Canada: The Empire of the North — From 1756 to 1763, part 3

[Illustration: THE COUNTRY ROUND TICONDEROGA] Cleaning guns and eating snatches of food, Montcalm's men slept that night in their places behind the logs.

Montcalm had passed from man to man, personally thanking the troops for their valor.

When daylight came over the hills with wisps of fog like cloud banners from the mountain tops, and the sunlight pouring gold mist through the valley, the French rose and rubbed their eyes.

They could scarcely believe it!

Surely Abercrombie would come back with his heavy guns.

Like the mists of the morning the English had vanished.

Far down the lake they were retreating in such panic terror they had left their baggage.

Places were found on the portage by French scouts where the English had fled in such haste, marchers had lost their boots in the mud and not stopped to {260} find them.

Such was the battle of Carillon, or Ticonderoga,--good reason for Amherst refusing to go on to Quebec.

The year closed with two more victories for the English.

Brigadier John Forbes and Washington succeeded in cutting their way up to Fort Duquesne by a new road.

They found the fort abandoned, and, taking possession in November, renamed it Pittsburg after the great English statesman.

The other victory was at Frontenac, or Kingston.

As the French had concentrated at Lake Champlain, leaving Frontenac unguarded, Bradstreet gained permission from Abercrombie to lead three thousand men across Lake Ontario against La Salle's old fur post.

Crossing from the ruins of old Oswego, Bradstreet encamped beneath the palisades of Frontenac on the evening of August 25. By morning he had his cannon in range for the walls.

Inside the fort Commandant de Noyan had less than one hundred men.

At seven in the evening of August 27 he surrendered.

Bradstreet permitted the prisoners to go down to Montreal on parole, to be exchanged for English prisoners held in Quebec.

Furs to the value of ,000, twenty cannon, and nine vessels were captured.

Bradstreet divided the loot among his men, taking for himself not so much as a penny's worth.

The fort was destroyed.

So were the vessels.

The guns and provisions were carried across the lake and deposited at Fort Stanwix, east of old Oswego.

The loss of Duquesne on the Ohio and Fort Frontenac on Lake Ontario cut French dominion in America in two.

Henceforth there was no highway from New France to Louisiana.

In September, Abercrombie was recalled.

Amherst became chief commander.

Wolfe had gone home to England ill.

It was while sojourning at the fashion resort, Bath, that he fell desperately in love with a Miss Lowther, to whom he became engaged.

Then came the summons from Pitt to meet the cabinet ministers in the war office of London.

Wolfe was asked to take command of the campaign in 1759 against Quebec.

It had been his ambition in Louisburg to proceed at once against Quebec.

Here was his opportunity.

{261} It need not be told, he took it.

Amherst now, on the field south of Lake Champlain, received 10 pounds a day as commander in chief.

For the greater task of reducing Quebec, Wolfe was to receive 2 pounds a day.

Under him were to serve Monckton, Townshend, and Murray.

Admiral Saunders was to command the fleet.

Wolfe advised sending a few ships beforehand to guard the entrance to the St. Lawrence, and Durell was dispatched for this purpose long before the main armaments set out.

By April 30 the combined fleet and army were at Halifax, Wolfe with a force of some 8500 men.

Wolfe, now only in his thirty-third year, had been the subject of such jealousy that he was actually compelled to sail from Louisburg in June without one penny of ready money in his army chest.

Underling officers, whose duty it was to advance him money on credit, had raised difficulties.

[Illustration: GENERAL JAMES WOLFE] Cheers and cheers yet again rent the air as the fleet at last set out for the St. Lawrence, the soldiers on deck shouting themselves hoarse as Louisburg faded over the watery horizon, the officers at table the first night out at sea drinking toast after toast to _British colors on every French fort in America_.

At Quebec was fast and furious preparation for the coming siege.

Bougainville had been sent to France from Lake Champlain in 1758 with report of the victory at Ticonderoga.

In vain {262} he appealed for more money, more men for the coming conflict!

The French government sent him back to Quebec with a bundle of advice and platitudes and titles and badges and promotions and soft words, but of the sinew which makes war, men and money, France had naught to spare.

The rumor of the English invasion was confirmed by Bougainville.

Every man capable of bearing arms was called to Quebec except the small forces at the outposts, and Bourlamaque at Champlain was instructed if attacked by Amherst to blow up Fort Carillon, then Crown Point, and retire.

Grain was gathered into the state warehouses, and so stripped of able-bodied men were the rural districts that the crops of 1759 were planted by the women and children.

Fire ships and rafts were constructed, the channel of St. Charles River closed by sinking vessels, and a bridge built higher up to lead from Quebec City across the river eastward to Beauport and Montmorency.

Along the high cliffs of the St. Lawrence from Montmorency Falls to Quebec were constructed earthworks and intrenchments to command the approach up the river.

What frigates had come in with Bougainville were sent higher up the St. Lawrence to be out of danger; but the crews, numbering 1400, were posted on the ramparts of Upper Town.

Counting mere boys, Quebec had a defensive force variously given as from 9000 to 14,000; but deducting raw levies, who scarcely know the rules of the drill room, it is doubtful if Montcalm could boast of more than 5000 able-bodied fighters.

Still he felt secure in the impregnable strength of Quebec's natural position.

July 29, when the enemy lay encamped beneath his trenches, he could write, "Unless they [the English] have wings, they cannot cross a river and effect a landing and scale a precipice."

One cruel feature there was of Quebec's preparations.

To keep the habitants on both sides the river loyal, Vaudreuil, the governor, issued a proclamation telling the people that the English intended to massacre the inhabitants, men, women, and children.

Meanwhile, morning, noon, and night, the chapel bells are ringing .

.

.

ringing .

.

.

lilting .

.

.

and calling the faithful to prayers for the destruction of the heretic invader!

Nuns lie prostrate day and night in prayer for the {263} country's deliverance from the English.

Holy processions march through the streets, nuns and priests and little children in white, and rough soldiery in the uniforms with the blue facings, to pray Heaven's aid for victory.

And while the poor people starve for bread, poultry is daily fattened on precious wheat that it may make tenderest meat for Intendant Bigot's table, where the painted women and drunken gamblers and gay officers nightly feast!

[Illustration: BOUGAINVILLE] Signal fires light up the hills with ominous warning as the English fleet glides slowly abreast the current of the St. Lawrence, now pausing to sound where the yellow riffle of the current shows shallows, now following the course staked out by flags, here depending on the Frenchman, whom they have compelled to act as pilot!

Nightly from hill to hill the signal fires leap to the sky, till one flames from Cape Tourmente, and Quebec learns that the English are surely very near.

Among the Englishmen who are out in the advance boats sounding is a young man, James Cook, destined to become a great navigator.

June 25, sail after sail, frigate after frigate bristling with cannon, literally swarming with soldiers and marines, glide round the end of Orleans Island through driving rain and a squall, and to clatter of anchor chains and rattle of falling sails, come to rest.

"Pray Heaven they be wrecked as Sir Hovenden Walker's fleet was wrecked long ago," sigh the nuns of Quebec.

If they had {264} prayed half as hard that their corrupt rulers, their Bigots and their kings and their painted women whose nod could set Europe on fire with war,--if the holy sisterhood had prayed for this gang of vampires whose vices had brought doom to the land, to be swallowed in some abyss, their prayers might have been more effective with Heaven.

Next day a band of rangers lands from Wolfe's ships and finds the Island of Orleans deserted.

On the church door the curé has pinned a note, asking the English not to molest his church; and expressing sardonic regret that the invaders have not come soon enough to enjoy the fresh vegetables of his garden.

Wolfe for the first time gazes on the prize of his highest ambition,--Quebec.

He is at Orleans, facing the city.

To his right is the cataract of Montmorency.

From the falls past Beauport to St. Charles River, the St. Lawrence banks are high cliffs.

Above the cliffs are Montcalm's intrenched fighters.

Then the north shore of the St. Lawrence suddenly sheers up beyond St. Charles River into a lofty, steep precipice.

The precipice is Quebec City: Upper Town and the convents and the ramparts and Castle St. Louis nestling on an upper ledge of the rock below Cape Diamond; Lower Town crowding between the foot of the precipice and tide water.

Look again how the St. Lawrence turns in a sharp angle at the precipice.

Three sides of the city are water,--St. Charles River nearest Wolfe, then the St. Lawrence across the steep face of the rock, then the St. Lawrence again along a still steeper precipice to the far side.

Only the rear of the city is vulnerable; but it is walled and inaccessible.

Quebec was a prize for any commander's ambition; but how to win it?

The night of June 28 is calm, warm, pitch-dark, the kind of summer night when the velvet heat touches you as with a hand.

The English soldiers of the crowded transports have gone ashore, when suddenly out of the darkness glide fire ships as from an under world, with flaming mast poles, and hulls in shadow, roaring with fire, throwing out combustibles, drifting straight down on the tide towards the English fleet.

But the French have managed {265} badly.

They have set the ships on fire too soon.

The air is torn to tatters by terrific explosions that light up the outlines of the city spires and churn the river to billows.

Then the English sailors are out in small boats, avoiding the suck of the undertow.

Throwing out grappling hooks, they tow the flaming fire rafts away from their fleet.

It is the first play of the game, and the French have lost.

[Illustration: THE SITE OF QUEBEC AND THE GROUND OCCUPIED DURING THE SIEGE OF 1759]

Monckton goes ashore south on Point Lévis side next day.

Townshend has landed his troops east of the Montmorency on the north shore.

It is the second play of the game, and Wolfe has violated every rule of war, for he has separated his forces in three divisions close to a powerful enemy.

He is counting on Montcalm's policy, however, and Montcalm's play is to lie inactive, sleeping in his boots, refusing to be lured to battle till winter drives the English off.

It is usual in all accounts of the great struggle to find that certain facts have been suppressed.

Let us frankly confess that when the English rangers went foraging they brought back French scalps, and when the French Indians went scouting they returned with English scalps.

However, manners were improving.

Strict orders are given: this is not a war on women; neither women nor children are to be touched.

Wolfe posts proclamations on the parish churches, calling on the habitants to stand neutral.

In answer, they tear the proclamations down.

{266} By July 12 Wolfe's batteries on the south side of the river are preparing to shell the city.

A band of five hundred students and habitants rows across from Quebec by night to dislodge the English gunners, but mistaking their own shots for the shots of the enemy, fall on each other in the dark and retreat in wild confusion.

Then the English cannon begin to do business.

In a single day half the houses of Lower Town are battered to bits, and high-tossed bombs have plunged through roofs of Upper Town, burning the cathedral and setting a multitude of lesser buildings on fire.

In the confusion of cannonade and counter-cannonade and a city on fire, shrouding the ruins in a pall of smoke, some English ships slip up the river beyond Quebec, but there the precipice of the river bank is still steeper, and Bougainville is on guard with two thousand men.

For thirty miles around the English rangers have laid the country waste.

Still Montcalm refuses to come out and fight.

The enforced inaction exasperates Wolfe, whose health is failing him, and who sees the season passing, no nearer the object of his ambition than when he came.

As he had stormed the batteries of Louisburg, so now he decides to storm the heights of Montmorency.

To any one who has stood on the knob of rock above the gorge where the cataract plunges to the St. Lawrence, or has scrambled down the bank slippery with spray, and watched the black underpool whirl out to the river, Wolfe's venture must seem madness; for French troops lined the intrenchments above the cliff, and below a redoubt or battery had been built.

Below the cataract, when the tide ebbed, was a place which might be forded.

From sunrise to sunset all the last days of July, Wolfe's cannon boomed from Lévis across the city, from the fleet in mid channel, from the land camp on the east side of Montmorency.

Montcalm rightly guessed, this presaged a night assault.

To hide his design, Wolfe kept his transports shifting up and down the St. Lawrence, as if to land at Beauport halfway to the city.

All the same, two armed transports, as if by chance, managed to get themselves stranded just opposite the redoubt below the cliff, where their cannon would protect a landing.

Montcalm saw the move and strengthened the troops behind the earthworks on the {267} top of the cliff.

Toward sunset the tide ebbed, and at that time cannon were firing from all points with such fury that the St. Lawrence lay hidden in smoke.

As the air cleared, two thousand men were seen wading and fording below the falls.

There was a rush of the tall grenadiers for the redoubt.

The French retreated firing, and the cliff above poured down an avalanche of shots.

At that moment Wolfe suffered a cruel and unforeseen check.

A frightful thunderstorm burst on the river, lashing earth and air to darkness.

It was impossible to see five paces ahead or to aim a shot.

The cliff roared down with miniature rivulets and the slippery clay bank gave to every step of the climbers slithering down waist-deep in mud and weeds.

Powder was soaked.

As the rain ceased, Indians were seen sliding down the cliff to scalp the wounded.

Wolfe ordered a retreat.

The drums rolled the recall and the English escaped pellmell, the French hooting with derision at the top of the banks, the English yelling back strong oaths for the enemy to come out of its rat hole and fight like men.

At the ford the men, soaked like water rats, and a sorry rabble, got into some sort of rank and burned the two stranded vessels as they passed back to the east side.

In less than an hour four hundred and forty-three men had fallen, the most of them killed, many both dead and wounded, into the hands of the Indian scalpers.

One can guess Wolfe's fearful despair that night.

A month had passed.

He had accomplished worse than nothing.

In another month the fleet must leave the St. Lawrence to avoid autumn storms.

Fragile at all times, Wolfe fell ill, ill of fever and of chagrin, and those officers over whose head he had been promoted did not spare their criticisms, their malice.

It is so easy to win battles of life and war in theory.

As for Quebec, it was felt the siege was over, the contest won.

Still bad news had come from the west.

Niagara had fallen before the English, and the forts on Lake Champlain were abandoned to Amherst.

Nothing now barred the English advance down the Richelieu to Montreal.

Montcalm dispatches Lévis to Montreal with eight hundred men.