A Historical Geography of the British Colonies Part 35

[Sidenote: _Negotiations for surrender._]

[Sidenote: _Montreal capitulates, and with it the whole of Canada._]

The next day the French commanders negotiated for {323} surrender, Murray having meanwhile landed on the island, and begun his march towards Montreal, on the opposite side to that on which Amherst was encamped. Vaudreuil and Levis tried to extract better terms from Amherst than the latter was inclined to grant; and Levis, in particular, strove hard to modify the provision that all the French troops in Canada should lay down their arms, and not serve again during the war. His protests were in vain. Amherst returned answer in strong words, that he was resolved by the terms of the capitulation to mark his sense of the infamous conduct of which the French troops had been guilty, in exciting the savages to barbarities in the course of the war. With 2,400 men opposed to about 17,000 in the three English forces, the Frenchmen had no option but to surrender. On September 8 the terms of capitulation were signed, and the whole of Canada pa.s.sed into the keeping of Great Britain.

[Sidenote: _Amherst on the conduct of the French Indians._]

Amherst's reference to French dealings with the Indians, and to the dealings of the Indians in French employ, the authority for which is Captain Knox's book, deserves to be noted. When two white races are pitted against each other in savage lands, the final mastery will rest with the one which, less than the other, comes down to the savage level. The French had sinned more than the English in this respect; and it is significant that, at the surrender of Niagara, they stipulated for protection against the Indian allies of the English, and that at the surrender of Montreal they made a similar request. On the second occasion Amherst answered, and answered truly, that no cruelties had been committed by the Indians on the English side. A few days before, at the taking of Fort Levis, a large proportion of Johnson's Indians had deserted when not allowed to use their scalping knives; and probably the majority of the English shared Captain Knox's opinion of them, that 'this is quite uniform with their conduct on all occasions whenever {324} opportunity seems to offer for their being serviceable to us.'[37] The truth was that the English did not love the Indians or Indian ways; they suffered in consequence while the fate of war was still in the balance; but in the end they gained, as a ruling race, for the humanity of Amherst and the men whom he commanded stood to the credit of Great Britain in the coming time.

[Footnote 37: Knox, vol. ii, p. 413. According to Knox, Johnson collected 1,330 Indians belonging to seventeen tribes. This number was reduced at the time of embarkation to 706, and afterwards by desertion to 182.]

[Sidenote: _End of the war._]

With the capitulation of Montreal, the war in North America ended.

Already in the past July some French ships bringing supplies, which had reached the Baie des Chaleurs in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, had been followed up and destroyed in the Restigouche river by Commander Byron; and while Montreal was being given up, a detachment from the English garrison at Quebec reduced the French outpost at Jacques Cartier. The surrender of Montreal included all Canada, and Robert Rogers was sent by Amherst to take over Detroit, Michillimackinac, and other of the western outposts of New France. They were peaceably occupied at the time, but three years later were the scene of hard fighting in consequence of the dangerous Indian rising under Pontiac.

Amherst himself left Canada almost immediately, but remained in America as Commander-in-Chief, having his head quarters at New York, until peace was signed, when he returned to England. Vaudreuil and his subordinates went back to France, to be brought heavily to account for their shortcomings; and until the peace, or rather until Pontiac's revolt had been put down a year later, Canada remained under military rule.

[Sidenote: _Canada under military rule._]

There were three Governors, subordinate to the Commander-in-Chief--General Murray at Quebec, Colonel Burton at Three Rivers, and General Gage, who eventually took over {325} Amherst's command, at Montreal. Matters seem to have gone in the main smoothly.

The Canadian people, worn with war, desired only rest and fair dealing, and fair dealing they received at the hands of the British commanders, among whom Murray was a conspicuously humane man.

Criminal jurisdiction was placed in the hands of British officers, but civil cases were left to be settled by the captains of militia in the various parishes according to the custom of the people, with the right of appeal to the Governor. More publicity was given by proclamation to the orders and regulations of the Governors than had been the case in French times; and though the status was one of military occupation, there was a nearer approach to freedom, or at any rate more even-handed justice, than in the days when Bigot and his confederates robbed the peasantry in the name of the French King.

[Sidenote: _Events in Europe._]

[Sidenote: _Death of King George II._]

[Sidenote: _Rise of Bute and resignation of Pitt._]

Meanwhile events moved fast in Europe. The fall of Montreal was followed in a few weeks' time by the death of King George II. He died on October 25, 1760, and with the accession of George III there came a change in English policy. The 'King's friends,' as they were called, by intrigue and bribery gradually gained power. Bute, the royal favourite, led them, and strongly supported a peace policy. In March, 1761, he became a Secretary of State, and in the following October Pitt resigned. Success had perhaps told against the great English minister. The main work to which he had put his hand had been accomplished; among the colleagues who intrigued against him, or who resented his imperious leadership, there may well have been in some minds an honest wish to give the country rest and to lighten the heavy burdens which war imposed. Already peace negotiations with France had been opened, but the discovery that the French Government had formed a secret compact with Spain stiffened Pitt's policy, and he urged the desirability of striking the first blow and declaring war against {326} Spain. On this issue he parted company with the other ministers, except Lord Temple, and retired from office. A few months later, in May, 1762, Newcastle resigned, and Bute was left supreme.

[Sidenote: _Greatness of Pitt._]

No eulogy on Pitt can exaggerate the services which he rendered to England. 'He revived the military genius of our people, he supported our allies, he extended our trade, he raised our reputation, he augmented our dominions.'[38] He gave to the world a splendid ill.u.s.tration of an English statesman who was as good as his word; who, unlike the ordinary run of Parliamentary leaders, did not shift his course or seek for compromise. He believed in the destiny of his country, and shaped that destiny on world-wide lines. His faults, which were not few, are forgiven by his countrymen, for he loved England much.

[Footnote 38: _Annual Register_ for 1761, p. 47.]

[Sidenote: _War with Spain._]

[Sidenote: _English reverse in Newfoundland._]

The mean men who supplanted him could not undo what he had done. The beginning of the year 1762 saw them at war with Spain, and still Englishmen struck blow after blow. In 1761, while Pitt was still in office, Belle ile, off the French coast, had been taken, and in the West Indies and in India there had been gains. In 1762 more West Indian islands were captured, and Spain lost for the time Havana in the West, the Philippines in the East. Curiously enough the one reverse experienced by the English was in North America, St. John's in Newfoundland being surprised and taken in June, 1762, though it was recovered in the following September.

[Sidenote: _The Peace of Paris._]

In spite of continued success Bute was resolved on peace, the negotiations being entrusted to the Duke of Bedford, who was one of the extreme peace party. The preliminaries were concluded in November, 1762; they were approved by Parliament, and on February 10, 1763, the Peace of Paris was signed. Under its provisions the French King renounced all pretensions to Nova Scotia or Acadia, and ceded 'in full {327} right Canada with all its dependencies, as well as the island of Cape Breton and all the other islands and coasts in the gulf and river St. Lawrence.' A line drawn down the middle of the river Mississippi defined the inland frontier; all territory on the left side of the river, 'except the town of New Orleans and the island in which it is situated,' being ceded to Great Britain. Two clauses, however, in the treaty marred the completeness of the cession. They renewed the rights of fishing and drying on part of the Newfoundland coast, which had been given to French subjects by the Treaty of Utrecht; and they ceded in full right to the King of France the islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon, to serve as a shelter to French fishermen, on condition that the islands should not be fortified. Here were the seeds of future trouble, sown by other hands than those of Pitt. Yet, considering the character and inclinations of the men who held power in England at this critical time, the country had reason to congratulate itself on the result of the negotiations.[39] Spain paid for her interference in the quarrel with France by the loss of Florida, which became a British possession; in turn she received from France Louisiana. Thus the Seven Years' War ended, {328} closing the story of New France; and on the line of the St. Lawrence, under British rule, grew up the Canadian nation.

[Footnote 39: Lord Chesterfield's views on the preliminaries of the Peace of Paris, not yet fully known when he wrote, are interesting.

In a letter dated Nov. 13, 1762 (1775 ed., vol. iv, pp. 190, 191, Letter 328), he writes, 'We have by no means made so good a bargain with France (i.e. as with Spain), for in truth what do we get by it except Canada, with a very proper boundary of the river Mississippi, and that is all? As for the restrictions upon the French fishery in Newfoundland, they are very well _per la predica_, and for the Commissary whom we shall employ, for he will have a good salary from hence to see that those restrictions are complied with, and the French will double that salary, that he may allow them all to be broken through. It is plain to me that the French fishery will be exactly what it was before the war.... But, after all I have said, the articles are as good as I expected with France, when I considered that no one single person, who carried on this negotiation on our parts, was ever concerned or consulted in any negotiation before.

Upon the whole then the acquisition of Canada has cost us four score millions sterling.']

NOTE.--For the above, see the books specified at the end of the preceding chapter.

In these two chapters the original dispatches have been consulted, and much use has been made of

KNOX'S _Historical Journal of the Campaigns in North America_ (London, 1769).

{329}

CHAPTER XI

GENERAL SUMMARY

In order to sum up the story of New France, it is proposed in the present chapter to try to answer the four following questions. What effect had geography on the history of Canada down to the year 1763?

Why did France lose Canada? What were the respective merits and defects of the French and English systems and policies in North America? And lastly, was the contest between the two powers and the victory of one inevitable, and was it beneficial? These four questions overlap each other, and the answers involve considerable repet.i.tion of what has gone before; but a short general summary may be useful to those who care to study the earlier history of Canada in reference to the general history of colonization.

[Sidenote: _Position of the French among colonizing nations._]

From the time of Columbus down to the middle of the nineteenth century, five nations, all on the western side of Europe, were mainly concerned in carrying European trade, conquest, and settlement into other parts of the world. They were the Spaniards, the Portuguese, the Dutch, the French, and the English. Of these five nations, the Spaniards had what may be called a continental career. They overran and mastered an immense area of mainland. The Portuguese, the Dutch, and the English, on the other hand, while they differed from each other in many points, were alike in this, that they were traders and seafarers, not so much attempting an inland dominion, as securing footholds on sea coasts, peninsulas, and islands. The French stood midway between the Spaniards and the other three nations. They were not {330} continental conquerors to the same extent as the Spaniards, they did not confine themselves to the fringes of the land to the same extent as the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the English. They were what France made them to be.

[Sidenote: _Twofold character of France and the French._]

France is an integral part of the continent of Europe; but it is also, with the exception of the Spanish peninsula, the westernmost province of that continent; and it has a long indented seaboard open to the Atlantic. The country has a double outlook, its people have had a twofold character and a double history. It is noteworthy that, while the French, to judge from the greatest event in their history--the French Revolution--and to judge from their writing and thought, have been the most thorough and logical, the most uncompromising of peoples, their record has yet been in a sense one of continual compromise, or at least one of perpetual combination of opposite extremes. The northern and southern races, the northern and southern religions, have had their meeting-ground in France. France, which has been notable for violent political changes, had and has the strongest element of conservatism in its population. No nation is more quick-witted than the French, yet in none is there more plodding industry.

[Sidenote: _Canada well suited to be a sphere of French colonization._]

In the fullness of time, the French people had their call to take part in the over-sea expansion of Europe, and they found their way to Canada. They entered the New World at its widest point, where the American continent extends furthest from west to east; but they entered it also at the point where the interior of the continent is most accessible from the sea by means of a great navigable river and a group of lakes. Thus the advent of the French into Canada meant the coming of a people, who in their old home were partly continental, partly sea-going, into a sphere of colonization, which was a vast extent of continent, but which at the same time was more intersected and more dominated by water than perhaps any other portion of the mainland of the globe. {331} Like came to like when the French came to Canada. Their old home had given them at once the instincts of land conquerors, and the knowledge of men whose way is on the waters.

Quick to move and loving motion, they found the route into the New World to be one which invited and facilitated quick movement; for, important as is inland water communication at the present day, it was all important before the days of railways. The great highroad of North America was the St. Lawrence, and that highroad became owned by a quick, ambitious people, who were not content to remain as traders by the side of the sea.

[Sidenote: _Greatness of the St. Lawrence water system._]

The combination of accessibility from the open sea, of length of navigable waters, and of volume of waters, makes the St. Lawrence basin almost, if not quite unique. Up to Three Rivers, 330 miles from the sea, the St. Lawrence is a tidal river. Up to the Falls of Niagara, 600 miles from the sea--nearly as far as London is from Berlin--there is no break of navigation. From the westernmost point of Lake Superior to the Atlantic is a distance of 2,000 miles--much further than is the distance from London to St. Petersburg. Lake Superior alone is larger in size than Scotland.

[Sidenote: _It is almost connected with the basin of the Mississippi, of Hudson Bay, and of the Hudson river._]

[Sidenote: _Colonization in Canada was colonization by water._]

Further, this wonderful chain of waters, as has been pointed out, is nearly continuous with the Mississippi basin on the southern side, and on the north-western side with the lakes and rivers which drain into Hudson Bay; while one of the smaller affluents of the St.

Lawrence, the Richelieu river, carries into the St. Lawrence the waters of Lake Champlain and Lake George, the southern end of Lake George being but very few miles distant from the upper waters of the Hudson river, which flows into the Atlantic. In short, Canada, within its ancient limits, was a network of inland waters. Here was a continent to be conquered and settled by water rather than by land, and the congenial task of conquering and attempting to settle it was allotted by Providence to the French.

{332} [Sidenote: _The geography of Canada favoured motion._]

Canada then suited the French, and the French suited Canada; but the effect of the geography of Canada on an incoming race, with the instincts and the characteristics of the French, was to stimulate their natural inclination to attempt too much and to go too fast and too far. The incomers moved quickly along the lines of communication, and went into the heart of the continent; but permanent settlement lagged behind, and was confined to the edges of the inland waters.