Montcalm and Wolfe — Chapter 11, Part 2

[Footnote 365: These extracts are translated from copies of the original letters, in possession of the present Marquis de Montcalm.

] Vaudreuil, the governor-general, was at Montreal, and Montcalm sent a courier to inform him of his arrival.

He soon went thither in person, and the two men met for the first time.

The new general was not welcome to Vaudreuil, who had hoped to command the troops himself, and had represented to the Court that it was needless and inexpedient to send out a general officer from France.

[366] The Court had not accepted his views;[367] and hence it was with more curiosity than satisfaction that he greeted the colleague who had been assigned him.

He saw before him a man of small stature, with a lively countenance, a keen eye, and, in moments of animation, rapid, vehement utterance, and nervous gesticulation.

Montcalm, we may suppose, regarded the Governor with no less attention.

Pierre François Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil, who had governed Canada early in the century; and he himself had been governor of Louisiana.

He had not the force of character which his position demanded, lacked decision in times of crisis; and though tenacious of authority, was more jealous in asserting than self-reliant in exercising it.

One of his traits was a sensitive egotism, which made him forward to proclaim his own part in every success, and to throw on others the burden of every failure.

He was facile by nature, and capable of being led by such as had skill and temper for the task.

But the impetuous Montcalm was not of their number; and the fact that he was born in France would in itself have thrown obstacles in his way to the good graces of the Governor.

Vaudreuil, Canadian by birth, loved the colony and its people, and distrusted Old France and all that came out of it.

He had been bred, moreover, to the naval service; and, like other Canadian governors, his official correspondence was with the minister of marine, while that of Montcalm was with the minister of war.

Even had Nature made him less suspicious, his relations with the General would have been critical.

Montcalm commanded the regulars from France, whose very presence was in the eyes of Vaudreuil an evil, though a necessary one.

Their chief was, it is true, subordinate to him in virtue of his office of governor;[368] yet it was clear that for the conduct of the war the trust of the Government was mainly in Montcalm; and the Minister of War had even suggested that he should have the immediate command, not only of the troops from France, but of the colony regulars and the militia.

An order of the King to this effect was sent to Vaudreuil, with instructions to communicate it to Montcalm or withhold it, as he should think best.

[369] He lost no time in replying that the General "ought to concern himself with nothing but the command of the troops from France;"

and he returned the order to the minister who sent it.

[370] The Governor and the General represented the two parties which were soon to divide Canada,--those of New France and of Old.

[Footnote 366: _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 30 Oct.

1755. _] [Footnote 367: _Ordres du Roy et Dépêches des Ministres, Fév. 1756. _] [Footnote 368: _Le Ministre à Vaudreuil, 15 Mars, 1756. Commission du Marquis de Montcalm.

Mémoire du Roy pour servir d'Instruction au Marquis de Montcalm_.

] [Footnote 369: _Ordres du Roy et Dépêches des Ministres, 1756. Le Ministre à Vaudreuil, 15 Mars, 1756_.

] [Footnote 370: _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 16 Juin, 1756_.

"Qu'il ne se mêle que du commandement des troupes de terre."

] A like antagonism was seen in the forces commanded by the two chiefs.

These were of three kinds,--the _troupes de terre,_ troops of the line, or regulars from France; the _troupes de la marine_, or colony regulars;

and lastly the militia.

The first consisted of the four battalions that had come over with Dieskau and the two that had come with Montcalm, comprising in all a little less than three thousand men.

[371] Besides these, the battalions of Artois and Bourgogne, to the number of eleven hundred men, were in garrison at Louisbourg.

All these troops wore a white uniform, faced with blue, red, yellow, or violet,[372] a black three-cornered hat, and gaiters, generally black, from the foot to the knee.

The subaltern officers in the French service were very numerous, and were drawn chiefly from the class of lesser nobles.

A well-informed French writer calls them "a generation of _petits-maîtres,_ dissolute, frivolous, heedless, light-witted; but brave always, and ready to die with their soldiers, though not to suffer with them."

[373] In fact the course of the war was to show plainly that in Europe the regiments of France were no longer what they had once been.

It was not so with those who fought in America.

Here, for enduring gallantry, officers and men alike deserve nothing but praise.

[Footnote 371: Of about twelve hundred who came with Montcalm, nearly three hundred were now in hospital.

The four battalions that came with Dieskau are reported at the end of May to have sixteen hundred and fifty-three effective men.

_État de la Situation actuelle des Bataillons,_ appended to Montcalm's despatch of 12 June.

Another document, _Dêtail de ce qui s'est passé en Canada, Juin, 1755, jusqu'à Juin_, 1756, sets the united effective strength of the battalions in Canada at twenty-six hundred and seventy-seven, which was increased by recruits which arrived from France about midsummer.

] [Footnote 372: Except perhaps, the battalion of Béarn, which formerly wore, and possibly wore still, a uniform of light blue.

] [Footnote 373: Susane, _Ancienne Infanterie Française_.

In the atlas of this work are colored plates of the uniforms of all the regiments of foot.

] The _troupes de la marine_ had for a long time formed the permanent military establishment of Canada.

Though attached to the naval department, they served on land, and were employed as a police within the limits of the colony, or as garrisons of the outlying forts, where their officers busied themselves more with fur-trading than with their military duties.

Thus they had become ill-disciplined and inefficient, till the hard hand of Duquesne restored them to order.

They originally consisted of twenty-eight independent companies, increased in 1750 to thirty companies, at first of fifty, and afterwards of sixty-five men each, forming a total of nineteen hundred and fifty rank and file.

In March, 1757, ten more companies were added.

Their uniform was not unlike that of the troops attached to the War Department, being white, with black facings.

They were enlisted for the most part in France; but when their term of service expired, and even before, in time of peace, they were encouraged to become settlers in the colony, as was also the case with their officers, of whom a great part were of European birth.

Thus the relations of the _troupes de la marine_ with the colony were close;

and formed a sort of connecting link between the troops of the line and the native militia.

[374] Besides these colony regulars, there was a company of colonial artillery, consisting this year of seventy men, and replaced in 1757 by two companies of fifty men each.

[Footnote 374: On the _troupes de la marine,--Mémoire pour servir d'Instruction a MM.

Jonquière et Bigot, 30 Avril, 1749. Ordres du Roy et Dépêches des Ministres, 1750. Ibid.

, 1755. Ibid.

, 1757. Instruction pour Vaudreuil, 22 Mars, 1755. Ordonnance pour l'Augmentation de Soldats dans les Compagnies de Canada, 14 Mars, 1755. Duquesne au Ministre, 26 Oct.

1753. Ibid.

, 30 Oct.

1753. Ibid.

, 29 Fév. 1754. Duquesne à Marin, 27 Août, 1753. Atlas de Susane.

_] All the effective male population of Canada, from fifteen years to sixty, was enrolled in the militia, and called into service at the will of the Governor.

They received arms, clothing, equipment, and rations from the King, but no pay; and instead of tents they made themselves huts of bark or branches.

The best of them were drawn from the upper parts of the colony, where habits of bushranging were still in full activity.

Their fighting qualities were much like those of the Indians, whom they rivalled in endurance and in the arts of forest war.

As bush-fighters they had few equals; they fought well behind earthworks, and were good at a surprise or sudden dash; but for regular battle on the open field they were of small account, being disorderly, and apt to break and take to cover at the moment of crisis.

They had no idea of the great operations of war.

At first they despised the regulars for their ignorance of woodcraft, and thought themselves able to defend the colony alone; while the regulars regarded them in turn with a contempt no less unjust.

They were excessively given to gasconade, and every true Canadian boasted himself a match for three Englishmen at least.

In 1750 the militia of all ranks counted about thirteen thousand; and eight years later the number had increased to about fifteen thousand.

[375] Until the last two years of the war, those employed in actual warfare were but few.

Even in the critical year 1758 only about eleven hundred were called to arms, except for two or three weeks in summer;[376] though about four thousand were employed in transporting troops and supplies, for which service they received pay.

[Footnote 375: _Récapitulation des Milices du Gouvernement de Canada_, 1750. _Dénombrement des Milices_, 1758, 1759. On the militia, see also Bougainville in Margry, _Rélations et Mémoires inédits_, 60, and _N.

Y.

Col. Docs.

_, X.

680. ] [Footnote 376: _Montcalm au Ministre_, _1 Sept.

1758. _] To the white fighting force of the colony are to be added the red men.

The most trusty of them were the Mission Indians, living within or near the settled limits of Canada, chiefly the Hurons of Lorette, the Abenakis of St. Francis and Batiscan, the Iroquois of Caughnawaga and La Présentation, and the Iroquois and Algonkins at the Two Mountains on the Ottawa.

Besides these, all the warriors of the west and north, from Lake Superior to the Ohio, and from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, were now at the beck of France.

As to the Iroquois or Five Nations who still remained in their ancient seats within the present limits of New York, their power and pride had greatly fallen; and crowded as they were between the French and the English, they were in a state of vacillation, some leaning to one side, some to the other, and some to each in turn.

As a whole, the best that France could expect from them was neutrality.

Montcalm at Montreal had more visits than he liked from his red allies.

"They are _vilains messieurs_," he informs his mother, "even when fresh from their toilet, at which they pass their lives.

You would not believe it, but the men always carry to war, along with their tomahawk and gun, a mirror to daub their faces with various colors, and arrange feathers on their heads and rings in their ears and noses.

They think it a great beauty to cut the rim of the ear and stretch it till it reaches the shoulder.

Often they wear a laced coat, with no shirt at all.

You would take them for so many masqueraders or devils.

One needs the patience of an angel to get on with them.

Ever since I have been here, I have had nothing but visits, harangues, and deputations of these gentry.

The Iroquois ladies, who always take part in their government, came also, and did me the honor to bring me belts of wampum, which will oblige me to go to their village and sing the war-song.

They are only a little way off.

Yesterday we had eighty-three warriors here, who have gone out to fight.

They make war with astounding cruelty, sparing neither men, women, nor children, and take off your scalp very neatly,--an operation which generally kills you."

"Everything is horribly dear in this country; and I shall find it hard to make the two ends of the year meet, with the twenty-five thousand francs the King gives me.

The Chevalier de Lévis did not join me till yesterday.

His health is excellent.

In a few days I shall send him to one camp, and M. de Bourlamaque to another; for we have three of them: one at Carillon, eighty leagues from here, towards the place where M. de Dieskau had his affair last year; another at Frontenac, sixty leagues;

and the third at Niagara, a hundred and forty leagues.

I don't know when or whither I shall go myself; that depends on the movements of the enemy.

It seems to me that things move slowly in this new world; and I shall have to moderate my activity accordingly.

Nothing but the King's service and the wish to make a career for my son could prevent me from thinking too much of my expatriation, my distance from you, and the dull existence here, which would be duller still if I did not manage to keep some little of my natural gayety."

The military situation was somewhat perplexing.

Iroquois spies had brought reports of great preparations on the part of the English.

As neither party dared offend these wavering tribes, their warriors could pass with impunity from one to the other, and were paid by each for bringing information, not always trustworthy.

They declared that the English were gathering in force to renew the attempt made by Johnson the year before against Crown Point and Ticonderoga, as well as that made by Shirley against forts Frontenac and Niagara.

Vaudreuil had spared no effort to meet the double danger.

Lotbinière, a Canadian engineer, had been busied during the winter in fortifying Ticonderoga, while Pouchot, a captain in the battalion of Béarn, had rebuilt Niagara, and two French engineers were at work in strengthening the defences of Frontenac.

The Governor even hoped to take the offensive, anticipate the movements of the English, capture Oswego, and obtain the complete command of Lake Ontario.

Early in the spring a blow had been struck which materially aided these schemes.

The English had built two small forts to guard the Great Carrying Place on the route to Oswego.

One of these, Fort Williams, was on the Mohawk;

the other, Fort Bull, a mere collection of storehouses surrounded by a palisade, was four miles distant, on the bank of Wood Creek.

Here a great quantity of stores and ammunition had imprudently been collected against the opening campaign.

In February Vaudreuil sent Léry, a colony officer, with three hundred and sixty-two picked men, soldiers, Canadians, and Indians, to seize these two posts.

Towards the end of March, after extreme hardship, they reached the road that connected them, and at half-past five in the morning captured twelve men going with wagons to Fort Bull.

Learning from them the weakness of that place, they dashed forward to surprise it.

The thirty provincials of Shirley's regiment who formed the garrison had barely time to shut the gate, while the assailants fired on them through the loopholes, of which they got possession in the tumult.

Léry called on the defenders to yield; but they refused, and pelted the French for an hour with bullets and hand-grenades.

The gate was at last beat down with axes, and they were summoned again; but again refused, and fired hotly through the opening.

The French rushed in, shouting _Vive le roi_, and a frightful struggle followed.

All the garrison were killed, except two or three who hid themselves till the slaughter was over; the fort was set on fire and blown to atoms by the explosion of the magazines; and Léry then withdrew, not venturing to attack Fort Williams.

Johnson, warned by Indians of the approach of the French, had pushed up the Mohawk with reinforcements; but came too late.

[377] [Footnote 377: _Bigot au Ministre, 12 Avril, 1756. Vaudreuil au Ministre, 1 Juin, 1756. Ibid.

, 8 Juin, 1756. Journal de ce qui s'est passé en Canada depuis le Mois d'Octobre, 1755, jusqu'au Mois de Juin, 1756. Shirley to Fox, 7 May, 1756. Conduct of Major-General Shirley briefly stated.

Information of Captain John Vicars, of the Fiftieth (Shirley's) Regiment.

_Eastburn_, _Faithful Narrative_.

Entick, I. 471. The French accounts place the number of English at sixty or eighty.

] Vaudreuil, who always exaggerates any success in which he has had part, says that besides bombs, bullets, cannon-balls, and other munitions, forty-five thousand pounds of gunpowder were destroyed on this occasion.

It is certain that damage enough was done to retard English operations in the direction of Oswego sufficiently to give the French time for securing all their posts on Lake Ontario.

Before the end of June this was in good measure done.

The battalion of Béarn lay encamped before the now strong fort of Niagara, and the battalions of Guienne and La Sarre, with a body of Canadians, guarded Frontenac against attack.

Those of La Reine and Languedoc had been sent to Ticonderoga, while the Governor, with Montcalm and Lévis, still remained at Montreal watching the turn of events.

[378] Hither, too, came the intendant François Bigot, the most accomplished knave in Canada, yet indispensable for his vigor and executive skill; Bougainville, who had disarmed the jealousy of Vaudreuil, and now stood high in his good graces; and the Adjutant-General, Montreuil, clearly a vain and pragmatic personage, who, having come to Canada with Dieskau the year before, thought it behooved him to give the General the advantage of his experience.

"I like M. de Montcalm very much," he writes to the minister, "and will do the impossible to deserve his confidence.

I have spoken to him in the same terms as to M. Dieskau; thus: 'Trust only the French regulars for an expedition, but use the Canadians and Indians to harass the enemy.

Don't expose yourself; send me to carry your orders to points of danger.'

The colony officers do not like those from France.

The Canadians are independent, spiteful, lying, boastful; very good for skirmishing, very brave behind a tree, and very timid when not under cover.

I think both sides will stand on the defensive.

It does not seem to me that M. de Montcalm means to attack the enemy; and I think he is right.

In this country a thousand men could stop three thousand."

[379] [Footnote 378: _Correspondance de Montcalm, Vaudreuil, et Lévis.

_] [Footnote 379: _Montreuil au Ministre, 12 Juin, 1756_.

The original is in cipher.

] "M.

de Vaudreuil overwhelms me with civilities," Montcalm writes to the Minister of War.

"I think that he is pleased with my conduct towards him, and that it persuades him there are general officers in France who can act under his orders without prejudice or ill-humor."

[380] "I am on good terms with him," he says again; "but not in his confidence, which he never gives to anybody from France.

His intentions are good, but he is slow and irresolute."

[381] [Footnote 380: _Montcalm au Ministre, 12 Juin, 1756. _] [Footnote 381: _Ibid.

, 19 Juin, 1756. _ "Je suis bien avec luy, sans sa confiance, qu'il ne donne jamais à personne de la France."

Erroneously rendered in _N.

Y.

Col. Docs.

_, X.

421. ] Indians presently brought word that ten thousand English were coming to attack Ticonderoga.

A reinforcement of colony regulars was at once despatched to join the two battalions already there; a third battalion, Royal Roussillon, was sent after them.

The militia were called out and ordered to follow with all speed, while both Montcalm and Lévis hastened to the supposed scene of danger.

[382] They embarked in canoes on the Richelieu, coasted the shore of Lake Champlain, passed Fort Frederic or Crown Point, where all was activity and bustle, and reached Ticonderoga at the end of June.

They found the fort, on which Lotbinière had been at work all winter, advanced towards completion.

It stood on the crown of the promontory, and was a square with four bastions, a ditch, blown in some parts out of the solid rock, bomb-proofs, barracks of stone, and a system of exterior defences as yet only begun.

The rampart consisted of two parallel walls ten feet apart, built of the trunks of trees, and held together by transverse logs dovetailed at both ends, the space between being filled with earth and gravel well packed.

[383] Such was the first Fort Ticonderoga, or Carillon,--a structure quite distinct from the later fort of which the ruins still stand on the same spot.

The forest had been hewn away for some distance around, and the tents of the regulars and huts of the Canadians had taken its place; innumerable bark canoes lay along the strand, and gangs of men toiled at the unfinished works.

[Footnote 382: _Montcalm au Ministre, 26 Juin, 1756. Détail de ce qui s'est passé, Oct.

1755 Juin, 1756. _] [Footnote 383: _Lotbinière au Ministre, 31 Oct.

1756. Montcalm au Ministre, 20 Juillet, 1756. _] Ticonderoga was now the most advanced position of the French, and Crown Point, which had before held that perilous honor, was in the second line.

Lévis, to whom had been assigned the permanent command of this post of danger, set out on foot to explore the neighboring woods and mountains, and slept out several nights before he reappeared at the camp.

"I do not think," says Montcalm, "that many high officers in Europe would have occasion to take such tramps as this.

I cannot speak too well of him.

Without being a man of brilliant parts, he has good experience, good sense, and a quick eye; and, though I had served with him before, I never should have thought that he had such promptness and efficiency.

He has turned his campaigns to good account."

[384] Lévis writes of his chief with equal warmth.

"I do not know if the Marquis de Montcalm is pleased with me, but I am sure that I am very much so with him, and shall always be charmed to serve under his orders.

It is not for me, Monseigneur, to speak to you of his merit and his talents.

You know him better than anybody else; but I may have the honor of assuring you that he has pleased everybody in this colony, and manages affairs with the Indians extremely well."

[385] [Footnote 384: _Montcalm au Ministre, 20 Juillet, 1756. _] [Footnote 385: _Lévis au Ministre, 17 Juillet, 1756. _] The danger from the English proved to be still remote, and there was ample leisure in the camp.

Duchat, a young captain in the battalion of Languedoc, used it in writing to his father a long account of what he saw about him,--the forests full of game; the ducks, geese, and partridges; the prodigious flocks of wild pigeons that darkened the air, the bears, the beavers; and above all the Indians, their canoes, dress, ball-play, and dances.

"We are making here," says the military prophet, "a place that history will not forget.

The English colonies have ten times more people than ours; but these wretches have not the least knowledge of war, and if they go out to fight, they must abandon wives, children, and all that they possess.

Not a week passes but the French send them a band of _hairdressers_, whom they would be very glad to dispense with.

It is incredible what a quantity of scalps they bring us.

In Virginia they have committed unheard-of cruelties, carried off families, burned a great many houses, and killed an infinity of people.

These miserable English are in the extremity of distress, and repent too late the unjust war they began against us.

It is a pleasure to make war in Canada.

One is troubled neither with horses nor baggage; the King provides everything.

But it must be confessed that if it costs no money, one pays for it in another way, by seeing nothing but pease and bacon on the mess-table.

Luckily the lakes are full of fish, and both officers and soldiers have to turn fishermen."

[386] [Footnote 386: _Relation de M. Duchat, Capitaine au Régiment de Languedoc, écrite au Camp de Carillon, 15 Juillet, 1756. _] Meanwhile, at the head of Lake George, the raw bands of ever-active New England were mustering for the fray.

Chapter 12

1756