Montcalm and Wolfe: The Riveting Story of the Heroes of the French & Indian War (20 page)

During these preparations there was active diplomatic correspondence between the two Courts. Mirepoix demanded why British troops were sent to America. Sir Thomas Robinson answered that there was no intention to disturb the peace or offend any Power whatever; yet the secret orders to Braddock were the reverse of pacific. Robinson asked on his part the purpose of the French armament at Brest and Rochefort; and the answer, like his own, was a protestation that no hostility was meant. At the same time Mirepoix in the name of the King proposed that orders should be given to the American governors on both sides to refrain from all acts of aggression. But while making this proposal the French Court secretly sent orders to Duquesne to attack and destroy Fort Halifax, one of the two forts lately built by Shirley on the Kennebec,—a river which, by the admission of the French themselves, belonged to the English. But, in making this attack, the French Governor was expressly enjoined to pretend that he acted without orders.
²
He was also told that, if necessary, he might make use of the Indians to harass the English.
³
Thus there was good faith on neither part; but it is clear through all the correspondence that the English expected to gain by precipitating an open rupture, and the French by postponing it. Projects of convention were proposed on both sides, but there was no agreement. The English insisted as a preliminary condition that the French should evacuate all the western country as far as the Wabash. Then ensued a long discussion of their respective claims, as futile as the former discussion at Paris on Acadian boundaries.
⁴

The British Court knew perfectly the naval and military preparations of the French. Lord Albemarle had died at Paris in December; but the secretary of the
embassy, De Cosne, sent to London full information concerning the fleet at Brest and Rochefort.
¹
On this, Admiral Boscawen, with eleven ships of the line and one frigate, was ordered to intercept it; and as his force was plainly too small, Admiral Holbourne, with seven more ships, was sent, nearly three weeks after, to join him if he could. Their orders were similar,—to capture or destroy any French vessels bound to North America.
²
Boscawen, who got to sea before La Motte, stationed himself near the southern coast of Newfoundland to cut him off; but most of the French squadron eluded him, and safely made their way, some to Louisbourg, and the others to Quebec. Thus the English expedition was, in the main, a failure. Three of the French ships, however, lost in fog and rain, had become separated from the rest, and lay rolling and tossing on an angry sea not far from Cape Race. One of them was the “Alcide,” commanded by Captain Hocquart; the others were the “Lis” and the “Dauphin.” The wind fell; but the fogs continued at intervals; till, on the afternoon of the seventh of June, the weather having cleared, the watchman on the maintop saw the distant ocean studded with ships. It was the fleet of Boscawen. Hocquart, who gives the account, says that in the morning they were within three leagues of him, crowding all sail in pursuit. Towards eleven o’clock one of them, the “Dunkirk,” was abreast of him to windward, within short speaking distance; and the ship of the Admiral, displaying a red flag as a signal to engage, was not far off. Hocquart called out: “Are we at peace, or war?” He declares that Howe, captain of the “Dunkirk,” replied in French: “La paix, la paix.” Hocquart then asked the name of the British admiral; and on hearing it said: “I know him; he is a friend of mine.” Being asked his own name in return, he had scarcely uttered it when the batteries of the “Dunkirk” belched flame and smoke, and volleyed a tempest of iron upon the crowded decks of the “Alcide.” She returned the fire, but was forced at length to strike her colors. Rostaing, second in command of the troops, was killed; and six other officers, with about eighty men, were killed or wounded.
³
At the same time the “Lis” was attacked and overpowered. She had on board eight companies of the battalions of La Reine and Languedoc. The third French ship, the “Dauphin,” escaped under cover of a rising fog.
⁴

Here at last was an end to negotiation. The sword was drawn and brandished in the eyes of Europe.

1
Dinwiddie to the Lords of Trade,
24
July,
1754.
Ibid. to Delancey,
20
June,
1754.

1
For a contemporary account of Williamsburg, Burnaby,
Travels in North America,
6. Smyth,
Tour in America,
I. 17, describes it some years later.

2
The English traveller Smyth, in his
Tour,
gives a curious and vivid picture of Virginian life. For the social condition of this and other colonies before the Revolution, one cannot do better than to consult Lodge's
Short History of the English Colonies
.

3
Dinwiddie to Hamilton,
6
Sept
., 1754.
Ibid. to J. Abercrombie,
1
Sept
., 1754.

4
Hening, VI. 435.

1
The Earl of Holdernesse to the Governors in America,
28
Aug
. 1753.

2
Colonial Records of Pa
., V. 748.

3
Pennsylvania Archives,
II. 235.
Colonial Records of Pa
., VI. 22-26.
Works of Franklin,
III. 265.

1
Colonial Records of Pa
., VI. 215.

2
Morris to Penn,
1
Jan
. 1755.

3
Address of the Assembly to Lieutenant-Governor Delancey,
23
April,
1754.
Lords of Trade to Delancey,
5
July,
1754.

4
Delancey to Lords of Trade,
8
Oct
. 1754.

5
Massachusetts Archives,
1754. Hutchinson, III. 26.
Conduct of Major-General Shirley briefly stated. Journals of the Board of Trade,
1754.

1
N.Y. Col. Docs
., VI. 788.
Colonial Records of Pa
., V. 625.

2
N.Y. Col. Docs
., VI. 813.

3
Circular Letter of Lords of Trade to Governors in America,
18
Sept
. 1753.
Lords of Trade to Sir Danvers Osborne,
in
N.Y. Col. Docs
., VI. 800.

1
Proceedings of the Congress at Albany, N.Y. Col. Docs
., VI. 853. A few verbal changes, for the sake of brevity, are made in the above extracts.

2
Kennedy,
Importance of gaining and preserving the Friendship of the Indians
.

3
On the Albany plan of union,
Franklin’s Works,
I. 177. Shirley thought it “a great strain upon the prerogative of the Crown,” and was for requiring the colonies to raise money and men “without farther consulting them upon any points whatever.”
Shirley to Robinson,
24
Dec
. 1754.

1
Dinwiddie Papers;
letters to Granville, Albemarle, Halifax, Fox, Holdernesse, Horace Walpole, and Lords of Trade.

2
Walpole,
George II
., I. 344.

1
Entick,
Late War,
I. 118.

2
Robinson to Lords of the Admiralty,
30
Sept
. 1754.
Ibid., to Board of Ordnance,
10
Oct
. 1754.
Ibid., Circular Letter to American Governors,
26
Oct
. 1754.
Instructions to our Trusty and Well-beloved Edward Braddock,
25
Nov
. 1754.

1
Lettres de Cremille, de Rostaing, et de Doreil au Ministre, Avril
18, 24, 28, 29, 1755.
Liste des Vaisseaux de Guerre qui composent l’Escadre armée à Brest,
1755.
Journal of M. de Vaudreuil’s Voyage to Canada,
in
N.Y. Col. Docs
., X. 297. Pouchot, I. 25.

2
Machault à Duquesne,
17
Fév
. 1755. The letter of Mirepoix proposing mutual abstinence from aggression, is dated on the 6th of the same month. The French dreaded Fort Halifax, because they thought it prepared the way for an advance on Quebec by way of the Chaudière.

3
Ibid
.

4
This correspondence is printed among the
Pièces justificatives
of the
Précis des Faits
.

1
Particulars in Entick, I. 121.

2
Secret Instructions for our Trusty and Well-beloved Edward Boscawen, Esq., Vice-Admiral of the Blue,
16
April,
1755.
Most secret Instructions for Francis Holbourne, Esq., Rear-Admiral of the Blue,
9
May,
1755.
Robinson to Lords of the Admiralty,
8
May,
1755.

3
Liste des Officiers tués et blessés dans le Combat de l’Alcide et du Lis
.

4
Hocquart’s account is given in full by Pichon,
Lettres et Mémoires pour servir à l’Histoire du Cap-Breton
. The short account in
Précis des Faits,
272, seems, too, to be drawn from Hocquart. Also
Boscawen to Robinson,
22
June,
1755.
Vaudreuil au Ministre,
24
Juillet,
1755. Entick, I. 137.
Some English accounts say that Captain Howe, in answer to the question, “Are we at peace, or war?” returned, “I don’t know; but you had better prepare for war.” Boscawen places the action on the 10th, instead of the 8th, and puts the English loss at seven killed and twenty-seven wounded.

VII

1755

B
RADDOCK

Arrival of Braddock · His Character · Council at Alexandria · Plan of the Campaign · Apathy of the Colonists · Rage of Braddock · Franklin · Fort Cumberland · Composition of the Army · Offended Friends · The March · The French Fort · Savage Allies · The Captive · Beaujeu · He goes to meet the English · Passage of the Monongahela · The Surprise · The Battle · Rout of Braddock · His Death · Indian Ferocity · Reception of the Ill News · Weakness of Dunbar · The Frontier abandoned

“I have the pleasure to acquaint you that General Braddock came to my house last Sunday night,” writes Dinwiddie, at the end of February, to Governor Dobbs of North Carolina. Braddock had landed at Hampton from the ship “Centurion,” along with young Commodore Keppel, who commanded the American squadron. “I am mighty glad,” again writes Dinwiddie, “that the General is arrived, which I hope will give me some ease; for these twelve months past I have been a perfect slave.” He conceived golden opinions of his guest. “He is, I think, a very fine officer, and a sensible, considerate gentleman. He and I live in great harmony.”

Had he known him better, he might have praised him less. William Shirley, son of the Governor of Massachusetts, was Braddock’s secretary; and after an acquaintance of some months wrote to his friend Governor Morris: “We have a general most judiciously chosen for being disqualified for the service he is employed in in almost every respect. He may be brave for aught I know, and he is honest in pecuniary matters.”
¹
The astute Franklin, who also had good opportunity of knowing him, says: “This general was, I think, a brave man, and might probably have made a good figure in some European war. But he had too much self-confidence; too high an opinion of the validity of regular troops; too mean a one of both Americans and Indians.”
²
Horace Walpole, in his function of gathering and immortalizing the gossip of his time, has left a sharply drawn
sketch of Braddock in two letters to Sir Horace Mann, written in the summer of this year: “I love to give you an idea of our characters as they rise upon the stage of history. Braddock is a very Iroquois in disposition. He had a sister who, having gamed away all her little fortune at Bath, hanged herself with a truly English deliberation, leaving only a note upon the table with those lines: ‘To die is landing on some silent shore,’
etc.
When Braddock was told of it, he only said: ‘Poor Fanny! I always thought she would play till she would be forced to
tuck herself up
.’ ” Under the name of Miss Sylvia S——, Goldsmith, in his life of Nash, tells the story of this unhappy woman. She was a rash but warm-hearted creature, reduced to penury and dependence, not so much by a passion for cards as by her lavish generosity to a lover ruined by his own follies, and with whom her relations are said to have been entirely innocent. Walpole continues: “But a more ridiculous story of Braddock, and which is recorded in heroics by Fielding in his
Covent Garden Tragedy,
was an amorous discussion he had formerly with a Mrs. Upton, who kept him. He had gone the greatest lengths with her pin-money, and was still craving. One day, that he was very pressing, she pulled out her purse and showed him that she had but twelve or fourteen shillings left. He twitched it from her: ‘Let me see that.’ Tied up at the other end he found five guineas. He took them, tossed the empty purse in her face, saying: ‘Did you mean to cheat me?’ and never went near her more. Now you are acquainted with General Braddock.

“He once had a duel with Colonel Gumley, Lady Bath’s brother, who had been his great friend. As they were going to engage, Gumley, who had good-humor and wit (Braddock had the latter), said: ‘Braddock, you are a poor dog! Here, take my purse; if you kill me, you will be forced to run away, and then you will not have a shilling to support you.’ Braddock refused the purse, insisted on the duel, was disarmed, and would not even ask his life. However, with all his brutality, he has lately been governor of Gibraltar, where he made himself adored, and where scarce any governor was endured before.”
¹

Another story is told of him by an accomplished actress of the time, George Anne Bellamy, whom Braddock had known from girlhood, and with whom his present relations seem to have been those of an elderly adviser and friend. “As we were walking in the Park one day, we heard a poor fellow was to be chastised; when I requested the General to beg off the offender. Upon his application to the general officer, whose name was Dury, he asked Braddock how long since he had divested himself of the brutality and insolence of his manners? To which the other replied: ‘You never knew me insolent to my inferiors. It is only to such rude men as yourself that I behave with the spirit which I think they deserve.’ ”

Braddock made a visit to the actress on the evening before he left London for America. “Before we parted,” she says, “the General told me that he should never see me more; for he was going with a handful of men to conquer whole
nations; and to do this they must cut their way through unknown woods. He produced a map of the country, saying at the same time: ‘Dear Pop, we are sent like sacrifices to the altar,’ ”
¹
—a strange presentiment for a man of his sturdy temper.

Whatever were his failings, he feared nothing, and his fidelity and honor in the discharge of public trusts were never questioned. “Desperate in his fortune, brutal in his behavior, obstinate in his sentiments,” again writes Walpole, “he was still intrepid and capable.”
²
He was a veteran in years and in service, having entered the Coldstream Guards as ensign in 1710.

The transports bringing the two regiments from Ireland all arrived safely at Hampton, and were ordered to proceed up the Potomac to Alexandria, where a camp was to be formed. Thither, towards the end of March, went Braddock himself, along with Keppel and Dinwiddie, in the Governor’s coach; while his aide-de-camp, Orme, his secretary, Shirley, and the servants of the party followed on horseback. Braddock had sent for the elder Shirley and other provincial governors to meet him in council; and on the fourteenth of April they assembled in a tent of the newly formed encampment. Here was Dinwiddie, who thought his troubles at an end, and saw in the red-coated soldiery the near fruition of his hopes. Here, too, was his friend and ally, Dobbs of North Carolina; with Morris of Pennsylvania, fresh from Assembly quarrels; Sharpe of Maryland, who, having once been a soldier, had been made a sort of provisional commander-in-chief before the arrival of Braddock; and the ambitious Delancey of New York, who had lately led the opposition against the Governor of that province, and now filled the office himself,—a position that needed all his manifold adroitness. But, next to Braddock, the most noteworthy man present was Shirley, governor of Massachusetts. There was a fountain of youth in this old lawyer. A few years before, when he was boundary commissioner in Paris, he had had the indiscretion to marry a young Catholic French girl, the daughter of his landlord; and now, when more than sixty years old, he thirsted for military honors, and delighted in contriving operations of war. He was one of a very few in the colonies who at this time entertained the idea of expelling the French from the continent. He held that Carthage must be destroyed; and, in spite of his Parisian marriage, was the foremost advocate of the root-and-branch policy. He and Lawrence, governor of Nova Scotia, had concerted an attack on the French fort of Beauséjour; and, jointly with others in New England, he had planned the capture of Crown Point, the key of Lake Champlain. By these two strokes and by fortifying the portage between the Kennebec and the Chaudière, he thought that the northern colonies would be saved from invasion, and placed in a position to become themselves invaders. Then, by driving the enemy from Niagara, securing that important pass, and thus cutting off the communication between Canada and her interior dependencies, all the
French posts in the West would die of inanition.
¹
In order to commend these schemes to the Home Government, he had painted in gloomy colors the dangers that beset the British colonies. Our Indians, he said, will all desert us if we submit to French encroachment. Some of the provinces are full of negro slaves, ready to rise against their masters, and of Roman Catholics, Jacobites, indented servants, and other dangerous persons, who would aid the French in raising a servile insurrection. Pennsylvania is in the hands of Quakers, who will not fight, and of Germans, who are likely enough to join the enemy. The Dutch of Albany would do anything to save their trade. A strong force of French regulars might occupy that place without resistance, then descend the Hudson, and, with the help of a naval force, capture New York and cut the British colonies asunder.
²

The plans against Crown Point and Beauséjour had already found the approval of the Home Government and the energetic support of all the New England colonies. Preparation for them was in full activity; and it was with great difficulty that Shirley had disengaged himself from these cares to attend the council at Alexandria. He and Dinwiddie stood in the front of opposition to French designs. As they both defended the royal prerogative and were strong advocates of taxation by Parliament, they have found scant justice from American writers. Yet the British colonies owed them a debt of gratitude, and the American States owe it still.

Braddock laid his instructions before the Council, and Shirley found them entirely to his mind; while the General, on his part, fully approved the schemes of the Governor. The plan of the campaign was settled. The French were to be attacked at four points at once. The two British regiments lately arrived were to advance on Fort Duquesne; two new regiments, known as Shirley’s and Pepperell’s, just raised in the provinces, and taken into the King’s pay, were to reduce Niagara; a body of provincials from New England, New York, and New Jersey was to seize Crown Point; and another body of New England men to capture Beauséjour and bring Acadia to complete subjection. Braddock himself was to lead the expedition against Fort Duquesne. He asked Shirley, who, though a soldier only in theory, had held the rank of colonel since the last war, to charge himself with that against Niagara; and Shirley eagerly assented. The movement on Crown Point was intrusted to Colonel William Johnson, by reason of his influence over the Indians and his reputation for energy, capacity, and faithfulness. Lastly, the Acadian enterprise was assigned to Lieutenant-Colonel Monckton, a regular officer of merit.

To strike this fourfold blow in time of peace was a scheme worthy of Newcastle and of Cumberland. The pretext was that the positions to be attacked were all on British soil; that in occupying them the French had been guilty of invasion; and that to expel the invaders would be an act of self-defence. Yet in
regard to two of these positions, the French, if they had no other right, might at least claim one of prescription. Crown Point had been twenty-four years in their undisturbed possession, while it was three quarters of a century since they first occupied Niagara; and, though New York claimed the ground, no serious attempt had been made to dislodge them.

Other matters now engaged the Council. Braddock, in accordance with his instructions, asked the governors to urge upon their several assemblies the establishment of a general fund for the service of the campaign; but the governors were all of opinion that the assemblies would refuse,—each being resolved to keep the control of its money in its own hands; and all present, with one voice, advised that the colonies should be compelled by Act of Parliament to contribute in due proportion to the support of the war. Braddock next asked if, in the judgment of the Council, it would not be well to send Colonel Johnson with full powers to treat with the Five Nations, who had been driven to the verge of an outbreak by the misconduct of the Dutch Indian commissioners at Albany. The measure was cordially approved, as was also another suggestion of the General, that vessels should be built at Oswego to command Lake Ontario. The Council then dissolved.

Shirley hastened back to New England, burdened with the preparation for three expeditions and the command of one of them. Johnson, who had been in the camp, though not in the Council, went back to Albany, provided with a commission as sole superintendent of Indian affairs, and charged, besides, with the enterprise against Crown Point; while an express was despatched to Monckton at Halifax, with orders to set at once to his work of capturing Beauséjour.
¹

In regard to Braddock’s part of the campaign, there had been a serious error. If, instead of landing in Virginia and moving on Fort Duquesne by the long and circuitous route of Wills Creek, the two regiments had disembarked at Philadelphia and marched westward, the way would have been shortened, and would have lain through one of the richest and most populous districts on the continent, filled with supplies of every kind. In Virginia, on the other hand, and in the adjoining province of Maryland, wagons, horses, and forage were scarce. The enemies of the Administration ascribed this blunder to the influence of the Quaker merchant, John Hanbury, whom the Duke of Newcastle had consulted as a person familiar with American affairs. Hanbury, who was a prominent stockholder in the Ohio Company, and who traded largely in Virginia, saw it for his interest that the troops should pass that way; and is said to have brought the Duke to this opinion.
²
A writer of the time thinks that if they had
landed in Pennsylvania, forty thousand pounds would have been saved in money, and six weeks in time.
¹

Not only were supplies scarce, but the people showed such unwillingness to furnish them, and such apathy in aiding the expedition, that even Washington was provoked to declare that “they ought to be chastised.”
²
Many of them thought that the alarm about French encroachment was a device of designing politicians; and they did not awake to a full consciousness of the peril till it was forced upon them by a deluge of calamities, produced by the purblind folly of their own representatives, who, instead of frankly promoting the expedition, displayed a perverse and exasperating narrowness which chafed Braddock to fury. He praises the New England colonies, and echoes Dinwiddie’s declaration that they have shown a “fine martial spirit,” and he commends Virginia as having done far better than her neighbors; but for Pennsylvania he finds no words to express his wrath.
³
He knew nothing of the intestine war between proprietaries and people, and hence could see no palliation for a conduct which threatened to ruin both the expedition and the colony. Everything depended on speed, and speed was impossible; for stores and provisions were not ready, though notice to furnish them had been given months before. The quartermaster-general, Sir John Sinclair, “stormed like a lion rampant,” but with small effect.
⁴
Contracts broken or disavowed, want of horses, want of wagons, want of forage, want of wholesome food, or sufficient food of any kind, caused such delay that the report of it reached England, and drew from Walpole the comment that Braddock was in no hurry to be scalped. In reality he was maddened with impatience and vexation.