Montcalm and Wolfe — Chapter 13, Part 1

Partisan War Shirley's grand scheme for cutting New France in twain had come to wreck.

There was an element of boyishness in him.

He made bold plans without weighing too closely his means of executing them.

The year's campaign would in all likelihood have succeeded if he could have acted promptly; if he had had ready to his hand a well-trained and well-officered force, furnished with material of war and means of transportation, and prepared to move as soon as the streams and lakes of New York were open, while those of Canada were still sealed with ice.

But timely action was out of his power.

The army that should have moved in April was not ready to move till August.

Of the nine discordant semi-republics whom he asked to join in the work, three or four refused, some of the others were lukewarm, and all were slow.

Even Massachusetts, usually the foremost, failed to get all her men into the field till the season was nearly ended.

Having no military establishment, the colonies were forced to improvise a new army for every campaign.

Each of them watched its neighbors, or, jealous lest it should do more than its just share, waited for them to begin.

Each popular assembly acted under the eye of a frugal constituency, who, having little money, were as chary of it as their descendants are lavish; and most of them were shaken by internal conflicts, more absorbing than the great question on which hung the fate of the continent.

Only the four New England colonies were fully earnest for the war, and one, even of these, was ready to use the crisis as a means of extorting concessions from its Governor in return for grants of money and men.

When the lagging contingents came together at last, under a commander whom none of them trusted, they were met by strategical difficulties which would have perplexed older soldiers and an abler general; for they were forced to act on the circumference of a vast semicircle, in a labyrinth of forests, without roads, and choked with every kind of obstruction.

Opposed to them was a trained army, well organized and commanded, focused at Montreal, and moving for attack or defence on two radiating lines,--one towards Lake Ontario, and the other towards Lake Champlain,--supported by a martial peasantry, supplied from France with money and material, dependent on no popular vote, having no will but that of its chief, and ready on the instant to strike to right or left as the need required.

It was a compact military absolutism confronting a heterogeneous group of industrial democracies, where the force of numbers was neutralized by diffusion and incoherence.

A long and dismal apprenticeship waited them before they could hope for success; nor could they ever put forth their full strength without a radical change of political conditions and an awakened consciousness of common interests and a common cause.

It was the sense of powerlessness arising from the want of union that, after the fall of Oswego, spread alarm through the northern and middle colonies, and drew these desponding words from William Livingston, of New Jersey: "The colonies are nearly exhausted, and their funds already anticipated by expensive unexecuted projects.

Jealous are they of each other; some ill-constituted, others shaken with intestine divisions, and, if I may be allowed the expression, parsimonious even to prodigality.

Our assemblies are diffident of their governors, governors despise their assemblies; and both mutually misrepresent each other to the Court of Great Britain."

Military measures, he proceeds, demand secrecy and despatch; but when so many divided provinces must agree to join in them, secrecy and despatch are impossible.

In conclusion he exclaims: "Canada must be demolished, --_Delenda est Carthago_,--or we are undone."

[435] But Loudon was not Scipio, and cis-Atlantic Carthage was to stand for some time longer.

[Footnote 435: _Review of Military Operations_, 187, 189 (Dublin, 1757).

] The Earl, in search of a scapegoat for the loss of Oswego, naturally chose Shirley, attacked him savagely, told him that he was of no use in America, and ordered him to go home to England without delay.

[436] Shirley, who was then in Boston, answered this indecency with dignity and effect.

[437] The chief fault was with Loudon himself, whose late arrival in America had caused a change of command and of plans in the crisis of the campaign.

Shirley well knew the weakness of Oswego; and in early spring had sent two engineers to make it defensible, with particular instructions to strengthen Fort Ontario.

[438] But they, thinking that the chief danger lay on the west and south, turned all their attention thither, and neglected Ontario till it was too late.

Shirley was about to reinforce Oswego with a strong body of troops when the arrival of Abercromby took the control out of his hands and caused ruinous delay.

He cannot, however, be acquitted of mismanagement in failing to supply the place with wholesome provisions in the preceding autumn, before the streams were stopped with ice.

Hence came the ravages of disease and famine which, before spring, reduced the garrison to a hundred and forty effective men.

Yet there can be no doubt that the change of command was a blunder.

This is the view of Franklin, who knew Shirley well, and thus speaks of him: "He would in my opinion, if continued in place, have made a much better campaign than that of Loudon, which was frivolous, expensive, and disgraceful to our nation beyond conception.

For though Shirley was not bred a soldier, he was sensible and sagacious in himself, and attentive to good advice from others, capable of forming judicious plans, and quick and active in carrying them into execution."

[439] He sailed for England in the autumn, disappointed and poor; the bull-headed Duke of Cumberland had been deeply prejudiced against him, and it was only after long waiting that this strenuous champion of British interests was rewarded in his old age with the petty government of the Bahamas.

[Footnote 436: _Loudon to Shirley, 6 Sept.

1756_.

] [Footnote 437: The correspondence on both sides is before me, copied from the originals in the Public Record Office.

] [Footnote 438: "The principal thing for which I sent Mr. Mackellar to Oswego was to strengthen Fort Ontario as much as he possibly could."

_Shirley to Loudon, 4 Sept.

1756. _] [Footnote 439: _Works of Franklin_, I. 220. ] Loudon had now about ten thousand men at his command, though not all fit for duty.

They were posted from Albany to Lake George.

The Earl himself was at Fort Edward, while about three thousand of the provincials still lay, under Winslow, at the lake.

Montcalm faced them at Ticonderoga, with five thousand three hundred regulars and Canadians, in a position where they could defy three times their number.

[440] "The sons of Belial are too strong for me," jocosely wrote Winslow;[441] and he set himself to intrenching his camp; then had the forest cut down for the space of a mile from the lake to the mountains, so that the trees, lying in what he calls a "promiscuous manner," formed an almost impenetrable abatis.

An escaped prisoner told him that the French were coming to visit him with fourteen thousand men;[442] but Montcalm thought no more of stirring than Loudon himself; and each stood watching the other, with the lake between them, till the season closed.

[Footnote 440: "Nous sommes tant à Carillon qu'aux postes avancés 5,300 hommes."

Bougainville, _Journal_.

] [Footnote 441: _Winslow to Loudon, 29 Sept.

1756_.

] [Footnote 442: _Examination of Sergeant James Archibald_.

] Meanwhile the western borders were still ravaged by the tomahawk.

New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia all writhed under the infliction.

Each had made a chain of blockhouses and wooden forts to cover its frontier, and manned them with disorderly bands, lawless, and almost beyond control.

[443] The case was at the worst in Pennsylvania, where the tedious quarrelling of Governor and Assembly, joined to the doggedly pacific attitude of the Quakers, made vigorous defence impossible.

Rewards were offered for prisoners and scalps, so bountiful that the hunting of men would have been a profitable vocation, but for the extreme wariness and agility of the game.

[444] Some of the forts were well built stockades; others were almost worthless; but the enemy rarely molested even the feeblest of them, preferring to ravage the lonely and unprotected farms.

There were two or three exceptions.

A

Virginian fort was attacked by a war-party under an officer named Douville, who was killed, and his followers were put to flight.

[445] The assailants were more fortunate at a small stockade called Fort Granville, on the Juniata.

A large body of French and Indians attacked it in August while most of the garrison were absent protecting the farmers at their harvest; they set it on fire, and, in spite of a most gallant resistance by the young lieutenant left in command, took it, and killed all but one of the defenders.

[446] [Footnote 443: In the public Record Office, _America and West Indies_, LXXXII.

, is a manuscript map showing the positions of such of these posts as were north of Virginia.

They are thirty-five in number, from the head of James River to a point west of Esopus, on the Hudson.

] [Footnote 444: _Colonial Records of Pa.

_, VII.

76. ] [Footnote 445: _Washington to Morris,--April, 1756_.

] [Footnote 446: _Colonial Records of Pa.

_, VII.

232, 242; _Pennsylvania Archives_, II.

744. ] What sort of resistance the Pennsylvanian borderers would have made under political circumstances less adverse may be inferred from an exploit of Colonel John Armstrong, a settler of Cumberland.

After the loss of Fort Granville the Governor of the province sent him with three hundred men to attack the Delaware town of Kittanning, a populous nest of savages on the Alleghany, between the two French posts of Duquesne and Venango.

Here most of the war-parties were fitted out, and the place was full of stores and munitions furnished by the French.

Here, too, lived the redoubted chief called Captain Jacobs, the terror of the English border.

Armstrong set out from Fort Shirley, the farthest outpost, on the last of August, and, a week after, was within six miles of the Indian town.

By rapid marching and rare good luck, his party had escaped discovery.

It was ten o'clock at night, with a bright moon.

The guides were perplexed, and knew neither the exact position of the place nor the paths that led to it.

The adventurers threaded the forest in single file, over hills and through hollows, bewildered and anxious, stopping to watch and listen.

At length they heard in the distance the beating of an Indian drum and the whooping of warriors in the war-dance.

Guided by the sounds, they cautiously moved forward, till those in the front, scrambling down a rocky hill, found themselves on the banks of the Alleghany, about a hundred rods below Kittanning.

The moon was near setting; but they could dimly see the town beyond a great intervening field of corn.

"At that moment," says Armstrong, "an Indian whistled in a very singular manner, about thirty perches from our front, in the foot of the cornfield."

He thought they were discovered; but one Baker, a soldier well versed in Indian ways, told him that it was only some village gallant calling to a young squaw.

The party then crouched in the bushes, and kept silent.

The moon sank behind the woods, and fires soon glimmered through the field, kindled to drive off mosquitoes by some of the Indians who, as the night was warm, had come out to sleep in the open air.

The eastern sky began to redden with the approach of day.

Many of the party, spent with a rough march of thirty miles, had fallen asleep.

They were now cautiously roused; and Armstrong ordered nearly half of them to make their way along the ridge of a bushy hill that overlooked the town, till they came opposite to it, in order to place it between two fires.

Twenty minutes were allowed them for the movement;

but they lost their way in the dusk, and reached their station too late.

When the time had expired, Armstrong gave the signal to those left with him, who dashed into the cornfield, shooting down the astonished savages or driving them into the village, where they turned and made desperate fight.

It was a cluster of thirty log-cabins, the principal being that of the chief, Jacobs, which was loopholed for musketry, and became the centre of resistance.

The fight was hot and stubborn.

Armstrong ordered the town to be set on fire, which was done, though not without loss; for the Delawares at this time were commonly armed with rifles, and used them well.

Armstrong himself was hit in the shoulder.

As the flames rose and the smoke grew thick, a warrior in one of the houses sang his death-song, and a squaw in the same house was heard to cry and scream.

Rough voices silenced her, and then the inmates burst out, but were instantly killed.

The fire caught the house of Jacobs, who, trying to escape through an opening in the roof, was shot dead.

Bands of Indians were gathering beyond the river, firing from the other bank, and even crossing to help their comrades; but the assailants held to their work till the whole place was destroyed.

"During the burning of the houses," says Armstrong, "we were agreeably entertained by the quick succession of charged guns, gradually firing off as reached by the fire; but much more so with the vast explosion of sundry bags and large kegs of gunpowder, wherewith almost every house abounded; the prisoners afterwards informing us that the Indians had frequently said they had a sufficient stock of ammunition for ten years' war with the English."

These prisoners were eleven men, women, and children, captured in the border settlements, and now delivered by their countrymen.

The day was far spent when the party withdrew, carrying their wounded on Indian horses, and moving perforce with extreme slowness, though expecting an attack every moment.

None took place; and they reached the settlements at last, having bought their success with the loss of seventeen killed and thirteen wounded.

[447] A medal was given to each officer, not by the Quaker-ridden Assembly, but by the city council of Philadelphia.

[Footnote 447: _Report of Armstrong to Governor Denny, 14 Sept.

1756_, in _Colonial Records of Pa.

_, VII.

257,--a modest yet very minute account.

_A list of the Names of the Persons killed, wounded, and missing in the late Expedition against the Kittanning_.

Hazard, _Pennsylvania Register_, I. 366. ] The report of this affair made by Dumas, commandant at Fort Duquesne, is worth noting.

He says that Attiqué, the French name of Kittanning, was attacked by "le Général Wachinton," with three or four hundred men on horseback; that the Indians gave way; but that five or six Frenchmen who were in the town held the English in check till the fugitives rallied;

that Washington and his men then took to flight, and would have been pursued but for the loss of some barrels of gunpowder which chanced to explode during the action.

Dumas adds that several large parties are now on the track of the enemy, and he hopes will cut them to pieces.

He then asks for a supply of provisions and merchandise to replace those which the Indians of Attiqué had lost by a fire.

[448] Like other officers of the day, he would admit nothing but successes in the department under his command.

[Footnote 448: _Dumas à Vaudreuil, 9 Sept.

1756_, cited in _Bigot au Ministre, 6 Oct.

1756_, and in Bougainville, _Journal_.

] Vaudreuil wrote singular despatches at this time to the minister at Versailles.

He takes credit to himself for the number of war-parties that his officers kept always at work, and fills page after page with details of the _coups_ they had struck; how one brought in two English scalps, another three, another one, and another seven.

He owns that they committed frightful cruelties, mutilating and sometimes burning their prisoners; but he expresses no regret, and probably felt none, since he declares that the object of this murderous warfare was to punish the English till they longed for peace.

[449] [Footnote 449: _Dépêches de Vaudreuil, 1756. _] The waters and mountains of Lake George, and not the western borders, were the chief centre of partisan war.

Ticonderoga was a hornet's nest, pouring out swarms of savages to infest the highways and byways of the wilderness.

The English at Fort William Henry, having few Indians, could not retort in kind; but they kept their scouts and rangers in active movement.

What they most coveted was prisoners, as sources of information.

One Kennedy, a lieutenant of provincials, with five followers, white and red, made a march of rare audacity, passed all the French posts, took a scalp and two prisoners on the Richelieu, and burned a magazine of provisions between Montreal and St. John.

The party were near famishing on the way back; and Kennedy was brought into Fort William Henry in a state of temporary insanity from starvation.

[450] Other provincial officers, Peabody, Hazen, Waterbury, and Miller, won a certain distinction in this adventurous service, though few were so conspicuous as the blunt and sturdy Israel Putnam.

Winslow writes in October that he has just returned from the best "scout" yet made, and that, being a man of strict truth, he may be entirely trusted.

[451] Putnam had gone with six followers down Lake George in a whale-boat to a point on the east side, opposite the present village of Hague, hid the boat, crossed northeasterly to Lake Champlain, three miles from the French fort, climbed the mountain that overlooks it, and made a complete reconnoissance; then approached it, chased three Frenchmen, who escaped within the lines, climbed the mountain again, and moving westward along the ridge, made a minute survey of every outpost between the fort and Lake George.

[452] These adventures were not always fortunate.

On the nineteenth of September Captain Hodges and fifty men were ambushed a few miles from Fort William Henry by thrice their number of Canadians and Indians, and only six escaped.

Thus the record stands in the _Letter Book_ of Winslow.

[453] By visiting the encampments of Ticonderoga, one may learn how the blow was struck.

[Footnote 450: _Minute of Lieutenant Kennedy's Scout.

Winslow to Loudon, 20 Sept.

1756. _] [Footnote 451: _Winslow to Loudon, 16 Oct.

1756. _] [Footnote 452: _Report of a Scout to Ticonderoga, Oct.

1756_, signed Israel Putnam.

]