Montcalm and Wolfe — Chapter 31, Part 1

Chapter 31

1758-1763 The Peace of Paris In accordance with the terms of the capitulation of Montreal, the French military officers, with such of the soldiers as could be kept together, as well as all the chief civil officers of the colony, sailed for France in vessels provided by the conquerors.

They were voluntarily followed by the principal members of the Canadian _noblesse_, and by many of the merchants who had no mind to swear allegiance to King George.

The peasants and poorer colonists remained at home to begin a new life under a new flag.

Though this exodus of the natural leaders of Canada was in good part deferred till the next year, and though the number of persons to be immediately embarked was reduced by the desertion of many French soldiers who had married Canadian wives, yet the English authorities were sorely perplexed to find vessels enough for the motley crowd of passengers.

When at last they were all on their way, a succession of furious autumnal storms fell upon them.

The ship that carried Lévis barely escaped wreck, and that which bore Vaudreuil and his wife fared little better.

[857] Worst of all was the fate of the "Auguste," on board of which was the bold but ruthless partisan, Saint-Luc de la Corne, his brother, his children, and a party of Canadian officers, together with ladies, merchants, and soldiers.

A worthy ecclesiastical chronicler paints the unhappy vessel as a floating Babylon, and sees in her fate the stern judgment of Heaven.

[858] It is true that New France ran riot in the last years of her existence; but before the "Auguste" was well out of the St. Lawrence she was so tossed and buffeted, so lashed with waves and pelted with rain, that the most alluring forms of sin must have lost their charm, and her inmates passed days rather of penance than transgression.

There was a violent storm as the ship entered the Gulf; then a calm, during which she took fire in the cook's galley.

The crew and passengers subdued the flames after desperate efforts; but their only food thenceforth was dry biscuit.

Off the coast of Cape Breton another gale rose.

They lost their reckoning and lay tossing blindly amid the tempest.

The exhausted sailors took, in despair, to their hammocks, from which neither commands nor blows could rouse them, while amid shrieks, tears, prayers, and vows to Heaven, the "Auguste" drove towards the shore, struck, and rolled over on her side.

La Corne with six others gained the beach; and towards night they saw the ship break asunder, and counted a hundred and fourteen corpses strewn along the sand.

Aided by Indians and by English officers, La Corne made his way on snow-shoes up the St. John, and by a miracle of enduring hardihood reached Quebec before the end of winter.

[859] [Footnote 857: _Lévis à Belleisle, 27 Nov.

1760_.

] [Footnote 858: Faillon, _Vie de Mademoiselle Le Ber_, 363-370. ] [Footnote 859: _Journal du Voyage de M. Saint-Luc de la Corne_.

This is his own narrative.

] The other ships weathered the November gales, and landed their passengers on the shores of France, where some of them found a dismal welcome, being seized and thrown into the Bastille.

These were Vaudreuil, Bigot, Cadet, Péan, Bréard, Varin, Le Mercier, Penisseault, Maurin, Corpron, and others accused of the frauds and peculations that had helped to ruin Canada.

In the next year they were all put on trial, whether as an act of pure justice or as a device to turn public indignation from the Government.

In December, 1761, judges commissioned for the purpose began their sessions at the Châtelet, and a prodigious mass of evidence was laid before them.

Cadet, with brazen effrontery, at first declared himself innocent, but ended with full and unblushing confession.

Bigot denied everything till silenced point by point with papers bearing his own signature.

The prisoners defended themselves by accusing each other.

Bigot and Vaudreuil brought mutual charges, while all agreed in denouncing Cadet.

Vaudreuil, as before mentioned, was acquitted.

Bigot was banished from France for life, his property was confiscated, and he was condemned to pay fifteen hundred thousand francs by way of restitution.

Cadet was banished for nine years from Paris and required to refund six millions;

while others were sentenced in sums varying from thirty thousand to eight hundred thousand francs, and were ordered to be held in prison till the money was paid.

Of twenty-one persons brought to trial ten were condemned, six were acquitted, three received an admonition, and two were dismissed for want of evidence.

Thirty-four failed to appear, of whom seven were sentenced in default, and judgment was reserved in the case of the rest.

[860] Even those who escaped from justice profited little by their gains, for unless they had turned them betimes into land or other substantial values, they lost them in a discredited paper currency and dishonored bills of exchange.

[Footnote 860: _Jugement rendu souverainement et en dernier Ressort dans l'Affaire du Canada_.

Papers at the Châtelet of Paris, cited by Dussieux.

] While on the American continent the last scenes of the war were drawing to their close, the contest raged in Europe with unabated violence.

England was in the full career of success;

but her great ally, Frederic of Prussia, seemed tottering to his ruin.

In the summer of 1758 his glory was at its height.

French, Austrians, and Russians had all fled before him.

But the autumn brought reverses; and the Austrian general, Daun, at the head of an overwhelming force, gained over him a partial victory, which his masterly strategy robbed of its fruits.

It was but a momentary respite.

His kingdom was exhausted by its own triumphs.

His best generals were dead, his best soldiers killed or disabled, his resources almost spent, the very chandeliers of his palace melted into coin; and all Europe was in arms against him.

The disciplined valor of the Prussian troops and the supreme leadership of their undespairing King had thus far held the invading hosts at bay;

but now the end seemed near.

Frederic could not be everywhere at once;

and while he stopped one leak the torrent poured in at another.

The Russians advanced again, defeated General Wedell, whom he sent against them, and made a junction with the Austrians.

In August, 1759, he attacked their united force at Kunersdorf, broke their left wing to pieces, took a hundred and eighty cannon, forced their centre to give ground, and after hours of furious fighting was overwhelmed at last.

In vain he tried to stop the rout.

The bullets killed two horses under him, tore his clothes, and crushed a gold snuff-box in his waistcoat pocket.

"Is there no b---- of a shot that can hit me, then?"

he cried in his bitterness, as his aides-de-camp forced him from the field.

For a few days he despaired; then rallied to his forlorn task, and with smiles on his lip and anguish at his heart watched, manoeuvred, and fought with cool and stubborn desperation.

To his friend D'Argens he wrote soon after his defeat: "Death is sweet in comparison to such a life as mine.

Have pity on me and it; believe that I still keep to myself a great many evil things, not wishing to afflict or disgust anybody with them, and that I would not counsel you to fly these unlucky countries if I had any ray of hope; Adieu, mon cher!"

It was well for him and for Prussia that he had strong allies in the dissensions and delays of his enemies.

But his cup was not yet full.

Dresden was taken from him, eight of his remaining generals and twelve thousand men were defeated and captured at Maxen, and "this infernal campaign," as he calls it, closed in thick darkness.

"I wrap myself in my stoicism as best I can," he writes to Voltaire.

"If you saw me you would hardly know me: I am old, broken, gray-headed, wrinkled.

If this goes on there will be nothing left of me but the mania of making verses and an inviolable attachment to my duties and to the few virtuous men I know.

But you will not get a peace signed by my hand except on conditions honorable to my nation.

Your people, blown up with conceit and folly, may depend on this."

The same stubborn conflict with overmastering odds, the same intrepid resolution, the same subtle strategy, the same skill in eluding the blow and lightning-like quickness in retorting it, marked Frederic's campaign of 1760. At Liegnitz three armies, each equal to his own, closed round him, and he put them all to flight.

While he was fighting in Silesia, the Allies marched upon Berlin, took it, and held it three days, but withdrew on his approach.

For him there was no peace.

"Why weary you with the details of my labors and my sorrows?"

he wrote again to his faithful D'Argens.

"My spirits have forsaken me; all gayety is buried with the loved noble ones to whom my heart was bound."

He had lost his mother and his devoted sister Wilhelmina.

"You as a follower of Epicurus put a value upon life; as for me, I regard death from the Stoic point of view.

I have told you, and I repeat it, never shall my hand sign a humiliating peace.

Finish this campaign I will, resolved to dare all, to succeed, or find a glorious end."

Then came the victory of Torgau, the last and one of the most desperate of his battles: a success dearly bought, and bringing neither rest nor safety.

Once more he wrote to D'Argens: "Adieu, dear Marquis; write to me sometimes.

Don't forget a poor devil who curses his fatal existence ten times a day."

"I live like a military monk.

Endless business, and a little consolation from my books.

I don't know if I shall outlive this war, but if I do I am firmly resolved to pass the rest of my life in solitude in the bosom of philosophy and friendship.

Your nation, you see, is blinder than you thought.

These fools will lose their Canada and Pondicherry to please the Queen of Hungary and the Czarina."

The campaign of 1761 was mainly defensive on the part of Frederic.

In the exhaustion of his resources he could see no means of continuing the struggle.

"It is only Fortune," says the royal sceptic, "that can extricate me from the situation I am in.

I escape out of it by looking at the universe on the great scale like an observer from some distant planet.

All then seems to be so infinitely small that I could almost pity my enemies for giving themselves so much trouble about so very little.

I read a great deal, I devour my books.

But for them I think hypochondria would have had me in Bedlam before now.

In fine, dear Marquis, we live in troublous times and desperate situations.

I have all the properties of a stage hero;

always in danger, always on the point of perishing."

[861] And in another mood: "I begin to feel that, as the Italians say, revenge is a pleasure for the gods.

My philosophy is worn out by suffering.

I am no saint, and I will own that I should die content if only I could first inflict a part of the misery that I endure."

[Footnote 861: The above extracts are as translated by Carlyle in his _History of Frederick II.

of Prussia_.

] While Frederic was fighting for life and crown, an event took place in England that was to have great influence on the war.

Walpole recounts it thus, writing to George Montagu on the twenty-fifth of October, 1760: "My man Harry tells me all the amusing news.

He first told me of the late Prince of Wales's death, and to-day of the King's; so I must tell you all I know of departed majesty.

He went to bed well last night, rose at six this morning as usual, looked, I suppose, if all his money was in his purse, and called for his chocolate.

A little after seven he went into the closet; the German _valet-de-chambre_ heard a noise, listened, heard something like a groan, ran in, and found the hero of Oudenarde and Dettingen on the floor with a gash on his right temple by falling against the corner of a bureau.

He tried to speak, could not, and expired.

The great ventricle of the heart had burst.

What an enviable death!"

The old King was succeeded by his grandson, George III.

, a mirror of domestic virtues, conscientious, obstinate, narrow.

His accession produced political changes that had been preparing for some time.

His grandfather was German at heart, loved his Continental kingdom of Hanover, and was eager for all measures that looked to its defence and preservation.

Pitt, too, had of late vigorously supported the Continental war, saying that he would conquer America in Germany.

Thus with different views the King and the Minister had concurred in the same measures.

But George III.

was English by birth, language, and inclination.

His ruling passion was the establishment and increase of his own authority.

He disliked Pitt, the representative of the people.

He was at heart averse to a war, the continuance of which would make the Great Commoner necessary, and therefore powerful, and he wished for a peace that would give free scope to his schemes for strengthening the prerogative.

He was not alone in his pacific inclinations.

The enemies of the haughty Minister, who had ridden roughshod over men far above him in rank, were tired of his ascendency, and saw no hope of ending it but by ending the war.

Thus a peace party grew up, and the young King became its real, though not at first its declared, supporter.

The Tory party, long buried, showed signs of resurrection.

There were those among its members who, even in a king of the hated line of Hanover, could recognize and admire the same spirit of arbitrary domination that had marked their fallen idols, the Stuarts; and they now joined hands with the discontented Whigs in opposition to Pitt.

The horrors of war, the blessings of peace, the weight of taxation, the growth of the national debt, were the rallying cries of the new party; but the mainspring of their zeal was hostility to the great Minister.

Even his own colleagues chafed under his spirit of mastery;

the chiefs of the Opposition longed to inherit his power; and the King had begun to hate him as a lion in his path.

Pitt held to his purpose regardless of the gathering storm.

That purpose, as proclaimed by his adherents, was to secure a solid and lasting peace, which meant the reduction of France to so low an estate that she could no more be a danger to her rival.

In this he had the sympathy of the great body of the nation.

Early in 1761 the King, a fanatic for prerogative, set his enginery in motion.

The elections for the new Parliament were manipulated in his interest.

If he disliked Pitt as the representative of the popular will, he also disliked his colleague, the shuffling and uncertain Newcastle, as the representative of a too powerful nobility.

Elements hostile to both were introduced into the Cabinet and the great offices.

The King'sfavorite, the Earl of Bute, supplanted Holdernesse as Secretary of State for the Northern Department;

Charles Townshend, an opponent of Pitt, was made Secretary of War; Legge, Chancellor of the Exchequer, was replaced by Viscount Barrington, who was sure for the King; while a place in the Cabinet was also given to the Duke of Bedford, one of the few men who dared face the formidable Minister.

It was the policy of the King and his following to abandon Prussia, hitherto supported by British subsidies, make friends with Austria and Russia at her expense, and conclude a separate peace with France.

France was in sore need of peace.

The infatuation that had turned her from her own true interest to serve the passions of Maria Theresa and the Czarina Elizabeth had brought military humiliation and financial ruin.

Abbé de Bernis, Minister of Foreign Affairs, had lost the favor of Madame de Pompadour, and had been supplanted by the Duc de Choiseul.

The new Minister had gained his place by pleasing the favorite; but he kept it through his own ability and the necessities of the time.

The Englishman Stanley, whom Pitt sent to negotiate with him, drew this sketch of his character: "Though he may have his superiors, not only in experience of business, but in depth and refinement as a statesman, he is a person of as bold and daring a spirit as any man whatever in our country or in his own.

Madame Pompadour has ever been looked upon by all preceding courtiers and ministers as their tutelary deity, under whose auspices only they could exist, and who was as much out of their reach as if she were of a superior class of beings; but this Minister is so far from being in subordination to her influence that he seized the first opportunity of depriving her not of an equality, but of any share of power, reducing her to the necessity of applying to him even for those favors that she wants for herself and her dependents.

He has effected this great change, which every other man would have thought impossible, in the interior of the Court, not by plausibility, flattery, and address, but with a high hand, with frequent railleries and sarcasms which would have ruined any other, and, in short, by a clear superiority of spirit and resolution."

[862] [Footnote 862: _Stanley to Pitt, 6 Aug.

1761_, in _Grenville Correspondence_, I. 367, _note_.

]