NOTE.—For the substance of the above chapter, seeKINGSFORD'SHistory of Canada,vol. iii;PARKMAN'SA Half Century of Conflict;Sir J. BOURINOT'SCape Breton(referred toabove, note); andLouisbourg in 1745,the anonymousLettre d'un habitant de Louisbourg,edited and translated by Professor WRONG, (Toronto, 1897).
THEPRELUDE TO THESEVENYEARS'WAR
THEPRELUDE TO THESEVENYEARS'WAR
The fifteen years from the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 to the Peace of Paris in 1763 include the most stirring and picturesque times in the history of Canada. They were masculine years, when, in all parts of the world, great men did great things. They were the years when Montcalm and Wolfe fought and died on the St. Lawrence; when Robert Clive mastered India; when Chatham redeemed England from littleness; and when Frederick of Prussia became known for all time as Frederick the Great, by standing grimly foursquare against the continent of Europe in the Seven Years' War.
The Seven Years' War only began in 1756; but before that date, before war between France and England had formally been proclaimed, French and English were fighting hard in North America. We have the same sphere of war as before, and in large measure the same plans of campaign, trouble and conflict in and on the borders of Acadia, siege and capture of Louisbourg, attack up the St. Lawrence against Quebec—at last a successful attack, and prolonged fighting along the line of Lakes George and Champlain. The Five Nation Indians played their part in the war, though a more subordinate part than in earlier times; the cantons most within range of the English remaining under English influence and being more adroitly managed than in earlier days, while the westernmost tribes, the Senecas, inclined to the French side. But a new feature came into the struggle, theresult of the inevitable advance of white men on either side in the course of years. The English colonies to the south of New York began to take a more active part than formerly in the conflict with France. The Virginians appeared on the scene, and among the Virginians was prominent the name of George Washington. The great French scheme of holding the rivers of North America and their basins implied that the English colonies should not cross the Alleghany mountains. Great schemes never allow for the ordinary every day work of nature and man. It was certain that, as the English multiplied, they would go further and further afield; and in due time, from Pennsylvania and from Virginia, English traders and backwoodsmen made their way into the valley of the Ohio.
The Ohio, which La Salle first made known to the world, is, as has been pointed out, the connecting link on the inner line of the North American waterways—starting from the confines of the St. Lawrence basin near the shores of Lake Erie, and reaching the Mississippi comparatively low down in its course. The outer line is much more extensive, continuing along the great lakes until from Lake Michigan the Mississippi is reached by the Wisconsin or the Illinois. Along this outer line the French had hitherto worked. It took them more directly to the far West; and, passing along it, they only skirted instead of traversing the region where the Iroquois were in strength; but, had they allowed the English to lay firm hold of the Ohio valley, Canada and Louisiana would have been severed, and down the Ohio would have come a challenge to French sovereignty over the West. Thus it was that, in the year 1749, the year after the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle was signed, the Governor of Canada, the Marquis de la Galissonière, sent one of his officers, Celeron de Bienville, to register the claims of France to the Ohio river and the lands which it watered and drained.
Starting up the St. Lawrence from the island of Montreal,Celeron landed on the shores of Lake Erie; and, making a portage to Lake Chautauqua, reached the head waters of the Ohio. Down stream he went, into the Alleghany, down the Alleghany to where, meeting the Monongahela, it becomes the Ohio, and down the Ohio to the confluence of the Miami river, not far from the site of Cincinnati city. Here he left the Ohio, and, ascending the Miami, crossed overland to the Maumee river, on which there was a small French post. The Maumee flows into the south-western end of Lake Erie, and down its stream he returned to Canada.
At various points along the route he buried leaden plates, with inscriptions asserting the title of the King of France to the lands of the Ohio and its tributaries; and he affixed to trees the arms of France on sheets of tin, to tell all comers that the French were lords of the country. It was time that some assertion of French claims was made in these regions. He found parties of English traders, as he went, and the Indians showed no love for France. There had been for some time past a migration of Indians into the Ohio valley. Many of the Iroquois had settled there: and if among the various races, notably among the Delawares, there were those whose traditional sympathies were with the owners of Canada, there were more who appreciated the present benefit of English trade. Prominent among the friends of the English were the Indians of the Miami confederacy, whose centre was at Pique Town or Pickawillany on the Miami river.
Celeron came and went. He had made a demonstration on behalf of France, but not a demonstration in force. His expedition was memorable as the prelude to coming events; but no definite action was taken for about three years. La Galissonière was succeeded as Governor of Canada by the Marquis de la Jonquière,1who died in 1752, and wasfollowed by the Marquis Duquesne. Meantime, an Ohio company was formed on the English side, consisting mainly of Virginians, and English traders and emissaries were active among the Indians of the Ohio. Yet the English, like the French, achieved no tangible results. Pennsylvania and Virginia were jealous of each other, and the Legislature in each state opposed the Governor. Both Assemblies were invited to build a fort at the junction of the Alleghany and Monongahela rivers, which formed the key of the position; but both refused.
1De la Jonquière had been named Governor of Canada in 1746, and made two unsuccessful attempts to reach Quebec, one in that year on board D'Anville's fleet, and a second in 1747, when he was taken prisoner in the fight off Cape Finisterre (seeabove). He finally arrived in 1749.
Thus matters drifted on until, in June, 1752, a Frenchman, Langlade, came down from the lakes with a band of Indian warriors, attacked the Miamis at Pickawillany, took the town, and killed its chief—who was known to the French as La Demoiselle, and who was feared by them as a warm friend of their English rivals. The place was a centre of English trade, there were English traders in it when the attack was made, and this French success was the beginning of action, on a larger scale than had hitherto been attempted, for the conquest and control of the Ohio valley.
Founded in 1749, Halifax, on the coast of Nova Scotia, was, in 1752, a town of 4,000 inhabitants. Had the settlement been made thirty years earlier, immediately after the Peace of Utrecht instead of after the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, the story of Acadia would have been a different and probably a happier one. Mascarene at Annapolis, and Shirley at Boston, saw the necessity of introducing English settlers into the peninsula in order to balance the French malcontents, and the British Government, when giving back Louisbourg to France, recognized at length that steps must be taken to strengthen the English hold on Nova Scotia. It was determined to recruit the English, or at any rate the Protestant,element in the population from Europe, from the North American colonies, and from the ranks of the men who were withdrawn from Louisbourg; and Chebucto harbour on the Atlantic coast of the Nova Scotian peninsula was selected as the scene of a new township to be well fortified and strongly garrisoned.
Here was created the city of Halifax, called after the Earl of Halifax, at the time 'First Lord of Trade and Plantations.' In founding it, the English had regard to the methods by which the French had established their colonies on the St. Lawrence. Halifax was in its origin a military colony. The first settlers consisted largely of officers and privates of the army and navy, who, when peace was concluded, received their discharge and who were supplemented by a certain number of labourers and artizans. Parliament voted £40,000 in aid of the initial expenses. Free passages, free grants of land, and the cost of subsistence for a year after landing were provided, privileges which secured a considerable number of colonists; 1,400 immigrants were landed from the first batch of transports at Chebucto harbour,2and others followed. A good Governor was appointed, Colonel Edward Cornwallis, uncle of Lord Cornwallis who surrendered at Yorktown and ruled India.
2It is difficult to make out the numbers. The above figure is given by Cornwallis in a letter to the Lords of Trade, July 24, 1749 (see Mr. Brymer'sCatalogue of Canadian Archives,'Nova Scotia,' p. 142). On the other hand passages were taken for over 2,500 (p. 138). Haliburton says, 'in a short time 3,760 adventurers with their families were entered for embarkation.' Parkman puts the number at about 2,500, including women and children, Kingsford at 1,176 settlers with their families. Parliament for some years continued to make annual grants for the colonization of Nova Scotia, 'which collected sums,' says Haliburton, 'amounted to the enormous sum of £415,584 14s.11d.'
Old soldiers do not always make good colonists, and Cornwallis wrote home complaining of their want of industry, contrasting the English unfavourably with a few Swiss who were among the newcomers, and suggesting that an effortshould be made to introduce Protestant emigrants from Germany. Accordingly, German Lutherans were brought over through an agent at Rotterdam, the majority of whom were, in 1753, planted out at Lunenburg, a little to the south-west of Halifax, on the same side of the peninsula. Thus the outer margin of Nova Scotia was being sparsely colonized with English, Swiss, and German Protestants, while on the side towards the mainland, along the shores of the Bay of Fundy, the Roman Catholic Acadians remained French in heart and sympathies.
For three years following the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, the French and English commissioners, appointed to determine the limits of the French and English possessions in North America, wrangled at Paris, William Shirley being one of the English delegates; but they never came to any conclusion. The French now refused even to concede that the whole of the Acadian peninsula belonged to England, and wished to confine English sovereignty to its southern coasts. They were in fact resolved by bluff or by force either to regain Acadia, or, in default of attaining that object, to make its condition one of permanent insecurity and unrest. As related in the last chapter,3immediately after the Peace of Utrecht the intention of the French Government had been to transplant the Acadians to French soil, to Cape Breton Island and to Prince Edward Island, then known as Île St. Jean. For this policy they subsequently substituted the more dangerous plan of not removing the Acadians, but encouraging them to consider themselves still as French subjects while remaining under the British flag. After the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle was signed, however, they reverted to their project of transplantation, finding that the British Government were resolved no longer to treat their subjects in Acadia as neutrals, and realizing that the Governor had now force at his back.
3Seeabove.
The Acadians claimed to be exempt from bearing arms in defence of their country and their country's rulers, in other words against the French and the Indian allies of the French. They were not free agents; they were terrorized by the French Government and the French priests, notorious among whom was a ruffian named Le Loutre, Vicar-General of Acadia. Spiritual excommunication and Indian hostility threatened them, if they acted with loyalty to the British King, whose subjects they had been for nearly forty years. How faithless and unscrupulous was the policy of the French is abundantly shown by official dispatches, proving that the Canadian Governor, La Jonquière, with the sanction of the French Government at home, accepted and endorsed Le Loutre's villainous schemes for preventing the Acadians from taking the full oath of allegiance, and for instigating the Indians of the peninsula to murder the English settlers. Cornwallis treated the Acadians with kindly firmness. Some of them asked to be allowed to leave the country, and he promised permission to those who should obtain passports, when peace and tranquillity were restored. For the moment he declined to allow them to cross the frontier, as it would mean sending them among French and Indians, who would compel them to bear arms against the English Government.
The frontier, as far as any line was provisionally recognized, was a little stream on the isthmus of Chignecto. On the mainland side the French had occupied a hill called Beauséjour, on the Nova Scotian side was the village of Beaubassin. In April, 1750, Cornwallis sent a force of some 400 men under Major Lawrence to occupy a position at or near Beaubassin, and to guard the isthmus. On his arrival, Lawrence found Beaubassin in flames. Le Loutre and his Indians had set fire to the place, and compelled the hapless residents to cross over to the French lines. The English left, but returned in September in stronger force; their landing was disputed by Le Loutre's savages, who were driven off,and a fort was built and garrisoned, called after the name of the commander, Fort Lawrence.
French and English now faced each other across a narrow stream, the French completed their fort at Beauséjour, and the temper of Le Loutre's Indians was shown by a horrible incident, the murder of an English officer, Captain Howe. Howe had gone out in answer to a flag of truce, which appeared from the French lines; but the bearer of the white flag was an Indian disguised in French uniform, who lured the Englishman into an ambush, where he was mortally wounded. The French themselves attributed this act of wanton wickedness to Le Loutre.
In 1752 Cornwallis returned to England, and was succeeded as Governor of Acadia by Colonel Hopson, who had been in command at Louisbourg, when that town was given back to France; the latter was, in the autumn of 1753, succeeded by Colonel Lawrence. The Acadian population, which in 1749 numbered between 12,000 and 13,000 souls, five years later was reduced to little more than 9,000. The emigration which caused the reduction in numbers was largely the result of a French terror, and on the mainland, or in the Île St. Jean, the unfortunate emigrants endured misery unknown in their old homes in Acadia. Those who find in the subsequent rooting up of Acadian settlement an instance of English cruelty with little parallel in history, would do well to remember that the process had already been going on at the hands of the French; and the lot of the Acadians under the French flag was in no wise preferable to the fortunes of those who were carried, as it were, into captivity in the English colonies.
The catastrophe, of which so much has been made in prose and verse, happened in the year 1755. It was not an isolated incident, but part of a general plan—which for the time miscarried—of breaking the French power in North America. The commandant of the French fort atBeauséjour was De Vergor, son of Duchambon who surrendered Louisbourg in 1745. He owed his position to Bigot, the notorious Intendant of Canada. By his side, and with as much or more authority, was Le Loutre, the evil genius of Acadia. The French contemplated attack on the English: Lawrence, in communication with Shirley, determined to forestall them. Some two thousand men came up from Massachusetts, enlisted under John Winslow—a name which New Englanders honoured—and, landing at the isthmus early in June, joined the English garrison at Fort Lawrence, the whole force being under Colonel Monckton. In a few days' time the bombardment of the French fort began; but, before there had been any serious fighting, De Vergor surrendered. The garrison marched out with the honours of war, and Fort Beauséjour was renamed Fort Cumberland.
This success was speedily followed by the capitulation of another French fort at Baie Verte, at the northern end of the isthmus, and by the evacuation of a post on the mainland, at the mouth of the river St. John. The whole of Acadia on both sides of the isthmus thus passed into English hands. De Vergor some time afterwards was put on trial at Quebec for his feeble and incapable conduct, but influential friends procured his acquittal; and he remained in Canada to earn further obloquy, as commandant of the French outpost which was surprised by Wolfe in his memorable climb by night up to the Plains of Abraham.4Le Loutre disappeared from the scene of his wickedness in North America. He fled in disguise to Quebec, and, sailing for France, was taken prisoner and spent eight years in captivity in the island of Jersey. He seems to have died in his bed in France—a better fate than he deserved.
4Seebelow.
The victory of the English arms was followed by the removal of the bulk of the Acadian population from Acadia. This policy had been determined upon as the only practicablealternative to unqualified obedience. Such obedience, until it was too late and the die had already been cast, the Acadians refused to give. They would not swear heart-whole allegiance to King George; they had abetted his enemies year after year; many of them had actually borne arms against the English; and with Louisbourg in threatening strength in the immediate neighbourhood, with manifold other difficulties to face—for before the actual expulsion Braddock's defeat and death on the Monongahela river had occurred—it was absolutely necessary for the English authorities to make the Nova Scotian peninsula permanently safe. The time to strike was while there was an adequate force on the spot, and before the Massachusetts contingent returned to Boston.
Sternly and relentlessly Governor Lawrence took his measures; at Beaubassin, at Annapolis, round the shores of the Basin of Mines, where the most pleasing features of Acadian settlement were to be found, the majority of able-bodied men were secured; and, as the transports came up, groups of peasants were carried off to other lands. In the actual work of expulsion, no unnecessary harshness appears to have been used; families were as a rule kept together, and went out hand in hand into exile; but they were taken, an ignorant and bewildered crowd, from the homes of their childhood, and were transported, helpless and hopeless, to distant countries, where there was another religion and another race. The pity of it was that, after forty years of so-called English government, the Acadians never believed that that Government, when it threatened or decreed, would be as good as its word. When therefore the blow came, it stunned a people who had been bred in the belief that much would be said and nothing would be done.
Some 6,000 in all were removed, out of a total population of a little over 9,000. Of these, over 3,000 had had their homes round the Basin of Mines, the majority of whomwere dwellers in the village and district of Grand Pré. The others came from the isthmus, or from Annapolis. They were dispersed abroad among the English colonies in North America, from Massachusetts southwards; but the colonies were not all willing to receive them, and from Virginia and South Carolina many were sent on to England. Some, it is said, found their way to Louisiana, while of those who had escaped transportation a certain number took refuge at Quebec. A considerable remnant was left behind in Acadia, and some of the exiles 'wandered back to their native land to die in its bosom';5but those who were left behind in Acadia, and those who returned, were not enough to leaven to any great extent the future history of the peninsula.
5From Longfellow'sEvangeline.
What judgment may fairly be passed upon this measure of expulsion? The traditional view has been that the removal of the Acadians from Acadia was an injustice and a crime—an arbitrary and cruel act, parallel on a smaller scale to the earlier expulsion of the Huguenots from France. According to this view the English were oppressors, rooting out and carrying captive a harmless and innocent peasantry—
Men whose lives glided on like rivers that water the woodlands,Darkened by shadows of earth but reflecting an image of heaven.
Longfellow has given us this picture inEvangeline,and it has been drawn in similar outlines by various hands. In the foreground are bands of terror-stricken peasants, driven on board ship amid mourning and lamentation. In the background are burning homesteads, emptiness where there had been plenty, desolation where yesterday the children played.
A different view is given by later writers who have more closely tested the facts. Their conclusion is that the expulsion of the Acadians, stern and even cruel as it was, was more or less a political necessity; that the Acadiansthemselves were sinners as well as sinned against; and that they were sinned against more by men of their own race and religion than by the English.
This latter view is probably nearer the truth. There is always, especially in England, a tendency to sympathize unreasonably with the weak against the strong, and, when severe measures are taken, to condemn those measures almost unheard. The Acadians, in their primitive agricultural life, in their farms gathered round the village church, were picturesque objects of sympathy; and, whenever a fine or a punishment is inflicted on a whole district or on a whole community, the innocent no doubt suffer with the guilty. But there are conditions under which no lasting effect can be produced without collective dealing, and the Acadians were not transported beyond the sea until for many years half-measures had been tried, and tried in vain. These farmers had been gently treated under English rule; many of them had been born and brought up under it; a large proportion of their number had requited the treatment by actively abetting or tacitly conniving at the unceasing petty warfare, by which French borderers and Indian savages year after year took English lives and pillaged English homes. Was it unreasonable that, if they would not be loyal subjects in Acadia, they should be moved elsewhere, and that, instead of being sent to increase the hostile population of Canada, they should be dispersed among the British colonies on the North American coast?
It must be remembered that the tale of their sufferings has probably not been minimized. French writers would naturally exaggerate what actually occurred, and American accounts, until recent years, would not be likely to be unduly friendly to England. It must be remembered, too, that half as many as were transported by the English had already been induced or forced by the French to emigrate to their possessions; and we have it on French evidence that those who,when the sentence of expatriation was passed, took refuge in Canada, suffered as much as or more than their compatriots suffered in the English colonies.
It is difficult to blame Colonel Lawrence for the step which he took under the conditions of the time and place. On the other hand, it is difficult to believe that the Acadians fully deserved their doom. The responsibility for the wholesale misery, in which a small community was involved, must be shared between the French Government and its agents on the one hand, notably the priests, and on the other the British Government in earlier years. Had the French been loyal to the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht, had they ceased to instil the spirit of disaffection into the minds of men who were no longer their subjects, had they discountenanced instead of encouraging acts of barbarity, had they not made religion a cloak for maliciousness, and used the ministers of religion as political agitators of the worst and most unscrupulous type, Acadia and the Acadians would have prospered under the British Government as Canada and the Canadians prospered in after years. Again if, when Acadia was ceded by the treaty, Great Britain had recognized her responsibilities, had given adequate protection and enforced the law, loyalty and obedience would have brought happiness in its train, and a generation would have grown up not attempting the impossible task of serving two masters. The true verdict of history on the melancholy episode is this. The misery which befell the Acadians was the result of not using force at the right time, and of the evil potency of priestcraft.
Before Acadia had been depopulated, much had happened in the west. Always unready, the English colonies let slip the opportunity of occupying the upper valley of the Ohio, and the French seized the opening which their rivals might have closed. Early in 1753, the Canadian Governor, Duquesne, sent a force of considerable strength under anold and tried officer, Marin, to establish communication between the great lakes and the Ohio, and to hold the route by a chain of forts. Launched upon Lake Erie, Marin and his men held their way past the point where Celeron had landed; and, instead of taking the portage to Chautauqua, disembarked further along the southern shore of the lake at Presque Île, where the town of Erie now stands. Here a fort was built, and a road cut southwards through the woods for about 21 miles to the Rivière aux Boeufs. This stream, now known as French Creek, flows into the Alleghany river, and is navigable for canoes when the water is high. Where the road struck the river a second fort was built, called Fort Le Boeuf. Thus the way was cleared from the lakes to the sources of the Ohio, and either end of the portage was guarded by a blockhouse.
So far the enterprise had succeeded, and success had produced the usual effect upon the wavering Indian mind, inclining the tribes of the Ohio to the side which took the initiative and gave outward and visible signs of strength. But the French were only at the outset of their enterprise. As the year wore on, their ranks were thinned by disease; their commander, Marin, died; and, when winter came, but three hundred men were left to hold the forts on Lake Erie and French Creek. The intention had been to push down the latter river, and, where it joined the Alleghany, to build a third fort. This fort in turn was to be a starting-point for a further advance to the main objective, the junction of the Alleghany and the Monongahela rivers.
All through early Canadian history, we find the clue to the various movements on either side is studying the waterways. As in the centre of the two conflicting lines of advance, the English moved up the Hudson and the French up the Richelieu, to find their battleground on Lakes George and Champlain, so further to the west, in the region of the Ohio, the Alleghany and its feeders brought the French down fromCanada, while the English moved north along the line of the Monongahela and its tributary the Youghiogany. These streams take their rise amid the parallel ranges of the Alleghanies, in that border country of the three States of Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, which was the scene of the hardest fighting between North and South in the American Civil War. Near where the Monongahela starts on its northern course to the Ohio, but divided by mountains, is the source of the northern branch of the Potomac, which runs into the Atlantic. This latter river flows at first north-east between two mountain ranges; and, where it turns to the east, cutting its way through the hills, a small stream, known as Wills Creek, joins it from the north. At this point was a station of the Ohio Company, shortly afterwards called Fort Cumberland, after the English duke. This was the base of the British advance; but mountains had to be crossed to reach the Monongahela valley; it was easier to come down from Canada to the Ohio than to march upon it from the Atlantic side.
The Lieutenant-Governor of Virginia, in the year 1753, the titular Governor being in England, was Robert Dinwiddie, a cross-grained Scotchman. He had none of the arts of popularity, but none the less was a watchful guardian of his country's interests. Like William Shirley in Massachusetts, he was a determined opponent of French pretensions; but he was less tactful than Shirley in managing a colonial Legislature, and less happily placed, in that the Legislatures of the southern provinces were far behind the New Englanders in public spirit. Hearing of the French advance from Lake Erie, he lost no time in making a counter claim, and sent a messenger to Fort Le Boeuf to warn off foreign trespassers from what he conceived to be the domain of the King of England. The messenger was George Washington, just come to man's estate.
In November, 1753, Washington left Wills Creek. InJanuary, 1754, he returned to Virginia, having in the depth of winter traversed the frost-bound backwoods, and risked his life in crossing the Alleghany river. His journey in either direction took him by the old Indian town of Venango, at the confluence of the French Creek with the Alleghany, where there had been an English trading house: this was now occupied by a French outpost. There could be no doubt that the Governor of Canada intended to be master of the Ohio. Still the British colonies remained apathetic or half-hearted. Virginia voted £10,000; North Carolina gave some money; a handful of troops in Imperial pay was placed at Dinwiddie's disposal; but the money and the men were utterly inadequate to the occasion, and Pennsylvania, the state which, with Virginia, was most concerned, did nothing at all. For Pennsylvania was the home of Quakers and Germans, the former averse to war on principle, the latter indifferent to the conflicting claims of alien races.
The crisis came on apace. In February, 1754, a month after Washington's return, Dinwiddie sent a small detachment over the mountains to build a fort at the junction of the Monongahela and Alleghany. While the work was in hand, a strong Canadian force came down in April from the north and overpowered the Virginians. A fort was built, but it was a French fort, and became memorable in history under the name of Fort Duquesne. Dinwiddie determined to drive the French back, if possible, from this new position, and he set Washington to the task—impossible to perform with the only available troops, amounting to 300 or 400 men.
From Wills Creek to Fort Duquesne was a distance of 120 to 140 miles, with two ranges of mountains to be crossed, before half the journey was accomplished, and the Monongahela reached. Making a road over the first range, the main range of the Alleghanies, Washington, about the end of May, reached open ground known as the Great Meadows, having still in front of him the Laurel hills, through whichthe two branches of the Monongahela find their way to the Ohio. A few miles further on, guided by Indian scouts, he surprised an advance party sent out from Fort Duquesne, and killed their commander, Jumonville. Assassination was the term which the French applied to the death of this officer, claiming that he was the peaceful bearer of a summons to the English to retire from the land; but there is no reason to doubt that Washington was justified in using force, and that the Frenchman was killed in fair fight. Returning to his camp, and entrenching it under the suitable name of Fort Necessity, the English commander awaited a counter attack. Small reinforcements reached him, and he pushed on over the Laurel ridge; but, hearing that the French were advancing in force, fell back again to Fort Necessity. Stronger in numbers, the French, from their base at Fort Duquesne, marched forward under Jumonville's brother, Coulon de Villiers; and, after a nine hours' fight, Fort Necessity surrendered; the English, under the terms of the surrender, retreated across the Alleghanies, and the French returned in triumph to Fort Duquesne. For the time, they were beyond dispute masters of the Ohio valley, and the young Virginian, whose name now stands first in the great history of the United States of America, crawled back over the mountains, defeated and undone.
American history is great as a whole, but the back records of its component parts are full of what is mean and contemptible. We are accustomed, in the chronicles of the English race, to trace the errors of its rulers, and to find them put right by the good sense and strong character of the people; but, if we turn to the provincial annals of the American States, when the fate of the continent seemed to be trembling in the balance, the rulers sent out from home must be credited with patriotism and some measure of foresight, while the peoples were or appeared to be selfish and blind. New England alone stands out in a brighter light, ready tosacrifice money and men in the national cause. With the enemy on their borders, the New Englanders knew what the danger was; further south the Alleghany mountains bounded the horizon of the colonists. State Assemblies squabbled with their Governors, each little province was passively indifferent to or actively jealous of its neighbour, all alike were with good reason suspicious of the mother country; while on the other side the fighting strength of Canada, centralized under a despotic Government, one in aim and sympathy, was menacing and dangerous out of all proportion to the resources of the country or the numbers of its people.
Yet some attempt had been made at concerted action on the part of the English colonies. It emanated from the Government at home. In September, 1753, the Lords of Trade wrote round to the Governors of the various North American provinces, directing them to invite their respective Legislatures to adopt a uniform policy towards the Indians. In consequence, a conference was held at Albany, at which seven of the colonies were represented—Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. The Commissioners met representatives of the Five Nation Indians, whose hereditary friendship for the English cause was fast turning into hatred and contempt. They pacified the angry Indians to some extent, and renewed the old covenant of friendship, then turned to constitution-making, at the instance of Franklin, one of the Commissioners from Pennsylvania.
Franklin had a scheme for North American union, comprising a President appointed by the Crown, and a general Council elected by the taxpayers of the colonies, the number of representatives of each colony to be determined by the amount of taxes paid. Plenary powers were to be given to the President and Council, including even power to make war and peace. Had the scheme been carried out, North America would have become one great self-governing colony,in some respects more independent, in others more restricted than the self-governing colonies of Great Britain at the present day. Franklin's proposals, though his fellow commissioners were inclined to approve them, pleased neither the colonies nor the mother country. They were premature. The colonies were too jealous of their local liberties to accept the scheme. The mother country still distrusted the colonies, and dreaded the strength which union would bring. Moreover, the immediate necessity was united action, not constitutional change. The French must first be driven back; and with this object Dinwiddie made an earnest appeal to the ministry in England.
The appeal was not made in vain; two regiments of infantry, the 44th and 48th, now the Essex and Northampton regiments, were ordered to embark for Virginia, and sailed from Cork in January, 1755, with Major-General Braddock in command. The French Government, taking alarm, ordered out 3,000 men under Baron Dieskau, a German serving in the French army; and at the beginning of May, 1755, eighteen French ships sailed from Brest carrying to Canada the troops and their commander, and taking out at the same time a new Governor-General, the Marquis de Vaudreuil. Most of the vessels reached their destination in safety; but two, theAlcideandLys,were intercepted by the English Admiral Boscawen, off the coast of Newfoundland, were fired into, and compelled to surrender.6There was still supposed to be peace between Great Britain and France, but the backwoods of America and the waters of the Atlantic echoed to the sounds of war.
6TheAlcidewas overpowered by theDunkirk,commanded by the afterwards famous Admiral Lord Howe.
At four points, according to the English plan of campaign Canada was to be threatened and the French advance was to be checked. Braddock, with his two English regiments, was to march on Fort Duquesne. From Albany the second andthe third expeditions were to start. One, marching due north, was to master Crown Point on Lake Champlain; the other, taking the route of the Five Nation cantons, and having for its advanced base Oswego on Lake Ontario, was to reduce the French fort at Niagara. The fourth effort was to be made in Acadia. This last enterprise proved successful, as has already been seen, Shirley having previously prepared the way by building a fort on the mainland behind the peninsula, at the portage between the Kennebec and the Chaudière rivers. What fate befell the other expeditions must now be told.
History has been unkind to General Braddock. His name is associated for ever with a great disaster in North America, as the name of Wolfe is linked to a crowning victory. Like Wolfe, Braddock was mortally wounded on the field of battle; he was defeated, and obloquy was heaped on his name. Wolfe triumphed, and all men spoke well of him. The accounts of Braddock are largely derived from the spiteful gossip collected by Horace Walpole, and from the writings of Franklin—never a lover of the mother country, and, after the War of Independence, glad, like others of his countrymen, to throw the blame of an English defeat upon a commander sent out from England. We have a portrait given us of a brutal, blustering, and incompetent soldier, a man of coarse habits and broken fortunes, with little to recommend him but personal honesty and courage. 'Braddock is a very Iroquois in disposition,'7writes Horace Walpole. Before the fatal battle the same writer tells us in the same letter, 'the duke (of Cumberland) is much dissatisfied at the slowness of General Braddock, who does not march as if he was at all impatient to be scalped.' After the disaster he writes, 'Braddock's defeat still remains in the situation of the longest battle that ever was fought with nobody.'8TheBraddocks of England, with all their failings, have deserved better of their country than the Horace Walpoles.
7Letters of Horace Walpole(Bohn's ed., 1861), vol. ii, p. 459 (Letter of Aug. 25, 1755).
8Ibid. p. 473 (Letter of Sept. 30, 1755).
Born in 1695, the son of an officer in the Coldstream Guards, and an officer of the Guards himself, he was sixty years old when sent out to America by the Duke of Cumberland. He had the reputation of being a very severe disciplinarian, and yet we have Walpole's own admission that while serving at Gibraltar, 'he made himself adored.'9He was criticized by Franklin as being too self-confident, and as having too high an opinion of European as compared with colonial troops; but, on the other hand, the scanty colonial levies which reached him had not shown high fighting qualities, and his care for transport and supplies, together with his anxiety to conciliate and use the Indians on the line of march, were evidence of prudence and military forethought. Burke wrote of him as 'abounding too much in his own sense for the degree of military knowledge he possessed';10but probably Wolfe's judgement upon him was sound, that 'though not a master of the difficult art of war, he was yet a man of sense and courage,'11and we may reasonably infer that the shortcomings of the colonists were unjustly visited on his head.
9Letters of Horace Walpole,p. 461 (Letter of Aug. 28, 1755).
10Annual Register,1758, p. 4.
11Wright'sLife of Wolfe,p. 324.
Late in February, 1755, the English troops and their commander reached Hampton in Virginia, at the entrance of Chesapeake Bay. In due course they were sent up the Potomac to Alexandria, where in April Braddock met the Governors of the various colonies, including Shirley, and settled with them the plan of campaign. He himself prepared to march on Fort Duquesne by the route which Washington had taken, but found endless difficulty in obtaining horses, wagons, and supplies. Virginia and Pennsylvania were still half-hearted, and inclined to think that the dangerof French invasion was a scare created in the interests of the Ohio Company. It was not the first time, and not the last, that a real crisis has been interpreted as the work of a designing few. However, a base was established, as before, at Fort Cumberland on Wills Creek, and early in June the march began.
The force consisted of about 2,000 men, 1,350 of whom belonged to the two regiments of the line. There were some 250 Virginia rangers, and the rest were detachments from New York, Maryland, and the Carolinas. The troops were formed in two brigades, under Sir Peter Halkett and Colonel Dunbar. Washington, ill with fever, was attached to Braddock's staff, by the General's own request. Steadily and well the advance on Fort Duquesne was made; a road was cleared through forests and over mountains; and every precaution was taken against surprise. But progress was inevitably slow; and, at a distance of forty miles from Fort Cumberland, Braddock, on Washington's advice, resolved to push forward with the larger half of his troops, leaving the remainder with the heavy baggage to follow under charge of Colonel Dunbar. The object was to reach Fort Duquesne before reinforcements could arrive from Canada.
At the end of the first week in July, Braddock was eight miles distant from the French fort, at a point where a little stream, called Turtle Creek, flows into the Monongahela. He was on the same side of the latter river as the fort, which stood on the right bank of the Monongahela, in the angle which it forms with the Alleghany; but the direct route passed through country suitable for ambuscade; and he therefore resolved to make a short détour, crossing the Monongahela, and recrossing it lower down the stream. On July 9, the movement was successfully carried out; no opposition at either ford being offered by the enemy. The troops moved on; and, early in the afternoon, at a little distance from the river, as the line of march crossed a shallowforest-clad ravine, there was a sudden check; a French officer sprang out in front of the advancing column, and forthwith, in a moment, at his signal, the thickets were alive with foes.
The scene which followed was one not uncommon in the story of colonial warfare. The first attack was answered by artillery fire; the French commander, De Beaujeu, was killed, and many of the Canadians fled. But the majority of the enemy, with whom the English had to deal, were Indians, who dispersed on this side and on that, hiding behind trees, and attacking either flank of the column, active and noisy out of all proportion to their numbers. The English vanguard fell back, the supports crowded up, the redcoated soldiers stood in close formation, an easy mark for the invisible foe. They fired at nothing, for nothing could be seen; all around was a hideous din, from every side came bullets dealing death. The men were bewildered, the ammunition began to fail, confusion turned into panic, and, when at length the order for retreat was given, there was a headlong flight.
The survivors rushed across the river, taking with them the General mortally wounded; no stand was made at the first crossing or at the second; and when, in about two days' time, the fugitives reached Dunbar's camp, many miles distant, they found panic prevailing there also. The retreat was continued to Fort Cumberland, stores, guns, and wagons being abandoned; and not many days after Fort Cumberland had been reached, Dunbar marched off with the remains of the regular troops to Philadelphia.
Braddock had shown conspicuous bravery, if not conspicuous judgment, on the battlefield. He was shot through the lungs as the retreat began, and bade his men leave him where he fell. They carried him, however, from the fight; and for four days he lingered, reaching Dunbar's camp, and dying at Great Meadows on July 13. Of 1,460British and colonial officers and men who took part in the battle, nearly 900 were killed or wounded. Those who escaped, escaped with their lives alone. On the French side the numbers engaged appear not to have exceeded 900, three-fourths of whom were Indians. The English force included over 1,200 regulars; the battle therefore resulted in a crushing defeat of troops of the line by a smaller number of Indians, with a sprinkling of Frenchmen and Canadians, led by French officers.
The disaster was attributed to the incompetence of the General, and the bad quality of the regular troops; it was said that the few Virginians who were present fought well, in contrast to their English comrades; that, knowing bush fighting, and taking cover, they were driven into the open by Braddock, only to be shot down like the rest. These accounts must be taken with reserve; the testimony of Washington and others was prejudiced in favour of the colonial and against the British soldier; Braddock did not live to give his own version of the matter; and the two regular regiments, having been brought up to strength since their arrival in America, included many colonists in their ranks. Yet it must be supposed that, as the column neared its destination unopposed, there was some slackening of precaution, for which the General must be held to blame; while Wolfe set down the defeat to the bad conduct of the infantry, writing in strong terms of the want of military training in the English army, as compared with the armies of the continent.12
12Wright'sLife of Wolfe,p. 324.
But, even if the defeat and rout on the Monongahela was due to the shortcomings of the English troops and their commander, we may well ask why troops from the mother country were needed to protect the frontiers of the two strong colonies of Virginia and Pennsylvania. The whole story shows these colonies in the worst possible light. Theyhad ample warning of the importance of securing Fort Duquesne; they allowed it to fall into the hands of the French; they threw on the mother country the onus of recovering it: they hindered Braddock rather than helped him; and, when he failed, they debited him and his men with the whole blame of failure. It was not wonderful that soldiers fresh from England should be stampeded at their first venture in forest warfare, but it was wonderful that the men on the spot should be so utterly indifferent to the calls, both of patriotism and of self-interest, as to contribute to the disaster.
Bad as was the failure, it was a blessing in disguise. The colonies concerned were for a time left to bear their own burdens; French and Indians harried their frontiers; homesteads and villages were burnt; women and children were butchered or carried into captivity. While sleek Quakers and garrulous Assembly men prated of peace and local liberties, the outlying settlements were given over to fire and sword; until the southern colonists began to learn the lesson, which New England had long since learnt, that the first duty of any community is self-defence.
On the Mohawk river, about thirty miles to the north-west of Albany, there lived a nephew of Sir Peter Warren, named William Johnson. He had come out to America in 1738, when he was twenty-three years old, to manage estates which his uncle had bought on the confines of the Five Nation Indians. He lived a semi-savage life, in a house constructed as a fort and named Fort Johnson or Mount Johnson, taking to wife first a German woman, and then an Iroquois. His position among the Indians was not unlike that which the Baron de Castin had held in bygone years on the Penobscot. He knew and understood the natives and their ways, he spoke their language, and his honest dealings contrasted favourably with the rascalities of the border traders. He was a type of man, more common on the French side than on the English,who lived within, not outside, the circle of native life; and, having these versatile attributes, it is almost superfluous to add that he was an Irishman. For the rest, Johnson was a man of force and energy, whose tact and talents were by no means confined to the backwoods. He did good service to his King and country, and was not at all inclined to hide his light under a bushel. His value to the English cause in North America cannot be overestimated. His personal influence among the Mohawks counterbalanced the influence of the Frenchman Joncaire among the Senecas at the other end of the confederacy; and, being appointed Superintendent of, or Commissioner for, Indian affairs, he, and he alone, kept alive the old covenant of friendship between the English and the Five Nation Indians.
When it was decided to send an expedition against Crown Point, Shirley gave him the command, and Braddock confirmed the appointment. He had no military experience, though he was a colonel of militia; but the whole force under him consisted of colonists, preferring to be led by a man who knew the country and its people than by a trained soldier. Preparations were made for raising 6,000 to 7,000 men. Massachusetts, as usual, contributed the largest levy; the other New England colonies and New York sent or promised smaller forces, and some 300 Mohawk Indians joined the expedition, finding that it was commanded by the white man, whom of all others they trusted and loved. The actual numbers engaged, however, did not much exceed 3,000 fighting men. In July they met at Albany and moved up the Hudson, for about forty-five miles, to the 'Carrying Place,' the spot where the portage begins to the waters which run to the St. Lawrence. Here, on the eastern side of the Hudson, a beginning was made of a fort, called for the time Fort Lyman, after Phineas Lyman, second in command of the expedition, but a little later rechristened Fort Edward.
The Hudson river rises in the Adirondack mountains, tothe west of Lake George, and flows in a south-easterly direction, until it reaches a point south-west by south of the southern end of the lake. Here for some miles it takes a due easterly course, at right angles to the line of the lake, until, at Sandy Hill, near where Fort Edward was founded, it turns due south, and flows due south into the Atlantic. It appears to prolong to southward the line of Lake George and Lake Champlain; but the watersheds are distinct, the two lakes in question drain to the north, and eventually discharge through the Richelieu river into the St. Lawrence.
They form a long narrow basin running north and south between the Adirondacks on the west and the Green mountains of Vermont on the east. No stream of any size feeds Lake George; it stretches for between thirty and forty miles from south-west to north-east, overshadowed by the Adirondacks; and, narrowing at the northern end, finds an outlet into Lake Champlain by a semicircular channel, which enters the larger lake from west to east. This channel is broken by rapids, and in the angle which it forms with Lake Champlain stands Ticonderoga.
Lake Champlain is here a broad river rather than a lake, having narrowed into the similitude of a river from where, fifteen miles further north, the isthmus of Crown Point juts out on the western side of the lake. But it does not end at Ticonderoga, where it meets the waters of Lake George. It continues southwards in a direct line, very roughly parallel to Lake George, still narrowing in its upward course, through the marshes known as the Drowned Lands, past a little subsidiary lake on the western side known as South Bay, over against which now stands the small town of Whitehall, and ending in a stream known as Wood Creek. The sources of Wood Creek are but a few miles distant from the point, already noted, where the Hudson turns south to form the central valley of New York State, and where Johnson, in the summer of 1755, was busy constructing Fort Lyman.