Montcalm and Wolfe: The Riveting Story of the Heroes of the French & Indian War (37 page)

Reaching Brest, the place of embarkation, he writes to his mother: “I have business on hand still. My health is good, and the passage will be a time of rest. I embrace you, and my dearest, and my daughters. Love to all the family. I shall write up to the last moment.”

No translation can give an idea of the rapid, abrupt, elliptical style of this familiar correspondence, where the meaning is sometimes suggested by a single word, unintelligible to any but those for whom it is written.

At the end of March Montcalm, with all his following, was ready to embark; and three ships of the line, the “Léopard,” the “Héros,” and the “Illustre,” fitted out as transports, were ready to receive the troops; while the General, with Lévis and Bourlamaque, were to take passage in the frigates “Licorne,” “Sauvage,” and “Sirène.” “I like the Chevalier de Lévis,” says Montcalm, “and I think he likes me.” His first aide-de-camp, Bougainville, pleased him, if possible, still more. This young man, son of a notary, had begun life as an advocate in the Parliament of Paris, where his abilities and learning had already made him conspicuous, when he resigned the gown for the sword, and became a captain of dragoons. He was destined in later life to win laurels in another career, and to become one of the most illustrious of French navigators. Montcalm, himself a scholar, prized his varied talents and accomplishments, and soon learned to feel for him a strong personal regard.

The troops destined for Canada were only two battalions, one belonging to the regiment of La Sarre, and the other to that of Royal Roussillon. Louis XV. and Pompadour sent a hundred thousand men to fight the battles of Austria, and could spare but twelve hundred to reinforce New France. These troops marched into Brest at early morning, breakfasted in the town, and went at once on board the transports, “with an incredible gayety,” says Bougainville. “What a nation is ours! Happy he who commands it, and commands it worthily!”
¹
Montcalm and he embarked in the “Licorne,” and sailed on the third of April, leaving Lévis and Bourlamaque to follow a few days after.
²

The voyage was a rough one. “I have been fortunate,” writes Montcalm to his wife, “in not being ill nor at all incommoded by the heavy gale we had in Holy Week. It was not so with those who were with me, especially M. Estève, my secretary, and Joseph, who suffered cruelly,—seventeen days without being able to take anything but water. The season was very early for such a hard voyage, and it was fortunate that the winter has been so mild. We had very favorable weather till Monday the twelfth; but since then till Saturday evening we had rough weather, with a gale that lasted ninety hours, and put us in real danger. The forecastle was always under water, and the waves broke twice over the quarter-deck. From the twenty-seventh of April to the evening of the fourth of May we had fogs, great cold, and an amazing quantity of icebergs. On the thirtieth, when luckily the fog lifted for a time, we counted sixteen of them. The day before, one drifted under the bowsprit, grazed it, and might have crushed us if the deck-officer had not called out quickly,
Luff
. After speaking of our troubles and sufferings, I must tell you of our pleasures, which were fishing for cod and eating it. The taste is exquisite. The head, tongue, and liver are morsels worthy of an epicure. Still, I would not advise anybody to make the voyage for their sake. My health is as good as it has been for a long time. I found it a good plan to eat little and take no supper; a little tea now and then, and plenty of lemonade. Nevertheless I have taken very little liking for the sea, and think that when I shall be so happy as to rejoin you I shall end my voyages there. I don’t know when this letter will go. I shall send it by the first ship that returns to France, and keep on writing till then. It is pleasant, I know, to hear particulars about the people one loves, and I thought that my mother and you, my dearest and most beloved, would be glad to read all these dull details. We heard Mass on Easter Day. All the week before, it was impossible, because the ship rolled so that I could hardly keep my legs. If I had dared, I think I should have had myself lashed fast. I shall not soon forget that Holy Week.”

This letter was written on the eleventh of May, in the St. Lawrence, where the ship lay at anchor, ten leagues below Quebec, stopped by ice from proceeding farther. Montcalm made his way to the town by land, and soon after learned with great satisfaction that the other ships were safe in the river below. “I see,” he writes again, “that I shall have plenty of work. Our campaign will soon begin. Everything is in motion. Don’t expect details about our operations; generals never speak of movements till they are over. I can only tell you that the winter has been quiet enough, though the savages have made great havoc in Pennsylvania and Virginia, and carried off, according to their custom, men, women, and children. I beg you will have High Mass said at Montpellier or Vauvert to thank God for our safe arrival and ask for good success in future.”
¹

Vaudreuil, the governor-general, was at Montreal, and Montcalm sent a courier to inform him of his arrival. He soon went thither in person, and the two men met for the first time. The new general was not welcome to Vaudreuil, who had hoped to command the troops himself, and had represented to the Court that it was needless and inexpedient to send out a general officer from France.
²
The Court had not accepted his views;
³
and hence it was with more curiosity than satisfaction that he greeted the colleague who had been assigned him. He saw before him a man of small stature, with a lively countenance, a keen eye, and, in moments of animation, rapid, vehement utterance, and nervous gesticulation. Montcalm, we may suppose, regarded the Governor with no less attention. Pierre François Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil, was son of Philippe de Vaudreuil, who had governed Canada early in the century; and he himself had been governor of Louisiana. He had not the force of character which his position demanded, lacked decision in times of crisis; and though tenacious of authority, was more jealous in asserting than self-reliant in exercising it. One of his traits was a sensitive egotism, which made him forward to proclaim his own part in every success, and to throw on others the burden of every failure. He was facile by nature, and capable of being led by such as had skill and temper for the task. But the impetuous Montcalm was not of their number; and the fact that he was born in France would in itself have thrown obstacles in his way to the good graces of the Governor. Vaudreuil, Canadian by birth, loved the colony and its people, and distrusted Old France and all that came out of it. He had been bred, moreover, to the naval service; and, like other Canadian governors, his official correspondence was with the minister of marine, while that of Montcalm was with the minister of war. Even had Nature made him less suspicious, his relations with the General would have been critical. Montcalm commanded the regulars from France, whose very presence was in the eyes of Vaudreuil an evil, though a necessary one. Their chief was, it is true, subordinate to him in virtue of his office of governor;
¹
yet it was clear that for the conduct of the war the trust of the Government was mainly in Montcalm; and the Minister of War had even suggested that he should have the immediate command, not only of the troops from France, but of the colony regulars and the militia. An order of the King to this effect was sent to Vaudreuil, with instructions to communicate it to Montcalm or withhold it, as he should think best.
²
He lost no time in replying that the General “ought to concern himself with nothing but the command of the troops from France”; and he returned the order to the minister who sent it.
³
The Governor and the General represented the two parties which were soon to divide Canada,—those of New France and of Old.

A like antagonism was seen in the forces commanded by the two chiefs. These were of three kinds,—the
troupes de terre,
troops of the line, or regulars from France; the
troupes de la marine,
or colony regulars; and lastly the militia. The first consisted of the four battalions that had come over with Dieskau and the two that had come with Montcalm, comprising in all a little less than three thousand men.
⁴
Besides these, the battalions of Artois and Bourgogne, to the number of eleven hundred men, were in garrison at Louisbourg. All these troops wore a white uniform, faced with blue, red, yellow, or violet,
¹
a black three-cornered hat, and gaiters, generally black, from the foot to the knee. The subaltern officers in the French service were very numerous, and were drawn chiefly from the class of lesser nobles. A well-informed French writer calls them “a generation of
petits-maîtres,
dissolute, frivolous, heedless, light-witted; but brave always, and ready to die with their soldiers, though not to suffer with them.”
²
In fact the course of the war was to show plainly that in Europe the regiments of France were no longer what they had once been. It was not so with those who fought in America. Here, for enduring gallantry, officers and men alike deserve nothing but praise.

The
troupes de la marine
had for a long time formed the permanent military establishment of Canada. Though attached to the naval department, they served on land, and were employed as a police within the limits of the colony, or as garrisons of the outlying forts, where their officers busied themselves more with fur-trading than with their military duties. Thus they had become ill-disciplined and inefficient, till the hard hand of Duquesne restored them to order. They originally consisted of twenty-eight independent companies, increased in 1750 to thirty companies, at first of fifty, and afterwards of sixty-five men each, forming a total of nineteen hundred and fifty rank and file. In March, 1757, ten more companies were added. Their uniform was not unlike that of the troops attached to the War Department, being white, with black facings. They were enlisted for the most part in France; but when their term of service expired, and even before, in time of peace, they were encouraged to become settlers in the colony, as was also the case with their officers, of whom a great part were of European birth. Thus the relations of the
troupes de la marine
with the colony were close; and they formed a sort of connecting link between the troops of the line and the native militia.
³
Besides these colony regulars, there was a company of colonial artillery, consisting this year of seventy men, and replaced in 1757 by two companies of fifty men each.

All the effective male population of Canada, from fifteen years to sixty, was enrolled in the militia, and called into service at the will of the Governor. They received arms, clothing, equipment, and rations from the King, but no pay; and instead of tents they made themselves huts of bark or branches. The best of them were drawn from the upper parts of the colony, where habits of bushranging were still in full activity. Their fighting qualities were much like those of the Indians, whom they rivalled in endurance and in the arts of forest war. As bush-fighters they had few equals; they fought well behind earthworks, and were good at a surprise or sudden dash; but for regular battle on the open field they were of small account, being disorderly, and apt to break and take to cover at the moment of crisis. They had no idea of the great operations of war. At first they despised the regulars for their ignorance of woodcraft, and thought themselves able to defend the colony alone; while the regulars regarded them in turn with a contempt no less unjust. They were excessively given to gasconade, and every true Canadian boasted himself a match for three Englishmen at least. In 1750 the militia of all ranks counted about thirteen thousand; and eight years later the number had increased to about fifteen thousand.
¹
Until the last two years of the war, those employed in actual warfare were but few. Even in the critical year 1758 only about eleven hundred were called to arms, except for two or three weeks in summer;
²
though about four thousand were employed in transporting troops and supplies, for which service they received pay.

To the white fighting force of the colony are to be added the red men. The most trusty of them were the Mission Indians, living within or near the settled limits of Canada, chiefly the Hurons of Lorette, the Abenakis of St. Francis and Batiscan, the Iroquois of Caughnawaga and La Présentation, and the Iroquois and Algonkins at the Two Mountains on the Ottawa. Besides these, all the warriors of the west and north, from Lake Superior to the Ohio, and from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, were now at the beck of France. As to the Iroquois or Five Nations who still remained in their ancient seats within the present limits of New York, their power and pride had greatly fallen; and crowded as they were between the French and the English, they were in a state of vacillation, some leaning to one side, some to the other, and some to each in turn. As a whole, the best that France could expect from them was neutrality.

Montcalm at Montreal had more visits than he liked from his red allies. “They are
vilains messieurs,”
he informs his mother, “even when fresh from their toilet, at which they pass their lives. You would not believe it, but the men always carry to war, along with their tomahawk and gun, a mirror to daub their faces with various colors, and arrange feathers on their heads and rings in their ears and noses. They think it a great beauty to cut the rim of the ear and stretch it till it reaches the shoulder. Often they wear a laced coat, with no shirt at all. You would take them for so many masqueraders or devils. One needs the patience of an angel to get on with them. Ever since I have been here, I have had nothing but visits, harangues, and deputations of these gentry. The Iroquois ladies, who always take part in their government, came also, and did me the honor to bring me belts of wampum, which will oblige me to go to their village and sing the war-song. They are only a little way off. Yesterday we had eighty-three warriors here, who have gone out to fight. They make war with astounding cruelty, sparing neither men, women, nor children, and take off your scalp very neatly,—an operation which generally kills you.