant, keen, penetrating; believing
+nothing, fearing nothing; an easy moralist, an uncertain
+ally, a hater of priests; light-minded, inconstant; yet a kind of
+patriot, eager to serve France and retrieve her fortunes.
+
+He flattered himself with no illusions. "Since we do not
+know how to make war," he said, "we must make peace;"[863]
+and he proposed a congress of all the belligerent Powers at
+Augsburg. At the same time, since the war in Germany was
+distinct from the maritime and colonial war of France and
+England, he proposed a separate negotiation with the British
+Court in order to settle the questions between them as a
+preliminary to the general pacification. Pitt consented, and
+Stanley went as envoy to Versailles; while M. de Bussy came
+as envoy to London and, in behalf of Choiseul, offered terms
+of peace, the first of which was the entire abandonment of
+Canada to England.[864] But the offers were accompanied by the
+demand that Spain, which had complaints of its own against
+England, should be admitted as a party to the negotiation, and
+even hold in some measure the attitude of a mediator. Pitt
+spurned the idea with fierce contempt. "Time enough to treat
+of all that, sir, when the Tower of London is taken sword in
+hand."[865] He bore his part with the ability that never failed him,
+and with a supreme arrogance that rose to a climax in his
+demand that the fortress of Dunkirk should be demolished, not
+because it was any longer dangerous to England, but because
+the nation would regard its destruction "as an eternal monument
+of the yoke imposed on France."[866]
+
+[Footnote 863:
+Flassan, _Diplomatie Française_, V. 376 (Paris, 1809).]
+
+[Footnote 864: See the proposals in Entick, V. 161.]
+
+[Footnote 865:
+Beatson, _Military Memoirs_, II. 434. _The Count de Fuentes
+to the Earl of Egremont, 25 Dec. 1761_, in Entick, V. 264.]
+
+[Footnote 866:
+On this negotiation, see _Mémoire historique sur la Négociation
+de la France et de l'Angleterre_ (Paris, 1761), a French Government
+publication containing papers on both sides. The British
+Ministry also published such documents as they saw fit, under the
+title of _Papers relating to the Rupture with Spain_. Compare
+Adolphus, _George III._, I. 31-39.]
+
+Choiseul replied with counter-propositions less humiliating
+to his nation. When the question of accepting or rejecting
+them came before the Ministry, the views of Pitt prevailed
+by a majority of one, and, to the disappointment of Bute and
+the King, the conferences were broken off. Choiseul, launched
+again on the billows of a disastrous war, had seen and provided
+against the event. Ferdinand VI. of Spain had died, and
+Carlos III. had succeeded to his throne. Here, as in England,
+change of kings brought change of policy. While negotiating
+vainly with Pitt, the French Minister had negotiated secretly
+and successfully with Carlos; and the result was the treaty
+known as the Family Compact, having for its object the union
+of the various members of the House of Bourbon in common
+resistance to the growing power of England. It provided that
+in any future war the Kings of France and Spain should act
+as one towards foreign Powers, insomuch that the enemy of
+either should be the enemy of both; and the Bourbon princes
+of Italy were invited to join in the covenant.[867] What was more
+to the present purpose, a special agreement was concluded on
+the same day, by which Spain bound herself to declare war
+against England unless that Power should make peace with
+France before the first of May, 1762. For the safety of her
+colonies and her trade Spain felt it her interest to join her
+sister nation in putting a check on the vast expansion of
+British maritime power. She could bring a hundred ships of war
+to aid the dilapidated navy of France, and the wealth of the
+Indies to aid her ruined treasury.
+
+[Footnote 867:
+Flassan, _Diplomatie Française_, V. 317 (Paris, 1809).]
+
+Pitt divined the secret treaty, and soon found evidence of
+it. He resolved to demand at once full explanation from
+Spain; and, failing to receive a satisfactory reply, attack her
+at home and abroad before she was prepared. On the second
+of October he laid his plan before a Cabinet Council held at
+a house in St. James Street. There were present the Earl of
+Bute, the Duke of Newcastle, Earl Granville, Earl Temple,
+and others of the Ministry. Pitt urged his views with great
+warmth. "This," he exclaimed, "is the time for humbling the
+whole House of Bourbon!"[868] His brother-in-law, Temple, supported
+him. Newcastle kept silent. Bute denounced the proposal,
+and the rest were of his mind. "If these views are to be followed,"
+said Pitt, "this is the last time I can sit at this board. I was
+called to the administration of affairs by the voice of the people;
+to them I have always considered myself as accountable for my conduct;
+and therefore cannot remain in a situation which makes me responsible
+for measures I am no longer allowed to guide." Nothing could be more
+offensive to George III. and his adherents.
+
+[Footnote 868: Beatson, II. 438.]
+
+The veteran Carteret, Earl Granville, replied angrily: "I
+find the gentleman is determined to leave us; nor can I say I
+am sorry for it, since otherwise he would certainly have compelled
+us to leave him. But if he is resolved to assume the office of
+exclusively advising His Majesty and directing the operations of the
+war, to what purpose are we called to this council? When he talks of
+being responsible to the people, he talks the language of the House
+of Commons, and forgets that at this board he is responsible only
+to the King. However, though he may possibly have convinced himself
+of his infallibility, still it remains that we should be equally
+convinced before we can resign our understandings to his direction,
+or join with him in the measure he proposes."[869]
+
+[Footnote 869: _Annual Register, 1761_, p. 44. Adolphus, _George III._,
+I. 40. Thackeray, _Life of Chatham_, I. 592.]
+
+Pitt resigned, and his colleagues rejoiced.[870] Power fell to
+Bute and the Tories; and great was the fall. The mass of the
+nation was with the defeated Minister. On Lord Mayor's Day
+Bute and Barrington were passing St. Paul's in a coach, which
+the crowd mistook for that of Pitt, and cheered lustily; till
+one man, looking in at the window, shouted to the rest: "This
+isn't Pitt; it's Bute, and be damned to him!" The cheers
+turned forthwith to hisses, mixed with cries of "No Bute!"
+"No Newcastle salmon!" "Pitt forever!" Handfuls of mud were showered
+against the coach, and Barrington's ruffles were besmirched with
+it.[871]
+
+[Footnote 870: Walpole, _George III._, I. 80, and note by Sir Denis Le
+Marchant, 80-82.]
+
+[Footnote 871: _Nuthall to Lady Chatham, 12 Nov. 1761_, in _Chatham
+Correspondence_, II. 166.]
+
+The fall of Pitt was like the knell of doom to Frederic of
+Prussia. It meant abandonment by his only ally, and the loss
+of the subsidy which was his chief resource. The darkness
+around him grew darker yet, and not a hope seemed left;
+when as by miracle the clouds broke, and light streamed out
+of the blackness. The bitterest of his foes, the Czarina Elizabeth,
+she whom he had called _infâme catin du Nord_, died, and was
+succeeded by her nephew, Peter III. Here again, as in England and
+Spain, a new sovereign brought new measures. The young Czar, simple
+and enthusiastic, admired the King of Prussia, thought him the
+paragon of heroes, and proclaimed himself his friend. No sooner
+was he on the throne than Russia changed front. From the foe of
+Frederic she became his ally; and in the opening campaign of 1762
+the army that was to have aided in crushing him was ranged on his
+side. It was a turn of fortune too sharp and sudden to endure.
+Ill-balanced and extreme in all things, Peter plunged into
+headlong reforms, exasperated the clergy and the army, and
+alienated his wife, Catherine, who had hoped to rule in his
+name, and who now saw herself supplanted by his mistress.
+Within six months he was deposed and strangled. Catherine,
+one of whose lovers had borne part in the murder, reigned
+in his stead, conspicuous by the unbridled disorders of her
+life, and by powers of mind that mark her as the ablest of
+female sovereigns. If she did not share her husband's enthusiasm
+for Frederic, neither did she share Elizabeth's hatred of him.
+He, on his part, taught by hard experience, conciliated instead of
+insulting her, and she let him alone.
+
+Peace with Russia brought peace with Sweden, and Austria
+with the Germanic Empire stood alone against him. France
+needed all her strength to hold her own against the mixed
+English and German force under Ferdinand of Brunswick in
+the Rhine countries. She made spasmodic efforts to seize upon
+Hanover, but the result was humiliating defeat.
+
+In England George III. pursued his policy of strengthening
+the prerogative, and, jealous of the Whig aristocracy, attacked
+it in the person of Newcastle. In vain the old politician
+had played false with Pitt, and trimmed to please his young
+master. He was worried into resigning his place in the Cabinet,
+and Bute, the obsequious agent of the royal will, succeeded
+him as First Lord of the Treasury. Into his weak and unwilling hands
+now fell the task of carrying on the war; for the nation, elated
+with triumphs and full of fight, still called on its rulers for
+fresh efforts and fresh victories. Pitt had proved a true prophet,
+and his enemies were put to shame; for the attitude of Spain forced
+Bute and his colleagues to the open rupture with her which the great
+Minister had vainly urged upon them; and a new and formidable war was
+now added to the old.[872] Their counsels were weak and half-hearted;
+but the armies and navies of England still felt the impulsion that
+the imperial hand of Pitt had given and the unconquerable spirit that
+he had roused.
+
+[Footnote 872:
+_Declaration of War against the King of Spain, 4 Jan. 1762._]
+
+This spirit had borne them from victory to victory. In Asia
+they had driven the French from Pondicherry and all their
+Indian possessions; in Africa they had wrested from them
+Gorée and the Senegal country; in the West Indies they had
+taken Guadeloupe and Dominica; in the European seas they
+had captured ship after ship, routed and crippled the great
+fleet of Admiral Conflans, seized Belleisle, and defeated a bold
+attempt to invade Ireland. The navy of France was reduced
+to helplessness. Pitt, before his resignation, had planned a
+series of new operations, including an attack on Martinique,
+with other West Indian islands still left to France, and then
+in turn on the Spanish possessions of Havana, Panama, Manila, and
+the Philippines. Now, more than ever before, the war appeared in
+its true character. It was a contest for maritime and colonial
+ascendency; and England saw herself confronted by both her great
+rivals at once.
+
+Admiral Rodney sailed for Martinique, and Brigadier
+Monckton joined him with troops from America. Before the
+middle of February the whole island was in their hands; and
+Grenada, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent soon shared its fate. The
+Earl of Albemarle and Admiral Sir George Pococke sailed in
+early spring on a more important errand, landed in June near
+Havana with eleven thousand soldiers, and attacked Moro Castle,
+the key of the city. The pitiless sun of the tropic midsummer
+poured its fierce light and heat on the parched rocks where the men
+toiled at the trenches. Earth was so scarce that hardly enough could
+be had to keep the fascines in place. The siege works were little
+else than a mass of dry faggots; and when, after exhausting toil,
+the grand battery opened on the Spanish defences, it presently took
+fire, was consumed, and had to be made anew. Fresh water failed,
+and the troops died by scores from thirst; fevers set in, killed
+many, and disabled nearly half the army. The sea was strewn with
+floating corpses, and carrion-birds in clouds hovered over the populous
+graveyards and infected camps. Yet the siege went on: a formidable
+sally was repulsed; Moro Castle was carried by storm; till at length,
+two months and eight days after the troops landed, Havana fell into
+their hands.[873] At the same time Spain was attacked at the antipodes,
+and the loss of Manila and the Philippines gave her fresh cause to
+repent her rash compact with France. She was hardly more fortunate
+near home; for having sent an army to invade Portugal, whichwas in
+the interest of England, a small British force, under Brigadier
+Burgoyne, foiled it, and forced it to retire.
+
+[Footnote 873: _Journal of the Siege, by the Chief Engineer, in Beatson_,
+II. 544. Mante, 398-465. Entick, V. 363-383.]
+
+The tide of British success was checked for an instant in
+Newfoundland, where a French squadron attacked St. John's
+and took it, with its garrison of sixty men. The news reached
+Amherst at New York; his brother, Lieutenant-Colonel Amherst,
+was sent to the scene of the mishap. St. John's was retaken, and
+its late conquerers were made prisoners of war.
+
+The financial condition of France was desperate. Her people
+were crushed with taxation; her debt grew apace; and her
+yearly expenditure was nearly double her revenue. Choiseul
+felt the need of immediate peace; and George III. and Bute
+were hardly less eager for it, to avert the danger of Pitt's return
+to power and give free scope to their schemes for strengthening the
+prerogative. Therefore, in September, 1762, negotiations were resumed.
+The Duke of Bedford was sent to Paris to settle the preliminaries,
+and the Duc de Nivernois came to London on the same errand. The
+populace were still for war. Bedford was hissed as he passed through
+the streets of London, and a mob hooted at the puny figure of Nivernois
+as he landed at Dover.
+
+The great question was, Should Canada be restored? Should
+France still be permitted to keep a foothold on the North
+American continent? Ever since the capitulation of Montreal
+a swarm of pamphlets had discussed the momentous subject.
+Some maintained that the acquisition of Canada was not an
+original object of the war; that the colony was of little value
+and ought to be given back to its old masters; that Guadeloupe
+should be kept instead, the sugar trade of that island being worth far
+more than the Canadian fur trade; and, lastly, that the British colonists,
+if no longer held in check by France, would spread themselves over
+the continent, learn to supply all their own wants, grow independent,
+and become dangerous. Nor were these views confined to Englishmen.
+There were foreign observers who clearly saw that the adhesion
+of her colonies to Great Britain would be jeopardized by the extinction
+of French power in America. Choiseul warned Stanley that they "would
+not fail to shake off their dependence the moment Canada should be
+ceded;" while thirteen years before, the Swedish traveller Kalm declared
+that the presence of the French in America gave the best assurance to
+Great Britain that its own colonies would remain in due subjection.[874]
+
+[Footnote 874: Kalm, _Travels in North America_, I. 207.]
+
+The most noteworthy argument on the other side was that
+of Franklin, whose words find a strange commentary in the
+events of the next few years. He affirmed that the colonies
+were so jealous of each other that they would never unite
+against England. "If they could not agree to unite against
+the French and Indians, can it reasonably be supposed that
+there is any danger of their uniting against their own nation,
+which it is well known they all love much more than they
+love one another? I will venture to say union amongst them
+for such a purpose is not merely improbable, it is impossible;"
+that is, he prudently adds, without "the most grievous tyranny
+and oppression," like the bloody rule of "Alva in the Netherlands."[875]
+
+[Footnote 875: _Interest of Great Britain in regard to her Colonies_
+(London, 1760)
+
+Lord Bath argues for retaining Canada in _A Letter addressed
+to Two Great Men on the Prospect of Peace_ (1759). He is answered
+by another pamphlet called _Remarks on the Letter to Two Great
+Men_ (1760). The _Gentleman's Magazine_ for 1759 has an ironical
+article styled _Reasons for restoring Canada to the French_; and
+in 1761 a pamphlet against the restitution appeared under the
+title, _Importance of Canada considered in Two Letters to a Noble
+Lord_. These are but a part of the writings on the question.]
+
+If Pitt had been in office he would have demanded terms
+that must ruin past redemption the maritime and colonial
+power of France; but Bute was less exacting. In November
+the plenipotentiaries of England, France, and Spain agreed
+on preliminaries of peace, in which the following were the
+essential points. France ceded to Great Britain Canada and
+all her possessions on the North American continent east of
+the River Mississippi, except the city of New Orleans and a small
+adjacent district. She renounced her claims to Acadia, and gave up
+to the conqueror the Island of Cape Breton, with all other islands
+in the Gulf and River of St. Lawrence. Spain received back Havana,
+and paid for it by the cession of Florida, with all her other
+possessions east of the Mississippi. France, subject to certain
+restrictions, was left free to fish in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and
+off a part of the coast of Newfoundland; and the two little islands
+of St. Pierre and Miquelon were given her as fishing stations on
+condition that she should not fortify or garrison them. In the West
+Indies, England restored the captured islands of Guadeloupe, Marigalante,
+Désirade, and Martinique, and France ceded Grenada and the Grenadines;
+while it was agreed that of the so-called neutral islands, St. Vincent,
+Dominica, and Tobago should belong to England, and St. Lucia to France.
+In Europe, each side promised to give no more help to its allies in the
+German war. France restored Minorca, and England restored Belleisle;
+France gave up such parts of Hanoverian territory as she had
+occupied, and evacuated certain fortresses belonging to Prussia,
+pledging herself at the same time to demolish, under the
+inspection of English engineers, her own maritime fortress
+of Dunkirk. In Africa France ceded Senegal, and received
+back the small Island of Gorée. In India she lost everything
+she had gained since the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle; recovered
+certain trading stations, but renounced the right of building
+forts or maintaining troops in Bengal.
+
+On the day when the preliminaries were signed, France
+made a secret agreement with Spain, by which she divested
+herself of the last shred of her possessions on the North
+American continent. As compensation for Florida, which her
+luckless ally had lost in her quarrel, she made over to the
+Spanish Crown the city of New Orleans, and under the name
+of Louisiana gave her the vast region spreading westward
+from the Mississippi towards the Pacific.
+
+On the ninth of December the question of approving the
+preliminaries came up before both Houses of Parliament.
+There was a long debate in the Commons. Pitt was not present,
+confined, it was said, by gout; till late in the day the
+House was startled by repeated cheers from the outside. The
+doors opened, and the fallen Minister entered, carried in the
+arms of his servants, and followed by an applauding crowd.
+His bearers set him down within the bar, and by the help of
+a crutch he made his way with difficulty to his seat. "There
+was a mixture of the very solemn and the theatric in this apparition,"
+says Walpole, who was present. "The moment was so well timed, the
+importance of the man and his services, the languor of his emaciated
+countenance, and the study bestowed on his dress were circumstances
+that struck solemnity into a patriot mind, and did a little furnish
+ridicule to the hardened and insensible. He was dressed in black
+velvet, his legs and thighs wrapped in flannel, his feet covered with
+buskins of black cloth, and his hands with thick gloves." Not
+for the first time, he was utilizing his maladies for purposes
+of stage effect. He spoke for about three hours, sometimes
+standing, and sometimes seated; sometimes with a brief burst
+of power, more often with the accents of pain and exhaustion.
+He highly commended the retention of Canada, but denounced
+the leaving to France a share in the fisheries, as well as other
+advantages tending to a possible revival of her maritime
+power. But the Commons listened coldly, and by a great majority approved
+the preliminaries of peace.
+
+These preliminaries were embodied in the definitive treaty
+concluded at Paris on the tenth of February, 1763. Peace between
+France and England brought peace between the warring nations of the
+Continent. Austria, bereft of her allies, and exhausted by vain efforts
+to crush Frederic, gave up the attempt in despair, and signed the treaty
+of Hubertsburg. The Seven Years War was ended.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 32
+
+1763-1884
+
+Conclusion
+
+
+"This," said Earl Granville on his deathbed, "has been the
+most glorious war and the most triumphant peace that England
+ever knew." Not all were so well pleased, and many held
+with Pitt that the House of Bourbon should have been forced
+to drain the cup of humiliation to the dregs. Yet the fact
+remains that the Peace of Paris marks an epoch than which
+none in modern history is more fruitful of grand results. With
+it began a new chapter in the annals of the world. To borrow
+the words of a late eminent writer, "It is no exaggeration to
+say that three of the many victories of the Seven Years War
+determined for ages to come the destinies of mankind. With
+that of Rossbach began the re-creation of Germany, with that
+of Plassey the influence of Europe told for the first time since
+the days of Alexander on the nations of the East; with the
+triumph of Wolfe on the Heights of Abraham began the history of
+the United States."[876]
+
+[Footnote 876: Green, _History of the English People_, IV. 193
+(London, 1880).]
+
+So far, however, as concerns the war in the Germanic
+countries, it was to outward seeming but a mad debauch of
+blood and rapine, ending in nothing but the exhaustion of the
+combatants. The havoc had been frightful. According to the
+King of Prussia's reckoning, 853,000 soldiers of the various
+nations had lost their lives, besides hundreds of thousands of
+non-combatants who had perished from famine, exposure, disease, or
+violence. And with all this waste of life not a boundary line had been
+changed. The rage of the two empresses and the vanity and spite of the
+concubine had been completely foiled. Frederic had defied them all,
+and had come out of the strife intact in his own hereditary dominions
+and master of all that he had snatched from the Empress-Queen;
+while Prussia, portioned out by her enemies as their spoil, lay depleted
+indeed, and faint with deadly striving, but crowned with glory, and with
+the career before her which, through tribulation and adversity, was to
+lead her at last to the headship of a united Germany.
+
+Through centuries of strife and vicissitude the French
+monarchy had triumphed over nobles, parliaments, and people,
+gathered to itself all the forces of the State, beamed with
+illusive splendors under Louis the Great, and shone with the
+phosphorescence of decay under his contemptible successor;
+till now, robbed of prestige, burdened with debt, and mined
+with corruption, it was moving swiftly and more swiftly towards
+the abyss of ruin.
+
+While the war hastened the inevitable downfall of the
+French monarchy, it produced still more notable effects.
+France under Colbert had embarked on a grand course of maritime
+and colonial enterprise, and followed it with an activity and vigor
+that promised to make her a great and formidable ocean power. It was
+she who led the way in the East, first trained the natives to fight
+her battles, and began that system of mixed diplomacy and war which,
+imitated by her rival, enabled a handful of Europeans to master all
+India. In North America her vast possessions dwarfed those of every
+other nation. She had built up a powerful navy and created an extensive
+foreign trade. All this was now changed. In India she was reduced to
+helpless inferiority, with total ruin in the future; and of all her
+boundless territories in North America nothing was left but the two
+island rocks on the coast of Newfoundland that the victors had given
+her for drying her codfish. Of her navy scarcely forty ships remained;
+all the rest were captured or destroyed. She was still great on the
+continent of Europe, but as a world power her grand opportunities
+were gone.
+
+In England as in France the several members of the State
+had battled together since the national life began, and the
+result had been, not the unchecked domination of the Crown,
+but a system of balanced and adjusted forces, in which King,
+Nobility, and Commons all had their recognized places and
+their share of power. Thus in the war just ended two great
+conditions of success had been supplied: a people instinct
+with the energies of ordered freedom, and a masterly leadership
+to inspire and direct them.
+
+All, and more than all, that France had lost England had
+won. Now, for the first time, she was beyond dispute the
+greatest of maritime and colonial Powers. Portugal and Holland,
+her precursors in ocean enterprise, had long ago fallen
+hopelessly behind. Two great rivals remained, and she had
+humbled the one and swept the other from her path. Spain,
+with vast American possessions, was sinking into the decay
+which is one of the phenomena of modern history; while France, of
+late a most formidable competitor, had abandoned the contest in
+despair. England was mistress of the seas, and the world was thrown
+open to her merchants, explorers, and colonists. A few years after
+the Peace the navigator Cook began his memorable series of voyages,
+and surveyed the strange and barbarous lands which after times were
+to transform into other Englands, vigorous children of this great
+mother of nations. It is true that a heavy blow was soon to fall
+upon her; her own folly was to alienate the eldest and greatest
+of her offspring. But nothing could rob her of the glory of
+giving birth to the United States; and, though politically
+severed, this gigantic progeny were to be not the less a source
+of growth and prosperity to the parent that bore them, joined
+with her in a triple kinship of laws, language, and blood. The
+war or series of wars that ended with the Peace of Paris
+secured the opportunities and set in action the forces that have
+planted English homes in every clime, and dotted the earth
+with English garrisons and posts of trade.
+
+With the Peace of Paris ended the checkered story of New
+France; a story which would have been a history if faults of
+constitution and the bigotry and folly of rulers had not dwarfed
+it to an episode. Yet it is a noteworthy one in both its lights
+and its shadows: in the disinterested zeal of the founder of
+Quebec, the self-devotion of the early missionary martyrs, and
+the daring enterprise of explorers; in the spiritual and temporal
+vassalage from which the only escape was to the savagery
+of the wilderness; and in the swarming corruptions which were
+the natural result of an attempt to rule, by the absolute hand
+of a master beyond the Atlantic, a people bereft of every
+vestige of civil liberty. Civil liberty was given them by the
+British sword; but the conqueror left their religious system untouched,
+and through it they have imposed upon themselves a weight of
+ecclesiastical tutelage that finds few equals in the most Catholic
+countries of Europe. Such guardianship is not without certain
+advantages. When faithfully exercised it aids to uphold some of the
+tamer virtues, if that can be called a virtue which needs the constant
+presence of a sentinel to keep it from escaping: but it is fatal to
+mental robustness and moral courage; and if French Canada would fulfil
+its aspirations it must cease to be one of the most priest-ridden
+communities of the modern world.
+
+Scarcely were they free from the incubus of France when
+the British provinces showed symptoms of revolt. The measures
+on the part of the mother-country which roused their resentment,
+far from being oppressive, were less burdensome than the navigation
+laws to which they had long submitted; and they resisted taxation by
+Parliament simply because it was in principle opposed to their rights
+as freemen. They did not, like the American provinces of Spain at a
+later day, sunder themselves from a parent fallen into decrepitude; but
+with astonishing audacity they affronted the wrath of England
+in the hour of her triumph, forgot their jealousies and quarrels,
+joined hands in the common cause, fought, endured, and won. The disunited
+colonies became the United States. The string of discordant communities
+along the Atlantic coast has grown to a mighty people, joined in a union
+which the earthquake of civil war served only to compact and consolidate.
+Those who in the weakness of their dissensions needed help
+from England against the savage on their borders have become
+a nation that may defy every foe but that most dangerous
+of all foes, herself, destined to a majestic future if she will
+shun the excess and perversion of the principles that made her
+great, prate less about the enemies of the past and strive more
+against the enemies of the present, resist the mob and the
+demagogue as she resisted Parliament and King, rally her
+powers from the race for gold and the delirium of prosperity
+to make firm the foundations on which that prosperity rests,
+and turn some fair proportion of her vast mental forces to
+other objects than material progress and the game of party
+politics. She has tamed the savage continent, peopled the
+solitude, gathered wealth untold, waxed potent, imposing, redoubtable;
+and now it remains for her to prove, if she can, that the rule of the
+masses is consistent with the highest growth of the individual; that
+democracy can give the world a civilization as mature and pregnant,
+ideas as energetic and vitalizing, and types of manhood as lofty and
+strong, as any of the systems which it boasts to supplant.
+
+
+
+
+Appendix A
+
+Chapter 3. Conflict for the West
+
+
+_Piquet and his War-Party_.--"Ce parti [_de guerre_] pour lequel
+M. le Général a donné son consentement, sera de plus de 3,800
+hommes.... 500 hommes de nos domicilies, 700 des Cinq nations
+à l'exclusion des Agniers [_Mohawks_] qui ne sont plus regardés
+que comme des anglais, 600 tant Iroquois que d'autres nations le
+long de la Belle Rivière d'où ils espèrent chasser les anglais qui
+y formentù des Établissemens contraires au bien des guerriers, 2,000
+hommes qu'ils doivent prendre aux têtes plates [_Choctaws_] où
+ils s'arresteront, c'est la où les deux chefs de guerre doivent proposer
+a l'armée l'expédition des Miamis au retour de celle contre
+la Nation du Chien [_Cherokees_]. Un vieux levain, quelques anciennes
+querelles leur feront tout entreprendre contre les anglais
+de la Virginie s'ils donnent encore quelques secours à cette
+dernière nation, ce qui ne manquera pas d'arriver...."
+
+"C'est un grand miracle que malgré l'envie, les contradictions,
+l'opposition presque générale de tous les Villages sauvages, j'aye
+formé en moins de 3 ans une des plus florissantes missions du
+Canada.... Je me trouve donc, Messieurs, dans l'occasion de
+pouvoir étendre l'empire de Jésus Christ et du Roy mes bons
+maîtres jusqu'aux extrémités de ce nouveau monde, et de plus
+faire avec quelques secours que vous me procurerez que la France
+et l'angleterre ne pourraient faire avec plusieurs millions et toutes
+leur troupes." _Copie de la Lettre écrite par M. l'Abbé Picquet,
+dattée à la Présentation du 8 Fév. 1752_ (Archives de la Marine).
+
+I saw in the possession of the late Jacques Viger, of Montreal,
+an illuminated drawing of one of Piquet's banners, said to be still
+in existence, in which the cross, the emblems of the Virgin and
+the Saviour, the fleur-de-lis, and the Iroquois totems are all embroidered
+and linked together by strings of wampum beads wrought into the silk.
+
+_Directions of the French Colonial Minister for the Destruction
+of Oswego_.--"La seule voye dont on puisse faire usage en temps
+de paix pour une pareille operation est celle des Iroquois des cinq
+nations. Les terres sur lesquelles le poste à été établi leur appartiennent
+et ce n'est qu'avec leur consentement que les anglois s'y
+sont placés. Si en faisant regarder à ces sauvages un pareil établissement
+comme contraire à leur liberté et comme une usurpation dont les anglois
+prétendent faire usage pour acquérir la propriété de leur terre on pourrait
+les déterminer à entreprendre de les détruire, une pareille opération ne
+seroit pas à négliger; mais M. le Marquis de la Jonquière doit sentir avec
+quelle circonspection une affaire de cette espèce doit être conduite et
+il faut en effêt qu'il y travaille de façon à ne se point compromettre."
+_Le Ministre à MM. de la Jonquière et Bigot, 15 Avril, 1750_
+(Archives de la Marine).
+
+
+
+
+Appendix B
+
+Chapter 4. Acadia
+
+
+_English Treatment of Acadians._--"Les Anglois dans la vue de
+la Conquête du Canada ont voulu donner aux peuples françois de
+ces Colonies un exemple frappant de la douceur de leur gouvernement
+dans leur conduite à l'égard des Accadiens."
+
+"Ils leur ont fourni pendant plus de 35 ans le simple nécessaire,
+sans élever la fortune d'aucun, ils leur ont fourni ce nécessaire
+souvent à crédit, avec un excès de confiance, sans fatiguer les
+débiteurs, sans les presser, sans vouloir les forcer au payement."
+
+"Ils leur ont laissé une apparence de liberté si excessive qu'ils
+n'ont voulu prendre aucune différence [_sic_] de leur différents, pas
+même pour les crimes.... Ils ont souffert que les accadiens leur
+refusassent insolemment certains rentes de grains, modiques &
+très-légitimement dues."
+
+"Ils ont dissimulé le refus méprisant que les accadiens ont fait
+de prendre d'eux des concessions pour les nouveaux terreins
+qu'ils voulaient occuper."
+
+"Les fruits que cette conduite a produit dans la dernière guerre
+nous le savons [_sic_] et les anglois n'en ignorent rien. Qu'on juge
+là-dessus de leur ressentiment et des vues de vengeance de cette
+nation cruelle.... Je prévois notamment la dispersion des jeunes
+accadiens sur les vaisseaux de guerre anglois, oú la seule règle
+pour la ration du pain suffit pour les detruire jusqu'au dernier."
+_Roma, Officier à l'Isle Royale à----, 1750._
+
+_Indians, directed by Missionaries, to attack the English in Time
+of Peace._--"La lettre de M. l'Abbé Le Loutre me paroit si intéressante
+que j'ay l'honneur de vous en envoyer Copie.... Les trois sauvages qui
+m'ont porté ces dépêches m'ont parlé relativement à ce que M. l'Abbé
+Le Loutre marque dans sa lettre; je n'ay eu garde de leur donner aucun
+Conseil là-dessus et je me suis borné à leur promettre que je ne les
+abandonnerai point, aussy ai-je pourvu à tout, soit pour les armes,
+munitions de guerre et de bouche, soit pour les autres choses nécessaires."
+
+"Il seroit à souhaiter que ces Sauvages rassemblés pussent
+parvenir à traverser les anglois dans leurs entreprises, même dans
+celle de Chibouctou [_Halifax_], ils sont dans cette résolution et
+s'ils peuvent mettre à execution ce qu'ils ont projetté il est assuré
+qu'ils seront fort incommodes aux Anglois et que les vexations
+qu'ils exerceront sur eux leur seront un très grand obstacle.
+Ces sauvages doívent agir seuls, il n'y aura ny soldat ny habitant,
+tout se fera de leur pur mouvement, et sans qu'il paraisse
+que j'en eusse connoissance."
+
+"Cela est très essentiel, aussy ai-je écrit au Sr. de Boishébert
+d'observer beaucoup de prudence dans ses démarches et de les
+faire très secrètement pour que les Anglois ne puissent pas s'apercevoir
+que nous pourvoyons aux besoins des dits sauvages."
+
+"Ce seront les missionnaires qui feront toutes les négociations
+et qui dirigeront les pas des dits sauvages, ils sont en très bonnes
+mains, le R.P. Germain et M. l'Abbé Le Loutre étant fort au
+fait d'en tirer tout le party possible et le plus avantageux pour nos
+intérêts, ils ménageront leur intrigue de façon à n'y pas paroitre...."
+
+"Je sens, Monseigneur, toute la délicatesse de cette negociation,
+soyez persuadé que je la conduirai avec tant de précautions que
+les anglois ne pourront pas dire que mes ordres y ont eu part."
+_La Jonquière au Minístre, 9 Oct. 1749_.
+
+_Missionaries to be encouraged in their Efforts to make the Indians
+attack the English._--"Les sauvages.... se distinguent,
+depuis la paix, dans les mouvements qu'il y a du côté de l'Acadie,
+et sur lesquels Sa Majesté juge à propos d'entrer dans quelques
+détails avec le Sieur de Raymond...."
+
+"Sa Majesté luy a déjà observé que les sauvages ont été jusqu'à
+présent dans les dispositions les plus favorables. Il est de la plus
+grande importance, et pour le présent et pour l'avenir, de ne rien
+négliger pour les y maintenir. Les missionnaires qui sont auprès
+d'eux sont plus à portés d'y contribuer que personne, et Sa Majesté
+a lieu d'être satisfaite des soins qu'ils y donnent. Le Sr. de
+Raymond doit exciter ces missionnaires à ne point se relacher
+sur cela; mais en même temps il doit les avertir de contenir leur
+zèle de manière qu'ils ne se compromettent pas mal à propos avec
+les anglois et qu'ils ne donnent point de justes sujets de plaintes."
+_Mémoire du Roy pour servir d'Instruction au Comte de Raymond,
+24 Avril, 1751_.
+
+_Acadians to join the Indians in attacking the English._--"Pour
+que ces Sauvages agissent avec beaucoup de Courage, quelques
+accadiens habillés et matachés comme les Sauvages pourront se
+joindre à eux pour faire coup sur les Anglois. Je ne puis éviter
+de consentir à ce que ces Sauvages feront puisque nous avons les
+bras liés et que nous ne pouvons rien faire par nous-mêmes, au
+surplus je ne crois pas qu'il y ait de l'inconvenient de laisser
+mêler les accadiens parmi les Sauvages, parceque s'ils sont pris,
+nous dirons qu'ils ont agi de leur propre mouvement." _La Jonquière
+au Minístre, 1 Mai_, 1751.
+
+_Cost of Le Loutre's Intrigues._--"J'ay déjà fait payer a M.
+Le Loutre depuis l'année dernière la somme de 11183l. 18s. pour
+acquitter les dépenses qu'il fait journellement et je ne cesse de
+luy recommander de s'en tenir aux indispensables en evitant toujours
+de rien compromettre avec le gouvernement anglois." _Prévost
+au Ministre, 22 Juillet, 1750_.
+
+_Payment for English Scalps in Time of Peace._--"Les Sauvages
+ont pris, il y a un mois, 18 chevelures angloises [_English scalps_,]
+et M. Le Loutre a été obligé de les payer 1800 l., argent de
+l'Acadie, dont je luy ay fait le remboursement." _Ibid., 16 Août,
+1753_.
+
+Many pages might be filled with extracts like the above. These,
+with most of the other French documents used in Chapter 4, are
+taken from the Archives de la Marine et des Colonies.
+
+
+
+
+Appendix C
+
+Chapter 5. Washington
+
+
+_Washington and the Capitulation at Fort Necessity_.--Villiers,
+in his Journal, boasts that he made Washington sign a virtual
+admission that he had assassinated Jumonville. In regard to this
+point, a letter, of which the following is an extract, is printed in
+the provincial papers of the time. It is from Captain Adam
+Stephen, an officer in the action, writing to a friend five weeks
+after.
+
+"When Mr. Vanbraam returned with the French proposals, we
+were obliged to take the sense of them from his mouth; it rained
+so heavy that he could not give us a written translation of them;
+we could scarcely keep the candle lighted to read them by; they
+were written in a bad hand, on wet and blotted paper, so that
+no person could read them but Vanbraam, who had heard them
+from the mouth of the French officer. Every officer there is
+ready to declare that there was no such word as _assassination_
+mentioned. The terms expressed were, _the death of Jumonville_. If
+it had been mentioned we would by all means have had it altered,
+as the French, during the course of the interview, seemed very
+condescending, and desirous to bring things to an issue." He then
+gives several other points in which Vanbraam had misled them.
+
+Dinwiddie, recounting the affair to Lord Albemarle, says that
+Washington, being ignorant of French, was deceived by the
+interpreter, who, through poltroonery, suppressed the word assassination.
+
+Captain Mackay, writing to Washington in September, after a
+visit to Philadelphia, says: "I had several disputes about our
+capitulation; but I satisfied every person that mentioned the subject
+as to the articles in question, that they were owing to a bad
+interpreter, and contrary to the translation made to us when we
+signed them."
+
+At the next meeting of the burgesses they passed a vote of thanks
+for gallant conduct to Washington and all his officers by name,
+except Vanbraam and the major of the regiment, the latter being
+charged with cowardice, and the former with treacherous misinterpretation
+of the articles.
+
+Sometime after, Washington wrote to a correspondent who had
+questioned him on the subject: "That we were wilfully or ignorantly
+deceived by our interpreter in regard to the word _assassination_
+I do aver, and will to my dying moment; so will every officer
+that was present. The interpreter was a Dutchman little acquainted
+with the English tongue, therefore might not advert to the tone and
+meaning of the word in English; but, whatever his motives for so doing,
+certain it is that he called it the _death_ or the _loss_ of
+the Sieur Jumonville. So we received and so we understood it, until, to
+our great surprise and mortification, we found it otherwise in a
+literal translation." Sparks, _Writings of Washington_, II. 464, 465.
+
+
+
+
+Appendix D
+
+Chapter 7. Braddock
+
+
+It has been said that Beaujeu, and not Contrecoeur, commanded
+at Fort Duquesne at the time of Braddock's expedition. Some
+contemporaries, and notably the chaplain of the fort, do, in fact,
+speak of him as in this position; but their evidence is overborne
+by more numerous and conclusive authorities, among them Vaudreuil,
+governor of Canada, and Contrecoeur himself, in an official
+report. Vaudreuil says of him: "Ce commandant s'occupa le 8
+[_Juillet_] à former un parti pour aller au devant des Anglois;" and
+adds that this party was commanded by Beaujeu and consisted of
+250 French and 650 Indians (_Vaudreuil au Ministre, 5 Août,
+1755_). In the autumn of 1756 Vaudreuil asked the Colonial Minister
+to procure a pension for Contrecoeur and Ligneris. He says:
+"Le premier de ces Messieurs a commandé longtemps au fort
+Duquesne; c'est luy qui a ordonné et dirigé tous les mouvements
+qui se sont faits dans cette partie, soit pour faire abandonner le
+premier établissement des Anglois, soit pour les forcer à se
+retirer du fort Nécessité, et soit enfin pour aller au devant de
+l'armée du Général Braddock qui a été entièrement défaite" (_Vaudreuil
+au Ministre, 8 Nov. 1756_.) Beaujeu, who had lately arrived with a
+reinforcement, had been named to relieve Contrecoeur (_Dumas au Ministre,
+24 Juillet, 1756_), but had not yet done so.
+
+As the report of Contrecoeur has never been printed, I give an
+extract from it (_Contrecceur à Vaudreuil, 14 Juillet, 1755_, in
+Archives de la Marine):--
+
+"Le meme jour [_8 Juillet_] je formai un party de tout ce que
+je pouvois mettre hors du fort pour aller à leur rencontre. Il étoit
+composé de 250 François et de 650 sauvages, ce qui faisoit 900
+hommes. M. de Beaujeu, capitaine, le commandoit. Il y avoit deux
+capitaines qui estoient Mrs. Dumas et Ligneris et plusieurs autres
+officiers subalternes. Ce parti se mit en marche le 9 à 8 heures
+du matin, et se trouva à midi et demie en présence des Anglois
+à environ 3 lieues du fort. On commença à faire feu de part et
+d'autre. Le feu de l'artillerie ennemie fit reculer un peu par deux
+fois notre parti. M. de Beaujeu fut tué à la troisième décharge.
+M. Dumas prit le commandement et s'en acquitta au mieux. Nos
+François, pleins de courage, soutenus par les sauvages, quoiqu'ils
+n'eussent point d'artillerie, firent à leur tour plier les Anglois qui
+se battirent en ordre de bataille et en bonne contenance. Et ces
+derniers voyant l'ardeur de nos gens qui fonçoient avec une vigeur
+infinie furent enfin obligés de plier tout à fait après 4 heures d'un
+grand feu. Mrs. Dumas et Ligneris qui n'avoient plus avec eux
+q'une vingtaine de François ne s'engagerent point dans la poursuite.
+Ils rentrerent dans le fort, parceq'une grande partie des
+Canadiens qui n'estoient malheureusement que des enfants s'estoient
+retirés à la première décharge."
+
+
+The letter of Dumas cited in the text has been equally unknown.
+It was written a year after the battle in order to draw the attention
+of the minister to services which the writer thought had not been
+duly recognized. The following is an extract (_Dumas au Ministre,
+24 Juillet, 1756_, in Archives de la Marine):--
+
+
+"M. de Beaujeu marcha donc, et sous ses ordres M. de Ligneris
+et moi. Il attaqua avec beaucoup d'audace mais sans nulle disposition;
+notre première décharge fut faite hors de portée; l'ennemi
+fit la sienne de plus près, et dans le premier instant du combat,
+cent miliciens, qui faisaient la moitié de nos Français
+lâchèrent honteusement le pied en criant 'Sauve qui peut.' Deux
+cadets qui depuis ont été faits officiers autorisaient cette fuite par
+leur exemple. Ce mouvement en arrière ayant encouragé l'ennemi,
+il fit retentir ses cris de Vive le Roi et avança sur nous à grand
+pas. Son artillerie s'étant preparée pendant ce temps là commença
+à faire feu ce qui épouvanta tellement les Sauvages que tout prit
+la fuite; l'ennemi faísait sa troisième décharge de mousqueterie
+quand M. de Beaujeu fut tué."
+
+"Notre déroute se présenta a mes yeux sous le plus désagréable
+point de vue, et pour n'être point chargé de la mauvaise manoeuvre
+d'autrui, je ne songeai plus qu'à me faire tuer. Ce fut alors,
+Monseigneur, qu'excitant de la voix et du geste le peu de soldats
+qui restait, je m'avançai avec la contenance qui donne le désespoir.
+Mon peloton fit un feu si vif que l'ennemi en parut étonné; il
+grossit insensiblement et les Sauvages voyant que mon attaque
+faisait cesser les crís de l'ennemi revinrent à moi. Dans ce moment
+j'envoyai M. le Chev'r. Le Borgne et M. de Rocheblave dire
+aux officiers qui étaient à la tête des Sauvages de prendre l'ennemi
+en flanc. Le canon qui battit en tête donna faveur à mes ordres.
+L'ennemi, pris de tous cotés, combattit avec la fermeté la plus
+opiniâtre. Des rangs entiers tombaient à la fois; presque tous
+les officiers périrent; et le désordre s'étant mis par là dans cette
+colonne, tout prit la fuite."
+
+Whatever may have been the conduct of the Canadian militia,
+the French officers behaved with the utmost courage, and shared
+with the Indians the honors of the victory. The partisan chief
+Charles Langlade seems also to have been especially prominent.
+His grandson, the aged Pierre Grignon, declared that it was he
+who led the attack (Draper, _Recollections of Grignon_, in the
+_Collections of the Wisconsin Historical Society,_ III.). Such evidence,
+taken alone, is of the least possible weight; but both the
+traveller Anbury and General John Burgoyne, writing many years
+after the event, speak of Langlade, who was then alive, as the
+author of Braddock's defeat. Hence there can be little doubt that
+he took an important part in it, though the contemporary writers
+do not mention his name. Compare Tassé, _Notice sur Charles
+Langlade_. The honors fell to Contrecoeur, Dumas, and Ligneris,
+all of whom received the cross of the Order of St Louis (_Ordres
+du Roy et Dépêches des Ministres_, 1755).
+
+
+
+
+Appendix E
+
+Chapter 14. Montcalm
+
+
+To show the style of Montcalm's familiar letters, I give a few
+examples. Literal translation is often impossible.
+
+À MADAME DE MONTCALM, À MONTRÉAL, 16 AVRIL, 1757.
+
+(_Extrait._)
+
+"Ma santé assez bonne, malgré beaucoup de travail, surtout
+d'ecriture. Estève, mon secretaire, se marie. Beau caractère. Bon
+autographe, écrivant vite. Je lui procure un emploi et le moyen
+de faire fortune s'il veut. Il fait un meilleur mariage que ne lui
+appartient; malgré cela je crains qu'il ne la fasse pas comme un
+autre; fat, frivole, joueur, glorieux, petit-maître, dépensier. J'ai
+toujours Marcel, des soldats copistes dans le besoin....Tous les
+soldats de Montpellier se portants bien, hors le fils de Pierre
+mort chez moi. Tout est hors de prix. Il faut vivre honorablement
+et je le fais, tous les jours seize personnes. Une fois tous les
+quinze jours chez M. le Gouverneur général et Mr. le Chev. de
+Lévis qui vit aussi très bien. Il a donné trois beaux grands bals.
+Pour moi jusqu'au carême, outre les dîners, de grands soupers de
+dames trois fois la semaine. Le jour des devotes prudes, des concerts.
+Les jours des jeûnes des violons d'hazard, parcequ'on me les
+demandait, cela ne menait que jusqu'à deux heures du matin et
+il se joignait l'après-souper compagnie dansante sans être priée,
+mais sure d'être bien reçue à celle qui avait soupé. Fort cher,
+peu amusant, et souvent ennuyeux.... Vous connaissiez ma
+maison, je l'ai augmentée d'un cocher, d'un frotteur, un garçon
+de cuisine, et j'ai marié mon aide de cuisine; car je travaille à
+peupler la colonie: 80 mariages de soldats cet hiver et deux
+d'officiers. Germain a perdu sa fille. Il a épousé mieux que lui;
+bonne femme mais sans bien, comme toutes...."
+
+À MADAME DE MONTCALM, À MONTRÉAL, 6 JUIN, 1757.
+
+(_Extrait_.)
+
+"J'addresse la première de cette lettre à ma mère. Il n'y a pas
+une heure dans la journée que je ne songe à vous, à elle, et à mes
+enfants. J'embrasse ma fille; je vous adore, ma très chère, ainsi que
+ma mère. Mille choses à mes soeurs. Je n'ai pas le temps de leur
+écrire, ni à Naujac, ni aux abbesses.... Des compliments au
+château d'Arbois, aux Du Cayla, et aux Givard. P.S. N'oubliez
+pas d'envoyer une douzaine de bouteilles d'Angleterre de pinte
+d'eau de lavande; vous en mettrez quatre pour chaque envoi."
+
+À BOURLAMAQUE, À MONTRÉAL, 20 FÉVRIER, 1757.
+
+(_Extrait_.)
+
+"Dimanche j'avais rassemblé les dames de France hors Mad.
+de Parfouru qui m'a fait l'honneur de me venir voir il y a trois jours
+et en la voyant je me suis apperçu que l'amour avait des traits de
+puissance dont on ne pouvait pas rendre raison, non pas par l'impression
+qu'elle a faite sur mon coeur, mais bien par celle qu'elle
+a faite sur celui de son époux. Mercredi une assemblée chez Mad.
+Varin. Jeudi un bal chez le Chev. de Lévis qui avait prié 65
+Dames ou demoiselles; Il n'y en avait que trente--autant
+d'hommes qu'à la guerre. Sa salle bien éclairée, aussi grand que
+celle de l'Intendance, beaucoup d'ordre, beaucoup d'attention, des
+rafraîchissements en abondance toute la nuit de tout genre et de
+toute espèce et on ne se retira qu'à sept heures du matin. Pour
+moi qui ay quitté le séjour de Québec, Je me couchai de bonne
+heure. J'avais eu ce jour-là huit dames à souper et ce souper était
+dédié à Mad. Varin. Demain j'en aurai une demi douzaine. Je ne
+sais encore a qui il est dedié, Je suis tenté de croire que c'est à La
+Roche Beaucourt Le galant Chev'r. nous donne encore un bal."
+
+
+
+
+Appendix F
+
+Chapter 15. Fort William Henry
+
+WEBB TO LOUDON, FORT EDWARD, 11 AUG. 1757.
+
+_Public Record Office._ (_Extract._)
+
+"On leaving the Camp Yesterday Morning they [_the English
+soldiers_] were stript by the Indians of everything they had both
+Officers and Men the Women and Children drag'd from among
+them and most inhumanly butchered before their faces, the party
+of about three hundred Men which were given them as an escort
+were during this time quietly looking on, from this and other circumstances
+we are too well convinced these barbarities must have been connived at by
+the French. After having destroyed the women and children they fell upon
+the rear of our Men who running in upon the Front soon put the whole
+to a most precipitate flight in which confusion part of them came into
+this Camp about two o'Clock yesterday morning in a most distressing
+situation, and have continued dropping in ever since, a great many men and
+we are afraid several Officers were massacred."
+
+The above is independent of the testimony of Frye, who did
+not reach Fort Edward till the day after Webb's letter was written.
+
+
+FRYE TO THOMAS HUBBARD, SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
+OF MASSACHUSETTS, ALBANY, 16 AUG. 1757.
+
+_Public Record Office._ (_Extract._)
+
+"We did not march till ye 10th at which time the Savages were
+let loose upon us, Strips, Kills, & Scalps our people drove them
+into Disorder Rendered it impossible to Rally, the French Gaurds
+we were promised shou'd Escort us to Fort Edward Could or
+would not protect us so that there Opened the most horrid Scene
+of Barbarity immaginable, I was strip'd myself of my Arms &
+Cloathing that I had nothing left but Briches Stockings Shoes &
+Shirt, the Indians round me with their Tomehawks Spears &c
+threatening Death I flew to the Officers of the French Gaurds for
+Protection but they would afford me none, therefore was Oblig'd
+to fly and was in the woods till the 12th in the Morning of which
+I arriv'd at Fort Edward almost Famished ... with what of
+Fatigue Starving &c I am obliged to break off but as soon as I
+can Recollect myself shall write to you more fully."
+
+FRYE, JOURNAL OF THE ATTACK OF FORT WILLIAM HENRY.
+
+_Public Record Office. (Extract.)_
+
+"_Wednesday, August 10th_.--Early this morning we were ordered
+to prepare for our march, but found the Indians in a worse
+temper (if possible) than last night, every one having a tomahawk,
+hatchett or some other instrument of death, and Constantly
+plundering from the officers their arms &ca this Col'o.
+Monro Complained of, as a breach of the Articles of Capitulation
+but to no effect, the french officers however told us that if
+we would give up the baggage of the officers and men, to the
+Indians, they thought it would make them easy, which at last
+Col'o. Monro Consented to but this was no sooner done, then
+they began to take the Officers Hatts, Swords, guns & Cloaths,
+stripping them all to their Shirts, and on some officers, left no
+shirt at all, while this was doing they killed and scalp'd all the
+sick and wounded before our faces and then took out from our
+troops, all the Indians and negroes, and Carried them off, one of
+the former they burnt alive afterwards."
+
+"At last with great difficulty the troops gott from the Retrenchment,
+but they were no sooner out, then the savages fell upon the
+rear, killing & scalping, which Occasioned an order for a halt,
+which at last was done in great Confusion but as soon as those
+in the front knew what was doing in the rear they again pressed
+forward, and thus the Confusion continued & encreased till we
+came to the Advanc'd guard of the French, the savages still carrying
+away Officers, privates, Women and Children, some of which
+latter they kill'd & scalpt in the road. This horrid scene of blood
+and slaughter obliged our officers to apply to the Officers of the
+French Guard for protection, which they refus'd & told them they
+must take to the woods and shift for themselves which many did,
+and in all probability many perish't in the woods, many got into
+Fort Edward that day and others daily Continued coming in, but
+vastly fatigued with their former hardships added to this last,
+which threw several of them into Deliriums."
+
+
+AFFIDAVIT OF MILES WHITWORTH, SURGEON OF THE
+MASSACHUSETTS REGIMENT, TAKEN BEFORE GOVERNOR
+POWNALL 17 OCT.1757.
+
+_Public Record Office. (Extract.)_
+
+"Being duly sworn on the Holy Evangelists doth declare ... that
+there were also seventeen Men of the Massachusetts Regiment
+wounded unable to March under his immediate Care in the
+Intrenched Camp, that according to the Capitulation he did deliver
+them over to the French Surgeon on the ninth of August at two in the
+Afternoon ... that the French Surgeon received them into his Custody
+and placed Centinals of the French Troops upon the said seventeen
+wounded. That the French Surgeon going away to the French Camp, the
+said Miles Whitworth continued with the said wounded Men till five
+o'clock on the Morn of the tenth of August, That the Centinals were
+taken off and that he the said Whitworth saw the French Indians about
+5 O'clock in the Morn of the 10th of August dragg the said seventeen
+wounded men out of their Hutts, Murder them with their Tomohawks and
+scalp them, That the French Troops posted round the lines were not further
+than forty feet from the Hutts where the said wounded Men lay, that several
+Canadian Officers particularly one Lacorne were present and that none,
+either Officer or Soldier, protected the said wounded Men."
+
+MILES WHITWORTH.
+"_Sworn before me_ T. POWNALL."
+
+
+
+
+Appendix G
+
+Chapter 20. Ticonderoga
+
+
+The French accounts of the battle at Ticonderoga are very
+numerous, and consist of letters and despatches of Montcalm,
+Lévis, Bougainville, Doreil, and other officers, besides several
+anonymous narratives, one of which was printed in pamphlet
+form at the time. Translations of many of them may be found in
+_N.Y. Colonial Documents,_ X. There are, however, various others
+preserved in the archives of the War and Marine Departments at
+Paris which have not seen the light. I have carefully examined
+and collated them all. The English accounts are by no means so
+numerous or so minute. Among those not already cited, may be
+mentioned a letter of Colonel Woolsey of the New York provincials,
+and two letters from British officers written just after the
+battle and enclosed in a letter from Alexander Colden to Major
+Halkett, 17 July. (_Bouquet and Haldimand Papers._)
+
+The French greatly exaggerated the force of the English and
+their losses in the battle. They place the former at from twenty
+thousand to thirty-one thousand, and the latter at from four
+thousand to six thousand. Prisoners taken at the end of the battle
+told them that the English had lost four thousand,--a statement
+which they readily accepted, though the prisoners could have
+known little more about the matter than they themselves. And
+these figures were easily magnified. The number of dead lying
+before the lines is variously given at from eight hundred to three
+thousand. Montcalm himself, who was somewhat elated by his
+victory, gives this last number in one of his letters, though he
+elsewhere says two thousand; while Lévis, in his _Journal de la
+Guerre,_ says "about eight hundred." The truth is that no pains
+were taken to ascertain the exact number, which, by the English
+returns, was a little above five hundred, the total of killed,
+wounded, and missing being nineteen hundred and forty-four. A
+friend of Knox, writing to him from Fort Edward three weeks
+after the battle, gives a tabular statement which shows nineteen
+hundred and fifty in all, or six more than the official report. As
+the name of every officer killed or wounded, with the corps to
+which he belonged, was published at the time (_London Magazine_,
+1758), it is extremely unlikely that the official return was
+falsified. Abercromby's letter to Pitt, of July 12, says that he
+retreated "with the loss of four hundred and sixty-four regulars
+killed, twenty-nine missing eleven hundred and seventeen wounded;
+and eighty-seven provincials killed, eight missing, and two hundred
+and thirty-nine wounded, officers of both included." In a
+letter to Viscount Barrington, of the same date (Public Record
+Office), Abercromby encloses a full detail of losses, regiment by
+regiment and company by company, being a total of nineteen
+hundred and forty-five. Several of the French writers state correctly
+that about fourteen thousand men (including reserves) were engaged in
+the attacks; but they add erroneously that there were thirteen thousand
+more at the Falls. In fact there was only a small provincial regiment
+left there, and a battalion of the New York regiment, under Colonel
+Woolsey, at the landing.
+
+A LEGEND OF TICONDEROGA.--Mention has been made of the
+death of Major Duncan Campbell of Inverawe. The following
+family tradition relating to it was told me in 1878 by the late
+Dean Stanley, to whom I am also indebted for various papers on
+the subject, including a letter from James Campbell, Esq., the
+present laird of Inverawe, and great-nephew of the hero of the
+tale. The same story is told, in an amplified form and with some
+variations, in the _Legendary Tales of the Highlands_ of Sir Thomas
+Dick Lauder. As related by Dean Stanley and approved by Mr.
+Campbell, it is this:--
+
+The ancient castle of Inverawe stands by the banks of the Awe,
+in the midst of the wild and picturesque scenery of the western
+Highlands. Late one evening, before the middle of the last century,
+as the laird, Duncan Campbell, sat alone in the old hall,
+there was a loud knocking at the gate; and, opening it, he saw
+a stranger, with torn clothing and kilt besmeared with blood, who
+in a breathless voice begged for asylum. He went on to say that
+he had killed a man in a fray, and that the pursuers were at his
+heels. Campbell promised to shelter him. "Swear on your dirk!"
+said the stranger; and Campbell swore. He then led him to a secret
+recess in the depths of the castle. Scarcely was he hidden when
+again there was a loud knocking at the gate, and two armed men
+appeared. "Your cousin Donald has been murdered, and we are
+looking for the murderer!" Campbell, remembering his oath,
+professed to have no knowledge of the fugitive; and the men went
+on their way. The laird, in great agitation, lay down to rest in
+a large dark room, where at length he feel asleep. Waking suddenly
+in bewilderment and terror, he saw the ghost of the murdered
+Donald standing by his bedside, and heard a hollow voice
+pronounce the words: _"Inverawe! Inverawe! blood has been shed.
+Shield not the murderer!"_ In the morning Campbell went to the
+hiding-place of the guilty man and told him that he could harbor
+him no longer. "You have sworn on your dirk!" he replied; and
+the laird of Inverawe, greatly perplexed and troubled, made a
+compromise between conflicting duties, promised not to betray
+his guest, led him to the neighboring mountain, and hid him in
+a cave.
+
+In the next night, as he lay tossing in feverish slumbers, the
+same stern voice awoke him, the ghost of his cousin Donald stood
+again at his bedside, and again he heard the same appalling words:
+_"Inverawe! Inverawe! blood has been shed. Shield not the murderer!"_
+At break of day he hastened, in strange agitation, to the
+cave; but it was empty, the stranger was gone. At night, as he
+strove in vain to sleep, the vision appeared once more, ghastly
+pale, but less stern of aspect than before. _"Farewell, Inverawe!"_
+it said; _"Farewell, till we meet at TICONDEROGA!"_
+
+The strange name dwelt in Campbell's memory. He had joined
+the Black Watch, or Forty-second Regiment, then employed
+in keeping order in the turbulent Highlands. In time he became
+its major; and, a year or two after the war broke out, he went
+with it to America. Here, to his horror, he learned that it was
+ordered to the attack of Ticonderoga. His story was well known
+among his brother officers. They combined among themselves to
+disarm his fears; and when they reached the fatal spot they told
+him on the eve of the battle, "This is not Ticonderoga; we are not
+there yet; this is Fort George." But in the morning he came to
+them with haggard looks. "I have seen him! You have deceived
+me! He came to my tent last night! This is Ticonderoga! I shall
+die to-day!" and his prediction was fulfilled.
+
+Such is the tradition. The indisputable facts are that Major
+Duncan Campbell of Inverawe, his arm shattered by a bullet,
+was carried to Fort Edward, where, after amputation, he died and
+was buried. (_Abercromby to Pitt_,19 _August_, 1758.) The stone
+that marks his grave may still be seen, with this inscription: _"Here
+lyes the Body of Duncan Campbell of Inverawe, Esq, Major to
+the old Highland Regiment, aged 55 Years, who died on the 17th
+July, 1758, of the Wounds he received in the Attack of the Retrenchment
+of Ticonderoga or Carrillon, on the 8th July, 1758."_
+
+His son, Lieutenant Alexander Campbell, was severely wounded
+at the same time, but reached Scotland alive, and died in Glasgow.
+Mr. Campbell, the present Inverawe, in the letter mentioned
+above, says that forty-five years ago he knew an old man whose
+grandfather was foster-brother to the slain major of the forty-second,
+and who told him the following story while carrying a salmon for him
+to an inn near Inverawe. The old man's grandfather was sleeping with his
+son, then a lad, in the same room, but in another bed. This son,
+father of the narrator, "was awakened," to borrow the words of
+Mr. Campbell, "by some unaccustomed sound, and behold there was a
+bright light in the room, and he saw a figure, in full Highland
+regimentals, cross over the room and stoop down over his father's
+bed and give him a kiss. He was too frightened to speak, but put his
+head under his coverlet and went to sleep. Once more he was roused in
+like manner, and saw the same sight. In the morning he spoke to his
+father about it, who told him that it was Macdonnochie _[the Gaelic
+patronymic of the laird of Inverawe]_ whom he had seen, and who came to
+tell him that he had been killed in a great battle in America.
+Sure enough, said my informant, it was on the very day that the
+battle of Ticonderoga was fought and the laird was killed."
+
+It is also said that two ladies of the family of Inverawe saw a
+battle in the clouds, in which the shadowy forms of Highland
+warriors were plainly to be described; and that when the fatal
+news came from America, it was found that the time of the
+vision answered exactly to that of the battle in which the head
+of the family fell.
+
+The legend of Inverawe has within a few years found its way
+into an English magazine, and it has also been excellently told
+in the _Atlantic Monthly_ of September of this year, 1884, by Miss
+C.F. Gordon Cumming. Her version differs a little from that
+given above from the recital of Dean Stanley and the present laird
+of Inverawe, but the essential points are the same. Miss Gordon
+Cumming, however, is in error when she says that Duncan Campbell
+was wounded in the breast, and that he was first buried at
+Ticonderoga. His burial-place was near Fort Edward, where he
+died, and where his remains still lie, though not at the same spot,
+as they were long after removed by a family named Gilchrist,
+who claimed kinship with the Campbells of Inverawe.
+
+
+
+
+Appendix H
+
+Chapter 25. Wolfe at Quebec
+
+FORCE OF THE FRENCH AND ENGLISH AT THE SIEGE OF QUEBEC.
+
+
+"Les retranchemens que j'avois fait tracer depuis la rivière St.
+Charles jusqu'au saut Montmorency furent occupés par plus de
+14,000 hommes, 200 cavaliers dont je formai un corps aux ordres
+de M. de la Rochebeaucour, environ 1,000 sauvages Abenakis et
+des différentes nations du nord des pays d'en haut. M. de Boishébert
+arriva ensuite avec les Acadiens et sauvages qu'il avoit rassemblés.
+Je réglai la garnison de Québec à 2,000 hommes." _Vaudreuil
+au Ministre, 5 Oct. 1759._
+
+The commissary Berniers says that the whole force was about
+fifteen thousand men, besides Indians, which is less than the number
+given by Vaudreuil.
+
+Bigot says: "Nous avions 13,000 hommes et mille à 1,200 sauvages,
+sans compter 2,000 hommes de garnison dans la ville." _Bigot au Ministre,
+25 Oct. 1759._
+
+The Hartwell _Journal du Siége_ says: "II fut décidé qu'on ne
+laisseroit dans la place que 1,200 hommes, et que tout le reste
+marcheroit au camp, où l'on comptoit se trouver plus de 15,000
+hommes, y compris les sauvages."
+
+Rigaud, Vaudreuil's brother, writing from Montreal to Bourlamaque
+on the 23d of June, says: "Je compte que l'armée campée
+sous Québec sera de 17,000 hommes bien effectifs, sans les sauvages."
+He then gives a list of Indians who have joined the army,
+or are on the way, amounting to thirteen hundred.
+
+At the end of June Wolfe had about eight thousand six hundred
+effective soldiers. Of these the ten battalions, commonly mentioned
+as regiments, supplied six thousand four hundred; detached
+grenadiers from Louisbourg, three hundred; artillery, three hundred;
+rangers, four hundred; light infantry, two hundred; marines,
+one thousand. The complement of the battalions was in some cases
+seven hundred and in others one thousand (Knox, II. 25); but
+their actual strength varied from five hundred to eight hundred,
+except the Highlanders, who mustered eleven hundred, their ranks
+being more than full. Fraser, in his _Journal of the Siege_, gives a
+tabular view of the whole. At the end of the campaign Lévis
+reckons the remaining English troops at about six thousand (_Lévis
+au Ministre, 10 Nov. 1759_), which answers to the report of General
+Murray: "The troops will amount to six thousand" (_Murray
+to Pitt, 12 Oct. 1759_). The precise number is given in the _Return
+of the State of His Majesty's Forces left in Garrison at Québec_,
+dated 12 Oct. 1759, and signed, Robert Monckton (Public Record
+Office, _America and West Indies_, XCIX.). This shows the total
+of rank and file to have been 6,214, which the addition of officers,
+sergeants, and drummers raises to about seven thousand, besides
+171 artillerymen.
+
+
+
+
+Appendix I
+
+Chapter 27. The Heights of Abraham
+
+
+One of the most important unpublished documents on Wolfe's
+operations against Quebec is the long and elaborate _Journal
+mémoratif de ce qui s'est passé de plus remarquable pendant qu'a
+duré le Siége de la Ville de Québec_ (Archives de la Marine). The
+writer, M. de Foligny, was a naval officer who during the siege
+commanded one of the principal batteries of the town. The official
+correspondence of Vaudreuil for 1759 (Archives Nationales)
+gives the events of the time from his point of view; and various
+manuscript letters of Bigot, Lévis, Montreuil, and others (Archives
+de la Marine, Archives de la Guerre) give additional particulars.
+The letters, generally private and confidential, written to Bourlamaque
+by Montcalm, Lévis, Vaudreuil, Malartic, Berniers, and others during
+the siege contain much that is curious and interesting.
+
+_Siége de Québec en 1759, d'après un Manuscrit déposé à la
+Bibliothêque de Hartwell en Angleterre._ A very valuable diary,
+by a citizen of Quebec; it was brought from England in 1834 by
+the Hon. D.B. Viger, and a few copies were printed at Quebec in
+1836. _Journal tenu a l'Armee que commandoit feu M. le Marquis
+de Montcalm._ A minute diary of an officer under Montcalm
+(printed by the Quebec Historical Society). _Memoire sur la Campagne
+de 1759, par M. de Joannès, Major de Québec_ (Archives de la Guerre).
+_Lettres et Depeches de Montcalm_ (Ibid.). These touch briefly
+the antecedents of the Siege. _Mémoires sur le Canada depuis 1749
+jusqu'à_ 1760 (Quebec Historical Society). _Journal du Siege de
+Québec en 1759, par M. Jean Claude Panet, notaire_ (Ibid.). The
+writer of this diary was in Quebec at the time. Several other journals
+and letters of persons present at the siege have been printed by the
+Quebec Historical Society, under the title _Événements de la Guerre
+en Canada durant les Années 1759 et 1760. Relation de ce qui s'est
+passé au Siége de Québec, par une Réligieuse de l'Hôpital Général
+de Québec_ (Quebec Historical Society). _Jugement impartial
+sur les Opérations militaires de la Campagne, par M'gr. de Pontbriand,
+Évêque de Québec_ (Ibid.). _Memoirs of the Siege of Quebec, from
+the Journal of a French Officer on board the Chezine Frigate, taken
+by His Majesty's Ship Rippon, by Richard Gardiner, Esq., Captain of
+Marines in the Rippon,_ London, 1761.
+
+_General Wolfe's Instructions to Young Officers,_ Philadelphia,
+1778. This title is misleading, the book being a collection of military
+orders. _General Orders in Wolfe's Army_ (Quebec Historical
+Society). This collection is much more full than the foregoing,
+so far as concerns the campaign of 1759. _Letters of Wolfe_ (in
+Wright's _Wolfe_), _Despatches of Wolfe, Saunders, Monckton, and
+Townshend_ (in contemporary magazines). _A Short Authentic
+Account of the Expedition against Quebec, by a Volunteer upon
+that Expedition,_ Quebec, 1872. This valuable diary is ascribed to
+James Thompson, a volunteer under Wolfe, who died at Quebec
+in 1830 at the age of ninety-eight, after holding for many years
+the position of overseer of works in the Engineer Department.
+Another manuscript, for the most part identical with this, was
+found a few years ago among old papers in the office of the
+Royal Engineers at Quebec. _Journal of the Expedition on the
+River St. Lawrence_. Two entirely distinct diaries bear this name.
+One is printed in the _New York Mercury_ for December, 1759;
+the other was found among the papers of George Alsopp, secretary
+to Sir Guy Carleton, who served under Wolfe (Quebec Historical
+Society). Johnstone, _A Dialogue in Hades_ (Ibid.). The Scotch
+Jacobite, Chevalier Johnstone, as aide-de-camp to Lévis, and afterwards
+to Montcalm, had great opportunities of acquiring information during
+the campaign; and the results, though produced in the fanciful form
+of a dialogue between the ghosts of Wolfe and Montcalm, are of
+substantial historical value. The _Dialogue_ is followed by a
+plain personal narrative. Fraser, _Journal of the Siege of Quebec_
+(Ibid.). Fraser was an officer in the Seventy-eighth Highlanders.
+_Journal of the Siege of Quebec, by a Gentleman in an Eminent Station
+on the Spot, Dublin, 1759_. _Journal of the Particular Transactions
+during the Siege of Quebec_ (_Notes and Queries_, XX.). The writer
+was a soldier or noncommissioned officer serving in the light infantry.
+
+_Memoirs of the Siege of Quebec and Total Reduction of Canada,
+by John Johnson, Clerk and Quarter-master Sergeant to the
+Fifty-eighth Regiment_. A manuscript of 176 pages, written when
+Johnson was a pensioner at Chelsea (England). The handwriting
+is exceedingly neat and clear; and the style, though often grandiloquent,
+is creditable to a writer in his station. This curious production
+was found among the papers of Thomas McDonough, Esq., formerly British
+Consul at Boston, and is in possession of his grandson, my relative,
+George Francis Parkman, Esq., who, by inquiries at the Chelsea Hospital,
+learned that Johnson was still living in 1802.
+
+I have read and collated with extreme care all the above authorities,
+with others which need not be mentioned.
+
+Among several manuscript maps and plans showing the operations
+of the siege may be mentioned one entitled, _Plan of the
+Town and Basin of Quebec and Part of the Adjacent Country,
+shewing the principal Encampments and Works of the British
+Army commanded by Major Gen'l. Wolfe, and those of the French
+Army by Lieut. Gen'l. the Marquis of Montcalm_. It is the work
+of three engineers of Wolfe's army, and is on a scale of eight
+hundred feet to an inch. A facsimile from the original in possession
+of the Royal Engineers is before me.
+
+Among the "King's Maps," British Museum (CXIX. 27), is a
+very large colored plan of operations at Quebec in 1759, 1760,
+superbly executed in minute detail.
+
+
+
+
+Appendix J
+
+Chapter 28. Fall of Quebec
+
+
+_Death and Burial of Montcalm_.--Johnstone, who had every
+means of knowing the facts, says that Montcalm was carried after
+his wound to the house of the surgeon Arnoux. Yet it is not quite
+certain that he died there. According to Knox, his death took
+place at the General Hospital; according to the modern author
+of the _Ursulines de Québec_, at the Château St.-Louis. But the
+General Hospital was a mile out of the town, and in momentary
+danger of capture by the English; while the Château had been
+made untenable by the batteries of Point Levi, being immediately
+exposed to their fire. Neither of these places was one to which the
+dying general was likely to be removed, and it is probable that he
+was suffered to die in peace at the house of the surgeon.
+
+It has been said that the story of the burial of Montcalm in a
+grave partially formed by the explosion of a bomb, rests only
+on the assertion in his epitaph, composed in 1761 by the Academy
+of Inscriptions at the instance of Bougainville. There is, however,
+other evidence of the fact. The naval captain Foligny, writing
+on the spot at the time of the burial, says in his Diary, under the
+date of September 14: "A huit heures du soir, dans l'église des
+Ursulines, fut enterré dans une fosse faite sous la chaire _par le
+travail de la Bombe_, M. le Marquis de Montcalm, décédé du matin
+à 4 heures après avoir reçu tous les Sacrements. Jamais Général
+n'avoit été plus aimé de sa troupe et plus universellement regretté.
+Il étoit d'un esprit supérieur, doux, gracieux, affable,
+familier à tout le monde, ce qui lui avoit fait gagner la confiance
+de toute la Colonie: _requiescat in pace_."
+
+The author of _Les Ursulines de Québec_ says: "Un des projectiles
+ayant fait une large ouverture dans le plancher de bas,
+on en profita pour creuser la fosse du général."
+
+The _Boston Post Boy and Advertiser_, in its issue of Dec. 3,
+1759, contains a letter from "an officer of distinction" at Quebec
+to Messrs. Green and Russell, proprietors of the newspaper. This
+letter contains the following words: "He [_Montcalm_] died the
+next day; and, with a little Improvement, one of our 13-inch Shell-Holes
+served him for a Grave."
+
+The particulars of his burial are from the _Acte Mortuaire du
+Marquis de Montcalm_ in the registers of the Church of Notre
+Dame de Québec, and from that valuable chronicle, _Les Ursulines
+de Québec_, composed by the Superior of the convent. A nun of
+the sisterhood, Mère Aimable Dubé de Saint-Ignace, was, when a
+child, a witness of the scene, and preserved a vivid memory of
+it to the age of eighty-one.
+
+
+
+
+Appendix K
+
+Chapter 29. Sainte-Foy>
+
+STRENGTH OF THE FRENCH AND ENGLISH AT THE BATTLE OF
+STE-FOY
+
+
+In the Public Record Office (_America and West Indies_, XCIX)
+are preserved the tabular returns of the garrison of Quebec for
+1759, 1760, sent by Murray to the War Office. They show the
+exact condition of each regiment, in all ranks, for every month
+of the autumn, winter, and spring. The return made out on the
+24th of April, four days before the battle, shows that the total
+number of rank and file, exclusive of non commissioned officers
+and drummers, was 6,808, of whom 2,612 were fit for duty in
+Quebec, and 654 at other places in Canada, that is, at Ste Foy,
+Old Lorette, and the other outposts. This gives a total of 3,266
+rank and file fit for duty at or near Quebec, besides which there
+were between one hundred and two hundred artillerymen, and
+a company of rangers. This was Murray's whole available force
+at the time. Of the rest of the 6,808 who appear in the return,
+2,299 were invalids at Quebec, and 669 in New York, 538 were
+on service in Halifax and New York, and 36 were absent on furlough.
+These figures nearly answer to the condensed statement of
+Fraser, and confirm the various English statements of the numbers
+that took part in the battle; namely, 3,140 (Knox), 3,000
+(John Johnson), 3,111, and elsewhere, in round numbers, 3,000
+(Murray) Lévis, with natural exaggeration, says 4,000. Three or
+four hundred were left in Quebec to guard the walls when the
+rest marched out.
+
+I have been thus particular because a Canadian writer, Garneau,
+says "Murray sortit de la ville le 28 au matin à la tête de toute
+la garnison, dont les seules troupes de la ligne comptaient encore
+7,714 combattants, non compris les officiers." To prove this, he
+cites the pay-roll of the garrison, which, in fact, corresponds to
+the returns of the same date, if noncommissioned officers, drummers,
+and artillerymen are counted with the rank and file. But
+Garneau falls into a double error. He assumes, first, that there
+were no men on the sick list, and secondly, that there were none
+absent from Quebec, when in reality, as the returns show, considerably
+more than half were in one or the other of these categories.
+The pay-rolls were made out at the headquarters of each
+corps, and always included the entire number of men enlisted in
+it, whether sick or well, present or absent. On the same fallacious
+premises Garneau affirms that Wolfe, at the battle on the Plains
+of Abraham, had eight thousand soldiers, or a little less than
+double his actual force.
+
+Having stated, as above, that Murray marched out of Quebec
+with at least 1,714 effective troops, Garneau, not very consistently,
+goes on to say that he advanced against Levis with six thousand
+or seven thousand men, and he adds that the two armies were
+about equal, because Levis had left some detachments behind to
+guard his boats and artillery. The number of the French, after
+they had all reached the field, was, in truth, about seven thousand;
+at the beginning of the fight it seems not to have exceeded five
+thousand. The _Relation de la seconde Bataille de Quebec_ says:
+"Notre petite armée consistoit _au moment de l'action_ en 3,000
+hommes de troupes reglées et 2,000 Canadiens ou sauvages." A
+large number of Canadians came up from Sillery while the affair
+went on, and as the whole French army, except the detachments
+mentioned by Garneau, had passed the night at no greater distance
+from the field than Ste-Foy and Sillery, the last man must
+have reached it before the firing was half over.
+
+
+
+
+Index
+
+   A
+   Abenaki Indians, 50, 122, 157, 262, 335
+     destruction of their town, 520
+
+   Abercromby, James, British general, 270, 409, 410, 432, 434, 460
+     arrives in Albany, 280
+     praises Robert Rogers, 309, 310n.
+     joy at fall of Louisbourg, 404
+     Wolfe's comments on, 411
+     his blunders, 418, 428
+     attacks Ticonderoga (1758), 422-424
+     his defeat, 425
+     his retreat, 426
+
+   Abraham, heights of, 523 (_See also_ Quebec)
+     Wolfe's plan to climb, 521-532, 537
+     guarded by Captain de Vergor, 533, 535
+     surprised and captured, 540
+
+   Abraham, Plains of, 542 (_See also_ Quebec)
+     Wolfe's army forms on, 542
+     battle for Quebec on, 544-550
+     rout of French forces,. 546-550
+     behavior of Canadians, 549-550
+     French and English losses, 547n.-548, 552, 637-638
+     report of battle on, 638-639
+
+   Acadia (Nova Scotia), Conflict for, 82-106
+     conquered by Nicholson, 82
+     ceded to England (1713), 82
+     guaranteed religious freedom, 82, 87
+     hostility of French-Canadian authorities, 82, 84, 174-175
+     English patience and moderation, 83, 85, 94-96, 175
+     Halifax founded, 84
+     treachery of French clergy, 86-102
+     British seize ship in, 97
+     British-French disputes over boundaries, 102-105
+     failure to settle boundary disputes, 105
+     life in, 189-190
+     emigration under French pressure (1748-1755), 17n.
+     its value to France, 175-176
+     British remove settlers, 186-205
+     delay in finding British settlers, 205
+
+   Acadian, oath of allegiance to George II, 83, 87
+     urged to leave by French, 87, 89, 93ff.
+     threats of Le Loutre, missionary priest, 93ff., 102, 174
+     forced from Beaubassin by Le Loutre, 98ff., 174
+     misery of refugees, 100-102
+     removal by British, 186-205
+     reasons for removal, 175, 177, 188-189, 191-193
+     their misery at Beauséjour, 179-180
+     heartless treatment from French authorities, 180-181
+     life of, 189-190
+     powers of church over, 190
+     refuse pledge of allegiance to George II, 191-193
+     English treatment of, 625
+     ordered by priests to join Indian attacks, 626
+
+   Adams, Captain, 194, 198
+
+   Africa, French driven from, 615
+     English power in, 615
+     Senegal ceded to England, 618
+   Aix-la-Chapelle, treaty of, 31, 38, 102
+
+   Albemarle, Lord, British Minister to France (1752), 91n., 139
+     Lord Chesterfield's comment on, 139
+     dies in Paris, 142
+
+   Albany, New York, in the 1750's, 228-229
+
+   Albemarle, Earl of (1761), takes Havana, 615
+
+   Alembert, D', 35
+
+   Alequippa, Iroquois Chieftoness, 54
+     joins Washington's men, 120
+
+   Algonquin, or Algonkin Indians, 72, 122, 262, 335
+     divination practices of, 305n.
+
+   Allen, Ensign, 152
+
+   Amherst, Major-General Jeffry, 516, 526, 527, 531
+     commands Louisbourg expedition, 385
+     sails for Halifax, 387
+     reaches Louisbourg, 390
+     his siege of Louisbourg, 394-399
+     Louisbourg surrenders, 401-402
+     his courtesy to French, 403
+     takes French posts around Louisbourg, 405
+     his relations with Wolfe, 406
+     joins Abercromby, 406, 437
+     discusses attack on Ticonderoga, 438
+     prepare for advance on Ticonderoga, Crown Point, and Montreal, 507
+     marches on Ticonderoga, 509
+     French retreat and fort falls, 510
+     rebuilds fort, 510, 516
+     postpones going to Wolfe's aid, 511
+     finally embarks, 517
+     turned back by storms, 518
+     winters at Crown Point, 518
+     his blunders, 518
+     his plan to capture Montreal, 590
+     sails from Oswego, 594
+     takes Fort Lévis, 595
+     arrives at Montreal, 596
+     Montreal surrenders, 597-598
+
+   Annapolis, Fort (Acadia), 83ff.
+
+   Anson, First Lord of the Admiralty (England 1754), 139
+
+   Anthonay D', Lieutenant-Colonel, 400
+
+   "Apostle of the Iroquois" (_see_ Piquet, Abbé)
+
+   Appleton, Nathaniel, 601
+
+   Apthorp, Boston merchant, 181
+
+   Argens, D', 607
+     Frederick the Great, letters to, 607-608
+
+   Argenson, D', French Minister of War (1743), 35, 252
+     appoints Montcalm to Canadian Command, 255
+
+   Armstrong, Colonel John, destroys Indian stronghold, 296-297
+
+   Arnoux, surgeon, Montcalm dies at his house, 556
+
+   Ashley, John, 272
+
+   Aubry, French officer, 513ff.
+
+   Augustus, Elector of Saxony, 32
+
+   Austria (_See also_ Maria Theresa)
+     her defeat at Rossbach, 380
+     signs treaty of Hubertsburg, 619
+
+   Avery, Ensign, 520
+
+
+   B
+
+   Bagley, Colonel Jonathon, Fort William Henry commander, 273-274
+
+   Barré, Major-General, 528
+
+   Barrington, Viscount, 610
+
+   Beaubassin (Acadia), occupied by British, 98
+     Le Loutre forces Acadians to leave, 98ff.
+
+   Beaujieu, Captain at Fort Duquesne, 157
+     plans to ambush Braddock, 158-160
+
+   Beauséjour, Fort, 100, 177-186
+     Lawrence authorizes attack on, 177
+     corruption in, 178-181
+     siege of, 182-185
+     its surrender, 185-186
+   name changed to Fort Cumberland, 186
+
+   Bedford, Duke of, 610
+
+   Belcher, Governor of New York, 276
+
+   Belleisle, Maréchalde, French war minister (1758), 376
+     forced to abandon Canada, 468
+
+   Berkeley, Sir William, Governor of Virginia, 44
+
+   Bernès, officer with Montcalm, 418
+
+   Berniers, Commissary-General, Quebec, 523, 567
+
+   Berry, with Montcalm at Ticonderoga, 411
+     defends fort, 422
+
+   Berryer, French Colonial Minister (1758), 375
+     accuses Bigot of fraud, 375-376
+     orders him to report to Montcalm, 378
+     refuses help to Canada, 466
+
+   Biddle, Edward, reports on Indian attacks, 244
+
+   Bienville, Celeron de (_See_ Céleron de Bienville)
+
+   Bigot, Francois, Intendant of Canada, 265, 322, 356, 535
+     his corruption, 76, 80, 178-179, 320, 366-377
+     reports on Le Loutre's work, 88
+     helps Le Loutre incite Indians, 89
+     appearance and personality, 365
+     investigation of his frauds, 377
+     at siege of Quebec, 485
+     votes to fight, 553
+     collects provisions, 558
+     returns to France, 604
+     jailed and tried for fraud, 605
+
+   Blanchard, Colonel, on Crown Point expedition, 212, 214
+
+   Blodget, Samuel, 220
+
+   Boishébert, Sieurde, French officer in Acadia, 87
+     sets Indians on British, 88
+     attributes misery of Acadians to priests, 193
+     attacks British in Acadia, 200
+     at siege of Louisbourg, 396
+     tried for fraud, 463-464, 605
+
+   Bonnecamp, Father, 49-50, 53, 58
+
+   Boscawen, British Admiral, 142
+     sails for Halifax with troops, 386-387
+     lands troops at Louisbourg, 390-391
+     takes part in siege, 400-401
+
+   Bougainville, aide-de-campe to Montcalm, 255ff., 263, 265, 304-305,
+        316ff., 589, 593
+     joins Indian war party, 299-300
+     his horror at Indian cruelties, 300, 356, 360
+     comments on Vaudreuil's treatment of Montcalm, 322
+     attends Indian feast, 329, 329n.
+     comments on Indians, 330, 331, 333-334, 345
+     carries terms to Monro at Fort William Henry, 346
+     sent to Montreal, 349
+     comments on official corruption, 371-372
+     comments on Vaudreuil's plans, 410
+     sent to France for help to Canada, 465-467
+     arranges marriage for Montcalm's son and daughter, 467
+     returns to Canada, 468
+     guards Quebec shores, 525, 533-534
+     is deceived by Wolfe's feint, 535-536, 538
+     despair at army's retreat, 552
+     sends troops to Quebec, 558
+     help arrives too late, 559
+
+   Bouquet, Colonel Henry, at Fort Duquesne, 440ff.
+     his difficulties on the march, 442, 445
+     his tact with Indian allies, 444
+
+   Bourlamaque, Chevalier de, third in command to Montcalm, 255, 315ff.
+   tries to stop Fort William Henry massacre, 350
+     Montcalm's letters to, 358-359
+     at Ticonderoga, 411, 416, 418, 426, 481
+     retires from Ticonderoga, 509, 516
+     hears from Montcalm, 532-533
+     Lévis asks him to hold on, 558
+     at defense of Montreal, 592
+     half his force deserts, 592
+     forced to retreat, 594
+     negotiates Montreal surrender, 597
+
+   Braddock, Major-General, 140-173, 174, 207
+     secret orders, 141
+     Shirley's opinion of, 144
+     Walpole's comments on, 144-148
+     Benjamin Franklin's opinion of, 144
+     anecdotes about, 145-146
+     meets with Colonial governors, 146-147
+     plans attacks on Fort Duquesne, 148-149
+     his fury at Colonial apathy, 150-151
+     Benjamin Franklin helps, 151-152
+     march on Fort Duquesne, 152-160
+     his ability, 152
+     George Washington's comments on, 152-153
+     his opinion and treatment of Indians, 154
+     hardships of march, 155-156
+     ambushed and defeated, 161-164, 165n.
+     horrors of massacre, 163
+     casualties of his forces, 164 and n.
+     his personal courage, 164
+     fatally wounded, 164
+     his retreat, 164-168
+     his death, 168
+     reports of massacre, 168-170
+     disastrous results of defeat to settlers, 230, 234-248
+     bones of his men found, 457
+     Contrecoeur's report on rout, 628-630
+
+   Bradstreet, Lieutenant Colonel John, 276-279
+     convoys stores to Oswego, 277
+     repels French attack, 278-279
+     some of his boatmen sent to Oswego, 284
+     in Ticonderoga campaign, 415, 417-418, 422
+     his plan to take Fort Frontenac, 436
+     his success, 437
+     prevents massacre of prisoners, 437
+     destroys Fort Duquesne supplies, 454
+
+   Bréard, naval comptroller at Quebec, 368
+     jailed and tried for fraud, 605
+
+   British Colonial troops, organization and pay, 271-272
+     discipline of, 272
+
+   British Colonies (_See_ English Colonies)
+
+   Brown, Lieutenant, carries mortally wounded Wolfe to rear, 546
+
+   Bull, Fort, destroyed by French, 264
+
+   Bullitt, Captain, 452-453
+
+   Burd, Colonel, in Duquesne expedition, 441, 443ff.
+
+   Burke, Captain, escapes Fort William Henry massacre, 351
+
+   Burney, Thomas, fur trader, escapes from French, 79
+
+   Burton, Lieutenant-Colonel,
+     with Braddock, 163
+     reports on Winslow's camp, 281-282
+     with Wolfe at Quebec, 537, 541, 542
+     receives Wolfe's last order, 546
+
+   Bury, Viscount, comments on Massachusetts, 408
+
+   Bussy, M. de, French envoy to London, 611
+
+   Bute, Earl of, Secretary of
+   State (1761), 610
+
+   Byng, Admiral, 384
+     defeat at Minorca, 48
+     death of, 48
+
+   Cadet, Joseph, Commissary-General of Canada, frauds of, 368-374
+     famine caused by, 370
+     sends supplies to Quebec, 482
+     jailed and tried for fraud, 605
+
+   Campbell, Major Duncan, at Ticonderoga, 414, 424
+     legend about his death, 635-637
+
+   Campbell, Captain John, killed at Ticonderoga, 424
+
+   Canada, 25
+     census of 1754, 38
+     census of 1755 and 1760, 38n.
+     Catholic influence in, 38-39
+     her military position, 40-41, 47
+     Indian tribes of, 40
+     power of Church (_See_ Acadia _and_ Acadians)
+     officials incite Indians to raid, 137
+     military life in, 267-268
+     social life in, 366-368
+     official corruption in, 365-374
+     Church fails to check corruption, 373
+     financial straits of, 374
+     loyalty of her people, 463
+     treatment of her people by officials, 463-464
+     dark days of 1758-1759, 460-470
+     France cannot help, 467-468
+     warned of attack on Quebec, 468
+     mobilizes for defense, 481
+     passes to British Crown, 598
+     people assured religious freedom, 598
+     people protected from Indians, 598
+
+   Captain Jacobs, Delaware Indian Chief, 296
+     killed, 297
+
+   Carleton, Sir Guy, Wolfe's friend, 476, 500
+
+   Carlos III of Spain, 612
+
+   Carter, Landon, 236
+
+   Carver, Jonathan, escapes Fort William Henry massacre, 351
+
+   Catawba Indians, 112, 444
+
+   Catherine of Russia, 614
+
+   Catholicism, influence on growth of New France, 38-39
+
+   Caughnawaga's Indians, 157
+
+   Cayuga Indians, 275
+
+   Chandler, Chaplain, 225
+
+   Céloron de Bienville, expedition to the Ohio (1749), 48-64
+     travel difficulties, 49-50, 57-58
+     hostility of Indians, 52-58
+     claims the Ohio for France, 52-55
+     warns English traders, 53-56, 58
+     sent to command Fort Detroit, 73
+     refuses to attack Pickawillany, 76
+
+   Charles VI of Austria, 37
+
+   Chesterfield, Lord, comment on Lord Albemarle, 139
+     reconciles Pitt and Newcastle, 380-381
+     his worry over England's future, 383
+
+   Cherokee Indians, 112, 323, 444
+
+   Chickasaw Indians, 112
+
+   Choiseul, Duc de, French minister (1761), 610
+     his character, 610-611
+     proposes European peace conference, 611
+     proposes negotiations with England on colonies, 611-612
+     negotiates secretly with Spain, 612
+
+   Choctaw Indians, 323
+   William Henry, 428, 430, 432, 436
+
+   Clerk, British engineer, 420-421
+
+   Clermont, Comte de, 384
+
+   Clinton, George, New York governor (1752), 63-64
+     complains French violate peace treaty, 75
+
+   Clive, victory at Plassey, 383
+
+   Connecticut, votes troops for Crown Point, 207
+     her sacrifices for Canadian campaigns, 409
+
+   Connor, James, scout, 290
+
+   Contrecoeur, Commandant at Fort Duquesne, 115, 118, 122, 157
+     awaits success of Braddock ambush, 159
+     his report on Braddock's rout, 628-630
+
+   Cope, Jean-Baptiste, Indian chief, treachery of, 90-91, 100
+
+   Corflans, French Admiral, his fleet crippled by British, 615
+
+   Cornwallis, Edward, Governor of Acadia (1749), 83
+     Wolfe's opinion of, 83
+     Walpole's comments on, 83
+     his patience and moderation, 83, 85, 94-96
+     asks pledge of allegiance from Acadians, 86
+     discovers treachery of French clergy, 92-93
+     sends troops to Beaubassin, 98
+
+   Corpron, accomplice of Cadet, 368, 373
+     jailed and tried for fraud, 605
+
+   Courserac, Chevalier de, 401
+
+   Crawford, Rev. William, comments on conditions in British camp,
+   283-284
+
+   Croghan, George, trader, 52, 59-60, 62-63
+     French offer reward for his scalp, 75-76
+     brings Indians to help Braddock, 154
+
+   Crown Point Expedition, 207-226
+     William Johnson named commander, 207
+     French prepare defense, 209
+     Johnson marches, 210ff.
+     battle at Lake George, 217-226
+     French routed, 221
+     British losses, 223
+     expedition a failure, 224
+     fort abandoned by French, 510
+     occupied and rebuilt by British, 511
+
+   Cumberland, Duke of, 30, 139, 294, 380, 383, 384
+
+   Cumberland, Fort, prepared for Braddock's expedition, 152
+
+   Cummings, Colonel, at site of Fort William Henry, 428
+
+
+   D
+
+   Dalling, Major, 573
+
+   Dalquier, Colonel, 551, 581
+
+   Dalzel, Captain, killed at Detroit, 433
+
+   De Cosne, British embassy secretary, 142
+
+   Delancey, New York Governor (1754), 132n., 226
+     asked for help against French in the Ohio, 114
+     attends Braddock's conference, 146
+     sides with William Johnson, 234
+     his cabal against Shirley, 270
+
+   Delancey, Oliver, British soldiers quartered on, 306
+
+   Delaware Indians, 50, 53, 54, 62-63, 101, 122, 154, 234, 275, 276,
+        296-298
+
+   Delouche, sends fire ships against Wolfe, 491
+
+   Demoiselle, Miami Chief, 57, 60-61, 78
+     killed by French Indians, 79
+
+   Desandrouin, French engineer, 418
+
+   Desauniers, Demoiselles, Canadian traders, 66
+
+   Desgouttes, naval commander at Louisbourg siege, 396, 400
+
+   Desherbes, harasses British in Acadia, 88ff.
+   Detroit, early days as French fort, 72
+     French try to build it up, 73
+     small-pox in, 77
+
+   Diderot, 35
+
+   Dieskau, Baron, commander of French regulars, 209
+     reaches Crown Point, 214
+     sends expedition toward Fort Lyman, 215-216
+     attacks William Johnson's forces, 218-220
+     wounded and captured, 220-221
+     his expedition routed, 221
+     Johnson protects him from Mohawks, 222
+     sent as prisoner to England, 222
+     returns to France and dies, 223
+
+   Dinwiddie, Robert, Lieutenant-Governor of Virginia
+     his opinion of Indian traders, 51
+     comments on Ohio Valley boundary dispute with Pennsylvania, 63
+     protests French invasion of the Ohio, 108-110
+     warns England, 111
+     ordered to drive French out, 112
+     difficulties with his Assembly, 112-114
+     failure of first expedition 115-116
+     his letter to Colonel Innes, 128
+     Assembly votes funds for Ohio defense, 130
+     his opinion of colonists' good sense, 131
+     advises war levies on colonies 133, 148
+     letter to Granville on number of French in the Ohio, 137
+     makes difficulties for George Washington defending Virginia
+        borders, 236-237
+     his dislike of Washington, 439
+
+   Dobbs, North Carolina governor, 144
+     attends Braddock's conference, 146
+
+   Doreil, French Commissary of War,
+     reports on official corruption, 464-465
+     sent to ask France for help, 465
+
+   Douville, French officer, 295
+
+   Drucour, Louisbourg governor, prepares defense, 390
+     his brave defense of Louisbourg, 395ff., 403
+     negotiates for surrender, 400-402
+     well-treated by Amherst, 403
+
+   Drucour, Mme., bravery of, 396, 403
+
+   Duchat, French, Captain, describes life at Ticonderoga, 267-268
+
+   Duchesnaye, 367
+
+   Dumas, French Captain at Fort Duquesne, 157, 158n., 161-162, 165,
+        235, 589
+     sets Indians on English settlers, 235ff.
+     reports destruction of Indiantown, 298
+     at defense of Quebec, 496, 499, 502
+     at defense of Montreal, 592
+
+   Dumas, M., tutor to Montcalm, 252-253
+
+   Dunbar, Colonel Thomas, with Braddock, 152
+     destroys supplies after ambush, 168
+     starts retreat, 168
+     reaches Fort Cumberland, 169
+     abandons frontier to its fate, 172-173
+     Dinwiddie calls conduct "monstrous," 173 and n.
+     disastrous results of retreat to settlers, 234-248
+
+   Duquesne, Fort, established, 115
+     garrison reinforced, 121
+     site of, 156
+     strength of, 156-157
+     Braddock ambushed from, 161
+     Washington urges capture of, 439
+   Forbes marches on, 439-459
+     its supplies cut off, 454-455
+     garrison destroys it and retires, 457
+     British occupy site, 457
+     its name changed to Pittsburg, 457
+     its conquest opens the West, 459
+
+   Duquesne, Marquis, Governor of Canada (1753), 51n.
+     sends expedition to occupy the Ohio, 79-80, 106ff.
+     recalled to France, 209
+
+   Durell, Admiral in Wolfe's Quebec fleet, 478
+     fails to intercept French ships, 482
+     arrives in Canada, 483, 486
+
+
+   E
+
+   Edwards, Jonathan, 42
+
+   Elder, John, reports Indian attacks, 244
+
+   Elizabeth of Russia, 36
+     her hatred of Frederic the Great, 250
+     her death, 614
+
+   England in the mid 1700's, 29-31
+     effect of Seven Years War, 26
+     political aspects, 29, 31
+     social aspects, 30
+     her military status, 31
+     her American colonies, 25, 38-47
+     her rule in Nova Scotia (_See_ Acadia)
+     her difficulties in Acadia, 82-102
+     extent of her claims in Acadia, 104n.
+     urges colonies to make joint treaties with Indians, 134
+     her naval strength, 139
+     her military strength, 139
+     her leadership weakness, 139
+     her bad faith toward France, 139-143 and n.
+     her policy of attack, 140
+     sends Braddock and troops to Virginia, 140
+     attacks French troop ships, 142-143
+     declares war on France (1756), 250
+     makes treaty with Frederic the Great, 250
+     loses Minorca, 380
+     William Pitt takes power, 380-381
+     her gloomy prospects in 1757, 383
+     Clive's victory in India, 383
+     fresh power under Pitt, 384-387
+     her joy at the fall of Louisbourg, 403
+     her celebrations on Quebec's surrender, 565
+     regains Minorca, 618
+
+   English colonies in the mid-1700's, 41-47
+     confined to Atlantic coast, 38
+     their population, 38
+     political differences, 41, 43-46
+     racial strains, 41, 44-45
+     Puritanism in New England, 42
+     religious differences, 42, 44
+     slavery in, 44, 236
+     jealousy between, 47
+
+   Estève, Montcalm's secretary, 255, 257
+
+   Europe in the mid 1700's, 31-38, 379-380, 619
+     the Seven Years War, 25-26
+     the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, 31, 38, 102
+     France, 31-36
+     Germany, 36
+     Prussia, 36
+     Russia, 36
+     Austria, 37
+     the treaty of Utrecht, 75, 102
+     political aspects, 250-252
+     the Peace of Paris, 620-623
+
+   Eyre, Captain, 219
+     winters at Fort William Henry, 305-307
+     repulses French attack, 311-313
+
+
+   F
+
+   Ferdinand Prince of Brunswick, English commander, 384
+   his successes in Europe and Africa, 384-385
+
+   Ferdinand VI of Spain, death of, 612
+
+   Fitch, at Ticonderoga, 417
+
+   Five Nations (_See_ Iroquois)
+
+   Folsom, Captain at Fort Lyman, 221
+
+   Forbes, John, brigadier in charge of Fort Duquesne expedition, 385
+     his slow advance, 438-441 445
+     his character, 439-440
+     refuses Washington's advice, 441
+     his opinion of provincials, 441
+     his illness, 442-443, 455-456, 458
+     his ignorance of French strength, 444-445
+     builds Fort Bedford, 445
+     arranges Indian convention, 446-450
+     his peace overtures accepted, 451
+     occupies Fort Duquesne, 458
+     his death, 459
+
+   Forbes, Eli, 600-601
+
+   Foxcroft, Thomas, 600
+
+   France, in the mid 1700's, 31-36
+     her power, 31-32
+     signs of decay, 31, 34-35
+     Louis XV and Mme. Pompadour, 25, 34-35
+     her philosophers, 35
+     American colonies claimed, 25-26, 38-40, 50
+     Commission on Acadia boundaries fails, 102
+     threatens growth of English colonies, 133
+     her naval strength, 139
+     her military strength, 139
+     her leadership weakness, 139
+     need for time, 139
+     her policy of diplomacy, 139-140
+     bad faith toward England, 139-143
+     sends troops and ships to Canada, 140
+     ships intercepted by British, 142-143
+     French losses, 143
+     incites Indians to massacre British, 141-142, 234-248
+     (_See_ Piquet, Le Loutre, _and_ Acadia)
+     declares war on England, 250
+     war in colonies subordinated, 252
+     Montcalm sent to Canada, 255
+     few troops allowed him, 257
+     victory at Oswego, 289-290
+     defeat at Rosbach, 380
+     Pompadour's role in ruin of, 383
+     Fort Frontenac falls, 437
+     importance of its loss, 437
+     her finances ruined, 466
+     her navy crippled, 466
+     she abandons Canada, 468
+     her need for peace, 610
+     the Peace of Paris, 620-623
+
+   Franklin, Benjamin, 42, 617
+     his project of colonial union, 136
+     his opinion of Braddock, 144
+     helps Braddock get supplies, 150-152
+     leader in Pennsylvania Assembly, 240, 247n., 248-249
+     defends Shirley on loss of Oswego, 294
+     comments on General Loudon, 325
+
+   Franquet, engineer, 365
+     at siege of Louisbourg, 359-360
+     his stories of Bigot, 366-368
+
+   Fraser, trader, 109n., 111
+
+   Frederic the Great of Prussia, 36, 606-609
+     begins Seven Years War, 379
+     his defeats and victories, 379-380
+     his letter to Voltaire, 607
+     his letters to D'Argen, 607-608
+     Pitt's resignation a blow, 613
+     signs a peace with Russia and Sweden, 614
+   French army in Canada, camp conditions, 282
+
+   Frontiersmen, life of, 238
+     frequent fate of, 235-248
+
+   Frontenac, Fort, Piquet's reception at, 72
+     Bradstreet attacks, 436
+     fort surrenders, 437
+     prisoners protected from Indians, 437
+     fort leveled, 437
+     importance of loss to France, 437
+
+   Fry, Colonel Joshua, 114
+     illness and death of, 120
+     with Winslow in Acadia, 200
+     survives Fort William Henry massacre, 349-351
+     his reports on Fort William Henry massacre, 632-633
+
+
+   G
+
+   Gage, Lieutenant-Colonel, with Braddock, 159, 160-161
+     wounded in ambush, 164
+     takes over command from William Johnson at Niagara, 516
+
+   Galissonière, Marquis de la, Governor of Canada (1749), 103-104
+     asks for colonists from France, 38-39, 48
+     his character and appearance, 48
+     his plans to link Canada and Louisiana, 48
+     his recall to France, 74
+
+   Gardiner, Captain of the _Monmouth_, his historic fight, 386
+
+   Gates, officer wounded in Braddock ambush, 164
+
+   George II of England, 29
+     Acadians refuse oath of allegiance to, 83, 86
+     his comment on Wolfe, 477
+     his death, 609
+
+   George III of England, 609, 615, 616
+
+   Germain, French missionary in Acadia, 88 (_See also_ Piquet,
+        _and_ Le Loutre)
+     incites Indians to attack British, 90
+
+   Germany in the mid 1700's, 36
+
+   German Flats, massacre at, 357
+
+   Girard, Acadian priest, 92
+
+   Gist, Christopher, trader, 52
+     explores land for the Ohio Company, 58-60
+     guides Washington in the Ohio. 109ff.
+     his settlement, 117
+     brings news of Fry's death, 120
+
+   Gladwin, defends Fort Detroit, 164
+     wounded in Braddock ambush, 164
+
+   Glen, South Carolina governor, his correspondence with Dinwiddie, 177
+
+   Gorham, Captain, reconnoitres Louisbourg, 325
+
+   Graham, Rev. John, describes conditions in British camp, 282-284
+
+   Grant, Major
+     reconnoitres Fort Duquesne, 451-452
+     his blunders, 452-453
+     captured by French, 453, 454n.
+     Forbes upset by reverse, 454
+
+   Granville Stockade, burned by French, 295
+
+   Gray, Sergeant James, 229
+
+   Great Meadows, Washington's camp at, 116-117
+     French victory at, 125
+     French and British losses, 125 and n.
+     named Fort Necessity, 120
+     significance of British defeat, 127
+
+   Gridley, Colonel, 282
+
+
+   H
+
+   Haldimand, Colonel, rebuilds Oswego, 511-512
+
+   Half-King, Indian Chief, 107
+     friend of Washington, 109, 116, 117, 120, 121
+     French try to win, 110
+     his comments on English and French, 126
+     his comments on Washington, 126n.
+
+   Halifax, Lord, 139
+   Halifax, Nova Scotia, founding of, 84
+     harassed by Indians, 87
+
+   Halket, Sir Peter, 152, 162
+     killed with his son in Braddock ambush, 164
+
+   Halket, Major, finds father's and brother's skeletons, 457
+
+   Hamilton, James, Pennsylvania Governor (1753)
+     opinion of traders, 51
+     tries to strengthen Indian friendship, 62-63
+     his battles with Assembly for defense funds, 114, 130-131
+
+   Hanbury, John, 58, 150n.
+     Dinwiddie's letter to, 115-116
+
+   Hancock, Boston merchant, 181
+
+   Handfield, Major, 194, 200
+
+   Hardy, Sir Charles, New York Governor (1756), 270, 325
+
+   Harris, John, reports on Indian raids, 244
+
+   Harris, Mary, 60
+
+   Harris, Thomas, British scout, 290
+
+   Haviland, Colonel, at Fort Edward, 361
+     sets out for Montreal, 590
+     captures Canadian naval force, 594
+     makes contact with Murray, 594
+
+   Hawke, Sir Edward, intercepts French troop ships, 386-387
+
+   Hawley, Captain Elisha, 217
+
+   Hazan, Moses, British Captain at Beauséjour, 183, 299
+     routs French raiding party, 574
+     wounded at Sainte-Foy, 582
+
+   Hebecourt, French Captain at Ticonderoga, 360
+     Roger's Rangers plague him, 360
+     his revenge, 360-362
+     blows up the fort, 509-510
+     escapes with his men, 509
+
+   Heights of Abraham (_See_ Abraham, heights of)
+
+   Henderson, British volunteer,
+     helps carry mortally wounded Wolfe to rear, 546
+
+   Hendrick, Mohawk Chief,
+     complains of wrongs, 134
+     conference at Onondaga, 134-136
+     speech on joint treaty with Britain, 135
+     advises William Johnson, 217
+     killed in battle, 217
+
+   Hensey, Florence, French spy, 324
+
+   Hobbs, Captain, 196, 198
+
+   Hocquart, Captain, 142-143 and n.
+
+   Hodges, Captain, ambushed by French, 299
+
+   Holbourne, Admiral, 142, 324-325
+     gale shatters his fleet, 326
+
+   Holdernesse, Earl of, 130
+     letter from Wolfe, 530
+
+   Holland, Lieutenant, 81
+
+   Holmes, Admiral of Wolfe's Quebec fleet, 478, 525, 526, 531, 532,
+        535, 536
+
+   Hopson, Governor of Acadia, 96
+
+   Houlière, French officer, 400
+
+   Howe, Captain Edward, 99
+     murder of, 100
+
+   Howe, Captain of H.M.S. _Dunkirk_, 143 and n.
+
+   Howe, Colonel, with Wolfe at Quebec, 537-538, 542
+
+   Howe, Lord, 358
+     assigned to Ticonderoga campaign, 385, 415
+     Abercromby's praise of, 412
+     Pitt's opinion of, 412
+     Wolfe's praise of, 412
+     his character, 412-413
+     stories about, 413
+     his death a great blow, 420
+     approves plan to take Fort Frontenac, 436
+
+   Huguenots, persecution in France, 34, 39
+
+   Hugues, officer with Montcalm, 418
+
+   Huron Indians, 51, 104, 122, 157, 262, 335
+
+   Hutchins, Ensign, 531
+
+
+   I
+
+   Indian tribes:
+   Abenakis, 50, 122, 157, 262
+     Algonquins or Algonkins, 72, 122, 262
+     Catawbas, 112
+     Cherokees, 112, 323, 444
+     Chickasaws, 112
+     Choctaws, 323
+     Caughnawagas, 157
+     Delawares, 50, 53-54, 62-63, 107, 122, 154, 234, 296-298, 446-447,
+        451
+     Hurons, 51, 104, 122, 157, 262, 335
+     Illinois, 50, 77, 104
+     Iowas, 300, 335
+     Iroquois, 53, 54, 59, 112, 122, 154, 217, 262, 335
+     Miamis, 50, 57, 61, 63, 77, 107, 157, 335
+     Michillimackinacas, 328
+     Micmacs, 98, 100, 335
+     Mingoes, 50, 54, 63, 157, 235, 451
+     Mohawks, 81, 134-136, 208-209, 217, 220, 276, 323
+     Mohecans, 275, 276
+     Nipissings, 50, 72, 122, 335
+     Ojibwas, 78, 107, 157, 335
+     Oneidas, 276, 357
+     Onondagas, 134, 276
+     Osages, 77
+     Ottawas, 50, 61, 78, 122, 157, 333, 335
+     Piankishaws, 77
+     Pottawattamies, 107, 157, 305, 335
+     Senacas, 53, 134, 447
+     Shawanoes, 50, 55-56, 60, 62, 107, 157, 234, 275, 276, 446-447, 451
+     Wabash, 77
+     Winnebagoes, 335
+     Wyandot, 59
+
+   Indians, atrocities of, 79, 155, 158, 166, 214, 235-248, 267,
+        300, 333-334, 348-352, 353n., 356, 362, 434-435, 471, 519, 521
+
+   Innes, Colonel James, 236
+     Dinwiddie's letter to, 128
+     notifies Lord Fairfax of Braddock's defeat, 168-169
+
+
+   J
+
+   James II of England, 46
+
+   Jefferson, Thomas, 128
+
+   Jervis, John, Wolfe's friend, 538
+
+   Joannes, mayor of Quebec, negotiates terms of surrender, 559
+
+   Johnson, Sergeant John, 575
+     comments on men's love for Wolfe, 536
+     reports on battle of Sainte-Foy, 581, 583-584
+
+   Johnson, Sir William,
+     his influence with the Five Nations, 63-64, 134-136, 208-209,
+     446-447
+     protests French violations, 75
+     in command of Crown Point expedition, 207-226
+     his appearance and character, 208
+     advances on Crown Point, 210
+     manners and morale of his troops, 211
+     his Mohawks report French near, 212
+     names Lake George for King, 213
+     wounded, 219
+     routs French attack, 220-221
+     saves Dieskau from Mohawks, 222
+     gives up attack on Crown Point, 224
+     his men disperse, 225
+     he is knighted by King, 226
+     his dispute with Shirley, 233-234
+     fails to save Fort Bull, 264
+     effects of Crown Point failure, 269
+     persuades the Five Nations to fight for British, 274-275
+     fails to gain other tribes, 276
+     joins Webb at Fort Edward, 354
+     takes command at Siege of Niagara, 513
+     defeats reinforcements, 514
+     captures Niagara, 515
+   protects prisoners from Indians, 516
+     Brigadier Gage sent to take his command, 516
+
+   Johnstone, Chevalier de, Aide-de-camp to Lévis, 495, 496, 504, 543
+     his report on rout of French forces at Quebec, 550-551
+     his comments on Vaudreuil's behavior, 551
+     his grief over Montcalm's loss, 551
+
+   Joncaire-Chabert, 52, 54, 56, 62, 64, 69, 109
+     reports on Ohio Indians with British, 77
+     wins to France, 134
+     his influence with Indians, 447
+
+   Jonquière, Marquis de la, Governor of Canada (1749), 74ff.
+     his intrigues against British, 75-76, 85, 87, 90
+     his death, 77
+
+   Jumonville, Ensign Coulon de, killed in the Ohio, 118-119, 121
+
+
+   K
+
+   Kanon, 482, 485
+
+   Kaunitz, Austrian Minister, 251
+
+   Kennedy, Adjutant, 197
+
+   Kennedy, Lieutenant, on scouting party, 298-299
+     killed, 308
+
+   Keppel, English Commodore, 144
+     lends Braddock men, 152
+
+   Kikensick, Nipissing Chief, 336
+
+   Killick, in Wolfe's Quebec fleet, 487-488
+
+   Kittanning, Delaware Indian stronghold, 296
+     burned by Armstrong, 297
+
+   Knox, Captain John, 404
+     winters in Fort Cumberland, 471
+     describes New England troops, 472
+     sails to join Wolfe, 472
+     describes ascent of British fleet up the St. Lawrence to Quebec,
+        487-489
+     reports on Siege of Quebec, 492, 493, 497, 498-499, 501, 505, 527,
+        535
+     describes Quebec under British rule, 568-569, 572, 574
+     reports on defence of Quebec, 585-586
+     voyage to Montreal, 591-592
+
+
+   L
+
+   La Clue, French Admiral, 386
+
+   La Corne, Saint Luc de, French officer in Acadia, 90, 335-336, 343,
+        589
+     destroys British wagon train, 432
+     attacks camp at Oswego, 512
+     repulsed and wounded, 512
+     sails for France, 604
+     shipwrecked, 605
+     gets back to Quebec, 605
+
+   Lake George, battle of, 217-226
+
+   La Motte, French Admiral, 140ff., 551
+     helps defend Louisbourg, 326, 327n.
+
+   Langlade, Charles, 157, 336
+     leads French against Pickawillany, 78-79
+     at defense of Quebec, 495
+
+   Langly, French officer, 415ff.
+
+   La Perade, Chevalier de, 158
+
+   Lawrence, Major, lands British troops at Beaubassin, 98
+
+   Lawrence, Governor of Nova Scotia, proposes attack on Beauséjour, 177
+     serves in Louisbourg expedition, 391-393
+
+   Le Boeuf, Fort, 108
+
+   Le Guerne, French priest describes removal of Acadians, 204
+
+   Le Loutre, Abbé Louis Joseph,
+     French missionary in Acadia, 174
+     sets Indians on British, 87ff.
+     receives pension, 91
+     his Indian mission, 96
+     his character, 97
+     terrorizes Acadians, 179-180
+   authority at Beauséjour, 179
+     escapes after fort surrenders, 185
+     captured and imprisoned, 185
+     cost of his intrigues, 626-627
+
+   Le Mercier, Chevalier, 122, 312, 367
+     his frauds, 377
+     at Ticonderoga, 410
+
+   Léry, destroys Fort Bull, 264
+
+   Lévis, Chevalier de, Montcalm's second in command, 265, 322, 330, 526
+     his opinion on Jumonville killing, 120
+     pleases Montcalm, 267
+     describes social life of Montreal, 315-317
+     marches on Fort William Henry, 338-340
+     tries to stop massacres at fort, 350
+     Vaudreuil praises him, 359
+     quells Montreal riots, 360
+     his report of Roger's defeat, 364n.
+     at Ticonderoga defense, 410, 421, 426
+     he defends Quebec, 495-496, 503
+     is sent to reinforce Montreal, 517
+     profits from Amherst's blunders, 518
+     his horror at army's retreat from Quebec, 557
+     urges Vaudreuil to march back, 558
+     hopes to retake Quebec, 576
+     attacks outposts, 577-578
+     battle joined at Sainte-Foy, 580-582
+     his losses, 583
+     besieges Quebec, 584-585
+     British fleet forces his retreat, 586-587
+     prepares to defend Montreal, 589-590
+     tries for better surrender terms, 597-598
+     returns to France, 604
+
+   Lewis, Major, 452-453
+
+   Ligneris, French commander at Fort Duquesne, 157, 162, 165,
+        445ff., 513
+     dismisses troops for lack of food, 455
+     severely wounded, 515
+
+   Livingstone, William, 293
+
+   Longueil, Baron de, Governor of Canada (1752), 77-78, 122, 329
+     encourages hostility to British, 92
+     defends Ticonderoga, 410
+
+   Loudon, Earl of, Commander of British forces in America, 270
+     his difficulties with Colonial troops, 272, 281
+     his character, 280
+     gets poor reports of Colonial camps, 281-282
+     blames Shirley for loss of Oswego, 293
+     at Fort Edward, 294
+     his orders to Winslow, 305
+     demands quarters for British regulars, 306
+     plans attack on Louisbourg, 324-325
+     abandons attempt, 326
+     threatens reprisals for Fort William Henry, 354
+     is recalled by Pitt, 385
+     Massachusetts shares cost of his campaign, 408
+     his blunders, 439
+
+   Louis XIII of France, 34
+
+   Louis XIV of France, orders dispersal of New York Colony population,
+        206n.
+
+   Louis XV of France, 25, 34
+     Céloron de Bienville declares him lord of the Ohio, 52
+     his government's policy toward Acadians, 206
+     joins Austria against Prussians, 251-252
+
+   Louisbourg, Fortress of, 388-407 (_See also_ Drucour)
+     conquered by Nicholson (1710), 82
+     restored to France, 83
+
+   Loudon plans to attack, 324
+     plans abandoned, 326
+     its geography, 388
+     its strengths and weaknesses, 389-390
+   British fleet arrives, 390-391
+     British succeed in landing troops, 392-393
+     siege and defense of, 394-400
+     its surrender, 401-403
+     its garrison sent to England, 403
+     its civilians sent to France, 403
+     effect of its fall, 403-405
+     leveled by order of George II, 591
+
+   Loppinot, French officer at Louisbourg, 400
+
+   Loring, British naval commander, 511, 517
+
+   Lotbinière, engineer, strengthens Ticonderoga defenses, 263-266, 410
+
+   Lowendal, Marshal of France, 32
+
+   Lowther, Katherine, Wolfe's fiancée, 476, 477
+     Wolfe's last message to, 538
+
+   Lusignan, Commandant at Ticonderoga, 309
+
+   Lydius, Dutch trader, 303
+     suspected French spy, 303n.
+
+   Lyman, General Phineas, with Crown Point expedition, 210, 281, 282
+     builds Fort Lyman, 212
+     takes command after Johnson is wounded, 219
+     Johnson's jealousy of, 224, 226
+     at Fort Ticonderoga campaign, 417
+
+   Lyman, Fort, name changed to Fort Edward, 226
+
+
+   M
+
+   Machault, d'Arnouville, Comptroller-General of France (1750), taxes
+        clergy, 33
+     becomes Minister of Marine, 35
+     Pompadour has him dismissed, 383
+
+   Macnamara, French Admiral, 141
+
+   Macdonald, Captain Donald, 452
+     captures French post, 574
+     death of, 453, 582
+
+   Mackellar, engineer with Wolfe, 294n., 489
+     reports weakness of Oswego, 279
+
+   Mackay, Captain, with Washington, 121, 125
+
+   Mackenzie, Captain, 452-453
+
+   MacVicar, Anne, life in Albany, 228-229
+
+   Maillard, French missionary, 91, 100
+
+   Maria Theresa of Austria, 37
+     her hatred of Frederick the Great, 251
+     sides with Russia and France, 251
+
+   Marin, French officer, 229-300, 367, 515
+     commander of Ohio expedition, 80, 106ff.
+     his successful raid on Fort Edward, 334-335
+     ambushes Roger's Rangers, 433
+     his defeat, 434, 436n.
+     rescues Israel Putnam from Indians, 435
+
+   Martel, King's Store-keeper, 367
+
+   Martin, Ranger Sergeant Joshua, 309
+
+   Martin, Abraham, heights and plains of Abraham named for, 541
+
+   Maryland, votes defense funds, 132
+     Indian massacres in, 295
+
+   Maurin, François, 367-368
+
+   Massachusetts in 1750's, 42
+     votes funds for Ohio Valley expedition, 132
+     sends volunteers to fight French, 207
+     her war debts, 408
+     her economy, 409
+     celebrates Montreal victory, 600
+
+   Massey, British Colonel, 515
+
+   Mathevet, French missionary, 336
+
+   Mayhew, Rev. Jonathan, predicts growth of Colonies, 565
+
+   McBryer, Andrew, trader, 79
+   McGinnis, Captain, death of, 221
+
+   McCartney, Captain, 578
+
+   McMullen, Ranger Lieutenant, 519
+
+   Meech, Lieutenant with Wolfe, 489
+
+   Mellen, John, 600
+
+   Mercer, Lieutenant Colonel, left to hold Fort Duquesne, 458
+
+   Miami Indians, 50, 57, 61, 63, 77, 107, 157, 335
+
+   Micmac Indians, 98, 100, 335
+
+   Michillimackinaca Indians, 328
+
+   Mingoes (English traders' name for Iroquois Indians), 50, 54,
+   63, 157, 235, 451
+
+   Mirepoix, French Ambassador to London (1754), 139
+
+   Mohawk Indians, 43, 81, 134-136, 208-209, 212-213, 217, 220,
+   276, 323
+
+   Moltke, von, 602
+
+   Monckton, British Lieutenant Colonel, in Acadia, 177ff., 527
+     besieges Beauséjour, 182-184
+     declares Acadians rebels, 186-187
+     ordered to remove Acadians, 194
+     his insolence to Colonials, 195
+     as Brigadier with Wolfe, 478, 493, 504, 532, 542
+     takes Martinique, 615
+
+   Monro, Lieutenant Colonel commanding Fort William Henry, 341
+     (_See_ also William Henry, Fort)
+     attacked by French, 341
+     asks for reinforcements, 342
+     Webb fails to support him, 343
+     his brave defense, 343-347
+     his surrender, 347
+
+   Montcalm, Marquis de, Commander of French Army in Canada, 252, 255
+     his childhood, youth, and marriage, 252-254
+     letters to his family, 255-256, 257-258, 262-263, 315-317, 359,
+        460, 466, 469, 630-632
+     embarks for Canada, 257
+     reaches Quebec, 258
+     meets Governor, Marquis de Vaudreuil, 258-259
+     his dealings with Indians, 262-263, 316, 321
+     his opinions on Vaudreuil, 265-266, 321, 359
+     his social life in Montreal, 314-318, 358-359
+     decorated by the King, 315
+     his difficulties with Vaudreuil, 318, 321, 460-470
+     plans attack on Lake George forts, 328-329
+     calls council of Indian allies, 335-337
+     marches on Fort William Henry, 338
+     tries to stop massacres at fort, 350-351
+     saves some prisoners, 352
+     exposes corruption in Canada, 376-377
+     prepares to defend Ticonderoga, 410, 418-421
+     his letters on Ticonderoga victory, 426
+     plans defense of Quebec, 484-486
+     his tactics of defense, 490-498, 502, 525
+     his last letter, 533
+     deceived by Wolfe's strategy, 535-540
+     finds Wolfe's army on plains of Abraham, 543
+     help from Quebec fails to arrive, 544
+     attacks British too soon, 544, 549-550
+     French beaten, 545-546
+     mortally wounded, 547, 552
+     his last moments, 554-555
+     his death and burial, 555, 641
+     his character, 564
+
+   Montgomery, Captain Alexander, murders prisoners, 524
+
+   Montesquieu, 35
+
+   Montguet, Captain, 551
+
+   Montguy, French officer, 418
+
+   Montigny, French officer, 515
+   Montmorenci, battle at, 504-505, 506n.
+
+   Montreal, Social life, 314-318
+     food shortage in, 359-360
+     riots in, 359
+     Lévis quells riots, 360
+     besieged by British, 596
+     surrenders, 597-598
+
+   Montreuil, General, 220
+     advises Montcalm, 265
+
+   Montour, Catherine, 59
+
+   Montour, Andrew, interpreter, 59-60
+
+   Moore, Colonel William, 246
+
+   Moravians, their Indian missions, 447
+     contrast with Catholic missions, 447-448
+
+   Morris, Robert Hunter, Pennsylvania Governor (1755), 131, 243ff.
+     difficulties with his assembly, 131
+     attends Braddock's conference, 146
+     declares war on Delawares, 276
+
+   Morris, Captain Roger, aide-de-camp to Braddock, 153
+     wounded in ambush, 164
+
+   Murray, Captain Alexander, in charge of Fort Edward, 190-191, 195
+     helps Winslow in removal of Acadians, 195-200, 202
+
+   Murray, Brigadier James, with Wolfe, 478, 527
+     raids Deschambault, 525
+     in front lines with Wolfe, 542
+     his qualities, 579
+     in command of occupied Quebec, 570-571
+     his outposts threatened, 573
+     rumors of French attack on Quebec, 574
+     spies among his men, 576
+     learns of French attack plan, 578
+     meets French forces outside Quebec, 580-582
+     retreats into city, 582
+     stops disorders among troops, 584
+     defends city against French, 584
+     saved by English fleet, 585
+     pursues retreating French, 586-587
+     ordered to Montreal, 590
+     takes measures to ensure Canadian neutrality, 592
+
+
+   N
+
+   New Brunswick (_See_ Acadia)
+
+   Newcastle, Duke of, 30, 477
+     named Prime Minister of England, 137
+     Walpole's opinion of, 137-138
+     Smollett's opinion of, 138
+     his political character, 138
+     his opposition to Pitt, 380
+     reconciled by Lord Chesterfield, 381
+     named First Lord of the Treasury, 381
+
+   New England, in 1750's, 41-43
+     (_See also_ individual states)
+     Puritanism in, 42
+     politics of, 41, 43
+     its method of raising and equipping troops, 271-272
+     celebrates fall of Louisbourg, 403
+     joy at Quebec surrender, 565
+
+   New France, ends with Quebec surrender, 556
+     (_See also_ Canada)
+
+   New Hampshire, votes men for Crown Point expedition, 207
+     raises men for Canadian war, 409
+
+   New Jersey, refuses funds for Ohio Valley defense, 132
+     Indian massacres in, 295
+
+   New York in 1750's, 45-46
+     refuses funds for Ohio Valley defense, 131
+     votes funds after Fort Necessity defeat, 132
+     votes troops to fight French, 207
+     conflict between Governor and Assembly, 248
+     Indian massacres in, 295
+     celebrates fall of Louisbourg, 403-404
+
+   Necessity, Fort (_See_ Great Meadows)
+
+   Niagara expedition, 228-234
+     march to Oswego, 229-230
+     difficulties of, 230-233
+     expeditions abandoned, 234
+     disastrous results to settlers, 234-248
+
+   Niagara, Fort,
+     British besiege, 511
+     reinforcements fail, 513-514
+     fort surrenders, 515-516
+     garrison saved from Indians, 516
+     importance of its capture, 516
+
+   Nicholson, General, conquers Acadia, 82
+
+   Nipissing Indians, 50, 72, 122, 235
+     burial customs of, 340
+
+   Nova Scotia (_See_ Acadia)
+
+   Nuns at Quebec (_See_ Ursulines)
+
+
+   O
+
+   Ochterlony, Captain, with Wolfe, rescued by French from scalping, 505
+
+   Ogden, Captain, 520, 521
+
+   Ohio Company, the, 58-59
+     trading posts of, 115, 116
+     its posts destroyed by French, 127
+
+   Ohio Valley (_See also_ Céloron de Bienville)
+     French claims in, 48-58
+     Indians of, 50, 107, 112, 119, 122
+     English claims in, 58-64
+     Virginia and Pennsylvania disputes over, 63
+     importance as key to West, 64
+
+   Ohio Valley battles, 106-127
+     France establishes forts, 106-108
+     illness among French, 107-108
+     Virginia protests invasion, 108-111
+     English colonies refuse help, 113-114, 129ff.
+     French detachment defeated, 116-118
+     Indians join French, 122
+     French victory at Great Meadows, 125-127
+     French and British losses, 125 and n.
+
+   Ojibwa Indians, 78, 107, 157, 335
+
+   Oneida Indians, 276, 357, 436-437
+
+   Onondaga Indians, 134-276
+
+   Orme, Captain Robert, Aide-de-Camp to Braddock, 146, 153
+     wounded in ambush, 164
+     describes the ambush, 170-171
+
+   Osage Indians, 77
+
+   Osborn, Admiral, intercepts French fleet, 386
+
+   Osgood, Captain, in Acadia, 196, 198
+
+   Oswego, English fur trading post, 49
+     its attraction to Indians, 68-69
+
+   Oswego, Fort, battle for, 285-291
+     sickness and hunger of troops, 279
+     weakness of defenses, 280
+     camp conditions, 286
+     surrender to French, 289
+     losses at, 289-290
+     burned, 290
+     Loudon blames Shirley for loss, 293
+
+   Ottawa Indians, 50, 61, 78, 122, 157, 333, 335
+
+
+   P
+
+   Paris, treaty of, (1763), 619
+
+   Parkman, William, comments on Abercromby, 411
+
+   Parker, Colonel of Fort William Henry, 334
+
+   Patton, John, English trader, 75
+
+   Péan, Chevalier, 80, 106-107, 359, 367, 368
+     his frauds, 372
+     jailed and tried, 605
+
+   Péan, Mme., 80, 372
+
+   Penn, Thomas and Richard, 240-241
+
+   Penn, William, 46
+
+   Pennahouel, Ottawa Chief, 336, 337
+
+   Peniseault, Antoine, accomplice of Bigot, 367-368
+     jailed and tried for fraud, 605
+
+   Peniseault, Mme., 372-373
+
+   Pennsylvania in 1750's, 44-45
+     refuses funds for Ohio Valley defense, 130-131, 240ff.
+     Indian massacres in, 235-248, 295
+     conflict between Governor and Assembly, 240-247
+
+   Pepperell, regiment of, 229, 270
+
+   Perière, leads Indian war party, 299-300
+
+   Peter the Great of Russia, 36
+
+   Peter the III of Russia, 614
+
+   Petrie, John lost, Indian prisoner, 357
+
+   Peyton, Lieutenant, escapes scalping, 504-505
+
+   Philadelphia, celebrates Louisbourg victory, 403
+
+   Phillips, Lieutenant of Rogers' Rangers, 360
+     massacred, 362
+
+   Piankishaws, 77
+
+   Pichon, Thomas, British spy, 179 and n.
+
+   Pickawillany, Miami Indian town, 57
+     destroyed by French, 78-79
+
+   Piquet, Abbé, French missionary, 49, 58, 71, 336, 624
+     his appearance and character, 65
+     his success as missionary to Indians, 66-72, 134
+     schemes to drive English from Ohio, 68, 70
+     plants cross in Oswego ruins, 290
+     joins Indian attack on British, 512
+
+   Pitt, William, 29, 430
+     his fierce patriotism, 31, 138, 324, 382
+     made Secretary of State, 381
+     his character and abilities, 381-382, 384
+     turns efforts towards America, 385-387
+     recalls General Loudon, 385
+     asks and gets men from Colonies, 408
+     names Wolfe commander of Quebec expedition, 477
+     disliked by George III, 609-610
+     breaks off peace conference with French, 611-612
+     proposes to attack Spain, 612
+     opposed and resigns, 613
+     denounces treaty of Paris, 619
+
+   Pitt, Fort, 457
+
+   Pittsburg, new name for Fort Duquesne, 457
+
+   Pococke, Admiral Sir George, takes Havana, 615-616
+
+   Pomeroy, Rev. Benjamin, watches army leave for Niagara, 508
+
+   Pomeroy, Daniel, with Crown Point expedition, 210, 219
+
+   Pomeroy, Seth, comments on Crown Point march, 213
+
+   Pompadour, Mme. de, 25, 35, 139, 610
+     her hatred of Frederic the Great, 251-252
+     her power in France, 382-383
+
+   Pontiac, Indian Chief, 157, 164
+
+   Pontleroy, French engineer, 418
+
+   Pontbriand, Bishop at Quebec, 526
+     administers last rites to Montcalm, 555
+
+   Portneuf, French officer, 69
+
+   Portneuf, Cure, killed and scalped, 524
+
+   Post, Frederic, Moravian envoy to Indians, 447-451
+     dangers of his mission, 448-449
+     his success, 451
+
+   Pottawattamie Indians, 107, 157, 305, 335
+
+   Pouchout, Captain, Commandant at Niagara, 360, 421
+     besieged by British, 512
+     reinforcements fail him, 513-514
+   surrenders, 515
+     made commandant of Fort Levis, 595
+     surrenders to Amherst, 595
+
+   Poulariez, Lieutenant-Colonel, 551, 553
+
+   Pownall, Massachusetts Governor (1758), 408-409
+
+   Preble, Major Jedediah, 200
+
+   Présentation, la, French mission, 65-66, 69, 72n.
+     (_See also_ Piquet, Abbé)
+
+   Prévost, Intendant at Louisbourg, 90-91
+
+   Prideaux, British Brigadier, sent to take Niagara, 507
+     begins siege, 511
+     killed in action, 513
+
+   Pringle, Captain, British volunteer with Rogers' Rangers, 360-361
+     lost in forest, 362-363
+     saved from Indians by French officers, 363
+
+   Prussia (_See_ Frederick the Great)
+
+   Puritanism in New England, 42
+
+   Putnam, Israel, 210
+     his expert scouting praised, 299
+     at Ticonderoga, 416
+     captured by Indians, 433
+     his tortures, 434-435
+     rescued by Marin, 435
+     prisoner in Montreal, 436
+     exchanged, 436
+
+   Puysieux, Marquis de, 35
+
+   Pynchon, Dr., 220
+
+
+   Q
+
+   Quakers, characteristics of, 239
+     cause of military paralysis, 240-248
+     their quarrel with Presbyterians, 239
+     attitude toward Indians, 239
+     influence in Pennsylvania, 240-248
+     oppose defense of borders against Indians, 295
+
+   Quebec, (_See also_ Montcalm _and_ Vaudreuil)
+     Montcalm's praise of, 316
+     suspense over threat to, 324
+     Montcalm prefers to Montreal, 358, 360
+
+   Quebec, Siege of, 481-505, 523-548
+     threatened with attack, 468, 482
+     Montcalm and Vaudreuil arrive, 483
+     troops and Indians pour in, 483
+     patriotism of its people, 484
+     English fleet starts up the St. Lawrence, 486
+     nature of the countryside, 488-489
+     city's strength as natural fortress, 489
+     British army lands below, 489
+     fire ships fail to harm British, 491-492, 501
+     steady bombardment of, 494-498, 526
+     British treatment of prisoners, 498-501
+     French victory at Montmorenci, 523
+     sickness in Wolfe's army, 526
+     short rations of French, 526
+     Wolfe plans new attack, 531-532
+     heights of Abraham scaled, 540-542
+     British army forms on plains of Abraham, 543
+     French forces attack, 544
+     defeat and rout of French, 546-549
+     death of Wolfe, 546
+     death of Montcalm, 547, 555
+     French and British losses, 547n., 548, 552, 637-638
+
+   Quebec, fall of, 549-567
+     Vaudreuil's behavior after defeat, 550-551, 553, 558
+     army flees the city, 554
+     New France ends with, 556
+     Vaudreuil's responsibility for, 559
+     garrison refuses to fight, 559
+     city surrenders, 559
+     ruin and chaos from bombardment, 567-568
+
+   Quebec, under British rule, 571-588
+   troops suffer from cold and sickness, 571-572, 575
+     rumors of French attack, 573-574
+     French try to retake, 580-586
+     British ships arrive and French retire, 587
+
+
+   R
+
+   Ramesay, Chevalier de, commandant at Quebec, 485
+     refuses Montcalm artillery, 544
+     left without supplies after battle, 556
+     forced to surrender, 559
+
+   Raymond, Comte de, 57, 77
+     harasses British in Acadia, 89
+
+   Raymal, Abbé, 189
+
+   Rea, Dr. Caleb, 429, 430
+
+   Repentigny, Lieutenant, 495-496, 589
+
+   Rhode Island, votes to fight French, 207
+
+   Richelieu, Cardinal, 34
+
+   Richelieu, Duc de, 384
+
+   Rigaud (brother of Vaudreuil), 317, 319, 320, 329, 410
+     commands William Henry attack, 311-313
+     attack fails, 313
+
+   Robinson, John, his Story of Wolfe, 539
+
+   Robinson, Sir Thomas, Secretary to Duke of Newcastle, 138
+     William Pitt's opinion of, 138-139
+     gives Braddock secret orders, 141
+     authorizes attack on Beauséjour, 177-178
+
+   Roche, Lieutenant, British volunteer with Rogers Rangers, 360-361
+     lost in forest, 362-363
+     saved from Indians by French officers, 363
+
+   Rochbeau court, 589
+
+   Rodney, British Admiral, takes Martinique, 615
+
+   Rogers, Lieutenant Richard, 301
+
+   Rogers, Major Robert, Commander of Rogers Rangers, 274, 300
+     his raids into Canada, 301-302
+     reconnoitres Ticonderoga, 303-304
+     raids outskirts of fort, 307-309, 360
+     his group cut to pieces, 361-362
+     his report of fight, 363n.-364
+     activities in Ticonderoga Campaign, 412-415
+     ambushed near Fort Edward, 433-434
+     sent to destroy Abenaki town, 517
+     instructed to spare women and children, 519
+     takes and burns town, 520
+     miseries of return trip, 520-521
+     at Quebec siege, 524
+
+   Rollo, Lord, 591
+
+   Roma, French officer, comments on British rule in Acadia, 85-86
+
+   Roquemaure, 215, 593, 594
+
+   Roubaud, French missionary, 331ff.
+     goes over to the English, 566n.
+
+   Rouillé, De, French Colonial Minister, 91n.
+
+   Rous, British Navy Captain, 97
+     convoys troops to Nova Scotia, 182
+     watches attacks on Beauséjour, 183
+     occupies Beauséjour, 185
+
+   Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 35
+
+   Russia, 36
+
+   Ryswick, treaty of, 52
+
+
+   S
+
+   St.-Florentin, Comte de, 35
+
+   Saint-Julien, Lieutenant-Colonel, 392
+
+   St. Paul, sacked and burned by British, 524
+
+   Saint-Pierre, Legardeur de,
+   French Commander of Ohio expedition, 107, 108, 110, 214
+     killed, 218
+
+   Sainte-Foy, battle of, 580-588
+     French and British losses, 583
+     near disaster for British, 584
+     strength of both forces, 642-643
+
+   Saunders, Admiral of Wolfe's Quebec fleet, 477, 478, 528
+     his feint to deceive Montcalm, 537
+     takes Wolfe's remains to England, 560
+
+   Saxe, Marshal of France, 32
+     comment on Mirepoix, 139
+     death of, 139
+
+   Saxony, joins league against Prussia, 251
+
+   Scarroyaddy, Indian Chief, 154
+
+   Schuyler, Colonel, prisoner in Montreal, 435
+
+   Schuyler, Mrs. of Albany, 413
+     her affection for Lord Howe, 413
+     her grief at his death, 417
+
+   Scotch regiments, 414, 424, 452ff.
+
+   Scott, Lieutenant Colonel George, 181, 183
+
+   Séjur, Comte de, 36
+
+   Seneca Indians, 53, 134
+
+   Senezerques, French Brigadier, 552
+
+   Seven Years War in Europe, 25
+     effect on world history, 26
+
+   Sewell, Colonel Matthew, 222
+
+   Sharpe, Maryland Governor, 146
+
+   Shawanoe Indians, 50, 55-56, 60, 62, 107, 157, 234, 275, 276
+
+   Shepherd, Captain, 303
+
+   Shirley, Captain John, son of Governor William Shirley, 230-232
+     death of, 23 In.
+
+   Shirley, William, son of Governor William Shirley, Secretary to
+        Braddock, 144, 146
+     his opinion of Braddock, 144, 153
+     his comments on Robert Orme, 153
+     killed in ambush, 164
+
+   Shirley, William, Massachusetts Governor, 241ff.
+     at Versailles Conference, 102
+     asked to help Virginia against French, 114
+     gets grant for expedition, 132
+     attends Braddocks' Conference, 146
+     his marriage in Paris, 147
+     advocates taxation of colonies, 148
+     takes command after Braddock's death, 173
+     orders renewed attack on Fort Duquesne, 173
+     his plan for removal of Acadians, 175, 188
+     his plan to capture Beausejour, 177-178, 181-182
+     names William Johnson as commander of Crown Point expedition, 207
+     his Niagara Campaign, 228-234
+     his plans to master Lake Ontario, 269
+     superseded in command, 270
+     reasons for failure of his plans, 292-293
+     blamed by General Loudon for Oswego loss, 293
+     his defense, 294
+     recalled to England, 294
+     made Governor of Bahamas, 294
+
+   Sinclair, Sir John, opens road for Braddock, 161
+     wounded in ambush, 164
+     advises on route to Fort Duquesne, 440
+     his inefficiency, 443
+     his annoyance with Indians, 444
+
+   Smith, James, treatment as Indian captive, 158 and n.
+     sees ambush of Braddock, 165
+     sees prisoners burned to death, 166
+
+   Smith, William, his feat at Ticonderoga, 424
+
+   Spain, secret negotiations with Choiseul, 612
+     loses Havana, Manila, and the Philippines, 616
+     gets Cuba back and cedes Florida, 618
+
+   Speakman, Captain, 200
+
+   Spikeman, Captain of Rogers Rangers, 307
+     killed, 308
+
+   Stanwix, General, builds Fort Pitt, 457
+     goes to reinforce Pittsburg, 507
+
+   Stark, Lieutenant John, 210, 301, 307-308, 310, 313, 415
+
+   Stephen, Adam, reports on Great Meadows, 125n.
+
+   Stephen, Lieutenant-Colonel, 444, 521
+
+   Stevens, his escape from Quebec, 534
+
+   Stewart, Captain, with Braddock, 164
+
+   Stobo, Major Robert, hostage to French at Fort Necessity, 125
+     his letters, 157n.
+     his escape from Quebec, 534
+
+   Stuarts, the, defeat at Culloden, 29
+
+   Sweden, joins league against Prussia, 251
+
+
+   T
+
+   Teedyuscung, Delaware Chief, 447
+
+   Titcomb, Moses, 210
+     killed, 220
+
+   Toronto, early days of, 69
+
+   Ticonderoga, Fort, 408-427
+     defenses strengthened, 263
+     description of first fort, 266
+     center for French-Indian raiding parties, 298, 300
+     troops withdrawn, 305
+     Montcalm's forces at, 329-335
+     provisioning problems, 331
+     British forces gather for attack, 410
+     British advance, 413-416
+     difficulties of the advance, 415-417
+     Lord Howe's death, 416-417
+     French defense and victory, 418-426
+     French and British losses, 425
+     Colonial report on defeat, 428-429
+     finally falls to Amherst, 510
+     French accounts of battle, 634-635
+
+   Townshend, Captain, fails in attempt to halt German Flats Massacre,
+        357
+     killed at Ticonderoga, 509
+
+   Townshend, Charles, Secretary of War (1761), 610
+
+   Townshend, George Brigadier with Wolfe, 478, 527, 532, 542
+     commands after Wolfe's death, 552
+     Quebec surrenders to him, 559
+
+   Trent, William, English trader, 52, 112, 115
+     reports on Indian massacres, 243
+
+   Trepezec, French officer, 415ff.
+
+   Turner, Lieutenant of Rogers Rangers, 520
+
+   Turnois, Father, 66
+
+
+   U
+
+   Ursulines, hospital of, 569-570
+
+   Utrecht, treaty of, 52, 75, 157
+     gives Acadia to England, 82, 84, 102
+
+
+   V
+
+   Valtry, M. de, 72
+
+   Vanbraam, Captain, French interpreter, 109
+     negotiates surrender of Fort Necessity, 125
+     kept as hostage, 125
+
+   Vannes, French officer at Beauséjour, 183, 184
+
+   Varin, Naval Commissary in Canada, 367
+     his frauds, 367
+     jailed and tried, 373
+
+   Vaudreuil, Marquis de, appointed Governor of Canada
+   in 1754, 140, 298, 323, 525 557, 561
+     sends Dieskau to defend Crown Point, 209
+     meets Montcalm, 258-259
+     strengthens posts on Lake Ontario, 265
+     Montcalm's opinion of, 265-266
+     sends Indians to Ticonderoga, 305
+     exaggerates British losses, 309, 310n., 358n.
+     resents and disparages Montcalm, 318, 320-321, 355 460-470, 561-563
+     takes credit for all success, 318-319, 356
+     dislike of French Regulars, 319-320, 322-323
+     character traits of, 322
+     encourages Indian massacres, 355-356, 358, 525
+     intrigues to replace Montcalm, 359, 461
+     fails to save Ticonderoga, 410
+     his boasts and exaggerations, 445-446, 464, 482, 483, 532-533
+     Montcalm placed over him, 462
+     his defense of Quebec, 481-505
+     his blunders and indecision, 526, 544, 551-553, 556
+     responsibility for loss of Quebec, 559
+     blames Ramesay for surrender, 561
+     corruption of his government (_See also_ Bigot) 373-374, 562,
+        563
+     retires to Montreal, 576
+     prepares Montreal defense, 589-590, 593
+     forced to surrender, 597-598
+     rebuked by Louis XV, 599
+     sails for France, 604
+     jailed and tried for fraud, 605
+
+   Vaudreuil, Rigaudde, (_See_ Rigaud)
+
+   Vauquelin, bravery of, 395
+     captured by British, 586
+
+   Verchires, M. de, 72
+
+   Vergor, Duchambon de, Commandant of Beauséjour, 177
+     his appearance and character, 178-179
+     Le Loutre and, 179
+     besieged by British, 182-184
+     surrenders the fort, 185
+     his trial for cowardice and acquittal, 186, 535
+     guards heights of Abraham, 533, 535
+     captured by Wolfe's men, 540
+
+   Vicars, Captain John, 279-280
+
+   Villeray, Commandant at Fort Gaspereau, surrenders to British, 186
+     tried for cowardice, 186
+
+   Villiers, Coulon de, French officer, 121-122
+     marches on Fort Necessity, 123ff.
+     defeats Washington's forces, 125-127
+     marches on Oswego and repulsed, 277
+     taken prisoner, 515
+
+   Virginia in 1750's, 43-44
+     refuses funds for Ohio Valley defense, 112
+     social life in Williamsburg, 128-129
+     votes funds after Fort Necessity defeat, 129-130
+     Indian massacres in, 235 238-239, 267
+     fear of slave uprisings, 236
+
+   Vitré, Denis de, forced to pilot British fleet, 486
+
+   Voltaire, 25, 35
+     letter from Frederick the Great, 607
+
+
+   W
+
+   Waggoner, Captain, 163, 236
+
+   Walpole, Horace, 29
+     opinion of Edward Cornwallis, 83
+     of Braddock, 144-148
+     of Duke of Newcastle, 137-138
+     comments on George Townshend, 478
+   on Wolfe and Quebec victory, 564-565
+     on French siege of Quebec, 587
+     on death of George II, 609
+     on Pitt, 619
+
+   Ward, Ensign, surrenders to French, 115
+
+   Warde, George, Wolfe's boyhood friend, 476
+
+   Washington, George, 25, 58, 106-127, 167
+     as envoy to French at Fort le Boeuf, 108-111
+     adventure at Murdering Town, 110-111
+     defeats French detachment, 116-118
+     his character at 22 years, 119, 126n., 237-238
+     defense of Fort Necessity, 120-125
+     defeat at Fort Necessity, 126-127, 627-628
+     named Braddock's Aide-de-Camp, 153
+     describes Braddock's march 159-160
+     his courage at ambush, 164
+     describes ambush, 170-171
+     commands Virginia troops guarding border, 235-237
+     his difficulties with Governor Dinwiddie, 439
+     urges capture of Fort Duquesne, 439-440
+     criticized by Forbes, 441, 443
+
+   Waterbury, provincial officer, 299
+
+   Webb, Colonel Daniel, 270, 280
+     sent to relieve Oswego, 284
+     arrives too late, 290
+     at Fort Edward, 341, 354
+     fails to support Fort William Henry, 342-346
+     his explanation, 343n.
+     his report to Loudon, 632
+
+   Wedell, General, defeat by Russians, 606
+
+   Weld, Chaplain, 284 and n.
+
+   Weiser, Conrad, Indian interpreter, 67, 71, 126, 246
+
+   Wesley, John, 29
+
+   West, Captain Benjamin, finds bones of Braddock's men, 457
+
+   Whiting, Lieutenant-Colonel, ambushed, 218
+
+   Whitmore, brigadier, in Louisbourg expedition, 385, 391-393
+     becomes Governor after its fall, 403
+
+   Whitworth, Dr. Miles, in Acadia, 197
+     at Fort William Henry Massacre, 350
+     his report on massacre, 633-634
+
+   William Henry, Fort, established, 226
+     first attack on fort fails, 310-313
+     threatened by new attack, 329
+     under siege, 339-347
+     description of fort, 341
+     Monro's brave defense of, 343-347
+     its surrender to Montcalm, 347
+     Indians break pledge to Montcalm, 348
+     massacre and atrocities at, 348-352, 353n.
+     survivors reach Fort Edward, 351-352
+     fort burned, 352
+     camp life and health in, 429-432
+
+   William of Orange, 29
+
+   William III of England, 29
+
+   Williams, Ephraim, 210
+     comments on Crown Point army, 211-212
+     killed at Lake George, 218
+
+   Williams, Stephen, Chaplain with Crown Point expedition, 210, 213
+
+   Williams, Thomas, surgeon at Crown Point, 210, 212
+     at Lake George battle, 219-220
+     his anxiety for Oswego, 284
+     report on fall of Oswego, 285
+
+   Williams, Colonel William, comment on Oswego loss, 285
+     his letters on Ticonderoga defeat, 428
+     his reports of illness at Fort William Henry, 431-432
+
+   Williamsburg, Virginia, social life in (1754), 128-129
+
+   Winnebago Indians, 335
+
+   Winslow, John, 132
+     raises Massachusetts regiment, 181
+     leads Colonials at Beauséjour, 183 and n.
+     oversees removal of Acadians, 194-204
+     his appearance and character, 198
+     his treatment of Acadians, 199-203
+     named Commander of Ticonderoga Campaign, 269-270
+     prepares attack on Ticonderoga, 273-274
+     confers with General Loudon, 281
+     at Lake George, 294-295
+     his praise of Israel Putnam, 299
+     comments on Crown Point failure, 305
+     Massachusetts shares cost of his expeditions, 408
+
+   Wolfe, Major-General Edward, father of James, 473, 475
+
+   Wolfe, Major General James, 83
+     named head of Louisbourg expedition, 385
+     his ill health, 391, 406, 475, 527, 529, 534
+     lands at Louisbourg, 391-393
+     his siege of Louisbourg, 394 ff.
+     letters to his family, 405-406, 474-478, 529
+     his desire to attack Quebec, 405
+     ordered to destroy French settlements, 406
+     returns to England, 406
+     comments on Abercomby, 411
+     praise of Lord Howe, 412
+     his appearance and character, 471 ff., 534
+     his childhood and youth, 473
+     his early military service, 473-474
+     named commander of Quebec expedition, 477
+     lands with British army, 489
+     difficulties of siege, 489-490, 492
+     driven back at Montmorenci, 504, 523
+     retaliates for French barbarities, 524-525
+     sickness in his troops, 526
+     his last dispatch to Pitt, 529-530
+     losses among his men, 531
+     plans new attack, 531-532
+     his last general orders, 536
+     his prestiment of death, 538
+     his plan of attack, 539
+     heights taken, 540-541
+     army forms on plains of Abraham, 542
+     battle for Quebec, 544-545
+     his last words after mortal wound, 546
+     his body returned to England, 560
+     reports on his siege of Quebec, 638-640
+
+   Wolfe, Major Water, Uncle of James, 476
+     James's letters to, 476, 477, 478
+
+   Wooster, Colonel David, at Fort Edward, 274
+
+   Wraxall, William Johnson's Secretary, 216n., 226
+
+   Wyandot Indians, 59
+
+
+   Z
+
+   Zingendorf, Count, 59 and n.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of France and England in North America, Part VI: Montcalm and Wolfe, by Francis Parkman
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MONTCALM AND WOLFE ***
+
+***** This file should be named 14517-8.txt or 14517-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/1/4/5/1/14517/
+
+Produced by Curtis Weyant, Graeme Mackreth and the PG Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.