BONNIE PRINCE CHARLIE.(From the painting by John Pettie, R.A.)
BONNIE PRINCE CHARLIE.(From the painting by John Pettie, R.A.)
AFTER CULLODEN: ROYALIST SOLDIERS SEARCHING FOR JACOBITE FUGITIVES.(From the picture by John Seymour Lucas, R.A., in the Tate Gallery. By permission of Messrs. Frost and Reed.)
AFTER CULLODEN: ROYALIST SOLDIERS SEARCHING FOR JACOBITE FUGITIVES.(From the picture by John Seymour Lucas, R.A., in the Tate Gallery. By permission of Messrs. Frost and Reed.)
A Royal Fugitive.(From the picture by Allan Stewart. Exhibited in the Royal Academy, 1907.)
A Royal Fugitive.(From the picture by Allan Stewart. Exhibited in the Royal Academy, 1907.)
Chapter XVII.MAKERS OF EMPIRE.
“War, disguised as commerce, came;Britain, carrying sword and flame,Won an empire.”
“War, disguised as commerce, came;Britain, carrying sword and flame,Won an empire.”
“War, disguised as commerce, came;Britain, carrying sword and flame,Won an empire.”
“War, disguised as commerce, came;
Britain, carrying sword and flame,
Won an empire.”
YOU are now permitted to peep into the citadel of Arcot, the old capital of the Carnatic. Its walls are ruinous, its ramparts unfitted for guns, its battlements too low to protect soldiers. The town is in the hands of four thousand native troops, assisted by one hundred and fifty Frenchmen. Within the fort there are but a hundred and twenty Europeans and two hundred Sepoys. Their stock of provisions is very low. At the request of the Sepoys the Europeans take the rice, while the faithful natives contrive to keep body and soul together on the water in which it has been boiled. The defenders are daily diminishing in number from starvation, disease, and the musketry fire of the enemy, but there is no talk of surrender. You judge that their leader must be a man of no common courage and resolution, and you are right. Within yonder room their young English captain is placidly sleeping, though he knows that the enemy is about to assault his feeble post.
Already he has been offered honourable terms and a bribe of money if he will but yield. He has rejected both with the utmost scorn and defiance, though he knows full well that the capture of the fort means the death of every man in it. In haughty tones the young Englishman has told the prince who commands the besieging army that his father is a usurper, that his forces are a mere rabble, and that he will do well to think twice before he sends such poltroons against English soldiers. It is now the 14th day of November, and on the 30th of August last he and his little army marched through a violent storm of thunder and rain, and captured the fort without striking a blow. He has already held out for seventy-five days, hoping hourly for relief. But he has not been inactive. Time after time he and his little band have sallied forth and inflicted considerable damage on the besiegers. The artillery of the enemy has already made much havoc; two great breaches gape in the walls. Every attempt to storm them has failed. Now the enemy is in overwhelming force, and to-day an assault is to be made; yet the commander of the post lies calmly sleeping, though a touch on the shoulder will awaken him and bring him on to the walls to direct the defence. He has made all arrangements; he has done all that man can do. Now he is recruiting his exhausted strength for the critical struggle that awaits him.
To-day is the most solemn festival in the Mohammedan calendar, a day on which the followers of Mohammed believe that he who falls in fight against the infidel will enter at once into Paradise. The religious enthusiasm of the besiegers is almost a frenzy, and they have further increased their madness by a free use of the intoxicating drug which they call bhang. They are ready to go to death with eager joy; no man of them will flinch from the most dangerous duty; all are zealous for the privilege of sacrificing their lives.
Suddenly you hear the discharge of three bombs. It is the signal for the attack. Our young Englishman is awake now, and you get your first glimpse of him. One glance at his face convinces you that he is a warrior of warriors, that there is not a particle of fear in his whole composition, that he is a born leader of men. His Sepoys positively worship him. They believe him to be more than mortal. Whatever he commands they obey. Their devotion to him exceeds that of the Tenth Legion to Cæsar and of the Old Guard to Napoleon.
Such is Robert Clive, a young man of twenty-five, who left his Shropshire home as the scapegrace of the family. In his home at Styche and in the grammar school of Market Drayton he acquired a most unenviable reputation—always in mischief, ready to use his fists on the slightest provocation, an idle, worthless dunce. In desperation his father packed him off to India as a book-keeper; but he has exchanged the pen for the sword, and has now found his vocation. It is he who suggested this desperate enterprise, and to-day he is about to lay the foundations of his great fame.
The attack has begun. A vast multitude of besiegers is beneath the walls carrying ladders, while against the four points where the fort is weakest—the two gates and the two breaches—organized and simultaneous attacks are preparing. Huge elephants, with their foreheads armed with iron plates, are driven forward, and you expect that the gates will be smashed to matchwood by the impact of these living battering-rams. But watch! Now you see Clive directing his men to pour their fire into the elephants. They do so, and the huge beasts, stung by the bullets, turn round and trample under foot the dense masses of men behind them. The enemy has been hoist with his own petard.
There is a wild rush into the north-west breach, which is blocked with yelling natives. Suddenly you hear a volley, and down go scores of the assailants. Clive has dug trenches behind the breaches, and his men are in them pouring a murderous fire on the living, struggling mass that swarms through the gap in the wall. As soon as the guns are discharged they are handed to the rear-rank men to be loaded, and others charged and primed are received in exchange. Three field-pieces now open fire, and every shot tells. After three desperate onsets the enemy is driven back.
Meanwhile the south-west breach is attacked. Water fills one part of the ditch which protects it, and on this the foe has launched a raft crowded with soldiers, who are urging it towards the shattered walls. The gunners at this post fire wildly and their aim is bad. Clive springs to the gun and works it himself. In three discharges he has cleared the raft and torn it asunder. Many of its occupants are drowning in the ditch, the remainder are swimming back to the bank.
The fight has now lasted an hour, and four hundred of the assailants are dead. The grand attack has failed. There is firing during the night, but when day breaks the besiegers are nowhere to be seen. They have hurriedly abandoned the town, leaving their artillery and ammunition behind them.
At once India rings with the praises of Clive. Reinforced, he proceeds upon his victorious career, and the natives tremble at his name. Within the next three years, by his marvellous energy and skill, he will establish British supremacy in India.
Now we must hark back in order to understand the meaning of the struggle which we have just witnessed. The East India Company, in whose service Clive had enlisted, was established as far back as the days of Queen Elizabeth. It was founded for trade, and it attended closely to business. When Clive arrived in India its territory consisted of a few square miles of land, for which rent was paid to native rajas. Its troops were scarcely sufficient to man the ill-constructed forts which had been erected at Madras, Bombay, Calcutta, and a few other places to protect the warehouses. Most of the soldiers in the service of the Company were natives, and were neither furnished with European weapons nor disciplined according to European methods. The white servants of the Company were simply traders, whose business it was to make advances to manufacturers, ship cargoes, and in other ways push the business interests of their employers. Most of the younger clerks, of whom Clive was one, were miserably paid, while the older ones enriched themselves by trading on their own account.
A French East India Company had also been founded, but at the outset it met with much less success than the English Company. At the close of the seventeenth century it possessed little more than the small town of Pondicherry, which still remains in French hands. At this time the Moguls, the descendants of the Mohammedan conquerors of Northern India, dominated the land; but a few years later their power fell to pieces, and India was splintered into little independent kingdoms. The land was given over to civil war; every nawab, or governor, quarrelled and fought with his neighbours. The feebleness of the native rulers and the disturbed state of the country positively invited the European traders, both English and French, to conquest. Hitherto they had been merely competitors for commerce; soon they were to become rivals for dominion.
Such was the condition of affairs when Clive sailed for India. He was very homesick and depressed during the long voyage round the Cape, and when he arrived he had spent all his money and contracted some debts. He was stationed at Fort George, Madras, where he was wretchedly lodged and badly paid, and engaged in duties ill-suited to his daring, ardent nature. On more than one occasion he got into scrapes and received reprimands. Twice he attempted suicide, and twice the pistol which he snapped at his own head failed to go off. “It appears I am destined for something,” he said, and, as you already know, his prophecy proved true. In the year of his arrival in India (1744) war was declared by Britain against France, and the struggle in Europe led to the long fight for supremacy in India.
Dupleix, the French Governor of Pondicherry, was a man of great ambition, and he now conceived the idea of founding a great French empire in India. Himself an able soldier, he made two most important discoveries. First, he observed that the native armies could not stand against men disciplined in the European fashion; and, secondly, he perceived that the natives could be brought under European discipline by European officers. Forthwith he began to enlist Sepoys, or native soldiers, and to arm and discipline them after the French manner. With these Sepoys he intended to intervene in the disputes of the native rulers, and by taking first this side, and then that, gradually win India for France.
A French expedition appeared before Madras, captured Fort George, and seized the contents of the warehouses as prize of war. Some of the servants of the Company, including Clive, were paraded through the streets of Pondicherry in triumphal procession, and treated with great indignity. Clive, in the disguise of a Mohammedan, managed to escape from the town by night and make his way to Fort St. David, a small British settlement one hundred miles south of Madras. Here he begged an ensign’s commission in the service of the Company, and at twenty-one entered upon his military career.
He took part in Admiral Boscawen’s unsuccessful siege of Pondicherry, where he distinguished himself, and in his twenty-fifth year was promoted to be a captain. Shortly after the failure at Pondicherry peace was proclaimed. Nevertheless, there was but a short cessation of hostilities in India; for though British and French were supposed to have sheathed the sword, a great struggle for power was about to begin both in India and in America. Before long there was open war, which at first went greatly in favour of France.
Dupleix, continuing his rapid and brilliant career, had intervened in the affairs of the two great native states of Hyderabad and the Carnatic, and had managed to get his own candidates placed on the thrones of both these states. Thus he was practically master of South India. Civil war, however, continued in the Carnatic, where the French nominee was besieging Trichinopoly, the last stronghold of his rival. Trichinopoly was about to fall, and its fall would mean the complete supremacy of the French in India. At the critical moment Clive persuaded the Governor of Madras to entrust him with a small force to attack Arcot, the capital of the nawab whom Dupleix was supporting. By doing so, he hoped to draw off the nawab’s forces from the siege of Trichinopoly. You already know how splendidly he defended Arcot, and how he forced the enemy to raise the siege. By 1753 he had completely undone the work of Dupleix.
Worn out by anxiety and fatigue, he now returned to England. He had gone out ten years before, a friendless, wayward boy; he now returned, at the age of twenty-eight, to find himself greeted as one of Britain’s most famous soldiers. Naturally, his father and mother and the other members of his family were overjoyed to learn that naughty, idle Bobby had developed into a famous man, the theme of all tongues, honoured and praised by the greatest in the land. The East India Company thanked him for his services in the warmest terms, and offered him a sword set with diamonds. This he refused to accept unless a similar one was given to his friend and commander Lawrence. With his prize-money Clive helped to pay off some of his father’s debts, and to redeem the family estate.
In 1755 Clive returned to India. He had only just arrived when terrible news reached him. Suraj-ud-Dowlah, the Nawab of Bengal, a fiend in human shape, whose amusement as a child was to torture beasts and birds, and his pastime as a man to watch the sufferings of his fellow-creatures, had attacked the British settlement at Calcutta, and had seized one hundred and forty-six Europeans. These he thrust into a chamber known as the “Black Hole.” It was eighteen feet by fourteen, and its cubical content was twenty feet square. When ordered to enter the cell the prisoners imagined that the soldiers were joking, and as the nawab had promised them their lives they laughed aloud at the absurdity of the idea that they could possibly exist during the stifling heat of a Bengal June night in such a confined space. They discovered their error when they were driven in at the point of the sword. The windows were small and barred, and soon the air was poisonous. The horrors that followed are almost too terrible to recount. The poor creatures cried for mercy, they strove to break in the door, they offered large bribes to their jailers; but all to no purpose. Nothing could be done without the nawab’s orders, and he was asleep and could not be awaked. Many went mad; they trampled each other down, and fought like wild beasts for places at the windows. The murderers outside mocked at their agonies, holding lights to the bars, and shouting with laughter as they beheld the struggles of their victims. When day broke and the doors were opened only twenty-three ghastly figures staggered out into the sunlight. A hundred and twenty-three corpses were flung promiscuously into a pit dug for the purpose.
The rage and anger of the British in India can well be imagined. Clive hastened to Bengal to avenge the awful outrage. He had nine hundred Europeans and fifteen hundred Sepoys with which to oppose Suraj-ud-Dowlah’s huge army. After a short, sharp fight the enemy fled in confusion, leaving baggage, guns, and cattle in the hands of the victors. This battle of Plassey, fought on June 23, 1757, secured for the British the province of Bengal, the richest and most populous province of India.
The battle, however, was not won without grave treachery. Prior to the battle Clive learned that Mir Jaffier, Suraj-ud-Dowlah’s chief commander, had formed a plot against his master. He managed to get into communication with the disaffected general through the agency of one Omichand, a wily, unscrupulous Bengali merchant. This man held the thread of the whole plot in his hands; one word whispered by him in the ear of Suraj-ud-Dowlah would have meant the lives of all the conspirators. Omichand claimed £300,000 sterling as the price of his secrecy and assistance, and insisted that an article regarding his claims should be inserted in the treaty between Clive and Mir Jaffier. Clive now descended to conduct for which he cannot be defended, though excuses may be made. He knew he had to do with a villain, and he determined to defeat him by his own knavish acts. Two treaties were drawn up—the one, on white paper, was real; the other, on red paper, was a sham. The red paper contained the promise to pay Omichand’s demand; there was no mention of it in the white paper. Clive now added his signature, and forged that of Admiral Watson to the red paper, which was handed to Omichand. The treaty to which Mir Jaffier agreed was on the white paper.
When Suraj-ud-Dowlah was overcome, Mir Jaffier received the throne of Bengal as his reward. According to the terms of the treaty, he granted territorial and other rights to the East India Company, and gave Clive a gift of £200,000. “It is now time,” said Clive, “to undeceive Omichand.” Turning to the man, Clive’s interpreter said, “Omichand, the red treaty is a trick. You are to have nothing.” Omichand fell back insensible, and afterwards relapsed into a state of idiocy. Soon after, Mir Jaffier was besieged by the eldest son of the Great Mogul; but Clive marched to his relief, and the besiegers melted away. Then Mir Jaffier in gratitude made over to Clive the yearly rent, amounting to £30,000, which the British paid for the lands which they occupied about Calcutta. Probably Clive was justified in accepting this present, but it gave his enemies a powerful handle against him. In 1760 Clive returned to England, and was everywhere greeted as a “heaven-born general.” He became member of Parliament for Shrewsbury, and received an Irish peerage. His fortune, acquired by spoils, presents, and grants, actually yielded him £40,000 a year.
In 1765 he returned to India as governor-general, and set himself the task of purifying the administration of the Company. The officials and military commanders received very small salaries; but these they turned into fortunes by “shaking the pagoda tree”—that is, by blackmail, extortion, and corruption of all kinds. Clive attempted to stop these practices, and though his reforms were bitterly opposed, he left the Company’s service much purer than he found it. In the process he raised up a host of enemies, who in 1767, when he finally returned to England in shattered health, brought about his impeachment for corrupt practices, especially with reference to the Omichand affair and the present from Mir Jaffier. During the Parliamentary inquiry, Clive, when confronted by hostile evidence, remarked, “Mr. Chairman, at this moment I stand astonished at my own moderation!” The House of Commons evaded a decision on his conduct by passing a resolution that Lord Clive “had rendered great and meritorious services to his country.” He was acquitted, but the acquittal was really a vote of censure. Clive, broken in health, keenly sensitive to the disgrace of the verdict, and enfeebled in mind by the use of opium, felt the disgrace keenly. During one of the fits of deep depression to which he was subject, he ended his life by his own hand (November 1774).
Thus perished, in his forty-ninth year, the great Clive. His faults were many, but his merits outweighed them, and he must always stand high in the roll of British empire-makers. “Our island has scarcely ever produced a man more truly great either in arms or in council.” Let this be his epitaph.
Clive at Bay.
Clive at Bay.
The natives of India believed that Clive bore a charmed life. On one occasion, when he was resting along with several of his men, a party of Frenchmen fired into the room which he occupied, killing the man next to him. Clive rushed out, and finding himself confronted by six Frenchmen, loudly ordered them to lay down their arms as they were surrounded. The native allies of the French fled, and the assailants themselves took refuge in a temple. Next day they surrendered.
“Wolfe, where’er he fought,Put so much of his heart into his actThat his example had a magnet’s force,And all were swift to follow whom all loved.”
“Wolfe, where’er he fought,Put so much of his heart into his actThat his example had a magnet’s force,And all were swift to follow whom all loved.”
“Wolfe, where’er he fought,Put so much of his heart into his actThat his example had a magnet’s force,And all were swift to follow whom all loved.”
“Wolfe, where’er he fought,
Put so much of his heart into his act
That his example had a magnet’s force,
And all were swift to follow whom all loved.”
Once more you see a young soldier advancing. He is a hero of heroes, yet never was the soul of a hero enshrined in a more unhero-like frame. His features are homely, his hair is fiery-red, his shoulders are narrow, and his limbs are veritable spindle-shanks. But look at his eyes, and you will instantly forget his plain features and his rickety body. They are bright, searching, brimful of intelligence and vivacity, and speak eloquently of the indomitable spirit within. This is James Wolfe, the man who gave us Canada—“eldest daughter of the Empire”—that vast land of fertile prairie, dense forest, widespreading pasture, rich mines, unrivalled waterways, fine cities, and, above all, of a sturdy nation, heart-warm towards the mother-country, and eager to give her tangible proofs of kinship and affection. Wolfe gave Canada to the Empire at the price of his heart’s blood. In one “crowded hour of glorious life” he gave us the heritage of this majestic land, already the greatest and most prosperous of all British lands beyond the seas, and yearly advancing towards a mighty destiny.
James Wolfe was a soldier from his youth. His father was an officer of distinction; his mother a woman of great sweetness and charm, deeply beloved by her two sons, of whom James was the elder. He was born on June 2, 1727, at Westerham in Kent. Of his brief boyhood’s days we know little—indeed, there are but meagre details of his whole life. We know, however, that he was a delicate, sensitive, highly-strung boy, who inherited his mother’s frailty though not her beauty. We know, too, that he saw little of his father, who was almost constantly absent from home on active service. Nevertheless, he was tenderly and judiciously reared by his devoted mother.
When a mere schoolboy—a little over fifteen years of age—he became an ensign, and carried the colours in one of his Majesty’s regiments. From the beginning of his career he set himself to study the art of war, and at sixteen he was adjutant of his regiment, then serving in Flanders. He discharged his duties with great intelligence, and very early demonstrated his capacity for leading men. Even though an adjutant, he had not lost his schoolboy tastes, for we find him writing to his mother warmly thanking her for a plum-cake which she had sent him.
At twenty-one he had seen seven campaigns, and was a major. He had been present at the victories of Dettingen and Culloden, and it is said that on the latter battlefield he proved the nobility of his nature by refusing to shoot a wounded Highlander when ordered to do so by “Butcher” Cumberland. It is also said that he recommended the enlistment of Highlanders as soldiers in the British army. This may or may not be true, but it is certain that the Highland regiments first began to win their great renown under his command.
At thirty years of age he had acquired the reputation of a capable, active, zealous officer, but so far he had given little indication of the great fame which was soon to be his. In 1758 he first crossed the Atlantic; and here we may interrupt the narrative in order to explain the condition of affairs at that time in America. By the middle of the eighteenth century the British had established themselves in thirteen colonies along the Atlantic coast from Florida to Nova Scotia. The French had chosen Quebec as their capital, and had occupied Acadia (now the provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick) and the valley of the St. Lawrence from the Atlantic to the Great Lakes. A new England and a new France had thus grown up in the New World.
New England grew rapidly in population and wealth. New France also prospered, though in a lesser degree. Its progress was hindered by constant warfare with the Indians, by the trading enterprise of the British, and by the interference of the home government. The two white races constantly advanced their frontiers, and their outposts drew nearer and nearer to each other every year. Border strife between the rival nations soon became frequent. In 1690, for example, the British settlers invaded New France to revenge themselves for the plunder of certain frontier stations. The invaders were driven back, but for years afterwards the French and the British kept up an irregular warfare. During the War of the Spanish Succession a powerful British fleet which was protecting the colonies seized that part of Acadia now known as Nova Scotia.
Though Britain had colonized the whole Atlantic seaboard from Florida to Nova Scotia, her territories had not advanced inland beyond the great barrier of the Alleghany Mountains. France, in addition to Canada, possessed the colony of Louisiana at the mouth of the Mississippi. She claimed that Louisiana stretched to the head-waters of the Mississippi and its tributary the Ohio. Had this claim been allowed, the British seaboard colonies would have been shut in on the west, and prevented from extending to the rich plains of the interior. Already the British needed elbow-room, for they numbered some 2,000,000, while the French in all the vast territory which they claimed could only muster 180,000.
The French now proposed to link Louisiana with Canada by a chain of forts along the Mississippi and the Ohio. The three northern links in the chain were Fort Ticonderoga, at the end of Lake Champlain; Fort Niagara, near the great falls; and Fort Duquesne, on the Ohio River, where the great manufacturing town of Pittsburg now stands. The first and last of these forts were close to the English back settlements, which were constantly ravaged by Indians in the pay of France. In 1754, while Britain was ringing with the fame of Clive fresh from his great defence of Arcot, a party of Virginian militia made a dash at Fort Duquesne under the leadership of George Washington, soon to be the greatest name in American history. The attack, however, was unsuccessful. This was the beginning of the great struggle between the French and the British for the possession of North America.
Next year General Braddock, who had been sent out to be commander-in-chief in America, marched against the French at the head of 2,200 British regulars and American settlers. He cut his way through almost impenetrable forest, but when eight miles from the fort fell into an ambuscade. The Indians and French were hidden in bushes and behind trees, and they poured volley after volley into the British ranks. The settlers wished to fight in the Indian fashion, and take cover behind the trees; but Braddock thought this mode of warfare cowardly, and so they fought in the open until so many of the British were killed that a retreat had to be sounded. Soon the retreat became a flight, and but for Washington and his Virginians, Braddock’s little army would probably have been cut off to a man. The consequences of this defeat were terrible. The French let loose the Indians on the outlying British settlements, and the woods rang with the screams of tortured victims. For a time France was supreme on the American continent.
In 1758 the British outlook was black indeed, and at home men trembled in hourly expectation of a French invasion. England was in a very bad way indeed; but the hour found the man, and that man was William Pitt. He sketched out a bold plan of campaign in America. Simultaneous attacks were to be made on Fort Ticonderoga and Fort Niagara, and on Quebec, the key to New France. Pitt looked around for a general after his own heart. He found him in James Wolfe, a young soldier with the daring, skill, and determination to accomplish what the great statesman planned. Merit and merit alone decided Pitt’s choice, and a better choice was never made.
Wolfe had just returned from the capture of the chief fort in Acadia, where as brigadier under General Amherst he had covered himself with glory, and had earned the proud title of “hero of Louisbourg.” When Pitt offered the command of the new expedition to Wolfe he jumped at the chance. “Mr. Pitt,” he said, “may dispose of my slight carcass as he pleases.” The Duke of Newcastle, then Prime Minister, was shocked at Pitt’s choice. He told the king that Wolfe was mad. “Mad is he?” said George; “then I hope he will bite some others of my generals.”
On February 17, 1759, Wolfe sailed for Canada with a strong fleet and 9,000 troops. During the voyage he suffered tortures from sea-sickness. In May he was in the harbour of Louisbourg, and on the sixteenth of June he weighed anchor for Quebec, the troops cheering and the officers drinking this toast, “British colours on every French fort, port, and garrison in America.”
Quebec, the most historic spot in all the New World, has not inaptly been called the Gibraltar of America. It stands on the nose of a rocky peninsula shaped like a bull’s head and facing eastward. On the south and east sides it rises by steep cliffs to a rocky summit. On south, east, and north it is defended by rivers: to the south flows the great St. Lawrence River, which expands on the east into a broad basin upon which the navies of the world might ride; while on the north the peninsula is protected by the estuary of the river St. Charles. The town itself consists of two parts—a lower town, which huddles by the water side, and an upper town, which climbs the cliffs. High on the summit is the grim and frowning citadel. Let us ascend to this historic fortress and gaze in admiration on the scene which unfolds itself. The lower town, with its steep streets, its old gabled houses, its public buildings, and numerous churches with their tin-covered cupolas and minarets, rises sharply from the water’s edge. Opposite to us, on the other side of the river, is Point Levis, and to the east is the beautiful Isle of Orleans. On our left, across the basin, is the Montmorency River, which hurls itself over a precipice to mingle its waters with those of the great river. To our right extend the famous Plains of Abraham, now purchased and preserved as a national park consecrated to great historical memories. Such is the Quebec of to-day. In the year 1759 it presented a much ruder aspect, though it was then lively and important, and had been made almost impregnable by walls, bastions, and fortified gates.
Within this city Vaudreuil, its bombastic, corrupt governor, and his gang of unscrupulous officials kept up a feeble imitation of the luxurious court of France. They robbed the king, their master, and they robbed the Canadians committed to their protection. “Are the walls of Quebec made of gold?” asked Lewis when official after official returned to France bloated with wealth. New France was honeycombed with peculation and fraud, and there was but one honest, incorruptible man amongst the greedy horde. He was Lewis Joseph, Marquis of Montcalm, a soldier of unblemished repute and no mean scholar. His life was one long struggle with the governor, who thwarted him in every possible way, and arrogated to himself all the credit and honour which his noble colleague managed to win.
Montcalm had early news of Wolfe’s errand, and he hastily collected every able-bodied man and every boy who could hold a gun within the walls of the town. “Never,” said he, “was Canada in a state so critical and full of peril.” Quebec was already strong by nature, and Montcalm proceeded to make it stronger still by art. Redoubts, batteries, and lines of entrenchment were thrown up along the lofty, curving shores from the St. Charles River to the Montmorency, and a boom of logs and hulks mounted with cannon barricaded the former river. Fourteen thousand men lined the earthworks, and one or two thousand more manned the guns of the fortress. When Wolfe arrived on the 21st of June, Quebec was well-nigh impregnable.
Wolfe landed his men on the Isle of Orleans, and soon realized the desperate character of the task which he had undertaken. To take Quebec seemed impossible. The cliffs to his left were edged with palisades and capped with redoubts, while on his right was a far-extended line of entrenchments, ending at the foaming cataract of Montmorency. There seemed to be no chink in the wall of defence. For weeks Wolfe lay inactive, wearing himself to a shadow in the attempt to find a weak spot against which he might hurl his army.
He seized Point Levis, and from it bombarded the city, only a mile away. Fierce as his fire was, it did nothing to help him to capture the place. At length, tired of inactivity, he attempted on the 31st of July to gain a footing on the north shore of the St. Lawrence by landing his men at the Montmorency Falls and climbing to the plateau above. In this he was successful; but though his guns now played on the flank of Montcalm’s entrenchments, the city of his desire was as far off as ever. “You may demolish the town,” said the bearer of a flag of truce, “but you shall never get inside it.” “I will take Quebec,” replied Wolfe, “if I stay here until November.”
A frontal attack on the Beauport Heights was a complete failure, and Wolfe lost more than two hundred men. He was now almost worn out. His pale face and tall, lean form were no more seen going to and fro amongst his soldiers. He lay dangerously ill, and his life was almost despaired of. He felt his failure intensely, especially as news now arrived that the attacks on Ticonderoga and Niagara had been successful. Meanwhile the British fleet had accomplished a great feat. Despite a furious cannonade from the guns of Quebec, ship after ship had managed to sail up the river past the forts, and now were able to threaten the city from a position which the French believed to be unattainable by the enemy.
On the 20th of August the young general was about again, and was diligently searching the steep, rocky shore above Quebec for a possible landing-place. At last, about three miles from the city, at a place now called Wolfe’s Cove, he discovered a goat track that wound up the wooded precipice for two hundred and fifty feet above the St. Lawrence. A French guard was stationed at the top, but Wolfe thought it could easily be surprised. Had he known that the captain in charge had gained a reputation for cowardice, and had allowed his men to go home to dig up their potatoes, his hopes would have been higher. At any rate he was now resolved to climb the Heights of Abraham and meet Montcalm’s army at the very gates of Quebec.
Now let us pass on to the fateful night of September 13, 1759. Under cover of the darkness the British flotilla of boats moved silently with muffled oars towards the landing-place. Wolfe, who was in the leading boat, began in a low whisper to recite the beautiful lines of Gray’s “Elegy.” He came to the noble verse—
“The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,Await alike the inevitable hour;The paths of glory lead but to the grave.”
“The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,Await alike the inevitable hour;The paths of glory lead but to the grave.”
“The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,Await alike the inevitable hour;The paths of glory lead but to the grave.”
“The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,
Await alike the inevitable hour;
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.”
“Now, gentlemen,” he said, “I would rather have written those lines than take Quebec.”
The boats drifted on in death-like silence. Suddenly, as the tide bore them inshore and the mighty wall of rock loomed above them, they were sharply challenged by a sentry. “Qui vive?” he cried. A Highland officer replied in good French, “La France.” “Of what regiment?” demanded the sentry. “The Queen’s,” answered the Highlander, and the sentry was satisfied. A sigh of relief escaped from the commander, and the boats glided on. Presently another sentry challenged, but he too was deceived. In a few moments more the boats lightly ran aground in a little cove. The men disembarked silently and scrambled up the wooded precipice on their hands and knees. The French guard at the top was captured, and loud British huzzas proclaimed that at last a footing had been gained on the coveted spot. Before the day broke Wolfe had marshalled his men on the Heights of Abraham, and in the gray dawn they saw the city almost within their grasp. When they became visible, Montcalm was greatly alarmed. “This is a serious business,” he said. Bugles and mounted messengers called in his troops. To save the citadel he was obliged to abandon his entrenchments and give fight in the open.
The battle that followed was singularly brief in duration, yet it settled the fate of Canada. The French advanced, firing rapidly; but the British reserved their fire until the enemy was within close range. Then a fearful hail of bullets sped from their muskets. The French wavered, and as the British reloaded and advanced, they turned and fled. Wolfe was wounded in the wrist as he led the charge, but he wrapped a handkerchief about the wound and pushed on. Soon after another bullet struck him in the breast. “Don’t let my men see me drop,” he said as they carried him to the rear. Here he lay, his eyes glazed, and his life fast ebbing away. Suddenly one of the little group about him cried, “They run; see, they run!” The dying man roused himself as though from sleep. “Who run?” he asked. “The enemy, sir,” was the reply; “they give way everywhere.” The dying flame of life flickered up for a moment, and he gave a clear, emphatic order for cutting off the retreat. This done, he turned on his side, murmuring, “Now God be praised, I die happy.” Wolfe was dead.
His gallant foe, Montcalm, was also stricken down in the fight. “How long have I to live?” he asked of his surgeon. “Twelve hours, more or less,” was the reply. “So much the better,” said the dying man; “I shall not live to see the surrender of Quebec.” Before passing away, he wrote to the British commander beseeching him to show mercy to the townsfolk. “Do not let them perceive,” he said, “that they have changed masters. Be their protector, as I have been their father.” It is to Britain’s honour that she has observed this dying request of a great and good man with scrupulous care. The French Canadian of to-day would be the first to say that under the Union Jack he retains his faith and language, his old laws and cherished institutions, and that under British rule his liberty has been enlarged and his prosperity established.
On September 18, 1759, the British flag was hoisted on the citadel of Quebec. At home the news was received with rapturous joy. “The whole nation rose up and felt itself the stronger for Wolfe’s victory.” The scattered remnants of the French fell back on Montreal, and in the next autumn they were surrounded and forced to surrender. The victory of the British was complete; the destiny of Canada was fixed for ever.
A tribute to the joint memory of the two leaders who in death were not divided now stands in the public gardens of Quebec, and on the battlefield is a simple obelisk with the plain inscription, “Here died Wolfe, victorious.”
And here we leave James Wolfe “alone with his glory.” He died, as he wished to die, a soldier’s death, and he leaves to future ages a noble example of high honour, strict integrity, and noble devotion to duty.
DEATH OF WOLFE.(From the picture by Benjamin West, P.R.A.)
DEATH OF WOLFE.(From the picture by Benjamin West, P.R.A.)
The Battle of Trafalgar, and the Victory of Lord Nelson over the French and Spanish Fleets,October 21, 1805.(From the picture by Clarkson Stanfield, R.A., in the National Gallery of British Art.)
The Battle of Trafalgar, and the Victory of Lord Nelson over the French and Spanish Fleets,October 21, 1805.(From the picture by Clarkson Stanfield, R.A., in the National Gallery of British Art.)
Chapter XVIII.NELSON OF THE NILE.
“Admirals all, for England’s sake,Honour be yours, and fame!And honour, as long as waves shall break,To Nelson’s peerless fame.”
“Admirals all, for England’s sake,Honour be yours, and fame!And honour, as long as waves shall break,To Nelson’s peerless fame.”
“Admirals all, for England’s sake,Honour be yours, and fame!And honour, as long as waves shall break,To Nelson’s peerless fame.”
“Admirals all, for England’s sake,
Honour be yours, and fame!
And honour, as long as waves shall break,
To Nelson’s peerless fame.”
IT is a gray, melancholy spring day in the year 1771. You are at Chatham, looking on to the deck of his Majesty’s shipRaisonnable, commanded by Captain Maurice Suckling. The sixty-four is not yet ready for sea; her chief officers are not yet aboard. On the quay you see a thin, delicate-looking lad of twelve years of age dressed in a “middy’s” uniform. The wind bites shrewdly; the lad shivers in his thin jacket, and there is something like a tear in his eye. This morning his father left him in London to make the best of his way to Chatham and there join his ship. He has wandered about, friendless and alone, for hours; he is hungry, footsore, and weary, and he cannot discover the vessel to which he is posted. You feel sorry for the lonely little fellow, but his troubles are now over. A kindly officer accosts him, and brings him on board. The lad’s eyes gleam as he gazes on the ship which is to be his home. He glances down at the almond-white decks; he looks around at grinning lines of black cannon; he turns his eyes aloft to the symmetrical fabric of spars and sails and rigging. It is a wonder-world of delight. There is fascination everywhere—in the red muzzles of the guns, in their white tompions, in the petticoat trousers and long pigtails of the sailors. His young eyes, brilliant with intellect, dart hither and thither; he is astonished and delighted by all the novel sights which he sees.
This frail weakling is Horatio Nelson, the proudest name in the naval annals of his land. He is to develop into the “unique sailor,” the great hero of his race, the man whose statue is decked with laurel and whose fame is eagerly commemorated year by year, though well-nigh a century has elapsed since he passed away.
Horatio Nelson was born in the year before Wolfe captured Quebec. He was the son of a plain country parson with a quiver full of children and a modest income. The future hero first saw the light in the pleasant rectory of Burnham Thorpe, Norfolk. At nine years of age his mother died, and the weak, sickly lad grew up under the care of his grandmother. There was nothing remarkable about the boy’s school days, though many stories are told of his mischievous exploits, his fearlessness, and his high sense of honour. The best-known story relates that as a little boy he strayed from the house on a birds’-nesting excursion, and was absent so long that his grandmother grew alarmed and sent out servants to look for him. At length young Horatio was discovered sitting placidly by the side of a stream which he could not cross. When brought back his grandmother said, “I wonder that you were not driven home by hunger and fear.” “Fear! grandma,” said the boy. “Fear! what is that? I never saw it!” Truly the boy was father to the man. To the end of his life he never saw fear or knew what it meant.
You already know that at twelve years of age Nelson began his naval career as a midshipman on board his uncle’s ship, theRaisonnable. At twenty-one he was a captain in the Royal Navy—“the merest boy of a captain,” as Prince William, afterwards William the Fourth, described him. Nevertheless, there was no better seaman or more gallant officer in the service.
Now let us pass on to the year 1789, when Nelson was thirty-one years of age, and was regarded by those who knew him best as one of the finest commanders in the service. In this year that huge upheaval known as the French Revolution took place. For centuries the kings and nobles of France had grossly mismanaged the country and had bitterly oppressed the people. The State was well-nigh bankrupt, and the land was full of starving and despairing men. In July of this fateful year Paris rose, the Bastille, or State prison, was stormed, the prisoners were released, and the garrison slain. All over the country the peasants revolted, murdered the nobles, and burned their castles. The king was powerless to interfere, and the National Assembly, which had now seized the reins of power, passed laws sweeping away the privileges of the nobles and the rights of the Church. Before long the king and his family tried to escape from the country, but they were brought back and treated as prisoners. Meanwhile large numbers of the nobles had sought refuge abroad, and were urging foreign governments to declare war on France. When the German sovereigns threatened invasion, the French declared war against Austria and Prussia.
Now we must introduce the most dominant figure of the modern world—Napoleon Bonaparte. He was born in Corsica in the year which saw the American colonists beginning to rise against the British Government. In the first year of American independence he was a “gentleman cadet” in the military school at Paris. Here he was chiefly noteworthy as a silent, haughty lad, full of self-love and of great ambition. He was studious and very fond of mathematics and geography, but his abilities were not striking. None of his teachers prophesied for him the astonishing genius which he afterwards displayed. When Nelson was twenty-seven years of age, Napoleon became a lieutenant of artillery. He was a zealous republican, and was placed in command of the artillery which was to besiege the naval port of Toulon, then in possession of the British, who had been called in by the royalist inhabitants of the town. Napoleon conducted the siege with such skill that the British were forced to evacuate the place, not, however, without burning the French fleet which lay in the harbour and destroying the arsenal.
At this juncture Nelson was detailed to besiege certain coast towns of the island of Corsica. He captured Bastia and Calvi, but at the latter place he lost the sight of an eye. A period of dangerous and exhausting service followed. Napoleon was now in command of the army of Italy, and was at the beginning of his extraordinary career. He was marching along the narrow coast-road of the Riviera, and Nelson’s task was to harass his shoreward march. Scarcely a day passed without a skirmish of some kind with a battery, a gunboat, or an armed cruiser. Nelson’s force, however, was inadequate, and Napoleon accomplished his purpose. His victories in Italy were extraordinary, and speedily he was acclaimed on all hands as the greatest general of the republic. As he rose in fame and influence new vistas opened before him, and he soon perceived that the highest office in the State was his to grasp. Next he advanced into Austria itself, and carried all before him. When he was within eighty miles of Vienna the emperor begged for peace, and obtained it at the price of Belgium and Lombardy. Prussia now deserted the allies, and Holland and Spain had already purchased peace by promising the republic the use of their navies. Great Britain was in a state of “splendid isolation,” and all eyes turned to the fleet as the only hope of succour. The banks stopped cash payments, alarm was at its height, and Consols fell to fifty-one. Great Britain had her back to the wall.
Before long, however, the British fleet had its first great success. On February 14, 1797—that glorious St. Valentine’s Day—Admiral Jervis won a splendid victory over the Spanish fleet off Cape St. Vincent. In that confused scene of roaring cannon, rolling clouds of smoke, crash of falling spars, shrieks of the wounded, and stormy huzzas of the half-naked sailors wrestling at the guns, Nelson stands out astheconspicuous figure of the day. At one time he was engaging nine Spanish ships. A little later he was abreast of theSan Josef, pouring in such a murderous fire that speedily she was unmanageable. TheSan Nicolasdrifted on to theSan Josef, and Nelson manœuvred to foul theSan Nicolas. He hooked his sprit-sail yard into her rigging, and then boarded. The ship yielded, but at this moment a fierce fire of musketry was opened from theSan Josef—only a jump away. Instantly Nelson and his men sprang aboard theSan Josef, and as they did so a Spanish officer called out that the ship had surrendered. Thus on the deck of a Spanish man-of-war, which he had boarded across the deck of another then in his possession, Nelson received the swords of the vanquished Spaniards. Already he was the darling of his sailors and a source of pride to the nation.
In a daring but unsuccessful attack on Cadiz he lost an arm, and sank into a state of deep depression, thinking that he had become a burden on his friends and useless to his country. For a time our little one-armed, one-eyed hero retired to a quiet country home; but on April 1, 1798, he was afloat in command of a fleet scouring the Mediterranean with orders to seek the French fleet, and use his best endeavours to take, sink, burn, and destroy it. After a long and anxious quest he at last discovered it anchored in Aboukir Bay. “We are moored in such a manner,” wrote the French admiral, “as to bid defiance to a force more than double our own.” How vain the boast was will shortly appear. The French ships were anchored in single file along the shore, with three miles of shoal water between them and the land, and the admiral believed that no man-of-war could possibly get to the shoreward of him. He had actually piled up his mess gear on the shoreward side of his ships, thus rendering the guns on that side unworkable. As the British fleet drew near, under a press of sail, during the afternoon of August 1, Nelson observed that the enemy’s ships were moored five hundred yards apart, so as to permit them to swing at anchor. Instantly he perceived that where the enemy’s ship could swing there was room enough for one of his squadron to anchor. The French were trapped, and Nelson cried, “Before this time to-morrow I shall have gained a peerage or Westminster Abbey!”
Five ships with men in the chains, heaving the leads, now bore down, rounded the bows of the leading vessel, and got inshore of the French fleet. The rest of Nelson’s ships took up their stations on the seaward side, and at half-past six, just as the sun was setting, the action began. In twelve minutes the leading ship of the enemy was dismasted, and almost at the same instant the third ship of the line suffered the same fate. Black night came on at seven, and only the flash of guns, crimsoning the heavens, lit up the darkness. At half-past eight the fourth and fifth ships of the enemy’s line surrendered. At ten minutes past nine the flagship, theOrient, caught fire. She lay between two British ships, and was almost cut in halves by shot. Her gallant admiral lay dying on the deck, and every moment the flames raged higher.
The burning of theOrientwas the most terribly grand spectacle ever seen in naval warfare. Her magazine was full of powder, and an explosion was inevitable. Such, however, was the heroism of her crew that while the lower decks were in flames, her men continued to work the guns on the upper deck. Huge forked flames and living sheets of fire leapt up as though from the heart of a volcano. She had ceased to fire now, and the remnants of her crew crawled out on the spars like flies. The flames lit up the scene so vividly that even the Arabs could be seen on the shore. At a quarter past eleven she blew up with a thunderous roar, and the battle of the Nile was over. All that remained was to render the victory complete. By three in the morning two ships alone of that proud French fleet had escaped. Next morning Nelson, with a deep wound on his forehead, called the fleet to return public thanksgiving to Almighty God for the most decisive victory that has ever blessed British arms at sea. The number of the enemy taken, drowned, burnt, and missing was 5,225. On the English side 218 were killed and 677 wounded.
Napoleon was at this time in Egypt, which he proceeded to conquer as the first step towards striking at India. The disaster at Aboukir Bay cooped him up in the East. He crossed the desert into Syria, and drove the Turks out of the southern part of the land. Before the walls of Acre, however, his victorious march was checked. The Turks within, and a British fleet under Sir Sidney Smith outside, completely baffled him. In later years Napoleon said, “That man made me miss my destiny.” But for Sir Sidney Smith, Napoleon would have been Emperor of the East. As it was, he was forced to raise the siege of Acre and retire into Egypt, where news reached him that the French armies had suffered some reverses. He left his army in Egypt to get home as best it might, and returned to France, where his friends arranged a revolution. On December 24, 1797, a new French constitution was proclaimed, and shortly afterwards Napoleon became First Consul. He took up his abode in the Tuileries, and was now on the direct highroad to the lofty position which he meant to attain.
Napoleon had pledged his word to save France from her host of enemies, and in May 1800 he took the field once more. Crossing the Great St. Bernard Pass, never before traversed by a large army, he succeeded in planting himself in the rear of the Austrians, and at the battle of Marengo achieved a brilliant victory. Later in the year the French general, Moreau, crushed another Austrian army at Hohenlinden, and then Austria sued for peace.
The Tsar Paul had already abandoned the allies, and now confessed to great admiration for Napoleon, who proceeded to form a league for the purpose of subduing Britain by striking at her trade. He persuaded the northern powers—Russia, Denmark, and Sweden—to mass their fleets and close all their ports against British ships. This was a deep-laid scheme, but it was doomed to failure.
On March 12, 1801, Nelson left Yarmouth Roads as second in command to Sir Hyde Parker, a man of unflinching bravery but of no original ideas. The fleet which these admirals commanded was detailed to destroy the ships of the allies which lay at Copenhagen, backed by formidable batteries. Parker was irresolute as to the route to be taken through the dangerous channels that led to the town. “Let it be by the Sound, by the Belt, or anyhow,” cried Nelson, “only lose not an hour.” We cannot stay to recount the progress of the terrible battle that followed. When twenty of the enemy’s ships were almost destroyed, Nelson offered a truce, which was gladly accepted, and