Montcalm At Quebec
Therejoicing in Canada was brief. Before the end of the year the British were victorious at both the eastern and western ends of the long battle-line. Louisbourg had fallen in July; Fort Duquesne, in November. Fort Frontenac—giving command of Lake Ontario and, with it, the West—had surrendered to Bradstreet in August just after Montcalm’s victory at Ticonderoga. The Ohio was gone. The great fortress guarding the gateway to the Gulf was gone. The next English attack would fall on Quebec. Montcalm had told Vaudreuil in the autumn, with vigorous precision, that the period of petty warfare, for taking scalps and burning houses, was past. It was time now to defend the main trunk of the tree and not the outer branches. The best Canadians should be incorporated into and trained in the battalions of regulars. The militia regiments themselves should be clothedand drilled like regular soldiers. Interior posts, such as Detroit, should be held by the smallest possible number of men. This counsel enraged Vaudreuil. Montcalm, he wrote, was trying to upset everything. Vaudreuil was certain that the English would not attack Quebec.
There is a melancholy greatness in the last days of Montcalm. He was fighting against fearful odds. With only about three thousand trained regulars and perhaps four times as many untrained Canadians and savages, he was confronting Britain’s might on sea and land which was now thrown against New France. From France itself Montcalm knew that he had nothing to hope. In the autumn of 1758 he sent Bougainville to Versailles. That brilliant and loyal helper managed to elude the vigilance of the British fleet, reached Versailles, and there spent some months in varied and resourceful attempts to secure aid for Canada. He saw ministers. He procured the aid of powerful connections of his own and of his fellow-officers in Canada. He went to what was at this time the fountainhead of authority at the French court, and it was not the King. “The King is nothing,” wrote Bougainville, “the Marchioness is all-powerful—prime minister.” Bougainville saw theMarchioness, Madame de Pompadour, and read to her some of Montcalm’s letters. She showed no surprise and said nothing—her habit, as Bougainville said. By this time the name of Montcalm was one to charm with in France. Bougainville wrote to him “I should have to include all France if I should attempt to give a list of those who love you and wish to see you Marshal of France. Even the little children know your name.” There had been a time when the court thought the recall of Montcalm would be wise in the interests of New France. Now it was Montcalm’s day and the desire to help him was real. France, however, could do little. Ministers were courteous and sympathetic; but as Berryer, Minister of Marine, said to Bougainville, with the house on fire in France, they could not take much thought of the stable in Canada.
This Berryer was an inept person. He was blindly ignorant of naval affairs, coarse, obstinate, a placeman who owed his position to intrigue and favoritism. His only merit was that he tried to cut down expenditure, but in regard to the navy this policy was likely to be fatal. It is useless, said this guardian of France’s marine, to try to rival Britain on the sea, and the wise thing to do isto save money by not spending it on ships. Berryer even sold to private persons stores which he had on hand for the use of the fleet. If the house was on fire he did not intend, it would seem, that much should be left to burn. The old Due de Belle-Isle, Minister of War, was of another type, a fine and efficient soldier. He explained the situation frankly in a letter to Montcalm. Austria was an exigent ally, and Frederick of Prussia a dangerous foe. France had to concentrate her strength in Europe. The British fleet, he admitted, paralyzed efforts overseas. There was no certainty, or even probability, that troops and supplies sent from France would ever reach Canada. France, the Duke said guardedly, was not without resources. She had a plan to strike a deadly blow against England and, in doing so, would save Canada without sending overseas a great army. The plan was nothing less than the invasion of England and Scotland with a great force, the enterprise which, nearly half a century later, Napoleon conceived as his master stroke against the proud maritime state. During that winter and spring France was building a great number of small boats with which to make a sudden descent and to land an army in England.
If this plan succeeded, all else would succeed. Montcalm must just hold on, conduct a defensive campaign and, above all, retain some part of Canada since, as the Duke said with prophetic foresight, if the British once held the whole of the country they would never give it up. Montcalm himself had laid before the court a plan of his own. He estimated that the British would have six men to his one. Rather than surrender to them, he would withdraw to the far interior and take his army by way of the Ohio to Louisiana. The design was a wild counsel of despair for he would be cut off from any base of supplies, but it shows the risks he was ready to take. In him now the court had complete confidence. Vaudreuil was instructed to take no military action without seeking the counsel of Montcalm. “The King,” wrote Belle-Isle to Montcalm, “relies upon your zeal, your courage and your resolution.” Some little help was sent. The British control of the sea was not complete; since more than twenty French ships eluded British vigilance, bringing military stores, food (for Canada was confronted by famine), four hundred soldiers, and Bougainville himself, with a list of honors for the leaders in Canada. Montcalm was given the rank of Lieutenant-Generaland, but for a technical difficulty, would have been made a Marshal of France.
All this reliance upon Montcalm was galling to Vaudreuil. This weak man was entirely in the hands of a corrupt circle who recognized in the strength and uprightness of Montcalm their deadly enemy. An incredible plundering was going on. Its strength was in the blindness of Vaudreuil. The secretary of Vaudreuil, Grasset de Saint-Sauveur, an ignorant and greedy man, was a member of the ring and yet had the entire confidence of the Governor. The scale of the robberies was enormous. Bigot, the Intendant, was stealing millions of francs; Cadet, the head of the supplies department, was stealing even more. They were able men who knew how to show diligence in their official work. More than once Montcalm praises the resourcefulness with which Bigot met his requirements. But it was all done at a fearful cost to the State. Under assumed names the ring sold to the King, of whose interests they were the guardians, supplies at a profit of a hundred or a hundred and fifty per cent. They made vast sums out of transport. They drew pay for feeding hundreds of men who were not in the King’s service. They received money for great bills of merchandisenever delivered and repeated the process over and over again. To keep the Indians friendly the King sent presents of guns, ammunition, and blankets. These were stolen and sold. Even the bodies of Acadians were sold. They were hired out for their keep to a contractor who allowed them to die of cold and hunger. Hundreds of the poor exiles perished. The nemesis of a despotic system is that, however well-intentioned it may be, its officials are not controlled by an alert public opinion and yet must be trusted by their master. France meant well by her colony but the colony, unlike the English colonies, was not taught to look after itself. While nearly every one in Canada understood what was going on, it was another thing to inform those in control in France. La Porte, the secretary of the colonial minister, was in the service of the ring. He intercepted letters which should have made exposures. Until found out, he had the ear of the minister and echoed the tone of lofty patriotism which Bigot assumed in his letters to his superiors.
History has made Montcalm one of its heroes—and with justice. He was a remarkable man, who would have won fame as a scholar had he not followed the long family tradition of a soldier’scareer. Bougainville once said that the highest literary distinction of a Frenchman, a chair in the Academy, might be within reach of Montcalm as well as the baton of a Marshal of France. He had a prodigious memory and had read widely. His letters, written amid the trying conditions of war, are nervous, direct, pregnant with meaning, the notes of a penetrating intelligence. He had deep family affection. “Adieu, my heart, I believe that I love you more than ever I did before”; these were the last words of what he did not know was to be his last letter to his wife. In the midst of a gay scene at Montreal, in the spring of 1759, he writes to Bourlamaque, then at Lake Champlain, with acute longing for the south of France in the spring. For six or seven months in the year he could receive no letters and always the British command of the sea made their expected arrival uncertain. “When shall I be again at the Château of Candiac, with my plantations, my oaks, my oil mill, my mulberry trees? O good God.” He lays bare his spirit especially to Bourlamaque, a quiet, efficient, thoughtful man, like himself, and enjoins him to burn the letters—which he does not, happily for posterity. Scandal does not touch him but, like most Frenchmen, he is dependenton the society of women. He lived in a house on the ramparts of Quebec and visited constantly thesalonsof his neighbor in the Rue du Parloir, the beautiful and witty Madame de la Naudière. In two or three other households he was also intimate and the Bishop was a sympathetic friend. His own tastes were those of the scholar, and more and more, during the long Canadian winters, he enjoyed evenings of quiet reading. The elder Mirabeau, father of the revolutionary leader of 1789, had just published hisAmi des Hommesand this we find Montcalm studying. But above all he reads the great encyclopædia of Diderot. By 1759 seven of the huge volumes had been issued. They startled the intellectual world of the time and Montcalm set out to read them, omitting the articles which had no interest for him or which he could not understand. C is a copious letter in an encyclopædia, and Montcalm found excellent the articles on Christianity, College, Comedy, Comet, Commerce, Council, and so on. Wolfe—soon to be his opponent—had the same taste for letters. The two men, unlike in body, for Wolfe was tall and Montcalm the opposite, were alike in spirit, painstaking students as well as men of action.
At first Montcalm had not realized what was the deepest shadow in the life of Canada. Perhaps chiefly because Vaudreuil was always at Montreal, Montcalm preferred Quebec and was surprised and charmed by the life of that city. It had, he said, the air of a real capital. There were fair women and brave men, sumptuous dinners with forty or fifty covers, brilliantly lightedsalons, a vivid social life in which he was much courted. The Intendant Bigot was agreeable and efficient. Soon, however, Montcalm had misgivings. It was a gambling age, but he was staggered by the extent of the gambling at the house of the Intendant. He did not wish to break with Bigot, and there was perhaps some weakness in his failure to denounce the orgies from which his conscience revolted. He warned his own officers but he could not control the colonial officers, and Vaudreuil was too weak to check a man like Bigot. Whence came the money? In time, Montcalm understood well enough. He himself was poor. To discharge the duties of his position he was going into debt, and he had even to consider the possible selling of his establishment in France. He had to beg the court for some financial relief. At the same time he saw about him a wild extravagance. There wasfamine in Canada. During the winter of 1758-59 the troops were put on short rations and, in spite of their bitter protests, had to eat horse flesh. Suffering and starvation bore heavily on the poor. Through lack of food people fell fainting in the streets. But the circle of Bigot paid little heed and feasted, danced, and gambled. Montcalm pours out his soul to Bourlamaque. He spends, he says, sleepless nights, and his mind is almost disordered by what he sees. In his journal he notes his own fight with poverty and its contrast with the careless luxury of a crowd of worthless hangers-on making four or five hundred thousand francs a year and insulting decency by their lavish expenditure. One of the ring, a clerk with a petty salary, a base creature, spends more on carriages, horses, and harness than a foppish and reckless young member of thenouveaux-richeswould spend in France. Corruption in Canada is protected by corruption in France. Montcalm cries out with a devotion which his sovereign hardly deserved, though it was due to France herself, “O King, worthy of better service, dear France, crushed by taxes to enrich greedy knaves!”
The weary winter of 1758-59 at length came to an end. In May the ships already mentionedarrived from France, bringing Bougainville and, among other things, the news that Pitt was sending great forces for a decisive attack on Canada. At that very moment, indeed, the British ships were entering the mouth of the St. Lawrence. Canada had already been cut off from France. Montcalm held many councils with his officers. The strategy decided upon was to stand at bay at Quebec, to strike the enemy if he should try to land, and to hold out until the approach of winter should force the retirement of the British fleet.
The Strategy Of Pitt
Duringfour campaigns the British had suffered humiliating disasters. It is the old story in English history of caste privilege and deadly routine bringing to the top men inadequate in the day of trial. It has happened since, even in our own day, as it has happened so often before. It seems that imminent disaster alone will arouse the nation to its best military effort. In 1757, however, England was thoroughly aroused. Failure then on her own special element, the sea, touched her vitally. Admiral Byng—through sheer cowardice, as was charged—had failed to attack a French fleet aiding in the siege of the island of Minorca which was held by the English, and Minorca had fallen to the French. Such was the popular clamor at this disaster that Byng was tried, condemned, and shot. There was also an upheaval in the government. At no time in English history were menmore eager for the fruits of office; and now, even in a great crisis, the greed for spoils could not be shaken off. The nation demanded a conduct of the war which sought efficiency above all else. The politicians, however, insisted on government favors.
In the end a compromise was reached. At the head of the government was placed a politician, the Duke of Newcastle, who loved jobbery and patronage in politics and who doled out offices to his supporters. At the War Office was placed Pitt with a free hand to carry on military operations. He was the terrible cornet of horse who had harried Walpole in the days when that minister was trying to keep out of war. He knew and even loved war; his fierce national pride had been stirred to passion by the many humiliations at the hand of France; and now he was resolved to organize, to spend, and to fight, until Britain trampled on France. He had the nation behind him. He bullied and frightened the House of Commons. Members trembled if Pitt turned on them. By his fiery energy, by making himself a terror to weakness and incompetence, he won for Britain the Seven Years’ War.
Though Pitt became Secretary of State for War in June, 1757, not until 1758 did the tide begin toturn in America. But when it did turn, it flowed with resistless force. In little more than a year the doom of New France was certain. The first great French reverse was at a point where the naval and military power of Britain could unite in attack. Pitt well understood the need of united action by the two services. Halifax became the radiating center of British activities. Here, in 1757, before Pitt was well in the saddle, a fleet and an army gathered to attack Louisbourg—an enterprise not carried out that year partly because France had a great fleet on the spot, and partly, too, on account of the bad quality of British leadership.
Only in the campaign of 1758 did Pitt’s dominance become effective. With him counted one quality and one alone, efficiency. The old guard at the War Office were startled when men with rank, years, influence, and every other claim but competence for their tasks, were passed over, and young and obscure men were given high command. To America in the spring of 1758 were sent officers hitherto little known. Edward Boscawen, Commander of the Fleet, and veteran among these leaders, was a comparatively young man, only forty-seven; Jeffrey Amherst, justturned forty, was Commander-in-Chief on land. Next in command to Amherst was James Wolfe, aged thirty.
These young and vigorous men knew the value of promptness or they would not have been tolerated under Pitt. Before the end of May, 1758, Boscawen was in Halifax harbor with a fleet of some forty warships and a multitude of transports. On board were nearly twelve thousand soldiers, more than eleven thousand of them British regulars. The colonial forces now play a minor part in the struggle; Pitt was ready to send from England all the troops needed. The array at Halifax, the greatest yet seen in America, numbered about twenty thousand men, including sailors. Before the first of June the fleet was on its way to Louisbourg. The defense was stubborn; and James Wolfe, who led the first landing party, had abundant opportunity to prove his courage and capacity. By the end of July, however, Louisbourg had fallen, and nearly six thousand prisoners were in the hands of the English. It was the beginning of the end.
In the autumn Wolfe was back in England, where he was quickly given command of the great expedition which was planned against Quebec forthe following year. Admiral Sir Charles Saunders, who seems almost old compared with Wolfe, for he was nearly fifty, was in chief command of the fleet. Amherst had remained in America as Commander-in-Chief, and was taking slow, deliberate, thorough measures for the last steps in the conquest of New France.
To be too late had been the usual fate of the many British expeditions against Canada. No one, however, dared to be late under Pitt. On February 17, 1759, the greatest fleet that had ever put out for America left Portsmouth. More than two hundred and fifty ships set their sails for the long voyage. There were forty-nine warships, carrying fourteen thousand sailors and marines, and two hundred other ships manned by perhaps seven thousand men in the merchant service, but ready to fight if occasion offered. Altogether nearly thirty thousand men now left the shores of England to attack Canada.
There is a touch of doom for France in the fact that its own lost fortress of Louisbourg was to be the rendezvous of the fleet. Saunders, however, arrived so early that the entrance to Louisbourg was still blocked with ice, and he went on to Halifax. In time he returned to Louisbourg,and from there the great fleet sailed for Quebec. The voyage was uneventful. We can picture the startled gaze of the Canadian peasants as they saw the stately array, many miles long, pass up the St. Lawrence. On the 26th of June, Wolfe and Saunders were in the basin before Quebec and the great siege had begun which was to mark one of the turning-points in history.
Nature had furnished a noble setting for the drama now to be enacted. Quebec stands on a bold semicircular rock on the north shore of the St. Lawrence. At the foot of the rock sweeps the mighty river, here at the least breadth in its whole course, but still a flood nearly a mile wide, deep and strong. Its currents change ceaselessly with the ebb and flow of the tide which rises a dozen feet, though the open sea is eight hundred miles away. Behind the rock of Quebec the small stream of the St. Charles furnishes a protection on the landward side. Below the fortress, the great river expands into a broad basin with the outflow divided by the Island of Orleans. In every direction there are cliffs and precipices and rising ground. From the north shore of the great basin the land slopes gradually into a remote blue of wooded mountains. The assailant of Quebec must land on lowground commanded everywhere from heights for seven or eight miles on the east and as many on the west. At both ends of this long front are further natural defenses—at the east the gorge of the Montmorency River, at the west that of the Cap Rouge River.
Wolfe’s desire was to land his army on the Beauport shore at some point between Quebec and Montmorency. But Montcalm’s fortified posts, behind which lay his army, stretched along the shore for six miles, all the way from the Montmorency to the St. Charles. Wolfe had a great contempt for Montcalm’s army—“five feeble French battalions mixed with undisciplined peasants.” If only he could get to close quarters with the “wily and cautious old fox,” as he called Montcalm! Already the British had done what the French had thought impossible. Without pilots they had steered their ships through treacherous channels in the river and through the dangerous “Traverse” near Cap Tourmente. Captain Cook, destined to be a famous navigator, was there to survey and mark the difficult places, and British skippers laughed at the forecasts of disaster made by the pilots whom they had captured on the river. The French were confident that the British wouldnot dare to take their ships farther up the river past the cannonade of the guns in Quebec, though this the British accomplished almost without loss.
Wolfe landed a force upon the lower side of the gorge at Montmorency and another at the head of the Island of Orleans. He planted batteries at Point Levis across the river from Quebec, and from there he battered the city. The pleasant houses in the Rue du Parloir which Montcalm knew so well were knocked into rubbish, and its fascinating ladies were driven desolate from the capital. But this bombardment brought Wolfe no nearer his goal. On the 31st of July he made a frontal attack on the flats at Beauport and failed disastrously with a loss of four hundred men. Time was fighting for Montcalm.
By the 1st of September Wolfe’s one hope was in a surprise by which he could land an army above Quebec, the nearer to the fortress the better. Its feeble walls on the landward side could not hold out against artillery. But Bougainville guarded the high shore and marched his men incessantly up and down to meet threatened attacks. On the heights, the battalion of Guienne was encamped on the Plains of Abraham to guard the Foulon. This was a cove on the river bankfrom which there was a path, much used by the French for dragging up provisions, leading to the top of the cliff at a point little more than a mile from the walls of the city. On the 6th of September the battalion of Guienne was sent back to the Beauport lines by order of Vaudreuil. Montcalm countermanded the order, but was not obeyed, and Wolfe saw his chance. For days he threatened a landing, above and below Quebec, now at one point, now at another, until the French were both mystified and worn out with incessant alarms. Then, early on the morning of the 13th of September, came Wolfe’s master-stroke. His men embarked in boats from the war-ships lying some miles above Quebec, dropped silently down the river, close to the north shore, made sentries believe that they were French boats carrying provisions to the Foulon, landed at the appointed spot, climbed up the cliff, and overpowered the sleeping guard. A little after daylight Wolfe had nearly five thousand soldiers, a “thin red line,” busy preparing a strong position on the Plains of Abraham, while the fleet was landing cannon to be dragged up the steep hill to bombard the fortress on its weakest side.
Montcalm had spent many anxious days. Hehad been incessantly on the move, examining for himself over and over again every point, Cap Rouge, Beauport, Montmorency, reviewing the militia of which he felt uncertain, inspecting the artillery, the commissariat, everything that mattered. At three o’clock in the morning of one of these days he wrote to Bourlamaque, at Lake Champlain, noting the dark night, the rain, his men awake and dressed in their tents, everyone alert. “I am booted and my horses are saddled, which is in truth my usual way of spending the night. I have not undressed since the twenty-third of June.” On the evening of the 12th of September the batteries at Point Levis kept up a furious fire on Quebec. There was much activity on board the British war-ships lying below the town. Boats filled with men rowed towards Beauport as if to attempt a landing during the night. Here the danger seemed to lie. At midnight the British boats were still hovering off the shore. The French troops manned the entrenched lines and Montcalm was continually anxious. A heavy convoy of provisions was to come down to the Foulon that night, and orders had been given to the French posts on the north shore above Quebec to make no noise. The arrival of the convoy wasvital, for the army was pressed for food. Montcalm was therefore anxious for its fate when at break of day he heard firing from the French cannon at Samos, above Quebec. Had the provisions then been taken by the English? Near his camp all now seemed quiet. He gave orders for the troops to rest, drank some cups of tea with his aide-de-camp Johnstone, a Scotch Jacobite, and at about half-past six rode towards Quebec to the camp of Vaudreuil to learn why the artillery was firing at Samos. Immediately in front of the Governor’s house he learned the momentous news. The English were on the Plains of Abraham. Soon he had the evidence of his own eyes. On the distant heights across the valley he could see the redcoats.
No doubt Montcalm had often pondered this possibility and had decided in such a case to attack at once before the enemy could entrench and bring up cannon. A rapid decision was now followed by rapid action. He had a moment’s conversation with Vaudreuil. The French regiments on the right at Vaudreuil’s camp, lying nearest to the city, were to march at once. To Johnstone he said, “The affair is serious,” and then gave orders that all the French left, except a few men to guard the ravine at Montmorency,should follow quickly to the position between Quebec and the enemy, a mile away. Off to this point he himself galloped. Already, by orders of officers on the spot, regiments were gathering between the walls of the city and the British. The regiments on the French right at Beauport were soon on the move towards the battlefield, but two thousand of the best troops still lay inactive beyond Beauport. Johnstone declares that Vaudreuil countermanded the order of Montcalm for these troops to come to his support and ordered that not one of them should budge. There was haste everywhere. By half-past nine Montcalm had some four thousand men drawn up between the British and the walls of Quebec. He hoped that Bougainville, advancing from Cap Rouge, would be able to assail the British rear: “Surely Bougainville understands that I must attack.”
The crisis was over in fifteen minutes. Montcalm attacked at once. His line was disorderly. His center was composed of regular troops, his wings of Canadians and Indians. These fired irregularly and lay down to reload, thus causing confusion. The French moved forward rapidly; the British were coming on more slowly. The French were only some forty yards away whenthere was an answering fire from the thin red line; for Wolfe had ordered his men to put two balls in their muskets and to hold their fire for one dread volley. Then the roar from Wolfe’s center was like that of a burst of artillery; and, when the smoke cleared, the French battalions were seen breaking in disorder from the shock, the front line cut down by the terrible fire. A bayonet charge from the redcoats followed. Some five thousand trained British regulars bore down, working great slaughter on four thousand French, many of them colonials who had never before fought in the open. The rout of the French was complete. Some fled to safety behind the walls of Quebec, others down the Côte Ste. Geneviève and across the St. Charles River, where they stopped pursuit by cutting the bridge. Both Wolfe and Montcalm were mortally wounded after the issue of the day was really decided, and both survived to be certain, the one of victory, the other of defeat. Wolfe died on the field of battle. Montcalm was taken into a house in Quebec and died early the next morning. It is perhaps the only incident in history of a decisive battle of world import followed by the death of both leaders, each made immortal by the tragedy of their common fate.
At two o’clock in the afternoon of the day of defeat, Vaudreuil held a tumultuous council of war. It was decided to abandon Quebec, where Montcalm lay dying and to retreat up the St. Lawrence to Montreal, to the defense of which Lévis had been sent before the fight. That night the whole French army fled in panic, leaving their tents standing and abandoning quantities of stores. Vaudreuil who had talked so bravely about death in the ruins of Canada, rather than surrender, gave orders to Ramezay, commanding in Quebec, to make terms and haul down his flag. On the third day after the battle, the surrender was arranged. On the fourth day the British marched into Quebec, where ever since their flag has floated.
Meanwhile, Amherst, the Commander-in-Chief of the British armies in America, was making a toilsome advance towards Montreal by way of Lake Champlain. He had occupied both Ticonderoga and Crown Point, which had been abandoned by the French. Across his path lay Bourlamaque at Isle aux Noix. Another British army, having captured Niagara, was advancing on Montreal down the St. Lawrence from Lake Ontario. Amherst, however, made little progress this year in his menace to Montreal and soon went into winterquarters, as did the other forces elsewhere. The British victory therefore was as yet incomplete.
The year 1759 proved dire for France. She was held fast by her treaty with Austria and at ruinous cost was ever sending more and more troops to help Austria against Prussia. The great plan of which Belle-Isle had written to Montcalm was the chief hope of her policy. England was to be invaded and London occupied. If this were done, all else would be right. It was not done. France could not parry Pitt’s blows. In Africa, in the West Indies, in India, the British won successes which meant the ruin of French power in three continents. French admirals like Conflans and La Clue were no match for Boscawen, Hawke, and Rodney, all seamen of the first rank, and made the stronger because dominated by the fiery Pitt. They kept the French squadrons shut up in their own ports. When, at last, on November 20, 1759, Conflans came out of Brest and fought Hawke at Quiberon Bay, the French fleet was nearly destroyed, and the dream of taking London ended in complete disaster.
The Fall Of Canada
ThoughQuebec was in their hands, the position of the British during the winter of 1759-60 was dangerous. In October General Murray, who was left in command, saw with misgiving the great fleet sail away which had brought to Canada the conquering force of Wolfe and Saunders. Murray was left with some seven thousand men in the heart of a hostile country, and with a resourceful enemy, still unconquered, preparing to attack him. He was separated from other British forces by vast wastes of forest and river, and until spring should come no fleet could aid him. Three enemies of the English, the French said exultingly, would aid to retake Quebec: the ruthless savages who haunted the outskirts of the fortress and massacred many an incautious straggler; the French army which could be recruited from the Canadian population; and, above all, the bittercold of the Canadian winter. To Murray, as to Napoleon long afterward in his rash invasion of Russia, General February was indeed the enemy. About the two or three British ships left at Quebec the ice froze in places a dozen feet thick, and snowdrifts were piled so high against the walls of Quebec that it looked sometimes as if the enemy might walk over them into the fortress. So solidly frozen was the surface of the river that Murray sent cannon to the south shore across the ice to repel a menace from that quarter. There was scarcity of firewood and of provisions. Scurvy broke out in the garrison. Many hundreds died so that by the spring Murray had barely three thousand men fit for active duty.
Throughout the winter Lévis, now in command of the French forces, made increasing preparations to destroy Murray in the spring. The headquarters of Lévis were at Montreal. Here Vaudreuil, the Governor, kept his little court. He and Lévis worked harmoniously, for Lévis was conciliatory and tactful. For a time Vaudreuil treasured the thought of taking command in person to attack Quebec. In the end, however, he showed that he had learned something from the disasters of the previous year and did not interfere with theplans made by Lévis. So throughout the winter Montreal had its gayeties and vanities as of old. There were feasts and dances—but over all brooded the reality of famine in the present and the foreboding of disaster to come.
By April 20, 1760, the St. Lawrence was open and, though the shores were cumbered with masses of broken ice, the central channel was free for the boats which Lévis filled with his soldiers. It was a bleak experience to descend the turbulent river between banks clogged with ice. When Lévis was not far from Quebec, he learned that it was impossible to surprise Murray who was well on guard between Cap Rouge on the west and Beauport on the east. The one thing to do was to reach the Plains of Abraham in order to attack the feeble walls of Quebec from the landward side. Since Murray’s alertness made impossible attack by way of the high cliffs which Wolfe had climbed in the night, Lévis had to reach Quebec by a circuitous route. He landed his army a little above Cap Rouge, marched inland over terrible roads in heavy rain, and climbed to the plateau of Quebec from the rear at Sainte Foy. On April 27, 1760, he drew up his army on the heights almost exactly as Wolfe had done in the previous September.Murray followed the example of Montcalm. He had no trust in the feeble defenses of Quebec and on the 28th marched out to fight on the open plain. The battle of Sainte Foy followed exactly the precedents of the previous year. The defenders of Quebec were driven off the field in overwhelming defeat. The difference was that Murray took his army back to Quebec and from behind its walls still defied his French assailant. Lévis had poor artillery, but he did what he could. He entrenched and poured his fire into Quebec. In the end it was sea power which balked him. On the 15th of May, when a British fleet appeared round the head of the Island of Orleans, Lévis withdrew in something like panic and Quebec was safe.
Lévis returned to Montreal; and to this point all the forces of France slowly retreated as they were pressed in by the overwhelming numbers of the British. At Oswego, the scene of Montcalm’s first brilliant success four years earlier, Amherst had gathered during the summer of 1760 an army of about ten thousand men. From here he descended the St. Lawrence in boats to attack Montreal from the west. From the south, down Lake Champlain and the Richelieu River to the St. Lawrence, came another British force under Havilandalso to attack Montreal. At Quebec Murray put his army on transports, left the city almost destitute of defense, and thus brought a third considerable force against Montreal. There was little fighting. The French withdrew to the common objective as their enemy advanced. Early in September Lévis had gathered at Montreal all his available force, amounting now to scarcely more than two thousand men, for Canadians and Indians alike had deserted him. The British pressed in with the slow and inevitable rigor of a force of nature. On the 7th of September their united army was before the town and Amherst demanded instant surrender. The only thing for Vaudreuil to do was to make the best terms possible. On the next day he signed a capitulation which protected the liberties in property and religion of the Canadians but which yielded the whole of Canada to Great Britain. The struggle for North America had ended.
In the moment of triumph Amherst inflicted on the French army a deep humiliation to punish the outrages committed by their Indian allies. In the early days of the war Loudoun, the Commander-in-Chief in America, had vowed that the British would make the French “sick of suchinhuman villainy” and teach them to respect “the laws of nature and humanity.” Washington speaks of his “deadly sorrow” at the dreadful outrages which he saw, the ravishing of women, the scalping alive even of children. Philadelphians had seen the grim spectacle of a wagon-load of corpses brought by mourning friends and relatives of the dead and laid down at the door of the Assembly to show to pacifist legislators what was really happening. The French regular officers, as we have seen, had hated this kind of warfare. Bougainville says that his soul shuddered at the sights in Montreal, where the whole town turned out to see an English prisoner killed, boiled, and eaten by the savages. Worse still, captive mothers were obliged to eat the flesh of their own children. The French believed that they could not get on without the savage allies who committed these outrages, and they were not strong enough to coerce them. Amherst, on the other hand, held his Indians in check and rebuked outrage. Now he was stern to punish what the French had permitted. He could write proudly to a friend that the French were amazed at the order in which he kept his own Indians. Not a man, woman, or child, he said, had been hurt or a single atrocitycommitted. It was a vivid contrast with what had taken place after the British surrender to Montcalm at Fort William Henry. The day of retribution had come. Because of such outrages, the French army was denied the honors of war usually conceded to a brave and defeated foe. The French officers and men must not, Amherst insisted, serve again during the war. Lévis protested and begged Vaudreuil to be allowed to go on fighting rather than accept the terms, but in vain. The humiliation was rigorously imposed, and it was a sullen host which the British took captive.
France had lost an Empire. It was nearly three years still before peace was signed at Paris in 1763. To Britain France yielded everything east of the Mississippi except New Orleans, and to Spain she ceded New Orleans and everything else to which she had any claim. Thefleurs-de-lisfloated still over only two tiny fishing islands off the Newfoundland shore. All the glowing plans of France’s leaders—of Richelieu, of Louis XIV, of Colbert, of Frontenac, of the heroic missionaries of the Jesuit Order—seemed to have come to nothing.
The fall of France did much to drag down her rival. Already was America restless under controlfrom Europe. There was now no danger to the English in America from the French peril which had made insecure the borders of Massachusetts, of New York, of Pennsylvania, and Virginia, and had brought widespread desolation and sorrow. With the removal of the menace went the need of help and defenses for the colonies from the motherland. The French belief that there was a natural antipathy between the English of the Old World and the English of the New was, in reality, based on the fact of a likeness so great that neither would accept control or patronage from the other. Towards the Englishman who assumed airs of superiority the antagonism of the colonists was always certain to be acute. Open strife came when the assumption of superiority took the form of levying taxes on the colonies without asking their leave. In no remote way the fall of French Canada, by removing a near menace to the English colonies, led to this new conflict and to the collapse of that older British Empire which had sprung from the England of the Stuarts.
When Montreal fell there were in the St. Lawrence many British ships which had been used for troops and supplies. Before the end of September the French soldiers and also the officials fromFrance who desired to go home were on board these ships bound for Europe. By the end of November most of the exiles had reached home. Varying receptions awaited them. Lévis, who took back the army, was soon again, by consent of the British government, in active service. Fortune smiled on him to the end. He died a great noble and Marshal of France just before the Revolution of 1789; but in that awful upheaval his widow and his two daughters perished on the scaffold. Vaudreuil’s shallow and vain incompetence did not go unpunished. He was put on trial, accused of a share in the black frauds which had helped to ruin Canada. The trial was his punishment. He was acquitted of taking any share of the plunder and so drops out of history. Bigot and his gang, on the other hand, were found guilty of vast depredations. The former Intendant was for a time in the Bastille and in the end was banished from France, after being forced to repay great sums. We find echoes of the luxury of Quebec in the sale in France of the rich plate which the rascal had acquired. There were, however, other and even worse plunderers. They were tried and condemned chiefly to return what they had stolen. We rather wonder that no expiatorysacrifice on the scaffold was required of any of these knaves. Lally Tollendal, who, as the French leader in India, had only failed and not plundered, was sent to a cruel execution.
Under the terms of the surrender and of the final Treaty of Peace in 1763, civilians in Canada were given leave to return to France. Nearly the whole of the official class and many of the large landowners, the seigneurs, left the country. In Canada there remained a priesthood, largely native, but soon to be recruited from France by the upheaval of the Revolution, a few seigneurial families, natural leaders of their race, a peasantry, exhausted by the long war but clinging tenaciously to the soil, and a good many hardy pioneers of the forest, men skilled in hunting and in the use of the axe. Out of these elements, amounting in 1763 to little more than sixty thousand people, has come that French-Canadian race in America now numbering perhaps three millions. The race has scattered far. It is found in the mills of Massachusetts, in the canebrakes of Louisiana, on the wide stretches of the prairie of the Canadian West, but it has always kept intact its strong citadel on the banks of the St. Lawrence. New France was, in reality, widely separated in spirit from old France, beforethe new master in Canada made the division permanent. The imagination of the Canadian peasant did not wander across the ocean to France. He knew only the scenes about his own hearth and in them alone were his thought and affections centered.
The one wider interest which the habitant treasured was love for the Catholic Church of his fathers and of his own spiritual hopes. It thus happened that when France in revolution assailed and for a time overthrew the Church within her borders, the heart of French Canada was not with France but with the persecuted Church; she hated the spirit of revolutionary France.Te Deumswere sung at Quebec in thanksgiving for the defeats of Napoleon. In language and what literary culture they possessed, in traditions and tastes, the conquered people remained French, but they had no allegiance divided between Canada and France. To this day they are proud to be simply Canadians, rooted in the soil of Canada, with no debt of patriotic gratitude to the France from which they sprang or to the Britain which obtained political dominance over their ancestors after a long agony of war. To the British Crown many of them feel a certain attachment becauseof the liberty guaranteed to them to pursue their own ideals of happiness. In preserving their type of social life, their faith and language, they have shown a resolute tenacity. To this day they are as different in these things from their fellow-citizens of British origin in the rest of Canada as were their ancestors from the English colonies which lay on their borders.
The French in Canada are still a separate people. From time to time a nervous fear seizes them lest too many of their race may be lost to their old ideals in the Anglo-Saxon world surging about them. Then they listen readily to appeals to their racial unity and draw more sharply than ever the lines of division between themselves and the rest of North America. They remain a fragment of an older France, remote and isolated, still dreaming dreams like those of Frontenac of old of the dominance of their race in North America and asserting passionately their rights in the soil of Canada to which, first of Europeans, they came. At the mouth of the Mississippi in the Louisiana founded by Louis XIV, along the St. Lawrence in the Canada of Champlain and Frontenac, with a resolution more than half pathetic, and in a world that gives little heed, men of French raceare still on guard to preserve in America the lineaments of that older France, long since decayed in Europe, which was above all the eldest daughter of the Church.