Chapter 23
1758, 1759

The Brink of Ruin

"Never was general in a more critical position than I was: God has delivered me; his be the praise! He gives me health, though I am worn out with labor, fatigue, and miserable dissensions that have determined me to ask for my recall.   Heaven grant that I may get it!"

Thus wrote Montcalm to his mother after his triumph at Ticonderoga.   That great exploit had entailed a train of vexations, for it stirred the envy of Vaudreuil, more especially as it was due to the troops of the line, with no help from Indians, and very little from Canadians.   The Governor assured the Colonial Minister that the victory would have bad results, though he gives no hint what these might be; that Montcalm had mismanaged the whole affair; that he would have been beaten but for the manifest interposition of Heaven; and, finally, that he had failed to follow his (Vaudreuil's) directions, and had therefore enabled the English to escape.   The real directions of the Governor, dictated, perhaps, by dread lest his rival should reap laurels, were to avoid a general engagement; and it was only by setting them at nought that Abercromby had been routed.   After the battle a sharp correspondence passed between the two chiefs.   The Governor, who had left Montcalm to his own resources before the crisis, sent him Canadians and Indians in abundance after it was over; while he cautiously refrained from committing himself by positive orders, repeated again and again that if these reinforcements were used to harass Abercromby's communications, the whole English army would fall back to the Hudson, and leave baggage and artillery a prey to the French.   These preposterous assertions and tardy succors were thought by Montcalm to be a device for giving color to the charge that he had not only failed to deserve victory, but had failed also to make use of it.   He did what was possible, and sent strong detachments to act in the English rear; which, though they did not, and could not, compel the enemy to fall back, caused no slight annoyance, till Rogers checked them by the defeat of Marin.   Nevertheless Vaudreuil pretended on one hand that Montcalm had done nothing with the Canadians and Indians sent him, and on the other that these same Canadians and Indians had triumphed over the enemy by their mere presence at Ticonderoga.   "It was my activity in sending these succors to Carillon [Ticonderoga] that forced the English to retreat.   The Marquis de Montcalm might have made their retreat difficult; but it was in vain that I wrote to him, in vain that the colony troops, Canadians and Indians, begged him to pursue the enemy.  ” The succors he speaks of were sent in July and August, while the English did not fall back till the first of November.   Neither army left its position till the season was over, and Abercromby did so only when he learned that the French were setting the example.   Vaudreuil grew more and more bitter.   "As the King has intrusted this colony to me, I cannot help warning you of the unhappy consequences that would follow if the Marquis de Montcalm should remain here.   I shall keep him by me till I receive your orders.   It is essential that they reach me early.  " "I pass over in silence all the infamous conduct and indecent talk he has held or countenanced; but I should be wanting in my duty to the King if I did not beg you to ask for his recall.  ”

He does not say what is meant by infamous conduct and indecent talk; but the allusion is probably to irreverent utterances touching the Governor in which the officers from France were apt to indulge, not always without the knowledge of their chief.   Vaudreuil complained of this to Montcalm, adding, "I am greatly above it, and I despise it.  ” To which the General replied: "You are right to despise gossip, supposing that there has been any.   For my part, though I hear that I have been torn to pieces without mercy in your presence, I do not believe it.  ”

In these infelicities Bigot figures as peacemaker, though with no perceptible success.   Vaudreuil's cup of bitterness was full when letters came from Versailles ordering him to defer to Montcalm on all questions of war, or of civil administration bearing up war.   He had begged hard for his rival's recall, and in reply his rival was set over his head.  

The two yokefellows were excellently fitted to exasperate each other: Montcalm, with his southern vivacity of emotion and an impetuous, impatient volubility that sometimes forgot prudence; and Vaudreuil, always affable towards adherents, but full of suspicious egotism and restless jealousy that bristled within him at the very thought of his colleague.   Some of the by-play of the quarrel may be seen in Montcalm's familiar correspondence with Bourlamaque.   One day the Governor, in his own house, brought up the old complaint that Montcalm, after taking Fort William Henry, did not take Fort Edward also.   The General, for the twentieth time, gave good reasons for not making the attempt.   "I ended," he tells Bourlamaque, "by saying quietly that when I went to war I did the best I could; and that when one is not pleased with one's lieutenants, one had better take the field in person.   He was very much moved, and muttered between his teeth that perhaps he would; at which I said that I should be delighted to serve under him.   Madame de Vaudreuil wanted to put in her word.   I said: 'Madame, saving due respect, permit me to have the honor to say that ladies ought not to talk war.  ' She kept on.   I said: 'Madame, saving due respect, permit me to have the honor to say that if Madame de Montcalm were here, and heard me talking war with Monsieur le Marquis de Vaudreuil, she would remain silent.  ' This scene was in presence of eight officers, three of them belonging to the colony troops; and a pretty story they will make of it.  "

These letters to Bourlamaque, in their detestable handwriting, small, cramped, confused, without stops, and sometimes almost indecipherable, betray the writer's state of mind.   "I should like as well as anybody to be Marshal of France; but to buy the honor with the life I am leading here would be too much.  " He recounts the last news from Fort Duquesne, just before its fall.   "Mutiny among the Canadians, who want to come home; the officers busy with making money, and stealing like mandarins.   Their commander sets the example, and will come back with three or four hundred thousand francs; the pettiest ensign, who does not gamble, will have ten, twelve, or fifteen thousand.   The Indians don't like Ligneris, who is drunk every day.   Forgive the confusion of this letter; I have not slept all night with thinking of the robberies and mismanagement and folly.   Pauvre Roi, pauvre France, cara patria!" "Oh, when shall we get out of this country! I think I would give half that I have to go home.   Pardon this digression to a melancholy man.   It is not that I have not still some remnants of gayety; but what would seem such in anybody else is melancholy for a Languedocian.   Burn my letter, and never doubt my attachment.  " "I shall always say, Happy he who is free from the proud yoke to which I am bound.   When shall I see my château of Candiac, my plantations, my chestnut grove, my oil-mill, my mulberry-trees? O bon Dieu! Bon soir; brûlez ma lettre.  ”

Never was dispute more untimely than that between these ill-matched colleagues.   The position of the colony was desperate.   Thus far the Canadians had never lost heart, but had obeyed with admirable alacrity the Governor's call to arms, borne with patience the burdens and privations of the war, and submitted without revolt to the exactions and oppressions of Cadet and his crew; loyal to their native soil, loyal to their Church, loyal to the wretched government that crushed and belittled them.   When the able-bodied were ordered to the war, where four fifths of them were employed in the hard and tedious work of transportation, the women, boys and old men tilled the fields and raised a scanty harvest, which always might be, and sometimes was, taken from them in the name of the King.   Yet the least destitute among them were forced every winter to lodge soldiers in their houses, for each of whom they were paid fifteen france a month, in return for substance devoured and wives and daughters debauched.  

No pains had been spared to keep up the courage of the people and feed them with flattering illusions.   When the partisan officer Boishébert was tried for peculation, his counsel met the charge by extolling the manner in which he had fulfilled the arduous duty of encouraging the Acadians, "putting on an air of triumph even in defeat; using threats, caresses, stratagems; painting our victories in vivid colors; hiding the strength and successes of the enemy; promising succors that did not and could not come; inventing plausible reasons why they did not come, and making new promises to set off the failure of the old; persuading a starved people to forget their misery; taking from some to give to others; and doing all this continually in the face of a superior enemy, that this country might be snatched from England and saved to France.  ” What Boishébert was doing in Acadia, Vaudreuil was doing on a larger scale in Canada.   By indefatigable lying, by exaggerating every success and covering over every reverse, he deceived the people and in some measure himself.   He had in abundance the Canadian gift of gasconade, and boasted to the Colonial Minister that one of his countrymen was a match for from three to ten Englishmen.   It is possible that he almost believed it; for the midnight surprise of defenceless families and the spreading of panics among scattered border settlements were inseparable from his idea of war.   Hence the high value he set on Indians, who in such work outdid the Canadians themselves.   Sustained by the intoxication of flattering falsehoods, and not doubting that the blunders and weakness of the first years of the war gave the measure of English efficiency, the colonists had never suspected that they could be subdued.  

But now there was a change.   The reverses of the last campaign, hunger, weariness, and possibly some incipient sense of atrocious misgovernment, began to produce their effect; and some, especially in the towns, were heard to murmur that further resistance was useless.   The Canadians, though brave and patient, needed, like Frenchmen, the stimulus of success.   "The people are alarmed," said the modest Governor, "and would lose courage if my firmness did not rekindle their zeal to serve the King.  ”

"Rapacity, folly, intrigue, falsehood, will soon ruin this colony which has cost the King so dear," wrote Doreil to the Minister of War.   "We must not flatter ourselves with vain hope; Canada is lost if we do not have peace this winter.  " "It has been saved by miracle in these past three years; nothing but peace can save it now, in spite of all the efforts and the talents of M.   de Montcalm.  ” Vaudreuil himself became thoroughly alarmed, and told the Court in the autumn of 1758 that food, arms, munitions, and everything else were fast failing, and that without immediate peace or heavy reinforcements all was lost.  
	
The condition of Canada was indeed deplorable.   The St.   Lawrence was watched by British ships; the harvest was meagre; a barrel of flour cost two hundred francs; most of the cattle and many of the horses had been killed for food.   The people lived chiefly on a pittance of salt cod or on rations furnished by the King; all prices were inordinate; the officers from France were starving on their pay; while a legion of indigenous and imported scoundrels fattened on the general distress.   "What a country!" exclaims Montcalm.   "Here all the knaves grow rich, and the honest men are ruined.  " Yet he was resolved to stand by it to the last, and wrote to the Minister of War that he would bury himself under its ruins.   "I asked for my recall after the glorious affair of the eighth of July; but since the state of the colony is so bad, I must do what I can to help it and retard its fall.  " The only hope was in a strong appeal to the Court; and he thought himself fortunate in persuading Vaudreuil to consent that Bougainville should be commissioned to make it, seconded by Doreil.   They were to sail in different ships, in order that at least one of them might arrive safe.  

Vaudreuil gave Bougainville a letter introducing him to the Colonial Minister in high terms of praise: "He is in all respects better fitted than anybody else to inform you of the state of the colony.   I have given him my instructions, and you can trust entirely in what he tells you.  ” Concerning Doreil he wrote to the Minister of War: "I have full confidence in him, and he may be entirely trusted.   Everybody here likes him.  ” While thus extolling the friends of his rival, the Governor took care to provide against the effects of his politic commendations, and wrote thus to his patron, the Colonial Minister: "In order to condescend to the wishes of M.   de Montcalm, and leave no means untried to keep in harmony with him, I have given letters to MM.   Doreil and Bougainville; but I have the honor to inform you, Monseigneur, that they do not understand the colony, and to warn you that they are creatures of M.   de Montcalm.  ”

The two envoys had sailed for France.   Winter was close at hand, and the harbor of Quebec was nearly empty.   One ship still lingered, the last of the season, and by her Montcalm sent a letter to his mother: "You will be glad to have me write to you up to the last moment to tell you for the hundredth time that, occupied as I am with the fate of New France, the preservation of the troops, the interest of the state, and my own glory, I think continually of you all.   We did our best in 1756, 1757, and 1758; and so, God helping, we will do in 1759, unless you make peace in Europe.  " Then, shut from the outer world for half a year by barriers of ice, he waited what returning spring might bright forth.  

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.   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.   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.   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.  

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.  ” 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.  

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.  ” "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.   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.  

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 Bougainvile 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.   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.  ”

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

* * * * *

NOTE.   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.