In England the news of his defeat, followed after a short interval by the news of his relief, resulted in a curious reproduction of the excitement of the previous year. In a letterdated June 19, 1760, Mr. Jenkinson in London wrote to Grenville, 'We all here blame Mr. Murray, and are not at all satisfied with the reasons he assigns for leaving the town to attack the enemy ... As it is, however, I understand that there are no expectations that it (Quebec) can be saved, and indeed I am told that Murray himself gives little reason to hope it. The relief from Amherst is certainly impossible, and I do not think that he has ever shown activity enough to make one hope that he would make an attempt vigorous enough, even if there was a mere chance of success.'33On the following ninth of July, we have in the sameGrenville Papersa letter from the Duke of Newcastle to Lord Temple, referring to 'the great and almost unexpected event of recovering Quebec and turning the loss entirely upon the French.'33Similarly Horace Walpole, on hearing the bad news, wrote: 'We are on a sudden reading our book backwards.' The good news came, and he chronicled it with 'Quebec is come to life again.'34Many cold and hot fits had been the result of news from North America since the year 1755; but, with the failure of Levis to retake Quebec, English anxiety as to the issue of the strife was finally dispelled. What was left was work for which Amherst was eminently suited, steady crushing out of the remains of resistance, slow and certain invasion, where no brilliant effort was needed or required.
33Grenville Papers,vol. i, pp. 343-5.
34Letters of Horace Walpole,vol. iii, pp. 317, 323 (Letters of June 20 and 28, 1760).
A threefold English advance on Montreal was planned. Murray was to move up the river from Quebec. Brigadier Haviland was to force the passage of the Île aux Noix at the end of Lake Champlain, and strike the St. Lawrence opposite Montreal. Amherst himself, with the main army, starting from Oswego on Lake Ontario, was to come down the river from the west. Murray was first in motion. He embarked2,400 men on ships and boats, and on July 14 took his way up stream, followed and joined on August 17 by two regiments from Louisbourg, which was being dismantled and abandoned. The troops went slowly up the river, passed French outposts at various points, landed here and there, here and there exchanged shots, and were often supplied with provisions by the peasantry, who preferred bargaining to fighting, and many of whom took the oath of allegiance. At Sorel, at the mouth of the Richelieu river, Bourlamaque was stationed with a comparatively strong force to prevent a junction between Murray and Haviland, who was coming down from Lake Champlain; but no battle took place, and, after Murray had reluctantly burnt the deserted houses of the inhabitants of Sorel, who were absent in arms, the English on the river, and the French on either bank, moved onward side by side towards Montreal. By the end of August, Murray was encamped on an island a few miles below Montreal, gradually gathering intelligence of Haviland's and Amherst's advance; and on September 7 he landed on the island of Montreal itself. During the voyage up the river two facts had become manifest. One was that the country higher up the St. Lawrence was less impoverished, and supplies were more plentiful, than in the neighbourhood of Quebec. The other was that the Canadians, who still had something to lose, were anxious for peace. The constant advance of the English, the obvious futility of Vaudreuil's boasts and threats, the good treatment of the inhabitants who offered no resistance, had due effect. The country side surrendered, the militia deserted, the French regulars began to follow suit; and the few remaining troops, driven back on Montreal, recognized the hopelessness of their position.
Haviland started from Crown Point on August 11 with about 3,500 men, including Rogers with some of his Rangers, and a few Indians. He took with him also somelight artillery. The boats which carried the force made their way to the northern end of Lake Champlain, entered the Richelieu river, and on the twentieth landed some of the troops on the eastern bank of the river, over against the Île aux Noix. Here Bougainville was stationed with a considerable force, behind fortifications which had been strengthened in the previous winter. Some miles further on down the Richelieu river, at St. John's, another French force was in position, under an officer named Roquemaure. Bougainville gave Haviland, in Knox's words, 'the trouble to break ground and erect batteries';35but the English, having attacked and taken the French vessels which lay below the Île aux Noix, and cut off the garrison's retreat by the river, Bougainville crossed from the island to the western bank on the twenty-seventh, and made his way with difficulty through the woods to St. John's, where he joined Roquemaure. On the twenty-eighth the few men left on the Île aux Noix surrendered; on the twenty-ninth the French abandoned St. John's also; the fort at Chambly surrendered on September 1; as Haviland advanced, the Canadians deserted wholesale; and the remains of Bougainville's and Roquemaure's troops, falling back to the St. Lawrence, joined Bourlamaque's force, and were carried over to the island of Montreal. By September 6, Haviland's army was encamped at Longueuil on the southern shore of the river, directly opposite Montreal.
35Knox, vol. ii, p. 394.
By the end of July, Amherst's army was assembling at Albany. The colonial troops came up slowly, and valuable time was lost. The General moved on to Schenectady, left that place on June 21, and reached Oswego on July 9. At Oswego he stayed for a month, waiting for the full complement of the expedition, and collecting the boats on which the force was to descend the St. Lawrence. Sir William Johnson joined him with a number of Indians,while the white troops reached a total of 10,000 men, rather more than half of whom were regulars. On August 10 the army embarked. They sailed and rowed to the end of Lake Ontario, entered the St. Lawrence, made their way through the Thousand Islands, and by the fifteenth reached the French mission station of La Présentation, now Ogdensburg, at the mouth of the Oswegatchie river, where the Abbé Piquet—the apostle of the Iroquois, as he was called—had, since the year 1749, endeavoured to win the Five Nations to the French.36
36SeeDocumentary History of New York,vol. i, pp. 433-40 (Papers relating to the early settlement at Ogdensburg). The Abbé Piquet retired in this year (1760) to Louisiana, and thence to France, where he died in 1781. His mission on the Oswegatchie river, or Rivière de la Présentation, was a good sample of the aggressive French missions in Canada. Its object was to bring over the western tribes of the Five Nations to the French religion and French interests.
A little lower down, on an island in the St. Lawrence, at the head of the rapids, the French had a fortified outpost. They called the island Île Royale, and the fort upon it Fort Levis. The officer in charge was Pouchot, who had commanded at Niagara in the preceding year, and had been exchanged with other prisoners. From the eighteenth to the twenty-fourth of August, Amherst attacked the fort. From either bank, and from the neighbouring islands, the British guns poured in their fire, supported by the armed vessels of the expedition; and on the twenty-fifth, after a brave defence, Pouchot surrendered. On the thirty-first, Amherst began the descent of the rapids, watched by La Corne and a band of Canadians. A number of boats were lost, and eighty-four men were drowned; but the main body was carried safely onward, and by September 5 reached the Île Perrot, a few miles above the island of Montreal. On the sixth, Amherst landed at Lachine, and, marching forward, encamped that night directly in front of Montreal.
The next day the French commanders negotiated forsurrender, Murray having meanwhile landed on the island, and begun his march towards Montreal, on the opposite side to that on which Amherst was encamped. Vaudreuil and Levis tried to extract better terms from Amherst than the latter was inclined to grant; and Levis, in particular, strove hard to modify the provision that all the French troops in Canada should lay down their arms, and not serve again during the war. His protests were in vain. Amherst returned answer in strong words, that he was resolved by the terms of the capitulation to mark his sense of the infamous conduct of which the French troops had been guilty, in exciting the savages to barbarities in the course of the war. With 2,400 men opposed to about 17,000 in the three English forces, the Frenchmen had no option but to surrender. On September 8 the terms of capitulation were signed, and the whole of Canada passed into the keeping of Great Britain.
Amherst's reference to French dealings with the Indians, and to the dealings of the Indians in French employ, the authority for which is Captain Knox's book, deserves to be noted. When two white races are pitted against each other in savage lands, the final mastery will rest with the one which, less than the other, comes down to the savage level. The French had sinned more than the English in this respect; and it is significant that, at the surrender of Niagara, they stipulated for protection against the Indian allies of the English, and that at the surrender of Montreal they made a similar request. On the second occasion Amherst answered, and answered truly, that no cruelties had been committed by the Indians on the English side. A few days before, at the taking of Fort Levis, a large proportion of Johnson's Indians had deserted when not allowed to use their scalping knives; and probably the majority of the English shared Captain Knox's opinion of them, that 'this is quite uniform with their conduct on all occasions wheneveropportunity seems to offer for their being serviceable to us.'37The truth was that the English did not love the Indians or Indian ways; they suffered in consequence while the fate of war was still in the balance; but in the end they gained, as a ruling race, for the humanity of Amherst and the men whom he commanded stood to the credit of Great Britain in the coming time.
37Knox, vol. ii, p. 413. According to Knox, Johnson collected 1,330 Indians belonging to seventeen tribes. This number was reduced at the time of embarkation to 706, and afterwards by desertion to 182.
With the capitulation of Montreal, the war in North America ended. Already in the past July some French ships bringing supplies, which had reached the Baie des Chaleurs in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, had been followed up and destroyed in the Restigouche river by Commander Byron; and while Montreal was being given up, a detachment from the English garrison at Quebec reduced the French outpost at Jacques Cartier. The surrender of Montreal included all Canada, and Robert Rogers was sent by Amherst to take over Detroit, Michillimackinac, and other of the western outposts of New France. They were peaceably occupied at the time, but three years later were the scene of hard fighting in consequence of the dangerous Indian rising under Pontiac. Amherst himself left Canada almost immediately, but remained in America as Commander-in-Chief, having his head quarters at New York, until peace was signed, when he returned to England. Vaudreuil and his subordinates went back to France, to be brought heavily to account for their shortcomings; and until the peace, or rather until Pontiac's revolt had been put down a year later, Canada remained under military rule.
There were three Governors, subordinate to the Commander-in-Chief—General Murray at Quebec, Colonel Burton at Three Rivers, and General Gage, who eventually took overAmherst's command, at Montreal. Matters seem to have gone in the main smoothly. The Canadian people, worn with war, desired only rest and fair dealing, and fair dealing they received at the hands of the British commanders, among whom Murray was a conspicuously humane man. Criminal jurisdiction was placed in the hands of British officers, but civil cases were left to be settled by the captains of militia in the various parishes according to the custom of the people, with the right of appeal to the Governor. More publicity was given by proclamation to the orders and regulations of the Governors than had been the case in French times; and though the status was one of military occupation, there was a nearer approach to freedom, or at any rate more even-handed justice, than in the days when Bigot and his confederates robbed the peasantry in the name of the French King.
Meanwhile events moved fast in Europe. The fall of Montreal was followed in a few weeks' time by the death of King George II. He died on October 25, 1760, and with the accession of George III there came a change in English policy. The 'King's friends,' as they were called, by intrigue and bribery gradually gained power. Bute, the royal favourite, led them, and strongly supported a peace policy. In March, 1761, he became a Secretary of State, and in the following October Pitt resigned. Success had perhaps told against the great English minister. The main work to which he had put his hand had been accomplished; among the colleagues who intrigued against him, or who resented his imperious leadership, there may well have been in some minds an honest wish to give the country rest and to lighten the heavy burdens which war imposed. Already peace negotiations with France had been opened, but the discovery that the French Government had formed a secret compact with Spain stiffened Pitt's policy, and he urged the desirability of striking the first blow and declaring war againstSpain. On this issue he parted company with the other ministers, except Lord Temple, and retired from office. A few months later, in May, 1762, Newcastle resigned, and Bute was left supreme.
No eulogy on Pitt can exaggerate the services which he rendered to England. 'He revived the military genius of our people, he supported our allies, he extended our trade, he raised our reputation, he augmented our dominions.'38He gave to the world a splendid illustration of an English statesman who was as good as his word; who, unlike the ordinary run of Parliamentary leaders, did not shift his course or seek for compromise. He believed in the destiny of his country, and shaped that destiny on world-wide lines. His faults, which were not few, are forgiven by his countrymen, for he loved England much.
38Annual Registerfor 1761, p. 47.
The mean men who supplanted him could not undo what he had done. The beginning of the year 1762 saw them at war with Spain, and still Englishmen struck blow after blow. In 1761, while Pitt was still in office, Belle Île, off the French coast, had been taken, and in the West Indies and in India there had been gains. In 1762 more West Indian islands were captured, and Spain lost for the time Havana in the West, the Philippines in the East. Curiously enough the one reverse experienced by the English was in North America, St. John's in Newfoundland being surprised and taken in June, 1762, though it was recovered in the following September.
In spite of continued success Bute was resolved on peace, the negotiations being entrusted to the Duke of Bedford, who was one of the extreme peace party. The preliminaries were concluded in November, 1762; they were approved by Parliament, and on February 10, 1763, the Peace of Paris was signed. Under its provisions the French King renounced all pretensions to Nova Scotia or Acadia, and ceded 'in fullright Canada with all its dependencies, as well as the island of Cape Breton and all the other islands and coasts in the gulf and river St. Lawrence.' A line drawn down the middle of the river Mississippi defined the inland frontier; all territory on the left side of the river, 'except the town of New Orleans and the island in which it is situated,' being ceded to Great Britain. Two clauses, however, in the treaty marred the completeness of the cession. They renewed the rights of fishing and drying on part of the Newfoundland coast, which had been given to French subjects by the Treaty of Utrecht; and they ceded in full right to the King of France the islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon, to serve as a shelter to French fishermen, on condition that the islands should not be fortified. Here were the seeds of future trouble, sown by other hands than those of Pitt. Yet, considering the character and inclinations of the men who held power in England at this critical time, the country had reason to congratulate itself on the result of the negotiations.39Spain paid for her interference in the quarrel with France by the loss of Florida, which became a British possession; in turn she received from France Louisiana. Thus the Seven Years' War ended,closing the story of New France; and on the line of the St. Lawrence, under British rule, grew up the Canadian nation.
39Lord Chesterfield's views on the preliminaries of the Peace of Paris, not yet fully known when he wrote, are interesting. In a letter dated Nov. 13, 1762 (1775 ed., vol. iv, pp. 190, 191, Letter 328), he writes, 'We have by no means made so good a bargain with France (i.e. as with Spain), for in truth what do we get by it except Canada, with a very proper boundary of the river Mississippi, and that is all? As for the restrictions upon the French fishery in Newfoundland, they are very wellper la predica,and for the Commissary whom we shall employ, for he will have a good salary from hence to see that those restrictions are complied with, and the French will double that salary, that he may allow them all to be broken through. It is plain to me that the French fishery will be exactly what it was before the war.... But, after all I have said, the articles are as good as I expected with France, when I considered that no one single person, who carried on this negotiation on our parts, was ever concerned or consulted in any negotiation before. Upon the whole then the acquisition of Canada has cost us four score millions sterling.'
NOTE.—For the above, see the books specified at the end of the preceding chapter.
In these two chapters the original dispatches have been consulted, and much use has been made ofKNOX'SHistorical Journal of the Campaigns in North America(London, 1769).
GENERALSUMMARY
GENERALSUMMARY
In order to sum up the story of New France, it is proposed in the present chapter to try to answer the four following questions. What effect had geography on the history of Canada down to the year 1763? Why did France lose Canada? What were the respective merits and defects of the French and English systems and policies in North America? And lastly, was the contest between the two powers and the victory of one inevitable, and was it beneficial? These four questions overlap each other, and the answers involve considerable repetition of what has gone before; but a short general summary may be useful to those who care to study the earlier history of Canada in reference to the general history of colonization.
From the time of Columbus down to the middle of the nineteenth century, five nations, all on the western side of Europe, were mainly concerned in carrying European trade, conquest, and settlement into other parts of the world. They were the Spaniards, the Portuguese, the Dutch, the French, and the English. Of these five nations, the Spaniards had what may be called a continental career. They overran and mastered an immense area of mainland. The Portuguese, the Dutch, and the English, on the other hand, while they differed from each other in many points, were alike in this, that they were traders and seafarers, not so much attempting an inland dominion, as securing footholds on sea coasts, peninsulas, and islands. The French stood midway between the Spaniards and the other three nations. They were notcontinental conquerors to the same extent as the Spaniards, they did not confine themselves to the fringes of the land to the same extent as the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the English. They were what France made them to be.
France is an integral part of the continent of Europe; but it is also, with the exception of the Spanish peninsula, the westernmost province of that continent; and it has a long indented seaboard open to the Atlantic. The country has a double outlook, its people have had a twofold character and a double history. It is noteworthy that, while the French, to judge from the greatest event in their history—the French Revolution—and to judge from their writing and thought, have been the most thorough and logical, the most uncompromising of peoples, their record has yet been in a sense one of continual compromise, or at least one of perpetual combination of opposite extremes. The northern and southern races, the northern and southern religions, have had their meeting-ground in France. France, which has been notable for violent political changes, had and has the strongest element of conservatism in its population. No nation is more quick-witted than the French, yet in none is there more plodding industry.
In the fullness of time, the French people had their call to take part in the over-sea expansion of Europe, and they found their way to Canada. They entered the New World at its widest point, where the American continent extends furthest from west to east; but they entered it also at the point where the interior of the continent is most accessible from the sea by means of a great navigable river and a group of lakes. Thus the advent of the French into Canada meant the coming of a people, who in their old home were partly continental, partly sea-going, into a sphere of colonization, which was a vast extent of continent, but which at the same time was more intersected and more dominated by water than perhaps any other portion of the mainland of the globe.Like came to like when the French came to Canada. Their old home had given them at once the instincts of land conquerors, and the knowledge of men whose way is on the waters. Quick to move and loving motion, they found the route into the New World to be one which invited and facilitated quick movement; for, important as is inland water communication at the present day, it was all important before the days of railways. The great highroad of North America was the St. Lawrence, and that highroad became owned by a quick, ambitious people, who were not content to remain as traders by the side of the sea.
The combination of accessibility from the open sea, of length of navigable waters, and of volume of waters, makes the St. Lawrence basin almost, if not quite unique. Up to Three Rivers, 330 miles from the sea, the St. Lawrence is a tidal river. Up to the Falls of Niagara, 600 miles from the sea—nearly as far as London is from Berlin—there is no break of navigation. From the westernmost point of Lake Superior to the Atlantic is a distance of 2,000 miles—much further than is the distance from London to St. Petersburg. Lake Superior alone is larger in size than Scotland.
Further, this wonderful chain of waters, as has been pointed out, is nearly continuous with the Mississippi basin on the southern side, and on the north-western side with the lakes and rivers which drain into Hudson Bay; while one of the smaller affluents of the St. Lawrence, the Richelieu river, carries into the St. Lawrence the waters of Lake Champlain and Lake George, the southern end of Lake George being but very few miles distant from the upper waters of the Hudson river, which flows into the Atlantic. In short, Canada, within its ancient limits, was a network of inland waters. Here was a continent to be conquered and settled by water rather than by land, and the congenial task of conquering and attempting to settle it was allotted by Providence to the French.
Canada then suited the French, and the French suited Canada; but the effect of the geography of Canada on an incoming race, with the instincts and the characteristics of the French, was to stimulate their natural inclination to attempt too much and to go too fast and too far. The incomers moved quickly along the lines of communication, and went into the heart of the continent; but permanent settlement lagged behind, and was confined to the edges of the inland waters. For, while nature had given to Canada, in her rivers and lakes, the best of roads, away from those rivers and lakes the land was difficult to penetrate. Thus Canada was colonized only by the water side, and what settlement there was, was characterized by length without breadth; while, beyond the point where continuous settlement ended, the very easiness of movement carried forward enterprising French officers, priests, and traders, until there was a skeleton outline of French dominion, which was never filled in, from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico.
Geography, too, had this effect upon the population. The rivers were so entirely all in all, that they made the settled portion of the French Canadians very settled, and the fluid portion very fluid. Those who wished to stay in one place stayed by the river bank, which was the roadside, because it was the roadside, and because behind and away from the river there was not open ground but dense forest. Those, on the other hand, who were inclined to roam, were carried by the waters wheresoever they wished, with the backwoods at hand, should hiding-places be required. Thus Canada bred two distinct species of colonists, thehabitansof the central St. Lawrence, and thevoyageursorcoureurs de bois. As in their old home, so still more in their new, the French race comprised contradictory elements.
Climate counts for much in the formation of a people, and in determining its history. The climate of EasternCanada inclines to extremes. It favours quickness but not continuity of action. The summer is short, but very hot and bright; the winter is long and severe, but again not unfavourable to movement over the frozen surface of water and ground. Eastern Canada is not by nature a land open all the year round to steady work, but one in which settlers have a limited time wherein to till the ground, followed by a long, close season; while wanderers can in summer and winter alike indulge their vagrant instincts. The tendency therefore of the Canadian climate, as regards its influence on an incoming race, with a restless and impatient element in its character, was to stimulate the restlessness, and to discourage colonization in the sense of attachment to the soil.
In winter, the St. Lawrence is closed to shipping. Consequently New France was for several months in each year cut off from all communication with the mother country. Here again the effect of climate was to break continuity of colonization; and, moreover, the forces of nature were employed against the policy of the French Government, for the effect of long breaks in communication must have been to develop a separate life in New France, evidence of which is to be found in the jealousy existing, in Vaudreuil's and Montcalm's time, between natives of France and natives of Canada; whereas the unaltering aim of French Kings and ministers was simply to reproduce France in America, and to keep the colony under constant and rigid control from home. The effects of the summer, therefore, on Canada were counteracted by winter isolation; and one more element of contradiction was introduced into French history in North America.
The natural products of a country are an important factor in making its people. Canada, as compared with most other fields of colonization, with Spanish America for instance, or the East Indies, was a poor land. It had practically no mineral wealth, though traces of iron and copper were foundin the region of Lake Superior. In the earlier part of the eighteenth century Charlevoix wrote: 'The first source of the ill fortune of this country, which is honoured with the name of New France, was the report which was at first spread through the kingdom that it had no mines; and they did not enough consider that the greatest advantage that can be drawn from a colony is the increase of trade. And to accomplish this, it requires people, and these peoplings must be made by degrees, so that it will not appear in such a kingdom as France.'1The great weakness of Canada was the paucity of the white population. Had mines been discovered, the colony would no doubt have been much stronger, for a far greater number of colonists would have come out from France; and, while the character of the people would have been, in a sense, at least as restless as it actually was, the restlessness would have been localized in the mining areas, which would have become large centres of population.
1Charlevoix'sLetters to the Duchess of Lesdiguières,giving an account of a voyage to Canada (Eng. translation, 1763, p. 31). The letters began in 1720.
In the absence of minerals Canada depended on agriculture, fisheries, and fur-trading. Of these three industries, agriculture alone conduced to permanent settlement. The fisheries did not directly much concern the life of the colony up the St. Lawrence river, for the fishing-grounds were mainly in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and on the coasts of Newfoundland and Acadia; nor did fishing, when the fishermen found their principal market in Europe, and were in great measure domiciled in Europe, contribute much to the colonization of North America. Fur-trading again, the great speciality of Canada, made for movement and for wandering life, not for colonization. This is pointed out by Charlevoix, who dwells upon the evil results of giving licences to trade, as encouraging vagabondism, and notes asthe second cause of the ill fortune of Canada, the want of resolution in its people, and their constant moving from place to place, instead of carefully selecting a place for settlement and staying there.2
2Charlevoix (as above), pp. 31-5.
The real wealth of Eastern Canada was, as it still is, agricultural; but the history of colonization proves that agricultural colonies, while very sound and sure, progress very slowly; and to the impatient, enterprising Frenchman, who was inclined to seek fortune over the seas, farming in Canada, with a Canadian winter to face, offered little attraction. It is true that the English North American colonies were also agricultural colonies; but they had a great advantage over New France, in that their coasts were open all the year round, resulting in a maritime trade, which could never be enjoyed by Canada. Moreover New England, at any rate, was peopled by colonists who went out, not to make their fortunes, and not to build up a dominion for their King, but to make their homes, and their children's homes, on the agricultural pattern, in as kindly a soil as, and in a kindlier climate than, that of Canada.
New France then was a country where movement was easy, and where the incentives to settlement were not great; and in its white population, or at any rate in a large proportion of that population, there was a strong element of restlessness, added to great power of conciliating and assimilating savages; while the religious and political policy of its rulers was, in the main, a forward policy. The result was that the Canadians were more successful in motion than at rest, in making war than in keeping peace. 'The English Americans,' writes Charlevoix, 'are entirely averse to war because they have much to lose; they do not regard the savages, because they think they have no occasion for them. The youth of the French, for the contrary reasons, hatepeace, and live well with the savages, whose esteem they gain during a war and have their friendship at all times.3
3Charlevoix (as above), p. 27.
The Canadians were to the English settlers in New England or New York, very much what the Highlanders of Scotland, in past centuries, were to the dwellers in the Lowlands. Their forte was in raiding their English rivals; and, as they were better qualified to excel in war than in peace, so in war they were more capable of quick, spasmodic action, than of bearing continuous and steady strain. 'They seem not to be masters of a certain impetuosity, which makes them fitter for acoup de main,or a sudden expedition, than for the regular and settled operations of a campaign. It has also been remarked, that amongst a great number of brave men, who have distinguished themselves in the late war, there have been few found who had talents to command. This was perhaps because they had not sufficiently learnt how to obey.'4On the other hand, it must be remembered that Canada also contained a stationary population on the banks of the St. Lawrence, who more and more, as years went on, learnt what war meant and preferred peace; and that the colony was not devoid of trading centres, the largest of which were Quebec and Montreal, and all of which, including for instance, Niagara, Detroit, and Michillimackinac, were inland ports.
4Charlevoix (as above), p. 104.
If the above was the effect of geography on the history of France in North America, it is not difficult to answer the question, Why did the French lose Canada? They lost it because the English had the better position in North America; because the English population in North America largely outnumbered the French; because, when the crisis came, the English made their main effort in North America, whereas the French devoted their resources and their energies primarily to continental war in Europe; and lastly, becausethe English secured command of the sea, and in consequence command of the St. Lawrence also. But then the further question arises: What produced this balance of advantage on the English side?
It is not easy to determine why the better lot in North America, as regards geography, fell to Great Britain and not to France. It was hardly a question of prior discovery. The first pioneer for England, Cabot, struck the New World at Newfoundland or Cape Breton, far north of what became the main sphere of British colonization. The first authenticated pioneer on behalf of France, Verrazano, found his way to the present shores of the United States. The French connexion with the St. Lawrence dated from Cartier's voyages; but those voyages, though they gave the right of discovery, did not result at the time in effective occupation. It was little more than an accident that the English settled in Virginia and New England, and the French in Acadia and on the St. Lawrence; though the fact of having found the St. Lawrence, and the attraction of a great river, which might be the long-wished-for, and long-dreamt-of, highroad to the far East, may well have dictated to French instincts where New France should be. At any rate, the English gained the great initial advantage of a far larger seaboard, open at all times of the year, and a climate which was more favourable to European colonization. 'Along the continent of America which we possess,' wrote Wolfe from Louisbourg in 1758, 'there is a variety of climate, and, for the most part, healthy and pleasant.... Such is our extent of territory upon this fine continent, that an inhabitant may enjoy the kind influence of moderate warmth all the year round.'5
5Wolfe to his mother, Aug. 11, 1758 (Wright, p. 454).
With this advantage, it was natural that there should be greater immigration into the English colonies than into Canada. But this was not the only, or the main, cause of the superior numbers in the English colonies. The maincause was the policy of the French Government, and especially its religious policy. The most fatal mistake made by the French in regard to North America was the exclusion of the Huguenots. The men who wished to leave England went to the present United States. The men who wished to leave France were not allowed to go to Canada, and went in considerable numbers to England and her colonies. The effect, therefore, of Roman Catholic exclusiveness was that, though France had a far greater population than England, the greatest French colony failed for want of colonists. Nor was it only a matter of quantity, but a matter of quality also. The Huguenots were the type of men who would make homes, create business, and build up communities beyond the seas. They were of the same strong fibre as the New England Puritans. In the competition of the coming time, New France was doomed in consequence of being closed to the French Protestants.
When the Seven Years' War came, the English colonists in North America outnumbered the French by thirteen to one; but, at the moment, superiority in numbers was largely counterbalanced by the want of union in the English colonies, whereas Canada was one. Therefore the issue largely depended on the forces and the leaders sent out by the two mother countries respectively. England, inspired by Pitt, sent out abundant troops. France, inspired by Madame de Pompadour, kept nearly all her troops to fight Frederick of Prussia, with his few English and Hanoverian allies. The result was the defeat of the French in North America, and the British conquest of Canada. Whatever might have been the result if the crisis had been postponed, it was not the British colonists but the troops from England, who, in 1758-60, decided the fate of North America. It is customary, in writing accounts of the colonial wars of Great Britain, to emphasize the merits of the colonial soldiers, who have the advantage of knowing the country and the mode offighting appropriate to it; and to depreciate the regulars sent from home. Reverses, like that of Braddock, are written and read from a colonial point of view; and in America, more especially, the colonists' side has been emphasized in consequence of the results of the subsequent War of Independence. But, as a matter of fact, excellent as were some of the colonial troops, such as Robert Rogers' Rangers, Canada was conquered by soldiers from England under able English generals like Wolfe and Amherst; and similarly the burden of the defence of Canada fell mainly on Montcalm and the few regiments which had been spared to him from France.
As the French kept for war on the continent of Europe the troops which should have been sent to North America, so they allowed the English to gain control of the water, over which alone troops and supplies could be sent to New France. 'The possession of Canada,' writes Captain Mahan, 'depended upon sea power.'6After the victory of Hawke in Quiberon Bay, and other English successes on sea, Burke, in theAnnual Registerfor 1760,7wrote that France 'was obliged to sit, the impotent spectator of the ruin of her colonies, without being able to send them the slightest succour. It was then she found what it was to be inferior at sea.' Especially important was the command of the water to those who would hold Canada, for two reasons; because Canada, poor and undeveloped, was dependent on supplies from Europe, to a greater extent than the English colonies8in North America; and because she could and must be attacked by the St. Lawrence.
6Influence of Sea Power upon History(6th ed.), p. 294.
7p. 9.
8Thus Charlevoix (as above, p. 38) says Canada 'has always had more from France than it could pay.'
The command of the sea meant the command of the St. Lawrence; and the command of the St. Lawrence was indispensable for the reduction of Quebec and Montreal. The downfall of New France began when the Treaty ofUtrecht took from her, in Acadia, the best part of her scanty seaboard; the downward process was arrested when Louisbourg, taken by Massachusetts, was restored to the French; it began again with the second capture of Louisbourg. The seaport was taken in one year; in the next the river port, Quebec, was lost also. This would not have happened had the French not divided their energies so completely as to give Great Britain superiority on the water. They attempted too much at home, and the same fault, if we turn to consider their system and policy in North America, was carried into the New World.
It is roughly true to say that in North America the French had a definite policy and a definite system; but the policy, though brilliant in conception, was quite impracticable, and the system was radically unsound. The English in North America, on the other hand, had rarely any policy and never any system.
The French policy was an imperial policy. It was clear, consistent, and far-reaching. The object aimed at was a French dominion in North America, the lines of communication being the two great rivers, the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi. Canada and Louisiana were to be joined; the English were to be kept between the Alleghanies and the Atlantic; the French King was to be lord of all; the French religion was to be supreme; the Indians were to be converted and made French in sympathies and interests. The scheme was brilliant, but it was impossible; and it is difficult to understand why it is considered by historians to have been so dangerous to the future of the British colonies. White men of one race, sparsely scattered over two sides of a gigantic triangle, were to control white men of another but equally masculine race, thirteen times as numerous, who held the base of the triangle, the base being the seaboard. The attempt became more impracticable every year, for every year the actual preponderance of numbers on the Englishside increased, and every year the white men gained on the red men, who alone could make the realization of the French dream even conceivably possible.
Ample reference has already been made to the dealings of the French with the Indians. There is much to praise and much to blame in what may be called the native policy of France in North America. The object of the French Government was, as Charlevoix points out, to 'frenchify' the savages;9and, as an instance of the value of the Indians to the cause of France in America, he cites 'the Abenaquis, who, though few in numbers, were during the two last wars the principal bulwark of New France against New England.'9With the exception of the Five Nation Indians, the natives of North America were almost wholly on the side of the French as against the English, in spite of the fact that the English offered them a better market and sold them better wares. The reason was that the French relations to the Indians were more human than those of the English. No doubt, among the English colonists were Quakers and Moravians, whose tenets bade them deal gently with the people of the soil; and on the New York frontier, from Dutch times, there had been friendship, sometimes warmer sometimes cooler, between the Dutch and the English colonists on the one hand, and the Iroquois on the other. But the ordinary English colonist's view of the red man was the Old Testament view—hard, exclusive, and often cruel. The Puritan New Englander took the land of the heathen in possession, and from his standpoint there was not room in it for him and them. Widely different was the French view. The Indians were not to be excluded from, but incorporated in, the French dominion. The King of France, and his representative the Governor of Canada, were to be the fathers, and the Indians were to be the obedient and trusting children. The missions taught thesame lesson. The Indians were not to be exterminated, but to be fruitful and multiply as dutiful children of France and of the Roman Catholic Church. On these lines the French acted consistently from first to last; and their unaltering policy contrasted favourably with the halting, uncertain dealings of the English, which changed from year to year, and were different in the different colonies. The way to win a black man's or a red man's affections is to treat him, if not as an equal, at least as a man, and to be constant in the treatment. For this reason, the Indians loved the French better than the English. Very rarely on the English side appeared a man, like Sir William Johnson, who possessed the mixture of firmness and sympathy which attracted and conciliated the Indians, and which was common among the French.
9Charlevoix (as above), pp. 34, 35.
But there was a very dark side to the French policy and system in regard to the North American Indians. In the first place, as has been abundantly shown in the preceding pages, the French authorities, temporal and spiritual, kept the savages on their side by sanctioning, or at least not repressing, their savagery; and notably the mission Indians of Canada, the special protégés of the priests, were foremost in barbarous warfare against white Christians of a different shade of religion. In the second place, the political system of Canada, which indirectly created the Canadian vagrants, thecoureurs de bois,produced, in doing so, indianized Frenchmen, differing little from frenchified Indians. Here again we can take Charlevoix's testimony. He writes that 'some vagabonds, who had taken a liking to independency and a wandering life, had remained among the savages, from whom they could not be distinguished but by their vices.'10If the French were more human than the English in their dealings with the Indians, they were more human for evil as well as for good; and, whatever was the result on the Indians,there is no question as to the result on the French and English respectively, of their different lines of action towards the red men. The English race gained greatly in the end in soundness and in progress, from keeping outside the Indian circle and not coming down to the Indian level.
10Charlevoix (as above), p. 34.
It has been said above that the French system in North America was radically unsound. It was unsound, in that it was based on political and religious exclusiveness. There was the one great fundamental mistake of excluding the Huguenots, and there were various other important defects. But, on the hypothesis that the most independent and most progressive element in France was to have no place in New France, it is open to question whether the system of colonization, which Louis XIV, Colbert, and Talon devised, and which remained the basis of the colony, deserves the somewhat severe criticism which it has received at the hands of historians. It is true that the system was most artificial, that it contained no element of freedom or self-government, and that when, long years after it came into being, many of the restrictions were removed in consequence of the English conquest of Canada, the colonists were deeply sensible of the relief. It is true, too, that reaction against these restrictions, while still in existence, produced the semi-savage race ofcoureurs de bois,and that, through placing the power in the hands of a few individuals, without providing any check of local representation or local public opinion, an atmosphere of wholesale corruption and intrigue was produced. But none the less there was an undoubted element of soundness and strength in the settlement of New France; and a considerable amount of shrewdness was shown in taking a certain material from the old country and placing it in the New World, under familiar conditions. The military side of the colonization was skilfully handled; and the peasants, who had been in tutelage in France to lord, to King, and to Church, found themselves in their new homesunder similar guidance, instead of being turned into strange ways, for which by bringing up they were not fitted. The system, artificial as it was, produced permanent settlement of considerable strength and great tenacity, which, under a more liberal régime, has resulted in the French-speaking Canadian people of the present day.
There were divisions in Canada, and various contradictory elements in its history; but, as against foreign rivals and for purposes of offence and defence, the colony was one, under one Government and one Church, and in line with the mother country. Widely different was the case of the English colonies. They were rarely in harmony with the mother country, or with each other. They had little or no instinct of imperialism. They had the instinct of self-preservation, and if seriously attacked were to some extent prepared, unless Quaker influence was dominant, to protect themselves, and to accept aid from the mother country. But their traditions and their inclinations made for peace, not for war; for isolation, not for union. Their forefathers' aim and object had been to create and maintain separate and self-dependent communities, not to be in substance amenable to home control. Here is a French view of the New Englanders given by the anonymous eye-witness of the siege of Louisbourg in 1745: 'These singular people have a system of laws and protection peculiar to themselves, and their Governor carries himself like a monarch.'11If the fault of the Canadian system was too rigid uniformity and too complete subordination to the mother country, the English colonies suffered from the opposite extreme, from utter want of uniformity and complete absence of system. Different constitutions, different shades of religious beliefs, different phases of settlement—all created disunion. Common origin made a bond with the mother country, but the Governorssent from England could tell those who sent them how deficient was the habit of obedience to the British Crown.
11Professor Wrong's translation, p. 37.
Common danger alone produced occasional signs of common action. The New England colonies, whose borders were most within reach of French raids, and whose shores reached to Acadia, showed far the most public spirit, and far the most power of combination. The southern colonies awoke only when the French in the Ohio valley did them active and present hurt; but, with many times the numbers of the Canadian population, the English colonies as a rule showed themselves to be no match for Canada. The first decisive treaty in North America—the Peace of Utrecht, which gave Acadia to Great Britain—was the result of fighting by English, not colonial soldiers, and not in America, but in Flanders under Marlborough. The second decisive treaty, the Peace of Paris in 1763, was the result of fighting in America, but mainly by British not colonial troops, and under British generals. The 'Bostonnais' alone among the English colonists were objects of apprehension to the French; and, if it were not for the record of Massachusetts and her smaller neighbours, the English colonies in North America before the year 1763 would in manhood and public spirit compare poorly with Canada. With equal truth it may be said that, in the matter of having a clear and consistent policy in North America, Great Britain compared very poorly with France; and the apathy of the colonies may fairly be attributed in large measure to their uncertainty as to what on any particular occasion might be the attitude of the King and the ministers in England; whether support would be forthcoming or withheld, and whether, if forthcoming, it would involve some sacrifice in return. It is very noticeable how often a promised force from home either was never sent or sent too late; it is noticeable too how difficult it was for Governors who opposed French claims and pretensions, such as Dongan of New York, in the seventeenth century, and William Shirleyof Massachusetts, in the eighteenth, to persuade the home Government of the justice of their views. Like her colonies, England was as a rule averse to war; and as her colonies were inclined to keep her at arm's length, so she was inclined to leave them, within limits, to take care of themselves.
In the case of North America, while French and English were competing there, the English through their Government acted as they always have acted, during the whole course of their foreign and colonial history. They did, they undid, they compromised, until at length in Pitt there came a man who gripped the nettle, and the end was reached which might with infinitely greater ease have been attained many years before. When Quebec was in its infancy, the English under Kirke conquered it; the English King gave it back, and then the French dominion in North America took root. After Marlborough's wars the Peace of Utrecht gave Acadia to England, but gave it in terms so vague that the French continued to claim much or most of it; at the same time it left Cape Breton Island to France, and sowed the seeds of an apparently perennial controversy between Great Britain and France with regard to fishing rights on the coast of Newfoundland. There was more war, and the colonists took Cape Breton Island. Under the terms of the next treaty the English Government restored it to France. Then came the final war and the final peace; England gained all Canada, but, with that strange liking which Englishmen seem to have for leaving a frayed end in their treaty arrangements, the British Government confirmed the fishing rights of France on the Newfoundland coast, and added thereto possession of the two small islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon.
It was not policy, it was not system, which gave North America to the English rather than to the French, and yet there was a certain gain even from the utter absence of both policy and system. Natural forces had more play on the English side than on the French, and in a sense it mightbe said of the English colonies that their strength was to sit still.
The last question to be asked, and if possible to be answered, is: Was the contest between France and Great Britain in North America, and the victory of one of the two powers, inevitable, and was it beneficial? From the English point of view, the answer to part of this question is a foregone conclusion. If there was to be a contest, it seems evident, if we look back on the past, that the English must have in the end prevailed. It is impossible to imagine that the French colony of Canada, with a population at the time of the conquest of considerably under 100,000, could dominate the English colonies with a million and a quarter inhabitants. Equally certain does it appear that to Canada the British conquest was a blessing in disguise, and the Canadians in a very short time realized what they had gained by the change of administration. In Mr. Parkman's words, 'a happier calamity never befell a people than the conquest of Canada by the British arms.'12
12The Old Régime in Canada(end).
But the question, whether a decisive war between the two races in North America was inevitable, is one which may well be asked and answered, inasmuch as a similar question has in our own day troubled many minds in regard to other parts of the world where colonizing races have been side by side. Surely, it might be said, and probably was said, there was room enough in the great continent of North America for both French and English to work out their national destinies, without trying to supplant each other. In a sense this was no doubt true; and the truth is not vitiated by the fact that the French scheme of policy was not compatible with the presence of the English race in North America, on the supposition that the latter race would be allowed to extend its bounds by natural increase and progressive settlementpari passuwith the French.