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Chapter 16
1757, 1758

A Winter of Discontent

Loudon, on his way back from Halifax, was at sea off the coast of Nova Scotia when a despatch-boat from Governor Pownall of Massachusetts startled him with news that Fort William Henry was attacked; and a few days after he learned by another boat that the fort was taken and the capitulation "inhumanly and villanously broken.  " On this he sent Webb orders to hold the enemy in check without risking a battle till he should himself arrive.   "I am on the way," these were his words, "with a force sufficient to turn the scale, with God's assistance; and then I hope we shall teach the French to comply with the laws of nature and humanity.   For although I abhor barbarity, the knowledge I have of Mr.  Vaudreuil's behavior when in Louisiana, from his own letters in my possession, and the murders committed at Oswego and now at Fort William Henry, will oblige me to make those gentlemen sick of such inhuman villany whenever it is in my power.  " He reached New York on the last day of August, and heard that the French had withdrawn.   He nevertheless sent his troops up the Hudson, thinking, he says, that he might still attack Ticonderoga; a wild scheme, which he soon abandoned, if he ever seriously entertained it.  

Webb had remained at Fort Edward in mortal dread of attack.   Johnson had joined him with a band of Mohawks; and on the day when Fort William Henry surrendered there had been some talk of attempting to throw succors into it by night.   Then came the news of its capture; and now, when it was too late, tumultuous mobs of militia came pouring in from the neighboring provinces.   In a few days thousands of them were bivouacked on the fields about Fort Edward, doing nothing, disgusted and mutinous, declaring that they were ready to fight, but not to lie still without tents, blankets, or kettles.   Webb writes on the fourteenth that most of those from New York had deserted, threatening to kill their officers if they tried to stop them.   Delancey ordered them to be fired upon.   A sergeant was shot, others were put in arrest, and all was disorder till the seventeenth; when Webb, learning that the French were gone, sent them back to their homes.  

Close on the fall of Fort William Henry came crazy rumors of disaster, running like wildfire through the colonies.   The number and ferocity of the enemy were grossly exaggerated; there was a cry that they would seize Albany and New York itself; while it was reported that Webb, as much frightened as the rest, was for retreating to the Highlands of the Hudson.   This was the day after the capitulation, when a part only of the militia had yet appeared.   If Montcalm had seized the moment, and marched that afternoon to Fort Edward, it is not impossible that in the confusion he might have carried it by a coup-de-main.  

Here was an opportunity for Vaudreuil, and he did not fail to use it.   Jealous of his rival's exploit, he spared no pains to tarnish it; complaining that Montcalm had stopped half way on the road to success, and, instead of following his instructions, had contented himself with one victory when he should have gained two.   But the Governor had enjoined upon him as a matter of the last necessity that the Canadians should be at their homes before September to gather the crops, and he would have been the first to complain had the injunction been disregarded.   To besiege Fort Edward was impossible, as Montcalm had no means of transporting cannon thither; and to attack Webb without them was a risk which he had not the rashness to incur.  

It was Bougainville who first brought Vaudreuil the news of the success on Lake George.   A day or two after his arrival, the Indians, who had left the army after the massacre, appeared at Montreal, bringing about two hundred English prisoners.   The Governor rebuked them for breaking the capitulation, on which the heathen savages of the West declared that it was not their fault, but that of the converted Indians, who, in fact, had first raised the war-whoop.   Some of the prisoners were presently bought from them at the price of two kegs of brandy each; and the inevitable consequences followed.  

"I thought," writes Bougainville, "that the Governor would have told them they should have neither provisions nor presents till all the English were given up; that he himself would have gone to their huts and taken the prisoners from them; and that the inhabitants would be forbidden, under the severest penalties, from selling or giving them brandy.   I saw the contrary; and my soul shuddered at the sights my eyes beheld.   On the fifteenth, at two o'clock, in the presence of the whole town, they killed one of the prisoners, put him into the kettle, and forced his wretched countrymen to eat of him.  " The Intendant Bigot, the friend of the Governor, confirms this story; and another French writer says that they "compelled mothers to eat the flesh of their children.  ” Bigot declares that guns, canoes, and other presents were given to the Western tribes before they left Montreal; and he adds, "they must be sent home satisfied at any cost.  " Such were the pains taken to preserve allies who were useful chiefly through the terror inspired by their diabolical cruelties.   This time their ferocity cost them dear.   They had dug up and scalped the corpses in the graveyard of Fort William Henry, many of which were remains of victims of the small-pox; and the savages caught the disease, which is said to have made great havoc among them.  

Vaudreuil, in reporting what he calls "my capture of Fort William Henry," takes great credit to himself for his "generous procedures" towards the English prisoners; alluding, it seems, to his having bought some of them from the Indians with the brandy which was sure to cause the murder of others.   His obsequiousness to his red allies did not cease with permitting them to kill and devour before his eyes those whom he was bound in honor and duty to protect.   "He let them do what they pleased," says a French contemporary; "they were seen roaming about Montreal, knife in hand, threatening everybody, and often insulting those they met.   When complaint was made, he said nothing.   Far from it; instead of reproaching them, he loaded them with gifts, in the belief that their cruelty would then relent.  

Nevertheless, in about a fortnight all, or nearly all, the surviving prisoners were bought out of their clutches; and then, after a final distribution of presents and a grand debauch at La Chine, the whole savage rout paddled for their villages.  

The campaign closed in November with a partisan exploit on the Mohawk.   Here, at a place called German Flats, on the farthest frontier, there was a thriving settlement of German peasants from the Palatinate, who were so ill-disposed towards the English that Vaudreuil had had good hope of stirring them to revolt, while at the same time persuading their neighbors, the Oneida Indians, to take part with France.   As his measures to this end failed, he resolved to attack them.   Therefore, at three o'clock in the morning of the twelfth of November, three hundred colony troops, Canadians and Indians, under an officer named Belêtre, wakened the unhappy peasants by a burst of yells, and attacked the small picket forts which they had built as places of refuge.   These were taken one by one and set on fire.   The sixty dwellings of the settlement, with their barns and outhouses, were all burned, forty or fifty of the inhabitants were killed, and about three times that number, chiefly women and children, were made prisoners, including Johan Jost Petrie, the magistrate of the place.   Fort Herkimer was not far off, with a garrison of two hundred men under Captain Townshend, who at the first alarm sent out a detachment too weak to arrest the havoc; while Belêtre, unable to carry off his booty, set on his followers to the work of destruction, killed a great number of hogs, sheep, cattle, and horses, and then made a hasty retreat.   Lord Howe, pushing up the river from Schenectady with troops and militia, found nothing but an abandoned slaughter-field.   Vaudreuil reported the affair to the Court, and summed up the results with pompous egotism: "I have ruined the plans of the English; I have disposed the Five Nations to attack them; I have carried consternation and terror into all those parts.  ”

Montcalm, his summer work over, went to Montreal; and thence in September to Quebec, a place more to his liking.   "Come as soon as you can," he wrote to Bourlamaque, "and I will tell a certain fair lady how eager you are.  " Even Quebec was no paradise for him; and he writes again to the same friend: "My heart and my stomach are both ill at ease, the latter being the worse.  " To his wife he says: "The price of everything is rising.   I am ruining myself; I owe the treasurer twelve thousand francs.   I long for peace and for you.   In spite of the public distress, we have balls and furious gambling.  " In February he returned to Montreal in a sleigh on the ice of the St.   Lawrence, a mode of travelling which he describes as cold but delicious.   Montreal pleased him less than ever, especially as he was not in favor at what he calls the Court, meaning the circle of the Governor-General.   "I find this place so amusing," he writes ironically to Bourlamaque, "that I wish Holy Week could be lengthened, to give me a pretext for neither making nor receiving visits, staying at home, and dining there almost alone.   Burn all my letters, as I do yours.  " And in the next week: "Lent and devotion have upset my stomach and given me a cold; which does not prevent me from having the Governor-General at dinner to-day to end his lenten fast, according to custom here.  " Two days after he announces: "To-day a grand dinner at Martel's; twenty-three persons, all big-wigs (les grosses perruques); no ladies.   We still have got to undergo those of Péan, Deschambault, and the Chevalier de Lévis.   I spend almost every evening in my chamber, the place I like best, and where I am least bored.  "

With the opening spring there were changes in the modes of amusement.   Picnics began, Vaudreuil and his wife being often of the party, as too was Lévis.   The Governor also made visits of compliment at the houses of the seigniorial proprietors along the river; "very much," says Montcalm, as "Henri IV.   did to the bourgeois notables of Paris.   I live as usual, fencing in the morning, dining, and passing the evening at home or at the Governor's.   Péan has gone up to La Chine to spend six days with the reigning sultana [Péan's wife, mistress of Bigot].   As for me, my ennui increases.   I don't know what to do, or say, or read, or where to go; and I think that at the end of the next campaign I shall ask bluntly, blindly, for my recall, only because I am bored.  ”

His relations with Vaudreuil were a constant annoyance to him, notwithstanding the mask of mutual civility.   "I never," he tells his mother, "ask for a place in the colony troops for anybody.   You need not be an Oedipus to guess this riddle.   Here are four lines from Corneille: 

   "'Mon crime véritable est d'avoir aujourd'hui
    Plus de nom que … [Vaudreuil], plus de vertus que lui,
    Et c'est de là que part cette secrète haine
    Que le temps ne rendra que plus forte et plus pleine.  '

Nevertheless I live here on good terms with everybody, and do my best to serve the King.   If they could but do without me; if they could but spring some trap on me, or if I should happen to meet with some check!"

Vaudreuil meanwhile had written to the Court in high praise of Lévis, hinting that he, and not Montcalm, ought to have the chief command.  

Under the hollow gayeties of the ruling class lay a great public distress, which broke at last into riot.   Towards midwinter no flour was to be had in Montreal; and both soldiers and people were required to accept a reduced ration, partly of horse-flesh.   A mob gathered before the Governor's house, and a deputation of women beset him, crying out that the horse was the friend of man, and that religion forbade him to be eaten.   In reply he threatened them with imprisonment and hanging; but with little effect, and the crowd dispersed, only to stir up the soldiers quartered in the houses of the town.   The colony regulars, ill-disciplined at the best, broke into mutiny, and excited the battalion of Béarn to join them.   Vaudreuil was helpless; Montcalm was in Quebec; and the task of dealing with the mutineers fell upon Lévis, who proved equal to the crisis, took a high tone, threatened death to the first soldier who should refuse horse-flesh, assured them at the same time that he ate it every day himself, and by a characteristic mingling of authority and tact, quelled the storm.  

The prospects of the next campaign began to open.   Captain Pouchot had written from Niagara that three thousand savages were waiting to be let loose against the English borders.   "What a scourge!" exclaims Bougainville.   "Humanity groans at being forced to use such monsters.   What can be done against an invisible enemy, who strikes and vanishes, swift as the lightning? It is the destroying angel.  " Captain Hebecourt kept watch and ward at Ticonderoga, begirt with snow and ice, and much plagued by English rangers, who sometimes got into the ditch itself.   This was to reconnoitre the place in preparation for a winter attack which Loudon had planned, but which, like the rest of his schemes, fell to the ground.   Towards midwinter a band of these intruders captured two soldiers and butchered some fifteen cattle close to the fort, leaving tied to the horns of one of them a note addressed to the commandant in these terms: "I am obliged to you, sir, for the rest you have allowed me to take and the fresh meat you have sent me.   I shall take good care of my prisoners.   My compliments to the Marquis of Montcalm.  " Signed, Rogers.  

A few weeks later Hebecourt had his revenge.   About the middle of March a report came to Montreal that a large party of rangers had been cut to pieces a few miles from Ticonderoga, and that Rogers himself was among the slain.   This last announcement proved false; but the rangers had suffered a crushing defeat.   Colonel Haviland, commanding at Fort Edward, sent a hundred and eighty of them, men and officers, on a scouting party towards Ticonderoga; and Captain Pringle and Lieutenant Roche, of the twenty-seventh regiment, joined them as volunteers, no doubt through a love of hardy adventure, which was destined to be fully satisfied.   Rogers commanded the whole.   They passed down Lake George on the ice under cover of night, and then, as they neared the French outposts, pursued their way by land behind Rogers Rock and the other mountains of the western shore.   On the preceding day, the twelfth of March, Hebecourt had received a reinforcement of two hundred Mission Indians and a body of Canadians.   The Indians had no sooner arrived than, though nominally Christians, they consulted the spirits, by whom they were told that the English were coming.   On this they sent out scouts, who came back breathless, declaring that they had found a great number of snow-shoe tracks.   The superhuman warning being thus confirmed, the whole body of Indians, joined by a band of Canadians and a number of volunteers from the regulars, set out to meet the approaching enemy, and took their way up the valley of Trout Brook, a mountain gorge that opens from the west upon the valley of Ticonderoga.  

Towards three o'clock on the afternoon of that day Rogers had reached a point nearly west of the mountain that bears his name.   The rough and rocky ground was buried four feet in snow, and all around stood the gray trunks of the forest, bearing aloft their skeleton arms and tangled intricacy of leafless twigs.   Close on the right was a steep hill, and at a little distance on the left was the brook, lost under ice and snow.   A scout from the front told Rogers that a party of Indians was approaching along the bed of the frozen stream, on which he ordered his men to halt, face to that side, and advance cautiously.   The Indians soon appeared, and received a fire that killed some of them and drove back the rest in confusion.  

Not suspecting that they were but an advance-guard, about half the rangers dashed in pursuit, and were soon met by the whole body of the enemy.   The woods rang with yells and musketry.   In a few minutes some fifty of the pursuers were shot down, and the rest driven back in disorder upon their comrades.   Rogers formed them all on the slope of the hill; and here they fought till sunset with stubborn desperation, twice repulsing the overwhelming numbers of the assailants, and thwarting all their efforts to gain the heights in the rear.   The combatants were often not twenty yards apart, and sometimes they were mixed together.   At length a large body of Indians succeeded in turning the right flank of the rangers.   Lieutenant Phillips and a few men were sent by Rogers to oppose the movement; but they quickly found themselves surrounded, and after a brave defence surrendered on a pledge of good treatment.   Rogers now advised the volunteers, Pringle and Roche, to escape while there was time, and offered them a sergeant as guide; but they gallantly resolved to stand by him.   Eight officers and more than a hundred rangers lay dead and wounded in the snow.   Evening was near and the forest was darkening fast, when the few survivors broke and fled.   Rogers with about twenty followers escaped up the mountain; and gathering others about him, made a running fight against the Indian pursuers, reached Lake George, not without fresh losses, and after two days of misery regained Fort Edward with the remnant of his band.   The enemy on their part suffered heavily, the chief loss falling on the Indians; who, to revenge themselves, murdered all the wounded and nearly all the prisoners, and tying Lieutenant Phillips and his men to trees, hacked them to pieces.  

Captain Pringle and Lieutenant Roche had become separated from the other fugitives; and, ignorant of woodcraft, they wandered by moonlight amid the desolation of rocks and snow, till early in the night they met a man whom they knew as a servant of Rogers, and who said that he could guide them to Fort Edward.   One of them had lost his snow-shoes in the fight; and, crouching over a miserable fire of broken sticks, they worked till morning to make a kind of substitute with forked branches, twigs, and a few leather strings.   They had no hatchet to cut firewood, no blankets, no overcoats, and no food except part of a Bologna sausage and a little ginger which Pringle had brought with him.   There was no game; not even a squirrel was astir; and their chief sustenance was juniper-berries and the inner bark of trees.   But their worst calamity was the helplessness of their guide.   His brain wandered; and while always insisting that he knew the country well, he led them during four days hither and thither among a labyrinth of nameless mountains, clambering over rocks, wading through snowdrifts, struggling among fallen trees, till on the fifth day they saw with despair that they had circled back to their own starting-point.   On the next morning, when they were on the ice of Lake George, not far from Rogers Rock, a blinding storm of sleet and snow drove in their faces.   Spent as they were, it was death to stop; and bending their heads against the blast, they fought their way forward, now on the ice, and now in the adjacent forest, till in the afternoon the storm ceased, and they found themselves on the bank of an unknown stream.   It was the outlet of the lake; for they had wandered into the valley of Ticonderoga, and were not three miles from the French fort.   In crossing the torrent Pringle lost his gun, and was near losing his life.   All three of the party were drenched to the skin; and, becoming now for the first time aware of where they were, they resolved on yielding themselves prisoners to save their lives.   Night, however, again found them in the forest.   Their guide became delirious, saw visions of Indians all around, and, murmuring incoherently, straggled off a little way, seated himself in the snow, and was soon dead.   The two officers, themselves but half alive, walked all night round a tree to keep the blood in motion.   In the morning, again toiling on, they presently saw the fort across the intervening snowfields, and approached it, waving a white handkerchief.   Several French officers dashed towards them at full speed, and reached them in time to save them from the clutches of the Indians, whose camps were near at hand.   They were kindly treated, recovered from the effects of their frightful ordeal, and were afterwards exchanged.   Pringle lived to old age, and died in 1800, senior major-general of the British army.  

Chapter 17
1753-1760

Bigot

At this stormy epoch of Canadian history the sinister figure of the Intendant Bigot moves conspicuous on the scene.   Not that he was answerable for all the manifold corruption that infected the colony, for much of it was rife before his time, and had a vitality of its own; but his office and character made him the centre of it, and, more than any other man, he marshalled and organized the forces of knavery.  

In the dual government of Canada the Governor represented the King and commanded the troops; while the Intendant was charged with trade, finance, justice, and all other departments of civil administration.   In former times the two functionaries usually quarrelled; but between Vaudreuil and Bigot there was perfect harmony.  

François Bigot, in the words of his biographer, was "born in the bosom of the magistracy," both his father and his grandfather having held honorable positions in the parliament of Bordeaux.   In appearance he was not prepossessing, though his ugly, pimpled face was joined with easy and agreeable manners.   In spite of indifferent health, he was untiring both in pleasure and in work, a skilful man of business, of great official experience, energetic, good-natured, free-handed, ready to oblige his friends and aid them in their needs at the expense of the King, his master; fond of social enjoyments, lavish in hospitality.  

A year or two before the war began, the engineer Franquet was sent from France to strengthen Louisbourg and inspect the defences of Canada.   He kept a copious journal, full of curious observation, and affording bright glimpses not only of the social life of the Intendant, but of Canadian society in the upper or official class.   Thus, among various matters of the kind, he gives us the following.   Bigot, who was in Quebec, had occasion to go to Montreal to meet the Governor; and this official journey was turned into a pleasure excursion, of which the King paid all the costs.   Those favored with invitations, a privilege highly prized, were Franquet, with seven or eight military officers and a corresponding number of ladies, including the wife of Major Pean, of whom Bigot was enamoured.   A chief steward, cooks, servants, and other attendants, followed the party.   The guests had been requested to send their portmanteaus to the Intendant's Palace six days before, that they might be sent forward on sledges along with bedding, table, service, cooking utensils, and numberless articles of comfort and luxury.   Orders were given to the inhabitants along the way, on pain of imprisonment, to level the snowdrifts and beat the road smooth with ox-teams, as also to provide relays of horses.   It is true that they were well paid for this last service; so well that the hire of a horse to Montreal and back again would cost the King the entire value of the animal.   On the eighth of February the party met at the palace; and after a grand dinner set out upon their journey in twenty or more sleighs, some with two guests and a driver, and the rest with servants and attendants.   The procession passed at full trot along St.   Vallier street amid the shouts of an admiring crowd, stopped towards night at Pointe-aux-Trembles, where each looked for lodging; and then they all met and supped with the Intendant.   The militia captain of the place was ordered to have fresh horses ready at seven in the morning, when Bigot regaled his friends with tea, coffee, and chocolate, after which they set out again, drove to Cap-Santé, and stopped two hours at the house of the militia captain to breakfast and warm themselves.   In the afternoon they reached Ste.   Anne-de-la-Pérade, when Bigot gave them a supper at the house in which he lodged, and they spent the evening at cards.  

The next morning brought them to Three Rivers, where Madame Marin, Franquet's travelling companion, wanted to stop to see her sister, the wife of Rigaud, who was then governor of the place.   Madame de Rigaud, being ill, received her visitors in bed, and ordered an ample dinner to be provided for them; after which they returned to her chamber for coffee and conversation.   Then they all set out again, saluted by the cannon of the fort.  

Their next stopping-place was Isle-au-Castor, where, being seated at cards before supper, they were agreeably surprised by the appearance of the Governor, who had come down from Montreal to meet them with four officers, Duchesnaye, Marin, Le Mercier, and Péan.   Many were the embraces and compliments; and in the morning they all journeyed on together, stopping towards night at the largest house they could find, where their servants took away the partitions to make room, and they sat down to a supper, followed by the inevitable game of cards.   On the next night they reached Montreal and were lodged at the intendency, the official residence of the hospitable Bigot.   The succeeding day was spent in visiting persons of eminence and consideration, among whom are to be noted the names, soon to become notorious, of Varin, naval commissary, Martel, King's storekeeper, Antoine Penisseault, and François Maurin.   A succession of festivities followed, including the benediction of three flags for a band of militia on their way to the Ohio.   All persons of quality in Montreal were invited on this occasion, and the Governor gave them a dinner and a supper.   Bigot, however, outdid him in the plenitude of his hospitality, since, in the week before Lent, forty guests supped every evening at his table, and dances, masquerades, and cards consumed the night.  

His chief abode was at Quebec, in the capacious but somewhat ugly building known as the Intendant's Palace.   Here it was his custom during the war to entertain twenty persons at dinner every day; and there was also a hall for dancing, with a gallery to which the citizens were admitted as spectators.   The bounteous Intendant provided a separate dancing-hall for the populace; and, though at the same time he plundered and ruined them, his gracious demeanor long kept him a place in their hearts.   Gambling was the chief feature of his entertainments, and the stakes grew deeper as the war went on.   He played desperately himself, and early in 1758 lost two hundred and four thousand francs, a loss which he will knew how to repair.   Besides his official residence on the banks of the St.   Charles, he had a country house about five miles distant, a massive old stone building in the woods at the foot of the mountain of Charlebourg; its ruins are now known as Chateau Bigot.   In its day it was called the Hermitage; though the uses to which it was applied savored nothing of asceticism.   Tradition connects it and its owner with a romantic, but more than doubtful, story of love, jealousy, and murder.  

The chief Canadian families were so social in their habits and so connected by intermarriage that, along with the French civil and military officers of the colonial establishment, they formed a society whose members all knew each other, like the corresponding class in Virginia.   There was among them a social facility and ease rare in democratic communities; and in the ladies of Quebec and Montreal were often seen graces which visitors from France were astonished to find at the edge of a wilderness.   Yet this small though lively society had anomalies which grew more obtrusive towards the close of the war.   Knavery makes strange companions; and at the tables of high civil officials and colony officers of rank sat guests as boorish in manners as they were worthless in character.  

Foremost among these was Joseph Cadet, son of a butcher at Quebec, who at thirteen went to sea as a pilot's boy, then kept the cows of an inhabitant of Charlebourg, and at last took up his father's trade and prospered in it.   In 1756 Bigot got him appointed commissary-general, and made a contract with him which flung wide open the doors of peculation.   In the next two years Cadet and his associates,Péan, Maurin, Corpron, and Penisseault, sold to the King, for about twenty-three million francs, provisions which cost them eleven millions, leaving a net profit of about twelve millions.   It was not legally proved that the Intendant shared Cadet's gains; but there is no reasonable doubt that he did so.   Bigot's chief profits rose, however, from other sources.   It was his business to see that the King's storehouses for the supply of troops, militia, and Indians were kept well stocked.   To this end he and Bréard, naval comptroller at Quebec, made a partnership with the commercial house of Gradis and Son at Bordeaux.   He next told the Colonial Minister that there were stores enough already in Canada to last three years, and that it would be more to the advantage of the King to buy them in the colony than to take the risk of sending them from France.   Gradis and Son then shipped them to Canada in large quantities, while Bréard or his agent declared at the custom-house that they belonged to the King, and so escaped the payment of duties.   Theywere then, as occasion rose, sold to the King at a huge profit, always under fictitious names.   Often they were sold to some favored merchant or speculator, who sold them in turn to Bigot's confederate, the King's storekeeper; and sometimes they passed through several successive hands, till the price rose to double or triple the first cost, the Intendant and his partners sharing the gains with friends and allies.   They would let nobody else sell to the King; and thus a grinding monopoly was established, to the great profit of those who held it.  

Under the name of a trader named Claverie, Bigot, some time before the war, set up a warehouse on land belonging to the King and not far from his own palace.   Here the goods shipped from Bordeaux were collected, to be sold in retail to the citizens, and in wholesale to favored merchants and the King.   This establishment was popularly known as La Friponne, at Montreal, which was leagued with that of Quebec, and received goods from it.  

Bigot and his accomplices invented many other profitable frauds.   Thus he was charged with the disposal of the large quantity of furs belonging to his master, which it was his duty to sell at public auction, after due notice, to the highest bidder.   Instead of this, he sold them privately at a low price to his own confederates.   It was also his duty to provide transportation for troops, artillery, provisions, and stores, in which he made good profit by letting to the King, at high prices, boats or vessels which he had himself bought or hired for the purpose.  

Yet these and other illicit gains still left him but the second place as public plunderer.   Cadet, the commissary-general, reaped an ampler harvest, and became the richest man in the colony.   One of the operations of this scoundrel, accomplished with the help of Bigot, consisted in buying for six hundred thousand francs a quantity of stores belonging to the King, and then selling them back to him for one million four hundred thousand.   It was further shown on his trial that in 1759 he received 1,614,354 francs for stores furnished at the post of Miramichi, while the value of those actually furnished was but 889,544 francs; thus giving him a fraudulent profit of more than seven hundred and twenty-four thousand.   Cadet's chief resource was the falsification of accounts.   The service of the King in Canada was fenced about by rigid formalities.   When supplies were wanted at any of the military posts, the commandant made a requisition specifying their nature and quantity, while, before pay could be drawn for them, the King's storekeeper, the local commissary, and the inspector must set their names as vouchers to the list, and finally Bigot must sign it.   But precautions were useless where all were leagued to rob the King.   It appeared on Cadet's trial that by gifts of wine, brandy, or money he had bribed the officers, both civil and military, at all the principal forts to attest the truth of accounts in which the supplies furnished by him were set at more than twice their true amount.   Of the many frauds charged against him there was one peculiarly odious.   Large numbers of refugee Acadians were to be supplied with rations to keep them alive.   Instead of wholesome food, mouldered and unsalable salt cod was sent them, and paid for by the King at inordinate prices.   It was but one of many heartless outrages practised by Canadian officials on this unhappy people.  

Cadet told the Intendant that the inhabitants were hoarding their grain, and got an order from him requiring them to sell it at a low fixed price, on pain of having it seized.   Thus nearly the whole fell into his hands.   Famine ensued; and he then sold it at a great profit, partly to the King, and partly to its first owners.   Another of his devices was to sell provisions to the King which, being sent to the outlying forts, were falsely reported as consumed; on which he sold them to the King a second time.   Not without reason does a writer of the time exclaim: "This is the land of abuses, ignorance, prejudice, and all that is monstrous in government.   Peculation, monopoly, and plunder have become a bottomless abyss.  ”

The command of a fort brought such opportunities of making money that, according to Bougainville, the mere prospect of appointment to it for the usual term of three years was thought enough for a young man to marry upon.   It was a favor in the gift of the Governor, who was accused of sharing the profits.   These came partly from the fur-trade, and still more from frauds of various kinds.   For example, a requisition was made for supplies as gifts to the Indians in order to keep them friendly or send them on the war-path; and their number was put many times above the truth in order to get more goods, which the commandant and his confederates then bartered for furs on their own account, instead of giving them as presents.   "And," says a contemporary, addressing the Colonial Minister, "those who treat the savages so basely are officers of the King, depositaries of his authority, ministers of that Great Onontio whom they call their father.  ” At the post of Green Bay, the partisan officer Marin, and Rigaud, the Governor's brother, made in a short time a profit of three hundred and twelve thousand francs.   "Why is it," asks Bougainville, "that of all which the King sends to the Indians two thirds are stolen, and the rest sold to them instead of being given?”

The transportation of military stores gave another opportunity of plunder.   The contractor would procure from the Governor or the local commandant an order requiring the inhabitants to serve him as boatmen, drivers, or porters, under a promise of exemption that year from duty as soldiers.   This saved him his chief item of expense, and the profits of his contract rose in proportion.  

A contagion of knavery ran through the official life of the colony; and to resist it demanded no common share of moral robustness.   The officers of the troops of the line were not much within its influence; but those of the militia and colony regulars, whether of French or Canadian birth, shared the corruption of the civil service.   Seventeen of them, including six chevaliers of St.   Louis and eight commandants of forts, were afterwards arraigned for fraud and malversation, though some of the number were acquitted.   Bougainville gives the names of four other Canadian officers as honorable exceptions to the general demoralization, Benoît, Repentigny, Lainé, and Le Borgne; "not enough," he observes, "to save Sodom.  "

Conspicuous among these military thieves was Major Péan, whose qualities as a soldier have been questioned, but who nevertheless had shown almost as much vigor in serving the King during the Ohio campaign of 1753 as he afterwards displayed effrontery in cheating him.   "Le petit Péan" had married a young wife, Mademoiselle Desméloizes, Canadian like himself, well born, and famed for beauty, vivacity, and wit.   Bigot, who was near sixty, became her accepted lover; and the fortune of Péan was made.   His first success seems to have taken him by surprise.   He had bought as a speculation a large quantity of grain, with money of the King lent him by the Intendant.   Bigot, officially omnipotent, then issued an order raising the commodity to a price far above that paid by Péan, who thus made a profit of fifty thousand crowns.   A few years later his wealth was estimated at from two to four million francs.   Madame Péan became a power in Canada, the dispenser of favors and offices; and all who sought opportunity to rob the King hastened to pay her their court.   Péan, jilted by his own wife, made prosperous love to the wife of his partner, Penisseault; who, though the daughter of a Montreal tradesman, had the air of a woman of rank, and presided with dignity and grace at a hospitable board where were gathered the clerks of Cadet and other lesser lights of the administrative hierarchy.   It was often honored by the presence of the Chevalier de Lévis, who, captivated by the charms of the hostess, condescended to a society which his friends condemned as unworthy of his station.   He succeeded Péan in the graces of Madame Penisseault, and after the war took her with him to France; while the aggrieved husband found consolation in the wives of the small functionaries under his orders.  

Another prominent name on the roll of knavery was that of Varin, commissary of marine, and Bigot's deputy at Montreal, a Frenchman of low degree, small in stature, sharp witted, indefatigable, conceited, arrogant, headstrong, capricious, and dissolute.   Worthless as he was, he found a place in the Court circle of the Governor, and aspired to supplant Bigot in the intendancy.   To this end, as well as to save himself from justice, he had the fatuity to turn informer and lay bare the sins of his confederates, though forced at the same time to betray his own.   Among his comrades and allies may be mentioned Deschenaux, son of a shoemaker at Quebec, and secretary to the Intendant; Martel, King's storekeeper at Montreal; the humpback Maurin, who is not to be confounded with the partisan officer Marin; and Corpron, a clerk whom several tradesmen had dismissed for rascality, but who was now in the confidence of Cadet, to whom he made himself useful, and in whose service he grew rich.  

Canada was the prey of official jackals, true lion's providers, since they helped to prepare a way for the imperial beast, who, roused at last from his lethargy, was gathering his strength to seize her for his own.   Honesty could not be expected from a body of men clothed with arbitrary and ill-defined powers, ruling with absolute sway an unfortunate people who had no voice in their own destinies, and answerable only to an apathetic master three thousand miles away.   Nor did the Canadian Church, though supreme, check the corruptions that sprang up and flourished under its eye.   The Governor himself was charged with sharing the plunder; and though he was acquitted on his trial, it is certain that Bigot had him well in hand, that he was intimate with the chief robbers, and that they found help in his weak compliances and wilful blindness.   He put his stepson, Le Verrier, in command at Michillimackinac, where, by fraud and the connivance of his stepfather, the young man made a fortune.   When the Colonial Minister berated the Intendant for maladministration, Vaudreuil became his advocate, and wrote thus in his defence: "I cannot conceal from you, Monseigneur, how deeply M.   Bigot feels the suspicions expressed in your letters to him.   He does not deserve them, I am sure.   He is full of zeal for the service of the King; but as he is rich, or passes as such, and as he has merit, the ill-disposed are jealous, and insinuate that he has prospered at the expense of His Majesty.   I am certain that it is not true, and that nobody is a better citizen than he, or has the King's interest more at heart.  ” For Cadet, the butcher's son, the Governor asked a patent of nobility as a reward for his services.   When Péan went to France in 1758, Vaudreuil wrote to the Colonial Minister: "I have great confidence in him.   He knows the colony and its needs.   You can trust all he says.   He will explain everything in the best manner.   I shall be extremely sensible to any kindness you may show him, and hope that when you know him you will like him as much as I do.  ”

Administrative corruption was not the only bane of Canada.   Her financial condition was desperate.   The ordinary circulating medium consisted of what was known as card money, and amounted to only a million of francs.   This being insufficient, Bigot, like his predecessor Hocquart, issued promissory notes on his own authority, and made them legal tender.   They were for sums from one franc to a hundred, and were called ordonnances.   Their issue was blamed at Versailles as an encroachment on the royal prerogative, though they were recognized by the Ministry in view of the necessity of the case.   Every autumn those who held them to any considerable amount might bring them to the colonial treasurer, who gave in return bills of exchange on the royal treasury in France.   At first these bills were promptly paid; then delays took place, and the notes depreciated; till in 1759 the Ministry, aghast at the amount, refused payment, and the utmost dismay and confusion followed.  

The vast jarring, discordant mechanism of corruption grew incontrollable; it seized upon Bigot, and dragged him, despite himself, into perils which his prudence would have shunned.   He was becoming a victim to the rapacity of his own confederates, whom he dared not offend by refusing his connivance and his signature of frauds which became more and more recklessly audacious.   He asked leave to retire from office, in the hope that his successor would bear the brunt of the ministerial displeasure.   Péan had withdrawn already, and with the fruits of his plunder bought land in France, where he thought himself safe.   But though the Intendant had long been an object of distrust, and had often been warned to mend his ways, yet such was his energy, his executive power, and his fertility of resource, that in the crisis of the war it was hard to dispense with him.   Neither his abilities, however, nor his strong connections in France, nor an ally whom he had secured in the bureau of the Colonial Minister himself, could avail him much longer; and the letters from Versailles became appalling in rebuke and menace.  

"The ship 'Britannia,'" wrote the Minister, Berryer, "laden with goods such as are wanted in the colony, was captured by a privateer from St.   Malo, and brought into Quebec.   You sold the whole cargo for eight hundred thousand francs.   The purchasers made a profit of two millions.   You bought back a part for the King at one million, or two hundred thousand more than the price which you sold the whole.   With conduct like this it is no wonder that the expenses of the colony become insupportable.   The amount of your drafts on the treasury is frightful.   The fortunes of your subordinates throw suspicion on your administration.  " And in another letter on the same day: "How could it happen that the small-pox among the Indians cost the King a million francs? What does this expense mean? Who is answerable for it? Is it the officers who command the posts, or is it the storekeepers? You give me no particulars.   What has become of the immense quantity of provisions sent to Canada last year? I am forced to conclude that the King's stores are set down as consumed from the moment they arrive, and then sold to His Majesty at exorbitant prices.   Thus the King buys stores in France, and then buys them again in Canada.   I no longer wonder at the immense fortunes made in the colony.  ” Some months later the Minister writes: "You pay bills without examination, and then find an error in your accounts of three million six hundred thousand francs.   In the letters from Canada I see nothing but incessant speculation in provisions and goods, which are sold to the King for ten times more than they cost in France.   For the last time, I exhort you to give these things your serious attention, for they will not escape from mine.  ”

"I write, Monsieur, to answer your last two letters, in which you tell me that instead of sixteen millions, your drafts on the treasury for 1758 will reach twenty-four millions, and that this year they will rise to from thirty-one to thirty-three millions.   It seems, then, that there are no bounds to the expenses of Canada.   They double almost every year, while you seem to give yourself no concern except to get them paid.   Do you suppose that I can advise the King to approve such an administration? or do you think that you can take the immense sum of thirty-three millions out of the royal treasury by merely assuring me that you have signed drafts for it? This, too, for expenses incurred irregularly, often needlessly, always wastefully; which make the fortune of everybody who has the least hand in them, and about which you know so little that after reporting them at sixteen millions, you find two months after that they will reach twenty-four.   You are accused of having given the furnishing of provisions to one man, who under the name of commissary-general, has set what prices he pleased; of buying for the King at second or third hand what you might have got from the producer at half the price; of having in this and other ways made the fortunes of persons connected with you; and of living in splendor in the midst of a public misery, which all the letters from the colony agree in ascribing to bad administration, and in charging M.   de Vaudreuil with weakness in not preventing.  ”

These drastic utterances seem to have been partly due to a letter written by Montcalm in cipher to the Maréchal de Belleisle, then minister of war.   It painted the deplorable condition of Canada, and exposed without reserve the peculations and robberies of those intrusted with its interests.   "It seems," said the General, "as if they were all hastening to make their fortunes before the loss of the colony; which many of them perhaps desire as a veil to their conduct.  " He gives among other cases that of Le Mercier, chief of Canadian artillery, who had come to Canada as a private soldier twenty years before, and had so prospered on fraudulent contracts that he would soon be worth nearly a million.   "I have often," continues Montcalm, "spoken of these expenditures to M.   de Vaudreuil and M.   Bigot; and each throws the blame on the other.  ” And yet at the same time Vaudreuil was assuring the Minister that Bigot was without blame.  

Some two months before Montcalm wrote this letter, the Minister, Berryer, sent a despatch to the Governor and Intendant which filled them with ire and mortification.   It ordered them to do nothing without consulting the general of the French regulars, not only in matters of war, but in all matters of administration touching the defence and preservation of the colony.   A plainer proof of confidence on one hand and distrust on the other could not have been given.  

One Querdisien-Tremais was sent from Bordeaux as an agent of Government to make investigation.   He played the part of detective, wormed himself into the secrets of the confederates, and after six months of patient inquisition traced out four distinct combinations for public plunder.   Explicit orders were now given to Bigot, who, seeing no other escape, broke with Cadet, and made him disgorge two millions of stolen money.   The Commissary-General and his partners became so terrified that they afterwards gave up nearly seven millions more.   Stormy events followed, and the culprits found shelter for a time amid the tumults of war.   Peculation did not cease, but a day of reckoning was at hand.  

NOTE: The printed documents of the trial of Bigot and the other peculators include the defence of Bigot, of which the first part occupies 303 quarto pages, and the second part 764.   Among the other papers are the arguments for Péan, Varin, Saint-Blin, Boishébert, Martel, Joncaire-Chabert and several more, along with the elaborate Jugement rendue, the Requêtes du Procureur-Général, the Réponse aux Mémoires de M.   Bigot et du Sieur Péan, etc.  , forming together five quarto volumes, all of which I have carefully examined.   These are in the Library of Harvard University.   There is another set, also of five volumes, in the Library of the Historical Society of Quebec, containing most of the papers just mentioned, and, bound with them, various others in manuscript, among which are documents in defence of Vaudreuil (printed in part); Estèbe, Corpron, Penisseault, Maurin, and Bréard.   I have examined this collection also.   The manuscript Ordres du Roy et Dépêches des Ministres, 1757-1760, as well as the letters of Vaudreuil, Bougainville, Daine, Doreil, and Montcalm throw much light on the maladministration of the time; as do many contemporary documents, notably those entitled Mémoire sur les Fraudes commises dans la Colonie, État présent du Canada, and Mémoire sur le Canada (Archives Nationales).   The remarkable anonymous work printed by the Historical Society of Quebec under the title _Mémoires sur le Canada depuis 1749 jusqu'àé 1760, is full of curious matter concerning Bigot and his associates which squares well with other evidence.   This is the source from which Smith, in his History of Canada (Quebec, 1815), drew most of his information on the subject.   A manuscript which seems to be the original draft of this valuable document was preserved at the Bastile, and, with other papers, was thrown into the street when that castle was destroyed.   They were gathered up, and afterwards bought by a Russian named Dubrowski, who carried them to St.   Petersburg.   Lord Dufferin, when minister there, procured a copy of the manuscript in question, which is now in the keeping of Abbé H.   Verreau at Montreal, to whose kindness I owe the opportunity of examining it.   In substance it differs little from the printed work, though the language and the arrangement often vary from it.   The author, whoever he may have been, was deeply versed in Canadian affairs of the time, and though often caustic, is generally trustworthy.  

Chapter 18
1757, 1758

Pitt

The war kindled in the American forest was now raging in full conflagration among the kingdoms of Europe; and in the midst stood Frederic of Prussia, a veritable fire-king.   He had learned through secret agents that he was to be attacked, and that the wrath of Maria Theresa with her two allies, Pompadour and the Empress of Russia, was soon to wreak itself upon him.   With his usual prompt audacity he anticipated his enemies, marched into Saxony, and began the Continental war.   His position seemed desperate.   England, sundered from Austria, her old ally, had made common cause with him; but he had no other friend worth the counting.   France, Russia, Austria, Sweden, Saxony, the collective Germanic Empire, and most of the smaller German States had joined hands for his ruin, eager to crush him and divide the spoil, parcelling out his dominions among themselves in advance by solemn mutual compact.   Against the five millions of Prussia were arrayed populations of more than a hundred million.   The little kingdom was open on all sides to attack, and her enemies were spurred on by the bitterest animosity.   It was thought that one campaign would end the war.   The war lasted seven years, and Prussia came out of it triumphant.   Such a warrior as her indomitable king Europe has rarely seen.   If the Seven Years War made the maritime and colonial greatness of England, it also raised Prussia to the rank of a first-class Power.  

Frederic began with a victory, routing the Austrians in one of the fiercest of recorded conflicts, the battle of Prague.   Then in his turn he was beaten at Kolin.   All seemed lost.   The hosts of the coalition were rolling in upon him like a deluge.   Surrounded by enemies, in the jaws of destruction, hoping for little but to die in battle, this strange hero solaced himself with an exhaustless effusion of bad verses, sometimes mournful, sometimes cynical, sometimes indignant, and sometimes breathing a dauntless resolution; till, when his hour came, he threw down his pen to achieve those feats of arms which stamp him one of the foremost soldiers of the world.  

The French and Imperialists, in overwhelming force, thought to crush him at Rosbach.   He put them to shameful rout; and then, instead of bonfires and Te Deums, mocked at them in doggerel rhymes of amazing indecency.   While he was beating the French, the Austrians took Silesia from him.   He marched to recover it, found them strongly posted at Leuthen, eighty thousand men against thirty thousand, and without hesitation resolved to attack them.   Never was he more heroic than on the eve of this, his crowning triumph.   "The hour is at hand," he said to his generals.   "I mean, in spite of the rules of military art, to attack Prince Karl's army, which is nearly thrice our own.   This risk I must run, or all is lost.   We must beat him or die, all of us, before his batteries.  " He burst unawares upon the Austrian left, and rolled their whole host together, corps upon corps, in a tumult of irretrievable ruin.  

While her great ally was reaping a full harvest of laurels, England, dragged into the Continental war because that apple of discord, Hanover, belonged to her King, found little but humiliation.   Minorca was wrested from her, and the Ministry had an innocent man shot to avert from themselves the popular indignation; while the same Ministry, scared by a phantom of invasion, brought over German troops to defend British soil.   But now an event took place pregnant with glorious consequence.   The reins of power fell into the hands of William Pitt.   He had already held them for a brief space, forced into office at the end of 1756 by popular clamor, in spite of the Whig leaders and against the wishes of the King.   But the place was untenable.   Newcastle's Parliament would not support him; the Duke of Cumberland opposed him; the King hated him; and in April 1757, he was dismissed.   Then ensued eleven weeks of bickering and dispute, during which, in the midst of a great war, England was left without a government.   It became clear that none was possible without Pitt; and none with him could be permanent and strong unless joined with those influences which had thus far controlled the majorities of Parliament.   Therefore an extraordinary union was brought about; Lord Chesterfield acting as go-between to reconcile the ill-assorted pair.   One of them brought to the alliance the confidence and support of the people; the other, Court management, borough interest, and parliamentary connections.   Newcastle was made First Lord of the Treasury, and Pitt, the old enemy who had repeatedly browbeat and ridiculed him, became Secretary of State, with the lead of the House of Commons and full control of the war and foreign affairs.   It was a partnership of magpie and eagle.   The dirty work of government, intrigue, bribery, and all the patronage that did not affect the war, fell to the share of the old politician.   If Pitt could appoint generals, admirals, and ambassadors, Newcastle was welcome to the rest.   "I will borrow the Duke's majorities to carry on the government," said the new secretary; and with the audacious self-confidence that was one of his traits, he told the Duke of Devonshire, "I am sure that I can save this country, and that nobody else can.  " England hailed with one acclaim the undaunted leader who asked for no reward but the honor of serving her.   The hour had found the man.   For the next four years this imposing figure towers supreme in British history.  

He had glaring faults, some of them of a sort not to have been expected in him.   Vanity, the common weakness of small minds, was the most disfiguring foible of this great one.   He had not the simplicity which becomes greatness so well.   He could give himself theatrical airs, strike attitudes, and dart stage lightnings from his eyes; yet he was formidable even in his affectations.   Behind his great intellectual powers lay a burning enthusiasm, a force of passion and fierce intensity of will, that gave redoubled impetus to the fiery shafts of his eloquence; and the haughty and masterful nature of the man had its share in the ascendency which he long held over Parliament.   He would blast the labored argument of an adversary by a look of scorn or a contemptuous wave of the hand.  

The Great Commoner was not a man of the people in the popular sense of that hackneyed phrase.   Though himself poor, being a younger son, he came of a rich and influential family; he was patrician at heart; both his faults and his virtues, his proud incorruptibility and passionate, domineering patriotism, bore the patrician stamp.   Yet he loved liberty and he loved the people, because they were the English people.   The effusive humanitarianism of to-day had no part in him, and the democracy of to-day would detest him.   Yet to the middle-class England of his own time, that unenfranchised England which had little representation in Parliament, he was a voice, an inspiration, and a tower of strength.   He would not flatter the people; but, turning with contempt from the tricks and devices of official politics, he threw himself with a confidence that never wavered on their patriotism and public spirit.   They answered him with a boundless trust, asked but to follow his lead, gave him without stint their money and their blood, loved him for his domestic virtues and his disinterestedness, believed him even in his self-contradiction, and idolized him even in his bursts of arrogant passion.   It was he who waked England from her lethargy, shook off the spell that Newcastle and his fellow-enchanters had cast over her, and taught her to know herself again.   A heart that beat in unison with all that was British found responsive throbs in every corner of the vast empire that through him was to become more vast.   With the instinct of his fervid patriotism he would join all its far-extended members into one, not by vain assertions of parliamentary supremacy, but by bonds of sympathy and ties of a common freedom and a common cause.  

The passion for power and glory subdued in him all the sordid parts of humanity, and he made the power and glory of England one with his own.   He could change front through resentment or through policy; but in whatever path he moved, his objects were the same: not to curb the power of France in America, but to annihilate it; crush her navy, cripple her foreign trade, ruin her in India, in Africa, and wherever else, east or west, she had found foothold; gain for England the mastery of the seas, open to her the great highways of the globe, make her supreme in commerce and colonization; and while limiting the activities of her rival to the European continent, give to her the whole world for a sphere.  

To this British Roman was opposed the pampered Sardanapalus of Versailles, with the silken favorite who by calculated adultery had bought the power to ruin France.   The Marquise de Pompadour, who began life as Jeanne Poisson, Jane Fish, daughter of the head clerk of a banking house, who then became wife of a rich financier, and then, as mistress of the King, rose to a pinnacle of gilded ignominy, chose this time to turn out of office the two ministers who had shown most ability and force, Argenson, head of the department of war, and Machault, head of the marine and colonies; the one because he was not subservient to her will, and the other because he had unwittingly touched the self-love of her royal paramour.   She aspired to a share in the conduct of the war, and not only made and unmade ministers and generals, but discussed campaigns and battles with them, while they listened to her prating with a show of obsequious respect, since to lose her favor was to risk losing all.   A few months later, when blows fell heavy and fast, she turned a deaf ear to representations of financial straits and military disasters, played the heroine, affected a greatness of soul superior to misfortune, and in her perfumed boudoir varied her tiresome graces by posing as a Roman matron.   In fact she never wavered in her spite against Frederic, and her fortitude was perfect in bearing the sufferings of others and defying dangers that could not touch her.  

When Pitt took office it was not over France, but over England that the clouds hung dense and black.   Her prospects were of the gloomiest.   "Whoever is in or whoever is out," wrote Chesterfield, "I am sure we are undone both at home and abroad: at home by our increasing debt and expenses; abroad by our ill-luck and incapacity.   We are no longer a nation.  " And his despondency was shared by many at the beginning of the most triumphant Administration in British history.   The shuffling weakness of his predecessors had left Pitt a heritage of tribulation.   From America came news of Loudon's manifold failures; from Germany that of the miscarriage of the Duke of Cumberland, who, at the head of an army of Germans in British pay, had been forced to sign the convention of Kloster-Zeven, by which he promised to disband them.   To these disasters was added a third, of which the new Government alone had to bear the burden.   At the end of summer Pitt sent a great expedition to attack Rochefort; the military and naval commanders disagreed, and the consequence was failure.   There was no light except from far-off India, where Clive won the great victory of Plassey, avenged the Black Hole of Calcutta, and prepared the ruin of the French power and the undisputed ascendency of England.  

If the English had small cause as yet to rejoice in their own successes, they found comfort in those of their Prussian allies.   The rout of the French at Rossbach and of the Austrians at Leuthen spread joy through their island.   More than this, they felt that they had found at last a leader after their own heart; and the consciousness regenerated them.   For the paltering imbecility of the old Ministry they had the unconquerable courage, the iron purpose, the unwavering faith, the inextinguishable hope, of the new one.   "England has long been in labor," said Frederic of Prussia, "and at last she has brought forth a man.  " It was not only that instead of weak commanders Pitt gave her strong ones; the same men who had served her feebly under the blight of the Newcastle Administration served her manfully and well under his robust impulsion.   "Nobody ever entered his closet," said Colonel Barre, "who did not come out of it a braver man.  " That inspiration was felt wherever the British flag waved.   Zeal awakened with the assurance that conspicuous merit was sure of its reward, and that no officer who did his duty would now be made a sacrifice, like Admiral Byng, to appease public indignation at ministerial failures.   As Nature, languishing in chill vapors and dull smothering fogs, revives at the touch of the sun, so did England spring into fresh life under the kindling influence of one great man.  

With the opening of the year 1758 her course of Continental victories began.   The Duke of Cumberland, the King's son, was recalled in disgrace, and a general of another stamp, Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, was placed in command of the Germans in British pay, with the contingent of English troops now added to them.   The French, too, changed commanders.   The Duke of Richelieu, a dissolute old beau, returned to Paris to spend in heartless gallantries the wealth he had gained by plunder; and a young soldier-churchman, the Comte de Clermont, took his place.   Prince Ferdinand pushed him hard with an inferior force, drove him out of Hanover, and captured eleven thousand of his soldiers.   Clermont was recalled, and was succeeded by Contades, another incapable.   One of his subordinates won for him the battle; of Lutterberg; but the generalship of Ferdinand made it a barren victory, and the campaign remained a success for the English.   They made descents on the French coasts, captured; St.  -Servan, a suburb of St.  -Malo, and burned three ships of the line, twenty-four privateers, and sixty merchantmen; then entered Cherbourg, destroyed the forts, carried off or spiked the cannon, and burned twenty-seven vessels, a success partially offset by a failure on the coast of Brittany, where they were repulsed with some loss.   In Africa they drove the French from the Guinea coast, and seized their establishment at Senegal.  

It was towards America that Pitt turned his heartiest efforts.   His first aim was to take Louisbourg, as a step towards taking Quebec; then Ticonderoga, that thorn in the side of the northern colonies; and lastly Fort Duquesne, the Key of the Great West.   He recalled Loudon, for whom he had a fierce contempt; but there were influences which he could not disregard, and Major-General Abercromby, who was next in order of rank, an indifferent soldier, though a veteran in years, was allowed to succeed him, and lead in person the attack on Ticonderoga.   Pitt hoped that Brigadier Lord Howe, an admirable officer, who was joined with Abercromby, would be the real commander, and make amends for all short-comings of his chief.   To command the Louisbourg expedition, Colonel Jeffrey Amherst was recalled from the German war, and made at one leap a major-general.   He was energetic and resolute, somewhat cautious and slow, but with a bulldog tenacity of grip.   Under him were three brigadiers, Whitmore, Lawrence, and Wolfe, of whom the youngest is the most noteworthy.   In the luckless Rochefort expedition, Colonel James Wolfe was conspicuous by a dashing gallantry that did not escape the eye of Pitt, always on the watch for men to do his work.   The young officer was ardent, headlong, void of fear, often rash, almost fanatical in his devotion to military duty, and reckless of life when the glory of England or his own was at stake.   The third expedition, that against Fort Duquesne, was given to Brigadier John Forbes, whose qualities well fitted him for the task.  

During his first short term of office, Pitt had given a new species of troops to the British army.   These were the Scotch Highlanders, who had risen against the House of Hanover in 1745, and would raise against it again should France accomplish her favorite scheme of throwing a force into Scotland to excite another insurrection for the Stuarts.   But they would be useful to fight the French abroad, though dangerous as their possible allies at home; and two regiments of them were now ordered to America.  

Delay had been the ruin of the last year's attempt against Louisbourg.   This time preparation was urged on apace; and before the end of winter two fleets had put to sea: one, under Admiral Boscawen, was destined for Louisbourg; while the other, under Admiral Osborn, sailed for the Mediterranean to intercept the French fleet of Admiral La Clue, who was about to sail from Toulon for America.   Osborn, cruising between the coasts of Spain and Africa, barred the way to the Straits of Gibraltar, and kept his enemy imprisoned.   La Clue made no attempt to force a passage; but several combats of detached ships took place, one of which is too remarkable to pass unnoticed.   Captain Gardiner of the "Monmouth," a ship of four hundred and seventy men and sixty-four guns, engaged the French ship "Foudroyant," carrying a thousand men and eighty-four guns of heavier metal than those of the Englishman.   Gardiner had lately been reproved by Anson, First Lord of the Admiralty, for some alleged misconduct or shortcoming, and he thought of nothing but retrieving his honor.   "We must take her," he said to his crew as the "Foudroyant" hove in sight.   "She looks more than a match for us, but I will not quit her while this ship can swim or I have a soul left alive;" and the sailors answered with cheers.   The fight was long and furious.   Gardiner was killed by a musket shot, begging his first lieutenant with his dying breath not to haul down his flag.   The lieutenant nailed it to the mast.   At length the "Foudroyant" ceased from thundering, struck her colors, and was carried a prize to England.  

The typical British naval officer of that time was a rugged sea-dog, a tough and stubborn fighter, though no more so than the politer generations that followed, at home on the quarter-deck, but no ornament to the drawing-room, by reason of what his contemporary, Entick, the strenuous chronicler of the war, calls, not unapprovingly, "the ferocity of his manners.  " While Osborn held La Clue imprisoned at Toulon, Sir Edward Hawke, worthy leader of such men, sailed with seven ships of the line and three frigates to intercept a French squadron from Rochefort convoying a fleet of transports with troops for America.   The French ships cut their cables and ran for the shore, where most of them stranded in the mud, and some threw cannon and munitions overboard to float themselves.   The expedition was broken up.   Of the many ships fitted out this year for the succor of Canada and Louisbourg, comparatively few reached their destination, and these for the most part singly or by twos and threes.  

Meanwhile Admiral Boscawen with his fleet bore away for Halifax, the place of rendezvous, and Amherst, in the ship "Dublin," followed in his wake.  

Chapter 19
1758

Louisbourg

The stormy coast of Cape Breton is indented by a small land-locked bay, between which and the ocean lies a tongue of land dotted with a few grazing sheep, and intersected by rows of stone that mark more or less distinctly the lines of what once were streets.   Green mounds and embankments of earth enclose the whole space, and beneath the highest of them yawn arches and caverns of ancient masonry.   This grassy solitude was once the "Dunkirk of America;" the vaulted caverns where the sheep find shelter from the ram were casemates where terrified women sought refuge from storms of shot and shell, and the shapeless green mounds were citadel, bastion, rampart, and glacis.   Here stood Louisbourg; and not all the efforts of its conquerors, nor all the havoc of succeeding times, have availed to efface it.   Men in hundreds toiled for months with lever, spade, and gunpowder in the work of destruction, and for more than a century it has served as a stone quarry; but the remains of its vast defences still tell their tale of human valor and human woe.  

Stand on the mounds that were once the King's Bastion.   The glistening sea spreads eastward three thousand miles, and its waves meet their first rebuff against this iron coast.   Lighthouse Point is white with foam; jets of spray spout from the rocks of Goat Island; mist curls in clouds from the seething surf that lashes the crags of Black Point, and the sea boils like a caldron among the reefs by the harbor's mouth; but on the calm water within, the small fishing vessels rest tranquil at their moorings.   Beyond lies a hamlet of fishermen by the edge of the water, and a few scattered dwellings dot the rough hills, bristled with stunted firs, that gird the quiet basin; while close at hand, within the precinct of the vanished fortress, stand two small farmhouses.   All else is a solitude of ocean, rock, marsh, and forest.  

At the beginning of June, 1758, the place wore another aspect.   Since the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle vast sums had been spent in repairing and strengthening it; and Louisbourg was the strongest fortress in French or British America.   Nevertheless it had its weaknesses.   The original plan of the works had not been fully carried out; and owing, it is said, to the bad quality of the mortar, the masonry of the ramparts was in so poor a condition that it had been replaced in some parts with fascines.   The circuit of the fortifications was more than a mile and a half, and the town contained about four thousand inhabitants.   The best buildings in it were the convent, the hospital, the King's storehouses, and the chapel and governor's quarters, which were under the same roof.   Of the private houses, only seven or eight were of stone, the rest being humble wooden structures, suited to a population of fishermen.   The garrison consisted of the battalions of Artois, Bourgogne, Cambis, and Volontaires Étrangers, with two companies of artillery and twenty-four of colony troops from Canada, in all three thousand and eighty regular troops, besides officers; and to these were added a body of armed inhabitants and a band of Indians.   In the harbor were five ships of the line and seven frigates, carrying in all five hundred and forty-four guns and about three thousand men.   Two hundred and nineteen cannon and seventeen mortars were mounted on the walls and outworks.   Of these last the most important were the Grand Battery on the shore of the harbor opposite its mouth, and the Island Battery on the rocky islet at its entrance.  

The strongest front of the works was on the land side, along the base of the peninsular triangle on which the town stood.   This front, about twelve hundred yards in extent, reached from the sea on the left to the harbor on the right, and consisted of four bastions with then-connecting curtains, the Princess's, the Queen's, the King's, and the Dauphin's.   The King's Bastion formed part of the citadel.   The glacis before it sloped down to an extensive marsh, which, with an adjacent pond, completely protected this part of the line.   On the right, however, towards the harbor, the ground was high enough to offer advantages to an enemy, as was also the case, to a less degree, on the left, towards the sea.   The best defence of Louisbourg was the craggy shore, that, for leagues on either hand, was accessible only at a few points, and even there with difficulty.   All these points were vigilantly watched.  

There had been signs of the enemy from the first opening of spring.   In the intervals of fog, rain, and snow-squalls, sails were seen hovering on the distant sea; and during the latter part of May a squadron of nine ships cruised off the mouth of the harbor, appearing and disappearing, sometimes driven away by gales, sometimes lost in fogs, and sometimes approaching to within cannon-shot of the batteries.   Their object was to blockade the port, in which they failed; for French ships had come in at intervals, till, as we have seen, twelve of them lay safe anchored in the harbor, with more than a year's supply of provisions for the garrison.  

At length, on the first of June, the southeastern horizon was white with a cloud of canvas.   The long-expected crisis was come.   Drucour, the governor, sent two thousand regulars, with about a thousand militia and Indians, to guard the various landing-places; and the rest, aided by the sailors, remained to hold the town.  

At the end of May Admiral Boscawen was at Halifax with twenty-three ships of the line, eighteen frigates and fireships, and a fleet of transports, on board of which were eleven thousand and six hundred soldiers, all regulars, except five hundred provincial rangers.   Amherst had not yet arrived, and on the twenty-eighth, Boscawen, in pursuance of his orders and to prevent loss of time, put to sea without him; but scarcely had the fleet sailed out of Halifax, when they met the ship that bore the expected general.   Amherst took command of the troops; and the expedition held its way till the second of June, when they saw the rocky shore-line of Cape Breton, and descried the masts of the French squadron in the harbor of Louisbourg.  

Boscawen sailed into Gabarus Bay.   The sea was rough; but in the afternoon Amherst, Lawrence, and Wolfe, with a number of naval officers, reconnoitred the shore in boats, coasting it for miles, and approaching it as near as the French batteries would permit.   The rocks were white with surf, and every accessible point was strongly guarded.   Boscawen saw little chance of success.   He sent for his captains, and consulted them separately.   They thought, like him, that it would be rash to attempt a landing, and proposed a council of war.   One of them alone, an old sea officer named Ferguson advised his commander to take the responsibility himself, hold no council, and make the attempt at every risk.   Boscawen took his advice, and declared that he would not leave Gabarus Bay till he had fulfilled his instructions and set the troops on shore.  

West of Louisbourg there were three accessible places, Freshwater Cove, four miles from the town, and Flat Point, and White Point, which were nearer, the last being within a mile of the fortifications.   East of the town there was an inlet called Lorambec, also available for landing.   In order to distract the attention of the enemy, it was resolved to threaten all these places, and to form the troops into three divisions, two of which, under Lawrence and Whitmore, were to advance towards Flat Point and White Point, while a detached regiment was to make a feint at Lorambec.   Wolfe, with the third division, was to make the real attack and try to force a landing at Freshwater Cove, which, as it proved, was the most strongly defended of all.   When on shore Wolfe was an habitual invalid, and when at sea every heave of the ship made him wretched; but his ardor was unquenchable.   Before leaving England he wrote to a friend: "Being of the profession of arms, I would seek all occasions to serve; and therefore have thrown myself in the way of the American war, though I know that the very passage threatens my life, and that my constitution must be utterly ruined and undone.  "

On the next day, the third, the surf was so high that nothing could be attempted.   On the fourth there was a thick fog and a gale.   The frigate "Trent" struck on a rock, and some of the transports were near being stranded.   On the fifth there was another fog and a raging surf.   On the sixth there was fog, with rain in the morning and better weather towards noon, whereupon the signal was made and the troops entered the boats; but the sea rose again, and they were ordered back to the ships.   On the seventh more fog and more surf till night, when the sea grew calmer, and orders were given for another attempt.   At two in the morning of the eighth the troops were in the boats again.   At daybreak the frigates of the squadron, anchoring before each point of real or pretended attack, opened a fierce cannonade on the French intrenchments; and, a quarter of an hour after, the three divisions rowed towards the shore.   That of the left, under Wolfe, consisted of four companies of grenadiers, with the light infantry and New England rangers, followed and supported by Fraser's Highlanders and eight more companies of grenadiers.   They pulled for Freshwater Cove.   Here there was a crescent-shaped beach, a quarter of a mile long, with rocks at each end.   On the shore above, about a thousand Frenchmen, under Lieutenant-Colonel de Saint-Julien, lay behind entrenchments covered in front by spruce and fir trees, felled and laid on the ground with the tops outward.   Eight cannon and swivels were planted to sweep every part of the beach and its approaches, and these pieces were masked by young evergreens stuck in the ground before them.  

The English were allowed to come within close range unmolested.   Then the batteries opened, and a deadly storm of grape and musketry was poured upon the boats.   It was clear in an instant that to advance farther would be destruction; and Wolfe waved his hand as a signal to sheer off.   At some distance on the right, and little exposed to the fire, were three boats of light infantry under Lieutenants Hopkins and Brown and Ensign Grant; who, mistaking the signal or wilfully misinterpreting it, made directly for the shore before them.   It was a few roads east of the beach; a craggy coast and a strand strewn with rocks and lashed with breakers, but sheltered from the cannon by a small projecting point.   The three officers leaped ashore, followed by their men.   Wolfe saw the movement, and hastened to support it.   The boat of Major Scott, who commanded the light infantry and rangers, next came up, and was stove in an instant; but Scott gained the shore, climbed the crags, and found himself with ten men in front of some seventy French and Indians.   Half his followers were killed and wounded, and three bullets were shot through his clothes; but with admirable gallantry he held his ground till others came to his aid.   The remaining boats now reached the landing.   Many were stove among the rocks, and others were overset; some of the men were dragged back by the surf and drowned; some lost their muskets, and were drenched to the skin: but the greater part got safe ashore.   Among the foremost was seen the tall, attenuated form of Brigadier Wolfe, armed with nothing but a cane, as he leaped into the surf and climbed the crags with his soldiers.   As they reached the top they formed in compact order, and attacked and carried with the bayonet the nearest French battery, a few rods distant.   The division of Lawrence soon came up; and as the attention of the enemy was now distracted, they made their landing with little opposition at the farther end of the beach whither they were followed by Amherst himself.   The French, attacked on right and left, and fearing, with good reason, that they would be cut off from the town, abandoned all their cannon and fled into the woods.   About seventy of them were captured and fifty killed.   The rest, circling among the hills and around the marshes, made their way to Louisbourg, and those at the intermediate posts joined their flight.   The English followed through a matted growth of firs till they reached the cleared ground; when the cannon, opening on them from the ramparts, stopped the pursuit.   The first move of the great game was played and won.  

Amherst made his camp just beyond range of the French cannon, and Flat Point Cove was chosen as the landing-place of guns and stores.   Clearing the ground, making roads, and pitching tents filled the rest of the day.   At night there was a glare of flames from the direction of the town.   The French had abandoned the Grand Battery after setting fire to the buildings in it and to the houses and fish-stages along the shore of the harbor.   During the following days stores were landed as fast as the surf would permit: but the task was so difficult that from first to last more than a hundred boats were stove in accomplishing it; and such was the violence of the waves that none of the siege-guns could be got ashore till the eighteenth.   The camp extended two miles along a stream that flowed down to the Cove among the low, woody hills that curved around the town and harbor.   Redoubts were made to protect its front, and blockhouses to guard its left and rear from the bands of Acadians known to be hovering in the woods.  

Wolfe, with twelve hundred men, made his way six or seven miles round the harbor, took possession of the battery at Lighthouse Point which the French had abandoned, planted guns and mortars, and opened fire on the Island Battery that guarded the entrance.   Other guns were placed at different points along the shore, and soon opened on the French ships.   The ships and batteries replied.   The artillery fight raged night and day; till on the twenty-fifth the island guns were dismounted and silenced.   Wolfe then strengthened his posts, secured his communications, and returned to the main army in front of the town.  

Amherst had reconnoitred the ground and chosen a hillock at the edge of the marsh, less than half a mile from the ramparts, as the point for opening his trenches.   A road with an epaulement to protect it must first be made to the spot; and as the way was over a tract of deep mud covered with water-weeds and moss, the labor was prodigious.   A thousand men worked at it day and night under the fire of the town and ships.  

When the French looked landward from their ramparts they could see scarcely a sign of the impending storm.   Behind them Wolfe's cannon were playing busily from Lighthouse Point and the heights around the harbor; but, before them, the broad flat marsh and the low hills seemed almost a solitude.   Two miles distant, they could descry some of the English tents; but the greater part were hidden by the inequalities of the ground.   On the right, a prolongation of the harbor reached nearly half a mile beyond the town, ending in a small lagoon formed by a projecting sandbar, and known as the Barachois.   Near this bar lay moored the little frigate "Aréthuse," under a gallant officer named Vauquelin.   Her position was a perilous one; but so long as she could maintain it she could sweep with her fire the ground before the works, and seriously impede the operations of the enemy.   The other naval captains were less venturous; and when the English landed, they wanted to leave the harbor and save their ships.   Drucour insisted that they should stay to aid the defence, and they complied; but soon left their moorings and anchored as close as possible under the guns of the town, in order to escape the fire of Wolfe's batteries.   Hence there was great murmuring among the military officers, who would have had them engage the hostile guns at short range.   The frigate "Écho," under cover of a fog, had been sent to Quebec for aid; but she was chased and captured; and, a day or two after, the French saw her pass the mouth of the harbor with an English flag at her mast-head.  

When Wolfe had silenced the Island Battery, a new and imminent danger threatened Louisbourg.   Boscawen might enter the harbor, overpower the French naval force, and cannonade the town on its weakest side.   Therefore Drucour resolved to sink four large ships at the entrance; and on a dark and foggy night this was successfully accomplished.   Two more vessels were afterwards sunk, and the harbor was then thought safe.  

The English had at last finished their preparations, and were urging on the siege with determined vigor.   The landward view was a solitude no longer.   They could be seen in multitudes piling earth and fascines beyond the hillock at the edge of the marsh.   On the twenty-fifth they occupied the hillock itself, and fortified themselves there under a shower of bombs.   Then they threw up earth on the right, and pushed their approaches towards the Barachois, in spite of a hot fire from the frigate "Aréthuse.  " Next they appeared on the left towards the sea about a third of a mile from the Princess's Bastion.   It was Wolfe, with a strong detachment, throwing up a redoubt and opening an entrenchment.   Late on the night of the ninth of July six hundred French troops sallied to interrupt the work.   The English grenadiers in the trenches fought stubbornly with bayonet and sword, but were forced back to the second line, where a desperate conflict in the dark took place; and after severe loss on both sides the French were driven back.   Some days before, there had been another sortie on the opposite side, near the Barachois, resulting in a repulse of the French and the seizure by Wolfe of a more advanced position.  

Various courtesies were exchanged between the two commanders.   Drucour, on occasion of a flag of truce, wrote to Amherst that there was a surgeon of uncommon skill in Louisbourg, whose services were at the command of any English officer who might need them.   Amherst on his part sent to his enemy letters and messages from wounded Frenchmen in his hands, adding his compliments to Madame Drucour, with an expression of regret for the disquiet to which she was exposed, begging her at the same time to accept a gift of pineapples from the West Indies.   She returned his courtesy by sending him a basket of wine; after which amenities the cannon roared again.   Madame Drucour was a woman of heroic spirit.   Every day she was on the ramparts, where her presence roused the soldiers to enthusiasm; and every day with her own hand she fired three cannon to encourage them.  

The English lines grew closer and closer, and their fire more and more destructive.   Desgouttes, the naval commander, withdrew the "Aréthuse" from her exposed position, where her fire had greatly annoyed the besiegers.   The shot-holes in her sides were plugged up, and in the dark night of the fourteenth of July she was towed through the obstructions in the mouth of the harbor, and sent to France to report the situation of Louisbourg.   More fortunate than her predecessor, she escaped the English in a fog.   Only five vessels now remained afloat in the harbor, and these were feebly manned, as the greater part of their officers and crews had come ashore, to the number of two thousand, lodging under tents in the town, amid the scarcely suppressed murmurs of the army officers.  

On the eighth of July news came that the partisan Boishébert was approaching with four hundred Acadians, Canadians, and Micmacs to attack the English outposts and detachments.   He did little or nothing, however, besides capturing a few stragglers.   On the sixteenth, early in the evening, a party of English, led by Wolfe, dashed forward, drove off a band of French volunteers, seized a rising ground called Hauteur-de-la-Potence, or Gallows Hill, and began to entrench themselves scarcely three hundred yards from the Dauphin's Bastion.   The town opened on them furiously with grapeshot; but in the intervals of the firing the sound of their picks and spades could plainly be heard.   In the morning they were seen throwing up earth like moles as they burrowed their way forward; and on the twenty-first they opened another parallel, within two hundred yards of the rampart.   Still their sappers pushed on.   Every day they had more guns in position, and on right and left their fire grew hotter.   Their pickets made a lodgment along the foot of the glacis, and fired up the slope at the French in the covered way.  

The twenty-first was a memorable day.   In the afternoon a bomb fell on the ship "Célèbre" and set her on fire.   An explosion followed.   The few men on board could not save her, and she drifted from her moorings.   The wind blew the flames into the rigging of the "Entreprenant," and then into that of the "Capricieux.  " At night all three were in full blaze; for when the fire broke out the English batteries turned on them a tempest of shot and shell to prevent it from being extinguished.   The glare of the triple conflagration lighted up the town, the trenches, the harbor, and the surrounding hills, while the burning ships shot off their guns at random as they slowly drifted westward, and grounded at last near the Barachois.   In the morning they were consumed to the water's edge; and of all the squadron the "Prudent" and the "Bienfaisant" alone were left.  

In the citadel, of which the King's Bastion formed the front, there was a large oblong stone building containing the chapel, lodgings for men and officers, and at the southern end the quarters of the Governor.   On the morning after the burning of the ships a shell fell through the roof among a party of soldiers in the chamber below, burst, and set the place on fire.   In half an hour the chapel and all the northern part of the building were in flames; and no sooner did the smoke rise above the bastion than the English threw into it a steady shower of missiles.   Yet soldiers, sailors, and inhabitants hastened to the spot, and labored desperately to check the fire.   They saved the end occupied by Drucour and his wife, but all the rest was destroyed.   Under the adjacent rampart were the casemates, one of which was crowded with wounded officers, and the rest with women and children seeking shelter in these subterranean dens.   Before the entrances there was a long barrier of timber to protect them from exploding shells; and as the wind blew the flames towards it, there was danger that it would take fire and suffocate those within.   They rushed out, crazed with fright, and ran hither and thither with outcries and shrieks amid the storm of iron.  

In the neighboring Queen's Bastion was a large range of barracks built of wood by the New England troops after their capture of the fortress in 1745.   So flimsy and combustible was it that the French writers call it a "house of cards" and "a paper of matches.  " Here were lodged the greater part of the garrison: but such was the danger of fire, that they were now ordered to leave it; and they accordingly lay in the streets or along the foot of the ramparts, under shelters of timber which gave some little protection against bombs.   The order was well timed; for on the night after the fire in the King's Bastion, a shell filled with combustibles set this building also in flames.   A fearful scene ensued.   All the English batteries opened upon it.   The roar of mortars and cannon, the rushing and screaming of round-shot and grape, the hissing of fuses and the explosion of grenades and bombs mingled with a storm of musketry from the covered way and trenches; while, by the glare of the conflagration, the English regiments were seen drawn up in battle array, before the ramparts, as if preparing for an assault.  

Two days after, at one o'clock in the morning, a burst of loud cheers was heard in the distance, followed by confused cries and the noise of musketry, which lasted but a moment.   Six hundred English sailors had silently rowed into the harbor and seized the two remaining ships, the "Prudent" and the "Bienfaisant.  " After the first hubbub all was silent for half an hour.   Then a light glowed through the thick fog that covered the water.   The "Prudent" was burning.   Being aground with the low tide, her captors had set her on fire, allowing the men on board to escape to the town in her boats.   The flames soon wrapped her from stem to stern; and as the broad glare pierced the illumined mists, the English sailors, reckless of shot and shell, towed her companion-ship, with all on board, to a safe anchorage under Wolfe's batteries.  

The position of the besieged was deplorable.   Nearly a fourth of their number were in the hospitals; while the rest, exhausted with incessant toil, could find no place to snatch an hour of sleep; "and yet," says an officer, "they still show ardor.  " "To-day," he again says, on the twenty-fourth, "the fire of the place is so weak that it is more like funeral guns than a defence.  " On the front of the town only four cannon could fire at all.   The rest were either dismounted or silenced by the musketry from the trenches.   The masonry of the ramparts had been shaken by the concussion of their own guns; and now, in the Dauphin's and King's bastions, the English shot brought it down in masses.   The trenches had been pushed so close on the rising grounds at the right that a great part of the covered way was enfiladed, while a battery on a hill across the harbor swept the whole front with a flank fire.   Amherst had ordered the gunners to spare the houses of the town; but, according to French accounts, the order had little effect, for shot and shell fell everywhere.   "There is not a house in the place," says the Diary just quoted, "that has not felt the effects of this formidable artillery.   From yesterday morning till seven o'clock this evening we reckon that a thousand or twelve hundred bombs, great and small, have been thrown into the town, accompanied all the time by the fire of forty pieces of cannon, served with an activity not often seen.   The hospital and the houses around it, which also serve as hospitals, are attacked with cannon and mortar.   The surgeon trembles as he amputates a limb amid cries of Gare la bombe! and leaves his patient in the midst of the operation, lest he should share his fate.   The sick and wounded, stretched on mattresses, utter cries of pain, which do not cease till a shot or the bursting of a shell ends them.  ” On the twenty-sixth the last cannon was silenced in front of the town, and the English batteries had made a breach which seemed practicable for assault.  

On the day before, Drucour, with his chief officers and the engineer, Franquet, had made the tour of the covered way, and examined the state of the defences.   All but Franquet were for offering to capitulate.   Early on the next morning a council of war was held, at which were present Drucour, Franquet, Desgouttes, naval commander, Houllière, commander of the regulars, and the several chiefs of battalions.   Franquet presented a memorial setting forth the state of the fortifications.   As it was he who had reconstructed and repaired them, he was anxious to show the quality of his work in the best light possible; and therefore, in the view of his auditors, he understated the effects of the English fire.   Hence an altercation arose, ending in a unanimous decision to ask for terms.   Accordingly, at ten o'clock, a white flag was displayed over the breach in the Dauphin's Bastion, and an officer named Loppinot was sent out with offers to capitulate.   The answer was prompt and stern: the garrison must surrender as prisoners of war; a definite reply must be given within an hour; in case of refusal the place will be attacked by land and sea.  

Great was the emotion in the council; and one of its members, D'Anthonay, lieutenant-colonel of the battalion of Volontaires Étrangers, was sent to propose less rigorous terms.   Amherst would not speak with him; and jointly with Boscawen despatched this note to the Governor: 

Sir, We have just received the reply which it has pleased your Excellency to make as to the conditions of the capitulation offered you.   We shall not change in the least our views regarding them.   It depends on your Excellency to accept them or not; and you will have the goodness to give your answer, yes or no, within half an hour.   We have the honor to be, etc.  ,

E.   BOSCAWEN.  
J.   AMHERST.  
Drucour answered as follows: 

Gentlemen, To reply to your Excellencies in as few words as possible, I have the honor to repeat that my position also remains the same, and that I persist in my first resolution.  

I have the honor to be, etc.  ,

The Chevalier de Drucour

In other words, he refused the English terms, and declared his purpose to abide the assault.   Loppinot was sent back to the English camp with this note of defiance.   He was no sooner gone than Prévost, the intendant, an officer of functions purely civil, brought the Governor a memorial which, with or without the knowledge of the military authorities, he had drawn up in anticipation of the emergency.   "The violent resolution which the council continues to hold," said this document, "obliges me, for the good of the state, the preservation of the King's subjects, and the averting of horrors shocking to humanity, to lay before your eyes the consequences that may ensue.   What will become of the four thousand souls who compose the families of this town, of the thousand or twelve hundred sick in the hospitals, and the officers and crews of our unfortunate ships? They will be delivered over to carnage and the rage of an unbridled soldiery, eager for plunder, and impelled to deeds of horror by pretended resentment at what has formerly happened in Canada.   Thus they will all be destroyed, and the memory of their fate will live forever in our colonies.   It remains, Monsieur," continues the paper, "to remind you that the councils you have held thus far have been composed of none but military officers.   I am not surprised at their views.   The glory of the King's arm and the honor of their several corps have inspired them.   You and I alone are charged with the administration of the colony and the care of the King's subjects who compose it.   These gentlemen, therefore, have had no regard for them.   They think only of themselves and their soldiers, whose business it is to encounter the utmost extremity of peril.   It is at the prayer of an intimidated people that I lay before you the considerations specified in this memorial.  "

"In view of these considerations," writes Drucour, "joined to the impossibility of resisting an assault, M.   le Chevalier de Courserac undertook in my behalf to run after the bearer of my answer to the English commander and bring it back.  " It is evident that the bearer of the note had been in no hurry to deliver it, for he had scarcely got beyond the fortifications when Courserac overtook and stopped him.   D'Anthonay, with Duvivier, major of the battalion of Artois, and Loppinot, the first messenger, was then sent to the English camp, empowered to accept the terms imposed.   An English spectator thus describes their arrival: "A lieutenant-colonel came running out of the garrison, making signs at a distance, and bawling out as loud as he could, 'We accept! We accept!' He was followed by two others; and they were all conducted to General Amherst's headquarters.  ” At eleven o'clock at night they returned with the articles of capitulation and the following letter: 

Sir, We have the honor to send your Excellency the articles of capitulation signed.  

Lieutenant-Colonel D'Anthonay has not failed to speak in behalf of the inhabitants of the town; and it is nowise our intention to distress them, but to give them all the aid in our power.  

Your Excellency will have the goodness to sign a duplicate of the articles and send it to us.  

It only remains to assure your Excellency that we shall with great pleasure seize every opportunity to convince your Excellency that we are with the most perfect consideration,

Sir, your Excellency's most obedient servants,

E.   BOSCAWEN.   J.   AMHERST.  

The articles stipulated that the garrison should be sent to England, prisoners of war, in British ships; that all artillery, arms, munitions, and stores, both in Louisbourg and elsewhere on the Island of Cape Breton, as well as on Isle St.  -Jean, now Prince Edward's Island, should be given up intact; that the gate of the Dauphin's Bastion should be delivered to the British troops at eight o'clock in the morning; and that the garrison should lay down their arms at noon.   The victors, on their part, promised to give the French sick and wounded the same care as their own, and to protect private property from pillage.  

Drucour signed the paper at midnight, and in the morning a body of grenadiers took possession of the Dauphin's Gate.   The rude soldiery poured in, swarthy with wind and sun, and begrimed with smoke and dust; the garrison, drawn up on the esplanade, flung down their muskets and marched from the ground with tears of rage; the cross of St.   George floated over the shattered rampart; and Louisbourg, with the two great islands that depended on it, passed to the British Crown.   Guards were posted, a stern discipline was enforced, and perfect order maintained.   The conquerors and the conquered exchanged greetings, and the English general was lavish of courtesies to the brave lady who had aided the defence so well.   "Every favor she asked was granted," says a Frenchman present.  

Drucour and his garrison had made a gallant defence.   It had been his aim to prolong the siege till it should be too late for Amherst to co-operate with Abercromby in an attack on Canada; and in this, at least, he succeeded.  

Five thousand six hundred and thirty-seven officers, soldiers, and sailors were prisoners in the hands of the victors.   Eighteen mortars and two hundred and twenty-one cannon were found in the town, along with a great quantity of arms, munitions, and stores.   At the middle of August such of the prisoners as were not disabled by wounds or sickness were embarked for England, and the merchants and inhabitants were sent to France.   Brigadier Whitmore, as governor of Louisbourg, remained with four regiments to hold guard over the desolation they had made.  

The fall of the French stronghold was hailed in England with noisy rapture.   Addresses of congratulation to the King poured in from all the cities of the kingdom, and the captured flags were hung in St.   Paul's amid the roar of cannon and the shouts of the populace.   The provinces shared these rejoicings.   Sermons of thanksgiving resounded from countless New England pulpits.   At Newport there were fireworks and illuminations; and, adds the pious reporter, "We have reason to believe that Christians will make wise and religious improvement of so signal a favor of Divine Providence.  " At Philadelphia a like display was seen, with music and universal ringing of bells.   At Boston "a stately bonfire like a pyramid was kindled on the top of Fort Hill, which made a lofty and prodigious blaze;" though here certain jealous patriots protested against celebrating a victory won by British regulars, and not by New England men.   At New York there was a grand official dinner at the Province Arms in Broadway, where every loyal toast was echoed by the cannon of Fort George; and illuminations and fireworks closed the day.   In the camp of Abercromby at Lake George, Chaplain Cleaveland, of Bagley's Massachusetts regiment, wrote: 'The General put out orders that the breastwork should be lined with troops, and to fire three rounds for joy, and give thanks to God in a religious way.  ” But nowhere did the tidings find a warmer welcome than in the small detached forts scattered through the solitudes of Nova Scotia, where the military exiles, restless from inaction, listened with greedy ears for every word from the great world whence they were banished.   So slow were their communications with it that the fall of Louisbourg was known in England before it had reached them, all.   Captain John Knox, then in garrison at Annapolis, tells how it was greeted there more than five weeks after the event.   It was the sixth of September.   A sloop from Boston was seen coming up the bay.   Soldiers and officers ran down to the wharf to ask for news.   "Every soul," says Knox, "was impatient, yet shy of asking; at length, the vessel being come near enough to be spoken to, I called out, 'What news from Louisbourg?' To which the master simply replied, and with some gravity, 'Nothing strange.  ' This answer, which was so coldly delivered, threw us all into great consternation, and we looked at each other without being able to speak; some of us even turned away with an intent to return to the fort.   At length one of our soldiers, not yet satisfied, called out with some warmth: 'Damn you, Pumpkin, isn't Louisbourg taken yet?' The poor New England man then answered: 'Taken, yes, above a month ago, and I have been there since; but if you have never heard it before, I have got a good parcel of letters for you now.  ' If our apprehensions were great at first, words are insufficient to express our transports at this speech, the latter part of which we hardly waited for; but instantly all hats flew off, and we made the neighboring woods resound with our cheers and huzzas for almost half an hour.   The master of the sloop was amazed beyond expression, and declared he thought we had heard of the success of our arms eastward before, and had sought to banter him.  ” At night there was a grand bonfire and universal festivity in the fort and village.  

Amherst proceeded to complete his conquest by the subjection of all the adjacent possessions of France.   Major Dalling was sent to occupy Port Espagnol, now Sydney.   Colonel Monckton was despatched to the Bay of Fundy and the River St.   John with an order "to destroy the vermin who are settled there.  ” Lord Rollo, with the thirty-fifth regiment and two battalions of the sixtieth, received the submission of Isle St.  -Jean, and tried to remove the inhabitants, with small success; for out of more than four thousand he could catch but seven hundred.  

The ardent and indomitable Wolfe had been the life of the siege.   Wherever there was need of a quick eye, a prompt decision, and a bold dash, there his lank figure was always in the front.   Yet he was only half pleased with what had been done.   The capture of Louisbourg, he thought, should be but the prelude of greater conquests; and he had hoped that the fleet and army would sail up the St.   Lawrence and attack Quebec.   Impetuous and impatient by nature, and irritable with disease, he chafed at the delay that followed the capitulation, and wrote to his father a few days after it: "We are gathering strawberries and other wild fruits of the country, with a seeming indifference about what is doing in other parts of the world.   Our army, however, on the continent wants our help.  " Growing more anxious, he sent Amherst a note to ask his intentions; and the General replied, "What I most wish to do is to go to Quebec.   I have proposed it to the Admiral, and yesterday he seemed to think it impracticable.  " On which Wolfe wrote again: "If the Admiral will not carry us to Quebec, reinforcements should certainly be sent to the continent without losing a moment.   This damned French garrison take up our time and attention, which might be better bestowed.   The transports are ready, and a small convoy would carry a brigade to Boston or New York.   With the rest of the troops we might make an offensive and destructive war in the Bay of Fundy and the Gulf of St.   Lawrence.   I beg pardon for this freedom, but I cannot look coolly upon the bloody inroads of those hell-hounds, the Canadians; and if nothing further is to be done, I must desire leave to quit the army.  "

Amherst answered that though he had meant at first to go to Quebec with the whole army, late events on the continent made it impossible; and that he now thought it best to go with five or six regiments to the aid of Abercromby.   He asked Wolfe to continue to communicate his views to him, and would not hear for a moment of his leaving the army; adding, "I know nothing that can tend more to His Majesty's service than your assisting in it.  " Wolfe again wrote to his commander, with whom he was on terms of friendship: "An offensive, daring kind of war will awe the Indians and ruin the French.   Blockhouses and a trembling defensive encourage the meanest scoundrels to attack us.   If you will attempt to cut up New France by the roots, I will come with pleasure to assist.  "

Amherst, with such speed as his deliberate nature would permit, sailed with six regiments for Boston to reinforce Abercromby at Lake George, while Wolfe set out on an errand but little to his liking.   He had orders to proceed to Gaspé, Miramichi, and other settlements on the Gulf of St.   Lawrence, destroy them, and disperse their inhabitants; a measure of needless and unpardonable rigor, which, while detesting it, he executed with characteristic thoroughness.   "Sir Charles Hardy and I," he wrote to his father, "are preparing to rob the fishermen of their nets and burn their huts.   When that great exploit is at an end, I return to Louisbourg, and thence to England.  " Having finished the work, he wrote to Amherst: "Your orders were carried into execution.   We have done a great deal of mischief, and spread the terror of His Majesty's arms through the Gulf, but have added nothing to the reputation of them.  " The destruction of property was great; yet, as Knox writes, "he would not suffer the least barbarity to be committed upon the persons of the wretched inhabitants,”

He returned to Louisbourg, and sailed for England to recruit his shattered health for greater conflicts.  

NOTE.   Four long and minute French diaries of the siege of Louisbourg are before me.   The first, that of Drucour, covers a hundred and six folio pages, and contains his correspondence with Amherst, Boscawen, and Desgouttes.   The second is that of the naval captain Tourville, commander of the ship "Capricieux," and covers fifty pages.   The third is by an officer of the garrison whose name does not appear.   The fourth, of about a hundred pages, is by another officer of the garrison, and is also anonymous.   It is an excellent record of what passed each day, and of the changing conditions, moral and physical, of the besieged.   These four Journals, though clearly independent of each other, agree in nearly all essential particulars.   I have also numerous letters from the principal officers, military, naval, and civil, engaged in the defence, Drucour, Desgouttes, Houllière, Beaussier, Marolles, Tourville, Courserac, Franquet, Villejouin, Prévost, and Querdisien.   These, with various other documents relating to the siege, were copied from the originals in the Archives de la Marine.   Among printed authorities on the French side may be mentioned Pichon, Lettres et Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire du Cap-Breton, and the Campaign of Louisbourg, by the Chevalier Johnstone, a Scotch Jacobite serving under Drucour.  

The chief authorities on the English side are the official Journal of Amherst, printed in the London Magazine and in other contemporary periodicals, and also in Mante, History of the Late War; five letters from Amherst to Pitt, written during the siege (Public Record Office); an excellent private Journal called An Authentic Account of the Reduction of Louisbourg, by a Spectator, parts of which have been copied verbatim by Entick without acknowledgement; the admirable Journal of Captain John Knox, which contains numerous letters and orders relating to the siege; and the correspondence of Wolfe contained in his Life by Wright.   Before me is the Diary of a captain or subaltern in the army of Amherst at Louisbourg, found in the garret of an old house at Windsor, Nova Scotia, on an estate belonging in 1760 to Chief Justice Deschamps.   I owe the use of it to the kindness of George Wiggins, Esq.  , of Windsor, N.  S.   Mante gives an excellent plan of the siege operations, and another will be found in Jefferys, Natural and Civil History of French Dominions in North America.  

Chapter 20
1758

Ticonderoga

In the last year London called on the colonists for four thousand men.   This year Pitt asked them for twenty thousand, and promised that the King would supply arms, ammunition, tents, and provisions, leaving to the provinces only the raising, clothing, and pay of their soldiers; and he added the assurance that Parliament would be asked to make some compensation even for these.   Thus encouraged, cheered by the removal of Loudon, and animated by the unwonted vigor of British military preparation, the several provincial assemblies voted men in abundance, though the usual vexatious delays took place in raising, equipping, and sending them to the field.   In this connection, an able English writer has brought against the colonies, and especially against Massachusetts, charges which deserve attention.   Viscount Bury says: "Of all the colonies, Massachusetts was the first which discovered the designs of the French and remonstrated against their aggressions; of all the colonies she most zealously promoted measures of union for the common defence, and made the greatest exertions in furtherance of her views.  " But he adds that there is a reverse to the picture, and that "this colony, so high-spirited, so warlike, and apparently so loyal, would never move hand or foot in her own defence till certain of repayment by the mother country.  ” The groundlessness of this charge is shown by abundant proofs, one of which will be enough.   The Englishman Pownall, who had succeeded Shirley as royal governor of the province, made this year a report of its condition to Pitt.   Massachusetts, he says, "has been the frontier and advanced guard of all the colonies against the enemy in Canada," and has always taken the lead in military affairs.   In the three past years she has spent on the expeditions of Johnson, Winslow, and Loudon £242,356, besides about £45,000 a year to support the provincial government, at the same time maintaining a number of forts and garrisons, keeping up scouting-parties, and building, equipping, and manning a ship of twenty guns for the service of the King.   In the first two months of the present year, 1758, she made a further military outlay of £172,239.   Of all these sums she has received from Parliament a reimbursement of only £70,117, and hence she is deep in debt; yet, in addition, she has this year raised, paid, maintained, and clothed seven thousand soldiers placed under the command of General Abercromby, besides above twenty-five hundred more serving the King by land or sea; amounting in all to about one in four of her able-bodied men.  

Massachusetts was extremely poor by the standards of the present day, living by fishing, farming, and a trade sorely hampered by the British navigation laws.   Her contributions of money and men were not ordained by an absolute king, but made by the voluntary act of a free people.   Pownall goes on to say that her present war-debt, due within three years, is 366,698 pounds sterling, and that to meet it she has imposed on her self taxes amounting, in the town of Boston, to thirteen shillings and twopence to every pound of income from real and personal estate; that her people are in distress, that she is anxious to continue her efforts in the public cause, but that without some further reimbursement she is exhausted and helpless.   Yet in the next year she incurred a new and heavy debt.   In 1760 Parliament repaid her £59,575.   Far from being fully reimbursed, the end of the war found her on the brink of bankruptcy.   Connecticut made equal sacrifices in the common cause, highly to her honor, for she was little exposed to danger, being covered by the neighboring provinces; while impoverished New Hampshire put one in three of her able-bodied men into the field.  

In June the combined British and provincial force which Abercromby was to lead against Ticonderoga was gathered at the head of Lake George; while Montcalm lay at its outlet around the walls of the French stronghold, with an army not one fourth so numerous.   Vaudreuil had devised a plan for saving Ticonderoga by a diversion into the valley of the Mohawk under Lévis, Rigaud, and Longueuil, with sixteen hundred men, who were to be joined by as many Indians.   The English forts of that region were to be attacked, Schenectady threatened, and the Five Nations compelled to declare for France.   Thus, as the Governor gave out, the English would be forced to cease from aggression, leave Montcalm in peace, and think only of defending themselves.   "This," writes Bougainville on the fifteenth of June, "is what M.   de Vaudreuil thinks will happen, because he never doubts anything.   Ticonderoga, which is the point really threatened, is abandoned without support to the troops of the line and their general.   It would even be wished that they might meet a reverse, if the consequences to the colony would not be too disastrous.  "

The proposed movement promised, no doubt, great advantages; but it was not destined to take effect.   Some rangers taken on Lake George by a partisan officer named Langy declared with pardonable exaggeration that twenty-five or thirty thousand men would attack Ticonderoga in less than a fortnight.   Vaudreuil saw himself forced to abandon his Mohawk expedition, and to order Lévis and his followers, who had not yet left Montreal, to reinforce Montcalm.   Why they did not go at once is not clear.   The Governor declares that there were not boats enough.   From whatever cause, there was a long delay, and Montcalm was left to defend himself as he could.  

He hesitated whether he should not fall back to Crown Point.   The engineer, Lotbinière, opposed the plan, as did also Le Mercier.   It was but a choice of difficulties, and he stayed at Ticonderoga.   His troops were disposed as they had been in the summer before; one battalion, that of Berry, being left near the fort, while the main body, under Montcalm himself, was encamped by the saw-mill at the Falls, and the rest, under Bourlamaque, occupied the head of the portage, with a small advanced force at the landing-place on Lake George.   It remained to determine at which of these points he should concentrate them and make his stand against the English.   Ruin threatened him in any case; each position had its fatal weakness or its peculiar danger, and his best hope was in the ignorance or blundering of his enemy.   He seems to have been several days in a state of indecision.  

In the afternoon of the fifth of July the partisan Langy, who had again gone out to reconnoitre towards the head of Lake George, came back in haste with the report that the English were embarked in great force.   Montcalm sent a canoe down Lake Champlain to hasten Lévis to his aid, and ordered the battalion of Berry to begin a breastwork and abattis on the high ground in front of the fort.   That they were not begun before shows that he was in doubt as to his plan of defence; and that his whole army was not now set to work at them shows that his doubt was still unsolved.  

It was nearly a month since Abercromby had begun his camp at the head of Lake George.   Here, on the ground where Johnson had beaten Dieskau, where Montcalm had planted his batteries, and Monro vainly defended the wooden ramparts of Fort William Henry, were now assembled more than fifteen thousand men; and the shores, the foot of the mountains, and the broken plains between them were studded thick with tents.   Of regulars there were six thousand three hundred and sixty-seven, officers and soldiers, and of provincials nine thousand and thirty-four.   To the New England levies, or at least to their chaplains, the expedition seemed a crusade against the abomination of Babylon; and they discoursed in their sermons of Moses sending forth Joshua against Amalek.   Abercromby, raised to his place by political influence, was little but the nominal commander.   "A heavy man," said Wolfe in a letter to his father; "an aged gentleman, infirm in body and mind," wrote William Parkman, a boy of seventeen, who carried a musket in a Massachusetts regiment, and kept in his knapsack a dingy little notebook, in which he jotted down what passed each day.   The age of the aged gentleman was fifty-two.  

Pitt meant that the actual command of the army should be in the hands of Brigadier Lord Howe, and he was in fact its real chief; "the noblest Englishman that has appeared in my time, and the best soldier in the British army," says Wolfe.   And he elsewhere speaks of him as "that great man.  " Abercromby testifies to the universal respect and love with which officers and men regarded him, and Pitt calls him "a character of ancient times; a complete model of military virtue.  ” High as this praise is, it seems to have been deserved.   The young nobleman, who was then in his thirty-fourth year, had the qualities of a leader of men.   The army felt him, from general to drummer-boy.   He was its soul; and while breathing into it his own energy and ardor, and bracing it by stringent discipline, he broke through the traditions of the service and gave it new shapes to suit the time and place.   During the past year he had studied the art of forest warfare, and joined Rogers and his rangers in their scouting-parties, sharing all their hardships and making himself one of them.   Perhaps the reforms that he introduced were fruits of this rough self-imposed schooling.   He made officers and men throw off all useless incumbrances, cut their hair close, wear leggings to protect them from briers, brown the barrels of their muskets, and carry in their knapsacks thirty pounds of meal, which they cooked for themselves; so that, according to an admiring Frenchman, they could live a month without their supply-trains.   "You would laugh to see the droll figure we all make," writes an officer.   "Regulars as well as provincials have cut their coats so as scarcely to reach their waists.   No officer or private is allowed to carry more than one blanket and a bearskin.   A small portmanteau is allowed each officer.   No women follow the camp to wash our linen.   Lord Howe has already shown an example by going to the brook and washing his own.  ”

Here, as in all things, he shared the lot of the soldier, and required his officers to share it.   A story is told of him that before the army embarked he invited some of them to dinner in his tent, where they found no seats but logs, and no carpet but bear-skins.   A servant presently placed on the ground a large dish of pork and peas, on which his lordship took from his pocket a sheath containing a knife and fork and began to cut the meat.   The guests looked on in some embarrassment; upon which he said: "Is it possible, gentlemen, that you have come on this campaign without providing yourselves with what is necessary?" And he gave each of them a sheath, with a knife and fork, like his own.  

Yet this Lycurgus of the camp, as a contemporary calls him, is described as a man of social accomplishments rare even in his rank.   He made himself greatly beloved by the provincial officers, with many of whom he was on terms of intimacy, and he did what he could to break down the barriers between the colonial soldiers and the British regulars.   When he was at Alban, sharing with other high officers the kindly hospitalities of Mrs.   Schuyler, he so won the heart of that excellent matron that she loved him like a son; and, though not given to such effusion, embraced him with tears on the morning when he left her to lead his division to the lake.   In Westminster Abbey may be seen the tablet on which Massachusetts pays grateful tribute to his virtues, and commemorates "the affection her officers and soldiers bore to his command.  "

On the evening of the fourth of July, baggage, stores, and ammunition were all on board the boats, and the whole army embarked on the morning of the fifth.   The arrangements were perfect.   Each corps marched without confusion to its appointed station on the beach, and the sun was scarcely above the ridge of French Mountain when all were afloat.   A spectator watching them from the shore says that when the fleet was three miles on its way, the surface of the lake at that distance was completely hidden from sight.   There were nine hundred bateaux, a hundred and thirty-five whaleboats, and a large number of heavy flatboats carrying the artillery.   The whole advanced in three divisions, the regulars in the centre, and the provincials on the flanks.   Each corps had its flags and its music.   The day was fair and men and officers were in the highest spirits.  
	
Before ten o'clock they began to enter the Narrows; and the boats of the three divisions extended themselves into long files as the mountains closed on either hand upon the contracted lake.   From front to rear the line was six miles long.   The spectacle was superb: the brightness of the summer day; the romantic beauty of the scenery; the sheen and sparkle of those crystal waters; the countless islets, tufted with pine, birch, and fir; the bordering mountains, with their green summits and sunny crags; the flash of oars and glitter of weapons; the banners, the varied uniforms, and the notes of bugle, trumpet, bagpipe, and drum, answered and prolonged by a hundred woodland echoes.   "I never beheld so delightful a prospect," wrote a wounded officer at Albany a fortnight after.  

Rogers with the rangers, and Gage with the light infantry, led the way in whaleboats, followed by Bradstreet with his corps of boatmen, armed and drilled as soldiers.   Then came the main body.   The central column of regulars was commanded by Lord Howe, his own regiment, the fifty-fifth, in the van, followed by the Royal Americans, the twenty-seventh, forty-fourth, forty-sixth, and eightieth infantry, and the Highlanders of the forty-second, with their major, Duncan Campbell of Inverawe, silent and gloomy amid the general cheer, for his soul was dark with foreshadowings of death.   With this central column came what are described as two floating castles, which were no doubt batteries to cover the landing of the troops.   On the right hand and the left were the provincials, uniformed in blue, regiment after regiment, from Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Rhode Island.   Behind them all came the bateaux, loaded with stores and baggage, and the heavy flatboats that carried the artillery, while a rear-guard of provincials and regulars closed the long procession.  

At five in the afternoon they reached Sabbath-Day Point, twenty-five miles down the lake, where they stopped till late in the evening, waiting for the baggage and artillery, which had lagged behind; and here Lord Howe, lying on a bearskin by the side of the ranger, John Stark, questioned him as to the position of Ticonderoga and its best points of approach.   At about eleven o'clock they set out again, and at daybreak entered what was then called the Second Narrows; that is to say, the contraction of the lake where it approaches its outlet.   Close on their left, ruddy in the warm sunrise, rose the vast bare face of Rogers Rock, whence a French advanced party, under Langy and an officer named Trepezec, was watching their movements.   Lord Howe, with Rogers and Bradstreet, went in whaleboats to reconnoitre the landing.   At the place which the French called the Burnt Camp, where Montcalm had embarked the summer before, they saw a detachment of the enemy too weak to oppose them.   Their men landed and drove them off.   At noon the whole army was on shore.   Rogers, with a party of rangers, was ordered forward to reconnoitre, and the troops were formed for the march.  

From this part of the shore a plain covered with forest stretched northwestward half a mile or more to the mountains behind which lay the valley of Trout Brook.   On this plain the army began its march in four columns, with the intention of passing round the western bank of the river of the outlet, since the bridge over it had been destroyed.   Rogers, with the provincial regiments of Fitch and Lyman, led the way, at some distance before the rest.   The forest was extremely dense and heavy, and so obstructed with undergrowth that it was impossible to see more than a few yards in any direction, while the ground was encumbered with fallen trees in every stage of decay.   The ranks were broken, and the men struggled on as they could in dampness and shade, under a canopy of boughs that the sun could scarcely pierce.   The difficulty increased when, after advancing about a mile, they came upon undulating and broken ground.   They were now not far from the upper rapids of the outlet.   The guides became bewildered in the maze of trunks and boughs; the marching columns were confused, and fell in one upon the other.   They were in the strange situation of an army lost in the woods.  

The advanced party of French under Langy and Trepezec, about three hundred and fifty in all, regulars and Canadians, had tried to retreat; but before they could do so, the whole English army had passed them, landed, and placed itself between them and their countrymen.   They had no resource but to take to the woods.   They seem to have climbed the steep gorge at the side of Rogers Rock and followed the Indian path that led to the valley of Trout Brook, thinking to descend it, and, by circling along the outskirts of the valley of Ticonderoga, reach Montcalm's camp at the saw-mill.   Langy was used to bushranging; but he too became perplexed in the blind intricacies of the forest.   Towards the close of the day he and his men had come out from the valley of Trout Brook, and were near the junction of that stream with the river of the outlet, in a state of some anxiety, for they could see nothing but brown trunks and green boughs.   Could any of them have climbed one of the great pines that here and there reared their shaggy spires high above the surrounding forest, they would have discovered where they were, but would have gained not the faintest knowledge of the enemy.   Out of the woods on the right they would have seen a smoke rising from the burning huts of the French camp at the head of the portage, which Bourlamaque had set on fire and abandoned.   At a mile or more in front, the saw-mill at the Falls might perhaps have been descried, and, by glimpses between the trees, the tents of the neighboring camp where Montcalm still lay with his main force.   All the rest seemed lonely as the grave; mountain and valley lay wrapped in primeval woods, and none could have dreamed that, not far distant, an army was groping its way, buried in foliage; no rumbling of wagons and artillery trains, for none were there; all silent but the cawing of some crow flapping his black wings over the sea of tree-tops.  

Lord Howe, with Major Israel Putnam and two hundred rangers, was at the head of the principal column, which was a little in advance of the three others.   Suddenly the challenge, Qui vive! rang sharply from the thickets in front.   Français! was the reply.   Langy's men were not deceived; they fired out of the bushes.   The shots were returned; a hot skirmish followed; and Lord Howe dropped dead, shot through the breast.   All was confusion.   The dull, vicious reports of musketry in thick woods, at first few and scattering, then in fierce and rapid volleys, reached the troops behind.   They could hear, but see nothing.   Already harassed and perplexed, they became perturbed.   For all they knew, Montcalm's whole army was upon them.   Nothing prevented a panic but the steadiness of the rangers, who maintained the fight alone till the rest came back to their senses.   Rogers, with his reconnoitring party, and the regiments of Fitch and Lyman, were at no great distance in front.   They all turned on hearing the musketry, and thus the French were caught between two fires.   They fought with desperation.   About fifty of them at length escaped; a hundred and forty-eight were captured, and the rest killed or drowned in trying to cross the rapids.   The loss of the English was small in numbers, but immeasurable in the death of Howe.   "The fall of this noble and brave officer," says Rogers, "seemed to produce an almost general languor and consternation through the whole army.  " "In Lord Howe," writes another contemporary, Major Thomas Mante, "the soul of General Abercromby's army seemed to expire.   From the unhappy moment the General was deprived of his advice, neither order nor discipline was observed, and a strange kind of infatuation usurped the place of resolution.  " The death of one man was the ruin of fifteen thousand.  

The evil news was despatched to Albany, and in two or three days the messenger who bore it passed the house of Mrs.   Schuyler on the meadows above the town.   "In the afternoon," says her biographer, "a man was seen coming from the north galloping violently without his hat.   Pedrom, as he was familiarly called, Colonel Schuyler's only surviving brother, was with her, and ran instantly to inquire, well knowing that he rode express.   The man galloped on, crying out that Lord Howe was killed.   The mind of our good aunt had been so engrossed by her anxiety and fears for the event impending, and so impressed with the merit and magnanimity of her favorite hero, that her wonted firmness sank under the stroke, and she broke out into bitter lamentations.   This had such an effect on her friends and domestics that shrieks and sobs of anguish echoed through every part of the house.  "

The effect of the loss was seen at once.   The army was needlessly kept under arms all night in the forest, and in the morning was ordered back to the landing whence it came.   Towards noon, however, Bradstreet was sent with a detachment of regulars and provincials to take possession of the saw-mill at the Falls, which Montcalm had abandoned the evening before.   Bradstreet rebuilt the bridges destroyed by the retiring enemy, and sent word to his commander that the way was open; on which Abercromby again put his army in motion, reached the Falls late in the afternoon, and occupied the deserted encampment of the French.  

Montcalm with his main force had held this position at the Falls through most of the preceding day, doubtful, it seems, to the last whether he should not make his final stand there.   Bourlamaque was for doing so; but two old officers, Bernès and Montguy, pointed out the danger that the English would occupy the neighboring heights; whereupon Montcalm at length resolved to fall back.   The camp was broken up at five o'clock.   Some of the troops embarked in bateaux, while others marched a mile and a half along the forest road, passed the place where the battalion of Berry was still at work on the breastwork begun in the morning, and made their bivouac a little farther on, upon the cleared ground that surrounded the fort.  

The peninsula of Ticonderoga consists of a rocky plateau, with low grounds on each side, bordering Lake Champlain on the one hand, and the outlet of Lake George on the other.   The fort stood near the end of the peninsula, which points towards the southeast.   Thence, as one goes westward, the ground declines a little, and then slowly rises, till, about half a mile from the fort, it reaches its greatest elevation, and begins still more gradually to decline again.   Thus a ridge is formed across the plateau between the steep declivities that sink to the low grounds on right and left.   Some weeks before, a French officer named Hugues had suggested the defence of this ridge by means of an abattis.   Montcalm approved his plan; and now, at the eleventh hour, he resolved to make his stand here.   The two engineers, Pontleroy and Desandrouin, had already traced the outline of the works, and the soldiers of the battalion of Berry had made some progress in constructing them.   At dawn of the seventh, while Abercromby, fortunately for his enemy, was drawing his troops back to the landing-place, the whole French army fell to their task.  

The regimental colors were planted along the line, and the officers, stripped to the shirt, took axe in hand and labored with their men.   The trees that covered the ground were hewn down by thousands, the tops lopped off, and the trunks piled one upon another to form a massive breastwork.   The line followed the top of the ridge, along which it zig-zagged in such a manner that the whole front could be swept by flank-fires of musketry and grape.   Abercromby describes the wall of logs as between eight and nine feet high;  in which case there must have been a rude banquette, or platform to fire from, on the inner side.   It was certainly so high that nothing could be seen over it but the crowns of the soldiers' hats.   The upper tier was formed of single logs, in which notches were cut to serve as loopholes; and in some places sods and bags of sand were piled along the top, with narrow spaces to fire through.   From the central part of the line the ground sloped away like a natural glacis; while at the sides, and especially on the left, it was undulating and broken.   Over this whole space, to the distance of a musket-shot from the works, the forest was cut down, and the trees left lying where they fell among the stumps, with tops turned outwards, forming one vast abattis, which, as a Massachusetts officer says, looked like a forest laid flat by a hurricane.   But the most formidable obstruction was immediately along the front of the breastwork, where the ground was covered with heavy boughs, overlapping and interlaced, with sharpened points bristling into the face of the assailant like the quills of a porcupine.   As these works were all of wood, no vestige of them remains.   The earthworks now shown to tourists as the lines of Montcalm are of later construction; and though on the same ground, are not on the same plan.  

Here, then, was a position which, if attacked in front with musketry alone, might be called impregnable.   But would Abercromby so attack it? He had several alternatives.   He might attempt the flank and rear of his enemy by way of the low grounds on the right and left of the plateau, a movement which the precautions of Montcalm had made difficult, but not impossible.   Or, instead of leaving his artillery idle on the strand of Lake George, he might bring it to the front and batter the breastwork, which, though impervious to musketry, was worthless against heavy cannon.   Or he might do what Burgoyne did with success a score of years later, and plant a battery on the heights of Rattlesnake Hill, now called Mount Defiance, which commanded the position of the French, and whence the inside of their breastwork could be scoured with round-shot from end to end.   Or, while threatening the French front with a part of his army, he could march the rest a short distance through the woods on his left to the road which led from Ticonderoga to Crown Point, and which would soon have brought him to the place called Five-Mile Point, where Lake Champlain narrows to the width of an easy rifle-shot, and where a battery of field-pieces would have cut off all Montcalm's supplies and closed his only way of retreat.   As the French were provisioned for but eight days, their position would thus have been desperate.   They plainly saw the danger; and Doreil declares that had the movement been made, their whole army must have surrendered.   Montcalm had done what he could; but the danger of his position was inevitable and extreme.   His hope lay in Abercromby; and it was a hope well founded.   The action of the English general answered the utmost wishes of his enemy.  
Abercromby had been told by his prisoners that Montcalm had six thousand men, and that three thousand more were expected every hour.   Therefore he was in haste to attack before these succors could arrive.   As was the general, so was the army.   "I believe," writes an officer, "we were one and all infatuated by a notion of carrying every obstacle by a mere coup de mousqueterie.  ” Leadership perished with Lord Howe, and nothing was left but blind, headlong valor.  

Clerk, chief engineer, was sent to reconnoitre the French works from Mount Defiance; and came back with the report that, to judge from what he could see, they might be carried by assault.   Then, without waiting to bring up his cannon, Abercromby prepared to storm the lines.  

The French finished their breastwork and abattis on the evening of the seventh, encamped behind them, slung their kettles, and rested after their heavy toil.   Lévis had not yet appeared; but at twilight one of his officers, Captain Pouchot, arrived with three hundred regulars, and announced that his commander would come before morning with a hundred more.   The reinforcement, though small, was welcome, and Lévis was a host in himself.   Pouchot was told that the army was half a mile off.   Thither he repaired, made his report to Montcalm, and looked with amazement at the prodigious amount of work accomplished in one day.   Lévis himself arrived in the course of the night, and approved the arrangement of the troops.   They lay behind their lines till daybreak; then the drums beat, and they formed in order of battle.   The battalions of La Sarre and Languedoc were posted on the left, under Bourlamaque, the first battalion of Berry with that of Royal Roussillon in the centre, under Montcalm, and those of La Reine, Béarn, and Guienne on the right, under Lévis.   A detachment of volunteers occupied the low grounds between the breastwork and the outlet of Lake George; while, at the foot of the declivity on the side towards Lake Champlain, were stationed four hundred and fifty colony regulars and Canadians, behind an abattis which they had made for themselves; and as they were covered by the cannon of the fort, there was some hope that they would check any flank movement which the English might attempt on that side.   Their posts being thus assigned, the men fell to work again to strengthen their defences.   Including those who came with Lévis, the total force of effective soldiers was now thirty-six hundred.  

Soon after nine o'clock a distant and harmless fire of small-arms began on the slopes of Mount Defiance.   It came from a party of Indians who had just arrived with Sir William Johnson, and who, after amusing themselves in this manner for a time, remained for the rest of the day safe spectators of the fight.   The soldiers worked undisturbed till noon, when volleys of musketry were heard from the forest in front.   It was the English light troops driving in the French pickets.   A cannon was fired as a signal to drop tools and form for battle.   The white uniforms lined the breastwork in a triple row, with the grenadiers behind them as a reserve, and the second battalion of Berry watching the flanks and rear.  

Meanwhile the English army had moved forward from its camp by the saw-mill.   First came the rangers, the light infantry, and Bradstreet's armed boatmen, who, emerging into the open space, began a spattering fire.   Some of the provincial troops followed, extending from left to right, and opening fire in turn; then the regulars, who had formed in columns of attack under cover of the forest, advanced their solid red masses into the sunlight, and passing through the intervals between the provincial regiments, pushed forward to the assault.   Across the rough ground, with its maze of fallen trees whose leaves hung withering in the July sun, they could see the top of the breastwork, but not the men behind it; when, in an instant, all the line was obscured by a gush of smoke, a crash of exploding firearms tore the air, and grapeshot and musket-balls swept the whole space like a tempest; "a damnable fire," says an officer who heard them screaming about his ears.   The English had been ordered to carry the works with the bayonet; but their ranks were broken by the obstructions through which they struggled in vain to force their way, and they soon began to fire in turn.   The storm raged in full fury for an hour.   The assailants pushed close to the breastwork; but there they were stopped by the bristling mass of sharpened branches, which they could not pass under the murderous cross-fires that swept them from front and flank.   At length they fell back, exclaiming that the works were impregnable.   Abercromby, who was at the saw-mill, a mile and a half in the rear, sent order to attack again, and again they came on as before.  

The scene was frightful: masses of infuriated men who could not go forward and would not go back; straining for an enemy they could not reach, and firing on an enemy they could not see; caught in the entanglement of fallen trees; tripped by briers, stumbling over logs, tearing through boughs; shouting, yelling, cursing, and pelted all the while with bullets that killed them by scores, stretched them on the ground, or hung them on jagged branches in strange attitudes of death.   The provincials supported the regulars with spirit, and some of them forced their way to the foot of the wooden wall.  

The French fought with the intrepid gayety of their nation, and shouts of Vive le Roi! and Vive notre General! mingled with the din of musketry.   Montcalm, with his coat off, for the day was hot, directed the defence of the centre, and repaired to any part of the line where the danger for the time seemed greatest.   He is warm in praise of his enemy, and declares that between one and seven o'clock they attacked him six successive times.   Early in the action Abercromby tried to turn the French left by sending twenty bateaux, filled with troops, down the outlet of Lake George.   They were met by the fire of the volunteers stationed to defend the low grounds on that side, and, still advancing, came within range of the cannon of the fort, which sank two of them and drove back the rest.  

A curious incident happened during one of the attacks.   De Bassignac, a captain in the battalion of Royal Roussillon, tied his handkerchief to the end of a musket and waved it over the breastwork in defiance.   The English mistook it for a sign of surrender, and came forward with all possible speed, holding their muskets crossed over their heads in both hands, and crying Quarter.   The French made the same mistake; and thinking that their enemies were giving themselves up as prisoners, ceased firing, and mounted on the top of the breastwork to receive them.   Captain Pouchot, astonished, as he says, to see them perched there, looked out to learn the cause, and saw that the enemy meant anything but surrender.   Whereupon he shouted with all his might: "Tirez! Tirez! Ne voyez-vous pas que ces gens-là vont vous enlever?" The soldiers, still standing on the breastwork, instantly gave the English a volley, which killed some of them, and sent back the rest discomfited.  

This was set to the account of Gallic treachery.   "Another deceit the enemy put upon us," says a military letter-writer: "they raised their hats above the breastwork, which our people fired at; they, having loopholes to fire through, and being covered by the sods, we did them little damage, except shooting their hats to pieces.  ” In one of the last assaults a soldier of the Rhode Island regiment, William Smith, managed to get through all obstructions and ensconce himself close under the breastwork, where in the confusion he remained for a time unnoticed, improving his advantages meanwhile by shooting several Frenchmen.   Being at length observed, a soldier fired vertically down upon him and wounded him severely, but not enough to prevent his springing up, striking at one of his enemies over the top of the wall, and braining him with his hatchet.   A British officer who saw the feat, and was struck by the reckless daring of the man, ordered two regulars to bring him off; which, covered by a brisk fire of musketry, they succeeded in doing.   A letter from the camp two or three weeks later reports him as in a fair way to recover, being, says the writer, much braced and invigorated by his anger against the French, on whom he was swearing to have his revenge.  

Toward five o'clock two English columns joined in a most determined assault on the extreme right of the French, defended by the battalions of Guienne and Béarn.   The danger for a time was imminent.   Montcalm hastened to the spot with the reserves.   The assailants hewed their way to the foot of the breastwork; and though again and again repulsed, they again and again renewed the attack.   The Highlanders fought with stubborn and unconquerable fury.   "Even those who were mortally wounded," writes one of their lieutenants, "cried to their companions not to lose a thought upon them, but to follow their officers and mind the honor of their country.   Their ardor was such that it was difficult to bring them off.  ” Their major, Campbell of Inverawe, found his foreboding true.   He received a mortal shot, and his clansmen bore him from the field.   Twenty-five of their officers were killed or wounded, and half the men fell under the deadly fire that poured from the loopholes.   Captain John Campbell and a few followers tore their way through the abattis, climbed the breastwork, leaped down among the French, and were bayoneted there.  

As the colony troops and Canadians on the low ground were left undisturbed, Lévis sent them an order to make a sortie and attack the left flank of the charging columns.   They accordingly posted themselves among the trees along the declivity, and fired upwards at the enemy, who presently shifted their position to the right, out of the line of shot.   The assault still continued, but in vain; and at six there was another effort, equally fruitless.   From this time till half-past seven a lingering fight was kept up by the rangers and other provincials, firing from the edge of the woods and from behind the stumps, bushes, and fallen trees in front of the lines.   Its only objects were to cover their comrades, who were collecting and bringing off the wounded, and to protect the retreat of the regulars, who fell back in disorder to the Falls.   As twilight came on, the last combatant withdrew, and none were left but the dead.   Abercromby had lost in killed, wounded, and missing, nineteen hundred and forty-four officers and men.   The loss of the French, not counting that of Langy's detachment, was three hundred and seventy-seven.   Bourlamaque was dangerously wounded; Bougainville slightly; and the hat of Lévis was twice shot through.  

Montcalm, with a mighty load lifted from his soul, passed along the lines, and gave the tired soldiers the thanks they nobly deserved.   Beer, wine, and food were served out to them, and they bivouacked for the night on the level ground between the breastwork and the fort.   The enemy had met a terrible rebuff; yet the danger was not over.   Abercromby still had more than thirteen thousand men, and he might renew the attack with cannon.   But, on the morning of the ninth, a band of volunteers who had gone out to watch him brought back the report that he was in full retreat.   The saw-mill at the Falls was on fire, and the last English soldier was gone.   On the morning of the tenth, Lévis, with a strong detachment, followed the road to the landing-place, and found signs that a panic had overtaken the defeated troops.   They had left behind several hundred barrels of provisions and a large quantity of baggage; while in a marshy place that they had crossed was found a considerable number of their shoes, which had stuck in the mud, and which they had not stopped to recover.   They had embarked on the morning after the battle, and retreated to the head of the lake in a disorder and dejection wofully contrasted with the pomp of their advance.   A gallant army was sacrificed by the blunders of its chief.  

Montcalm announced his victory to his wife in a strain of exaggeration that marks the exaltation of his mind.   "Without Indians, almost without Canadians or colony troops, I had only four hundred, alone with Lévis and Bourlamaque and the troops of the line, thirty-one hundred fighting men, I have beaten an army of twenty-five thousand.   They repassed the lake precipitately, with a loss of at least five thousand.   This glorious day does infinite honor to the valor of our battalions.   I have no time to write more.   I am well, my dearest, and I embrace you.  " And he wrote to his friend Doreil: "The army, the too-small army of the King, has beaten the enemy.   What a day for France! If I had had two hundred Indians to send out at the head of a thousand picked men under the Chevalier de Lévis, not many would have escaped.   Ah, my dear Doreil, what soldiers are ours! I never saw the like.   Why were they not at Louisbourg?"

On the morrow of his victory he caused a great cross to be planted on the battle-field, inscribed with these lines, composed by the soldier-scholar himself, 

   "Quid dux? quid miles? quid strata ingentia ligna?
   En Signum! en victor! Deus hîc, Deus ipse triumphat.  "

   "Soldier and chief and rampart's strength are nought;
   Behold the conquering Cross! 'T is God the triumph wrought.  ”

Chapter 21
1758

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.   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 ye 11th," 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.   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.  ”

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 tender-hearted, 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.  ” 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.   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.   The firing lasted about two hours.   At length some of the Canadians gave way, and the rest of the French and Indians followed.   They broke into small parties to elude pursuit, and reuniting towards evening, made their bivouac on a spot surrounded by impervious swamps.  

Rogers remained on the field and buried all his own dead, forty-nine in number.   Then he resumed his march to Fort Edward, carrying the wounded on litters of branches till the next day, when he met a detachment coming with wagons to his relief.   A party sent out soon after for the purpose reported that they had found and buried more than a hundred French and Indians.   From this time forward the war-parties from Ticonderoga greatly relented in their activity.  

The adventures of the captured Putnam were sufficiently remarkable.   The Indians, after dragging him to the rear, lashed him fast to a tree so that he could not move a limb, and a young savage amused himself by throwing a hatchet at his head, striking it into the wood as close as possible to the mark without hitting it.   A French petty officer then thrust the muzzle of his gun violently against the prisoner's body, pretended to fire it at him, and at last struck him in the face with the butt; after which dastardly proceeding he left him.   The French and Indians being forced after a time to fall back, Putnam found himself between the combatants and exposed to bullets from both sides; but the enemy, partially recovering the ground they had lost, unbound him, and led him to a safe distance from the fight.   When the retreat began, the Indians hurried him along with them, stripped of coat, waistcoat, shoes, and stockings, his back burdened with as many packs of the wounded as could be piled upon it, and his wrists bound so tightly together that the pain became intense.   In his torment he begged them to kill him; on which a French officer who was near persuaded them to untie his hands and take off some of the packs, and the chief who had captured him gave him a pair of moccasons to protect his lacerated feet.   When they encamped at night, they prepared to burn him alive, stripped him naked, tied him to a tree, and gathered dry wood to pile about him.   A sudden shower of rain interrupted their pastime; but when it was over they began again, and surrounded him with a circle of brushwood which they set on fire.   As they were yelling and dancing their delight at the contortions with which he tried to avoid the rising flames, Marin, hearing what was going on forward, broke through the crowd, and with a courageous humanity not too common among Canadian officers, dashed aside the burning brush, untied the prisoner, and angrily upbraided his tormentors.   He then restored him to the chief who had captured him, and whose right of property in his prize the others had failed to respect.   The Caughnawaga treated him at first with kindness; but, with the help of his tribesmen, took effectual means to prevent his escape, by laying him on his back, stretching his arms and legs in the form of a St.   Andrew's cross, and binding the wrists and ankles fast to the stems of young trees.   This was a mode of securing prisoners in vogue among Indians from immemorial time; but, not satisfied with it, they placed brushwood upon his body, and then laid across it the long slender stems of saplings, on the ends of which several warriors lay down to sleep, so that the slightest movement on his part would rouse them.   Thus he passed a night of misery, which did not prevent him from thinking of the ludicrous figure he made in the hands of the tawny Philistines.  

On the next night, after a painful march, he reached Ticonderoga, where he was questioned by Montcalm, and afterwards sent to Montreal in charge of a French officer, who showed him the utmost kindness.   On arriving, wofully tattered, bruised, scorched, and torn, he found a friend in Colonel Schuyler, himself a prisoner on parole, who helped him in his need, and through whose good offices the future major-general of the Continental Army was included in the next exchange of prisoners.  

The petty victory over Marin was followed by a more substantial success.   Early in September Abercromby's melancholy camp was cheered with the tidings that the important French post of Fort Frontenac, which controlled Lake Ontario, which had baffled Shirley in his attempt against Niagara, and given Montcalm the means of conquering Oswego, had fallen into British hands.   "This is a glorious piece of news, and may God have all the glory of the same!" writes Chaplain Cleaveland in his Diary.   Lieutenant-Colonel Bradstreet had planned the stroke long before, and proposed it first to Loudon, and then to Abercromby.   Loudon accepted it; but his successor received it coldly, though Lord Howe was warm in its favor.   At length, under the pressure of a council of war, Abercromby consented that the attempt should be made, and gave Bradstreet three thousand men, nearly all provincials.   With these he made his way, up the Mohawk and down the Onondaga, to the lonely and dismal spot where Oswego had once stood.   By dint of much persuasion a few Oneidas joined him; though, like most of the Five Nations, they had been nearly lost to the English through the effects of the defeat at Ticonderoga.   On the twenty-second of August his fleet of whaleboats and bateaux pushed out on Lake Ontario; and, three days after, landed near the French fort.   On the night of the twenty-sixth Bradstreet made a lodgment within less than two hundred yards of it; and early in the morning De Noyan, the commandant, surrendered himself and his followers, numbering a hundred and ten soldiers and laborers, prisoners of war.   With them were taken nine armed vessels, carrying from eight to eighteen guns, and forming the whole French naval force on Lake Ontario.   The crews escaped.   An enormous quantity of provisions, naval stores, munitions, and Indian goods intended for the supply of the western posts fell into the hands of the English, who kept what they could carry off, and burned the rest.   In the fort were found sixty cannon and sixteen mortars, which the victors used to batter down the walls; and then, reserving a few of the best, knocked off the trunnions of the others.   The Oneidas were bent on scalping some of the prisoners.   Bradstreet forbade it.   They begged that he would do as the French did, turn his back and shut his eyes; but he forced them to abstain from all violence, and consoled them by a lion's share of the plunder.   In accordance with the orders of Abercromby, the fort was dismantled, and all the buildings in or around it burned, as were also the vessels, except the two largest, which were reserved to carry off some of the captured goods.   Then, with boats deeply laden, the detachment returned to Oswego; where, after unloading and burning the two vessels, they proceeded towards Albany, leaving a thousand of their number at the new fort which Brigadier Stanwix was building at the Great Carrying Place of the Mohawk.  

Next to Louisbourg, this was the heaviest blow that the French had yet received.   Their command of Lake Ontario was gone.   New France was cut in two; and unless the severed parts could speedily reunite, all the posts of the interior would be in imminent jeopardy.   If Bradstreet had been followed by another body of men to reoccupy and rebuild Oswego, thus recovering a harbor on Lake Ontario, all the captured French vessels could have been brought thither, and the command of this inland sea assured at once.   Even as it was, the advantages were immense.   A host of savage warriors, thus far inclined to France or wavering between the two belligerents, stood henceforth neutral, or gave themselves to England; while Fort Duquesne, deprived of the supplies on which it depended, could make but faint resistance to its advancing enemy.  

Amherst, with five regiments from Louisbourg, came, early in October, to join Abercromby at Lake George, and the two commanders discussed the question of again attacking Ticonderoga.   Both thought the season too late.   A fortnight after, a deserter brought news that Montcalm was breaking up his camp.   Abercromby followed his example.   The opposing armies filed off each to its winter quarters, and only a few scouting parties kept alive the embers of war on the waters and mountains of Lake George.  

Meanwhile Brigadier Forbes was climbing the Alleghanies, hewing his way through the forests of western Pennsylvania, and toiling inch by inch towards his goal of Fort Duquesne.  

Chapter 22
1758

Fort Duquesne

During the last year Loudon, filled with vain schemes against Louisbourg, had left the French scalping-parties to their work of havoc on the western borders.   In Virginia Washington still toiled at his hopeless task of defending with a single regiment a forest frontier of more than three hundred miles, and in Pennsylvania the Assembly thought more of quarrelling with their governor than of protecting the tormented settlers.   Fort Duquesne, the source of all the evil, was left undisturbed.   In vain Washington urged the futility of defensive war, and the necessity of attacking the enemy in his stronghold.   His position, trying at the best, was made more so by the behavior of Dinwiddie.   That crusty Scotchman had conceived a dislike to him, and sometimes treated him in a manner that must have been unspeakably galling to the proud and passionate young man, who nevertheless, unconquerable in his sense of public duty, curbed himself to patience, or the semblance of it.  

Dinwiddie was now gone, and a new governor had taken his place.   The conduct of the war, too, had changed, and in the plans of Pitt the capture of Fort Duquesne held an important place.   Brigadier John Forbes was charged with it.   He was a Scotch veteran, forty-eight years of age, who had begun life as a student of medicine, and who ended it as an able and faithful soldier.   Though a well-bred man of the world, his tastes were simple; he detested ceremony, and dealt frankly and plainly with the colonists, who both respected and liked him.   In April he was in Philadelphia waiting for his army, which as yet had no existence; for the provincials were not enlisted, and an expected battalion of Highlanders had not arrived.   It was the end of June before they were all on the march; and meanwhile the General was attacked with a painful and dangerous malady, which would have totally disabled a less resolute man.  

His force consisted of provincials from Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina, with twelve hundred Highlanders of Montgomery's regiment and a detachment of Royal Americans, amounting in all, with wagoners and camp followers, to between six and seven thousand men.   The Royal American regiment was a new corps raised, in the colonies, largely from among the Germans of Pennsylvania.   Its officers were from Europe; and conspicuous among them was Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Bouquet, a brave and accomplished Swiss, who commanded one of the four battalions of which the regiment was composed.   Early in July he was encamped with the advance-guard at the hamlet of Raystown, now the town of Bedford, among the eastern heights of the Alleghanies.   Here his tents were pitched in an opening of the forest by the banks of a small stream; and Virginians in hunting-shirts, Highlanders in kilt and plaid, and Royal Americans in regulation scarlet, labored at throwing up intrenchments and palisades, while around stood the silent mountains in their mantles of green.  

Now rose the question whether the army should proceed in a direct course to Fort Duquesne, hewing a new road through the forest, or march thirty-four miles to Fort Cumberland, and thence follow the road made by Braddock.   It was the interest of Pennsylvania that Forbes should choose the former route, and of Virginia that he should choose the latter.   The Old Dominion did not wish to see a highway cut for her rival to those rich lands of the Ohio which she called her own.   Washington, who was then at Fort Cumberland with a part of his regiment, was earnest for the old road; and in an interview with Bouquet midway between that place and Raystown, he spared no effort to bring him to the same opinion.   But the quartermaster-general, Sir John Sinclair, who was supposed to know the country, had advised the Pennsylvania route; and both Bouquet and Forbes were resolved to take it.   It was shorter, and when once made would furnish readier and more abundant supplies of food and forage; but to make it would consume a vast amount of time and labor.   Washington foretold the ruin of the expedition unless it took Braddock's road.   Ardent Virginian as he was, there is no cause to believe that his decision was based on any but military reasons; but Forbes thought otherwise, and found great fault with him.   Bouquet did him more justice.   "Colonel Washington," he writes to the General, "is filled with a sincere zeal to aid the expedition, and is ready to march with equal activity by whatever way you choose.  "

The fate of Braddock had impressed itself on all the army, and inspired a caution that was but too much needed; since, except Washington's men and a few others among the provincials, the whole, from general to drummer-boy, were total strangers to that insidious warfare of the forest in which their enemies, red and white, had no rival.   Instead of marching, like Braddock, at one stretch for Fort Duquesne, burdened with a long and cumbrous baggage-train, it was the plan of Forbes to push on by slow stages, establishing fortified magazines as he went, and at last, when within easy distance of the fort, to advance upon it with all his force, as little impeded as possible with wagons and packhorses.   He bore no likeness to his predecessor, except in determined resolution, and he did not hesitate to embrace military heresies which would have driven Braddock to fury.   To Bouquet, in whom he placed a well-merited trust, he wrote, "I have been long in your opinion of equipping numbers of our men like the savages, and I fancy Colonel Burd, of Virginia, has most of his best people equipped in that manner.   In this country we must learn the art of war from enemy Indians, or anybody else who has seen it carried on here.  "

His provincials displeased him, not without reason; for the greater part were but the crudest material for an army, unruly, and recalcitrant to discipline.   Some of them came to the rendezvous at Carlisle with old province muskets, the locks tied on with a string; others brought fowling-pieces of their own, and others carried nothing but walking-sticks; while many had never fired a gun in their lives.   Forbes reported to Pitt that their officers, except a few in the higher ranks, were "an extremely bad collection of broken inn-keepers, horse-jockeys, and Indian traders;" nor is he more flattering towards the men, though as to some of them he afterwards changed his mind.  

While Bouquet was with the advance at Raystown, Forbes was still in Philadelphia, trying to bring the army into shape, and collecting provisions, horses, and wagons; much vexed meantime by the Assembly, whose tedious disputes about taxing the proprietaries greatly obstructed the service.   "No sergeant or quartermaster of a regiment," he says, "is obliged to look into more details than I am; and if I did not see to everything myself, we should never get out of this town.  " July had begun before he could reach the frontier village of Carlisle, where he found everything in confusion.   After restoring some order, he wrote to Bouquet: "I have been and still am but poorly, with a cursed flux, but shall move day after to-morrow.  " He was doomed to disappointment; and it was not till the ninth of August that he sent another letter from the same place to the same military friend.   "I am now able to write after three weeks of a most violent and tormenting distemper, which, thank God, seems now much abated as to pain, but has left me as weak as a new-born infant.   However, I hope to have strength enough to set out from this place on Friday next.  " The disease was an inflammation of the stomach and other vital organs; and when he should have been in bed, with complete repose of body and mind, he was racked continually with the toils and worries of a most arduous campaign.  

He left Carlisle on the eleventh, carried on a kind of litter made of a hurdle slung between two horses; and two days later he wrote from Shippensburg: "My journey here from Carlisle raised my disorder and pains to so intolerable a degree that I was obliged to stop, and may not get away for a day or two.  " Again, on the eighteenth: "I am better, and partly free from the excruciating pain I suffered; but still so weak that I can scarce bear motion.  " He lay helpless at Shippensburg till September was well advanced.   On the second he says: "I really cannot describe how I have suffered both in body and mind of late, and the relapses have been worse as the disappointment was greater;" and on the fourth, still writing to Bouquet, who in the camp at Raystown was struggling with many tribulations: "I am sorry you have met with so many cross accidents to vex you, and have such a parcel of scoundrels as the provincials to work with; mais le vin est tiré, and you must drop a little of the gentleman and treat them as they deserve.   Seal and send off the enclosed despatch to Sir John by some sure hand.   He is a very odd man, and I am sorry it has been my fate to have any concern with him.   I am afraid our army will not admit of division, lest one half meet with a check; therefore I would consult Colonel Washington, though perhaps not follow his advice, as his behavior about the roads was noways like a soldier.   I thank my good cousin for his letter, and have only to say that I have all my life been subject to err; but I now reform, as I go to bed at eight at night, if able to sit up so late.  "

Nobody can read the letters of Washington at this time without feeling that the imputations of Forbes were unjust, and that here, as elsewhere, his ruling motive was the public good.   Forbes himself, seeing the rugged and difficult nature of the country, began to doubt whether after all he had not better have chosen the old road of Braddock.   He soon had an interview with its chief advocates, the two Virginia colonels, Washington and Burd, and reported the result to Bouquet, adding: "I told them that, whatever they thought, I had acted on the best information to be had, and could safely say for myself, and believed I might answer for you, that the good of the service was all we had at heart, not valuing provincial interest, jealousies, or suspicions on single twopence.  " It must be owned that, considering the slow and sure mode of advance which he had wisely adopted, the old soldier was probably right in his choice; since before the army could reach Fort Duquesne, the autumnal floods would have made the Youghiogany and the Monongahela impassable.  

The Sir John mentioned by Forbes was the quartermaster-general, Sir John Sinclair, who had gone forward with Virginians and other troops from the camp of Bouquet to make the road over the main range of the Alleghanies, whence he sent back the following memorandum of his requirements: "Pickaxes, crows, and shovels; likewise more whiskey.   Send me the newspapers, and tell my black to send me a candlestick and half a loaf of sugar.  " He was extremely inefficient; and Forbes, out of all patience with him, wrote confidentially to Bouquet that his only talent was for throwing everything into confusion.   Yet he found fault with everybody else, and would discharge volleys of oaths at all who met his disapproval.   From this cause or some other, Lieutenant-Colonel Stephen, of the Virginians, told him that he would break his sword rather than be longer under his orders.   "As I had not sufficient strength," says Sinclair, "to take him by the neck from among his own men, I was obliged to let him have his own way, that I might not be the occasion of bloodshed.  " He succeeded at last in arresting him, and Major Lewis, of the same regiment, took his place.  

The aid of Indians as scouts and skirmishers was of the last importance to an army so weak in the arts of woodcraft, and efforts were made to engage the services of the friendly Cherokees and Catawbas, many of whom came to the camp, where their caprice, insolence, and rapacity tried to the utmost the patience of the commanders.   That of Sir John Sinclair had already been overcome by his dealings with the provincial authorities; and he wrote in good French, at the tail of a letter to the Swiss colonel: "Adieu, my dear Bouquet.   The greatest curse that our Lord can pronounce against the worst of sinners is to give them business to do with provincial commissioners and friendly Indians.  " A band of sixty warriors told Colonel Burd that they would join the army on condition that it went by Braddock's road.   "This," wrote Forbes, on hearing of the proposal, "is a new system of military discipline truly, and shows that my good friend Burd is either made a cat's-foot of himself, or little knows me if he imagines that sixty scoundrels are to direct me in my measures.  ” Bouquet, with a pliant tact rarely seen in the born Briton, took great pains to please these troublesome allies, and went so far as to adopt one of them as his son.   A considerable number joined the army; but they nearly all went off when the stock of presents provided for them was exhausted.  

Forbes was in total ignorance of the strength and movements of the enemy.   The Indians reported their numbers to be at least equal to his own; but nothing could be learned from them with certainty, by reason of their inveterate habit of lying.   Several scouting-parties of whites were therefore sent forward, of which the most successful was that of a young Virginian officer, accompanied by a sergeant and five Indians.   At a little distance from the French fort, the Indians stopped to paint themselves and practise incantations.   The chief warrior of the party then took certain charms from an otter-skin bag and tied them about the necks of the other Indians.   On that of the officer he hung the otter-skin itself; while to the sergeant he gave a small packet of paint from the same mystic receptacle.   "He told us," reports the officer, "that none of us could be shot, for those things would turn the balls from us; and then shook hands with us, and told us to go and fight like men.  " Thus armed against fate, they mounted the high ground afterwards called Grant's Hill, where, covered by trees and bushes, they had a good view of the fort, and saw plainly that the reports of the French force were greatly exaggerated.  

Meanwhile Bouquet's men pushed on the heavy work of road-making up the main range of the Alleghanies, and, what proved far worse, the parallel mountain ridge of Laurel Hill, hewing, digging, blasting, laying fascines and gabions to support the track along the sides of steep declivities, or worming their way like moles through the jungle of swamp and forest.   Forbes described the country to Pitt as an "immense uninhabited wilderness, overgrown everywhere with trees and brushwood, so that nowhere can one see twenty yards.  " In truth, as far as eye or mind could reach, a prodigious forest vegetation spread its impervious canopy over hill, valley, and plain, and wrapped the stern and awful waste in the shadows of the tomb.  

Having secured his magazines at Raystown, and built a fort there named Fort Bedford, Bouquet made a forward movement of some forty miles, crossed the main Alleghany and Laurel Hill, and, taking post on a stream called Loyalhannon Creek, began another depot of supplies as a base for the final advance on Fort Duquesne, which was scarcely fifty miles distant.  

Vaudreuil had learned from prisoners the march of Forbes, and, with his usual egotism, announced to the Colonial Minister what he had done in consequence.   "I have provided for the safety for Fort Duquesne.  " "I have sent reinforcements to M.   de Ligneris, who commands there.  " "I have done the impossible to supply him with provisions, and I am now sending them in abundance, in order that the troops I may perhaps have occasion to send to drive off the English may not be delayed.  " "A stronger fort is needed on the Ohio; but I cannot build one till after the peace; then I will take care to build such a one as will thenceforth keep the English out of that country.  " Some weeks later he was less confident, and very anxious for news from Ligneris.   He says that he has sent him all the succors he could, and ordered troops to go to his aid from Niagara, Detroit, and Illinois, as well as the militia of Detroit, with the Indians there and elsewhere in the West, Hurons, Ottawas, Pottawattamies, Miamis, and other tribes.   What he fears is that the English will not attack the fort till all these Indians have grown tired of waiting, and have gone home again.   This was precisely the intention of Forbes, and the chief object of his long delays.  

He had another good reason for making no haste.   There was hope that the Delawares and Shawanoes, who lived within easy reach of Fort Duquesne, and who for the past three years had spread havoc throughout the English border, might now be won over from the French alliance.   Forbes wrote to Bouquet from Shippensburg: "After many intrigues with Quakers, the Provincial Commissioners, the Governor, etc.  , and by the downright bullying of Sir William Johnson, I hope I have now brought about a general convention of the Indians.  ” The convention was to include the Five Nations, the Delawares, the Shawanoes, and other tribes, who had accepted wampum belts of invitation, and promised to meet the Governor and Commissioners of the various provinces at the town of Easton, before the middle of September.   This seeming miracle was wrought by several causes.   The Indians in the French interest, always greedy for presents, had not of late got enough to satisfy them.   Many of those destined for them had been taken on the way from France by British cruisers, and the rest had passed through the hands of official knaves, who sold the greater part for their own profit.   Again, the goods supplied by French fur-traders were few and dear; and the Indians remembered with regret the abundance and comparative cheapness of those they had from the English before the war.   At the same time it was reported among them that a British army was marching to the Ohio strong enough to drive out the French from all that country; and the Delawares and Shawanoes of the West began to waver in their attachment to the falling cause.   The eastern Delawares, living at Wyoming and elsewhere on the upper Susquehanna, had made their peace with the English in the summer before; and their great chief, Teedyuscung, thinking it for his interest that the tribes of the Ohio should follow his example, sent them wampum belts, inviting them to lay down the hatchet.   The Five Nations, with Johnson at one end of the Confederacy and Joncaire at the other, the one cajoling them in behalf of England, and the other in behalf of France, were still divided in counsel; but even among the Senecas, the tribe most under Joncaire's influence, there was a party so far inclined to England that, like the Delaware chief, they sent wampum to the Ohio, inviting peace.   But the influence most potent in reclaiming the warriors of the West was of a different kind.   Christian Frederic Post, a member of the Moravian brotherhood, had been sent at the instance of Forbes as an envoy to the hostile tribes from the Governor and Council of Pennsylvania.   He spoke the Delaware language, knew the Indians well, had lived among them, had married a converted squaw, and, by his simplicity of character, directness, and perfect honesty, gained their full confidence.   He now accepted his terrible mission, and calmly prepared to place himself in the clutches of the tiger.   He was a plain German, upheld by a sense of duty and a single-hearted trust in God; alone, with no great disciplined organization to impel and support him, and no visions and illusions such as kindled and sustained the splendid heroism of the early Jesuit martyrs.   Yet his errand was no whit less perilous.   And here we may notice the contrast between the mission settlements of the Moravians in Pennsylvania and those which the later Jesuits and the Sulpitians had established at Caughnawaga, St.   Francis, La Présentation, and other places.   The Moravians were apostles of peace, and they succeeded to a surprising degree in weaning their converts from their ferocious instincts and warlike habits; while the Mission Indians of Canada retained all their native fierceness, and were systematically impelled to use their tomahawks against the enemies of the Church.   Their wigwams were hung with scalps, male and female, adult and infant; and these so-called missions were but nests of baptized savages, who wore the crucifix instead of the medicine-bag, and were encouraged by the Government for purposes of war.  

The Moravian envoy made his way to the Delaware town of Kushkushkee, on Beaver Creek, northwest of Fort Duquesne, where the three chiefs known as King Beaver, Shingas, and Delaware George received him kindly, and conducted him to another town on the same stream.   Here his reception was different.   A crowd of warriors, their faces distorted with rage, surrounded him, brandishing knives and threatening to kill him; but others took his part, and, order being at last restored, he read them his message from the Governor, which seemed to please them.   They insisted, however, that he should go with them to Fort Duquesne, in order that the Indians assembled there might hear it also.   Against this dangerous proposal he protested in vain.   On arriving near the fort, the French demanded that he should be given up to them, and, being refused, offered a great reward for his scalp; on which his friends advised him to keep close by the camp-fire, as parties were out with intent to kill him.   "Accordingly," says Post, "I stuck to the fire as if I had been chained there.   On the next day the Indians, with a great many French officers, came out to hear what I had to say.   The officers brought with them a table, pens, ink, and paper.   I spoke in the midst of them with a free conscience, and perceived by their looks that they were not pleased with what I said.  " The substance of his message was an invitation to the Indians to renew the old chain of friendship, joined with a warning that an English army was on its way to drive off the French, and that they would do well to stand neutral.  

He addressed an audience filled with an inordinate sense of their own power and importance, believing themselves greater and braver than either of the European nations, and yet deeply jealous of both.   "We have heard," they said, "that the French and English mean to kill all the Indians and divide the land among themselves.  " And on this string they harped continually.   If they had known their true interest, they would have made no peace with the English, but would have united as one man to form a barrier of fire against their farther progress; for the West in English hands meant farms, villages, cities, the ruin of the forest, the extermination of the game, and the expulsion of those who lived on it; while the West in French hands meant but scattered posts of war and trade, with the native tribes cherished as indispensable allies.  

After waiting some days, the three tribes of the Delawares met in council, and made their answer to the message brought by Post.   It was worthy of a proud and warlike race, and was to the effect that since their brothers of Pennsylvania wished to renew the old peace-chain, they on their part were willing to do so, provided that the wampum belt should be sent them in the name, not of Pennsylvania alone, but of the rest of the provinces also.  

Having now accomplished his errand, Post wished to return home; but the Indians were seized with an access of distrust, and would not let him go.   This jealousy redoubled when they saw him writing in his notebook.   "It is a troublesome cross and heavy yoke to draw this people," he says; "they can punish and squeeze a body's heart to the utmost.   There came some together and examined me about what I had wrote yesterday.   I told them I writ what was my duty.   'Brothers, I tell you I am not afraid of you.   I have a good conscience before God and man.   I tell you, brothers, there is a bad spirit in your hearts, which breeds jealousy, and will keep you ever in fear.  '" At last they let him go; and, eluding a party that lay in wait for his scalp, he journeyed twelve days through the forest, and reached Fort Augusta with the report of his mission.  

As the result of it, a great convention of white men and red was held at Easton in October.   The neighboring provinces had been asked to send their delegates, and some of them did so; while belts of invitation were sent to the Indians far and near.   Sir William Johnson, for reasons best known to himself, at first opposed the plan; but was afterwards led to favor it and to induce tribes under his influence to join in the grand pacification.   The Five Nations, with the smaller tribes lately admitted into their confederacy, the Delawares of the Susquehanna, the Mohegans, and several kindred bands, all had their representatives at the meeting.   The conferences lasted nineteen days, with the inevitable formalities of such occasions, and the weary repetition of conventional metaphors and long-winded speeches.   At length, every difficulty being settled, the Governor of Pennsylvania, in behalf of all the English, rose with a wampum belt in his hand, and addressed the tawny congregation thus: "By this belt we heal your wounds; we remove your grief; we take the hatchet out of your heads; we make a hole in the earth, and bury it so deep that nobody can dig it up again.  " Then, laying the first belt before them, he took another, very large, made of white wampum beads, in token of peace: "By this belt we renew all our treaties; we brighten the chain of friendship; we put fresh earth to the roots of the tree of peace, that it may bear up against every storm, and live and nourish while the sun shines and the rivers run.  " And he gave them the belt with the request that they would send it to their friends and allies, and invite them to take hold also of the chain of friendship.   Accordingly all present agreed on a joint message of peace to the tribes of the Ohio.  

Frederic Post, with several white and Indian companions, was chosen to bear it.   A small escort of soldiers that attended him as far as the Alleghany was cut to pieces on its return by a band of the very warriors to whom he was carrying his offers of friendship; and other tenants of the grim and frowning wilderness met the invaders of their domain with inhospitable greetings.   "The wolves made a terrible music this night," he writes at his first bivouac after leaving Loyalhannon.   When he reached the Delaware towns his reception was ominous.   The young warriors said: "Anybody can see with half an eye that the English only mean to cheat us.   Let us knock the messengers in the head.  " Some of them had attacked an English outpost, and had been repulsed; hence, in the words of Post, "They were possessed with a murdering spirit, and with bloody vengeance were thirsty and drunk.   I said: 'As God has stopped the mouths of the lions that they could not devour Daniel, so he will preserve us from their fury.  '" The chiefs and elders were of a different mind from their fierce and capricious young men.   They met during the evening in the log-house where Post and his party lodged; and here a French officer presently arrived with a string of wampum from the commandant, inviting them to help him drive back the army of Forbes.   The string was scornfully rejected.   "They kicked it from one to another as if it were a snake.   Captain Peter took a stick, and with it flung the string from one end of the room to the other, and said: 'Give it to the French captain; he boasted of his fighting, now let us see him fight.   We have often ventured our lives for him, and got hardly a loaf of bread in return; and now he thinks we shall jump to serve him.  ' Then we saw the French captain mortified to the uttermost.   He looked as pale as death.   The Indians discoursed and joked till midnight, and the French captain sent messengers at midnight to Fort Duquesne.  "

There was a grand council, at which the French officer was present; and Post delivered the peace message from the council at Easton, along with another with which Forbes had charged him.   "The messages pleased all the hearers except the French captain.   He shook his head in bitter grief, and often changed countenance.   Isaac Still [an Indian] ran him down with great boldness, and pointed at him, saying, 'There he sits!' They all said: 'The French always deceived us!' pointing at the French captain; who, bowing down his head, turned quite pale, and could look no one in the face.   All the Indians began to mock and laugh at him.   He could hold it no longer, and went out.  ”

The overtures of peace were accepted, and the Delawares, Shawanoes, and Mingoes were no longer enemies of the English.   The loss was the more disheartening to the French, since, some weeks before, they had gained a success which they hoped would confirm the adhesion of all their wavering allies.   Major Grant, of the Highlanders, had urged Bouquet to send him to reconnoitre Fort Duquesne, capture prisoners, and strike a blow that would animate the assailants and discourage the assailed.   Bouquet, forgetting his usual prudence, consented; and Grant set out from the camp at Loyalhannon with about eight hundred men, Highlanders, Royal Americans, and provincials.   On the fourteenth of September, at two in the morning, he reached the top of the rising ground thenceforth called Grant's Hill, half a mile or more from the French fort.   The forest and the darkness of the night hid him completely from the enemy.   He ordered Major Lewis, of the Virginians, to take with him half the detachment, descend to the open plain before the fort, and attack the Indians known to be encamped there; after which he was to make a feigned retreat to the hill, where the rest of the troops were to lie in ambush and receive the pursuers.   Lewis set out on his errand, while Grant waited anxiously for the result.   Dawn was near, and all was silent; till at length Lewis returned, and incensed his commander by declaring that his men had lost their way in the dark woods, and fallen into such confusion that the attempt was impracticable.   The morning twilight now began, but the country was wrapped in thick fog.   Grant abandoned his first plan, and sent a few Highlanders into the cleared ground to burn a warehouse that had been seen there.   He was convinced that the French and their Indians were too few to attack him, though their numbers in fact were far greater than his own.   Infatuated with this idea, and bent on taking prisoners, he had the incredible rashness to divide his force in such a way that the several parts could not support each other.   Lewis, with two hundred men, was sent to guard the baggage two miles in the rear, where a company of Virginians, under Captain Bullitt, was already stationed.   A hundred Pennsylvanians were posted far off on the right, towards the Alleghany, while Captain Mackenzie, with a detachment of Highlanders, was sent to the left, towards the Monongahela.   Then, the fog having cleared a little, Captain Macdonald, with another company of Highlanders, was ordered into the open plain to reconnoitre the fort and make a plan of it, Grant himself remaining on the hill with a hundred of his own regiment and a company of Maryland men.   "In order to put on a good countenance," he says, "and convince our men they had no reason to be afraid, I gave directions to our drums to beat the reveille.   The troops were in an advantageous post, and I must own I thought we had nothing to fear.  " Macdonald was at this time on the plain, midway between the woods and the fort, and in full sight of it.   The roll of the drums from the hill was answered by a burst of war-whoops, and the French came swarming out like hornets, many of them in their shirts, having just leaped from their beds.   They all rushed upon Macdonald and his men, who met them with a volley that checked their advance; on which they surrounded him at a distance, and tried to cut off his retreat.   The Highlanders broke through, and gained the woods, with the loss of their commander, who was shot dead.   A crowd of French followed close, and soon put them to rout, driving them and Mackenzie's party back to the hill where Grant was posted.   Here there was a hot fight in the forest, lasting about three quarters of an hour.   At length the force of numbers, the novelty of the situation, and the appalling yells of the Canadians and Indians, completely overcame the Highlanders, so intrepid in the ordinary situations of war.   They broke away in a wild and disorderly retreat.   "Fear," says Grant, "got the better of every other passion; and I trust I shall never again see such a panic among troops.  "

His only hope was in the detachment he had sent to the rear under Lewis to guard the baggage.   But Lewis and his men, when they heard the firing in front, had left their post and pushed forward to help their comrades, taking a straight course through the forest; while Grant was retreating along the path by which he had advanced the night before.   Thus they missed each other; and when Grant reached the spot where he expected to find Lewis, he saw to his dismay that nobody was there but Captain Bullitt and his company.   He cried in despair that he was a ruined man; not without reason, for the whole body of French and Indians was upon him.   Such of his men as held together were forced towards the Alleghany, and, writes Bouquet, "would probably have been cut to pieces but for Captain Bullitt and his Virginians, who kept up the fight against the whole French force till two thirds of them were killed.  " They were offered quarter, but refused it; and the survivors were driven at last into the Alleghany, where some were drowned, and others swam over and escaped.   Grant was surrounded and captured, and Lewis, who presently came up, was also made prisoner, along with some of his men, after a stiff resistance.   Thus ended this mismanaged affair, which cost the English two hundred and seventy three killed, wounded, and taken.   The rest got back safe to Loyalhannon.  

The invalid General was deeply touched by this reverse, yet expressed himself with a moderation that does him honor.   He wrote to Bouquet from Raystown: "Your letter of the seventeenth I read with no less surprise than concern, as I could not believe that such an attempt would have been made without my knowledge and concurrence.   The breaking in upon our fair and flattering hopes of success touches me most sensibly.   There are two wounded Highland officers just now arrived, who give so lame an account of the matter that one can draw nothing from them, only that my friend Grant most certainly lost his wits, and by his thirst of fame brought on his own perdition, and ran great risk of ours.  ”

The French pushed their advantage with spirit.   Early in October a large body of them hovered in the woods about the camp at Loyalhannon, drove back a detachment sent against them, approached under cover of the trees, and, though beaten off, withdrew deliberately, after burying their dead and killing great numbers of horses and cattle.   But, with all their courageous energy, their position was desperate.   The militia of Louisiana and the Illinois left the fort in November and went home; the Indians of Detroit and the Wabash would stay no longer; and, worse yet, the supplies destined for Fort Duquesne had been destroyed by Bradstreet at Fort Frontenac.   Hence Ligneris was compelled by prospective starvation to dismiss the greater part of his force, and await the approach of his enemy with those that remained.  

His enemy was in a plight hardly better than his own.   Autumnal rains, uncommonly heavy and persistent, had ruined the newly-cut road.   On the mountains the torrents tore it up, and in the valleys the wheels of the wagons and cannon churned it into soft mud.   The horses, overworked and underfed, were fast breaking down.   The forest had little food for them, and they were forced to drag their own oats and corn, as well as supplies for the army, through two hundred miles of wilderness.   In the wretched condition of the road this was no longer possible.   The magazines of provisions formed at Raystown and Loyalhannon to support the army on its forward march were emptied faster than they could be filled.   Early in October the elements relented; the clouds broke, the sky was bright again, and the sun shone out in splendor on mountains radiant in the livery of autumn.   A gleam of hope revisited the heart of Forbes.   It was but a flattering illusion.   The sullen clouds returned, and a chill, impenetrable veil of mist and rain hid the mountains and the trees.   Dejected Nature wept and would not be comforted.   Above, below, around, all was trickling, oozing, pattering, gushing.   In the miserable encampments the starved horses stood steaming in the rain, and the men crouched, disgusted, under their dripping tents, while the drenched picket-guard in the neighboring forest paced dolefully through black mire and spongy mosses.   The rain turned to snow; the descending flakes clung to the many-colored foliage, or melted from sight in the trench of half-liquid clay that was called a road.   The wheels of the wagons sank in it to the hub, and to advance or retreat was alike impossible.  

Forbes from his sick bed at Raystown wrote to Bouquet: "Your description of the road pierces me to the very soul.  " And a few days later to Pitt: "I am in the greatest distress, occasioned by rains unusual at this season, which have rendered the clay roads absolutely impracticable.   If the weather does not favor, I shall be absolutely locked up in the mountains.   I cannot form any judgment how I am to extricate myself as everything depends on the weather, which snows and rains frightfully.  " There was no improvement.   In the next week he writes to Bouquet: "These four days of constant rain have completely ruined the road.   The wagons would cut it up more in an hour than we could repair in a week.   I have written to General Abercromby, but have not had one scrape of a pen from him since the beginning of September; so it looks as if we were either forgot or left to our fate.  ” Wasted and tortured by disease, the perplexed commander was forced to burden himself with a multitude of details which would else have been neglected, and to do the work of commissary and quartermaster as well as general.   "My time," he writes, "is disagreeably spent between business and medicine.  "

In the beginning of November he was carried to Loyalhannon, where the whole army was then gathered.   There was a council of officers, and they resolved to attempt nothing more that season; but, a few days later, three prisoners were brought in who reported the defenceless condition of the French, on which Forbes gave orders to advance again.   The wagons and all the artillery, except a few light pieces, were left behind; and on the eighteenth of November twenty-five hundred picked men marched for Fort Duquesne, without tents or baggage, and burdened only with knapsacks and blankets.   Washington and Colonel Armstrong, of the Pennsylvanians, had opened a way for them by cutting a road to within a day's march of the French fort.   On the evening of the twenty-fourth, the detachment encamped among the hills of Turkey Creek; and the men on guard heard at midnight a dull and heavy sound booming over the western woods.   Was it a magazine exploded by accident, or were the French blowing up their works? In the morning the march was resumed, a strong advance-guard leading the way.   Forbes came next, carried in his litter; and the troops followed in three parallel columns, the Highlanders in the centre under Montgomery, their colonel, and the Royal Americans and provincials on the right and left, under Bouquet and Washington.   Thus, guided by the tap of the drum at the head of each column, they moved slowly through the forest, over damp, fallen leaves, crisp with frost, beneath an endless entanglement of bare gray twigs that sighed and moaned in the bleak November wind.   It was dusk when they emerged upon the open plain and saw Fort Duquesne before them, with its background of wintry hills beyond the Monongahela and the Alleghany.   During the last three miles they had passed the scattered bodies of those slain two months before at the defeat of Grant; and it is said that, as they neared the fort, the Highlanders were goaded to fury at seeing the heads of their slaughtered comrades stuck on poles, round which the kilts were hung derisively, in imitation of petticoats.   Their rage was vain; the enemy was gone.   Only a few Indians lingered about the place, who reported that the garrison, to the number of four or five hundred, had retreated, some down the Ohio, some overland towards Presquisle, and the rest, with their commander, up the Alleghany to Venango, called by the French, Fort Machault.   They had burned the barracks and storehouses, and blown up the fortifications.  

The first care of the victors was to provide defence and shelter for those of their number on whom the dangerous task was to fall of keeping what they had won.   A stockade was planted around a cluster of traders' cabins and soldiers' huts, which Forbes named Pittsburg, in honor of the great minister.   It was not till the next autumn that General Stanwix built, hard by, the regular fortified work called Fort Pitt.   Captain West, brother of Benjamin West, the painter, led a detachment of Pennsylvanians, with Indian guides, through the forests of the Monongahela, to search for the bones of those who had fallen under Braddock.   In the heart of the savage wood they found them in abundance, gnawed by wolves and foxes, and covered with the dead leaves of four successive autumns.   Major Halket, of Forbes' staff, had joined the party; and, with the help of an Indian who was in the fight, he presently found two skeletons lying under a tree.   In one of them he recognized, by a peculiarity of the teeth, the remains of his father, Sir Peter Halket, and in the other he believed that he saw the bones of a brother who had fallen at his father's side.   The young officer fainted at the sight.   The two skeletons were buried together, covered with a Highland plaid, and the Pennsylvanian woodsmen fired a volley over the grave.   The rest of the bones were undistinguishable; and, being carefully gathered up, they were all interred in a deep trench dug in the freezing ground.  

The work of the new fort was pushed on apace, and the task of holding it for the winter was assigned to Lieutenant-Colonel Mercer, of the Virginians, with two hundred provincials.   The number was far too small.   It was certain that, unless vigorously prevented by a counter attack, the French would gather in early spring from all their nearer western posts, Niagara, Detroit, Presquisle, Le Boeuf, and Venango, to retake the place; but there was no food for a larger garrison, and the risk must be run.  

The rest of the troops, with steps quickened by hunger, began their homeward march early in December.   "We would soon make M.   de Ligneris shift his quarters at Venango," writes Bouquet just after the fort was taken, "if we only had provisions; but we are scarcely able to maintain ourselves a few days here.   After God, the success of this expedition is entirely due to the General, who, by bringing about the treaty with the Indians at Easton, struck the French a stunning blow, wisely delayed our advance to wait the effects of that treaty, secured all our posts and left nothing to chance, and resisted the urgent solicitation to take Braddock's road, which would have been our destruction.   In all his measures he has shown the greatest prudence, firmness, and ability.  ” No sooner was his work done, than Forbes fell into a state of entire prostration, so that for a time he could neither write a letter nor dictate one.   He managed, however, two days after reaching Fort Duquesne, to send Amherst a brief notice of his success, adding: "I shall leave this place as soon as I am able to stand; but God knows when I shall reach Philadelphia, if I ever do.  ” On the way back, a hut with a chimney was built for him at each stopping-place, and on the twenty-eighth of December Major Halket writes from "Tomahawk Camp:" "How great was our disappointment, on coming to this ground last night, to find that the chimney was unlaid, no fire made, nor any wood cut that would burn.   This distressed the General to the greatest degree, by obliging him after his long journey to sit above two hours without any fire, exposed to a snowstorm, which had very near destroyed him entirely; but with great difficulty, by the assistance of some cordials, he was brought to.  ” At length, carried all the way in his litter, he reached Philadelphia, where, after lingering through the winter, he died in March, and was buried with military honors in the chancel of Christ Church.  

If his achievement was not brilliant, its solid value was above price.   It opened the Great West to English enterprise, took from France half her savage allies, and relieved the western borders from the scourge of Indian war.   From southern New York to North Carolina, the frontier populations had cause to bless the memory of the steadfast and all-enduring soldier.  

So ended the campaign of 1758.   The centre of the French had held its own triumphantly at Ticonderoga; but their left had been forced back by the capture of Louisbourg, and their right by that of Fort Duquesne, while their entire right wing had been well nigh cut off by the destruction of Fort Frontenac.   The outlook was dark.   Their own Indians were turning against them.   "They have struck us," wrote Doreil to the Minister of War; "they have seized three canoes loaded with furs on Lake Ontario, and murdered the men in them: sad forerunner of what we have to fear! Peace, Monseigneur, give us peace! Pardon me, but I cannot repeat that word too often.  "

NOTE: The Bouquet and Haldimand Papers in the British Museum contain a mass of curious correspondence of the principal persons engaged in the expedition under Forbes; copies of it all are before me.   The Public Record Office, America and West Indies, has also furnished much material, including the official letters of Forbes.   The Writings of Washington, the Archives and Colonial Records of Pennsylvania, and the magazines and newspapers of the time may be mentioned among the sources of information, along with a variety of miscellaneous contemporary letters.   The Journals of Christian Frederic Post are printed in full in the Olden Time and elsewhere.  

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.  

Chapter 24
1758, 1759

Wolfe

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.  

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 back 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 Caesar, 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.  "

Pitt chose him to command the expedition then fitting out against Quebec; made him a major-general, though, to avoid giving offence to older officers, he was to hold that rank in America alone; and permitted him to choose his own staff.   Appointments made for merit, and not through routine and patronage, shocked the Duke of Newcastle, to whom a man like Wolfe was a hopeless enigma; and he told George II.   that Pitt's new general was mad.   "Mad is he?" returned the old King; "then I hope he will bite some others of my generals.  "

At the end of January the fleet was almost ready, and Wolfe wrote to his uncle Walter: "I am to act a greater part in this business than I wished.   The backwardness of some of the older officers has in some measure forced the Government to come down so low.   I shall do my best, and leave the rest to fortune, as perforce we must when there are not the most commanding abilities.   We expect to sail in about three weeks.   A London life and little exercise disagrees entirely with me, but the sea still more.   If I have health and constitution enough for the campaign, I shall think myself a lucky man; what happens afterwards is of no great consequence.  " He sent to his mother an affectionate letter of farewell, went to Spithead, embarked with Admiral Saunders in the ship "Neptune," and set sail on the seventeenth of February.   In a few hours the whole squadron was at sea, the transports, the frigates, and the great line-of-battle ships, with their ponderous armament and their freight of rude humanity armed and trained for destruction; while on the heaving deck of the "Neptune," wretched with sea-sickness and racked with pain, stood the gallant invalid who was master of it all.  

The fleet consisted of twenty-two ships of the line, with frigates, sloops-of-war, and a great number of transports.   When Admiral Saunders arrived with his squadron off Louisbourg, he found the entrance blocked by ice, and was forced to seek harborage at Halifax.   The squadron of Admiral Holmes, which had sailed a few days earlier, proceeded to New York to take on board troops destined for the expedition, while the squadron of Admiral Durell steered for the St.   Lawrence to intercept the expected ships from France.   In May the whole fleet, except the ten ships with Durell, was united in the harbor of Louisbourg.   Twelve thousand troops were to have been employed for the expedition; but several regiments expected from the West Indies were for some reason countermanded, while the accessions from New York and the Nova Scotia garrisons fell far short of the looked-for numbers.   Three weeks before leaving Louisbourg, Wolfe writes to his uncle Walter that he has an army of nine thousand men.   The actual number seems to have been somewhat less.   "Our troops are good," he informs Pitt; "and if valor can make amends for the want of numbers, we shall probably succeed.  "

Three brigadiers, all in the early prime of life, held command under him: Monckton, Townshend, and Murray.   They were all his superiors in birth, and one of them, Townshend, never forgot that he was so.   "George Townshend," says Walpole, "has thrust himself again into the service; and, as far as wrongheadedness will go, is very proper for a hero.  ” The same caustic writer says further that he was of "a proud, sullen, and contemptuous temper," and that he "saw everything in an ill-natured and ridiculous light.  ” Though his perverse and envious disposition made him a difficult colleague, Townshend had both talents and energy; as also had Monckton, the same officer who commanded at the capture of Beauséjour in 1755.   Murray, too, was well matched to the work in hand, in spite of some lingering remains of youthful rashness.  

On the sixth of June the last ship of the fleet sailed out of Louisbourg harbor, the troops cheering and the officers drinking to the toast, "British colors on every French fort, port, and garrison in America.  " The ships that had gone before lay to till the whole fleet was reunited, and then all steered together for the St.   Lawrence.   From the headland of Cape Egmont, the Micmac hunter, gazing far out over the shimmering sea, saw the horizon flecked with their canvas wings, as they bore northward on their errand of havoc.  

NOTE: For the material of the foregoing sketch of Wolfe I am indebted to Wright's excellent Life of him and the numerous letters contained in it.   Several autograph letters which have escaped the notice of Mr.  Wright are preserved in the Public Record Office.   The following is a characteristic passage from one of these, written on board the "Neptune," at sea, on the sixth of June, the day when the fleet sailed from Louisbourg.   It is directed to a nobleman of high rank in the army, whose name does not appear, the address being lost (War Office Records: North America, various, 1756-1763): "I have had the honour to receive two letters from your Lordship, one of an old date, concerning my stay in this country [after the capture of Louisbourg,] in answer to which I shall only say that the Marshal told me I was to return at the end of the campaign; and as General Amherst had no other commands than to send me to winter at Halifax under the orders of an officer [Brigadier Lawrence] who was but a few months before put over my head, I thought it was much better to get into the way of service and out of the way of being insulted; and as the style of your Lordship's letter is pretty strong, I must take the liberty to inform you that … rather than receive orders in the Government [of Nova Scotia] from an officer younger than myself (though a very worthy man), I should certainly have desired leave to resign my commission; for as I neither ask nor expect any favour, so I never intend to submit to any ill-usage whatsoever.  "

Many other papers in the Public Record Office have been consulted in preparing the above chapter, including the secret instructions of the King to Wolfe and to Saunders, and the letters of Amherst to Wolfe and to Pitt.   Other correspondence touching the same subjects is printed in Selections from the Public Documents of Nova Scotia, 441-450.   Knox, Mante, and Entick are the best contemporary printed sources.  

A story has gained currency respecting the last interview of Wolfe with Pitt, in which he is said to have flourished his sword and boasted of what he would achieve.   This anecdote was told by Lord Temple, who was present at the interview, to Mr.  Grenville, who, many years after, told it to Earl Stanhope, by whom it was made public.   That the incident underwent essential changes in the course of these transmissions, which extended over more than half a century, for Earl Stanhope was not born till 1805, can never be doubted by one who considers the known character of Wolfe, who may have uttered some vehement expression, but who can never be suspected of gasconade.  

Chapter 25
1759

Wolfe at Quebec

In early spring the chiefs of Canada met at Montreal to settle a plan of defence.   What at first they most dreaded was an advance of the enemy by way of Lake Champlain.   Bourlamaque, with three battalions, was ordered to take post at Ticonderoga, hold it if he could, or, if overborne by numbers, fall back to Isle-aux-Noix, at the outlet of the lake.   La Corne was sent with a strong detachment to intrench himself at the head of the rapids of the St.   Lawrence, and oppose any hostile movement from Lake Ontario.   Every able-bodied man in the colony, and every boy who could fire a gun, was to be called to the field.   Vaudreuil sent a circular letter to the militia captains of all the parishes, with orders to read it to the parishioners.   It exhorted them to defend their religion, their wives, their children, and their goods from the fury of the heretics; declared that he, the Governor, would never yield up Canada on any terms whatever; and ordered them to join the army at once, leaving none behind but the old, the sick, the women, and the children.   The Bishop issued a pastoral mandate: "On every side, dearest brethren, the enemy is making immense preparations.   His forces, at least six times more numerous than ours, are already in motion.   Never was Canada in a state so critical and full of peril.   Never were we so destitute, or threatened with an attack so fierce, so general, and so obstinate.   Now, in truth, we may say, more than ever before, that our only resource is in the powerful succor of our Lord.   Then, dearest brethren, make every effort to deserve it.   'Seek first the kingdom of God; and all these things shall be added unto you.  '" And he reproves their sins, exhorts them to repentance, and ordains processions, masses, and prayers.  

Vaudreuil bustled and boasted.   In May he wrote to the Minister: "The zeal with which I am animated for the service of the King will always make me surmount the greatest obstacles.   I am taking the most proper measures to give the enemy a good reception whenever he may attack us.   I keep in view the defence of Quebec.   I have given orders in the parishes below to muster the inhabitants who are able to bear arms, and place women, children, cattle, and even hay and grain, in places of safety.   Permit me, Monseigneur, to beg you to have the goodness to assure His Majesty that, to whatever hard extremity I may be reduced, my zeal will be equally ardent and indefatigable, and that I shall do the impossible to prevent our enemies from making progress in any direction, or, at least, to make them pay extremely dear for it.  ” Then he writes again to say that Amherst with a great army will, as he learns, attack Ticonderoga; that Bradstreet, with six thousand men, will advance to Lake Ontario; and that six thousand more will march to the Ohio.   "Whatever progress they may make," he adds, "I am resolved to yield them nothing, but hold my ground even to annihilation.  " He promises to do his best to keep on good terms with Montcalm, and ends with a warm eulogy of Bigot.  

It was in the midst of all these preparations that Bougainville arrived from France with news that a great fleet was on its way to attack Quebec.   The town was filled with consternation mixed with surprise, for the Canadians had believed that the dangerous navigation of the St.   Lawrence would deter their enemies from the attempt.   "Everybody," writes one of them, "was stupefied at an enterprise that seemed so bold.  " In a few days a crowd of sails was seen approaching.   They were not enemies, but friends.   It was the fleet of the contractor Cadet, commanded by officer named Kanon, and loaded with supplies for the colony.   They anchored in the harbor, eighteen sail in all, and their arrival spread universal joy.   Admiral Durell had come too late to intercept them, catching but three stragglers that had lagged behind the rest.   Still others succeeded in eluding him, and before the first of June five more ships had come safely into port.  

When the news brought by Bougainville reached Montreal, nearly the whole force of the colony, except the detachments of Bourlamaque and La Corne, was ordered to Quebec.   Montcalm hastened thither, and Vaudreuil followed.   The Governor-General wrote to the Minister in his usual strain, as if all the hope of Canada rested in him.   Such, he says, was his activity, that, though very busy, he reached Quebec only a day and a half after Montcalm; and, on arriving, learned from his scouts that English ships-of-war had already appeared at Isle-aux-Coudres.   These were the squadron of Durell.   "I expect," Vaudreuil goes on, "to be sharply attacked, and that our enemies will make their most powerful efforts to conquer this colony; but there is no ruse, no resource, no means which my zeal does not suggest to lay snares for them, and finally, when the exigency demands it, to fight them with an ardor, and even a fury, which exceeds the range of their ambitious designs.   The troops, the Canadians, and the Indians are not ignorant of the resolution I have taken, and from which I shall not recoil under any circumstance whatever.   The burghers of this city have already put their goods and furniture in places of safety.   The old men, women, and children hold themselves ready to leave town.   My firmness is generally applauded.   It has penetrated every heart; and each man says aloud: 'Canada, our native land, shall bury us under its ruins before we surrender to the English!' This is decidedly my own determination, and I shall hold to it inviolably.  " He launches into high praise of the contractor Cadet, whose zeal for the service of the King and the defence of the colony he declares to be triumphant over every difficulty.   It is necessary, he adds, that ample supplies of all kinds should be sent out in the autumn, with the distribution of which Cadet offers to charge himself, and to account for them at their first cost; but he does not say what prices his disinterested friend will compel the destitute Canadians to pay for them.  

Five battalions from France, nearly all the colony troops, and the militia from every part of Canada poured into Quebec, along with a thousand or more Indians, who, at the call of Vaudreuil, came to lend their scalping-knives to the defence.   Such was the ardor of the people that boys of fifteen and men of eighty were to be seen in the camp.   Isle-aux-Coudres and Isle d'Orléans were ordered to be evacuated, and an excited crowd on the rock of Quebec watched hourly for the approaching fleet.   Days passed and weeks passed, yet it did not appear.   Meanwhile Vaudreuil held council after council to settle a plan of defence, They were strange scenes: a crowd of officers of every rank, mixed pell-mell in a small room, pushing, shouting, elbowing each other, interrupting each other; till Montcalm in despair, took each aside after the meeting was over, and made him give his opinion in writing.  

He himself had at first proposed to encamp the army on the plains of Abraham and the meadows of the St.   Charles, making that river his line of defence; but he changed his plan, and, with the concurrence of Vaudreuil, resolved to post his whole force on the St.   Lawrence below the city, with his right resting on the St.   Charles, and his left on the Montmorenci.   Here, accordingly, the troops and militia were stationed as they arrived.   Early in June, standing at the northeastern brink of the rock of Quebec, one could have seen the whole position at a glance.   On the curving shore from the St.   Charles to the rocky gorge of the Montmorenci, a distance of seven or eight miles, the whitewashed dwellings of the parish of Beauport stretched down the road in a double chain, and the fields on both sides were studded with tents, huts, and Indian wigwams.   Along the borders of the St.   Lawrence, as far as the eye could distinguish them, gangs of men were throwing up redoubts, batteries, and lines of intrenchment.   About midway between the two extremities of the encampment ran the little river of Beauport; and on the rising ground just beyond it stood a large stone house, round which the tents were thickly clustered; for here Montcalm had made his headquarters.  

A boom of logs chained together was drawn across the mouth of the St.   Charles, which was further guarded by two hulks mounted with cannon.   The bridge of boats that crossed the stream nearly a mile above, formed the chief communication between the city and the camp.   Its head towards Beauport was protected by a strong and extensive earthwork; and the banks of the stream on the Quebec side were also intrenched, to form a second line of defence in case the position at Beauport should be forced.  

In the city itself every gate, except the Palace Gate, which gave access to the bridge, was closed and barricaded.   A hundred and six cannon were mounted on the walls.   A floating battery of twelve heavy pieces, a number of gunboats, eight fireships, and several firerafts formed the river defences.   The largest merchantmen of Kanon's fleet were sacrificed to make the fireships; and the rest, along with the frigates that came with them, were sent for safety up the St.   Lawrence beyond the River Richelieu, whence about a thousand of their sailors returned to man the batteries and gunboats.  

In the camps along the Beauport shore were about fourteen thousand men, besides Indians.   The regulars held the centre; the militia of Quebec and Three Rivers were on the right, and those of Montreal on the left.   In Quebec itself there was a garrison of between one and two thousand men under the Chevalier de Ramesay.   Thus the whole number, including Indians, amounted to more than sixteen thousand; and though the Canadians who formed the greater part of it were of little use in the open field, they could be trusted to fight well behind intrenchments.   Against this force, posted behind defensive works, on positions almost impregnable by nature, Wolfe brought less than nine thousand men available for operations on land.   The steep and lofty heights that lined the river made the cannon of the ships for the most part useless, while the exigencies of the naval service forbade employing the sailors on shore.   In two or three instances only, throughout the siege, small squads of them landed to aid in moving and working cannon; and the actual fighting fell to the troops alone.  

Vaudreuil and Bigot took up their quarters with the army.   The Governor-General had delegated the command of the land-forces to Montcalm, whom, in his own words, he authorized "to give orders everywhere, provisionally.  " His relations with him were more than ever anomalous and critical; for while Vaudreuil, in virtue of his office, had a right to supreme command, Montcalm, now a lieutenant-general, held a military grade far above him; and the Governor, while always writing himself down in his despatches as the head and front of every movement, had too little self-confidence not to leave the actual command in the hands of his rival.  

Days and weeks wore on, and the first excitement gave way to restless impatience.   Why did not the English come? Many of the Canadians thought that Heaven would interpose and wreck the English fleet, as it had wrecked that of Admiral Walker half a century before.   There were processions, prayers, and vows towards this happy consummation.   Food was scarce.   Bigot and Cadet lived in luxury; fowls by thousands were fattened with wheat for their tables, while the people were put on rations of two ounces of bread a day.   Durell and his ships were reported to be still at Isle-aux-Coudres.   Vaudreuil sent thither a party of Canadians, and they captured three midshipmen, who, says Montcalm, had gone ashore pour polissonner, that is, on a lark.   These youths were brought to Quebec, where they increased the general anxiety by grossly exaggerating the English force.  

At length it became known that eight English vessels were anchored in the north channel of Orleans, and on the twenty-first of June the masts of three of them could plainly be seen.   One of the fireships was consumed in a vain attempt to burn them, and several firerafts and a sort of infernal machine were tried with no better success; the unwelcome visitors still held their posts.  

Meanwhile the whole English fleet had slowly advanced, piloted by Denis de Vitré, a Canadian of good birth, captured at sea some time before, and now compelled to serve, under a threat of being hanged if he refused.   Nor was he alone; for when Durell reached the place where the river pilots were usually taken on board, he raised a French flag to his mast-head, causing great rejoicings among the Canadians on shore, who thought that a fleet was come to their rescue, and that their country was saved.   The pilots launched their canoes and came out to the ships, where they were all made prisoners; then the French flag was lowered, and the red cross displayed in its stead.   The spectators on shore turned from joy to despair; and a priest who stood watching the squadron with a telescope is said to have dropped dead with the revulsion of feeling.  

Towards the end of June the main fleet was near the mountain of Cape Tourmente.   The passage called the Traverse, between the Cape and the lower end of the Island of Orleans, was reputed one of the most dangerous parts of the St.   Lawrence; and as the ships successively came up, the captive pilots were put on board to carry them safely through, on pain of death.   One of these men was assigned to the transport "Goodwill," in which was Captain Knox, who spoke French, and who reports thus in his Diary: "He gasconaded at a most extravagant rate, and gave us to understand that it was much against his will that he was become an English pilot.   The poor fellow assumed great latitude in his conversation, and said 'he made no doubt that some of the fleet would return to England, but they should have a dismal tale to carry with them; for Canada should be the grave of the whole army, and he expected in a short time to see the walls of Quebec ornamented with English scalps.  ' Had it not been in obedience to the Admiral, who gave orders that he should not be ill-used, he would certainly have been thrown overboard.  " The master of the transport was an old sailor named Killick, who despised the whole Gallic race, and had no mind to see his ship in charge of a Frenchman.   "He would not let the pilot speak," continues Knox, "but fixed his mate at the helm, charged him not to take orders from any person but himself, and going forwards with his trumpet to the forecastle, gave the necessary instructions.   All that could be said by the commanding officer and the other gentlemen on board was to no purpose; the pilot declared we should be lost, for that no French ship ever presumed to pass there without a pilot.   'Ay, ay, my dear,' replied our son of Neptune, 'but, damn me, I'll convince you that an Englishman shall go where a Frenchman dare not show his nose.  ' The "Richmond" frigate being close astern of us, the commanding officer called out to the captain and told him our case; he inquired who the master was, and was answered from the forecastle by the man himself, who told him 'he was old Killick, and that was enough.  ' I went forward with this experienced mariner, who pointed out the channel to me as we passed; showing me by the ripple and color of the water where there was any danger, and distinguishing the places where there were ledges of rocks (to me invisible) from banks of sand, mud, or gravel.   He gave his orders with great unconcern, joked with the sounding-boats which lay off on each side with different colored flags for our guidance; and when any of them called to him and pointed to the deepest water, he answered: 'Ay, ay, my dear, chalk it down, a damned dangerous navigation, eh! If you don't make a sputter about it you'll get no credit in England.  ' After we had cleared this remarkable place, where the channel forms a complete zigzag, the master called to his mate to give the helm to somebody else, saying, 'Damn me if there are not a thousand places in the Thames fifty times more hazardous than this; I am ashamed that Englishmen should make such a rout about it.  ' The Frenchman asked me if the captain had not been there before.   I assured him in the negative; upon which he viewed him with great attention, lifting at the same time his hands and eyes to heaven with astonishment and fervency.  ”

Vaudreuil was blamed for not planting cannon at a certain plateau on the side of the mountain of Cape Tourmente, where the gunners would have been inaccessible, and whence they could have battered every passing ship with a plunging fire.   As it was, the whole fleet sailed safely through.   On the twenty-sixth they were all anchored off the south shore of the Island of Orleans, a few miles from Quebec; and, writes Knox, "here we are entertained with a most agreeable prospect of a delightful country on every side; windmills, watermills, churches, chapels, and compact farmhouses, all built with stone, and covered, some with wood, and others with straw.   The lands appear to be everywhere well cultivated; and with the help of my glass I can discern that they are sowed with flax, wheat, barley, peas, etc.  , and the grounds are enclosed with wooden pales.   The weather to-day is agreeably warm.   A light fog sometimes hangs over the highlands, but in the river we have a fine clear air.   In the curve of the river, while we were under sail, we had a transient view of a stupendous natural curiosity called the waterfall of Montmorenci.  "

That night Lieutenant Meech, with forty New England rangers, landed on the Island of Orleans, and found a body of armed inhabitants, who tried to surround him.   He beat them off, and took possession of a neighboring farmhouse, where he remained till daylight; then pursued the enemy, and found that they had crossed to the north shore.   The whole army now landed, and were drawn up on the beach.   As they were kept there for some time, Knox and several brother officers went to visit the neighboring church of Saint-Laurent, where they found a letter from the parish priest, directed to "The Worthy Officers of the British Army," praying that they would protect the sacred edifice, and also his own adjoining house, and adding, with somewhat needless civility, that he wished they had come sooner, that they might have enjoyed the asparagus and radishes of his garden, now unhappily going to seed.   The letter concluded with many compliments and good wishes, in which the Britons to whom they were addressed saw only "the frothy politeness so peculiar to the French.  " The army marched westward and encamped.   Wolfe, with his chief engineer, Major Mackellar, and an escort of light infantry, advanced to the extreme point of the island.  

Here he could see, in part, the desperate nature of the task he had undertaken.   Before him, three or four miles away, Quebec sat perched upon her rock, a congregation of stone houses, churches, palaces, convents, and hospitals; the green trees of the Seminary garden and the spires of the Cathedral, the Ursulines, the Recollets, and the Jesuits.   Beyond rose the loftier height of Cape Diamond, edged with palisades and capped with redoubt and parapet.   Batteries frowned everywhere; the Chateau battery, the Clergy battery, the Hospital battery, on the rock above, and the Royal, Dauphin's, and Queen's batteries on the strand, where the dwellings and warehouses of the lower town clustered beneath the cliff.  

Full in sight lay the far-extended camp of Montcalm, stretching from the St.   Charles, beneath the city walls, to the chasm and cataract of the Montmorenci.   From the cataract to the river of Beauport, its front was covered by earthworks along the brink of abrupt and lofty heights; and from the river of Beauport to the St.   Charles, by broad flats of mud swept by the fire of redoubts, intrenchments, a floating battery, and the city itself.   Above the city, Cape Diamond hid the view; but could Wolfe have looked beyond it, he would have beheld a prospect still more disheartening.   Here, mile after mile, the St.   Lawrence was walled by a range of steeps, often inaccessible, and always so difficult that a few men at the top could hold an army in check; while at Cap-Rouge, about eight miles distant, the high plateau was cleft by the channel of a stream which formed a line of defence as strong as that of the Montmorenci.   Quebec was a natural fortress.   Bougainville had long before examined the position, and reported that "by the help of intrenchments, easily and quickly made, and defended by three or four thousand men, I think the city would be safe.   I do not believe that the English will make any attempt against it; but they may have the madness to do so, and it is well to be prepared against surprise.  "

Not four thousand men, but four times four thousand, now stood in its defence; and their chiefs wisely resolved not to throw away the advantages of their position.   Nothing more was heard of Vaudreuil's bold plan of attacking the invaders at their landing; and Montcalm had declared that he would play the part, not of Hannibal, but of Fabius.   His plan was to avoid a general battle, run no risks, and protract the defence till the resources of the enemy were exhausted, or till approaching winter forced them to withdraw.   Success was almost certain but for one contingency.   Amherst, with a force larger than that of Wolfe, was moving against Ticonderoga.   If he should capture it, and advance into the colony, Montcalm would be forced to weaken his army by sending strong detachments to oppose him.   Here was Wolfe's best hope.   This failing, his only chance was in audacity.   The game was desperate; but, intrepid gamester as he was in war, he was a man, in the last resort, to stake everything on the cast of the dice.  

The elements declared for France.   On the afternoon of the day when Wolfe's army landed, a violent squall swept over the St.   Lawrence, dashed the ships together, drove several ashore, and destroyed many of the flatboats from which the troops had just disembarked.   "I never saw so much distress among shipping in my whole life," writes an officer to a friend in Boston.   Fortunately the storm subsided as quickly as it rose.   Vaudreuil saw that the hoped-for deliverance had failed; and as the tempest had not destroyed the British fleet, he resolved to try the virtue of his fireships.   "I am afraid," says Montcalm, "that they have cost us a million, and will be good for nothing after all.  " This remained to be seen.   Vaudreuil gave the chief command of them to a naval officer named Delouche; and on the evening of the twenty-eighth, after long consultation and much debate among their respective captains, they set sail together at ten o'clock.   The night was moonless and dark.   In less than an hour they were at the entrance of the north channel.   Delouche had been all enthusiasm; but as he neared the danger his nerves failed, and he set fire to his ship half an hour too soon, the rest following his example.  

There was an English outpost at the Point of Orleans; and, about eleven o'clock, the sentries descried through the gloom the ghostly outlines of the approaching ships.   As they gazed, these mysterious strangers began to dart tongues of flame; fire ran like lightning up their masts and sails, and then they burst out like volcanoes.   Filled as they were with pitch, tar, and every manner of combustible, mixed with fireworks, bombs, grenades, and old cannon, swivels, and muskets loaded to the throat, the effect was terrific.   The troops at the Point, amazed at the sudden eruption, the din of the explosions, and the showers of grapeshot that rattled among the trees, lost their wits and fled.   The blazing dragons hissed and roared, spouted sheets of fire, vomited smoke in black, pitchy volumes and vast illumined clouds, and shed their infernal glare on the distant city, the tents of Montcalm, and the long red lines of the British army, drawn up in array of battle, lest the French should cross from their encampments to attack them in the confusion.   Knox calls the display "the grandest fireworks that can possibly be conceived.  " Yet the fireships did no other harm than burning alive one of their own captains and six or seven of his sailors who failed to escape in their boats.   Some of them ran ashore before reaching the fleet; the others were seized by the intrepid English sailors, who, approaching in their boats, threw grappling-irons upon them and towed them towards land, till they swung round and stranded.   Here, after venting their fury for a while, they subsided into quiet conflagration, which lasted till morning.   Vaudreuil watched the result of his experiment from the steeple of the church at Beauport; then returned, dejected, to Quebec.  

Wolfe longed to fight his enemy; but his sagacious enemy would not gratify him.   From the heights of Beauport, the rock of Quebec, or the summit of Cape Diamond, Montcalm could look down on the river and its shores as on a map, and watch each movement of the invaders.   He was hopeful, perhaps confident; and for a month or more he wrote almost daily to Bourlamaque at Ticonderoga, in a cheerful, and often a jocose vein, mingling orders and instructions with pleasantries and bits of news.   Yet his vigilance was unceasing.   "We pass every night in bivouac, or else sleep in our clothes.   Perhaps you are doing as much, my dear Bourlamaque.  ”

Of the two commanders, Vaudreuil was the more sanguine, and professed full faith that all would go well.   He too corresponded with Bourlamaque, to whom he gave his opinion, founded on the reports of deserters, that Wolfe had no chance of success unless Amherst should come to his aid.   This he pronounced impossible; and he expressed a strong desire that the English would attack him, "so that we may rid ourselves of them at once.  ” He was courageous, except in the immediate presence of danger, and failed only when the crisis came.  

Wolfe, held in check at every other point, had one movement in his power.   He could seize the heights of Point Levi, opposite the city; and this, along with his occupation of the Island of Orleans, would give him command of the Basin of Quebec.   Thence also he could fire on the place across the St.   Lawrence, which is here less than a mile wide.   The movement was begun on the afternoon of the twenty-ninth, when, shivering in a north wind and a sharp frost, a part of Monckton's brigade was ferried over to Beaumont, on the south shore, and the rest followed in the morning.   The rangers had a brush with a party of Canadians, whom they drove off, and the regulars then landed unopposed.   Monckton ordered a proclamation, signed by Wolfe, to be posted on the door of the parish church.   It called on the Canadians, in peremptory terms, to stand neutral in the contest, promised them, if they did so, full protection in property and religion, and threatened that, if they presumed to resist the invaders, their houses, goods, and harvests should be destroyed, and their churches despoiled.   As soon as the troops were out of sight the inhabitants took down the placard and carried it to Vaudreuil.  

The brigade marched along the river road to Point Levi, drove off a body of French and Indians posted in the church, and took possession of the houses and the surrounding heights.   In the morning they were intrenching themselves, when they were greeted by a brisk fire from the edge of the woods.   It came from a party of Indians, whom the rangers presently put to flight, and, imitating their own ferocity, scalped nine of them.   Wolfe came over to the camp on the next day, went with an escort to the heights opposite Quebec, examined it with a spy-glass, and chose a position from which to bombard it.   Cannon and mortars were brought ashore, fascines and gabions made, intrenchments thrown up, and batteries planted.   Knox came over from the main camp, and says that he had "a most agreeable view of the city of Quebec.   It is a very fair object for our artillery, particularly the lower town.  " But why did Wolfe wish to bombard it? Its fortifications were but little exposed to his fire, and to knock its houses, convents, and churches to pieces would bring him no nearer to his object.   His guns at Point Levi could destroy the city, but could not capture it; yet doubtless they would have good moral effect, discourage the French, and cheer his own soldiers with the flattering belief that they were achieving something.  

The guns of Quebec showered balls and bombs upon his workmen; but they still toiled on, and the French saw the fatal batteries fast growing to completion.   The citizens, alarmed at the threatened destruction, begged the Governor for leave to cross the river and dislodge their assailants.   At length he consented.   A party of twelve or fifteen hundred was made up of armed burghers, Canadians from the camp, a few Indians, some pupils of the Seminary, and about a hundred volunteers from the regulars.   Dumas, an experienced officer, took command of them; and, going up to Sillery, they crossed the river on the night of the twelfth of July.   They had hardly climbed the heights of the south shore when they grew exceedingly nervous, though the enemy was still three miles off.   The Seminary scholars fired on some of their own party, whom they mistook for English; and the same mishap was repeated a second and a third time.   A panic seized the whole body, and Dumas could not control them.   They turned and made for their canoes, rolling over each other as they rushed down the heights, and reappeared at Quebec at six in the morning, overwhelmed with despair and shame.  

The presentiment of the unhappy burghers proved too true.   The English batteries fell to their work, and the families of the town fled to the country for safety.   In a single day eighteen houses and the cathedral were burned by exploding shells; and fiercer and fiercer the storm of fire and iron hailed upon Quebec.  

Wolfe did not rest content with distressing his enemy.   With an ardor and a daring that no difficulties could cool, he sought means to strike an effective blow.   It was nothing to lay Quebec in ruins if he could not defeat the army that protected it.   To land from boats and attack Montcalm in front, through the mud of the Beauport flats or up the heights along the neighboring shore, was an enterprise too rash even for his temerity.   It might, however, be possible to land below the cataract of Montmorenci, cross that stream higher up, and strike the French army in flank or rear; and he had no sooner secured his positions at the points of Levi and Orleans, than he addressed himself to this attempt.  

On the eighth several frigates and a bomb-ketch took their stations before the camp of the Chevalier de Lévis, who, with his division of Canadian militia, occupied the heights along the St.   Lawrence just above the cataract.   Here they shelled and cannonaded him all day; though, from his elevated position, with very little effect.   Towards evening the troops on the Point of Orleans broke up their camp.   Major Hardy, with a detachment of marines, was left to hold that post, while the rest embarked at night in the boats of the fleet.   They were the brigades of Townshend and Murray, consisting of five battalions, with a body of grenadiers, light infantry, and rangers, in all three thousand men.   They landed before daybreak in front of the parish of L'Ange Gardien, a little below the cataract.   The only opposition was from a troop of Canadians and Indians, whom they routed, after some loss, climbed the heights, gained the plateau above, and began to intrench themselves.   A company of rangers, supported by detachments of regulars, was sent into the neighboring forest to protect the parties who were cutting fascines, and apparently, also, to look for a fording-place.  

Lévis, with his Scotch-Jacobite aide-de-camp, Johnstone, had watched the movements of Wolfe from the heights across the cataract.   Johnstone says that he asked his commander if he was sure there was no ford higher up on the Montmorenci, by which the English could cross.   Lévis averred that there was none, and that he himself had examined the stream to its source; on which a Canadian who stood by whispered to the aide-de-camp: "The General is mistaken; there is a ford.  " Johnstone told this to Lévis, who would not believe it, and so browbeat the Canadian that he dared not repeat what he had said.   Johnstone, taking him aside, told him to go and find somebody who had lately crossed the ford, and bring him at once to the General's quarters; whereupon he soon reappeared with a man who affirmed that he had crossed it the night before with a sack of wheat on his back.   A detachment was immediately sent to the place, with orders to intrench itself, and Repentigny, lieutenant of Lévis, was posted not far off with eleven hundred Canadians.  

Four hundred Indians passed the ford under the partisan Langlade, discovered Wolfe's detachment, hid themselves, and sent their commander to tell Repentigny that there was a body of English in the forest, who might all be destroyed if he would come over at once with his Canadians.   Repentigny sent for orders to Lévis, and Lévis sent for orders to Vaudreuil, whose quarters were three or four miles distant.   Vaudreuil answered that no risk should be run, and that he would come and see to the matter himself.   It was about two hours before he arrived; and meanwhile the Indians grew impatient, rose from their hiding-place, fired on the rangers, and drove them back with heavy loss upon the regulars, who stood their ground, and at last repulsed the assailants.   The Indians recrossed the ford with thirty-six scalps.   If Repentigny had advanced, and Lévis had followed with his main body, the consequences to the English might have been serious; for, as Johnstone remarks, "a Canadian in the woods is worth three disciplined soldiers, as a soldier in a plain is worth three Canadians.  " Vaudreuil called a council of war.   The question was whether an effort should be made to dislodge Wolfe's main force.   Montcalm and the Governor were this time of one mind, and both thought it inexpedient to attack, with militia, a body of regular troops whose numbers and position were imperfectly known.   Bigot gave his voice for the attack.   He was overruled, and Wolfe was left to fortify himself in peace.  

His occupation of the heights of Montmorenci exposed him to great risks.   The left wing of his army at Point Levi was six miles from its right wing at the cataract, and Major Hardy's detachment on the Point of Orleans was between them, separated from each by a wide arm of the St.   Lawrence.   Any one of the three camps might be overpowered before the others could support it; and Hardy with his small force was above all in danger of being cut to pieces.   But the French kept persistently on the defensive; and after the failure of Dumas to dislodge the English from Point Levi, Vaudreuil would not hear of another such attempt.   Wolfe was soon well intrenched; but it was easier to defend himself than to strike at his enemy.   Montcalm, when urged to attack him, is said to have answered: "Let him amuse himself where he is.   If we drive him off he may go to some place where he can do us harm.  " His late movement, however, had a discouraging effect on the Canadians, who now for the first time began to desert.   His batteries, too, played across the chasm of Montmorenci upon the left wing of the French army with an effect extremely annoying.  

The position of the hostile forces was a remarkable one.   They were separated by the vast gorge that opens upon the St.   Lawrence; an amphitheatre of lofty precipices, their brows crested with forests, and their steep brown sides scantily feathered with stunted birch and fir.   Into this abyss leaps the Montmorenci with one headlong plunge of nearly two hundred and fifty feet, a living column of snowy white, with its spray, its foam, its mists, and its rainbows; then spreads itself in broad thin sheets over a floor of rock and gravel, and creeps tamely to the St.   Lawrence.   It was but a gunshot across the gulf, and the sentinels on each side watched each other over the roar and turmoil of the cataract.   Captain Knox, coming one day from Point Levi to receive orders from Wolfe, improved a spare hour to visit this marvel of nature.   "I had very nigh paid dear for my inquisitiveness; for while I stood on the eminence I was hastily called to by one of our sentinels, when, throwing my eyes about, I saw a Frenchman creeping under the eastern extremity of their breastwork to fire at me.   This obliged me to retire as fast as I could out of his reach, and, making up to the sentry to thank him for his attention, he told me the fellow had snapped his piece twice, and the second time it flashed in the pan at the instant I turned away from the Fall.  " Another officer, less fortunate, had a leg broken by a shot from the opposite cliffs.  

Day after day went by, and the invaders made no progress.   Flags of truce passed often between the hostile camps.   "You will demolish the town, no doubt," said the bearer of one of them, "but you shall never get inside of it.  " To which Wolfe replied: "I will have Quebec if I stay here till the end of November.  " Sometimes the heat was intense, and sometimes there were floods of summer rain that inundated the tents.   Along the river, from the Montmorenci to Point Levi, there were ceaseless artillery fights between gunboats, frigates, and batteries on shore.   Bands of Indians infested the outskirts of the camps, killing sentries and patrols.   The rangers chased them through the woods; there were brisk skirmishes, and scalps lost and won.   Sometimes the regulars took part in these forest battles; and once it was announced, in orders of the day, that "the General has ordered two sheep and some rum to Captain Cosnan's company of grenadiers for the spirit they showed this morning in pushing those scoundrels of Indians.  " The Indians complained that the British soldiers were learning how to fight, and no longer stood still in a mass to be shot at, as in Braddock's time.   The Canadian coureurs-de-bois mixed with their red allies and wore their livery.   One of them was caught on the eighteenth.   He was naked, daubed red and blue, and adorned with a bunch of painted feathers dangling from the top of his head.   He and his companions used the scalping-knife as freely as the Indians themselves; nor were the New England rangers much behind them in this respect, till an order came from Wolfe forbidding "the inhuman practice of scalping, except when the enemy are Indians, or Canadians dressed like Indians.  "

A part of the fleet worked up into the Basin, beyond the Point of Orleans; and here, on the warm summer nights, officers and men watched the cannon flashing and thundering from the heights of Montmorenci on one side, and those of Pont Levi on the other, and the bombs sailing through the air in fiery semicircles.   Often the gloom was lighted up by the blaze of the burning houses of Quebec, kindled by incendiary shells.   Both the lower and the upper town were nearly deserted by the inhabitants, some retreating into the country, and some into the suburb of St.   Roch; while the Ursulines and Hospital nuns abandoned their convents to seek harborage beyond the range of shot.   The city was a prey to robbers, who pillaged the empty houses, till an order came from headquarters promising the gallows to all who should be caught.   News reached the French that Niagara was attacked, and that the army of Amherst was moving against Ticonderoga.   The Canadians deserted more and more.   They were disheartened by the defensive attitude in which both Vaudreuil and Montcalm steadily persisted; and accustomed as they were to rapid raids, sudden strokes, and a quick return to their homes, they tired of long weeks of inaction.   The English patrols caught one of them as he was passing the time in fishing.   "He seemed to be a subtle old rogue," says Knox, "of seventy years of age, as he told us.   We plied him well with port wine, and then his heart was more open; and seeing that we laughed at the exaggerated accounts he had given us, he said he 'wished the affair was well over, one way or the other; that his countrymen were all discontented, and would either surrender, or disperse and act a neutral part, if it were not for the persuasions of their priests and the fear of being maltreated by the savages, with whom they are threatened on all occasions.  '" A deserter reported on the nineteenth of July that nothing but dread of the Indians kept the Canadians in the camp.  

Wolfe's proclamation, at first unavailing, was now taking effect.   A large number of Canadian prisoners, brought in on the twenty-fifth, declared that their countrymen would gladly accept his offers but for the threats of their commanders that if they did so the Indians should be set upon them.   The prisoners said further that "they had been under apprehension for several days past of having a body of four hundred barbarians sent to rifle their parish and habitations.  ” Such threats were not wholly effectual.   A French chronicler of the time says: "The Canadians showed their disgust every day, and deserted at every opportunity, in spite of the means taken to prevent them.  " "The people were intimidated, seeing all our army kept in one body and solely on the defensive; while the English, though far less numerous, divided their forces, and undertook various bold enterprises without meeting resistance.  ”

On the eighteenth the English accomplished a feat which promised important results.   The French commanders had thought it impossible for any hostile ship to pass the batteries of Quebec; but about eleven o'clock at night, favored by the wind, and covered by a furious cannonade from Point Levi, the ship "Sutherland," with a frigate and several small vessels, sailed safely by and reached the river above the town.   Here they at once attacked and destroyed a fireship and some small craft that they found there, Now, for the first time, it became necessary for Montcalm to weaken his army at Beauport by sending six hundred men, under Dumas, to defend the accessible points in the line of precipices between Quebec and Cap-Rouge.   Several hundred more were sent on the next day, when it became known that the English had dragged a fleet of boats over Point Levi, launched them above the town, and despatched troops to embark in them.   Thus a new feature was introduced into the siege operations, and danger had risen on a side where the French thought themselves safe.   On the other hand, Wolfe had become more vulnerable than ever.   His army was now divided, not into three parts, but into four, each so far from the rest that, in case of sudden attack, it must defend itself alone.   That Montcalm did not improve his opportunity was apparently due to want of confidence in his militia.  

The force above the town did not lie idle.   On the night of the twentieth, Colonel Carleton, with six hundred men, rowed eighteen miles up the river, and landed at Pointe-aux-Trembles, on the north shore.   Here some of the families of Quebec had sought asylum; and Wolfe had been told by prisoners that not only were stores in great quantity to be found here, but also letters and papers throwing light on the French plans.   Carleton and his men drove off a band of Indians who fired on them, and spent a quiet day around the parish church; but found few papers, and still fewer stores.   They withdrew towards evening, carrying with them nearly a hundred women, children, and old men; any they were no sooner gone than the Indians returned to plunder the empty houses of their unfortunate allies.   The prisoners were treated with great kindness.   The ladies among them were entertained at supper by Wolfe, who jested with them on the caution of the French generals, saying: "I have given good chances to attack me, and am surprised that they have not profited by them.  ” On the next day the prisoners were all sent to Quebec under a flag of truce.  

Thus far Wolfe had refrained from executing the threats he had affixed the month before to the church of Beaumont.   But now he issued another proclamation.   It declared that the Canadians had shown themselves unworthy of the offers he had made them, and that he had therefore ordered his light troops to ravage their country and bring them prisoners to his camp.   Such of the Canadian militia as belonged to the parishes near Quebec were now in a sad dilemma; for Montcalm threatened them on one side, and Wolfe on the other.   They might desert to their homes, or they might stand by their colors; in the one case their houses were to be burned by French savages, and in the other by British light infantry.  

Wolfe at once gave orders in accord with his late proclamation; but he commanded that no church should be profaned, and no woman or child injured.   The first effects of his stern policy are thus recorded by Knox: "Major Dalling's light infantry brought in this afternoon to our camp two hundred and fifty male and female prisoners.   Among this number was a very respectable looking priest, and about forty men fit to bear arms.   There was almost an equal number of black cattle, with about seventy sheep and lambs, and a few horses.   Brigadier Monckton entertained the reverend father and some other fashionable personages in his tent, and most humanely ordered refreshments to all the rest of the captives; which noble example was followed by the soldiery, who generously crowded about those unhappy people, sharing the provisions, rum, and tobacco with them.   They were sent in the evening on board of transports in the river.  " Again, two days later: "Colonel Fraser's detachment returned this morning, and presented us with more scenes of distress and the dismal consequences of war, by a great number of wretched families, whom they brought in prisoners, with some of their effects, and near three hundred black cattle, sheep, hogs, and horses.  "

On the next night the attention of the excellent journalist was otherwise engaged.   Vaudreuil tried again to burn the English fleet.   "Late last night," writes Knox, under date of the twenty-eighth, "the enemy sent down a most formidable fireraft, which consisted of a parcel of schooners, shallops, and stages chained together.   It could not be less than a hundred fathoms in length, and was covered with grenades, old swivels, gun and pistol barrels loaded up to their muzzles, and various other inventions and combustible matters.   This seemed to be their last attempt against our fleet, which happily miscarried, as before; for our gallant seamen, with their usual expertness, grappled them before they got down above a third part of the Basin, towed them safe to shore, and left them at anchor, continually repeating, All's well.   A remarkable expression from some of these intrepid souls to their comrades on this occasion I must not omit, on account of its singular uncouthness; namely: 'Damme, Jack, didst thee ever take hell in tow before?'"

According to a French account, this aquatic infernal machine consisted of seventy rafts, boats, and schooners.   Its failure was due to no shortcoming on the part of its conductors; who, under a brave Canadian named Courval, acted with coolness and resolution.   Nothing saved the fleet but the courage of the sailors, swarming out in their boats to fight the approaching conflagration.  

It was now the end of July.   More than half the summer was gone, and Quebec seemed as far as ever beyond the grasp of Wolfe.   Its buildings were in ruins, and the neighboring parishes were burned and ravaged; but its living rampart, the army of Montcalm, still lay in patient defiance along the shores of Beauport, while above the city every point where a wildcat could climb the precipices was watched and guarded, and Dumas with a thousand men held the impregnable heights of Cap-Rouge.   Montcalm persisted in doing nothing that his enemy wished him to do.   He would not fight on Wolfe's terms, and Wolfe resolved at last to fight him on his own; that is, to attack his camp in front.  

The plan was desperate; for, after leaving troops enough to hold Point Levi and the heights of Montmorenci, less than five thousand men would be left to attack a position of commanding strength, where Montcalm at an hour's notice could collect twice as many to oppose them.   But Wolfe had a boundless trust in the disciplined valor of his soldiers, and an utter scorn of the militia who made the greater part of his enemy's force.  

Towards the Montmorenci the borders of the St.   Lawrence are, as we have seen, extremely high and steep.   At a mile from the gorge of the cataract there is, at high tide, a strand, about the eighth of a mile wide, between the foot of these heights and the river; and beyond this strand the receding tide lays bare a tract of mud nearly half a mile wide.   At the edge of the dry ground the French had built a redoubt mounted with cannon, and there were other similar works on the strand a quarter of a mile nearer the cataract.   Wolfe could not see from the river that these redoubts were commanded by the musketry of the intrenchments along the brink of the heights above.   These intrenchments were so constructed that they swept with cross-fires the whole face of the declivity, which was covered with grass, and was very steep.   Wolfe hoped that, if he attacked one of the redoubts, the French would come down to defend it, and so bring on a general engagement; or, if they did not, that he should gain an opportunity of reconnoitring the heights to find some point where they could be stormed with a chance of success.  

In front of the gorge of the Montmorenci there was a ford during several hours of low tide, so that troops from the adjoining English camp might cross to co-operate with their comrades landing in boats from Point Levi and the Island of Orleans.   On the morning of the thirty-first of July, the tide then being at the flood, the French saw the ship "Centurion," of sixty-four guns, anchor near the Montmorenci and open fire on the redoubts.   Then two armed transports, each of fourteen guns, stood in as close as possible to the first redoubt and fired upon it, stranding as the tide went out, till in the afternoon they lay bare upon the mud.   At the same time a battery of more than forty heavy pieces, planted on the lofty promontory beyond the Montmorenci, began a furious cannonade upon the flank of the French intrenchments.   It did no great harm, however, for the works were protected by a great number of traverses, which stopped the shot; and the Canadians, who manned this part of the lines, held their ground with excellent steadiness.  

About eleven o'clock a fleet of boats filled with troops, chiefly from Point Levi, appeared in the river and hovered off the shore west of the parish church of Beauport, as if meaning to land there.   Montcalm was perplexed, doubting whether the real attack was to be made here, or toward the Montmorenci.   Hour after hour the boats moved to and fro, to increase his doubts and hide the real design; but he soon became convinced that the camp of Lévis at the Montmorenci was the true object of his enemy; and about two o'clock he went thither, greeted as he rode along the lines by shouts of Vive notre Général! Lévis had already made preparations for defence with his usual skill.   His Canadians were reinforced by the battalions of Béarn, Guienne, and Royal Roussillon; and, as the intentions of Wolfe became certain, the right of the camp was nearly abandoned, the main strength of the army being gathered between the river of Beauport and the Montmorenci, where, according to a French writer, there were, towards the end of the afternoon, about twelve thousand men.  

At half-past five o'clock the tide was out, and the crisis came.   The batteries across the Montmorenci, the distant batteries of Point Levi, the cannon of the "Centurion," and those of the two stranded ships, all opened together with redoubled fury.   The French batteries replied; and, amid this deafening roar of artillery, the English boats set their troops ashore at the edge of the broad tract of sedgy mud that the receding river had left bare.   At the same time a column of two thousand men was seen, a mile away, moving in perfect order across the Montmorenci ford.   The first troops that landed from the boats were thirteen companies of grenadiers and a detachment of Royal Americans.   They dashed swiftly forward; while at some distance behind came Monckton's brigade, composed of the fifteenth, or Amherst's regiment, and the seventy-eighth, or Fraser's Highlanders.   The day had been fair and warm; but the sky was now thick with clouds, and large rain-drops began to fall, the precursors of a summer storm.  

With the utmost precipitation, without orders, and without waiting for Monckton's brigade to come up, the grenadiers in front made a rush for the redoubt near the foot of the hill.   The French abandoned it; but the assailants had no sooner gained their prize than the thronged heights above blazed with musketry, and a tempest of bullets fell among them.   Nothing daunted, they dashed forward again, reserving their fire, and struggling to climb the steep ascent; while, with yells and shouts of Vive le Roi! the troops and Canadians at the top poured upon them a hailstorm of musket-balls and buckshot, and dead and wounded in numbers rolled together down the slope.   At that instant the clouds burst, and the rain fell in torrents.   "We could not see half way down the hill," says the Chevalier Johnstone, who was at this part of the line.   Ammunition was wet on both sides, and the grassy steeps became so slippery that was impossible to climb them.   The English say that the storm saved the French; the French, with as much reason, that it saved the English.  

The baffled grenadiers drew back into the redoubt.   Wolfe saw the madness of persisting, and ordered a retreat.   The rain ceased, and troops of Indians came down the heights to scalp the fallen.   Some of them ran towards Lieutenant Peyton, of the Royal Americans, as he lay disabled by a musket-shot.   With his double-barrelled gun he brought down two of his assailants, when a Highland sergeant snatched him in his arms, dragged him half a mile over the mud-flats, and placed him in one of the boats.   A friend of Peyton, Captain Ochterlony, had received a mortal wound, and an Indian would have scalped him but for the generous intrepidity of a soldier of the battalion of Guienne; who, seizing the enraged savage, held him back till several French officers interposed, and had the dying man carried to a place of safety.  

The English retreated in good order, after setting fire to the two stranded vessels.   Those of the grenadiers and Royal Americans who were left alive rowed for the Point of Orleans; the fifteenth regiment rowed for Point Levi; and the Highlanders, led by Wolfe himself, joined the column from beyond the Montmorenci, placing themselves in its rear as it slowly retired along the flats and across the ford, the Indians yelling and the French shouting from the heights, while the British waved their hats, daring them to come down and fight.  

The grenadiers and the Royal Americans, who had borne the brunt of the fray, bore also nearly all the loss; which, in proportion to their numbers, was enormous.   Knox reports it at four hundred and forty-three, killed, wounded, and missing, including one colonel, eight captains, twenty-one lieutenants, and three ensigns.  

Vaudreuil, delighted, wrote to Bourlamaque an account of the affair.   "I have no more anxiety about Quebec.   M.   Wolfe, I can assure you, will make no progress.   Luckily for him, his prudence saved him from the consequences of his mad enterprise, and he contented himself with losing about five hundred of his best soldiers.   Deserters say that he will try us again in a few days.   That is what we want; he'll find somebody to talk to (il trouvera à qui parler).  "

NOTE: Among the killed in this affair was Edward Botwood, sergeant in the grenadiers of the forty-seventh, or Lascelles' regiment.   "Ned Botwood" was well known among his comrades as a poet; and the following lines of his, written on the eve of the expedition to Quebec, continued to be favorites with the British troops during the War of the Revolution (see Historical Magazine, II.  , First Series, 164).   It may be observed here that the war produced a considerable quantity of indifferent verse on both sides.   On that of the English it took the shape of occasional ballads, such as "Bold General Wolfe," printed on broadsides, or of patriotic effusions scattered through magazines and newspapers, while the French celebrated all their victories with songs.  

HOT STUFF.  
Air, Lilies of France.  

    Come, each death-doing dog who dares venture his neck,
    Come, follow the hero that goes to Quebec;
    Jump aboard of the transports, and loose every sail,
    Pay your debts at the tavern by giving leg-bail;
    And ye that love fighting shall soon have enough:
    Wolfe commands us, my boys; we shall give them Hot Stuff.  

    Up the River St.   Lawrence our troops shall advance,
    To the Grenadiers' March we will teach them to dance.  
    Cape Breton we have taken, and next we will try
    At their capital to give them another black eye.  
    Vaudreuil 't is in vain you pretend to look gruff, 
    Those are coming who know how to give you Hot Stuff.  

    With powder in his periwig, and snuff in his nose,
    Monsieur will run down our descent to oppose;
    And the Indians will come: but the light infantry
    Will soon oblige them to betake to a tree.  
    From such rascals as these may we fear a rebuff?
    Advance, grenadiers, and let fly your Hot Stuff!

    When the forty-seventh regiment is dashing ashore,
    While bullets are whistling and cannons do roar,
    Says Montcalm: "Those are Shirley's I know the lappels.  "
    "You lie," says Ned Botwood, "we belong to Lascelles'!
    Tho' our cloathing is changed, yet we scorn a powder-puff;
    So at you, ye b  s, here's give you Hot Stuff.  "
P/

On the repulse at Montmorenci, Wolfe to Pitt, 2 Sept.   1759.   Vaudreuil au Ministre, 5 Oct.   1759.   Panet, Journal du Siége.   Johnstone, Dialogue in Hades.   Journal tenu à l'Armée, etc.   Journal of the Siege of Quebec, by a Gentleman in an eminent Station on the Spot.   Mémoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760.   Fraser, Journal of the Siege.   Journal du Siége d'après un MS.   déposé à la Bibliothêque Hartwell.   Foligny, Journal mémoratif.   Journal of Transactions at the Siege of Quebec, in Notes and Queries, XX.   164.   John Johnson, Memoirs of the Siege of Quebec.   Journal of an Expedition on the River St.   Lawrence.   An Authentic Account of the Expedition against Quebec, by a Volunteer on that Expedition.   J.   Gibson to Governor Lawrence, 1 Aug.   1759.   Knox, I.   354.   Mante, 244.  

Chapter 26
1759

Amherst.   Niagara

Pitt had directed that, while Quebec was attacked, an attempt should be made to penetrate into Canada by way of Ticonderoga and Crown Point.   Thus the two armies might unite in the heart of the colony, or, at least, a powerful diversion might be effected in behalf of Wolfe.   At the same time Oswego was to be re-established, and the possession of Fort Duquesne, or Pittsburg, secured by reinforcements and supplies; while Amherst, the commander-in-chief, was further directed to pursue any other enterprise which in his opinion would weaken the enemy, without detriment to the main objects of the campaign.   He accordingly resolved to attempt the capture of Niagara.   Brigadier Prideaux was charged with this stroke; Brigadier Stanwix was sent to conduct the operations for the relief of Pittsburg; and Amherst himself prepared to lead the grand central advance against Ticonderoga, Crown Point, and Montreal.  

Towards the end of June he reached that valley by the head of Lake George which for five years past had been the annual mustering-place of armies.   Here were now gathered about eleven thousand men, half regulars and half provincials, drilling every day, firing by platoons, firing at marks, practising manoeuvres in the woods; going out on scouting parties, bathing parties, fishing parties; gathering wild herbs to serve for greens, cutting brushwood and meadow hay to make hospital beds.   The sick were ordered on certain mornings to repair to the surgeon's tent, there, in prompt succession, to swallow such doses as he thought appropriate to their several ailments; and it was further ordered that "every fair day they that can walk be paraded together and marched down to the lake to wash their hands and faces.  " Courts-martial were numerous; culprits were flogged at the head of each regiment in turn, and occasionally one was shot.   A frequent employment was the cutting of spruce tops to make spruce beer.   This innocent beverage was reputed sovereign against scurvy; and such was the fame of its virtues that a copious supply of the West Indian molasses used in concocting it was thought indispensable to every army or garrison in the wilderness.   Throughout this campaign it is repeatedly mentioned in general orders, and the soldiers are promised that they shall have as much of it as they want at a halfpenny a quart.  

The rear of the-army was well protected from insult.   Fortified posts were built at intervals of three or four miles along the road to Fort Edward, and especially at the station called Half-way Brook; while, for the whole distance, a broad belt of wood on both sides was cut down and burned, to deprive a skulking enemy of cover.   Amherst was never long in one place without building a fort there.   He now began one, which proved wholly needless, on that flat rocky hill where the English made their intrenched camp during the siege of Fort William Henry.   Only one bastion of it was ever finished, and this is still shown to tourists under the name of Fort George.  

The army embarked on Saturday, the twenty-first of July.   The Reverend Benjamin Pomeroy watched their departure in some concern, and wrote on Monday to Abigail, his wife: "I could wish for more appearance of dependence on God than was observable among them; yet I hope God will grant deliverance unto Israel by them.  " There was another military pageant, another long procession of boats and banners, among the mountains and islands of Lake George.   Night found them near the outlet; and here they lay till morning, tossed unpleasantly on waves ruffled by a summer gale.   At daylight they landed, beat back a French detachment, and marched by the portage road to the saw-mill at the waterfall.   There was little resistance.   They occupied the heights, and then advanced to the famous line of intrenchment against which the army of Abercromby had hurled itself in vain.   These works had been completely reconstructed, partly of earth, and partly of logs.   Amherst's followers were less numerous than those of his predecessor, while the French commander, Bourlamaque, had a force nearly equal to that of Montcalm in the summer before; yet he made no attempt to defend the intrenchment, and the English, encamping along its front, found it an excellent shelter from the cannon of the fort beyond.  

Amherst brought up his artillery and began approaches in form, when, on the night of the twenty-third, it was found that Bourlamaque had retired down Lake Champlain, leaving four hundred men under Hebecourt to defend the place as long as possible.   This was in obedience to an order from Vaudreuil, requiring him on the approach of the English to abandon both Ticonderoga and Crown Point, retreat to the outlet of Lake Champlain, take post at Isle-aux-Noix, and there defend himself to the last extremity; a course unquestionably the best that could have been taken, since obstinacy in holding Ticonderoga might have involved the surrender of Bourlamaque's whole force, while Isle-aux-Noix offered rare advantages for defence.  

The fort fired briskly; a cannon-shot killed Colonel Townshend, and a few soldiers were killed and wounded by grape and bursting shells; when, at dusk on the evening of the twenty-sixth, an unusual movement was seen among the garrison, and, about ten o'clock, three deserters came in great excitement to the English camp.   They reported that Hebecourt and his soldiers were escaping in their boats, and that a match was burning in the magazine to blow Ticonderoga to atoms.   Amherst offered a hundred guineas to any one of them who would point out the match, that it might be cut; but they shrank from the perilous venture.   All was silent till eleven o'clock, when a broad, fierce glare burst on the night, and a roaring explosion shook the promontory; then came a few breathless moments, and then the fragments of Fort Ticonderoga fell with clatter and splash on the water and the land.   It was but one bastion, however, that had been thus hurled skyward.   The rest of the fort was little hurt, though the barracks and other combustible parts were set on fire, and by the light the French flag was seen still waving on the rampart.   A sergeant of the light infantry, braving the risk of other explosions, went and brought it off.   Thus did this redoubted stronghold of France fall at last into English hands, as in all likelihood it would have done a year sooner, if Amherst had commanded in Abercromby's place; for, with the deliberation that marked all his proceedings, he would have sat down before Montcalm's wooden wall and knocked it to splinters with his cannon.  

He now set about repairing the damaged works and making ready to advance on Crown Point; when on the first of August his scouts told him that the enemy had abandoned this place also, and retreated northward down the lake.   Well pleased, he took possession of the deserted fort, and, in the animation of success, thought for a moment of keeping the promise he had given to Pitt "to make an irruption into Canada with the utmost vigor and despatch.  ” Wolfe, his brother in arms and his friend, was battling with the impossible under the rocks of Quebec, and every motive, public and private, impelled Amherst to push to his relief, not counting costs, or balancing risks too nicely.   He was ready enough to spur on others, for he wrote to Gage: "We must all be alert and active day and night; if we all do our parts the French must fall;” but, far from doing his, he set the army to building a new fort at Crown Point, telling them that it would "give plenty, peace, and quiet to His Majesty's subjects for ages to come.  ” Then he began three small additional forts, as outworks to the first, sent two parties to explore the sources of the Hudson; one party to explore Otter Creek; another to explore South Bay, which was already well known; another to make a road across what is now the State of Vermont, from Crown Point to Charlestown, or "Number Four," on the Connecticut; and another to widen and improve the old French road between Crown Point and Ticonderoga.   His industry was untiring; a great deal of useful work was done: but the essential task of making a diversion to aid the army of Wolfe was needlessly postponed.  

It is true that some delay was inevitable.   The French had four armed vessels on the lake, and this made it necessary to provide an equal or superior force to protect the troops on their way to Isle-aux-Noix.   Captain Loring, the English naval commander, was therefore ordered to build a brigantine; and, this being thought insufficient, he was directed to add a kind of floating battery, moved by sweeps.   Three weeks later, in consequence of farther information concerning the force of the French vessels, Amherst ordered an armed sloop to be put on the stocks; and this involved a long delay.   The saw-mill at Ticonderoga was to furnish planks for the intended navy; but, being overtasked in sawing timber for the new works at Crown Point, it was continually breaking down.   Hence much time was lost, and autumn was well advanced before Loring could launch his vessels.  

Meanwhile news had come from Prideaux and the Niagara expedition.   That officer had been ordered to ascend the Mohawk with five thousand regulars and provincials, leave a strong garrison at Fort Stanwix, on the Great Carrying Place, establish posts at both ends of Lake Oneida, descend the Onondaga to Oswego, leave nearly half his force there under Colonel Haldimand, and proceed with the rest to attack Niagara.   These orders he accomplished.   Haldimand remained to reoccupy the spot that Montcalm had made desolate three years before; and, while preparing to build a fort, he barricaded his camp with pork and flour barrels, lest the enemy should make a dash upon him from their station at the head of the St.   Lawrence Rapids.   Such an attack was probable; for if the French could seize Oswego, the return of Prideaux from Niagara would be cut off, and when his small stock of provisions had failed, he would be reduced to extremity.   Saint-Luc de la Corne left the head of the Rapids early in July with a thousand French and Canadians and a body of Indians, who soon made their appearance among the stumps and bushes that surrounded the camp at Oswego.   The priest Piquet was of the party; and five deserters declared that he solemnly blessed them, and told them to give the English no quarter.   Some valuable time was lost in bestowing the benediction; yet Haldimand's men were taken by surprise.   Many of them were dispersed in the woods, cutting timber for the intended fort; and it might have gone hard with them had not some of La Corne's Canadians become alarmed and rushed back to their boats, oversetting Father Piquet on the way.   These being rallied, the whole party ensconced itself in a tract of felled trees so far from the English that their fire did little harm.   They continued it about two hours, and resumed it the next morning; when, three cannon being brought to bear on them, they took to their boats and disappeared, having lost about thirty killed and wounded, including two officers and La Corne himself, who was shot in the thigh.   The English loss was slight.  

Prideaux safely reached Niagara, and laid siege to it.   It was a strong fort, lately rebuilt in regular form by an excellent officer, Captain Pouchot, of the battalion of Béarn, who commanded it.   It stood where the present fort stands, in the angle formed by the junction of the River Niagara with Lake Ontario, and was held by about six hundred men, well supplied with provisions and munitions of war.   Higher up the river, a mile and a half above the cataract, there was another fort, called Little Niagara, built of wood, and commanded by the half-breed officer, Joncaire-Chabert, who with his brother, Joncaire-Clauzonne, and a numerous clan of Indian relatives, had so long thwarted the efforts of Johnson to engage the Five Nations in the English cause.   But recent English successes had had their effect.   Joncaire's influence was waning, and Johnson was now in Prideaux's camp with nine hundred Five Nation warriors pledged to fight the French.   Joncaire, finding his fort untenable, burned it, and came with his garrison and his Indian friends to reinforce Niagara.  

Pouchot had another resource, on which he confidently relied.   In obedience to an order from Vaudreuil, the French population of the Illinois, Detroit, and other distant posts, joined with troops of Western Indians, had come down the Lakes to recover Pittsburg, undo the work of Forbes, and restore French ascendency on the Ohio.   Pittsburg had been in imminent danger; nor was it yet safe, though General Stanwix was sparing no effort to succor it.   These mixed bands of white men and red, bushrangers and savages, were now gathered, partly at Le Boeuf and Venango, but chiefly at Presquisle, under command of Aubry, Ligneris, Marin, and other partisan chiefs, the best in Canada.   No sooner did Pouchot learn that the English were coming to attack him than he sent a messenger to summon them all to his aid.  

The siege was begun in form, though the English engineers were so incompetent that the trenches, as first laid out, were scoured by the fire of the place, and had to be made anew.   At last the batteries opened fire.   A shell from a coehorn burst prematurely, just as it left the mouth of the piece, and a fragment striking Prideaux on the head, killed him instantly.   Johnson took command in his place, and made up in energy what he lacked in skill.   In two or three weeks the fort was in extremity.   The rampart was breached, more than a hundred of the garrison were killed or disabled, and the rest were exhausted with want of sleep.   Pouchot watched anxiously for the promised succors; and on the morning of the twenty-fourth of July a distant firing told him that they were at hand.  

Aubry and Ligneris, with their motley following, had left Presquisle a few days before, to the number, according to Vaudreuil, of eleven hundred French and two hundred Indians.   Among them was a body of colony troops; but the Frenchmen of the party were chiefly traders and bushrangers from the West, connecting links between civilization and savagery; some of them indeed were mere white Indians, imbued with the ideas and morals of the wigwam, wearing hunting-shirts of smoked deer-skin embroidered with quills of the Canada porcupine, painting their faces black and red, tying eagle feathers in their long hair, or plastering it on their temples with a compound of vermilion and glue.   They were excellent woodsmen, skilful hunters, and perhaps the best bush-fighters in all Canada.  

When Pouchot heard the firing, he went with a wounded artillery officer to the bastion next the river; and as the forest had been cut away for a great distance, they could see more than a mile and a half along the shore.   There, by glimpses among trees and bushes, they descried bodies of men, now advancing, and now retreating; Indians in rapid movement, and the smoke of guns, the sound of which reached their ears in heavy volleys, or a sharp and angry rattle.   Meanwhile the English cannon had ceased their fire, and the silent trenches seemed deserted, as if their occupants were gone to meet the advancing foe.   There was a call in the fort for volunteers to sally and destroy the works; but no sooner did they show themselves along the covered way than the seemingly abandoned trenches were thronged with men and bayonets, and the attempt was given up.   The distant firing lasted half an hour, then ceased, and Pouchot remained in suspense; till, at two in the afternoon, a friendly Onondaga, who had passed unnoticed through the English lines, came to him with the announcement that the French and their allies had been routed and cut to pieces.   Pouchot would not believe him.  

Nevertheless his tale was true.   Johnson, besides his Indians, had with him about twenty-three hundred men, whom he was forced to divide into three separate bodies, one to guard the bateaux, one to guard the trenches, and one to fight Aubry and his band.   This last body consisted of the provincial light infantry and the pickets, two companies of grenadiers, and a hundred and fifty men of the forty-sixth regiment, all under command of Colonel Massey.   They took post behind an abattis at a place called La Belle Famille, and the Five Nation warriors placed themselves on their flanks.   These savages had shown signs of disaffection; and when the enemy approached, they opened a parley with the French Indians, which, however, soon ended, and both sides raised the war-whoop.   The fight was brisk for a while; but at last Aubry's men broke away in a panic.   The French officers seem to have made desperate efforts to retrieve the day, for nearly all of them were killed or captured; while their followers, after heavy loss, fled to their canoes and boats above the cataract, hastened back to Lake Erie, burned Presquisle, Le Boeuf, and Venango, and, joined by the garrisons of those forts, retreated to Detroit, leaving the whole region of the upper Ohio in undisputed possession of the English.  

At four o'clock on the day of the battle, after a furious cannonade on both sides, a trumpet sounded from the trenches, and an officer approached the fort with a summons to surrender.   He brought also a paper containing the names of the captive French officers, though some of them were spelled in a way that defied recognition.   Pouchot, feigning incredulity, sent an officer of his own to the English camp, who soon saw unanswerable proof of the disaster; for here, under a shelter of leaves and boughs near the tent of Johnson, sat Ligneris, severely wounded, with Aubry, Villiers, Montigny, Marin, and their companions in misfortune, in all, sixteen officers, four cadets, and a surgeon.  

Pouchot had now no choice but surrender.   By the terms of the capitulation, the garrison were to be sent prisoners to New York, though honors of war were granted them in acknowledgment of their courageous conduct.   There was a special stipulation that they should be protected from the Indians, of whom they stood in the greatest terror, lest the massacre of Fort William Henry should be avenged upon them.   Johnson restrained his dangerous allies, and, though the fort was pillaged, no blood was shed.  

The capture of Niagara was an important stroke.   Thenceforth Detroit, Michillimackinac, the Illinois, and all the other French interior posts, were severed from Canada, and left in helpless isolation; but Amherst was not yet satisfied.   On hearing of Prideaux's death he sent Brigadier Gage to supersede Johnson and take command on Lake Ontario, directing him to descend the St.   Lawrence, attack the French posts at the head of the rapids, and hold them if possible for the winter.   The attempt was difficult; for the French force on the St.   Lawrence was now greater than that which Gage could bring against it, after providing for the safety of Oswego and Niagara.   Nor was he by nature prone to dashing and doubtful enterprise.   He reported that the movement was impossible, much to the disappointment of Amherst, who seemed to expect from subordinates an activity greater than his own.  

He, meanwhile, was working at his fort at Crown Point, while the season crept away, and Bourlamaque lay ready to receive him at Isle-aux-Noix.   "I wait his coming with impatience," writes the French commander, "though I doubt if he will venture to attack a post where we are intrenched to the teeth, and armed with a hundred pieces of cannon.  ” Bourlamaque now had with him thirty-five hundred men, in a position of great strength.   Isle-aux-Noix, planted in mid-channel of the Richelieu soon after it issues from Lake Champlain, had been diligently fortified since the spring.   On each side of it was an arm of the river, closed against an enemy with chevaux-de-frise.   To attack it in front in the face of its formidable artillery would be a hazardous attempt, and the task of reducing it was likely to be a long one.   The French force in these parts had lately received accessions.   After the fall of Niagara the danger seemed so great, both in the direction of Lake Ontario and that of Lake Champlain, that Lévis had been sent up from Quebec with eight hundred men to command the whole department of Montreal.   A body of troops and militia was encamped opposite that town, ready to march towards either quarter, as need might be, while the abundant crops of the neighboring parishes were harvested by armed bands, ready at a word to drop the sickle for the gun.  

Thus the promised advance of Amherst into Canada would be not without its difficulties, even when his navy, too tardily begun, should be ready to act its part.   But if he showed no haste in succoring Wolfe, he at least made some attempts to communicate with him.   Early in August he wrote him a letter, which Ensign Hutchins, of the rangers, carried to him in about a month by the long and circuitous route of the Kennebec, and which, after telling the news of the campaign, ended thus: "You may depend on my doing all I can for effectually reducing Canada.   Now is the time!” Amherst soon after tried another expedient, and sent Captains Kennedy and Hamilton with a flag of truce and a message of peace to the Abenakis of St.   Francis, who, he thought, won over by these advances, might permit the two officers to pass unmolested to Quebec.   But the Abenakis seized them and carried them prisoners to Montreal; on which Amherst sent Major Robert Rogers and a band of rangers to destroy their town.  

It was the eleventh of October before the miniature navy of Captain Loring the floating battery, the brig, and the sloop that had been begun three weeks too late was ready for service.   They sailed at once to look for the enemy.   The four French vessels made no resistance.   One of them succeeded in reaching Isle-aux-Noix; one was run aground; and two were sunk by their crews, who escaped to the shore.   Amherst, meanwhile, leaving the provincials to work at the fort, embarked with the regulars in bateaux, and proceeded on his northern way till, on the evening of the twelfth, a head-wind began to blow, and, rising to a storm, drove him for shelter into Ligonier Bay, on the west side of the lake.   On the thirteenth, it blew a gale.   The lake raged like an angry sea, and the frail bateaux, fit only for smooth water, could not have lived a moment.   Through all the next night the gale continued, with floods of driving rain.   "I hope it will soon change," wrote Amherst on the fifteenth, "for I have no time to lose.  " He was right.   He had waited till the season of autumnal storms, when nature was more dangerous than man.   On the sixteenth there was frost, and the wind did not abate.   On the next morning it shifted to the south, but soon turned back with violence to the north, and the ruffled lake put on a look of winter, "which determined me," says the General, "not to lose time by striving to get to the Isle-aux-Noix, where I should arrive too late to force the enemy from their post, but to return to Crown Point and complete the works there.  " This he did, and spent the remnant of the season in the congenial task of finishing the fort, of which the massive remains still bear witness to his industry.  

When Lévis heard that the English army had fallen back, he wrote, well pleased, to Bourlamaque: "I don't know how General Amherst will excuse himself to his Court, but I am very glad he let us alone, because the Canadians are so backward that you could count on nobody but the regulars.  ”

Concerning this year's operations on the Lakes, it may be observed that the result was not what the French feared, or what the British colonists had cause to hope.   If, at the end of winter, Amherst had begun, as he might have done, the building of armed vessels at the head of the navigable waters of Lake Champlain, where Whitehall now stands, he would have had a navy ready to his hand before August, and would have been able to follow the retreating French without delay, and attack them at Isle-aux-Noix before they had finished their fortifications.   And if, at the same time, he had directed Prideaux, instead of attacking Niagara, to co-operate with him by descending the St.   Lawrence towards Montreal, the prospect was good that the two armies would have united at the place, and ended the campaign by the reduction of all Canada.   In this case Niagara and all the western posts would have fallen without a blow.  

Major Robert Rogers, sent in September to punish the Abenakis of St.   Francis, had addressed himself to the task with his usual vigor.   These Indians had been settled for about three quarters of a century on the River St.   Francis, a few miles above its junction with the St.   Lawrence.   They were nominal Christians, and had been under the control of their missionaries for three generations; but though zealous and sometimes fanatical in their devotion to the forms of Romanism, they remained thorough savages in dress, habits, and character.   They were the scourge of the New England borders, where they surprised and burned farmhouses and small hamlets, killed men, women, and children without distinction, carried others prisoners to their village, subjected them to the torture of "running the gantlet," and compelled them to witness dances of triumph around the scalps of parents, children, and friends.  

Amherst's instructions to Rogers contained the following: "Remember the barbarities that have been committed by the enemy's Indian scoundrels.   Take your revenge, but don't forget that, though those dastardly villains have promiscuously murdered women and children of all ages, it is my order that no women or children be killed or hurt.  "

Rogers and his men set out in whaleboats, and, eluding the French armed vessels, then in full activity, came, on the tenth day, to Missisquoi Bay, at the north end of Lake Champlain.   Here he hid his boats, leaving two friendly Indians to watch them from a distance, and inform him should the enemy discover them.   He then began his march for St.   Francis, when, on the evening of the second day, the two Indians overtook him with the startling news that a party of about four hundred French had found the boats, and that half of them were on his tracks in hot pursuit.   It was certain that the alarm would soon be given, and other parties sent to cut him off.   He took the bold resolution of outmarching his pursuers, pushing straight for St.   Francis, striking it before succors could arrive, and then returning by Lake Memphremagog and the Connecticut.   Accordingly he despatched Lieutenant McMullen by a circuitous route back to Crown Point, with a request to Amherst that provisions should be sent up the Connecticut to meet him on the way down.   Then he set his course for the Indian town, and for nine days more toiled through the forest with desperate energy.   Much of the way was through dense spruce swamps, with no dry resting-place at night.   At length the party reached the River St.   Francis, fifteen miles above the town, and, hooking their arms together for mutual support, forded it with extreme difficulty.   Towards evening, Rogers climbed a tree, and descried the town three miles distant.   Accidents, fatigue, and illness had reduced his followers to a hundred and forty-two officers and men.   He left them to rest for a time, and, taking with him Lieutenant Turner and Ensign Avery, went to reconnoitre the place; left his two companions, entered it disguised in an Indian dress, and saw the unconscious savages yelling and signing in the full enjoyment of a grand dance.   At two o'clock in the morning he rejoined his party, and at three led them to the attack, formed them in a semicircle, and burst in upon the town half an hour before sunrise.   Many of the warriors were absent, and the rest were asleep.   Some were killed in their beds, and some shot down in trying to escape.   "About seven o'clock in the morning," he says, "the affair was completely over, in which time we had killed at least two hundred Indians and taken twenty of their women and children prisoners, fifteen of whom I let go their own way, and five I brought with me, namely, two Indian boys and three Indian girls.   I likewise retook five English captives.  "

English scalps in hundreds were dangling from poles over the doors of the houses.   The town was pillaged and burned, not excepting the church, where ornaments of some value were found.   On the side of the rangers, Captain Ogden and six men were wounded, and a Mohegan Indian from Stockbridge was killed.   Rogers was told by his prisoners that a party of three hundred French and Indians was encamped on the river below, and that another party of two hundred and fifteen was not far distant.   They had been sent to cut off the retreat of the invaders, but were doubtful as to their designs till after the blow was struck.   There was no time to lose.   The rangers made all haste southward, up the St.   Francis, subsisting on corn from the Indian town; till, near the eastern borders of Lake Memphremagog, the supply failed, and they separated into small parties, the better to sustain life by hunting.   The enemy followed close, attacked Ensign Avery's party, and captured five of them; then fell upon a band of about twenty, under Lieutenants Dunbar and Turner, and killed or captured nearly all.   The other bands eluded their pursuers, turned southeastward, reached the Connecticut, some here, some there, and, giddy with fatigue and hunger, toiled wearily down the wild and lonely stream to the appointed rendezvous at the mouth of the Amonoosuc.  

This was the place to which Rogers had requested that provisions might be sent; and the hope of finding them there had been the breath of life to the famished wayfarers.   To their horror, the place was a solitude.   There were fires still burning, but those who made them were gone.   Amherst had sent Lieutenant Stephen up the river from Charlestown with an abundant supply of food; but finding nobody at the Amonoosuc, he had waited there two days, and then returned, carrying the provisions back with him; for which outrageous conduct he was expelled from the service.   "It is hardly possible," says Rogers, "to describe our grief and consternation.  " Some gave themselves up to despair.   Few but their indomitable chief had strength to go father.   There was scarcely any game, and the barren wilderness yielded no sustenance but a few lily bulbs and the tubers of the climbing plant called in New England the ground-nut.   Leaving his party to these miserable resources, and promising to send then relief within ten days, Rogers made a raft of dry pine logs, and drifted on it down the stream, with Captain Ogden, a ranger, and one of the captive Indian boys.   They were stopped on the second day by rapids, and gained the shore with difficulty.   At the foot of the rapids, while Ogden and the ranger went in search of squirrels, Rogers set himself to making another raft; and having no strength to use the axe, he burned down the trees, which he then divided into logs by the same process.   Five days after leaving his party he reached the first English settlement, Charlestown, or "Number Four," and immediately sent a canoe with provisions to the relief of the sufferers, following himself with other canoes two days later.   Most of the men were saved, though some died miserably of famine and exhaustion.   Of the few who had been captured, we are told by French contemporary that they "became victims of the fury of the Indian women," from whose clutches the Canadians tried in vain to save them.  

NOTE: On the day after he reached "Number Four," Rogers wrote a report of his expedition to Amherst.   This letter is printed in his Journals, in which he gives also a supplementary account, containing further particulars.   The New Hampshire Gazette, Boston Evening Post, and other newspapers of the time recount the story in detail.   Hoyt (Indian Wars, 302) repeats it, with a few additions drawn from the recollections of survivors, long after.   There is another account, very short and unsatisfactory, by Thompson Maxwell, who says that he was of the party, which is doubtful.   Mante (223) gives horrible details of the sufferings of the rangers.   An old chief of the St.   Francis Indians, said to be one of those who pursued Rogers after the town was burned, many years ago told Mr.  Jesse Pennoyer, a government land surveyor, that Rogers laid an ambush for the pursuers, and defeated them with great loss.   This, the story says, took place near the present town of Sherbrooke; and minute details are given, with high praise of the skill and conduct of the famous partisan.   If such an incident really took place, it is scarcely possible that Rogers would not have made some mention of it.   On the other hand, it is equally incredible that the Indians would have invented the tale of their own defeat.   I am indebted for Pennoyer's puzzling narrative to the kindness of R.  A.   Ramsay, Esq.  , of Montreal.   It was printed, in 1869, in the History of the Eastern Townships, by Mrs.   C.  M.   Day.   All things considered, it is probably groundless.  

Vaudreuil describes the destruction of the village in a letter to the Minister dated October 26, and says that Rogers had a hundred and fifty men; that St.   Francis was burned to ashes; that the head chief and others were killed; that he (Vaudreuil), hearing of the march of the rangers, sent the most active of the Canadians to oppose them, and that Longueuil sent all the Canadians and Indians he could muster to pursue them on their retreat; that forty-six rangers were killed, and ten captured; that he thinks all the rest will starve to death; and, finally, that the affair is very unfortunate.  

I once, when a college student, followed on foot the route of Rogers from Lake Memphremagog to the Connecticut.  

Chapter 27
1759

The Heights of Abraham

Wolfe was deeply moved by the disaster at the heights of Montmorenci, and in a General Order on the next day he rebuked the grenadiers for their precipitation.   "Such impetuous, irregular, and unsoldierlike proceedings destroy all order, make it impossible for the commanders to form any disposition for an attack, and put it out of the general's power to execute his plans.   The grenadiers could not suppose that they could beat the French alone.  "

The French were elated by their success.   "Everybody," says the commissary Berniers, "thought that the campaign was as good as ended, gloriously for us.  " They had been sufficiently confident even before their victory; and the bearer of a flag of truce told the English officers that he had never imagined they were such fools as to attack Quebec with so small a force.   Wolfe, on the other hand, had every reason to despond.   At the outset, before he had seen Quebec and learned the nature of the ground, he had meant to begin the campaign by taking post on the Plains of Abraham, and thence laying siege to the town; but he soon discovered that the Plains of Abraham were hardly more within his reach than was Quebec itself.   Such hope as was left him lay in the composition of Montcalm's army.   He respected the French commander, and thought his disciplined soldiers not unworthy of the British steel; but he held his militia in high scorn, and could he but face them in the open field, he never doubted the result.   But Montcalm also distrusted them, and persisted in refusing the coveted battle.  

Wolfe, therefore, was forced to the conviction that his chances were of the smallest.   It is said that, despairing of any decisive stroke, he conceived the idea of fortifying Isle-aux-Coudres, and leaving a part of his troops there when he sailed for home, against another attempt in the spring.   The more to weaken the enemy and prepare his future conquest, he began at the same time a course of action which for his credit one would gladly wipe from the record; for, though far from inhuman, he threw himself with extraordinary intensity into whatever work he had in hand, and, to accomplish it, spared others scarcely more than he spared himself.   About the middle of August he issued a third proclamation to the Canadians, declaring that as they had refused his offers of protection and "had made such ungrateful returns in practising the most unchristian barbarities against his troops on all occasions, he could no longer refrain in justice to himself and his army from chastising them as they deserved.  " The barbarities in question consisted in the frequent scalping and mutilating of sentinels and men on outpost duty, perpetrated no less by Canadians than by Indians.   Wolfe's object was twofold: first, to cause the militia to desert, and, secondly, to exhaust the colony.   Rangers, light infantry, and Highlanders were sent to waste the settlements far and wide.   Wherever resistance was offered, farmhouses and villages were laid in ashes, though churches were generally spared.   St.   Paul, far below Quebec, was sacked and burned, and the settlements of the opposite shore were partially destroyed.   The parishes of L'Ange Gardien, Château Richer, and St.   Joachim were wasted with fire and sword.   Night after night the garrison of Quebec could see the light of burning houses as far down as the mountain of Cape Tourmente.   Near St.   Joachim there was a severe skirmish, followed by atrocious cruelties.   Captain Alexander Montgomery, of the forty-third regiment, who commanded the detachment, and who has been most unjustly confounded with the revolutionary general, Richard Montgomery, ordered the prisoners to be shot in cold blood, to the indignation of his own officers.   Robineau de Portneuf, curé of St.   Joachim, placed himself at the head of thirty parishioners and took possession of a large stone house in the adjacent parish of Château Richer, where for a time he held the English at bay.   At length he and his followers were drawn out into ambush, where they were surrounded and killed; and, being disguised as Indians, the rangers scalped them all.  

Most of the French writers of the time mention these barbarities without much comment, while Vaudreuil loudly denounces them.   Yet he himself was answerable for atrocities incomparably worse, and on a far larger scale.   He had turned loose his savages, red and white, along a frontier of six hundred miles, to waste, burn, and murder at will.   "Women and children," such were the orders of Wolfe, "are to be treated with humanity; if any violence is offered to a woman, the offender shall be punished with death.  " These orders were generally obeyed.   The English, with the single exception of Montgomery, killed none but armed men in the act of resistance or attack; Vaudreuil's war-parties spared neither age nor sex.  

Montcalm let the parishes burn, and still lay fast intrenched in his lines of Beauport.   He would not imperil all Canada to save a few hundred farmhouses; and Wolfe was as far as ever from the battle that he coveted.   Hitherto, his attacks had been made chiefly below the town; but, these having failed, he now changed his plan and renewed on a larger scale the movements begun above it in July.   With every fair wind, ships and transports passed the batteries of Quebec, favored by a hot fire from Point Levi, and generally succeeded, with more or less damage, in gaining the upper river.   A fleet of flatboats was also sent thither, and twelve hundred troops marched overland to embark in them, under Brigadier Murray.   Admiral Holmes took command of the little fleet now gathered above the town, and operations in that quarter were systematically resumed.  

To oppose them, Bougainville was sent from the camp at Beauport with fifteen hundred men.   His was a most arduous and exhausting duty.   He must watch the shores for fifteen or twenty miles, divide his force into detachments, and subject himself and his followers to the strain of incessant vigilance and incessant marching.   Murray made a descent at Pointe-aux-Trembles, and was repulsed with loss.   He tried a second time at another place, was met before landing by a body of ambushed Canadians, and was again driven back, his foremost boats full of dead and wounded.   A third time he succeeded, landed at Deschambault, and burned a large building filled with stores and all the spare baggage of the French regular officers.   The blow was so alarming that Montcalm hastened from Beauport to take command in person; but when he arrived the English were gone.  

Vaudreuil now saw his mistake in sending the French frigates up the river out of harm's way, and withdrawing their crews to serve the batteries of Quebec.   Had these ships been there, they might have overpowered those of the English in detail as they passed the town.   An attempt was made to retrieve the blunder.   The sailors were sent to man the frigates anew and attack the squadron of Holmes.   It was too late.   Holmes was already too strong for them, and they were recalled.   Yet the difficulties of the English still seemed insurmountable.   Dysentery and fever broke out in their camps, the number of their effective men was greatly reduced, and the advancing season told them that their work must be done quickly, or not done at all.  

On the other side, the distress of the French grew greater every day.   Their army was on short rations.   The operations of the English above the town filled the camp of Beauport with dismay, for troops and Canadians alike dreaded the cutting off of their supplies.   These were all drawn from the districts of Three Rivers and Montreal; and, at best, they were in great danger, since when brought down in boats at night they were apt to be intercepted, while the difficulty of bringing them by land was extreme, through scarcity of cattle and horses.   Discipline was relaxed, disorder and pillage were rife, and the Canadians deserted so fast, that towards the end of August two hundred of them, it is said, would sometimes go off in one night.   Early in the month the disheartening news came of the loss of Ticonderoga and Crown Point, the retreat of Bourlamaque, the fall of Niagara, and the expected advance of Amherst on Montreal.   It was then that Levis was despatched to the scene of danger; and Quebec was deplorably weakened by his absence.   About this time the Lower Town was again set on fire by the English batteries, and a hundred and sixty-seven houses were burned in a night.   In the front of the Upper Town nearly every building was a ruin.   At the General Hospital, which was remote enough to be safe from the bombardment, every barn, shed, and garret, and even the chapel itself, were crowded with sick and wounded, with women and children from the town, and the nuns of the Ursulines and the Hôtel-Dieu, driven thither for refuge.   Bishop Pontbriand, though suffering from a mortal disease, came almost daily to visit and console them from his lodging in the house of the curé at Charlesbourg.  

Towards the end of August the sky brightened again.   It became known that Amherst was not moving on Montreal, and Bourlamaque wrote that his position at Isle-aux-Noix was impregnable.   On the twenty-seventh a deserter from Wolfe's army brought the welcome assurance that the invaders despaired of success, and would soon sail for home; while there were movements in the English camps and fleet that seemed to confirm what he said.   Vaudreuil breathed more freely, and renewed hope and confidence visited the army of Beauport.  

Meanwhile a deep cloud fell on the English.   Since the siege began, Wolfe had passed with ceaseless energy from camp to camp, animating the troops, observing everything, and directing everything; but now the pale face and tall lean form were seen no more, and the rumor spread that the General was dangerously ill.   He had in fact been seized by an access of the disease that had tortured him for some time past; and fever had followed.   His quarters were at a French farmhouse in the camp at Montmorenci; and here, as he lay in an upper chamber, helpless in bed, his singular and most unmilitary features haggard with disease and drawn with pain, no man could less have looked the hero.   But as the needle, though quivering, points always to the pole, so, through torment and languor and the heats of fever, the mind of Wolfe dwelt on the capture of Quebec.   His illness, which began before the twentieth of August, had so far subsided on the twenty-fifth that Knox wrote in his Diary of that day: "His Excellency General Wolfe is on the recovery, to the inconceivable joy of the whole army.  " On the twenty-ninth he was able to write or dictate a letter to the three brigadiers, Monckton, Townshend, and Murray: "That the public service may not suffer by the General's indisposition, he begs the brigadiers will meet and consult together for the public utility and advantage, and consider of the best method to attack the enemy.  " The letter then proposes three plans, all bold to audacity.   The first was to send a part of the army to ford the Montmorenci eight or nine miles above its mouth, march through the forest, and fall on the rear of the French at Beauport, while the rest landed and attacked them in front.   The second was to cross the ford at the mouth of the Montmorenci and march along the strand, under the French intrenchments, till a place could be found where the troops might climb the heights.   The third was to make a general attack from boats at the Beauport flats.   Wolfe had before entertained two other plans, one of which was to scale the heights at St.   Michel, about a league above Quebec; but this he had abandoned on learning that the French were there in force to receive him.   The other was to storm the Lower Town; but this also he had abandoned, because the Upper Town, which commanded it, would still remain inaccessible.  

The brigadiers met in consultation, rejected the three plans proposed in the letter, and advised that an attempt should be made to gain a footing on the north shore above the town, place the army between Montcalm and his base of supply, and so force him to fight or surrender.   The scheme was similar to that of the heights of St.   Michel.   It seemed desperate, but so did all the rest; and if by chance it should succeed, the gain was far greater than could follow any success below the town.   Wolfe embraced it at once.  

Not that he saw much hope in it.   He knew that every chance was against him.   Disappointment in the past and doom in the future, the pain and exhaustion of disease, toils, and anxieties "too great," in the words of Burke, "to be supported by a delicate constitution, and a body unequal to the vigorous and enterprising soul that it lodged," threw him at times into deep dejection.   By those intimate with him he was heard to say that he would not go back defeated, "to be exposed to the censure and reproach of an ignorant populice.  " In other moods he felt that he ought not to sacrifice what was left of his diminished army in vain conflict with hopeless obstacles.   But his final resolve once taken, he would not swerve from it.   His fear was that he might not be able to lead his troops in person.   "I know perfectly well you cannot cure me," he said to his physician; "but pray make me so that I may be without pain for a few days, and able to do my duty: that is all I want.  "

In a despatch which Wolfe had written to Pitt, Admiral Saunders conceived that he had ascribed to the fleet more than its just share in the disaster at Montmorenci; and he sent him a letter on the subject.   Major Barré kept it from the invalid till the fever had abated.   Wolfe then wrote a long answer, which reveals his mixed dejection and resolve.   He owns the justice of what Saunders had said, but adds: "I cannot leave out that part of my letter to Mr.  Pitt which you object to.   I am sensible of my own errors in the course of the campaign, see clearly wherein I have been deficient, and think a little more or less blame to a man that must necessarily be ruined, of little or no consequences.   I take the blame of that unlucky day entirely upon my own shoulders, and I expect to suffer for it.  " Then, speaking of the new project of an attack above Quebec, he says despondingly: "My ill state of health prevents me from executing my own plan; it is of too desperate a nature to order others to execute.  " He proceeds, however, to give directions for it.   "It will be necessary to run as many small craft as possible above the town, with provisions for six weeks, for about five thousand, which is all I intend to take.   My letters, I hope, will be ready to-morrow, and I hope I shall have strength to lead these men to wherever we can find the enemy.  "

On the next day, the last of August, he was able for the first time to leave the house.   It was on this same day that he wrote his last letter to his mother: "My writing to you will convince you that no personal evils worse than defeats and disappointments have fallen upon me.   The enemy puts nothing to risk, and I can't in conscience put the whole army to risk.   My antagonist has wisely shut himself up in inaccessible intrenchments, so that I can't get at him without spilling a torrent of blood, and that perhaps to little purpose.   The Marquis de Montcalm is at the head of a great number of bad soldiers, and I am at the head of a small number of good ones, that wish for nothing so much as to fight him; but the wary old fellow avoids an action, doubtful of the behavior of his army.   People must be of the profession to understand the disadvantages and difficulties we labor under, arising from the uncommon natural strength of the country.  "

On the second of September a vessel was sent to England with his last despatch to Pitt.   It begins thus: "The obstacles we have met with in the operations of the campaign are much greater than we had reason to expect or could foresee; not so much from the number of the enemy (though superior to us) as from the natural strength of the country, which the Marquis of Montcalm seems wisely to depend upon.   When I learned that succors of all kinds had been thrown into Quebec; that five battalions of regular troops, completed from the best inhabitants of the country, some of the troops of the colony, and every Canadian that was able to bear arms, besides several nations of savages, had taken the field in a very advantageous situation, I could not flatter myself that I should be able to reduce the place.   I sought, however, an occasion to attack their army, knowing well that with these troops I was able to fight, and hoping that a victory might disperse them.  " Then, after recounting the events of the campaign with admirable clearness, he continues: "I found myself so ill, and am still so weak, that I begged the general officers to consult together for the general utility.   They are all of opinion that, as more ships and provisions are now got above the town, they should try, by conveying up a corps of four or five thousand men (which is nearly the whole strength of the army after the Points of Levi and Orleans are left in a proper state of defence), to draw the enemy from their present situation and bring them to an action.   I have acquiesced in the proposal, and we are preparing to put it into execution.  " The letter ends thus: "By the list of disabled officers, many of whom are of rank, you may perceive that the army is much weakened.   By the nature of the river, the most formidable part of this armament is deprived of the power of acting; yet we have almost the whole force of Canada to oppose.   In this situation there is such a choice of difficulties that I own myself at a loss how to determine.   The affairs of Great Britain, I know, require the most vigorous measures; but the courage of a handful of brave troops should be exerted only when there is some hope of a favorable event; however, you may be assured that the small part of the campaign which remains shall be employed, as far as I am able, for the honor of His Majesty and the interest of the nation, in which I am sure of being well seconded by the Admiral and by the generals; happy if our efforts here can contribute to the success of His Majesty's arms in any other parts of America.  "

Some days later, he wrote to the Earl of Holdernesse: "The Marquis of Montcalm has a numerous body of armed men (I cannot call it an army), and the strongest country perhaps in the world.   Our fleet blocks up the river above and below the town, but can give no manner of aid in an attack upon the Canadian army.   We are now here [off Cap-Rouge] with about thirty-six hundred men, waiting to attack them when and wherever they can best be got at.   I am so far recovered as to do business; but my constitution is entirely ruined, without the consolation of doing any considerable service to the state, and without any prospect of it.  " He had just learned, through the letter brought from Amherst by Ensign Hutchins, that he could expect no help from that quarter.  

Perhaps he was as near despair as his undaunted nature was capable of being.   In his present state of body and mind he was a hero without the light and cheer of heroism.   He flattered himself with no illusions, but saw the worst and faced it all.   He seems to have been entirely without excitement.   The languor of disease, the desperation of the chances, and the greatness of the stake may have wrought to tranquillize him.   His energy was doubly tasked: to bear up his own sinking frame, and to achieve an almost hopeless feat of arms.  

Audacious as it was, his plan cannot be called rash if we may accept the statement of two well-informed writers on the French side.   They say that on the tenth of September the English naval commanders held a council on board the flagship, in which it was resolved that the lateness of the season required the fleet to leave Quebec without delay.   They say further that Wolfe then went to the Admiral, told him that he had found a place where the heights could be scaled, that he would send up a hundred and fifty picked men to feel the way, and that if they gained a lodgment at the top, the other troops should follow; if, on the other hand, the French were there in force to oppose them, he would not sacrifice the army in a hopeless attempt, but embark them for home, consoled by the thought that all had been done that man could do.   On this, concludes the story, the Admiral and his officers consented to wait the result.  

As Wolfe had informed Pitt, his army was greatly weakened.   Since the end of June his loss in killed and wounded was more than eight hundred and fifty, including two colonels, two majors, nineteen captains, and thirty-four subalterns; and to these were to be added a greater number disabled by disease.  

The squadron of Admiral Holmes above Quebec had now increased to twenty-two vessels, great and small.   One of the last that went up was a diminutive schooner, armed with a new swivels, and jocosely named the "Terror of France.  " She sailed by the town in broad daylight, the French, incensed at her impudence, blazing at her from all their batteries; but she passed unharmed, anchored by the Admiral's ship, and saluted him triumphantly with her swivels.  

Wolfe's first move towards executing his plan was the critical one of evacuating the camp at Montmorenci.   This was accomplished on the third of September.   Montcalm sent a strong force to fall on the rear of the retiring English.   Monckton saw the movement from Point Levi, embarked two battalions in the boats of the fleet, and made a feint of landing at Beauport.   Montcalm recalled his troops to repulse the threatened attack; and the English withdrew from Montmorenci unmolested, some to the Point of Orleans, others to Point Levi.   On the night of the fourth a fleet of flatboats passed above the town with the baggage and stores.   On the fifth, Murray, with four battalions, marched up to the River Etechemin, and forded it under a hot fire from the French batteries at Sillery.   Monckton and Townshend followed with three more battalions, and the united force, of about thirty-six hundred men, was embarked on board the ships of Holmes, where Wolfe joined them on the same evening.  

These movements of the English filled the French commanders with mingled perplexity, anxiety, and hope.   A deserter told them that Admiral Saunders was impatient to be gone.   Vaudreuil grew confident.   "The breaking up of the camp at Montmorenci," he says, "and the abandonment of the intrenchments there, the reimbarkation on board the vessels above Quebec of the troops who had encamped on the south bank, the movements of these vessels, the removal of the heaviest pieces of artillery from the batteries of Point Levi, these and the lateness of the season all combined to announce the speedy departure of the fleet, several vessels of which had even sailed down the river already.   The prisoners and the deserters who daily came in told us that this was the common report in their army.  ” He wrote to Bourlamaque on the first of September: "Everything proves that the grand design of the English has failed.  "

Yet he was ceaselessly watchful.   So was Montcalm; and he, too, on the night of the second, snatched a moment to write to Bourlamaque from his headquarters in the stone house, by the river of Beauport: "The night is dark; it rains; our troops are in their tents, with clothes on, ready for an alarm; I in my boots; my horses saddled.   In fact, this is my usual way.   I wish you were here; for I cannot be everywhere, though I multiply myself, and have not taken off my clothes since the twenty-third of June.  " On the eleventh of September he wrote his last letter to Bourlamaque, and probably the last that his pen ever traced.   "I am overwhelmed with work, and should often lose temper, like you, if I did not remember that I am paid by Europe for not losing it.   Nothing new since my last.   I give the enemy another month, or something less, to stay here.  " The more sanguine Vaudreuil would hardly give them a week.  

Meanwhile, no precaution was spared.   The force under Bougainville above Quebec was raised to three thousand men.   He was ordered to watch the shore as far as Jacques-Cartier, and follow with his main body every movement of Holmes's squadron.   There was little fear for the heights near the town; they were thought inaccessible.   Even Montcalm believed them safe, and had expressed himself to that effect some time before.   "We need not suppose," he wrote to Vaudreuil, "that the enemy have wings;" and again, speaking of the very place where Wolfe afterwards landed, "I swear to you that a hundred men posted there would stop their whole army.  ” He was right.   A hundred watchful and determined men could have held the position long enough for reinforcements to come up.  

The hundred men were there.   Captain de Vergor, of the colony troops, commanded them, and reinforcements were within his call; for the battalion of Guienne had been ordered to encamp close at hand on the Plains of Abraham.   Vergor's post, called Anse du Foulon, was a mile and a half from Quebec.   A little beyond it, by the brink of the cliffs, was another post, called Samos, held by seventy men with four cannon; and, beyond this again, the heights of Sillery were guarded by a hundred and thirty men, also with cannon.   These were outposts of Bougainville, whose headquarters were at Cap-Rouge, six miles above Sillery, and whose troops were in continual movement along the intervening shore.   Thus all was vigilance; for while the French were strong in the hope of speedy delivery, they felt that there was no safety till the tents of the invader had vanished from their shores and his ships from their river.   "What we knew," says one of them, "of the character of M.   Wolfe, that impetuous, bold, and intrepid warrior, prepared us for a last attack before he left us.  "

Wolfe had been very ill on the evening of the fourth.   The troops knew it, and their spirits sank; but, after a night of torment, he grew better, and was soon among them again, rekindling their ardor, and imparting a cheer that he could not share.   For himself he had no pity; but when he heard of the illness of two officers in one of the ships, he sent them a message of warm sympathy, advised them to return to Point Levi, and offered them his own barge and an escort.   They thanked him, but replied that, come what might, they would see the enterprise to an end.   Another officer remarked in his hearing that one of the invalids had a very delicate constitution.   "Don't tell me of constitution," said Wolfe; "he has good spirit, and good spirit will carry a man through everything.  ” An immense moral force bore up his own frail body and forced it to its work.  

Major Robert Stobo, who, five years before, had been given as a hostage to the French at the capture of Fort Necessity, arrived about this time in a vessel from Halifax.   He had long been a prisoner at Quebec, not always in close custody, and had used his opportunities to acquaint himself with the neighborhood.   In the spring of this year he and an officer of rangers named Stevens had made their escape with extraordinary skill and daring; and he now returned to give his countrymen the benefit of his local knowledge.   His biographer says that it was he who directed Wolfe in the choice of a landing-place.    Be this as it may, Wolfe in person examined the river and the shores as far as Pointe-aux-Trembles; till at length, landing on the south side a little above Quebec, and looking across the water with a telescope, he descried a path that ran with a long slope up the face of the woody precipice, and saw at the top a cluster of tents.   They were those of Vergor's guard at the Anse du Foulon, now called Wolfe's Cove.   As he could see but ten or twelve of them, he thought that the guard could not be numerous, and might be overpowered.   His hope would have been stronger if he had known that Vergor had once been tried for misconduct and cowardice in the surrender of Beauséjour, and saved from merited disgrace by the friendship of Bigot and the protection of Vaudreuil.  

The morning of the seventh was fair and warm, and the vessels of Holmes, their crowded decks gay with scarlet uniforms, sailed up the river to Cap-Rouge.   A lively scene awaited them; for here were the headquarters of Bougainville, and here lay his principal force, while the rest watched the banks above and below.   The cove into which the little river runs was guarded by floating batteries; the surrounding shore was defended by breastworks; and a large body of regulars, militia, and mounted Canadians in blue uniforms moved to and fro, with restless activity, on the hills behind.   When the vessels came to anchor, the horsemen dismounted and formed in line with the infantry; then, with loud shouts, the whole rushed down the heights to man their works at the shore.   That true Briton, Captain Knox, looked on with a critical eye from the gangway of his ship, and wrote that night in his Diary that they had made a ridiculous noise.   "How different!" he exclaims, "how nobly awful and expressive of true valor is the customary silence of the British troops!"

In the afternoon the ships opened fire, while the troops entered the boats and rowed up and down as if looking for a landing-place.   It was but a feint of Wolfe to deceive Bougainville as to his real design.   A heavy easterly rain set in on the next morning, and lasted two days without respite.   All operations were suspended, and the men suffered greatly in the crowded transports.   Half of them were therefore landed on the south shore, where they made their quarters in the village of St.   Nicholas, refreshed themselves, and dried their wet clothing, knapsacks, and blankets.  

For several successive days the squadron of Holmes was allowed to drift up the river with the flood tide and down with the ebb, thus passing and repassing incessantly between the neighborhood of Quebec on one hand, and a point high above Cap-Rouge on the other; while Bougainville, perplexed, and always expecting an attack, followed the ships to and fro along the shore, by day and by night, till his men were exhausted with ceaseless forced marches.  

At last the time for action came.   On Wednesday, the twelfth, the troops at St.   Nicholas were embarked again, and all were told to hold themselves in readiness.   Wolfe, from the flagship "Sutherland," issued his last general orders.   "The enemy's force is now divided, great scarcity of provisions in their camp, and universal discontent among the Canadians.   Our troops below are in readiness to join us; all the light artillery and tools are embarked at the Point of Levi; and the troops will land where the French seem least to expect it.   The first body that gets on shore is to march directly to the enemy and drive them from any little post they may occupy; the officers must be careful that the succeeding bodies do not by any mistake fire on those who go before them.   The battalions must form on the upper ground with expedition, and be ready to charge whatever presents itself.   When the artillery and troops are landed, a corps will be left to secure the landing-place, while the rest march on and endeavor to bring the Canadians and French to a battle.   The officers and men will remember what their country expects from them, and what a determined body of soldiers inured to war is capable of doing against five weak French battalions mingled with a disorderly peasantry.  "

The spirit of the army answered to that of its chief.   The troops loved and admired their general, trusted their officers, and were ready for any attempt.   "Nay, how could it be otherwise," quaintly asks honest Sergeant John Johnson, of the fifty-eighth regiment, "being at the heels of gentlemen whose whole thirst, equal with their general, was for glory? We had seen them tried, and always found them sterling.   We knew that they would stand by us to the last extremity.  "

Wolfe had thirty-six hundred men and officers with him on board the vessels of Holmes; and he now sent orders to Colonel Burton at Point Levi to bring to his aid all who could be spared from that place and the Point of Orleans.   They were to march along the south bank, after nightfall, and wait further orders at a designated spot convenient for embarkation.   Their number was about twelve hundred, so that the entire forced destined for the enterprise was at the utmost forty-eight hundred.   With these, Wolfe meant to climb the heights of Abraham in the teeth of an enemy who, though much reduced, were still twice as numerous as their assailants.  

Admiral Saunders lay with the main fleet in the Basin of Quebec.   This excellent officer, whatever may have been his views as to the necessity of a speedy departure, aided Wolfe to the last with unfailing energy and zeal.   It was agreed between them that while the General made the real attack, the Admiral should engage Montcalm's attention by a pretended one.   As night approached, the fleet ranged itself along the Beauport shore; the boats were lowered and filled with sailors, marines, and the few troops that had been left behind; while ship signalled to ship, cannon flashed and thundered, and shot ploughed the beach, as if to clear a way for assailants to land.   In the gloom of the evening the effect was imposing.   Montcalm, who thought that the movements of the English above the town were only a feint, that their main force was still below it, and that their real attack would be made there, was completely deceived, and massed his troops in front of Beauport to repel the expected landing.   But while in the fleet of Saunders all was uproar and ostentatious menace, the danger was ten miles away, where the squadron of Holmes lay tranquil and silent at its anchorage off Cap-Rouge.  

It was less tranquil than it seemed.   All on board knew that a blow would be struck that night, though only a few high officers knew where.   Colonel Howe, of the light infantry, called for volunteers to lead the unknown and desperate venture, promising, in the words of one of them, "that if any of us survived we might depend on being recommended to the General.  ” As many as were wanted twenty-four in all soon came forward.   Thirty large bateaux and some boats belonging to the squadron lay moored alongside the vessels; and late in the evening the troops were ordered into them, the twenty-four volunteers taking their place in the foremost.   They held in all about seventeen hundred men.   The rest remained on board.  

Bougainville could discern the movement, and misjudged it, thinking that he himself was to be attacked.   The tide was still flowing; and, the better to deceive him, the vessels and boats were allowed to drift upward with it for a little distance, as if to land above Cap-Rouge.  

The day had been fortunate for Wolfe.   Two deserters came from the camp of Bougainville with intelligence that, at ebb tide on the next night, he was to send down a convoy of provisions to Montcalm.   The necessities of the camp at Beauport, and the difficulties of transportation by land, had before compelled the French to resort to this perilous means of conveying supplies; and their boats, drifting in darkness under the shadows of the northern shore, had commonly passed in safety.   Wolfe saw at once that, if his own boats went down in advance of the convoy, he could turn the intelligence of the deserters to good account.  

He was still on board the "Sutherland.  " Every preparation was made, and every order given; it only remained to wait the turning of the tide.   Seated with him in the cabin was the commander of the sloop-of-war "Porcupine," his former school-fellow, John Jervis, afterwards Earl St.   Vincent.   Wolfe told him that he expected to die in the battle of the next day; and taking from his bosom a miniature of Miss Lowther, his betrothed, he gave it to him with a request that he would return it to her if the presentiment should prove true.  

Towards two o'clock the tide began to ebb, and a fresh wind blew down the river.   Two lanterns were raised into the maintop shrouds of the "Sutherland.  " It was the appointed signal; the boats cast off and fell down with the current, those of the light infantry leading the way.   The vessels with the rest of the troops had orders to follow a little later.  

To look for a moment at the chances on which this bold adventure hung.   First, the deserters told Wolfe that provision-boats were ordered to go down to Quebec that night; secondly, Bougainville countermanded them; thirdly, the sentries posted along the heights were told of the order, but not of the countermand; fourthly, Vergor at the Anse du Foulon had permitted most of his men, chiefly Canadians from Lorette, to go home for a time and work at their harvesting, on condition, it is said, that they should afterwards work in a neighboring field of his own; fifthly, he kept careless watch, and went quietly to bed; sixthly, the battalion of Guienne, ordered to take post on the Plains of Abraham, had, for reasons unexplained, remained encamped by the St.   Charles; and lastly, when Bougainville saw Holmes's vessels drift down the stream, he did not tax his weary troops to follow them, thinking that they would return as usual with the flood tide.   But for these conspiring circumstances New France might have lived a little longer, and the fruitless heroism of Wolfe would have passed, with countless other heroisms, into oblivion.  

For full two hours the procession of boats, borne on the current, steered silently down the St.   Lawrence.   The stars were visible, but the night was moonless and sufficiently dark.   The General was in one of the foremost boats, and near him was a young midshipman, John Robison, afterwards professor of natural philosophy in the University of Edinburgh.   He used to tell in his later life how Wolfe, with a low voice, repeated Gray's Elegy in a Country Churchyard to the officers about him.   Probably it was to relieve the intense strain of his thoughts.   Among the rest was the verse which his own fate was soon to illustrate, 

    "The paths of glory lead but to the grave.  "

"Gentlemen," he said, as his recital ended, "I would rather have written those lines than take Quebec.  " None were there to tell him that the hero is greater than the poet.  

As they neared their destination, the tide bore them in towards the shore, and the mighty wall of rock and forest towered in darkness on their left.   The dead stillness was suddenly broken by the sharp Qui vive! of a French sentry, invisible in the thick gloom.   France! answered a Highland officer of Fraser's regiment from one of the boats of the light infantry.   He had served in Holland and spoke French fluently.  

À quel régiment?

De la Reine, replied the Highlander.   He knew that a part of that corps was with Bougainville.   The sentry, expecting the convoy of provisions, was satisfied, and did not ask for the password.  

Soon after, the foremost boats were passing the heights of Samos, when another sentry challenged them, and they could see him through the darkness running down to the edge of the water, within range of a pistol-shot.   In answer to his questions, the same officer replied, in French: "Provision-boats.   Don't make a noise; the English will hear us.  ” In fact, the sloop-of-war "Hunter" was anchored in the stream not far off.   This time, again, the sentry let them pass.   In a few moments they rounded the headland above the Anse du Foulon.   There was no sentry there.   The strong current swept the boats of the light infantry a little below the intended landing-place.   They disembarked on a narrow strand at the foot of heights as steep as a hill covered with trees can be.   The twenty-four volunteers led the way, climbing with what silence they might, closely followed by a much larger body.   When they reached the top they saw in the dim light a cluster of tents at a short distance, and immediately made a dash at them.   Vergor leaped from bed and tried to run off, but was shot in the heel and captured.   His men, taken by surprise, made little resistance.   One or two were caught, the rest fled.  

The main body of troops waited in their boats by the edge of the strand.   The heights near by were cleft by a great ravine choked with forest trees; and in its depths ran a little brook called Ruisseau St.  -Denis, which, swollen by the late rains, fell plashing in the stillness over a rock.   Other than this no sound could reach the strained ear of Wolfe but the gurgle of the tide and the cautious climbing of his advance-parties as they mounted the steeps at some little distance from where he sat listening.   At length from the top came a sound of musket-shots, followed by loud huzzas, and he knew that his men were masters of the position.   The word was given; the troops leaped from the boats and scaled the heights, some here, some there, clutching at trees and bushes, their muskets slung at their backs.   Tradition still points out the place, near the mouth of the ravine, where the foremost reached the top.   Wolfe said to an officer near him: "You can try it, but I don't think you'll get up.  " He himself, however, found strength to drag himself up with the rest.   The narrow slanting path on the face of the heights had been made impassable by trenches and abattis; but all obstructions were soon cleared away, and then the ascent was easy.   In the gray of the morning the long file of red-coated soldiers moved quickly upward, and formed in order on the plateau above.  

Before many of them had reached the top, cannon were heard close on the left.   It was the battery at Samos firing on the boats in the rear and the vessels descending from Cap-Rouge.   A party was sent to silence it; this was soon effected, and the more distant battery at Sillery was next attacked and taken.   As fast as the boats were emptied they returned for the troops left on board the vessels and for those waiting on the southern shore under Colonel Burton.  

The day broke in clouds and threatening rain.   Wolfe's battalions were drawn up along the crest of the heights.   No enemy was in sight, though a body of Canadians had sallied from the town and moved along the strand towards the landing-place, whence they were quickly driven back.   He had achieved the most critical part of his enterprise; yet the success that he coveted placed him in imminent danger.   On one side was the garrison of Quebec and the army of Beauport, and Bougainville was on the other.   Wolfe's alternative was victory or ruin; for if he should be overwhelmed by a combined attack, retreat would be hopeless.   His feelings no man can know; but it would be safe to say that hesitation or doubt had no part in them.  

He went to reconnoitre the ground, and soon came to the Plains of Abraham, so called from Abraham Martin, a pilot known as Maître Abraham, who had owned a piece of land here in the early times of the colony.   The Plains were a tract of grass, tolerably level in most parts, patched here and there with cornfields, studded with clumps of bushes, and forming a part of the high plateau at the eastern end of which Quebec stood.   On the south it was bounded by the declivities along the St.   Lawrence; on the north, by those along the St.   Charles, or rather along the meadows through which that lazy stream crawled like a writhing snake.   At the place that Wolfe chose for his battle-field the plateau was less than a mile wide.  

Thither the troops advanced, marched by files till they reached the ground, and then wheeled to form their line of battle, which stretched across the plateau and faced the city.   It consisted of six battalions and the detached grenadiers from Louisbourg, all drawn up in ranks three deep.   Its right wing was near the brink of the heights along the St.   Lawrence; but the left could not reach those along the St.   Charles.   On this side a wide space was perforce left open, and there was danger of being outflanked.   To prevent this, Brigadier Townshend was stationed here with two battalions, drawn up at right angles with the rest, and fronting the St.   Charles.   The battalion of Webb's regiment, under Colonel Burton, formed the reserve; the third battalion of Royal Americans was left to guard the landing; and Howe's light infantry occupied a wood far in the rear.   Wolfe, with Monckton and Murray, commanded the front line, on which the heavy fighting was to fall, and which, when all the troops had arrived, numbered less than thirty-five hundred men.  

Quebec was not a mile distant, but they could not see it; for a ridge of broken ground intervened, called Buttes-à-Neveu, about six hundred paces off.   The first division of troops had scarcely come up when, about six o'clock, this ridge was suddenly thronged with white uniforms.   It was the battalion of Guienne, arrived at the eleventh hour from its camp by the St.   Charles.   Some time after there was hot firing in the rear.   It came from a detachment of Bougainville's command attacking a house where some of the light infantry were posted.   The assailants were repulsed, and the firing ceased.   Light showers fell at intervals, besprinkling the troops as they stood patiently waiting the event.  

Montcalm had passed a troubled night.   Through all the evening the cannon bellowed from the ships of Saunders, and the boats of the fleet hovered in the dusk off the Beauport shore, threatening every moment to land.   Troops lined intrenchments till day, while the General walked the field that adjoined his headquarters till one in the morning, accompanied by the Chevalier Johnstone and Colonel Poulariez.   Johnstone says that he was in great agitation, and took no rest all night.   At daybreak he heard the sound of cannon above the town.   It was the battery at Samos firing on the English ships.   He had sent an officer to the quarters of Vaudreuil, which were much nearer Quebec, with orders to bring him word at once should anything unusual happen.   But no word came, and about six o'clock he mounted and rode thither with Johnstone.   As they advanced, the country behind the town opened more and more upon their sight; till at length, when opposite Vaudreuil's house, they saw across the St.   Charles, some two miles away, the red ranks of British soldiers on the heights beyond.  

"This is a serious business," Montcalm said; and sent off Johnstone at full gallop to bring up the troops from the centre and left of the camp.   Those of the right were in motion already, doubtless by the Governor's order.   Vaudreuil came out of the house.   Montcalm stopped for a few words with him; then set spurs to his horse, and rode over the bridge of the St.   Charles to the scene of danger.   He rode with a fixed look, uttering not a word.  

The army followed in such order as it might, crossed the bridge in hot haste, passed under the northern rampart of Quebec, entered at the Palace Gate, and pressed on in headlong march along the quaint narrow streets of the warlike town: troops of Indians in scalp-locks and war-paint, a savage glitter in their deep-set eyes; bands of Canadians whose all was at stake, faith, country, and home; the colony regulars; the battalions of Old France, a torrent of white uniforms and gleaming bayonets, La Sarre, Languedoc, Roussillon, Béarn, victors of Oswego, William Henry, and Ticonderoga.   So they swept on, poured out upon the plain, some by the gate of St.   Louis, and some by that of St.   John, and hurried, breathless, to where the banners of Guienne still fluttered on the ridge.  

Montcalm was amazed at what he saw.   He had expected a detachment, and he found an army.   Full in sight before him stretched the lines of Wolfe: the close ranks of the English infantry, a silent wall of red, and the wild array of the Highlanders, with their waving tartans, and bagpipes screaming defiance.   Vaudreuil had not come; but not the less was felt the evil of a divided authority and the jealousy of the rival chiefs.   Montcalm waited long for the forces he had ordered to join him from the left wing of the army.   He waited in vain.   It is said that the Governor had detained them, lest the English should attack the Beauport shore.   Even if they did so, and succeeded, the French might defy them, could they but put Wolfe to rout on the Plains of Abraham.   Neither did the garrison of Quebec come to the aid of Montcalm.   He sent to Ramesay, its commander, for twenty-five field-pieces which were on the Palace battery.   Ramesay would give him only three, saying that he wanted them for his own defence.   There were orders and counter-orders; misunderstanding, haste, delay, perplexity.  

Montcalm and his chief officers held a council of war.   It is said that he and they alike were for immediate attack.   His enemies declare that he was afraid lest Vaudreuil should arrive and take command; but the Governor was not a man to assume responsibility at such a crisis.   Others say that his impetuosity overcame his better judgment; and of this charge it is hard to acquit him.   Bougainville was but a few miles distant, and some of his troops were much nearer; a messenger sent by way of Old Lorette could have reached him in an hour and a half at most, and a combined attack in front and rear might have been concerted with him.   If, moreover, Montcalm could have come to an understanding with Vaudreuil, his own force might have been strengthened by two or three thousand additional men from the town and the camp of Beauport; but he felt that there was no time to lose, for he imagined that Wolfe would soon be reinforced, which was impossible, and he believed that the English were fortifying themselves, which was no less an error.   He has been blamed not only for fighting too soon, but for fighting at all.   In this he could not choose.   Fight he must, for Wolfe was now in a position to cut off all his supplies.   His men were full of ardor, and he resolved to attack before their ardor cooled.   He spoke a few words to them in his keen, vehement way.   "I remember very well how he looked," one of the Canadians, then a boy of eighteen, used to say in his old age; "he rode a black or dark bay horse along the front of our lines, brandishing his sword, as if to excite us to do our duty.   He wore a coat with wide sleeves, which fell back as he raised his arm, and showed the white linen of the wristband.  ”

The English waited the result with a composure which, if not quite real, was at least well feigned.   The three field-pieces sent by Ramesay plied them with canister-shot, and fifteen hundred Canadians and Indians fusilladed them in front and flank.   Over all the plain, from behind bushes and knolls and the edge of cornfields, puffs of smoke sprang incessantly from the guns of these hidden marksmen.   Skirmishers were thrown out before the lines to hold them in check, and the soldiers were ordered to lie on the grass to avoid the shot.   The firing was liveliest on the English left, where bands of sharpshooters got under the edge of the declivity, among thickets, and behind scattered houses, whence they killed and wounded a considerable number of Townshend's men.   The light infantry were called up from the rear.   The houses were taken and retaken, and one or more of them was burned.  

Wolfe was everywhere.   How cool he was, and why his followers loved him, is shown by an incident that happened in the course of the morning.   One of his captains was shot through the lungs; and on recovering consciousness he saw the General standing at his side.   Wolfe pressed his hand, told him not to despair, praised his services, promised him early promotion, and sent an aide-de-camp to Monckton to beg that officer to keep the promise if he himself should fall.  

It was towards ten o'clock when, from the high ground on the right of the line, Wolfe saw that the crisis was near.   The French on the ridge had formed themselves into three bodies, regulars in the centre, regulars and Canadians on right and left.   Two field-pieces, which had been dragged up the heights at Anse du Foulon, fired on them with grapeshot, and the troops, rising from the ground, prepared to receive them.   In a few moments more they were in motion.   They came on rapidly, uttering loud shouts, and firing as soon as they were within range.   Their ranks, ill ordered at the best, were further confused by a number of Canadians who had been mixed among the regulars, and who, after hastily firing, threw themselves on the ground to reload.   The British advanced a few rods; then halted and stood still.   When the French were within forty paces the word of command rang out, and a crash of musketry answered all along the line.   The volley was delivered with remarkable precision.   In the battalions of the centre, which had suffered least from the enemy's bullets, the simultaneous explosion was afterwards said by French officers to have sounded like a cannon-shot.   Another volley followed, and then a furious clattering fire that lasted but a minute or two.   When the smoke rose, a miserable sight was revealed: the ground cumbered with dead and wounded, the advancing masses stopped short and turned into a frantic mob, shouting, cursing, gesticulating.   The order was given to charge.   Then over the field rose the British cheer, mixed with the fierce yell of the Highland slogan.   Some of the corps pushed forward with the bayonet; some advanced firing.   The clansmen drew their broadswords and dashed on, keen and swift as bloodhounds.   At the English right, though the attacking column was broken to pieces, a fire was still kept up, chiefly, it seems, by sharpshooters from the bushes and cornfields, where they had lain for an hour or more.   Here Wolfe himself led the charge, at the head of the Louisbourg grenadiers.   A shot shattered his wrist.   He wrapped his handkerchief about it and kept on.   Another shot struck him, and he still advanced, when a third lodged in his breast.   He staggered, and sat on the ground.   Lieutenant Brown, of the grenadiers, one Henderson, a volunteer in the same company, and a private soldier, aided by an officer of artillery who ran to join them, carried him in their arms to the rear.   He begged them to lay him down.   They did so, and asked if he would have a surgeon.   "There's no need," he answered; "it's all over with me.  " A moment after, one of them cried out: "They run; see how they run!" "Who run?" Wolfe demanded, like a man roused from sleep.   "The enemy, sir.   Egad, they give way everywhere!" "Go one of you, to Colonel Burton," returned the dying man; "tell him to march Webb's regiment down to Charles River, to cut off their retreat from the bridge.  " Then, turning on his side, he murmured, "Now, God be praised, I will die in peace!" and in a few moments his gallant soul had fled.  

Montcalm, still on horseback, was borne with the tide of fugitives towards the town.   As he approached the walls a shot passed through his body.   He kept his seat; two soldiers supported him, one on each side, and led his horse through the St.   Louis Gate.   On the open space within, among the excited crowd, were several women, drawn, no doubt, by eagerness to know the result of the fight.   One of them recognized him, saw the streaming blood, and shrieked, "O mon Dieu! mon Dieu! le Marquis est tué!" "It's nothing, it's nothing," replied the death-stricken man; "don't be troubled for me, my good friends.  " ("Ce n'est rien, ce n'est rien; ne vous affligez pas pour moi, mes bonnes amies.  ")

NOTE: There are several contemporary versions of the dying words of
Wolfe.   The report of Knox, given above, is by far the best attested.  
Knox says that he took particular pains at the time to learn them
accurately from those who were with Wolfe when they were uttered.  

The anecdote of Montcalm is due to the late Hon.   Malcolm Fraser, of Quebec.   He often heard it in his youth from an old woman, who, when a girl, was one of the group who saw the wounded general led by, and to whom the words were addressed.  

Force of the English and French at the Battle of Quebec.   The tabular return given by Knox shows the number of officers and men in each corps engaged.   According to this, the battalions as they stood on the Plains of Abraham before the battle varied in strength from 322 (Monckton's) to 683 (Webb's), making a total of 4,828, including officers.   But another return, less specific, signed George Townshend, Brigadier, makes the entire number only 4,441.   Townshend succeeded Wolfe in the command; and this return, which is preserved in the Public Record Office, was sent to London a few days after the battle.   Some French writers present put the number lower, perhaps for the reason that Webb's regiment and the third battalion of Royal Americans took no part in the fight, the one being in the rear as a reserve, and the other invisible, guarding the landing place.   Wolfe's front line, which alone met and turned the French attack, was made up as follows, the figures including officers and men: 

/$
Thirty-fifth Regiment .   519 Twenty-eighth Regiment 421
Fifty-eighth " .   335 Forty-seventh " .   360
Seventy-eighth " .   662 Forty-third " .  .   327
Louisbourg Grenadiers 241 Light Infantry ….  .   400
Making a total of 3,265.  
$/

The French force engaged cannot be precisely given.   Knox, on information received from "an intelligent Frenchman," states the number, corps by corps, the aggregate being 7,520.   This, on examination, plainly appears exaggerated.   Fraser puts it at 5,000; Townshend at 4,470, including militia.   Bigot says, 3,500, which may perhaps be as many as actually advanced to the attack, since some of the militia held back.   Including Bougainville's command, the militia and the artillerymen left in the Beauport camp, the sailors at the town batteries, and the garrison of Quebec, at least as many of the French were out of the battle as were in it; and the numbers engaged on each side seem to have been about equal.  

For authorities of the foregoing chapter, see Appendix I.  

Chapter 28
1759

Fall of Quebec

"Never was rout more complete than that of our army," says a French official.   It was the more so because Montcalm held no troops in reserve, but launched his whole force at once against the English.   Nevertheless there was some resistance to the pursuit.   It came chiefly from the Canadians, many of whom had not advanced with the regulars to the attack.   Those on the right wing, instead of doing so, threw themselves into an extensive tract of bushes that lay in front of the English left; and from this cover they opened a fire, too distant for much effect, till the victors advanced in their turn, when the shot of the hidden marksmen told severely upon them.   Two battalions, therefore, deployed before the bushes, fired volleys into them, and drove their occupants out.  

Again, those of the Canadians who, before the main battle began, attacked the English left from the brink of the plateau towards the St.   Charles, withdrew when the rout took place, and ran along the edge of the declivity till, at the part of it called Côte Ste.  -Geneviève, they came to a place where it was overgrown with thickets.   Into these they threw themselves; and were no sooner under cover than they faced about to fire upon the Highlanders, who presently came up.   As many of these mountaineers, according to their old custom, threw down their muskets when they charged, and had no weapons but their broadswords, they tried in vain to dislodge the marksmen, and suffered greatly in the attempt.   Other troops came to their aid, cleared the thickets, after stout resistance, and drove their occupants across the meadow to the bridge of boats.   The conduct of the Canadians at the Côte Ste.  -Geneviève went far to atone for the short-comings of some of them on the battle-field.  

A part of the fugitives escaped into the town by the gates of St.   Louis and St.   John, while the greater number fled along the front of the ramparts, rushed down the declivity to the suburb of St.   Roch, and ran over the meadows to the bridge, protected by the cannon of the town and the two armed hulks in the river.   The rout had but just begun when Vaudreuil crossed the bridge from the camp of Beauport.   It was four hours since he first heard the alarm, and his quarters were not much more than two miles from the battle-field.   He does not explain why he did not come sooner; it is certain that his coming was well timed to throw the blame on Montcalm in case of defeat, or to claim some of the honor for himself in case of victory.   "Monsieur the Marquis of Montcalm," he says, "unfortunately made his attack before I had joined him.  ” His joining him could have done no good; for though he had at last brought with him the rest of the militia from the Beauport camp, they had come no farther than the bridge over the St.   Charles, having, as he alleges, been kept there by an unauthorized order from the chief of staff, Montreuil.   He declares that the regulars were in such a fright that he could not stop them; but that the Canadians listened to his voice, and that it was he who rallied them at the Côte Ste.  -Geneviève.   Of this the evidence is his own word.   From other accounts it would appear that the Canadians rallied themselves.   Vaudreuil lost no time in recrossing the bridge and joining the militia in the redoubt at the farther end, where a crowd of fugitives soon poured in after him.  

The aide-de-camp Johnstone, mounted on horseback, had stopped for a moment in what is now the suburb of St.   John to encourage some soldiers who were trying to save a cannon that had stuck fast in a marshy hollow; when, on spurring his horse to the higher ground, he saw within musket-shot a long line of British troops, who immediately fired upon him.   The bullets whistled about his ears, tore his clothes, and wounded his horse; which, however, carried him along the edge of the declivity to a windmill, near which was a roadway to a bakehouse on the meadow below.   He descended, crossed the meadow, reached the bridge, and rode over it to the great redoubt or hornwork that guarded its head.  

The place was full of troops and Canadians in a wild panic.   "It is impossible," says Johnstone, "to imagine the disorder and confusion I found in the hornwork.   Consternation was general.   M.   de Vaudreuil listened to everybody, and was always of the opinion of him who spoke last.   On the appearance of the English troops on the plain by the bakehouse, Montguet and La Motte, two old captains in the regiment of Béarn, cried out with vehemence to M.   de Vaudreuil 'that the hornwork would be taken in an instant by assault, sword in hand; that we all should be cut to pieces without quarter; and that nothing would save us but an immediate and general capitulation of Canada, giving it up to the English.  ”’ Yet the river was wide and deep, and the hornwork was protected on the water side by strong palisades, with cannon.   Nevertheless there rose a general cry to cut the bridge of boats.   By doing so more than half the army, who had not yet crossed, would have been sacrificed.   The axemen were already at work, when they were stopped by some officers who had not lost their wits.  

"M.   de Vaudreuil," pursues Johnstone, "was closeted in a house in the inside of the hornwork with the Intendant and some other persons.   I suspected they were busy drafting the articles for a general capitulation, and I entered the house, where I had only time to see the Intendant, with a pen in his hand, writing upon a sheet of paper, when M.   de Vaudreuil told me I had no business there.   Having answered him that what he had said was true, I retired immediately, in wrath to see them intent on giving up so scandalously a dependency for the preservation of which so much blood and treasure had been expended.  " On going out he met Lieutenant-colonels Dalquier and Poulariez, whom he begged to prevent the apprehended disgrace; and, in fact, if Vaudreuil really meant to capitulate for the colony, he was presently dissuaded by firmer spirits than his own.  

Johnstone, whose horse could carry him no farther, set out on foot for Beauport, and, in his own words, "continued sorrowfully jogging on, with a very heavy heart for the loss of my dear friend M.   de Montcalm, sinking with weariness, and lost in reflection upon the changes which Providence had brought about in the space of three or four hours.  "

Great indeed were these changes.   Montcalm was dying; his second in command, the Brigadier Senezergues, was mortally wounded; the army, routed and demoralized, was virtually without a head; and the colony, yesterday cheered as on the eve of deliverance, was plunged into sudden despair.   "Ah, what a cruel day!" cries Bougainville; "how fatal to all that was dearest to us! My heart is torn in its most tender parts.   We shall be fortunate if the approach of winter saves the country from total ruin.  ”

The victors were fortifying themselves on the field of battle.   Like the French, they had lost two generals; for Monckton, second in rank, was disabled by a musket-shot, and the command had fallen upon Townshend at the moment when the enemy were in full flight.   He had recalled the pursuers, and formed them again in line of battle, knowing that another foe was at hand.   Bougainville, in fact, appeared at noon from Cap-Rouge with about two thousand men; but withdrew on seeing double that force prepared to receive him.   He had not heard till eight o'clock that the English were on the Plains of Abraham; and the delay of his arrival was no doubt due to his endeavors to collect as many as possible of his detachments posted along the St.   Lawrence for many miles towards Jacques-Cartier.  

Before midnight the English had made good progress in their redoubts and intrenchments, had brought cannon up the heights to defend them, planted a battery on the Côte Ste.  -Geneviève, descended into the meadows of the St.   Charles, and taken possession of the General Hospital, with its crowds of sick and wounded.   Their victory had cost them six hundred and sixty-four of all ranks, killed, wounded, and missing.   The French loss is placed by Vaudreuil at about six hundred and forty, and by the English official reports at about fifteen hundred.   Measured by the numbers engaged, the battle of Quebec was but a heavy skirmish; measured by results, it was one of the great battles of the world.  

Vaudreuil went from the hornwork to his quarters on the Beauport road and called a council of war.   It was a tumultuous scene.   A letter was despatched to Quebec to ask for advice of Montcalm.   The dying General sent a brief message to the effect that there was a threefold choice, to fight again, retreat to Jacques-Cartier, or give up the colony.   There was much in favor of fighting.   When Bougainville had gathered all his force from the river above, he would have three thousand men; and these, joined to the garrison of Quebec, the sailors at the batteries, and the militia and artillerymen of the Beauport camp, would form a body of fresh soldiers more than equal to the English then on the Plains of Abraham.   Add to these the defeated troops, and the victors would be greatly outnumbered.   Bigot gave his voice for fighting.   Vaudreuil expressed himself to the same effect; but he says that all the officers were against him.   "In vain I remarked to these gentlemen that we were superior to the enemy, and should beat them if we managed well.   I could not at all change their opinion, and my love for the service and for the colony made me subscribe to the views of the council.   In fact, if I had attacked the English against the advice of all the principal officers, their ill-will would have exposed me to the risk of losing the battle and the colony also.  ”

It was said at the time that the officers voted for retreat because they thought Vaudreuil unfit to command an army, and, still more, to fight a battle.   There was no need, however, to fight at once.   The object of the English was to take Quebec, and that of Vaudreuil should have been to keep it.   By a march of a few miles he could have joined Bougainville; and by then intrenching himself at or near Ste.  -Foy he would have placed a greatly superior force in the English rear, where his position might have been made impregnable.   Here he might be easily furnished with provisions, and from hence he could readily throw men and supplies into Quebec, which the English were too few to invest.   He could harass the besiegers, or attack them, should opportunity offer, and either raise the siege or so protract it that they would be forced by approaching winter to sail homeward, robbed of the fruit of their victory.  

At least he might have taken a night for reflection.   He was safe behind the St.   Charles.   The English, spent by fighting, toil, and want of sleep, were in no condition to disturb him.   A part of his own men were in deadly need of rest; the night would have brought refreshment, and the morning might have brought wise counsel.   Vaudreuil would not wait, and orders were given at once for retreat.   It began at nine o'clock that evening.   Quebec was abandoned to its fate.   The cannon were left in the lines of Beauport, the tents in the encampments, and provisions enough in the storehouses to supply the army for a week.   "The loss of the Marquis de Montcalm," says a French officer then on the spot, "robbed his successors of their senses, and they thought of nothing but flight; such was their fear that the enemy would attack the intrenchments the next day.   The army abandoned the camp in such disorder that the like was never known.  ” "It was not a retreat," says Johnstone, who himself a part of it, "but an abominable flight, with such disorder and confusion that, had the English known it, three hundred men sent after us would have been sufficient to cut all our army to pieces.   The soldiers were all mixed, and scattered, dispersed, and running as hard as they could, as if the English army were at their heels.  " They passed Charlesbourg, Lorette, and St.   Augustin, till, on the fifteenth, they found rest on the impregnable hill of Jacques-Cartier, by the brink of the St.   Lawrence, thirty miles from danger.  

In the night of humiliation when Vaudreuil abandoned Quebec, Montcalm was breathing his last within its walls.   When he was brought wounded from the field, he was placed in the house of the Surgeon Arnoux, who was then with Bourlamaque at Isle-aux-Noix, but whose younger brother, also a surgeon, examined the wound and pronounced it mortal.   "I am glad of it," Montcalm said quietly; and then asked how long he had to live.   "Twelve hours, more or less," was the reply.   "So much the better," he returned.   "I am happy that I shall not live to see the surrender of Quebec.  " He is reported to have said that since he had lost the battle it consoled him to have been defeated by so brave an enemy; and some of his last words were in praise of his successor, Lévis, for whose talents and fitness for command he expressed high esteem.   When Vaudreuil sent to ask his opinion, he gave it; but when Ramesay, commandant of the garrison, came to receive his orders, he replied: "I will neither give orders nor interfere any further.   I have much business that must be attended to, of greater moment than your ruined garrison and this wretched country.   My time is very short; therefore pray leave me.   I wish you all comfort, and to be happily extricated from your present perplexities.  " Nevertheless he thought to the last of those who had been under his command, and sent the following note to Brigadier Townshend: "Monsieur, the humanity of the English sets my mind at peace concerning the fate of the French prisoners and the Canadians.   Feel towards them as they have caused me to feel.   Do not let them perceive that they have changed masters.   Be their protector as I have been their father.  ”

Bishop Pontbriand, himself fast sinking with mortal disease, attended his deathbed and administered the last sacraments.   He died peacefully at four o'clock on the morning of the fourteenth.   He was in his forty-eighth year.  

In the confusion of the time no workman could be found to make a coffin, and an old servant of the Ursulines, known as Bonhomme Michel, gathered a few boards and nailed them together so as to form a rough box.   In it was laid the body of the dead soldier; and late in the evening of the same day he was carried to his rest.   There was no tolling of bells or firing of cannon.   The officers of the garrison followed the bier, and some of the populace, including women and children, joined the procession as it moved in dreary silence along the dusky street, shattered with cannon-ball and bomb, to the chapel of the Ursuline convent.   Here a shell, bursting under the floor, had made a cavity which had been hollowed into a grave.   Three priests of the Cathedral, several nuns, Ramesay with his officers, and a throng of townspeople were present at the rite.   After the service and the chant, the body was lowered into the grave by the light of torches; and then, says the chronicle, "the tears and sobs burst forth.   It seemed as if the last hope of the colony were buried with the remains of the General.  ” In truth, the funeral of Montcalm was the funeral of New France.  

It was no time for grief.   The demands of the hour were too exigent and stern.   When, on the morning after the battle, the people of Quebec saw the tents standing in the camp of Beauport, they thought the army still there to defend them.   Ramesay knew that the hope was vain.   On the evening before, Vaudreuil had sent two hasty notes to tell him of his flight.   "The position of the enemy," wrote the Governor, "becomes stronger every instant; and this, with other reasons, obliges me to retreat.  " "I have received all your letters.   As I set out this moment, I pray you not to write again.   You shall hear from me to-morrow.   I wish you good evening.  " With these notes came the following order: "M.   de Ramesay is not to wait till the enemy carries the town by assault.   As soon as provisions fail, he will raise the white flag.  " This order was accompanied by a memorandum of terms which Ramesay was to ask of the victors.  

"What a blow for me," says the unfortunate commandant, "to find myself abandoned so soon by the army, which alone could defend the town!" His garrison consisted of between one and two hundred troops of the line, some four or five hundred colony troops, a considerable number of sailors, and the local militia.   These last were in a state of despair.   The inhabitants who, during the siege, had sought refuge in the suburb of St.   Roch, had returned after the battle, and there were now twenty-six hundred women and children, with about a housand invalids and other non-combatants to be supported, though the provisions in the town, even at half rations, would hardly last a week.   Ramesay had not been informed that a good supply was left in the camps of Beauport; and when he heard at last that it was there, and sent out parties to get it, they found that the Indians and the famished country people had carried it off.  

"Despondency," he says again, "was complete; discouragement extreme and universal.   Murmurs and complaints against the army that had abandoned us rose to a general outcry.   I could not prevent the merchants, all of whom were officers of the town militia, from meeting at the house of M.   Daine, the mayor.   There they declared for capitulating, and presented me a petition to that effect, signed by M.   Daine and all the principal citizens.  "

Ramesay called a council of war.   One officer alone, Piedmont, captain of artillery, was for reducing the rations still more, and holding out to the last.   All the others gave their voices for capitulation.   Ramesay might have yielded without dishonor; but he still held out till an event fraught with new hope took place at Jacques-Cartier.  

This event was the arrival of Lévis.   On the afternoon of the battle Vaudreuil took one rational step; he sent a courier to Montreal to summon that able officer to his aid.   Lévis set out at once, reached Jacques-Cartier, and found his worst fears realized.   "The great number of fugitives that I began to meet at Three Rivers prepared me for the disorder in which I found the army.   I never in my life knew the like of it.   They left everything behind in the camp at Beauport; tents, baggage, and kettles.  "

He spoke his mind freely; loudly blamed the retreat, and urged Vaudreuil to march back with all speed to whence he came.   The Governor, stiff at ordinary times, but pliant at a crisis, welcomed the firmer mind that decided for him, consented that the troops should return, and wrote afterwards in his despatch to the Minister: "I was much charmed to find M.   de Lévis disposed to march with the army towards Quebec.  ”

Lévis, on his part, wrote: "The condition in which I found the army, bereft of everything, did not discourage me, because M.   de Vaudreuil told me that Quebec was not taken, and that he had left there a sufficiently numerous garrison; I therefore resolved, in order to repair the fault that had been committed, to engage M.   de Vaudreuil to march the army back to the relief of the place.   I represented to him that this was the only way to prevent the complete defection of the Canadians and Indians; that our knowledge of the country would enable us to approach very near the enemy, whom we knew to be intrenching themselves on the heights of Quebec and constructing batteries to breach the walls; that if we found their army ill posted, we could attack them, or, at any rate, could prolong the siege by throwing men and supplies into the town; and that if we could not save it, we could evacuate and burn it, so that the enemy could not possibly winter there.  ”

Lévis quickly made his presence felt in the military chaos about him.   Bigot bestirred himself with his usual vigor to collect provisions; and before the next morning all was ready.   Bougainville had taken no part in the retreat, but sturdily held his ground at Cap-Rouge while the fugitive mob swept by him.   A hundred of the mounted Canadians who formed part of his command were now sent to Quebec, each with a bag of biscuit across his saddle.   They were to circle round to the Beauport side, where there was no enemy, and whence they could cross the St.   Charles in canoes to the town.   Bougainville followed close with a larger supply.   Vaudreuil sent Ramesay a message, revoking his order to surrender if threatened with assault, telling him to hold out to the last, and assuring him that the whole army was coming to his relief.   Lévis hastened to be gone; but first he found time to write a few lines to Bourlamaque.   "We have had a very great loss, for we have lost M.   de Montcalm.   I regret him as my general and my friend.   I found our army here.   It is now on the march to retrieve our fortunes.   I can trust you to hold your position; as I have not M.   de Montcalm's talents, I look to you to second me and advise me.   Put a good face on it.   Hide this business as long as you can.   I am mounting my horse this moment.   Write me all the news.  ”

The army marched that morning, the eighteenth.   In the evening it reached St.   Augustin; and here it was stopped by the chilling news that Quebec had surrendered.   Utter confusion had reigned in the disheartened garrison.   Men deserted hourly, some to the country, and some to the English camp; while Townshend pushed his trenches nearer and nearer to the walls, in spite of the cannonade with which Piedmont and his artillerymen tried to check them.   On the evening of the seventeenth, the English ships of war moved towards the Lower Town, and a column of troops was seen approaching over the meadows of the St.   Charles, as if to storm the Palace Gate.   The drums beat the alarm; but the militia refused to fight.   Their officers came to Ramesay in a body; declared that they had no mind to sustain an assault; that they knew he had orders against it; that they would carry their guns back to the arsenal; that they were no longer soldiers, but citizens; that if the army had not abandoned them they would fight with as much spirit as ever; but that they would not get themselves killed to no purpose.   The town-major, Joannès, in a rage, beat two of them with the flat of his sword.  

The white flag was raised; Joannès pulled it down, thinking, or pretending to think, that it was raised without authority; but Ramesay presently ordered him to go to the English camp and get what terms he could.   He went, through driving rain, to the quarters of Townshend, and, in hope of the promised succor, spun out the negotiation to the utmost, pretended that he had no power to yield certain points demanded, and was at last sent back to confer with Ramesay, under a promise from the English commander that, if Quebec were not given up before eleven o'clock, he would take it by storm.   On this Ramesay signed the articles, and Joannes carried them back within the time prescribed.   Scarcely had he left the town, when the Canadian horsemen appeared with their sacks of biscuit and a renewed assurance that help was near; but it was too late.   Ramesay had surrendered, and would not break his word.   He dreaded an assault, which he knew he could not withstand, and he but half believed in the promised succor.   "How could I trust it"? he asks.   "The army had not dared to face the enemy before he had fortified himself; and could I hope that it would come to attack him in an intrenched camp, defended by a formidable artillery?" Whatever may be thought of his conduct, it was to Vaudreuil, and not to him, that the loss of Quebec was due.  

The conditions granted were favorable, for Townshend knew the danger of his position, and was glad to have Quebec on any terms.   The troops and sailors of the garrison were to march out of the place with the honors of war, and to be carried to France.   The inhabitants were to have protection in person and property, and free exercise of religion.  

In the afternoon a company of artillerymen with a field-piece entered the town, and marched to the place of arms, followed by a body of infantry.   Detachments took post at all the gates.   The British flag was raised on the heights near the top of Mountain Street, and the capital of New France passed into the hands of its hereditary foes.   The question remained, should they keep, or destroy it? It was resolved to keep it at every risk.   The marines, the grenadiers from Louisbourg, and some of the rangers were to reimbark in the fleet; while the ten battalions, with the artillery and one company of rangers, were to remain behind, bide the Canadian winter, and defend the ruins of Quebec against the efforts of Lévis.   Monckton, the oldest brigadier, was disabled by his wound, and could not stay; while Townshend returned home, to parade his laurels and claim more than his share of the honors of victory.   The command, therefore, rested with Murray.  

The troops were not idle.   Levelling their own field-works, repairing the defences of the town, storing provisions sent ashore from the fleet, making fascines, and cutting firewood, busied them through the autumn days bright with sunshine, or dark and chill with premonition of the bitter months to come.   Admiral Saunders put off his departure longer than he had once thought possible; and it was past the middle of October when he fired a parting salute, and sailed down the river with his fleet.   In it was the ship "Royal William," carrying the embalmed remains of Wolfe.  

Montcalm lay in his soldier's grave before the humble altar of the Ursulines, never more to see the home for which he yearned, the wife, mother, and children whom he loved, the olive-trees and chestnut-groves of his beloved Candiac.   He slept in peace among triumphant enemies, who respected his memory, though they hardly knew his resting-place.   It was left for a fellow-countryman a colleague and a brother-in-arms to belittle his achievements and blacken his name.   The jealous spite of Vaudreuil pursued him even in death.   Leaving Lévis to command at Jacques-Cartier, whither the army had again withdrawn, the Governor retired to Montreal, whence he wrote a series of despatches to justify himself at the expense of others, and above all of the slain general, against whom his accusations were never so bitter as now, when the lips were cold that could have answered them.   First, he threw on Ramesay all the blame of the surrender of Quebec.   Then he addressed himself to his chief task, the defamation of his unconscious rival.   "The letter that you wrote in cipher, on the tenth of February, to Monsieur the Marquis of Montcalm and me, in common, flattered his self-love to such a degree that, far from seeking conciliation, he did nothing but try to persuade the public that his authority surpassed mine.   From the moment of Monsieur de Montcalm's arrival in this colony, down to that of his death, he did not cease to sacrifice everything to his boundless ambition.   He sowed dissension among the troops, tolerated the most indecent talk against the government, attached to himself the most disreputable persons, used means to corrupt the most virtuous, and, when he could not succeed, became their cruel enemy.   He wanted to be Governor-General.   He privately flattered with favors and promises of patronage every officer of the colony troops who adopted his ideas.   He spared no pains to gain over the people of whatever calling, and persuade them of his attachment; while, either by himself or by means of the troops of the line, he made them bear the most frightful yoke (le joug le plus affreux).   He defamed honest people, encouraged insubordination, and closed his eyes to the rapine of his soldiers.  "

This letter was written to Vaudreuil's official superior and confidant, the Minister of the Marine and Colonies.   In another letter, written about the same time to the Minister of War, who held similar relations to his rival, he declares that he "greatly regretted Monsieur de Montcalm.  ”

His charges are strange ones from a man who was by turns the patron, advocate, and tool of the official villains who cheated the King and plundered the people.   Bigot, Cadet, and the rest of the harpies that preyed on Canada looked to Vaudreuil for support, and found it.   It was but three or four weeks since he had written to the Court in high eulogy of Bigot and effusive praise of Cadet, coupled with the request that a patent of nobility should be given to that notorious public thief.   The corruptions which disgraced his government were rife, not only in the civil administration, but also among the officers of the colony troops, over whom he had complete control.   They did not, as has been seen already, extend to the officers of the line, who were outside the circle of peculation.   It was these who were the habitual associates of Montcalm; and when Vaudreuil charges him with "attaching to himself the most disreputable persons, and using means to corrupt the most virtuous," the true interpretation of his words is that the former were disreputable because they disliked him (the Governor), and the latter virtuous because they were his partisans.  

Vaudreuil continues thus: "I am in despair, Monseigneur, to be under the necessity of painting you such a portrait after death of Monsieur the Marquis of Montcalm.   Though it contains the exact truth, I would have deferred it if his personal hatred to me were alone to be considered; but I feel too deeply the loss of the colony to hide from you the cause of it.   I can assure you that if I had been the sole master, Quebec would still belong to the King, and that nothing is so disadvantageous in a colony as a division of authority and the mingling of troops of the line with marine [colony] troops.   Thoroughly knowing Monsieur de Montcalm, I did not doubt in the least that unless I condescended to all his wishes, he would succeed in ruining Canada and wrecking all my plans.  "

He then charges the dead man with losing the battle of Quebec by attacking before he, the Governor, arrived to take command; and this, he says, was due to Montcalm's absolute determination to exercise independent authority, without caring whether the colony was saved or lost.   "I cannot hide from you, Monseigneur, that if he had had his way in past years Oswego and Fort George [William Henry] would never have been attacked or taken; and he owed the success at Ticonderoga to the orders I had given him.  ” Montcalm, on the other hand, declared at the time that Vaudreuil had ordered him not to risk a battle, and that it was only through his disobedience that Ticonderoga was saved.  

Ten days later Vaudreuil wrote again: "I have already had the honor, by my letter written in cipher on the thirteenth of last month, to give you a sketch of the character of Monsieur the Marquis of Montcalm; but I have just been informed of a stroke so black that I think, Monseigneur, that I should fail in my duty to you if I did not tell you of it.  " He goes on to say that, a little before his death, and "no doubt in fear of the fate that befell him," Montcalm placed in the hands of Father Roubaud, missionary at St.   Francis, two packets of papers containing remarks on the administration of the colony, and especially on the manner in which the military posts were furnished with supplies; that these observations were accompanied by certificates; and that they involved charges against him, the Governor, of complicity inpeculation.   Roubaud, he continues, was to send these papersto France; "but now, Monseigneur, that you are informed about them, I feel no anxiety, and I am sure that the King will receive no impression from them without acquainting himself with their truth or falsity.  "

Vaudreuil's anxiety was natural; and so was the action of Montcalm in making known to the Court the outrageous abuses that threatened the King's service with ruin.   His doing so was necessary both for his own justification and for the public good; and afterwards, when Vaudreuil and others were brought to trial at Paris, and when one of the counselfor the defence charged the late general with slanderously accusing his clients, the Court ordered the charge to be struck from the record.   The papers the existence of which, if they did exist, so terrified Vaudreuil, have thus far escaped research.   But the correspondence of the two rivals with the chiefs of the departments on which they severally depended is in large measure preserved; and while that of the Governor is filled with defamation of Montcalm and praise of himself, that of the General is neither egotistic nor abusive.   The faults of Montcalm have sufficiently appeared.   They were those of an impetuous, excitable, and impatient nature, by no means free from either ambition or vanity; but they were never inconsistent with the character of a man of honor.   His impulsive utterances, reported by retainers and sycophants, kept Vaudreuil in a state of chronic rage; and, void as he was of all magnanimity, gnawed with undying jealousy, and mortally in dread of being compromised by the knaveries to which he had lent his countenance, he could not contain himself within the bounds of decency or sense.   In another letter he had the baseness to say that Montcalm met his death in trying to escape from the English.  

Among the Governor's charges are some which cannot be flatly denied.   When he accuses his rival of haste and precipitation in attacking the English army, he touches a fair subject of criticism; but, as a whole, he is as false in his detraction of Montcalm as in his praises of Bigot and Cadet.  

The letter which Wolfe sent to Pitt a few days before his death, written in what may be called a spirit of resolute despair, and representing success as almost hopeless, filled England with a dejection that found utterance in loud grumblings against the Ministry.   Horace Walpole wrote the bad news to his friend Mann, ambassador at Florence: "Two days ago came letters from Wolfe, despairing as much as heroes can despair.   Quebec is well victualled, Amherst is not arrived, and fifteen thousand men are encamped to defend it.   We have lost many men by the enemy, and some by our friends; that is, we now call our nine thousand only seven thousand.   How this little army will get away from a much larger, and in this season, in that country, I don't guess: yes, I do.  "

Hardly were these lines written when tidings came that Montcalm was defeated, Quebec taken, and Wolfe killed.   A flood of mixed emotions swept over England.   Even Walpole grew half serious as he sent a packet of newspapers to his friend the ambassador.   "You may now give yourself what airs you please.   An ambassador is the only man in the world whom bullying becomes.   All precedents are on your side: Persians, Greeks, Romans, always insulted their neighbors when they took Quebec.   Think how pert the French would have been on such an occasion! What a scene! An army in the night dragging itself up a precipice by stumps of trees to assault a town and attack an enemy strongly intrenched and double in numbers! The King is overwhelmed with addresses on our victories; he will have enough to paper his palace.  ”

When, in soberer mood, he wrote the annals of his time, and turned, not for the better, from the epistolary style to the historical, he thus described the impression made on the English public by the touching and inspiring story of Wolfe's heroism and death: "The incidents of dramatic fiction could not be conducted with more address to lead an audience from despondency to sudden exaltation than accident prepared to excite the passions of a whole people.   They despaired, they triumphed, and they wept; for Wolfe had fallen in the hour of victory.   Joy, curiosity, astonishment, was painted on every countenance.   The more they inquired, the more their admiration rose.   Not an incident but was heroic and affecting.  ” England blazed with bonfires.   In one spot alone all was dark and silent; for here a widowed mother mourned for a loving and devoted son, and the people forbore to profane her grief with the clamor of their rejoicings.  

New England had still more cause of joy than Old, and she filled the land with jubilation.   The pulpits resounded with sermons of thanksgiving, some of which were worthy of the occasion that called them forth.   Among the rest, Jonathan Mayhew, a young but justly celebrated minister of Boston, pictured with enthusiasm the future greatness of the British-American colonies, with the continent thrown open before them, and foretold that, "with the continued blessing of Heaven, they will become, in another century or two, a mighty empire;" adding in cautious parenthesis, "I do not mean an independent one.  " He read Wolfe's victory aright, and divined its far-reaching consequence.  

NOTE: The authorities of this chapter are, in the main, the same as those of the preceding, with some additions, the principal of which is the Mémoire du Sieur de Ramezay, Chevalier de l'Ordre royal et militaire de St.  -Louis, cy-devant Lieutenant pour le Roy commandant à Québec, au sujet de la Reddition de cette Ville, qui a été suivie de la Capitulation du 18 7bre 1759 (Archives de la Marine).   To this document are appended a number of important "pièces justificatives.  " These, with the Mémoire, have been printed by the Quebec Historical Society.   The letters of Vaudreuil cited in this chapter are chiefly from the Archives Nationales.  

If Montcalm, as Vaudreuil says, really intrusted papers to the care of the Jesuit missionary Roubaud, he was not fortunate in his choice of a depositary.   After the war Roubaud renounced his Order, adjured his faith, and went over to the English.   He gave various and contradictory accounts of the documents said to be in his hands.   On one occasion he declared that Montcalm's effects left with him at his mission of St.   Francis had been burned to prevent their falling into the hands of the enemy (see Verreau, Report on Canadian Archives, 1874, p.   183).   Again, he says that he had placed in the hands of the King of England certain letters of Montcalm (see Mr.  Roubaud's Deplorable Case, humbly submitted to Lord North's Consideration, in Historical Magazine, Second Series, VIII.   283).   Yet again, he speaks of these same letters as "pretended" (Verreau, as above).   He complains that some of them had been published, without his consent, "by a Lord belonging to His Majesty's household" (Mr.  Roubaud's Deplorable Case).  

The allusion here is evidently to a pamphlet printed in London, in 1777, in French and English, and entitled, Lettres de Monsieur le Marquis de Montcalm, Gouverneur-Général en Canada, à Messieurs de Berryer et de la Molé, écrites dans les Années 1757, 1758, et 1759, avec une Version Angloise.   They profess to be observations by Montcalm on the English colonies, their political character, their trade, and their tendency to independence.   They bear the strongest marks of being fabricated to suit the times, the colonies being then in revolt.   The principal letter is one addressed to Molé, and bearing date Quebec, Aug.   24, 1759.   It foretells the loss of her colonies as a consequence to England of her probable conquest of Canada.   I laid before the Massachusetts Historical Society my reasons for believing this letter, like the rest, an imposture (see the Proceedings of that Society for 1869-1870, pp.   112-128).   To these reasons it may be added that at the date assigned to the letter all correspondence was stopped between Canada and France.   From the arrival of the English fleet, at the end of spring, till its departure, late in autumn, communication was completely cut off.   It was not till towards the end of November, when the river was clear of English ships, that the naval commander Kanon ran by the batteries of Quebec and carried to France the first news from Canada.   Some of the letters thus sent were dated a month before, and had waited in Canada till Kanon's departure.  

Abbé Verreau a high authority on questions of Canadian history tells me a comparison of the handwriting has convinced him that these pretended letters of Montcalm are the work of Roubaud.  

On the burial of Montcalm, see Appendix J.  

Chapter 29
1759, 1760

Sainte-Foy

The fleet was gone; the great river was left a solitude; and the chill days of a fitful November passed over Quebec in alternations of rain and frost, sunshine and snow.   The troops, driven by cold from their encampment on the Plains, were all gathered within the walls.   Their own artillery had so battered the place that it was not easy to find shelter.   The Lower Town was a wilderness of scorched and crumbling walls.   As you ascend Mountain Street, the Bishop's Palace, on the right, was a skeleton of tottering masonry, and the buildings on the left were a mass of ruin, where ragged boys were playing at seesaw among the fallen planks and timbers.   Even in the Upper Town few of the churches and public buildings had escaped.   The Cathedral was burned to a shell.   The solid front of the College of the Jesuits was pockmarked by numberless cannon-balls, and the adjacent church of the Order was wofully shattered.   The church of the Recollects suffered still more.   The bombshells that fell through the roof had broken into the pavement, and as they burst had thrown up the bones and skulls of the dead from the graves beneath.   Even the more distant Hôtel-Dieu was pierced by fifteen projectiles, some of which had exploded in the halls and chambers.  

The Commissary-General, Berniers, thus describes to Bourlamaque the state of the town: "Quebec is nothing but a shapeless mass of ruins.   Confusion, disorder, pillage reign even among the inhabitants, for the English make examples of severity every day.   Everybody rushes hither and thither, without knowing why.   Each searches for his possessions, and, not finding his own, seizes those of other people.   English and French, all is chaos alike.   The inhabitants, famished and destitute, escape to the country.   Never was there seen such a sight.  ”

Quebec swarmed with troops.   There were guardhouses at twenty different points; sentinels paced the ramparts, squads of men went the rounds, soldiers off duty strolled the streets, some in mitre caps and some black three-cornered hats; while a ceaseless rolling of drums and a rigid observance of military forms betrayed the sense of a still imminent danger.   While some of the inhabitants left town, others remained, having no refuge elsewhere.   They were civil to the victors, but severe towards their late ruler.   "The citizens," says Knox, "particularly the females, reproach M.   Vaudreuil upon every occasion, and give full scope to bitter invectives.  " He praises the agreeable manners and cheerful spirit of the Canadian ladies, concerning whom another officer also writes: "It is very surprising with what ease the gayety of their tempers enables them to bear misfortunes which to us would be insupportable.   Families whom the calamities of war have reduced from the height of luxury to the want of common necessaries laugh, dance, and sing, comforting themselves with this reflection Fortune de guerre.   Their young ladies take the utmost pains to teach our officers French; with what view I know not, if it is not that they may hear themselves praised, flattered, and courted without loss of time.  ”

Knox was quartered in a small stable, with a hayloft above and a rack and manger at one end: a lodging better than fell to the lot of many of his brother officers; and, by means of a stove and some help from a carpenter, he says that he made himself tolerably comfortable.   The change, however, was an agreeable one when he was ordered for a week to the General Hospital, a mile out of the town, where he was to command the guard stationed to protect the inmates and watch the enemy.   Here were gathered the sick and wounded of both armies, nursed with equal care by the nuns, of whom Knox speaks with gratitude and respect.   "When our poor fellows were ill and ordered to be removed from their odious regimental hospital to this general receptacle, they were indeed rendered inexpressibly happy.   Each patient has his bed, with curtains, allotted to him, and a nurse to attend him.   Every sick or wounded officer has an apartment to himself, and is attended by one of these religious sisters, who in general are young, handsome, courteous, rigidly reserved, and very respectful.   Their office of nursing the sick furnishes them with opportunities of taking great latitudes if they are so disposed; but I never heard any of them charged with the least levity.  " The nuns, on their part, were well pleased with the conduct of their new masters, whom one of them describes as the "most moderate of all conquerors.  "

"I lived here," Knox continues, "at the French King's table, with an agreeable, polite society of officers, directors, and commissaries.   Some of the gentlemen were married, and their ladies honored us with their company.   They were generally cheerful, except when we discoursed on the late revolution and the affairs of the campaign; then they seemingly gave way to grief, uttered by profound sighs, followed by an O mon Dieu!" He walked in the garden with the French officers, played at cards with them, and passed the time so pleasantly that his short stay at the hospital seemed an oasis in his hard life of camp and garrison.  

Mère de Sainte-Claude, the Superior, a sister of Ramesay, late commandant of Quebec, one morning sent him a note of invitation to what she called an English breakfast; and though the repast answered to nothing within his experience, he says that he "fared exceedingly well, and passed near two hours most agreeably in the society of this ancient lady and her virgin sisters.  "

The excellent nuns of the General Hospital are to-day what their predecessors were, and the scene of their useful labors still answers at many points to that described by the careful pen of their military guest.   Throughout the war they and the nuns of the Hôtel-Dieu had been above praise in their assiduous devotion to the sick and wounded.  

Brigadier Murray, now in command of Quebec, was a gallant soldier, upright, humane, generous, eager for distinction, and more daring than prudent.   He befriended the Canadians, issued strict orders against harming them in person or property, hanged a soldier who had robbed a citizen of Quebec, and severely punished others for slighter offences of the same sort.   In general the soldiers themselves showed kindness towards the conquered people; during harvest they were seen helping them to reap their fields, without compensation, and sharing with them their tobacco and rations.   The inhabitants were disarmed, and required to take the oath of allegiance.   Murray reported in the spring that the whole country, from Cap-Rouge downward, was in subjection to the British Crown.  

Late in October it was rumored that some of the French ships in the river above Quebec were preparing to run by the batteries.   This was the squadron which had arrived in the spring with supplies, and had lain all summer at Batiscan, in the Richelieu, and at other points beyond reach of the English.   After nearly a month of expectancy, they at length appeared, anchored off Sillery on the twenty-first of November, and tried to pass the town on the dark night of the twenty-fourth.   Seven or eight of them succeeded; four others ran aground and were set on fire by their crews, excepting one which was stranded on the south shore and abandoned.   Captain Miller, with a lieutenant and above forty men, boarded her; when, apparently through their own carelessness, she blew up.   Most of the party were killed by the explosion, and the rest, including the two officers, were left in a horrible condition between life and death.   Thus they remained till a Canadian, venturing on board in search of plunder, found them, called his neighbors to his aid, carried them to his own house, and after applying, with the utmost kindness, what simple remedies he knew, went over to Quebec and told of the disaster.   Fortunately for themselves, the sufferers soon died.  

December came, and brought the Canadian winter, with its fierce light and cold, glaring snowfields, and piercing blasts that scorch the cheek like a firebrand.   The men were frost-bitten as they dug away the dry, powdery drifts that the wind had piled against the rampart.   The sentries were relieved every hour; yet feet and fingers were continually frozen.   The clothing of the troops was ill-suited to the climate, and, though stoves had been placed in the guard and barrack rooms, the supply of fuel constantly fell short.   The cutting and dragging of wood was the chief task of the garrison for many weeks.   Parties of axemen, strongly guarded, were always at work in the forest of Ste.  -Foy, four or five miles from Quebec, and the logs were brought to town on sledges dragged by the soldiers.   Eight of them were harnessed in pairs to each sledge; and as there was always danger from Indians and bushrangers, every man carried his musket slung at his back.   The labor was prodigious; for frequent snowstorms made it necessary again and again to beat a fresh track through the drifts.   The men bore their hardships with admirable good humor; and once a party of them on their return, dragging their load through the street, met a Canadian, also with a load of wood, which was drawn by a team of dogs harnessed much like themselves.   They accosted them as yoke-fellows, comrades, and brothers; asked them what allowance of pork and rum they got; and invited them and their owner to mess at the regimental barracks.  

The appearance of the troops on duty within the town, as described by Knox, was scarcely less eccentric.   "Our guards on the grand parade make a most grotesque appearance in their different dresses; and our inventions to guard us against the extreme rigor of this climate are various beyond imagination.   The uniformity as well as nicety of the clean, methodical soldier is buried in the rough, fur-wrought garb of the frozen Laplander; and we rather resemble a masquerade than a body of regular troops, insomuch that I have frequently been accosted by my acquaintances, whom, though their voices were familiar to me, I could not discover, or conceive who they were.   Besides, every man seems to be in a continual hurry; for instead of walking soberly through the streets, we are obliged to observe a running or trotting pace.  "

Early in January there was a storm of sleet, followed by severe frost, which glazed the streets with ice.   Knox, being ordered to mount guard in the Lower Town, found the descent of Mountain Street so slippery that it was impossible to walk down with safety, especially as the muskets of the men were loaded; and the whole party, seating themselves on the ground, slid one after another to the foot of the hill.   The Highlanders, in spite of their natural hardihood, suffered more from the cold than the other troops, as their national costume was but a sorry defence against the Canadian winter.   A detachment of these breechless warriors being on guard at the General Hospital, the nuns spent their scanty leisure in knitting for them long woollen hose, which they gratefully accepted, though at a loss to know whether modesty or charity inspired the gift.  

From the time when the English took possession of Quebec, reports had come in through deserters that Lévis meant to attack and recover it.   Early in November there was a rumor that he was about to march upon it with fifteen thousand men.   In December word came that he was on his way, resolved to storm it on or about the twenty-second, and dine within the walls, under the French flag, on Christmas Day.   He failed to appear; but in January a deserter said that he had prepared scaling-ladders, and was training his men to use them by assaults on mock ramparts of snow.   There was more tangible evidence that the enemy was astir.   Murray had established two fortified outposts, one at Ste.  -Foy, and the other farther on, at Old Lorette.   War-parties hovered round both, and kept the occupants in alarm.   A large body of French grenadiers appearedat the latter place in February, and drove off a herd of cattle; when a detachment of rangers, much inferior in number, set upon them, put them to flight, and recovered the plunder.   At the same time a party of regulars, Canadians, andIndians took up a strong position near the church at Point Levi, and sent a message to the English officers that a large company of expert hairdressers were ready to wait upon them whenever they required their services.   The allusion was of course to the scalp-lifting practices of the Indians and bushrangers.  

The river being now hard frozen, Murray sent over a detachment of light infantry under Major Dalling.   A sharp fight ensued on the snow, around the church, and in the neighboringforest, where the English soldiers, taught to use snow-shoes by the rangers, routed the enemy, and killed or captured a considerable number.   A third post was then established at the church and the priest's house adjacent.   Some days after, the French came back in large numbers, fortified themselves with felled trees, and then attacked the English position.   The firing being heard at Quebec, the light infantry went over to the scene of action, and Murray himself followed on the ice, with the Highlanders and other troops.   Before he came up, the French drew off and retreated to their breastwork, where they were attacked and put to flight, the nimble Highlanders capturing a few, while the greater part made their escape.  

As it became known that the French held a strong post at Le Calvaire, near St.   Augustin, two days' march from Quebec, Captain Donald MacDonald was sent with five hundred men to attack it.   He found the enemy behind a breastwork of logs protected by an abattis.   The light infantry advanced and poured in a brisk fire; on which the French threw down their arms and fled.   About eighty of them were captured; but their commander, Herbin, escaped, leaving to the victors his watch, hat and feather, wine, liquor-case, and mistress.   The English had six men wounded and nearly a hundred frost-bitten.  

Captain Hazen and his rangers soon after had a notable skirmish.   They were posted in a house not far from the station at Lorette.   A scout came in with news that a large party of the enemy was coming to attack them; on which Hazen left a sergeant and fourteen men in the house, and set out for Lorette with the rest to ask a reinforcement.   On the way he met the French, who tried to surround him; and he told his men to fall back to the house.   They remonstrated, saying that they "felt spry," and wanted to show the regulars that provincials could fight as well as red-coats.   Thereupon they charged the enemy, gave them a close volley of buckshot and bullets, and put them to flight; but scarcely had they reloaded their guns when they were fired upon from behind.   Another body of assailants had got into their rear, in order to cut them off.   Theyfaced about, attacked them, and drove them back like the first.   The two French parties then joined forces, left Hazen topursue his march, and attacked the fourteen rangers in the house, who met them with a brisk fire.   Hazen and his men heard the noise; and, hastening back, fell upon the rear of the French, while those in the house sallied and attacked them infront.   They were again routed; and the rangers chased them two miles, killing six of them and capturing seven.   Knox, in whose eyes provincials usually find no favor, launches this time into warm commendation of "our simply honest New England men.  "

Fresh reports came in from time to time that the French were gathering all their strength to recover Quebec; and late in February these stories took a definite shape.   A deserter from Montreal brought Murray a letter from an officer of rangers, who was a prisoner at that place, warning him that eleven thousand men were on the point of marching to attack him.   Three other deserters soon after confirmed the news, but added that the scheme had met with a check; for as it was intended to carry the town by storm, a grand rehearsal had taken place, with the help of scaling-ladders planted against the wall of a church; whereupon the Canadians rushed with such zeal to the assault that numerous broken legs, arms, and heads ensued, along with ruptures, sprains, bruises, and dislocations; insomuch, said the story, that they became disgusted with the attempt.   All remained quiet till after the middle of April, when the garrison was startled by repeated assurances that at the first breaking-up of the ice all Canada would be upon them.   Murray accordingly ordered the French inhabitants to leave the town within three days.  

In some respects the temper of the troops was excellent.   In the petty warfare of the past winter they had generally been successful, proving themselves a match for the bushrangers and Indians on their own ground; so that, as Sergeant Johnson remarks, in his odd way, "Very often a small number of our men would put to flight a considerable party of those Cannibals.  " They began to think themselves invincible; yet they had the deepest cause for anxiety.   The effective strength of the garrison was reduced to less than half, and of those that remained fit for duty, hardly a man was entirely free from scurvy.   The rank and file had no fresh provisions; and, in spite of every precaution, this malignant disease, aided by fever and dysentery, made no less havoc among them than among the crews of Jacques Cartier at this same place two centuries before.   Of about seven thousand men left at Quebec in the autumn, scarcely more than three thousand were fit for duty on the twenty-fourth of April.   About seven hundred had found temporary burial in the snowdrifts, as the frozen ground was impenetrable as a rock.  

Meanwhile Vaudreuil was still at Montreal, where he says that he "arrived just in time to take the most judicious measures and prevent General Amherst from penetrating into thecolony.  ” During the winter some of the French regulars were kept in garrison at the outposts, and the rest quartered on the inhabitants; while the Canadians were dismissed to theirhomes, subject to be mustered again at the call of the Governor.   Both he and Lévis were full of the hope of retaking Quebec.   He had spies and agents among Murray's soldiers; and though the citizens had sworn allegiance to King George, some of them were exceedingly useful to his enemies.   Vaudreuil had constant information of the state of the garrison.   He knew that the scurvy was his active and powerful ally, and that the hospitals and houses of Quebec were crowded withthe sick.   At the end of March he was informed that more than half the British were on the sick-list; and it was presentlyrumored that Murray had only two thousand men able to bear arms.   With every allowance for exaggeration in these reports, it was plain that the French could attack their invaders in overwhelming force.  

The difficulty was to find means of transportation.   The depth of the snow and the want of draught animals made it necessary to wait till the river should become navigable; but preparation was begun at once.   Lévis was the soul of the enterprise.   Provisions were gathered from far and near; cannon, mortars, and munitions of war were brought from the frontier posts, and butcher-knives were fitted to the muzzles of guns to servethe Canadians in place of bayonets.   All the workmen aboutMontreal were busied in making tools and gun-carriages.   Stores were impressed from the merchants; and certain articles, which could not otherwise be had, were smuggled, with extraordinary address, out of Quebec itself.   Early in spring the militia received orders to muster for the march.   There were doubts and discontent; but, says a contemporary, "sensible people dared not speak, for if they did they were set down as English.  " Some there were who in secret called the scheme "Lévis' folly;" yet it was perfectly rational, well conceived, and conducted with vigor and skill.   Two frigates, two sloops-of-war, and a number of smaller craft still remained in the river, under command of Vauquelin, the brave officer who haddistinguished himself at the siege of Louisbourg.   The storesand cannon were placed on board these vessels, the army embarkedin a fleet of bateaux, and on the twentieth of April thewhole set out together for the scene of action.   They comprised eight battalions of troops of the line and two of colony troops; with the colonial artillery, three thousand Canadians, and four hundred Indians.   When they left Montreal, their effective strength, besides Indians, is said by Lévis to have been six thousand nine hundred and ten, a number which was increased as he advanced by the garrisons of Jacques-Cartier, Déschambault, and Pointe-aux-Trembles, as well as by the Canadians on both side of the St.   Lawrence below Three Rivers; forVaudreuil had ordered the militia captains to join his standard, with all their followers, armed and equipped, on pain of death.   These accessions appear to have raised his force to between eight and nine thousand.  

The ice still clung to the river banks, the weather was bad, and the navigation difficult; but on the twenty-sixth the army landed at St.   Augustin, crossed the river of Cap-Rouge on bridges of their own making, and moved upon the English outpost at Old Lorette.   The English abandoned it and fell backto Ste.  -Foy.   Lévis followed.   Night came on, with a gale from the southeast, a driving rain, and violent thunder, unusual at that season.   The road, a bad and broken one, led through themarsh called La Suède.   Causeways and bridges broke down under the weight of the marching columns and plunged the men into water, mud, and half-thawed ice.   "It was a frightful night," says Lévis; "so dark that but for the flashes of lightning we should have been forced to stop.  " The break of day found the vanguard at the edge of the woods bordering the farther side of the marsh.   The storm had abated; and they saw before them, a few hundred yards distant, through the misty air, a ridge of rising ground on which stood the parish church of Ste.  -Foy, with a row of Canadian houses stretching far to right and left.   This ridge was the declivity of the plateau of Quebec; the same which as it approaches the town, some five or six miles towards the left, takes the names of Côte d'Abraham and Côte Ste.  -Geneviève.   The church and the houses were occupied by British troops, who, as the French debouchedfrom the woods, opened on them with cannon, and compelledthem to fall back.   Though the ridge at this point is not steep, the position was a strong one; but had Lévis known how fewwere as yet there to oppose him, he might have carried it byan assault in front.   As it was, he resolved to wait till night, and then flank the enemy by a march to the right along the border of the wood.  

It was the morning of Sunday, the twenty-seventh.   Till late in the night before, Murray and the garrison of Quebec were unaware of the immediate danger; and they learned it at last through a singular stroke of fortune.   Some time after midnight the watch on board the frigate "Racehorse," which hadwintered in the dock at the Lower Town, heard a feeble cryof distress from the midst of the darkness that covered the St.   Lawrence.   Captain Macartney was at once informed of it; and, through an impulse of humanity, he ordered a boat to put outamid the drifting ice that was sweeping up the river with thetide.   Guided by the faint cries, the sailors found a man lying on a large cake of ice, drenched, and half dead with cold; and, taking him with difficulty into their boat, they carried him to the ship.   It was long before he was able to speak intelligibly; but at last, being revived by cordials and other remedies, he found strength to tell his benefactors that he was a sergeant of artillery in the army that had come to retake Quebec; that in trying to land a little above Cap-Rouge, his boat had been overset, his companions drowned, and he himself saved by climbing upon the cake of ice where they had discovered him; that he had been borne by the ebb tide down to the Island of Orleans, and then brought up to Quebec by the flow; and, finally, that Lévis was marching on the town with twelve thousand men at his back.  

He was placed in a hammock and carried up Mountain Street to the quarters of the General, who was roused from sleep at three o'clock in the morning to hear his story.   The troops were ordered under arms; and soon after daybreak Murray marched out with ten pieces of cannon and more than half the garrison.   His principal object was to withdraw the advanced posts at Ste.  -Foy, Cap-Rouge, Sillery, and Anse du Foulon.   The storm had turned to a cold, drizzling rain, and the men, as they dragged their cannon through snow and mud, were soon drenched to the skin.   On reaching Ste.  -Foy, they opened a brisk fire from the heights upon the woods which now covered the whole army of Lévis; and being rejoined by the various outposts, returned to Quebec in the afternoon, after blowing up the church, which contained a store of munitions that they had no means of bringing off.   When they entered Quebec a gill of rum was served out to each man; several houses in the suburb of St.   Roch were torn down to supply them with firewood for drying their clothes; and they were left to take what rest they could against the morrow.   The French, meanwhile, took possession of the abandoned heights; and while some filled the houses, barns, and sheds of Ste.  -Foy and its neighborhood, others, chiefly Canadians, crossed the plateau to seek shelter in the village of Sillery.  

Three courses were open to Murray.   He could defend Quebec, fortify himself outside the walls on the Buttes-à-Neveu, or fight Lévis at all risks.   The walls of Quebec could not withstand a cannonade, and he had long intended to intrench his army on the Buttes, as a better position of defence; but the ground, frozen like a rock, had thus far made the plan impracticable.   Even now, though he surface was thawed, the soil beneath was still frost-bound, making the task of fortificationextremely difficult, if indeed the French would give him time for it.   Murray was young in years, and younger still in impulse.   He was ardent, fearless, ambitious, and emulous of the fame of Wolfe.   "The enemy," he soon after wrote to Pitt, "was greatly superior in number, it is true; but when I considered that our little army was in the habit of beating the enemy, and had a very fine train of field artillery; that shutting ourselves at once within the walls was putting all upon the single chance of holding out for a considerable time a wretched fortification, I resolved to give them battle; and, half an hour after six in the morning, we marched with all the force I could muster, namely, three thousand men.  ” Some of these had left the hospitals of their own accord in their eagerness to take part in the fray.  

The rain had ceased; but as the column emerged from St.   Louis Gate, the scene before them was a dismal one.   As yet there was no sign of spring.   Each leafless bush and tree was dark with clammy moisture; patches of bare earth lay oozy and black on the southern slopes: but elsewhere the ground was still covered with snow, in some places piled in drifts, and everywhere sodden with rain; while each hollow and depression was full of that half-liquid, lead-colored mixture of snow and water which new England schoolboys call "slush," for all drainage was stopped by the frozen subsoil.   The troops had with them two howitzers and twenty field-pieces, which had been captured when Quebec surrendered, and had formed a part of that very battery which Ramesay refused to Montcalm at the battle of the autumn before.   As there were no horses, the cannon were dragged by some of the soldiers, while others carried picks and spades; for as yet Murray seems not to have made up his mind whether to fortify or fight.   Thus they advanced nearly half a mile; till reaching the Buttes-à-Neveu, they formed in order of battle along their farther slopes, on thesame ground that Montcalm had occupied on the morning of his death.  

Murray went forward to reconnoitre.   Immediately before him was a rising ground, and, beyond it, a tract of forest called Sillery Wood, a mile or more distant.   Nearer, on the left, he could see two blockhouses built by the English in the last autumn, not far from the brink of the plateau above the Anse du Foulon where Wolfe climbed the heights.   On the right, at the opposite brink of the plateau, was a house and a fortified wind mill belonging to one Dumont.   The blockhouses, the mill, and the rising ground between them were occupied by the vanguard of Lévis' army; while, behind, he could descry the main body moving along the road from Ste.  -Foy, then turning, battalion after battalion, and rapidly marching across the plateau along the edge of Sillery Wood.   The two brigades of the leading column had already reached the blockhouses by the Anse du Foulon, and formed themselves as the right wing of the French line of battle; but those behind were not yet in position.  

Murray, kindling at the sight, thought that so favorable a moment was not to be lost, and ordered an advance.   His line consisted of eight battalions, numbering a little above two thousand.   In the intervals between them the cannon were dragged through slush and mud by five hundred men; and, at a little distance behind, the remaining two battalions followed as a reserve.   The right flank was covered by Dalling's light infantry; the left by Hazen's company of rangers and a hundred volunteers under Major MacDonald.   They all moved forward till they were on nearly the same ground where Wolfe's army had been drawn up.   Then the cannon unlimbered, andopened on the French with such effect that Lévis, who was on horseback in the middle of the field, sent orders to the corpsof his left to fall back to the cover of the woods.   The movement caused some disorder.   Murray mistook it for retreat, and commanded a farther advance.   The whole British line, extending itself towards the right, pushed eagerly forward: in doing which it lost the advantage of the favorable position it had occupied; and the battalions of the right soon found themselves on low grounds, wading in half-melted snow, which in some parts was knee deep.   Here the cannon could no longer be worked with effect.   Just in front, a small brook ran along the hollow, through soft mud and saturated snowdrifts, then gurgled down the slope on the right, to lose itself in the meadows of the St.   Charles.   A few rods before this brook stood the house and windmill of Dumont, occupied by five companies of French grenadiers.   The light infantry at once attacked them.   A furious struggle ensued, till at length the French gave way, and the victors dashed forward to follow up their advantage.   Their ardor cost them dear.   The corps on the French left, which had fallen back into the woods, now advanced again as the cannon ceased to play, rushing on without order but with the utmost impetuosity, led by a gallant old officer, Colonel Dalquier, of the battalion of Béarn.   A bullet in the body could not stop him.   The light infantry were overwhelmed; and such of them as were left alive were driven back in confusion upon the battalions behind them, along the front of which they remained dispersed for some minutes, preventing the troops from firing on the advancing French, whothus had time to reform their ranks.   At length the light infantrygot themselves out of the way and retired to the rear, where, having lost nearly all their officers, they remained during the rest of the fight.   Another struggle followed for the house and mill of Dumont, of which the French again got possession, to be again driven out; and it remained, as if by mutual consent, unoccupied for some time by either party.   For above an hour more the fight was hot and fierce.   "We drove them back as long as we had ammunition for our cannon," says Sergeant Johnson; but now it failed, and no more was to be had, because, in the eccentric phrase of the sergeant, the tumbrils were "bogged in deep pits of snow.  "

While this was passing on the English right, it fared still worse with them on the left.   The advance of the line was no less disastrous here than there.   It brought the troops close to the woods which circled round to this point from the French rear, and from which the Canadians, covered by the trees, now poured on them a deadly fire.   Here, as on the right, Lévis had ordered his troops to fall back for a time; but when the fire of the English cannon ceased, they advanced again, and their artillery, though consisting of only three pieces, played its part with good effect.   Hazen's rangers and MacDonald's volunteers attacked and took the two adjacent blockhouses, but could not hold them.   Hazen was wounded, MacDonald killed, and their party overpowered.   The British battalions held their ground till the French, whose superior numbers enabled them to extend themselves on both sides beyond the English line, made a furious attack on the left wing, in front and flank.   The reserves were ordered up, and the troops stood for a time in sullen desperation under the storm of bullets; but they were dropping fast in the blood-stained snow, and the order came at length to fall back.   They obeyed with curses: "Damn it, what is falling back but retreating?” The right wing, also outflanked, followed the example of the left.   Some of the corps tried to drag off their cannon; but being prevented by the deep mud and snow they spiked the pieces and abandoned them.   The French followed close, hoping to cut off the fugitives from the gates of Quebec; till Lévis, seeing that the retreat, though precipitate, was not entirely without order, thought best to stop the pursuit.  

The fight lasted about two hours, and did credit to both sides.   The Canadians not only showed their usual address and courage when under cover of woods, but they also fought well in the open field; and the conduct of the whole French force proved how completely they had recovered from the panic of the last autumn.   From the first they were greatly superior in number, and at the middle and end of the affair, when they had all reached the field, they were more than two against one.   The English, on the other hand, besides the opportunity of attacking before their enemies had completely formed, had a vastly superior artillery and a favorable position, both which advantages they lost after their second advance.  

Some curious anecdotes are told of the retreat.   Colonel Fraser, of the Highlanders, received a bullet which was no doubt half spent, and which, with excellent precision, hit the base of his queue, so deadening the shock that it gave him no other inconvenience than a stiff neck.   Captain Hazen, of the rangers, badly wounded, was making his way towards the gate, supported by his servant, when he saw at a great distance a French officer leading a file of men across a rising ground; whereupon he stopped and told the servant to give him his gun.   A volunteer named Thompson, who was near by and who tells the story, thought that he was out of his senses; but Hazen persisted, seated himself on the ground, took a long aim, fired, and brought down his man.   Thompson congratulated him.   "A chance shot may kill the devil," replied Hazen; and resigning himself again to the arms of his attendant, he reached the town, recovered from his wound, and lived to be a general of the Revolution.  

The English lost above a thousand, or more than a third of their whole number, killed, wounded, and missing.   They carried off some of their wounded, but left others behind; and the greater part of these were murdered, scalped, and mangled by the Indians, all of whom were converts from the mission villages.   English writers put the French loss at two thousand and upwards, which is no doubt a gross exaggeration.   Lévis declares that the number did not exceed six or eight hundred; but afterwards gives a list which makes it eight hundred and thirty-three.  

Murray had left three or four hundred men to guard Quebec when the rest marched out; and adding them to those who had returned scathless from the fight, he now had about twenty-four hundred rank and file fit for duty.   Yet even the troops that were rated as effective were in so bad a condition that the hyperbolical Sergeant Johnson calls them "half-starved, scorbutic skeletons.  " That worthy soldier, commonly a model of dutiful respect to those above him, this time so far forgets himself as to criticise his general for the "mad, enthusiastic zeal" by which he nearly lost the fruits of Wolfe's victory.   In fact, the fate of Quebec trembled in the balance.   "We were too few and weak to stand an assault," continues Johnson, "and we were almost in as deep a distress as we could be.  " At first there was some drunkenness and some plundering of private houses; but Murray stopped the one by staving the rum-barrels of the sutlers, and the other by hanging the chief offender.   Within three days order, subordination, hope, and almost confidence were completely restored.   Not a man was idle.   The troops left their barracks and lay in tents close to their respective alarm posts.   On the open space by St.   Louis Gate a crowd of convalescents were busy in filling sand-bags to strengthen the defences, while the sick and wounded in the hospitals made wadding for the cannon.   The ramparts were faced with fascines, of which a large stock had been provided in the autumn; chevaux-de-frise were planted in exposed places; an outwork was built to protect St.   Louis Gate; embrasures were cut along the whole length of the walls; and the French cannon captured when the town was taken were planted against their late owners.   Every man was tasked to the utmost of his strength; and the garrison, gaunt, worn, besmirched with mud, looked less like soldiers than like overworked laborers.  

The conduct of the officers troubled the spirit of Sergeant Johnson.   It shocked his sense of the fitness of things to see them sharing the hard work of the private men, and he thus gives utterance to his feelings: "None but those who were present on the spot can imagine the grief of heart the soldiers felt to see their officers yoked in the harness, dragging up cannon from the Lower Town; to see gentlemen, who were set over them by His Majesty to command and keep them to their duty, working at the batteries with the barrow, pickaxe, and spade.  " The effect, however, was admirable.   The spirit of the men rose to the crisis.   Murray, no less than his officers, had all their confidence; for if he had fallen into a fatal error, he atoned for it now by unconquerable resolution and exhaustless fertility of resource.   Deserters said that Lévis would assault the town; and the soldiers replied: "Let him come on; he will catch a Tartar.  "

Lévis and his army were no less busy in digging trenches along the stony back of the Buttes-à-Neveu.   Every day the English fire grew hotter; till at last nearly a hundred and fifty cannon vomited iron upon them from the walls of Quebec, and May was well advanced before they could plant a single gun to reply.   Their vessels had landed artillery at the Anse du Foulon; but their best hope lay in the succors they daily expected from the river below.   In the autumn Lévis, with a view to his intended enterprise, had sent a request to Versailles that a ship laden with munitions and heavy siege-guns should be sent from France in time to meet him at Quebec in April; while he looked also for another ship, which had wintered at Gaspé, and which therefore might reach him as soon as navigation opened.   The arrival of these vessels would have made the position of the English doubly critical; and, on the other hand, should an English squadron appear first, Lévis would be forced to raise the siege.   Thus each side watched the river with an anxiety that grew constantly more intense; and the English presently descried signals along the shore which seemed to say that French ships were moving up the St.   Lawrence.   Meantime, while doing their best to compass each other's destruction, neither side forgot the courtesies of war.   Lévis heard that Murray liked spruce-beer for his table, and sent him a flag of truce with a quantity of spruce-boughs and a message of compliment; Murray responded with a Cheshire cheese, and Lévis rejoined with a present of partridges.  

Bad and scanty fare, excessive toil, and broken sleep were telling ominously on the strength of the garrison when, on the ninth of May, Murray, as he sat pondering over the fire at his quarters in St.   Louis Street, was interrupted by an officer who came to tell him that there was a ship-of-war in the Basin beating up towards the town.   Murray started from his revery, and directed that British colors should be raised immediately on Cape Diamond.   The halyards being out of order, a sailor climbed the staff and drew up the flag to its place.   The news had spread; men and officers, divided between hope and fear, crowded to the rampart by the Château, where Durham Terrace now overlooks the St.   Lawrence, and every eye was strained on the approaching ship, eager to see whether she would show the red flag of England or the white one of France.   Slowly her colors rose to the mast-head and unfurled to the wind the red cross of St.   George.   It was the British frigate "Lowestoffe.  " She anchored before the Lower Town, and saluted the garrison with twenty-one guns.   "The gladness of the troops," says Knox, "is not to be expressed.   Both officers and soldiers mounted the parapet in the face of the enemy and huzzaed with their hats in the air for almost an hour.   The garrison, the enemy's camp, the bay, and circumjacent country resounded with our shouts and the thunder of our artillery; for the gunners were so elated that they did nothing but load and fire for a considerable time.   In short, the general satisfaction is not to be conceived, except by a person who had suffered the extremities of a siege, and been destined, with his brave friends and countrymen, to the scalping-knives of a faithless conqueror and his barbarious allies.  " The "Lowestoffe" brought news that a British squadron was at the mouth of the St.   Lawrence, and would reach Quebec in a few days.  

Lévis, in ignorance of this, still clung to the hope that French ships would arrive strong enough to overpower the unwelcome stranger.   His guns, being at last in position, presently opened fire upon a wall that was not built to bear the brunt of heavy shot; but an artillery better and more numerous than his own almost silenced them, and his gunners were harassed by repeated sallies.   The besiegers had now no real chance of success unless they could carry the place by storm, to which end they had provided abundant scaling-ladders as well as petards to burst in the gates.   They made, however, no attempt to use them.   A week passed, when, on the evening of the fifteenth, the ship of the line "Vanguard" and the frigate "Diana" sailed into the harbor; and on the next morning the "Diana" and the "Lowestoffe" passed the town to attack the French vessels in the river above.   These were six in all, two frigates, two smaller armed ships, and two schooners; the whole under command of the gallant Vauquelin.   He did not belie his reputation; fought his ship with persistent bravery till his ammunition was spent, refused even then to strike his flag, and being made prisoner, was treated by his captors with distinguished honor.   The other vessels made little or no resistance.   One of them threw her guns overboard and escaped; the rest ran ashore and were burned.  

The destruction of his vessels was a death-blow to the hopes of Lévis, for they contained his stores of food and ammunition.   He had passed the preceding night in great agitation; and when the cannonade on the river ceased, he hastened to raise the siege.   In the evening deserters from hiscamp told Murray that the French were in full retreat; on which all the English batteries opened, firing at random through the darkness, and sending cannon-balls en ricochet, bowling by scores together, over the Plains of Abraham on the heels of the retiring enemy.   Murray marched out at dawn of day to fall upon their rear; but, with a hundred and fifty cannon bellowing behind them, they had made such speed that, though he pushed over the marsh to Old Lorette, he could not overtake them; they had already crossed the river of Cap-Rouge.   Why, with numbers still superior, they went off in such haste, it is hard to say.   They left behind them thirty-four cannon and six mortars, with petards, scaling-ladders, tents, ammunition, baggage, intrenching tools, many of their muskets, and all their sick and wounded.  

The effort to recover Quebec did great honor to the enterprise of the French; but it availed them nothing, served only to waste resources that seemed already at the lowest ebb, and gave fresh opportunity of plunder to Cadet and his crew, who failed not to make use of it.  

After the battle of Ste.  -Foy Murray sent the frigate "Racehorse" to Halifax with news of his defeat, and from Halifax it was sent to England.   The British public were taken by surprise.   "Who the deuce was thinking of Quebec?" says Horace Walpole.   "America was like a book one has read and done with; but here we are on a sudden reading our book backwards.  " Ten days passed, and then came word that the siege was raised and that the French were gone; upon which Walpole wrote to General Conway: "Well, Quebec is come to life again.   Last night I went to see the Holdernesses.   I met my Lady in a triumphal car, drawn by a Manx horse, thirteen little fingers high, with Lady Emily.   Mr.  Milbank was walking by himself in ovation after the car, and they were going to see the bonfire at the alehouse at the corner.   The whole procession returned with me; and from the Countess's dressing-room we saw a battery fired before the house, the mob crying, 'God bless the good news!' These are all the particulars I know of the siege.   My Lord would have showed me the journal; but we amused ourselves much better in going to eat peaches from the new Dutch stoves [hothouses].  "

NOTE: On the battle of Ste.  -Foy and the subsequent siege, Lévis, Guerre du Canada.   Relation de la seconde Bataille de Québec et du Siége de cette Ville (there are several copies of this paper, with different titles and some variation).   Murray to Amherst, 30 April, 1760.   Murray, Journal kept at Quebec from Sept.   18, 1759, to May 17, 1760 (Public Record Office, America and West Indies, XCIX.  ).   Murray to Pitt, 25 May, 1760.   Letter from an Officer of the Royal Americans at Quebec, 24 May, 1760 (in London Magazine and several periodical papers of the time).   Fraser, Journal (Quebec Hist.   Soc.  ); Johnstone, Campaign of 1760 (Ibid.  ).   Relation de ce qui s'est passé au Siége de Québec, par une Religieuse de l'Hôpital Général (Ibid.  ).   Memoirs of the Siege of Quebec, by Sergeant John Johnson.   Mémoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760.   Letters of Lévis, Bourlamaque, and Vaudreuil, May, June, 1760.   Several letters from officers at Quebec in provincial newspapers.   Knox, II.   292-322.   Plan of the Battle and Situation of the British and French on the Heights of Abraham, the 28th of April, 1760, an admirable plan, attached to the great plan of operations at Quebec before mentioned, and necessary to an understanding of the position and movements of the two armies (British Museum, King's Maps).  

The narratives of Mante, Entick, Wynne, Smith, and other secondary writers give no additional light.   On the force engaged on each side, see Appendix K.  

Chapter 30
1760

Fall of Canada

The retreat of Lévis left Canada little hope but in a speedy peace.   This hope was strong, for a belief widely prevailed that, even if the colony should be subdued, it would be restored to France by treaty.   Its available force did not exceed eight or ten thousand men, as most of the Canadians below the district of Three Rivers had sworn allegiance to King George; and though many of them had disregarded the oath to join the standard of Lévis, they could venture to do so no longer.   The French had lost the best of their artillery, their gunpowder was falling short, their provisions would barely carry them to harvest time, and no more was to be hoped for, since a convoy of ships which had sailed from France at the end of winter, laden with supplies of all kinds, had been captured by the English.   The blockade of the St.   Lawrence was complete.   The Western Indians would not fight, and even those of the mission villages were wavering and insolent.  

Yet Vaudreuil and Lévis exerted themselves for defence with an energy that does honor to them both.   "Far from showing the least timidity," says the ever-modest Governor, "I have taken positions such as may hide our weakness from the enemy.  ” He stationed Rochbeaucourt with three hundred men at Pointe-aux-Trembles; Repentigny with two hundred at Jacques-Cartier; and Dumas with twelve hundred at Deschambault to watch the St.   Lawrence and, if possible, prevent Murray from moving up the river.   Bougainville was stationed at Isle-aux-Noix to bar the approach from Lake Champlain, and a force under La Corne was held ready to defend the rapids above Montreal, should the English attempt that dangerous passage.   Prisoners taken by war parties near Crown Point gave exaggerated reports of hostile preparation, and doubled and trebled the forces that were mustering against Canada.  

These forces were nevertheless considerable.   Amherst had resolved to enter the colony by all its three gates at once, and, advancing from east, west, and south, unite at Montreal and crush it as in the jaws of a vice.   Murray was to ascend the St.   Lawrence from Quebec, while Brigadier Haviland forced an entrance by way of Lake Champlain, and Amherst himself led the main army down the St.   Lawrence from Lake Ontario.   This last route was long, circuitous, difficult, andfull of danger from the rapids that obstructed the river.   His choice of it for his chief line of operation, instead of the shorter and easier way of Lake Champlain, was meant, no doubt, to prevent the French army from escaping up the Lakes to Detroit and the other wilderness posts, where it might have protracted the war for an indefinite time; while the plan adopted, if successful, would make its capture certain.   The plan was a critical one.   Three armies advancing from three different points, hundreds of miles apart, by routes full of difficulty, and with no possibility of intercommunication, were to meet at the same place at the same time, or, failing to do so, run the risk of being destroyed in detail.   If the French troops could be kept together, and if the small army of Murray or of Haviland should reach Montreal a few days before the co-operating forces appeared, it might be separately attacked and overpowered.   In this lay the hope of Vaudreuil and Lévis.  

After the siege of Quebec was raised, Murray had an effective force of about twenty-five hundred rank and file.   As the spring opened the invalids were encamped on the Island of Orleans, where fresh air, fresh provisions, and the change from the pestiferous town hospitals wrought such wonders on the scorbutic patients, that in a few weeks a considerable number of them were again fit for garrison duty, if not for the field.   Thus it happened that on the second of July twenty-four hundred and fifty men and officers received orders to embark for Montreal; and on the fifteenth they set sail, in thirty-two vessels, with a number of boats and bateaux.   They were followed some time after by Lord Rollo, with thirteen hundred additional men just arrived from Louisbourg, the King having ordered that fortress to be abandoned and dismantled.   They advanced slowly, landing from time to time, skirmishing with detachments of the enemy who followed them along the shore, or more frequently trading with the farmers who brought them vegetables, poultry, eggs, and fresh meat.   They passed the fortified hill of Jacques-Cartier, whence they were saluted with shot and shell, stopped at various parishes, disarmed the inhabitants, administered oaths of neutrality, which were taken without much apparent reluctance, and on the fourth of August came within sight of Three Rivers, then occupied by a body of troops expecting an attack.   "But," says Knox, "a delay here would be absurd, as that wretched place must share the fate of Montreal.   Our fleet sailed this morning.   The French troops, apparently about two thousand, lined their different works, and were in general clothed as regulars, except a very few Canadians and about fifty naked Picts or savages, their bodies being painted of a reddish color and their faces of different colors, which I plainly discerned with my glass.   Their light cavalry, who paraded along shore, seemed to be well appointed, clothed in blue, faced with scarlet; but their officers had white uniforms.   In fine, their troops, batteries, fair-looking houses; their situation on the banks of a delightful river; our fleet sailing triumphantly before them, with our floating batteries drawn up in line of battle; the country on both sides interspersed with neat settlements, together with the verdure of the fields and trees and the clear, pleasant weather, afforded as agreeable a prospect as the most lively imagination can conceive.  "

This excellent lover of the picturesque was still more delighted as the fleet sailed among the islands of St.   Peter.   "I think nothing could equal the beauties of our navigation this morning: the meandering course of the narrow channel; the awfulness and solemnity of the dark forests with which these islands are covered; the fragrancy of the spontaneous fruits, shrubs, and flowers; the verdure of the water by the reflection of the neighboring woods; the wild chirping notes of the feathered inhabitants; the masts and sails of ships appearing as if among the trees, both ahead and astern: formed altogether an enchanting diversity.  "

The evening recalled him from dreams to realities; for towards seven o'clock they reached the village of Sorel, where they found a large body of troops and militia intrenched along the strand.   Bourlamaque was in command here with two or three thousand men, and Dumas, with another body, was on the northern shore.   Both had orders to keep abreast of the fleet as it advanced; and thus French and English alike drew slowly towards Montreal, where lay the main French force under Lévis, ready to unite with Bourlamaque and Dumas, and fall upon Murray at the first opportunity.   Montreal was now but a few leagues distant, and the situation was becoming delicate.   Murray sent five rangers towards Lake Champlain to get news of Haviland, and took measures at the same time to cause the desertion of the Canadians, who formed the largest part of the opposing force.   He sent a proclamation among the parishes, advising the inhabitants to remain peacefully at home, promising that those who did so should be safe in person and property, and threatening to burn every house from which the men of the family were absent.   These were not idle words.   A detachment sent for the purpose destroyed a settlement near Sorel, the owners of which were in arms under Bourlamaque.   "I was under the cruel necessity of burning the greatest part of these poor unhappy people's houses," wrote Murray.   "I pray God this example may suffice, for my nature revolts when this becomes a necessary part of my duty.  ” On the other hand, he treated with great kindness all who left the army and returned to their families.   The effect was soon felt.   The Canadians came in by scores and by hundreds to give up their arms and take the oath of neutrality, till, before the end of August, half Bourlamaque's force had disappeared.   Murray encamped on Isle Ste.  -Thérèse, just below Montreal, and watched and waited for Haviland and Amherst to appear.  

Vaudreuil on his part was not idle.   He sent a counter-proclamation through the parishes as an antidote to that of Murray.   "I have been compelled," he writes to the Minister, "to decree the pain of death to the Canadians who are so dastardly as to desert or give up their arms to the enemy, and to order that the houses of those who do not join our army shall be burned.  ” Execution was to be summary, without court-martial.   Yet desertion increased daily.   The Canadians felt themselves doubly ruined, for it became known that the Court had refused to redeem the paper that formed the whole currency of the colony; and, in their desperation, they preferred to trust the tried clemency of the enemy rather than exasperate him by persisting in a vain defence.   Vaudreuil writes in his usual strain: "I am taking the most just measures to unite our forces, and, if our situation permits, fight a battle, or several battles.   It is to be feared that we shall go down before an enemy so numerous and strong; but, whatever may be the event, we will save the honor of the King's arms.   I have the honor to repeat to you, Monseigneur, that if any resource were left me, whatever the progress the English might make, I would maintain myself in some part of the colony with my remaining troops, after having fought with the greatest obstinacy; but I am absolutely without the least remnant of the necessary means.   In these unhappy circumstances I shall continue to use every manoeuvre and device to keep the enemy in check; but if we succumb in the battles we shall fight, I shall apply myself to obtaining a capitulation which may avert the total ruin of a people who will remain forever French, and who could not survive their misfortunes but for the hope of being restored by the treaty of peace to the rule of His Most Christian Majesty.   It is with this view that I shall remain in this town, the Chevalier de Lévis having represented to me that it would be an evil to the colonists past remedy if any accident should happen to me.  " Lévis was willing to go very far in soothing the susceptibilities of the Governor; but it may be suspected this time that he thought him more useful within four walls than in the open field.  

There seemed good hope of stopping the advance of Haviland.   To this end Vaudreuil had stationed Bougainville at Isle-aux-Noix with seventeen hundred men, and Roquemaure at St.   John, a few miles distant, with twelve or fifteen hundred more, besides all the Indians.   Haviland embarked at Crown Point with thirty-four hundred regulars, provincials, and Indians.   Four days brought him to Isle-aux-Noix; he landed, planted cannon in the swamp, and opened fire.   Major Darby with the light infantry, and Rogers with the rangers, dragged three light pieces through the forest, and planted them on the river-bank in the rear of Bougainville's position, where lay the French naval force, consisting of three armed vessels and several gunboats.   The cannon were turned upon the principal ship; a shot cut her cable, and a strong west wind drove her ashore into the hands of her enemies.   The other vessels and gunboats made all sail for St.   John, but stranded in a bend of the river, where the rangers, swimming out with their tomahawks, boarded and took one of them, and the rest soon surrendered.   It was a fatal blow to Bougainville, whose communications with St.   John were now cut off.   In accordance with instructions from Vaudreuil, he abandoned the island on the night of the twenty-seventh of August, and, making his way with infinite difficulty through the dark forest, joined Roquemaure at St.   John, twelve miles below.   Haviland followed, the rangers leading the way.   Bougainville and Roquemaure fell back, abandoned St.   John and Chambly, and joined Bourlamaque on the banks of the St.   Lawrence, where the united force at first outnumbered that of Haviland, though fast melted away by discouragement and desertion.   Haviland opened communication with Murray, and they both looked daily for the arrival of Amherst, whose approach was rumored by prisoners and deserters.  

The army of Amherst had gathered at Oswego in July.   On the tenth of August it was all afloat on Lake Ontario, to the number of ten thousand one hundred and forty-two men, besides about seven hundred Indians under Sir William Johnson.  Before the fifteenth the whole had reached La Présentation, otherwise called Oswegatchie or La Galette, the seat of Father Piquet's mission.   Near by was a French armed brig, the "Ottawa," with ten cannon and a hundred men, threatening destruction to Amherst's bateaux and whaleboats.   Five gunboats attacked and captured her.   Then the army advanced again, and were presently joined by two armed vessels of their own which had lingered behind, bewildered among the channels of the Thousand Islands.  

Near the head of the rapids, a little below La Galette, stood Fort Lévis, built the year before on an islet in mid-channel.   Amherst might have passed its batteries with slight loss, continuing his voyage without paying it the honor of a siege; and this was what the French commanders feared that he would do.   "We shall be fortunate," Lévis wrote to Bourlamaque, "if the enemy amuse themselves with capturing it.   My chief anxiety is lest Amherst should reach Montreal so soon that we may not have time to unite our forces to attack Haviland or Murray.  " If he had better known the English commander, Lévis would have seen that he was not the man to leave a post of the enemy in his rear under any circumstances; and Amherst had also another reason for wishing to get the garrison into his hands, for he expected to find among them the pilots whom he needed to guide his boats down the rapids.   He therefore invested the fort, and, on the twenty-third, cannonaded it from his vessels, the mainland, and the neighboring islands.   It was commanded by Pouchot, the late commandant of Niagara, made prisoner in the last campaign, and since exchanged.   As the rocky islet had but little earth, the defences, though thick and strong, were chiefly of logs, which flew in splinters under the bombardment.   The French, however, made a brave resistance.   The firing lasted all day, was resumed in the morning, and continued two days more; when Pouchot, whose works were in ruins, surrendered himself and his garrison.   On this, Johnson's Indians prepared to kill the prisoners; and, being compelled to desist, three fourths of them went home in a rage.  

Now began the critical part of the expedition, the descent of the rapids.   The Galops, the Rapide Plat, the Long Saut, the Côteau du Lac were passed in succession, with little loss, till they reached the Cedars, the Buisson, and the Cascades, where the reckless surges dashed and bounded in the sun, beautiful and terrible as young tigers at play.   Boat after boat, borne on their foaming crests, rushed madly down the torrent.   Forty-six were totally wrecked, eighteen were damaged, and eighty-four men were drowned.   La Corne was watching the rapids with a considerable body of Canadians; and it is difficult to see why this bold and enterprising chief allowed the army to descend undisturbed through passes so dangerous.   At length the last rapid was left behind; and the flotilla, gliding in peace over the smooth breast of Lake St.   Louis, landed at Isle Perrot, a few leagues from Montreal.   In the morning, September sixth, the troops embarked again, landed unopposed at La Chine, nine miles from the city, marched on without delay, and encamped before its walls.  

The Montreal of that time was a long, narrow assemblage of wooden or stone houses, one or two stories high, above which rose the peaked towers of the Seminary, the spires of three churches, the walls of four convents, with the trees of their adjacent gardens, and, conspicuous at the lower end, a high mound of earth, crowned by a redoubt, where a few cannon were mounted.   The whole was surrounded by a shallow moat and a bastioned stone wall, made for defenceagainst Indians, and incapable of resisting cannon.  

On the morning after Amherst encamped above the place, Murray landed to encamp below it; and Vaudreuil, looking across the St.   Lawrence, could see the tents of Haviland's little army on the southern shore.   Bourlamaque, Bougainville, and Roquemaure, abandoned by all their militia, had crossed to Montreal with the few regulars that remained with them.   The town was crowded with non-combatant refugees.   Here, too, was nearly all the remaining force of Canada, consisting of twenty-two hundred troops of the line and some two hundred colony troops; for all the Canadians had by this time gone home.   Many of the regulars, especially of the colony troops, had also deserted; and the rest were so broken in discipline that their officers were forced to use entreaties instead of commands.   The three armies encamped around the city amounted to seventeen thousand men; Amherst was bringing up his cannon from La Chine, and the town wall would have crumbled before them in an hour.  

On the night when Amherst arrived, the Governor called a council of war.   It was resolved that since all the militia and many of the regulars had abandoned the army, and the Indian allies of France had gone over to the enemy, further resistance was impossible.   Vaudreuil laid before the assembled officers a long paper that he had drawn up, containing fifty-five articles of capitulation to be proposed to the English; and these were unanimously approved.   In the morning Bougainville carried them to the tent of Amherst.   He granted the greater part, modified some, and flatly refused others.   That which the French officers thought more important than all the rest was the provision that the troops should march out with arms, cannon, and the honors of war; to which it was replied: "The whole garrison of Montreal and all other French troops in Canada must lay down their arms, and shall not serve during the present war.  " This demand was felt to be intolerable.   The Governor sent Bougainville back to remonstrate; but Amherst was inflexible.   Then Lévis tried to shake his resolution, and sent him an officer with the following note: "I send your Excellency M.   de la Pause, Assistant Quartermaster-General of the Army, on the subject of the too rigorous article which you dictate to the troops by the capitulation, to which it would not be possible for us to subscribe.  " Amherst answered the envoy: "I am fully resolved, for the infamous part the troops of France have acted in exciting the savages to perpetrate the most horrid and unheard of barbarities in the whole progress of the war, and for other open treacheries and flagrant breaches of faith, to manifest to all the world by this capitulation my detestation of such practices;" and he dismissed La Pause with a short note, refusing to change the conditions.  

On the next morning, September eighth, Vaudreuil yielded, and signed the capitulation.   By it Canada and all its dependencies passed to the British Crown.   French officers, civil and military, with French troops and sailors, were to be sent to France in British ships.   Free exercise of religion was assured to the people of the colony, and the religious communities were to retain their possessions, rights, and privileges.   All persons who might wish to retire to France were allowed to do so, and the Canadians were to remain in full enjoyment of feudal and other property, including negro and Indian slaves.  

The greatest alarm had prevailed among the inhabitants lest they should suffer violence from the English Indians, and Vaudreuil had endeavored to provide that these dangerous enemies should be sent back at once to their villages.   This was refused, with the remark: "There never have been any cruelties committed by the Indians of our army.  " Strict precautions were taken at the same time, not only against the few savages whom the firm conduct of Johnson at Fort Lévis had not driven away, but also against the late allies of the French, now become a peril to them.   In consequence, not a man, woman, or child was hurt.   Amherst, in general orders, expressed his confidence "that the troops will not disgrace themselves by the least appearance of inhumanity, or by any unsoldierlike behavior in seeking for plunder; and that as the Canadians are now become British subjects, they will feel the good effects of His Majesty's protection.  " They were in fact treated with a kindness that seemed to surprise them.  

Lévis was so incensed at the demand that the troops should lay down their arms and serve no longer during the war that, before the capitulation was signed, he made a formal protest in his own name and that of the officers from France, and insisted that the negotiation should be broken off.   "If," he added, "the Marquis de Vaudreuil, through political motives, thinks himself obliged to surrender the colony at once, we ask his permission to withdraw with the troops of the line to the Island of St.   Helen, in order to uphold there, on our own behalf, the honor of the King's arms.  " The proposal was of course rejected, as Lévis knew that it would be, and he and his officers were ordered to conform to the capitulation.   When Vaudreuil reached France, three months after, he had the mortification to receive from the Colonial Minister a letter containing these words: "Though His Majesty was perfectly aware of the state of Canada, nevertheless, after the assurances you had given to make the utmost efforts to sustain the honor of his arms, he did not expect to hear so soon of the surrender of Montreal and the whole colony.   But, granting that capitulation was a necessity, his Majesty was not the less surprised and ill pleased at the conditions, so little honorable, to which you submitted, especially after the representations made you by the Chevalier de Lévis.  ” The brother of Vaudreuil complained to the Minister of the terms of this letter, and the Minister replied: "I see with regret, Monsieur, that you are pained by the letter I wrote your brother; but I could not help telling him what the King did me the honor to say to me; and it would have been unpleasant for him to hear it from anybody else.  ”

It is true that Vaudreuil had in some measure drawn this reproach upon himself by his boastings about the battles he would fight; yet the royal displeasure was undeserved.   The Governor had no choice but to give up the colony; for Amherst had him in his power, and knew that he could exact what terms he pleased.   Further resistance could only have ended in surrender at the discretion of the victor, and the protest of Lévis was nothing but a device to save his own reputation and that of his brother officers from France.   Vaudreuil had served the King and the colony in some respects with ability, always with an unflagging zeal; and he loved the land of his birth with a jealous devotion that goes far towards redeeming his miserable defects.   The King himself, and not the servants whom he abandoned to their fate, was answerable for the loss of New France.  

Half the continent had changed hands at the scratch of a pen.   Governor Bernard, of Massachusetts, proclaimed a day of thanksgiving for the great event, and the Boston newspapers recount how the occasion was celebrated with a parade of the cadets and other volunteer corps, a grand dinner in Faneuil Hall, music, bonfires, illuminations, firing of cannon, and, above all, by sermons in every church of the province; for the heart of early New England always found voice through her pulpits.   Before me lies a bundle of these sermons, rescued from sixscore years of dust, scrawled on their title-pages with names of owners dead long ago, worm-eaten, dingy, stained with the damps of time, and uttering in quaint old letterpress the emotions of a buried and forgotten past.   Triumph, gratulation, hope, breathe in every line, but no ill-will against a fallen enemy.   Thomas Foxcroft, pastor of the "Old Church in Boston," preaches from the text, "The Lord hath done great things for us, whereof we are glad.  " "Long," he says, "had it been the common opinion, Delenda est Carthago, Canada must be conquered, or we could hope for no lasting quiet in these parts; and now, through the good hand of our God upon us, we see the happy day of its accomplishment.   We behold His Majesty's victorious troops treading upon the high places of the enemy, their last fortress delivered up, and their whole country surrendered to the King of Britain in the person of his general, the intrepid, the serene, the successful Amherst.  "

The loyal John Mellen, pastor of the Second Church in Lancaster, exclaims, boding nothing of the tempest to come: "Let us fear God and honor the King, and be peaceable subjects of an easy and happy government.   And may the blessing of Heaven be ever upon those enemies of our country that have now submitted to the English Crown, and according to the oath they have taken lead quiet lives in all godliness and honesty.  " Then he ventures to predict that America, now thrown open to British colonists, will be peopled in a century and a half with sixty million souls: a prophecy likely to be more than fulfilled.  

"God has given us to sing this day the downfall of New France, the North American Babylon, New England's rival," cries Eli Forbes to his congregation of sober farmers and staid matrons at the rustic village of Brookfield.   Like many of his flock, he had been to the war, having served two years as chaplain of Ruggles's Massachusetts regiment; and something of a martial spirit breathes through his discourse.   He passes in review the events of each campaign down to their triumphant close.   "Thus God was our salvation and our strength; yet he who directs the great events of war suffered not our joy to be uninterrupted, for we had to lament the fall of the valiant and good General Wolfe, whose death demands a tear from every British eye, a sigh from every Protestant heart.   Is he dead? I recall myself.   Such heroes are immortal; he lives on every loyal tongue; he lives in every grateful breast; and charity bids me give him a place among the princes of heaven.  " Nor does he forget the praises of Amherst, "the renowned general, worthy of that most honorable of all titles, the Christian hero; for he loves his enemies, and while he subdues them he makes them happy.   He transplants British liberty to where till now it was unknown.   He acts the General, the Briton, the Conqueror, and the Christian.   What fair hopes arise from the peaceful and undisturbed enjoyment of this good land, and the blessing of our gracious God with it! Methinks I see towns enlarged, settlements increased, and this howling wilderness become a fruitful field which the Lord hath blessed; and, to complete the scene, I see churches rise and flourish in every Christian grace where has been the seat of Satan and Indian idolatry.  "

Nathaniel Appleton, of Cambridge, hails the dawning of a new era.   "Who can tell what great and glorious things God is about to bring forward in the world, and in this world of America in particular? Oh, may the time come when these deserts, which for ages unknown have been regions of darkness and habitations of cruelty, shall be illuminated with the light of the glorious Gospel, and when this part of the world, which till the later ages was utterly unknown, shall be the glory and joy of the whole earth!"

On the American continent the war was ended, and the British colonists breathed for a space, as they drifted unwittingly towards a deadlier strife.   They had learned hard and useful lessons.   Their mutual jealousies and disputes, the quarrels of their governors and assemblies, the want of any general military organization, and the absence, in most of them, of military habits, joined to narrow views of their own interest, had unfitted them to the last degree for carrying on offensive war.   Nor were the British troops sent for their support remarkable in the beginning for good discipline or efficient command.   When hostilities broke out, the army of Great Britain was so small as to be hardly worth the name.   A new one had to be created; and thus the inexperienced Shirley and the incompetent Loudon, with the futile Newcastle behind them, had, besides their own incapacity, the disadvantage of raw troops and half-formed officers; while against them stood an enemy who, though weak in numbers, was strong in a centralized military organization, skilful leaders armed with untrammelled and absolute authority, practised soldiers, and a population not only brave, but in good part inured to war.  

The nature of the country was another cause that helped to protract the contest.   "Geography," says Von Moltke, "is three fourths of military science;" and never was the truth of his words more fully exemplified.   Canada was fortified with vast outworks of defence in the savage forests, marshes, and mountains that encompassed her, where the thoroughfares were streams choked with fallen trees and obstructed by cataracts.   Never was the problem of moving troops, encumbered with baggage and artillery, a more difficult one.   The question was less how to fight the enemy than how to get at him.   If a few practicable roads had crossed this broad tract of wilderness, the war would have been shortened and its character changed.  

From these and other reasons, the numerical superiority of the English was to some extent made unavailing.   This superiority, though exaggerated by French writers, was nevertheless immense if estimated by the number of men called to arms; but only a part of these could be employed in offensive operations.   The rest garrisoned forts and blockhouses and guarded the far reach of frontier from Nova Scotia to South Carolina, where a wily enemy, silent and secret as fate, choosing their own time and place of attack, and striking unawares at every unguarded spot, compelled thousands of men, scattered at countless points of defence, to keep unceasing watch against a few hundred savage marauders.   Full half the levies of the colonies, and many of the regulars, were used in service of this kind.  

In actual encounters the advantage of numbers was often with the French, through the comparative ease with which they could concentrate their forces at a given point.   Of the ten considerable sieges or battles of the war, five, besides the great bushfight in which the Indians defeated Braddock, were victories for France; and in four of these Oswego, Fort William Henry, Montmorenci, and Ste.  -Foy the odds were greatly on her side.  

Yet in this the most picturesque and dramatic of American wars, there is nothing more noteworthy than the skill with which the French and Canadian leaders used their advantages; the indomitable spirit with which, slighted and abandoned as they were, they grappled with prodigious difficulties, and the courage with which they were seconded by regulars and militia alike.   In spite of occasional lapses, the defence of Canada deserves a tribute of admiration.  

Chapter 31
1758-1763

The Peace of Paris

In accordance with the terms of the capitulation of Montreal, the French military officers, with such of the soldiers as could be kept together, as well as all the chief civil officers of the colony, sailed for France in vessels provided by the conquerors.   They were voluntarily followed by the principal members of the Canadian noblesse, and by many of the merchants who had no mind to swear allegiance to King George.   The peasants and poorer colonists remained at home to begin a new life under a new flag.  

Though this exodus of the natural leaders of Canada was in good part deferred till the next year, and though the number of persons to be immediately embarked was reduced by the desertion of many French soldiers who had married Canadian wives, yet the English authorities were sorely perplexed to find vessels enough for the motley crowd of passengers.   When at last they were all on their way, a succession of furious autumnal storms fell upon them.   The ship that carried Lévis barely escaped wreck, and that which bore Vaudreuil and his wife fared little better.   Worst of all was the fate of the "Auguste," on board of which was the bold but ruthless partisan, Saint-Luc de la Corne, his brother, his children, and a party of Canadian officers, together with ladies, merchants, and soldiers.   A worthy ecclesiastical chronicler paints the unhappy vessel as a floating Babylon, and sees in her fate the stern judgment of Heaven.   It is true that New France ran riot in the last years of her existence; but before the "Auguste" was well out of the St.   Lawrence she was so tossed and buffeted, so lashed with waves and pelted with rain, that the most alluring forms of sin must have lost their charm, and her inmates passed days rather of penance than transgression.   There was a violent storm as the ship entered the Gulf; then a calm, during which she took fire in the cook's galley.   The crew and passengers subdued the flames after desperate efforts; but their only food thenceforth was dry biscuit.   Off the coast of Cape Breton another gale rose.   They lost their reckoning and lay tossing blindly amid the tempest.   The exhausted sailors took, in despair, to their hammocks, from which neither commands nor blows could rouse them, while amid shrieks, tears, prayers, and vows to Heaven, the "Auguste" drove towards the shore, struck, and rolled over on her side.   La Corne with six others gained the beach; and towards night they saw the ship break asunder, and counted a hundred and fourteen corpses strewn along the sand.   Aided by Indians and by English officers, La Corne made his way on snow-shoes up the St.   John, and by a miracle of enduring hardihood reached Quebec before the end of winter.  

The other ships weathered the November gales, and landed their passengers on the shores of France, where some of them found a dismal welcome, being seized and thrown into the Bastille.   These were Vaudreuil, Bigot, Cadet, Péan, Bréard, Varin, Le Mercier, Penisseault, Maurin, Corpron, and others accused of the frauds and peculations that had helped to ruin Canada.   In the next year they were all put on trial, whether as an act of pure justice or as a device to turn public indignation from the Government.   In December, 1761, judges commissioned for the purpose began their sessions at the Châtelet, and a prodigious mass of evidence was laid before them.   Cadet, with brazen effrontery, at first declared himself innocent, but ended with full and unblushing confession.   Bigot denied everything till silenced point by point with papers bearing his own signature.   The prisoners defended themselves by accusing each other.   Bigot and Vaudreuil brought mutual charges, while all agreed in denouncing Cadet.   Vaudreuil, as before mentioned, was acquitted.   Bigot was banished from France for life, his property was confiscated, and he was condemned to pay fifteen hundred thousand francs by way of restitution.   Cadet was banished for nine years from Paris and required to refund six millions; while others were sentenced in sums varying from thirty thousand to eight hundred thousand francs, and were ordered to be held in prison till the money was paid.   Of twenty-one persons brought to trial ten were condemned, six were acquitted, three received an admonition, and two were dismissed for want of evidence.   Thirty-four failed to appear, of whom seven were sentenced in default, and judgment was reserved in the case of the rest.   Even those who escaped from justice profited little by their gains, for unless they had turned them betimes into land or other substantial values, they lost them in a discredited paper currency and dishonored bills of exchange.  

While on the American continent the last scenes of the war were drawing to their close, the contest raged in Europe with unabated violence.   England was in the full career of success; but her great ally, Frederic of Prussia, seemed tottering to his ruin.   In the summer of 1758 his glory was at its height.   French, Austrians, and Russians had all fled before him.   But the autumn brought reverses; and the Austrian general, Daun, at the head of an overwhelming force, gained over him a partial victory, which his masterly strategy robbed of its fruits.   It was but a momentary respite.   His kingdom was exhausted by its own triumphs.   His best generals were dead, his best soldiers killed or disabled, his resources almost spent, the very chandeliers of his palace melted into coin; and all Europe was in arms against him.   The disciplined valor of the Prussian troops and the supreme leadership of their undespairing King had thus far held the invading hosts at bay; but now the end seemed near.   Frederic could not be everywhere at once; and while he stopped one leak the torrent poured in at another.   The Russians advanced again, defeated General Wedell, whom he sent against them, and made a junction with the Austrians.   In August, 1759, he attacked their united force at Kunersdorf, broke their left wing to pieces, took a hundred and eighty cannon, forced their centre to give ground, and after hours of furious fighting was overwhelmed at last.   In vain he tried to stop the rout.   The bullets killed two horses under him, tore his clothes, and crushed a gold snuff-box in his waistcoat pocket.   "Is there no b   of a shot that can hit me, then?" he cried in his bitterness, as his aides-de-camp forced him from the field.   For a few days he despaired; then rallied to his forlorn task, and with smiles on his lip and anguish at his heart watched, manoeuvred, and fought with cool and stubborn desperation.   To his friend D'Argens he wrote soon after his defeat: "Death is sweet in comparison to such a life as mine.   Have pity on me and it; believe that I still keep to myself a great many evil things, not wishing to afflict or disgust anybody with them, and that I would not counsel you to fly these unlucky countries if I had any ray of hope; Adieu, mon cher!" It was well for him and for Prussia that he had strong allies in the dissensions and delays of his enemies.   But his cup was not yet full.   Dresden was taken from him, eight of his remaining generals and twelve thousand men were defeated and captured at Maxen, and "this infernal campaign," as he calls it, closed in thick darkness.  

"I wrap myself in my stoicism as best I can," he writes to Voltaire.   "If you saw me you would hardly know me: I am old, broken, gray-headed, wrinkled.   If this goes on there will be nothing left of me but the mania of making verses and an inviolable attachment to my duties and to the few virtuous men I know.   But you will not get a peace signed by my hand except on conditions honorable to my nation.   Your people, blown up with conceit and folly, may depend on this.  "

The same stubborn conflict with overmastering odds, the same intrepid resolution, the same subtle strategy, the same skill in eluding the blow and lightning-like quickness in retorting it, marked Frederic's campaign of 1760.   At Liegnitz three armies, each equal to his own, closed round him, and he put them all to flight.   While he was fighting in Silesia, the Allies marched upon Berlin, took it, and held it three days, but withdrew on his approach.   For him there was no peace.   "Why weary you with the details of my labors and my sorrows?" he wrote again to his faithful D'Argens.   "My spirits have forsaken me; all gayety is buried with the loved noble ones to whom my heart was bound.  " He had lost his mother and his devoted sister Wilhelmina.   "You as a follower of Epicurus put a value upon life; as for me, I regard death from the Stoic point of view.   I have told you, and I repeat it, never shall my hand sign a humiliating peace.   Finish this campaign I will, resolved to dare all, to succeed, or find a glorious end.  " Then came the victory of Torgau, the last and one of the most desperate of his battles: a success dearly bought, and bringing neither rest nor safety.   Once more he wrote to D'Argens: "Adieu, dear Marquis; write to me sometimes.   Don't forget a poor devil who curses his fatal existence ten times a day.  " "I live like a military monk.   Endless business, and a little consolation from my books.   I don't know if I shall outlive this war, but if I do I am firmly resolved to pass the rest of my life in solitude in the bosom of philosophy and friendship.   Your nation, you see, is blinder than you thought.   These fools will lose their Canada and Pondicherry to please the Queen of Hungary and the Czarina.  "

The campaign of 1761 was mainly defensive on the part of Frederic.   In the exhaustion of his resources he could see no means of continuing the struggle.   "It is only Fortune," says the royal sceptic, "that can extricate me from the situation I am in.   I escape out of it by looking at the universe on the great scale like an observer from some distant planet.   All then seems to be so infinitely small that I could almost pity my enemies for giving themselves so much trouble about so very little.   I read a great deal, I devour my books.   But for them I think hypochondria would have had me in Bedlam before now.   In fine, dear Marquis, we live in troublous times and desperate situations.   I have all the properties of a stage hero; always in danger, always on the point of perishing.  ” And in another mood: "I begin to feel that, as the Italians say, revenge is a pleasure for the gods.   My philosophy is worn out by suffering.   I am no saint, and I will own that I should die content if only I could first inflict a part of the misery that I endure.  "

While Frederic was fighting for life and crown, an event took place in England that was to have great influence on the war.   Walpole recounts it thus, writing to George Montagu on the twenty-fifth of October, 1760: "My man Harry tells me all the amusing news.   He first told me of the late Prince of Wales's death, and to-day of the King's; so I must tell you all I know of departed majesty.   He went to bed well last night, rose at six this morning as usual, looked, I suppose, if all his money was in his purse, and called for his chocolate.   A little after seven he went into the closet; the German valet-de-chambre heard a noise, listened, heard something like a groan, ran in, and found the hero of Oudenarde and Dettingen on the floor with a gash on his right temple by falling against the corner of a bureau.   He tried to speak, could not, and expired.   The great ventricle of the heart had burst.   What an enviable death!"

The old King was succeeded by his grandson, George III.  , a mirror of domestic virtues, conscientious, obstinate, narrow.   His accession produced political changes that had been preparing for some time.   His grandfather was German at heart, loved his Continental kingdom of Hanover, and was eager for all measures that looked to its defence and preservation.   Pitt, too, had of late vigorously supported the Continental war, saying that he would conquer America in Germany.   Thus with different views the King and the Minister had concurred in the same measures.   But George III.   was English by birth, language, and inclination.   His ruling passion was the establishment and increase of his own authority.   He disliked Pitt, the representative of the people.   He was at heart averse to a war, the continuance of which would make the Great Commoner necessary, and therefore powerful, and he wished for a peace that would give free scope to his schemes for strengthening the prerogative.   He was not alone in his pacific inclinations.   The enemies of the haughty Minister, who had ridden roughshod over men far above him in rank, were tired of his ascendency, and saw no hope of ending it but by ending the war.   Thus a peace party grew up, and the young King became its real, though not at first its declared, supporter.  

The Tory party, long buried, showed signs of resurrection.   There were those among its members who, even in a king of the hated line of Hanover, could recognize and admire the same spirit of arbitrary domination that had marked their fallen idols, the Stuarts; and they now joined hands with the discontented Whigs in opposition to Pitt.   The horrors of war, the blessings of peace, the weight of taxation, the growth of the national debt, were the rallying cries of the new party; but the mainspring of their zeal was hostility to the great Minister.   Even his own colleagues chafed under his spirit of mastery; the chiefs of the Opposition longed to inherit his power; and the King had begun to hate him as a lion in his path.   Pitt held to his purpose regardless of the gathering storm.   That purpose, as proclaimed by his adherents, was to secure a solid and lasting peace, which meant the reduction of France to so low an estate that she could no more be a danger to her rival.   In this he had the sympathy of the great body of the nation.  

Early in 1761 the King, a fanatic for prerogative, set his enginery in motion.   The elections for the new Parliament were manipulated in his interest.   If he disliked Pitt as the representative of the popular will, he also disliked his colleague, the shuffling and uncertain Newcastle, as the representative of a too powerful nobility.   Elements hostile to both were introduced into the Cabinet and the great offices.   The King'sfavorite, the Earl of Bute, supplanted Holdernesse as Secretary of State for the Northern Department; Charles Townshend, an opponent of Pitt, was made Secretary of War; Legge, Chancellor of the Exchequer, was replaced by Viscount Barrington, who was sure for the King; while a place in the Cabinet was also given to the Duke of Bedford, one of the few men who dared face the formidable Minister.   It was the policy of the King and his following to abandon Prussia, hitherto supported by British subsidies, make friends with Austria and Russia at her expense, and conclude a separate peace with France.  

France was in sore need of peace.   The infatuation that had turned her from her own true interest to serve the passions of Maria Theresa and the Czarina Elizabeth had brought military humiliation and financial ruin.   Abbé de Bernis, Minister of Foreign Affairs, had lost the favor of Madame de Pompadour, and had been supplanted by the Duc de Choiseul.   The new Minister had gained his place by pleasing the favorite; but he kept it through his own ability and the necessities of the time.   The Englishman Stanley, whom Pitt sent to negotiate with him, drew this sketch of his character: "Though he may have his superiors, not only in experience of business, but in depth and refinement as a statesman, he is a person of as bold and daring a spirit as any man whatever in our country or in his own.   Madame Pompadour has ever been looked upon by all preceding courtiers and ministers as their tutelary deity, under whose auspices only they could exist, and who was as much out of their reach as if she were of a superior class of beings; but this Minister is so far from being in subordination to her influence that he seized the first opportunity of depriving her not of an equality, but of any share of power, reducing her to the necessity of applying to him even for those favors that she wants for herself and her dependents.   He has effected this great change, which every other man would have thought impossible, in the interior of the Court, not by plausibility, flattery, and address, but with a high hand, with frequent railleries and sarcasms which would have ruined any other, and, in short, by a clear superiority of spirit and resolution.  ”

Choiseul was vivacious, brilliant, keen, penetrating; believing nothing, fearing nothing; an easy moralist, an uncertain ally, a hater of priests; light-minded, inconstant; yet a kind of patriot, eager to serve France and retrieve her fortunes.  

He flattered himself with no illusions.   "Since we do not know how to make war," he said, "we must make peace;” and he proposed a congress of all the belligerent Powers at Augsburg.   At the same time, since the war in Germany was distinct from the maritime and colonial war of France and England, he proposed a separate negotiation with the British Court in order to settle the questions between them as a preliminary to the general pacification.   Pitt consented, and Stanley went as envoy to Versailles; while M.   de Bussy came as envoy to London and, in behalf of Choiseul, offered terms of peace, the first of which was the entire abandonment of Canada to England.   But the offers were accompanied by the demand that Spain, which had complaints of its own against England, should be admitted as a party to the negotiation, and even hold in some measure the attitude of a mediator.   Pitt spurned the idea with fierce contempt.   "Time enough to treat of all that, sir, when the Tower of London is taken sword in hand.  ” He bore his part with the ability that never failed him, and with a supreme arrogance that rose to a climax in his demand that the fortress of Dunkirk should be demolished, not because it was any longer dangerous to England, but because the nation would regard its destruction "as an eternal monument of the yoke imposed on France.  ”

Choiseul replied with counter-propositions less humiliating to his nation.   When the question of accepting or rejecting them came before the Ministry, the views of Pitt prevailed by a majority of one, and, to the disappointment of Bute and the King, the conferences were broken off.   Choiseul, launched again on the billows of a disastrous war, had seen and provided against the event.   Ferdinand VI.   of Spain had died, and Carlos III.   had succeeded to his throne.   Here, as in England, change of kings brought change of policy.   While negotiating vainly with Pitt, the French Minister had negotiated secretly and successfully with Carlos; and the result was the treaty known as the Family Compact, having for its object the union of the various members of the House of Bourbon in common resistance to the growing power of England.   It provided that in any future war the Kings of France and Spain should act as one towards foreign Powers, insomuch that the enemy of either should be the enemy of both; and the Bourbon princes of Italy were invited to join in the covenant.   What was more to the present purpose, a special agreement was concluded on the same day, by which Spain bound herself to declare war against England unless that Power should make peace with France before the first of May, 1762.   For the safety of her colonies and her trade Spain felt it her interest to join her sister nation in putting a check on the vast expansion of British maritime power.   She could bring a hundred ships of war to aid the dilapidated navy of France, and the wealth of the Indies to aid her ruined treasury.  

Pitt divined the secret treaty, and soon found evidence of it.   He resolved to demand at once full explanation from Spain; and, failing to receive a satisfactory reply, attack her at home and abroad before she was prepared.   On the second of October he laid his plan before a Cabinet Council held at a house in St.   James Street.   There were present the Earl of Bute, the Duke of Newcastle, Earl Granville, Earl Temple, and others of the Ministry.   Pitt urged his views with great warmth.   "This," he exclaimed, "is the time for humbling the whole House of Bourbon!” His brother-in-law, Temple, supported him.   Newcastle kept silent.   Bute denounced the proposal, and the rest were of his mind.   "If these views are to be followed," said Pitt, "this is the last time I can sit at this board.   I was called to the administration of affairs by the voice of the people; to them I have always considered myself as accountable for my conduct; and therefore cannot remain in a situation which makes me responsible for measures I am no longer allowed to guide.  " Nothing could be more offensive to George III.   and his adherents.  

The veteran Carteret, Earl Granville, replied angrily: "I find the gentleman is determined to leave us; nor can I say I am sorry for it, since otherwise he would certainly have compelled us to leave him.   But if he is resolved to assume the office of exclusively advising His Majesty and directing the operations of the war, to what purpose are we called to this council? When he talks of being responsible to the people, he talks the language of the House of Commons, and forgets that at this board he is responsible only to the King.   However, though he may possibly have convinced himself of his infallibility, still it remains that we should be equally convinced before we can resign our understandings to his direction, or join with him in the measure he proposes.  ”

Pitt resigned, and his colleagues rejoiced.   Power fell to Bute and the Tories; and great was the fall.   The mass of the nation was with the defeated Minister.   On Lord Mayor's Day Bute and Barrington were passing St.   Paul's in a coach, which the crowd mistook for that of Pitt, and cheered lustily; till one man, looking in at the window, shouted to the rest: "This isn't Pitt; it's Bute, and be damned to him!" The cheers turned forthwith to hisses, mixed with cries of "No Bute!" "No Newcastle salmon!" "Pitt forever!" Handfuls of mud were showered against the coach, and Barrington's ruffles were besmirched with it.  

The fall of Pitt was like the knell of doom to Frederic of Prussia.   It meant abandonment by his only ally, and the loss of the subsidy which was his chief resource.   The darkness around him grew darker yet, and not a hope seemed left; when as by miracle the clouds broke, and light streamed out of the blackness.   The bitterest of his foes, the Czarina Elizabeth, she whom he had called infâme catin du Nord, died, and was succeeded by her nephew, Peter III.   Here again, as in England and Spain, a new sovereign brought new measures.   The young Czar, simple and enthusiastic, admired the King of Prussia, thought him the paragon of heroes, and proclaimed himself his friend.   No sooner was he on the throne than Russia changed front.   From the foe of Frederic she became his ally; and in the opening campaign of 1762 the army that was to have aided in crushing him was ranged on his side.   It was a turn of fortune too sharp and sudden to endure.   Ill-balanced and extreme in all things, Peter plunged into headlong reforms, exasperated the clergy and the army, and alienated his wife, Catherine, who had hoped to rule in his name, and who now saw herself supplanted by his mistress.   Within six months he was deposed and strangled.   Catherine, one of whose lovers had borne part in the murder, reigned in his stead, conspicuous by the unbridled disorders of her life, and by powers of mind that mark her as the ablest of female sovereigns.   If she did not share her husband's enthusiasm for Frederic, neither did she share Elizabeth's hatred of him.   He, on his part, taught by hard experience, conciliated instead of insulting her, and she let him alone.  

Peace with Russia brought peace with Sweden, and Austria with the Germanic Empire stood alone against him.   France needed all her strength to hold her own against the mixed English and German force under Ferdinand of Brunswick in the Rhine countries.   She made spasmodic efforts to seize upon Hanover, but the result was humiliating defeat.  

In England George III.   pursued his policy of strengthening the prerogative, and, jealous of the Whig aristocracy, attacked it in the person of Newcastle.   In vain the old politician had played false with Pitt, and trimmed to please his young master.   He was worried into resigning his place in the Cabinet, and Bute, the obsequious agent of the royal will, succeeded him as First Lord of the Treasury.   Into his weak and unwilling hands now fell the task of carrying on the war; for the nation, elated with triumphs and full of fight, still called on its rulers for fresh efforts and fresh victories.   Pitt had proved a true prophet, and his enemies were put to shame; for the attitude of Spain forced Bute and his colleagues to the open rupture with her which the great Minister had vainly urged upon them; and a new and formidable war was now added to the old.   Their counsels were weak and half-hearted; but the armies and navies of England still felt the impulsion that the imperial hand of Pitt had given and the unconquerable spirit that he had roused.  

This spirit had borne them from victory to victory.   In Asia they had driven the French from Pondicherry and all their Indian possessions; in Africa they had wrested from them Gorée and the Senegal country; in the West Indies they had taken Guadeloupe and Dominica; in the European seas they had captured ship after ship, routed and crippled the great fleet of Admiral Conflans, seized Belleisle, and defeated a bold attempt to invade Ireland.   The navy of France was reduced to helplessness.   Pitt, before his resignation, had planned a series of new operations, including an attack on Martinique, with other West Indian islands still left to France, and then in turn on the Spanish possessions of Havana, Panama, Manila, and the Philippines.   Now, more than ever before, the war appeared in its true character.   It was a contest for maritime and colonial ascendency; and England saw herself confronted by both her great rivals at once.  

Admiral Rodney sailed for Martinique, and Brigadier Monckton joined him with troops from America.   Before the middle of February the whole island was in their hands; and Grenada, St.   Lucia, and St.   Vincent soon shared its fate.   The Earl of Albemarle and Admiral Sir George Pococke sailed in early spring on a more important errand, landed in June near Havana with eleven thousand soldiers, and attacked Moro Castle, the key of the city.   The pitiless sun of the tropic midsummer poured its fierce light and heat on the parched rocks where the men toiled at the trenches.   Earth was so scarce that hardly enough could be had to keep the fascines in place.   The siege works were little else than a mass of dry faggots; and when, after exhausting toil, the grand battery opened on the Spanish defences, it presently took fire, was consumed, and had to be made anew.   Fresh water failed, and the troops died by scores from thirst; fevers set in, killed many, and disabled nearly half the army.   The sea was strewn with floating corpses, and carrion-birds in clouds hovered over the populous graveyards and infected camps.   Yet the siege went on: a formidable sally was repulsed; Moro Castle was carried by storm; till at length, two months and eight days after the troops landed, Havana fell into their hands.   At the same time Spain was attacked at the antipodes, and the loss of Manila and the Philippines gave her fresh cause to repent her rash compact with France.   She was hardly more fortunate near home; for having sent an army to invade Portugal, whichwas in the interest of England, a small British force, under Brigadier Burgoyne, foiled it, and forced it to retire.  

The tide of British success was checked for an instant in Newfoundland, where a French squadron attacked St.   John's and took it, with its garrison of sixty men.   The news reached Amherst at New York; his brother, Lieutenant-Colonel Amherst, was sent to the scene of the mishap.   St.   John's was retaken, and its late conquerers were made prisoners of war.  

The financial condition of France was desperate.   Her people were crushed with taxation; her debt grew apace; and her yearly expenditure was nearly double her revenue.   Choiseul felt the need of immediate peace; and George III.   and Bute were hardly less eager for it, to avert the danger of Pitt's return to power and give free scope to their schemes for strengthening the prerogative.   Therefore, in September, 1762, negotiations were resumed.   The Duke of Bedford was sent to Paris to settle the preliminaries, and the Duc de Nivernois came to London on the same errand.   The populace were still for war.   Bedford was hissed as he passed through the streets of London, and a mob hooted at the puny figure of Nivernois as he landed at Dover.  

The great question was, Should Canada be restored? Should France still be permitted to keep a foothold on the North American continent? Ever since the capitulation of Montreal a swarm of pamphlets had discussed the momentous subject.   Some maintained that the acquisition of Canada was not an original object of the war; that the colony was of little value and ought to be given back to its old masters; that Guadeloupe should be kept instead, the sugar trade of that island being worth far more than the Canadian fur trade; and, lastly, that the British colonists, if no longer held in check by France, would spread themselves over the continent, learn to supply all their own wants, grow independent, and become dangerous.   Nor were these views confined to Englishmen.   There were foreign observers who clearly saw that the adhesion of her colonies to Great Britain would be jeopardized by the extinction of French power in America.   Choiseul warned Stanley that they "would not fail to shake off their dependence the moment Canada should be ceded;" while thirteen years before, the Swedish traveller Kalm declared that the presence of the French in America gave the best assurance to Great Britain that its own colonies would remain in due subjection.  

The most noteworthy argument on the other side was that of Franklin, whose words find a strange commentary in the events of the next few years.   He affirmed that the colonies were so jealous of each other that they would never unite against England.   "If they could not agree to unite against the French and Indians, can it reasonably be supposed that there is any danger of their uniting against their own nation, which it is well known they all love much more than they love one another? I will venture to say union amongst them for such a purpose is not merely improbable, it is impossible;" that is, he prudently adds, without "the most grievous tyranny and oppression," like the bloody rule of "Alva in the Netherlands.  ”

Lord Bath argues for retaining Canada in A Letter addressed to Two Great Men on the Prospect of Peace (1759).   He is answered by another pamphlet called Remarks on the Letter to Two Great Men (1760).   The Gentleman's Magazine for 1759 has an ironical article styled Reasons for restoring Canada to the French; and in 1761 a pamphlet against the restitution appeared under the title, Importance of Canada considered in Two Letters to a Noble Lord.   These are but a part of the writings on the question.  ]

If Pitt had been in office he would have demanded terms that must ruin past redemption the maritime and colonial power of France; but Bute was less exacting.   In November the plenipotentiaries of England, France, and Spain agreed on preliminaries of peace, in which the following were the essential points.   France ceded to Great Britain Canada and all her possessions on the North American continent east of the River Mississippi, except the city of New Orleans and a small adjacent district.   She renounced her claims to Acadia, and gave up to the conqueror the Island of Cape Breton, with all other islands in the Gulf and River of St.   Lawrence.   Spain received back Havana, and paid for it by the cession of Florida, with all her other possessions east of the Mississippi.   France, subject to certain restrictions, was left free to fish in the Gulf of St.   Lawrence and off a part of the coast of Newfoundland; and the two little islands of St.   Pierre and Miquelon were given her as fishing stations on condition that she should not fortify or garrison them.   In the West Indies, England restored the captured islands of Guadeloupe, Marigalante, Désirade, and Martinique, and France ceded Grenada and the Grenadines; while it was agreed that of the so-called neutral islands, St.   Vincent, Dominica, and Tobago should belong to England, and St.   Lucia to France.   In Europe, each side promised to give no more help to its allies in the German war.   France restored Minorca, and England restored Belleisle; France gave up such parts of Hanoverian territory as she had occupied, and evacuated certain fortresses belonging to Prussia, pledging herself at the same time to demolish, under the inspection of English engineers, her own maritime fortress of Dunkirk.   In Africa France ceded Senegal, and received back the small Island of Gorée.   In India she lost everything she had gained since the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle; recovered certain trading stations, but renounced the right of building forts or maintaining troops in Bengal.  

On the day when the preliminaries were signed, France made a secret agreement with Spain, by which she divested herself of the last shred of her possessions on the North American continent.   As compensation for Florida, which her luckless ally had lost in her quarrel, she made over to the Spanish Crown the city of New Orleans, and under the name of Louisiana gave her the vast region spreading westward from the Mississippi towards the Pacific.  

On the ninth of December the question of approving the preliminaries came up before both Houses of Parliament.   There was a long debate in the Commons.   Pitt was not present, confined, it was said, by gout; till late in the day the House was startled by repeated cheers from the outside.   The doors opened, and the fallen Minister entered, carried in the arms of his servants, and followed by an applauding crowd.   His bearers set him down within the bar, and by the help of a crutch he made his way with difficulty to his seat.   "There was a mixture of the very solemn and the theatric in this apparition," says Walpole, who was present.   "The moment was so well timed, the importance of the man and his services, the languor of his emaciated countenance, and the study bestowed on his dress were circumstances that struck solemnity into a patriot mind, and did a little furnish ridicule to the hardened and insensible.   He was dressed in black velvet, his legs and thighs wrapped in flannel, his feet covered with buskins of black cloth, and his hands with thick gloves.  " Not for the first time, he was utilizing his maladies for purposes of stage effect.   He spoke for about three hours, sometimes standing, and sometimes seated; sometimes with a brief burst of power, more often with the accents of pain and exhaustion.   He highly commended the retention of Canada, but denounced the leaving to France a share in the fisheries, as well as other advantages tending to a possible revival of her maritime power.   But the Commons listened coldly, and by a great majority approved the preliminaries of peace.  

These preliminaries were embodied in the definitive treaty concluded at Paris on the tenth of February, 1763.   Peace between France and England brought peace between the warring nations of the Continent.   Austria, bereft of her allies, and exhausted by vain efforts to crush Frederic, gave up the attempt in despair, and signed the treaty of Hubertsburg.   The Seven Years War was ended.  

Chapter 32
1763-1884

Conclusion

"This," said Earl Granville on his deathbed, "has been the most glorious war and the most triumphant peace that England ever knew.  " Not all were so well pleased, and many held with Pitt that the House of Bourbon should have been forced to drain the cup of humiliation to the dregs.   Yet the fact remains that the Peace of Paris marks an epoch than which none in modern history is more fruitful of grand results.   With it began a new chapter in the annals of the world.   To borrow the words of a late eminent writer, "It is no exaggeration to say that three of the many victories of the Seven Years War determined for ages to come the destinies of mankind.   With that of Rossbach began the re-creation of Germany, with that of Plassey the influence of Europe told for the first time since the days of Alexander on the nations of the East; with the triumph of Wolfe on the Heights of Abraham began the history of the United States.  ”

So far, however, as concerns the war in the Germanic countries, it was to outward seeming but a mad debauch of blood and rapine, ending in nothing but the exhaustion of the combatants.   The havoc had been frightful.   According to the King of Prussia's reckoning, 853,000 soldiers of the various nations had lost their lives, besides hundreds of thousands of non-combatants who had perished from famine, exposure, disease, or violence.   And with all this waste of life not a boundary line had been changed.   The rage of the two empresses and the vanity and spite of the concubine had been completely foiled.   Frederic had defied them all, and had come out of the strife intact in his own hereditary dominions and master of all that he had snatched from the Empress-Queen; while Prussia, portioned out by her enemies as their spoil, lay depleted indeed, and faint with deadly striving, but crowned with glory, and with the career before her which, through tribulation and adversity, was to lead her at last to the headship of a united Germany.  

Through centuries of strife and vicissitude the French monarchy had triumphed over nobles, parliaments, and people, gathered to itself all the forces of the State, beamed with illusive splendors under Louis the Great, and shone with the phosphorescence of decay under his contemptible successor; till now, robbed of prestige, burdened with debt, and mined with corruption, it was moving swiftly and more swiftly towards the abyss of ruin.  

While the war hastened the inevitable downfall of the French monarchy, it produced still more notable effects.   France under Colbert had embarked on a grand course of maritime and colonial enterprise, and followed it with an activity and vigor that promised to make her a great and formidable ocean power.   It was she who led the way in the East, first trained the natives to fight her battles, and began that system of mixed diplomacy and war which, imitated by her rival, enabled a handful of Europeans to master all India.   In North America her vast possessions dwarfed those of every other nation.   She had built up a powerful navy and created an extensive foreign trade.   All this was now changed.   In India she was reduced to helpless inferiority, with total ruin in the future; and of all her boundless territories in North America nothing was left but the two island rocks on the coast of Newfoundland that the victors had given her for drying her codfish.   Of her navy scarcely forty ships remained; all the rest were captured or destroyed.   She was still great on the continent of Europe, but as a world power her grand opportunities were gone.  

In England as in France the several members of the State had battled together since the national life began, and the result had been, not the unchecked domination of the Crown, but a system of balanced and adjusted forces, in which King, Nobility, and Commons all had their recognized places and their share of power.   Thus in the war just ended two great conditions of success had been supplied: a people instinct with the energies of ordered freedom, and a masterly leadership to inspire and direct them.  

All, and more than all, that France had lost England had won.   Now, for the first time, she was beyond dispute the greatest of maritime and colonial Powers.   Portugal and Holland, her precursors in ocean enterprise, had long ago fallen hopelessly behind.   Two great rivals remained, and she had humbled the one and swept the other from her path.   Spain, with vast American possessions, was sinking into the decay which is one of the phenomena of modern history; while France, of late a most formidable competitor, had abandoned the contest in despair.   England was mistress of the seas, and the world was thrown open to her merchants, explorers, and colonists.   A few years after the Peace the navigator Cook began his memorable series of voyages, and surveyed the strange and barbarous lands which after times were to transform into other Englands, vigorous children of this great mother of nations.   It is true that a heavy blow was soon to fall upon her; her own folly was to alienate the eldest and greatest of her offspring.   But nothing could rob her of the glory of giving birth to the United States; and, though politically severed, this gigantic progeny were to be not the less a source of growth and prosperity to the parent that bore them, joined with her in a triple kinship of laws, language, and blood.   The war or series of wars that ended with the Peace of Paris secured the opportunities and set in action the forces that have planted English homes in every clime, and dotted the earth with English garrisons and posts of trade.  

With the Peace of Paris ended the checkered story of New France; a story which would have been a history if faults of constitution and the bigotry and folly of rulers had not dwarfed it to an episode.   Yet it is a noteworthy one in both its lights and its shadows: in the disinterested zeal of the founder of Quebec, the self-devotion of the early missionary martyrs, and the daring enterprise of explorers; in the spiritual and temporal vassalage from which the only escape was to the savagery of the wilderness; and in the swarming corruptions which were the natural result of an attempt to rule, by the absolute hand of a master beyond the Atlantic, a people bereft of every vestige of civil liberty.   Civil liberty was given them by the British sword; but the conqueror left their religious system untouched, and through it they have imposed upon themselves a weight of ecclesiastical tutelage that finds few equals in the most Catholic countries of Europe.   Such guardianship is not without certain advantages.   When faithfully exercised it aids to uphold some of the tamer virtues, if that can be called a virtue which needs the constant presence of a sentinel to keep it from escaping: but it is fatal to mental robustness and moral courage; and if French Canada would fulfil its aspirations it must cease to be one of the most priest-ridden communities of the modern world.  

Scarcely were they free from the incubus of France when the British provinces showed symptoms of revolt.   The measures on the part of the mother-country which roused their resentment, far from being oppressive, were less burdensome than the navigation laws to which they had long submitted; and they resisted taxation by Parliament simply because it was in principle opposed to their rights as freemen.   They did not, like the American provinces of Spain at a later day, sunder themselves from a parent fallen into decrepitude; but with astonishing audacity they affronted the wrath of England in the hour of her triumph, forgot their jealousies and quarrels, joined hands in the common cause, fought, endured, and won.   The disunited colonies became the United States.   The string of discordant communities along the Atlantic coast has grown to a mighty people, joined in a union which the earthquake of civil war served only to compact and consolidate.   Those who in the weakness of their dissensions needed help from England against the savage on their borders have become a nation that may defy every foe but that most dangerous of all foes, herself, destined to a majestic future if she will shun the excess and perversion of the principles that made her great, prate less about the enemies of the past and strive more against the enemies of the present, resist the mob and the demagogue as she resisted Parliament and King, rally her powers from the race for gold and the delirium of prosperity to make firm the foundations on which that prosperity rests, and turn some fair proportion of her vast mental forces to other objects than material progress and the game of party politics.   She has tamed the savage continent, peopled the solitude, gathered wealth untold, waxed potent, imposing, redoubtable; and now it remains for her to prove, if she can, that the rule of the masses is consistent with the highest growth of the individual; that democracy can give the world a civilization as mature and pregnant, ideas as energetic and vitalizing, and types of manhood as lofty and strong, as any of the systems which it boasts to supplant.

The End

A concluding word from Robert J.   Kuniegel

TR AMERICAN PATRIOT hopes you enjoy our books.   Theodore Roosevelt lived his life in a manner that made government responsive to the people.   He has written how to make meaningful reform possible not only for his generation but for future generations, if we read what he has said.   We only need to interest others in reading what he has said to transform our government.  

Reading the books on TR AMERICAN PATRIOT DOT COM  and having others do the same, has the potential to develop citizens and leaders capable of transforming American politics into a system of government that will be honest, and responsive to “a square deal”.   A square deal has no special deals for the rich, the middle class, or the poor.   Our government today rewards citizens for not being productive.   It promotes entitlements under the guise of helping people, when in fact it only helps politicians to protect their own royal positions.   Policies that foster a special privileged class was the type of government policies Theodore Roosevelt fought against and won.   He was a visionary.   He knew this fight would need to be fought through the ages if we were to keep our country strong.   He was an intrepid pioneer that blazed a trail through a jungle of corrupt government, so that others might follow his proven and highly successful common sense approach toward honest government.   His fearless course helped make America a beacon of hope to all that seek justice.   His endless devotion to America helped make America a super power that no just nation has needed to fear as long as our citizens value his lofty resolute square deal policy toward our fellow citizens and those of other nations.  

Theodore Roosevelt’s greatest gift to this country is before us.   It is not in the past, if we as Americans recognize that his message is not just a story from American history pages.   His message is an example, clearly defined.   It details actions that are required if we desire to do something meaningful for our country.   Join the good fight today by becoming a member of our web site. 

David Boyd, repeating what he had read, once said, “The person we become is because of our experiences in life, the people we meet, and the books we read.  ” It is time to have others meet Theodore Roosevelt.   It is time for a Theodore Roosevelt revival, “Fear God and do your own part”.   Dare to help make Theodore Roosevelt the standard and not the exception.   America needs to adopt a wise, fearless and honest role model as the standard we revere, so that our public servants know what we expect.   The first step to honest government is no harder than setting proper standards of conduct for our public servants through the use of a proper role model.   Can you find one quality in Theodore Roosevelt that is not right in a public servant?  If you think you can, I bet your conjecture is based upon something other than truth and honest reasoning and this American would love an opportunity to debate any such conjecture.