A Historical Geography of the British Colonies, Vol. V / Canada—Part I, Historical

by Sir Charles Prestwood Lucas

CHAPTER IX

THE CONQUEST OF CANADA

The Seven Years' War.

In May, 1756, Great Britain declared war against France. In June, France declared war against Great Britain. The war between these two nations formed part of the Seven Years' War, one of the most widely extended and, in its results, one of the most decisive in history. In the first number of the Annual Register, for the year 1758,¹ Edmund Burke wrote: 'The war, into which all parties and interests seem now to be so perfectly blended, arose from causes which originally had not the least connexion, the uncertain limits of the English and French territories in America, and the mutual claims of the houses of Austria and Brandenburg on the Duchy of Silesia.' After three years of the war, in September, 1759, Horace Walpole wrote in his laughing style, 'I believe the world will come to be fought for somewhere between the north of Germany and the back of Canada.'²

¹ p. 2.

² Letters of Horace Walpole, vol. iii, p. 249 (Letter of Sept. 13, 1759).

Numerical superiority of the English in America.

On the continent of Europe, Great Britain had Frederick of Prussia for an ally; on the other side were France, Austria, Russia, and Sweden. Beyond the Atlantic, a French population in Canada, Acadia, and Louisiana of less than 90,000 souls was ranged against British colonies with a population at least thirteen times as numerous. One or other of the larger British colonies, taken alone, was better peopled with white colonists than Canada.

Official corruption in Canada. Bigot and his gang.

Nor was want of numbers the only disadvantage under which Canada laboured. The currency, principally paper money, was depreciated. Provisions were scarce, seeing that the farmers were constantly called away to fight, and that supplies from beyond the sea were liable to be intercepted. The government was corrupt, and the high officials cheated the King on the one hand and the habitans on the other with the greatest impartiality. Canadian history, all through its course, as long as Canada was a province of France, was tainted by official corruption. The officials were traders also, and the public service was largely in the hands of commercial rings. What happened in the mother country happened also in her greatest colony. One official's wife became another official's mistress, and the husband who gave up the wife was rewarded with pickings at the expense of the public and of the Crown. The evil was at its worst in the last days of New France. The Intendant was then Bigot, a clever Frenchman who had come out in 1748, and round him gathered a gang of unscrupulous adventurers, whose misdeeds were fully brought to light after the crisis was over and the colony was lost. Among them were Cadet, butcher and contractor, who was made Commissary-General; Péan, Varin, and others, who, one at Quebec and another at Montreal, formed stores and created monopolies, buying and selling at artificial prices, sucking the life-blood of an extravagant Government in France and of a poor community in America.

Vaudreuil.

In past years, supreme authority in Canada had been shared between the Governor and the Intendant, and quarrels in abundance had arisen between the holders of the two offices; but, at the time when the Seven Years' War began, the Governor and the Intendant were at one. The Intendant Bigot, and the Governor De Vaudreuil, were on excellent terms. Vaudreuil, son of a previous Governor-General of Canada, received his appointment in 1755, having already been Governor of Louisiana. He was a vain man, of some but not great capacity, called to high office in a difficult time, and not equal to the task which was imposed upon him. Surrounded by cleverer and more unscrupulous men of Bigot's type, he did nothing to check the evils which were ruining Canada.

Division between Canadians and Frenchmen. Different classes of troops engaged in the war.

The principal point to note about him is that he was a Canadian by birth. This fact was the source of mischief. In lieu of the old feud between the Governor and the Intendant, there came into being a new line of cleavage, which tended to divide the mother country from the colony. The Governor had always been supreme in military matters; but, when war in North America grew to be more than a series of border forays, it became necessary to send out skilled generals from France. Dieskau was sent, and after him came a greater man, Montcalm. Friction then arose between the Governor and the General, accentuated in consequence of the Governor being a Canadian. All the Governors of Canada, including Vaudreuil, had seen service, or had at any rate been trained to war, but they were usually either sailors or connected with the forces which were attached to the navy and under the Minister of Marine. On both the English and the French side in North America there were, at the time of the Seven Years' War, three classes of troops engaged. On the English side there were the regular regiments sent out from home, and brought up to strength by recruiting in the colonies. There were also regiments entirely raised in the colonies, but still royal regiments in the pay of the Crown, such for instance as the four battalions of Royal Americans, first raised by Loudoun's orders, and famous in after times as the 60th or the King's Royal Rifle Corps.³ Lastly, there were the purely colonial levies. On the French side there were in the first place regiments of the line from France. In the second place there were the troupes de la Marine, regiments or companies mainly raised in France, but permanently stationed in Canada, to form a standing garrison and to develop into military colonists. In the third place there was the Canadian militia, including all the adult males between the years of fifteen and sixty. Only the first of these three classes of troops was under the direct command of the General from France. After Montcalm's arrival they numbered rather over 4,000 men, about one-fourth of whom were in garrison at Louisbourg. The troupes de la Marine amounted at most to about 2,500 men. The Canadian militia on paper numbered 15,000, but very few of them were to be found in the field at any given time or place. The General corresponded with the Minister for War; when in action he took command of all the forces present, but the nominal Commander-in-Chief was the Governor, who was by way of directing the campaign, and who reported to the Minister of Marine. Thus, both at home and in Canada, there was divided responsibility at a time when all depended on the most complete co-operation and single control.

³ They were originally the 62nd or Royal American Regiment of foot. The men were chiefly German and Swiss Protestants, and about one-third of the officers were of the same nationalities. On the disbanding of Shirley's and Pepperell's Regiments, which were numbered 50th and 51st, the Royal Americans became the 60th Regiment. Their motto, 'Celer et audax,' is said, without much authority, to have been first given them by Wolfe.

The strength of Canada.

The strength of Canada, on the other hand, consisted in the divisions of her adversaries, the separate grumbling English colonies; in the incompetence of the English Government at home; in the fact that the routes for attack from Canada favoured quick movement from the base; and most of all in the support which the Frenchmen received from the red men, notably from the mission Indians. The Indians went hand in hand with the Canadians; the one and the other loved irregular warfare; the one and the other answered to the call of the Governor of Canada, rather than of the General who looked on war as he had known it in Europe—more scientific, more continuous, better controlled, and more humane than the savage outbursts of killing and plundering which were the product of American backwoods.

Canadian raid on the route between Albany and Oswego.

As winter turned into spring, in 1756, before war had been proclaimed in Europe, and before Montcalm had come out, the Canadians made a move. The most distant and isolated English outpost was Oswego on Lake Ontario. Its communication with Albany depended on the two little forts which, as told in the last chapter,⁴ had been constructed to guard the four miles' portage between the Mohawk river and Wood Creek, the stream which feeds Lake Oneida. Towards the end of March, a party of Canadians and Indians, sent by Vaudreuil and commanded by an officer named De Léry, surprised the fort on the latter river, Fort Bull, killed or captured the small garrison, and destroyed the building with all its contents. The damage was repaired by Shirley, in whose eyes Oswego was of supreme importance, and who, in the winter of 1755, had formulated new schemes for a comprehensive campaign against Canada, including as before the reduction of the French forts on Lake Ontario.

⁴ See [above].

Weakness of Oswego. Colonel Bradstreet.

If this last object was to be achieved, it was absolutely necessary that Oswego should be made so strong in men and munitions, as not merely to hold its own, but to dominate the rival forts at Frontenac, Toronto, and Niagara. These conditions were very far from being fulfilled, and Shirley can hardly be acquitted of blame in the matter. The garrison of Oswego was weakened by winter sickness, the fortifications were hopelessly incomplete, the supplies were scanty and uncertain. The French raid in March was followed by a strengthening of the French positions on Lake Ontario, and Coulon de Villiers, a well-known Canadian leader, took up new ground at Sandy Creek to eastward of, and at no great distance from, the English fort. From Albany, early in the summer, Shirley sent up supplies to Oswego in charge of a strong body of colonists under Colonel John Bradstreet, a New Englander who did other good service later in the war. Bradstreet reached his destination in safety, but on his return up the Oswego river, at the beginning of July, was attacked by Villiers, whom he beat off after heavy fighting and considerable loss on either side.

French designs on Oswego.

Vaudreuil was as determined to drive the English from Lake Ontario, as Shirley was to secure for his countrymen control over the navigation of the lake; and at the time that Bradstreet's fight took place, Montcalm had already been some weeks in Canada. The French knew from the reports of their scouts the weakness of Oswego, they knew too that the English were concentrating in another direction for an attack on Ticonderoga: an advance in force on Oswego was likely to succeed: if not successful, it would at least draw off some of the English troops from the main campaign. Accordingly, an expedition was taken in hand, commanded by Montcalm in person.

Montcalm marches against it.

In July, Montcalm was at Ticonderoga. Returning rapidly to Montreal, he pushed up the St. Lawrence to Fort Frontenac; and early in August, moving his troops by night, crossed Lake Ontario, at the outlet of the St. Lawrence, passing to Wolfe Island, and thence to Sackett's Harbour in the south-eastern corner of the lake. Here a force of Canadians, including the remains of Villiers' troops, was awaiting him; and he advanced with about 3,000 men, including three regiments of the line, and an adequate supply of artillery, some of the guns having been taken from General Braddock's force. Undiscovered by the English, the expedition moved westward, the main body coasting the shore, the Canadians marching on land, until at night time, on August 10, they took up a position at little more than a mile's distance from Oswego.

Position of Oswego.

There were at this time, in consequence of Shirley's efforts, three forts at Oswego or Chouaguen, as the French called it. The old fort and trading house stood on the western bank of the Onondaga or Oswego river, where it enters the lake. On the same side of the river, about 600 yards to the westward, was a 'small unfinished redoubt, badly enough entrenched with earth on two sides.'⁵ It was called a fort, and pompously named Fort George, but, as a matter of fact, it was used as, and was little better than, a cattle-pen. On the eastern side of the river, over against the old fort, at a distance of 470 yards, was a newly-built, square-shaped blockhouse, known as Fort Ontario. It was built wholly of timber; and, while strong enough to resist such firearms as Indians could bring, it was of no avail against artillery.

⁵ See 'Papers relating to Oswego,' in O'Callaghan's Documentary History of New York, vol. i, pp. 488-503.

The French attack. Oswego surrenders.

The French prepared to bombard this eastern fort, but, before their trenches were complete, it was evacuated, and the garrison was withdrawn across the river. The abandonment was inevitable, but it sealed the fate of the main fort, which, for protection on the lake and river side, depended on Fort Ontario. One day's fighting saw the conclusion of the matter. The French brought their guns into position by the side of the abandoned fort; and, firing across the river, riddled Fort Oswego. At the same time, Canadians and Indians forded the river higher up, and attacked on the southern side. The English commander, Colonel Mercer, was killed: the troops, consisting mainly of convalescents and recruits, were not in condition for a stubborn defence; women and children found no shelter from the enemy's fire; the position was hopeless, and the garrison surrendered. The prisoners, who were carried off, numbered about 1,600; guns, boats, and supplies fell into the hands of the French, the forts were burnt to the ground, and every vestige of British occupation was for the time obliterated.

Effect of the fall of Oswego.

The news of the fall of Oswego, after so many years of British occupation, caused consternation in England. Colonel Daniel Webb, who at the time was bringing up reinforcements along the line of the Mohawk and Wood Creek rivers, beat a hurried and discreditable retreat, burning the forts at the Carrying Place⁶ and blocking the waterway with fallen timber. In England the blow followed on that of the capture of Minorca, for which Byng was made a scapegoat. 'Minorca is gone, Oswego gone, the nation is in a ferment,' wrote Horace Walpole; and again, 'Oswego, of ten times more importance even than Minorca, is so annihilated that we cannot learn the particulars.'⁷ It was in truth a great success for France, the result of a plan boldly conceived and brilliantly executed. The garrison had been taken completely by surprise; in four days from the date when Montcalm landed within reach of the forts, he had achieved his object, and left the English no foothold on Lake Ontario. The defeat of Braddock had given to France command of the Ohio; the fall of Oswego gave her undisputed mastery of the lakes. All the west, and all the ways to the west, were now in her hands, and her forces could be concentrated on the central line of advance to the south up Lake Champlain. There already some way had been made, for, in addition to holding Crown Point, the French were now firmly planted at Ticonderoga.

⁶ Fort Williams was rebuilt in 1758, and named Fort Stanwix. See [below].

⁷ Letters of Horace Walpole, vol. iii, pp. 41, 42 (Letter of Nov. 4, 1756).

Great as were the immediate material results of Montcalm's success, the indirect moral advantage which the French derived from it was greater still. Oswego, Burke reminds us in the Annual Register for 1758,⁸ was 'designed to cover the country of the Five Nations, to secure the Indian trade, to interrupt the communication between the French northern and southern establishments, and to open a way to our arms to attack the forts of Frontenac and Niagara.' A few pages later, he describes the effect of the disaster in the following words: 'Since Oswego had been taken, the French remained entirely masters of all the lakes, and we could do nothing to obstruct their collecting the Indians from all parts, and obliging them to act in their favour. But our apprehensions (or what shall they be called?) did more in favour of the French than their conquests. Not satisfied with the loss of that important fortress, we ourselves abandoned to the mercy of the enemy all the country of the Five Nations, the only body of Indians who preserved even the appearance of friendship to us. The forts we had at the Great Carrying Place were demolished, Wood Creek was industriously stopped up and filled with logs, by which it became evident to all those who knew that country that our communication with our allied Indians was totally cut off, and, what was worse, our whole frontier left perfectly uncovered to the irruption of the enemy's savages.'

⁸ pp. 13, 29.

The Iroquois discouraged.

The effect of what had happened on the minds of the Five Nation Indians was disastrous. Oswego had covered their cantons, it had been the entrepôt of trade between them and the west. They saw it swept away with little or no resistance. They saw Webb hurry back towards Albany, only anxious, as it seemed, to quit the country unmolested. Hesitating constantly between the French and English alliance, they had now every reason to prefer the former; and, had it not been for Johnson's influence with the Mohawks, the Iroquois would, for the time at any rate, have abandoned the English cause in disgust and contempt.⁹

⁹ Sir William Johnson, writing to the Lords of Trade on Sept. 10, 1756, says: 'Oswego in our hands, fortified and secured by us, and our having a navigation on Lake Ontario, was not only a curb to the power of the French that way, but esteemed by the Six Nations, whenever they joined our arms, as a secure cover to them and their habitations against the resentment of the French.' Later in the same letter he speaks of the fort as 'the barrier of the Six Nations,' and says that, in consequence of its capture, 'the spirit they had recently shown in our favour was sunk and overawed by the success of the French' (O'Callaghan's Documentary History of New York, vol. ii, pp. 733, 734).

Moreover, the achievement differed in kind from the ordinary Canadian raid. Troops had been moved, artillery brought up, transport organized in rapid, skilful fashion, which betokened leadership of no ordinary kind; the new General from France had at once made himself felt, and friend and foe alike recognized that Canada was being defended and the English colonies attacked by a soldier of high order in the Marquis de Montcalm.

Montcalm.

Few characters in colonial history are so interesting and attractive as that of Montcalm. Interest attaches to him not only on account of his own personality, but also because he illustrates the better side of the soldier-aristocrats of France. Born in 1712, near Nîmes in the south of France, he came out in middle life to North America, having seen hard fighting in various parts of the continent, and owing the Canadian command to his own merits, not to Court influence. He was the head of his family, owner of the ancestral estate, straitened in means, and with ten children to provide for; loving his home, loving his mother, his wife and children, following arms as his profession for honour and for a livelihood. He was well educated, and in every sense a gentleman of France, with a quick, impetuous Southern spirit, but the heart of an affectionate and chivalrous man. His coming lifted the war on the Canadian side to a higher plane; he used the savage tools which he found to hand, but he did not love them,¹⁰ nor did he love the corruption and chicanery which made the Government of New France a squalid reproduction of the Government at home. A great man—Champlain—brought New France to birth; her end was ennobled by the death of Montcalm. Of his military talent it would be difficult even for an expert to judge, for it must always be a matter of doubt how far Montcalm, like Wolfe, may have been 'felix opportunitate mortis.' Neither the one nor the other was tried in the command of big battalions on European battlefields; but in quick aggressive movement, such as resulted in the capture of Oswego, as well as in the patient defensive tactics which he displayed at Quebec, Montcalm proved himself to be a skilful commander.

¹⁰ This is contrary to what Wolfe wrote, when before Louisbourg, to Amherst. 'Montcalm has changed the very nature of war, and has forced us, in some measure, to a deterring and dreadful vengeance' (Wright's Life of Wolfe, pp. 440, 441). But none the less it was the case that, with Montcalm's arrival, war on the French side became what it never had been before, something more than a series of semi-savage raids.

Levis, Bourlamaque, and Bougainville.

He was ably supported by his second in command, De Levis, who lived to be a duke and a marshal of France, and a third good officer, Bourlamaque, came out at the same time. Montcalm's own aide de camp was De Bougainville, more famed in after years on sea than land. His name stands first in the list of French navigators; he was the rival and contemporary of Captain Cook. Good leaders France sent out to America in the spring of 1756, but she sent few troops with them. The campaign on the continent absorbed her strength, and New France was lost in consequence.

The English leaders. Webb, Abercromby, and Loudoun. Recall of Shirley.

Montcalm and his officers arrived in May; in June and July three English commanders appeared on the scene—Colonel Daniel Webb, General Abercromby, and Lord Loudoun. Of these three, Webb in a subordinate command and Loudoun as Commander-in-Chief were failures. Abercromby, possibly the best of the three, was not a success; he was in Wolfe's opinion 'a heavy man.'¹¹ The trio were a type of the soldiers that the English Government chose, while England, to quote the Prussian King Frederick's words, was in labour, and before she brought forth a man. While sending out inadequate officers from home, the Government recalled William Shirley, who, whatever his faults may have been, embodied more than any one man in America enterprising and heart-whole resistance to the national foe. He left on the arrival of Loudoun, having to the last used all his influence to prepare manfully for the coming campaign. Thus the summer of 1756 found the two sides ill matched in point of commanders; if the chances of war were at all even, the forces led by Montcalm could not fail to outwit and surprise the troops which were guided by the slow-moving Scotch laird, the Earl of Loudoun.¹²

¹¹ Wright's Life of Wolfe, p. 451.

¹² John Campbell, Earl of Loudoun, had served in the Highland campaign of 1745. In America he appears to have shown himself wanting in quickness, in tact, and in strategical ability. Franklin accused him of indecision. The colonial saying about him was that he was like the sign of St. George over an inn, always on horseback but never moving on. There is a pleasant notice of him in Boswell's Life of Johnson, when Boswell and Johnson dined at his house on the tour to the Hebrides.

Robert Rogers.

Yet the English had some useful men among them, though not in the first rank. William Johnson has already been noticed. John Winslow, who had adequately commanded the New England contingent in Acadia, was now in charge of the provincial troops at Fort William Henry, near Johnson's old camping-ground at the southern end of Lake George. In the same force was Robert Rogers, of New Hampshire, whose name is still borne by a cliff on Lake George, known as 'Rogers' Rock.' Rogers raised and commanded companies of New England scouts, known as the Rangers, which were multiplied as the war went on, and as the value of the men and their leader became more apparent. His journal is a model of clear, concise military writing, recounting in straightforward fashion feats of extraordinary daring and hardihood. As Johnson in his mastery over the Indians rivalled and perhaps excelled the French, so no Canadian partizan understood border warfare better than Robert Rogers. We read that on one occasion, when he had been reported as killed and the report proved false, the Indians in the French interest, who had been committing atrocities, repented from fear when they learnt that Rogers was still alive, and blamed the French for encouraging them, as they said, to do the actions for which vengeance awaited them. It was something to have on the English side men who, in the Canadian style of fighting, were as good as or better than the Canadians themselves; and, in the absence of competent generals, fighting backwoodsmen, like Robert Rogers, at least served to remind Canada that the English colonies had a nasty sting.

End of the campaign of 1756.

The programme for 1756—Shirley's programme—had included an advance to and from Oswego, and an advance from Fort William Henry against Ticonderoga. When Loudoun arrived, he countermanded the first movement, though he subsequently sent Webb too late up the Mohawk river in order to reinforce Oswego. Montcalm's swift action then disconcerted all English plans, Oswego was lost, the forward move down Lake George was countermanded, and the summer ended with nothing for the English to record but one crushing defeat.

Fruitless French attack on Fort William Henry.

In November, the main body of the troops on either side went back into winter quarters, and Fort William Henry was left in charge of a small garrison of between 400 and 500 men, belonging to the 44th Regiment and the Rangers, commanded by Major Eyre. In the early spring of 1757, an attempt was made to surprise them by an expedition sent up from Montreal under the command of Rigaud de Vaudreuil, brother of the Governor of Canada. The attacking force started towards the end of February, and on March 19 appeared before the fort. The next day they offered terms of surrender, which were refused; and, after vainly attempting to reduce the fort till the twenty-fourth, they retreated down Lake George, having burnt some boats and outbuildings, but otherwise inflicted little loss.

Loudoun's abortive expedition against Louisbourg.

The spring came on, and the early summer, and Loudoun matured a plan, which he had formed for attacking Louisbourg in force, as a preliminary to a further attack on Quebec. His plan was accepted in London, and the Government determined to send out a strong fleet to co-operate with him, the rendezvous to be the harbour of Halifax. Like previous schemes of the same kind, the enterprise failed through untoward delays. The fleet under Admiral Holborne, consisting of fifteen ships of the line, and conveying transports with from 5,000 to 6,000 men on board, did not sail till May 5, and did not reach Halifax till early in July. Loudoun, meanwhile, had drawn off the bulk of his troops, including Rogers and his Rangers, from the New York frontier; and, after vainly waiting at New York for news of the English Admiral, set sail for Halifax on June 20, reaching his destination on the last day of that month.

The combined forces were nearly 12,000 strong, but the time for attack had gone by. Hearing of the English preparations, the French Government had sent a fleet at least as strong as Holborne's across the Atlantic, under Admiral La Motte; and the English commanders learnt that Louisbourg was being defended by ships as numerous as their own, and by a garrison in which the troops of the line alone were said to number 6,000 men. The enterprise was accordingly abandoned. In the middle of August Loudoun re-embarked the majority of his troops for New York. Holborne twice reconnoitred Louisbourg in the hope of bringing on a sea-fight. The second time, in the middle of September, a storm shattered his vessels, and the whole expedition utterly collapsed.¹³ 'It is time,' wrote Horace Walpole¹⁴ in despondent terms, 'for England to slip her own cables and float away into some unknown ocean.' On his way back to New York, Loudoun was met with bad news—that Fort William Henry had fallen.

¹³ While Loudoun's troops were waiting at Halifax, he employed them in raising vegetables. In consequence, Lord Charles Hay, who was third in command, charged him with expending the nation's wealth 'in making sham fights and planting cabbages.' Lord Charles Hay was sent back to England, and a court-martial was held upon him, but the incident served to bring ridicule on the expedition.

¹⁴ Letters of Horace Walpole, vol. iii, p. 103 (Letter of Sept. 3, 1757, written before the final break-up of the fleet).

Montcalm prepares to attack Fort William Henry.

When he started for Louisbourg, he left Webb in command of the small forces which remained to cover the New York frontier. He seems to have thought that the troops were sufficient not only to hold the French in check, but also to threaten Ticonderoga. Montcalm, on the other hand, saw his opportunity and determined, while he had superior numbers, to strike a blow which should rival his former achievement at Oswego. Throughout July the French troops concentrated at Ticonderoga, provisions were brought up, and a road was made past the rapids, by which Lake George discharges into Lake Champlain. A number of Indians were gathered from all quarters to join in the expedition, mission Indians taught to kill the heretic English, and savages from the wild and barbarous west. Scouting parties went forth, some along Lake George, others up the parallel southern arm of Lake Champlain; and, with Robert Rogers far away in Nova Scotia, they did much damage, on one occasion killing or taking prisoners two out of three hundred New Englanders. At the end of the month the main advance began.

The fort and its surroundings.

Fort William Henry was about thirty miles distant from the French lines. It was a strong square fort, built near the southern edge of Lake George, a little to the west of the spot where Sir William Johnson two years before had formed his camp. The road from the fort to Fort Edward ran for a short distance due east, skirting the shore of the lake, and then turned inland to the south and south-east. On rising ground to the east of the road, beyond the point where it took the southward turn, the English had an entrenched camp, separated from the fort by swampy ground. After the attack on the fort in the preceding spring, Major Eyre and his troops had been replaced by others under the command of Colonel Monro, the main body consisting of 600 men of the 35th, now the Sussex Regiment. When news came that the French were on the point of advancing, Webb sent up 1,000 colonial troops from Fort Edward; and, when the attack began, Monro had with him about 2,400 men, while Webb, who had only 1,600 men left at Fort Edward, sent urgent messages to New York for reinforcements.

The French advance.

On July 30, Levis moved forward with the French vanguard, marching along the western shore of Lake George; the main body of troops under Montcalm followed in boats on August 1, the whole force amounting to between 7,000 and 8,000 men. Two detachments, one commanded by La Corne, the other by Levis, marched round the fort, and took up positions on its southern side, to cut off communication with Webb; La Corne occupied the road to Fort Edward, while Levis encamped a little further to the west. Montcalm landed his big guns at a little inlet, still called Artillery Cove, about half a mile in a direct line from the fort, and, after a summons to surrender on August 3, began his trenches on the night of the fourth.

The fort surrenders.

A far better defence was made than at Oswego. For four days the garrison held out bravely, hoping for relief from the south. Their guns were heard at Fort Edward; the urgency of their case was known; but Webb, though some 2,000 militia had reached him, felt himself too weak to make any advance. At length the situation became hopeless, and on August 9 Monro surrendered. The terms of capitulation were that the garrison should be escorted to Fort Edward, on condition that they would not serve again for eighteen months, and that all French prisoners taken in the war should be restored. The fort with all that it contained was handed over to the French. The surrender included the entrenched camp as well as the fort: the fort was evacuated; and the whole garrison, with the exception of a few sick and wounded, were gathered into the camp, retaining their arms, but without ammunition.

The massacre of Fort William Henry.

Before night fell, the French Indians plundered the fort, and butchered some of the sick. Early on the following morning, the English troops began their march to Fort Edward; the Indians broke in among them, seizing and stripping men, women, and children; and, at a signal given by the Christian Abenakis from the Penobscot—Indians who had known the teaching and training of men like Le Loutre—a wholesale massacre began. Montcalm and his officers, however, used every effort to protect the English, with the result that not more than fifty were murdered, and 600 carried off, 400 of whom were promptly recovered; and the broken band of fugitives in due course found their way to Fort Edward.

Blame attaching to the French.

This was the episode well known in colonial annals as the massacre of Fort William Henry, told of in history and in romance.¹⁵ The horrors have no doubt been exaggerated, if, as appears to have been the case, the death-roll did not exceed the number given above. Still it was a horrible incident, and brought righteous discredit on the French cause. Though Montcalm, when the mischief had begun, acted with promptitude and vigour, it was well within his power to have prevented the possibility of any such outrage. His Indians numbered but 1,800, and he had 3,000 regular troops from France to hold them in check. The Canadian militia, too, numbered 2,500 men; but probably the seed of the evil lay in the disinclination of the colonial French and their officers to interfere with their Indian allies. It had become the tradition in Canada to live down to the Indians in matters of war, to attach them and to hold them by humouring their savage instincts; and it may well be believed that, if Canadian soldiers or Canadian officers were concerned in seeing the terms of capitulation carried out, they would prefer injuring the English to offending the Indians. Three years later, in the advance on Montreal, we read of Sir William Johnson, under Amherst's orders, strongly repressing the Iroquois' lust for French blood, and Amherst reporting that not a peasant woman or child had been hurt, nor a house burnt, since he entered the enemy's country. Better control of the savages in their employ gave the English fewer friends among them, but in the end it was one, and not the least, of the causes of their gaining the supremacy in North America.

¹⁵ e.g. in Fennimore Cooper's Last of the Mohicans.

Webb's conduct.

It was disputed at the time, and is still matter of dispute, whether Webb from Fort Edward might have saved the fort by the lake. The view generally taken of his conduct was probably coloured by the memory of his frightened retreat down the Mohawk river in the preceding year. He could muster but 4,000 men all told; and, had he advanced and met with disaster, no force would have been left to keep Montcalm from marching on Albany, and possibly on New York itself. He risked nothing, and possibly he was wise; but the catastrophe which happened within his reach was in part, rightly or wrongly, debited to his account, and the feeling deepened in England and in America that on the English side leaders of men were sadly wanting.

The French raid the German Flats.

One more success was scored by the French before the winter came on. In October, Vaudreuil sent out from Montreal a raiding party of the old type, consisting of about 300 Canadians and Indians under an officer named Belêtre. They went up the St. Lawrence into Lake Ontario, landed on its southern shore, at some distance east of the ruins of Oswego, crossed to the portage between the Mohawk and Wood Creek, where the forts were no longer standing, and moved down the Mohawk to raid the outlying settlements. Between the head waters of the Mohawk and Schenectady, on the northern side of the river, was the district known as the German Flats, where German colonists had been planted about the year 1720. They came from the Palatinate, and their group of houses bore the name of the settlement or village of the Palatines. In the second week of November, Belêtre's party broke in among them, burnt houses and barns, killed cattle, horses, and some of the inhabitants, carried off over a hundred prisoners, and retired in safety in face of a weak detachment from a little English fort on the other side of the river, and of a stronger body of troops whom Lord Howe brought up from Schenectady too late to retrieve the disaster.

The French triumphant in North America. William Pitt.

This was the end of the campaign, the high-water mark of French successes in North America. At the end of 1757, the English had been beaten at all points. They had failed to attack Louisbourg, they had been driven from Lake George, the country of the Five Nation Indians was nearly cut off, all hold on the rivers and the lakes was gone. The outlook was dark in the extreme: it is always darkest before dawn, and as a matter of fact dawn had already begun; for William Pitt, who had been dismissed from office in April, was recalled by the unanimous voice of the people of England before the end of June, and, leaving to the incompetent Duke of Newcastle the name of Prime Minister, controlled, as Secretary of State and Leader of the House of Commons, the soldiers, the sailors, the subsidies and the foreign policy of his country.¹⁶

¹⁶ Lord Chesterfield in a letter to his son dated May 18, 1758 (1775 ed., vol. iv, p. 137, Letter 298), wrote as follows of the Newcastle-Pitt combination: 'The Duke of Newcastle and Mr. Pitt jog on like man and wife, that is, seldom agreeing, often quarrelling, but by mutual interest upon the whole not parting.'

Want of a leader on the English side.

The wars of England have usually run the same course. They have begun with blunders and reverses, but ended in success. The English do not love war, and are rarely prepared for it. They begin fighting in half-hearted fashion, before the nation makes up its mind that the cause is worth a real effort and serious expenditure of money and life. There is groping about for a leader, for some one who will say distinctly what is to be done, and will prove as good as his word. If such a man is found, the people will follow; they forgive a man who makes mistakes provided, as the saying is, that he makes something. Then the resources of the country are concentrated and utilized, and under articulate and sympathetic leadership the cause of the nation prospers. If England in the year 1757 needed some one controlling will, much more was the want felt in her North American colonies. The demoralization caused by feeble ministries in England had its baleful effect in America; nerveless government at home strengthened the centrifugal tendencies of the colonies. Nothing but common danger gave them any common life; and, though Pitt's advent to power partially corrected the evil, Pitt was in England not in America. To the end the uniting force came from without rather than from within: the colonies followed the lead of Pitt and his generals, but to the mother country not to the colonies was due the conquest of Canada.

Distress in Canada.

That Canada must be conquered, when England made her effort, was inevitable. The French appeared triumphant; they had moved forward; they had struck heavy blows; but behind the fighting line, even on the surface, they were in straits. The garrison of Fort William Henry had not been taken prisoners to Canada, because Canada could hardly feed them;¹⁷ and the winter of 1757, which followed the brilliant campaign, was a winter of distress. Bread was wanting; horses were eaten for meat; the troops were mutinous and only kept in order by Levis' firmness and tact; the finances were in a ruinous condition; there were winter gaieties and winter gambling, but Canada before its conquest was in much the same condition as the mother country on the brink of the Revolution.

¹⁷ Similarly, after the fall of Oswego, Horace Walpole wrote, 'The massacre at Oswego happily proves a romance; part of the two regiments that were made prisoners there are actually arrived at Plymouth, the provisions at Quebec being too scanty to admit additional numbers.' Letters of Horace Walpole, vol. iii, pp. 44, 45 (Letter of Nov. 13, 1756).

French plan of campaign for 1758.

Both sides laid their plans for the coming year. The French scheme included a movement by Levis from Fort Frontenac on Lake Ontario, across to the site of Oswego, and thence, after securing the alliance or the allegiance of the Iroquois, down the Mohawk valley, so as to co-operate with the main army under Montcalm advancing from Ticonderoga. The success of this project of Vaudreuil's, which was never carried into effect, presupposed that the bulk of the English troops would again be drawn off to attack Louisbourg, for it was known or suspected in Canada that another attempt on Louisbourg was in contemplation.

Pitt's plan.

Pitt's plan of campaign was not new or original. The experience of long years had painfully taught what were the points where Canada must be attacked, if any permanent success was to be achieved. First and foremost was Louisbourg. With Louisbourg in English hands, the St. Lawrence could be blocked and Canada starved out. But the English minister had no intention of denuding the inland frontier of the British colonies, in order to take the French fortress in Cape Breton. On the contrary, he laid his plans also for an advance on Ticonderoga, and for the recovery of Fort Duquesne. He conceived no new scheme, but into old schemes he put new life. The novelties which he introduced were abundance of English troops, prompt instead of dilatory movement, and above all capable leaders—inspired with his own spirit, and in their turn inspiring the men whom they led. There was to be an end of the 'delays, misfortunes, disappointments and disgraces,'¹⁸ which had so long been associated in the English mind with war in America.

¹⁸ Annual Register for 1758, p. 70.

Strong English forces sent to America.

On December 30, 1757, he addressed a circular letter to the Governors of the North American colonies, asking for levies of 20,000 men. On February 19, 1758, a strong fleet set sail for Halifax, to be directed against Louisbourg, while other English squadrons blocked the French ports in Europe, and kept the enemy's ships from crossing the Atlantic. It was a rare thing for an English expedition for America to start betimes, instead of waiting for orders and counter orders, until the season for active work was far spent. It was unheard of, too, for so many English troops to be sent into the New World. Twelve thousand soldiers, nearly all regulars, took part in the Louisbourg expedition. Abercromby on Lake George commanded, when summer came on, 15,000 men, of whom fully 6,000 were regulars. Six thousand men took part in the march against Fort Duquesne, of whom 1,600 were Imperial troops. Thus in the year 1758 England had more than 20,000 regular soldiers employed in North America, enough force, as Lord Chesterfield thought, when coupled with the colonial troops, 'to eat up the French alive in Canada, Quebec, and Louisbourg, if we have but skill and spirit enough to exert it properly.'¹⁹

¹⁹ Lord Chesterfield to his son, Feb. 8, 1758 (1775 ed., vol. iv, p. 124; Letter 293).

The English commanders.

The skill and the spirit were forthcoming also, though not at once in full measure, and not at all points. Loudoun was recalled. Abercromby was left to take his place, but with him was placed as brigadier a young officer of rare promise, Lord Howe. Jeffrey Amherst was picked out to command the troops against Louisbourg, and of his three brigadiers one was Lawrence, the Governor of Nova Scotia, and another was Wolfe. In the further west, the command of the expedition against Fort Duquesne was given to a resolute Scotch soldier, Forbes. Gradually in his choice of officers Pitt sifted the chaff from the grain, young men were brought to the front, merit was preferred to seniority. Amherst was forty-one years of age, Wolfe was thirty-one, Howe was thirty-three. Lord Chesterfield wrote of them in February, 1758, 'Abercromby is to be the sedentary and not the acting commander. Amherst, Lord Howe, and Wolfe are to be the acting and I hope the active officers. I wish they may agree.'²⁰

²⁰ Ibid.

The fleet sails for Louisbourg. Admiral Boscawen.

The fleet which sailed for North America, carrying the hopes and the fortunes of England, was commanded by Admiral Boscawen. He had seen service in the East and West, off Cartagena and Pondicherry; and it was he who in the year 1755, before France and England were at war, had, as has already been told, attacked and taken the two French ships, the Alcide and the Lys, off the North American coast.²¹ He had Churchill blood in his veins, for Arabella Churchill was his grandmother; and he was known as 'Old Dreadnought,' after a ship of that name which he had commanded. He was a determined, hard-fighting sailor, with little respect for neutrality in time or place if there was a chance of striking a blow for England.

²¹ See [above].

Amherst.

His colleague, General Amherst, like Wolfe, was born in Kent. Joining the Guards in 1731, he made his name on the Continent. He was present at Dettingen and Fontenoy, and served on the Duke of Cumberland's staff. Unlike most of the commanders of the time, he lived to be an old man, and was Commander-in-Chief of the English army before he died; but his good work was all done in America in the years 1758-60, while he was still in early middle age, and when he conquered Canada. He was a good soldier of the cautious type, not wanting either in vigour or determination, but making sure of each point before he moved further. What Carlyle says of the Parliamentary general, Lord Essex, might be said of Amherst—he was a 'somewhat elephantine' man.

The first and second siege of Louisbourg compared.

The ships took time to go over the sea, and did not reach Halifax until well into May. On the second of June they sailed into Gabarus Bay and came in sight of Louisbourg. The second siege and capture of Louisbourg was very similar to the first, except that in 1758 much larger forces were engaged on either side, and more military skill was shown than in 1745. The earlier siege was, on the English side, as far as the land forces were concerned, purely a colonial venture. On the later occasion very few colonial troops were employed. The French had in garrison 3,000 regulars, and the residents of the town who bore arms made up nearly another thousand, the besiegers on land outnumbering the besieged in the proportion of three to one. In harbour there were twelve French ships of war, with a complement of 3,000 men—no match for Boscawen's overpowering fleet. The fortifications of Louisbourg were strong, but not so strong as they were reputed. It was stated that prior to 1755 nothing had been done to repair the damage done in the first siege.²² The French had a good commander, the Chevalier de Drucour; and his wife, according to the accounts of the time, was as brave as himself. In 1758 the English landed in the same place as in 1745; the siege took almost exactly the same number of days; the Grand Battery on the north shore of the harbour was, as before, evacuated by the French; once more the English mounted guns on Lighthouse Point, from which the French had retired, and battered to pieces the Island Battery, which guarded the mouth of the harbour. Again, as in 1745, a small force of Canadians and Indians tried to make a diversion from inland, and again the attempt was quite ineffectual. The seas and the skies, however, in spite of the time of year, were far less kind to the besiegers on the later than on the earlier occasion.

²² In the Annual Register for 1758, pp. 179-81, is given a translation of a letter from Drucour, the French Governor of Louisbourg, after he had been taken prisoner to England. It is dated Andover, Oct. 1, 1758. Referring to the defences of Louisbourg, he speaks of 'a fortification (if it could deserve the name) crumbling down in every flank, face, and courtine, except the right flank of the King's bastion, which was remounted the first year after my arrival.'

Landing effected by Wolfe.

The real difficulty was the initial difficulty, that of landing on an awkward coast in bad weather, with an enemy lining the shore. The French had made full preparations, and had their men, guns, and batteries ready along the fringe of Gabarus Bay; while, for nearly a week, surf and fog made any attempt at landing impracticable. At length, at daybreak on June 8, three strong parties under the three brigadiers put out in boats from the transports, and rowed for the shore at three separate points. The main effort was intended to be made on the extreme left, at Freshwater Cove, by the party commanded by Wolfe. As the boats neared the land, the French opened a heavy fire, and Wolfe signalled a retreat; but, by happy accident or by design, one or more of the boats misinterpreted the sign, and made good their landing a little to the right of the cove, where the cliff gave some slight shelter from the enemy's fire. The rest then followed in support, and, with no slight loss of men and boats, the English carried the French position, and drove their opponents back within range of the Louisbourg guns.

The siege pressed.

The disembarkation now went on under difficulties. On June 18 the siege guns were landed, and gradually the English formed their encampment, drew their lines, and opened their trenches, beleaguering the fortress on the western side, where the peninsula on which the town of Louisbourg stood joined the mainland. The lines started from the sea at Flat Point cove, and extended in a semicircle for about two miles inland. Meanwhile, on the twelfth of June, Wolfe had marched round the harbour, and subsequently mounted his guns at Lighthouse Point on the opposite side. By the twenty-fifth he had silenced the Island Battery, and thus commanded the mouth of the harbour, where the French in consequence sunk several of their ships to bar any attack by Boscawen.

The town was now fully invested by land and sea; such French ships as still remained were cooped up in the harbour, and the fall of Louisbourg was merely a question of time. But the operations took time. The besiegers had the same difficulty as had been experienced in 1745, in advancing across a belt of swamp. Day and night passed in incessant work, under fire of the enemy's guns, and interrupted by sorties of the garrison; but slowly and surely the trenches were drawn nearer to the town. On the twenty-first of July three out of the five remaining French ships took fire from a shell and were destroyed, and on the twenty-fifth the two last were successfully attacked by a detachment of English sailors, who rowed into the harbour at night time, and among whom was James Cook, not yet known to fame. One ship was grounded and burnt, the other was towed off by its captors.

The town surrenders. Louisbourg dismantled.

This bold feat brought matters to a climax. The land defences were in ruins, the garrison was worn out, there was nothing to stop a general assault by land and sea. On the twenty-sixth the French Governor asked for terms. Unconditional surrender was demanded and refused; but before the message of refusal reached the English camp, it was withdrawn, at the instance, it was said, of the Intendant or Commissary-General, who represented the civilian element in the town. The articles of capitulation were signed, between 5,000 and 6,000 French soldiers and sailors became prisoners of war, and on July 27 the English forces entered Louisbourg. Two years later, in 1760, all the fortifications were demolished, and the town was practically blotted out. No chance was left of again handing back to France a fortress which had so long threatened English interests in America. Halifax was henceforth to be unrivalled on the coast; and at the present day the once famous harbour of Louisbourg is in the keeping of Cape Breton fishermen.

Wolfe's services at Louisbourg. Time lost by the English.

The English Parliament voted thanks to Amherst and Boscawen; but to Wolfe, who as a subordinate was not mentioned, the thanks of the nation were mainly due. He 'shone extremely at Louisbourg,'²³ wrote Horace Walpole, and Walpole owns that he did not love him. Had he been in supreme command, the siege would probably have ended earlier, and greater results would have been achieved. His own view, at any rate, as expressed in a private letter written after his return to England, was that both during the siege and after it valuable time was lost.²⁴ It is certain that when the expedition was sent out, more was hoped from it than the capture of Louisbourg alone. On May 18, 1758, Lord Chesterfield wrote: 'By this time I believe the French are entertained in America with the loss of Cape Breton, and, in consequence of that, Quebec; for we have a force there equal to both those undertakings, and officers there now that will execute what Lord L—— (Loudoun) never would so much as attempt.'²⁵ The French on their side, as we learn from a subsequent letter from Drucour, were aware of the importance of prolonging the siege, in order to prevent Abercromby being reinforced, or an attack being made on Quebec;²⁶ and all honour is due to the memory of the brave French commander for the determined stand which he made. Before the siege ended, Abercromby had been beaten back from Ticonderoga, and breathing time had been given to the defenders of Canada.

²³ Letters of Horace Walpole, vol. iii, p. 207 (Letter of Feb. 9, 1759).

²⁴ 'We lost time at the siege, still more after the siege, and blundered from the beginning to the end of the campaign' (from a letter written Dec. 1, 1758; Wright's Life of Wolfe, p. 465). Similarly, Wolfe wrote from the camp before Louisbourg, on July 27, 1758, the day after the capitulation: 'If this force had been properly managed, there was an end of the French colony in North America in one campaign' (Wright, p. 449).

²⁵ Lord Chesterfield to his son, May 18, 1758 (1775 ed., vol. iv, p. 136; Letter 298).

²⁶ See the letter already quoted above, p. 273, note. Drucour is explaining why he would not allow the French ships to leave Louisbourg harbour, 'It was our business to defer the determination of our fate as long as possible. My accounts from Canada assured me that M. de Montcalm was marching to the enemy and would come up with them between July 15 and 20. I said then "if the ships leave the harbour on June 10 (as they desire), the English admiral will enter it immediately after," and we should have been lost before the end of the month, which would have put it in the power of the generals of the besiegers to have employed the months of July and August in sending succours to the troops marching against Canada, and to have entered the river St. Lawrence at the proper season.' In a 'Scheme for taking Louisbourg,' which was submitted to Pitt by Brigadier Waldo (who had been on Pepperell's expedition) on Nov. 7, 1757, fourteen days were given to Louisbourg to hold out when once duly invested, and an attack on Quebec was contemplated as the immediate result of its fall (Brymer's Report on Canadian Archives, 1886, pp. 151-3).

Wolfe returns to England.

Yet it was but the end of July when Louisbourg fell, and, if Wolfe had had his way, the ships would have gone on to Quebec. Even Amherst might have gone on but for the bad news from Abercromby, which confirmed his habitual caution, and retarded instead of quickening his movements. One officer, Lord Rollo, was sent to reduce the Île St. Jean; another, Monckton, cleared the valley of the St. John river on the mainland. Wolfe was dispatched to Gaspé Bay and the mouth of the St. Lawrence, to harry the settlers and the fishermen; and when he had accomplished his task, which was little to his taste, he sailed for home angry and disappointed that more had not been done, and that his advice had not been taken. Amherst, in the meantime, had gone with six regiments to reinforce Abercromby at Lake George.

The Maritime Provinces finally secured to England.

The capture of Louisbourg secured to England all that should have been hers when the Treaty of Utrecht was being negotiated. The English were now in full occupation of the Maritime Provinces of Canada. More than half of the comparatively small French population of Cape Breton was, at the people's own wish, shipped to France; and of the residents in the Île St. Jean, mainly Acadian refugees, a large proportion was similarly transported, while others found their way to Canada. Cape Breton was attached to Nova Scotia, to be subsequently separated from that province and again rejoined. The Île St. Jean was placed under the same Government, and before the century ended, in the year 1799, its name was changed to Prince Edward Island in honour of the Duke of Kent, the father of Her late Majesty Queen Victoria.

Abercromby's advance.

By Loudoun's recall, Abercromby was left in chief command of the British forces in North America. He had with him, as one of his brigadiers, Lord Howe, who commanded the 55th Regiment. In May, 1758, he was at Albany preparing for the summer's work. In June he moved up to the end of Lake George, where his force, amounting to 15,000 men, gathered to drive the French back on Canada. The colonies had answered well to Pitt's appeal, and contributed 9,000 men to the total. On July 5 the army embarked in boats; on the sixth they landed without opposition at the northern end of the lake, on the western side of the water, and began their march on Ticonderoga through the forest, having on their right the semicircular stream which connects Lake George and Lake Champlain.

Lord Howe killed.

The right centre column was led by Lord Howe, and, as the soldiers groped their way through the dense thickets, they stumbled across a party of French, who had been sent out to reconnoitre, had also lost their way, and found their retreat cut off. A confused skirmish followed, with more numerical loss to the French than to the English; but Howe was shot dead, and his life by common consent meant the life of the expedition. All night the army remained under arms in the forest, and on the morning of the seventh marched back to the landing-place.

The approach to the French position at Ticonderoga.

It was a matter of very few miles to the French position. The river, which carries the waters of Lake George into Lake Champlain, and enters the latter lake at Ticonderoga, has a course of about eight miles; but they are eight miles of a semicircle, and the distance in a straight line from Lake George to Ticonderoga is much shorter. The English had landed at the head of the river; about two miles lower down rapids begin, and here was the portage leading from the head to the bottom of the rapids, and forming the chord of an arc, the arc being between three and four miles of broken water. The lower bridge of the portage, where there was a sawmill, was well within two miles of the French Fort Carillon. At the head of the rapids the French had held an advanced post, which was withdrawn on the approach of Abercromby's army, and, when the main force of that army landed to wander in the forest, a detachment was sent on down the river and occupied the deserted position. On the seventh, while the main body again was resting at the landing-place, Bradstreet was sent forward to the post at the bottom of the rapids, which was also found to be deserted, and here on the evening of the seventh the main body encamped, the bridge being repaired, and the encampment being on the same side of the river as Ticonderoga.

Montcalm's dispositions.

Montcalm, who was joined by Levis on the night of the seventh, had with him rather under 4,000 men, the majority of whom were regulars. Outnumbered as he was by three or four to one, his position was perilous in the extreme, for his retreat could easily be cut off. He determined, however, to make a stand, and on rising ground on the inland—the western—side of the little peninsula on which Fort Carillon or Ticonderoga²⁷ was built, at a distance of rather over half a mile from the fort, he formed at the eleventh hour entrenchments of timber, fringed on the outside by a network of 'felled trees, the branches pointed outwards,'²⁸ and carefully laid so as to entangle and annoy the enemy.

²⁷ Ticonderoga, according to Rogers' Journals (p. 22, note), is an 'Indian name signifying the meeting or confluence of three waters.'

²⁸ Abercromby's dispatch to Pitt, July 12, 1758.

The English repulse at Ticonderoga. Retreat of Abercromby.

Against this position Abercromby ordered an attack on July 8. He had been told by French prisoners that Montcalm's force was stronger than it actually was, and that further reinforcements were shortly to arrive. In consequence he hurried his movements, and without bringing up any guns, which apparently he had left behind him, he determined, thinking that the entrenchment had not been completed, to trust entirely to the bayonet. The result was the inevitable result of a frontal attack, delivered in the open, against an enemy fighting under cover and undisturbed by artillery fire. For four hours charge after charge was made, and at the close of the day the English had achieved nothing and had lost nearly 2,000 men. The casualties in the Black Watch alone amounted to 500. Abercromby had still 13,000 men left, but he had no stomach for further fighting. On the following day he ordered a retreat, and the whole force went back to the southern end of Lake George.

Triumph of Montcalm.

At Oswego and at Fort William Henry, Montcalm had shown how to concentrate superior forces at a given point rapidly and effectively, and how to use them when concentrated to the best possible advantage. At Ticonderoga, he showed how to make the most of very inferior numbers, by utilizing every natural and artificial advantage, and every mistake of the foe. It was a great triumph for him; it produced joy in Canada, and discouragement in England; but, as Mr. Parkman points out, it is difficult to see how he could possibly have succeeded, if Abercromby had taken any other course than the one which he actually took. Wolfe summed up the matter aright, when, in the following December, he referred in a private letter to 'the famous post at Ticonderoga, where Mr. Abercromby by a little soldiership and a little patience might, I think, have put an end to the war in America.'²⁹

²⁹ Wright's Life of Wolfe, p. 469.

Tribute to Lord Howe.

Almost as disastrous as the repulse itself was the death of Lord Howe, which preceded it. The eldest of three distinguished brothers, the second of whom was the famous admiral, and the third the not so successful general in the American War of Independence, he was not thirty-four years old when he was killed, and had only landed in America in the previous year. Yet he had lived long enough for all men to speak well of him, and all to love him. In his dispatch giving an account of the operations, Abercromby wrote: 'He was very deservedly universally beloved and respected through the whole army.'³⁰ Pitt testified in more stilted phrases that 'he was by the universal voice of army and people a character of ancient times, a complete model of military virtue in all its branches.'³¹ Wolfe loved him dearly, and his letters show how highly he valued 'his abilities, spirit and address.'³² He writes of him as 'the very best officer in the King's service,' as 'the noblest Englishman that has appeared in my time,' as 'truly a great man.' 'This country has produced nothing like him in my time; his death cannot be enough lamented.' Similar testimony is given by Robert Rogers, the Ranger, who was with the force when he fell: 'This noble and brave officer being universally beloved by both officers and soldiers of the army, his fall was not only most sincerely lamented, but seemed to produce an almost universal consternation and langour through the whole.'³³ But the most striking honour to his name and memory was paid by the province of Massachusetts. In 1759 the Court of Assembly ordered a monument to him to be placed in Westminster Abbey, which still records 'the sense they had of his services and military virtues, and of the affection their officers and soldiers bore to his command.' Burke, in the Annual Register for 1758,³⁴ gives the clue to the affection with which the colonists regarded Lord Howe: 'From the moment he landed in America he had wisely conformed, and made his regiment conform, to the kind of service which the country required.' Howe's life, he adds, was 'long enough for his honour, but not for his country.' In truth, had he lived, and had Wolfe lived, the history of the English in America might have been widely different. Two men who in youth had so inspired their time, and so impressed American colonists with the sense of leadership, might well have averted the War of Independence, or by military genius have given it another issue.

³⁰ Abercromby to Pitt, July 12, 1758.

³¹ Grenville Correspondence, vol. i, p. 262.

³² Wright, pp. 426, 448, 450, 465, 469.

³³ Rogers' Journals, p. 114, note.

³⁴ pp. 72, 73.

Bradstreet takes Fort Frontenac.

From July to October Abercromby remained at one end of Lake George, and Montcalm, who had received heavy reinforcements, at the other. Parties of Rangers and Canadians attacked each other on the Wood Creek line, but the main bodies were inactive. The presence of the English force had the advantage, however, of holding in their front so large a number of the enemy that the latter were unable adequately to protect other positions, and in consequence they lost Fort Frontenac. That competent officer, Colonel Bradstreet, had already proposed an expedition against this point, and when he renewed his proposal after the battle of Ticonderoga, Abercromby gave his consent, and spared him 3,600 men for the purpose, noting that 'he is not only very active, but has great knowledge of the country.'³⁵

³⁵ Abercromby to Pitt, July 12, 1758.

In August he moved up the Mohawk, took his troops past the Carrying Place from that river, where, on the site of Fort Williams, General Stanwix was busy building a new fort, reached the ruins of Oswego, put out across the lake, and on August 25 landed close to Fort Frontenac. By the twenty-seventh he had the fort at the mercy of his guns, and the small garrison of a little over a hundred men surrendered. The prisoners were sent on parole to Montreal, to be exchanged for a corresponding number of English; the fort was burnt, and guns, ships, and supplies were carried off or destroyed. It was an excellent piece of work for the English side; 'a great stroke,' as Wolfe wrote on hearing of it.³⁶ Great material damage was caused to the French by, temporarily at any rate, cutting their communications with the west, and intercepting supplies which had been intended for the forts on the Ohio and on the upper lakes. The moral effect was greater still. The time-honoured French fort on Lake Ontario, the earliest French post on the lakes, had been with little effort taken and blotted out, reminding the waverers among the Five Nation Indians that, in spite of reverses, the English arm was strong and far-reaching, and the English alliance was for them a valuable asset.

³⁶ Letter of Sept. 30, 1758 (Wright's Life of Wolfe, p. 457). In another letter (p. 465) he writes: 'Bradstreet's coup was masterly. He is a very extraordinary man.'

Amherst becomes Commander-in-Chief in North America.

Early in October Amherst came up to Abercromby's camp, and the two generals decided not to make a further attempt on Ticonderoga until the following year. 'General Amherst,' wrote Wolfe, 'thought the entrenchments so improved as to require more ceremony in the second attack than the season would allow of.'³⁷ The troops were accordingly sent into winter quarters, and in November Abercromby received a letter of recall. Amherst became in his stead Commander-in-Chief of the British forces in North America.

³⁷ Wright's Life of Wolfe, p. 469.

The expedition against Fort Duquesne.

By the end of October campaigning was over for the year in the east, and in the centre; but it was not so in the west, where Brigadier-General Forbes was marching on Fort Duquesne.

General Forbes.

Forbes was an older man than the other English commanders, who achieved success in the war; and he seems to have been over sixty in the year 1758.³⁸ He proved himself to be a man of great fortitude and resolution, tactful in dealing with colonists or Indians, a brave, sure, and careful soldier. His task was to give security to the harried frontiers of Virginia and Pennsylvania, and to clear the French out of the Ohio valley. With this end he had to collect and equip a force, the large majority of whom were provincials; to get money and men out of two colonies, which were very jealous alike of the mother country and of each other; to make choice between two conflicting routes, and to detach the Ohio Indians as far as possible from the French cause.

³⁸ For his age see Kingsford's History of Canada, vol. iv, p. 192, note. He has been generally put down as a younger man.

Reasons why the expedition made slow progress.

A long time was taken over the preliminaries, and over the expedition itself, the object of which was not attained until the end of November; but the delays were not only the consequence of want of transport, and of Forbes' own ill health, they were also the result of design. The longer the English kept their enemies waiting to be attacked, the fewer those enemies were likely to be; for the Indians, and the militia of New France, did not love to keep the field for any long time together. Moreover, as Forbes wrote to Pitt,³⁹ October and November were the best hunting months for the Indians, which they were therefore not willing to devote to war; while, on the other hand, they were months when the leaves fell and left the backwoods easier to reconnoitre and less easy for ambuscade.

³⁹ Letter of Forbes to Pitt, Oct. 20, 1758.

Preparation for advance. A new route taken.

Forbes came to Philadelphia in April; and through the early summer months his force gradually assembled, and moved to the front. When the numbers were complete, they amounted to over 6,000 men, in the main southern colonists, but including a strong regiment of Highlanders. The second in command was a good man for the work, Bouquet, one of the Swiss officers of the Royal Americans. The advanced base was formed at Raestown, now Bedford, in Pennsylvania, distant about ninety miles from Fort Duquesne. It was some thirty miles north-east of Fort Cumberland, from which Braddock had started on his disastrous march; and a keen controversy arose as to whether the old route should be followed, or a new road taken. Opening a road to the Ohio meant, when the fighting was over, giving to the State, within or near whose boundaries the road ran, control of the trade. Virginia accordingly pressed for the old and more southerly route, Pennsylvania for the northern line. In spite of Washington's arguments, the latter was chosen; it was shorter and more direct, and on the whole presented fewer natural difficulties than the other. The first forty miles led due west over the main Alleghany range and the Laurel hills, to a place called Loyalhannon; and by the end of August Bouquet had a road cut to this place, a dépôt established, and preparations made for carrying on the track through fifty miles of less difficult country to Fort Duquesne.

An advance attack on Fort Duquesne repulsed with loss. The Ohio Indians desert the French.

Every care was being taken by the commanders; but notwithstanding, before the end came, there was in a smaller measure a repetition of Braddock's reverse. In the middle of September, Major Grant, an officer of the Highlanders, obtained permission from Bouquet to march out from Loyalhannon with between 700 and 800 men,⁴⁰ for the purpose of reconnoitring Fort Duquesne. He arrived at night time close to the fort; intended a night attack, which miscarried; repeated the attempt to attack on the following day, and having broken up his force into small parties, was badly beaten and himself taken prisoner. The total British casualties numbered about 280, the survivors finding their way back to Bouquet at Loyalhannon. 'This was a most terrible check to my small army,' wrote Forbes,⁴¹ but the reverse was more than counterbalanced shortly afterwards by a success of a different kind. From the first Forbes had spared no pains to secure the friendship of the Indians; and in October, in large measure through the good offices of a Moravian missionary, a general council was held, at which the tribes of the Ohio made their peace with the English, deserting the French cause as rats leave a sinking ship.

⁴⁰ Forbes' own dispatch mentions 900.

⁴¹ Forbes to Pitt, Raestown, Oct. 20, 1758.

The final advance on Fort Duquesne. The fort abandoned by the French and occupied by the English.

It was November before Forbes joined Bouquet at Loyalhannon. He was broken in body, but resolute to carry through the expedition, in spite of the lateness of the season. The road had been cut to within easy reach of the French fort; and, on November 18, 2,500 men, picked out of the force, advanced in three columns, carrying with them only what was absolutely necessary in the way of supplies, and their brave commander on a litter. At a day's march from Fort Duquesne, it was reported that the fort had been evacuated and burnt; and when the English reached it on the twenty-fifth, they found that the news was true. Weakened by the desertion of the Indians, and by having disbanded some of the militia, whom he could not feed, in want of the provisions which Bradstreet had intercepted at Fort Frontenac, the French commander, De Ligneris, saw no alternative but to blow up the fort, and retreat more than a hundred miles up the Alleghany to the junction of that river with French Creek, leaving the valley of the Ohio in English hands, as events proved, for ever.

Foundation of Pittsburg. Death of Forbes.

For the moment Forbes' chief care was to build at once on the site of Fort Duquesne a temporary stockade, which could be held by a small garrison through the winter. In the following year a permanent fort was built. The name of Fort Duquesne was exchanged for that of Fort Pitt, and the city of Pittsburg still recalls the statesman who recovered for the British colonies the rich western lands which are watered by the Ohio. 'I have used the freedom of giving your name to Fort Duquesne,' wrote Forbes to Pitt two days after he had reached the fort, 'as I hope it was in some measure the being actuated by your spirit that now makes us masters of the place.'⁴² The honest soldier, whom the English minister sent to do the work, and who did it when the colonies concerned should have done it for themselves, did not long survive his success. Patient and suffering, John Forbes was carried back to Philadelphia, where he died in the following March, having shown a steadfast, single-minded devotion to duty, rare even in the rich record of British soldiers.

⁴² Forbes to Pitt, Pittsburg, Nov. 27, 1758.

Results of the campaign of 1758. Canada receives little help from France.

With the English occupation of Fort Duquesne, the campaigning of 1758 in North America came to an end. It been a long season, and for England distinctly a successful though also to a certain extent a disappointing one. 'I do not reckon that we have been fortunate this year in America,' wrote Wolfe on December 1; 'our force was so superior to the enemy's that we might hope for greater success.'⁴³ He wrote in ignorance that Fort Duquesne had been taken, but, notwithstanding, his view of the situation was the true one. At Louisbourg, Fort Frontenac, Fort Duquesne, there had been great and substantial successes. At Ticonderoga there had been a bad check; but the French had made nothing of it afterwards. They were now on the defensive and playing a losing game. Yet that more might and should have been done by the English commanders with their great superiority of numbers cannot be doubted. Had Wolfe been in Amherst's place, and Lord Howe in Abercromby's, the year 1758 might well have been the last year of French rule in North America. But the end was only postponed for a short time, the resources of Canada in men and in supplies were becoming insufficient to sustain the war: the country was practically in a state of blockade; and Bougainville, who was sent at the beginning of winter to France to plead the cause of Canada, met with little success. A very few soldiers, some supplies, and honours for the generals, were the result of his mission. France was engrossed in the war in Europe, and not as many hundreds were sent to North America as England sent thousands. Vaudreuil, in the meantime, was intriguing against Montcalm, whose genius and determination had prolonged the unequal fight, and on whom, with Levis and Bourlamaque, lay the heavy burden of defending a ruined State, and checking, at this point and at that, the flowing tide of English invasion.

⁴³ Wright, p. 464.

NOTE.—For the above see, among modern books,
KINGSFORD'S History of Canada, vols. iii and iv;
PARKMAN'S Montcalm and Wolfe; and
WRIGHT'S Life of Wolfe.