The prospect of conquering Canada now appeared less visionary than ever before; the settlers ought to have felt that they were entering on the last great struggle, had it not been for the fact that, as always, colony was divided against colony. Pennsylvania, the home of the Quaker, disapproved of war on principle; it was a safe theory for the Pennsylvanians, for they were out of reach of French attack, and they knew that they were well protected by those colonies which lay in the zone of danger. Then, too, instead of acting like true men, the people of New Jersey refused any actual help in the way of a force, though they were not so mean as the Pennsylvanians, for they did send a contribution of money. The New Yorkers exhibited a more magnanimous spirit; they threw in their lot with the people of New England and roused the Five Nations against the French. The chief expedition by land was under the command of Colonel Francis Nicholson, who wrote to Lord Sunderland in July, and said that if "I had not accepted the command, there would have been insuperable difficulties."[257] This sentence tells its own story, for the writer knew that any other commander would have been without support owing to the shameful provincial jealousies which were the everlasting reproach and curse of the American states. Nicholson was a man of robust strength, a clear, practical brain, though ambitious, vehement, and bold. He had already proved himself a fairly capable colonial governor in Virginia, New York, Maryland, and Carolina, where, though his private life may not have been a pattern of strict morality, his conduct in official affairs was unimpeachable. With 1500 men he entrenched himself at Wood Creek, near Lake Champlain, where he was besieged by Ramesay, governor of Montreal. The settlers were able to drive back the French, but were forced to wait anxiously for news of the grand naval expedition that was to do so much; they waited in vain, day by day being struck down by disease and pestilence; and Nicholson was finally compelled to retreat, leaving behind him innumerable graves as proofs of the patience and courage of his little force.
The British squadron with the promised regiments was long overdue. The forces of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island were encamped at Boston ready, on the appearance of the fleet, to sail to Quebec. From May to July they were diligently drilled, and Vetch wrote in August, "The bodies of men are in general better than in Europe and I hope their courage will prove so too; so that nothing in human probability can prevent the success of this glorious enterprise but the too late arrival of the fleet."[258] If it should not come, "it would be the last disappointment to her Majesty's colonies, who have so heartily complied with her royal order, and would render them much more miserable than if such a thing had never been undertaken."[259] The fleet never came! To the grief and despair of the colonies, it had been sent to Portugal to meet the exigencies of the European war. Although the hearts of the English settlers had been made sick by hope deferred, yet a tenacious energy had always been one of their strongest characteristics; and the representatives of Massachusetts still urged the home Government to make a supreme effort against New France. They asked Nicholson, who sailed for Europe, to point out how much assistance was needed, how advantageous the undertaking would be to the Crown, and how impoverished and enfeebled the colony was by the long and expensive war. The last plea was true enough, for Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island had spent on the disastrous military schemes of 1709 no less than £46,000. Like Massachusetts, the colony of New York was equally anxious to impress the English Crown with the importance of the question at stake, and in 1710 sent five Mohawk chiefs under the guidance of Peter Schuyler to interest the English in colonial affairs, and at the same time to so impress the chiefs with England's power as to dispose them to hold fast to their alliance.
The resolution and tenacity shown by the colonies had some effect in the home country. An English force of over three thousand men was at last dispatched to Boston; and though timed to arrive in March, it did not reach that port until July. Meantime the people of Massachusetts had once again stirred themselves; raised their own militia; tempted the soldiers of 1709 to rejoin by a promise of the Queen's musket; and actually quartered troops on private houses, "any law or usage to the contrary notwithstanding."[260] This fresh outburst of energy culminated in Nicholson again taking command and sailing for Port Royal. On September 24, 1710, he reached his object of attack; and on October 1 the French, finding themselves outnumbered, readily surrendered; the town became Annapolis, and Acadia or Nova Scotia passed permanently into the possession of Great Britain, owing to the bravery of her American colonists.
The capture of Acadia was to Nicholson merely a stepping-stone towards the greater defeat of the French and the final subjugation of New France. He returned to England to further his schemes and was there ably supported by Jeremiah Dummer, who was at that time in the service of Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke. The Sacheverell trial of 1710 had, amongst other things, caused the fall of the Whigs and concluded Marlborough's warlike schemes. The Tories, champions of peace, were left in power with St John and Harley as their leaders; but so ably did the two colonials plead the cause of their brethren, that in April 1711 fifteen men-of-war and forty-six transports, containing five thousand regular troops, sailed for America. To their intense surprise the officers of this great armament found on their arrival that they were regarded by the colonists with the strongest suspicion. The ships had only been provisioned to reach America; definite orders as to their further destination had not been issued; and the French had attempted to poison the minds of the Bostonians by the idea that the British forces were to subvert colonial liberties and reduce Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire to the position of Crown colonies. One Frenchman wrote, "There is an antipathy between the English of Europe and those of America, who will not endure troops from England even to guard their forts."[261] Another, Costobelle, had said as early as December 1709, "I do not think that they are so blind as not to see that they will insensibly be brought under the yoke of the Parliament of Old England; but by the cruelties that the Canadians and Indians exercise in continual incursions upon their lands, I judge that they would rather be delivered from the inhumanity of such neighbours than preserve all the former powers of their little republic."[262] For the reasons stated in this report the New England colonists were on the horns of a dilemma; they feared the British troops, but they were equally afraid of their French neighbours.
There were, however, other difficulties. The presence of the British regulars acted as an incentive to ill-feeling, which showed itself in the deliberate lack of provisions and pilots, and in the willing shelter offered to deserters from the army. The English officers, too, failed entirely to understand now, as again in later years, the character of the colonists; they were often arrogant or at least patronising; and to the republican New Englander they appeared bumptious aristocrats. The colonist was a brave and experienced man, and it was irksome to him to find himself in an inferior position to men who really knew less than he did about Indian warfare and forest fighting. On the other hand, the English troops felt quite as bitterly as the colonists, and Colonel King wrote to St John in July 1711, "You'll find in my Journal what Difficultyes we mett with through the Misfortune that the Coloneys were not inform'd of our Coming two Months sooner, and through the Interestedness, ill Nature, and Sowerness of these People, whose Government, Doctrine and Manners, whose Hypocracy and canting, are insupportable; and no man living but one of Gen'l Hill's good sense and good nature could have managed them. But if such a Man mett with nothing he could depend on, altho' vested with the Queen's Royal Power and Authority, and Supported by a Number of Troops sufficient to reduce by force all the Coloneys, 'tis easy to determine the Respect and Obedience Her Majesty may reasonably expect from them ... they will grow more stiff and disobedient every day unless they are brought under our government and deprived of their charters."[263]
The inhabitants of Boston may have shown many signs of coolness, but the authorities of Massachusetts loyally supported the expedition which was supposed to be about to accomplish so much. On the 30th July the fleet sailed from Boston to the St Lawrence under the command of Sir Hovenden Walker, of whom little is known, and who in no way added lustre to his name. The colonial contingent that went by sea consisted of about fifteen hundred men, led by the experienced and buoyant Samuel Vetch. Another colonial force was commanded by Francis Nicholson, whose object was to move north by way of Lake Champlain and attack the Canadian strongholds. At the head of all was General Hill, or Jack Hill, the man about town, who was no soldier, and owed his position to his sister Abigail Hill, the famous supplanter of the Duchess of Marlborough. General Hill made no attempt to gain laurels for himself or his country, and his troops struggled back to Boston disgraced, not by their own actions, but by the want of action on the part of their leader.
Walker's fleet entered the St Lawrence on the 22nd of August. The Admiral, totally ignorant of the navigation of the gulf, steered his vessels in misty weather straight for the northern shore. His own ship was saved just in time, but not so those which followed, and eight of the transports were dashed to pieces on the rocks, with a loss of almost a thousand lives. Walker, as proved by his own writings, never possessed any true ability; and he was only too ready, like Jack Hill, to look for some pretext for retreat. This horrible disaster was sufficient for the Admiral's purpose, and three days later the mighty armament turned away from Quebec, and New France was for the time saved. Walker looked upon the wreck as providential, and that the army had been saved from worse disasters. It was indeed a strange action for a British sailor to pen words of sincere gratitude for the loss of half his fleet. "Had we arrived safe at Quebec," he writes, "our provisions would have been reduced to a very small proportion, not exceeding eight or nine weeks at short allowance, so that between ten and twelve thousand men must have been left to perish with the extremity of cold and hunger. I must confess the melancholy contemplation of this (had it happened) strikes me with horror; for how dismal must it have been to have beheld the seas and earth locked up by adamantine frosts, and swoln with high mountains of snow in a barren and uncultivated region."[264] Walker sailed back to Boston and then with his fleet returned to England, where as a final completion to the horrible fiasco, the Admiral's ship was blown up. Swift records this event as taking place in the Thames, but it more probably occurred at Spithead, owing "to an accident and carelessness of some rogue, who was going as they think to steal some gunpowder: five hundred men are lost."[265]
Every disgraceful plot deserved to come to a bad end. The ignominious conclusion of the Walker and Hill expedition was only to be expected, since its true object had been to eclipse the victories of Marlborough and bring about his entire downfall. St John and Harley had not been animated by patriotic or imperial sentiments when Mrs Masham had agreed to assist them in the backstairs attack upon the Churchill family. The price of her assistance was a high military command for her incapable brother Jack Hill. The two Tory ministers cared nothing for the success or failure of the colonies; all they required at the time was the fall of the Whigs with Marlborough at their head. The blame therefore must to a certain extent rest upon the English Crown ministers; but the incompetence of the two commanders, though not unparalleled in English history, was worse than most instances, because it bordered very closely upon cowardice. Muddle-headed as some British generals have proved themselves, it is almost impossible to find another case where the more serious charge can be brought or sustained. Marlborough had certainly fallen; but his unpatriotic enemies had not succeeded in effacing the glories of the four battles which still stand out as the chief features of the War of the Spanish Succession. Although St John's plot was disgraceful and deserved the failure that it earned, yet the disaster fell very hardly upon New England. It has been hinted that the colonials were themselves to blame, and that they were so afraid of the presence of an English force that they preferred failure to success. They feared, according to Colonel King's Journal, that "the conquest of Canada will naturally lead the Queen into changing their present disorderly government."[266] The New Englanders could not, however, be so indifferent as is supposed, for the people of Massachusetts at any rate did their utmost to make the attack a success; and it was afterwards found that one in five of her male population was on active service in 1711; while many years had to elapse before the colony recovered from the effects of her financial exhaustion.[267]
The War of the Spanish Succession in Europe had for all practical purposes ceased, and the echo of it in America was dying away. The belligerents were weary; the English began to feel the burden of their National Debt; while the French were utterly exhausted, for in 1709 even nature had turned against the omnipotent Louis, and the country was impoverished by a winter which killed the fruits and vines. In 1713 terms were at last agreed to; and the Treaty of Utrecht, the first really great colonial treaty, was the result. It is idle to speculate on what enormous gains might have fallen to the English if party spirit and spite had not cut short the remarkable career of England's great captain. Had Marlborough been allowed to continue his unbroken series of triumphant victories, and had he been permitted to select a commander-in-chief in the West, it is most probable that the Treaty of Utrecht would have contained those clauses which made the Treaty of Paris so famous half a century later. As it was, the gains to England in the colonial world were not to be despised. Acadia was surrendered to Great Britain, with Hudson Bay and Newfoundland; on the other hand, Cape Breton Island was restored to France. The great faults of the treaty, as far as it concerned the Western Hemisphere, lay first in allowing the French certain fishing rights off the shores of Newfoundland, which remained until recently "a dangerous cause of quarrel between two great nations, a perpetual irritating sore, a bar to the progress and prosperity of the Colony;"[268] and, secondly, it was unwise to restore Cape Breton to the French, as it was the key to the St Lawrence. A Frenchman pointed this out in 1745, when he said that "it was necessary that we should retain a position that would make us at all times masters of the entrance to the river which leads to New France";[269] and even in 1713 the French Government realised something of the island's importance, and reared upon its desolate, fog-bound shore the mighty fortress of Louisburg, a stronghold that came to be regarded as impregnable, and second only in importance to that of Quebec.
"An avalanche of defeat and disaster had fallen upon the old age of Louis XIV.,"[270] and he was forced into a treaty which contained many humiliations. He must, however, have realised that England had once more lost her opportunity, and that it was still possible for France to assert her supremacy in the West. Canada, the goal of the New Englander, was still New France, and for the next thirty years chronic warfare, sometimes only flickering, but never extinct, smouldered along the frontier line of the English and French settlers. The Canadians had the distinct advantage of knowing what their great object was. It was far more magnificent than that which filled the minds of the English; it was perhaps too widely extended, but it was undoubtedly grand—North America for the Gaul. To the governors of Massachusetts and New York the dream of the total defeat of the French and their banishment from Canada may have occasionally appeared; but their general outlook upon the question was as circumscribed as that of the French was diffuse; and to them the safety of their colonies, the friendship of the Five Nations, and sound, steady trade were sufficiently difficult problems for solution.