Montcalm and Wolfe: The Riveting Story of the Heroes of the French & Indian War (61 page)

3
N.Y. Col. Docs.,
X. 893. Lotbinière’s relative, Vaudreuil, confirms the statement. Montcalm had not, as has been said, begun already to fall back.

Notes - 4

1
Abercromby to Pitt,
12
July,
1758.

2
Great-uncle of the writer, and son of the Rev. Ebenezer Parkman, a graduate of Harvard, and minister of Westborough, Mass.

3
Chesterfield,
Letters,
IV. 260 (ed. Mahon).

4
Wolfe to his Father,
7
Aug.
1758, in Wright, 450.

5
Pitt to Grenville,
22
Aug.
1758, in
Grenville Papers,
I. 262.

6
Pouchot,
Dernière Guerre de l’Amérique,
I. 140.

7
Letter from Camp,
12
June,
1758, in
Boston Evening Post
. Another, in
Boston News Letter,
contains similar statements.

Notes - 5

1
Mrs. Grant,
Memoirs of an American Lady,
226 (ed. 1876).

2
Letter from Lake George,
in
Boston News Letter
.

Notes - 6

1
See
Appendix G
.

2
Letter from Lake George,
in
Boston News Letter
. Even Rogers, the ranger, speaks of the beauty of the scene.

3
Between the old and new steamboat-landings, and parts adjacent.

Notes - 7

1
Abercromby to Pitt,
12
July,
1758.

2
Pouchot, I. 145.

Notes - 8

1
N.Y.
Col. Docs
., X. 708.

2
Abercromby to Barrington,
12
July,
1758. “At least eight feet high.” Rogers,
Journals,
116.

3
A Swiss officer of the Royal Americans, writing on the 14th, says that there were two, and in some parts three, rows of loopholes. See the letter in
Pennsylvania Archives,
III. 472.

4
Colonel Oliver Partridge to his Wife,
12
July,
1758.

Notes - 9

1
A new line of works was begun four days after the battle, to replace the log breastwork. Malartic,
Journal. Travaux faits à Carillon,
1758.

2
Doreil au Ministre,
28
Juillet,
1758. The Chevalier Johnstone thought that Montcalm was saved by Abercromby’s ignorance of the ground.
A Dialogue in Hades
(Quebec Historical Society).

3
See the letter in Knox, I. 148.

Notes - 10

1
Pouchot, I. 137.

2
Livre d’Ordres, Disposition de Défense des Retranchements,
8
Juillet,
1758.

3
Montcalm,
Relation de la Victoire remportée à Carillon,
8
Juillet,
1758. Vaudreuil puts the number at 4,760, besides officers, which includes the garrison and laborers at the fort.
Vaudreuil au Ministre,
28
Juillet,
1758.

Notes - 11

1
Pouchot, I. 153. Both Niles and Entick mention the incident.

Notes - 12

1
Letter from Saratoga,
12
July,
1758, in
New Hampshire Gazette
. Compare
Pennsylvania Archives,
III. 474.

2
Letter from Lake George,
26
July,
1758, in
Boston Gazette
. The story is given, without much variation, in several other letters.

3
Letter of Lieutenant William Grant,
in
Maclachlan’s Highlands,
II. 340 (ed. 1875).

4
Ibid
., II. 339.

Notes - 13

1
See
Appendix G
.

2
Lévis au Ministre,
13
Juillet,
1758.

Notes - 14

1
Along with the above paraphrase I may give that of Montcalm himself, which was also inscribed on the cross:—

“Chrétien! ce ne fut point Montcalm et la prudence,

Ces arbres renversés, ces héros, leurs exploits,

Qui des Anglais confus ont brisé l’espérance;

C’est le bras de ton Dieu, vainqueur sur cette croix.”

In the same letter in which Montcalm sent these lines to his mother he says: “Je vous envoie, pour vous amuser, deux chansons sur le combat du 8 Juillet, dont l’une est en style des poissardes de Paris.” One of these songs, which were written by soldiers after the battle, begins,—

“Je chante des François
La valeur et la gloire,
Qui toujours sur l’Anglois
Remportent la victoire.
Ce sont des héros,
Tous nos généraux,
Et Montcalm et Lévis,
Et Bourlamaque aussi.

“Mars, qui les engendra
Pour l’honneur de la France,
D’abord les anima
De sa haute vaillance,
Et les transporta
Dans le Canada,
Où l’on voit les François
Culbuter les Anglois.”

The other effusion of the military muse is in a different strain, “en style des poissardes de Paris.” The following is a specimen, given
literatim
:—

“L’aumônier fit l’exhortation,
Puis il donnit l’absolution;
Aisément cela se peut croire.
Enfants, dit-il, animez-vous!
L’bon Dieu, sa mere, tout est pour vous.

S—
é! j’sommes catholiques. Les Anglois sont des hérétiques
.

“Ce sont des chiens; à coups d’pieds, a coups d’poings faut leur casser la gueule et la mâchoire.

“Soldats, officiers, généraux,
Chacun en ce jour fut héros.
Aisément cela se peut croire.
Montcalm, comme défunt Annibal,
S’montroit soldat et général.

S—
é! sil y avoit quelqu’un qui ne l’aimît point!

“Je veux être un chien; à coups d’pieds, a coups d’poings, j’lui cass’rai la gueule et la mâchoire.”
This is an allusion to Vaudreuil. On the battle of Ticonderoga, see
Appendix G
.

XXI

F
ORT
F
RONTENAC

The Routed Army · Indignation at Abercromby · John Cleaveland and his Brother Chaplains · Regulars and Provincials · Provincial Surgeons · French Raids · Rogers defeats Marin · Adventures of Putnam · Expedition of Bradstreet · Capture of Fort Frontenac

The rashness of Abercromby before the fight was matched by his poltroonery after it. Such was his terror that on the evening of his defeat he sent an order to Colonel Cummings, commanding at Fort William Henry, to send all the sick and wounded and all the heavy artillery to New York without delay.
¹
He himself followed so closely upon this disgraceful missive that Cummings had no time to obey it.

The defeated and humbled troops proceeded to reoccupy the ground they had left a few days before in the flush of confidence and pride; and young Colonel Williams, of Massachusetts, lost no time in sending the miserable story to his uncle Israel. His letter, which is dated “Lake George (sorrowful situation), July y
^e
11
^th
,” ends thus: “I have told facts; you may put the epithets upon them. In one word, what with fatigue, want of sleep, exercise of mind, and leaving the place we went to capture, the best part of the army is unhinged. I have told enough to make you sick, if the relation acts on you as the facts have on me.”

In the routed army was the sturdy John Cleaveland, minister of Ipswich, and now chaplain of Bagley’s Massachusetts regiment, who regarded the retreat with a disgust that was shared by many others. “This day,” he writes in his Diary, at the head of Lake George, two days after the battle, “wherever I went I found people, officers and soldiers, astonished that we left the French ground, and commenting on the strange conduct in coming off.” From this time forth the provincials called their commander Mrs. Nabbycromby.
²
He thought of nothing but fortifying himself. “Towards evening,” continues the chaplain, “the General, with his Rehoboam counsellors, came over to line out a fort on the rocky hill where our breastwork was last year. Now we begin to think strongly that the grand expedition against Canada is laid aside, and a foundation made totally to impoverish our country.” The whole army was soon intrenched. The chaplain of Bagley’s, with his brother Ebenezer, chaplain of another regiment, one day walked round the camp and carefully inspected it. The tour proved satisfactory to the militant divines, and John Cleaveland reported to his wife: “We have built an extraordinary good breastwork, sufficient to defend ourselves against twenty thousand of the enemy, though at present we have not above a third part of that number fit for duty.” Many of the troops had been sent to the Mohawk, and others to the Hudson.

In the regiment of which Cleaveland was chaplain there was a young surgeon from Danvers, Dr. Caleb Rea, who also kept a copious diary, and, being of a serious turn, listened with edification to the prayers and exhortations to which the yeoman soldiery were daily summoned. In his zeal, he made an inquest among them for singers, and chose the most melodious to form a regimental choir, “the better to carry on the daily service of singing psalms”; insomuch that the New England camp was vocal with rustic harmony, sincere, if somewhat nasal. These seemly observances were not inconsistent with a certain amount of disorder among the more turbulent spirits, who, removed from the repressive influence of tight-laced village communities, sometimes indulged in conduct which grieved the conscientious surgeon. The rural New England of that time, with its narrowness, its prejudices, its oddities, its combative energy, and rugged, unconquerable strength, is among the things of the past, or lingers in remote corners where the whistle of the locomotive is never heard. It has spread itself in swarming millions over half a continent, changing with changing conditions; and even the part of it that clings to the ancestral hive has transformed and continues to transform itself.

The provincials were happy in their chaplains, among whom there reigned a marvellous harmony, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists meeting twice a week to hold prayer-meetings together. “A rare instance indeed,” says Dr. Rea, “and perhaps scarce ever was an army blessed with such a set of chaplains before.” On one occasion, just before the fatal expedition, nine of them, after prayers and breakfast, went together to call upon the General. “He treated us very kindly,” says the chaplain of Bagley’s, “and told us that he hoped we would teach the people to do their duty and be courageous; and told us a story of a chaplain in Germany, where he was, who just before the action told the soldiers he had not time to say much, and therefore should only say: ‘Be courageous; for no cowards go to heaven.’ The General treated us to a bowl of punch and a bottle of wine, and then we took our leave of him.”
¹

When Cleaveland and the more gifted among his brethren preached of a Sunday, officers and men of the regulars, no less than the provincials, came to listen; yet that pious Sabbatarian, Dr. Rea, saw much to afflict his conscience. “Sad, sad it is to see how the Sabbath is profaned in the camp,” above all by “the horrid custom of swearing, more especially among the regulars; and I can’t but charge our defeat on this sin.”

It would have been well had the harmony that prevailed among the chaplains found its counterpart among the men of the sword; but between the British regular officers and those of the provinces there was anything but an equal brotherhood. It is true that Pitt, in the spirit of conciliation which he always showed towards the colonies, had procured a change in the regulations concerning the relative rank of British and provincial officers, thus putting them in a position much nearer equality; but this, while appeasing the provincials, seems to have annoyed the others. Till the campaign was nearly over, not a single provincial colonel had been asked to join in a council of war; and, complains Cleaveland, “they know no more of what is to be done than a sergeant, till the orders come out.” Of the British officers, the greater part had seen but little active service. Most of them were men of family, exceedingly prejudiced and insular, whose knowledge of the world was limited to certain classes of their own countrymen, and who looked down on all others, whether domestic or foreign. Towards the provincials their attitude was one of tranquil superiority, though its tranquillity was occasionally disturbed by what they regarded as absurd pretension on the part of the colony officers. One of them gave vent to his feelings in an article in the
London Chronicle,
in which he advanced the very reasonable proposition that “a farmer is not to be taken from the plough and made an officer in a day”; and he was answered wrathfully, at great length, in the
Boston Evening Post,
by a writer signing himself “A New England Man.” The provincial officers, on the other hand, and especially those of New England, being no less narrow and prejudiced, filled with a sensitive pride and a jealous local patriotism, and bred up in a lofty appreciation of the merits and importance of their country, regarded British superciliousness with a resentment which their strong love for England could not overcome. This feeling was far from being confined to the officers. A provincial regiment stationed at Half-Moon, on the Hudson, thought itself affronted by Captain Cruikshank, a regular officer; and the men were so incensed that nearly half of them went off in a body. The deportment of British officers in the Seven Years War no doubt had some part in hastening on the Revolution.

What with levelling Montcalm’s siege works, planting palisades, and grubbing up stumps in their bungling and laborious way, the regulars found abundant occupation. Discipline was stiff and peremptory. The wooden horse and the whipping-post were conspicuous objects in the camp, and often in use. Caleb Rea, being tenderhearted, never went to see the lash laid on; for, as he quaintly observes, “the cries were satisfactory to me, without the sight of the strokes.” He and the rest of the doctors found active exercise for such skill as they had, since fever and dysentery were making scarcely less havoc than the bullets at Ticonderoga. This came from the bad state of the camps and unwholesome food. The provincial surgeons seem to have been very little impressed with the importance of sanitary regulations, and to have thought it their business not to prevent disease, but only to cure it. The one grand essential in their eyes was a well-stocked medicine-chest, rich in exhaustless stores of rhubarb, ipecacuanha, and calomel. Even this sometimes failed. Colonel Williams reports “the sick destitute of everything proper for them; medicine-chest empty; nothing but their dirty blankets for beds; Dr. Ashley dead, Dr. Wright gone home, low enough; Bille worn off his legs,—such is our case. I have near a hundred sick. Lost a sergeant and a private last night.”
¹
Chaplain Cleaveland himself, though strong of frame, did not escape; but he found solace in his trouble from the congenial society of a brother chaplain, Mr. Emerson, of New Hampshire, “a right-down hearty Christian minister, of savory conversation,” who came to see him in his tent, breakfasted with him, and joined him in prayer. Being somewhat better, he one day thought to recreate himself with the apostolic occupation of fishing. The sport was poor; the fish bit slowly; and as he lay in his boat, still languid with his malady, he had leisure to reflect on the contrasted works of Providence and man,—the bright lake basking amid its mountains, a dream of wilderness beauty, and the swarms of harsh humanity on the shore beside him, with their passions, discords, and miseries. But it was with the strong meat of Calvinistic theology, and not with reveries like these, that he was accustomed to nourish his military flock.

While at one end of the lake the force of Abercromby was diminished by detachments and disease, that of Montcalm at the other was so increased by reinforcements that a forward movement on his part seemed possible. He contented himself, however, with strengthening the fort, reconstructing the lines that he had defended so well, and sending out frequent war-parties by way of Wood Creek and South Bay, to harass Abercromby’s communications with Fort Edward. These parties, some of which consisted of several hundred men, were generally more or less successful; and one of them, under La Corne, surprised and destroyed a large wagon train escorted by forty soldiers. When Abercromby heard of it, he ordered Rogers, with a strong detachment of provincials, light infantry, and rangers, to go down the lake in boats, cross the mountains to the narrow waters of Lake Champlain, and cut off the enemy. But though Rogers set out at two in the morning, the French retreated so fast that he arrived too late. As he was on his way back, he was met by a messenger from the General with orders to intercept other French parties reported to be hovering about Fort Edward. On this he retraced his steps, marched through the forest to where Whitehall now stands, and thence made his way up Wood Creek to old Fort Anne, a relic of former wars, abandoned and falling to decay. Here, on the neglected “clearing” that surrounded the ruin, his followers encamped. They counted seven hundred in all, and consisted of about eighty rangers, a body of Connecticut men under Major Putnam, and a small regular force, chiefly light infantry, under Captain Dalzell, the brave officer who was afterwards killed by Pontiac’s warriors at Detroit.

Up to this time Rogers had observed his usual caution, commanding silence on the march, and forbidding fires at night; but, seeing no signs of an enemy, he forgot himself; and on the following morning, the eighth of August, he and Lieutenant Irwin, of the light infantry, amused themselves by firing at a mark on a wager. The shots reached the ears of four hundred and fifty French and Indians under the famous partisan Marin, who at once took steps to reconnoitre and ambuscade his rash enemy. For nearly a mile from the old fort the forest had formerly been cut down and burned; and Nature had now begun to reassert herself, covering the open tract with a dense growth of bushes and saplings almost impervious to anything but a wild-cat, had it not been traversed by a narrow Indian path. Along this path the men were forced to march in single file. At about seven o’clock, when the two marksmen had decided their bet, and before the heavy dew of the night was dried upon the bushes, the party slung their packs and set out. Putnam was in the front with his Connecticut men; Dalzell followed with the regulars; and Rogers, with his rangers, brought up the rear of the long and slender line. Putnam himself led the way, shouldering through the bushes, gun in hand; and just as the bluff yeoman emerged from them to enter the forest-growth beyond, the air was rent with yells, the thickets before him were filled with Indians, and one of them, a Caughnawaga chief, sprang upon him, hatchet in hand. He had time to cock his gun and snap it at the breast of his assailant; but it missed fire, and he was instantly seized and dragged back into the forest, as were also a lieutenant named Tracy and three private men. Then the firing began. The French and Indians, lying across the path in a semicircle, had the advantage of position and surprise. The Connecticut men fell back among the bushes in disorder; but soon rallied, and held the enemy in check while Dalzell and Rogers—the latter of whom was nearly a mile behind—were struggling through briers and thickets to their aid. So close was the brushwood that it was full half an hour before they could get their followers ranged in some kind of order in front of the enemy; and even then each man was forced to fight for himself as best he could. Humphreys, the biographer of Putnam, blames Rogers severely for not coming at once to the aid of the Connecticut men; but two of their captains declare that he came with all possible speed; while a regular officer present highly praised him to Abercromby for cool and officer-like conduct.
¹
As a man his deserts were small; as a bushfighter he was beyond reproach.

Another officer recounts from hearsay the remarkable conduct of an Indian, who sprang into the midst of the English and killed two of them with his hatchet; then mounted on a log and defied them all. One of the regulars tried to knock him down with the butt of his musket; but though the blow made him bleed, he did not fall, and would have killed his assailant if Rogers had not shot him dead.
¹
The firing lasted about two hours. At length some of the Canadians gave way, and the rest of the French and Indians followed.
²
They broke into small parties to elude pursuit, and reuniting towards evening, made their bivouac on a spot surrounded by impervious swamps.