Montcalm and Wolfe: The Riveting Story of the Heroes of the French & Indian War (66 page)

Both Bougainville and Doreil escaped the British cruisers and safely reached Versailles, where, in the slippery precincts of the Court, as new to him as they were treacherous, the young aide-de-camp justified all the confidence of his chief. He had interviews with the ministers, the King, and, more important than all, with Madame de Pompadour, whom he succeeded in propitiating, though not, it seems, without difficulty and delay. France, unfortunate by land and sea, with finances ruined and navy crippled, had gained one brilliant victory, and she owed it to Montcalm. She could pay for it in honors, if in nothing else. Montcalm was made lieutenant-general, Lévis major-general, Bourlamaque brigadier, and Bougainville colonel and chevalier of St. Louis; while Vaudreuil was solaced with the grand cross of that order.
¹
But when the two envoys asked substantial aid for the imperilled colony, the response was chilling. The Colonial Minister, Berryer, prepossessed against Bougainville by the secret warning of Vaudreuil, received him coldly, and replied to his appeal for help: “Eh, Monsieur, when the house is on fire one cannot occupy one’s self with the stable.” “At least, Monsieur, nobody will say that you talk like a horse,” was the irreverent answer.

Bougainville laid four memorials before the Court, in which he showed the desperate state of the colony and its dire need of help. Thus far, he said, Canada has been saved by the dissensions of the English colonies; but now, for the first time, they are united against her, and prepared to put forth their strength. And he begged for troops, arms, munitions, food, and a squadron to defend the mouth of the St. Lawrence.
²
The reply, couched in a letter to Montcalm, was to the effect that it was necessary to concentrate all the strength of the kingdom for a decisive operation in Europe; that, therefore, the aid required could not be sent; and that the King trusted everything to his zeal and generalship, joined with the valor of the victors of Ticonderoga.
³
All that could be obtained was between three and four hundred recruits for the regulars, sixty engineers, sappers, and artillerymen, and gunpowder, arms, and provisions sufficient, along with the supplies brought over by the contractor, Cadet, to carry the colony through the next campaign.
⁴

Montcalm had intrusted Bougainville with another mission, widely different. This was no less than the negotiating of suitable marriages for the eldest son and daughter of his commander, with whom, in the confidence of friendship, he had had many conversations on the matter. “He and I,” Montcalm wrote to his mother, Madame de Saint-Véran, “have two ideas touching these marriages,—the first, romantic and chimerical; the second, good, practicable.”
⁵

Bougainville, invoking the aid of a lady of rank, a friend of the family, acquitted himself well of his delicate task. Before he embarked for Canada, in early spring, a treaty was on foot for the marriage of the young Comte de Montcalm to an heiress of sixteen; while Mademoiselle de Montcalm had already become Madame d’Espineuse. “Her father will be delighted,” says the successful negotiator.
¹

Again he crossed the Atlantic and sailed up the St. Lawrence as the portentous spring of 1759 was lowering over the dissolving snows of Canada. With him came a squadron bearing the supplies and the petty reinforcement which the Court had vouchsafed. “A little is precious to those who have nothing,” said Montcalm on receiving them. Despatches from the ministers gave warning of a great armament fitted out in English ports for the attack of Quebec, while a letter to the General from the Maréchal de Belleisle, minister of war, told what was expected of him, and why he and the colony were abandoned to their fate. “If we sent a large reinforcement of troops,” said Belleisle, “there would be great fear that the English would intercept them on the way; and as the King could never send you forces equal to those which the English are prepared to oppose to you, the attempt would have no other effect than to excite the Cabinet of London to increased efforts for preserving its superiority on the American continent.

“As we must expect the English to turn all their force against Canada, and attack you on several sides at once, it is necessary that you limit your plans of defence to the most essential points and those most closely connected, so that, being concentrated within a smaller space, each part may be within reach of support and succor from the rest. How small soever may be the space you are able to hold, it is indispensable to keep a footing in North America; for if we once lose the country entirely, its recovery will be almost impossible. The King counts on your zeal, courage, and persistency to accomplish this object, and relies on you to spare no pains and no exertions. Impart this resolution to your chief officers, and join with them to inspire your soldiers with it. I have answered for you to the King; I am confident that you will not disappoint me, and that for the glory of the nation, the good of the state, and your own preservation, you will go to the utmost extremity rather than submit to conditions as shameful as those imposed at Louisbourg, the memory of which you will wipe out.”
²
“We will save this unhappy colony, or perish,” was the answer of Montcalm.

It was believed that Canada would be attacked with at least fifty thousand men. Vaudreuil had caused a census to be made of the governments of Montreal, Three Rivers, and Quebec. It showed a little more than thirteen thousand effective men.
³
To these were to be added thirty-five hundred troops of the line, including the late reinforcement, fifteen hundred colony troops, a body of irregulars in Acadia, and the militia and
coureurs-de-bois
of Detroit and the other upper posts, along with from one to two thousand Indians who could still be counted on. Great as was the disparity of numbers, there was good hope that the centre of the colony could be defended; for the only avenues by which an enemy could approach were barred by the rock of Quebec, the rapids of the St. Lawrence, and the strong position of Isle-aux-Noix, at the outlet of Lake Champlain. Montcalm had long inclined to the plan of concentration enjoined on him by the Minister of War. Vaudreuil was of another mind; he insisted on still occupying Acadia and the forts of the upper country: matters on which he and the General exchanged a correspondence that widened the breach between them.

Should every effort of resistance fail, and the invaders force their way into the heart of Canada, Montcalm proposed the desperate resort of abandoning the valley of the St. Lawrence, descending the Mississippi with his troops and as many as possible of the inhabitants, and making a last stand for France among the swamps of Louisiana.
¹

In April, before Bougainville’s return, he wrote to his wife: “Can we hope for another miracle to save us? I trust in God; he fought for us on the eighth of July. Come what may, his will be done! I wait the news from France with impatience and dread. We have had none for eight months; and who knows if much can reach us at all this year? How dearly I have to pay for the dismal privilege of figuring two or three times in the gazettes!” A month later, after Bougainville had come: “Our daughter is well married. I think I would renounce every honor to join you again; but the King must be obeyed. The moment when I see you once more will be the brightest of my life. Adieu, my heart! I believe that I love you more than ever.”

Bougainville had brought sad news. He had heard before sailing from France that one of Montcalm’s daughters was dead, but could not learn which of them. “I think,” says the father, “that it must be poor Mirète, who was like me, and whom I loved very much.” He was never to know if this conjecture was true.

To Vaudreuil came a repetition of the detested order that he should defer to Montcalm on all questions of war; and moreover that he should not take command in person except when the whole body of the militia was called out; nor, even then, without consulting his rival.
²
His ire and vexation produced an access of jealous self-assertion, and drove him into something like revolt against the ministerial command. “If the English attack Quebec, I shall always hold myself free to go thither myself with most of the troops and all the militia and Indians I can assemble. On arriving I shall give battle to the enemy; and I shall do so again and again, till I have forced him to retire, or till he has entirely crushed me by excessive superiority of numbers. My obstinacy in opposing his landing will be the more
à propos,
as I have not the means of sustaining a siege. If I succeed as I wish, I shall next march to Carillon to arrest him there. You see, Monseigneur, that the slightest change in my arrangements would have the most unfortunate consequences.”
¹

Whether he made good this valorous declaration will presently be seen.

N
OTE
.—The Archives de la Guerre and the Archives de la Marine contain a mass of letters and documents on the subjects treated in the above chapter; these I have carefully read and collated. The other principal authorities are the correspondence of Montcalm with Bourlamaque and with his own family; the letters of Vaudreuil preserved in the Archives Nationales; and the letters of Bougainville and Doreil to Montcalm and Madame de Saint-Véran while on their mission to France. For copies of these last I am indebted to the present Marquis de Montcalm.

Notes - 1

1
Vaudreuil au Ministre,
8
Août,
1758.

Notes - 2

1
Much of the voluminous correspondence on these matters will be found in
N
.
Y
.
Col
.
Docs
., X.

2
Vaudreuil au Ministre,
8
Avril,
1759.

3
Ibid
.

4
Vaudreuil à Montcalm,
1
Août,
1758.

5
Montcalm à Vaudreuil,
6
Août,
1758.

6
Ordres du Roy et Dépêches des Ministres,
1758, 1759.

Notes - 3

1
The above extracts are from letters of 5 and 27 Nov. and 9 Dec. 1758, and 18 and 23 March, 1759.

Notes - 4

1
Mémoire sur le moyen d’entretenir
10,000
Hommes de Troupes dans les Colonies,
1759.

2
Procès de Bigot,
Cadet,
et autres,
Mémoire pour le Sieur de Boishébert
.

3
Vaudreuil au Ministre,
10
Avril,
1759.

Notes - 5

1
Doreil au Ministre,
31
Juillet,
1758.
Ibid
. 12
Août,
1758.
Ibid
. 31 Août, 1758.
Ibid.
I
Sept
. 1758.

2
Vaudreuil au Ministre de la Marine,
4
Nov
. 1758.

3
Vaudreuil au Ministre de la Guerre,
11
Oct
. 1758.

4
Vaudreuil au Ministre de la Marine,
3
Nov
. 1758.

Notes - 6

1
Ordres du Roy et Dépêches des Ministres,
Janvier,
Février,
1759.

2
Mémoire remis au Ministre par M
.
de Bougainville,
Décembre,
1758.

3
Le Ministre à Montcalm,
3
Fév
. 1759.

4
Ordres du Roy et Dépêches des Ministres,
Février,
1759.

5
Montcalm à Madame de Saint-Véran,
24
Sept
. 1758.

Notes - 7

1
Lettres de Bougainville à Madame de Saint-Véran,
1758, 1759.

2
Belleisle à Montcalm,
19
Fév
. 1759.

3
Vaudreuil au Ministre,
8
Avril,
1759. The
Mémoires sur le Canada,
1749-1760, says 15,229 effective men.

Notes - 8

1
Mémoire sur le Canada remis au Ministre,
27
Déc
. 1758.

2
Ordres du Roy et Dépêches des Ministres,
Lettre à Vaudreuil,
3
Fév
. 1759.

Notes - 9

1
Vaudreuil au Ministre,
8
Avril,
1759.

XXIV

W
OLFE

The Exiles of Fort Cumberland · Relief · The Voyage to Louisbourg · The British Fleet · Expedition against Quebec · Early Life of Wolfe · His Character · His Letters to his Parents · His Domestic Qualities · Appointed to command the Expedition · Sails for America

Captain John Knox, of the forty-third regiment, had spent the winter in garrison at Fort Cumberland, on the hill of Beauséjour. For nearly two years he and his comrades had been exiles amid the wilds of Nova Scotia, and the monotonous inaction was becoming insupportable. The great marsh of Tantemar on the one side, and that of Missaguash on the other, two vast flat tracts of glaring snow, bounded by dark hills of spruce and fir, were hateful to their sight. Shooting, fishing, or skating were a dangerous relief; for the neighborhood was infested by “vermin,” as they called the Acadians and their Micmac allies. In January four soldiers and a ranger were waylaid not far from the fort, disabled by bullets, and then scalped alive. They were found the next morning on the snow, contorted in the agonies of death, and frozen like marble statues. St. Patrick’s Day brought more cheerful excitements. The Irish officers of the garrison gave their comrades a feast, having laid in during the autumn a stock of frozen provisions, that the festival of their saint might be duly honored. All was hilarity at Fort Cumberland, where it is recorded that punch to the value of twelve pounds sterling, with a corresponding supply of wine and beer, was consumed on this joyous occasion.
¹

About the middle of April a schooner came up the bay, bringing letters that filled men and officers with delight. The regiment was ordered to hold itself ready to embark for Louisbourg and join an expedition to the St. Lawrence, under command of Major-General Wolfe. All that afternoon the soldiers were shouting and cheering in their barracks; and when they mustered for the evening roll-call, there was another burst of huzzas. They waited in expectancy nearly three weeks, and then the transports which were to carry them arrived, bringing the provincials who had been hastily raised in New England to take their place. These Knox describes as a mean-looking set of fellows, of all ages and sizes, and without any kind of discipline; adding that their officers are sober, modest men, who, though of confined ideas, talk very clearly and sensibly, and make a decent appearance in blue, faced with scarlet, though the privates have no uniform at all.

At last the forty-third set sail, the cannon of the fort saluting them, and the soldiers cheering lustily, overjoyed to escape from their long imprisonment. A gale soon began; the transports became separated; Knox’s vessel sheltered herself for a time in Passamaquoddy Bay; then passed the Grand Menan, and steered southward and eastward along the coast of Nova Scotia. A calm followed the gale; and they moved so slowly that Knox beguiled the time by fishing over the stern, and caught a halibut so large that he was forced to call for help to pull it in. Then they steered northeastward, now lost in fogs, and now tossed mercilessly on those boisterous waves; till, on the twenty-fourth of May, they saw a rocky and surf-lashed shore, with a forest of masts rising to all appearance out of it. It was the British fleet in the land-locked harbor of Louisbourg.

On the left, as they sailed through the narrow passage, lay the town, scarred with shot and shell, the red cross floating over its battered ramparts; and around in a wide semicircle rose the bristling backs of rugged hills, set thick with dismal evergreens. They passed the great ships of the fleet, and anchored among the other transports towards the head of the harbor. It was not yet free from ice; and the floating masses lay so thick in some parts that the reckless sailors, returning from leave on shore, jumped from one to another to regain their ships. There was a review of troops, and Knox went to see it; but it was over before he reached the place, where he was presently told of a characteristic reply just made by Wolfe to some officers who had apologized for not having taught their men the new exercise. “Poh, poh!—new exercise—new fiddlestick. If they are otherwise well disciplined, and will fight, that’s all I shall require of them.”

Knox does not record his impressions of his new commander, which must have been disappointing. He called him afterwards a British Achilles; but in person at least Wolfe bore no likeness to the son of Peleus, for never was the soul of a hero cased in a frame so incongruous. His face, when seen in profile, was singular as that of the Great Condé. The forehead and chin receded; the nose, slightly upturned, formed with the other features the point of an obtuse triangle; the mouth was by no means shaped to express resolution; and nothing but the clear, bright, and piercing eye bespoke the spirit within. On his head he wore a black three-cornered hat; his red hair was tied in a queue behind; his narrow shoulders, slender body, and long, thin limbs were cased in a scarlet frock, with broad cuffs and ample skirts that reached the knee; while on his left arm he wore a band of crape in mourning for his father, of whose death he had heard a few days before.

James Wolfe was in his thirty-third year. His father was an officer of distinction, Major-General Edward Wolfe, and he himself, a delicate and sensitive child, but an impetuous and somewhat headstrong youth, had served the King since the age of fifteen. From childhood he had dreamed of the army and the wars. At sixteen he was in Flanders, adjutant of his regiment, discharging the duties of the post in a way that gained him early promotion and, along with a painstaking assiduity, showing a precocious faculty for commanding men. He passed with credit through several campaigns, took part in the victory of Dettingen, and then went to Scotland to fight at Culloden. Next we find him at Stirling, Perth, and Glasgow, always ardent and always diligent, constant in military duty, and giving his spare hours to mathematics and Latin. He presently fell in love; and being disappointed, plunged into a variety of dissipations, contrary to his usual habits, which were far above the standard of that profligate time.

At twenty-three he was a lieutenant-colonel, commanding his regiment in the then dirty and barbarous town of Inverness, amid a disaffected and turbulent population whom it was his duty to keep in order: a difficult task, which he accomplished so well as to gain the special commendation of the King, and even the goodwill of the Highlanders themselves. He was five years among these northern hills, battling with ill-health, and restless under the intellectual barrenness of his surroundings. He felt his position to be in no way salutary, and wrote to his mother: “The fear of becoming a mere ruffian and of imbibing the tyrannical principles of an absolute commander, or giving way insensibly to the temptations of power till I became proud, insolent, and intolerable,—these considerations will make me wish to leave the regiment before next winter; that by frequenting men above myself I may know my true condition, and by discoursing with the other sex may learn some civility and mildness of carriage.” He got leave of absence, and spent six months in Paris, where he was presented at Court and saw much of the best society. This did not prevent him from working hard to perfect himself in French, as well as in horsemanship, fencing, dancing, and other accomplishments, and from earnestly seeking an opportunity to study the various armies of Europe. In this he was thwarted by the stupidity and prejudice of the commander-in-chief; and he made what amends he could by extensive reading in all that bore on military matters.

His martial instincts were balanced by strong domestic inclinations. He was fond of children; and after his disappointment in love used to say that they were the only true inducement to marriage. He was a most dutiful son, and wrote continually to both his parents. Sometimes he would philosophize on the good and ill of life; sometimes he held questionings with his conscience; and once he wrote to his mother in a strain of self-accusation not to be expected from a bold and determined soldier. His nature was a compound of tenderness and fire, which last sometimes showed itself in sharp and unpleasant flashes. His excitable temper was capable almost of fierceness, and he could now and then be needlessly stern; but towards his father, mother, and friends he was a model of steady affection. He made friends readily, and kept them, and was usually a pleasant companion, though subject to sallies of imperious irritability which occasionally broke through his strong sense of good breeding. For this his susceptible constitution was largely answerable, for he was a living barometer, and his spirits rose and fell with every change of weather. In spite of his impatient outbursts, the officers whom he had commanded remained attached to him for life; and, in spite of his rigorous discipline, he was beloved by his soldiers, to whose comfort he was always attentive. Frankness, directness, essential good feeling, and a high integrity atoned for all his faults.

In his own view, as expressed to his mother, he was a person of very moderate abilities, aided by more than usual diligence; but this modest judgment of himself by no means deprived him of self-confidence, nor, in time of need, of self-assertion. He delighted in every kind of hardihood; and, in his contempt for effeminacy, once said to his mother: “Better be a savage of some use than a gentle, amorous puppy, obnoxious to all the world.” He was far from despising fame; but the controlling principles of his life were duty to his country and his profession, loyalty to the King, and fidelity to his own ideal of the perfect soldier. To the parent who was the confidant of his most intimate thoughts he said: “All that I wish for myself is that I may at all times be ready and firm to meet that fate we cannot shun, and to die gracefully and properly when the hour comes.” Never was wish more signally fulfilled. Again he tells her: “My utmost desire and ambition is to look steadily upon danger”; and his desire was accomplished. His intrepidity was complete. No form of death had power to daunt him. Once and again, when bound on some deadly enterprise of war, he calmly counts the chances whether or not he can compel his feeble body to bear him on till the work is done. A frame so delicately strung could not have been insensible to danger; but forgetfulness of self, and the absorption of every faculty in the object before him, shut out the sense of fear. He seems always to have been at his best in the thick of battle; most complete in his mastery over himself and over others.

But it is in the intimacies of domestic life that one sees him most closely, and especially in his letters to his mother, from whom he inherited his frail constitution, without the beauty that distinguished her. “The greatest happiness that I wish for here is to see you happy.” “If you stay much at home I will come and shut myself up with you for three weeks or a month, and play at piquet from morning till night; and you shall laugh at my short red hair as much as you please.” The playing at piquet was a sacrifice to filial attachment; for the mother loved cards, and the son did not. “Don’t trouble yourself about my room or my bedclothes; too much care and delicacy at this time would enervate me and complete the destruction of a tottering constitution. Such as it is, it must serve me now, and I’ll make the best of it while it holds.” At the beginning of the war his father tried to dissuade him from offering his services on board the fleet; and he replies in a letter to Mrs. Wolfe: “It is no time to think of what is convenient or agreeable; that service is certainly the best in which we are the most useful. For my part, I am determined never to give myself a moment’s concern about the nature of the duty which His Majesty is pleased to order us upon. It will be a sufficient comfort to you two, as far as my person is concerned,—at least it will be a reasonable consolation,—to reflect that the Power which has hitherto preserved me may, if it be his pleasure, continue to do so; if not, that it is but a few days or a few years more or less, and that those who perish in their duty and in the service of their country die honorably.” Then he proceeds to give particular directions about his numerous dogs, for the welfare of which in his absence he provides with anxious solicitude, especially for “my friend Cæsar, who has great merit and much good-humor.”

After the unfortunate expedition against Rochefort, when the board of general officers appointed to inquire into the affair were passing the highest encomiums upon his conduct, his parents were at Bath, and he took possession of their house at Blackheath, whence he wrote to his mother: “I lie in your chamber, dress in the General’s little parlor, and dine where you did. The most perceptible difference and change of affairs (exclusive of the bad table I keep) is the number of dogs in the yard; but by coaxing Ball [
his father’s dog
] and rubbing his back with my stick, I have reconciled him with the new ones, and put them in some measure under his protection.”

When about to sail on the expedition against Louisbourg, he was anxious for his parents, and wrote to his uncle, Major Wolfe, at Dublin: “I trust you will give the best advice to my mother, and such assistance, if it should be wanted, as the distance between you will permit. I mention this because the General seems to decline apace, and narrowly escaped being carried off in the spring. She, poor woman, is in a bad state of health, and needs the care of some friendly hand. She has long and painful fits of illness, which by succession and inheritance are likely to devolve on me, since I feel the early symptoms of them.” Of his friends Guy Carleton, afterwards Lord Dorchester, and George Warde, the companion of his boyhood, he also asks help for his mother in his absence.

His part in the taking of Louisbourg greatly increased his reputation. After his return he went to Bath to recruit his health; and it seems to have been here that he wooed and won Miss Katherine Lowther, daughter of an ex-Governor of Barbadoes, and sister of the future Lord Lonsdale. A betrothal took place, and Wolfe wore her portrait till the night before his death. It was a little before this engagement that he wrote to his friend Lieutenant-Colonel Rickson: “I have this day signified to Mr. Pitt that he may dispose of my slight carcass as he pleases, and that I am ready for any undertaking within the compass of my skill and cunning. I am in a very bad condition both with the gravel and rheumatism; but I had much rather die than decline any kind of service that offers. If I followed my own taste it would lead me into Germany. However, it is not our part to choose, but to obey. My opinion is that I shall join the army in America.”