FRONTIER WARFARE
SOLDIERS’ MONUMENT, DEERFIELD
This monument stands on the common in Deerfield, on the site of the church of 1704.
All this fighting was not according to the nice, formal, observe-the-laws-of-war methods, such as are now followed between civilized nations: it was more like a campaign in the Balkans, or the amenities of the Zulus in Africa. Europeans were not particularly gentle in their warfare. The early colonies were planted when the Thirty Years’ War was raging in Germany, a war in which the unoffending peasants expected both sides to rob them of their little property, and then to torture them because they had no more to give. The Indians were not the only race that found pleasure in inflicting awful suffering on other human beings. The cultivated English colonists and the French trappers and hunters were not above taking scalps on occasion; and, though they did not torture their prisoners, allowed their Indian allies to indulge themselves in that amusement.
DEERFIELD MEMORIAL
This stone marks the grave of the victims of the Deerfield massacre on February 29, 1704.
GENERAL MONTCALM’S HEADQUARTERS AT QUEBEC
The French were better wood fighters than the English, and throughout these struggles had a disagreeable habit of raiding English settlements. Twice they captured villages within a day’s march of sacred Boston. Their most spectacular achievement was the raid upon Deerfield in 1704, upon which an epic poem might be written. Depict the French and Indians stealing two hundred miles through the frozen wilderness; the Puritans in Deerfield trusting to their stockade; the sudden dash at dawn; the shots, cries, screams; the Indians chopping away with their hatchets at Parson Williams’ front door, till they made a loophole through which to fire at the family; the file of captives quickly marshaled for the terrible northward trail; the valiant little band from Hatfield pursuing the Indians, many times their number, and getting a bad licking; the wrath and fear of all New England at this appearance of the fearful enemy!
QUEBEC IN COLONIAL DAYS
From an old print.
The people of Haverhill, Massachusetts, have put up a statue to a militant woman named Hannah Dustin, who, when carried away a captive, had the sweet thought to brain half a dozen of her captors, and so get home again with her children. Had there been more Hannah Dustins, there would have been fewer French raids!
In all these wars the English colonists excelled as fighting seamen. We may still be proud of William Phipps and his levy of colonial forces, who took Port Royal in 1690. Who shall envy him his well earned title of Sir William, and his fair brick house on Green Lane, Boston? Think of the New England men, aided by a small British fleet, sallying out in 1745 to attack Louisburg, the proudest fortress in the western world,—laying siege to it, digging trenches before it, complimenting it with bombshells, and compelling it to surrender! That was worth a score of Deerfields!
WOLFE’S MONUMENT, QUEBEC
This memorial commemorates the capture of Quebec from the French by the English.
The world has agreed to give the palm of picturesqueness in warfare to the capture of Quebec in 1759 by Wolfe’s English fleet and army. Modern critics tell you that nothing could be easier; that anybody can make his way up the steep footpath in Wolfe’s Cove. But Montcalm, the French commander, as brave a man and as skilled a warrior as you could find, did not think it likely that a British army would find its way to the Plains of Abraham at the top. Still, he realized, when his little army came out of the strongly fortified town, and offered battle, that the French empire in America was at stake. The battle of Quebec was a stage battle,—soldiers arriving in alarms and incursions, and both commanders fighting like heroes till they fell covered with wounds. Quebec was a battle that makes a man glad of being what he is, whether French or English.
DEATH OF GENERAL WOLFE
When Quebec was captured from the French by the English under General Wolfe, the commanders on both sides were killed. General Montcalm was in command of the French forces. From the painting by Benjamin West.
Four years earlier the French took their chance to defeat an army and kill a British general. Somebody has said that it was a hard fate for a brave military officer to go down to history known only through “Braddock’s Defeat.” The trouble with Braddock was that he was an Englishman, bigoted, obstinate, know-it-all, but brave to his heart’s core; and his march up through the wild country was managed with great skill. Braddock was a good officer; for on that fateful day he recognized and gave responsibility to a better officer, young George Washington. The French had been on the point of fleeing from Fort Duquesne, and as a last desperate chance came out, faced the invader, and defeated him.
BRADDOCK’S MARCH
General Braddock marched his army through the wilderness as though he were on a parade ground in Europe. To this lack of caution was due in great measure his defeat.