At the commencement of April, the violent breaking up of the ice of the St. Lawrence proclaimed that spring had arrived. "It was a sight," said Montcalm, "to see the masses of ice heaping up, mountain-like, amidst great noise. The ice shove took place at 7.30 A. M. It happens from time to time and makes one fear for a part of Montreal, which is built too near the river. One year it bore down all the walls of the town. This year it has battered the Château de Callières, a house at the extremity of the town, so called, because it was the dwelling of the governor general of that name."
The troops began to be moved. At last the vessels from France reached Quebec and Bougainville returned to Montreal on May 14th to render his report to the governor general, confirming his letters, arriving ahead. The situation now unfolded by Bougainville, with the letters from the court at Versailles and the ministers of war and marine to Vaudreuil and Montcalm, was one of intense anxiety. France was in a pitiable state of degeneracy. A weak king sat without honour on its throne, surrounded by ministers without pride and without patriotism, sad successors of a Henry IV, a Richelieu, a Louis XIV and a Colbert. There was no consistent policy in the king's council. The king, who had boasted "après moi, le déluge," was a nobody, and Madame la Marquise de Pompadour virtually prime minister, all powerful. There was no credit. The finances were inadequate to pay for the toilettes and the shameful splendours of the Pompadour, whose budget was greater than that of Canada under the infamous government of Louis XV. France saw its erstwhile moral and political grandeur in decay; its administration of its foreign and home affairs a by-word heightened by the scandalous disorders of the court of a king who was a gamester and a high liver.
It is no wonder then that Bougainville, after three months' insistent solicitations in France with M. Berryer, the minister of marine, the Marshal de Belle-Isle and the Pompadour, could only obtain the reinforcement for Canada of 400 men and some ammunition, and inadequate supplies of provisions. In his journal he notes that "M. Berryer who, from being a lieutenant of the police in Paris, had been made minister of marine, would not understand that Canada was the barrier of our other colonies and that the English would not attack any others until they had chased us out of it. This minister was fond of proverbs and he told me pertinently that one did not seek to save the stables when the house was on fire." Hence the small reinforcements for the stables of Canada.
Honours, however, were thickly scattered. Montcalm had been made a lieutenant-general, with an increase of salary, with the red ribbon of knighthood of the Order of St. Louis; de Lévis became a maréchal de camp; Bourlamaque had been created a brigadier, Bougainville a colonel, and both had received supplementary pensions; M. de Vaudreuil was named Grand Croix of the Order of St. Louis; M. de Rigaud, his brother, received for life the concession of the Port of Baie Verte (Green Bay). Many other officers received pensions, promotions or the Cross of St. Louis.
Without the necessary reinforcements the colony appeared abandoned. The argument given for this to Vaudreuil and Bigot in a letter dated February 3d from the minister of marine was that "the continuation of the war in Europe, the too great risks by sea and the necessity of reuniting the naval forces, did not allow of their separation or the hazarding of a part of them to afford the uncertain succour which would be employed more usefully for the state and the relief of Canada, in expeditions more prompt and decisive later."
Yet in spite of the news that the English counted on invading Carillon and Quebec—Amherst at Carillon and Wolfe at Quebec—Montcalm's instructions were "to hearken to no capitulation, but to defend himself foot by foot, and not to imitate the shameful conduct of Louisbourg." [211] Vaudreuil had to keep his foot in Canada at any price. The letter of M. Berryer to Montcalm and Vaudreuil, dated February 10, 1759, put this explicitly: "Your principal object, which you ought not to lose sight of, must be to preserve at least a sufficient portion of this colony and to hold it, in view of recovering the whole on the declaration of peace, it being a very different thing, in a treaty to stipulate for the restitution of the whole of a colony, than for that only of dependent portions lost in the hazard of war.... Moreover, His Majesty will not lose sight of you during this campaign.... He will busy himself about means to assist you effectively, not only through the new reinforcements he may send you, but still more by efficient manœuvres to procure diversions of the strength likely otherwise to oppose you."
This enigmatic, mysterious allusion, not then understood, was to nothing less than to the projected invasion of England which, it was thought, would withdraw the English forces from Canada. This plan, conceived by M. Machault, prompted by the Maréchal de Belle-Isle and enthusiastically adopted by Choiseul, forty-six years before Napoleon, was actually attempted. But Pitt, becoming aware of the preparations, quickly encircled the British Isles and Ireland with a powerful fleet and organized the militia forces on land, and sent Rodney, Boscawen and Hawke to attack the French fleets when mobilizing. Lavisse, in the "Histoire de France," 8, II, p. 219, tells the result: "The Atlantic fleet was rendered as powerless as was that of the Mediterranean with the loss to France of twenty-nine vessels of the line and thirty-five frigates; its fleet was reduced to nearly nothing. It was no longer in the position to defend its colonies." [212]
It was a gloomy lookout for the military authorities at Montreal. To them it seemed as if the government at home, unmindful of the sacrifice of its heroes in Canada by field, flood and ice, was ready to abandon the "few arpents of snow" as too great a burden for its weak shoulders and to shamefully lower the fleur-de-lys to the flag of England. [214]
The forces at the disposal of Canada were, according to the census taken in January, only 15,229. The census of February, 1759, gave a total population in Canada of 82,000, with 20,000 able to bear arms. (Cf., Rameau, "La France aux Colonies," p. 86.) This would not include the regular army and the domiciliated Indians.