Montcalm and Wolfe — Chapter 32

1763-1884 Conclusion "This," said Earl Granville on his deathbed, "has been the most glorious war and the most triumphant peace that England ever knew."

Not all were so well pleased, and many held with Pitt that the House of Bourbon should have been forced to drain the cup of humiliation to the dregs.

Yet the fact remains that the Peace of Paris marks an epoch than which none in modern history is more fruitful of grand results.

With it began a new chapter in the annals of the world.

To borrow the words of a late eminent writer, "It is no exaggeration to say that three of the many victories of the Seven Years War determined for ages to come the destinies of mankind.

With that of Rossbach began the re-creation of Germany, with that of Plassey the influence of Europe told for the first time since the days of Alexander on the nations of the East; with the triumph of Wolfe on the Heights of Abraham began the history of the United States."

[876] [Footnote 876: Green, _History of the English People_, IV.

193 (London, 1880).

] So far, however, as concerns the war in the Germanic countries, it was to outward seeming but a mad debauch of blood and rapine, ending in nothing but the exhaustion of the combatants.

The havoc had been frightful.

According to the King of Prussia's reckoning, 853,000 soldiers of the various nations had lost their lives, besides hundreds of thousands of non-combatants who had perished from famine, exposure, disease, or violence.

And with all this waste of life not a boundary line had been changed.

The rage of the two empresses and the vanity and spite of the concubine had been completely foiled.

Frederic had defied them all, and had come out of the strife intact in his own hereditary dominions and master of all that he had snatched from the Empress-Queen;

while Prussia, portioned out by her enemies as their spoil, lay depleted indeed, and faint with deadly striving, but crowned with glory, and with the career before her which, through tribulation and adversity, was to lead her at last to the headship of a united Germany.

Through centuries of strife and vicissitude the French monarchy had triumphed over nobles, parliaments, and people, gathered to itself all the forces of the State, beamed with illusive splendors under Louis the Great, and shone with the phosphorescence of decay under his contemptible successor;

till now, robbed of prestige, burdened with debt, and mined with corruption, it was moving swiftly and more swiftly towards the abyss of ruin.

While the war hastened the inevitable downfall of the French monarchy, it produced still more notable effects.

France under Colbert had embarked on a grand course of maritime and colonial enterprise, and followed it with an activity and vigor that promised to make her a great and formidable ocean power.

It was she who led the way in the East, first trained the natives to fight her battles, and began that system of mixed diplomacy and war which, imitated by her rival, enabled a handful of Europeans to master all India.

In North America her vast possessions dwarfed those of every other nation.

She had built up a powerful navy and created an extensive foreign trade.

All this was now changed.

In India she was reduced to helpless inferiority, with total ruin in the future; and of all her boundless territories in North America nothing was left but the two island rocks on the coast of Newfoundland that the victors had given her for drying her codfish.

Of her navy scarcely forty ships remained;

all the rest were captured or destroyed.

She was still great on the continent of Europe, but as a world power her grand opportunities were gone.

In England as in France the several members of the State had battled together since the national life began, and the result had been, not the unchecked domination of the Crown, but a system of balanced and adjusted forces, in which King, Nobility, and Commons all had their recognized places and their share of power.

Thus in the war just ended two great conditions of success had been supplied: a people instinct with the energies of ordered freedom, and a masterly leadership to inspire and direct them.

All, and more than all, that France had lost England had won.

Now, for the first time, she was beyond dispute the greatest of maritime and colonial Powers.

Portugal and Holland, her precursors in ocean enterprise, had long ago fallen hopelessly behind.

Two great rivals remained, and she had humbled the one and swept the other from her path.

Spain, with vast American possessions, was sinking into the decay which is one of the phenomena of modern history; while France, of late a most formidable competitor, had abandoned the contest in despair.

England was mistress of the seas, and the world was thrown open to her merchants, explorers, and colonists.

A few years after the Peace the navigator Cook began his memorable series of voyages, and surveyed the strange and barbarous lands which after times were to transform into other Englands, vigorous children of this great mother of nations.

It is true that a heavy blow was soon to fall upon her; her own folly was to alienate the eldest and greatest of her offspring.

But nothing could rob her of the glory of giving birth to the United States; and, though politically severed, this gigantic progeny were to be not the less a source of growth and prosperity to the parent that bore them, joined with her in a triple kinship of laws, language, and blood.

The war or series of wars that ended with the Peace of Paris secured the opportunities and set in action the forces that have planted English homes in every clime, and dotted the earth with English garrisons and posts of trade.

With the Peace of Paris ended the checkered story of New France; a story which would have been a history if faults of constitution and the bigotry and folly of rulers had not dwarfed it to an episode.

Yet it is a noteworthy one in both its lights and its shadows: in the disinterested zeal of the founder of Quebec, the self-devotion of the early missionary martyrs, and the daring enterprise of explorers; in the spiritual and temporal vassalage from which the only escape was to the savagery of the wilderness; and in the swarming corruptions which were the natural result of an attempt to rule, by the absolute hand of a master beyond the Atlantic, a people bereft of every vestige of civil liberty.

Civil liberty was given them by the British sword; but the conqueror left their religious system untouched, and through it they have imposed upon themselves a weight of ecclesiastical tutelage that finds few equals in the most Catholic countries of Europe.

Such guardianship is not without certain advantages.

When faithfully exercised it aids to uphold some of the tamer virtues, if that can be called a virtue which needs the constant presence of a sentinel to keep it from escaping: but it is fatal to mental robustness and moral courage; and if French Canada would fulfil its aspirations it must cease to be one of the most priest-ridden communities of the modern world.

Scarcely were they free from the incubus of France when the British provinces showed symptoms of revolt.

The measures on the part of the mother-country which roused their resentment, far from being oppressive, were less burdensome than the navigation laws to which they had long submitted; and they resisted taxation by Parliament simply because it was in principle opposed to their rights as freemen.

They did not, like the American provinces of Spain at a later day, sunder themselves from a parent fallen into decrepitude; but with astonishing audacity they affronted the wrath of England in the hour of her triumph, forgot their jealousies and quarrels, joined hands in the common cause, fought, endured, and won.

The disunited colonies became the United States.

The string of discordant communities along the Atlantic coast has grown to a mighty people, joined in a union which the earthquake of civil war served only to compact and consolidate.

Those who in the weakness of their dissensions needed help from England against the savage on their borders have become a nation that may defy every foe but that most dangerous of all foes, herself, destined to a majestic future if she will shun the excess and perversion of the principles that made her great, prate less about the enemies of the past and strive more against the enemies of the present, resist the mob and the demagogue as she resisted Parliament and King, rally her powers from the race for gold and the delirium of prosperity to make firm the foundations on which that prosperity rests, and turn some fair proportion of her vast mental forces to other objects than material progress and the game of party politics.

She has tamed the savage continent, peopled the solitude, gathered wealth untold, waxed potent, imposing, redoubtable;

and now it remains for her to prove, if she can, that the rule of the masses is consistent with the highest growth of the individual; that democracy can give the world a civilization as mature and pregnant, ideas as energetic and vitalizing, and types of manhood as lofty and strong, as any of the systems which it boasts to supplant.

Appendix A Chapter 3.

Conflict for the West _Piquet and his War-Party_.

--"Ce parti [_de guerre_] pour lequel M.

le Général a donné son consentement, sera de plus de 3,800 hommes....

500 hommes de nos domicilies, 700 des Cinq nations à l'exclusion des Agniers [_Mohawks_] qui ne sont plus regardés que comme des anglais, 600 tant Iroquois que d'autres nations le long de la Belle Rivière d'où ils espèrent chasser les anglais qui y formentù des Établissemens contraires au bien des guerriers, 2,000 hommes qu'ils doivent prendre aux têtes plates [_Choctaws_] où ils s'arresteront, c'est la où les deux chefs de guerre doivent proposer a l'armée l'expédition des Miamis au retour de celle contre la Nation du Chien [_Cherokees_].

Un vieux levain, quelques anciennes querelles leur feront tout entreprendre contre les anglais de la Virginie s'ils donnent encore quelques secours à cette dernière nation, ce qui ne manquera pas d'arriver...."

"C'est un grand miracle que malgré l'envie, les contradictions, l'opposition presque générale de tous les Villages sauvages, j'aye formé en moins de 3 ans une des plus florissantes missions du Canada....

Je me trouve donc, Messieurs, dans l'occasion de pouvoir étendre l'empire de Jésus Christ et du Roy mes bons maîtres jusqu'aux extrémités de ce nouveau monde, et de plus faire avec quelques secours que vous me procurerez que la France et l'angleterre ne pourraient faire avec plusieurs millions et toutes leur troupes."

_Copie de la Lettre écrite par M. l'Abbé Picquet, dattée à la Présentation du 8 Fév. 1752_ (Archives de la Marine).

I saw in the possession of the late Jacques Viger, of Montreal, an illuminated drawing of one of Piquet's banners, said to be still in existence, in which the cross, the emblems of the Virgin and the Saviour, the fleur-de-lis, and the Iroquois totems are all embroidered and linked together by strings of wampum beads wrought into the silk.

_Directions of the French Colonial Minister for the Destruction of Oswego_.

--"La seule voye dont on puisse faire usage en temps de paix pour une pareille operation est celle des Iroquois des cinq nations.

Les terres sur lesquelles le poste à été établi leur appartiennent et ce n'est qu'avec leur consentement que les anglois s'y sont placés. Si en faisant regarder à ces sauvages un pareil établissement comme contraire à leur liberté et comme une usurpation dont les anglois prétendent faire usage pour acquérir la propriété de leur terre on pourrait les déterminer à entreprendre de les détruire, une pareille opération ne seroit pas à négliger; mais M. le Marquis de la Jonquière doit sentir avec quelle circonspection une affaire de cette espèce doit être conduite et il faut en effêt qu'il y travaille de façon à ne se point compromettre."

_Le Ministre à MM.

de la Jonquière et Bigot, 15 Avril, 1750_ (Archives de la Marine).

Appendix B Chapter 4.

Acadia _English Treatment of Acadians.

_--"Les Anglois dans la vue de la Conquête du Canada ont voulu donner aux peuples françois de ces Colonies un exemple frappant de la douceur de leur gouvernement dans leur conduite à l'égard des Accadiens."

"Ils leur ont fourni pendant plus de 35 ans le simple nécessaire, sans élever la fortune d'aucun, ils leur ont fourni ce nécessaire souvent à crédit, avec un excès de confiance, sans fatiguer les débiteurs, sans les presser, sans vouloir les forcer au payement."

"Ils leur ont laissé une apparence de liberté si excessive qu'ils n'ont voulu prendre aucune différence [_sic_] de leur différents, pas même pour les crimes....

Ils ont souffert que les accadiens leur refusassent insolemment certains rentes de grains, modiques & très-légitimement dues."

"Ils ont dissimulé le refus méprisant que les accadiens ont fait de prendre d'eux des concessions pour les nouveaux terreins qu'ils voulaient occuper."

"Les fruits que cette conduite a produit dans la dernière guerre nous le savons [_sic_] et les anglois n'en ignorent rien.

Qu'on juge là-dessus de leur ressentiment et des vues de vengeance de cette nation cruelle....

Je prévois notamment la dispersion des jeunes accadiens sur les vaisseaux de guerre anglois, oú la seule règle pour la ration du pain suffit pour les detruire jusqu'au dernier."

_Roma, Officier à l'Isle Royale à----, 1750. _ _Indians, directed by Missionaries, to attack the English in Time of Peace.

_--"La lettre de M. l'Abbé Le Loutre me paroit si intéressante que j'ay l'honneur de vous en envoyer Copie....

Les trois sauvages qui m'ont porté ces dépêches m'ont parlé relativement à ce que M. l'Abbé Le Loutre marque dans sa lettre; je n'ay eu garde de leur donner aucun Conseil là-dessus et je me suis borné à leur promettre que je ne les abandonnerai point, aussy ai-je pourvu à tout, soit pour les armes, munitions de guerre et de bouche, soit pour les autres choses nécessaires."

"Il seroit à souhaiter que ces Sauvages rassemblés pussent parvenir à traverser les anglois dans leurs entreprises, même dans celle de Chibouctou [_Halifax_], ils sont dans cette résolution et s'ils peuvent mettre à execution ce qu'ils ont projetté il est assuré qu'ils seront fort incommodes aux Anglois et que les vexations qu'ils exerceront sur eux leur seront un très grand obstacle.

Ces sauvages doívent agir seuls, il n'y aura ny soldat ny habitant, tout se fera de leur pur mouvement, et sans qu'il paraisse que j'en eusse connoissance."

"Cela est très essentiel, aussy ai-je écrit au Sr. de Boishébert d'observer beaucoup de prudence dans ses démarches et de les faire très secrètement pour que les Anglois ne puissent pas s'apercevoir que nous pourvoyons aux besoins des dits sauvages."

"Ce seront les missionnaires qui feront toutes les négociations et qui dirigeront les pas des dits sauvages, ils sont en très bonnes mains, le R. P.

Germain et M. l'Abbé Le Loutre étant fort au fait d'en tirer tout le party possible et le plus avantageux pour nos intérêts, ils ménageront leur intrigue de façon à n'y pas paroitre...."

"Je sens, Monseigneur, toute la délicatesse de cette negociation, soyez persuadé que je la conduirai avec tant de précautions que les anglois ne pourront pas dire que mes ordres y ont eu part."

_La Jonquière au Minístre, 9 Oct.

1749_.

_Missionaries to be encouraged in their Efforts to make the Indians attack the English.

_--"Les sauvages....

se distinguent, depuis la paix, dans les mouvements qu'il y a du côté de l'Acadie, et sur lesquels Sa Majesté juge à propos d'entrer dans quelques détails avec le Sieur de Raymond...."

"Sa Majesté luy a déjà observé que les sauvages ont été jusqu'à présent dans les dispositions les plus favorables.

Il est de la plus grande importance, et pour le présent et pour l'avenir, de ne rien négliger pour les y maintenir.

Les missionnaires qui sont auprès d'eux sont plus à portés d'y contribuer que personne, et Sa Majesté a lieu d'être satisfaite des soins qu'ils y donnent.

Le Sr. de Raymond doit exciter ces missionnaires à ne point se relacher sur cela; mais en même temps il doit les avertir de contenir leur zèle de manière qu'ils ne se compromettent pas mal à propos avec les anglois et qu'ils ne donnent point de justes sujets de plaintes."

_Mémoire du Roy pour servir d'Instruction au Comte de Raymond, 24 Avril, 1751_.

_Acadians to join the Indians in attacking the English.

_--"Pour que ces Sauvages agissent avec beaucoup de Courage, quelques accadiens habillés et matachés comme les Sauvages pourront se joindre à eux pour faire coup sur les Anglois.

Je ne puis éviter de consentir à ce que ces Sauvages feront puisque nous avons les bras liés et que nous ne pouvons rien faire par nous-mêmes, au surplus je ne crois pas qu'il y ait de l'inconvenient de laisser mêler les accadiens parmi les Sauvages, parceque s'ils sont pris, nous dirons qu'ils ont agi de leur propre mouvement."

_La Jonquière au Minístre, 1 Mai_, 1751. _Cost of Le Loutre's Intrigues.

_--"J'ay déjà fait payer a M. Le Loutre depuis l'année dernière la somme de 11183l.

18s.

pour acquitter les dépenses qu'il fait journellement et je ne cesse de luy recommander de s'en tenir aux indispensables en evitant toujours de rien compromettre avec le gouvernement anglois."

_Prévost au Ministre, 22 Juillet, 1750_.

_Payment for English Scalps in Time of Peace.

_--"Les Sauvages ont pris, il y a un mois, 18 chevelures angloises [_English scalps_,] et M. Le Loutre a été obligé de les payer 1800 l. , argent de l'Acadie, dont je luy ay fait le remboursement."

_Ibid.

, 16 Août, 1753_.

Many pages might be filled with extracts like the above.

These, with most of the other French documents used in Chapter 4, are taken from the Archives de la Marine et des Colonies.

Appendix C Chapter 5.

Washington _Washington and the Capitulation at Fort Necessity_.

--Villiers, in his Journal, boasts that he made Washington sign a virtual admission that he had assassinated Jumonville.

In regard to this point, a letter, of which the following is an extract, is printed in the provincial papers of the time.

It is from Captain Adam Stephen, an officer in the action, writing to a friend five weeks after.

"When Mr. Vanbraam returned with the French proposals, we were obliged to take the sense of them from his mouth; it rained so heavy that he could not give us a written translation of them;

we could scarcely keep the candle lighted to read them by; they were written in a bad hand, on wet and blotted paper, so that no person could read them but Vanbraam, who had heard them from the mouth of the French officer.

Every officer there is ready to declare that there was no such word as _assassination_ mentioned.

The terms expressed were, _the death of Jumonville_.

If it had been mentioned we would by all means have had it altered, as the French, during the course of the interview, seemed very condescending, and desirous to bring things to an issue."

He then gives several other points in which Vanbraam had misled them.

Dinwiddie, recounting the affair to Lord Albemarle, says that Washington, being ignorant of French, was deceived by the interpreter, who, through poltroonery, suppressed the word assassination.

Captain Mackay, writing to Washington in September, after a visit to Philadelphia, says: "I had several disputes about our capitulation; but I satisfied every person that mentioned the subject as to the articles in question, that they were owing to a bad interpreter, and contrary to the translation made to us when we signed them."

At the next meeting of the burgesses they passed a vote of thanks for gallant conduct to Washington and all his officers by name, except Vanbraam and the major of the regiment, the latter being charged with cowardice, and the former with treacherous misinterpretation of the articles.

Sometime after, Washington wrote to a correspondent who had questioned him on the subject: "That we were wilfully or ignorantly deceived by our interpreter in regard to the word _assassination_ I do aver, and will to my dying moment; so will every officer that was present.

The interpreter was a Dutchman little acquainted with the English tongue, therefore might not advert to the tone and meaning of the word in English; but, whatever his motives for so doing, certain it is that he called it the _death_ or the _loss_ of the Sieur Jumonville.

So we received and so we understood it, until, to our great surprise and mortification, we found it otherwise in a literal translation."

Sparks, _Writings of Washington_, II.

464, 465. Appendix D Chapter 7.

Braddock It has been said that Beaujeu, and not Contrecoeur, commanded at Fort Duquesne at the time of Braddock's expedition.

Some contemporaries, and notably the chaplain of the fort, do, in fact, speak of him as in this position; but their evidence is overborne by more numerous and conclusive authorities, among them Vaudreuil, governor of Canada, and Contrecoeur himself, in an official report.

Vaudreuil says of him: "Ce commandant s'occupa le 8 [_Juillet_] à former un parti pour aller au devant des Anglois;" and adds that this party was commanded by Beaujeu and consisted of 250 French and 650 Indians (_Vaudreuil au Ministre, 5 Août, 1755_).

In the autumn of 1756 Vaudreuil asked the Colonial Minister to procure a pension for Contrecoeur and Ligneris.

He says: "Le premier de ces Messieurs a commandé longtemps au fort Duquesne; c'est luy qui a ordonné et dirigé tous les mouvements qui se sont faits dans cette partie, soit pour faire abandonner le premier établissement des Anglois, soit pour les forcer à se retirer du fort Nécessité, et soit enfin pour aller au devant de l'armée du Général Braddock qui a été entièrement défaite" (_Vaudreuil au Ministre, 8 Nov.

1756_.

) Beaujeu, who had lately arrived with a reinforcement, had been named to relieve Contrecoeur (_Dumas au Ministre, 24 Juillet, 1756_), but had not yet done so.

As the report of Contrecoeur has never been printed, I give an extract from it (_Contrecceur à Vaudreuil, 14 Juillet, 1755_, in Archives de la Marine):-- "Le meme jour [_8 Juillet_] je formai un party de tout ce que je pouvois mettre hors du fort pour aller à leur rencontre.

Il étoit composé de 250 François et de 650 sauvages, ce qui faisoit 900 hommes.

M.

de Beaujeu, capitaine, le commandoit.

Il y avoit deux capitaines qui estoient Mrs. Dumas et Ligneris et plusieurs autres officiers subalternes.

Ce parti se mit en marche le 9 à 8 heures du matin, et se trouva à midi et demie en présence des Anglois à environ 3 lieues du fort.

On commença à faire feu de part et d'autre.

Le feu de l'artillerie ennemie fit reculer un peu par deux fois notre parti.

M.

de Beaujeu fut tué à la troisième décharge.

M.

Dumas prit le commandement et s'en acquitta au mieux.

Nos François, pleins de courage, soutenus par les sauvages, quoiqu'ils n'eussent point d'artillerie, firent à leur tour plier les Anglois qui se battirent en ordre de bataille et en bonne contenance.

Et ces derniers voyant l'ardeur de nos gens qui fonçoient avec une vigeur infinie furent enfin obligés de plier tout à fait après 4 heures d'un grand feu.

Mrs. Dumas et Ligneris qui n'avoient plus avec eux q'une vingtaine de François ne s'engagerent point dans la poursuite.

Ils rentrerent dans le fort, parceq'une grande partie des Canadiens qui n'estoient malheureusement que des enfants s'estoient retirés à la première décharge."

The letter of Dumas cited in the text has been equally unknown.

It was written a year after the battle in order to draw the attention of the minister to services which the writer thought had not been duly recognized.

The following is an extract (_Dumas au Ministre, 24 Juillet, 1756_, in Archives de la Marine):-- "M. de Beaujeu marcha donc, et sous ses ordres M. de Ligneris et moi.

Il attaqua avec beaucoup d'audace mais sans nulle disposition;

notre première décharge fut faite hors de portée; l'ennemi fit la sienne de plus près, et dans le premier instant du combat, cent miliciens, qui faisaient la moitié de nos Français lâchèrent honteusement le pied en criant 'Sauve qui peut.'

Deux cadets qui depuis ont été faits officiers autorisaient cette fuite par leur exemple.

Ce mouvement en arrière ayant encouragé l'ennemi, il fit retentir ses cris de Vive le Roi et avança sur nous à grand pas.

Son artillerie s'étant preparée pendant ce temps là commença à faire feu ce qui épouvanta tellement les Sauvages que tout prit la fuite; l'ennemi faísait sa troisième décharge de mousqueterie quand M. de Beaujeu fut tué."

"Notre déroute se présenta a mes yeux sous le plus désagréable point de vue, et pour n'être point chargé de la mauvaise manoeuvre d'autrui, je ne songeai plus qu'à me faire tuer.

Ce fut alors, Monseigneur, qu'excitant de la voix et du geste le peu de soldats qui restait, je m'avançai avec la contenance qui donne le désespoir.

Mon peloton fit un feu si vif que l'ennemi en parut étonné; il grossit insensiblement et les Sauvages voyant que mon attaque faisait cesser les crís de l'ennemi revinrent à moi.

Dans ce moment j'envoyai M. le Chev'r. Le Borgne et M. de Rocheblave dire aux officiers qui étaient à la tête des Sauvages de prendre l'ennemi en flanc.

Le canon qui battit en tête donna faveur à mes ordres.

L'ennemi, pris de tous cotés, combattit avec la fermeté la plus opiniâtre.

Des rangs entiers tombaient à la fois; presque tous les officiers périrent; et le désordre s'étant mis par là dans cette colonne, tout prit la fuite."

Whatever may have been the conduct of the Canadian militia, the French officers behaved with the utmost courage, and shared with the Indians the honors of the victory.

The partisan chief Charles Langlade seems also to have been especially prominent.

His grandson, the aged Pierre Grignon, declared that it was he who led the attack (Draper, _Recollections of Grignon_, in the _Collections of the Wisconsin Historical Society,_ III.

).

Such evidence, taken alone, is of the least possible weight; but both the traveller Anbury and General John Burgoyne, writing many years after the event, speak of Langlade, who was then alive, as the author of Braddock's defeat.

Hence there can be little doubt that he took an important part in it, though the contemporary writers do not mention his name.

Compare Tassé, _Notice sur Charles Langlade_.

The honors fell to Contrecoeur, Dumas, and Ligneris, all of whom received the cross of the Order of St Louis (_Ordres du Roy et Dépêches des Ministres_, 1755).

Appendix E Chapter 14.

Montcalm To show the style of Montcalm's familiar letters, I give a few examples.

Literal translation is often impossible.

À MADAME DE MONTCALM, À MONTRÉAL, 16 AVRIL, 1757.

(_Extrait.

_) "Ma santé assez bonne, malgré beaucoup de travail, surtout d'ecriture.

Estève, mon secretaire, se marie.

Beau caractère.

Bon autographe, écrivant vite.

Je lui procure un emploi et le moyen de faire fortune s'il veut.

Il fait un meilleur mariage que ne lui appartient; malgré cela je crains qu'il ne la fasse pas comme un autre; fat, frivole, joueur, glorieux, petit-maître, dépensier.

J'ai toujours Marcel, des soldats copistes dans le besoin....

Tous les soldats de Montpellier se portants bien, hors le fils de Pierre mort chez moi.

Tout est hors de prix.

Il faut vivre honorablement et je le fais, tous les jours seize personnes.

Une fois tous les quinze jours chez M. le Gouverneur général et Mr. le Chev.

de Lévis qui vit aussi très bien.

Il a donné trois beaux grands bals.

Pour moi jusqu'au carême, outre les dîners, de grands soupers de dames trois fois la semaine.

Le jour des devotes prudes, des concerts.

Les jours des jeûnes des violons d'hazard, parcequ'on me les demandait, cela ne menait que jusqu'à deux heures du matin et il se joignait l'après-souper compagnie dansante sans être priée, mais sure d'être bien reçue à celle qui avait soupé.

Fort cher, peu amusant, et souvent ennuyeux....

Vous connaissiez ma maison, je l'ai augmentée d'un cocher, d'un frotteur, un garçon de cuisine, et j'ai marié mon aide de cuisine; car je travaille à peupler la colonie: 80 mariages de soldats cet hiver et deux d'officiers.

Germain a perdu sa fille.

Il a épousé mieux que lui;

bonne femme mais sans bien, comme toutes...."

À MADAME DE MONTCALM, À MONTRÉAL, 6 JUIN, 1757.

(_Extrait_.

) "J'addresse la première de cette lettre à ma mère.

Il n'y a pas une heure dans la journée que je ne songe à vous, à elle, et à mes enfants.

J'embrasse ma fille; je vous adore, ma très chère, ainsi que ma mère.

Mille choses à mes soeurs.

Je n'ai pas le temps de leur écrire, ni à Naujac, ni aux abbesses....

Des compliments au château d'Arbois, aux Du Cayla, et aux Givard.

P.

S.

N'oubliez pas d'envoyer une douzaine de bouteilles d'Angleterre de pinte d'eau de lavande; vous en mettrez quatre pour chaque envoi."

À BOURLAMAQUE, À MONTRÉAL, 20 FÉVRIER, 1757.

(_Extrait_.

) "Dimanche j'avais rassemblé les dames de France hors Mad.

de Parfouru qui m'a fait l'honneur de me venir voir il y a trois jours et en la voyant je me suis apperçu que l'amour avait des traits de puissance dont on ne pouvait pas rendre raison, non pas par l'impression qu'elle a faite sur mon coeur, mais bien par celle qu'elle a faite sur celui de son époux.

Mercredi une assemblée chez Mad.

Varin.

Jeudi un bal chez le Chev.

de Lévis qui avait prié 65 Dames ou demoiselles; Il n'y en avait que trente--autant d'hommes qu'à la guerre.

Sa salle bien éclairée, aussi grand que celle de l'Intendance, beaucoup d'ordre, beaucoup d'attention, des rafraîchissements en abondance toute la nuit de tout genre et de toute espèce et on ne se retira qu'à sept heures du matin.

Pour moi qui ay quitté le séjour de Québec, Je me couchai de bonne heure.

J'avais eu ce jour-là huit dames à souper et ce souper était dédié à Mad.

Varin.

Demain j'en aurai une demi douzaine.

Je ne sais encore a qui il est dedié, Je suis tenté de croire que c'est à La Roche Beaucourt Le galant Chev'r. nous donne encore un bal."

Appendix F Chapter 15.

Fort William Henry WEBB TO LOUDON, FORT EDWARD, 11 AUG.

1757. _Public Record Office.

_ (_Extract.

_) "On leaving the Camp Yesterday Morning they [_the English soldiers_] were stript by the Indians of everything they had both Officers and Men the Women and Children drag'd from among them and most inhumanly butchered before their faces, the party of about three hundred Men which were given them as an escort were during this time quietly looking on, from this and other circumstances we are too well convinced these barbarities must have been connived at by the French.

After having destroyed the women and children they fell upon the rear of our Men who running in upon the Front soon put the whole to a most precipitate flight in which confusion part of them came into this Camp about two o'Clock yesterday morning in a most distressing situation, and have continued dropping in ever since, a great many men and we are afraid several Officers were massacred."

The above is independent of the testimony of Frye, who did not reach Fort Edward till the day after Webb's letter was written.

FRYE TO THOMAS HUBBARD, SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF MASSACHUSETTS, ALBANY, 16 AUG.

1757. _Public Record Office.

_ (_Extract.

_) "We did not march till ye 10th at which time the Savages were let loose upon us, Strips, Kills, & Scalps our people drove them into Disorder Rendered it impossible to Rally, the French Gaurds we were promised shou'd Escort us to Fort Edward Could or would not protect us so that there Opened the most horrid Scene of Barbarity immaginable, I was strip'd myself of my Arms & Cloathing that I had nothing left but Briches Stockings Shoes & Shirt, the Indians round me with their Tomehawks Spears &c threatening Death I flew to the Officers of the French Gaurds for Protection but they would afford me none, therefore was Oblig'd to fly and was in the woods till the 12th in the Morning of which I arriv'd at Fort Edward almost Famished ...

with what of Fatigue Starving &c I am obliged to break off but as soon as I can Recollect myself shall write to you more fully."

FRYE, JOURNAL OF THE ATTACK OF FORT WILLIAM HENRY.

_Public Record Office.

(Extract.

)_ "_Wednesday, August 10th_.

--Early this morning we were ordered to prepare for our march, but found the Indians in a worse temper (if possible) than last night, every one having a tomahawk, hatchett or some other instrument of death, and Constantly plundering from the officers their arms &ca this Col'o. Monro Complained of, as a breach of the Articles of Capitulation but to no effect, the french officers however told us that if we would give up the baggage of the officers and men, to the Indians, they thought it would make them easy, which at last Col'o. Monro Consented to but this was no sooner done, then they began to take the Officers Hatts, Swords, guns & Cloaths, stripping them all to their Shirts, and on some officers, left no shirt at all, while this was doing they killed and scalp'd all the sick and wounded before our faces and then took out from our troops, all the Indians and negroes, and Carried them off, one of the former they burnt alive afterwards."

"At last with great difficulty the troops gott from the Retrenchment, but they were no sooner out, then the savages fell upon the rear, killing & scalping, which Occasioned an order for a halt, which at last was done in great Confusion but as soon as those in the front knew what was doing in the rear they again pressed forward, and thus the Confusion continued & encreased till we came to the Advanc'd guard of the French, the savages still carrying away Officers, privates, Women and Children, some of which latter they kill'd & scalpt in the road.

This horrid scene of blood and slaughter obliged our officers to apply to the Officers of the French Guard for protection, which they refus'd & told them they must take to the woods and shift for themselves which many did, and in all probability many perish't in the woods, many got into Fort Edward that day and others daily Continued coming in, but vastly fatigued with their former hardships added to this last, which threw several of them into Deliriums."

AFFIDAVIT OF MILES WHITWORTH, SURGEON OF THE

MASSACHUSETTS REGIMENT, TAKEN BEFORE GOVERNOR

POWNALL 17 OCT.

1757. _Public Record Office.

(Extract.

)_ "Being duly sworn on the Holy Evangelists doth declare ...

that there were also seventeen Men of the Massachusetts Regiment wounded unable to March under his immediate Care in the Intrenched Camp, that according to the Capitulation he did deliver them over to the French Surgeon on the ninth of August at two in the Afternoon ...

that the French Surgeon received them into his Custody and placed Centinals of the French Troops upon the said seventeen wounded.

That the French Surgeon going away to the French Camp, the said Miles Whitworth continued with the said wounded Men till five o'clock on the Morn of the tenth of August, That the Centinals were taken off and that he the said Whitworth saw the French Indians about 5 O'clock in the Morn of the 10th of August dragg the said seventeen wounded men out of their Hutts, Murder them with their Tomohawks and scalp them, That the French Troops posted round the lines were not further than forty feet from the Hutts where the said wounded Men lay, that several Canadian Officers particularly one Lacorne were present and that none, either Officer or Soldier, protected the said wounded Men."

MILES WHITWORTH.

"_Sworn before me_ T. POWNALL."

Appendix G Chapter 20.

Ticonderoga The French accounts of the battle at Ticonderoga are very numerous, and consist of letters and despatches of Montcalm, Lévis, Bougainville, Doreil, and other officers, besides several anonymous narratives, one of which was printed in pamphlet form at the time.

Translations of many of them may be found in _N.

Y.

Colonial Documents,_ X. There are, however, various others preserved in the archives of the War and Marine Departments at Paris which have not seen the light.

I have carefully examined and collated them all.

The English accounts are by no means so numerous or so minute.

Among those not already cited, may be mentioned a letter of Colonel Woolsey of the New York provincials, and two letters from British officers written just after the battle and enclosed in a letter from Alexander Colden to Major Halkett, 17 July.

(_Bouquet and Haldimand Papers.

_) The French greatly exaggerated the force of the English and their losses in the battle.

They place the former at from twenty thousand to thirty-one thousand, and the latter at from four thousand to six thousand.

Prisoners taken at the end of the battle told them that the English had lost four thousand,--a statement which they readily accepted, though the prisoners could have known little more about the matter than they themselves.

And these figures were easily magnified.

The number of dead lying before the lines is variously given at from eight hundred to three thousand.

Montcalm himself, who was somewhat elated by his victory, gives this last number in one of his letters, though he elsewhere says two thousand; while Lévis, in his _Journal de la Guerre,_ says "about eight hundred."

The truth is that no pains were taken to ascertain the exact number, which, by the English returns, was a little above five hundred, the total of killed, wounded, and missing being nineteen hundred and forty-four.

A

friend of Knox, writing to him from Fort Edward three weeks after the battle, gives a tabular statement which shows nineteen hundred and fifty in all, or six more than the official report.

As the name of every officer killed or wounded, with the corps to which he belonged, was published at the time (_London Magazine_, 1758), it is extremely unlikely that the official return was falsified.

Abercromby's letter to Pitt, of July 12, says that he retreated "with the loss of four hundred and sixty-four regulars killed, twenty-nine missing eleven hundred and seventeen wounded;

and eighty-seven provincials killed, eight missing, and two hundred and thirty-nine wounded, officers of both included."

In a letter to Viscount Barrington, of the same date (Public Record Office), Abercromby encloses a full detail of losses, regiment by regiment and company by company, being a total of nineteen hundred and forty-five.

Several of the French writers state correctly that about fourteen thousand men (including reserves) were engaged in the attacks; but they add erroneously that there were thirteen thousand more at the Falls.

In fact there was only a small provincial regiment left there, and a battalion of the New York regiment, under Colonel Woolsey, at the landing.

A LEGEND OF TICONDEROGA.

--Mention has been made of the death of Major Duncan Campbell of Inverawe.

The following family tradition relating to it was told me in 1878 by the late Dean Stanley, to whom I am also indebted for various papers on the subject, including a letter from James Campbell, Esq.

, the present laird of Inverawe, and great-nephew of the hero of the tale.

The same story is told, in an amplified form and with some variations, in the _Legendary Tales of the Highlands_ of Sir Thomas Dick Lauder.

As related by Dean Stanley and approved by Mr. Campbell, it is this:-- The ancient castle of Inverawe stands by the banks of the Awe, in the midst of the wild and picturesque scenery of the western Highlands.

Late one evening, before the middle of the last century, as the laird, Duncan Campbell, sat alone in the old hall, there was a loud knocking at the gate; and, opening it, he saw a stranger, with torn clothing and kilt besmeared with blood, who in a breathless voice begged for asylum.

He went on to say that he had killed a man in a fray, and that the pursuers were at his heels.

Campbell promised to shelter him.

"Swear on your dirk!"

said the stranger; and Campbell swore.

He then led him to a secret recess in the depths of the castle.

Scarcely was he hidden when again there was a loud knocking at the gate, and two armed men appeared.

"Your cousin Donald has been murdered, and we are looking for the murderer!"

Campbell, remembering his oath, professed to have no knowledge of the fugitive; and the men went on their way.

The laird, in great agitation, lay down to rest in a large dark room, where at length he feel asleep.

Waking suddenly in bewilderment and terror, he saw the ghost of the murdered Donald standing by his bedside, and heard a hollow voice pronounce the words: _"Inverawe!

Inverawe!

blood has been shed.

Shield not the murderer!"