Montcalm and Wolfe: The Riveting Story of the Heroes of the French & Indian War (38 page)

“Everything is horribly dear in this country; and I shall find it hard to make the two ends of the year meet, with the twenty-five thousand francs the King gives me. The Chevalier de Lévis did not join me till yesterday. His health is excellent. In a few days I shall send him to one camp, and M. de Bourlamaque to another; for we have three of them: one at Carillon, eighty leagues from here, towards the place where M. de Dieskau had his affair last year; another at Frontenac, sixty leagues; and the third at Niagara, a hundred and forty leagues. I don’t know when or whither I shall go myself; that depends on the movements of the enemy. It seems to me that things move slowly in this new world; and I shall have to moderate my activity accordingly. Nothing but the King’s service and the wish to make a career for my son could prevent me from thinking too much of my expatriation, my distance from you, and the dull existence here, which would be duller still if I did not manage to keep some little of my natural gayety.”

The military situation was somewhat perplexing. Iroquois spies had brought reports of great preparations on the part of the English. As neither party dared offend these wavering tribes, their warriors could pass with impunity from one to the other, and were paid by each for bringing information, not always trustworthy. They declared that the English were gathering in force to renew the attempt made by Johnson the year before against Crown Point and Ticonderoga, as well as that made by Shirley against forts Frontenac and Niagara. Vaudreuil had spared no effort to meet the double danger. Lotbinière, a Canadian engineer, had been busied during the winter in fortifying Ticonderoga, while Pouchot, a captain in the battalion of Béarn, had rebuilt Niagara, and two French engineers were at work in strengthening the defences of Frontenac. The Governor even hoped to take the offensive, anticipate the movements of the English, capture Oswego, and obtain the complete command of Lake Ontario. Early in the spring a blow had been struck which materially aided these schemes.

The English had built two small forts to guard the Great Carrying Place on the route to Oswego. One of these, Fort Williams, was on the Mohawk; the other, Fort Bull, a mere collection of storehouses surrounded by a palisade, was four miles distant, on the bank of Wood Creek. Here a great quantity of stores and ammunition had imprudently been collected against the opening campaign. In February Vaudreuil sent Léry, a colony officer, with three hundred and sixty-two picked men, soldiers, Canadians, and Indians, to seize these two posts. Towards the end of March, after extreme hardship, they reached the road that connected them, and at half-past five in the morning captured twelve men going with wagons to Fort Bull. Learning from them the weakness of that place, they dashed forward to surprise it. The thirty provincials of Shirley’s regiment who formed the garrison had barely time to shut the gate, while the assailants fired on them through the loopholes, of which they got possession in the tumult. Léry called on the defenders to yield; but they refused, and pelted the French for an hour with bullets and hand-grenades. The gate was at last beat down with axes, and they were summoned again; but again refused, and fired hotly through the opening. The French rushed in, shouting
Vive le roi,
and a frightful struggle followed. All the garrison were killed, except two or three who hid themselves till the slaughter was over; the fort was set on fire and blown to atoms by the explosion of the magazines; and Léry then withdrew, not venturing to attack Fort Williams. Johnson, warned by Indians of the approach of the French, had pushed up the Mohawk with reinforcements; but came too late.
¹

Vaudreuil, who always exaggerates any success in which he has had part, says that besides bombs, bullets, cannon-balls, and other munitions, forty-five thousand pounds of gunpowder were destroyed on this occasion. It is certain that damage enough was done to retard English operations in the direction of Oswego sufficiently to give the French time for securing all their posts on Lake Ontario. Before the end of June this was in good measure done. The battalion of Béarn lay encamped before the now strong fort of Niagara, and the battalions of Guienne and La Sarre, with a body of Canadians, guarded Frontenac against attack. Those of La Reine and Languedoc had been sent to Ticonderoga, while the Governor, with Montcalm and Lévis, still remained at Montreal watching the turn of events.
²
Hither, too, came the intendant François Bigot, the most accomplished knave in Canada, yet indispensable for his vigor and executive skill; Bougainville, who had disarmed the jealousy of Vaudreuil, and now stood high in his good graces; and the Adjutant-General, Montreuil, clearly a vain and pragmatic personage, who, having come to Canada with Dieskau the year before, thought it behooved him to give the General the advantage of his experience. “I like M. de Montcalm very much,” he writes to the minister, “and will do the impossible to deserve his confidence. I have spoken to him in the same terms as to M. Dieskau; thus: ‘Trust only the French regulars for an expedition, but use the Canadians and Indians to harass the enemy. Don’t expose yourself; send me to carry your orders to points of danger.’ The colony officers do not like those from France. The Canadians are independent, spiteful, lying, boastful; very good for skirmishing, very brave behind a tree, and very timid when not under cover. I think both sides will stand on the defensive. It does not seem to me that M. de Montcalm means to attack the enemy; and I think he is right. In this country a thousand men could stop three thousand.”
³

“M. de Vaudreuil overwhelms me with civilities,” Montcalm writes to the Minister of War. “I think that he is pleased with my conduct towards him, and that it persuades him there are general officers in France who can act under his orders without prejudice or ill-humor.”
⁴
“I am on good terms with him,” he says again; “but not in his confidence, which he never gives to anybody from France. His intentions are good, but he is slow and irresolute.”
¹

Indians presently brought word that ten thousand English were coming to attack Ticonderoga. A reinforcement of colony regulars was at once despatched to join the two battalions already there; a third battalion, Royal Roussillon, was sent after them. The militia were called out and ordered to follow with all speed, while both Montcalm and Lévis hastened to the supposed scene of danger.
²
They embarked in canoes on the Richelieu, coasted the shore of Lake Champlain, passed Fort Frederic or Crown Point, where all was activity and bustle, and reached Ticonderoga at the end of June. They found the fort, on which Lotbinière had been at work all winter, advanced towards completion. It stood on the crown of the promontory, and was a square with four bastions, a ditch, blown in some parts out of the solid rock, bomb-proofs, barracks of stone, and a system of exterior defences as yet only begun. The rampart consisted of two parallel walls ten feet apart, built of the trunks of trees, and held together by transverse logs dovetailed at both ends, the space between being filled with earth and gravel well packed.
³
Such was the first Fort Ticonderoga, or Carillon,—a structure quite distinct from the later fort of which the ruins still stand on the same spot. The forest had been hewn away for some distance around, and the tents of the regulars and huts of the Canadians had taken its place; innumerable bark canoes lay along the strand, and gangs of men toiled at the unfinished works.

Ticonderoga was now the most advanced position of the French, and Crown Point, which had before held that perilous honor, was in the second line. Lévis, to whom had been assigned the permanent command of this post of danger, set out on foot to explore the neighboring woods and mountains, and slept out several nights before he reappeared at the camp. “I do not think,” says Montcalm, “that many high officers in Europe would have occasion to take such tramps as this. I cannot speak too well of him. Without being a man of brilliant parts, he has good experience, good sense, and a quick eye; and, though I had served with him before, I never should have thought that he had such promptness and efficiency. He has turned his campaigns to good account.”
⁴
Lévis writes of his chief with equal warmth. “I do not know if the Marquis de Montcalm is pleased with me, but I am sure that I am very much so with him, and shall always be charmed to serve under his orders. It is not for me, Monseigneur, to speak to you of his merit and his talents. You know him better than anybody else; but I may have the honor of assuring you that he has pleased everybody in this colony, and manages affairs with the Indians extremely well.”
⁵

The danger from the English proved to be still remote, and there was ample leisure in the camp. Duchat, a young captain in the battalion of Languedoc, used it in writing to his father a long account of what he saw about him,—the forests full of game; the ducks, geese, and partridges; the prodigious flocks of wild pigeons that darkened the air; the bears, the beavers; and above all the Indians, their canoes, dress, ball-play, and dances. “We are making here,” says the military prophet, “a place that history will not forget. The English colonies have ten times more people than ours; but these wretches have not the least knowledge of war, and if they go out to fight, they must abandon wives, children, and all that they possess. Not a week passes but the French send them a band of
hairdressers,
whom they would be very glad to dispense with. It is incredible what a quantity of scalps they bring us. In Virginia they have committed unheard-of cruelties, carried off families, burned a great many houses, and killed an infinity of people. These miserable English are in the extremity of distress, and repent too late the unjust war they began against us. It is a pleasure to make war in Canada. One is troubled neither with horses nor baggage; the King provides everything. But it must be confessed that if it costs no money, one pays for it in another way, by seeing nothing but pease and bacon on the mess-table. Luckily the lakes are full of fish, and both officers and soldiers have to turn fishermen.”
¹

Meanwhile, at the head of Lake George, the raw bands of ever-active New England were mustering for the fray.

1
This passage is given by Somervogel from the original letter.

1
The account of Montcalm up to this time is chiefly from his unpublished autobiography, preserved by his descendants, and entitled
Mémoires pour servir à l’Histoire de ma Vie
. Somervogel,
Comme on servait autrefois;
Bonnechose,
Montcalm et le Canada;
Martin,
Le Marquis de Montcalm; Éloge de Montcalm; Autre Éloge de Montcalm; Mémoires sur le Canada,
1749-1760, and other writings in print and manuscript have also been consulted.

1
Journal de Bougainville
. This is a fragment; his Journal proper begins a few weeks later.

2
Lévis à
——, 5
Avril,
1756.

1
These extracts are translated from copies of the original letters, in possession of the present Marquis de Montcalm.

2
Vaudreuil au Ministre,
30
Oct
. 1755.

3
Ordres du Roy et Dépêches des Ministres, Fév
. 1756.

1
Le Ministre à Vaudreuil,
15
Mars,
1756.
Commission du Marquis de Montcalm. Mémoire du Roy pour servir d’Instruction au Marquis de Montcalm
.

2
Ordres du Roy et Dépêches des Ministres,
1756.
Le Ministre à Vaudreuil,
15
Mars,
1756.

3
Vaudreuil au Ministre,
16
Juin,
1756. “Qu’il ne se mêle que du commandement des troupes de terre.”

4
Of about twelve hundred who came with Montcalm, nearly three hundred were now in hospital. The four battalions that came with Dieskau are reported at the end of May to have sixteen hundred and fifty-three effective men.
État de la Situation actuelle des Bataillons,
appended to Montcalm’s despatch of 12 June. Another document,
Détail de ce qui s’est passé en Canada, Juin,
1755,
jusqu’à Juin,
1756, sets the united effective strength of the battalions in Canada at twenty-six hundred and seventy-seven, which was increased by recruits which arrived from France about midsummer.

1
Except, perhaps, the battalion of Béarn, which formerly wore, and possibly wore still, a uniform of light blue.

2
Susane,
Ancienne Infanterie Française
. In the atlas of this work are colored plates of the uniforms of all the regiments of foot.

3
On the
troupes de la marine,
—
Mémoire pour servir d’Instruction à MM. Jonquière et Bigot,
30
Avril,
1749.
Ordres du Roy et Dépêches des Ministres,
1750.
Ibid.,
1755.
Ibid.,
1757.
Instruction pour Vaudreuil,
22
Mars,
1755.
Ordonnance pour l’Augmentation de Soldats dans les Compagnies de Canada,
14
Mars,
1755.
Duquesne au Ministre,
26
Oct
. 1753.
Ibid.,
30
Oct
. 1753.
Ibid.,
29
Fév
. 1754.
Duquesne à Marin,
27
Août,
1753.
Atlas de Susane
.

1
Récapitulation des Milices du Gouvernement de Canada,
1750.
Dénombrement des Milices,
1758, 1759. On the militia, see also Bougainville in Margry,
Relations et Mémoires inédits,
60, and
N.Y. Col. Docs.,
X. 680.