The Two Highland Seigneurs at Malbaie
Pitt's use of the Highlanders in the Seven Years' War.—The origin of Fraser's Highlanders.—The career of Lord Lovat.—Lovat's son Simon Fraser and other Frasers at Quebec.—Malcolm Fraser and John Nairne, future seigneurs at Malbaie.—The Highlanders and Wolfe's victory.—The Highlanders in the winter of 1759-60.—Malcolm Fraser on Murray's defeat in April, 1760.—The return of Canadian seigneurs to France.—General Murray buys Canadian seigniories.—Nairne and Fraser at Malbaie.—Their grants from Murray.
The great British fleet which has passed up beyond Malbaie to Quebec is important for our tale. It carried men who have since become world famous; not only Wolfe but Jervis, afterward Lord St. Vincent, Cook, the great navigator, Guy Carleton, who saved Canada for Britain during the American Revolution, and many others of lesser though still considerable fame. But for Malbaie the most interesting men in that great array were those connected with the 78th, or Fraser's, Highlanders. On the decks of the British ships were hundreds of these brawny, bare-legged and kilted sons of the north, speaking their native Gaelic, and on occasion harangued by their officers in that tongue. A few years earlier many of them had served under Prince Charles Stuart to overthrow, if possible, King George II, and the house of Hanover; now they were fighting for that King against their old allies the French. Unreal in truth had been the rising in behalf of the Stuarts. Scotland had no grievances: she did not wish to dissolve the union with England, and if the tyranny of any royal house troubled her it was that of the Stuarts, alien from most Scots in both religious and political thought. But when, in 1745, some of the chieftains called out their clansmen, loyalty made these heed the summons, though half-heartedly. The same devotion was now given to the house of Hanover. Years earlier Duncan Forbes of Culloden, one of the noblest and wisest Scots of his age, had urged Walpole to call the Highlanders to fight Britain's battles. The hint was not then taken but later, Pitt, the greatest war minister Britain has ever had, revived Forbes's plan. Some Highland regiments were formed. The Highland dress that had been proscribed after Culloden as the brand of treason was now given its place in Britain's battle array: ever since it has played there its creditable part. Wolfe called his Highland companions in arms the most manly lot of officers he had ever seen.
The Highland regiment that came with Wolfe to Quebec was known as Fraser's Highlanders because recruited chiefly from that ancient and powerful Scottish clan. In the rising of 1745 the Frasers had supported the Stuart cause and they suffered when that cause was lost. In 1747 the head of the clan, Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, an old man of 80, perished on the scaffold for his treason. The details of Lovat's career are amazing. In one aspect he was a wild, half barbarous Highland chieftain, in another one of the polished gentlemen and courtiers of his time. He was devoured by the ambition to be the most powerful man in Scotland. In that age others, more reputable than Fraser, found it wise to stand well with both royal houses, but he surpassed them all in tortuous treachery. In the rising of 1715 he was on the Whig side; in 1745 he was forced at last to come out openly for the Stuarts. For neither side did he really care: he was merely serving his own ends. Considering his deeds it is a wonder that he so long escaped the scaffold. When he was a young man a certain Baroness Lovat stood in the way of his own claims to be the heir to the title of Lovat; so he offered to marry this lady's daughter and thus end the dispute. When his advances were refused he determined to use force and seized Lady Lovat's residence, Castle Dounie, only to find that the young lady had been spirited away. He resolved on the spot to marry her mother who was in the castle. She was a widow of thirty-four, he a man of thirty, so the disparity of age was not great. Stories of what happened vary, but it is said that in the dead of night a clergyman was brought to Lady Lovat's chamber and she was forced to go through the form of marriage, the bag-pipes playing in the next room to drown her cries. The lady was connected with the great house of Atholl who warred on Fraser with fire and sword. Outlawed, he escaped to the Continent to survive for half a century of intrigue and treason.
Though profligate, cruel, treacherous and avaricious, so smooth was Lovat's address, so profound his knowledge of Scotland, and so strong his hold upon his own clansmen, that he always remained a man to be reckoned with. Since he served on the Hanoverian side in 1715 George I granted a pardon for his many offences; for his treason in 1745 George II let him go to the block. His last days in London were like those of a dying saint. He wrote to his son Simon Fraser, who led Fraser's Highlanders at Quebec in 1759, a beautiful spiritual letter. To the Major of the Tower he said he was going to Heaven where, he added, "very few Majors go." He was gay on his last morning:—"I hope to be in heaven by one o'clock or I should not be so merry now,"—and expressed his pity for those who "must continue to crawl a little longer in this evil world." He took what he called an eternal farewell from some of those about him: "we shall not meet again in the same place; I am sure of that." He practised kneeling at the block so that he might do it with dignity on the scaffold. A great crowd assembled to witness his execution and a platform fell killing several people. "The more mischief, the better sport," said Lord Lovat grimly, but he wondered that so many should come to see the taking off of his "old grey head." He carefully felt the edge of the executioner's axe to make sure that it was sharp.
No doubt there was a touch of madness in Lord Lovat but the Fraser clan was devoted to him. By his treason all his honours and estates were forfeited. At the time his heir, Simon Fraser, only twenty-one years old, was a prisoner in the Castle of Edinburgh, attainted for high treason. But so good was his conduct that in 1750 he received a pardon. Then, a penniless man, he was called to the Scottish Bar. But another career was in store for him. Some years later when Pitt formed his design to use the Highlanders in the Seven Years' War he made Simon Fraser Colonel of a battalion, to be raised on the forfeited estates of his family and from the clan of which he was head. Success was instantaneous. Within a few weeks Fraser was at the head of some 1500 men. They wore the Highland dress, with a sporran of badger's or otter's skin and carried musket and broadsword; some of them wore a dirk at their own cost. Among the officers were no less than five Simon Frasers,[3] three or four each of Alexander Frasers and John Frasers, and a good many other Frasers, among them a young Ensign, Malcolm Fraser, destined to rule one of the seigniories at Malbaie for more than half a century. Other Scottish names also appear, Macnabs, Chisholms, Macleans, and among them John Nairne who, like Malcolm Fraser, spent the best part of his life at Malbaie.
The head of the Nairne clan, a John Nairne, third Baron Nairne, had fought for the Stuarts in 1745. He died an exile in France. Of how close kin to him was the young Highland Officer, John Nairne, who settled later at Malbaie, we do not know. His family was of course Jacobite. In "Waverley" Sir Walter Scott mentions a Miss Nairne with whom he says he was acquainted, and this lady appears to have been one of the sisters of Captain John Nairne. In 1745, as the Highland army rushed into Edinburgh, Miss Nairne was standing with some ladies on a balcony, when a shot, discharged by accident from a Highlander's musket, grazed her forehead. "Thank God," she said, "that the accident happened to me whose principles are known; had it befallen a Whig [the name then identified with the anti-Jacobite party] they would have said it was done on purpose."[4] At Murray Bay there is still a miniature portrait of Prince Charlie given it is said by himself to Miss Nairne.
Before fighting under Wolfe John Nairne had followed the Dutch flag. Just before the rising of 1745, when a youth of only 17, he, like a great many others of his countrymen, is found serving in the well known "Scots Brigade"; many years later at Malbaie, he tells in his letters, of old companions in this service with well known Scottish names—Bruce, Maclean, Seton, Hepburn, Campbell, Dunbar, Dundass, Graham, and so on. In the pay of Holland Nairne remained for some nine years. He made, he says, "long voyages" possibly to the Dutch possessions in the far East. But he was glad of the chance to serve his own land which came when Britain, embarked upon the Seven Years' War, was anxious to recall her banished sons and to find soldiers, Scots or of any other nationality, who would fight her battles. So John Nairne left the Dutch service to join the 78th Highlanders and henceforth his loyalty to the house of Hanover was never questioned. From the first, since Scotland offered only a poor prospect of a career, Nairne may have thought of remaining in the new world when the war should end. The Highlander of that day, like the Irishman, found better chances abroad than at home. Unlike Nairne, Malcolm Fraser, a younger man, had not seen foreign service. The two met for the first time when, in 1757, they both joined the 78th Highlanders. Soon they became fast friends and for nearly half a century they were to live in the closest relations.
Fraser's Highlanders had landed at Halifax in Nova Scotia in June, 1757. Their dress seemed unsuited to both the severe winters and the hot summers of North America and a change of costume was proposed; but officers and men protested vehemently and no change was made. During the campaigns in America the Highlanders boasted, not with entire truth as we shall see, that they with their bare legs enjoyed better health than those who wore breeches and warm clothing. At Louisbourg they did well. At Quebec a Highland officer's knowledge of French proved a great boon. When, in the darkness of the momentous morning of September 13th, 1759, Wolfe's boats were drifting down with the tide close to the north shore near Quebec, intending to land and scale the heights at what is now Wolfe's Cove, a French sentry called out sharply from the bank, "Qui vive?" A Highland officer, who had served in Holland, was able to reply "France!" without betraying his nationality.
"A quel régiment?" demanded the sentry.
"De la reine," answered the Highlander, giving the name of a well-known French regiment commanded by Bougainville; and then he added in a low voice, "Ne faites pas de bruit; ce sont les vivres"—for a convoy with provisions was expected by the French. The Highlanders were at the forefront in the stiff climb up the heights which proved to be Wolfe's master stroke. Malcolm Fraser has left his own account of that morning's work. The troops, he says, had been in the boats since nine o'clock on the previous night. At about twelve they had set out with a falling tide and they landed just as day was breaking. The light infantry struggled up the hill first, the French meanwhile firing on the boats, killing and wounding some of the occupants; but "the main body of our army soon got to the upper ground, after climbing a hill or rather a precipice, of about three hundred yards, very steep and covered with wood and brush." By ten the army was drawn up in order of battle,—"in a masterly manner," John Nairne said later,—on the Plains of Abraham, the bag-pipes of the Highlanders screaming a wild defiance to the foe. Then followed that brief death grapple, fatal to the leader on each side. Fraser and his Highlanders, we are told, rushed at the enemy with their broadswords in such irresistible fury that they were driven with a prodigious slaughter into the town. The Highlanders suffered as much after the battle as in it, for General Murray led them to reconnoitre in the direction of the General Hospital and a good many were shot by the French from bushes and from houses in the suburbs of St. Louis and St. John. To the French the Highlanders seemed especially ferocious, possibly owing to the wild music of their pipes, their waving tartans, their terrible broadswords, and perhaps, also, their partially naked bodies. They were indeed christened "the savages of Europe."
Not many days after Wolfe's victory the Highlanders marched into Quebec with the victorious army. The French garrison was sent away to Europe, the British fleet itself soon followed, and the conquerors, with General Murray in command, settled down to face for the first time the rigours of a winter at Quebec. The Highlanders suffered terribly. One suspects that, in spite of their protests, the Highland costume was ill-suited to meet the severity of the climate; and, in any case, the army was ill-fed, ill-housed, and overworked. Malcolm Fraser kept a journal,[5] but Nairne, the other future seigneur at Malbaie, the most methodical of men, was less ready with the pen and appears to have made no chronicle of those slow but momentous days. The bitter weather was the dread enemy. Fraser tells how men on duty lost fingers and toes and some were even deprived of speech and sensation in a few minutes through "the incredible severity of the frost.... Our regiment in particular is in a pitiful situation having no breeches. Nothing but the last necessity obliged any man to go out of doors." Colonel Simon Fraser is, he adds, doing his best to provide trousers. Pitying nuns observed the need and soon busied themselves knitting long hose for the poor strangers. The scurvy carried off a good many. In April, 1760, of 894 men in Fraser's Highlanders not fewer than 580 were on the sick list and it was a wan and woe-begone host that set itself grimly to the task of meeting the assault on Quebec for which the French under Lévis had been preparing throughout the winter.
When it came on April 28th, 1760, the Highlanders were not wanting. Instead of fighting behind Quebec's crazy walls Murray marched his men out to the Plains of Abraham to meet the enemy in the open. On ground half covered by snow, with here and there deep pools of water from the heavy rain of the previous day, the two armies grappled in what was sometimes a hand to hand conflict. Of the British one-third had come from the hospital to take their places in the ranks. The proportion of the Highlanders who did this was even greater; half of them rose on that day from sick beds. It proved a dark day for Britain. Murray was defeated, losing about one-third of his army on the field. Four of the Highland officers were killed, twenty-three were wounded, among them Colonel Simon Fraser himself. Malcolm Fraser was dangerously wounded; but he tells us gleefully that within twenty days he was entirely cured. Nairne seems to have gone through the fight without a hurt. It was surely by a strange turn of fortune that men, some of whom fought against George II in '45 and had been condemned as traitors, should fifteen years later shed their blood like water for the same sovereign. Malcolm Fraser was disposed to be critical of Murray's tactics. He ought to have stood like a wall on the rising ground near Quebec, says Fraser; but "his passion for glory getting the better of his reason he ordered the army to march out and attack the enemy ... in a situation the most desired by them and [that] ought to be avoided by us as the Canadians and Savages could be used against us to the greatest advantage in their beloved ... element, woods." Nearly half a century later when Malcolm Fraser was giving advice to a young officer, Nairne's son, he advised him not to be too critical of the actions of his superiors. The confident young diarist of 1760 had meanwhile learned reserve. But he was not alone among the Highlanders in his criticism of Murray. A Murray led at Culloden in April, 1746, as at Quebec in April, 1760. Lieutenant Charles Stewart was wounded in both battles; as he lay in Quebec surrounded by brother officers he said, "From April battles and Murray generals, Good Lord deliver me." It is to General Murray's credit that, when the remark was repeated to him, he called on his subordinate to express the hope for better luck next time.
A little later Quebec was saved by the arrival of a British fleet and the French fell back on Montreal. Murray followed them but the Highlanders remained in garrison at Quebec, apparently because, with half the officers and men invalided, they could make but a poor muster for active campaigning. It thus happened that Nairne and Fraser did not share the glory of being present at the fall of Montreal. There, on a September day in 1760, the Governor of Canada, the Marquis de Vaudreuil, handed over to General Amherst, the Commander-in-Chief in America of the armies of Great Britain, the vast territory which he had ruled. It was not certain, albeit the great Pitt was resolved what to do, that, when the war ended, the country would not be handed back to France. The French officers professed, indeed, to believe that a peace was imminent by which France should save what she held in America. Meanwhile, however, they and their regiments were to be sent to France. The few residents at Malbaie whom Captain Gorham had spared, looking out across the river in October, 1760, saw it dotted with the white sails of many ships outward bound. Though they floated the British flag, their decks were crowded with the soldiers of France now carried home by the triumphant conqueror.
But more than the soldiers went back to France. Rather than live under the sway of the British, many civilians also left Canada, among them some of the seigneurs of Canadian manors. Land was cheap in Canada and it is not to be wondered at that young British officers, seeking their fortune, should have thought of settling in the country. A hundred years earlier French officers of the Carignan Regiment had abandoned their military careers to become Canadian seigneurs. In the end John Nairne and Malcolm Fraser took up this project most warmly and in their plan to get land they had the support of their commanding officer, General Murray. Murrays, Nairnes and Frasers had all fought on the Jacobite side in 1745; and we know how the Scots hold together.
James Murray, son of a Scottish peer, Lord Elibank, was himself still a young man of only a little more than thirty,—a high-spirited, brave, generous and impulsive officer. His family played some considerable part in the life of the time and they were always suspected of Jacobite leanings. Murray's brother, Lord Elibank, was a leader among the Scottish wits of his day. Dr. Johnson's famous quip against the Scots when he defined oatmeal as a food in England for horses and in Scotland for men was met by Elibank's neat retort: "And where will you find such horses and such men?" Another brother, Alexander, was a forerunner of John Wilkes the radical; the cry of "Murray and Liberty" was heard in London long before that of "Wilkes and Liberty." A third brother, George became an admiral. General James Murray sometimes described himself as a soldier of fortune. He was certainly not rich. Yet now when many of the Canadian seigneurs sold their manors, in some way Murray was able to purchase half a dozen of these vast estates. He bought that of Lauzon opposite Quebec on which now stands the town of Levis and half a dozen villages. He bought St. Jean and Sans-Bruit (now Belmont), near Quebec, Rivière du Loup and Madawaska, on the lower St. Lawrence, and Foucault on Lake Champlain.
To Nairne and Fraser, brave young Scots, who had done good service, Murray was specially attracted. Nairne, though only a lieutenant, till 1761, when he purchased a captaincy, was his junior by but a few years; Lieutenant Malcolm Fraser was three years younger than Nairne. The young men were seeking their fortunes but since they had very little money to buy estates, as Murray did, they could not expect to get land in the more settled parts of the country. For them Malbaie was a promising field and in September, 1761, they went down to have a look at it. The property was vested in the government, for which Murray could act. It was not wholly untrodden wilderness, for some land was cleared and a good deal of live stock still remained. The houses too had not been entirely destroyed by Gorham's men. The war had not yet ended. It was still uncertain whether Britain would hold Canada. But, for the moment, there was little to do. It was possible that in Canada further opportunities of military service would not be wanting. As seigneurs in Canada the young officers would retain rank as gentlemen and would not sink to the social level of mere cultivators of the soil. The experience too of founding settlements in the Canadian wilderness had compensations. Good sport was always to be had. They could pay at least annual visits to Quebec for a few weeks, and were, perhaps, hardly more remote from the cultivated world than some of the chieftains in their own Scottish Highlands.
The survey of Malbaie must have proved satisfactory. It is true, as the young officers said, that there was an over-abundance of "mountains and morasses," with good land scattered only here and there. But in their formal proposals to Murray they made this fact the plea for the grant of a larger area. Nairne apparently had greater resources than Fraser and, being now a captain, was his senior in rank. He asked for the more important tract lying west of the little river at Malbaie and stretching to the seigniory of Les Eboulements, Fraser for that lying east of the river and stretching some eighteen miles along the St. Lawrence to the Rivière Noire. The grants were to extend for three leagues into the interior. They were to be held under seigniorial tenure but Nairne asked for 3000 acres of freehold and Fraser for 2000. They thus close their petition to Murray: "This [request], if his Excellency is pleased to grant, will make the proposers extremely happy, and they shall forever retain the most grateful remembrance of his bounty; and [they] hope his Excellency will be pleased in the grant to allow them to give the lands to be granted such a name as may perpetuate their sense of his great kindness to them." They got what they asked for. It may indeed be doubted whether Murray had any right to allot huge areas of land in a country which had not yet been ceded finally to Great Britain, but any defects of title in this respect were corrected long after by new grants under the great seal. As it was, Murray wrote on a sheet of ordinary foolscap, still preserved at Murray Bay, a brief deed of the land[6] and, behold, the two young officers have become landed proprietors! To their request for permission to use Murray's name, in grateful remembrance of his kindness, he also assented. Nairne's seigniory was to be called Murray's Bay and Fraser's Mount Murray. The grants were made because "it is a national advantage and tends to promote the cultivation of lands within the province to encourage His Majesty's natural-born subjects settling within the same"; and the consideration was "the faithful services" rendered by the two officers.
A good deal of stock and farm implements remained at Malbaie and this the new proprietors arranged to buy, giving in payment their promissory notes, Nairne's for £85, 6s. 8d., currency and Fraser, who got only one-third, his for £42, 13s. 4d. They seem to have had a good deal for their money. There were a score and a half or so of cattle, four or five horses, (one of them twenty-two years old), twenty sheep, fourteen pigs, besides chickens and other living creatures. In addition there were waggons and other farm appliances, most of them probably old and of little use, though they must have helped to tide over the first difficult days when everything would have to be provided.
On getting his grant Nairne retired from the army on half pay, but Fraser remained on active service for many years still. Thus Nairne was the more continuously resident at Murray Bay and in its development he played the greater part. Fraser's interests were divided, not only between Murray Bay and the army, but also between Murray Bay and another seigniory which he secured on the south side of the river at Rivière du Loup and known as Fraserville. For us therefore the interest at Murray Bay now centres chiefly in Nairne and his family.