Greatness of soul, joined to superiority of talent, ignores the art of cringing; it is even impossible that merit can lead to fortune in a corrupted and venal country: on the contrary, it becomes a cause of exclusion. Virtue elevates the soul, and can neither fawn nor buy credit, nor flatter vice and incapacity. "If such is the military constitution of a State," says M. Gaubert, in his Treatise of Tactics, "of which the Sovereign (the King of Prussia) is one of the greatest men of the age, who instructs and commands his armies, and whose armies form all the pomp of the court, what ought it to be in those States where the Sovereign is not at all a military man; where he does not see his troops; where he seems to disdain or be ignorant of all that regards them; where the Court, who always obey the impression of the Sovereign, is consequently not military; where almost all the great rewards are obtained by surprise, by intrigue; where the greater portion of favors are hereditary; where merit languishes for want of support; where favor can advance without talent; where to make a fortune no more implies acquiring a reputation, but merely to heap up riches; where men may be, at one and the same time, covered with orders and infamy—with grades and ignorance, serve ill the State, and occupy the best places; be smeared with the censure of the public, and enjoy the Sovereign's good graces? If, whilst all other sciences are becoming perfected, that of war remains in its infancy, it is the fault of the Governments, who do not attach to it sufficient importance; who do not make it an object of public education; who fail to direct men of genius to that profession; who suffer them to find more glory and advantages in sciences trifling or less useful; who render the profession of arms an ungrateful employment, where talents are outstripped by intrigue, and the prizes distributed by Fortune."
General Amherst, according to his statement in his letter to Mr. Pitt, then Secretary of State, lost in coming down the rapids—without meeting there any opposition from the French or Indians—by drowning, eighty-four men. Twenty more of the regiments' boats were dashed to pieces. Seven boats of the artillery, loaded with arms and ammunition, and one of his galleys, were also lost.
If 900 Indians had been there, as they should have been, scattered in the woods upon the borders of the river, with 1,200 Canadians, which they had solicited earnestly from M. de Vaudreuil, to defend those difficult passes of the Rapids, but which this officer obstinately refused, what would have become of General Amherst? How could he have got out of the scrape? As it happened to Braddock, Amherst and his army must have perished there; his expedition would have been fruitless, and Canada would have been yet saved to France: but heaven willed it otherwise. How long the English may preserve this conquest depends on their own wise and prudent conduct.
THE END.
[The original of this manuscript is deposited in the French war archives, in Paris: a copy was, with the permission of the French Government, taken by P.L. Morin, Esq., Draughtsman to the Crown Lands Department of Canada, about 1855, and deposited in the Library of the Legislative Assembly of Canada. The Literary and Historical Society of Quebec, through the kindness of Mr. Todd, the Librarian, was permitted to have communication thereof. This document is supposed to have been written some years after the return to France from Canada of the writer, the Chevalier Johnstone, a Scotch Jacobite, who had fled to France after the defeat at Culloden, and had obtained from the French monarch, with several other Scotchmen, commissions in the French armies. In 1748, says Francisque Michel,[D] he sailed from Rochefort as an Ensign with troops going to Cape Breton: he continued to serve in America until he returned to France, in December, 1760, having acted during the campaign of 1759, in Canada, as aide-de-camp to Chevalier de Levis. On de Levis being ordered to Montreal, Johnstone was detached and retained by General Montcalm on his staff, on account of his thorough knowledge of the environs of Quebec, and particularly of Beauport, where the principal works of defence stood, and where the whole army, some 11,000 men, were entrenched, leaving in Quebec merely a garrison of 1,500. The journal is written in English, and is not remarkable for orthography or purity of diction: either Johnstone had forgotten, or had never thoroughly known, the language.]
[D] Les Ecossais en France, vol. ii, p. 449.