Ton malheur vient d’une catin.”
But the measure of their disgraces was not yet complete. They were foiled in the East Indies, as in all other parts. Lally, their General, a man of great parts and impetuosity, but with both the high and the low talents of an adventurer, was forced to raise the siege, which he had undertaken, of Madras, and resigned his command in indignation at the cowardice of his countrymen. Admiral Pococke twice beat their Fleet. Their invasions on the Ohio cost them the second empire which they had so artfully and so silently been founding at the other end of the world.
The joy on those successes, however, was damped by a desponding letter received from General Wolfe before Quebec, on the 14th of October. He had found the enterprise infinitely more difficult than he had conceived, the country strong from every circumstance of situation: the French had a superior Army, had called in every Canadian capable of bearing arms: twenty-two ship-loads of provisions had escaped Admiral Durell, and got into the town; Amherst was not come up: and, above all, Montcalm, the French General, had shown that he understood the natural strength of the country, had posted himself in the most advantageous situation, and was not to be drawn from it by any stratagem which Wolfe, assisted by the steady co-operation of our Fleet, could put in practice. Wolfe, himself, was languishing with the stone, and a complication of disorders, which fatigue and disappointment had brought upon him. Townshend[70] and other officers had crossed him in his plans, but he had not yielded. Himself had been one of the warmest censurers of the miscarried expedition to Rochfort; and he had received this high command upon the assurance that no dangers or difficulties should discourage him. His Army wasted before his eyes by sickness; the season advanced fast which must put an end to his attempts: he had no choice remaining but in variety of difficulties. In the most artful terms that could be framed he left the nation uncertain whether he meaned to prepare an excuse for desisting, or to claim the melancholy merit of having sacrificed himself without a prospect of success.
Three days after, an express arrived that Quebec was taken—a conquest heightened by the preceding gloom and despair. The rapidity with which our arms had prevailed in every quarter of the globe made us presume that Canada could not fail of being added to our acquisitions; and however arduously won, it would have sunk in value, if the transient cloud that overcast the dawn of this glory had not made it burst forth with redoubled lustre. The incidents of dramatic fiction could not be conducted with more address to lead an audience from despondency to sudden exultation, than accident prepared to excite the passions of a whole people. They despaired—they triumphed—and they wept—for Wolfe had fallen in the hour of victory! Joy, grief, curiosity, astonishment, were painted in every countenance: the more they inquired, the higher their admiration rose. Not an incident but was heroic and affecting!
Wolfe, between persuasion of the impracticability, unwillingness to leave any attempt untried that could be proposed, and worn out with the anxiety of mind and body, had determined to make one last effort above the town. He embarked his forces at one in the morning, and passed the French sentinels in silence, that were posted along the shore. The current carried them beyond the destined spot. They found themselves at the foot of a precipice, esteemed so impracticable, that only a slight guard of one hundred and fifty men defended it. Had there been a path, the night was too dark to discover it. The troops, whom nothing could discourage, for these difficulties could not, pulled themselves and one another up by stumps and boughs of trees. The guard, hearing a rustling, fired down the precipice at random, as our men did up into the air: but, terrified by the strangeness of the attempt, the French picquet fled—all but the Captain, who, though wounded, would not accept quarter, but fired at one of our officers at the head of five hundred men. This, as he staked but a single life, was thought such an unfair war, that, instead of honouring his desperate valour, our men, to punish him, cut off his croix de St. Louis before they sent him to the hospital. Two of our officers, however, signed a certificate of his courage, lest the French should punish him as corrupted; our enterprise, unless facilitated by corruption, being deemed impossible to have taken place.
Day-break discovered our forces in possession of the eminence. Montcalm could not credit it when reported to him; but it was too late to doubt when nothing but a battle could save the town. Even then he held our attempt so desperate, that, being shown the position of the English, he said, “Oui, je les vois où ils ne doivent pas être.” Forced to quit his entrenchments, he said, “S’il faut donc combattre, je vais les écraser.” He prepared for engagement, after lining the bushes with detachments of Indians. Our men, according to orders, reserved their fire with a patience and tranquillity equal to the resolution they had exerted in clambering the precipice—but when they gave it, it took place with such terrible slaughter of the enemy, that half an hour decided the day. The French fled precipitately; and Montcalm, endeavouring to rally them, was killed on the spot. General Monckton[71] was wounded early, and obliged to retire.
The fall of Wolfe was noble indeed. He received a wound in the head, but covered it from his soldiers with his handkerchief. A second ball struck him in the belly: that too he dissembled. A third hitting him in the breast, he sunk under the anguish, and was carried behind the ranks. Yet, fast as life ebbed out, his whole anxiety centred on the fortune of the day. He begged to be borne nearer to the action; but his sight being dimmed by the approach of death, he entreated to be told what they who supported him saw: he was answered that the enemy gave ground. He eagerly repeated the question, heard the enemy was totally routed, cried “I am satisfied”—and expired.
In five days the town capitulated. Wolfe dead, and Monckton disabled, General Townshend signed the articles. He, and his friends for him, even attempted to ravish the honour of the conquest from Wolfe. Townshend’s first letter said nothing in praise of him. In one to the Speaker of the House of Commons he went so far as indirectly to assume the glory of the last effort. The words were these, “We determined on the 13th of September to do what we ought to have done in the beginning: but in military operations it is never too late to reform.” In other more private dispatches Townshend was still more explicit. These he ordered to be shown to the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Newcastle, and Mr. Pitt. From the first he received great assurances of countenance—but the passion of gratitude with which the nation was transported towards Wolfe’s memory overbore all attempts to lessen his fame. It was not by surviving him that he could be eclipsed.
Monsieur de Vaudreuil, Governor of the province, had appeared at the close of the engagement, but, seeing his countrymen defeated, retired to Montreal. Had he fallen into our hands, our men were determined to scalp him, he having been the chief and blackest author of the cruelties exercised on our countrymen. Some of his letters were taken, in which he explicitly and basely said, that “Peace was the best time for making war on the English.” Such perfidy, and such barbarism as was contained in the dispatches of Marshal Belleisle, mentioned before, affix a stain on a nation which it requires an age of generous heroism to wash out. The cruelties exercised in the Palatinate by Louis XIV. conjured up that storm which overwhelmed the end of his reign, and enjoined the humiliating proposal of obliging him to concur in dethroning his own grandson. When ambition is inhuman, and tyranny insolent, they double the bitterness of a reverse of fortune by having given a precedent of wanton indignities.
The repeated misfortunes of France, and the efforts they had made without effect to bring the war to some tolerable conclusion, reduced them at last to a state of bankruptcy; a kind of evidence which even their future historians will not be able to parry. Defeated Armies frequently claim the victory, but no nation ever sung Te Deum on becoming insolvent. Three arrêts were published by the Court of France in October, suspending for a year the payment of the orders upon the general receipts of the finances, and allowing five per cent. on the respective sums as an indemnification. The second, of the same tenour with respect to the hills of the general farms; and the third suspending the reimbursement of capitals, as well in regard to the treasury as to the redemption-fund.