Nor was want of numbers the only disadvantage under which Canada laboured. The currency, principally paper money, was depreciated. Provisions were scarce, seeing that the farmers were constantly called away to fight, and that supplies from beyond the sea were liable to be intercepted. The government was corrupt, and the high officials cheated the King on the one hand and the habitans on the other with the greatest impartiality. Canadian history, all through its course, as long as Canada was a province of France, was tainted by official corruption. The officials were traders also, and the public service was largely in the hands of commercial rings. What happened in the mother country happened also in her greatest colony. One official's wife became another official's mistress, and the husband who gave up the wife was rewarded with pickings at the expense of the public and of the Crown. The evil was at its worst in the last days of New France. The Intendant was then Bigot, a clever Frenchman who had come out in 1748, and round him gathered a gang of unscrupulous adventurers, whose misdeeds were fully brought to light after the crisis was over and the colony was lost. Among them were Cadet, butcher and contractor, who was made Commissary-General; Péan, Varin, and others, who, one at Quebec and another at Montreal, formed stores and created monopolies, buying and selling at artificial prices, sucking the life-blood of an extravagant Government in France and of a poor community in America.
| Vaudreuil. |
In past years, supreme authority in Canada had been shared between the Governor and the Intendant, and quarrels in abundance had arisen between the holders of the two offices; but, at the time when the Seven Years' War began, the Governor and the Intendant were at one. The Intendant Bigot, and the Governor De Vaudreuil, were on excellent terms. Vaudreuil, son of a previous Governor-General of Canada, received his appointment in 1755, having already been Governor of Louisiana. He was a vain man, of some but not great capacity, called to high office in a difficult time, and not equal to the task which was imposed upon him. Surrounded by cleverer and more unscrupulous men of Bigot's type, he did nothing to check the evils which were ruining Canada.
| Division between Canadians and Frenchmen. Different classes of troops engaged in the war. |
The principal point to note about him is that he was a Canadian by birth. This fact was the source of mischief. In lieu of the old feud between the Governor and the Intendant, there came into being a new line of cleavage, which tended to divide the mother country from the colony. The Governor had always been supreme in military matters; but, when war in North America grew to be more than a series of border forays, it became necessary to send out skilled generals from France. Dieskau was sent, and after him came a greater man, Montcalm. Friction then arose between the Governor and the General, accentuated in consequence of the Governor being a Canadian. All the Governors of Canada, including Vaudreuil, had seen service, or had at any rate been trained to war, but they were usually either sailors or connected with the forces which were attached to the navy and under the Minister of Marine. On both the English and the French side in North America there were, at the time of the Seven Years' War, three classes of troops engaged. On the English side there were the regular regiments sent out from home, and brought up to strength by recruiting in the colonies. There were also regiments entirely raised in the colonies, but still royal regiments in the pay of the Crown, such for instance as the four battalions of Royal Americans, first raised by Loudoun's orders, and famous in after times as the 60th or the King's Royal Rifle Corps.3 Lastly, there were the purely colonial levies. On the French side there were in the first place regiments of the line from France. In the second place there were the troupes de la Marine, regiments or companies mainly raised in France, but permanently stationed in Canada, to form a standing garrison and to develop into military colonists. In the third place there was the Canadian militia, including all the adult males between the years of fifteen and sixty. Only the first of these three classes of troops was under the direct command of the General from France. After Montcalm's arrival they numbered rather over 4,000 men, about one-fourth of whom were in garrison at Louisbourg. The troupes de la Marine amounted at most to about 2,500 men. The Canadian militia on paper numbered 15,000, but very few of them were to be found in the field at any given time or place. The General corresponded with the Minister for War; when in action he took command of all the forces present, but the nominal Commander-in-Chief was the Governor, who was by way of directing the campaign, and who reported to the Minister of Marine. Thus, both at home and in Canada, there was divided responsibility at a time when all depended on the most complete co-operation and single control.
3 They were originally the 62nd or Royal American Regiment of foot. The men were chiefly German and Swiss Protestants, and about one-third of the officers were of the same nationalities. On the disbanding of Shirley's and Pepperell's Regiments, which were numbered 50th and 51st, the Royal Americans became the 60th Regiment. Their motto, 'Celer et audax,' is said, without much authority, to have been first given them by Wolfe.
| The strength of Canada. |
The strength of Canada, on the other hand, consisted in the divisions of her adversaries, the separate grumbling English colonies; in the incompetence of the English Government at home; in the fact that the routes for attack from Canada favoured quick movement from the base; and most of all in the support which the Frenchmen received from the red men, notably from the mission Indians. The Indians went hand in hand with the Canadians; the one and the other loved irregular warfare; the one and the other answered to the call of the Governor of Canada, rather than of the General who looked on war as he had known it in Europe—more scientific, more continuous, better controlled, and more humane than the savage outbursts of killing and plundering which were the product of American backwoods.
| Canadian raid on the route between Albany and Oswego. |
As winter turned into spring, in 1756, before war had been proclaimed in Europe, and before Montcalm had come out, the Canadians made a move. The most distant and isolated English outpost was Oswego on Lake Ontario. Its communication with Albany depended on the two little forts which, as told in the last chapter,4 had been constructed to guard the four miles' portage between the Mohawk river and Wood Creek, the stream which feeds Lake Oneida. Towards the end of March, a party of Canadians and Indians, sent by Vaudreuil and commanded by an officer named De Léry, surprised the fort on the latter river, Fort Bull, killed or captured the small garrison, and destroyed the building with all its contents. The damage was repaired by Shirley, in whose eyes Oswego was of supreme importance, and who, in the winter of 1755, had formulated new schemes for a comprehensive campaign against Canada, including as before the reduction of the French forts on Lake Ontario.