A history of Canada, 1763-1812

by Sir Charles Prestwood Lucas

FOOTNOTES:

[16] Travels into North America, by Peter Kalm, Eng. Transl.; 1770, vol. i, pp. 264-5.

[17] Montcalm’s letters, however, to which reference is here made, are held to have been forged by a Jesuit or ex-Jesuit named Roubaud. See Mr. Brymner’s Report on Canadian Archives for the year 1885, p. xiii, &c., and Note E, p. cxxxviii. See also Parkman’s Montcalm and Wolfe, 1884 ed., vol. ii, pp. 325-6, Note.

[18] History of England in the Eighteenth Century, 1882 ed., vol. iii, chap. xii, p. 272.

[19] From the anonymous Lettre d’un habitant de Louisbourg, edited and translated by Professor Wrong, Toronto, 1897, p. 58.

[20] As to the authenticity of Montcalm’s letters, see above, note to p. 31.

[21] Sir G. Cornewall Lewis, in the Essay on the Government of Dependencies, chap. vi, writes that the North American colonies ‘had not been required at any time since their foundation to contribute anything to the expenses of the Supreme Government, and there is scarcely any habit which it is so difficult for a government to overcome in a people as a habit of not paying’.

[22] Wealth of Nations: chapter on the ‘Causes of the Prosperity of New Colonies’.

[23] Wealth of Nations: chapters on the ‘Causes of the Prosperity of New Colonies’, and on the ‘Advantages which Europe has derived from the Discovery of America and from that of a Passage to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope’.

[24] The Greek colonies will be remembered to the contrary. Some of them speedily outgrew the mother cities in wealth and population, but then they were wholly independent.

[25] The American Revolution, 1899 ed., Part I, chap. ii, p. 101.

[26] See above, p. 38.

[27] Chapter on ‘Causes of the Prosperity of New Colonies’.

[28] The above, however, was not Adam Smith’s view. In the chapter ‘Of the Advantages which Europe has derived from the Discovery of America, &c. &c.’ he writes, ‘The late war was altogether a colony quarrel, and the whole expense of it, in whatever part of the world it may have been laid out, whether in Germany or the East Indies, ought justly to be stated to the account of the colonies.’

[29] It is very difficult to state the case quite fairly as between the mother country and the colonies. In the first place a broad distinction must be drawn between the New England colonies and the more southern colonies. The New Englanders, who had the French on their borders, made far more sacrifices in men and money than the southern colonies, some of which, owing to remoteness, took no part in the war. The efforts of Massachusetts, and the military expenditure incurred by that colony, are set out by Mr. Parkman in his Montcalm and Wolfe, 1884 ed., vol. ii, chap. xx, pp. 83-6. In the next place, the regular regiments, though the whole expense of them was borne by the mother country, were to a considerable extent recruited in the colonies. The Royal Americans, e.g. were entirely composed of colonists. At the second siege of Louisbourg the English force consisted, according to Parkman, of 11,600 men, of whom only 500 were provincial troops, and according to Kingsford of 12,260, of whom five companies only were Rangers. The expedition against Ticonderoga, excluding bateau men and non-combatants, included, according to Kingsford, 6,405 regulars and 5,960 provincials. Parkman gives 6,367 regulars and 9,034 provincials; this was before the actual advance began, and probably included bateau men, &c. Forbes’ army contained 1,630 regulars out of a total of 5,980 (Kingsford). Wolfe’s force at Quebec, in 1759, numbered 8,535 combatants, out of whom the provincial troops only amounted to about 700 (Kingsford. See also Parkman’s Montcalm and Wolfe, Appendix H). Amherst, in the same year, in the campaign on Lakes George and Champlain, commanded 6,537 Imperial troops and 4,839 provincials. [The respective numbers in the different forces are well summed up in the fifth volume of Kingsford’s History of Canada, pp. 273-4.]

[30] It is interesting to notice that as early as 1652 a proposal emanated from Barbados that colonial representatives from that island should sit in the Imperial Parliament.

[31] Grenville carried a resolution in the House of Commons in favour of the Stamp Act in 1764. The Act received the Royal Assent in March, 1765, and came into operation on November 1, 1765.

[32] O’Callaghan’s Documentary History of New York, vol. ii (1849), MSS. of Sir William Johnson; this was at a public meeting of the Six Nations with Sir William Johnson, July 3, 1755.

[33] Sir W. Johnson to the Rev. Mr. Wheelock, October 16, 1762. Documentary History of New York, vol. iv. Paper relating principally to the conversion and civilization of the Six Nations of Indians.

[34] See O’Callaghan’s Documentary History of New York, 1849, vol. i, Paper No. 20, pp. 587-91.

[35] General Murray to Lord Shelburne, London, August 20, 1766. See Kingsford’s History of Canada, vol. v, p. 188.

[36] See Documents Relating to the Constitutional History of Canada, 1759-91 (Shortt and Doughty), pp. 37-72.

[37] The delay was probably due to the provisions of the fourth clause of the Treaty of Paris, by which eighteen months were to be allowed to the subjects of the French king in Canada, who wished to leave the country, to do so. The treaty was signed on February 10, 1763, and was ratified by England on February 21, 1763; the eighteen months were to run from the date of ratification, but civil government in Canada began on August 10, 1764, i.e. eighteen months from the date of the treaty itself.

[38] ‘The Canadians are to a man soldiers, and will naturally conceive that he who commands the troops should govern them.’ Murray to Halifax, October 15, 1764. Shortt and Doughty, p. 153.

[39] The words, ‘under our immediate government,’ did not connote what would now be called Crown colonies as opposed to self-governing colonies, but colonies which held under the Crown and not under proprietors.

[40] The Lords of Trade to Lord Egremont, June 8, 1763. Shortt and Doughty, p. 104.

[41] Part of the 4th Article of the Peace of Paris in 1763 ran as follows: ‘His Britannic Majesty, on his side, agrees to grant the liberty of the Catholic religion to the inhabitants of Canada; he will in consequence give the most precise and most effectual orders, that his new Roman Catholic subjects may profess the worship of their religion according to the rites of the Romish Church, as far as the laws of Great Britain permit.’

[42] The letter is printed in full in the fifth volume of Kingsford’s History of Canada, pp. 188-90.

[43] For these documents see Shortt and Doughty, pp. 153, &c.

[44] October 29, 1764. See Shortt and Doughty, p. 167.

[45] October, 1766: Shortt and Doughty, pp. 194-5.

[46] For this ordinance see Shortt and Doughty, p. 280. Carleton’s dispatch of March 28, 1770, which enclosed the ordinance, explained the reasons for passing it, and submitted in evidence of the abuses which had sprung up a letter from an ex-captain of Canadian militia, will be found printed in Mr. Brymner’s Report on Canadian Archives for 1890 (published in 1891), Note A.

[47] p. 75

[48] A French Canadian petition to the King, drawn up about the end of 1773, referred in the following terms to the Labrador question: ‘We desire also that His Majesty would be graciously pleased to re-annex to this province the coast of Labrador, which formerly belonged to it, and has been taken from it since the peace. The fishery for seals, which is the only fishery carried on upon this coast, is carried on only in the middle of winter, and sometimes does not last above a fortnight. The nature of this fishery, which none of His Majesty’s subjects but the inhabitants of this province understand; the short time of its continuance; and the extreme severity of the weather, which makes it impossible for ships to continue at that time upon the coasts; are circumstances which all conspire to exclude any fishermen from old England from having any share in the conduct of it.’ (Shortt and Doughty, pp. 358-9.)

[49] See above, p. 6, and Shortt and Doughty, p. 111.

[50] See Canadian Constitutional Development, Egerton and Grant, p. 28.

[51] See Shortt and Doughty, p. 381. Paper as to Proposed extension of Provincial Limits: ‘The King’s servants were induced to confine the government of Quebec within the above limits, from an apprehension that there were no settlements of Canadian subjects, or lawful possessions beyond those limits, and from a hope of being able to carry into execution a plan that was then under consideration for putting the whole of the interior country to the westward of our colonies under one general control and regulation by Act of Parliament.... The plan for the regulation of the interior country proved abortive, and in consequence thereof an immense tract of very valuable land, within which there are many possessions and actual colonies existing under the faith of the Treaty of Paris, has become the theatre of disorder and confusion....’

[52] See above, p. 5, and Shortt and Doughty, p. 108.

[53] See above, p. 59.

[54] Annual Register for 1774, p. 77.

[55] The Quebec Act was 14 Geo. III, cap. 83, and its full title was ‘An act for making more effectual provision for the government of the Province of Quebec in North America’. The Quebec Revenue Act was 14 Geo. III, cap. 88, and its full title was ‘An act to establish a fund towards further defraying the charges of the Administration of Justice and support of the Civil Government within the Province of Quebec in America’. Much was heard of this latter Act in the constitutional wrangles of later years in Lower Canada.

[56] See above, p. 60.

[57] The opponents of the Quebec Act maintained that it took away the right of Habeas Corpus. Thus petitions from English residents in Quebec, dated November 12, 1774, complained, in respect to the Quebec Act, ‘That in matters of a Criminal Nature the Habeas Corpus Act is dissolved:’ and again, ‘That to their inexpressible grief they find, by an Act of Parliament entitled an act for making more effectual provision for the government of the province of Quebec in North America, they are deprived of the Habeas Corpus Act and trial by juries:’ and again, ‘an Act of Parliament which deprives His Majesty’s ancient subjects of all their rights and franchises, destroys the Habeas Corpus Act and the inestimable privilege of trial by juries’ (Shortt and Doughty, pp. 414-18). The Government on the other hand contended that before the Quebec Act, the Statute of Habeas Corpus was not in force in Canada, although, both before and after the Act, the Common Law right existed. Thus Wedderburn, the Solicitor-General, before the Quebec Act was drafted but while the subject matter was being considered by the Government, reported, ‘It is recommended by the Governor, the Chief Justice, and the Attorney-General, in their report, to extend the provisions of the Habeas Corpus Act to Canada. The inhabitants will, of course, be entitled to the benefit of the writ of Habeas Corpus at Common Law, but it may be proper to be better assured of their fidelity and attachment, before the provisions of the statute are extended to that country’ (Ib. 300); and in November, 1783, Governor Haldimand reported that he was going to propose an ordinance for introducing the Habeas Corpus Act, ‘which will remove one of the ill-grounded objections to the Quebec Act, for though that law had never been introduced into the province, people were taught to believe that the Quebec Act had deprived the inhabitants of the benefit of it’ (Ib. 499). The point at issue, and it is not free from doubt, was whether the introduction en bloc of the English criminal law into Canada, brought with it ipso facto the introduction of the Habeas Corpus statute. Haldimand passed his ordinance in 1784 under the title of an ‘Act for securing the liberty of the subject and for the prevention of imprisonments out of this province’. The preamble stated that ‘The Legislature could not follow a better example than that which the Common Law of England hath set in the provision made for a writ of Habeas Corpus which is the right of every British subject in that kingdom’.

CHAPTER III
THE WAR OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE

Ticonderoga and Crown Point.

The War of American Independence began with the skirmish at Lexington on the 19th of April, 1775. The battle of Bunker’s Hill was fought on the following 16th of June. Between these two dates a forward move was made towards Canada by the American colonists, and the forts of Ticonderoga and Crown Point on Lake Champlain were surprised and taken.

Carleton urges the upkeep of strong forts in North America.

Years before, shortly after taking over the administration of Canada, Carleton had called attention to the dilapidated condition of these forts. In a letter, dated the 15th of February, 1767,[58] he wrote to General Gage, then Commander-in-Chief in North America—‘the forts of Crown Point, Ticonderoga, and Fort George are in a very declining condition, of which, I believe, your Excellency is well informed. Should you approve of keeping up these posts, it will be best to repair them as soon as possible.’ The letter went on to suggest that, in addition to repairing the forts in question, there should be ‘a proper place of arms near the town of New York and a citadel in or near the town of Quebec’, the object being to secure communication with the mother country and to link the two provinces together. Written in view of ‘the state of affairs on this continent’, the letter was statesmanlike and farseeing in a high degree. The writer argued that ‘the natural and political situation of the provinces of Quebec and New York is such as must for ever give them great influence and weight in the American system’. He pleaded, therefore, for strong forts at Quebec and New York, and strong posts on the line between New York and Canada. Thus, in the event of war breaking out, the King’s magazines would be kept secure, the northern colonies would be separated from the Carleton’s policy: (1) adequate defences and garrisons: (2) attachment of the Canadians to the British Crown especially by giving them employment under the government. southern, and delay in transport and difficulty of communication, so dangerous, especially in the early stages of a war, would be averted. In the years which preceded the War of American Independence, Carleton had constantly in view the twofold contingency of war with France and war with the British colonies in America; and there were two cardinal points in his policy, which he never ceased to impress upon the Home Government, on the one hand the necessity for adequate military forces, and adequate forts in America, on the other the necessity for taking such steps as would attach the Canadians to the British Crown.

In November, 1767,[59] he wrote to Shelburne, ‘The town of Quebec is the only post in this province that has the least claim to be called a fortified place; for the flimsy wall about Montreal, was it not falling to ruins, could only turn musketry.’ He went on to show how the French officers who still remained in Canada, and the Canadian seigniors who had served France, had lost their employment through the conquest of Canada, and, not having been taken into the English King’s service, had no motive to be ‘active in the defence of a people that has deprived them of their honours, privileges, profits, and laws’; and again he urged the importance of building a citadel, for which he enclosed a plan, within the town of Quebec. ‘A work of this nature,’ he wrote, ‘is not only necessary as matters now stand, but supposing the Canadians could be interested to take a part in the defence of the King’s Government, a change not impossible to bring about, yet time must bring forth events that will render it essentially necessary for the British interests on this continent to secure this port of communication with the mother country.’

In January, 1868,[60] he wrote again to Shelburne, and referring to his previous letter and to the scheme for constructing a citadel at Quebec, he said—‘Was this already constructed, and I could suppose it impossible for any foreign enemy to shake the King’s dominion over the province, still I shall think the interests of Great Britain but half advanced, unless the Canadians are inspired with a cordial attachment and zeal for the King’s Government.’ Once more he urged that the Canadians had no motive of self-interest to attach them to British rule. The laws and customs which affected their property had been overturned. Justice was slow and expensive. The different offices claimed ‘as their right, fees calculated for much wealthier provinces’; and the leading Canadians were excluded from all places of trust and profit. Give the people back their old laws and customs in civil matters, let them feel thereby secure in their property, take a few Canadians into the service of the Crown, enlist in the King’s forces ‘a few companies of Canadian foot, judiciously officered’, ‘hold up hopes to the gentlemen, that their children, without being bred up in France, or in the French service, might support their families in the service of the King their master,’ and, at any rate, some proportion of the French Canadians would be found loyally attached to the British Government.

Another letter, written to Lord Hillsborough in November, 1768,[61] was in similar terms. It referred to rumours of French intrigues and of a contemplated rising on the part of the Canadian gentry. Carleton discredited the rumours, but added, ‘Notwithstanding this, and their decent and respectful obedience to the King’s Government hitherto, I have not the least doubt of their secret attachment to France, and think this will continue, as long as they are excluded from all employments under the British Government.’ He reflected ‘that France naturally has the affections of all the people: that, to make no mention of fees of office and of the vexations of the law, we have done nothing to gain one man in the province, by making it his private interest to remain the King’s subject’. He went on to point out that ‘the King’s dominion here is maintained but by a few troops, necessarily dispersed, without a place of security for their magazines, for their arms, or for themselves, amidst a numerous military people, the gentlemen all officers of experience, poor, without hopes that they or their descendants will be admitted into the service of their present Sovereign’, and he argued that, were a war with France to coincide with a rising of the British colonies in North America, the danger to the British power would be great. ‘Canada, probably, will then become the principal scene, where the fate of America may be determined.’ On the other hand he urged—‘How greatly Canada might for ever support the British interests on this continent, for it is not united in any common principle, interest, or wish with the other provinces, in opposition to the supreme seat of government, was the King’s dominion over it only strengthened by a citadel, which a few national troops might secure, and the natives attached by making it their interest to remain his subjects.’

Carleton’s sympathy with the French Canadians.

In the second of these letters[62] from which quotations have been made, Carleton said that he would endeavour to represent the true situation of the province to the ministers at home, who were already engaged in considering ‘the improvement of the civil constitution of Quebec’, lest the King’s servants, with all their ability, should be at a disadvantage in forming their conclusions ‘for want of having truly represented to them objects at so great a distance, and in themselves so different from what is to be found in any other of his dominions’. But it was not merely a case of the man on the spot advising the men at a distance; the value of Carleton’s advice was largely due to the fact of his being a soldier. To this fact must be attributed, in great measure, the strong sympathy which the soldier-governors felt with the French Canadians, and on Carleton’s part more especially with the French Canadian gentry. As Murray had pointed out,[63] the Canadians were a people of soldiers; they were The French Canadians were a people of soldiers accustomed to personal rule. accustomed to personal rule and attachment rather than to the rule of the law. To high minded English officers, themselves brought up in the King’s service, trained to discipline, to well ordered grades of obedience, the old Canadian system with its feudal customs was congenial and attractive, and they resented attempts to substitute for it the beginnings of undisciplined democracy. Hence Carleton laid stress on taking Canadian gentlemen into the government service, and on enlisting companies of Canadian soldiers, in other words, on making the Canadians feel that they were, as they had been in past times, the King’s men. Hence, too, we find him in a letter to Shelburne of April, 1768,[64] recommending full recognition and continuance of the old feudal tenures of Canada, including ‘a formal requisition of all those immediately holding of the King, to pay faith and homage to him at his castle of St. Lewis’. If left to himself, he would have liked to repeal entirely the Ordinance of September, 1764, which introduced English laws into Canada, ‘and for the present leave the Canadian laws almost entire;’[65] and, though he assented to the compromise embodied in the Quebec Act, whereby the criminal law was to be that of England, while in civil matters Canadian law and custom were in the main to prevail, we find him in June, 1775,[66] after war had begun, writing to Dartmouth, ‘For my part, since my return to this province I have seen good cause to repent my ever having recommended the Habeas Corpus Act and English criminal laws.’

It was due to Carleton that the Ordinance of 1770, to which reference has already been made,[67] was passed, taking away from the justices of the peace jurisdiction in matters of private property which had been exercised to the detriment of the French Canadians. It was due to him that in 1771 a new Royal Instruction was issued, authorizing the governor to revert to the old French system of grants of Crown lands ‘in Fief or Seigneurie’;[68] and his influence was all in favour of the clauses in the Quebec Act which were favourable to the ‘new subjects’, the French Canadians, who, at the time when the War of American Independence began, seem to have numbered under 100,000.[69]

Carleton returns from England in September, 1774, and sends two regiments to Boston.

As has been told, Carleton came back from England to Quebec in the middle of September, 1774, finding the French Canadians in great good humour at the passing of the Quebec Act. Twenty hours after his arrival an express letter reached him from General Gage, still Commander-in-Chief in North America, who was then at Boston.[70] In it Gage asked his colleague to send at once to Boston, if they could be spared, the 10th and 52nd Regiments, which formed a large part of the scanty garrison of Canada. The transports which brought the letter were to take back the troops. September, 1774, was a critical month in the North American provinces. The first continental Congress met at Philadelphia; and at Suffolk, near Boston, on the 9th September, a public meeting passed resolutions,[71] boldly advocating resistance to the recent Acts of Parliament.

Proposals to raise Canadian and Indian forces.

Accordingly, in addition to his request for the two regiments, Gage wrote—‘As I must look forward to the worst, from the apparent disposition of the people here, I am to ask your opinion, whether a body of Canadians and Indians might be collected and confided in, for the service in this country, should matters come to extremities.’ Carleton promptly replied: ‘Pilots are sent down the river, the 10th and 52nd shall be ready to embark at a moment’s notice;’ and the regiments were sent to Boston, as in later years Lord Lawrence, at the time of the Indian Mutiny, denuded the Punjaub of soldiers, in order to strengthen the force which was besieging Delhi. Carleton’s letter continued: ‘The Canadians have testified to me the strongest marks of joy and gratitude, and fidelity to the King, and to his Government, for the late arrangements made at home in their favour: a Canadian regiment would complete their happiness, which in time of need might be Carleton strongly favours raising a Canadian regiment. augmented to two, three, or more battalions ... the savages of this province, I hear, are in very good humour, a Canadian battalion would be a great motive and go far to influence them, but you know what sort of people they are.’ Here was the opportunity which Carleton desired, of taking the Canadians into the King’s service. Following on the Quebec Act, he looked to such a measure as likely to rivet Canadian loyalty to the British Crown, and evidently took himself, and inspired the Home Government with, too hopeful a view of the amount of support to be expected from the Canadians, looking to and sympathizing with the seigniors rather than the lower classes of the people of Canada. It will be noted that both Gage and he contemplated employing Indians, in the event of war between the mother country and the North American colonies. Indians had been used on either side in the wars with the French, but it seems strange that there is no hint or suggestion in these letters of the danger and impolicy of employing them against the British colonists.[72]

In November, 1774, writing to Dartmouth,[73] Carleton still spoke of the gratitude and loyalty of the French Canadians, but there was a warning note in his letter. While the respectable members of the English community at Quebec supported the Government, there was much disloyalty among the British residents at Montreal. The resolutions of the Philadelphia Congress, and their address to the people of Canada, had reached that place. Walker was much in evidence, embittered by the outrage which he had suffered some years before,[74] and, with others, was organizing meetings and petitions both at Montreal and at Quebec. These proceedings, Carleton wrote, were causing uneasiness to the Canadians, and he concluded that ‘Government cannot guard too much, or too soon, against the consequences of an infection, imported daily, warmly recommended, and spread abroad by the colonists here, and indeed by some from Europe, not less violent than the Americans’.

The year 1774 ended in anxiety and suspense, and the year 1775 opened, memorable and disastrous to Great Britain. On Christmas Day, 1774, Gage had written again to Carleton on the subject of Canadian and Indian levies, and on the 4th of February, 1775, Carleton answered the letter.[75] Political matters relating to the Indians, he said, Canadian feeling at the beginning of 1775. he had always considered to be the special charge of the late Sir William Johnson, and outside the sphere of his own authority, but his intelligence was to the effect that the Indians would be ready for service if called upon.[76] Of the Canadians Carleton wrote that they had in general been made very happy by the passing of the Quebec Act, but he reminded Gage that that Act did not come into force until the 1st of May following, that the new commissions and instructions expected in connexion with it had not yet arrived, and that the whole machinery for carrying out the new system of government had still to be created. ‘Had the present settlement taken place,’ he Carleton strongly urges employing the Canadian gentry in the regular army. added, ‘when first recommended, it would not have aroused the jealousy of the other colonies, and had the appearance of more disinterested favour to the Canadians.’ He pointed out that the gentry, ‘well disposed and heartily desirous as they are, to serve the Crown, and to serve it with zeal, when formed into regular corps, do not relish commanding a bare militia.’ They had not been used to act as militia officers under the French Government, and they were further deterred from taking such employment by recollection of the sudden disbandment of a Canadian regiment, which had been raised in 1764, and subsequently broken up, ‘without gratuity or recompense to officers, who engaged in our service almost immediately after the cession of the country, or taking any notice of them since, though they all expected half pay.’[77] The habitants, again, had since the introduction of civil government into Canada, and in consequence of the little authority which had been exercised, ‘in a manner emancipated themselves.’ Time and good management would be necessary ‘to recall them to their ancient habits of obedience and discipline’, and meanwhile they would be slow to allow themselves to be suddenly and without preparation embodied into a militia. Carleton accordingly deprecated attempting to raise a militia force in Canada and recommended enlisting one or two regular battalions of Canadian soldiers. ‘Such a measure might be of singular use, in finding employment for, and consequently firmly attaching the gentry to our interests, in restoring them to a significance they have lost, and through their means obtaining a further influence upon the lower class of people, a material service to the state, besides that of effectually securing many nations of savages.’

Summary of the political conditions of Canada at the beginning of the War of American Independence.

From the above correspondence we can form some impression of the state of political feeling in Canada, when the great revolt of the American colonies began. We have the picture of a conquered people, accustomed to a military system, to personal rule, and to feudal laws and customs. This people had been brought by the fortune of war under the same flag as covered very democratic communities, which communities were their immediate neighbours and had been their traditional rivals. The few years which had passed since the conquest of Canada had, with the exception of the Indian rising under Pontiac, been years of uncomfortable peace and administrative weakness. The government of the country, which was the mother country of the old colonies and the ruler of the new possession, was anxious to curtail expenses as much as possible, in view of the great expenditure which had been caused by the Seven Years’ War; to maintain and, if possible, to emphasize its precarious authority over the democratic communities of the Atlantic seaboard; and, on the other hand, in a sense to relax its authority over Canada, by modifying in the direction of English institutions the despotism which had prevailed under the old French régime. The net result was that on the American continent the Executive, having insufficient force behind it and in the old colonies no popular goodwill, was increasingly weak, and the people were more and more unsettled. The democratic communities became more democratic, and from those communities individuals brought themselves and their ideas into the sphere of French conservatism, adding to the uncertainty and confusion which attempts to introduce English laws and customs had already produced in Canada. The Canadian gentry under British rule found their occupation gone, their importance minimized, and no outlet for their military instincts and aspirations. The peasantry found old rules relaxed and unaccustomed freedom. Strength was nowhere in evidence in Canada. The forts were falling into ruin; the English soldiers were few; there was the King’s Government without the backing of the King’s men; the old subjects were a small number of men, of whom a large proportion were noisy, disloyal, adventurers; the new subjects were not held in submission, but not admitted to confidence. On the other hand, the French Canadians had recent and undeniable evidence of the goodwill of the British Government in the passing of the Quebec Act. Their governors, Murray and Carleton, had transparently shown their sympathies with the French Canadian race, its traditions, and even its prejudices. Amid many inconveniences, and with some solid grounds for discontent, the Canadians had none the less tasted British freedom since the cession of Canada; and they had not yet imbibed it to such an extent as to overcome their traditional animosity to, and their inveterate suspicion of, the militant Protestants of the old colonies who were rising against the King.

It is unnecessary for the purposes of this book to give a full account of the War of American Independence, except so far as Canada was immediately concerned. Here the Americans appeared in the character of invaders, and the issue really depended upon the attitude of the French Canadians. Would they rise against their recent conquerors and join hands with the rebellious colonists, or would their confidence in Carleton, coupled with their long standing antipathy to the British settlers in America, keep them in allegiance to the British Crown? For the moment all went well for the Americans.

The Green Mountain rising.

It was characteristic of the state of unrest which prevailed at this time in America that, while the colonies as a whole were quarrelling with the mother country, one portion of a colony was declaring its independence of the state to which it was supposed to belong. On the eastern side of Lake Champlain were a number of settlers who had come in under grants issued by the Governor of New Hampshire, but over whom the government and legislature of New York claimed jurisdiction, the New York claim having moreover been upheld by the Imperial Government. These settlers were known at the time as the ‘Green Mountain Boys’, and they were the nucleus of the present state of Vermont. In April, 1775, they held a meeting to declare their independence of New York, their leaders being Ethan Allen, who had been proclaimed Ethan Allen. an outlaw by the Governor of New York in the previous year, and Seth Warner. They had already apparently in their minds the possibility of taking possession of the forts on Lake Champlain. There were few men Capture of Ticonderoga and Crown Point. at Ticonderoga and Crown Point, only about fifty at the former and half a dozen or so at the latter, belonging to the 26th Regiment, enough and no more than sufficient to guard the guns and the stores. The garrison apprehended no attack and had made no preparations for defence.

The news of Lexington suggested to the Green Mountain Boys to commend themselves to Congress by at once securing these two forts. If they had any instructions in planning their expedition, those instructions seem to have come from Connecticut; and though, before a start was made, Benedict Arnold was sent up by Congress to take the matter in hand, the insurgents refused his leadership; and, while he accompanied the expedition, it was Allen who mainly carried out the enterprise. Under Allen’s command, on the night of the 9th of May, a band of armed men, variously estimated at from under 100 to over 200 in number, marched to the shore of the Lake Champlain, where it narrows to little more than a river immediately opposite Ticonderoga; and, crossing over in two parties, early on the morning of the 10th were admitted to the fort on pretence of bringing a message to the commandant, overpowered the guard, and surprised the rest of the little garrison in their beds. Two days later Crown Point was secured by Seth Warner; and shortly afterwards, under the command of Arnold, part of the expedition made their way in a captured schooner to the northern end of the lake, took prisoners a dozen men who represented the garrison at the fort of St. John’s, seized a vessel belonging to the Government which was lying off the fort, and retreated up the lake on the approach of a detachment from Montreal.[78]

Thus the old fighting route by the way of Lakes George and Champlain, the scene of numberless raids and counter-raids, where Robert Rogers, William Johnson, Montcalm, Abercromby, Amherst, and many others had played their parts, passed into the hands of the revolutionary party, and only the forts of St. John’s and Chambly, beyond the outlet of Lake Champlain, barred the way to Montreal. The British power in Canada seemed gone to nothingness, and at the beginning of June, in reporting to Dartmouth what had taken place, Carleton wrote: ‘We are equally unprepared for attack or defence; not six hundred rank and file fit for duty upon the whole extent of this great river,[79] not an armed vessel, no place of strength; the ancient provincial force enervated and broke to pieces; all subordination overset, and the minds of the people poisoned by the same hypocrisy and lies practised with so much success in the other provinces.’[80]

The gentry and clergy, he reported, had shown zeal and loyalty in the King’s service, but they had lost much of their influence over the people, and the Indians had been as backward as the peasantry in rallying to the defence of Canada. The crisis had come, and Carleton’s warnings of past years had been amply justified. Absence of military preparations, and neglect to take measures to attach the Canadians to the British Crown had resulted in a situation full of danger, a province open to invasion, a government without material for defence, and a confused and half-hearted people. Even Carleton’s forecast had not been wholly accurate. He seems to have over-rated the Miscalculations as to Canadian feeling. good effects of passing the Quebec Act, and not to have fully realized the strength of class feeling in Canada, or the extent to which the peasantry, under the influence of the disloyal British minority and of emissaries from the revolting colonies, had emancipated themselves from the control of the seigniors and the gentry. It was even suggested that the lower orders in the province, instead of being grateful for the Quebec Act, regarded it with suspicion and dislike, as intended to restore a feudal authority which they had repudiated, and such no doubt would have been the doctrine taught by the British malcontents inside and outside the province. ‘What will be your lordship’s astonishment,’ wrote Hey, the Chief Justice of Canada, to the Lord Chancellor, towards the end of the following August,[81] ‘when I tell you that an Act passed for the express purpose of gratifying the Canadians, and which was supposed to comprehend all that they either wished or wanted, is become the first object of their discontent and dislike. English officers to command them in time of war, and English laws to govern them in time of peace, is the general wish. The former they know to be impossible (at least at present), and by the latter, if I understand them right, they mean no laws and no government whatsoever. In the meantime, it may be truly said that General Carleton has taken an ill measure of the influence of the seigniors and clergy over the lower order of people.’ If Carleton had misjudged the feelings of the Canadians, the Chief Justice frankly admitted that he himself had been fully as much deceived.

Mistakes of the Home Government.

The mischief was that the Government in England had imbibed the confident anticipations of Canadian loyalty which had been formed by the men on the spot immediately after the passing of the Quebec Act; and, instead of sending reinforcements to Canada, they expected Carleton to reinforce Gage’s army in New England. On the 1st of July, Dartmouth wrote to Carleton, instructing him to raise a body of 3,000 Canadians to co-operate with Gage; on the 24th of July, having had further news from America, he doubled the number and authorized a levy of 6,000 Canadians; and no hope was given of sending British troops to Canada until the following spring. At the beginning of the American war the greatest danger to the British Empire consisted in the utter weakness of the position in Canada. It was some excuse, no doubt, for the ministers at home that the Governor of Canada had latterly over-estimated the loyalty of the Canadians; and it may well have been too that the dispatch of troops to the St. Lawrence was delayed in order not to alarm the American colonies, before they openly revolted, and while there was still some faint hope of peace, by a measure which might have been interpreted as a threat of war. But those who were responsible for the safe keeping of British interests in America stand condemned in the light of the repeated warnings which Carleton had given in previous years. As a skilled soldier, he had pointed out, and history confirmed, the vital importance of Canada in the event of war in America, its commanding position for military purposes in relation to the other[82] provinces. He had urged the necessity of military strength in Canada, of strength which was both actual and apparent; of forts strong enough to be defended and of British soldiers numerous enough to defend them; moreover, of forts strong enough and British soldiers numerous enough to at once compel and attract the attachment of a military people. As a statesman, he had recommended more than a Quebec Act, years before the Quebec Act was passed. Political and financial exigencies outside Canada may have made it impossible to take his guidance, but had it been followed, the whole course of history might have been changed.

Carleton moves troops to St. John’s.

On hearing of the capture of the forts on Lake Champlain, Carleton took what measures he could. He moved all his available troops, including some Canadian volunteers,[83] to St. John’s, and strengthened its defences. He went up himself from Quebec to Montreal, where he arrived on the 26th of May. On the 9th of June he called out the Canadian militia under the old French law, with little effect beyond causing irritation and discontent, which American emissaries and sympathizers turned to account; and on the 2nd of August he went back to Quebec, to summon the first Legislative Council which was constituted under the Quebec Act, that Act having now come into operation. Meanwhile, after the battle of Bunker’s Hill, the American Congress had resolved on invading Canada in force; General Philip Schuyler was placed in charge of the expedition, but, his health giving way, the command devolved upon Richard Montgomery, The Americans under Richard Montgomery invade Canada. who had served under Amherst throughout the campaign which ended with the conquest of Canada, and had subsequently settled in the state of New York and married an American lady.

At the beginning of September, the American troops moved northward down Lake Champlain, and took up a position at the Isle aux Noix, twelve miles from the fort at St. John’s, preparatory to besieging that fort. ‘The rebels are returned into this province in great numbers, well provided with everything, and seemingly resolved to make themselves masters of this province. Hardly a Canadian will take arms to oppose them, and I doubt all we have to trust to is about 500 men and two small forts at St. John’s. Everything seems to be desperate,’ so wrote Chief Justice Hey from Quebec to the Lord Chancellor on the 11th of September.[84] On the 17th he added, ‘The rebels have succeeded in making peace with the savages who have all left the camp at St. John’s, many of the Canadians in that neighbourhood are in arms against the King’s troops, and not one hundred except in the towns of Montreal and Quebec are with us. St. John’s and Montreal must soon fall into their hands, and I doubt Quebec will follow too soon.’

There was skirmishing between scouts and outposts, and on the night of the 24th of September, a party of about 150 Americans under Ethan Allen crossed over into the island of Montreal and penetrated to the suburbs of the town. Their daring attempt, however, miscarried: they were driven out: Allen was taken prisoner and sent in irons to England: and his failure gave for the moment some encouragement to the Loyalists’ cause.

Carleton applies to Gage for reinforcements.

On hearing of Schuyler’s and Montgomery’s advance Carleton at once hurried back from Quebec to Montreal. There were two possibilities of saving the town, and with it, perhaps, the whole of Canada. One was by obtaining reinforcements from the British army at Boston, the other by contriving, even without reinforcements, to hold the forts at St. John’s and Chambly until winter drove the invaders back whence they had come. Early in September Carleton applied to Boston for two regiments, the same number that in the previous autumn he had sent to Boston at Gage’s request; his message came to hand on the 10th of October, just as Gage was leaving for England, and Howe, who took over the command of the troops, at once prepared to send the men. But there was a blight on English sailors as on English soldiers in America in these days. Admiral Graves, who commanded the ships, refused Admiral Graves refuses to move. to risk the dangers of the passage from Boston to Quebec at the season of the year, and Carleton in his sore straits was left unaided. All, therefore, turned on the defence of the forts.

The siege of St. John’s and Chambly.

St. John’s fort was manned by between 600 and 700 men, 120 of whom were Canadian volunteers, the rest being regulars. Chambly was held by some 80 men of the line. A few men were stationed at Montreal, but Quebec was almost emptied of its garrison. Major Preston,[85] of the 26th Regiment, commanded at St. John’s, and Chambly was in charge of Major Stopford. On the 18th of September Montgomery laid siege to the former fort, cutting off communication between the defenders and the outside world; but, notwithstanding, news reached Preston of Allen’s unsuccessful attempt on Montreal, and he held out bravely, helped by the fact that Montgomery had hardly any artillery, and could only rely on starving out the garrison, while his own men were suffering from exposure, privations, and want of ammunition. But in the middle of October the outlook was changed, for, after less than two days’ siege, the fort at Chambly, said to have been well provisioned, The two forts taken. and with ample means of defence, was on the 17th of that month surrendered,[86] providing Montgomery with supplies, guns, and ammunition to be used against the main fort. Preston’s condition was now desperate. An attempt made by Carleton to cross from Montreal to his relief on the 30th of October was beaten back, and on the 2nd of November, St. John’s surrendered, after having held out for forty-five days.

Carleton leaves Montreal,

The fall of St. John’s made the defence of Montreal impossible. Carleton dismissed such of the militia as were in arms to their homes, and with the few Imperial troops in the town, rather over 100 in number, and any arms and supplies that he could carry away, embarked on the afternoon of the 11th of November to make the best of his way to Quebec. On the 13th, Montgomery which is occupied by the Americans. and his men entered Montreal. Already advanced parties of the Americans were heading down the river banks. Colonel Maclean, who had come up from Quebec as far as the Richelieu river with a small body of Canadians and Scotchmen, to co-operate with Carleton for the relief of St. John’s, had fallen back, Benedict Arnold was threatening Quebec itself, and it became a question whether Carleton would ever reach the city to take charge of its defence. His vessels and boats sailed down the river to a point some miles above Sorel at the confluence of the Richelieu river. There one of them grounded; the wind veered round and blew up-stream; for three days the Carleton narrowly escapes capture and reaches Quebec. little flotilla remained stationary; the enemy overtook them on the land, raised batteries in front to bar their progress, and summoned them to surrender. On the night of the 16th Carleton went on board a whale boat; silently, with muffled oars, and at one point propelled only by the rowers’ hands, she dropped down-stream, undetected by the watchers on the banks. On the 17th Carleton reached Three Rivers, with the American troops close behind him, and lower down he met an armed British ship, which carried him in safety to Quebec. He entered the city on the 19th. On the same day the vessels in which he had started from Montreal surrendered with all on board, and, being brought back to Montreal, were used to carry Montgomery and his men down to Quebec.

Quebec was already threatened by a small force under Benedict Arnold. In the year 1761, while General Murray was in military command of the city and district, an engineer officer, acting under his instructions, had marked Arnold’s march from the mouth of the Kennebec to Quebec. out a trail along the route from the Atlantic coast, at the mouth of the Kennebec river, to the confluence of the Chaudière with the St. Lawrence over against Quebec. In 1775, when the American colonists determined to invade Canada, Washington decided to send an expedition by this route to co-operate with the main advance by Lake Champlain and the St. Lawrence. The enterprise required a daring, resourceful leader, and the command was given to Arnold. In the middle of September, Arnold embarked with 1,100 men at Newbury port at the mouth of the Merrimac, and sailed for the Kennebec. In the latter days of September he began his march: some 200 batteaux were taken up the Kennebec, carrying arms, ammunition, and supplies; the troops were partly on board the boats, partly kept pace with them on the banks. The expedition followed the course of the Kennebec and its tributary, the Dead River, crossed the height of land, reached the headwaters of the Chaudière in Lake Megantic, and descended the Chaudière to the St. Lawrence. It was a march of much danger and privation, no easy task for a skilled backwoodsman to accomplish, and full of difficulty when it was a case of transporting a small army. All through October and into November the men toiled in the wilderness, boats were lost, provisions were scarce, the sick and ailing were left behind, the rearguard turned back, but eventually Arnold brought two-thirds of his men through, and, with the goodwill and assistance of the Canadians on the southern bank of the St. Lawrence, emerged at Point Levis on the 8th of November, having achieved a memorable exploit in the military history of America. On the 14th he crossed the river by night, landed where Wolfe had landed before his last memorable fight, and, after summoning the city to surrender without effect, retreated to Pointe aux Trembles, nearly twenty miles up the river, to await Montgomery’s arrival. Meanwhile, Carleton passed by and entered Quebec.

Montgomery arrives before Quebec.

On the 5th of December, Montgomery came upon the scene, having landed his guns at Cap Rouge, about nine miles above the city.[87] A threatening letter which he sent to Carleton on the day after his arrival summoning the British general to surrender, received no answer, and he took up his position and planted batteries within reach of the walls on the western side—the side of Wolfe’s attack, while Arnold occupied the suburb of St. Roch, on the north of the city, with the river St. Charles behind him. So far the American advance had been little more than a procession. Montreal had received Montgomery without fighting. Three Rivers had given in its adhesion to the revolutionary cause, without requiring the general’s presence, as he passed down the river. Nearly all the British regulars were prisoners; and, with the help of the disloyal element in the population, Montgomery had good reason to expect that Quebec would forthwith pass into his hands and the Imperial Government be deprived of its last foothold in Canada. He was soon undeceived, however, and found the task beyond his strength.

The siege of Quebec.

His whole force, when united to Arnold’s and including some Canadians, seems not to have exceeded 2,000 men; his artillery was inadequate, and winter was coming on. On the other hand, Carleton’s garrison was a nondescript Number of the garrison. force of some 1,600 to 1,800 men. Nearly one-third of the number were Canadians. About 400 were seamen and marines from the ships in the harbour, including the Lizard ship of war, which, with one convoy ship containing stores and arms, represented all the aid that had come from England. There were less than 300 regulars, including about 200 of a newly-raised corps under Colonel Maclean’s command, Scotch veterans who were known as the Royal Highland Emigrants; and there were about 300 militia of British birth. But the city was well provisioned; the disloyal citizens had been ejected; Carleton himself had been through the famous winter siege of 1759-60; and the preparations which had been made during his recent absence at Montreal, showed that he had capable officers serving under him. The upper classes of Canada had from the first sided with the British Government, and now that Quebec, the hearth and home of Canada, was in deadly peril, some spirit of Canadian citizenship was stirred in its defence.

click here for larger image.

PLAN OF QUEBEC IN 1775-6

Reduced from Plan in Colonial Office Library

To face p. 112

Montgomery plans a night attack.

Montgomery’s army was too small in numbers, without the support of powerful artillery which he did not possess, to justify a direct assault upon the town walls, and a prolonged siege in the depth of winter meant severe strain on the American resources with no sure hope of ultimate success. Moreover, many of the men had enlisted only for a specified term, which expired at the end of the year. Before the year closed, therefore, the general determined to attempt a night surprise, and laid his plans not to attack the city from the plateau, but to storm the barricades which guarded the lower town by the water’s edge, and thence to rush the heights above.

The attack of December 31, 1775.

Before dawn on the morning of Sunday the 31st of December,[88] 1775, between the hours of two and seven, in darkness and driving snow, the attempt was made. From Montgomery’s batteries on the Heights of Abraham the guns opened fire on the town. At Arnold’s camp at St. Roch, troops placed themselves in evidence under arms; and, while this semblance of attack was made, the two leaders led two separate columns from opposite directions, intended to converge in the centre of the lower town, so that the combined parties might force the steep ascent from the port to the city on the cliff.

Repulse of Montgomery and his death.

About two in the morning Montgomery led his men, according to one account, 900 in number, down to the river side at Wolfe’s landing-place; and signalling with rockets to Arnold to begin his march, started about four o’clock along a rough pathway which skirted the river under Cape Diamond and led to the lower town. Unnoticed, it would seem, by an outpost on Cape Diamond, and by an advance picket, he came at the head of his force within thirty yards of a barricade, which had been constructed where the houses began at Prés de Ville. Up to this point the defenders had given no sign, but now every gun, large and small, blazed forth: the general fell dead with 12 of his following, and the whole column beat a hasty retreat.

Repulse of Arnold’s column.

Meanwhile, on the other side, in the angle between the St. Charles and the St. Lawrence, Arnold led forward 700 men, passing below Palace Gate, and fired at from the walls where the garrison were all on the alert, for Carleton had for some days past been warned of a coming attack. The Americans crossed a small projecting point, known as the Sault au Matelot, and reached one end of the narrow street which bore the same name. Here there was a barricade, a second barricade having been erected at the other end of the street. The first barrier was forced, but not until Arnold himself had been disabled by a wound; and led by the Virginian, Daniel Morgan, who was second in command, and who, later in the war, won the fight at Cowpens, the assailants pressed boldly on to take the second barricade and effect a junction with Montgomery. But Montgomery was no more; the garrison grew constantly stronger at the threatened point; the way of retreat was blocked; and caught in a trap, under fire from the houses, the attacking party surrendered to the number of 431, in addition to 30 killed, including those who fell with Montgomery. The day had hardly broken when all was over, the result being an unqualified success for the English, a crushing defeat for the American forces. Quebec was saved, and with Quebec, as events proved, the whole of Canada.

Continuance of the siege.

The English, according to a letter from Carleton to General Howe, written on the 12th of January, only lost 7 killed and 11 wounded on this memorable night; but, notwithstanding, in view of the small numbers of the garrison, the governor did not follow up his success by any general attack on the American lines; he contented himself with bringing in five mortars and a cannon from Arnold’s position, and settled down with his force to wait for spring. The Americans, from time to time reinforced by way of Montreal, continued the blockade, but it was somewhat ineffective, as firewood and even provisions were at intervals brought into the town. On the 25th of March a party of Canadians, who attempted to relieve Quebec by surprising an American battery at Point Levis, on the other side of the St. Lawrence, were themselves surprised and suffered a reverse; on the 4th of April the battery in question opened on the town with little effect: on the 3rd of May a fire ship was directed against the Quebec relieved on May 6, 1776. port and proved abortive. On the 6th of May English ships once more came up the river with reinforcements, and the siege was at an end. The Congress troops retreated in hot haste, as Levis’s men had fled when Murray was relieved: artillery, ammunition, stores, were left behind; and the retreat continued beyond Three Rivers, as far as Sorel, at the mouth of the Richelieu.

Carleton’s Report.

‘After this town had been closely invested by the rebels for five months and had defeated all their attempts, the Surprise frigate, Isis and sloop Martin came into the Basin the 6th instant.... Thus ended our siege and blockade, during which the mixed garrison of soldiers, sailors, British and Canadian militia, with the artificers from Halifax and Newfoundland, showed great zeal and patience under very severe duty and uncommon vigilance.’ So wrote Carleton to Lord George Germain on the 14th of May, 1776, having conducted a singularly successful defence of an all important point. Murray’s defence of Quebec had been marked by a severe reverse, great sickness, privation, and loss. Nothing of the kind happened under Carleton. He had, it is true, a far smaller army against him than besieged Murray, and he had the inestimable advantage of personal experience of the former siege, but on the other hand the force which he commanded was infinitely weaker, numerically and in training, than Murray’s. He made no mistakes, incurred no risks, his one aim was to save Quebec, and he saved it.

Importance of holding Quebec.

The more the history of these times is studied, the greater importance will be attached to Carleton’s successful defence of Quebec, and his defeat of the American forces beneath its walls; the more clearly too it will be seen that the net result of the American war was due at least as much to the agency of individual men as to any combination of moral or material forces. Whoever held Quebec held Canada; and, if Great Britain had lost Quebec in the winter of 1775-6, she would in all probability have lost Canada for all time. Wolfe’s victory before Quebec, and the surrender of the city which followed, determined that Canada should become a British possession. Carleton’s defeat of Montgomery and Arnold in the suburbs of Quebec, and the holding of the city which followed, determined that Canada should remain a British possession. It was not merely a question of the geographical position of Quebec, great as was its importance from a strategical point of view. It was a question of the effect of its retention or its loss upon the minds of men. The Canadians were wavering: the tide was flowing against the English: one rock alone was not submerged: the waves beat against it and subsided. Thenceforward Canada was never in serious danger. The Americans were not liked in Canada. They carried many of the Canadians with them in the first impulse, but, when once they were checked and driven back, the Canadians were given time to think, and they inclined to the cause personified by the man who had stemmed the tide of invasion and held Quebec.

Carleton as a general,

When the news of what had taken place reached England at the beginning of June, Horace Walpole wrote to his friend Sir Horace Mann. ‘The provincials have again attempted to storm Quebec and been repulsed with great loss by the conduct and bravery of Carleton, who, Mr. Conway has all along said, would prove himself a very able general.’[89] Two months later he wrote again to the same friend: ‘You have seen by the public newspapers that General Carleton has driven the provincials out of all Canada. It is well he fights better than he writes. General Conway has constantly said that he would do great service.’[90] Of Carleton’s merits as a soldier there can be no question. No one ever gauged a military situation better. No one ever displayed more firmness and courage at a time of crisis, made more of small resources, or showed more self-restraint. But he was more than a good military leader; he was also a statesman of high and as a statesman. order, and, had he been given a free hand and supreme control of the British forces and policy in America, he might well have kept the American colonies as he kept Quebec. For Carleton was an understanding man. No Carleton’s character. Englishman in America, or who dealt with America, was of the same calibre. He knew the land: he knew the people: he had the qualities which were conspicuously wanting in other English leaders of the time, firmness, foresight, breadth of view, sound judgement as to what was possible and what was not; above all, he had a character above and beyond intrigue. Had he not been ousted by malign influence, but been given wider powers and a more extensive command, the British cause in North America might have had the one thing needful, a personality to stand in not unworthy comparison with that of Washington.

Carleton was a little over fifty years old at the time of the siege of Quebec. The two American generals who confronted him were younger men. Montgomery was just under forty years of age when he was killed; Arnold at the time was not thirty-five. It would have been well for Arnold’s reputation had he shared Montgomery’s fate. A New Englander by birth, a native of Connecticut, he Benedict Arnold. seems to have been a restless, adventurous man, with no strong sense of principle. His name is clouded by his grievous treachery at West Point, but his military capacity was as great as his personal courage, and of all the American leaders in the earlier stages of the war, he was the man who dealt the hardest blows at the British cause in Canada. From the capture of the forts on Lake Champlain till the fights before Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga, at almost every point on the frontier he was in evidence, leading attack, covering retreat, invaluable as a leader in border war.

Richard Montgomery.

Of Montgomery, Horace Walpole wrote that he ‘was not so fortunate as Wolfe to die a conqueror, though very near being so’.[91] He was so far fortunate in his death, that his name has passed into American history as that of a martyr to the cause of liberty. He was known to Burke, Fox, and the leaders of the Opposition in England; and he seems to have been an attractive man in private life as well as a capable soldier. We read in the Annual Register for 1776 that ‘The excellency of his qualities and disposition had procured him an uncommon share of private affection, as his abilities had of public esteem; and there was probably no man engaged on the same side, and few on either, whose loss would have been so much regretted both in England and America’.[92] In America addresses and monuments commemorated his name, Tryon county of New York was renamed Montgomery county in honour to his memory, and in 1818 his remains were exhumed and taken to New York for public burial. In England leading politicians bore tribute to his merits, and as late as the year 1791, in the House of Commons, Fox called to Burke’s remembrance how the two friends had ‘sympathized almost in tears for the fall of a Montgomery.’[93] He died fighting for what proved to be the winning cause, and men spoke well of him. But there is another side to the picture which should not be overlooked. Montgomery was not, like Arnold, born and bred on New England soil. He was ‘a gentleman of good family in the kingdom of Ireland’,[94] and educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He had worn the King’s uniform from 1756 to 1772; he had served as a subaltern at the capture of Louisbourg, under Amherst again on Lake Champlain, and with Haviland’s division in the final British advance on Montreal, by the line by which in 1775 he led the American troops into Canada. After the British conquest of Canada he had seen active service in the West Indies. His connexion with the North American colonies consisted in having bought an estate in New York, having married a lady of the well-known Livingston family in that state, and having made his home there after retirement from the army. That retirement took place in 1772. In 1775 he was a brigadier-general in the American army, not concerned to defend house and home against unprovoked attack, but to lead an army of invasion into a neighbouring British province, endeavouring to wrest from Great Britain what he himself had fought to give her, and identifying oppression with one whose worth he must well have known, with a fellow British soldier of Carleton’s high character and name. Montgomery was an Irishman. In his case, as in that of Arnold, the wife’s influence probably counted for much; and the time was one when what were called generous instincts were at a premium and principles were at a discount. But the terms[95] in which he summoned Carleton to surrender suggest unfavourable contrast between his own words and actions on the one hand, and on the other the stern old-fashioned views of loyalty and military honour which Carleton held, and which forbade him to pay to Montgomery in his lifetime the respect which was ensured by a soldier’s death.

Montgomery had charged Carleton with inhumanity. Carleton was a soldier who did not play with war and rebellion, but he was also a humane man, and the charge, if it needed any contradiction, is belied by a proclamation which he issued on the 10th of May, four days after the relief of Quebec. In it search was directed to be made for sick and wounded Americans, reported to be ‘dispersed in the adjacent woods and parishes, and in great danger of perishing for want of proper assistance’. They were to be given relief and brought in to the General Hospital at Quebec, a promise being added that, as soon as their health was restored, they should be at liberty to return to their homes.[96]

Quebec was relieved on the 6th of May. Some ships were sent up the river, but Carleton waited for the reinforcements which were fast coming in from England before making a decided move, and it was not until the beginning of June that Three Rivers was re-occupied by the Royal troops. Meanwhile, the American head quarters at Montreal had been alarmed by a diversion from another quarter. The invading forces had broken into Canada at The affair of the Cedars. two points only. Montgomery’s advance had been direct to Montreal: Arnold had marched straight on Quebec. The British outposts above Montreal and in the west had been left undisturbed. One of them, very small in numbers, was stationed at Ogdensburg, then known as Oswegatchie, a few years previously the scene of the Abbé Piquet’s mission of La Présentation. The commander was Captain Forster of the 8th Regiment of the line, the same regiment which in the later war of 1812 played so conspicuous a part in the defence of Canada. Towards the end of the second week in May, Forster, with about 50 regulars and volunteers and some 200 Indians,[97] started down the St. Lawrence, his objective being the Cedars, a place on the northern bank of the St. Lawrence below Lake St. Francis in that river, and a few miles above Lake St. Louis and the island of Montreal. Here an American force was stationed, numbering nearly 400 men. On the 18th and 19th of May Forster attacked the post, which surrendered on the second day; and on the 20th another small party of Americans, rather under 100 in number, which was advancing from Vaudreuil, seven miles to the north of the Cedars, surrendered to a mixed body of Canadians and Indians. By these two successes Forster secured between 400 and 500 prisoners, and crossing over to the island of Montreal, he advanced against Lachine, where a considerable force of Americans was encamped. These men were under the command of Arnold who, on recovering from the wound which he had received at Quebec, had been placed in charge of the Congress troops at Montreal. Forster found the position and the numbers defending it too strong to attack, although he had been reinforced by a large party of Canadians. Accordingly, he retired to the mainland. Arnold then attempted to cross and make a counter attack, but was in turn obliged to recross to the island. There then followed negotiations for the release of the prisoners, who were handed over to Arnold on condition that British prisoners should be subsequently released in exchange, and at the end of the month Forster returned to Oswegatchie.

His exploit had been a notable one. With a very insignificant following he had defeated superior numbers and had threatened Montreal. History repeated itself; and, as in the days of New France, the Canadians and Indians showed themselves formidable in sudden raids, supplementing the regular plan of campaign. The affair of the Cedars proved that, as long as Quebec and the mouth of the St. Lawrence were in British keeping, the American army of occupation would be troubled on the western side by home-bred combatants, stiffened by British outposts which could only be dislodged as the result of a general conquest of Canada. Canada was in fact far from conquered, and in a very short time the country was cleared of its foes.

But Forster’s enterprise obtained notoriety for another and a different reason. The Congress of the revolting Dispute with Congress as to the exchange of prisoners. states refused to ratify the agreement to which Arnold had consented. The American prisoners, with the exception of a few hostages, were sent back, but the promised exchanges were not made, and the reason given for not fulfilling the engagement was that some of Forster’s prisoners had been murdered and others maltreated and plundered. Congress therefore resolved not to give back the requisite number of British prisoners, until the authors and abettors of the alleged crimes had been handed over and compensation made for the plunder. The allegations seem in the main not to have been substantiated, as is shown by a letter from one of the American hostages themselves.[98] That the Indians looted some of the prisoners’ property was undeniable, but Forster appears to have used every effort to secure the safety and good treatment of those who were in his hands, and the charges of murder were not made good. Carleton wrote strongly on the subject,[99] attributing the action of the American Congress to a desire to embitter their people against the English and to prolong the war; but at this distance of time it is unnecessary to revive the controversy. What is worth noting is the feeling aroused when coloured men are enlisted, or even alleged to be enlisted, on either side in white men’s quarrels, the exaggerated reports which are spread abroad, and the credence which is given to them. The record of Indian warfare in North America was a terrible one, and it is no matter for surprise if, when Indians were found fighting on the British side, the barbarities of the past were reported to have been reproduced at a later date.

American delegates sent to Montreal.

Before Quebec had been relieved, the weakness of the American hold on Canada, and the condition of the army of occupation, had given anxiety to Congress, who sent special commissioners to Montreal. The commissioners were three in number. One was Benjamin Franklin, and another was Carroll, a Roman Catholic, who was accompanied by his brother, a Jesuit priest. The object was to ascertain the actual position of matters military and political, and to conciliate Canadian feeling. What was ascertained was depressing enough, and the efforts at conciliation came to nothing. While the commissioners were at Montreal, they received news of the relief of Quebec, and events soon swept away recommendations. The American army fell back from Quebec to the Richelieu; Retreat of the American army. and, as the troops came in from England, including some German regiments under Baron Riedesel, Carleton sent them up the St. Lawrence by land and water, Burgoyne being in command. In the first days of June Three Rivers was garrisoned; and within a week, on the 8th of June, an American general, Thompson, who made an attempt to regain the position, crossing over by night from the southern shore, was cut off and taken prisoner with over 200 of his men. This completed the discomfiture of the Americans: small-pox and other diseases were rife in Montreal re-occupied by the English, and preparations made for an advance up Lake Champlain. their ranks: their posts on the line of the Richelieu were hastily abandoned; Arnold barely had time to evacuate Montreal; and, before the last week of June began, Montreal, Chambly, and St. John’s were all again in British possession, and the invasion of Canada was at an end.

The Americans, however, still retained their hold on Lake Champlain. It was impossible to dislodge them without organizing transport by water as well as by land, and building armed vessels to overpower the ships with which they commanded the lake. For when they overran Canada as far as Quebec, they secured all the sailing craft and bateaux on the Upper St. Lawrence. ‘The task was indeed arduous,’ says a contemporary writer, ‘a fleet of above thirty fighting vessels, of different kinds and sizes, all furnished with cannon, was to be little less than recreated.’[100] Three months, therefore, were taken up in boat-building, the material being in large measure sent out from England, in making roads, constructing entrenchments, drilling the troops, and collecting supplies. The troops, over 10,000 in number, were stationed at La Prairie on the St. Lawrence, immediately opposite Montreal, at Chambly, St. John’s, and the Isle aux Noix, with detachments lower down the Richelieu river than Chambly in order to keep all the communications open; and in September, when the preparations were nearly completed, advanced parties were moved forward to the opening of Lake Champlain.

Fighting on Lake Champlain.

In October the newly-constructed gunboats ascended the Richelieu river from St. John’s, and entered the lake. On the 11th they came into touch with the American vessels, which were then stationed, under Arnold’s command, between Valcour Island and the western shore of the lake. The place was about five miles south of Plattsburg, about twenty-five miles south of what is now the boundary line of Canada, and a little less than fifty miles to the north of Crown Point. The strait between the island and the mainland is about a mile wide, and across it was the American line of battle. The English had the superiority in numbers and, as the result of the first day’s fighting, being carried to the south of the enemy’s ships, were at the close of the day drawn up in line to intercept their retreat. At night, however, Arnold, bold and skilful as ever, found a passage through and sailed off to the south, hotly pursued by Carleton’s squadron. On the 13th fighting began again, and ended with the capture Destruction of the American flotilla. or destruction of twelve American vessels, out of a total of fifteen, over 100 prisoners being taken including the second in command to Arnold. Crown Point was set on fire and Crown Point abandoned by the Americans. abandoned by the Americans, and on the 14th Carleton wrote from his ship off that place reporting his success. In his dispatch he expressed doubts whether anything further could be done at that late season of the year, and he subsequently came to the conclusion that an attack on Ticonderoga, which was held by a strong force under Gates, must be postponed till the following spring. Nor did he think it prudent to occupy Crown Point, which was in a dismantled and ruined condition, through the Close of the campaign. winter, and by the middle of November, he had withdrawn all his forces to the Isle aux Noix and St. John’s, whence he had started.

Carleton censured by Germain.

It was a good summer’s work. Quebec had been relieved, the whole of Canada had been recovered, and on the main line of invasion, Lake Champlain, the English had obtained the upper hand by the destruction of Arnold’s vessels. This last part of the campaign stands out in bright contrast to the abortive Plattsburg expedition in the later war of 1812. If there had been any delay, it was largely due to the fact that Carleton had not received from England all the boats and materials for boat-building for which he had requisitioned; and, to judge from Horace Walpole, intelligent observers in England were not disappointed with the outcome of the autumn fighting. ‘You will see the particulars of the naval victory in the Gazette,’ he wrote to Sir Horace Mann on the 26th of November, 1776, ‘It is not much valued here, as it is thought Carleton must return to Quebec for the winter.’ Nevertheless, the British Government, as represented by Lord George Germain, professed to be dissatisfied that more had not been achieved, and that, having reached Crown Point, the general had not made a further advance against Ticonderoga, or at least held his ground where he was through the winter. Germain, who in January, 1776, had succeeded Dartmouth in charge of colonial matters, had begun by finding fault with Carleton, complaining that the latter had left the Home Government in the dark as to his plan of operations after the relief of Quebec, and as to the position in Canada. The result was, Germain wrote, that it was impossible at the time to send Carleton any further instructions.[101] It would have been well if the impossibility had continued. He found new ground for criticism in Carleton’s temporary retreat from Lake Champlain, but the criticism was wholly without justification. Carleton was a cautious leader; he had shown caution in the defence of Quebec, where events had justified his attitude; but the whole record of the 1776 campaign had proved him to be at the same time a man of energy, firmness, and resource, unwearied in organizing, prompt in action. Wolfe, it might be said, would at all hazards have attacked Ticonderoga, but it must be remembered that Wolfe in America, where he always preached and practised forward aggressive movement, was fighting Frenchmen and Indians, not soldiers of the same race as his own. If we compare Amherst, on the other hand, with Carleton, we find that Amherst in 1759, having taken Ticonderoga and Crown Point by the beginning of August, made no further move till the middle of October, and then, after an abortive start down Lake Champlain, gave up active operations for the winter. There is no valid reason to suppose that Carleton’s judgement was otherwise than sound. At any rate, to quote his own words to Germain in a letter written on the 20th of May, 1777, ‘Any officer entrusted with the supreme command ought, upon the spot, to see what was most expedient to be done, better than a great general at 3,000 miles distance.’[102]

The English generals in America.

Less capable than Carleton were the other British officers in America, and far less satisfactory were the results of their efforts. In the early days of 1775, before fighting actually began, Amherst, the former Commander-in-Chief in North America, was invited by the King to resume his command, but declined the invitation, and General Gage was accordingly retained in that position. To support him, three generals were sent out from England, Howe, Burgoyne, and Clinton. They arrived towards the end of May, 1775, after the fight at Lexington had taken place, and before the battle of Bunker’s Hill. Early in 1776 Lord Cornwallis also appeared upon the scene. After the battle of Bunker’s Hill, Gage was recalled to England, and Howe was placed in command of the troops on the Atlantic seaboard, while Carleton was given independent command in Canada. Gage left in October, 1775, and Howe, his successor, remained in America till May, 1778, having sent in his resignation a few months previously. Clinton succeeded Howe, and held the command until the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown in October, 1781, turned out the ministry and practically finished the war. Then, when it was too late, Carleton was named as commander-in-chief, and arrived at New York in May, 1782, by which time the fighting was practically over.

These men, who commanded the armies of England in America during a disastrous war, were by no means hopelessly incompetent. Howe had been one of the best Howe. of Wolfe’s officers. He had led the advanced party which stormed the Heights of Abraham on the memorable morning of the 13th of September, 1759. In the revolutionary war, though found wanting in some of the qualities which make a great general, he none the less showed firmness, courage, and skill in various actions from Bunker’s Hill onwards, and he achieved several notable successes. Clinton proved himself to be at least Clinton. an average commander. Burgoyne, in a subordinate position, was apparently a good soldier; and the subsequent Burgoyne. career of Lord Cornwallis showed that he was a man of capacity. Comparing them with the predecessors of Wolfe and Amherst in the late French war, with Cornwallis. Loudoun, Webb, and Abercromby, and bearing in mind that they had a far more difficult task, they stand in no unfavourable light. But they were not leaders of men themselves, and there was no man in power in England, such as Chatham had been, who was a leader of men, strong enough to break down political intrigue and court influence, to find the best men and send them out, superseding the second best, encouraging and supporting his soldiers and sailors, but not worrying them with ill-timed and ignorant interference.

The English admirals.

On the sea England was even less fortunate in the men who served her than on land, whereas, as events proved, the possibility of success in the war depended entirely on keeping command of the sea. In the time of the Seven Years’ War, the English admirals were at their best. Hawke, in his brilliant fight at Quiberon, did hardly better service than the less known Admiral Saunders, who co-operated heart and soul with Wolfe at Quebec. Widely different was the naval record of the War of American Independence. The French navy, it is true, was stronger than in former years, but the naval commanders on the English side were also less adequate. The competent men were superseded by, or had to serve under, senior and less competent officers. Sir George Collier, who showed energy and ability, was succeeded by an inferior man, Marriot Arbuthnot; and, at the most critical point of the campaign, when the French admiral, de Grasse, combined with Washington to procure the surrender of Cornwallis, Sir Samuel Hood, one of the best, had to take his orders from Admiral Graves, one of the least competent of British naval officers. Even Rodney, who had not yet won the great victory in the West Indies, by which he is best remembered, seems to have been remiss in regard to North America; and, if Hood be excepted, Lord Howe alone among the famous seamen of England, during a short period of the war, showed something of the skill and energy which, at other times, and in other than American waters, characterized the leaders of the British navy.

Military science was not conspicuous in the American War of Independence.

Apart altogether from its causes and its results, and dealing only with the actual operations, the War of American Independence was a most unsatisfactory, and for the English, a most inglorious war. It might well have resulted in a far more crushing defeat for England, and yet have left a much better impression on English minds. Though the war lasted for fully seven years, on neither side, with one exception, were very great military reputations made. The American Civil War of later days was marked by notable military achievements, and extraordinarily stubborn fighting. It was a terrible but a heart-whole struggle, fought hard to the bitter end under men, among winners and losers alike, whose names will live to all time in military history. In the American War of Independence, on the other hand, though good soldiers were engaged on either side and some, such as the American general, Nathaniel Greene, deservedly attained high reputation, yet the only name which lives for the world at large because of the war itself, is that of Washington; and it lives not so much because of brilliant feats of generalship, as because he led a murmuring people through the wilderness with statesmanship, rare nobility of character, and unconquerable patience. ‘Few of the great pages of history,’ writes Mr. Lecky, ‘are less marked by the stamp of heroism than the American Revolution.’[103] The Americans muddled through, because the English made more mistakes, and because, though the American people were divided among themselves, their leaders, at any rate, knew their own minds, and were not half-hearted like the majority of leading men at the time in the United Kingdom.

For neither the English nation nor the English Government were wholehearted in the war. It was of the nature of a civil war, with little to appeal to on the English side. It is true that it was for a time popular in England, that the intervention of France prolonged its popularity, and that the outrageous extravagances of Fox and other extreme Whigs also tended to provoke honest patriotism in favour of the Government and their policy; but it was not truly a nation’s war, guided by the nation’s chosen leaders. Not only was there strong opposition to it in England, for reasons which have already been given, strong especially in the personality of men like Chatham and Burke who opposed it, but the ministry themselves showed that their heart was Wavering attitude of the English Government not in their work. Twice in the middle of the struggle they tried to make peace. In 1776, the brothers Howe at New York, Whigs themselves, were commissioned to open negotiations with the colonists: but their powers in granting concessions were far too limited to satisfy opponents, who had already, on the 4th of July in that year, declared for independence. Again in 1778, under an Act of Parliament, specially passed for the purpose, commissioners were appointed to negotiate for peace. They were five in number, two being, as before, the brothers Howe,[104] and the other three being delegates specially sent out from home. This time ample powers were given to make concessions, but the situation was wholly changed. Burgoyne had surrendered in the preceding autumn, the French had joined hands with the colonists, and Philadelphia was being evacuated by the British troops. Had the commissioners been sent out after some striking success on the side of England, offering generous terms from a strong and resolute nation, they might have gained a hearing, and the proffered concessions might have been accepted. Under the circumstances the mission was interpreted as a sign of weakness, and the messages which were brought were treated with contempt.

and of the generals.

As it was with the Government, so it was also with the military men. Amherst would not serve because of his old friendly relations with the Americans. General Howe, for similar reasons, was at first loth to serve, and his delays and shortcomings in prosecuting the war may perhaps be in part attributed to the same cause. Howe, Burgoyne, and Clinton all came out in 1775 from the House of Commons, politicians as well as soldiers.[105] Burgoyne was brought home towards the end of 1775. He went out again to Canada in the spring of 1776, again went home in the autumn of that year, and again went out in 1777 for his last disastrous campaign. Cornwallis went to England twice in the course of the war. It was probably a mere coincidence, but the fact remains that the two commanders who suffered the greatest disasters, were the two who went back and fore between England and America, and presumably came most under the influence of the mischievous ministry at home. It is true that Wolfe had gone home in 1758 after the taking of Louisburg, discontented with the tardiness of Amherst’s movements, and that he went out again in 1759 to his crowning victory and death; but Wolfe went home to Chatham, Burgoyne and Cornwallis to Lord George Germain.

Want of continuity in the military operations on the English side.

Take again the spasmodic operations of the war. Boston, held when war broke out, and for the retention of which Bunker’s Hill was fought, was subsequently abandoned. Philadelphia was occupied and again evacuated. The southern colonies were over-run but not held. At point after point the Loyalists were first encouraged and then left to their fate. Everything was attempted in turn but nothing done, or what was done was again undone. The vacillation and infirmity of purpose, which has so often marred the public action of England, was never more manifest than in the actual campaigns of the War of American Independence. The great difficulty to contend with was the large area covered by the revolting colonies; and the one hope of subduing them lay in blockading the coasts and concentrating instead of dispersing the British land forces. Lord Howe and Lord Amherst are credited with the view that the only chance of success for England lay in a purely naval war; and it is said to have been on Amherst’s advice that Philadelphia was abandoned and the troops concentrated at New York. The true policy was, as Captain Mahan has pointed out,[106] and as Carleton had seen before the war came,[107] to cut the colonies in two by holding the line of the Hudson and Lake Champlain; and the object of sending Burgoyne down from Canada by way of Lake Champlain in 1777 was that he might join hands with the British forces on the Atlantic coast, as they moved up the Hudson from New York. But, while Burgoyne was marching south, Howe carried off the bulk of the troops from New York to attack Philadelphia; and there followed, as a direct consequence, the ruin of Burgoyne’s force and its surrender at Saratoga. No positive instructions had reached Howe as to co-operating with Burgoyne, and the well-known story goes[108] that this oversight was due to Lord George Germain, who had fathered the enterprise, going out of town at the moment when the dispatches should have been signed and sent. At any rate, it is clear that, even when the British Government had formed a right conception of the course to be followed, they failed to take ordinary precautions for ensuring that it was carried into effect. In Canada alone did the English rise to the occasion. Here, and here only, was a man among them in the early stages of the war who moved on a higher plane altogether than his contemporaries in action, a statesman-general of dignity, foresight and prudence. Here alone too the English were repelling invasion, and keeping for the nation what the nation had won. In this wrong-headed struggle the one and only ray of brightness for England shone out from Canada.

Operations on the Atlantic seaboard.

After the battle of Bunker’s Hill, in June, 1775, the British army of occupation at Boston spent the year in a state of siege. Gage was recalled to England in October, the command of the troops being handed over to Howe. Burgoyne too went home, returning to Canada in the following spring. The autumn and the winter went by, Carleton being beleaguered in Quebec, and Howe cooped up in Boston, while British ships bombarded one or two of the small seaport towns on the American coast, causing misery and exasperation, without effecting any useful result. Early in 1776, Clinton and Cornwallis were sent to carry war into the southern states, and towards the end of June made an unsuccessful attack on Charleston Harbour.

Howe evacuates Boston and occupies New York.

In March Howe evacuated Boston, and brought off his troops to Halifax. In June he set sail for New York, which was held by Washington; established himself on Staten Island, where he was joined by his brother, the admiral, with strong reinforcements; and, having now ample troops under his command, he took action in the middle of August. Crossing over to Long Island, he inflicted a heavy blow on Washington’s army on the 27th of August, but did not follow up his success, with the result that Washington two days later carried over his troops to New York. In the middle of September New York was evacuated by the Americans and occupied by the English, and through October and November, Washington was driven back with loss, until by the beginning of the second week in December, he had retreated over the Delaware to Philadelphia, and the whole of the country between that river and the Hudson, which forms the State of New Jersey, was in British hands. The American cause was further depressed by the temporary loss of General Charles Lee, who had been surprised and taken prisoner. He was one of the few American leaders who was a practised soldier, having been before the war a half-pay officer of the British army; at the time of his capture he stood second only to Washington.

Howe’s delays.

Howe had been almost uniformly successful, but at each step he had been slow to follow up his successes. In all wars in which trained soldiers are pitted against untrained men, it must be of the utmost importance to give as little breathing space as possible to the latter, for delay gives time for learning discipline, regaining confidence, and realizing that defeat may be repaired. Easy to check and to keep on the run in the initial stages of such a war, the untried levies gradually harden into seasoned soldiers, taking repulses not as irreparable disasters, but as incidents in a campaign. For those who set out to subdue a stubborn race it is a fatal mistake to give their enemies time to learn the trade of war. Especially is it a mistake when, as in the case of the Americans, the causes of the war and the ultimate objects are at the outset not yet clearly defined, when there are misgivings and hesitations as to the rights and wrongs, the necessities of the case, the most desirable issue: most of all when one side represents a loose confederation of jealous states, and not one single-minded nation. Howe seems to have lost sight of these considerations, and not to have wished to press matters too far. While engaged in taking New York, he was also busy with his brother in trying vainly to negotiate terms of peace; and subsequently, while mastering New Jersey, instead of completing his success by sending ships and troops round to the Delaware to attack Washington in Philadelphia, he dispatched Clinton to the north to occupy Newport in Rhode Island, a point of vantage for the naval warfare, but held at the cost of dispersing instead of concentrating the British forces.

Yet, as the year 1776 drew towards its close, all seemed going well for the English in America. Carleton from Canada, Howe from New York, had uninterrupted progress to report. With Christmas night there came another tale. In fancied security after the late campaign, Howe’s Washington’s victory at Trenton. troops in New Jersey were quartered at different points, the commander-in-chief remaining at New York, and Cornwallis, who had commanded in New Jersey, being on the point of leaving for England. The village of Trenton on the Delaware, through which passed the road from New York to Philadelphia, was held by a strong detachment of Hessians under General Rahl, whose whole force, including a few British cavalry, numbered about 1,400 men. No entrenchments had been constructed, few precautions had been taken against attack, and Christmas time and Christmas weather made for want of vigilance. Crossing the Delaware with 2,500 men, Washington broke in upon the position in the early morning of December 26th, amid snow and rain, and the surprise was complete: General Rahl was mortally wounded; between 900 and 1,000 of his men were killed, wounded, or taken prisoners; and not many more than 400 made good their escape. Returning with his prisoners to Philadelphia, Washington again re-crossed the Delaware, and during the rest of the winter and the first six months of the year 1777 continually harassed the English in New Jersey, avoiding a general engagement, which Howe vainly endeavoured to bring on. At length, towards the end of July, Howe evacuated the Howe retreats from the Jerseys, and occupies Philadelphia. territory, and, leaving Clinton with over 8,000 men at New York, shipped the rest of his army for Chesapeake Bay, resolved to attack the enemy from the opposite direction and to take Philadelphia. Washington gave him battle on the Brandywine river early in September and was defeated. On the 26th of September Howe entered Philadelphia: and on the 4th of October at Germantown, five miles distant from the city, he successfully repelled a sudden attack by which Washington attempted to repeat the success of Trenton. At Brandywine, Washington lost some 1,300 men, at Germantown over 1,000; but, while Germantown was being fought, Burgoyne’s army on the upper reaches of the Hudson was nearing its final disaster.

Far-reaching consequences of the fight at Trenton.

The War of American Independence, to quote the words of the Annual Register for 1777,[109] was ‘a war of posts, surprises, and skirmishes, instead of a war of battles’. The disaster to the Hessians at Trenton was what would have been called in the late South African war a regrettable incident, but it had far-reaching consequences. The German troops employed by the British Government were not unnaturally regarded by the American colonists with special dislike and apprehension. They were foreigners and professional soldiers, alien in sympathies and in speech, partisans in a quarrel with which they had no concern, fighting for profit not for principle. The citizen general, at the darkest time of the national cause, came back to Philadelphia, bringing a number of them prisoners, and broke at once the spell of ill success. There followed, as a direct consequence, the abandonment of the Jerseys by the English, the rising again of colonial feeling throughout the region, and corresponding depression of the Loyalists. But almost more important was the effect on the side of Canada; for the Trenton episode led to the supersession of Carleton and to his eventual resignation.

The Secretary of State for the American Department.

In the year 1768 the office of Secretary of State for the American Department was created in England, to deal especially with colonial matters. The Council of Trade and Plantations, which in one form or another had hitherto taken charge of the colonies, was not superseded, but to the new Secretary of State it fell to handle questions of war and peace with the American colonies. The appointment was not long lived, being abolished, together with the Council of Trade and Plantations, by Burke’s Act in 1782. The first Secretary of State for the American Department was Lord Hillsborough; the second, appointed in 1772, was Lord Dartmouth, in character and sympathy, a pleasing exception to the type of politicians who at the time had power in Great Britain; the third, appointed at the beginning of 1776, was Lord George Germain who, when he took office, was about sixty years of age.

Lord George Germain.

No name in English political history during the last 150 years is less loved than that of Lord George Sackville, or, as he was known in later years, Lord George Germain. He was born in 1716, a younger son of the first Duke of Dorset. Lady Betty Germain, who died in 1769, left him the Drayton estate[110] in Northamptonshire, and he took her name. Ten years before, he had been cashiered for disobedience to an order to charge at the battle of Minden in 1759, laying himself open by his conduct in that battle to what was no doubt an unfounded charge of cowardice. He took to political life, and has been commonly regarded as in a special manner the evil genius of the British ministry during the war with America. Yet he was not a man without parts. In his early life he had some reputation as a soldier, being highly spoken of by Wolfe. After he was dismissed from the army, he pertinaciously demanded a court-martial, though warned that more serious results even than dismissal might follow from re-opening the case. The inquiry was held, and the dismissal confirmed; but, helped no doubt by his family connexions, he held up his head in public life, and became, in Horace Walpole’s opinion, one of the five best speakers in the House of Commons.[111] Walpole, and probably others also, disbelieved the charge of cowardice;[112] and certainly in politics, whatever may have been the case on the battlefield, Germain cannot be denied the merits of courage and tenacity, though he may well have been embittered by his past, and hardened into fighting narrowly for his own hand. He became a follower of Lord North, and under him was appointed a Lord Commissioner of Trade and Plantations and Secretary of State for the American Department. He was an unbending opponent of the colonists and their claims. ‘I don’t want you to come and breathe fire and sword against the Bostonians like that second Duke of Alva, the inflexible Lord George Germain,’ wrote Horace Walpole in January, 1775,[113] before Germain had taken office. To use Germain’s own words, he would be satisfied with nothing less from the Americans than ‘unlimited submission’.[114]

Germain seems to have been deeply imbued with the great political vice of the time, that of dealing with national questions from a personal and partisan point of view. It was a vice inculcated by George the Third. The King was a narrow man: his school bred narrow men: and one of the narrowest was Lord George Germain. Such men are fearful of power passing from their hands, and are consequently prone to be constantly interfering with their officers. Hence it was that the evil of ministers trying to order the operations of generals, and of men in one continent purporting to regulate movements in another, was more pronounced at this time than at almost any other period in English history. Moreover, Lord George Germain having been a soldier, though a discredited one, no doubt thought that he could control armies; and, mixing military knowledge with political intrigue, he communed with the generals who came home, and formulated plans with slight regard to the views of the responsible men in America. The result was disastrous, in spite of the fact that he seems to have formed a true conception of the campaign, viz., that the one army in Canada and the other at New York should co-operate and cut in two the revolting colonies. The immediate outcome of his arrogant meddling was the loss of Carleton’s services.

His correspondence with Carleton.

On the 22nd of August, 1776, while Carleton was busy making preparations to drive the Americans back up Lake Champlain, Germain wrote to him, commending what had been done, expressing a hope that the frontiers of Canada would soon be cleared of the rebel forces, and giving instructions that, when this task had been accomplished, Carleton should return to Quebec, to attend to civil duties and the restoration of law and order, while detaching Burgoyne with any troops that could be spared to co-operate with Howe’s army acting from New York. Written when it was, the letter could hardly have been received in any case before the year’s campaign was drawing to its close, and before events had already determined what could or could not be done. It might have been received, wrote Carleton in a dignified and reasoned reply, at the beginning of November,[115] and coming to hand then could only have caused embarrassment. As a matter of fact, the ship which carried Germain’s letter, was driven back three times, and Carleton only received a duplicate in May, 1777, under cover of a second letter from Germain which was dated the 26th of March in that year. This Carleton censured and superseded in command of the army on the side of Canada. second letter attributed the disaster to the Hessians at Trenton, which had happened in the meantime, in part to the fact that by retreating from before Ticonderoga in the preceding autumn Carleton had relaxed the pressure on the American army in front of him, which had thereby been enabled to reinforce Washington; and it announced that two expeditions were in the coming campaign to be sent from Canada, one under Colonel St. Leger, the other under Burgoyne, while Carleton himself was to remain behind in Canada and devote his energies to the defence of the province, and to furnishing supplies and equipment for the two expeditions in question. It will be remembered that Burgoyne had in the meantime returned to England, reaching Portsmouth about the 9th of December, 1776, and had brought with him Carleton’s plans for the operations of 1777, which were therefore well known to Germain when he wrote in March.

It is difficult to imagine how a responsible minister could have been at once so ignorant and so unfair as Germain showed himself to be in this communication. To suppose that the movement or want of movement on Lake Champlain could have had any real connexion with the cutting off of a detachment on the Delaware river, which was within easy reach of the rest of Howe’s forces, overpowering in numbers as compared with Washington’s, was at best wilful blindness to facts. To supersede Carleton in the supreme command of the troops on the Canadian side was an act of unwisdom and injustice. It is true that, already in the previous August, while Carleton was still on the full tide of success, it had been determined to confine his authority to Canada, and apparently, in order that his commission might not clash with that of Howe, to place under a subordinate officer the troops which were intended to effect a junction with Howe’s army. But in any case Personal relations of Germain and Carleton. it is not easy to resist the conclusion that Germain had some personal grudge against the governor.[116] From a letter written by the King to Lord North in February, 1777, it would seem that, had Germain been given his way, Carleton would have been recalled, and, writing to Germain on the 22nd of May, Carleton did not hesitate to refer to the reports which were set abroad when Germain took office, to the effect that he intended to remove Carleton from his appointment, and in the meantime to undermine his authority. In his answer, dated the 25th of July, 1777, Germain gave the lie to these allegations, assuring Carleton that ‘whatever reports you may have heard of my having any personal dislike to you are without the least foundation. I have at no time received any disobligation from you’; he stated categorically that the action which had been taken for giving Burgoyne an independent command was by ‘the King’s particular directions’, and he added that the hope that Carleton would in his advance in the previous autumn penetrate as far as Albany was based upon the opinions of officers who had served in the country, and was confirmed by intelligence since received to the effect that the Americans had intended to abandon Ticonderoga, if Carleton had attacked it.[117] But, whatever may have been the facts as to the personal relations of Carleton and Germain, it seems clear that the small-minded minister in England was bent on ridding himself of the best man who served England in America.[118]

The case of Chief Justice Livius.

As Germain superseded Carleton in his military command, so he set aside his advice, and over-rode his appointments in civil matters. Reference has already been made to the evil effects produced by appointing unfit men to legal and judicial offices in Canada. The climax was reached when Germain in August, 1776, appointed to the Chief Justiceship of Canada a man named Livius, whose case attained considerable notoriety in the annals of the time. Peter Livius seems to have been a foreigner by extraction. Before the war broke out, he had been a judge in New Hampshire; and, his appointment having been abolished, he came back to England with a grievance against the governor and council, with whom he had been on bad terms while still holding his judgeship. A provision in the Quebec Act had annulled all the commissions given to the judges and other officers in Canada under the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which that Act superseded: and the English ministry seems to have taken advantage of this provision to displace men who had done their work well, and whose services Carleton desired to retain, substituting for them unfit nominees from England.

One of the men thus substituted was Livius, for whom they saw an opportunity of providing in Canada. Lord Dartmouth wrote to Carleton in May, 1775, notifying the appointment of Livius as a judge of Common Pleas for the district of Montreal; and in August of the following year he was promoted by Germain to be Chief Justice of Canada. Livius succeeded Chief Justice Hey, who had held the office since 1766, and had in August, 1775, requested to be allowed to retire after ‘ten years honest, however imperfect, endeavours to serve the Crown in an unpleasant and something critical situation’.[119] Hey was a man of high standing and character, and had been much consulted by the Government in passing the Quebec Act. Livius was a man of a wholly different class. Carleton’s Carleton’s description of Livius. unflattering description of him in a letter written on the 25th of June, 1778,[120] was that he was ‘greedy of power and more greedy of gain, imperious and impetuous in his temper, but learned in the ways and eloquence of the New England provinces, valuing himself in his knowledge how to manage governors, well schooled, it seems, in business of this sort’. ‘’Tis unfortunate,’ he wrote in another and earlier letter, referring apparently to Livius, ‘that your Lordship should find it necessary for the King’s service to send over a person to administer justice to this people, when he understands neither their laws, manners, customs, nor their language.’[121]

He dismisses him from office.

Livius’ appointment as Chief Justice apparently did not take effect till 1777, and he lost no time in making difficulties. Though paid better than his predecessor, he protested as to his emoluments and position; he claimed the powers which had been enjoyed by the Intendant under the old French régime, and both in his judicial capacity and as a member of the council, constituted himself an active opponent of the government. As Chief Justice, he espoused the cause of a Canadian who had been arrested and sent to prison for disloyalty by the Lieutenant-Governor Cramahé, and in the council, in April, 1778, he brought forward motions directed against what he held to be illegal and irregular proceedings on the part of the governor. The result of his attitude was that on the 1st of May, 1778, Carleton, before he left Canada, summarily, and without giving any reason, dismissed him from office.

Livius appeals to the King.

Both Livius and Carleton went back to England, and in September Livius appealed to the King. His appeal was referred to the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations, whose report on the case was in turn referred to the Lords of the Committee of Council for Plantation Affairs, and with their recommendation was brought before the King in Privy Council, Livius having in the course of the inquiry stated his case fully both in person and in writing, while Carleton declined to appear, and contented himself with referring to his dispatches and to the minutes of council. On technical grounds Livius had a strong case. Appointed by the King, he had been Merits of the case. dismissed by the governor without any reason being assigned in the letter of dismissal. His conduct in a judicial capacity had not been specifically impugned, and the two motions directed against Carleton, which he had brought forward in the Legislative Council immediately prior to his dismissal, had, at any rate, some show of reason. The first was to the effect that the governor should communicate to the council the Royal Instructions which had been given him with respect to legislation, and which by those instructions he was to communicate so far as it was convenient for the King’s service. The second referred to a committee of five members of the council, which Carleton had constituted in August, 1776, a kind of Privy Council for the transaction of executive, as opposed to legislative business, in which Livius was not included. Livius contended, and his contention was upheld, that the instruction under which the governor had appointed this board or committee, did not contemplate the formation of a standing committee of particular members of council, but only authorized the transaction of executive business by any five councillors, if more were not available at the time.

The appeal upheld and Livius restored to office. His subsequent career.

The result of the inquiry was that the Chief Justice was restored to his office, but he never returned to Canada. In July, 1779, a mandamus for his re-appointment as Chief Justice was sent to Governor Haldimand, Carleton’s successor, and in the same month he was ordered to go back at once to Quebec. But he remained on in England on one pretext or another. In March, 1780, he was still in London asking for further extension of leave, to see his brother who was coming home from India. Two years later, in April, 1782, he had not gone, though he alleged that he had attempted to cross the Atlantic and had been driven back by stress of weather; and he pleaded with rare audacity that it was advisable that he should still prolong his absence from Canada, as otherwise it would be his duty to oppose the high-handed proceedings, as he deemed them to be, of General Haldimand. So matters went on until Carleton, now Lord Dorchester, returned to govern Canada in the autumn of 1786, when a new Chief Justice was at once appointed, and Livius finally disappeared from history.[122]

Moral of the case.

It has been worth while to give at some length the details of this somewhat squalid incident, because it is a good illustration of the difficulties which may arise from one of the most valued and valuable of English principles, the independence of the judicature. In the distant possessions of Great Britain, even more than at home, a great safeguard and a strong source of confidence is and always has been that the judges are in no way dependent on the Executive; and yet the case of Livius is by no means the only case in which serious mischief to the public service has resulted from this very cause. There can be no doubt that on technical grounds the Privy Council were right in upholding Livius’ appeal. What weighed with them most of all was that Livius had not been dismissed for judicial misconduct; and short of such misconduct, flagrant and proved beyond all shadow of doubt, it would still be held that a judge should not be removed from office by the King himself, much less by the governor. Carleton, like other men cast in a large mould, did not sufficiently safeguard his action. A mischief-making adventurer was placed in high office for which he was clearly unfit. At a time of national crisis he used his powers of making mischief, and feeling secure in the independence of his judicial position, sought to undermine the authority of the Government. Unwilling to leave the difficulty for his successor to solve, the outgoing governor, fearless of responsibility, summarily dismissed the man, and contemptuously refused to justify the grounds of dismissal. He acted in the best interests of the public service, but, in doing so, he placed himself in the wrong, and the restoration of Livius to his office must be held to be justified, while his original appointment admits of no excuse.

Carleton resigns.

In June, 1777, Carleton sent in his resignation, but a year passed before he was able to leave Canada, and a bitter year it was for the English cause in America. Germain’s letter to him of the 26th of March, to which reference has already been made, gave a minute account of Germain’s plan of campaign for 1777. the plans for the year’s campaign. Carleton was to remain behind in Canada with 3,770 men. He was to place under command of General Burgoyne 7,173 men, in addition to Canadians and Indians, and after providing him with whatever artillery, stores, and provisions he might require, and rendering him every assistance in his power, ‘to give him orders to pass Lake Champlain and from thence, by the most vigorous exertion of the force under his command, to proceed with all expedition to Albany, and put himself under the command of Sir William Howe.’ In an earlier part of the same letter the phrase is used that Burgoyne was ‘to force his way to Albany’, leaving no doubt of the writer’s intention that at all hazards Burgoyne was to effect a junction with Howe. Carleton was further to place under Lieutenant-Colonel St. Leger 675 men, also to be supplemented by Canadians and Indians, to give him all the necessaries for his expedition, and to instruct him to advance to the Mohawk river, and down that river to Albany, where he was to place himself under Sir William Howe. St. Leger’s force was to be supplementary to Burgoyne’s: as phrased elsewhere in the same letter, he was ‘to make a diversion on the Mohawk river’.

Minuteness of the instructions.

It is noteworthy how this remarkable letter purported to settle all the details. The exact number of men for each service are counted, the particular regiments and companies of regiments are told off, no discretion is left to Carleton or to Burgoyne as to whom they should send forward to Lake Champlain or the Mohawk, and whom they should keep in Canada. No mention is made of the reinforcements which Carleton had written were necessary. Nothing is allowed apparently for sick or ineffectives. All is on paper, concocted by the man at a distance who persisted in knowing better than the far more capable man on the spot. But the most damning passage in the letter is as follows, ‘I shall write to Sir William from hence by Germain fails to communicate with Sir W. Howe. the first packet, but you will nevertheless endeavour to give him the earliest intelligence of this measure, and also direct Lieutenant-General Burgoyne and Lieutenant-Colonel St. Leger to neglect no opportunity of doing the same, that they may receive instructions from Sir William Howe.’ Sir William Howe’s Narrative of his operations, given to a Committee of the House of Commons in April, 1779, states explicitly that the promised letter was never sent to him by Germain; that it was not until the 5th of June that he received from Carleton a copy of the letter which has been quoted above, unaccompanied by any instructions; and that, before Burgoyne left England, Germain had received Howe’s plans for the Philadelphia expedition, and had written approving them. Such was Lord George Germain’s conduct of the war in America.

click here for larger image.

Map to illustrate THE BORDER WARS

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B. V. Barbishire, Oxford, 1908

Burgoyne and Carleton.

On the 27th of March Burgoyne left London. On the 6th of May he arrived at Quebec. There was no friction between him and Carleton. He had made no attempt to supplant Carleton, and, bitterly as Carleton resented his own treatment by Germain, he gave Burgoyne the utmost assistance for the coming campaign. ‘Had that officer been acting for himself or for his brother, he could not have shown more indefatigable zeal than he did to comply with and expedite my requisitions and desires.’ Such was Burgoyne’s testimony to Carleton, in his Narrative of the ‘state of the Expedition from Canada’ as given to the House of Commons.[123]

St. Leger’s expedition to the Mohawk river.

Before following the fortunes of Burgoyne and his army, it will be well to give an account of how St. Leger fared in the ‘diversion on the Mohawk river’. As in the days of the French and English wars, the twofold British advance from Canada followed the course of the waterways. While the main army moved up Lake Champlain to strike the Hudson at Fort Edward and thence move down to Albany, St. Leger’s smaller force was dispatched up the St. Lawrence to Oswego on Lake Ontario, in order by lake and stream to reach and overpower Fort Stanwix on the upper waters of the Mohawk river, and then to follow down that river to the Hudson, and reach the meeting-point with Burgoyne’s troops at Albany. At Albany both Burgoyne and St. Leger were to place themselves under Sir William Howe’s command. Oswego, the starting-point of St. Leger’s expedition, owing to its geographical position always played a prominent part in the border wars of Canada and the North American colonies. From this point Count Frontenac started when, in 1696, Oswego. he led his men to Onondaga, burnt the villages of the Iroquois, and laid waste their cornfields. The first fort at Oswego was built in 1727 by Governor Burnet of New York, who reported that he had built it with the consent of the Six Nations. It was built on the western bank of the mouth of the Onondaga or Oswego river, which here runs into Lake Ontario, and it was still the main fort in 1756, when Oswego was taken by Montcalm, although a subsidiary fort had also lately been built upon the opposite—the eastern side of the river. The effect produced both in England and in America by the French general’s brilliant feat of arms marked the importance which was attached to the position. The place was re-occupied by Prideaux and Haldimand with Sir William Johnson in 1759; and subsequently a new fort was constructed on the high ground which forms a promontory on the eastern side of the estuary. This fort, which after the War of Independence passed into American hands, was stormed and taken by Gordon Drummond in the war of 1812.

The Oswego river, or one branch of it, runs out of Lake Oneida: and into that lake, at the eastern end, runs the stream which was known as Wood Creek. From the Wood Creek there was a portage to the Mohawk river, and at the end of the portage stood Fort Stanwix, held by an American garrison, and barring St. Leger’s way to the Mohawk valley and the Hudson. All this was the country The Six Nations. of the Six Nation Indians, Six Nations instead of Five since the early part of the eighteenth century, when the Tuscaroras, driven up from the south by the white men, had been admitted to the Iroquois Confederacy. The Allies of the English. people of the Long House, as the Iroquois called themselves, had always been, in the main, allies of the English as against the French. From the time when the state of New York became a British possession, these Indians, who had had friendly trading relations with the Dutch, transferred their friendship to the English, and the chain of the covenant, though often strained, was never completely broken. When the War of American Independence began, and the English were divided, the Six Nations, though confused by the issue and by the competing appeals of the two parties, adhered as a whole to the Royalist cause. The majority of the Oneidas, and possibly the Tuscaroras, inclined to the American side, the Oneidas having come under the strong personal influence of a New England missionary, Samuel Kirkland, but the other members of the league were for the King. After the battle of Oriskany, where, among others, the powerful clan of Senecas suffered heavily, the enmity between these Indians and the colonists became more pronounced, and took the form of a blood feud, accompanied by all the horrors of militant savagery.

There were various reasons why the Iroquois should espouse the side of England against America. They looked to the Great King beyond the sea as their father and protector. The English colonists on their borders had shown little respect for their lands: and in 1774, in one of the inevitable conflicts between white men and red on the Virginian frontier, which was known as Cresap’s war, some of the Six Nation warriors had been involved, and the family of a friendly Cayuga chief had been murdered by the whites, bringing bitterness into the hearts of the western members of the Iroquois Confederacy. But, most of all, the Mohawks shaped the policy of the league, and they in turn were guided by the Johnson family, and by their famous fighting chief Thayandenegea, more commonly known by his English name of Joseph Brant.

The Mohawks.

The Mohawks had always been the leaders among the Six Nation Indians, though, by the time when war broke out between England and America, they were comparatively few in number, worn down by constant fighting, and by other causes.[124] Of all the Iroquois, they had been most consistently loyal to the English, and the most determined foes of the French. Their homes were at the eastern end of the Long House, in the valley of the Mohawk river, and they had therefore always been in close touch with the settlements at Albany, Schenectady, and along the course of the river to which they gave their name. They had mingled much and intermarried with their white neighbours; and for thirty-five years they had had living among them the Englishman, or rather the Irishman, who above all others won the confidence of the North American Indians, Sir William Johnson. They adopted Sir William Johnson. him and he adopted them, taking to wife in his later years, a Mohawk girl, Mary or Molly Brant. If Johnson in large measure lived down to the Indians, he also endeavoured to make the Indians live up to the white men’s level. He encouraged missionary effort, and promoted education, sending, among others, Joseph Brant, brother of Molly Brant, to a school for Indian boys at Lebanon in the state of Connecticut. Johnson represented the authority of the King, and he used his authority and his influence for the protection of the Indians against the inroads of the white men into their lands. The Mohawks, from their position, were more exposed than the other members of the confederacy to white land-jobbers, whose aggressiveness increased after Johnson’s death in 1774. Accordingly, while their traditional sympathies had always been with the English, when the civil war came, they had no hesitation in attaching themselves to the King’s cause. It was the cause of their protector; it was the cause of the Johnson family; it was the cause to which both interest and sentiment bade them to adhere. When Sir William Johnson died, he left as his political representative, his nephew and son-in-law, Colonel Guy Johnson: the heir of his estates was his own son, Sir John Johnson. Both the one and the other were pronounced Loyalists: they drew the Mohawks after them; and when, in the summer of 1775, after hearing of the fight at Bunker’s Hill, Guy Johnson left the Mohawk Valley for Oswego and crossed over to Canada, the majority of the Mohawks left their homes and followed him. In Canada, it was said, they received assurances from Carleton, which were confirmed by Haldimand, that they should not be allowed to suffer for their loyalty to the King.[125]

Joseph Brant.

The leader of these Mohawk friends of England was Joseph Brant, who was born, the son of a full-blooded Mohawk, in 1742. He was therefore a man of between thirty and forty years of age at the time of the American Revolution. In the period intervening between the British conquest of Canada and the battle of Waterloo, North America produced three very remarkable men of pure Indian descent. Pontiac was one, Joseph Brant was the second, the third was Tecumseh, who fought and fell in the war of 1812. Of these three, Joseph Brant alone sprang from the famous Iroquois stock. Pontiac was to a greater extent than the others a leader of the red men against the whites. So far as he had sympathies with white men, they were with the French as against the English. Brant, in the main, and Tecumseh played their parts when French rule had ceased to exist in North America; they were fast allies of the English as against the Americans or, to put it more accurately, of the English controlled from home as against the English installed in their own right in America. But all these three Indian chiefs had, in one form or another, the same main motive for action, to prevent what the red man had being taken from him by the white man. Of the three, Brant was by far the most civilized. He was an educated man and a Christian. He was, as has been seen, sent to school in Connecticut, he was a friend of the missionaries, he visited England twice, went to Court, had interviews and correspondence with Secretaries of State, made acquaintance with Boswell, was painted by Romney, and was presented by Fox with a silver snuff-box. He was poles asunder from the ordinary native inhabitant of the North American backwoods. He had known war from early boyhood, had borne arms under Sir William Johnson against the French, and had apparently fought against Pontiac. At the outbreak of the revolution he followed Guy Johnson to Canada, and seems to have taken part in opposing the American advance on Montreal. He paid his first visit to England towards the end of 1775, returned to New York in July 1776, and before the year closed made his way back up country to the lands belonging to or within striking distance of the Six Nations. Throughout the coming years of the war his name was great and terrible in the borderland, the main scene of his warfare being what was then known as the Tryon county of New York, the districts east of the Fort Stanwix treaty line, which were watered by the Mohawk river and its tributaries, and by the streams which flow south and south-west to form the Susquehanna. Once portrayed as the embodiment of ruthless ferocity, Brant was afterwards given a place in history as a hero. He was present at the Cherry Valley massacre, but in his fighting he seems to have been beyond question more humane than most Indian warriors, and at least as humane as some white men in these border wars, while his courage, his skill in bush-fighting, and his rapidity of movement were never surpassed. He was not a devil, and not an angel. Like other men, both coloured and white, he no doubt acted from mixed motives. His friendship for the English, and his patriotism for the native races, may well have been coupled with personal ambition. But he fought heart-whole and with no little chivalry for the cause which he espoused; and in war, as in peace, he was above and beyond the normal level of the North American Indian. After the war was over, he settled with his people in Canada, where he died in 1807, and the town of Brantford preserves his name.

St. Leger’s force too small for the task.

St. Leger’s expedition had been suggested to Germain by Burgoyne, while the latter was in England: indeed, some enterprise of the kind had been contemplated by Carleton. In view alike of past history and of the general plan of the summer’s campaign, it had much to recommend it; but the opposition which the English were likely to encounter, and actually did encounter, was under-rated, and the force was too small for the task imposed upon it. The total number has usually been given at 1,700 men, including Indians; but this seems to have been an over-estimate, at any rate when the fighting came. The white troops probably did not in any case exceed 650 in number. There were only 200 British regulars, half of whom were a detachment of the 8th, now the King’s (Liverpool Regiment), the same regiment which had furnished a company for the attack on the Cedars. There were a few German troops, who had just arrived in Canada, and some of whom did not reach Oswego until the expedition was over. The Germans, being wholly ignorant of the country, were quite unsuited for bush-fighting and bateau-work. There was a corps of New York Loyalists under the command of Sir John Johnson, and known as Johnson’s Royal Greens. Colonel John Butler led a company of the Rangers, and a small body of Canadians also took part in the expedition. The Indian contingent numbered over 800 men. Brant joined at Oswego at the head of 300 Indian warriors, mostly Mohawks, and the Senecas were much in evidence. The Indians, as a whole, were under the command of Colonel Daniel Claus, Johnson’s brother-in-law, who for many years was one of the officers charged by the British Government with the superintendence of Indian affairs. Thus St. Leger had with him most of the men whose names are best known on the British side in the annals of the border warfare in these troubled times. Guns were taken with the force, though of too small calibre to overpower a well-built fort; and, when the advance began towards the end of July, no precautions were neglected, a detachment was sent on a day’s march or so in front of the main column, and the latter was led and flanked on either side by Indians.

Fort Stanwix had at the time been renamed Fort Schuyler by the Americans, presumably in honour of General Schuyler, who commanded the American forces in the Northern Department. The older and better known name was subsequently restored. The fort stood on the Mohawk river, not actually on the bank of the river, but about 300 yards distant, guarding the end of the portage from Wood Creek. The length of the portage where the two rivers were nearest to each other, was rather over a mile.[126] The old blockhouse, Fort Williams, which had been the predecessor of the existing fort, and the ruins of which were standing at the time of St. Leger’s expedition, was destroyed by the English general, Daniel Webb, in 1756, as he retreated in hot haste on hearing of the capture of Oswego by Montcalm. Two years later General Stanwix built a new fort, which bore his own name. The town of Rome now covers the site on which Fort Stanwix stood. The fort was square in form. It had evidently been carefully designed by a trained soldier and strongly constructed, but during the years of peace, in this case as in those of the other border forts, the defences had fallen more or less into decay, and had not been fully repaired or rebuilt when the siege began. None the less, they proved to be too strong to be overpowered by St. Leger’s light guns. The garrison consisted of 750 men, 200 of whom came in, bringing stores and provisions, on the very day on which the forerunners of St. Leger’s force appeared on the scene. The commander of the garrison was Colonel Gansevoort, the second in command was Colonel Willett, Fort Stanwix. both thoroughly competent men.

St. Leger’s advanced guard, consisting of a detachment of 30 men of the 8th Regiment, under Lieutenant Bird, with 200 Indians under Brant, arrived before the fort on The siege of Fort Stanwix begins. the 2nd of August. They had been sent on, as is told in St. Leger’s dispatch, ‘to seize fast hold of the lower landing-place, and thereby cut off the enemy’s communication with the lower country.’[127] It had been hoped that they would be in time to intercept the reinforcements which were due at the fort, but they arrived too late for this purpose. They took up their position at the point named, below and due south of the fort, on the bank of the Mohawk river, athwart the road to Albany. On the following day, the 3rd of August, St. Leger came up himself, sent a proclamation into the fort, and began to invest it, fixing his main encampment about half a mile to the north-east of the fort, and higher up the river, which here runs in a curving course, so that a straight line drawn from the main British camp to the post at the lower landing-place would cross and recross the river, forming the base of a semi-circle. The Americans had blocked up Wood Creek with fallen timber, and St. Leger reported that it took nine days and the work of 110 men to clear away the obstructions, while two days were spent in making several miles of track through the woods in order in the meantime to bring up stores and guns. The siege, therefore, began long before the necessary preparations had been made, and long before the besieging force had been concentrated and duly entrenched. On the evening of the 5th of August there were not 250 of the white troops in camp, and at this juncture St. Leger was threatened by a strong body of Americans who had gathered for the relief of the fort.

The fight at Oriskany.

When news came to the New York settlements of the British advance, the militia of Tryon county were called out by their commander, General Nicholas Herkimer. The rendezvous was Fort Dayton, at the German Flatts, lower down the Mohawk valley than Fort Stanwix. The German Flatts were so named after settlers from the Palatinate, who had come out early in the eighteenth century, and from this stock Herkimer was himself descended. On the 4th of August he moved forward, the number of his force being usually given at from 800 to 1,000 men. St. Leger reported that they were 800 strong, and assuming that the total was between 700 and 800, the relief force and the garrison together equalled, if they did not outnumber, the whole of St. Leger’s army, the majority of which moreover consisted, as has been seen, of Indians. On the 5th Herkimer encamped near a place called Oriskany, about eight[128] miles short of Fort Stanwix, where a stream called the Oriskany Creek flowed into the Mohawk river. From this point he sent on messengers to the fort to secure the co-operation of the garrison. Meanwhile intelligence had reached St. Leger, sent it was said by Molly Brant, of the coming relief force, and at five o’clock on the evening of the 5th he dispatched 80 white troops, being all that he could spare, with 400 Indians, to intercept the advancing Americans before they came into touch with the fort, and ambush them among the woods. Sir John[129] Johnson was placed in command of the detachment, and with him were Butler and Joseph Brant. It was work for which Brant was eminently suited, and he seems to have been the leading spirit in planning the ambuscade. Very early on the morning of the 6th of August, urged on by his impatient followers, and against his own better judgement, Herkimer, without waiting for reinforcements or for a sign from the beleaguered fort, continued his advance. He reached a point between two and three miles beyond Oriskany, and within six miles of the fort, where the path descended into a semi-circular ravine, with swampy ground at the bottom and high wooded ground at the sides. Here the Americans were caught in a trap, which would have been more complete had not the Indians begun fighting before the plan of ambush had been fully developed. The American rearguard, which had not yet entered the ravine, broke and fled: the main body were surrounded, Johnson barring their way in front, Brant falling on their rear, while others of the Indians and Butler’s rangers fought on the flanks. There followed a confused fight among the trees, gradually becoming a hand to hand struggle, with a brief interlude caused by a heavy storm of rain. Herkimer was mortally wounded, many, if not most, of the other leading American officers were killed; while, on the British side, the Indians suffered heavy losses. In the end the remnant of the American force seem to have beaten off or tired out their assailants, and made good their retreat, but according to St. Leger’s report only 200 of them escaped. Butler estimated the total American casualties in killed, wounded, and prisoners, at 500, and, according to American accounts, the total was about 400. The white casualties on the British side were very small, but the casualties among the Indians seem to have numbered from 60 to 100.

While the engagement was going on, a sortie was made from the fort, and it was probably news of this movement, coupled with the Indian losses, which put an end to the fight at Oriskany. Bird, the commander of the post at the lower landing-place, had been misled by a rumour that Johnson was hard pressed, and led out his men to support him, leaving the post undefended. Meanwhile, Willett at the head of 250 men marched out of the fort, apparently in ignorance of the ambuscade and designing to join hands with Herkimer’s force. Willett found the post practically deserted, mastered it, and carried off its contents, eluding an attempt which St. Leger made to cut him off on his return to the fort.[130] This ended the day’s work. Herkimer’s force had been blotted out, but it must have become increasingly evident that St. Leger’s men and resources were hopelessly inadequate for the task which had been set him, to force his way to Albany.

St. Leger fails to take Fort Stanwix and retreats to Oswego.

After the battle of Oriskany, St. Leger summoned the fort to surrender, but without effect. He continued the siege, but made little or no impression upon the defences. On the night of the 10th of August Willett made his way out of the fort, reached Fort Dayton, and went on to Albany where he met Benedict Arnold who had been charged with the duty of relieving Fort Stanwix. Arnold gathered troops for the purpose and in the meantime, with his usual cleverness, contrived to send on rumours which caused alarm in the British camp. A thousand men were reported to be coming, then 2,000, then 3,000, and Arnold’s own name may well have been a potent source of apprehension. The Indians, already depressed by their losses at Oriskany, and by the prolonging of the siege, became more and more out of hand, deserting, marauding, and spreading exaggerated tales; and at length, on the 22nd or 23rd of August, St. Leger beat a hasty retreat by night, leaving behind him most of his stores and guns, and returned to Oswego, whence he went back to Montreal and on to Lake Champlain in the wake of Burgoyne’s army. Joseph Brant took a less circuitous route. When St. Leger retreated from Fort Stanwix, Brant made one of his marvellous flying marches down the Mohawk Valley: and, after passing for over a hundred miles through the heart of the enemy’s country, which was also his own, in two or three days’ time joined Burgoyne’s force on the banks of the Hudson river.

Misconduct of the Indians.

When he returned to Oswego, St. Leger, on the 27th of August, wrote a dispatch to Burgoyne, giving details of his expedition, but not punctuating his failure. The failure was due to insufficiency of numbers and artillery in the first place, and in the second, beyond question, to the misconduct of his Indian allies. The employment of Bad effects of employing them in the war. Indians in this war with British colonists may have been inevitable, but it was certainly politically inexpedient, notwithstanding the fact that the colonists themselves were ready to avail themselves of similar aid. Indians had been engaged on the English side in the wars with the French, but sparingly and under strict supervision. Carleton, as long as he directed operations in the War of Independence, had been equally careful in using these savage tools.[131] In St. Leger’s expedition the disadvantages of enlisting Indian fighting men came fully to light. They became, St. Leger wrote to Burgoyne, ‘more formidable than the enemy we had to expect.’ Disappointed of looting the enemy, they plundered their friends and endangered, if they did not in some cases take, their lives. Unstable as friends, ferocious as foes, they were not fit helpmates for Englishmen in fighting Englishmen, even their value as scouts was diminished by their incurable habit of believing and exaggerating any report. As in the war with the French in Canada, the English gained ground by the scrupulous care which they took to prevent outrages on the part of the savages who accompanied their armies, so in the later war with their own countrymen, they distinctly lost ground through calling out the coloured men of America against colonists of British birth.

Burgoyne’s address to the Indians.

Burgoyne’s instructions from Lord George Germain included the employment of Indians under due precautions; and he formally addressed his Indian followers in his camp at the river Bouquet, on the western side of Lake Champlain, on the 21st of June, 1777. ‘The collective voices and hands of the Indian tribes over this vast continent,’ were, he told them, with a few exceptions, ‘on the side of justice, of law, and the King.’ He bade them ‘go forth in might of your valour and your cause: strike at the common enemies of Great Britain and America’. On the other hand, he sternly forbade bloodshed except in battle, and enjoined that ‘aged men, women, children, and prisoners must be held sacred from the knife or hatchet, even in the time of actual conflict’. Compensation would be given for the prisoners taken, but the Indians would be called to account for scalps. His listeners replied, through an old chief of the Iroquois—‘We have been tried and tempted by the Bostonians, but we have loved our father, and our hatchets have been sharpened upon our affections.’ They promised with one voice obedience to the general’s commands.

Burgoyne.

At this date, in the year 1777, Burgoyne was fifty-five years of age, having been born in 1722, two years before Carleton was born. He was clearly a man of ability, and unusually versatile. He was also, as times went, an honourable man. In his relations to Carleton, at any rate, he seems to have been open to no reproach. But he tried too many things to be first-rate in anything; he was not adequate to a great crisis and to heavy responsibility: and because he was not of the first class, and also because he had much dramatic instinct, he seems to have had more eye for present effect than for the root of matters. He was educated at Westminster School, and, when he died in 1792, he was buried in the northern cloister of Westminster Abbey. He was a soldier, a politician, a dramatist, and a man of society. He entered the army in 1740, again two years before Carleton’s military service began. He became so involved in debt that he had to sell his commission. He rejoined the army in 1756, and in 1762 he distinguished himself in Portugal, where the English supported the Portuguese against Spain and France. A few years later, however, in 1769, Junius referred to him as ‘not very conspicuous in his profession’.[132] He went into the House of Commons in 1761 as member for Midhurst. In 1768, through the influence of his father-in-law, Lord Derby, he became member for Preston, and, in connexion with his election, was attacked by Junius for corruption and also for his gambling propensities. As a politician he was, before he went to America, more or less of a free-lance. He spoke on foreign and Indian questions, and in 1773 made a speech in the House of Commons, attacking Clive. After the catastrophe at Saratoga, and his return to England, he threw in his lot with the Whigs, having been befriended by Fox and his followers; he became Commander-in-Chief in Ireland under Rockingham; and in 1787 he managed the impeachment of Warren Hastings. Before the American war broke out, he produced in 1774 a play called The Maid of the Oaks, of which Horace Walpole wrote: ‘There is a new puppet show at Drury Lane as fine as scenes can make it, called The Maid of the Oaks, and as dull as the author could not help making it.’[133] At a later date, however, Walpole had to confess that ‘General Burgoyne has written the best modern comedy’.[134] This was The Heiress, which was brought out in the beginning of 1786, and achieved a great success. Walpole had no love for Burgoyne, at any rate at the time when the latter served in America. ‘You ask the history of Burgoyne the pompous,’ he wrote in October, 1777,[135] the month in which the surrender at Saratoga took place; and after describing him as ‘a fortunate gamester’, he continued, ‘I have heard him speak in Parliament, just as he writes: for all his speeches were written and laboured, and yet neither in them nor in his conversation did he ever impress me with an idea of his having parts.’ Burgoyne’s affectation and mannerism may have been due to the fact that he was essentially a man of society, as society was then. He had eloped in early life with Lord Derby’s daughter, and, like Charles Fox, was a confirmed gambler. The world of London was his world, and the standard by which he measured things was not the standard of all time. When he went out in 1777 to command the expedition from Canada, he was on the flowing tide of fortune, and the tone of his proclamations gave Walpole cause for sarcastic comment. ‘Have you read General Burgoyne’s rhodomontade, in which he almost promises to cross America in a hop, step, and a jump?’[136] ‘Burgoyne has sent over a manifesto that if he was to over-run ten provinces would appear too pompous.’[136] ‘I heard to-day at Richmond that Julius Caesar Burgonius’s Commentaries are to be published in an Extraordinary Gazette of three-and-twenty pages in folio to-morrow—a counterpart to the Iliad in a nutshell.’[136] All these three passages were written in August, 1777, while Burgoyne’s expedition was proceeding. The writer of them did not like Burgoyne, and did not like the war in which Burgoyne was engaged; but, though Burgoyne lent himself to criticism and lacked the qualities which the time and place demanded, his story is by no means the story either of a bad soldier or of a bad man; it is rather the story of a second-rate man set with inadequate means to solve a problem of first-rate importance.

Burgoyne’s advance against Ticonderoga.

Having completed his preparations, Burgoyne reached Crown Point on the 26th of June, preparatory to attacking Ticonderoga. The full control of the operations had passed into his own hands, for, by Germain’s instructions, Carleton’s authority was limited by the boundary line of Canada, and that line was drawn far north of Crown Point and Ticonderoga, cutting the outlet of Lake Champlain near the point of land named Point au Fer. The total force amounted to rather over 7,000 men, nearly half of whom were Germans under the command of Baron Riedesel. The advance was made on both sides of the lake, the Germans being on the eastern shore, the British on the western—the side on which were Crown Point and Ticonderoga. The Americans, too, held positions on The American position at Ticonderoga. both sides of the lake, for, over against the peninsula on which Ticonderoga stood, there jutted out another point of land, described in Burgoyne’s dispatch as ‘high and circular’, but in reality rather oblong in form, rising well above the level of the lake and skirted in part on the land side by a rivulet. It was called Mount Independence, and was strongly held and fortified. The lake, here narrowed to a river, is about a quarter of a mile across, and between Ticonderoga and Mount Independence a bridge had been constructed, consisting of sunken timber piers connected by floating timber, the whole being guarded in front by a heavy boom of wood strengthened by iron rivets and chains.

click here for larger image.

MAP TO ILLUSTRATE BURGOYNE’S CAMPAIGN

Reduced from the Map published in ‘A State of the Expedition from Canada as laid before the House of Commons by Lieutenant-General Burgoyne, London, 1780’

London, published as the Act directs, Feb. 1st 1780, by Wm. Faden, Charing Cross

To face p. 161

The Indian name Ticonderoga signified the confluence of three waters. At this point the long narrow southern arm of Lake Champlain, coming in from the south-east, meets the stream which carries out the waters of Lake George into the third water, the main lake Champlain. The outlet of Lake George describes a complete semi-circle, and runs into Lake Champlain due west and east. The direct route therefore from Lake Champlain to Lake George runs well to the west of and inside the peninsula of Ticonderoga, cutting the semi-circular stream without touching the peninsula. In this consisted the weakness of the American position: unless the works were extended further afield than they had men to hold them, part of the attacking force could pass them by and invest Ticonderoga on the southern as well as on the northern side, blocking retreat by the line of Lake George. So it happened when Burgoyne’s army came on the scene.

Burgoyne’s operations against Ticonderoga.

After three days’ stay at Crown Point to bring up all his forces, the general on the 30th of June moved forward his leading corps on either side of the lake, and on the next day the whole army followed. On the 2nd of July the Americans were reported to have abandoned the post which guarded the bridge over the river from Lake George, to the west of Ticonderoga, where saw-mills stood and which was the starting-point of the ‘carrying place’ from Lake Champlain to Lake George. They abandoned it, in order to concentrate their strength against the English advance on the north-west. Burgoyne immediately moved forward his troops and, driving the enemy back, on the night of the 2nd occupied the high ground on the west which commanded the communications with Lake George, and thereby cut off the possibility of retreat in that direction. On the 3rd and 4th the attacking forces drew nearer to the two beleaguered forts, in spite of cannonade; and on the night of the 4th, a party of light infantry occupied a height called Sugar Hill, which stood on the southern bank of the outlet from Lake George, in the angle between that stream and the southern arm of Lake Champlain, overlooking and commanding both Ticonderoga and Mount Independence at an estimated distance of about 1,400 and 1,500 yards respectively. On the 5th guns were being brought up to the hill, but, The Americans evacuate their position, when the morning of the 6th came, it was found that the American general, St. Clair, had carried his troops across by the bridge from Ticonderoga, and, having evacuated both that post and Mount Independence, was retreating by land and water.

and are followed up by the English.

By land and water Burgoyne’s men followed on the same day, the bridge and boom being broken for the gunboats to pass through. At Skenesborough, where the navigation of Lake Champlain ends, the enemy’s vessels were taken or destroyed by the British squadron, and the detachment of Americans who held the fort set fire to it and retreated to Fort Anne. Meanwhile, diverging to the east in the direction of Castleton on the road to Connecticut, General Fraser, commanding the van of the troops who pursued by land, followed hard throughout the 6th upon the American rearguard; Riedesel came up behind him with supports; but, by agreement between the two commanders, Fraser, when night fell, bivouacked three miles in front of his colleague. Early on the 7th he attacked the Americans, who outnumbered his own troops, near a place named Huberton, and was on the point of being beaten back when the arrival of Riedesel converted a repulse into a victory. The colonists were broken, their leader, Colonel Francis, and some 200 of his men were killed, about the same number were taken prisoners, and a large number of wounded were supposed to have lost their lives in the woods. Having completed the rout, on the 8th and 9th Riedesel and Fraser came into touch with the main army at Skenesborough.

Fight near Fort Anne.

At Skenesborough there was a portage from Lake Champlain to Wood Creek,[137] a stream which flows into the lake from the south. While boats were being dragged across from the lake to the river with a view to further advance, the 9th Regiment was sent on by land to Fort Anne, twelve miles distant in a due southerly direction. By the evening of the 7th the English drew near to the fort, and on the following day they were attacked and hard pressed by a stronger body of Americans. They took up a position on a hill, and held their ground resolutely, until the whoop of Indians told that reinforcements were coming up: the Americans then gave way, and, setting fire to Fort Anne, fell back to Fort Edward. The English in their turn returned to Skenesborough, in the neighbourhood of which, on the 9th and 10th of July, the whole army, excluding the troops required to garrison Ticonderoga, was concentrated, the line extending eastward from the head of Lake Champlain towards Castleton.

Result of the operations.

‘General Burgoyne has taken Ticonderoga, and given a new complexion to the aspect of affairs, which was very wan indeed,’ wrote Horace Walpole, when the news reached England.[138] So far the operations had been triumphantly successful. Hardly an attempt had been made by the Americans to hold their ground at Ticonderoga and Mount Independence, although months had been spent in strengthening the positions, and the number of the defenders was variously estimated at from 3,000 to 5,000 men. Great quantities of stores, of boats, of guns had fallen into British hands: the enemy’s loss on the retreat had been heavy, and the rapidity with which the retreat had been followed up had caused widespread alarm. For the moment there seemed nothing to check the tide of British victory, but time, place, and insufficiency of numbers gradually told against Burgoyne’s enterprise. He, too, had suffered some losses, though small when compared with those of the Americans; and his army, already inadequate in numbers for the expedition, was further weakened by the necessity of garrisoning Ticonderoga with some 900 men. He applied to Carleton to supply the requisite number of soldiers for the garrison from the troops who, in accordance with the instructions from home, were retained for the defence of Canada, but Carleton felt himself bound to refuse the request. It was Germain who had given the orders, and yet the same man, writing from England in the following September, on receipt of Burgoyne’s account of the capture of Ticonderoga, stated that he presumed that the post would be garrisoned from Canada.[139]

The two routes to the Hudson.

Burgoyne’s objective was the Hudson river and Albany. Fort Edward stood on the left or eastern bank of the Hudson, a little below the point where that river curves to the south, to flow direct to the Atlantic. It was twenty-six miles distant from Skenesborough, and due south of that place. The first twelve miles of the route from Skenesborough lay along Wood Creek, until Fort Anne was reached, and from Fort Anne to Fort Edward was an interval of fourteen miles. Three miles short of Fort Edward the road joined the road to Fort Edward from Fort George, previously known as Fort William Henry, at the head of Lake George, which was at much the same distance from Fort Edward as Fort Anne, viz., fourteen to sixteen miles. The more obvious route of advance towards the Hudson from Ticonderoga, and the one originally contemplated, was along Lake George, and Burgoyne’s line of advance. Burgoyne was criticized for not taking that line—without good reason, because the American retreat had already determined the choice of routes. Having immediately followed the enemy up as far as Skenesborough, Burgoyne, as he justly pointed out, would have been unwise to make a retrograde movement in order to adopt the alternative line of advance by Lake George. Moreover, while the troops were moving forward from Skenesborough viâ Wood Creek and Fort Anne, supplies were being forwarded along Lake George in order to meet him when he reached Fort Edward. But there was a further reason, which in His object was to threaten the New England States. Burgoyne’s mind made for the more easterly of the two routes. His own scheme for the campaign had inclined to carrying war to the east into Connecticut and the New England states, in preference to a direct advance to the Hudson and Albany; and, though his instructions prevented his carrying out the plan which he preferred, he might yet, as he advanced, threaten New England, and at the same time gather supplies from a more promising country than would be found in the Adirondack region on the west of Lake George. Thus in a private letter to Germain, which accompanied his dispatch from Skenesborough, detailing the success of his recent operations, he wrote: ‘I a little lament that my orders do not give me the latitude I ventured to propose in my original project for the campaign, to make a real effort instead of a feint upon New England. As things have turned out, were I at liberty to march in force immediately by my left, instead of by my right, I should have little doubt of subduing before winter the provinces where the rebellion originated.’ It must be remembered that at this time British troops were in occupation of Rhode Island, and that Sir William Howe had originally planned a campaign in New England in 1777, only giving up the scheme when he found that sufficient reinforcements from Europe would not be forthcoming.

It was with the object of keeping the New England States in fear of invasion, or, as he himself phrased it, ‘of giving jealousy to Connecticut, and keeping in check the whole country called the Hampshire Grants,’[140] that Burgoyne, while encamped at Skenesborough, detached Riedesel to occupy Castleton about fourteen miles to Riedesel sent to Castleton. the east. Castleton was an important point, because through it ran a road which connected Skenesborough by land with the shore of Lake Champlain opposite Ticonderoga and Crown Point. Riedesel was absent for about twelve days, and in the meantime preparations were pressed forward for a further advance of the main army, the road to Fort Anne and the parallel waterway of Wood Creek being cleared of obstructions. Simultaneous preparations were made at Ticonderoga for forwarding supplies by Lake George. On the 23rd of July the advanced guard moved forward to Fort Anne: on the 25th the whole army had reached that point; on the 29th, the van arrived at Fort Edward, which the Americans had already evacuated, and on the 30th Burgoyne arrived at the same place. A large convoy of provisions sent by Lake George reached the head of that lake by the 29th, Fort George like Fort Edward having been abandoned The army arrives at Fort Edward on the Hudson river. by the enemy, who had carried off their stores. Thus the end of July found Burgoyne on the Hudson, well on his way to Albany; the main difficulties of the expedition seemed to be past; but as a matter of fact the most trying time was yet to come. His communications were insecure, for he could not spare men to guard them. His transport was inadequate, and so were his supplies. Delay in bringing up stores meant time to the Americans to recover their spirits and gather in his front: he had no tidings from Howe, and no sure knowledge of St. Leger’s progress. He only knew that at all hazards he was expected to make his way to Albany.

The beginning of misfortunes. Murder of Jane McCrae by the Indians.

While he halted at Fort Edward, two untoward incidents took place. The first was a brutal murder by Indians of a young white woman named Jane McCrae, who had remained behind at or near Fort Edward, when the Congress troops fell back before Burgoyne’s advance. The story went that she was engaged and about to be married to an officer in Burgoyne’s army. Falling into the hands of the Indians, she was murdered with purposeless, savage fury, and the tale of the outrage, embellished with horrors, was spread far and wide through the land. Colonists hitherto inclined to the loyal cause, felt that their homes and womenkind would not be safe, if they awaited the coming of the English and their savage allies: the opponents of England found additional justification for the stand which they had taken up; the sympathizers with the American cause in England were given a new text for denouncing the war; and Burgoyne lost Indian support by taking steps to prevent a recurrence of such enormities.

The second misfortune which happened—a most grave misfortune—was an unsuccessful expedition in the direction of Bennington. Bennington is in the state of Vermont, The expedition to Bennington. to the south-east of Fort Edward, lying about twenty-four miles due east of the stretch of the Hudson river, between Saratoga on the north and the confluence of the Mohawk on the south, which was known as Stillwater. It is in the forks of the two streams which combine to form the Hoosick river, a tributary of the Hudson, flowing Objects aimed at by the expedition. into the main river from the east. Burgoyne’s information was to the effect, quoting his own words, that it was ‘the great deposit of corn, flour, and store cattle’, intended for the use of the Congress troops, which he designed to secure for his own army in view of the difficulty and delay experienced in bringing up supplies from Canada. The German general, Riedesel, seems to have originally suggested such an expedition, from knowledge gained while he was stationed at Castleton. He was anxious to obtain horses to mount his men and to carry the baggage; there was evidence of a considerable Loyalist element in the population, and little reason to apprehend strong opposition from the colonial militia. Above all Burgoyne had constantly in his mind the object of threatening the New England states: and, having by this time received intelligence that St. Leger was before Fort Stanwix, he wished to make a diversion to the east, in order to prevent reinforcements being sent up the Mohawk river to the relief of that post. The instructions which he issued for the expedition show that he contemplated that the detached force, if things went well, would penetrate far beyond Bennington, up to the Connecticut river, and possibly not rejoin the main army until the latter had reached Albany.

Strength and composition of the force.

About 500 men, according to his dispatch, were detailed for the enterprise, but the number appears to have been larger.[141] It was a mixed body. There was a strong contingent of Germans, chiefly dismounted dragoons, ill suited for a cross-country march, and there were also picked marksmen from the British regiments, Canadians, provincials, and about 100 Indians. Out of compliment to Riedesel, the command was given to Colonel Baum, Colonel Baum in command. one of his officers, and in selecting German troops for the expedition, Burgoyne marked his appreciation of the good service which those regiments had rendered in following up the retreat of the Americans from Ticonderoga. The starting-point was the Batten Kill stream, running into the Hudson on its eastern side, ten miles lower down than Fort Edward. From this point to Bennington, by the route which Baum was finally instructed to take, was a distance of under thirty miles. The advance guard of Burgoyne’s army had already been moved down the Hudson to the Batten Kill, and, on the 14th of August, after Baum had started, they were thrown across the main river a little higher up under the command of General Fraser, and moved forward on the western bank as far as Saratoga, with the object of a further advance to Stillwater in the event of Baum’s expedition proving successful. The temporary bridge of rafts, however, by which they had crossed, being carried away, the troops were recalled and passed back in boats to the eastern side.

Baum started from the Batten Kill early on the morning of the 13th of August, reached a place called Cambridge in the afternoon of that day, and on the following day arrived at Sancoick Mill near the confluence of the two branches of the Hoosick river, about four miles short of Bennington. There he found that the enemy in front of him were more numerous than had been anticipated, and he sent back to Burgoyne for reinforcements. Colonel Reinforcements sent under Colonel Breyman. Breyman, another German officer, was dispatched to his support with nearly 700 men: he started early on the morning of the 15th, but, owing to the difficulties of the route, and want of horses and forage, he made slow way, and was far short of Baum when evening came. On the 16th a number of men, as from the country side, Baum’s force surprised and cut up. came to where Baum was encamped: they were taken to be friends and Loyalists, and made their way within his lines. On a sudden, while beginning to move forward,[142] he found himself attacked on all sides: the component parts of his little force were separated from each other, and only the German soldiers held together, fighting bravely, as long as they had powder left, and then vainly endeavouring to cut their way out with their swords. The end was inevitable. The Indians dispersed in the woods: some of the British contingent with their commander, Captain Frazer, escaped, and so did a good many of the Canadians and provincials: but Baum was mortally Baum mortally wounded. wounded, and nearly all of his Brunswickers were killed or captured. On the afternoon of the same day, ignorant of what had happened, Breyman’s force was coming Breyman attacked and forced to retreat with heavy loss. up and was in turn suddenly attacked. Again the men fought hard until their ammunition gave out, and eventually the main body made good their retreat, though they suffered heavy losses and had to leave their guns behind. John Stark was the leader of the Americans in these hard fought engagements.

Consequences of the disaster.

The immediate result of the fighting was the loss to the English of over 500 men and four guns,[143] and the total failure of the expedition. The ultimate effect was much more serious. Burgoyne’s small army was still further reduced: his hope of securing supplies and horses from the surrounding country was entirely gone; his expectation of Loyalist support, upon which the English had counted, was shown to be groundless; the chance of facilitating the main operations by a successful diversion was lost; the enemy were put in good heart; and such fickle allies as the Indians were further alienated. The enterprise was subsequently made the subject of much hostile criticism, and blame was variously assigned. Burgoyne considered that the failure was due to the fact that Baum had not taken up a position in the open in accordance with instructions, to the chance co-operation of bodies of the enemy who happened to be near, and to undue slowness on Breyman’s part. The truth seems to have been that the expedition was not badly conceived, but imperfect knowledge of the country and faulty intelligence as to the enemy’s strength and movements in this, as in many similar cases, procured disaster.[144]

Burgoyne’s views on the situation.

Burgoyne’s anxiety as to the future was expressed in a private letter which he wrote to Germain on the 20th of August, accompanying the public dispatch of the same date in which he reported the failure of the Bennington expedition. He wrote that, in spite of St. Leger’s victory, Fort Stanwix was holding out obstinately, that no operation had been taken in his favour, and that the American forces under Gates in his front had been strengthened and now outnumbered his own. Only one letter had reached him from Sir William Howe. That letter was written from New York on the 17th of July, and in it Howe stated that he had heard of Burgoyne’s victory at Ticonderoga, adding ‘My intention is for Pennsylvania, where I expect to meet Washington, but if he goes to the northward contrary to my expectations and you can keep him at bay, be assured I shall soon be after him to relieve you’. As has been already stated, no instructions from Germain had reached Howe on the subject of Burgoyne and his army, though he had received from Carleton a copy of Germain’s dispatch of March 26th, 1777, in which the programme of the expedition from Canada had been detailed. Situated as Burgoyne was, knowing that further advance would entail cutting of his communications with Ticonderoga, it is no wonder that in his letter to Germain he wrote that, had he latitude in his orders, he would have thought it his duty to remain where he was encamped opposite Saratoga, or further back at Fort Edward where his communications would be secure, until events in other quarters facilitated a forward movement. But his instructions were ‘to force a junction with Sir William Howe’, or at any rate to make his way to Albany; and, as he sadly wrote, when the catastrophe was over and he was a prisoner, ‘The expedition I commanded was evidently meant at first to be hazarded. Circumstances might require it should be devoted.’ A very strong man in his position would have taken the responsibility of temporary retreat, but, good soldier as he was, he was not a commanding character. He knew the power which Germain possessed of making and unmaking men, he had before his eyes the harsh treatment of Carleton, because Carleton had exercised wise discretion in falling back from Crown Point in the preceding autumn. His instructions freed him from responsibility if he went forward, the blame would be his alone if he fell back. The evil influence of Germain blighted loyal commanders and soldiers in America. George the Third’s system was working itself out, and the British Empire was being sacrificed to the ‘King’s Friends’.

The first necessity was to bring up supplies from Lake George for the further advance, enough to last for twenty-five to thirty days, inasmuch as crossing the Hudson and moving south meant the loss of communication with Canada. This Burgoyne anticipated, and his apprehensions proved true. Shortly after he crossed the Burgoyne’s communications attacked by the colonists. Hudson and began his southward march, a force of colonists, assembling at Skenesborough, on the 18th of September attacked the British garrisons at Ticonderoga and Mount Independence. They were repulsed after four or five days’ fighting, but not until they had taken outposts at the saw-mills, Mount Hope, and Sugar Hill, captured three companies of British soldiers, and taken or destroyed a large amount of stores and a number of boats. Retreating up Lake George, they attacked a detachment on an island in the lake named Diamond Island and, though they were again beaten off, their operations served the purpose of making Burgoyne’s communications utterly insecure.[145]

From the 16th of August to the 13th of September, the British army remained on the eastern bank of the Hudson over against Saratoga. The reinforcements which joined them apparently amounted to only 300 men. News seems to have reached the army, before they moved onward, that St. Leger was retreating from Fort Stanwix, so that hope of co-operation in the direction of the Mohawk river was at an end; on the other hand there was a possibility that St. Leger’s men, brought down the St. Lawrence and up Lake Champlain and Lake George, might be able to join the main force. It is not clear what was the exact number of men who crossed the Hudson under Burgoyne’s command. According to the evidence given at the subsequent Parliamentary inquiry, the regulars, British and German, were rather short of 5,000 men, but, if the Canadians and provincials were included, the total fighting force must have reached 6,000. From Fort Edward to Albany is a distance of over forty miles and to the confluence of the Mohawk river about thirty-four; but Burgoyne was already encamped ten miles south of Fort Edward and the Americans, who had previously fallen back to what was The Americans under Gates take up a position at Bemus’ Heights. known as the Half Moon at the mouth of the Mohawk river, after the British defeat at Sancoick Mills and the relief of Fort Stanwix, moved up the Hudson a little way above Stillwater, and took up a strong position on high ground called Bemus’ Heights, where they were within ten miles’ distance of the point where Burgoyne crossed the river.

General Philip Schuyler had been in command of the Congress troops on the side of Canada. He was a man of the highest character, and apparently a perfectly competent soldier, whose Fabian tactics were beginning to achieve success when he was superseded. After the abandonment of Ticonderoga and the rout which followed, the tide of public opinion set against him—without any adequate reason. The New Englanders were jealous of a general from New York state; and, under a resolution of Congress, Schuyler was in the middle of August replaced by Horatio Gates, a godson of Horace Walpole, who, like Richard Montgomery, had been born in the United Kingdom and had served in the British army, having been badly wounded in Braddock’s disastrous expedition. Gates, who in the previous year had commanded the garrison at Ticonderoga, was a self-seeking, intriguing man. His subsequent disloyalty to Washington, and his defeat at Camden, clouded what reputation he gained through receiving Burgoyne’s surrender. When he took over the command of the troops opposing Burgoyne, his task was comparatively easy. He had good men with him, among others Arnold, who had returned from the march to relieve Fort Stanwix and between whom and Gates there was no love lost, he had also Daniel Morgan and Lincoln; while the army under their command had received an accession to its numbers in consequence of Howe having moved off from New York to Philadelphia. The Americans now largely outnumbered Burgoyne’s force, and behind them, lower down the Hudson, the Highlands were held against a possible movement on the part of Clinton, who commanded the troops left behind at New York when Howe sailed for Chesapeake Bay.

Burgoyne crosses the Hudson and advances South.

About six miles below Fort Edward, between that fort and the Batten Kill stream, at a place named Fort Miller, there were rapids in the Hudson, where a portage was necessary for the boats descending the river; below it navigation was unimpeded, and the stores and baggage of the army could be carried by water. A bridge of boats was thrown over the river about half a mile above the Batten Kill, and by this bridge the whole army crossed the Hudson on the 13th and 14th of September from the eastern to the western shore. Burgoyne was subsequently criticized for crossing, but the criticism had no sound foundation. If he was to reach Albany at all, he must cross the river at some point or other, and the further he went down stream the more difficult the crossing was likely to be. Moreover the high road ran along the western bank, while on the opposite shore swamp and mountain would have made it impossible at certain points to march close to the river bank, and the army would therefore have been separated from the boats. On the western side of the Hudson the country, through which the troops advanced, was wooded and broken, the road and bridges over the intervening creeks had been cut up by the enemy, and progress was slow; but by the 17th less than four miles intervened between the two armies. On the 18th there was skirmishing, while the British force were repairing bridges and cutting a way through the bush: and on the 19th a general action took place.

Action of September 19.

The British army advanced in three divisions. On the right under General Fraser were the 24th Regiment, the light infantry and the grenadiers, accompanied by Indian and Canadian scouts and supported by some German troops under Colonel Breyman. The centre column, entirely composed of British regiments, was under Burgoyne’s immediate command. The left wing was in charge of Riedesel, and included the main body of the German soldiers with most of the artillery. The left marched along the high road on the lowland following the course of the river, and one British regiment, the 47th, on the bank of the river, guarded the boats which carried the stores. There was a deep ravine between the armies, and Fraser’s division made a wide circuit to the right in order to keep on the high ground. The movement was successfully carried out, and Fraser established himself in a strong position while the centre column moved forward, crossed the ravine, formed on the other side, and bearing to the right became engaged with the enemy. The centre of the battle was a clearing in the woods, where there was a homestead known as Freeman’s farm; from this farm the Americans had molested Burgoyne’s advance, and being dislodged by artillery fell back into the cover behind. Their intention had been to turn the British right, but, finding that Fraser was too strongly posted, they counter-marched and placed their full force in front of the centre column. Here the battle was fought, and for four hours, from three o’clock in the afternoon till seven, the brunt of the fighting fell upon three British regiments, the 20th, the 21st and the 62nd, a fourth regiment, the 9th, being held in reserve. Some help came from Fraser’s men, but the safety of the army depended upon his holding his ground on the right, so that he could not bring up his whole division in support of the centre. Constantly reinforced and covered by the woods, the Americans, led by Arnold, who commanded the left wing of their army, pressed hard upon the fighting regiments, until, late in the day, Riedesel, having pushed forward his troops along the line of the river, wheeled them sharp to the right and struck in on the flank. This decided the battle, and, as darkness fell, the forces of the Congress drew off, leaving Burgoyne’s army in possession of the field.

Result of the fight—Burgoyne’s losses.

The fight was won, but, as Burgoyne wrote in his subsequent dispatch, ‘it was soon found that no fruits, honour excepted, were attained by the preceding victory.’ He had lost about 500 men, the 62nd Regiment having especially suffered, and though the losses of the Americans had possibly been heavier, reinforcements were available for them and their position grew stronger and stronger. On the day after the battle the English moved forward slightly until they were almost within cannon shot of their enemies, at a distance of about half a mile, and in turn threw up entrenchments. On the 21st Burgoyne received a message from Clinton, dated the 12th, to the Message from Clinton. effect that in about ten days’ time he intended to move up the Hudson and attack the American forts in the Highlands. Burgoyne sent back word, urging the necessity of some such operation in his favour in order to divert part of the American force which was barring his way, and he stated that he would hold his ground if possible, till the 12th of October. The days went on: Scarcity of provisions. provisions began to run short: on the 3rd of October it was found necessary to reduce the soldiers’ rations: and, some movement having become inevitable, Burgoyne Further movement necessary. determined on the 7th to make a reconnaissance on the enemy’s left—the side furthest removed from the Hudson, in order definitely to ascertain whether there was a possibility of either forcing a passage or at any rate so far dislodging the enemy as to enable the British army to retreat unmolested. At the same time it was hoped that under cover of the reconnaissance, forage, badly needed, might be collected for the horses.

Action of October 7.

Only about 1,500 regular soldiers were available for the movement, with ten pieces of artillery: and, small as the number was, hardly enough men were left behind to guard the lines. The detachment advanced, and was formed within about three-quarters of a mile of the enemy’s left, waiting for some of the marksmen with Canadians and Indians to make a detour through the woods still further to the right and take the enemy in the rear. On a sudden the Americans in superior numbers made a determined attack on the left wing of the little force, where were the grenadiers and a German regiment. At the same time the flank of the right wing was in imminent danger of being turned: and, while the troops on this side were being drawn back and reformed in order to secure the retreat, the Americans redoubled the attack on the grenadiers and the Germans. The German regiment gave way, the grenadiers were overpowered, and complete disaster was averted only by the stanch fighting of the gunners and by bringing up supports The English heavily defeated and their corps partly taken. from the right under General Fraser who, in carrying out the movement, was mortally wounded. Hard pressed and heavily defeated, leaving six guns behind them, the force regained their lines, but the Americans, who fought with conspicuous boldness and resolution, followed on, broke through the entrenchments, and eventually stormed the post in the rear of the right which was held by Colonel Breyman and the scanty German reserve. The position was taken, but night came on, Arnold who had led the fight was wounded, and the Congress troops drew off, content with the success which they had already gained. Under cover of the same night Burgoyne fell back, and took up a new position on high ground in the rear of his former camp.[146]

Up to this point in the campaign General Burgoyne may have made mistakes, but at any rate he had not shown himself to be either irresolute or incompetent. He had been sent to achieve the impossible: he had loyally attempted to carry out his instructions, even when opposed to his own views; and, bearing in mind the small number of his troops and the difficulty of securing provisions and supplies, it is not easy to find ground Burgoyne’s fatal delay. for criticism either in his delays or in his fighting. But now his duty was clear, to retreat at once on Fort Edward and save the remnant of the expedition. Every hour was of importance, for every hour numbers greater than his own, emboldened by success, were gathering round him and threatening his retreat. The position in which he was placed after the battle of the 7th of October was no doubt one of great difficulty, but at any rate there was only one practical course to be taken, and a firm resolute man, intent only on the public good, would have taken it at once. Burgoyne acted otherwise, his movements were leisurely and almost invited the final catastrophe. Reading the account of what took place, and his own defence, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that the personal element was strong in him, that there was a theatrical strain in his character, and that he was concerned with public opinion and effect, instead of simply gripping the nettle in manful fashion, neglecting no chance, and fighting out hard to the last.[147]

All day on the 8th the army remained in their new position offering battle, and burying General Fraser with the honour due to a brave and much loved man, while parties of the enemy crossed the Hudson, and fired on the British camp from the opposite side. A day Beginning of the retreat. was lost, the Americans were beginning to turn the right or inland flank, and on the night of the 8th the retreat began, the wounded being left behind in hospital. The weather was bad, the baggage encumbered the army, it was necessary to guard the boats on the river, yet the distance to be traversed to Fort Edward was less than twenty miles and a hurried retreat would have saved the army. When the morning of the 9th came, however, Burgoyne called a halt for his wearied men, and through the greater part of that day no further movement was made. Late in the afternoon the march was resumed, when darkness came, the troops passed through Saratoga and crossed the Fish Kill stream, and on the morning of the 10th the artillery was brought over. Meanwhile the Americans had pressed forward up the eastern bank of the Hudson, and, when the British troops neared Saratoga, they found a party of the enemy already in front of them on the western side, who were beginning to throw up entrenchments, but withdrew as the British came up, leaving the road still open for retreat. On the 10th some troops were sent forward by Burgoyne to hold the ford opposite Fort Edward and to cover the work of repairing the bridges, but were recalled when the main American force attacked the rear of the British army on the line of the Fish Kill. The boats could now Loss of the boats. no longer be adequately defended against the American guns, the provisions were taken out of them, and they Burgoyne’s irresolution. drifted into the enemy’s hands. Through the next three days, the 11th, the 12th and the 13th, Burgoyne remained inactive. Councils of war were held, and it was contemplated to make a night march and try to cross the river near Fort Edward, but the procrastination and indecision of the general put off the movement until it was too late. ‘The army’, wrote Burgoyne in his subsequent dispatch, ‘took the best position possible and fortified, waiting till the 13th at night, in the anxious hope of succours from our friends or, the next desirable expectation, an attack from our enemy’. On the 14th Negotiations with Gates. negotiations were begun with General Gates, they continued for three days, terms were signed late on the 16th, and on the 17th the English surrendered to the American The final surrender. general and his army, kindly and generous in the hour of victory as they had been strong and stubborn in fighting.

The delay in the conclusion of the matter was due at first to the wording of the terms which Gates dictated, and subsequently to intelligence which reached both Clinton’s movements. armies of Clinton’s movements up the Hudson. On the 4th of October Clinton started up the river from New York with some ships of war, carrying 3,000 men, and on the 6th stormed two American forts which barred the passage of the river about fifty miles from the sea; some of the ships went higher up stream but did not come within many miles of Albany; and, brilliant as the operation was, it could not in any case have affected the main issue and only served, with the help of rumour and report, to make Gates anxious to conclude the negotiations of surrender and Burgoyne for a few hours reluctant to sign the terms. At length the inevitable was accepted and the remains of the English army, under 5,000 in number, of whom about 3,500 were fighting men, were taken as prisoners of war to Albany and Boston.[148]

Causes of the disaster.

The ultimate cause of the disaster was Lord George Germain. Here is Carleton’s judgement upon the matter, contained in a letter to Burgoyne dated the following Carleton on Lord George Germain. 12th of November, ‘This unfortunate event, it is to be hoped, will in future prevent ministers from pretending to direct operations of war, in a country at 3,000 miles distance, of which they have so little knowledge as not to be able to distinguish between good, bad, or interested advices, or to give positive orders in matters which from their nature are ever upon the change.’ The more Character of Burgoyne. immediate cause was the character of Burgoyne. His condemnation is written in his own dispatch.

‘The bulk of the enemy’s army was hourly joined by new corps of militia and volunteers, and their numbers together amounted to upwards of 16,000 men. After the execution of the treaty General Gates drew together the force that had surrounded my position, and I had the consolation to have as many witnesses as I had men under my command, of its amounting to the numbers mentioned above.’

Why had the 16,000 men gathered round him? Because he had given them time to do so, because in the hour of need his thought was rather of saving his own reputation than of saving the force under his command. Would Wolfe, weakly and suffering, have waited helplessly for something to turn up, looking for co-operation from Amherst in the far distance, as Burgoyne looked for it from Clinton? Would he have found consolation in allowing the enemy’s numbers to grow and counting up how far superior they were to his own? Would he have been at pains to make the story plausible and dramatic, so that he might hold up his head thereafter in London circles and retain the favour of those who were in high places? It was not English to court surrender, and to cast about for excuse for surrender. Had Chatham been in Germain’s place, no such foolhardy expedition would have been ordered cut and dried from England. Had Wolfe been in Burgoyne’s, if success was possible he would have achieved it, if it was impossible he would have redeemed failure or died. Military skill, daring, manhood, self-reliance, leadership of soldiers and of men, were the qualities which less than twenty years before had shone out in dark days round Quebec; the same qualities seemed dead or numbed, when Burgoyne bade his men lay down their arms by the banks of the Hudson river.

The story of this ill-fated expedition has been told at some length because it is part and parcel of the history of Canada. The scene of the later years of the War of Independence was the Atlantic seaboard; and Canada, except on her western borders, though threatened, was unmolested. The surrender of Burgoyne’s army by no means finished the fighting, the English were still to win Consequences of the disaster. barren successes before the final catastrophe at Yorktown; but after Saratoga the war entered upon a wholly new stage. The surrender in itself was serious enough. No colonists had in modern history achieved so great a triumph, no such disaster had ever clouded British arms in the story of her colonization. The Preface of the Annual Register for 1777 refers to the ‘awful aspect of the times’, awful indeed to a country whose best men had no faith in her cause. But the great practical result which followed on the reverse of Saratoga, the result which eventually decided the war, was that the French The French intervene in the war. now joined hands with the Americans, and the latter thereby secured the help of a fleet, strong enough, when the Spaniards at a later date also entered the ranks of England’s enemies, to compete with the British navy on the western seas.

While, however, the intervention of France greatly increased the difficulties with which Great Britain had to contend at this critical time of her history, for the moment it made the war more popular in England, inasmuch as Englishmen were now called upon to fight against their The French alliance with the Americans tended to protect Canada from invasion. old rivals and not merely against their kinsfolk. In another respect too it was of distinct advantage to the British Empire, in that it brought to Canada immunity from invasion. The American colonists welcomed French aid in securing their independence, but they had no mind to restore Canada to France, and they looked with suspicion on any proposal or utterance which might seem to point in that direction. Though the French in their treaty with the United States disclaimed any intention of national aggrandizement in America,[149] Admiral D’Estaing, in October, 1778, a few months after his arrival in American waters, issued a proclamation to the Canadians, appealing to their French nationality; and Lafayette proposed a scheme for an invasion of Canada which Congress accepted but Washington set aside. There was sufficient uneasiness in American minds with regard to French designs to restrict French co-operation in the main to the Atlantic side; and, though the Canadians were excited by their countrymen’s appeal, they did not rise in arms themselves, nor did the Americans attempt to repeat the movement by which Montgomery had over-run the country up to the walls of Quebec.

It would not indeed have been easy for them to do so, for Carleton and his successor Haldimand, though badly in need of reinforcements, were yet better prepared and had more men at their command than when the war first broke out. Immediately after Burgoyne’s capitulation Precautions taken in Canada against invasion. Ticonderoga and Crown Point were abandoned, and the troops were withdrawn to the northern end of Lake Champlain. A year later Haldimand directed the whole country round the lake to be cleared of settlement and cultivation, as a safeguard against American invasion. At various points, where such invasion might take place, he established posts, on an island at the opening of Lake Ontario, which was named Carleton Island; at the Isle aux Noix at the head of the Richelieu river, and at Sorel at its mouth: on the river St. Francis which joins the St. Lawrence below Sorel, flowing from the direction of Vermont: and on the Chaudière river over against Quebec, lest Arnold’s inroad by the line of that river should be repeated.

Border War.

Nor was this all. As in Count Frontenac’s time, and with much the same ruthlessness as in those earlier days, Canada was defended by counter attacks upon the border settlements of the revolting colonies, Loyalists and Indians dealing the blows and bearing the penalties. In May and June of 1778, Brant harried the New York frontier and burnt the town of Springfield; in July, in order, it was said, to counteract American designs against Niagara, Colonel John Butler, with a force of Rangers and Indians, carried war far into the enemy’s country and uprooted the settlements at Wyoming, on the eastern branch of the Susquehanna river within the borders of Pennsylvania. Fact and fiction have combined to keep alive the memories of the massacre at Wyoming; and, together with the even more terrible tragedy of Cherry Valley which followed, it stands to the discredit of England in the story of these most barbarous border wars.[150] In September the Mohawk leader burnt to the ground the houses and barns at the German Flatts, though the settlers had been warned in time to take refuge in Fort Dayton. In November Brant joined forces with Walter Butler, son of the raider of Wyoming; and together they carried death and desolation into the Cherry Valley settlement in Tryon county. In the following year the Americans took a terrible revenge for these doings, and a strong force under General John Sullivan turned the country of the Six Nation Indians into a wilderness. ‘General Sullivan,’ wrote Washington to Lafayette, ‘has completed the entire destruction of the country of the Six Nations, driven all the inhabitants, men, women, and children out of it’.

George Rogers Clark in the West.

Further west, in 1778 and 1779, the Illinois region and the settlements on the middle Mississippi fell into American hands, never to be regained, the leader of the backwoodsmen in this quarter being George Rogers Clark, a young Virginian, one of the pioneers of settlement in Kentucky, a most able leader and a hard determined man. In July, 1778, Clark surprised and took the fort and settlement of Kaskaskia standing on the river of that name a little above its junction with the Mississippi, and immediately afterwards he received the submission of the post at Vincennes on the Wabash river. A few months later, in December, 1778, Vincennes was re-occupied by Hamilton, Lieutenant-Governor of Detroit, with a handful of men. Before the following February ended, Hamilton was in turn attacked and overpowered by Clark who carried out a daring winter march; and, being forced to surrender at discretion, the English commander was, according to English accounts, treated through long months of imprisonment with unmerited harshness. The truth was that, as the war went on, bitterness increased, and when, as in the West and on the border the combatants were backwoodsmen, Rangers and Indians, the fighting became a series of ruthless reprisals.

Later raids from Canada.

Later again, in 1780 and 1781, parties sent out from Canada retraced the routes taken by Burgoyne and St. Leger, harried the country at the southern end of Lakes George and Champlain, and laid waste the settlements in the Mohawk valley. In one, commanded by Major Carleton, brother of the late governor of Canada, Fort Anne and Fort George were taken with their garrisons; in another, on the line of the Mohawk, Major Ross, advancing from Oswego, inflicted heavy loss on the Americans. In all these expeditions on either side there was the same object, to prevent invasion by counter invasion, to destroy stores, and to terrorize the adherents of the enemy; but none of them, except the exploits of Clark, contributed materially to the issue of the war.

Fighting on the Penobscot.

On or near the Atlantic coast-line of Canada, in 1779, fighting took place which might well have had lasting results. An expedition was sent in that year from Halifax to the Penobscot river, commanded by Maclean, who had done good service under Carleton at the time of the American invasion. In June he established himself at Castine at the mouth of the Penobscot; and, inasmuch as the place was then within the borders of Massachusetts, he was towards the end of July attacked by a small squadron and a force of militia sent from and paid for by that state. For between two or three weeks the Americans besieged the British post until, towards the end of the second week in August, British ships under Sir George Collier appeared on the scene, and all the American vessels were taken or destroyed. Maclean’s expedition was repeated with equal success by Sir John Sherbrooke in the war of 1812, but neither enterprise produced the permanent result of making the Penobscot river, as it should have been, the boundary between Canada and the United States.

Carleton succeeded by Haldimand.

It has been seen that in June, 1777, Carleton sent in his resignation of the governorship of Canada. Burgoyne wrote privately to Germain at the end of July, before he started on his expedition, to decline the appointment in case it should be offered to him; and in August, 1777, General Haldimand, who was then at home in Switzerland, was nominated as Carleton’s successor. He was ordered to go out as soon as possible in a ship which, as Germain wrote to Carleton on the 19th of October, was to bring the latter home, but did not leave England till the end of April or beginning of May following, arriving at Quebec at the end of June, 1778. Carleton then immediately returned to England, and was received with honour by the King to the disgust of Lord George Germain.

Haldimand’s government.

General Haldimand, Sir Frederick Haldimand as he afterwards was, governed Canada till the end of 1784, and he governed it, in thankless times, strongly and well. In the year 1778 he was sixty years of age, having been born in 1718. Like his great friend Henry Bouquet, he was a Swiss. His birthplace was Yverdon at the south-western end of the lake of Neuchâtel, and there he died in 1791, the year in which the Canada Act was passed. There is a tablet to his memory in Henry VII’s Chapel in Westminster Abbey. His career was that of a soldier of fortune. With Bouquet, he served the Stadtholder of the Netherlands in a regiment of Swiss Guards; and in 1754[151] the two officers entered the British service as lieutenant-colonels of the newly-raised regiment of Royal Americans. He fought under Abercromby at Ticonderoga, and afterwards served under Amherst; and in 1759, while rebuilding the fort at Oswego, he beat off a force of Canadians and Indians commanded by St. Luc de la Corne, who in later days was a member of his Legislative Council at Quebec. After the capitulation of Montreal, being a French-speaking officer, he was selected by Amherst to take possession of the city. He subsequently acted as governor of Three Rivers, and when to his great grief Bouquet died at Pensacola in 1765, Haldimand, in 1767, succeeded his friend in the command in Florida. In 1773 he went to New York to act for General Gage while the latter was on leave in England. In 1775 he was brought back to England, and in 1778 he went out to govern Canada.

Haldimand was a man of the Carleton type; and, before he left London to take up his appointment, he wrote to Germain to the effect that he should be given full discretion in military matters, and, as civil governor, have the nomination to all appointments. Like Carleton, he was attacked by the partisans of Congress in Canada as a military despot, the enemy of civil liberties, the best known case against him being that of Du Calvet,[152] a French Protestant, who was in 1780 arrested and imprisoned for encouraging and abetting treason, and who subsequently published his case against the governor in London. That Du Calvet was a traitor there seems to have been no doubt, but his charges against the governor coloured the view which was commonly taken in after years of Haldimand’s administration. None the less, whatever may have been the technical merits of this and other individual cases, it is beyond question that, at a time when England was badly served both at home and abroad, in the most critical years, and in Canada where the position was most difficult, she was conspicuously well served by Carleton and Haldimand. Haldimand governed a community, in which the minority, as in Carleton’s time, was largely disaffected, and the loyalty of the majority was undermined by French appeals. From day to day the danger of attack at this point or at that was imminent, while there was constant risk that the supplies which came over the sea would be intercepted by French ships or American privateers. In England Haldimand’s master was still the same self-willed, half-informed minister Germain. In Canada there were few that he could trust. Yet solitary in public as in private life—for he had no wife or child—he held the reins of government with a firm and an honest hand, a good servant of England though of foreign birth. If Canada at the present day be compared with the province of Quebec which the Peace of 1763 gave into British keeping, the three main elements in the evolution of the great Dominion will be found to have been British immigration, canals, and railways. Railways, opening the North-West and linking the two oceans, date from long after Haldimand’s time; but he was governor when the first steps were taken to improve the waterways of Canada, and he watched over the incoming of the United Empire Loyalists.

The Vermont negotiations.

Not the least of Haldimand’s difficulties was that he had to negotiate peace and wage war at the same time, for, while directing or controlling border raids at other points on the Canadian frontier, he had on his hands, from 1779 onwards, troublesome and in the end abortive negotiations with the settlers in the present state of Vermont. Of the character of these settlers he seems to have had but a poor opinion, their lawless antecedents no doubt not being to his mind. Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys had not been animated by American patriotism alone when at the beginning of the war they took Ticonderoga. They had in their minds to put themselves in evidence and to vindicate their claim to be free of New York. While the war went on, and after it ended, their determination to be an independent state was as strong as ever; and their negotiations with Canada were an intimation to Congress that the price of their continued adhesion to the continental cause must be recognition of their local independence. The policy had the immediate merit of giving them a respite from Canadian raids, and it left open a choice of future issues. The Vermont men knew the value or the weakness of their geographical position as regards Canada. It was patent then as it was in the later war of 1812. In a private letter to Lord North, dated the 24th of October, 1783,[153] Haldimand wrote, ‘Since the provisional treaty has been made public, several persons of influence in the state of Vermont have been here at different times, they all agree in describing these people as very averse to Congress and its measures.... They made no scruple of telling me that Vermont must either be annexed to Canada or become mistress of it, as it is the only channel by which the produce of their country can be conveyed to a market, but they assured me that they rather wished the former.’ The Vermont settlers were, in short, like many states and many individuals before and since, on the fence; but in the end they were neither annexed to Canada nor did they become mistress of her, for in 1791 Vermont became a state of the American Union, and Canada worked out her own salvation.

Haldimand’s dispatches might have been written by Carleton. There is the same point of view, almost the same turn of expression. On the 25th of October, 1780, in a long dispatch to Lord George Germain, giving an account of the general conditions of men and things in Canada, he wrote, ‘As it is my duty, it has been my business to inform myself of the state of the country, and I coincide with the majority of the Legislative Council in considering the Canadians as the people of the country, and think that in making laws and regulations for the administration of these laws, regard is to be paid to the sentiments and manner of thinking of 60,000 rather than of 2,000—three-fourths of whom are traders and cannot with propriety be considered as residents of the province. In this point of view the Quebec Act was both just and politic, though unfortunately for the British Empire it was enacted ten years too late. It requires but little penetration to discover that, had the system of government solicited by the old subjects been adopted in Canada, this colony would in 1775 have become one of the United States of America.’[154] Three years later, when the war was over, in his letter to Lord North referred to above, he wrote ‘This province can only be preserved by bringing back the Canadians to a regular subordination, and by rendering them useful as a well-disciplined militia. In order to effectuate this, the authority of government must be strengthened and not diminished’.[155]

Like Carleton and like Murray, Haldimand had it at heart to provide the people of Canada with an upright and kindly administration. Among the various grievances, real or alleged, which were ventilated from time to time, one of the most substantial, so far as the French Canadians were concerned, was the excessive amount which was exacted from them by officials and lawyers in the form of fees of office. In 1780 Haldimand assented to an ordinance regulating the fees for two years, at the expiration of which time he hoped that the Legislature would, from the experience gained in the meantime, be able to draw up ‘a more perfect list of fees, more permanent and less burthensome to the people’ for, he wrote, ‘the fees in general are by far too high and more than the people of this province can bear.’[156] A favourite complaint of the British minority, who had as little to complain of as they were loud and persistent in complaining, was that there was no statutory provision for the right of Habeas Corpus, which was supposed to have been abolished by the Quebec Act. When peace was restored and the step could safely be taken, Haldimand met this grievance by passing, in 1784, an ordinance ‘for securing the liberty of the subject and for the prevention of imprisonments out of this province’.[157] When reporting the passing of the fees ordinance Haldimand wrote, ‘Sir Guy Carleton had in the sessions 1775 proposed to regulate the fees of office, and had that business very much at heart. Committees were appointed for that salutory purpose and, though many obstacles were thrown in the way, great progress was made. The ordinance was lost for that time by Sir Guy Carleton’s putting an end to the session in consequence of motions made in council by Mr. Livius and others’.[158] He himself suffered from similar obstruction; his dispatch goes on to refer to members of his council, ‘who, however willing they may be to circumscribe the King’s authority in measures of general utility to his service and the welfare of his people, are for carrying on to the greatest height his prerogative to grant Letters Patent for the emolument of individuals though to the oppression of the people’. As the outcome of the Livius case, two additional Royal Instructions had been issued to Haldimand, dated the 29th of March, 1779. The first prohibited him from interpreting the words in the general instructions ‘It is our further Will and Pleasure that any five of the said council shall constitute a board of council for transacting all business in which their advice and consent may be requisite, acts of legislation only excepted’, as Carleton had interpreted them, namely, as authorizing the governor to select five particular members of the Legislative Council to form an Executive or Privy Council; and it instructed him to communicate this decision to the council. The second instructed him to communicate to the council ‘such and so many of our said instructions, wherein their advice and consent are made requisite, with such others from time to time as you shall judge for our service to be imparted to them’.[159] Haldimand did not at once communicate these additional instructions to his council. He thought that at the time it was not for the public interest to do so, and he wrote to Germain to that effect, but only brought upon himself a severe reprimand alike from Germain and from the Board of Trade. Equally he thought it inadvisable, under existing circumstances, to communicate to his council certain clauses in the general instructions, in which the Home Government practically invited the Quebec Legislative Council to modify the Quebec Act, recommending the introduction to some extent of English civil law and also statutory provision for Habeas Corpus. Like Carleton he saw things face to face, as a soldier not as a constitutional lawyer, and he gave advice according to existing conditions, which were those of war and not of peace. These two governors may have been technically wrong in this point or in that, but they had the root of the matter in them, they governed with a single eye, a firm hand, and with most generous and humane intent. ‘Party spirit,’ Haldimand wrote to Germain, ‘is the enemy of every private as well as public virtue. Since my arrival in the province I have steered clear of all parties and have taken great care not to enter into the resentments of my predecessor or his friends, but this present occasion obliges me to declare to your lordship that in general Mr. Livius’ conduct has not impressed people with a favourable idea of his moderation.’[160] There was no party spirit about Carleton, nor yet about Haldimand. In a bad time, when partisanship was rife, they stood for the good name of England, and for the substance of sound and honest administration.

Clinton succeeds Howe at Philadelphia and retreats to New York.

At the same time that Haldimand relieved Carleton, Sir Henry Clinton took over from Howe the command of the army at Philadelphia. He arrived there at the beginning of May, 1778, and at the end of the month Howe left for England. The abandonment of Philadelphia had been ordered from home, in view of the new complications produced by the intervention of France in the war. All the available ships carried off to New York, stores, baggage, and numbers of Loyalists, while Clinton retreated with his army overland through New Jersey. On the 18th of June he left Philadelphia, which was immediately re-occupied by the Americans, and for a fortnight, closely followed by Washington, he slowly made his way in the heat of the summer through the enemy’s country. On the 28th of June in what is known as the battle of Monmouth, near Freehold Court House, he fought a rearguard action with Lee, who commanded the advance of Washington’s army: and, thereby covering his retreat, reached Sandy Hook, and on the 5th of July carried over his troops to New York.

The French fleet.

D’Estaing and a French squadron had now appeared on the scene, threatened New York, and in co-operation with the American general Sullivan attacked the English in Rhode Island. Bad weather, the skill and seamanship of Admiral Howe, and the preparations made by the English commander on shore, rendered the expedition abortive, and the summer closed without decisive success on either side.

Operations in the south.

Later in the year, an expedition under Colonel Campbell, was dispatched to the south, and landing at the end of December near Savannah, the capital of the colony of Savannah taken by the English. Georgia, by a skilful movement took the town and captured the whole of the garrison and stores. General Prevost, who arrived from Florida shortly afterwards and took over command of the British troops in Georgia, advanced into South Carolina and, in May, 1779, threatened Charleston, but was compelled to retreat. In September D’Estaing’s fleet appeared before Savannah; on the 9th of October a combined French and American force attempted to re-take the town, but were beaten off with heavy loss: and in the spring of 1780 Clinton arrived with Clinton takes command in the south. a large body of troops from New York to direct operations in the southern states. A year and a half had passed since he had brought off his army from Philadelphia, and little had been done. There had been fighting on the Hudson, the coasts of Virginia and the New England colonies had been harried, small towns had been sacked and burnt, and stores and ships destroyed, causing damage and distress to the Americans but also unwisely embittering the war. Now the English garrison at Rhode Island had been withdrawn and, while New York was still strongly held, the main efforts on the British side were directed to re-conquering the southern states, where Loyalist sympathies were strong and widely spread.

Taking of Charleston.

Charleston was the main point of attack. It was bravely defended for several weeks by General Lincoln, but his communications were cut by Clinton’s stronger force, the investment was gradually completed, and on the 12th of May, 1780, the town was surrendered and the garrison became prisoners of war. This success was followed by the annihilation of another small body of American troops, on which occasion Tarleton, the British commander, was accused of indiscriminate slaughter. Clinton having returned to New York, the command in Cornwallis. the south devolved on Cornwallis, whose campaigns in 1780 and 1781 were the closing scenes of the war. He began with a great success. General Gates had been sent south to take command of the American forces in the Carolinas, and, having collected an army which largely outnumbered the troops at the disposal of Cornwallis, The battle of Camden. marched to attack the latter at Camden to the north-west of Charleston. Cornwallis resolved on a counter attack; and, after a night march on either side, the two forces came into collision near Camden at dawn on the 16th of August. After hard fighting the Americans gave way before a British bayonet charge and a rout ensued, which was supplemented by a further small victory gained by Tarleton over the American general Sumter, who had previously intercepted Cornwallis’ communications and captured a convoy and some prisoners. Cornwallis now advanced into North Carolina, but behind him the backwoodsmen gathered, and on the 7th of October overwhelmed, after heavy fighting, a strong detachment of Loyalists under Major Ferguson at a place called King’s Mountain. This reverse had the same King’s Mountain. effect as the fights at Trenton or Bennington. Cornwallis had to fall back, the American cause revived in the south, and the extraordinary difficulty of dealing with guerilla warfare in an immense territory was once more effectively illustrated. In December Gates was superseded by an abler and more trustworthy general, Nathaniel Greene.

In the north no decisive action took place during the year. The English made an incursion into New Jersey, without producing any effect. A French fleet and army under de Rochambeau arrived at Rhode Island, where Clinton would have attacked them in force but for want of co-operation on the part of the English admiral Arbuthnot. The American cause received a heavy blow in the treachery of Arnold, and on the other hand, before the close of the year, the Dutch were added to the long list of enemies against whom England was maintaining an unequal struggle.

The campaign of 1781, Cornwallis moves north.

With the opening of the new year, 1781, Cornwallis moved northwards. In the middle of January the light troops from his force, who were under Tarleton’s command, were heavily defeated by the American general Morgan, at Cowpens near the border line between South and North Carolina. Having received reinforcements, Cornwallis Cowpens. still advanced, Greene falling back before him until he had collected a larger number of men than the English general had at his disposal. The two forces met near Guilford Court House on the 15th of March, under much Guilford Court House. the same conditions as had preceded the fight at Camden; and after an even fight the English were victorious, though with a loss of about one-third of their small army. After the battle, Cornwallis fell back for a while towards Wilmington, and, as the Americans were again active behind him in South Carolina, debated whether to continue his efforts to stamp out resistance in the south, or to march forward into Virginia where there was now a strong British force, commanded at first by Arnold and Cornwallis in Virginia. afterwards by Burgoyne’s colleague General Phillips, who were opposed by Lafayette. He determined on the northward movement and effected a junction with Phillips’ troops, their commander having in the meantime died at Petersburg in Virginia late in May.

The fighting went on in the Carolinas with varying success. On the 25th of April Lord Rawdon, who was then in command, defeated Greene at Hobkirk’s Hill. In September his successor Colonel Stuart fought a drawn battle at Eutaw Springs, but the Americans secured one point and another, and the balance of the campaign was against the British cause. In Virginia Cornwallis and Lafayette manœuvred against each other, the British operations being hampered by the apprehension of a combined attack in force by the French and Americans on New York, which led Clinton to order the return of a part of the army in Virginia. The order was countermanded, but Cornwallis was instructed to take up a Cornwallis takes up a position at Yorktown. defensive position in touch with the sea, and in August he concentrated his troops at Yorktown on the bank of the York river, where a peninsula is formed by that river and the James flowing into the mouth of Chesapeake Bay; the village of Gloucester on the opposite side of the York river was also held. It was not a strong position, and all depended on keeping command, of the water. For once the English lost the command, and the consequence was the loss of the army.

Naval operations. The French fleet under de Grasse comes into touch with Washington and Lafayette.

At the end of March a strong French fleet under de Grasse sailed from Brest for the West Indies. After a few weeks’ operations among the islands, and taking Tobago, de Grasse made for Cap François in Hayti and found dispatches from Washington. Taking on board 3,500 French soldiers, he sailed for the North American coast and reached the Chesapeake at the end of August. The object was to co-operate with Washington and de Rochambeau in blockading Cornwallis and compelling him to surrender. Meanwhile a French squadron at Newport in Rhode Island, under de Barras, put out to sea with a convoy containing the siege train, making a wide circuit in order to escape detection by the English ships and join de Grasse in Chesapeake Bay. On land Lafayette, strengthened by a body of Pennsylvanians, already harassed Cornwallis, especially charged to prevent as far as possible a retreat to the south; while de Rochambeau from Rhode Island joined Washington who was facing New York, and the combined army, after threatening an attack on Clinton, crossed the Hudson in August, marched through New Jersey to Philadelphia, and passing on to Virginia, with the help of French transports appeared before Yorktown in the latter end of September. Cornwallis besieged at Yorktown. Cornwallis was now besieged by 16,000 men on land and an overwhelming fleet at sea.

The movement had been well planned and skilfully executed. Clinton at New York had been misled by a feint of attack, and on the sea the English had been found wanting. When Rodney learnt that de Grasse had left the West Indies for the North American coast, in ill health himself and about to leave for England, he dispatched Sir Samuel Hood in pursuit with fourteen ships of the line. A stronger force was needed and had apparently been intended by Rodney. Hood reached the Chesapeake three or four days before de Grasse arrived, and passing on to New York came under the Ineffective movements of the English fleet. orders of a senior officer, Admiral Graves, who had at the time but five ships with him. The combined squadron sailed for the Chesapeake, and found that de Grasse had forestalled them with a stronger fleet. They attacked on the 5th of September, with no decisive result on either side: for three or four days longer the two fleets faced each other, then Graves returned to New York and de Grasse went back to block Cornwallis, his manœuvres having enabled de Barras in the meantime to bring in his ships in safety to the Chesapeake.

Cornwallis surrenders at Yorktown.

Cornwallis was now in hopeless case, unless Clinton could relieve him. Expectation of relief was given, the 5th of October being named as the day on which the relieving force would probably leave New York. On the night of the 5th the Americans began their trenches, on the 9th the guns opened fire: after a week’s fighting, on the 17th, Cornwallis treated for surrender; and on the 19th, the day on which Clinton actually sailed from New York to bring the promised aid, the British army laid down their arms, sickness having reduced the number of fighting men from 7,000 to barely 4,000.

Consequences of the surrender.

Four years had passed almost to the day since the similar disaster at Saratoga. The second surrender practically finished the war, though there was still some small fighting in the south, the English being driven back to Charleston and Savannah. Savannah was eventually evacuated in July, 1782, and Charleston in the following December, by which date terms of peace between Great Britain and the United States had already been signed. Meanwhile in England Carleton had been Carleton succeeds Clinton. nominated to take the place of Clinton as Commander-in-Chief in America, Germain resigned, and in March, 1782, Lord North’s ministry came to an end. The Whigs came in pledged to make peace, Rockingham being Prime Minister and Shelburne and Fox Secretaries of State. Within four months Lord Rockingham died, and Shelburne Negotiations for peace. became Prime Minister, Fox leaving the Government, and the younger Pitt joining it as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Already negotiations for peace were proceeding at Paris, where Richard Oswald, a nominee of Shelburne’s, had been treating with Franklin, complaisantly entertaining every American demand. Rodney’s great victory over de Grasse in the battle of the Saints, on the 12th of April, 1782, enabled England to speak with a firmer voice. The failure in September of the combined efforts of France and Spain to take Gibraltar again added strength: and Shelburne’s ministry was enabled to conclude a peace, which, if it contrasted sadly with the triumphant Treaty of 1763, was at least far from being the capitulation of a ruined Power. On the 30th of November, 1782, articles were signed between Peace concluded and the Independence of the United States recognized. Oswald, on behalf of Great Britain, and the Commissioners of the United States, ‘to be inserted in and to constitute the treaty of Peace’ which was to be concluded when Great Britain and France had come to terms. On the 20th of January, 1783, Preliminary Articles of Peace were signed between Great Britain and France on the one hand and between Great Britain and Spain on the other; and on the following 3rd of September the Peace of Versailles was finally concluded, treaties being made by Great Britain with France, Spain, and the United States, a treaty with the Netherlands having been signed on the previous day. Under the first article of the treaty with the United States the King of England acknowledged the thirteen colonies then forming the United States to be ‘free sovereign and Independent States’.

Comparison of the American War of Independence with the late war in South Africa.

At the time of the late war in South Africa an analogy was sometimes drawn between that war and the War of American Independence. In some respects there was similarity. In either case a group of British colonies was primarily concerned, and in either case the British Government was faced with the difficulty of transporting large bodies of troops across the sea to a distant scene of war, America in the eighteenth century before the days of steam being for all practical purposes more remote than South Africa in our own time. There were two distinct spheres of operations in America in the earlier years of the war, Canada and the Atlantic states, just as in South Africa the war was divided between Natal and the Cape Colony; and the Boer invasion of Natal and investment of Ladysmith to some extent recalls the overrunning of Canada by Montgomery’s troops and the hemming up of Carleton inside Quebec. In both cases there was the same kind of half knowledge of the country and its conditions in the public mind in Great Britain, and, curiously enough, in either case the estimate seems to have been most at fault where fighting had been most recent; in Natal, where less than twenty years had elapsed since the previous Boer war, and on the line of Lake Champlain and the Hudson, presumed to be well known to many who had served at a somewhat shorter interval of time under Abercromby and Amherst, and who encouraged Germain to give his confident instructions to Burgoyne for a march to Albany. Distance, transport, supplies, communications, rather than hard fighting, were the main elements of either war; and the description of the American war given in the Annual Register for 1777, which has been already quoted,[161] that it was ‘a war of posts, surprises, and skirmishes instead of a war of battles’, would apply equally to the South African war. But here the likeness ceases, and no real parallel can be drawn between the two contests. The American war was a civil war, Englishmen were fighting Englishmen. The war in South Africa was a war between two rival races. In the earlier war the great forces which have been embodied in British colonization, mental and physical vigour, forwardness and tenacity, the forces of youth, which have the keeping of the future, were in the main ranged against the mother country: in the later war they contributed, as never before, to the sum of national patriotism. In the earlier war foreign nations intervened, with fatal effect, and the sea power of England was crippled. In the later, the struggle was kept within its original limits and British ships went unmolested to and from South Africa. Not least of all, while on the former occasion ministers at home tried to do the work of the generals on the spot, Carleton’s bitter comments on the disastrous result, which have been quoted above[162], could in no sense be applied to the later crisis. As bearing on this last point, Effect on war of submarine cables. it is interesting to speculate what would have happened had submarine cables existed in the days of King George the Third. The telegraph invites and facilitates interference from home. It tends to minimize the responsibility, and to check the initiative, of the men on the spot: and if the cables which now connect England and America, had been in existence in the years 1776 and 1777, it might be supposed that the commanders in America would have been even more hampered than they were by the meddling of the King, and his ministers. But the evil was that, in the absence of the telegraph, interference could not be corrected, and co-operation could not be ensured. Germain laid down a rigid plan: a second-rate man received precise instructions which he felt bound to follow against his own judgement; and for want of sure and speedy communication the cause was lost. It is impossible to suppose that even the King and Germain would have refused to modify their plans, had they known what was passing from day to day or from week to week: in other words, the invention which more than any other has opened a door to undue interference, would probably in the case in point have done most to remedy the ignorant meddling which was the prime cause of the disaster at Saratoga.

The War of American Independence was ‘by far the most dangerous in which the British nation was ever involved’.[163] It was seen at the time that its issues would colour all future history and modify for ever political and commercial systems, but no prophet seemed to contemplate a colonial future for Great Britain, and Benjamin Franklin said ‘he would furnish Mr. Gibbon with materials for writing the history of the Decline of the British Empire’.[164] Yet the present broad-based Imperial system of Great Britain was for two reasons the direct outcome of that war. While the United States were still colonial possessions of Great Britain, they Effects of the American War of Independence on the British Empire as a whole. overshadowed all others; and, had they remained British possessions, their preponderance would in all probability have steadily increased. It is quite possible that the centre of the Empire might have been shifted to the other side of the Atlantic; it is almost certain that the colonial expansion of Great Britain would have been mainly confined to North America. Nothing has been more marked and nothing sounder in our recent colonial history than the comparative uniformity of development in the British Empire. In those parts of the world which have been settled and not merely conquered by Europeans, and which are still British possessions, in British North America, Australasia, and South Africa, there has been on the whole parity of progress. No one of the three groups of colonies has in wealth and population wholly out-distanced the others. This fact has unquestionably made for strength and permanence in the British Empire, and it is equally beyond question that the spread of colonization within the Empire would have been wanting, had Great Britain retained her old North American colonies. Unequalled in history was the loss of such colonies, and yet by that loss, it may fairly be said, Great Britain has achieved a more stable and a more world-wide colonial dominion.

But this result would not have been attained had not the lesson taught by the American war sunk deep into the minds of Englishmen. It is true that for a while the moral drawn from this calamitous war was that self-governing institutions should not be given to colonies lest they should rebel, as did the Americans, and win their independence: but, as the smart of defeat passed away and men saw events and their causes in true perspective, as Englishmen again multiplied out of England but in lands which belonged to England, and as the old questions again pressed for solution, the answer given in a wiser and a broader age was dictated by remembrance of the American war, and Lord Durham’s report embodied the principles, on which has been based the present colonial system of Great Britain. It was seen—but it might not have been seen had the United States not won their independence—that English colonists, like the Greek colonists of old, go out on terms of being equal not subordinate to those who are left behind, that when they have effectively planted another and a distant land, they must within the widest limits be left to rule themselves; that, whether they are right or whether they are wrong, more perhaps when they are wrong than when they are right, they cannot be made amenable by force; that mutual good feeling, community of interest, and abstention from pressing rightful claims to their logical conclusion, can alone hold together a true colonial empire.

Its effects on Canada.

Though the United States, in the war and in the treaty which followed it, attained in the fullest possible measure the objects for which they had contended, it is a question whether, of all the countries concerned in the war, Canada did not really gain most, notwithstanding the hardship which she suffered in respect of the boundary line between the Dominion and the United States. For Canada to have a future as a nation, it was necessary, in the first place, that she should be cut adrift from the French colonial system as it existed in the eighteenth century. This was secured as the result of the Seven Years’ War. In the second place, it was necessary that she should not be absorbed by and among the British colonies in North America. This end was attained, and could only be attained by what actually happened, viz., by the British colonies in North America ceasing to belong to Great Britain, while Canada was kept within the circle of the British Empire. Had the United States remained British possessions, Canada must eventually have come into line with them, and been more or less lost among the stronger and more populous provinces. The same result would have followed, had the British Government entertained, as their emissary Oswald did, Franklin’s proposal that Canada should be ceded to the United States. It would have followed too, in all probability, if Canada had been left at the time independent both of Great Britain and of the United States, for she would have been too weak to stand alone. The result of the war was to give prominence and individuality to Canada as a component part of the British Empire; to bring in a strong body of British colonists not displacing but supplementing the French Canadians and antagonistic to the United States from which they were refugees; to revive the instinct of self-preservation which in old days had kept Canada alive, and which is the mainspring of national sentiment, by again directly confronting her with a foreign Power; and at the same time to give her the advantage of protection by and political connexion with what was still to be the greatest sea-going and colonizing nation of the world. The result of the War of American Independence was to make the United States a great nation; but it was a result which, whether with England or without, they must in any case have achieved. The war had also the effect, and no other cause could have had a like effect, of making possible a national existence for Canada, which possibility was to be converted into a living and a potent fact by the second American war, the war of 1812.