A Historical Geography of the British Colonies Part 30

At Ticonderoga, he showed how to make the most of very inferior numbers, by utilizing every natural and artificial advantage, and every mistake of the foe. It was a great triumph for him; it produced joy in Canada, and discouragement in England; but, as Mr. Parkman points out, it is difficult to see how he could possibly have succeeded, if Abercromby had taken any other course than the one which he actually took. Wolfe summed up the matter aright, when, in the following December, he referred in a private letter to 'the famous post at Ticonderoga, where Mr. Abercromby by a little soldiership and a little patience might, I think, have put an end to the war in America.'[29]

[Footnote 29: Wright's _Life of Wolfe_, p. 469.]

[Sidenote: _Tribute to Lord Howe._]

Almost as disastrous as the repulse itself was the death of Lord Howe, which preceded it. The eldest of three distinguished brothers, the second of whom was the famous admiral, and the third the not so successful general in the American War of Independence, he was not thirty-four years old when he was killed, and had only landed in America in the previous year. Yet he had lived long enough for all men to speak well of him, and all to love him. In his dispatch giving an account of the operations, Abercromby wrote: 'He was very deservedly universally beloved and respected through {281} the whole army.'[30] Pitt testified in more stilted phrases that 'he was by the universal voice of army and people a character of ancient times, a complete model of military virtue in all its branches.'[31] Wolfe loved him dearly, and his letters show how highly he valued 'his abilities, spirit and address.'[32] He writes of him as 'the very best officer in the King's service,' as 'the n.o.blest Englishman that has appeared in my time,' as 'truly a great man.' 'This country has produced nothing like him in my time; his death cannot be enough lamented.' Similar testimony is given by Robert Rogers, the Ranger, who was with the force when he fell: 'This n.o.ble and brave officer being universally beloved by both officers and soldiers of the army, his fall was not only most sincerely lamented, but seemed to produce an almost universal consternation and langour through the whole.'[33]

But the most striking honour to his name and memory was paid by the province of Ma.s.sachusetts. In 1759 the Court of a.s.sembly ordered a monument to him to be placed in Westminster Abbey, which still records 'the sense they had of his services and military virtues, and of the affection their officers and soldiers bore to his command.'

Burke, in the _Annual Register_ for 1758,[34] gives the clue to the affection with which the colonists regarded Lord Howe: 'From the moment he landed in America he had wisely conformed, and made his regiment conform, to the kind of service which the country required.'

Howe's life, he adds, was 'long enough for his honour, but not for his country.' In truth, had he lived, and had Wolfe lived, the history of the English in America might have been widely different.

Two men who in youth had so inspired their time, and so impressed American colonists with the sense of leadership, might well {282} have averted the War of Independence, or by military genius have given it another issue.

[Footnote 30: Abercromby to Pitt, July 12, 1758.]

[Footnote 31: _Grenville Correspondence_, vol. i, p. 262.]

[Footnote 32: Wright, pp. 426, 448, 450, 465, 469.]

[Footnote 33: Rogers' _Journals_, p. 114, note.]

[Footnote 34 pp. 72, 73.]

[Sidenote: _Bradstreet takes Fort Frontenac._]

From July to October Abercromby remained at one end of Lake George, and Montcalm, who had received heavy reinforcements, at the other.

Parties of Rangers and Canadians attacked each other on the Wood Creek line, but the main bodies were inactive. The presence of the English force had the advantage, however, of holding in their front so large a number of the enemy that the latter were unable adequately to protect other positions, and in consequence they lost Fort Frontenac. That competent officer, Colonel Bradstreet, had already proposed an expedition against this point, and when he renewed his proposal after the battle of Ticonderoga, Abercromby gave his consent, and spared him 3,600 men for the purpose, noting that 'he is not only very active, but has great knowledge of the country.'[35]

[Footnote 35: Abercromby to Pitt, July 12, 1758.]

In August he moved up the Mohawk, took his troops past the Carrying Place from that river, where, on the site of Fort Williams, General Stanwix was busy building a new fort, reached the ruins of Oswego, put out across the lake, and on August 25 landed close to Fort Frontenac. By the twenty-seventh he had the fort at the mercy of his guns, and the small garrison of a little over a hundred men surrendered. The prisoners were sent on parole to Montreal, to be exchanged for a corresponding number of English; the fort was burnt, and guns, ships, and supplies were carried off or destroyed. It was an excellent piece of work for the English side; 'a great stroke,' as Wolfe wrote on hearing of it.[36] Great material damage was caused to the French by, temporarily at any rate, cutting their communications with the west, and intercepting supplies which had been intended for {283} the forts on the Ohio and on the upper lakes. The moral effect was greater still. The time-honoured French fort on Lake Ontario, the earliest French post on the lakes, had been with little effort taken and blotted out, reminding the waverers among the Five Nation Indians that, in spite of reverses, the English arm was strong and far-reaching, and the English alliance was for them a valuable a.s.set.

[Footnote 36: Letter of Sept. 30, 1758 (Wright's _Life of Wolfe_, p.

457). In another letter (p. 465) he writes: 'Bradstreet's coup was masterly. He is a very extraordinary man.']

[Sidenote: _Amherst becomes Commander-in-Chief in North America._]

Early in October Amherst came up to Abercromby's camp, and the two generals decided not to make a further attempt on Ticonderoga until the following year. 'General Amherst,' wrote Wolfe, 'thought the entrenchments so improved as to require more ceremony in the second attack than the season would allow of.'[37] The troops were accordingly sent into winter quarters, and in November Abercromby received a letter of recall. Amherst became in his stead Commander-in-Chief of the British forces in North America.

[Footnote 37: Wright's _Life of Wolfe_, p. 469.]

[Sidenote: _The expedition against Fort Duquesne._]

By the end of October campaigning was over for the year in the east, and in the centre; but it was not so in the west, where Brigadier-General Forbes was marching on Fort Duquesne.

[Sidenote: _General Forbes._]

Forbes was an older man than the other English commanders, who achieved success in the war; and he seems to have been over sixty in the year 1758.[38] He proved himself to be a man of great fort.i.tude and resolution, tactful in dealing with colonists or Indians, a brave, sure, and careful soldier. His task was to give security to the harried frontiers of Virginia and Pennsylvania, and to clear the French out of the Ohio valley. With this end he had to collect and equip a force, the large majority of whom were provincials; to get money and men out of two colonies, which were very jealous alike of the mother country and of {284} each other; to make choice between two conflicting routes, and to detach the Ohio Indians as far as possible from the French cause.

[Footnote 38: For his age see Kingsford's _History of Canada_, vol.

iv, p. 192, note. He has been generally put down as a younger man.]

[Sidenote: _Reasons why the expedition made slow progress._]

A long time was taken over the preliminaries, and over the expedition itself, the object of which was not attained until the end of November; but the delays were not only the consequence of want of transport, and of Forbes' own ill health, they were also the result of design. The longer the English kept their enemies waiting to be attacked, the fewer those enemies were likely to be; for the Indians, and the militia of New France, did not love to keep the field for any long time together. Moreover, as Forbes wrote to Pitt,[39] October and November were the best hunting months for the Indians, which they were therefore not willing to devote to war; while, on the other hand, they were months when the leaves fell and left the backwoods easier to reconnoitre and less easy for ambuscade.

[Footnote 39: Letter of Forbes to Pitt, Oct. 20, 1758.]

[Sidenote: _Preparation for advance._]

[Sidenote: _A new route taken._]

Forbes came to Philadelphia in April; and through the early summer months his force gradually a.s.sembled, and moved to the front. When the numbers were complete, they amounted to over 6,000 men, in the main southern colonists, but including a strong regiment of Highlanders. The second in command was a good man for the work, Bouquet, one of the Swiss officers of the Royal Americans. The advanced base was formed at Raestown, now Bedford, in Pennsylvania, distant about ninety miles from Fort Duquesne. It was some thirty miles north-east of Fort c.u.mberland, from which Braddock had started on his disastrous march; and a keen controversy arose as to whether the old route should be followed, or a new road taken. Opening a road to the Ohio meant, when the fighting was over, giving to the State, within or near whose boundaries the road ran, control of the trade.

Virginia accordingly pressed for the old and more southerly route, Pennsylvania for the northern line. In spite {285} of Washington's arguments, the latter was chosen; it was shorter and more direct, and on the whole presented fewer natural difficulties than the other. The first forty miles led due west over the main Alleghany range and the Laurel hills, to a place called Loyalhannon; and by the end of August Bouquet had a road cut to this place, a depot established, and preparations made for carrying on the track through fifty miles of less difficult country to Fort Duquesne.

[Sidenote: _An advance attack on Fort Duquesne repulsed with loss._]

[Sidenote: _The Ohio Indians desert the French._]

Every care was being taken by the commanders; but notwithstanding, before the end came, there was in a smaller measure a repet.i.tion of Braddock's reverse. In the middle of September, Major Grant, an officer of the Highlanders, obtained permission from Bouquet to march out from Loyalhannon with between 700 and 800 men,[40] for the purpose of reconnoitring Fort Duquesne. He arrived at night time close to the fort; intended a night attack, which miscarried; repeated the attempt to attack on the following day, and having broken up his force into small parties, was badly beaten and himself taken prisoner. The total British casualties numbered about 280, the survivors finding their way back to Bouquet at Loyalhannon. 'This was a most terrible check to my small army,' wrote Forbes,[41] but the reverse was more than counterbalanced shortly afterwards by a success of a different kind. From the first Forbes had spared no pains to secure the friendship of the Indians; and in October, in large measure through the good offices of a Moravian missionary, a general council was held, at which the tribes of the Ohio made their peace with the English, deserting the French cause as rats leave a sinking ship.

[Footnote 40: Forbes' own dispatch mentions 900.]

[Footnote 41: Forbes to Pitt, Raestown, Oct. 20, 1758.]

[Sidenote: _The final advance on Fort Duquesne._]

[Sidenote: _The fort abandoned by the French and occupied by the English._]

It was November before Forbes joined Bouquet at Loyalhannon. He was broken in body, but resolute to carry {286} through the expedition, in spite of the lateness of the season. The road had been cut to within easy reach of the French fort; and, on November 18, 2,500 men, picked out of the force, advanced in three columns, carrying with them only what was absolutely necessary in the way of supplies, and their brave commander on a litter. At a day's march from Fort Duquesne, it was reported that the fort had been evacuated and burnt; and when the English reached it on the twenty-fifth, they found that the news was true. Weakened by the desertion of the Indians, and by having disbanded some of the militia, whom he could not feed, in want of the provisions which Bradstreet had intercepted at Fort Frontenac, the French commander, De Ligneris, saw no alternative but to blow up the fort, and retreat more than a hundred miles up the Alleghany to the junction of that river with French Creek, leaving the valley of the Ohio in English hands, as events proved, for ever.

[Sidenote: _Foundation of Pittsburg._]

[Sidenote: _Death of Forbes._]

For the moment Forbes' chief care was to build at once on the site of Fort Duquesne a temporary stockade, which could be held by a small garrison through the winter. In the following year a permanent fort was built. The name of Fort Duquesne was exchanged for that of Fort Pitt, and the city of Pittsburg still recalls the statesman who recovered for the British colonies the rich western lands which are watered by the Ohio. 'I have used the freedom of giving your name to Fort Duquesne,' wrote Forbes to Pitt two days after he had reached the fort, 'as I hope it was in some measure the being actuated by your spirit that now makes us masters of the place.'[42] The honest soldier, whom the English minister sent to do the work, and who did it when the colonies concerned should have done it for themselves, did not long survive his success. Patient and suffering, John Forbes was carried back to Philadelphia, where he {287} died in the following March, having shown a steadfast, single-minded devotion to duty, rare even in the rich record of British soldiers.

[Footnote 42: Forbes to Pitt, Pittsburg, Nov. 27, 1758.]

[Sidenote: _Results of the campaign of 1758._]

[Sidenote: _Canada receives little help from France._]

With the English occupation of Fort Duquesne, the campaigning of 1758 in North America came to an end. It been a long season, and for England distinctly a successful though also to a certain extent a disappointing one. 'I do not reckon that we have been fortunate this year in America,' wrote Wolfe on December 1; 'our force was so superior to the enemy's that we might hope for greater success.'[43]

He wrote in ignorance that Fort Duquesne had been taken, but, notwithstanding, his view of the situation was the true one. At Louisbourg, Fort Frontenac, Fort Duquesne, there had been great and substantial successes. At Ticonderoga there had been a bad check; but the French had made nothing of it afterwards. They were now on the defensive and playing a losing game. Yet that more might and should have been done by the English commanders with their great superiority of numbers cannot be doubted. Had Wolfe been in Amherst's place, and Lord Howe in Abercromby's, the year 1758 might well have been the last year of French rule in North America. But the end was only postponed for a short time, the resources of Canada in men and in supplies were becoming insufficient to sustain the war: the country was practically in a state of blockade; and Bougainville, who was sent at the beginning of winter to France to plead the cause of Canada, met with little success. A very few soldiers, some supplies, and honours for the generals, were the result of his mission. France was engrossed in the war in Europe, and not as many hundreds were sent to North America as England sent thousands. Vaudreuil, in the meantime, was intriguing against Montcalm, whose genius and determination had prolonged the unequal {288} fight, and on whom, with Levis and Bourlamaque, lay the heavy burden of defending a ruined State, and checking, at this point and at that, the flowing tide of English invasion.

[Footnote 43: Wright, p. 464.]

NOTE.--For the above see, among modern books,