Montcalm and Wolfe — Chapter 26, Part 2

Nevertheless his tale was true.

Johnson, besides his Indians, had with him about twenty-three hundred men, whom he was forced to divide into three separate bodies,--one to guard the bateaux, one to guard the trenches, and one to fight Aubry and his band.

This last body consisted of the provincial light infantry and the pickets, two companies of grenadiers, and a hundred and fifty men of the forty-sixth regiment, all under command of Colonel Massey.

[742] They took post behind an abattis at a place called La Belle Famille, and the Five Nation warriors placed themselves on their flanks.

These savages had shown signs of disaffection; and when the enemy approached, they opened a parley with the French Indians, which, however, soon ended, and both sides raised the war-whoop.

The fight was brisk for a while; but at last Aubry's men broke away in a panic.

The French officers seem to have made desperate efforts to retrieve the day, for nearly all of them were killed or captured; while their followers, after heavy loss, fled to their canoes and boats above the cataract, hastened back to Lake Erie, burned Presquisle, Le Boeuf, and Venango, and, joined by the garrisons of those forts, retreated to Detroit, leaving the whole region of the upper Ohio in undisputed possession of the English.

[Footnote 742: _Johnson to Amherst, 25 July, 1759. _ Knox, II.

135. _Captain Delancey to----, 25 July, 1759. _ This writer commanded the light infantry in the fight.

] At four o'clock on the day of the battle, after a furious cannonade on both sides, a trumpet sounded from the trenches, and an officer approached the fort with a summons to surrender.

He brought also a paper containing the names of the captive French officers, though some of them were spelled in a way that defied recognition.

Pouchot, feigning incredulity, sent an officer of his own to the English camp, who soon saw unanswerable proof of the disaster; for here, under a shelter of leaves and boughs near the tent of Johnson, sat Ligneris, severely wounded, with Aubry, Villiers, Montigny, Marin, and their companions in misfortune,--in all, sixteen officers, four cadets, and a surgeon.

[743] [Footnote 743: Johnson gives the names in his private _Diary_, printed in Stone, _Life of Johnson_, II.

394. Compare Pouchot, II.

105, 106. _Letter from Niagara_, in _Boston Evening Post_, No. 1,250. _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 30 Oct.

1759. _] Pouchot had now no choice but surrender.

By the terms of the capitulation, the garrison were to be sent prisoners to New York, though honors of war were granted them in acknowledgment of their courageous conduct.

There was a special stipulation that they should be protected from the Indians, of whom they stood in the greatest terror, lest the massacre of Fort William Henry should be avenged upon them.

Johnson restrained his dangerous allies, and, though the fort was pillaged, no blood was shed.

The capture of Niagara was an important stroke.

Thenceforth Detroit, Michillimackinac, the Illinois, and all the other French interior posts, were severed from Canada, and left in helpless isolation; but Amherst was not yet satisfied.

On hearing of Prideaux's death he sent Brigadier Gage to supersede Johnson and take command on Lake Ontario, directing him to descend the St. Lawrence, attack the French posts at the head of the rapids, and hold them if possible for the winter.

The attempt was difficult; for the French force on the St. Lawrence was now greater than that which Gage could bring against it, after providing for the safety of Oswego and Niagara.

Nor was he by nature prone to dashing and doubtful enterprise.

He reported that the movement was impossible, much to the disappointment of Amherst, who seemed to expect from subordinates an activity greater than his own.

[744] [Footnote 744: _Amherst to Gage, 28 July, 1 Aug.

, 14 Aug.

, 11 Sept.

1759. Diary of Sir William Johnson_, in Stone, _Life of Johnson_, II.

394-429. ] He, meanwhile, was working at his fort at Crown Point, while the season crept away, and Bourlamaque lay ready to receive him at Isle-aux-Noix.

"I wait his coming with impatience," writes the French commander, "though I doubt if he will venture to attack a post where we are intrenched to the teeth, and armed with a hundred pieces of cannon."

[745] Bourlamaque now had with him thirty-five hundred men, in a position of great strength.

Isle-aux-Noix, planted in mid-channel of the Richelieu soon after it issues from Lake Champlain, had been diligently fortified since the spring.

On each side of it was an arm of the river, closed against an enemy with _chevaux-de-frise_.

To attack it in front in the face of its formidable artillery would be a hazardous attempt, and the task of reducing it was likely to be a long one.

The French force in these parts had lately received accessions.

After the fall of Niagara the danger seemed so great, both in the direction of Lake Ontario and that of Lake Champlain, that Lévis had been sent up from Quebec with eight hundred men to command the whole department of Montreal.

[746] A body of troops and militia was encamped opposite that town, ready to march towards either quarter, as need might be, while the abundant crops of the neighboring parishes were harvested by armed bands, ready at a word to drop the sickle for the gun.

[Footnote 745: _Bourlamaque à_ (_Bernetz?

_), _22 Sept.

1759. _] [Footnote 746: _Montcalm à Bourlamaque, 9 Août, 1759. Rigaud à Bourlamaque, 14 Août, 1759. Lévis à Bourlamaque, 25 Août, 1759. _] Thus the promised advance of Amherst into Canada would be not without its difficulties, even when his navy, too tardily begun, should be ready to act its part.

But if he showed no haste in succoring Wolfe, he at least made some attempts to communicate with him.

Early in August he wrote him a letter, which Ensign Hutchins, of the rangers, carried to him in about a month by the long and circuitous route of the Kennebec, and which, after telling the news of the campaign, ended thus: "You may depend on my doing all I can for effectually reducing Canada.

Now is the time!"

[747] Amherst soon after tried another expedient, and sent Captains Kennedy and Hamilton with a flag of truce and a message of peace to the Abenakis of St. Francis, who, he thought, won over by these advances, might permit the two officers to pass unmolested to Quebec.

But the Abenakis seized them and carried them prisoners to Montreal; on which Amherst sent Major Robert Rogers and a band of rangers to destroy their town.

[748] [Footnote 747: _Amherst to Wolfe, 7 Aug.

1759. _] [Footnote 748: _Amherst to Pitt, 22 Oct.

1759. _ Rogers, _Journals_, 144. ] It was the eleventh of October before the miniature navy of Captain Loring--the floating battery, the brig, and the sloop that had been begun three weeks too late--was ready for service.

They sailed at once to look for the enemy.

The four French vessels made no resistance.

One of them succeeded in reaching Isle-aux-Noix; one was run aground; and two were sunk by their crews, who escaped to the shore.

Amherst, meanwhile, leaving the provincials to work at the fort, embarked with the regulars in bateaux, and proceeded on his northern way till, on the evening of the twelfth, a head-wind began to blow, and, rising to a storm, drove him for shelter into Ligonier Bay, on the west side of the lake.

[749] On the thirteenth, it blew a gale.

The lake raged like an angry sea, and the frail bateaux, fit only for smooth water, could not have lived a moment.

Through all the next night the gale continued, with floods of driving rain.

"I hope it will soon change," wrote Amherst on the fifteenth, "for I have no time to lose."

He was right.

He had waited till the season of autumnal storms, when nature was more dangerous than man.

On the sixteenth there was frost, and the wind did not abate.

On the next morning it shifted to the south, but soon turned back with violence to the north, and the ruffled lake put on a look of winter, "which determined me," says the General, "not to lose time by striving to get to the Isle-aux-Noix, where I should arrive too late to force the enemy from their post, but to return to Crown Point and complete the works there."

This he did, and spent the remnant of the season in the congenial task of finishing the fort, of which the massive remains still bear witness to his industry.

[Footnote 749: _Orderly Book of Commissary Wilson_.

] When Lévis heard that the English army had fallen back, he wrote, well pleased, to Bourlamaque: "I don't know how General Amherst will excuse himself to his Court, but I am very glad he let us alone, because the Canadians are so backward that you could count on nobody but the regulars."

[750] [Footnote 750: _Lévis à Bourlamaque, 1 Nov.

1759. _] Concerning this year's operations on the Lakes, it may be observed that the result was not what the French feared, or what the British colonists had cause to hope.

If, at the end of winter, Amherst had begun, as he might have done, the building of armed vessels at the head of the navigable waters of Lake Champlain, where Whitehall now stands, he would have had a navy ready to his hand before August, and would have been able to follow the retreating French without delay, and attack them at Isle-aux-Noix before they had finished their fortifications.

And if, at the same time, he had directed Prideaux, instead of attacking Niagara, to co-operate with him by descending the St. Lawrence towards Montreal, the prospect was good that the two armies would have united at the place, and ended the campaign by the reduction of all Canada.

In this case Niagara and all the western posts would have fallen without a blow.

Major Robert Rogers, sent in September to punish the Abenakis of St. Francis, had addressed himself to the task with his usual vigor.

These Indians had been settled for about three quarters of a century on the River St. Francis, a few miles above its junction with the St. Lawrence.

They were nominal Christians, and had been under the control of their missionaries for three generations; but though zealous and sometimes fanatical in their devotion to the forms of Romanism, they remained thorough savages in dress, habits, and character.

They were the scourge of the New England borders, where they surprised and burned farmhouses and small hamlets, killed men, women, and children without distinction, carried others prisoners to their village, subjected them to the torture of "running the gantlet," and compelled them to witness dances of triumph around the scalps of parents, children, and friends.

Amherst's instructions to Rogers contained the following: "Remember the barbarities that have been committed by the enemy's Indian scoundrels.

Take your revenge, but don't forget that, though those dastardly villains have promiscuously murdered women and children of all ages, it is my order that no women or children be killed or hurt."

Rogers and his men set out in whaleboats, and, eluding the French armed vessels, then in full activity, came, on the tenth day, to Missisquoi Bay, at the north end of Lake Champlain.

Here he hid his boats, leaving two friendly Indians to watch them from a distance, and inform him should the enemy discover them.

He then began his march for St. Francis, when, on the evening of the second day, the two Indians overtook him with the startling news that a party of about four hundred French had found the boats, and that half of them were on his tracks in hot pursuit.

It was certain that the alarm would soon be given, and other parties sent to cut him off.

He took the bold resolution of outmarching his pursuers, pushing straight for St. Francis, striking it before succors could arrive, and then returning by Lake Memphremagog and the Connecticut.

Accordingly he despatched Lieutenant McMullen by a circuitous route back to Crown Point, with a request to Amherst that provisions should be sent up the Connecticut to meet him on the way down.

Then he set his course for the Indian town, and for nine days more toiled through the forest with desperate energy.

Much of the way was through dense spruce swamps, with no dry resting-place at night.

At length the party reached the River St. Francis, fifteen miles above the town, and, hooking their arms together for mutual support, forded it with extreme difficulty.

Towards evening, Rogers climbed a tree, and descried the town three miles distant.

Accidents, fatigue, and illness had reduced his followers to a hundred and forty-two officers and men.

He left them to rest for a time, and, taking with him Lieutenant Turner and Ensign Avery, went to reconnoitre the place; left his two companions, entered it disguised in an Indian dress, and saw the unconscious savages yelling and signing in the full enjoyment of a grand dance.

At two o'clock in the morning he rejoined his party, and at three led them to the attack, formed them in a semicircle, and burst in upon the town half an hour before sunrise.

Many of the warriors were absent, and the rest were asleep.

Some were killed in their beds, and some shot down in trying to escape.

"About seven o'clock in the morning," he says, "the affair was completely over, in which time we had killed at least two hundred Indians and taken twenty of their women and children prisoners, fifteen of whom I let go their own way, and five I brought with me, namely, two Indian boys and three Indian girls.

I likewise retook five English captives."

English scalps in hundreds were dangling from poles over the doors of the houses.

[751] The town was pillaged and burned, not excepting the church, where ornaments of some value were found.

On the side of the rangers, Captain Ogden and six men were wounded, and a Mohegan Indian from Stockbridge was killed.

Rogers was told by his prisoners that a party of three hundred French and Indians was encamped on the river below, and that another party of two hundred and fifteen was not far distant.

They had been sent to cut off the retreat of the invaders, but were doubtful as to their designs till after the blow was struck.

There was no time to lose.

The rangers made all haste southward, up the St. Francis, subsisting on corn from the Indian town; till, near the eastern borders of Lake Memphremagog, the supply failed, and they separated into small parties, the better to sustain life by hunting.

The enemy followed close, attacked Ensign Avery's party, and captured five of them; then fell upon a band of about twenty, under Lieutenants Dunbar and Turner, and killed or captured nearly all.

The other bands eluded their pursuers, turned southeastward, reached the Connecticut, some here, some there, and, giddy with fatigue and hunger, toiled wearily down the wild and lonely stream to the appointed rendezvous at the mouth of the Amonoosuc.

[Footnote 751: Rogers says "about six hundred."

Other accounts say six or seven hundred.

The late Abbé Maurault, missionary of the St. Francis Indians, and their historian, adopts the latter statement, though it is probably exaggerated.

] This was the place to which Rogers had requested that provisions might be sent; and the hope of finding them there had been the breath of life to the famished wayfarers.

To their horror, the place was a solitude.

There were fires still burning, but those who made them were gone.

Amherst had sent Lieutenant Stephen up the river from Charlestown with an abundant supply of food; but finding nobody at the Amonoosuc, he had waited there two days, and then returned, carrying the provisions back with him; for which outrageous conduct he was expelled from the service.

"It is hardly possible," says Rogers, "to describe our grief and consternation."

Some gave themselves up to despair.

Few but their indomitable chief had strength to go father.

There was scarcely any game, and the barren wilderness yielded no sustenance but a few lily bulbs and the tubers of the climbing plant called in New England the ground-nut.

Leaving his party to these miserable resources, and promising to send then relief within ten days, Rogers made a raft of dry pine logs, and drifted on it down the stream, with Captain Ogden, a ranger, and one of the captive Indian boys.

They were stopped on the second day by rapids, and gained the shore with difficulty.

At the foot of the rapids, while Ogden and the ranger went in search of squirrels, Rogers set himself to making another raft; and having no strength to use the axe, he burned down the trees, which he then divided into logs by the same process.

Five days after leaving his party he reached the first English settlement, Charlestown, or "Number Four," and immediately sent a canoe with provisions to the relief of the sufferers, following himself with other canoes two days later.

Most of the men were saved, though some died miserably of famine and exhaustion.

Of the few who had been captured, we are told by French contemporary that they "became victims of the fury of the Indian women," from whose clutches the Canadians tried in vain to save them.

[752] [Footnote 752: _Événements de la Guerre en Canada,_ 1759, 1760. Compare _N.

Y.

Col. Docs.

,_ X.

1042. ] NOTE: On the day after he reached "Number Four," Rogers wrote a report of his expedition to Amherst.

This letter is printed in his _Journals_, in which he gives also a supplementary account, containing further particulars.

The _New Hampshire Gazette, Boston Evening Post,_ and other newspapers of the time recount the story in detail.

Hoyt (_Indian Wars,_ 302) repeats it, with a few additions drawn from the recollections of survivors, long after.

There is another account, very short and unsatisfactory, by Thompson Maxwell, who says that he was of the party, which is doubtful.

Mante (223) gives horrible details of the sufferings of the rangers.

An old chief of the St. Francis Indians, said to be one of those who pursued Rogers after the town was burned, many years ago told Mr. Jesse Pennoyer, a government land surveyor, that Rogers laid an ambush for the pursuers, and defeated them with great loss.

This, the story says, took place near the present town of Sherbrooke; and minute details are given, with high praise of the skill and conduct of the famous partisan.

If such an incident really took place, it is scarcely possible that Rogers would not have made some mention of it.

On the other hand, it is equally incredible that the Indians would have invented the tale of their own defeat.

I am indebted for Pennoyer's puzzling narrative to the kindness of R. A.

Ramsay, Esq.

, of Montreal.

It was printed, in 1869, in the _History of the Eastern Townships,_ by Mrs. C. M.

Day.

All things considered, it is probably groundless.

Vaudreuil describes the destruction of the village in a letter to the Minister dated October 26, and says that Rogers had a hundred and fifty men; that St. Francis was burned to ashes; that the head chief and others were killed; that he (Vaudreuil), hearing of the march of the rangers, sent the most active of the Canadians to oppose them, and that Longueuil sent all the Canadians and Indians he could muster to pursue them on their retreat; that forty-six rangers were killed, and ten captured; that he thinks all the rest will starve to death; and, finally, that the affair is very unfortunate.

I once, when a college student, followed on foot the route of Rogers from Lake Memphremagog to the Connecticut.

Chapter 27

1759