A History of the British Army, Vol. 2 / First Part—to the Close of the Seven Years' War

by Sir J. W. Fortescue

Accordingly on the morning of the 31st of July H.M.S. Centurion stood in close to the Montmorenci, dropped her anchor and opened fire on the redoubts. Two armed transports followed her and likewise opened fire on the nearest redoubt, stranding as the tide ebbed till at last they lay high and dry on the mud. Simultaneously the batteries on the other side of the Montmorenci opened a furious fire upon the flank of Montcalm's entrenchments, and at eleven o'clock a number of boats filled with troops rowed across from Point Lévis and hovered about the river opposite Beauport as if to attack at that point. Time, however, showed Montcalm where real danger was to be apprehended, and he concentrated the whole of his twelve thousand men between Beauport and the Montmorenci. At half-past five the British batteries afloat and ashore opened fire with redoubled fury, and the boats made a dash for the shore. Unfortunately some of them grounded on a ledge short of the flats, which caused some confusion and delay, but eventually all of them reached the strand and set the men ashore. Thirteen companies of grenadiers were the first to land, and after them two hundred men of the Sixtieth; while some distance behind them the Fifteenth and Fraser's Highlanders followed in support. No sooner were they ashore than the grenadiers, the most trusted troops in the army, for some reason got out of hand. Despite the efforts of their officers they would not wait for the supports to form up, but made a rush in the greatest disorder and confusion for the redoubt and drove the French from it. Instantly a tremendous fire was poured upon them from the entrenchments above. The grenadiers recoiled for a moment; then recovering themselves they ran forward again and made a mad effort to struggle up the steep, slippery grass of the ascent, but only to roll down by scores, killed or wounded by the hail of musketry from the French lines. Where the affair would have ended it is hard to say, had not the clouds of a summer's storm, which had hung over the river all the afternoon, suddenly burst just at that moment in a deluge of rain. All ammunition on both sides was drenched, so that further firing became impossible, while the grassy slope became so treacherous that it was hopeless to attempt to climb it. Wolfe, seeing that everything was gone wrong, ordered a retreat; and the troops fell back and re-embarked, the grenadiers and Sixtieth having lost five hundred officers and men, or well-nigh half of their numbers, in killed, wounded, and missing.

August 5.

Wolfe was highly indignant over the misbehaviour of the grenadiers, and rebuked them sharply in general orders for their impetuous, irregular, and unsoldierlike proceedings. The French, on the other hand, were naturally much elated, and flattered themselves that the campaign was virtually at an end. Nor was Wolfe of a very different opinion. It is said, indeed, that he conceived the idea of leaving a part of his troops in a fortified position before Quebec, to be ready for a new attempt in the following spring. Meanwhile for the present he fell back on the tactics, which Barrington had so successfully employed at Guadeloupe, of laying waste all the settlements round about Quebec, with the object of provoking desertion among the militia and exhausting the colony generally. Montcalm, however, was not to be enticed from his lines; he had Indians with him sufficient to make hideous reprisals for Wolfe's desolation, and Canada was not to be won by the burning of villages. Wolfe, therefore, now shifted his operations to the point whither the enterprise of the fleet had led him, above and on the reverse side of Quebec. With every fair wind more and more ships had braved the fire of the batteries and passed through it in safety; and now a flotilla of flat-boats dared the same passage, while twelve hundred men under Brigadier Murray marched overland up the south bank of the St. Lawrence to do service in them. This movement compelled Montcalm to withdraw another fifteen hundred men from the camp at Beauport, to check any attempt at a landing above the city. The duty thus imposed upon this small body of French was most arduous, since it involved anxious watching of fifteen or twenty miles of the shore. So well was it performed, however, under the direction of Bougainville, an officer afterwards famous as the great navigator, that it was only after two repulses that Murray succeeded in burning a large magazine of French stores. The alarm caused by this stroke was so great that Montcalm hastened from Beauport to take command in person; but when he arrived the British had already retired, content with their success.

None the less the French from the highest to the lowest now grew seriously uneasy. Their army was on short rations. All its supplies were drawn from the districts of Three Rivers and Montreal; and, from want of transport overland, these were perforce sent down the river where the British ships lay ready to intercept them. Now was seen the error of sending the frigates up the river and allowing the British squadron to assemble by small detachments above Quebec; but it was too late to repair it. The British fleet had discovered the true method of reducing the city by severing its communications both above and below. The only hope for the French was that winter might drive the shipping from the St. Lawrence and put an end to the campaign, before Quebec should be starved out.

June 15.
July.
July 24.

Meanwhile Amherst's operations to south and west began likewise to tell upon the situation. Taking advantage of the latitude allowed to him by Pitt, he determined to add the reduction of Niagara to the enterprises prescribed to him. This duty he assigned to Brigadier Prideaux with five thousand men;[316] Brigadier Stanwix was entrusted with the relief of Pittsburg; and Amherst in person took charge of the grand advance by Lakes George and Champlain. The operations of Prideaux and Stanwix were to be conducted in combination; for it was intended that while Prideaux was engaged with Niagara, Stanwix should push a force northward against the French posts on Lake Erie, and thence on to Niagara itself, thus releasing Prideaux for an advance to the St. Lawrence. Prideaux was the first to take the field. His force having been assembled on the Mohawk at Senectady, he moved up the stream, left a strong garrison at Fort Stanwix to guard the Great Carrying-place, and moved forward by Lake Oneida and the river Onandaga to Oswego. There leaving nearly half of his force under Colonel Haldimand to secure his retreat, he embarked with the rest on the lake for Niagara. The fort stood in the angle formed by the river Niagara and Lake Ontario, and was garrisoned by some six hundred men. Prideaux at once laid siege in form, though the trenches were at first so unskilfully laid out by the engineers as to require almost total reconstruction. At last, however, the batteries opened fire. Prideaux was unluckily killed almost immediately by the premature explosion of a shell from one of his own guns, but Sir William Johnson, who had joined the force with a party of Indians, took command in his place and pushed the siege with great energy. The fort after two or three weeks of battering was in extremity; when a party of thirteen hundred French rangers and Indians, which had been summoned from the work of harassing the British on the Ohio to the relief of Niagara, appeared on the scene in the very nick of time. Johnson rose worthily to the occasion. Leaving a third of his force in the trenches and yet another third to guard his boats, he sallied forth with the remainder to meet the relieving force, and after a brisk engagement routed it completely. The survivors fled hurriedly back to Lake Erie, burned Venango and the posts on the lake and retired to Detroit. Niagara surrendered on the evening of the same day, and thus were accomplished at a stroke the most important objects to be gained by Stanwix and Prideaux. The whole region of the Upper Ohio was left in undisputed possession of the British, and the French posts of the West were hopelessly cut off from Canada. Now, therefore, the ground was open for an advance on Montreal by Lake Ontario; and Amherst lost no time in sending General Gage to take command of Prideaux's force, with orders to attack the French post of La Galette, at the head of the rapids of the St. Lawrence, and thence to push on as close as possible to Montreal. "Now is the time," wrote Amherst to him, "and we must make use of it."[317]

July 21.
July 26.
August.

Amherst himself had assembled his army at the end of June at the usual rendezvous by the head of Lake George. His force consisted of about eleven thousand five hundred men, five thousand of them Provincials and the remainder British.[318] As was now the rule, he had massed the grenadiers of the army into one corps, and had formed also a body of Light Infantry which he had equipped appropriately for its work.[319] It was not, however, until the 21st of July that the troops were embarked, and that a flotilla little less imposing than Abercromby's set sail with a fair wind over Lake George. It was drawn up in four columns, the light troops and Provincials on either flank, the regular troops in the right centre and the artillery and baggage in the left centre. An advanced and a rear-guard in line covered the head and tail of the columns, and an armed sloop followed in rear of all. Before dark they had reached the Narrows, and at daybreak of the following morning the force disembarked and marched, meeting with little resistance, by the route of Abercromby's second advance to Ticonderoga. The entrenchments which had foiled the British in the previous year had been reconstructed but were found to be deserted; Bourlamaque, the French commander, having withdrawn his garrison, some thirty-five hundred men only, into the fort. Amherst brought up his artillery to lay siege in form, but on the night of the 26th a loud explosion announced that the French had abandoned Ticonderoga and blown up the works. It was, however, but one bastion that had been destroyed, so Amherst at once repaired the damage and made preparations for advance on Crown Point. On the 1st of August he learned that Bourlamaque had abandoned this fortress also, and fallen back to the strong position of Isle aux Noix at the northern outlet of Lake Champlain. Amherst was now brought to a standstill, for the French had four armed vessels on the lake, and it was necessary for him to build vessels likewise for the protection of the flotilla before he could advance farther. He at once set about this work, concurrently with the erection of a strong fort at Crown Point, but unfortunately he began too late. Amherst was above all a methodical man, whose principle was to make good each step gained before he attempted to move again. Possibly he had not anticipated so easy an advance to Crown Point, but, be that as it may, he had made no provision for advancing beyond it, and when at last, by the middle of September, his ships were ready, the season was too far advanced for further operations. He tried to stir up Gage to hasten to the attack on La Galette, but without success. In fact by the middle of August the campaign of the armies of the south and west was virtually closed.

August.