to
Xibrar?
of tbe
of Toronto
Bertram 1R. 2>avis
from tbe books of
tbe late Xionel Davis, 1R*<L
,) CHRONICLES OF CANADA SERIES
THIRTY-TWO VOLUMES ILLUSTRATED
Edited by GEORGE M. WRONG and H. H. LANGTON
t */ , f
CHRONICLES OF CANADA SERIES
PART I
THE FIRST
EUROPEAN
VISITORS
PART II
THE RISE
OF NEW
FRANCE
PART HI
THE
ENGLISH
INVASION
1. THE DAWN OF CANADIAN HISTORY
By Stephen Leacock.
2. THE MARINER OF ST MALO
By Stephen Leacock.
3. THE FOUNDER OF NEW FRANCE*
By Charles W. Colby.
4. THE BLACKROBES *
By J. Edgar Middleton.
5. THE SEIGNEURS OF OLD CANADA
By W. Bennett Munro.
6. THE GREAT INTENDANT
By Thomas Chapais.
7. THE FIGHTING GOVERNOR *
By Charles W. Colby.
8. THE GREAT FORTRESS *
By William Wood.
9. THE ACADIAN EXILES *
By Arthur G. Doughty.
10. THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
By William Wood.
ix. THE WINNING OF CANADA
By William Wood.
The volumes marked with an asterisk are in preparation.
The others are published.
CHRONICLES OF CANADA SERIES
12. THE INVASION OF 1775 *
By C. Frederick Hamilton.
13. BATTLEFIELDS OF 1812-14 *
By William Wood.
14. PONTIAC: THE WAR CHIEF OF THE
OTTAWAS *
By Thomas Guthrie Marquis.
15. BRANT: THE WAR CHIEF OF THE SIX
NATIONS
By Louis Aubrey Wood.
16. TECUMSEH: THE LAST GREAT LEADER
OF HIS PEOPLE *
By Ethel T. Raymond.
17. THE 'ADVENTURERS OF ENGLAND'
ON HUDSON BAY
By Agnes C. Laut.
18. PATHFINDERS OF THE GREAT
PLAINS
By Lawrence J. Burpee.
XQ. PIONEERS OF THE PACIFIC COAST*
By Agnes C. Laut.
20. ADVENTURERS OF THE FAR NORTH
By Stephen Leacock.
21. THE UNITED EMPIRE LOYALISTS
By W. Stewart Wallace.
22. THE RED RIVER COLONY*
By Louis Aubrey Wood.
23. THE CARIBOO TRAIL*
By Agnes C. Laut.
PART IV
THE
AMERICAN
INVASIONS
PART V
THE
RED MAN
IN CANADA
PART VI
PATH-
FINDERS
AND
PIONEERS
CHRONICLES OF CANADA SERIES
24. THE ' FAMILY COMPACT' *
By W. Stewart Wallace.
25. THE REBELLION IN LOWER
CANADA *
By A. D. DeCelles.
PART vn
POLITICAL
FREEDOM
AND
NATIONALITY
26. THE TRIBUNE OF NOVA SCOTIA*
By William L. Grant.
27. THE WINNING OF POPULAR
GOVERNMENT*
By Archibald MacMechan.
28. THE FATHERS OF CONFEDERA-
TION *
By Sir Joseph Pope.
29. THE DAY OF SIR JOHN MACDONALD *
By Sir Joseph Pope.
30. THE DAY OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER *
By Oscar D. Skelton.
PART VIII
NATIONAL
HIGHWAYS
31. ALL AFLOAT
By William Wood.
32. THE RAILROAD BUILDERS *
By Oscar D. Skelton.
TORONTO : GLASGOW, BROOK & COMPANY
THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
BY WILLIAM WOOD
MONTCALM
After the original painting owned by the Marquis de Montcalm
THE PASSING OF
NEW FRANCE
A Chronicle of Montcalm
BY
WILLIAM WOOD
TORONTO
GLASGOW, BROOK & COMPANY
1914
Copyright in all Countries subscribing to
the Berne Convention
F
50 fog
M G W
TO
FOUR GOOD FRIENDS
J.,G., E.,AND H. LAIRD
CONTENTS
Page
I. MONTCALM IN FRANCE I
II. MONTCALM IN CANADA .... 14
III. OSWEGO 28
IV. FORT WILLIAM HENRY .... 44
V. TICONDEROGA 67
VI. QUEBEC 97
VII. THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM . . . .120
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE . . . .143
INDEX. . . . 145
XUl
ILLUSTRATIONS
MONTCALM Frontispiece
After the original painting owned by the
Marquis de Montcalm.
MAP OF NORTH AMERICA, 1755-60 . . Facing page 14
VAUDREUIL » 26
From the painting in the Chateau de Ramezay.
PLAN OF THE SIEGE OF FORTS OSWEGO
AND ONTARIO, 1756 34
PLAN OF THE SIEGE OF FORT WILLIAM
HENRY 54
LEVIS ,,70
From the painting in the Versailles Gallery.
SKETCH OF THE COUNTRY ROUND
TICONDEROGA ,86
PLAN OF THE SIEGE OF QUEBEC, 1759 • >, "°
COMTE DE BOUGAINVILLE . . . ,,128
From Doughty 's ' Siege of Quebec.'
CHAPTER I
MONTCALM IN FRANCE
1712-1756
' WAR is the grave of the Montcalms.' No
one can tell how old this famous saying is.
Perhaps it is as old as France herself. Cer-
tainly there never was a time when the men
of the great family of Montcalm-Gozon were
not ready to fight for their king and country ;
and so Montcalm, like Wolfe, was a soldier
born.
Even in the Crusades his ancestors were
famous all over Europe. When the Christians
of those brave days were trying to drive the
unbelievers out of Palestine they gladly
followed leaders whom they thought saintly
and heroic enough to be their champions
against the dragons of sultan, satan, and hell ;
for people then believed that dragons fought
on the devil's side, and that only Christian
knights, like St George, fighting on God's
side, could kill them. The Christians banded
PASS. A
2 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
themselves together in many ways, among
others in the Order of the Knights of St John
of Jerusalem, taking an oath to be faithful
unto death. They chose the best man among
them to be their Grand Master ; and so it could
have been only after much devoted service
that Deodat de Gozon became Grand Master,
more than five hundred years ago, and was
granted the right of bearing the conquered
Dragon of Rhodes on the family coat of arms,
where it is still to be seen. How often this
glorious badge of victory reminded our own
Montcalm of noble deeds and noble men !
How often it nerved him to uphold the family
tradition !
There are centuries of change between
Crusaders and Canadians. Yet the Mont-
calms can bridge them with their honour.
And, among all the Montcalms who made
their name mean soldier's honour in Eastern
or European war, none have given it so
high a place in the world's history as the
hero whose life and death in Canada made it
immortal. He won the supreme glory for his
name, a glory so bright that it shone even
through the dust of death which shrouded the
France of the Revolution. In 1790, when
the National Assembly was suppressing
MONTCALM IN FRANCE 3
pensions granted by the Crown, it made a
special exception in favour of Montcalm's
children. As kings, marquises, heirs, and
pensions were among the things the Revolu-
tion hated most, it is a notable tribute to our
Marquis of Montcalm that the revolutionary
parliament should have paid to his heirs the
pension granted by a king. Nor has another
century of change in France blotted out his
name and fame. The Montcalm was the French
flagship at the naval review held in honour
of the coronation of King Edward VII. The
Montcalm took the President of France to greet
his ally the Czar of Russia. And, but for a
call of duty elsewhere at the time, the Montcalm
would have flown the French admiral's flag
in 1908, at the celebration of the Tercen-
tenary of the founding of Quebec, when King
George V led the French- and English-speaking
peoples of the world in doing honour to the
twin renown of Wolfe and Montcalm on the
field where they won equal glory, though un-
equal fortune.
Montcalm was a leap-year baby, having
been born on February 29, 1712, in the
family castle of Candiac, near Nimes, a very
old city of the south of France, a city with
many forts built by the Romans two thousand
4 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
years ago. He came by almost as much good
soldier blood on his mother's side as on his
father's, for she was one of the Castellanes,
with numbers of heroic ancestors, extending
back to the First Crusade.
The Montcalms had never been rich. They
had many heroes but no millionaires. Yet
they were well known and well loved for their
kindness to all the people on their estates ; and
so generous to every one in trouble, and so
ready to spend their money as well as their
lives for the sake of king and country, that
they never could have made great fortunes,
even had their estate been ten times as large as
it was. Accordingly, while they were famous
and honoured all over France, they had to be
very careful about spending money on them-
selves. They all — and our own Montcalm in
particular — spent much more in serving their
country than their country ever spent in paying
them to serve it.
Montcalm was a delicate little boy of six
when he first went to school. He had many
schoolboy faults. He found it hard to keep
quiet or to pay attention to his teacher ; he
was backward in French grammar ; and he
wrote a very bad hand. Many a letter of com-
plaint was sent to his father. ' It seems to
MONTCALM IN FRANCE 5
me,' writes the teacher, ' that his handwriting
is getting worse than ever. I show him, again
and again, how to hold his pen ; but he will
not do it properly. I think rn ought to try
to make up for his want of cleverness by being
more docile, taking more pains, and listening
to my advice.1 And then poor old Dumas would
end with an exclamation of despair — ' What
will become of him ! '
Dumas had another pupil who was much
more to his taste. This was Montcalm's
younger brother, Jean, who knew his letters
before he was three, read Latin when he was
five, and Greek and Hebrew when he was six.
Dumas was so proud of this infant prodigy
that he took him to Paris and showed him
off to the learned men of the day, who were
dumbfounded at so much knowledge in so
young a boy. All this, however, was too much
for a youthful brain ; and poor Jean died at
the age of seven.
Dumas then turned sadly to the elder boy
who was in no danger of being killed by too
much study, and soon renewed his complaints.
At last Montcalm, now sixteen and already an
officer, could bear it no longer, and wrote to
his father telling him that in spite of his sup-
posed stupidity he had serious aims. ' I want
6 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
to be, first, a man of honour, brave, and a good
Christian. Secondly, I want to read moder-
ately ; to know as much Greek and Latin
as other men ; also arithmetic, history, geo-
graphy, literature, and some art and science.
Thirdly, I want to be obedient to you and my
dear mother, and listen to Mr Dumas's advice.
Lastly, I want to manage a horse and handle
a sword as well as ever I can/ The result of
it all was that Montcalm became a good Latin
scholar, a very well read man, an excellent
horseman and swordsman, and — to poor old
Dumas's eternal confusion — such a master of
French that he might have been as great an
author as he was a soldier. His letters and
dispatches from the seat of war remind one of
Caesar's. He wrote like a man who sees into
the heart of things and goes straight to the
point with the fewest words which will express
exactly what he wishes to say. /In this he
was like Wolfe, and like many another great
soldier whose quick eye, cool head and warm
heart, all working together in the service of
his country, give him a command over words
which often equals his command over men/
In 1727, the year Wolfe was born, Montcalm
'oined his father's regiment as an ensign.
Presently, in 1733, the French and Germans
MONTCALM IN FRANCE 7
fell out over the naming of a king for Poland.
Montcalm went to the front and had what
French soldiers call his * baptism of fire.'
This war gave him little chance of learning
how great battles should be fought. But he
saw two sieges ; he kept his eyes open to every-
thing that happened ; and, even in camp, he
did not forget his studies. ' I am learning
German,' he wrote home, ' and I am reading
more Greek than I have read for three or
four years.'
The death of his father in 1735 made
him the head of the family of Montcalm.
The next year he married Angelique Talon
du Boulay, a member of a military family,
and grand-daughter of Denis Talon, a kinsman
of Jean Talon, the best intendant who ever
served New France. For the next twenty
years, from 1736 to 1756, he spent in his an-
cestral castle of Candiac as much of his time
as he could spare from the army. There he
had been born, and there he always hoped he
could live and die among his own people after
his wars were over. How often he was to
sigh for one look at his pleasant olive groves
when he was far away, upholding the honour
of France against great British odds and, far
worse, against secret enemies on the French
8 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
side in the dying colony across the sea ! But
for the present all this was far off. Meanwhile,
Candiac was a very happy home; and Mont-
calm's wife and his mother made it the happier
by living together under the same roof. In
course of time ten children were born, all in
his beloved home.
Montcalm's second war was the War of the
Austrian Succession, a war in which his younger
opponent Wolfe saw active service for the
first time. The two future opponents in
Canada never met, however, on the same
battlefields in Europe. In 1741, the year in
which Wolfe received his first commission,
Montcalm fought so well in Bohemia that he
was made a Knight of St Louis. Two years
later, at the age of thirty-one, he was pro-
moted to the command of a regiment which
he led through three severe campaigns in
Italy. During the third campaign, in 1746,
there was a terrific fight against the Austrians
under the walls of Placentia. So furious was
the Austrian attack that the French army
was almost destroyed. Twice was Montcalm 's
regiment broken by sheer weight of numbers.
But twice he rallied it and turned to face
the enemy again. The third attack was the
worst of all. Montcalm still fought on, though
MONTCALM IN FRANCE 9
already he had three bullet wounds, when the
Austrian cavalry made a dashing charge and
swept the French off the field altogether.
He met them, sword in hand, as dauntless
as ever; but he was caught in a whirlwind
of sabre-cuts and was felled to the ground
with two great gashes in his head. He was
taken prisoner; but was soon allowed to go
home, on giving his word of honour, or
* parole/ that he would take no further part
in the war until some Austrian prisoner, of
the same rank as his own, was given back
by the French in exchange. While still on
parole he was promoted to be a brigadier, so
that he could command more than a single
regiment. In due time, when proper exchange
of prisoners was made, Montcalm went back
to Italy, again fought splendidly, and again
was badly wounded. The year 1748 closed
with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle ; and seven
years of peace followed before the renewed
tumult of the Seven Years' War.
Life went very well with Montcalm at
Candiac. He was there as much as possible,
and spent his time between his castle and his
olive groves, his study and his family circle.
His eldest son was a young man of much
promise, growing immensely tall, devoted to
10 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
the army, and engaged to be married. His
wife and her mother-in-law were as happy as
ever with him and with each other. Nothing
seemed more peaceful than that quiet corner in
the pleasant land of southern France.
But the age-long rivalry of French and
British could not long be stilled. Even in
1754 there were rumours of war from the Far
East in India and from the Far West in Canada.
Next year, though peace was outwardly kept
in Europe, both the great rivals sent fleets and
armies to America, where the clash of arms
had already been heard. There were losses on
both sides. And, when the French general,
Baron Dieskau, was made prisoner, the minister
of War, knowing the worth of Montcalm, asked
him to think over the proposal that he should
take command in New France.
On January 26, 1756, the formal offer
came in a letter approved by the king. ' The
king has chosen you to command his troops
in North America, and will honour you on
your departure with the rank of major-general.
But what will please you still more is that His
Majesty will put your son in your place at the
head of your present regiment. The applause
of the public will add to your satisfaction.'
On the very day Montcalm received this
MONTCALM IN FRANCE 11
letter he made up his mind, accepted the com-
mand, bade good-bye to Candiac, and set out
for Paris. From Lyons he wrote to his
mother : ' I am reading with much pleasure
the History of New France by Father
Charlevoix. He gives a pleasant description
of Quebec.' From Paris he wrote to his wife :
* Do not expect any long letter before the ist of
March. All my pressing work will then be
finished, and I shall be able to breathe once
more. Last night I came from Versailles and
I am going back to-morrow. My outfit will
cost me a thousand crowns more than the
amount I am paid to cover it. But I cannot
stop for that.' On March 15 he wrote home:
' Yesterday I presented my son, with whom I
am very well pleased, to all the royal family.'
Three days later he wrote to his wife : ' I shall
be at Brest on the twenty-first. My son has
been here since yesterday, for me to coach him
and also in order to get his uniform properly
made. He will thank the king for his pro-
motion at the same time that I make my
adieux in my embroidered coat. Perhaps I
shall leave some debts behind me. I wait im-
patiently for the accounts. You have my will.
I wish you would have it copied, and would
send me the duplicate before I sail.'
12 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
On April 3 Montcalm left Brest in the
Licorne, a ship of the little fleet which the
French were hurrying out to Canada before
war should be declared in Europe. The
passage proved long and stormy. But Mont-
calm was lucky in being a much better sailor
than poor sea-sick Wolfe. Impatient to
reach the capital at the earliest possible
moment he rowed ashore from below the
island of Orleans, where the Licorne met a
contrary wind, and drove up to Quebec, a
distance of twenty-five miles. It was May
13 when he first passed along the Beau-
port shore between Montmorency and Quebec.
Three years and nine days later he was to
come back tp that very point, there to make
his last heroic stand.
On the evening of his arrival Bigot the in-
tendant gave a magnificent dinner-party for
him. Forty guests sat down to the banquet.
Montcalm had not expected that the poor
struggling colony could boast such a scene as
this. In a letter home he said : ' Even a
Parisian would have been astonished at the
profusion of good things on the table. Such
splendour and good cheer show how much
the intendant's place is worth.' We shall
soon hear more of Bigot the intendant.
MONTCALM IN FRANCE 13
On the 26th Montcalm arrived at Montreal
to see the Marquis of Vaudreuil the governor.
The meeting went off very well. The
governor was as full of airs and graces as
the intendant, and said that nothing else in
the world could have given him so much
pleasure as to greet the general sent out to
take command of the troops from France.
We shall soon hear more of Vaudreuil the
governor.
CHAPTER II
MONTCALM IN CANADA
1756
THE French colonies in North America con-
sisted of nothing more than two very long and
very thin lines of scattered posts and settle-
ments, running up the St Lawrence and the
Mississippi to meet, in the far interior, at the
Great Lakes. Along the whole of these four
thousand miles there were not one hundred
thousand people. Only two parts of the
country were really settled at all : one Acadia,
the other the shores of the St Lawrence be-
tween Bic and Montreal ; and both regions
together covered not more than four hundred
of the whole four thousand miles. There were
but three considerable towns — Louisbourg,
Quebec, and Montreal — and Quebec, which
was much the largest, had only twelve thousand
inhabitants.
The territory bordering on the Mississippi
was called Louisiana. That in the St Lawrence
MONTCALM IN CANADA 15
region was called New France along the river
and Acadia down by the Gulf ; though Canada
is much the best word to cover both. Now,
Canada had ten times as many people as
Louisiana ; and Louisiana by itself seemed
helplessly weak. It was this very weakness
which made the French so keen about the
country south of the Lakes, where Canada
and Louisiana met. For, as long as they held
it, they held the gateways of the West, kept
the valleys of the Ohio and Mississippi quite
securely, shut up the British colonies between
the Alleghany Mountains and the Atlantic,
and prevented them from expanding westward.
One other thing was even more vital than this
to the French in America : it was that they
should continue to hold the mouth of the St
Lawrence. Canada could live only by getting
help from France ; and as this help could not
come up the Mississippi it had to come up the
St Lawrence.
The general position of the French may be
summed up briefly. First, and most im-
portant of all, they had to hold the line of
the St Lawrence for a thousand miles in
from the sea. Here were their three chief
positions: Louisbourg, Quebec, and Lake
Champlain.
16 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
Secondly, they had to hold another thousand
miles westward, to and across the Lakes ; but
especially the country south of Lakes Ontario
and Erie, into the valley of the Ohio. Here
there were a few forts, but no settlements
worth speaking of.
Thirdly, they had to hold the valley of the
Mississippi, two thousand miles from north to
south. Here there were very few forts, very
few men, and no settlements of any kind.
In fact, they held the Mississippi only by the
merest thread, and chiefly because the British
colonies had not yet grown out in that direc-
tion. The Mississippi did not come into the war,
though it might have done so. If Montcalm
had survived the battle of the Plains, and if in
1760 the defence of Canada on the St Lawrence
had seemed to him utterly hopeless, his plan
would probably then have been to take his best
soldiers from Canada into the interior, and in
the end to New Orleans, there to make a last
desperate stand for France among the swamps.
But this plan died with him ; and we may leave
the valley of the Mississippi out of our reckon-
ing altogether.
Not so the valley of the Ohio, which, as we
have seen, was the meeting-place of Canada
and Louisiana, and the chief gateway to the
MONTCALM IN CANADA 17
West ; and which the French and British
rivals were both most fiercely set on possess-
ing. It was here that the world-wide Seven
Years' War first broke out ; here that George
Washington first appeared as an American
commander ; here that Braddock led the
first westbound British army ; and here that
Montcalm struck his first blow for French
America.
But, as we have also seen, even the valley of
the Ohio was less important than the line of
the St Lawrence. The Ohio region was cer-
tainly the right arm of French America. But
the St Lawrence was the body, of which the
lungs were Louisbourg, and the head and
heart Quebec. Montcalm saw this at once ;
and he made no single mistake in choosing
the proper kind of attack and defence during
the whole of his four campaigns.
The British colonies were different in every
way from the French. The French held a
long, thin line of four thousand miles, forming
an inland loop from the Gulf of St Lawrence
to the Gulf of Mexico, with only one hundred
thousand people sparsely settled in certain
spots; the British filled up the solid inside of
this loop with over twelve hundred thousand
people, who had an open seaboard on the
PASS. B
18 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
Atlantic for two thousand miles, from Nova
Scotia down to Florida.
Now, what could have made such a great
difference in growth between the French and
the British colonies, when France had begun
/ with all the odds of European force and
numbers in her favour ? The answer is two-
fold: France had no adequate fleets and her
colonies had no adequate freedom.
First, as to fleets. The mere fact that the
Old and New Worlds had a sea between them
meant that the power with the best navy would
have a great advantage. The Portuguese,
Spaniards, Dutch, and French all tried to build
empires across the sea. But they all failed
whenever they came to blows with Britain,
simply because no empire can live cut up into
separate parts. The sea divided the other
empires, while, strange as it may appear, this
same sea united the British. The French were
a nation of landsmen, for one very good reason
that they had two-land frontiers tojefend. Their
kings and statesmen understood armies better
than navies, and the French people themselves
liked soldiers better than sailors. The British,
on the other hand, since they lived on an
island, had no land frontiers to defend. The
people liked sailors better than soldiers. And
MONTCALM IN CANADA 19
their rulers understood navies better than
armies, for the sea had always been the
people's second home.
At this period, whenever war broke out, the
British navy was soon able to win * the com-
mand of the sea ' ; that is, its squadrons soon
made the sea a safe road for British ships and
a very unsafe road for the ships of an enemy.
In America, at that time, everything used in
war, from the regular fleets and armies them-
selves down to the powder and shot, cannon
and muskets, swords and bayonets, tools, tents,
and so on — all had to be brought across the
Atlantic. While this was well enough for
the British, for the French it was always very
hard and risky work. In time of war their
ships were watched, chased and taken whenever
they appeared on the sea. Even during peace
they had much the worse of it, for they had to
spend great sums and much effort in building
vessels to make up for the men of-war and
the merchant ships which they had lost and
the British had won. Thus they never quite
succeeded in beginning again on even terms
with their triumphant rival.
We must remember, too, that every sort of
trade and money-making depended on the
command of the sea, which itself depended
20 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
on the stronger navy. Even the trade with
Indians in America, two thousand miles inland,
depended on defeat or victory at sea. The
[French might send out ships full of things to
{exchange for valuable furs. But if they lost
their ships they lost their goods, and in conse-
quence the trade and even the friendship of the
Indians. In the same way the navy helped
or hindered the return trade from America to
Europe. The furs and food from the British
colonies crossed over in safety, and the money
or other goods in exchange came safely back.
But the French ships were not safe, and French
merchants were often ruined by the capture of
their ships or by having the sea closed to them.
To follow out all the causes and effects of
the command of the sea would be far too long
a story even to begin here. But the gist of
it is quite short and quite plain : no Navy, no
Empire. That is what it meant then, and that
is what it means now.
Secondly, as to freedom in the French
colonies. Of course, freedom itself, no matter
how good it is and how much we love it, would
have been nothing without the protection of
fleets. All the freedom in the world cannot
hold two countries on opposite sides of the sea
together without the link of strong fleets. But
MONTCALM IN CANADA 21
even the strongest fleet would not have helped
New France to grow as fast and as well as New
England grew. The French people were not
free in the motherland. They were not free
as colonists in Canada. All kinds of laws and
rules were made for the Canadians by persons
thousands of miles away. This interference
came from men who knew scarcely anything
about Canada. They had crude notions as
to what should be done, and sometimes they
ordered the men on the spot to do impossible
things. The result was that the men on the
spot, if they were bad enough and clever
enough, just hoodwinked the government in
France, and did in Canada what they liked
and what made for their own profit.
Now, Bigot the intendant, the man of affairs
in the colony, was on the spot ; and he
was one of the cleverest knaves ever known,
with a feeble colony in his power. He had
nothing to fear from the people, the poor,
helpless French Canadians. He had nothing
to fear from their governor, the vain, incom-
petent Vaudreuil. He was, moreover, three
thousand miles away from the French court,
which was itself full of parasites. He had been
given great power in Canada. As intendant
he was the head of everything except the
22 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
army, the navy, and the church. He had
charge of all the public money and all the
public works, and whatever else might be
called public business. Of course, he was
supposed to look after the interests of France
and of Canada, not after his own ; and earlier
intendants like Talon had done this with per-
fect honesty. But Bigot soon organized a
gang of men like himself, and gathered into
his grasping hands the control of the private
as well as of the public business.
One example will show how he worked.
Whenever food became dangerously scarce in
Canada the intendant's duty was to buy it up,
to put it into the king's stores, and to sell out
only enough for the people to live on till
the danger was over. There was a reason for
this, as Canada, cut off from France, was like
a besieged fortress, and it was proper to treat
the people as a garrison would be treated, and
to make provision for the good of the whole.
But when Bigot had formed his gang, and had,
in some way, silenced Vaudreuil, he declared
Canada in danger when it was not, seized all
the food he could lay hands on, and sent it
over to France ; sent it, too, in the king's ships,
that it might be carried free. Then he made
Vaudreuil send word to the king that Canada
MONTCALM IN CANADA 23
was starving. In the meantime, his friends f
in France had stored the food, and had then /
assured the king that there was plenty of grain /
in hand which they could ship to Canada at
once. The next step was to get an order from I
the king to buy this food to be shipped to I /
Canada. This order was secured through in- I /
fluential friends in Paris, and, of course, the I/
price paid by the king was high. The food I]
was then sent back to Canada, again in the//
king's ships. I Then Bigot and his friends in I
Canada put it not into the king's but into their
own stores in Quebec, sold it to the king's
stores once more, as they had sold it in France,
and then effected a third sale, this time to the
wretched French Canadians from whom they
had bought it for next to nothing at first.
Thus both the king and the French Canadians
were each robbed twice over, thanks to Vau-
dreuil's complaisance and Bigot's official posi-
tion as also representing the king.
Bigot had been some time in Canada before!
Vaudreuil arrived as governor in 1755. He
had already cheated a good deal. But it was
only when he found out what sort of man
Vaudreuil was that he set to work to do his
worst. Bigot was a knave, Vaudreuil a fool.
Vaudreuil was a French Canadian born and
24 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
very jealous of any one from France, unless the
Frenchman flattered him as Bigot did. He
loved all sorts of pomp and show, and thought
himself the greatest man in America. Bigot
played on this weakness with ease and could
persuade him to sign any orders, no matter
how bad they were.
Now, when an owl like Vaudreuil and a fox
like Bigot were ruining Canada between them,
they were anything but pleased to see a lion
like Montcalm come out with an army from
France. Vaudreuil, indeed, had done all he
could to prevent the sending out of Montcalm.
He wrote to France several times, saying that
no French general was needed, that separate
regiments under their own colonels would
suffice, and that he himself could command
the regulars from France, just as he did the
Canadians.
But how did he command the Canadians ?
By law every Canadian had to serve as a soldier,
without pay, whenever the country was in
danger. By law every man needed for carry-
ing supplies to the far-off outposts could also
be taken; but, in this case, he had to be
paid. Now, all the supplies and the carnage of
them were under Bigot's care. So when the
Canadians were called out as soldiers, with-
MONTCALM IN CANADA 25
out pay, Bigot's gang would ask them if they
would rather go and be shot for nothing or
carry supplies in safety for pay. Of course,
they chose the carrier's work and the pay,
though half the pay was stolen from them.
At the same time their names were still kept
on the muster rolls as soldiers. This was
the reason why Montcalm often had only
half the militia called out for him : the other
half were absent as carriers, and the half
which remained for Montcalm was made up
of those men whom Bigot's friends did not
think good enough for carriers.
But there were more troubles still for Mont-
calm and his army. As governor, Yaudreuil*
was, of course, the heaxLpl.jeYerything in the
country, including_the army. This was right
enough, if Tie had been fiTfor his post, because
a country must have a supreme head, and
the army is only a part, though the most im-
portant part, in war. A soldier may be also a
statesman and at the head of everything, as
were Cromwell, Napoleon, and Frederick the
Great. But a statesman who is not a soldier
only ruins an army if he tries to command
it himself. And this was precisely what Vau-
dreuil did. Indeed, he did worse, for, while he
did not go into the field himself, he continued
26 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
to give orders to Montcalm at every turn.
Besides, instead of making all the various forces
on the French side into one army he kept.th.em
as separate as he could — five parts and no
whole.
It should be made clear what these five parts
were. First, there were the F^nchjregulars,
the best of all, commanded by Montcalm, who
was himself under Vaudreuil. Next, there
were the Canadian regulars and the Canadian
militia^ both directly under Vaudreuil. Then
there were the Ftench^_sajlprs, under their
own officers, but subject to Vaudreuil. Mont-
calm had to report to the minister of War
in Paris about the French regulars, and to
the minister of Marine about the Canadians
of both kinds. Vaudreuil reported to both
ministers, usually against Montcalm ; and the
French naval commander reported to his own
minister on his own account. So there was
abundant opportunity to make trouble among
the four French forces. But there was more
trouble still with the fifth force, the Indians,
who were ur^erJ±L^irown^chiefs. These men
admired Montcalm ; Eutthey had to make
treaties with Vaudreuil. They were cheated
byBigot and were offered^ presents by the
nfitlsh. As they very naturally desired to
MONTCALM IN CANADA 27
keep their own country for themselves in their
own way they always wished to side with the
stronger of the two white rivals, if they could
not get rid of both.
Such was the Canada of 17^6, a country in
quite as much janger from French parasites
as. from jritish^ patriots. It might have lasted
for some years longer if there had been no
general war. The American colonists, though
more than twelve to one, could not have con-
quered it alone, because they had no fleet and
no regular army. But the war came, and it
was a great one. In a great war a country of
parasites has no chance against a country of
patriots. All the sins of sloth and wilful weak-
ness, of demagogues and courtiers, and what-
ever else is rotten in the state, are soon found
out and punished by war. Canada under
Vaudreuil_and JBigoJ jwas no_match _ for! an
empire under Pitt. For one's own parasites
are always the worst of one's enemies. So
the last great fight for Canada was not a fight
of three against three ; but of one against
five. Montcalm the lion stood utterly alone,
with two secret foes behind him and three
open foes in front — Vaudreuil the owl, and
Bigot the fox, behind ; Pitt, Saunders and
Wolfe, three lions like himself, in front.
CHAPTER III
OSWEGO
1756
IN 1753 the governor of Virginia had sent
Washington, then a young major of only
twenty-one, to see what the French were
doing in the valley of the Ohio, where they
had been busy building forts to shut the gate-
way of the West against the British and to
keep it open for themselves. The French
officers at a post which they called Venango
received Washington very politely and asked
him to supper. Washington wrote in his
diary that, after they had drunk a good deal
of wine, ' they told me that it was their
absolute design to take possession of the
Ohio, and by God they would do it.' When
Washington had returned home and reported,
the Virginians soon sent him back with a
small force to turn the French out. But
meanwhile the French had been making them-
selves much stronger, and on July 4, 1754,
28
OSWEGO 29
when Washington advanced into their disputed
territory, he was overcome and obliged to
surrender — a strange Fourth of July for him to
look back upon !
Exciting events followed rapidly. In 1755
Braddock came out from England with a
small army of regulars to take command of
the British forces in America and drive the
French from the Ohio valley. But there were
many difficulties. The governments of the
thirteen British colonies were jealous of each
other and of the government in Britain ; their
militia were jealous of the British regulars,
who in turn looked down on them. In the
end, with only a few Virginians to assist him,
Braddock marched into a. country perfectly
new _to jiim and his men. The French and
Indians, quite at home in the dense forest, laid
an ambush for the British regulars. These
stood bravely, but they could not see a single
enemy to fire at. They were badly defeated,
and Braddock was- killed. The British had a
compensating success a few weeks later when,
in the centre of Canada, beside Lake George,
the French general, Baron Dieskau, was de-
feated almost as badly as Braddock had been.
Following this, down by the Gulf the French
Acadians were rooted out of Nova Scotia, for
30 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
fear that they might join the other French in
the coming war. Their lot was a hard one,
but as they had been British subjects for
forty years and had always refused to take the
oath of allegiance to the British crown, and as
they were being constantly stirred up against
British rule, it was decided that they could not
be safely left inside the British frontier.
At sea the French had also suffered loss.
Admiral Boscawen had seized two ships with
four hundred seasoned French regulars on board
destined for Canada. The French then sent out
another four hundred to replace them. But no
veteran soldiers could be spared. So this second
four . Jmndred^j^jised-JH^^ of men,
were oLpoor guality, and spoiled the discipline
of the regiments they joined in Canada. One
of these regiments, which had the worst of
these recruits, proved to be the least trust-
worthy in the final struggle before Quebec in
1759. Thus the power of the British navy in
the Gulf of St Lawrence in 1755 made itself
felt four years later, and a long distance away,
at the very crisis of the war on land.
Strange as it seems to us now, all this fight-
ing had taken place in a time of nominal peace.
But in 1756 the Seven_ Years' War broke out
in Europe, and then~many plans were made,
OSWEGO 31
especially in the English colonies in America,
for the conquest of Canada. The British forces
were greater than the French, all told on both
sides, both then and throughout the war.
But the thirteen colonies could not agree.
Some of them were hot, others lukewarm,
others, such as the Quakers of Pennsylvania,
cold. Moreover, the British generals were of £*Vla
little use, and the colonial ones squabbled as 'f>^*
the colonies themselves squabbled. Pitt had
not yet taken charge of the war, and the British
in America were either doing nothing or doing
harm.
There was only one trained and competent
general on the whole continent ; and that
general was Mqntcalm. Though new to war-
fare in the wilds he soon understood it as well
as those who had waged it all their lives ; and
he saw at a glance that an attack on Oswego
was the key tp_ the whole campaign. Loiiis-
bourg was, as ye^~safe" enough ; and the
British movements against Lake Champlain
were so slow and foolish that he turned them
to good account for his own purposes.
At the end of June, 1756, Montcalm arrived
at Ticonderoga, where he had already posted
his second-in-command, the Chevalier de
Levis, with 3000 men. He walked all over
32 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
the country thereabouts and seized the lie of
the land so well that he knew it thoroughly
when he came back, two years later, and won
his greatest victory. He kept his men busy
too. He moved them forward so boldly and
so cleverly that the British who had been
planning the capture of the fort never thought
of attacking him, but made sure only of de-
fending themselves. All this was but a feint
to put the British off their guard elsewhere.
Suddenly, while Levis kept up this show of
force, Montcalm himself left secretly for
Montreal, saw Vaudreuil, who, like Bigot, was
still all bows and smiles, and left again, with
equal suddenness, for Fort Frontenac (now
Kingston) on July 21. From this point he
intended to attack Oswego.
At the entrance to the Thousand Islands
there was a point, called by the voyageurs
Point Baptism, where every new-comer into the
' Upper Countries ' had to pay the old hands
to drink his health. The French regulars,
1300 strong, were all new to the West, and,
as they formed nearly half of Montcalm's
little army, the ' baptism ' of so many new-
comers caused a great deal of jollity in camp
that night. Serious work was, however,
ahead. Fort Frontenac was reached on the
OSWEGO 33
2Qth ; and here the report that Villiers, with
the advance guard, had already taken from
the British 200 canoes and 300 prisoners soon
flew round and raised the men's spirits to the
highest pitch.
Montcalm at once sent out two armed ships,
with twenty-eight cannon between them, to
cut off Oswego by water, while he sent a picked
body of Canadians and Indians into the woods
on the south shore to cut the place off by
land. There was no time to lose, since the
British were, on the whole, much stronger,
and might make up their slow minds to send
an army to the rescue. Montcalm lost not a
moment. He sailed across the lake with his
3000 men and all his guns and stores, and
landed at Sackett's Harbour, which his
advance guard had already seized and pre-
pared. Then, hiding in the mouths of rivers
.by -day and marching and rowing by night,
hi&. army _ arrived safely withih
shcJLja£--Qswego under cover ~olJJie_dark^ on
August 10.
There~wenrthree forts at the mouth of the
Oswego. The first was Fort Ontario ; then,
across the river, stood Fort Oswego ; and, be-
yond that again, little Fort George. These
forts were held by about iSooJBritish, mostly
*""
PASS.
34 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
American colonists, with 123 guns of all
kinds.
While it was still dark Montcalm gave
out his orders. At the first streak of dawn
the Indians and Canadians were in position
to protect the engineers and working parties.
Only one accident marred the success of the
opening day. One of the French engineers was
returning to camp through the woods at dusk,
when an Indian, mistaking him for an enemy,
shot him dead. It is said that this Indian
felt so sorry for what he had done that he
vowed to avenge the engineer's loss on the
British, and did not stop scalp-hunting during
the rest of the war ; but went on until he
had lifted as many as thirty scalps from the
hated British heads. In the meantime, other
engineers had traced out the road from the
bay to the battery. Led by their officers the
French regulars set to work with such good-
will that the road was ready next day for the
siege train of twenty-two cannon, now landed
in the nick of time.
Every part of the siege was made to fit in
perfectly with every other part. While the
guns were being landed, the British, who had
only just taken alarm, sent round two armed
vessels to stop this work. But Montcalm had
OSWEGO 35
placed a battery all ready to beat off these
ships, and the landing went on like clock-
work. The next day, again, the soldiers were
as busy as bees round the doomed British
forts. Canadians and Indians filled the woods.
Canadians and French hauled the cannon
up to the battery commanding Fort Ontario,
but left them hidden near by till after dark.
The engineers made the first parallel. French
troops raised the battery ; and at daylight the
next morning it was ready. Fort Ontario kept
up an active fire. The distance was only a
musket shot, two hundred yards; but the
French fire was so furious that the British
guns were silenced the same afternoon.
Colonel Mercer, the British commander,
called in the garrison, who abandoned Fort
Ontario and crossed the river after spiking
the guns. Without a moment's delay Mont-
calm seized the fort and kept his working
parties hauling guns all night long. In the
morning Fort Oswego on the other side of the
river was commanded by a heavier battery
than the one that had taken Fort Ontario the
day before. More than this, the Canadians
and Indians had crossed the river and had cut
off the little Fort George, half a mile beyond.
There was a stiff fight for it, but Mercer's men
36 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
were driven off into the other fort with con-
siderable loss.
Montcalm's new battery beside the river
was on higher ground than Fort Oswego,
which was only five hundred yards away.
At six o'clock it opened fire and ploughed
up the whole area of this fort with terrible
effect. Hardly a spot was left which the
French shells did not search out. The
British reply, fired uphill, soon began to
weaken. The French fire was redoubled.
Colonel Mercer was killed by a cannon ball, and
this, of course, weakened the British defence.
The second-in-command kept up the unequal
fight for another couple of hours. Then,
finding that he could not induce his men to
face the murderous fire any longer, and see-
ing his fort cut off by land and water, he ran
up the white flag.
Montcalm gave him an hour to surrender
both fort and garrison. Again there was no
time to lose, and again Montcalm lost none.
That morning a letter found on a British
messenger showed that Colonel Webb, with
2000 men, was somewhere up the river Oswego
waiting for news. So, while Montcalm was
attacking the fort with his batteries, he was
also preparing his army to attack Webb. He
OSWEGO 37
did not intend to wait ; but to march out and
meet the new enemy, so as not to be caught
between two fires.
At eleven the fort surrendered with 1600
prisoners, 123 cannon, powder, shot, stores
and provisions of all kinds, 5 armed ships
and 200 boats. There was also a large quantity
of wine and rum, which Montcalm at once
spilt into the lake, lest the Indians should get
hold of it and in their drunken frenzy begin a
massacre. As it was, they were anything but
pleased to find that he was conducting the war
on European principles, and that he would not
let them scalp the sick and wounded British.
Some of them sneaked in and, in the first con-
fusion, took a few scalps. But Montcalm was
among them at once and stopped them short.
He had been warned not to offend them ; and
so he promised them rich presents if they
would behave properly. In his dispatch to
the minister of War he said : ' I am afraid my
promises will cost ten thousand francs ; but
the keeping of them will attach the Indians
more to our side. In any case, there is
nothing I would not have done to prevent any
breach of faith with the enemy.'
In a single week every part of all three forts
was levelled with the ground. This delighted
38 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
the Indians more than anything else, for they
rightly feared that any British advance in this
direction would be sure to end in their being
driven out of their own country. By August
21, ten days from the time the first shot was
fired, Montcalm was leading his victorious
army back to Montreal.
The news spread like wildfire. No such
sudden, complete, and surprising victory had
ever before been won in the West. The name
and fame of Montcalm ran along the war-
paths of the endless forest and passed from
mouth to mouth over ten thousand leagues of
inland waters. In one short summer the magic
of that single word, Montcalm, became as
great in America as it had been for centuries
in France. The whole face of the war was
changed. At the beginning of the year the
British had thought of nothing but attack.
Then, when Montcalm had shown them so
bold a front at Ticonderoga, they had paused
to make sure. Now, after Oswego, they
thought of nothing but defence.
People could hardly believe that one and the
same man had in July checked the threatened
British invasion at Lake Champlain and in
August had taken the stronghold of British
power on Lake Ontario. Every step of the
OSWEGO 39
way had to be covered by force of the men's
own legs and arms, marching, paddling, haul-
ing, carrying. In short, Montcalm had moved
a whole army, siege train and all, as fast
through the wilderness without horses as
another army would have been moved over
good roads in Europe with them. The wonder
grew when the numbers became known.
Wjth sogft-'iimi rm4-22 giinS-J^nt^ir1^^
aken thfftt foffo ****** * MirtiaQft of 1800 men
jmd 123 gunt ; and had done this in face oT~
five armed British vessels against his own two,
and in spite <tf the fact that 2000 more British. _
"soldiers were close behind him in the forest.
Canada burst into great rejoicings. All the
churches sang Te Deum. The five captured
flags were carried in triumph through Montreal,
Three Rivers, and Quebec. In France the news
was received with great jubilation, and many
officers gained promotion for this success. In
the midst of all this glory Montcalm was busy
looking after the health and comfort of his
men, seeing that the Canadians were sent home
as soon as possible to gather in their harvest,
and engaging the Indians to join him for a still
greater war next year. Nor did he forget any
one who had done him faithful service. He
asked, as a special favour, that an old sergeant,
40 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
Marcel, who had come out as his orderly and
clerk, should be made a captain. Marcel had
thus good reason never to forget Montcalm.
It was his hand that wrote the last letter which
Montcalm ever dictated and signed, the one to
the British commander after the battle of the
Plains, the one which admitted the ultimate
failure of all Montcalm's heroic work.
Another man whom Montcalm specially
praised was Bougainville, his aide-de-camp,
of whom we shall hear again very often.
Bougainville, though still under thirty, was
already a well-known man of science who had
been made a Fellow of the Royal Society of
London. ' You could hardly believe how full
of resource he is,' wrote the admiring Mont-
calm, who then added modestly : * As the
account of this expedition may be printed
I have asked him to correct it carefully, be-
cause he writes much better than I do.'
Only one thing spoiled the triumph ; and
that was the jealousy of Vaudreuil, who tried
to claim all the credit of making the plan for
himself and the credit of carrying it out for
the Canadians. Certainly he had been saying
for some time before Montcalm arrived that
Oswego ought to be taken. Everybody on
both sides knew perfectly well, however, that
OSWEGO 41
Oswego was the gateway of the West ; so /
Vaudreuil was not a bit wiser than many /
others. In a way he did make the plan. But /
Montcalm was the one who really worked /
it out. Vaudreuil pressed the button that /
launched the ship. It was Montcalm who /
took her into action and brought her out/
victorious. — J
Montcalm's crew worked well together.
But this did not suit Vaudreuil at all. He
wrote both to the minister of War and to the
minister of Marine in France, praising the
Canadians and Indians and making as little
as possible of the work of the French. ' The
French regulars showed their wonted zeal ;
but the enemy did not give them a chance to
do much work.' l Our troops, the Canadians
and Indians, fought with courage. They have
all done very well/ True enough. But, all
the same, the regulars were, from first to last,
tK'e backbone of the defence of Canada. ' The _
measures^ _i look _. made our victory certain.
If I had been less firm, Oswego would still „
have been in the hands of the British. I
^cannot sufficiently congratulate myself on the
zeal which my brother [an officer in the
Canadian service] and the Canadians and
Indians showed. Without them my orders
42 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
would have been given in vain.' And so on,
and so on.
Mont calm saw the real strength and weak-
ness of the Canadians and wrote his own
opinion to the minister of War. ' Our French
regulars did all I required with splendid zeal.
... I made good use of the militia, but not
at the works exposed to the enemy's fire.
These militiamen have no discipline. In six
months I could make grenadiers of them. But
at present I would not rely on them, nor be-
lieve what they say about themselves ; for
they think themselves quite the finest fellows
in the world. The governor is a native of
Canada, was married here, and is surrounded
by his relatives on all sides.'
The fact is that the war was no longer an
affair of little raids, first on one side and then
on the other, but was becoming, more and
more, a war on a great scale, with long cam-
paigns, larger numbers of men, trains of
artillery, fortifications, and all the other
things that require well-drilled troops who
have thoroughly learned the soldier's duty,
and are ready to do it at any time and in any
place. War is like everything else in the world.
The men whose regular business it is will wage
it better than the men who only do it as an odd
OSWEGO 43
job. Of course, if the best men are chosen for
the militia, and the worst are turned into
regulars, the militia may beat the regulars,
even on equal terms. If, too, regulars are set
down in a strange country, quite unlike the
one in which they have been trained to fight,
naturally they will begin by making a good
many mistakes. But, for all-round work, the
same men, as regulars, are worth much more
than twice what they are worth as militia,
everywhere and always.
CHAPTER IV
FORT WILLIAM HENRY
1757
IN January Montcalm paid a visit to Quebec,
and there began to see how Bigot and his
fellow-vampires were sucking away the life-
blood of Canada. * The intendant lives in
grandeur, and has given two splendid balls,
where I have seen over eighty very charm-
ing and well-dressed ladies. I think Quebec
is a town of very good style, and I do not be-
lieve we have a dozen cities in France that
could rank before it as a social centre.' This
was well enough ; though not when armies
were only half-fed. But here is the real crime :
' The intendant's strong taste for gambling,
and the governor's weakness in letting him
have his own way, are causing a great deal of
play for very high stakes. Many officers will
repent it soon and bitterly.' Montcalm was
placed in a most awkward position. He
wished to stop the ruinous gambling. But he
44
FORT WILLIAM HENRY 45
was under Vaudreuil, had no power over the
intendant, and, as he said himself, * felt
obliged not to oppose either of them in
public, because they were invested with the
king's authority.'
Vaudreuil nearly did Canada a very good
turn this winter, by falling ill on his way to
Montreal. But, luckily for the British and
unluckily for the French, he recovered. On
February 14 he began hatching more mis-
chief. The British, having been stopped in
the West at Oswego, were certain to try another
advance, in greater force, by the centre, up
Lake Champlain. The French, with fewer
men and very much less provisions and stores
of all kinds, could hope to win only by giving
the British another sudden, smashing blow
and then keeping them in check for the rest
of the summer. The whol$ ptargti|rfo nf r^^fl
was needed to give this blow, and every pound
of food was precious. Vaudreuil, however,
was planning to take separate action on his
own account. He organized a raid under his
brother, Rigaud, without telling Montcalm a
'Word about it till the whole plan was made,
'even though the raid required the use of some
of the French regulars, who were, in an
especial degree, under Montcalm's command.
46 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
Montcalm told Vaudreuil that it was a pity not
to keep their whole strength for one decisive
dash, and that, if this raid was to take place at
all, Levis or some other regular French officer
high in rank should be in command.
Vaudreuil, however, adhered to his own plan.
This time there was to be no question of credit
for anyone but Canadians, Indians, Vaudreuil
himself, and his brother. As for making sure
of victory by taking, as Montcalm advised,
a really strong force : well, Vaudreuil would
trust to luck, hit or miss, as he always had
trusted before. And a strange stroke of luck
very nearly did serve his unworthy turn. For,
on March 17, when the 1600 raiders were
drawing quite close to Fort William Henry,
most of the little British garrison of 400 men
were drinking so much New England rum in
honour of St Patrick's Day that their muskets
would have hurt friends more than foes if an
attack had been made that night. Next even-
ing the French crept up, hoping to surprise the
place. But the sentries were once more alert,
and in the silence they heard a tapping noise
on the lake, which turned out to be made by
a Canadian who was trying the strength of the
ice with the back of his axe to see if it would
bear. This led to a brisk defence. When
FORT WILLIAM HENRY 47
the French advanced over the ice the British
gunners sent such a hail of grape-shot crashing
along this precarious foothold that the enemy
were glad to scamper off as hard as their legs
v^puld take them.
The French did not abandon their attempt,
however, and two days later Vaudreuil's
brother arrayed his 1600 men against the fort
and summoned it to surrender. As he had no
guns the garrison would not listen to him.
Rigaud then proceeded to burn what he could
outside the fort. He certainly made a splendid
bonfire ; the wild, red flames leaped into the
sky from the open, snow-white clearings
beside the fort, with the long, white reaches
of Lake George in front and the dark, densely
wooded hills all round. A great deal was
burnt : four small ships, 350 boats, a saw-
mill, sheds, magazines, immense piles of fire-
wood, and a large supply of provisions. But
the British could afford this loss much better
than the French could afford the cost of the
raid. And the cost, of course, was five times
as great as it ought to have been. Bigot's
gang took care of that.
- Jfren the raiderar*m^kkvj^ JbikeJJie fortT set
out— ior Jiome on snow-shoes. There had
been a very heavy snowstorm before they
48 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
started, and the spring sun was now shining
full on the glaring white snow. Many of
them, even among the Canadians and Indians,
were struck snowblind so badly that they
had to be led by the hand — no easy thing on
snow-shoes. At the end of March they were
safely back in Montreal, where Vaudreuil and
his brother went strutting about like a pair of
turkey-cocks.
Montcalm's first Canadian winter wore away.
Vaudreuil and Bigot still kept up an outward
politeness in all their relations with him.
But they were beginning to fear that he was
far too wise and honest for them. He was,
however, under VaudreuiPs foolish orders and
he had no power to check Bigot's knaveries.
Much against his will he was already getting
into debt, and was thus rendered even more
helpless. Vaudreuil, as governor, had plenty
of money. Bigot stole as much as he wished.
But Montcalm was not well paid. Yet, as
the commander-in-chief, he had to be asking
people to dinners and receptions almost every
day, while becoming less and less able to meet
the expense. The Bigot gang made provisions
so scarce and so dear that only the thieves
themselves could pay for them. Well might
the sorely tried general write home : ' What a
FORT WILLIAM HENRY 49
country, where knaves grow rich and honest
men are ruined ! ' ^
In June there was such a sight in Montreal
as Canada had never seen before, and never
saw again. During the autumn, the winter,
and the spring, messengers had been going
along every warpath and waterway, east and
west for thousands of miles, to summon the
tribes to meet Onontio, as they called the
French governor, at Montreal. The ice had
hardly gone in April when the first of the
braves began to arrive in flotillas of bark
canoes. The surrender of Washington at
Fort Necessity and the capture and rebuild-
ing of Fort Duquesne in 1754, the bloody
defeat of Braddock in 1755, and Montcalm's
sudden, smashing blow against Oswego in
1756, all had led the western Indians to think
that the French were everything and the
British nothing. In Canada itself the Indians
were equally sure that the French were going
to be the victors there ; while in the east,
in far Acadia, the Abnakis were as bitter as
the Acadians themselves against the British.
So now, whether eager for more victories or
thirsting for revenge, the warriors came to
Montreal from far and near.
Fifty- one of the tribes were ready for the
PASS. D
J
SO THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
warpath. Their chiefs had sat in grave
debate round the council fires. Their medicine
men had made charms in secret wigwams and
seen visions of countless British scalps and
piles of British booty. Accordingly, when
the braves of these fifty-one tribes met at
Montreal, there was war in every heart among
them. No town in the world had ever shown
more startling contrasts in its streets. Here,
side by side, were outward signs of the highest
civilization and of the lowest barbarism. Here
were the most refined of ladies, dressed in the
latest Paris fashions, mincing about in silks
and satins and high-heeled, golden-buckled
shoes. Here were the most courtly gentlemen
of Europe, in the same embroidered and be-
ruffled uniforms that they would have worn
before the king of France. Yet in and out of
this gay throng of polite society went hundreds
of copper-coloured braves ; some of them
more than half-naked ; most of them ready,
after a victory, to be cannibals who revelled
in stews of white man's flesh ; all of them
decked in waving plumes, all of them
grotesquely painted, like demons in a night-
mare, and all of them armed to the teeth.
Much to VaudreuiPs disgust the man whom
the Indians wished most to see was not him-
FORT WILLIAM HENRY 51
self, the ' Great Onontio/ much less Bigot,
prince of thieves, but the warrior chief, Mont-
calm. They had the good sense to prefer the
lion to the owl or the fox. Three hundred of
the wildest Ottawas came striding in one day,
each man a model of agility and strength, a
living bronze, a sculptor's dream, the whole
making a picture for^the brush of the greatest
painter. * We want to see the chief who
tramples the British to death and sweeps their
forts off the face of the earth. ' Montcalm,
though every inch a soldier, was rather short
than tall ; and at first the Ottawa chief looked
surprised. ' We thought your head would be
lost in the clouds/ he said. But then, as he
caught Montcalm's piercing glance, he added :
1 Yet when we look into your eyes, we see the
height of the pine and the wings of the eagle.'
Meanwhile, prisoners, scouts, and spies had
been coming in; so too had confidential dis-
patches from France confirming the rumours
that the greater part of the British army was
to attack Louisbourg, and that the French
were well able to defend it. With the British
concentrating their strength on Louisbourg a
chance offered for another Oswego-like blow
against the British forts at the southern end
of Lake George if it could be made by July.
52 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
But Vaudreuil's raid in March, and Bigot's
bill for it, had eaten up so much of the supplies
and money, that nothing like a large force
could be made ready to strike before August ;
and the month's delay might give the militia
of the British colonies, slow as they were, time
to be brought up to the help of the forts.
Montcalm was now eager to strike the blow.
Once clear of Montreal and its gang of parasites,
he soon had his motley army in hand, in spite of
all kinds of difficulties. In May Bourlamaque
had begun rebuilding Ticonderoga. In July
Lake Champlain began to swarm with boats,
canoes, and sailing vessels, all moving south
towards the doomed fort on Lake George.
Montcalm's whole force numbered 8000. Of
these 3000 were regulars, 3000 were militia,
and 2000 were Indians from the fifty-one
different tribes, very few of whom knew any-
thing of war, except war as it was carried
on by savages. By the end of the month
these 8000 men were camped along the four
miles of valley between Lakes Champlain and
George. Meanwhile the British were at the
other end of Lake George, little more than thirty
miles away. Their first post was Fort William
Henry, where they had 2200 men under Colonel
Monro. Fourteen miles inland beyond that
FORT WILLIAM HENRY 53
was Fort Edward, where Webb commanded
3600 men. There were 900 more British
troops still farther on, but well within call,
and it was known that a large force of militia
were being assembled somewhere near Albany.
Thus Montcalm knew that the British already
had nearly as many men as his own regulars
and militia put together, and that further
levies of militia might come on at any time
and in any numbers. He therefore had to
strike as hard and fast as he could, and then
retire on Ticonderoga. He knew the Indians
would go home at once after the fight and also
that he must send the Canadians home in
August to save their harvest. Then he would
be left with only 3000 regulars, who could not
be fed for the rest of the summer so far from
headquarters. With this 3000 he could not
advance, in any case, because of lack of food
and because of the presence of Webb's 4500,
increased by an unknown number of American
militia.
The first skirmish on Lake George was
fought while the main bodies of both armies
were still at opposite ends. A party of 400
Indians and 50 Canadians were paddling south
when they saw advancing on the lake a number
of British boats with 300 men, mostly raw
54 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
militia from New Jersey. The Indians went
ashore and hid. The doomed militiamen
rowed on in careless, straggling disorder.
Suddenly, as they passed a wooded point, the
calm air was rent with blood-curdling war-
whoops, and the lake seemed alive with red-
skinned fiends, who paddled in among the
British boats in one bewildering moment.
The militiamen were seized with a panic and
tried to escape. But they could not get away
from the finest paddlers in the world, who cut
them off, upset their boats, tomahawked some,
and speared a good many others like fish in
the water. Only two boats, out of twenty-
three, escaped to tell the tale. That night the
forest resounded with savage yells of triumph
as the prisoners, out of reach of all help from
either army, were killed and scalped to the
last man.
On August i Montcalm advanced by land
and water. He sent Levis by land with
3000 men to cut Fort William Henry off
from Fort Edward, while he went himself, with
the rest of his army, by water in boats and
canoes. The next day they met at a little
bay quite close to the fort. On the 3rd the
final advance was made. The French canoes
formed lines stretching right across the lake.
SIEGE OF
FORT WILLIAM HENRY
1757
A A A AA^A **
Campdf Mont^lm
Section through A. B.
Sea/is of Yards
6 16 & &
Bartholomew, tdm:
FORT WILLIAM HENRY 55
While the artillery was being landed in a cove
out of reach of the guns of the fort Levis was
having a lively skirmish with the British, who
were trying to drive in their cattle and save
their tents. About 500 of them held the fort,
and 1700 were in the entrenched camp some
way beyond.
Montcalm sent in a summons to surrender.
But old Colonel Monro replied that he was
ready to fight. On the 4th and 5th the French
batteries rose as if by magic. But the Indians,
not used to the delay and the careful prepara-
tion which a siege involves, soon grew angry
and impatient, and swarmed all over the French
lines, asking why they were ordered here and
there and treated like slaves, why their advice
had not been sought, and why the big guns
were not being fired. Montcalm had been
counselled to humour them as much as possible
and on no account whatever to offend them.
Their help was needed, and the British were
quite ready to win them over to their own
side if possible. Accordingly, on the after-
noon of the 5th, Montcalm held a grand
' pow-wow ' with the savages. He told them
that the French had to be slow at first, but
that the very next day the big guns would
begin to fire, and that they would all be in the
56 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
fight together. The fort was timbered and
made a good target. The Indians greeted
the first roar of the siege guns with yells of
delight, and when they saw shells bursting
and scattering earth and timbers in all direc-
tions they shrieked and whooped so loudly
that their savage voices woke almost as many
wild echoes along those beautiful shores as
the thunder of the guns themselves.
Presently a man came in to the French camp
with a letter addressed to Monro, which the
Indians had found concealed in a hollow bullet
on a British messenger whom they had killed.
This letter was from Monro's superior officer,
General Webb, fourteen miles distant at Fort
Edward. He advised Monro to make the best
terms possible with Montcalm, as he did not
feel strong enough to relieve Fort William
Henry. Montcalm stopped his batteries and
sent the letter in to Monro by Bougainville,
with his compliments. But Monro, while
thanking him for his courtesy, still said he
should hold out to the last.
Montcalm now decided to bring matters to
a head at once. As yet his batteries were too
far off to be effective, and between them and
the fort lay first a marsh and then a little hill.
By sheer hard work the French made a road
FORT WILLIAM HENRY 57
for their cannon across the marsh ; and Monro
saw, to his horror, that Montcalm's new
batteries were rising, in spite of the British fire,
right opposite the fort, on top of the little hill,
and only two hundred and fifty yards away.
Monro knew he was lost. Smallpox was
raging in the fort. Webb would not move.
Montcalm was able to knock the whole place
to pieces and destroy the garrison. On the
9th the white flag went up. Montcalm granted
the honours of war. The British were to
march off the next morning to Fort Edward,
carrying their arms, and under escort of a
body of French regulars. Every precaution
was taken to keep the Indians from commit-
ting any outrage. Montcalm assembled them,
told them the terms, and persuaded them to
promise obedience. He took care to keep all
strong drink out of their way, and asked Monro
to destroy all the liquor in the British fort and
camp.
In spite of these precautions a dire tragedy
followed. While the garrison were marching
out of the fort towards their own camp, some
Indians climbed in without being seen and
began to scalp the sick and wounded who were
left behind in charge of the French. The
French guard, hearing cries, rushed in and
58 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
stopped the savages by force. The British
were partly to blame for this first outrage:
they had not poured out the rum, and the
Indians had stolen enough to make them
drunk. Montcalm came down himself, at the
first alarm, and did his utmost. He seized
and destroyed all the liquor ; and he arranged
with two chiefs from each tribe to be ready
to start in the morning with the armed British
and their armed escort. He went back to
his tent only at nine o'clock, when everything
was quiet.
Much worse things happened the next
morning. The British, who had some women
and children with them, and who still kept
a good deal of rum in their canteens, began
to stir much earlier than had been arranged.
The French escort had not arrived when the
British column began to straggle out on the
road to Fort Edward. When the march began
the scattered column was two or three times
as long as it ought to have been. Meanwhile
a savage enemy was on the alert. Before day-
light the Abnakis of Acadia, who hated the
British most of all, had slunk off unseen to
prepare an ambush for the first stragglers they
could find. Other Indians, who had appeared
later, had begged for rum from the British, and
FORT WILLIAM HENRY 59
had received it in the hope that, in this way,
they might be got rid of. Suddenly, a war-
whoop was raised, a wild rush on the British
followed, and a savage massacre began. The
British column, long and straggling already,
broke up, and the French escort could defend
only those who kept together. At the first
news Montcalm ordered out another guard,
and himself rushed with all his staff officers
to the scene of outrage. They ran every
risk to save their prisoners from massacre.
Several French officers and soldiers were
wounded by the savages, and all did their best.
The Canadians, on the other hand, more
hardened to Indian ways, simply looked on at
the wild scene. Most of the British were
rescued and were taken safely to Fort Edward.
The French fired cannon from Fort William
Henry to guide fugitives back. Those not
massacred at once but made prisoners by the
Indians in the woods were in nearly all cases
ransomed by Vaudreuil, who afterwards sent
them to Halifax in a French ship.
Such was the 'massacre of Fort William
Henry,' about which people took opposite
views at the time, as they do still. It is quite
clear that, in the first instance, Montcalm did
almost everything that any man in his place
60 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
could possibly do to protect his captives from
the Indians. It is also clear that he did every-
thing possible during and after the massacre,
even to risking his life and the lives of his
officers and men. He might, indeed, have
turned out all his French regulars to guard
the captive column from the first. But there
were only 2500 of these regulars, not many
more than the British, who were armed, who
ought to have poured out every drop of rum
the night before, and who ought to have
started only at the proper time and in proper
order. . There were faults ftn KTth titlff, flit
there usually are. But, except for not having
"the whole of his regulars ready at the spot,
which did not seem necessary the night before,
Montcalm stands quite clear of all blame as a
general. His efforts to stop the bloody work—
and they were successful efforts involving danger
to himself — clear him of all blame as a man.
The number of persons massacred has been
given by some few British and American
writers as amounting to 1500. Most people
know now that this is nonsense. All but
about a hundred of the losses on the British
side are accounted for otherwise, under the
heading of those who were either killed in
battle, or died of sickness, or were given up
FORT WILLIAM HENRY 6l
at Fort Edward, or were sent back by way of
Halifax. It is simply impossible that more
than a hundred were massacred.
Still, a massacre is a massacre ; all sorts of
evil are sure to come of it ; and this one was no
exception to the rule. It blackened unjustly
the good name of Montcalm. It led to an
intensely bitter hate of the British against the
Canadians, many of whom were given no
quarter afterwards. It caused the British to
break the terms of surrender, which required
the prisoners not to fight again for the next
eighteen months. Most of all, the massacre
hurt the Indians, guilty and innocent alike.
Many of them took scalps from men who had
smallpox ; and so they carried this dread
disease throughout the wilderness, where it
killed fifty times as many of their own people
as they had killed on the British side.
The massacre at Fort William Henry raises
the whole vexed question of the rights of the
savages and of their means of defence. The
Indians naturally wished to live in their own
country in their own way — as other people
do. They did not like the whites to push them
aside — who does like being pushed aside ?
But, if they had to choose between different
nations of whites, they naturally chose the ones
62 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
who changed their country the least. Now,
the British colonists were aggressive and
numerous, fjfhey were always taking more
and more of the land of the Indians, in one
way or another. The French, on the other
hand, were few, they wanted less of the land,
for they were more inclined to trade than to
farm, and in general thejLmanaged to get on
with the Indians better.) Therefore most of
the Indians took sides witti the French ; and
therefore most of the scalps lifted were British
scalps. The question of the barbarity of
Indian warfare remains. The Indians were in
fact living the same sort of barbarous life
that the ancestors of the French and British
had lived two or three thousand years earlier.
So the Indians did, of course, just what the
French and the British would have done at a
corresponding age. Peoples take centuries to
grow into civilized nations; and it is absurd
to expect savages to change more in a hundred
years than Europeans changed in a thousand.
We need hardly inquire which side was
the more right and which the more wrong in
respect to these barbarities. The fact is, there
were plenty of rights and wrongs all round.
Each side excused itself and accused the other.
The pot has always called the kettle black.
FORT WILLIAM HENRY 63
Both the French and the British made use of
Indians when the savages themselves would
gladly have remained neutral. In contrast
with the colonial levies the French and British
regulars, trained in European discipline, were
less inclined to ' act the Indian ' ; but both
did so on occasion. The French regulars did
a little scalping on their own account now and
then ; the Canadian regulars did more than
a little ; while the Canadian militiamen,
roughened by their many raids, did a great
deal. The first thing Wolfe's regulars did at
Louisbourg was to scalp an Indian chief.
The American rangers were scalpers when their
blood was up and when nobody stopped them.
They scalped under Wolfe at Quebec. They
scalped whites as well as Indians at Baie
St Paul, at St Joachim and elsewhere. Even
Washington was a party to such practices.
When sending in a batch of Indian scalps for
the usual reward offered by Governor Dinwiddie
of Virginia he asked that an extra one might
be paid for at the usual rate, ' although it is
not an Indian's.' It is thus clear that the
barbarities were in effect a normal feature
of warfare in the wilderness.
A week after its surrender Fort William
Henry had been wiped off the face of the
64 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
earth, as Oswego had been the year before,
and Montcalm's army had set out homeward
bound. But he was sick at heart. Vaudreuil
had been behaving worse than ever. He had
written and ordered Montcalm to push on
and take Fort Edward at once. Yet, as we
have seen, the Indians had melted away, the
Canadians had gone home for the harvest,
only 3000 regulars were left, and these could
not be kept a month longer in the field for
lack of food. In spite of this, Vaudreuil thought
Montcalm ought to advance into British terri-
tory, besiege a larger army than his own, and
beat it in spite of all the British militia that
were coming to its aid.
Even before leaving for the front Montcalm
had written to France asking to be recalled
from Canada. In this letter to the minister
of Marine he spoke very freely. He pointed
out that if Vaudreuil had died in the winter
the new governor would have been Rigaud,
VaudreuiPs brother. What this would have
meant every one knew only too well ; for
Rigaud was a still bigger fool than Vaudreuil
himself. Montcalm gave the Canadians their
due. 'What a people, when called upon!
They have talent and courage enough, but
nobody has called these qualities forth.' In
FORT WILLIAM HENRY 65
fact, the wretched Canadian was bullied and
also flattered by Vaudreuil, robbed by Bigot,
bothered on his farm by all kinds of foolish
regulations, and then expected to be a model
subject and soldier. How could he be con-
sidered a soldier when he had never been
anything but a mere raider, not properly
trained, not properly armed, not properly
fed, and not paid at all ?
While Montcalm was writing the truth
Vaudreuil was writing lie after lie about
Montcalm, in order to do him all the harm
he could. Busy tell-tales repeated and twisted
every impatient word Montcalm spoke, and
altogether Canada was at sixes and sevens.
Vaudreuil, sitting comfortably at his desk and
eating three good meals a day, had written to
Montcalm saying that there would be no trouble
about provisions if Fort Edward was attacked.
Yet, at this very time, he had given orders that,
because of scarcity, the Canadians at home
should not have more than a quarter of a
pound of bread a day. Canada was drawing
very near a famine, though its soil could
grow some of the finest crops in the world.
But what can any country do under knaves
and fools, especially when it is gagged as well
as robbed ? Montcalm's complaints did not
E
66 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
always reach the minister of Marine, who was
the special person in France to look after
Canada ; for the minister's own right-hand
man was one of the Bigot gang and knew how
to steal a letter as well as a shipload of stores.
To outward view, and especially in the eyes
of the British Americans, 1757 was a year of
nothing but triumph for the French in America.
They had made Louisbourg safer than ever ;
the British fleet and army had not even dared
to attack it. French power had never been
so widespread. The fleurs-de-lis floated over
the whole of the valleys of the St Lawrence,
Ohio, and Mississippi, as well as over the
Great Lakes, where these three valleys meet.
But this great show of strength depended on
the army of Montcalm — that motley host
behind whose dauntless front everything was
hollow and rotten to the last degree. The time
was soon to come when even the bravest of
armies could no longer stand against lions in
front and jackals behind.
CHAPTER V
TICONDEROGA
1758
MONTCALM'S second winter in Canada was
worse than his first. Vaudreuil, Bigot, and
all the men in the upper circles of what would
nowadays be the business, . the political, and
the official world, lived on the fat of the land ;
but the rest only on what fragments were left.
In our meaning of the word * business ' there
was in reality no business at all. There were
then no real merchants in Canada, no real
tradesmen, no bankers, no shippers, no honest
men of affairs at all. Everything was done
by or under the government, and the govern-
ment was controlled by or under the Bigot
gang. This gang stole a great deal of what
was found in Canada, and most of what came
out from France as well. In consequence,
supplies became scarcer and scarcer and dearer
and dearer ; and the worst of it was that the
gang wished things to be scarce and dear,
67
68 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
so that more stores and money might be sent
out from France and stolen on arrival. For
France, in spite of all her faults in governing,
helped Canada, and helped her generously.
It seems too terrible for belief, but it is true
that the parasites in Canada did their best on
this account to keep the people half starved.
Montcalm saw through the scheme, but com-
plaint was almost useless, for many of his
letters were stopped before they reached the
head men in France. To cap all, the wretched
army was no longer paid in gold, which always
has its own fixed value, but in paper bills which
had no real money to back them, as bank-notes
have to-day. The result was that this money
was accepted at much less than its face value,
and that every officer who had to support
himself, as he must when not campaigning,
fell into debt, Montcalm, of course, more than
the others. 'What a country,' to repeat his
words, c where knaves grow rich and honest
men are ruined ! '
As the winter wore away food grew scarcer
— except for those who belonged to the gang.
Soldiers were allowed about a pound of meat
a day. This would have been luxury if the
meat had been good, and if they had had any-
thing else to eat with it. But a pound of
TICONDEROGA 69
bad beef, or of scraggy horse-flesh, or some-
times even of flabby salt cod-fish, with a
quarter of a pound of bread, and nothing else
but a little Indian corn, is not a good ration
for an army. The Canadians were worse off
still. In the spring the bread ration was
halved again, and became only a couple of
ounces. Two thousand Acadians had escaped
from the British efforts to deport them, and had
reached the St Lawrence region. Their needs
increased the misery, for they could not yet
grow as much as they ate, even if they had
had a fair chance.
At last the poor, patient, down-trodden
Canadians began to grumble. One day a
crowd of angry women threw their horse-
flesh at VaudreuiPs door. Another day even
the grenadiers refused to eat their rations.
Then Montcalm's second-in-command, Levis,
who ate horse-flesh himself, for the sake of
example, told them that Canada was now like
a besieged fortress and that the garrison would
have to put up with hardships. At once the
pride of the soldier came out. Next day they
brought him some roast horse, better cooked
and served than his own. He gave each
grenadier a gold coin to drink the king's
health ; and the trouble ended.
70 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
The Canadians and Indians made two suc-
cessful raids. One was against a place near
Schenectady, where they destroyed many
stores and provisions. The other ended in a
fight with the British guerilla leader Rogers
and his rangers, who were badly cut up near
Ticonderoga. The Canadians were at their
best in making raids. Yet now raids hardly
counted any longer, for the war had outgrown
them. Larger and larger armies were tak-
ing the field, and these armies had artillery,
engineers, and transport on a greater scale.
The mere raidef, or odd- job soldier, though
always good in his own place and in his own
kind of country, was becoming less and less
important compared with the regular. The
larger an army the more the difference of
value widens between regulars and militia.
In great wars men must be trained to act
together at any time, in any place, and in any
numbers ; and this is only possible with those
all -the-y ear-round soldiers who are either
regulars already or who, though militia to
start with, become by practice the same as
regulars.
When Montcalm looked forward to the
campaign of 1758, he saw in what a desperate
plight he was. The wild, unstable Indians were
LEVIS
From the painting in the Versailles Gallery
TICONDEROGA 71
the weakest element. Gladly would he have
done without them altogether. But some
were always needed as scouts and guides ;
and, in any case, it was a good thing to employ
them so as to keep them from joining the
enemy. The trouble was that they were already
beginning to fail him. Some of the ships
with goods for the Indians were captured by
the British fleet. Those that arrived were in
as real a sense captured, for they were stolen
by the Bigot gang, and did not fulfil the purpose
of holding the Indian allies. ' If,' said Mont-
calm, in one of his despairing letters to the
minister, ' if all the presents that the king
sends out to the Indians were really given to
them, we should have every tribe in America
on our own side.'
The Canadians were robbed even more ;
and they and the Canadian regulars were set
against Montcalm and the French by every
lie that Vaudreuil could speak in Canada or
write to France. The wonder is, not that the
French Canadians of those dreadful days did
badly now and then, but that they did so well
on the whole ; that they were so brave, so
loyal, so patient, so hopeful, so true to many
of the best traditions of their race. One other
feature of their system must be noted — the
72 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
influence of their priests. Protestants would
think them too much under the thumb of the
priests. But, however this may have been,
it can be said with truth that the church and
the native soldiers, with all their faults, were
the glory of Canada, while the government
was nothing but its shame. The priests stood
by their people like men, suffered hardship
with them, and helped them to face every
trial of fortune against false friends and open
foes alike.
The mainstay of the defence of Canada
was, however, the disciplined strength of the
French regulars. There were eight battalions,
belonging to seven regiments whose names
deserve to be held in honour wherever the
fight for Canada is known : La Reine, Guienne,
Beam, Languedoc, La Sarre, Royal Roussillon
and Berry. Each battalion had about 500
fighting men, making about 4000 in all. About
2000 more men were sent out to Quebec to fill
up gaps at different times ; so that, one way
and another, at least 6000 French soldiers
reached Canada between 1755 and 1759.
Yet, when Levis laid down the arms of France
in Canada for ever in 1760, only 2000 of all
these remained. About 1000 had been taken
prisoner on sea or land. A few had deserted.
TICONDEROGA 73
But almost 3000 had been lost by sickness or
in battle. How many armies have a record
of sacrifices greater than these, and against
foes behind as well as in front ?
From the very first these gallant men
showed their mettle. They were not forced to
go to Canada. They went willingly. When
the first four battalions went, the general who
had to arrange their departure was afraid he
might have trouble in filling the gaps by getting
men to volunteer from the other battalions
of the same regiments. But no. He could
have filled every gap ten times over. It was
the same with the officers. Every one was
eager to fight for the honour of France in
Canada. One officer actually offered his whole
fortune to another, in hopes of getting this
other's place for service in Canada. But in
vain. France had parasites at court, plenty
of them. But the French troops who went
out were patriots almost to a man. The only
exception was in the case we have noticed
before, when 400 riff-raff were sent out to
take the places of the 400 good men whom
Boscawen had captured in the Gulf during the
summer of 1755.
The year 1758 saw the tide turn against
France. Pitt was now at the head of the war
74 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
in Britain ; throughout the British Empire
the patriots had gained the upper hand over
the parasites. Canada could no longer attack ;
indeed, she was hard pressed for defence.
Pitt's plan was to send one army against the
west, a fleet and an army against the east at
Louisbourg, and a third army straight at the
centre, along the line of Lake Champlain.
This third, or central, army was the one which
Montcalm had to meet. It was the largest
yet seen in the New World. There were
6000 British regulars and 9000 American
militia, with plenty of guns and all the other
arms and stores required. Its general, Aber-
cromby, was its chief weakness. He was a
muddle-headed man, whom Pitt had not yet
been able to replace by a better. But Lord
Howe, whom Wolfe and Pitt both thought ' a
perfect model of military virtue/ was second-
in-command and the real head. He was
young, as full of calm wisdom as of fiery
courage, and the idol of Americans and of
British regulars alike.
This year the campaign took place not in
August but in July. By the middle of June
it was known that Abercromby was coming.
Even then Montcalm and his regulars were
ready, but nothing else was. Every one knew
TICONDEROGA 75
that Ticonderoga was the key to the south of
Canada ; yet the fort was not ready, though the
Canadian engineers had been tinkering at it
for two whole summers. These engineers were,
in fact, friends of Bigot, and had found that
they could make money by spinning the work
out as long as possible, charging for good
material and putting in bad, and letting the
gang plunder the stores on the way to the fort.
Montcalm had arranged everything in 1756,
and there was no good reason why Ticonderoga
should not have been in perfect order in 1758,
when the fate of Canada was hanging on its
strength. But it was not. It had not even
been rightly planned. The engineers were
fools as well as knaves. When the proper
French army engineers arrived, having been
sent out at the last moment, they were horrified
at the mess that had been made of the work.
But it was too late then. Montcalm and Aber-
cromby were both advancing ; and Montcalm
would have to make up with the lives of his
men for all that the knaves and fools had
done against him.
Bad as this was, there was a still worse
trouble. Vaudreuil now thought he saw a
chance for another raid which would please
the Canadians and hurt Montcalm. So he
76 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
actually took away 1600 men in June and
sent them off to the Mohawk valley farther
west under Levis, who ought to have known
better than to have allowed himself to be
flattered into taking command. This came
near to wrecking the whole defence. But the
owls did not see, and the foxes did not care.
Meanwhile, Montcalm was hurrying his
little handful of regulars to the front. He
was to leave on June 24. On the night
of the 23rd Vaudreuil sent a long string of
foolish orders, worded in such a way by some
of his foxy parasites that the credit for any
victory would come to himself, while the blame
for any failure would rest on Montcalm. This
was more than flesh and blood could endure.
Once before Montcalm had tried to open
VaudreuiPs eyes to the mischief that was
going on. Now he spoke out again, and
proved his case so plainly that, for very shame,
Vaudreuil had to change the orders. Mont-
calm arrived at Ticonderoga with his new
engineers on the 3Oth. Here he found 3000
men and one bad fort ; and the British were
closing in with 15,000 men and good artillery.
The two armies lay only the length of Lake
George apart, a little over thirty miles ; in
positions the same as last year, except that
TICONDEROGA 77
Montcalm was now on the defensive with less
than half as many men, and the British were
on the offensive with more than twice as
many. Montcalm's great object was to gain
time. Every minute was precious. He sent
messenger after messenger, begging Vaudreuil
to hurry forward the Canadians and to call
back the Mohawk valley raiding party of
1600 men. His 3000 harassed regulars were
working almost night and day. The fort was
patched up until nothing more could be done
without pulling it down and building a new
fort; and an entrenched camp was dug in
front of it. Meanwhile Montcalm's little army,
though engaged in all this work, was actually
making such a show of force about the valley
between the lakes that it checked the British,
who now gave up their plan of seizing a
forward position in the valley as a cover for
the advance of the main body later on. Mont-
calm, with 3000 toil-worn soldiers, had out-
generalled Abercromby and Howe with 15,000
fresh ones. He had also gained four priceless
days.
But on July 5 the British advanced in
force. It had been a great sight the year
before, when Montcalm had gone south along
Lake George with 5000 men ; but how much
78 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
more magnificent now, when Abercromby
came north with 15,000 men, all eager for this
Armageddon of the West. Perhaps there never
has been any other occasion on which the pride
and pomp of glorious war have been set in a
scene of such wonderful peace and beauty.
The midsummer day was perfectly calm. Not
a cloud was in the sky. The lovely lake shone
like a burnished mirror. The forest -clad
mountains never looked greener or cooler,
nor did their few bare crags or pinnacles ever
stand out more clearly against the endless
blue sky than when those thousand boats
rowed on to what 15,000 men thought certain
victory. The procession of boats was wide
enough to stretch from shore to shore ; yet
it was much longer than its width. On each
side went the Americans, 9000 men in blue
and buff. In the centre came 6000 British
regulars in scarlet and gold, among them a
thousand kilted Highlanders of the splendid
' Black Watch/ led by their major, Duncan
Campbell of Inverawe, whose weird had told
him a year before that he should fight and fall
at a place with what was then to him an un-
known name — Ticonderoga. The larger boats
were in the rear, lashed together, two by two,
with platforms laid across them for artillery.
VAUDREUIL
From the painting in the Chateau de Ramezay
TICONDEROGA 79
And so the brave array advanced. The
colours fluttered gallantly with the motion
of the boats. The thousands of brilliant
scarlet uniforms showed gaily between the
masses of more sober blue. The drums were
beating, the bugles blowing, the bagpipes
screaming defiance to the foe ; and every echo
in the surrounding hills was roused to send its
own defiance back.
The British halted for the night a few miles
short of the north end of the lake. Next morn-
ing, the 6th, they set out again in time to land
about noon within four miles of Ticonderoga
in a straight line. There were two routes by
which an army could march from Lake George
to Lake Champlain. The first, the short way,
was to go eastward across the four-mile valley.
The second was twice as far, north and then
east, all the way round through the woods.
Since the valley road led to a bridge which
Montcalm had blown up, Lord Howe went
round through the woods with a party of
rangers to see if that way would do. While
he was pushing ahead the French recon-
noitring party, which, from under cover, had
been following the British movements the
day before, was trying to find its own way
back to Montcalm through the same woods.
8o THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
Its Indian guides had run away in the night,
scared out of their wits by the size of the
British army. It was soon lost and, circling
round, came between Howe and Abercromby.
Suddenly the rangers and the French met in
the dense forest. * Who goes there ? ' shouted
a Frenchman. ' Friends ! ' answered a British
soldier in perfect French. But the uniforms
told another tale and both sides fired. The
French were soon overpowered by numbers,
and the fifty or so survivors were glad to scurry
off into the bush. But they had dealt one
mortal blow. Lord Howe had fallen, and,
with him, the head and heart of the whole
British force.
Abercromby, a helpless leader, pottered
about all the next day, not knowing what
to do. Meanwhile Montcalm kept his men
hard at work, and by night he was ready and
hopeful. He had just written to his friend
Doreil, the commissary of war at Quebec : ' We
have only eight days' provisions. I have no
Canadians and no Indians. The British have
a very strong army. But I do not despair.
My soldiers are good. From the movements
of the British I can see they are in doubt. If
they are slow enough to let me entrench the
heights of Ticonderoga, I shall beat them.'
TICONDEROGA 81
He had ended his dispatch to Vaudreuil with
similar words : * If they only let me entrench
the heights I shall beat them/ And now, on
the night of the 7th, he actually was holding
the heights with his 3000 French regulars
against the total British force of 15,000.
Could he win on the 8th ?
Late in the evening 300 regulars arrived
under an excellent officer, Pouchot. At five
the next morning, the fateful July 8, Levis
came in with 100 more. These were all,
except 400 Canadians who arrived in driblets,
some while the battle was actually going on.
Vaudreuil had changed his mind again, and
had decided to recall the Mohawk valley
raiders. But too late. Levis, Pouchot and
the Canadians had managed to get through
only after a terrible forced march, spurred on
by the hope of reaching their beloved Mont-
calm in time. The other men from the raid,
and five times as many more from Canada,
came in afterwards. But again too late.
The odds in numbers were four to one
against Montcalm. Even in the matter of
position he was anything but safe. The
British could have forced him out of it by
taking 10,000 men through the woods towards
Crown Point, to cut off his retreat to the north,
F
82 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
while leaving 5000 in front of him to protect
their march and harass his own embarkation.
And even if they had chosen to attack him
where he was they could have used their cannon
with great effect from Rattlesnake Hill, over-
looking his left flank, only a mile away, or
from the bush straight in front of him, at much
less than half that distance, or from both places
together. Always on the alert he was ready
for anything, retreat included, though he pre-
ferred fighting where he was, especially if the
British were foolish enough to attack without
their guns — the very thing they seemed about
to do. After Howe's death they made mis-
takes that worked both ways against them.
They waited long enough to let Montcalm get
ready to meet their infantry ; but not long
enough to get their guns ready to meet him.
Now, too, blundering Abercromby believed
a stupid engineer who said the trenches could
be rushed with the bayonet — precisely what
could not be done. The peninsula of Ticon-
deroga was strong towards Lake Champlain,
the narrows of which it entirely commanded.
But, against infantry, it was even stronger
towards the land, where trenches had been
dug. The peninsula was almost a square. It
jutted out into the lake about three-quarters
TICONDEROGA 83
of a mile, and its neck was of nearly the same
width. Facing landward, the direction from
which the British came, the left half of the
peninsula was high, the right low. Montcalm
entrenched the left half and put his French
regulars there. He made a small trench in
the middle of the right half for the Canadian
regulars and militia, and cut down the trees
everywhere, all round. The position of the
Canadians was not strong in itself ; but if the
British rushed it they would be taken in flank
by the French and in front by the fort, which
was half a mile in rear of the trenches and
could fire in any direction ; while if they turned
to rush the French right, they would have to
charge uphill with the fire of the fort on their
left.
Montcalm's men were already at work at
five o'clock in the morning of the 8th when
Levis marched in ; and they went on working
like ants till the battle began, though all day the
heat was terrific. Some of the trees cut down
were piled up like the wall of a log-cabin, only
not straight but zigzag, like a * snake* fence,
so that the enemy should be caught between
two fires at every angle. This zigzag wooden
wall was, of course, well loopholed. In front
of it was its zigzag ditch ; and in front of the
84 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
ditch were fallen trees, with their branches
carefully trimmed and sharpened, and pointing
outwards against the enemy. To make sure
that his men should know their places in battle
Montcalm held a short rehearsal. Then all
fell to work again with shovel, pick, and axe.
Presently five hundred British Indians under
Sir William Johnson appeared on Rattlesnake
Hill and began to amuse themselves by firing
off their muskets, which, of course, were per-
fectly useless at a distance of a mile. In the
meantime Abercromby had drawn back his
men from the woods and had made up his
mind to take the short cut through the valley
and rebuild the bridge which Montcalm had
destroyed. This took up the whole morning ;
and it was not till noon that the British advance
guard began to drive in the French outposts.
A few shots were heard. The outposts
came back to the trenches. French officers
on the look-out spied the blue rangers coming
towards the far side of the clearings and
spreading out cautiously to right and left.
Then, in the centre, a mass of moving red and
the fitful glitter of steel told Montcalm that
his supreme moment had come at last. He
raised his hand above his head. An officer,
posted in the rear, made a signal to the fort
TICONDEROGA 85
half a mile farther back. A single cannon
fired one shot ; and every soldier laid down
his tools and took up his musket. In five
minutes a line three-deep had been formed
behind the zigzag stockade, which looked
almost like the front half of a square. The
face towards the enemy was about five hundred
yards long. The left face was about two
hundred yards, and the right, overlooking the
low ground, ran back quite three hundred.
Levis had charge of the right, Bourlamaque of
the left. Montcalm himself took the centre,
straight in the enemy's way. As he looked
round, for the last time, and saw how steadily
that long, white, three-deep, zigzag line was
standing at its post of danger, with the blue
Royal Roussillon in the middle, and the
grenadiers drawn up in handy bodies just
behind, ready to rush to the first weak spot,
he thrilled with the pride of the soldier born
who has an army fit to follow him.
All round the far side of the clearing the blue
rangers were running, stooping, slinking for-
ward, and increasing in numbers every second.
In a few minutes not a stump near the edge of the
bush but had a muzzle pointing out from beside
it. Soon not one but four great, solid masses
of redcoats were showing through the trees,
86 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
less than a quarter of a mile away. Presently
they all formed up correctly, and stood quite
still for an anxious minute or two. Then, as
if each red column was a single being, with
heart and nerves of its own, the whole four
stirred with that short, tense quiver which
runs through every mass of men when they
prepare to meet death face to face. Behind
the loopholed wall there was a murmur from
three thousand lips — * Here they come ! ' —
and the answering quiver ran through the
zigzag, white ranks of the French. Mont-
calm's officers immediately repeated his last
caution : * Steady, boys. Don't fire till the red-
coats reach the stakes and you get the word ! '
At the edge of the trees the British officers
were also reminding their men about the
orders. * Remember : no firing at all ; nothing
but the bayonet ; and follow the officers
in ! ' Quick — March ! and the four dense
columns came out of the wood, drew clear
of it altogether, and advanced with steady
tramp, their muskets at the shoulder and their
bayonets gleaming with a deadly sheen under
the fierce, hot, noonday sun. On they came,
four magnificent processions, full of the pride
of arms and the firm hope of glorious victory.
Three of them were uniform masses of ordinary
SKETCH OF THE
COUNTRY ROUND
TICONDEROGA
After map by Lt Meyer
of the 60$Re£iment
North End
of
Lake Geoige
TICONDEROGA 87
redcoats. But the fourth, making straight
for Montcalm himself, was half grenadiers,
huge men with high-pointed hats, and half
Highlanders, with swinging kilts and dancing
plumes. The march was a short one ; but
it seemed long, for at every step the suspense
became greater and greater. At last the lead-
ing officers suddenly waved their swords, the
bugles rang out the Charge! and then, as if
the four eager columns had been slipped from
one single leash together, they dashed at the
trees with an exultant roar that echoed round
the hills like thunder.
Montcalm gripped his sword, and every
French ringer tightened on the trigger. His
colonels watched him eagerly. Up went his
sword and up went theirs. Ready ! — Present !
—Fire!! and a terrific, double-shotted, point-
blank volley crashed out of that zigzag wall
and simply swept away the heads of the charg-
ing columns. But the men in front were no
sooner mown down than the next behind them
swarmed forward. Again the French fired,
again the leading British fell, and again more
British rushed forward. The British sharp-
shooters now spread out in swarms on the
flanks of the columns and fired back, as did
the first ranks of the columns themselves.
88 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
But they had much the worse of this kind of
fighting. Again the columns surged forward,
broke up as they reached the trees, and were
shot down as they struggled madly among the
sharpened branches.
Montcalm had given orders that each man
was to fire for himself, whenever he could get
a good shot at an enemy ; and that the officers
were only to look after the powder and shot,
see that none was wasted, and keep their
men steady in line. His own work was to
watch the whole fight and send parties of
grenadiers from his reserve to any point where
the enemy seemed likely to break in. But the
defence weakened only in a single place,
where the regiment of Berry, which had a
good many recruits, wavered and began to
sway back from its loopholes. Its officers,
however, were among their men in a moment,
and had put them into their places again before
the grenadiers whom Montcalm sent running
down could reach them.
Again and again the British sharpshooters
repeated their fire ; again and again the heads
of the columns were renewed by the men
behind, as those in front were mown down by
the French. At last, but slowly, sullenly, and
turning to have shot after shot at that stubborn
TICONDEROGA 89
defence of Montcalm's, the redcoats gave way
and retreated, leaving hundreds of killed and
wounded behind them. Montcalm was sure
now that all was going well. He had kept
several officers moving about the line, and
their reports were all of the same kind — l men
steady, firing well, no waste of ammunition,
not many killed and wounded, all able to hold
their own.* Here and there a cartridge or
grenade had set the wooden walls alight. But
men were ready with water ; and even when
the flames caught on the side towards the
enemy there was no lack of volunteers to jump
down and put them out. The fort, half a mile
in rear and overlooking the whole scene, did
good work with its guns. Once it stopped an
attack on the extreme left by a flotilla of barges
which came out of the mouth of the river
running through the four-mile valley between
the lakes. Two barges were sent to the
bottom. Several others were well peppered
by the French reserves, who ran down to the
bank of the river ; and the rest turned round
and rowed back as hard as they could.
In all this heat of action Vaudreuil was not
forgotten ; but he would not have felt flattered
by what the soldiers said. All knew how slow
he had been about sending the Canadians,
90 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
3000 of whom were already long overdue.
' Bah ! ' they said during the first lull in the
battle ; * the governor has sold the .colony ;
but we won't let him deliver the goods ! God
save the King and Montcalm ! '
This first lull was not for long. On came
the four red columns again, just as stubborn
as before. Again they charged. Again they
split up in front as they reached the fatal trees.
Again they were shot down. Again rank after
rank replaced the one that fell before it. Again
the sharpshooters stood up to that death-deal-
ing loopholed wall. And again the British
retired slowly and sullenly, leaving behind
them four larger heaps of killed and wounded.
A strange mistake occurred on both sides.
Whenever the French soldiers shouted ' God
save the King and Montcalm,' the ensigns
carrying the colours of the regiment of Guienne
waved them high in the air. The flags were
almost white, and some of the British mistook
them for a sign of surrender. Calling out
* Quarter, Quarter ! ' the redcoats held their
muskets above their heads and ran in towards
the wall. The French then thought it was the
British who wished to surrender, and called out
* Ground Arms ! ' But Pouchot, the officer
who had marched night and day from the
TICONDEROGA 91
Mohawk valley to join Montcalm, seeing what
he thought a serious danger that the British
would break through, called out ' Fire ! ' and
his men, most of them leaning over the top
of the wall, poured in a volley that cut down
more than a hundred of the British.
The Canadians in the separate trench on the
low ground, at the extreme right, were not
closely engaged at all. They and the American
rangers took pot-shots at each other without
doing much harm on either side. In the middle
of the battle the Canadians were joined by 250
of their friends, just come in from Lake
Champlain. But even with this reinforcement
they made only a very feeble attack on the
exposed left flank of the British column nearest
to them on the higher ground, in spite of the
fact that this column was engaged in a keen
fight with the French in its front, and was
getting much the worse of it. When Levis
sent two French officers down to lead an attack
on the British column the Canadian officers
joined it at once. But the mass of the men
hung back. They were raiders and bush-
fighters. They had no bayonets. Above all,
they did not intend to come to close quarters
if they could help it. Ticonderoga was no
attack by men from the British colonies and
92 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
no French-Canadian defence and victory. It
was a stand-up fight between the French and
the British regulars, who settled it between
themselves alone.
About five o'clock the two left columns of
the British joined forces to make a supreme
effort. They were led by the Highlanders,
who charged with the utmost fury, while the
two right columns made an equally brave
attack elsewhere. The front ranks were shot
down as before. But the men in rear rushed
forward so fast — every fallen man seeming to
make ten more spring over his body — that
Montcalm was alarmed, and himself pressed
down at the head of his grenadiers to the point
where the fight was hottest. At the same
time Levis, finding his own front clear of the
old fourth column, brought over the regiment
of La Reine and posted it in rear of the men
who most needed its support. These two rein-
forcements turned the scale of victory, and
the charge failed.
Abercromby, unlike Montcalm, never ex-
posed himself on the field at all. But, for the
second time, he sent word that the trenches
must be taken with the bayonet. The response
was another attack. But the men were tired
out by the sweltering heat and a whole after-
TICONDEROGA 93
noon of desperate fighting. They advanced,
fired, had their front ranks shot down again ;
and once more retired in sullen silence. The
last British attack had failed. Their sharp-
shooters and the American rangers covered
the retreat. Montcalm had won the day, the
most glorious that French arms had seen in
the whole of their long American career.
The British had lost 2000 men, nearly all
regulars. But they still had 4000 regulars left,
more than Montcalm's entire command could
muster now. He went into action with 3500
French regulars, 150 Canadian regulars, 250
Canadian militia, and 15 Indians : a total of
3915. At four o'clock 250 more Canadians
arrived. But as his loss was 400 killed and
wounded, nearly all French regulars, he had
not 4000 fit for action, of all kinds together,
at any one time ; and he ended the day with
only 3765. On the other hand, Abercromby
still had nearly all his 9000 militia, be-
sides 500 Indians, who, though worthless in
the battle, were dangerous in the bush. Under
these conditions it would have been sheer
madness for Montcalm to have followed the
British into their own country, especially as
he lacked food almost more than he lacked
men.
94 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
The losses of the different kinds of troops
on both sides show us by whom most of the
fighting was done. The Indians had no losses,
either from among the 15 French or the 500
British. The Canadians and the American
militia each lost about one man in every
twenty-seven. The French regulars, fighting
behind entrenchments ajid under a really great
general, lost in proportion about three times
as many as these others did, or one man in
every nine. The British regulars, fighting in
the open against entrenchments and under a
blundering commander, lost nearly one man
in every three.
Abercromby, having been pig-headed in his
advance, now became chicken-hearted in his
retreat. He was in no danger. Yet he ran
like a hare. Had it not been for his steady
regulars and some old hands among the
rangers his return would have become a
perfect rout. Pitt soon got rid of him ;
and he retired into private life with the
well-earned nickname of ' Mrs. Nabby-
Cromby.'
Montcalm was a devout man. He felt
that the issue of the day had been the result
of an appeal to the God of Battles ; and he
set up a cross on the ground he had won,
TICONDEROGA 95
with a Latin inscription that shows both his
modesty and his scholarship :
1 Quid dux ? Quid miles ? Quid strata ingentia ligna ?
En signum 1 En victor ! Deus hie, Deus ipse, triumphat ! '
' General, soldier, and ramparts are as naught !
Behold the conquering Cross ! 'Tis God the triumph wrought I '
But the glorious joy of victory did not last
long. Vaudreuil claimed most of the credit
for himself and the Canadians. He wrote
lying dispatches to France and senseless orders
to Montcalm. Now that reinforcements were
worse than useless, because they ate up the
food and could not attack the enemy, he kept
on sending them every day. Montcalm was
stung to the quick by the letters he received.
After getting three foolish orders to march
into the British colonies he wrote back sharply :
' I think it very strange that you find yourself,
at a distance of a hundred and fifty miles, so
well able to make war in a country you have
never seen ! ' Nor was this all. Vaudreuil
had also sent Indians, of course after the
need for them had passed. They were idle
and a perfect nuisance to the French. They
began stealing the hospital stores and all the
strong drink they could lay hands on. Mont-
calm checked them sharply. Then they com-
96 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
plained to Vaudreuil, and Vaudreuil reproached
Montcalm.
It was the same wretched story over and
over again : the owls and foxes in the rear
thwarting, spiting and robbing the lions at the
front. Montcalm was more sick at heart than
ever. He saw that anything he could say or
do was of little use ; and he again asked to be
recalled. But he soon heard news which made
him change his mind, no matter what the cost
to his feelings. The east and the west had
both fallen into British hands. Louisbourg
and the Ohio were taken. Only Canada itself
remained ; and, even now, Pitt was planning
to send against it overpowering forces both
by sea and land. Montcalm would not, could
not, leave the ruined colony he had fought for
so long against such fearful odds. In the
desperate hope of saving it from impending
doom, he decided to stay to the end.
CHAPTER VI
QUEBEC
1759
HAVING decided to stay in Canada Mont-
calm did all he could to come to terms with
Vaudreuil, so that the French might meet
with a united front the terrible dangers of
the next campaign. He spoke straight out
in a letter written to Vaudreuil on August 2,
less than a month after his victory at Ticon-
deroga : ' I think the real trouble lies with
the people who compose your letters, and with
the mischief-makers who are trying to set
you against me. You may be sure that none
of the things which are being done against
me will ever lessen my zeal for the good of
the country or my respect towards you, the
governor. Why not change your secretary's
style ? Why not give me more of your con-
fidence ? I take the liberty of saying that the
king's service would gain by it, and we should
no longer appear so disunited that even the
PASS. G
98 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
British know all about it. I enclose a news-
paper printed in New York which mentions it.
False reports are made to you. Efforts are
made to embitter you against me. I think
you need not suspect my military conduct,
when I am really doing all I can. After my
three years of command under your orders
what need is there for your secretary to tell
me about the smallest trifles and give me petty
orders that I should myself blush to give to a
junior captain ? '
When Montcalm wrote this he had not yet
heard the bad news from Louisbourg and
the Ohio, and he was still anxious to be re-
called to France. Vaudreuil, of course, was
delighted at the prospect of getting rid of him :
' I beseech you/ he wrote home to France, * to
ask the king to recall the Marquis of Montcalm.
He desires it himself. The king has confided
Canada to my own care, and I cannot help
thinking that it would be a very bad thing
for the marquis to remain here any longer ! '
There spoke the owl. And here the lion, when
the bad news came : ' I had asked for my re-
call after Ticonderoga. But since the affairs
of Canada are getting worse, it is my duty to
help in setting them right again, or at least to
stave off ruin so long as I can.'
QUEBEC 99
Vaudreuil and Montcalm met and talked
matters over. Even the governor began to see
that the end was near, unless France should
send out help in the spring of 1759. He was
so scared at the idea of losing his governor-
ship in such an event that he actually agreed
with Montcalm to send two honest and capable
men to France to tell the king and his minis-
ters the truth. Two officers, Bougainville and
Doreil, were chosen. They sailed in November
with letters from both Montcalm and Vaudreuil.
Nothing could have been better or truer than
the letters Vaudreuil gave them to present
at court. ' Colonel Bougainville is, in all re-
spects, better fitted than anybody else to inform
you of the state of the colony. I have given
him my orders, and you can trust entirely
in everything he tells you.' * M. Doreil, the
commissary of war, may be entirely trusted.
Everybody likes him here.' But, by the same
ship, the same Vaudreuil wrote a secret letter
against these officers and against Montcalm.
' In order to condescend to the Marquis of
Montcalm and do all I can to keep on good
terms with him I have given letters to
Colonel Bougainville and M. Doreil. But I
must tell you that they do not really know
Canada well, and I warn you that they are
too THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
nothing but creatures of the Marquis of
Montcalm.'
The winter of 1758-59 was like the two
before it, only very much worse. The three
might be described, in so many words, as bad,
worse, and worst of all. Doreil had seen the
stores and provisions of the army plundered
by the Bigot gang, the soldiers half starved,
the supposed presents for the Indians sold to
them at the highest possible price, and the forts
badly built of bad materials by bad engineers,
who made a Bigot-gang profit out of their
work. A report was also going home from a
French inspector who had been sent out to see
why the cost of government had been rising
by leaps and bounds. Things were cheap in
those days, and money was scarce and went
a long way. When this was the case the whole
public expense of Canada for a year should
not have been more than one million dollars.
But in Montcalm's first year it had already
passed two millions. In his second it had
passed four. And now, in his third, it was
getting very near to eight.
Where did the money go ? Just where all
public money always goes when parasites
govern a country. The inspector found out
that many items of cost for supplies to the
QUEBEC 101
different posts had a cipher added to them.
The officials told him why : * We have to do
it because the price of living has gone up ten
times over.' But how did such an increase
come about ? The goods were sold from
favourite to favourite, each man getting his
wholly illegal profit, till the limit was reached
beyond which Bigot thought it would not be
safe to go. By means of false accounts, by
lying reports and by the aid of accomplices in
France who stopped letters from Montcalm
and other honest men, the game went on for
two years. Now it was found out. But the
gang was still too strong in Canada to be
broken up. In France it was growing weak.
Another couple of years and all its members
would have been turned out by the home
government. They knew this ; and, seeing
that their end was coming in one way or
another, they thought a British conquest
could not be much worse than a French
prison ; indeed, it might be better, for a com-
plete and general ruin might destroy proof of
their own guilt. The lions would die fight-
ing— and a good thing too ! But the owls and
foxes might escape with the spoils. ' What a
country, where knaves grow rich and honest
men are ruined ! '
102 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
Montcalm wrote home to his family by every
ship. He might not have long to do so. Just
after Ticonderoga he wrote to his wife :
' Thank God ! it is all over now until the
beginning of May. We shall have desperate
work in the next campaign. The enemy will
have 50,000 men in the field, all together ;
and we, how many ? I dare not tell it.
Adieu, my heart, I long for peace and you.
When shall I see my Candiac again ? ' On
November 21, 1758, the last ship left for
France. He wrote to his old mother, to whom
he had always told the story of his wars, from
the time when, thirty-one years before, as a
stripling of fifteen, he had joined his father 's
regiment in the very year that Wolfe was born :
' You will be glad to hear from me up to the
last moment and know, for the hundredth
time, that I am always thinking of you all at
home, in spite of the fate of New France and
my duty with the army and the state. We
did our best these last three years ; and so,
God helping us, we shall in 1759 — unless you
can make a peace for us in Europe/
The wretched winter dragged on. The
French were on half rations, the Canadians
worse off still. In January Montcalm wrote
in his diary : ' terrible distress round Quebec.'
QUEBEC 103
Then, the same day : ' balls, amusements,
picnics, and tremendous gambling/ Another
entry: 'in spite of the distress and impend-
ing ruin of the colony pleasure parties are
going on the whole time.* He himself had
only plain fare — horse-flesh and the soldier's
half ration of bread — on his table. No wonder
the vampires hated him 1
May came ; but not a word from France.
For eight whole months no French ship had
been able to cross the sea, to bring aid for the
needy colony. Day by day the half-starved
people scanned the St Lawrence for sight of
a sail. At last, on the loth, they had their
reward. A French ship arrived ; more ships
followed, and by the 2oth there were twenty-
three in the harbour, all laden with provisions,
stores, and men. The help was inadequate.
There were only 326 soldiers for Montcalm
on board, and there were not enough pro-
visions to keep the soldiers and people on full
rations through the summer, even with the
help of what crops might be harvested while
the farmers remained under arms. But Mont-
calm made the best of it : 'a little is precious
to those who have nothing.'
Bougainville brought out plenty of pro-
motions and honours for the victory at
104 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
Ticonderoga. Montcalm was made lieutenant-
general of the king in Canada. Bougainville
told him his name was known all over France ;
' even the children use it in their games.'
Old Marshal Belle Isle, a gallant veteran, now
at the head of the French army, and a great
admirer of Montcalm, had sent out the king's
last orders : ' No matter how small the space
may be that you can retain, you must somehow
keep a foothold in America ; for, if we once
lose the whole country, we shall never get
it back again. The king counts upon your
zeal, your courage, and your firmness to spare
no pains and no exertion. You must hold out
to the very last, whatever happens. I have
answered for you to the king.' Montcalm
replied : ' I shall do everything to maintain
a foothold in New France, or die in its de-
fence ' ; and he kept his word.
There was both joy and sorrow in the
news from Candiac. His eldest daughter
was happily married. His eldest son was no
less happily engaged. But, at the last minute,
Bougainville had heard that another daughter
had died suddenly; he did not know which
one. ' It must be poor Mirete,' said Montcalm,
' I love her so much.' His last letters home
show with what a brave despair he faced the
QUEBEC 105
coming campaign. ' Can we hope for another
miracle to save us ? God's will be done ! I
await news from France with impatience and
dread. We had none for eight months, and
who knows if we shall have any more this year.
How dearly I have to pay for the dismal
privilege of figuring in the Gazette. I would
give up all my honours to see you again. But
the king must be obeyed. Adieu, my heart, I
believe I love you more than ever 1 '
Bougainville had also brought out the news
that Pitt was sending enormous forces to con-
quer Canada for good and all. One army was
to attack the last French posts on the Lakes.
Another was to come up Lake Champlain and
take Montreal. A combined fleet and army,
under Saunders and Wolfe, was to under-
take the most difficult task and to besiege
Quebec. There was no time to lose. Even
Vaudreuil saw that. Pouchot was left at
Niagara with 1000 men. De la Corne
had another 1000 on the shores of Lake
Ontario. Bourlamaque held Lake Champlain
with 3000. But the key of all Canada
was Quebec ; and so every man who
could be spared was brought down to defend
it. Saunders and Wolfe had 27,000 men of
all kinds, 9000 soldiers and 18,000 sailors,
io6 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
mostly man-of-war's-men. The total number
which the French could collect to meet them
was 17,000. Of these 17,000 only 4000 were
French regulars. There were over 1000
Canadian regulars ; less than 2000 sailors,
very few of whom were man-of-war's-men ;
about 10,000 Canadian militia, and a few
hundred Indians. The militia included old
men and young boys, any one, in fact, who
could fire off a musket. The grand totals,
all over the seat of war, were 44,000 British
against 22,000 French.
Having done all he could for Niagara,
Ontario, and Lake Champlain, Montcalm
hurried down to Quebec on May 22. Vau-
dreuil followed on the 23rd. On the same
day the advance guard of the British fleet
arrived at Bic on the lower St Lawrence.
From that time forward New France was
sealed up as completely as if it had shrunk
to a single fort. Nothing came in and nothing
went out. The strangling coils of British
sea-power were all round it. But still Mont-
calm stood defiantly at bay. ' You must
maintain your foothold to the very last.' —
' I shall do it or die.'
His plan was to keep the British at arm's
length as long as possible. The passage known
QUEBEC 107
as the ' Traverse ' from the north channel to
the south, at the lower end of the Island of
Orleans, was a good place to begin. Strong
batteries there might perhaps sink enough of
the fleet to block the way for the rest. These
Montcalm was eager to build, but Vaudreuil
was not. Had not VaudreuiPs Canadian pilots
prophesied that no British fleet could possibly
ascend the river in safety, even without any
batteries to hinder it ? And was not Vaudreuil
so sure of this himself that he had never had
the Traverse properly sounded at all ? He
would allow no more than a couple of useless
batteries, which the first British men-of-war
soon put to silence. The famous Captain Cook,
who was sailing master of a frigate on this
expedition, made the necessary soundings in
three days ; and the fleet of forty warships and
a hundred transports went through without a
scratch. /•
VaudreuiPs second chance was with seven
fireships, which had been fitted out by the
Bigot gang at ten times the proper cost and
were commanded by a favoured braggart
called Delouche. The night after the British
fleet had arrived in the Orleans Channel, and
when it lay at anchor near the head of the
island, the whole French camp turned out to
\*J
io8 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
watch what it was hoped would be a dramatic
and effective attack on the British ships. The
fireships were sent down with the ebb-tide,
straight for the crowded British fleet. But
Delouche lost his nerve, fired his ship too soon,
jumped into a boat and rowed away. Five of
the others did the same. The seventh was a
hero, Dubois de la Milletiere, who stuck to his
post, but was burned to death there in a vain
effort to get among the enemy. Had the six
others waited longer the whole of the seven
French crews might have escaped together
and some damage might have been done to
the British. As it was there was nothing but
splendid fireworks for both sides. The best
man on the French side was killed for nothing ;
no harm was done to the British ; and for
equipping the fireships the Bigot gang put
another hundred thousand stolen dollars into
their thievish pockets. * What a country,
where knaves grow rich and honest men are
ruined 1 '
VaudreuiPs third chance was to defend the
shore opposite Quebec, Point Levis, which
Montcalm wished to hold as long as possible.
If the French held it the British fleet could not
go past Quebec, between two fires, and Wolfe
could not bombard the town from the opposite
QUEBEC 109
heights. But, early in July, Vaudreuil with-
drew the French troops from Point Levis,
and Wolfe at once occupied the shore and
began to build his batteries. As soon as the
British had made themselves secure Vaudreuil
thought it time to turn them out. But he sent
only 1500 men ; and so many of these were
boys and youths at school and college that
the French troops dubbed them 'The Royal
Syntax.' These precious 1500 went up the
north shore, crossed over after dark, and
started to march, in two separate columns,
down the. south shore towards Levis. Pre-
sently the first column heard a noise in the
woods and ran back to join the second. But
the second, seeing what it mistook for the
enemy, fired into the first and ran for dear life.
Then the first, making a similar mistake,
blazed into the second, and, charmed with its
easy victory, started hotfoot in pursuit. After
shooting at each other a little more, just to
make sure, the two lost columns joined to-
gether again and beat a hasty retreat.
With the opposite shore lost Montcalm had
now no means of keeping Wolfe at any distance.
But Montcalm chose his position with such
skill, and it was so strong by nature, that it
might yet be held till the autumn, if only he
Xio THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
was allowed to defend it in his own way.
His left was protected by the Montmorency
river, narrow, but deep and rapid, with only
two fords, one in thick bush, where the British
regulars would have least chance, and another
at the mouth, directly under the fire of the
French left. His centre was the six miles of
ground stretching towards Quebec between the
Montmorency and the little river St Charles.
Here the bulk of his army was strongly en-
trenched, mostly on rising ground, just beyond
the shore of the great basin of the St Lawrence,
the wide oozy tidal flats of which the British
would have to cross if they tried to attack him
in front. His right was Quebec itself and the
heights of the north shore above.
Wolfe pitched his camp on the far side of
the cliffs near the Falls of Montmorency ; and
one day tried to cross the upper fords, four
miles above the falls, to attack Montcalm in
the rear. But Montcalm was ready for him
in the bush and beat him back.
The next British move was against the left
of Montcalm's entrenchments. On July 31
Wolfe's army was busy at an early hour ;
and all along the French front men-of-
war were under way with their decks cleared
for action. At ten o'clock, when the tide was
QUEBEC in
high, two small armed ships were run aground
opposite the French redoubt on the beach a
mile from the falls ; and they, the men-of-
war, and Wolfe's batteries beyond the falls,
all began to fire on the redoubt and the trenches
behind it. Montcalm fired back so hard at the
two armed ships that the British had to leave
them. Then he gave orders for his army to be
ready to come at a moment's notice, but to
keep away from the threatened point for the
present. By this means, and from the fact
that his trenches had been very cleverly made
by his own French engineers, he lost very few
men, even though the British kept up a furious
fire.
The British kept cannonading all day. By
four o'clock one British brigade was trying
to land beside the two stranded armed ships,
and the two other brigades were seen to be
ready to join it from their camp at Mont-
morency. The redcoats had plenty of trouble
in landing ; and it was not till six that their
grenadiers, a thousand strong, were forming
up to lead the attack. Suddenly there was an
outburst of cheering from the British sailors.
The grenadiers mistook this for the commence-
ment of the attack. They broke their ranks
and dashed madly at the redoubt. The
112 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
garrison at once left it and ran back, up the
hill, into the trenches. The grenadiers climbed
into it, pell-mell ; but, as it was open towards
its rear, it gave them no cover from the terrific
fire that the French, on Montcalm's signal, now
poured into them. Again they made a mad
charge, this time straight at the trenches.
Montcalm had called in every man there was
room for, and such a storm of bullets, grape-
shot, cannon-balls, and shells now belched
forth that even British grenadiers could not
face it. A thunderstorm burst, with a deluge
of rain ; and, amid the continued roar of
nature's and man's artillery, half the grenadiers
were seen retreating, while half remained dead
or wounded on the field.
The two redcoat brigades from Mont-
morency had now joined the remnant of the
first, which had had such a rough experience.
Montcalm kept his men well in hand to meet this
more formidable attack. But Wolfe had had
enough. The first brigade went back to its
boats. The second and third brigades marched
back to Montmorency along the beach in
perfect order, the men waving their hats in
defiance at the French, who jumped up on top
of their earthworks and waved defiance back.
Before retiring the British set fire to the two
QUEBEC 113
stranded ships. The day had been as disastrous
for Wolfe as glorious for Montcalm.
August was a hard month for both armies.
Montcalm had just won his fourth victory over
the British ; and he would have saved Canada
once more if only he could keep Wolfe out
of Quebec till October. Wolfe was ill, weak,
disappointed, defeated. But his army was
at least perfectly safe from attack. With a
powerful fleet to aid him Wolfe was never in
any danger in the positions he occupied. His
army was always well provisioned ; even
luxuries could be bought in the British camp.
The fleet patrolled the whole course of the
St Lawrence ; convoys of provision ships
kept coming up throughout the siege, and
Montcalm had no means of stopping a single
vessel.
Montcalm could not stop the ships ; but the
ships could stop him. He was completely
cut off from the rest of the world, except from
the country above Quebec ; and now that
was being menaced too. The St Lawrence be-
tween Quebec and Montreal was the only link
connecting the different parts of New France,
and the only way by which Quebec could be
provisioned. The course of the campaign
could not have been foretold ; and Montcalm
PASS. H
114 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
had to keep provisions in several places along
the river above Quebec, in case he had to
retreat. It would have been foolish to put
all the food into Quebec, as he would not be
able to take enough away with him, should
he be obliged to leave for Montreal or perhaps
for the Great Lakes, or even for a last desperate
stand among the swamps of New Orleans.
1 You must keep a foothold in America.' —
' I shall do everything to keep it, or die.'
Quebec was the best of all footholds. But if
not Quebec, then some other place not so
good : Montreal ; an outpost on the Great
Lakes ; a camp beyond the Mississippi ; or
even one beside the Gulf of Mexico.
So, for every reason, Montcalm was quite as
anxious about the St Lawrence above Quebec
as he was about Quebec itself. Ever since
July 1 8 Admiral Saunders had been send-
ing more and more ships up the river, under
cover of the fire from the Levis batteries. In
August things had grown worse for Montcalm.
Admiral Holmes commanded a strong squadron
in the river above Quebec. Under his convoy
one of Wolfe's brigades landed at Descham-
bault, forty miles above Quebec, and burnt a
magazine of food and other stores. This step
promised disaster for the French. Montcalm
QUEBEC 115
sent Bougainville up along the north shore
with 1000 men to watch the enemy and help
any of the French posts there to prevent a
landing. Whenever Saunders and Wolfe sent
further forces in that direction Montcalm did
the same. He gave Bougainville more men.
He strengthened both the shore and floating
batteries, and by means of mounted messengers
he kept in almost hourly touch with what was
going on.
The defence of the north shore above
Quebec was of the last importance. The only
safe way of feeding Quebec was by barges
from Montreal, Sorel, and Three Rivers, which
came down without any trouble to the Riche-
lieu rapids, a swift and narrow part of the
St Lawrence near Deschambault, where some
small but most obstructive French frigates
and the natural difficulties in the river would
probably keep Holmes from going any higher.
There was further safety to the French in the
fact that Wolfe could not take his army to this
point from Montmorency without being found
out in good time to let Montcalm march up to
meet him.
It was vital to Montcalm to keep the river
open. It would never do to be obliged to land
provisions above Deschambault and to cart
n6 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
them down by road. To begin with, there
were not enough carts and horses, nor enough
men to be spared for driving them; and, in
addition, the roads were bad. Moreover,
transport by land was not to be compared with
transport by water ; it was easier to carry a
hundred tons by water than one by land.
Accordingly, Quebec was fed by way of the
river. The French barges would creep down,
close alongshore, at night, and try to get into
the Foulon, a cove less than two miles above
Quebec. Here they would unload their cargoes,
which were then drawn up the hill, carted
across the Plains of Abraham, and down the
other side, over the bridge of boats, into the
French camp.
Montcalm was anxious, but not despairing.
Vaudreuil was, indeed, as mischievous as ever.
But now that the two enemies were facing
each other, in much the same way, for weeks
together, there was less mischief for him to
make. He made, however, as much as he
could. Everything that happened in the
French camp was likely to be known next day
in the British camp. Vaudreuil could not keep
any news to himself. But he tried to keep
news from Montcalm. He made plans behind
Montcalm's back. The British had no draw-
QUEBEC 117
backs like this. News from their camp which
reached the French was always stale, because
the fleet was a perfect screen, and no one on
the French side could tell what was going on
behind it.
One day Captain Vauquelin, a French naval
officer, offered to board a British man-of-war
that was in the way of the provision boats, if
Vaudreuil would let him take five hundred
men and two frigates, which he would bring
down the river in the night. Vauquelin was a
patriot hero, who had done well at Louisbourg
the year before, and who was to do well at
Quebec the year after. But, of course, he was
not a member of the Bigot gang. So he was
set aside in favour of a parasite, who made a
hopeless bungle of the whole affair.
The siege dragged on, and every day seemed
to tell in favour of Montcalm, in spite of all
the hardships the French were suffering.
Wolfe was pounding the city into ruins from
his Levis batteries ; but not getting any nearer
to taking it. He was also laying most of the
country waste. But this was of no use either,
unless the French barges on the river could be
stopped altogether, and a landing in force could
be made on the north shore close to Quebec.
Wolfe was right to burn the farms from
n8 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
which the Canadians fired at his men. Armies
may always destroy whatever is used to destroy
them. But one of his British regular officers
was disgracefully wrong in another matter.
The greatest blackguard on either side, during
the whole war, was Captain Alexander Mont-
gomery of the 43rd Regiment, brother of the
general who led the American invasion of
Canada in 1775 and fell defeated before Quebec.
Montgomery had a fight with the villagers of
St Joachim, who had very foolishly dressed
up as Indians. No quarter was given while
the fight lasted, as Indians never gave it them-
selves. But some Canadians who surrendered
were afterwards butchered in cold blood, by
Montgomery's own orders, and actually scalped
as well.
The siege went on with move and counter-
move. Both sides knew that September must
be the closing month of the drama, and French
hopes rose. There was bad news for them from
Lake Champlain ; but it might have been
much worse. Amherst was advancing to-
wards Montreal very slowly. Bourlamaque, an
excellent French officer, was retreating before
him, but thought Montreal would be safe till
the next year if some French reinforcements
could be sent up from Quebec. Only good
QUEBEC 119
troops would be of any use, and Montcalm had
too few of them already. But if Amherst took
Montreal the line of the St Lawrence would be
cut at once. So Levis was sent off with a
thousand men, a fact which Wolfe knew the
very day they left.
September came. The first and second days
passed quietly enough. But on the third the
whole scene of action was suddenly changed.
From this time on, for the next ten days, Mont-
calm and his army were desperately trying to
stave off the last and fatal move, which ended
with one of the great historic battles of the
world.
CHAPTER VII
THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM
September 13, 1759
SEPTEMBER 3 looked like July 31 over again.
One brigade of redcoats came in boats from
the Point of Levy and rowed about in front
of the left of Montcalm's entrenchments.
The two others marched down the hill to the
foot of the Falls of Montmorency. But here,
instead of fording the mouth and marching
along the beach, they entered boats and
joined the first brigade, which was hovering
in front of the French lines. Meanwhile,
the main squadron of the fleet, under Saunders
himself, was closing in before these same lines,
with decks cleared for action. Montcalm
thought that this was likely to be Wolfe's last
move,- and he felt sure he could beat him again.
But no attack was made. As the ships closed
in towards the shore the densely crowded boats
suddenly turned and rowed off to the Point
120
THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM 121
of Levy. Wolfe had broken camp without the
loss of a single man.
Now began for Montcalm ten terrible days
and nights. From the time Wolfe left Mont-
morency to the time he stood upon the Plains
of Abraham, Montcalm had no means what-
ever of finding out where the bulk of the British
army was or what it intended to do. Even
now, Vaudreuil had not sense enough to hold
his tongue, and the French plans and move-
ments were soon known to Wolfe, especially
as the Canadians were beginning to desert in
large numbers. Wolfe, on the other hand,
kept his own counsel ; the very few deserters
from the British side knew little or nothing,
and the fleet became a better screen than ever.
For thirty miles, from the Falls of Mont-
morency up to above Pointe aux Trembles,
the ships kept moving up and down, threaten-
ing first one part of the north shore and then
another, and screening the south altogether.
Sometimes there were movements of men-of-
war, sometimes of transports, sometimes of
boats, sometimes of any two of these, some-
times of all three together ; sometimes there
were redcoats on board one, or two, or all three
kinds of craft, and sometimes not. It was
a dreadful puzzle for Montcalm, a puzzle made
122 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
ten times worse because all the news of the
British plans that could be found out was first
told to Vaudreuil.
Gradually it seemed as if Wolfe was aiming
at a landing somewhere on the stretch of
thirteen miles of the north shore between
Cap Rouge, nine miles above Quebec, and
Pointe aux Trembles, twenty-two miles above.
Camp gossip, the reports from Bougainville,
who was still watching Holmes up the river,
and whatever other news could be gathered,
all seemed to point the same way. But
Saunders was still opposite the Beauport en-
trenchments ; and the British camps at the
island of Orleans, the Point of Levy, and the
Levis batteries still seemed to have a good
many redcoats. The use of redcoats, how-
ever, made the puzzle harder than ever at
this time, for Saunders had over 2000
marines, who were dressed in red and who
at a distance could not be told from Wolfe's
own soldiers.
Perhaps Wolfe was only making a feint at
Pointe aux Trembles, and might, after all,
come down against the entrenchments if he
saw that Montcalm had weakened them.
Perhaps, also, he might try to land, not at
either end of the French line, but somewhere
THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM 123
in the middle, between Cap Rouge and Quebec.
Nothing could be found out definitely. Cer-
tainly the British were looking for the weakest
spot, wherever it was. So Montcalm did the
best he could to defend nearly thirty miles of
shoreline with the reduced army of 13,000
men which he now had. Sickness, desertion,
losses in battle, and the reinforcements for
Lake Champlain had taken away a good 4000.
Again he reinforced Bougainville, and told
him to watch more carefully than ever the
menaced thirteen miles between Cap Rouge
and Pointe aux Trembles. He himself looked
after the garrison of Quebec. He made sure
that the bulk of his army was ready to defend
the Beauport entrenchments as well as before,
and that it was also ready at a moment's
notice to march up the river. He sent a good
battalion of French regulars to guard the
heights between Quebec and Cap Rouge,
heights so strong by nature that nobody else
seemed to think they needed defending at all.
This French battalion, that of La Guienne,
marched up to their new position on the 5th,
and made the nine miles between Quebec and
Cap Rouge safe enough against any British
attack. There were already posts and batteries
to cover all the points where a body of men
124 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
could get up the cliffs, and the presence of a
battalion reduced to nothing the real dangers
in this quarter. By the 7th Vaudreuil had
decided that these real dangers did not exist,
that Montcalm was all wrong, especially about
the Plains of Abraham, that there could be no
landing of the enemy between Quebec and Cap
Rouge, that there was not enough firewood
there for both the Guienne battalion and the
men at the posts and batteries, and that, in
short, the French regulars must march back to
the entrenchments. So back they came.
On the 8th and Qth the British vessels
swarmed round Pointe aux Trembles. How
many soldiers there were on board was more
than Bougainville could tell. He knew only
that a great many had been seen first from
Cap Rouge, that later a great many had been
seen from Pointe aux Trembles, and that every
day bodies of soldiers had been landed and
taken on board again at St Nicholas, on the
south shore, between the two positions of Cap
Rouge and Pointe aux Trembles. The British
plan seemed to be to wear out their enemy.
Daily the odds against the French grew ; for
shiploads of redcoats would move up and down
with the strong tide and keep Bougainville's
wretched, half-starved men tramping and
THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM 125
scrambling along the rough ground of the
heights in order to follow and forestall this
puzzling and persistent enemy.
On the loth a French officer near the Foulon,
one of the posts on the heights between Quebec
and Cap Rouge, saw, through his telescope, that
six British officers on the south shore were
carefully surveying the heights all about him.
When he reported this at once, Montcalm
tried again to reinforce this point. He also
tried to send a good officer to command the
Foulon post. The officer stationed there was
Vergor, one of the Bigot gang and a great friend
of VaudreuiPs. Vergor had disgraced himself
by giving up Fort Beausejour in Acadia without
a fight. He was now disgracing himself again
by allowing fifty of the hundred men at the
post to go and work at their farms in the
1 valley of the St Charles, provided that they
put in an equal amount of work on his own
farm there. It was a bad feature of the case
that his utter worthlessness was as well known
to Wolfe as it was to Montcalm.
On the nth and I2th the movements of the
fleet became more puzzling than before. They
still seemed, however, to point to a landing
somewhere along those much threatened thir-
teen miles between Cap Rouge and Pointe
126 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
aux Trembles, but, more especially, at Pointe
aux Trembles itself. By this time Bougain-
ville's 2000 men were fairly worn out with
constant marching to and fro ; and on the
evening of the I2th they were for the most
part too tired to cook their suppers. Bougain-
ville kept the bulk of them for the night near
St Augustin, five miles below Pointe aux
Trembles and eight miles above Cap Rouge,
so that he could go to either end of his line
when he made his inspection in the morning.
He knew that at sunset some British vessels
were still off Pointe aux Trembles. He knew
also that most of the British vessels had gone
down for the night to St Nicholas, on the south
shore, only four miles nearer Quebec than he
was at St Augustin. Bougainville and every-
body else on both sides — except Wolfe and
Montcalm themselves — thought the real attack
was going to be made close to Pointe aux
Trembles, for news had leaked out that this
was the plan formed by the British brigadiers
with Wolfe's own approval.
Down the river, below Quebec, in his six
miles of entrenchments at Beauport, Mont-
calm was getting more and more uneasy on
the fatal I2th. Where was Wolfe's army ?
The bulk of it, two brigades, was said to be
THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM 127
at St Nicholas, thirteen miles above Quebec,
facing the same thirteen miles that Bougain-
ville's worn-out men had been so long defend-
ing. But where was Wolfe's third brigade ?
Saunders remained opposite Beauport, as usual.
His boats seemed very busy laying buoys,
as if to mark out good landing-places for
another attack. He had redcoats with him,
too. Which were they? Marines? Soldiers?
Nobody could see. There were more redcoats
at the island of Orleans, more at the Point of
Levy, more still near the Levis batteries.
Were these all soldiers or were some of them
marines ? Why was Saunders beginning to
bombard the entrenchments at Beauport and
to send boats along the shore there after
dark ? Was this a feint or not ? Why were
the Levis batteries thundering so furiously
against Quebec ? Was it to cover Wolfe's
crowded boats coming down to join Saunders
at Beauport ?
Montcalm was up all night, keeping his men
ready for anything. That night Bougainville
reported much the same news as for several
days past. He expected to see Holmes and
Wolfe back at Pointe aux Trembles in the
morning. If occasion arose, he was, however,
ready to march down to Cap Rouge as fast as
128 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
his tired-out men could go. His thirteen miles
were being well watched.
What, however, about the nine miles of
shore under his guard between Cap Rouge
and Quebec? About them Vaudreuil was as
stubborn as ever. They were a line of high
cliffs, seemingly impregnable, and Vergor who
defended them was his friend. Surely this was
enough ! But Montcalm saw what a chance
the position offered to a man of such daring
skill as Wolfe. Again he tried to have Vergor
recalled, but in vain. Then, in the afternoon
of the 1 2th, he had taken the bold but only
safe course of ordering the Guienne battalion,
four hundred strong, to go up at once and
camp for the night at the top of the Foulon,
near Vergor. The men had been all ready to
march when Vaudreuil found out what they
were going to do. It was no order of his ! It
would belittle him to let Montcalm take his
place ! And, anyhow, it was all nonsense !
Raising his voice so that the staff could hear
him, he then said : * The English haven't
wings ! Let La Guienne stay where it is !
I '11 see about that Foulon myself to-morrow
morning ! '
' To-morrow morning ' began early, long
before Vergor and Vaudreuil were out of bed.
COMTE DE BOUGAINVILLE
From Doughty's 'Siege of Quebec'
THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM 129
Of the two Vergor was up first ; up first, and
with a shock, to find redcoats running at his
tent with fixed bayonets. He was off, like a
flash, in his nightshirt, and Wolfe had taken
his post. He ought to have been on the alert
for friends as well as foes that early morning,
because all the French posts had been warned
to look out for a provision convoy which was
Q expected down the north shore and in at the
Foulon itself. But Vergor was asleep instead,
and half his men were away at his farm. So
Vaudreuil lost his chance to 'see about that
Foulon himself ' on that ' to-morrow morning.'
Saunders had been threatening the en-
trenchments at Beauport all night, and before
daylight the Levis batteries had redoubled their
fire against Quebec. But about five o'clock
Montcalm's quick ear caught the sound of a
new cannonade above Quebec. It came from
the Foulon, which was only two miles and a
half from the St Charles bridge of boats,
though the tableland of the Plains of Abraham
rose between, three hundred feet high. Mont-
calm's first thought was for the provision
convoy, so badly needed in his half-starved
camp. He knew it was expected down at
the Foulon this very night, and that the
adjacent Samos battery was to try to protect
i'ASS. I
130 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
it from the British men-of-war as it ran in.
But he did not know that it had been stopped
by a British frigate above Pointe aux Trembles,
and that Wolfe's boats were taking its place
and fooling the French sentries, who had been
ordered to pass it quietly.
Yet he knew Wolfe ; he knew Vergor ;
and now the sound of the cannonade alarmed
him. Setting spurs to his horse, he galloped
down from Beauport to the bridge of boats,
giving orders as he went to turn out every
man at once.
At the bridge he found Vaudreuil writing
a letter to Bougainville. If Vaudreuil had
written nothing else in his life, this single
letter would be enough to condemn him for
ever at the bar of history. W.th the British
on the Plains of Abraham and the fate of half a
continent trembling in the scale, he prattled
away on his official foolscap as if Wolfe was at
the head of only a few naughty boys whom
a squad of police could easily arrest. 'I have
set the army in motion. I have sent the
Marquis of Montcalm with one hundred
Canadians as a reinforcement.9
Montcalm took up with him a good many
more than the 'one hundred men* whom
Vaudreuil ordered him to take, and he sent
THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM 131
to Bougainville a message very different from
the one Vaudreuil had written. What hero was
ever more sorely tried ? When he caught sight
of the redcoats marching towards Quebec, in full
view of the place where Vaudreuil was writing
that idiotic letter, he exclaimed, as he well
might : * Ah ! there they are, where they have
no right to be ! ' Then, turning to the officers
with him, he added : * Gentlemen, this is a
serious affair. Let every one take post at
once ! '
The camp was already under arms. Mont-
calm ordered up all the French and Canadian
regulars and all the militia, except 2000.
Vaudreuil at once ordered a battalion of
regulars and all the militia, except 2000, to
stay where they were. Montcalm asked for
the whole of the twenty-five field guns in
Quebec. Vaudreuil gave him three.
Wolfe's 5000 redcoats were already on the
Plains when Montcalm galloped up to the
crest of ground from which he could see them,
only six hundred yards away. The line was
very thin, only two-deep, and its right did
not seem to have come up yet. Some sailors
were dragging up a gun, not far from the
Foulon. Perhaps Wolfe's landing was not
quite completed ?
132 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
Meanwhile half the 5000 that Montcalm
was able to get into action was beginning to
fire at the redcoats from under cover and at
some distance. This half was militia and
Indians, 2000 of the first and 500 of the second.
The flat and open battlefield that Wolfe had
in his front was almost empty. It was there
that Montcalm would have to fight with his
other 2500, in eight small battalions of regulars
— five French and three Canadian.
These regulars wasted no time, once they
were clear of Vaudreuil, who still thought some
of them should stay down at Montmorency.
They crossed the bridge of boats and the valley
of the St Charles, mounted the Heights of
Abraham, and formed up about as far on the
inner side of the crest of ground as Wolfe's
men were on the outer side. Montcalm called
his brigadiers, colonels, and staff together, to
find out if anyone could explain the move-
ments of the British. No one knew anything
certain. But most of them thought that the
enemy's line was not yet complete, and that,
\/for this reason, as well as because the sailors
/\ were beginning to land entrenching tools and
artillery, it would be better to attack at once.
Montcalm agreed. In fact, he had no
choice. He was now completely cut off from
THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM 133
the St Lawrence above Quebec. His army
could not be fed by land for another week.
Most important of all, by prompt action he
might get in a blow before Wolfe was quite
ready. There was nothing to wait for. Bou-
gainville must have started down the river
bank, as hard as his tired-out men could
march. To wait for French reinforcements
meant to wait for British ones too, and the
British would gain more by reinforcements
than the French. The fleet was closing in.
Boats crowded with marines and sailors were
rowing to the Foulon, with tools and guns for
a siege. Already a naval brigade was on the
beach.
Montcalm gave the signal, the eight
battalions stepped off, reached the crest of
the hill, and came in sight of their opponents.
Wolfe's front was of six battalions two-deep,
about equal in numbers to Montcalm's eight
battalions six-deep. The redcoats marched
forward a hundred paces and halted. The
two fronts were now a quarter of a mile apart.
Wolfe's front represented the half of his army.
Some of the other half were curved back to
protect the flanks against the other half of
Montcalm's, and some were in reserve, ready
for Bougainville.
134 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
Montcalm rode along his little line for the
last time. There stood the heroes of his four
great victories — Oswego, Fort William Henry,
Ticonderoga, Montmorency. He knew that
at least half of them would follow wherever
he led. The three Canadian battalions on his
right and left might not close with an enemy
who had bayonets and knew how to use them,
when they themselves had none. The Lan-
guedoc battalion of Frenchmen was also a
little shaky, because it had been obliged to
take most of the bad recruits sent out to re-
place the tried soldiers captured by the British
fleet in 1755. But the remainder were true
as steel.
' Don't you want a little rest before you
begin ? ' asked Montcalm, as he passed the
veteran Royal Roussillon. ' No, no ; we 're
never tired before a battle ! ' the men shouted
back. And so he rode along, stopping to say
a word to each battalion on the way. He had
put on his full uniform that morning, thinking
a battle might be fought. He wore the green,
gold-embroidered coat he had worn at court
when he presented his son to the king and
took leave of France for ever. It was open
in front, showing his polished cuirass. The
Grand Cross of St Louis glittered on his breast,
THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM 135
over as brave a heart as any of the Montcalms
had shown during centuries in the presence
of the foe. From head to foot he looked the
hero that he was; and he sat his jet-black
charger as if the horse and man were one.
He reined up beside the Languedoc battalion,
hoping to steady it by leading it in person.
As he did so he saw that the Canadians and
Indians were pressing Wolfe's flanks more
closely from under cover and that there was
some confusion in the thin red line itself,
where its skirmishers, having been called in,
were trying to find their places in too much
of a hurry. This was his only chance. Up
went his sword, and the advance began, the
eight six-deep battalions stepping off together
at the slow march, with shouldered arms.
' Long live the King and Montcalm ! ' they
shouted, as they had shouted at Ticonderoga ;
and the ensigns waved the fleurs-de-lis aloft.
Half the distance was covered in good
formation. But when the three battalions of
Canadian regulars came within musket-shot
they suddenly began to fire without orders,
and then dropped down flat to reload. This
threw out the line ; and there was more
wavering when the French saw that the
Canadians, far from regaining their places,
136 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
were running off to the flanks to join the
militia and Indians under cover. Montcalm
was now left with only his five French
battalions — five short, thick lines, four white
and one blue, against Wolfe's long, six-
jointed, thin red line. He halted a moment,
to steady the men, and advanced again in the
way that regulars at that time fought each
other on flat and open battlefields : a short
march of fifty paces or so, in slow time, a
halt to fire, another advance and another halt
to fire, until the foes came to close quarters,
when a bayonet charge gave the victory to
whichever side had kept its formation the
better.
A single British gun was firing grape-shot
straight into the French left and cutting down
a great many men. But the thin red line
itself was silent ; silent as the grave and
steadfast as a wall. Presently the substitutes
in the Languedoc battalion could not endure
the strain any longer. They fired without
orders and could not be stopped. At the
same time Montcalm saw that his five little
bodies of men were drifting apart. When
the Canadian regulars had moved off, they
had left the French flanks quite open. In
consequence, the French battalions nearest
THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM 137
the flanks kept edging outwards, the ones on
the right towards their own right and the ones
on the left towards their own left, to prevent
themselves from being overlapped by the long
red line of fire and steel when the two fronts
closed. But this drift outwards, while not
enough to reach Wolfe's flanks, was quite
enough to make a dreadful gap in Montcalm's
centre. Thus the British, at the final moment,
took the French on both the outer and both
the inner flanks as well as straight in front.
The separating distance was growing less
and less. A hundred paces now ! Would that
grim line of redcoats never fire ? Seventy-
five ! !— Fifty ! !— Forty ! ! !— the glint of a
sword-blade on the British right ! — the word
of command to their grenadiers ! — 'Ready! —
Present! Fire!!!9 Like six single shots
from as many cannon the British volleys
crashed forth, from right to left, battalion by
battalion, all down that thin red line.
The stricken front rank of the French fell
before these double-shotted volleys almost to
a man. When the smoke cleared off the
British had come nearer still. They had
closed up twenty paces to their front, reload-
ing as they came. And now, taking the six-
deep French in front and flanks, they fired as
138 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
fast as they could, but steadily and under per-
fect control. The French, on the other hand,
were firing wildly, and simply crumbling away
before that well-aimed storm of lead. The
four white lines melted into shapeless masses.
They rocked and reeled like sinking vessels.
In a vain, last effort to lead them on, their
officers faced death and found it. All three
brigadiers and two of the colonels went down.
Montcalm was the only one of four French
generals still on horseback ; and he was
wounded while trying to keep the Languedoc
men in action.
Suddenly, on the right, the Sarre and
Languedoc battalions turned and ran. A
moment more, and Beam and Guienne, in
the centre, had followed them. The wounded
Montcalm rode alone among the mad rush
of panic-stricken fugitives. But over towards
the St Lawrence cliffs he saw the blue line of
the Royal Roussillon still fighting desperately
against the overlapping redcoats. He galloped
up to them. But, even as he arrived, the whole
mass swayed, turned, and broke in wild con-
fusion. Only three officers remained. Half
the battalion was killed or wounded. Nothing
could stay its flight.
On the top of the crest of ground, where he
THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM 139
had formed his line of attack only a few
minutes before, Montcalm was trying to rally
some men to keep back the pursuing British
when he was hit again, and this time he
received a mortal wound. He reeled in the
saddle, and would have fallen had not two
faithful grenadiers sprung to his side and held
him up. His splendid black charger seemed
to know what was the matter with his master,
and walked on gently at a foot's pace down the
Grande Allee and into Quebec by the St Louis
Gate. Pursuers and pursued were now racing
for the valley of the St Charles, and Quebec
itself was, for the moment, safe.
Never was there a greater rout than on the
Plains of Abraham at ten o'clock that morning.
The French and Canadians ran for the bridge
of boats, their only safety. But they came
very close to being cut off both in front and
rear. Vaudreuil had poked his nose out of one
of the gates of Quebec when the flight began.
He then galloped down to the bridge, telling
the Canadians on the Cote d' Abraham, which
was the road from the Plains to the St Charles,
to make a stand there. Having got safely over
the bridge himself, he was actually having it
cut adrift, when some officers rushed up and
stopped this crowning act of shame. This
140 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
saved the fugitives in front of the broken
army.
Meanwhile the flying troops were being saved
in the rear by the Canadians at the Cote
d' Abraham under a French officer called
Dumas. These Canadians had not done much
in the battle, for various reasons : one was that
the fighting was in the open, a mode of war-
fare in which they had not been trained ; the
British, moreover, used bayonets, of which
the Canadians themselves had none. But in
the bush along the crest of the cliffs overlook-
ing the valley they fought splendidly. After
holding back the pursuit for twenty minutes,
and losing a quarter of their numbers, they
gave way. Then a few of them made a second
stand at a mill and bakery in the valley itself,
and were killed or wounded to a man.
Montcalm heard the outburst of firing at
the Cote d> Abraham. But he knew that all
was over now, that Canada was lost, and with
it all he had fought for so nobly, so wisely, and
so well. As he rode through St Louis Gate,
with the two grenadiers holding him up in his
saddle, a terrified woman shrieked out : ' Oh !
look at the marquis, he 's killed, he 's killed ! '
1 It is nothing at all, my kind friend/ answered
Montcalm, trying to sit up straight, ' you must
THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM 141
not be so much alarmed 1 * Five minutes
later the doctor told him he had only a few
hours to live. ' So much the better/ he re-
plied ; * I shall not see the surrender of Quebec/
On hearing that he had such a short time
before him his first thought was to leave no
possible duty undone. He told the com-
mandant of Quebec that he had no advice to
give about the surrender. He told Vaudreuil's
messenger that there were only three courses
for the army to follow : to fight again, sur-
render, or retreat towards Montreal ; and that
he would advise a retreat. He dictated a letter
to the British commander. It was written
by his devoted secretary, Marcel, and de-
livered to Wolfe's successor, Townshend :
' Sir, being obliged to surrender Quebec to
your arms I have the honour to recommend
our sick and wounded to Your Excellency's
kindness, and to ask you to carry out the
exchange of prisoners, as agreed upon be-
tween His Most Christian Majesty and His
Britannic Majesty. I beg Your Excellency
to rest assured of the high esteem and great
respect with which I have the honour to be
your most humble and obedient servant,
MONTCALM.'
142 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
And then, his public duty over, he sent a
message to each member of his family at
Candiac, including * poor Mirete,' for not a
word had come from France since the British
fleet had sealed up the St Lawrence, and he
did not yet know which of his daughters had
died.
Having remembered his family he gave the
rest of his thoughts to his God and to that other
world he was so soon to enter. All night long
his lips were seen to move in prayer. And,
just as the dreary dawn was breaking, he
breathed his last.
' War is the grave of the Montcalms.'
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
MONTCALM is, of course, a very prominent char-
acter in every history of New France. Parkman
(Montcalm and Wolfe) tried to be just, but the
facts were not all before him when he wrote.
The Abbe* Casgrain (Guerre du Canada, 1756'
1760: Montcalm et Levis) was unfortunately too
prejudiced in favour of Vaudreuil and Ldvis to
be just, much less generous, towards Montcalm ;
but the Honourable Thomas Chapais's work (Le
Marquis de Montcalm, 1712-1759) based on much
more nearly complete materials, does honour both
to Montcalm and to French-Canadian scholar-
ship. Captain Sautai's monograph on Ticonde-
roga (Montcalm au Combat de Carillon) is the
best military study yet published. An elaborate
bibliography of works connected with Montcalm's
Quebec campaign is to be found in volume vi
of Doughty's Siege of Quebec. The present work
seems to be the only life of Montcalm written by
an English-speaking author with sufficient access
to original data, naval as well as military.
See also in this series : The Winning of Canada ;
The Great Fortress; The Acadian Exiles.
INDEX
Abercromby, General, defeated
by Montcalm at Ticonde-
roga, 74, 75, 80-94.
Acadia, French colony of, 14-
Acadians, expulsion of, 29-30,
49 ; in Canada, 69.
Aix-la-Chapelle, treaty of, 9.
America, French position in,
14-16; British colonies in,
17-18, 31.
Amherst, General, advancing
slowly towards Montreal,
118-19.
Beam regiment, with Mont-
calm in America, 72, 138.
Belle Isle, Marshal, his orders
to Montcalm, 104.
Berry regiment, with Mont-
calm in America, 72.
Bigot, Fra^ois, intendant of
New France, his reception of
Montcalm, 12 ; his knavery,
21-4, 25, 27, 48; and his
gang, 66, 67, 71, 75, 100, 101,
107-8.
• Black Watch,' the, at Ticon-
deroga, 78.
Boscawen, Admiral, seizes
French ships in the St
Lawrence, 30.
Bougainville, Comte de, with
Montcalm, 40 ; sent as emis-
sary to France, 99 ; reaches
PASS. K
Quebec with provision ships,
103 ; brings news from
Candiac and of Pitt's plans
to Montcalm, 104-5 ; his task
to guard shore above Quebec
against Wolfe, 115, 122, 123,
124, 126, 127; Vaudreuil's
letter to, 130-1.
Bourlamaque, Colonel, with
Montcalm at Ticonderoga,
52, 85 ; at Lake Champlain,
105 ; retreats before Amherst
to Montreal, 118.
Braddock, General, defeated
and killed in the Ohio valley,
29.
Campbell, Duncan, major of
Black Watch regiment, at
Ticonderoga, 78.
Canada, French position in, 14-
15; in 1756, 26-7; in 1757,
66-9 ; in 1758-9, 100-1, 102-3.
Cook, Captain, with Wolfe at
Quebec, 107.
Crusades, the, Montcalm's an-
cestors famous in, 1-2.
Delouche, fails in attempt to
fire British ships in the St
Lawrence, 107-8.
Deschambault, French disaster
at, 114.
Dieskau, Baron, defeated at
146 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
Lake George and taken
prisoner, 10, 29.
Doreil, commissary of war at
Quebec, Montcalm's letter
to, 80; sent as emissary to
France, 99; and the Bigot
gang, 100.
Dubois de la Milletiere, his
heroism at siege of Quebec,
108.
Dumas, Montcalm's teacher,
5-6.
Dumas, Captain, his stand
with Canadians at the Cote
d' Abraham, 140.
Fort Edward, 53, 57.
Fort Frontenac, Montcalm
with his army at, 32-3.
Fort George, surrenders to
Montcalm, 35.
Fort Ontario, surrenders to
Montcalm, 35.
Fort Oswego, Montcalm's
operations against and its
surrender, 35-7.
Fort William Henry, Rigaud's
raid against, 45-8; its sur-
render to Montcalm, 52, 55-7 ;
Indian massacre of British at,
57-61.
Foulon, the, French cargoes of
provisions for Quebec un-
loaded at, 116 ; Wolfe makes
• his ascent of the Heights by,
128-30.
France, does honour to Mont-
calm's memory, 3 ; and war
with Great Britain, 10; two
reasons for her failure in
America, 18-21 ; her position
in America in 1757, 66 ; her
generosity to New France,
68; her soldiers eager for
service in New France,
73.
Great Britain, and war with
France, 10; her sea-power
gives her an advantage over
France in America, 18-20, 30 ;
her colonies in America, 29-
30, 3L
Guienne regiment, with Mont-
calm in America, 72, 123,
138.
Holmes, Admiral, in siege of
Quebec, 114, 127.
Howe, Lord, with Abercromby
in America, 74, 77 ; killed at
Ticonderoga, 79-80.
Indians, barbarity of, 61-2.
Johnson, Sir William, at Ticon-
deroga, 84.
La Come, Colonel de, on Lake
Ontario, 105.
Lake Champlain, an important
French position, 15.
Lake George, militia massacred
by Indians at, 53-4.
Languedoc regiment, with
Montcalm in America, 72,
I34» 138.
Levis, Chevalier de, at Ticon-
deroga, 31-2 ; with Montcalm
at Fort William Henry, 54-5 ;
his example to his men, 69;
is persuaded by Vaudreuil to
take command at Mohawk
valley, 76; with Montcalm
at defence of Ticonderoga,
81, 83, 85, 91, 92; sent to
defend Montreal, 119; at the
Cession, 72.
Louisbourg, and the French
INDEX
147
position in America, 14, 15,
17 ; taken by the British, 96.
Louisiana, French colony of,
Marcel, Sergeant, made a cap-
tain after Oswego, 40; as
secretary to Mont calm at the
siege of Quebec, 141.
Mercer, Colonel, British com-
mander, killed at Fort Os-
wego, 35-6.
Monro, Colonel, commander at
Fort William Henry, 52;
surrenders, 55-7.
Montcalm, Marquis de, his an-
cestry, parentage, and birth,
1-4 ; schooldays and studies,
4-7 ; letter to his father regard-
ing his aims in life, 5-6 ; as
an ensign in war with Ger-
many, 6-7 ; succeeds his father
and marries, 7 ; made briga-
dier-general in War of the
Austrian Succession, 8-9 ;
appointed to command of
troops in North America as
major-general, 10-11 ; his de-
parture for New France, n-
12 ; his reception at Quebec
and Montreal, 12-13; his
troubles with Vaudreuil and
Bigot, 24-6, 27, 32, 44-5, 48 ;
his troops in America, 26, 72 ;
victorious at Oswego, 31-7 ;
his relations with the Indians,
37» 51* 55 J becomes famous,
38-40 ; his opinion of Canadian
militia, 42; his criticism of
the intendant Bigot, 44, 49,
102-3; his objection to
Rigaud's raid on Fort William
Henry, 45-6; too wise and
honest for Vaudreuil and
Bi
48 ; captures Fort
wm. Henry, 52-7; tries
to prevent the Indian mass-
acre of the British after sur-
render, 57-60; so disgusted
with Vaudreuil's duplicity
that he wishes to be recalled!,
64-5 ; his high opinion of the
Canadians, 64 ; his letter on
the king's presents to the
Indians, 71; his criticism
of Vaudreuil's foolish plans
and orders, 76, 77, 95-6 ; his
victory over Abercromby at
Ticonderoga, 76-7, 80-96 ;
again asks to be recalled, but
decides to remain on hearing
of French disasters at Louis-
bourg and Ohio, 96-8; his
plain speaking frightens Vau-
dreuil, 97-9 ; his last letters
home, 102, 104-5 » made a lieu-
tenant-general, 104 ; learns
of Pitt's plans, 105; his
force at Quebec, 105-6 ; pre-
vented by Vaudreuil from
building batteries at the
Traverse, 107; forced to
abandon Point Levis by Vau-
dreuil, 109 ; his strong posi-
tion at Quebec, 109-10 ; is
twice victorious over Wolfe,
110-13; his alternative if
defeated at Quebec, 113-14 ;
his task to keep the St
Lawrence open above Quebec
to ensure provisions reach-
ing him, 115-16; his uncer-
tainty as to Wolfe's intentions,
121-3 ; wishes to reinforce the
guard above the Foulon but
is prevented by Vaudreuil,
123-4, 128; Battle of the
tins, 129-40; his end, 140-2.
148 THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
Montgomery, Captain Alex-
ander, his disgraceful conduct
at siege of Quebec, 118.
Montreal, a great meeting of
French and Indians in, 49-51.
National Assembly of France,
its tribute in honour of
Montcalm, 2-3.
New France, French colony of,
14-15; a comparison with
New England, 21.
Ohio valley, the Seven Years'
War first breaks out in, 17 ;
taken by the British, 96.
Oswego river, surrender of
forts at, 33-7.
Pitt, William, his plan of attack
in America, 73-4, 96, 105.
Point Baptism, an old custom
at, 32.
Point Levis, abandoned by the
French and occupied by
Wolfe, 109, 117, 129.
Pointe aux Trembles, and the
siege of Quebec, 124, 126.
Pouchot, Colonel, with Mont-
calm at Ticonderoga, 81, 90 ;
at Niagara, 105.
Quebec, and the French posi-
tion in America, 14, 15, 17,
105 ; siege of, 106-41.
Rigaud, Vaudreuii's brother,
fails in attempt to take Fort
William Henry, 45-8, 64.
Rogers, guerilla leader, de-
feated near Ticonderoga, 70.
Royal Roussillon regiment,
with Montcalm, 72, 85, 134,
138.
'Royal Syntax,* the, and the
attempt to retake Point
Levis, 109.
Sackett's Harbour, Montcalm
with his army at, 33.
St Joachim, Canadians butch-
ered at in siege of Quebec,
118.
Saunders, Admiral, with Wolfe
in siege of Quebec, 105, 114,
122, 127, 129.
Scalping, French and British
guilty of, 63.
Schenectady,
raid on, 70.
Seven Years' War, the, 30.
Talon du Boulay, Ange"lique,
wife of Montcalm and a
relative of Jean Talon, 7.
Ticonderoga, 38; building of
fort at, 75; British under
Abercromby defeated by
Montcalm at, 77-94.
Townshend, General, with
Wolfe at Quebec, 141.
Vaudreuil, governor of New
France, meets Montcalm,
13; his vanity and incom-
petence, 23-4, 25-6, 27 ; takes
the credit of Montcalm's
victory at Oswego, AO-I ;
against Montcalm's advice
organizes raid against Fort
William Henry, which fails,
45-6, 48; Indian preference
for Montcalm, 51; tries to
harm Montcalm with authori-
ties in France, 65; sends
LeVis on raid to Mohawk
valley to spite Montcalm,
75-6; the soldiers' opinion
of, 89-90; his foolish orders
INDEX
149
to Montcalm, 95-6; an ex-
ample of his double deal-
ing* 97-ioo; is anxious to
have Montcalm recalled, 98-
100 ; frustrates Montcalm in
his plans for the defence of
Quebec, 106-9 » an inveterate
gossip, 116-17, 121 ; counter-
mands Montcalm's order to
strengthen the guard at the
Heights, 124, 128 ; his idiotic
letter, 130-1 ; his cowardice
after the Battle of the Plains,
139-
Vauquelin, Captain, his offer
to Vaudreuil at the siege of
Quebec, 117.
Vergor, commander of the
guard at the Foulon, 125,
128 ; surprised at his post
and bolts in his nightshirt,
129.
War of the Austrian Succes-
sion, Montcalm in, 8-9.
Washington, George, defeated
by the French in Ohio valley,
28-9 ; his recognition of scalp-
ing". 63.
Webb, General, 36; commander
at Fort Edward, 53, 56.
Wolfe, General, and Mont-
calm, 6, 8, 12; his force
at Quebec, 105-6; occupies
Point Levis, 109 ; repulsed
at Montmorency fords, no;
and at Beaufort, 110-13; his
fleet gives him an advantage
over Montcalm, 113; breaks
camp at Montmorency with-
out loss, 1 20- 1 ; his puzzling
movements, 121-7 ; his ascent
of the Heights, 129, 130;
Battle of the Plains, 131-42.
Wolfe's Cove. See Foulon.
Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty
at the Edinburgh University Press
BINDING SECT. JUL 2 9 »66
F Wood, William Charles Henry
5065 The passing of New France
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