CHAPTER IV
FRENCH AND ENGLISH DOWN TO THE PEACE OF UTRECHT
Down to the date of the Treaty of Utrecht, the Iroquois formed the first line of the foes of Canada. Behind them were the English.
| Little communication in early times between Canada and the English colonies. Route from the Atlantic to Quebec by the line of the Kennebec. |
After Quebec had been in 1632 given back to France, the English on the Atlantic coast, and the French on the St. Lawrence, for many years came little into contact with each other. In Acadia the two nations overlapped, with results which are told elsewhere, and it was the same in Newfoundland; but the French colonists at Quebec and the English colonists at Boston or in Virginia were far apart. We read of an English traveller finding his way, in 1640, from the coast of Maine, up the Kennebec river and by the Chaudière, to Quebec, his journey being noted as an explorer's feat with an ultimate design of reaching the North Sea; while a few years later, in 1647-51, the same route became better known, and was taken by French emissaries of peace to the New England states.
| Proposals for a treaty between the English and French colonies. |
Negotiations were then on foot, at the instance of Winthrop, Governor of Massachusetts, for a treaty of commerce between the English and French colonies in North America, and it was suggested that they should keep peace with each other even in the event of war in Europe between the respective mother countries.1 Such a treaty might have been made and kept, if there had been no native question; but each side had Indian friends and Indian foes, and could not afford to alienate the one or add to the number of the other. The French wanted New England support against the Iroquois, and with the Iroquois the New Englanders had no quarrel. Thus the friendly overtures between the two parties came to nothing; but Frenchmen on the river of Canada and Englishmen by the open sea went their own ways, having no direct dealings with each other in war or peace.
1 A like sensible policy was pursued in the little island of St. Kitts, when first colonized by French and English. They agreed to keep the peace whether or not France and Great Britain were at war. See vol. ii of this series, chap. iv, p. 135. See also Kingsford's History of Canada, vol. ii, p. 426.
| The English take New York. |
A change came when the English, in 1664, took possession of New York. They too had now a river—the Hudson—which carried them inland; they became neighbours and friends of the Five Nations; and their natural line of expansion was in the direction of the St. Lawrence and the great lakes. From this time onward collision between French and English was inevitable, and it was equally inevitable that the colony of New York should be the central point of the contest.
| Want of union between the English colonies. |
Before the Dutchmen on Manhattan Island and in the valley of the Hudson became subjects of the British Crown, they had themselves absorbed the Swedish colonists on the Delaware. The result, therefore, of New York becoming a British province was to link together the British colonies on the Atlantic seaboard. It has been said above that English colonization in North America was more compact and more continuous than French. In other words, though the English colonists many times outnumbered the French, they were less dispersed through the wilderness. But the compactness and continuity was comparative only. Continuity of English colonization meant little more than that the lands claimed by one colony were coterminous with those claimed by the next, and that no other European nation could plant a settlement between the Alleghanies and the sea without committing a trespass and fighting for its place. There was no continuity of what would now be called effective occupation. Colony was divided from colony by many miles of forest and backwood. Separately they were planted. Their surroundings, their traditions, their interests were all distinct. Sprung in the main from one stock, and speaking one language, they had little else in common. They had not even the bond of a common religious creed.
| Dissensions in New York. |
Within each single colony there was division still. Settlements and homesteads were often far from one another, and political or religious dissensions supplemented geographical separation. New York was an instance in point. Alone among the colonies, it had a good waterway for any distance inland; but there was little community of interest between the settlers at Albany or Schenectady, and the seaport at Manhattan Island, except so far as the latter commanded the import and export trade of the Hudson valley. The settlers at the mouth of the Hudson were merchants and seafaring men. The settlers inland were farmers, landholders, and traders with the Indians. The former were exposed to attack by sea, but recked little of the French in Canada or their Indian allies. The latter had nothing to fear from a hostile fleet, but were constantly in danger from an inroad from Canada. Then there were feuds of race and religion. The English overpowered the Dutch, and with the English came in the rule of the Duke of York, Roman Catholic influence, and a policy too often dictated by France.
| Leisler's rebellion. |
The Revolution, which turned out the Stuarts in England, was followed by a rising in New York. There was a cleavage, not so much on lines of race, as on those of politics and religion. The extreme Protestants and Republicans, whose stronghold was in and about the town of New York, rose against the existing system, which was upheld by the more moderate and aristocratic section of the population, who were stronger up country, and were supported by such men as Schuyler, the chief magistrate of Albany. Jacob Leisler, a German, led the revolutionary party, and in 1689, backed by the militia, he deposed the Lieutenant-Governor and took the government into his own hands. He played the part of Cromwell for two years until, in 1691, regular troops were sent out from England, when he was deserted by his followers, imprisoned, and hanged; and the ordinary methods of colonial government were resumed.
| Want of union made the English impotent against the French. |
Colony being thus divided from colony, and the one colony which directly abutted on Canada being divided against itself, it was long before the English made any headway against the French on the St. Lawrence. At almost any given date the French had a larger number of regular troops available, supported by Canadian rangers, whose life was spent in border warfare—the whole being under one Governor, who was, as has been seen, invariably a man of considerable military experience. On the sea the English could more than hold their own, but the sea-route from New York or Boston to Quebec was long and troublesome. If such an expedition was taken in hand, there could be no secrecy and no speed in the matter. There was gathering of ships and transports; discussions as to the quota of each colony; selection of a leader because he was a good neighbour or a popular citizen, rather than for any naval or military capacity. There was sailing round the coast, taking Acadia on the way, and finally arrival before Quebec after men and ships had dropped off and the French had been forewarned and forearmed. Thus down to the date of the Treaty of Utrecht English efforts against the French in Canada amounted to little more than giving arms and supplies to the Five Nations, making occasional counter raids by land, and still more occasional demonstrations by sea.
| First proposal for joint action against the French. |
It will be remembered2 that in February, 1666, the French commander, Courcelles, on his bold midwinter expedition against the Mohawks, strayed from his route, and found himself near Corlaer or Schenectady, where he learnt that the English had become masters of New York, and that there was an English garrison at Albany. This was the first intrusion of the French into the Hudson valley. Tracy's expedition against the Mohawk towns later in the same year gave Colonel Nicolls, the first English Governor of New York, occasion to invite the New England colonies to join him in attacking the French. They refused, fearing that, if they sided with the Iroquois, they would be exposed to attack from the Abenakis, who were on their borders, and who were friends of the French, foes of the Five Nations. Some twenty years then passed without open rupture. New York was retaken by the Dutch and regained by the English. The colonization of Canada went on. The Iroquois remained comparatively quiet, and in Frontenac's first term of administration western exploration and western trade began to determine French policy in Canada and English policy in New York.
2 See [above].
| Thomas Dongan. Meeting between the English Governors and the chiefs of the Five Nations. Bad feeling between French and English. |
In 1683, after Frontenac had come to Canada for the first time and gone again, New York was given in the Irish Catholic, Thomas Dongan, a Governor of strength and foresight. In the following year, at a conference held at Albany, at which Lord Howard of Effingham, the Governor of Virginia, was present, the alliance between the English and the Five Nations was formally confirmed; and, assured of English aid and protection, the Iroquois turned their strength against Canada. Though there was peace between Great Britain and France in James II's time, the relations between New York and Canada were the reverse of friendly. The French knew that the Five Nations were backed by the English. Dongan on his part was resolved that the trade of the West should not be left exclusively in French hands. Angry letters passed between him and Denonville, English and Dutch traders on the lakes were intercepted by the Canadians, and a party from Montreal captured and looted three English trading posts on Hudson Bay. In 1688 Dongan was recalled, and in the following year news reached the American colonies of the Revolution in England.
| French plan for attacking New York. Frontenac's raiding parties. |
The expulsion of the Stuarts and the accession of William III to the throne of Great Britain meant war with France; and at this critical moment Frontenac came back to Canada. He came back with a plan, devised by Callières and approved by the King, for attacking New York by land and sea. A stillborn scheme it proved, through untoward delays, but its conception indicated that New York was recognized by the French Government and its advisers as the key of the position in North America. While plans were being laid by the French for the invasion of New York the Iroquois invaded Canada, and the massacre of Lachine faced Frontenac on his return in 1689. Next year he sent out against the English colonies the three expeditions which have been already mentioned.3
3 See [above].
| The capture of Schenectady. |
The first started from Montreal in depth of winter, following the familiar route of the Richelieu and Lake Champlain, and intending to strike a blow at Albany. The men were picked for the work, Frenchmen and Indians, about 250 in all, led by the best of Canadian rangers, such as Le Moyne d'Iberville and his brothers. They toiled through ice and snow, and, turning off from the path to Albany, in the darkness of a winter's night they fell upon the Dutch settlement of Schenectady. It was the time of Leisler's movement, when New York was in the throes of revolution. The village was unguarded, its gates were open, its inmates were asleep. A blockhouse manned by eight or nine militiamen from Connecticut was stormed, and the scene was one of helpless massacre.
| The attack on Salmon Falls and Falmouth. |
The second party, smaller in number, consisting of some fifty French and Abenaki Indians, left Three Rivers towards the end of January, and near the end of March made a night attack on the settlement of Salmon Falls, on the borders of New Hampshire and Maine. Again the English, sleeping and unprepared, were murdered in their beds, and the murderers, making good their retreat, joined forces with the third and strongest party, which had set out from Quebec to attack the settlement of Falmouth at Casco Bay. Falmouth stood where the town of Portland in Maine now stands. There was a fort at the place—Fort Loyal—into which the outlying settlers gathered with their families when the attacking force of four or five hundred men appeared. After a short defence the commander, Sylvanus Davies by name, surrendered on solemn promise, according to his own circumstantial account, of quarter and freedom for the whole company. The terms were immediately broken, and all the English were massacred or carried into captivity.
| Effect of the French raids. |
Thus three separate raids on the English colonies, sent out under Frontenac's orders in the year 1690, were all successful. They were well devised, and carried out with skill, courage, and determination. The English and Dutch settlers, on their side, showed the greatest negligence and little stubbornness or competence in self-defence. The immediate result was to invigorate the French and their Indian allies; but the causes of their momentary success were the causes of their ultimate failure; and even at the moment these marauding exploits threatened new danger to Canada. The French succeeded because, leagued with savages, they in all things likened themselves to their companions, they habited themselves in Indian dress, their warriors were ferocious as Indian warriors, their priests hounded on to blood. They succeeded because their trade was war not peace, because they were roving adventurers who had only their lives to lose, ravening among quiet men of substance who had homes and wives and children to be plundered and slain. It was as certain that in course of time the cause of the English colonists would prevail, as that the Highland clans, who in Scotland marauded their southern neighbours, would eventually be broken, or that the Five Nations themselves, if left to fight alone, would eventually go down before the settled life of Canada.
| They tended to unite the English colonists. |
On this occasion three blows were struck, nearly at the same time, at three separate points in a long undefended line. The adoption of this policy by the French, and still more the fact of its success, in reality tended to remove the one great obstacle to British supremacy in North America. When Sylvanus Davies, taken at Fort Loyal and carried prisoner to Quebec, asked Frontenac the reason for the savage raid on the Casco Bay settlement, he was told that it was reprisal for the support given to the Iroquois by New York. His rejoinder, which was to the effect that New England should not be called upon to answer for the doings of New York, showed how little community of sentiment or interest existed in the English colonies. The one great source of weakness to the English cause, the greatest source of strength to the French, was the disunion of the English colonies and their indifference to each other. Consolidation could come only through partnership in suffering, and pressure from a common foe. This was the lesson which Frontenac taught, when his border ruffians carried havoc from the head waters of the Hudson to the sea-coast of Maine.
| The colonies determine to attack Canada. |
The lesson was never fully learnt as long as the Atlantic colonies were British possessions and Canada was French; but for a time the French outrages produced some semblance of common action on the other side; and at a conference held at Albany, in 1690, it was resolved to attack Canada by land and sea. The land expedition, taking the route of Lake Champlain, was a failure, ending in a small raid on the French settlement of La Prairie; and the main effort was made by sea. On sea the New Englanders showed the way, led by the men of Massachusetts.
| Massachusetts takes the lead. Capture of Port Royal. |
The 'Bostonnais,' as the French called them, were dangerous foes of Canada. Puritans, Republicans, sea-fighters, sea-traders, they were all that the Canadians were not. They were strong in numbers too. At the end of the seventeenth century, Boston was a town of some 7,000 inhabitants, and the population of the whole colony was estimated at not far short of 50,000, against less than 15,000 French in Canada. At the very time that the French and Indian raid on Casco Bay took place, a fleet of seven or eight ships with 700 men on board sailed from Boston for Acadia, took possession of Port Royal with other French settlements on the Acadian coast, and returned in little more than a month's time with prisoners, booty, and renown.
| William Phipps. |
The commander of the expedition was William Phipps, a typical product of the seaboard colonies. Starting as a New England ship-carpenter, he had turned rover and buccaneer; and finding a sunken Spanish treasure-ship, had won himself riches and a knighthood. He was brave, not too scrupulous or cleanhanded, a good seaman, and a patriotic man. He was well fitted for irregular warfare on a small scale, but his capacity was limited, and he did not rise to the level of greatness. After his success in Acadia, Phipps seemed obviously the man to achieve the conquest of Canada.
| Condition of Quebec. |
Sixty years had passed since David Kirke took Quebec. A better leader than Phipps, he had had an easy task in starving out an infant settlement. The interval had been for Quebec a time of comparative peace. Sheltered on the land side by Three Rivers, Montreal, and the military outposts of the Richelieu, the town was practically safe from the Iroquois, while civil wars and Stuart Kings in England prevented invasion from the sea. One year and another the furs which came down the river, or the supplies which were brought from France, were intercepted; but in the main the capital of New France enjoyed security and peace. It had grown, but was a very small town still, ill fortified, except by nature, and, if fortune and skill had combined, might well have been taken. But in 1690 there was no luck and little skill on the attacking side. The land campaign, which was to have kept Frontenac and his best troops at Montreal, failed just in time to enable all the available French forces to concentrate at Quebec. England, when asked by Massachusetts to help the expedition by arms and ammunition, sent nothing; and, while the appeal was being made, valuable time was lost. Phipps was at first too leisurely and afterwards too impatient to succeed, and wind and weather befriended the Frenchmen in Quebec.
| Phipps' expedition against Quebec. Its failure. |
It was the ninth of August when the New England commander sailed from Nantucket with thirty-four ships, and soldiers and sailors to the number of 2,200 men. It was the sixteenth of October when he anchored before Quebec. He sent a pompous summons to surrender, which provoked an insulting reply, and then prepared to land his troops below the town, to attack it in rear, while his ships opened fire in front. It was a hopeless enterprise. The night after the English fleet appeared, strong reinforcements came in from Montreal, and Frontenac had at his disposal not far short of 3,000 fighting men. On the eighteenth, the New England levies were landed on the Beauport shore, having the river St. Charles between them and Quebec. They were between 1,200 and 1,300 in number, commanded by Major Walley. Short of food and supplies, sickening in the wet weather, out-numbered by disciplined troops and Canadian rangers, who fought under cover and with the advantage of the ground, they could do nothing but prove themselves brave and stubborn men. Phipps on shipboard gave them no support, wasting his ammunition in a wild and useless cannonade against the face of the cliff and the walls of the upper town; and in ten days time all the men were re-embarked and the ships set sail for home.
| Boldness of the attempt. |
So ended in complete failure the attempt of Massachusetts to take Quebec. Yet it was a bold and masterful effort on the part of one undeveloped English colony. It had in it the elements of strength, and under different conditions might have earned success. As it was, the citizen soldiers and sailors of Boston, led by an ex-ship-carpenter, faced Count Frontenac and all the trained strength of New France, their retreat was unmolested, and their failure was hailed as a miraculous deliverance for Quebec.4
4 Phipps, before he made his attack, was told by French prisoners of the path up the cliff above the town, by which Wolfe subsequently took Quebec; but he preferred to attack from Beauport.
| Death of Phipps. |
Phipps had not proved himself to be a great commander. He failed too as Governor of Massachusetts, to which post he was appointed in the following year; but he had the merit of dogged determination to fight the French in Canada; and, had he lived longer, he might again have tried his hand at besieging Quebec. A few weeks after his repulse and return to Boston, he sailed to England to urge upon the home Government an active policy against New France, and that policy he continued to advocate until he died, in 1695, at the early age of forty-four.
| Wheeler's abortive expedition. |
On either side, the true line of defence was to carry war into the enemy's country. It was thus that Frontenac defended Canada. It was by constant raids that the Iroquois maintained their position; and the counsel which those astute savages gave to their English friends was to combine and attack Quebec. 'Strike at Quebec,' urged Phipps on the English Government; 'strike at Boston and New York' was the advice which the leaders of Canada one after another tendered to King Louis. No help had been sent from England to the late expedition against Quebec, but Phipps' subsequent representations led to an English fleet being dispatched to the West Indies in the winter of 1692, under command of Admiral Wheeler. The ships were intended to take Martinique, then to go on to Boston, and embarking a force of New Englanders under Phipps to sail for Quebec. Again there was a failure. Wheeler lost more than half his soldiers and sailors in the West Indies from yellow fever; and, when he reached Boston in midsummer of 1693, bringing the sickness with him, the Massachusetts Government decided that it was hopeless to attempt to carry out the scheme.
| Fighting on the New York frontier. New York protected by the Iroquois. |
In spite of the massacre at Schenectady, New York suffered less than New England from border war. In 1691, in a second attack on the French settlement of La Prairie over against Montreal, the English and Dutch colonists achieved some success, carrying out the raid which they had planned, and cutting their way back hand to hand through a party of French troops who tried to bar their retreat. The Iroquois were the salvation of New York. Their raids into Canada safeguarded the rival colony, and when the Five Nations were not on the warpath, the French hesitated to attack their English allies, for fear of provoking a fresh incursion of savages. It has been seen that the Iroquois tended more and more to a policy of neutrality, worn by constant fighting, tired of English inaction, and discerning that their true interest lay in siding with neither French nor English. Still, with the exception of their converted countrymen settled in Canada, they were not likely to band with the French against the English. To do so would have been to break with old ties and traditions, to close their best market, to combine with their deadliest foes against friends of long standing, whose faults had been after all but faults of omission. This the French knew well: they were content to leave New York alone, provided they themselves were left alone by the Iroquois, and so long as the traders of New York did not seriously threaten their command of the West.
| The Abenakis on the borders of New England. |
It was otherwise in the case of New England. The Abenaki Indians on the borders of the New England colonies had always been in the French interest. Jesuit influence was strong among them: they had been taught that Christianity could go hand in hand with ferocity, and that murder of white heretics might be not only a pleasure but a duty. Here the object of the French was not to keep the Indians quiet, but to spur them on. As they dreaded lest their Indian allies on the upper lakes should come to terms with the Iroquois,5 and enforced barbarities to make peace impossible, so in the closing years of the seventeenth century and the early years of the eighteenth, they incited the Abenaki warriors against the border settlements of Maine and New Hampshire, butchering, looting, carrying into captivity, their one object being to keep alive the taste of blood, lest, lured by the prospect of peaceful and profitable trade with the neighbouring English, the Abenakis should drift apart from New France.
5 See [above].
| Port Royal reoccupied by the French. French and Indian raids on York, Wells, and Oyster River. |
A Canadian officer, Villebon, was specially deputed to take charge of Acadia, and organize war-parties against the English settlers. He reoccupied Port Royal, and at the beginning of 1692 the work of massacre was taken seriously in hand. The first point of attack was the border settlement of York on the sea-coast of Maine: it was laid waste early in February, with all the usual horrors of Indian warfare. In June, another seaside settlement—Wells, about twenty miles to the north of York—was attacked by a large party; but some thirty militiamen, headed by a determined officer, Convers by name, made a stubborn defence, and beat off the assailants. Two years later the settlement at Oyster River was surprised, and its inhabitants killed or carried off.
| Backwardness of the New Englanders in self-defence. |
There was one way, and one only, to put a stop to this destructive warfare; to build strong forts in advanced positions; to give them adequate garrisons under competent officers; to patrol the frontier constantly with bodies of armed border police, and to harry the Indian marauders by land and sea. New England—and New England meant Massachusetts—was perfectly able to adopt and to maintain such a policy. The New Englanders were many against comparatively few; they had as a rule command of the sea; but the colonists did not like the expense or the personal service which was involved; the Boston citizens did not feel the full force of the blows which struck the outlying farms and homesteads; and the petifogging Government too often employed men to command who knew little or nothing of soldiering.
| Fort Pemaquid. Chubb's treachery. |
There was one point, in particular, which should have been strongly fortified and strongly garrisoned. This was Fort Pemaquid, on the sea-coast between the mouths of the Kennebec and the Penobscot. It was to New England, and to the Abenakis, what Fort Frontenac was to Canada and to the Iroquois, an advanced post covering the English colonies and menacing the Indians. In 1689, most of the English garrison having been withdrawn, it had been surprised and taken by the Abenakis. In 1692, Phipps, then Governor of Massachusetts, acting under orders from the King, rebuilt and regarrisoned it. Iberville, sent by Frontenac in the following year, with two ships of war, reconnoitred the fort but did not venture to attack it. In 1696, it was in charge of an incompetent commander, Chubb, who made himself odious to the Indians by a gross act of treachery. Some Abenaki chiefs had been invited to the fort under pledge of personal safety, to exchange prisoners; and, acting under instructions from Stoughton, Lieutenant-Governor of Massachusetts, Chubb laid an ambush for them, killed some and kidnapped others.
| Surrender of Pemaquid. |
It was a proceeding as impolitic as it was immoral, and quickly brought retribution. Early in 1696, two ships of war came out from France, and, taking on board troops from Quebec, coasted round the Acadian peninsula, capturing on the way some English vessels, including an armed frigate. Off the mouth of the St. John the French received reinforcements, sent down by Villebon from his Fort Naxouat, which stood higher up the river; and a further band of Indians joined them at Pentegoet, the fort of the French adventurer St. Castin, at the mouth of the river Penobscot. The expedition led by Iberville, St. Castin, and others sailed on to Pemaquid, and on August 14 demanded its surrender. Chubb returned a contemptuous reply, and backed his words by promptly surrendering next day, on condition of safe conduct for himself and his men. He went back to Boston in safety and disgrace, and a year later was murdered by Indians.
| Abortive French expedition against Boston. |
The loss of Fort Pemaquid was a serious blow to the English, and in the next year, 1697, the French Government determined to follow up their success by attacking Boston. A strong fleet was sent out to Newfoundland under the Marquis de Nesmond. Its orders were to defeat any English vessels off that coast, and sailing south to the mouth of the Penobscot to take up Canadian troops and Indian allies. The expedition was then to proceed to take Boston, and, having accomplished this object, to overrun the whole of New England to the north of that city. Frontenac had the land forces in readiness, proposing to take command himself; but on this occasion the French took a leaf out of the English book; the fleet was detained by contrary winds till the summer was past, the combination failed, and all the grand scheme came to nothing at all. For Boston read Quebec, and the record of this failure might be the record of one of the stillborn enterprises, by which the English from time to time hoped to reduce Canada.
| Treaty of Ryswick. War of the Spanish Succession. |
The Treaty of Ryswick signed in 1697, and formally proclaimed in America in 1698, settled nothing. It gave breathing-space to Louis XIV and his enemies, and, while it lasted, there was a respite from border forays for the English colonies in North America. But no attempt was made to adjust boundaries, or to remove causes of past and future disputes, and the only specific provision, which the treaty contained with regard to America, referred to Hudson Bay. Both sides knew that the truce was not likely to be long-lived, and its end came when, in 1701, the King of France promised the exiled James II on his deathbed to acknowledge his son as rightful King of England. In the following year war broke out again, the War of the Spanish Succession, the war which, after Marlborough's victories, ended with the Peace of Utrecht.
| French raids on Wells, Casco Bay, Deerfield, and Haverhill. |
It was in Europe that the battle of the American colonies was fought, in Flanders and at Blenheim, rather than on the St. Lawrence or on the coasts of Acadia and New England. There was fighting in America, but it was in the main fighting of the same indecisive kind as had gone before—murder, pillage, and the like; and history repeated itself with singular fidelity. On May 4, 1702, war was declared: in August, 1703, the old work of raiding the New England frontier was resumed. The settlement at Wells, which had suffered before, was the first to suffer again; the neighbouring settlements, as far as Casco Bay, were marauded by the Abenaki Indians; and the fort at Casco was hard beset, until relieved by an armed vessel from Massachusetts. In the following year, at the end of February, 1704, the village of Deerfield was attacked by night by some 250 French and Indians. It stood on the Connecticut river, on the north-western frontier of Massachusetts, and at the date of the attack contained in all nearly 300 human beings. Of them about fifty were killed, and over 100 were carried off, among the latter being the minister of the place, John Williams, who survived to tell a tale of almost incredible loss and suffering in a narrative entitled The Redeemed Captive returning to Sion. A similar attack was made, in 1708, on the village of Haverhill on the Merrimac river, which cost the lives of about fifty villagers; and one after another the border settlements, during these troubled years, were infested by savages appearing from and disappearing in the backwoods under cover of night. The authors of the outrages were the French rulers of Canada; their agents were in the main converted Indians; the series of raids was not so much the spontaneous movement of natives against white men, as a crusade against heretics, prompted and led by Europeans, and carried out by Indian warriors on the lines of Indian warfare. There was much vicarious suffering. The past inroads of the Iroquois into Canada led to years of retaliation on New England: retaliation on New England induced the New Englanders in their turn to attack Acadia.
| Port Royal threatened by Major Church and Colonel March. |
In 1691, the year after Phipps had taken Port Royal, a new charter was granted by the Crown to Massachusetts, which included Acadia within the limits of the colony. But in the same year, and in the very month of September in which the charter was given, the Frenchman Villebon reoccupied Port Royal, and four years later, Massachusetts, unwilling or unable to make good its claim, petitioned the British Government to take over its rights and responsibilities in regard to the Acadian peninsula. Whether in English or in French hands, Port Royal remained a small, ill-fortified, and poorly defended post, constantly open to, and constantly threatened with attack. In 1704, after and in consequence of the French raid on Deerfield, a buccaneering force from New England, under Major Benjamin Church, appeared before it, having previously burnt the Acadian settlement of Grand Pré, but sailed away without venturing to attack the fort. In 1707, a stronger expedition was sent from Massachusetts and the neighbouring colonies under Colonel John March; but again, though the troops landed, skirmished, and began a siege, the enterprise came to nothing.
| Samuel Vetch. |
In 1709 preparations were made for more vigorous and more effective action. In the previous year the colony of Massachusetts resolved to appeal to the British Government for help from home to attack Canada. Their emissary to England was Samuel Vetch, a notable man of the time in North American history. He was a Scotchman, the son of a Presbyterian minister, born and bred in Puritan surroundings; he had served in the Cameronian regiment, and had fought on the continent in William III's armies. After the Peace of Ryswick he went out with other would-be colonists to the Isthmus of Darien, and, on the failure of the scheme, came over to New York. There he married and engaged in trade with Canada, gaining a knowledge of New France, its river, and its people, which subsequently stood him in good stead. Like Phipps, he was a shrewd, self-made man, whose enemies accused him, apparently with reason, of illicit dealings; like Phipps, he had seen the world outside New England and New York; and, having seen it and having taken stock of Canada as well as of the English colonies, he was a warm advocate, as Phipps had been before him, of united and aggressive action against the French.
| His mission to England. British aid promised to New England. |
Quite recently, in 1705, he had been in Canada, to negotiate exchange of prisoners and a treaty of peace between Massachusetts and the French. Both Dudley, the Governor of Massachusetts, and Vaudreuil, the Canadian Governor, were inclined to peace, but the negotiations broke down in consequence of Vaudreuil's demand that the other English colonies in North America should also be included in the treaty—a condition which Dudley was not in a position to guarantee. Vetch was for some little time on this occasion both at Quebec and at Montreal. When, therefore he visited England in 1708, he brought with him accurate first-hand knowledge of the enemy's land and people. He was well received. Marlborough's victories supported his plea for a decisive campaign in America, and early in 1709 he was sent back over the Atlantic with the promise of a fleet and five regiments of British troops amounting to 3,000 men. The colonists on their part were to raise contingents of specified strength, and attack by sea was to be combined with a land expedition by way of Lake Champlain.
| Attitude of the colonies. Land expedition under Colonel Nicholson. Its retreat. |
Even now some of the colonies hung back. Pennsylvania, out of reach of French attack and dominated by Quakers, sent no help in men or money. New Jersey sent money but no men. New York however abandoned its neutrality, threw in its lot with New England, and persuaded some of the Five Nations to take up arms again against the French, the Senecas only, under the influence of a skilful French agent, Joncaire, holding aloof. Fifteen hundred men were gathered for the land march, and, under the command of Colonel Francis Nicholson, advanced to Wood Creek, which is connected with Lake Champlain. He entrenched himself there, and his outposts came into collision with the advance guard of a French force sent to surprise him under Ramesay, Governor of Montreal. The French fell back to Chambly, and Nicholson waited week after week for news of the English fleet, until pestilence broke out among his troops, and he was compelled to retreat.
| Non-arrival of the English fleet. |
Meanwhile at Boston every preparation had been made, according to the orders of the English Government. Men, stores, transports were gathered, but all to no purpose, for no fleet came. It was due in May, and not till October came the news that the ships and men intended for America had been sent instead to Portugal. Once more there was a respite for Canada, once more the hearts of the English colonists were made sick by hope deferred. They had done their part, and all the trouble and expense and, in Nicholson's army, loss of life had been for nought.
| Fresh representations to the home Government. |
Yet the representatives of Massachusetts still pressed the home Government to take action against New France. Nicholson went to England at the end of the year, and pleaded the cause of the colonies, pleading it with authority, as having been Lieutenant-Governor of New York and Governor of Maryland. One of the Schuylers too followed him to England from New York, bringing a party of Mohawk chiefs to see and be seen.
| Reduction of Port Royal by Nicholson. |
If Canada were not to be invaded, at least Port Royal might be taken, and Imperial aid was promised to attain the latter object. An English force, timed to reach Boston in March, 1710, arrived there in July; and in September Nicholson sailed for Port Royal at the head of a strong expedition. He reached it on September 24. For a week there was some fighting, but the French were hopelessly outnumbered; and on October 1, the fort surrendered. Port Royal, henceforth known as Annapolis, now passed in permanence into English hands, and with it the English became masters of all Acadia.
| Political changes in England. Jeremiah Dummer. The expedition of 1711. Its arrival at Boston. |
After taking Port Royal Nicholson returned to London, again to urge an attack on Canada. Before he arrived, there had been in August, 1710, a change of ministry. Godolphin had been dismissed, and Marlborough's enemies, Harley and Bolingbroke, were in power. Bolingbroke had in his service a New Englander, trained at Harvard University—Jeremiah Dummer—who had become agent of Massachusetts in England, and who set forth in pamphlets the colonists' case, and urged the vital importance of conquering Canada. His writings, combined with the personal representations of Nicholson, persuaded ministers, who were anxious to father an enterprise which might weigh in the balance of public opinion against Marlborough's victories; and in April, 1711, fifteen men of war, with forty-six transports, sailed for America, carrying seven regiments of the line, five of which were from the army in Flanders. The regulars numbered 5,000 men, exclusive of sailors and marines, and they were to be supplemented on arrival by colonial levies. They reached Boston, after a fair passage, towards the end of June.
| Feeling of the colonists. |
The force was fully strong enough to take Quebec, provided that two requisites were forthcoming—the hearty co-operation of the colonists and capable leaders. The colonists did their part, but not with a whole heart and not without misgivings. They had asked for British troops, but, notwithstanding, there was a suspicion in the minds of many that a strong force landed in America might be used to subvert colonial liberties, and to reduce the communities of New England to the position of Crown Colonies. The French knew that such a spirit was abroad, and did their best to foster it. It was fostered too by other causes. There was something new in the action of the British Government. The American settlers were accustomed to refusal of aid from home, to promises of aid made but not fulfilled, to tardy and inadequate assistance. But on the present occasion an unusually large force of veteran troops arrived at Boston at a fortnight's notice.
| The expedition sails from Boston. |
Nicholson landed with the news of the coming fleet on June 8, on the twenty-fourth the fleet appeared. Its destination had been kept secret, and it was provisioned only for the voyage to America. On its arrival, therefore, it was necessary to impress men and supplies: pilots too were wanted and were not forthcoming: the King's officers found the colonists difficult to deal with: the colonists resented peremptory orders, and sheltered deserters from the army and the fleet. Still the authorities of Massachusetts loyally backed the expedition; preparations went forward; and on July 30 the ships set sail for the St. Lawrence, carrying, in addition to the English forces, two Massachusetts regiments, which numbered about 1,500 men, and were commanded by Vetch, now Governor of Annapolis.
| Nicholson's advance towards Lake Champlain. Admiral Walker and General Hill. |
The orthodox plan of invading Canada involved a twofold attack, by land on Montreal, by sea on Quebec. Accordingly, while the fleet was sailing round the North American coast, Nicholson collected troops at Albany, and advanced as far as Wood Creek at the head of 2,300 men, 800 of whom were Iroquois. Thence he intended to push his way down Lake Champlain. He was a competent commander, but the leaders of the main expedition were not. Little is known of the admiral, Sir Hovenden Walker, and it does not appear why he was chosen for so important a post. The general, Hill, familiar enough to London society as Jack Hill, had hitherto shown no military capacity. Marlborough had set his face against his promotion, and he owed his rise entirely to Court favour, for he was brother of Abigail Hill (Lady Masham), now the ruling favourite of Queen Anne. Sister and brother alike had been befriended by the Duchess of Marlborough; by intrigue, Abigail Hill had supplanted her benefactress in the Queen's favour; and with her aid Harley and Bolingbroke, themselves arch-intriguers, turned out Godolphin and procured Marlborough's disgrace. The price of her assistance was the appointment of her incompetent brother to command seasoned troops well fitted to conquer Canada.
| Disaster to the fleet in the St. Lawrence. |
Rounding Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island, the fleet, on August 18, put into Gaspé Bay. By the evening of the twenty-second it was at the mouth of the St. Lawrence, and in foggy weather the unskilful admiral, many miles out of his course, headed straight for the northern shore of the river, under the impression that he was too close to land on the southern side. At dead of night he was roused from his berth with the unwelcome news that the ship was among breakers; and turned her head just in time to avoid running upon rocks. The ships which followed his disastrous lead were not so fortunate, and eight of the transports were dashed to pieces on the reefs with a loss of about 1,000 lives.6 The place where the catastrophe occurred was one of the rocky islets, known as the Egg Islands, about twenty miles to the north of the Point de Monts.
6 According to one English account 884 soldiers were lost, according to another 740 soldiers and women. The number of sailors lost is not given.
| The expedition abandoned. |
For two days the ships were busied in picking up survivors from the wrecks. On the twenty-fifth a council of war was held, and it was resolved to abandon the expedition. A message was sent to recall Nicholson and his troops from their advance on Montreal; the fleet sailed back to Sydney harbour in Cape Breton Island. A suggestion to attack Placentia in Newfoundland was rejected. The New England transports returned to Boston, and the English fleet went home to Portsmouth,7 where—to complete the fiasco—the admiral's ship blew up, costing the lives of some 400 seamen.
7 Swift, in the Journal to Stella, says that the ship blew up in the Thames, but the accident seems to have taken place at Spithead; see Kingsford's History of Canada, vol. ii, pp. 468-9. There are various references to this expedition and to Hill in the Journal to Stella. Hill was subsequently placed in command at Dunkirk, while that port was being held as security for the execution of the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht.
Of the two commanders, Hill escaped formal censure. Luckily for him, Swift's bitter pen was at the service of the political clique with which he was connected. Walker, more culpable, was also less fortunate: deprived of his command he emigrated first to South Carolina and afterwards to Barbados, where he died, having written his own version of the expedition,8 which in no way tended to redeem his reputation.
8 A full account of the late Expedition to Canada, by Sir Hovenden Walker (London, 1720).
| Ignominious end of the expedition. |
Such was the end of the enterprise, intended to eclipse the great deeds of Marlborough. There have been many shortcomings and many disasters in the military annals of England, but few instances are on record of so much incompetence, verging almost on cowardice. Phipps' expedition against Quebec was a complete failure, but at least he led his band of untrained farmers and fishermen safely up and down the St. Lawrence, and gave Count Frontenac a taste of powder and shot. Walker and Hill, with the best of ships and the best of men, blundered and turned back at the mouth of the river; at the first mishap they abandoned everything. No wonder the Frenchmen deemed that the saints watched over Canada.
| The Treaty of Utrecht. |
The result can hardly have confirmed the American colonies in their allegiance to England. As a matter of fact, England had been fighting their battle against France, but her successes had been on the other side of the Atlantic; whereas in America, under the eyes of the colonists, there had been little but failure. One substantial gain there was—the capture of Port Royal; but this easy feat had been previously achieved by Massachusetts alone without any aid from home. The conquest of Canada, which had been well within reach, now seemed as far off as ever; and the Treaty of Utrecht—which, if Marlborough had been left to follow up his career of victory, and if a commander of his choosing had been sent with his troops across the seas, might have forestalled the famous treaty of fifty years later—did not even secure the whole seaboard to England, or confine the French to the river of Canada. Acadia, according to its ancient limits, was ceded to the British Crown, the French gave up their possessions in Newfoundland, and their hold on Hudson Bay: but on a section of the Newfoundland coast they were granted fishing rights, to be a fruitful source of future trouble; and, keeping Cape Breton Island, they reared in it the fortress of Louisbourg, to be a stronghold second only to that of Quebec. Once more England lost her opportunity, and the settlement, which should have been made in 1713, was postponed till 1763.
NOTE.—For the substance of chaps. iii, iv, and v, see among modern books,
KINGSFORD'S History of Canada, vols. i and ii,
and the following works of PARKMAN:
The Jesuits in North America;
The Old Régime in Canada;
Count Frontenac and New France;
La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West.