A Historical Geography of the British Colonies Part 26

[Sidenote: _Dieskau at Crown Point._]

The French in the meantime had not been idle. When Dieskau arrived in Canada with his troops, it was intended that he should operate on Lake Ontario, and reduce the English outpost at Oswego; but, as soon as news came of Johnson's expedition, the plan was changed, and he hurried up the Richelieu with reinforcements to protect Crown Point.

By the time that Johnson reached Lake George, there were a.s.sembled at Crown Point over 3,500 men--French soldiers, Canadians, and Indians.

[Sidenote: _He advances to Ticonderoga and up the southern arm of Lake Champlain,_]

The two alternative routes from Fort Lyman to Crown Point converged at Ticonderoga, or, as the French called it, Carillon. Dieskau therefore moved forward to that place, to block the English advance.

He had not yet learnt that Johnson was encamped at Lake George, but was under the impression that the advanced guard of the English, instead of the rearguard, was at Fort Lyman. Accordingly, he laid his plans to push rapidly up the southern arm of Lake Champlain, and to take Fort Lyman before reinforcements could arrive; or, if Johnson had already marched to Lake George, to cut the line of his communications. French and English were in fact advancing, or preparing to advance, south and north respectively, on parallel lines.

[Sidenote: _and cuts Johnson's communications._]

A flying column of 1,500 men set out from Ticonderoga; the water carried them as far as South Bay, where they left their boats, and marching thence through the forest between Lake George and Wood Creek, they struck the road which {244} Johnson had made from Fort Lyman to the lake, at a point three miles from the fort, eleven from the lake. They had thus intercepted Johnson's communications and cut him off from his base of supplies. From prisoners Dieskau learnt the disposition of Johnson's forces, and he took counsel whether to attack the fort or the encampment by the lake. Capture of the fort had been the original object of the march; but in deference to the Indians, who little loved a.s.sault on fortified positions, it was decided to take the second alternative and advance on the lake.

[Sidenote: _Johnson's counter plan._]

[Sidenote: _The English fall into an ambush._]

Meanwhile, warned of what had happened, Johnson prepared a counter-stroke. What Dieskau had done, he could do also; if the Frenchman had cut his communications, he in his turn could intercept Dieskau's line of retreat; and, with this object, on the morning of the eighth of September, a force of 1,000 men was sent out from the camp to strike the French in the rear. The whole formed a pretty picture of backwood manoeuvres; but, like the Boers in South Africa, the Canadians proved themselves more mobile than the English, and more skilful in ambuscade. At three miles distance from the camp, after an hour's march, the English fell into a carefully-laid trap.

On the road in front were the French regulars; in the forest on either flank Canadians and Indians lay in wait for their prey.

Advancing without due precaution, though they had a band of Mohawks with them, the English were completely surprised; the head of the column was driven in on the rear, the whole force became (in Dieskau's words) like a pack of cards, and fell back with heavy loss in rout to the camp, the retreat being partially covered by a detachment sent out by Johnson on hearing of the engagement.

[Sidenote: _The French attack the camp and are defeated._]

[Sidenote: _Dieskau taken prisoner._]

At the camp hasty preparations were made for defence, behind wagons and fallen trees, and in a short time the enemy appeared. The French regulars attacked boldly and well, but the Canadians and Indians were out of hand, the {245} commander of the Canadians, Legardeur de Saint Pierre, having already been killed. For three or four hours there was furious firing; but the English had artillery, the French had not, and this advantage, coupled with the lines of defence, decided the issue. Dieskau was disabled by a wound; the attack slackened; at length the defenders left their entrenchments and charged their foes, and late in the afternoon the whole French force was routed and fled, leaving their wounded General in the hands of the enemy. Some of the Canadians and Indians had already fallen back to the scene of the morning's fight, intent on scalps and plunder. Here a scouting party from Fort Lyman fell upon them, and, after a hard struggle, drove them into further retreat.

Both sides lost heavily, but the balance of the day's fighting was unquestionably in favour of the English. On the French side the regulars showed to more advantage than their colonial and Indian allies, and Dieskau deserved a better fate than wounds and captivity.

While lying wounded, we read, he was again shot by a French deserter, and, when he was brought into the English camp, the Mohawks, whose chief had been killed, threatened his life. Johnson, however, who had himself been wounded, took every care of his prisoner; in due course he was sent over to England; and eventually, disabled for further service, he returned to France, where he died in 1767.

[Sidenote: _Results of the fight._]

[Sidenote: _Fort William Henry._]

The most was made of this repulse of the French. It came as a set-off to the defeat of Braddock. Johnson was made a baronet and received 5,000 pounds. The Lac du Sacrement he had already renamed Lake George, the encampment at the head of the lake blossomed out into Fort William Henry, and another of the King's sons provided the name of Fort Edward for the fort at the Carrying Place. Yet the object of the expedition was not achieved; no attempt was made at a further advance; the French were unmolested in their retreat, and retained their hold on Crown Point and {246} Ticonderoga also. Johnson remained encamped by the lake, with a force raised to a total of 3,600 men, until November was drawing to a close, when, a garrison being left to hold Fort William Henry through the winter, the rest of the army disbanded to their homes.

[Sidenote: _Shirley's advance to Lake Ontario._]

While Johnson was moving north from Albany to attack Crown Point, William Shirley went west, with the intention of reducing the French fort at Niagara and cutting off Canada from the upper lakes. He started from Albany in July with some 1,500 men, mainly colonial troops in Imperial pay, and took his way along the line of the Five Nation cantons. He moved up the Mohawk river, past Schenectady and past Johnson's home, made the portage from the Mohawk to the stream called, like the feeder of Lake Champlain, Wood or Wood's Creek, which runs into Lake Oneida, and by the outlet of that lake, now the Oswego river, to Lake Ontario.

[Sidenote: _Oswego and Niagara._]

[Sidenote: _The expedition abandoned._]

Where the river joined Lake Ontario stood the small English fort of Oswego, founded in 1727, and regarded with the utmost jealousy by the French.[13] The French fort at Niagara was 130 to 140 miles to the west of Oswego, while due north of the latter place, at a distance of over fifty miles across Lake Ontario, was Fort Frontenac. The garrisons of both the French forts had been reinforced on hearing of Shirley's advance, and an attack on Fort Niagara involved the danger of a counter attack on Oswego from Fort Frontenac. On the other hand, Fort Frontenac was fully strong enough to repel any direct attempt to take it. The English, moreover, experienced great difficulty in collecting provisions or an adequate fleet of boats, and after some weeks' delay it was resolved to abandon the expedition. Before October ended, Shirley returned to Albany by the way he went, leaving 700 men to garrison Oswego and strengthen its defences, communications with Albany being maintained by two blockhouses which had been built at either end of the {247} four miles' portage between the Mohawk river and Wood Creek--Fort Williams on the Mohawk river, where the town of Rome now stands, and Fort Bull on Wood Creek.

[Footnote 13: See above, p. 196.]

[Sidenote: _Results of the year's campaign_]

Thus the campaigning of the busy year 1755 came to an end. The main forces on either side disbanded, or went into garrison for the winter; Washington and a few hundred Virginians tried to safeguard the harried frontiers of the southern colonies; Robert Rogers, boldest of New England rangers, went scouting up the line of Lake George. The forts stood isolated in the wintry backwoods, waiting for the stirring times which were coming on forthwith.

[Sidenote: _in favour of the French._]

Neither French nor English had much cause to boast of the results of the year's fighting. On either side a General had been sent out from Europe; the English General had been killed, the French General had been wounded and taken prisoner. But, on the whole, the French had undoubtedly gained and the English had lost. The English had taken the offensive, they had planned attack all along the line, and in the main their schemes had conspicuously failed. Only in the extreme east had they achieved substantial success. Acadia had been permanently secured, if there could be security as long as the fortress of Louisbourg remained in French hands. In the extreme west they had been badly beaten, and the French had acquired full control of the Ohio valley. On Lake Ontario they had done nothing at all. On the main central line of advance they had set out to take Crown Point, and had to be content with repelling a counter attack by the French.

The more New England had been concerned in the war, the better the English had fared; the further west or south they operated, the greater was their want of success.

[Sidenote: _Effect of geography on the English side of the war._]

The most striking feature to notice in the events of the year is the effect of distance, when not counteracted by steam and telegraphy. It will be noted how far removed in every sense was America from Europe in the middle of the {248} eighteenth century, and how far removed in every sense were the American colonies from one another. Here was fighting going on at all points on the border line of French and English America, and yet France and England were nominally at peace.

New England was raising her levies with patriotism and spirit, meeting a common foe with common feeling, and, it may be added, with common sense. New York and Virginia could, on the other hand, scarcely be prevailed upon to move; while Pennsylvania was as indifferent as though the fighting had been on another continent. We may and must put down much to political causes, to social and religious prejudices; and Canada proved that, even in the eighteenth century, long distances did not necessarily preclude concerted action; but, where settlement had begun and continued for generations at widely different points on the American continent, and on absolutely separate and independent lines, war and peace were alike localized, and there was little or no cohesion between the colonies and the mother country, or between one colony and another. The history of the English North American colonies had been the history not of one but of many communities. No uniform system held them together, no sentiment of the distant past was strong enough to counteract geography. Only, as colonization spread in the long course of years, the dwellers in one province came into contact with the dwellers in another, and both the one and the other came face to face with the French advance. Then the pressure of common danger made for union, and the race instinct gathered strength. The mother country sent out soldiers; colonists were enlisted in royal regiments to supplement the provincial militias; and in clumsy, most imperfect fashion, the English in North America began to shape themselves into a nation.

One keen English observer, at any rate--General Wolfe--saw at once the present defects of the English colonies in North America, and the great future which lay before them. {249} 'These colonies,' he wrote in 1758, 'are deeply tinged with the vices and bad qualities of the mother country.' But he added, 'This will, some time hence, be a vast empire, the seat of power and learning. Nature has refused them nothing, and there will grow a people out of our little spot, England, that will fill this vast s.p.a.ce, and divide this great portion of the globe with the Spaniards, who are possessed of the other half.'[14]

[Footnote 14: Wolfe to his mother, Louisbourg, Aug. 11, 1758 (Wright's _Life of Wolfe_, p. 454).]

NOTE.--For the above see

KINGSFORD'S _History of Canada_, vol. iii, and PARKMAN'S _Montcalm and Wolfe_.

The period dealt with in this and the two succeeding chapters is covered by

A. G. BRADLEY'S recent work, _The Fight with France for North America_ (1900).

{250}

CHAPTER IX

THE CONQUEST OF CANADA

[Sidenote: _The Seven Years' War._]

In May, 1756, Great Britain declared war against France. In June, France declared war against Great Britain. The war between these two nations formed part of the Seven Years' War, one of the most widely extended and, in its results, one of the most decisive in history. In the first number of the _Annual Register_, for the year 1758,[1]

Edmund Burke wrote: 'The war, into which all parties and interests seem now to be so perfectly blended, arose from causes which originally had not the least connexion, the uncertain limits of the English and French territories in America, and the mutual claims of the houses of Austria and Brandenburg on the Duchy of Silesia.' After three years of the war, in September, 1759, Horace Walpole wrote in his laughing style, 'I believe the world will come to be fought for somewhere between the north of Germany and the back of Canada.'[2]

[Footnote 1: p. 2.]

[Footnote 2: _Letters of Horace Walpole_, vol. iii, p. 249 (Letter of Sept. 13, 1759).]

[Sidenote: _Numerical superiority of the English in America._]

On the continent of Europe, Great Britain had Frederick of Prussia for an ally; on the other side were France, Austria, Russia, and Sweden. Beyond the Atlantic, a French population in Canada, Acadia, and Louisiana of less than 90,000 souls was ranged against British colonies with a population at least thirteen times as numerous. One or other of the larger British colonies, taken alone, was better peopled with white colonists than Canada.

{251} [Sidenote: _Official corruption in Canada._]