Montcalm and Wolfe: The Riveting Story of the Heroes of the French & Indian War (45 page)

The garrison, including rangers, consisted of three hundred and forty-six effective men.
¹
The fort was not strong, and a resolute assault by numbers so superior must, it seems, have overpowered the defenders; but the Canadians and Indians who composed most of the attacking force were not suited for such work; and, disappointed in his hope of a surprise, Rigaud withdrew them at daybreak, after trying in vain to burn the buildings outside. A few hours after, the whole body reappeared, filing off to surround the fort, on which they kept up a brisk but harmless fire of musketry. In the night they were heard again on the ice, approaching as if for an assault; and the cannon, firing towards the sound, again drove them back. There was silence for a while, till tongues of flame lighted up the gloom, and two sloops, icebound in the lake, and a large number of bateaux on the shore were seen to be on fire. A party sallied to save them; but it was too late. In the morning they were all consumed, and the enemy had vanished.

It was Sunday, the twentieth. Everything was quiet till noon, when the French filed out of the woods and marched across the ice in procession, ostentatiously carrying their scaling-ladders, and showing themselves to the best effect. They stopped at a safe distance, fronting towards the fort, and several of them advanced, waving a red flag. An officer with a few men went to meet them, and returned bringing Le Mercier, chief of the Canadian artillery, who, being led blindfold into the fort, announced himself as bearer of a message from Rigaud. He was conducted to the room of Major Eyre, where all the British officers were assembled; and, after mutual compliments, he invited them to give up the place peaceably, promising the most favorable terms, and threatening a general assault and massacre in case of refusal. Eyre said that he should defend himself to the last; and the envoy, again blindfolded, was led back to whence he came.

The whole French force now advanced as if to storm the works, and the garrison prepared to receive them. Nothing came of it but a fusillade, to which the British made no reply. At night the French were heard advancing again, and each man nerved himself for the crisis. The real attack, however, was not against the fort, but against the buildings outside, which consisted of several storehouses, a hospital, a saw-mill, and the huts of the rangers, besides a sloop on the stocks and piles of planks and cord-wood. Covered by the night, the assailants crept up with fagots of resinous sticks, placed them against the farther side of the buildings, kindled them, and escaped before the flame rose; while the garrison, straining their ears in the thick darkness, fired wherever they heard a sound. Before morning all around them was in a blaze, and they had much ado to save the fort barracks from the shower of burning cinders. At ten o’clock the fires had subsided, and a thick fall of snow began, filling the air with a restless chaos of large moist flakes. This lasted all day and all the next night, till the ground and the ice were covered to a depth of three feet and more. The French lay close in their camps till a little before dawn on Tuesday morning, when twenty volunteers from the regulars made a bold attempt to burn the sloop on the stocks, with several storehouses and other structures, and several hundred scows and whaleboats which had thus far escaped. They were only in part successful; but they fired the sloop and some buildings near it, and stood far out on the ice watching the flaming vessel, a superb bonfire amid the wilderness of snow. The spectacle cost the volunteers a fourth of their number killed and wounded.

On Wednesday morning the sun rose bright on a scene of wintry splendor, and the frozen lake was dotted with Rigaud’s retreating followers toiling towards Canada on show-shoes. Before they reached it many of them were blinded for a while by the insufferable glare, and their comrades led them homewards by the hand.
¹

1
Review of Military Operations,
187, 189 (Dublin, 1757).

2
Loudon to Shirley,
6
Sept
. 1756.

3
The correspondence on both sides is before me, copied from the originals in the Public Record Office.

4
“The principal thing for which I sent Mr. Mackellar to Oswego was to strengthen Fort Ontario as much as he possibly could.”
Shirley to Loudon,
4 Sept. 1756.

1
Works of Franklin,
I. 220.

2
“Nous sommes tant à Carillon qu’aux postes avancés 5,300 hommes.” Bougainville,
Journal
.

3
Winslow to Loudon,
29
Sept
. 1756.

4
Examination of Sergeant James Archibald
.

5
In the Public Record Office,
America and West Indies,
LXXXII., is a manuscript map showing the positions of such of these posts as were north of Virginia. They are thirty-five in number, from the head of James River to a point west of Esopus, on the Hudson.

6
Colonial Records of Pa
., VII. 76.

1
Washington to Morris,
——
April,
1756.

2
Colonial Records of Pa
., VII. 232, 242;
Pennsylvania Archives,
II. 744.

1
Report of Armstrong to Governor Denny,
14
Sept
. 1756, in
Colonial Records of Pa
., VII. 257,—a modest yet very minute account.
A List of the Names of the Persons killed, wounded, and missing in the late Expedition against the Kittanning
. Hazard,
Pennsylvania Register,
I. 366.

2
Dumas à Vaudreuil,
9
Sept
. 1756, cited in
Bigot au Ministre,
6
Oct
. 1756, and in Bougainville,
Journal
.

1
Dépêches de Vaudreuil,
1756.

2
Minute of Lieutenant Kennedy’s Scout. Winslow to Loudon,
20
Sept
. 1756.

3
Winslow to Loudon,
16
Oct
. 1756.

4
Report of a Scout to Ticonderoga, Oct
. 1756, signed Israel Putnam.

5
Compare Massachusetts Archives, LXXVI. 81.

1
Bougainville;
Journal
.

1
A large engraved portrait of him, nearly at full length, is before me, printed at London in 1776.

2
Rogers,
Journals, Introduction
(1765).

3
Provincial Papers of New Hampshire,
VI. 364.
Correspondence of Gage,
1766.
N.Y. Col. Docs
., VII. 990. Caleb Stark,
Memoir and Correspondence of John Stark,
386.

4
Rogers,
Journals. Report of the Adjutant-General of New Hampshire
(1866), II. 158, 159.

1
Letter and Order Books of Winslow
. “One Lydiass...whom we suspect for a French spy; he lives better than anybody, without any visible means, and his daughters have had often presents from Mr. Vaudreuil.”
Loudon
(
to Fox?
), 19
Aug
. 1756.

1
Report of Rogers to Sir William Johnson, July,
1756. This incident is suppressed in the printed
Journals,
which merely say that the man “soon died.”

2
Rogers, Journals,
20.
Shirley to Fox,
26
July,
1756. “This afternoon Capt. Rogers came down with 4 scalps and 8 prisoners which he took on Lake Champlain, between 20 and 30 miles beyond Crown Point.”
Surgeon Williams to his Wife,
16
July,
1756.

3
Bougainville,
Journal
.

1
This kind of divination was practised by Algonkin tribes from the earliest times. See
Pioneers of France in the New World,
315.

2
Bougainville,
Journal
. Malartic,
Journal
.

3
Letter and Order Books of Winslow. Winslow to Halifax,
30 Dec. 1756.

1
Loudon to Denny,
28
Oct
. 1756.
Colonial Records of Pa
., VII. 358-380.
Loudon to Pitt,
10
March,
1757.
Notice of Colonel Bouquet, in Pennsylvania Magazine,
III. 124.
The Conduct of a Noble Commander in America impartially reviewed
(1758).

2
Smith,
Hist. of N.Y
., Part II. 242.
William Corry to Johnson,
15
Jan
., 1757, in Stone,
Life of Sir William Johnson,
II. 24,
note. Loudon to Hardy,
21
Nov
. 1756.

3
Massachusetts Archives, LXXVI. 153.

1
Rogers,
Journals,
38-44. Caleb Stark,
Memoir and Correspondence of John Stark,
18, 412.
Return of Killed, Wounded, and Missing in the Action near Ticonderoga, Jan
. 1757; all the names are here given. James Abercromby, aide-de-camp to his uncle, General Abercromby, wrote to Rogers from Albany: “You cannot imagine how all ranks of people here are pleased with your conduct and your men’s behavior.”
The accounts of the French writers differ from each other, but agree in placing the English force at from seventy to eighty, and their own much higher. The principal report is that of
Vaudreuil au Ministre,
19
Avril,
1757 (his second letter of this date). Bougainville, Montcalm, Malartic, and Montreuil all speak of the affair, placing the English loss much higher than is shown by the returns. The story, repeated in most of the French narratives, that only three of the rangers reached Fort William Henry, seems to have arisen from the fact that Stark with two men went thither in advance of the rest. As regards the antecedents of the combat, the French and English accounts agree.

1
Strength of the Garrison of Fort William Henry when the Enemy came before it,
enclosed in the letter of
Major Eyre to Loudon,
26
March,
1757. There were also one hundred and twenty-eight invalids.

1
Eyre to Loudon,
24
March,
1757.
Ibid.,
25
March,
enclosed in Loudon’s despatch of 25 April, 1757.
Message of Rigaud to Major Eyre,
20
March,
1757.
Letter from Fort William Henry,
26
March,
1757, in
Boston Gazette, No
. 106, and
Boston Evening Post, No
. 1,128.
Abstract of Letters from Albany,
in
Boston News Letter, No
. 2,860. Caleb Stark,
Memoir and Correspondence of John Stark,
22, a curious mixture of truth and error.
Relation de la Campagne sur le Lac St. Sacrement pendant l’Hiver,
1757. Bougainville,
Journal
. Malartic,
Journal
.
Montcalm au Ministre,
24
Avril,
1757.
Montreuil au Ministre,
23
Avril,
1757.
Montcalm à sa Mère,
1
Avril,
1757.
Mémoires sur le Canada,
1749-1760.
The French loss in killed and wounded is set by Montcalm at eleven. That of the English was seven, slightly wounded, chiefly in sorties. They took three prisoners. Stark was touched by a bullet, for the only time in his adventurous life.

XIV

1757

M
ONTCALM AND
V
AUDREUIL

The Seat of War · Social Life at Montreal · Familiar Correspondence of Montcalm · His Employments · His Impressions of Canada · His Hospitalities · Misunderstandings with the Governor · Character of Vaudreuil · His Accusations · Frenchmen and Canadians · Foibles of Montcalm · The opening Campaign · Doubts and Suspense · Loudon’s Plan · His Character · Fatal Delays · Abortive Attempt against Louisbourg · Disaster to the British Fleet

Spring came at last, and the Dutch burghers of Albany heard, faint from the far height, the clamor of the wild-fowl, streaming in long files northward to their summer home. As the aërial travellers winged their way, the seat of war lay spread beneath them like a map. First the blue Hudson, slumbering among its forests, with the forts along its banks, Half-Moon, Stillwater, Saratoga, and the geometric lines and earthen mounds of Fort Edward. Then a broad belt of dingy evergreen; and beyond, released from wintry fetters, the glistening breast of Lake George, with Fort William Henry at its side, amid charred ruins and a desolation of prostrate forests. Hence the lake stretched northward, like some broad river, trenched between mountain ranges still leafless and gray. Then they looked down on Ticonderoga, with the flag of the Bourbons, like a flickering white speck, waving on its ramparts; and next on Crown Point with its tower of stone. Lake Champlain now spread before them, widening as they flew: on the left, the mountain wilderness of the Adirondacks, like a stormy sea congealed; on the right, the long procession of the Green Mountains; and, far beyond, on the dim verge of the eastern sky, the White Mountains throned in savage solitude. They passed over the bastioned square of Fort St. John, Fort Chambly guarding the rapids of the Richelieu, and the broad belt of the St. Lawrence, with Montreal seated on its bank. Here we leave them, to build their nests and hatch their brood among the fens of the lonely North.

Montreal, the military heart of Canada, was in the past winter its social centre also, where were gathered conspicuous representatives both of Old France and of New; not men only, but women. It was a sparkling fragment of the reign of Louis XV. dropped into the American wilderness. Montcalm was here with his staff and his chief officers, now pondering schemes of war, and now turning in thought to his beloved Château of Candiac, his mother, children, and wife, to whom he sent letters with every opportunity. To his wife he writes: “Think of me affectionately; give love to my girls. I hope next year I may be with you all. I love you tenderly, dearest.” He says that he has sent her a packet of marten-skins for a muff; “and another time I shall send some to our daughter; but I should like better to bring them myself.” Of this eldest daughter he writes in reply to a letter of domestic news from Madame de Montcalm: “The new gown with blonde trimmings must be becoming, for she is pretty.” Again, “There is not an hour in the day when I do not think of you, my mother and my children.” He had the tastes of a country gentleman, and was eager to know all that was passing on his estate. Before leaving home he had set up a mill to grind olives for oil, and was well pleased to hear of its prosperity. “It seems to be a good thing, which pleases me very much. Bougainville and I talk a great deal about the oil-mill.” Some time after, when the King sent him the coveted decoration of the
cordon rouge,
he informed Madame de Montcalm of the honor done him, and added: “But I think I am better pleased with what you tell me of the success of my oil-mill.”

To his mother he writes of his absorbing occupations, and says: “You can tell my dearest that I have no time to occupy myself with the ladies, even if I wished to.” Nevertheless he now and then found leisure for some little solace in his banishment; for he writes to Bourlamaque, whom he had left at Quebec, after a visit which he had himself made there early in the winter: “I am glad you sometimes speak of me to the three ladies in the Rue du Parloir; and I am flattered by their remembrance, especially by that of one of them, in whom I find at certain moments too much wit and too many charms for my tranquillity.” These ladies of the Rue du Parloir are several times mentioned in his familiar correspondence with Bourlamaque.

His station obliged him to maintain a high standard of living, to his great financial detriment, for Canadian prices were inordinate. “I must live creditably, and so I do; sixteen persons at table every day. Once a fortnight I dine with the Governor-General and with the Chevalier de Lévis, who lives well too. He has given three grand balls. As for me, up to Lent I gave, besides dinners, great suppers, with ladies, three times a week. They lasted till two in the morning; and then there was dancing, to which company came uninvited, but sure of a welcome from those who had been at supper. It is very expensive, not very amusing, and often tedious. At Quebec, where we spent a month, I gave receptions or parties, often at the Intendant’s house. I like my gallant Chevalier de Lévis very much. Bourlamaque was a good choice; he is steady and cool, with good parts. Bougainville has talent, a warm head, and warm heart; he will ripen in time. Write to Madame Cornier that I like her husband; he is perfectly well, and as impatient for peace as I am. Love to my daughters, and all affection and respect to my mother. I live only in the hope of joining you all again. Nevertheless, Montreal is as good a place as Alais even in time of peace, and better now, because the Government is here; for the Marquis de Vaudreuil, like me, spent only a month at Quebec. As for Quebec, it is as good as the best cities of France, except ten or so. Clear sky, bright sun; neither spring nor autumn, only summer and winter. July, August, and September, hot as in Languedoc: winter insupportable; one must keep always indoors. The ladies
spirituelles, galantes, dévotes
. Gambling at Quebec, dancing and conversation at Montreal. My friends the Indians, who are often unbearable, and whom I treat with perfect tranquillity and patience, are fond of me. If I were not a sort of general, though very subordinate to the Governor, I could gossip about the plans of the campaign, which it is likely will begin on the tenth or fifteenth of May. I worked at the plan of the last affair [
Rigaud’s expedition to Fort William Henry
], which might have turned out better, though good as it was. I wanted only eight hundred men. If I had had my way, Monsieur de Lévis or Monsieur de Bougainville would have had charge of it. However, the thing was all right, and in good hands. The Governor, who is extremely civil to me, gave it to his brother; he thought him more used to winter marches. Adieu, my heart; I adore and love you!”

To meet his manifold social needs, he sends to his wife orders for prunes, olives, anchovies, muscat wine, capers, sausages, confectionery, cloth for liveries, and many other such items; also for scent-bags of two kinds, and perfumed pomatum for presents; closing in postscript with an injunction not to forget a dozen pint-bottles of English lavender. Some months after, he writes to Madame de Saint-Véran: “I have got everything that was sent me from Montpellier except the sausages. I have lost a third of what was sent from Bordeaux. The English captured it on board the ship called ‘La Superbe;’ and I have reason to fear that everything sent from Paris is lost on board ‘La Liberté.’ I am running into debt here. Pshaw! I must live. I do not worry myself. Best love to you, my mother.”

When Rigaud was about to march with his detachment against Fort William Henry, Montcalm went over to La Prairie to see them. “I reviewed them,” he writes to Bourlamaque, “and gave the officers a dinner, which, if anybody else had given it, I should have said was a grand affair. There were two tables, for thirty-six persons in all. On Wednesday there was an Assembly at Madame Varin’s; on Friday the Chevalier de Lévis gave a ball. He invited sixty-five ladies, and got only thirty, with a great crowd of men. Rooms well lighted, excellent order, excellent service, plenty of refreshments of every sort all through the night; and the company stayed till seven in the morning. As for me, I went to bed early. I had had that day eight ladies at a supper given to Madame Varin. To-morrow I shall have half-a-dozen at another supper, given to I don’t know whom, but incline to think it will be La Roche Beaucour. The gallant Chevalier is to give us still another ball.”

Lent put a check on these festivities. “To-morrow,” he tells Bourlamaque, “I shall throw myself into devotion with might and main [
à corps perdu
]. It will be easier for me to detach myself from the world and turn heavenward here at Montreal than it would be at Quebec.” And, some time after, “Bougainville spent Monday delightfully at Isle
Ste.
Hélène, and Tuesday devoutly with the Sulpitian Fathers at the Mountain. I was there myself at four o’clock, and did them the civility to sup in their refectory at a quarter before six.”

In May there was a complete revival of social pleasures, and Montcalm wrote to Bourlamaque: “Madame de Beaubassin’s supper was very gay. There were toasts to the Rue du Parloir and to the General. To-day I must give a dinner to Madame de Saint-Ours, which will be a little more serious. Péan is gone to establish himself at La Chine, and will come back with La Barolon, who goes thither with a husband of hers, bound to the Ohio with Villejoin and Louvigny. The Chevalier de Lévis amuses himself very much here. He and his friends spend all their time with Madame de Lenisse.”

Under these gayeties and gallantries there were bitter heart-burnings. Montcalm hints at some of them in a letter to Bourlamaque, written at the time of the expedition to Fort William Henry, which, in the words of Montcalm, who would have preferred another commander, the Governor had ordered to march “under the banners of brother Rigaud.” “After he got my letter on Sunday evening,” says the disappointed General, “Monsieur de Vaudreuil sent me his secretary with the instructions he had given his brother,” which he had hitherto withheld. “This gave rise after dinner to a long conversation with him; and I hope for the good of the service that his future conduct will prove the truth of his words. I spoke to him with frankness and firmness of the necessity I was under of communicating to him my reflections; but I did not name any of the persons who, to gain his good graces, busy themselves with destroying his confidence in me. I told him that he would always find me disposed to aid in measures tending to our success, even should his views, which always ought to prevail, be different from mine; but that I dared flatter myself that he would henceforward communicate his plans to me sooner; for, though his knowledge of the country gave greater weight to his opinions, he might rest satisfied that I should second him in methods and details. This explanation passed off becomingly enough, and ended with a proposal to dine on a moose’s nose [
an esteemed morsel
] the day after to-morrow. I burn your letters, Monsieur, and I beg you to do the same with mine, after making a note of anything you may want to keep.” But Bourlamaque kept all the letters, and bound them in a volume, which still exists.
¹

Montcalm was not at this time fully aware of the feeling of Vaudreuil towards him. The touchy egotism of the Governor and his jealous attachment to the colony led him to claim for himself and the Canadians the merit of every achievement and to deny it to the French troops and their general. Before the capture of Oswego was known, he wrote to the naval minister that Montcalm would never have dared attack that place if he had not encouraged him and answered his timid objections.
¹
“I am confident that I shall reduce it,” he adds; “my expedition is sure to succeed if Monsieur de Montcalm follows the directions I have given him.” When the good news came he immediately wrote again, declaring that the victory was due to his brother Rigaud and the Canadians, who, he says, had been illused by the General, and not allowed either to enter the fort or share the plunder, any more than the Indians, who were so angry at the treatment they had met that he had great difficulty in appeasing them. He hints that the success was generally ascribed to him. “There has been a great deal of talk here; but I will not do myself the honor of repeating it to you, especially as it relates to myself. I know how to do violence to my self-love. The measures I took assured our victory, in spite of opposition. If I had been less vigilant and firm, Oswego would still be in the hands of the English. I cannot sufficiently congratulate myself on the zeal which my brother and the Canadians and Indians showed on this occasion; for without them my orders would have been given in vain. The hopes of His Britannic Majesty have vanished, and will hardly revive again; for I shall take care to crush them in the bud.”
²

The pronouns “I” and “my” recur with monotonous frequency in his correspondence. “I have laid waste all the British provinces.” “By promptly uniting my forces at Carillon, I have kept General Loudon in check, though he had at his disposal an army of about twenty thousand men”;
³
and so without end, in all varieties of repetition. It is no less characteristic that he here assigns to his enemies double their actual force.

He has the faintest of praise for the troops from France. “They are generally good, but thus far they have not absolutely distinguished themselves. I do justice to the firmness they showed at Oswego; but it was only the colony troops, Canadians, and Indians who attacked the forts. Our artillery was directed by the Chevalier Le Mercier and M. Frémont [
colony officers
], and was served by our colony troops and our militia. The officers from France are more inclined to defence than attack. Far from spending the least thing here, they lay by their pay. They saved the money allowed them for refreshments, and had it in pocket at the end of the campaign. They get a profit, too, out of their provisions, by having certificates made under borrowed names, so that they can draw cash for them on their return. It is the same with the soldiers, who also sell their provisions to the King and get paid for them. In conjunction with M. Bigot, I labor to remedy all these abuses; and the rules we have established have saved the King a considerable expense. M. de Montcalm has complained very much of these rules.” The Intendant Bigot, who here appears as a reformer, was the centre of a monstrous system of public fraud and robbery; while the charges against the French officers are unsupported. Vaudreuil, who never loses an opportunity of disparaging them, proceeds thus:—