MONTREAL, MILITARY HEADQUARTERS
THE FINAL STRUGGLE FOR SUPREMACY—THE SEVEN YEARS, 1756-1763—THE CAMPAIGN OF 1756 (OSWEGO)—THE WINTER AT MONTREAL
REVIEW—CELERON DE BIENVILLE—DE VAUDREUIL—MONTCALM—HIS MILITARY AND HOUSEHOLD STAFF—DE LEVIS, BOURLAMAQUE, BOUGAINVILLE—CHATEAU DE VAUDREUIL—THE MEETING OF MONTCALM AND DE VAUDREUIL—MONTCALM'S POSITION—THE THREE MILITARY ARMS—THE MILITIA, MARINE, REGULARS—THE RED ALLIES—CAPITULATION OF OSWEGO—SACKING—TE DEUM IN THE PARISH CHURCH—THE TWO PREJUGES—WINTER IN MONTREAL—GAMING AT QUEBEC—A WINTER WAR PARTY—SOCIAL GAYETIES AT MONTREAL—SCARCITY OF PROVISIONS—SHIPS AWAITED.
The long peace during which Montreal had made great progress was at last to end. The Seven Years' War began formally in 1750, when France, Austria and Russia entered the lists against England and Prussia, and ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1763. We are now to study the history of Montreal in the period during which the final struggle for the mastery between the English and the French powers was being fiercely maintained. Montreal played a peculiar part as the headquarters of military operations, to be directed for defence and offence, by way of Lake Champlain, against the heart of the British settlements. This was the most natural point of attack, as the other two routes for the invasion of Canada offered little encouragement—the lower St. Lawrence on the east being guarded by the natural and almost impregnable fortress of Quebec, the upper St. Lawrence on the west being protected by a long chain of dangerous rapids. If we delay on the events of 1756-60, it is because this was the crucial and pivotal point of Canadian history and Montreal was for the most part the headquarters of de Vaudreuil and Montcalm, who directed the military operations thence. Before entering on these fateful years, let us review the situation.
The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle was concluded on October 8, 1748. By it an official and fictitious peace ruled between England and France, but in the colonies the rival powers were still disputing the possession of territories and influence, whether in India or in America. In the latter country there were frequent skirmishes on the frontiers of Acadia. In the summer of 1749 Galissonière, the hump-backed but high-minded administrator general, sent out to vindicate French rights in the valley of Ohio, Céleron de Bienville, one of the Le Moynes, a chevalier of St. Louis and a captain in the colonial troops. Leaving Lachine on June 15th, he took with him twenty-three birchwood canoes, with fourteen officers and cadets, twenty soldiers, a hundred and eighty Canadians and a band of Indians, to the district of the Ohio and the Alleghenies, where he buried six leaden plates at various places, to mark French occupation.
The same policy of vindication was followed under the Sieur de la Jonquière, made governor, on August 16th of the same year, and the Marquis du Quesne, succeeding him August 7, 1752. This activity provoked the recriminations of Virginia and the other colonies west of the Alleghenies, the treacherous slaying of the young Coulon de Jumonville and nine of his band, on May 28, 1754, being one of the events which woke up Canada and France to the farcical make-believe of peace between the two nations. England was ready to declare war, but France, weakened after the Austrian Succession, impoverished in her finances, with a decadent marine service, immersed in religious and parliamentary troubles, and its people loaded with taxes, sought to temporize and to stave off the inevitable crisis.
In the month of January, 1755, the English government provoked the French to defend Canada, by sending Major General Braddock, with two regiments, to command the regular and colonial troops. Accordingly on May 3, 1755, a squadron of fourteen ships sailed from Brest, bearing about three thousand soldiers for America, under the command of Admiral Dubois de la Motte. With the fleet were M. de Vaudreuil, son of the former Governor of Montreal, himself now governor general elect, his appointment being dated from July 1Oth, and the Baron de Dieskau, commissioned as commandant of the troops which were sent out. Their journey was interrupted by the English pirates, who captured the Alcide and the Lis, making prisoners of M. Rigaud de Vaudreuil, brother of the governor general, and himself the Governor of Three Rivers, several officers and eight companies. Similar acts of piracy, directly countenanced by the English government, were being committed on the seas, and they provoked lively indignation in France. But, although the Marquis de Mirepoix, the French ambassador at the Court of St. James in London, was recalled and shots were being interchanged in America, so that Baron de Dieskau was wounded and taken prisoner at Lake George by General William Johnson, yet conflicting views in France between the parties led by the Count d'Argenson, minister of war, and M. de Machault, minister of marine, delayed any decision that year.
In January, 1756, however, it became necessary to look around in France for a successor to Dieskau and to prepare a new body of troops for Canada, to be sent that spring. D'Argenson's choice fell upon the Marquis Louis-Joseph de Montcalm, then at Montpellier, a soldier of forty-four years of age, who had seen many campaigns. Montcalm lost no time in arranging his staff and household retinue. Since these are to figure in the life of Montreal of their period, we give their names. His first aide-de-camp was Louis Antoine de Bougainville, of whom Montcalm wrote in his journal: "He is a young man of light, and literary ability, a great geometrician, known for his work on the integral calculus; he belongs to the Royal Society of London, and aspires to the Academy of Sciences in Paris, where he could have had a place, had he not preferred to go to America to learn the trade of war and to give proofs of his good will." He was highly recommended to the new maréchal de camp, a dignity equivalent to that of a general of brigade. Bougainville was named, before leaving, Capitaine réformé. The second aide was M. de la Rochebeaucour, "a gentleman of good birth from Poitou, a lieutenant in Montcalm's cavalry," The third, a working aide-de-camp, acting as secretary, was an under-officer of the Flanders Regiment, named Marcel, a sergeant, who now became lieutenant réformé.
