Canada: the Empire of the North Part 21

Henceforth there was no highway from New France to Louisiana. In September, Abercrombie was recalled. Amherst became chief commander.

Wolfe had gone home to England ill. It was while sojourning at the fashion resort, Bath, that he fell desperately in love with a Miss Lowther, to whom he became engaged. Then came the summons from Pitt to meet the cabinet ministers in the war office of London. Wolfe was asked to take command of the campaign in 1759 against Quebec. It had been his ambition in Louisburg to proceed at once against Quebec. Here was his opportunity. {261} It need not be told, he took it. Amherst now, on the field south of Lake Champlain, received 10 pounds a day as commander in chief. For the greater task of reducing Quebec, Wolfe was to receive 2 pounds a day. Under him were to serve Monckton, Townshend, and Murray. Admiral Saunders was to command the fleet.

Wolfe advised sending a few ships beforehand to guard the entrance to the St. Lawrence, and Durell was dispatched for this purpose long before the main armaments set out. By April 30 the combined fleet and army were at Halifax, Wolfe with a force of some 8500 men. Wolfe, now only in his thirty-third year, had been the subject of such jealousy that he was actually compelled to sail from Louisburg in June without one penny of ready money in his army chest. Underling officers, whose duty it was to advance him money on credit, had raised difficulties.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GENERAL JAMES WOLFE]

Cheers and cheers yet again rent the air as the fleet at last set out for the St. Lawrence, the soldiers on deck shouting themselves hoa.r.s.e as Louisburg faded over the watery horizon, the officers at table the first night out at sea drinking toast after toast to _British colors on every French fort in America_.

At Quebec was fast and furious preparation for the coming siege.

Bougainville had been sent to France from Lake Champlain in 1758 with report of the victory at Ticonderoga. In vain {262} he appealed for more money, more men for the coming conflict! The French government sent him back to Quebec with a bundle of advice and plat.i.tudes and t.i.tles and badges and promotions and soft words, but of the sinew which makes war, men and money, France had naught to spare. The rumor of the English invasion was confirmed by Bougainville. Every man capable of bearing arms was called to Quebec except the small forces at the outposts, and Bourlamaque at Champlain was instructed if attacked by Amherst to blow up Fort Carillon, then Crown Point, and retire. Grain was gathered into the state warehouses, and so stripped of able-bodied men were the rural districts that the crops of 1759 were planted by the women and children. Fire ships and rafts were constructed, the channel of St. Charles River closed by sinking vessels, and a bridge built higher up to lead from Quebec City across the river eastward to Beauport and Montmorency. Along the high cliffs of the St. Lawrence from Montmorency Falls to Quebec were constructed earthworks and intrenchments to command the approach up the river. What frigates had come in with Bougainville were sent higher up the St. Lawrence to be out of danger; but the crews, numbering 1400, were posted on the ramparts of Upper Town. Counting mere boys, Quebec had a defensive force variously given as from 9000 to 14,000; but deducting raw levies, who scarcely know the rules of the drill room, it is doubtful if Montcalm could boast of more than 5000 able-bodied fighters. Still he felt secure in the impregnable strength of Quebec's natural position.

July 29, when the enemy lay encamped beneath his trenches, he could write, "Unless they [the English] have wings, they cannot cross a river and effect a landing and scale a precipice." One cruel feature there was of Quebec's preparations. To keep the habitants on both sides the river loyal, Vaudreuil, the governor, issued a proclamation telling the people that the English intended to ma.s.sacre the inhabitants, men, women, and children. Meanwhile, morning, noon, and night, the chapel bells are ringing . . . ringing . . . lilting . . . and calling the faithful to prayers for the destruction of the heretic invader! Nuns lie prostrate day and night in prayer for the {263} country's deliverance from the English. Holy processions march through the streets, nuns and priests and little children in white, and rough soldiery in the uniforms with the blue facings, to pray Heaven's aid for victory. And while the poor people starve for bread, poultry is daily fattened on precious wheat that it may make tenderest meat for Intendant Bigot's table, where the painted women and drunken gamblers and gay officers nightly feast!

[Ill.u.s.tration: BOUGAINVILLE]

Signal fires light up the hills with ominous warning as the English fleet glides slowly abreast the current of the St. Lawrence, now pausing to sound where the yellow riffle of the current shows shallows, now following the course staked out by flags, here depending on the Frenchman, whom they have compelled to act as pilot! Nightly from hill to hill the signal fires leap to the sky, till one flames from Cape Tourmente, and Quebec learns that the English are surely very near.

Among the Englishmen who are out in the advance boats sounding is a young man, James Cook, destined to become a great navigator.

June 25, sail after sail, frigate after frigate bristling with cannon, literally swarming with soldiers and marines, glide round the end of Orleans Island through driving rain and a squall, and to clatter of anchor chains and rattle of falling sails, come to rest. "Pray Heaven they be wrecked as Sir Hovenden Walker's fleet was wrecked long ago,"

sigh the nuns of Quebec. If they had {264} prayed half as hard that their corrupt rulers, their Bigots and their kings and their painted women whose nod could set Europe on fire with war,--if the holy sisterhood had prayed for this gang of vampires whose vices had brought doom to the land, to be swallowed in some abyss, their prayers might have been more effective with Heaven.

Next day a band of rangers lands from Wolfe's ships and finds the Island of Orleans deserted. On the church door the cure has pinned a note, asking the English not to molest his church; and expressing sardonic regret that the invaders have not come soon enough to enjoy the fresh vegetables of his garden.

Wolfe for the first time gazes on the prize of his highest ambition,--Quebec. He is at Orleans, facing the city. To his right is the cataract of Montmorency. From the falls past Beauport to St.

Charles River, the St. Lawrence banks are high cliffs. Above the cliffs are Montcalm's intrenched fighters. Then the north sh.o.r.e of the St. Lawrence suddenly sheers up beyond St. Charles River into a lofty, steep precipice. The precipice is Quebec City: Upper Town and the convents and the ramparts and Castle St. Louis nestling on an upper ledge of the rock below Cape Diamond; Lower Town crowding between the foot of the precipice and tide water. Look again how the St. Lawrence turns in a sharp angle at the precipice. Three sides of the city are water,--St. Charles River nearest Wolfe, then the St. Lawrence across the steep face of the rock, then the St. Lawrence again along a still steeper precipice to the far side. Only the rear of the city is vulnerable; but it is walled and inaccessible.

Quebec was a prize for any commander's ambition; but how to win it?

The night of June 28 is calm, warm, pitch-dark, the kind of summer night when the velvet heat touches you as with a hand. The English soldiers of the crowded transports have gone ash.o.r.e, when suddenly out of the darkness glide fire ships as from an under world, with flaming mast poles, and hulls in shadow, roaring with fire, throwing out combustibles, drifting straight down on the tide towards the English fleet. But the French have managed {265} badly. They have set the ships on fire too soon. The air is torn to tatters by terrific explosions that light up the outlines of the city spires and churn the river to billows. Then the English sailors are out in small boats, avoiding the suck of the undertow. Throwing out grappling hooks, they tow the flaming fire rafts away from their fleet. It is the first play of the game, and the French have lost.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SITE OF QUEBEC AND THE GROUND OCCUPIED DURING THE SIEGE OF 1759]

Monckton goes ash.o.r.e south on Point Levis side next day. Townshend has landed his troops east of the Montmorency on the north sh.o.r.e. It is the second play of the game, and Wolfe has violated every rule of war, for he has separated his forces in three divisions close to a powerful enemy. He is counting on Montcalm's policy, however, and Montcalm's play is to lie inactive, sleeping in his boots, refusing to be lured to battle till winter drives the English off. It is usual in all accounts of the great struggle to find that certain facts have been suppressed.

Let us frankly confess that when the English rangers went foraging they brought back French scalps, and when the French Indians went scouting they returned with English scalps. However, manners were improving.

Strict orders are given: this is not a war on women; neither women nor children are to be touched. Wolfe posts proclamations on the parish churches, calling on the habitants to stand neutral. In answer, they tear the proclamations down. {266} By July 12 Wolfe's batteries on the south side of the river are preparing to sh.e.l.l the city. A band of five hundred students and habitants rows across from Quebec by night to dislodge the English gunners, but mistaking their own shots for the shots of the enemy, fall on each other in the dark and retreat in wild confusion. Then the English cannon begin to do business. In a single day half the houses of Lower Town are battered to bits, and high-tossed bombs have plunged through roofs of Upper Town, burning the cathedral and setting a mult.i.tude of lesser buildings on fire. In the confusion of cannonade and counter-cannonade and a city on fire, shrouding the ruins in a pall of smoke, some English ships slip up the river beyond Quebec, but there the precipice of the river bank is still steeper, and Bougainville is on guard with two thousand men. For thirty miles around the English rangers have laid the country waste. Still Montcalm refuses to come out and fight.

The enforced inaction exasperates Wolfe, whose health is failing him, and who sees the season pa.s.sing, no nearer the object of his ambition than when he came. As he had stormed the batteries of Louisburg, so now he decides to storm the heights of Montmorency. To any one who has stood on the k.n.o.b of rock above the gorge where the cataract plunges to the St. Lawrence, or has scrambled down the bank slippery with spray, and watched the black underpool whirl out to the river, Wolfe's venture must seem madness; for French troops lined the intrenchments above the cliff, and below a redoubt or battery had been built. Below the cataract, when the tide ebbed, was a place which might be forded. From sunrise to sunset all the last days of July, Wolfe's cannon boomed from Levis across the city, from the fleet in mid channel, from the land camp on the east side of Montmorency. Montcalm rightly guessed, this presaged a night a.s.sault. To hide his design, Wolfe kept his transports shifting up and down the St. Lawrence, as if to land at Beauport halfway to the city. All the same, two armed transports, as if by chance, managed to get themselves stranded just opposite the redoubt below the cliff, where their cannon would protect a landing.

Montcalm saw the move and strengthened the troops behind the earthworks on the {267} top of the cliff. Toward sunset the tide ebbed, and at that time cannon were firing from all points with such fury that the St. Lawrence lay hidden in smoke. As the air cleared, two thousand men were seen wading and fording below the falls. There was a rush of the tall grenadiers for the redoubt. The French retreated firing, and the cliff above poured down an avalanche of shots. At that moment Wolfe suffered a cruel and unforeseen check. A frightful thunderstorm burst on the river, lashing earth and air to darkness. It was impossible to see five paces ahead or to aim a shot. The cliff roared down with miniature rivulets and the slippery clay bank gave to every step of the climbers slithering down waist-deep in mud and weeds. Powder was soaked. As the rain ceased, Indians were seen sliding down the cliff to scalp the wounded. Wolfe ordered a retreat. The drums rolled the recall and the English escaped pellmell, the French hooting with derision at the top of the banks, the English yelling back strong oaths for the enemy to come out of its rat hole and fight like men. At the ford the men, soaked like water rats, and a sorry rabble, got into some sort of rank and burned the two stranded vessels as they pa.s.sed back to the east side. In less than an hour four hundred and forty-three men had fallen, the most of them killed, many both dead and wounded, into the hands of the Indian scalpers.

One can guess Wolfe's fearful despair that night. A month had pa.s.sed.

He had accomplished worse than nothing. In another month the fleet must leave the St. Lawrence to avoid autumn storms. Fragile at all times, Wolfe fell ill, ill of fever and of chagrin, and those officers over whose head he had been promoted did not spare their criticisms, their malice. It is so easy to win battles of life and war in theory.

As for Quebec, it was felt the siege was over, the contest won. Still bad news had come from the west. Niagara had fallen before the English, and the forts on Lake Champlain were abandoned to Amherst.

Nothing now barred the English advance down the Richelieu to Montreal.

Montcalm dispatches Levis to Montreal with eight hundred men.

{268} Why did Amherst not come to Wolfe's aid? His enemies say because the commanding general was so sure the siege of Quebec would fail that he did not want any share of the blame. That may be unjust. Amherst was of the slow, cautious kind, who marched doggedly to victory. He may not have wished to risk a second Ticonderoga. Wolfe's position was now desperate. His only alternatives were success or ruin. "You can't cure me," he told his surgeon, "but mend me up so I can go on for a few days." What he did in those few days left his name immortal. Robert Stobo, who had been captured from Washington's battalions on the Ohio, and who knew every foot of Quebec from five years of captivity, had escaped, joined Wolfe, and drawn plans of all surroundings. From his ship above Quebec Wolfe could see there was one path just behind the city where men might ascend to the Plains of Abraham outside the rear wall, but the path was guarded, and Bougainville's troops patrolled westward as far as Cape Rouge.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LOUIS JOSEPH, MARQUIS DE MONTCALM]

It was now September. From their trenches above the river the French could see the English evacuating camp at Montmorency. They were jubilant. Surely the English were giving up the siege. Night after night English transports loaded with soldiers ascended the St. Lawrence above Quebec. What did it mean? Was it a feint to draw Montcalm's men away from the east side? {269} The French general was sleeplessly anxious. He had not pa.s.sed a night in bed since the end of June. The fall rains were beginning, and another month of work in the trenches meant half the army invalided.

The most of the English fleet was working up and down with the tide between the western limits of Quebec and Cape Rouge, nine miles away.

Bougainville's force was increased to three thousand men, and he was ordered to keep especial watch westward. The steepness of the precipice was guard enough near the town. Wednesday, the 12th of September, the English troops were ordered to hold themselves in readiness. They pa.s.sed the day cleaning their arms, and were ordered not to speak after nightfall or permit a sound to be heard from the ranks. Admiral Saunders with the main fleet was to feign attack on the east side of the city. Admiral Holmes with Wolfe's army, now numbering not four thousand men, was to glide down with the tide from Cape Rouge above Quebec. Because the main fleet lay on the east side Montcalm felt sure the attack would come from that quarter. Deserters had brought word to Wolfe that some flatboats with provisions were coming down the river to Quebec that night.

Here, then, the position! Saunders on the east side, opposite Beauport, feigning attack; Montcalm watching him from the Beauport cliffs; Wolfe nine miles up the river west of the city; Bougainville watching him, watching too for those provisions, for Quebec was down to empty larder.

It is said that as Wolfe rested in his ship, the _Sutherland_, off Cape Rouge, he felt strange premonition of approaching death, and repeated the words of Gray's "Elegy,"--"The paths of glory lead but to the grave,"--but this has been denied. Certainly he had such strange consciousness of impending death that, taking a miniature of his fiancee from his breast, he asked a fellow-officer to return it to her.

About midnight the tide began to ebb, and two lanterns were hung as a sign from the masthead of the _Sutherland_. Instantly all the ships glided silent as the great river down with the tide. The night was moonless. Near the little bridle path now known as Wolfe's Cove the ships draw {270} ash.o.r.e. Sharp as iron on stone a sentry's voice rings out, "Who goes?"

"The French," answers an officer, who speaks perfect French.

"What regiment?"

"The Queen's," replies the officer, who chances to know that Bougainville has a regiment of that name. Thinking they were the provision transports, this sentry was satisfied. Not so another. He ran down to the water's edge, and peering through the darkness called, "Why can't you speak louder?"

"Hush you! We 'll be overheard," answers the English officer in French.

Thus the English boats glided towards the little bridle path that led up to the rear of the city. Wolfe's Cove is not a path steep as a stair up the face of a rock, as the most of the schoolbooks teach; it is a little weed-grown, stony gully, easy to climb, but slant and narrow, where I have walked many a night to drink from the spring near the foot of the cliff.

Twenty-four volunteers lead the way up the stony path, silent and agile as cats. At the top are the tents of the sentries, who rush from their couches to be overpowered by the English. Before daybreak the whole army has ascended to the plateau behind the city, known as the Plains of Abraham. No use entering here into the dispute whether Wolfe took his place where the goal now stands, or farther back from the city wall. Roughly speaking, the main line of Wolfe's forces, three deep, with himself, Monckton, and Murray in command, faced the rear of Quebec about three quarters of a mile from what was then the wall. To his left was the wooded road now known as St. Louis. He posts Townshend facing this, at right angles to his front line. Another battalion lay in the woods to the rear. There were, besides, a reserve regiment, and a battalion to guard the landing.

What was Wolfe's position? Behind him lay Bougainville with three thousand French soldiers, fresh and in perfect condition. In front lay Quebec with three thousand more. To his right was the river; to his left, across the St. Charles, Montcalm's main army of five thousand men. "When your enemies blunder, {271} don't interrupt them," Napoleon is reported to have advised. If some one had not blundered badly now, it might have been a second Ticonderoga with Wolfe; but some one did blunder most tragically.

Montcalm had come from the trenches above Beauport, where he had been guarding against Saunders' landing, and he had ordered hot tea and beer served to the troops, when he happened to look across the St. Charles River towards Quebec. It had been cloudy, but the sun had just burst out; and there, standing in the morning light, were the English in battle array, red coat and tartan kilt, grenadier and Highlander, in the distance a confused ma.s.s of color, which was not the white uniform of the French.

"This is a serious business," said Montcalm hurriedly to his aide.

Then, spurs to his big black horse, he was galloping furiously along the Beauport road, over the resounding bridge across the St. Charles, up the steep cobblestone streets that lead from Lower to Upper Town, and out by the St. Louis road to the Plains of Abraham. In Quebec all was confusion. _Who_ had given the order for the troops to move out against the English without waiting for Bougainville to come from Cape Rouge? But there they were, huddling, disorderly columns that crowded on each other, filing out of the St. Louis and St. John Gates, with a long string of battalions following Montcalm up from the St. Charles.

And Ramezay, who was commandant of the city, refused to send out part of his troops; and Vaudreuil, who was at Beauport, delayed to come; and though Montcalm waited till ten o'clock, Bougainville did not come up from Cape Rouge with his three thousand men. Easy to criticise and say Montcalm should have waited till Bougainville and Vaudreuil came. He could _not_ wait, for Wolfe's position cut his forces in two, and the army was without supplies. With his four thousand five hundred men he accepted fate's challenge.

Bagpipes shrilling, English flags waving to the wind, the French soldiers shouting riotously, the two armies moved towards each other.

Then the English halted, silent, motionless {272} statues. The men were refreshed, for during the four hours' wait from daylight, Wolfe had permitted them to rest on the gra.s.sed plain. The French came bounding forward, firing as they ran, and bending down to reload. The English waited till the French were but forty yards away. "They were not to throw away their fire," Wolfe had ordered. Now forty yards, if you measure it off in your mind's eye, is short s.p.a.ce between hostile armies. It is not as wide as the average garden front in a suburban city. Then suddenly the thin red line of the English spoke in a crash of fire. The shots were so simultaneous that they sounded like one terrific crash of ear-splitting thunder. The French had no time to halt before a second volley rent the air. Then a clattering fire rocketed from the British like echoes from a precipice. With wild halloo the British were charging, . . . charging, . . . charging, the Highlanders leading with their broadswords flashing overhead and their mountain blood on fire, Wolfe to the fore of the grenadiers till a shot broke his wrist! Wrapping his handkerchief about the wound as he ran, the victorious young general was dashing forward when a second shot hit him and a third pierced his breast. He staggered a step, reeled, fell to the ground. Three soldiers and an officer ran to his aid and carried him in their arms to the rear. He would have no surgeon. It was useless, he said. "But the day is ours, and see that you keep it,"

he muttered, sinking back unconscious. A moment later he was roused by wild, hilarious, jubilant, heart-shattering shouts.

"Gad! they run! See how they run!" said an English voice.

"_Who_--run?" demanded Wolfe, roused as if from the sleep of death.

"The enemy, sir. They give way . . . everywhere."

"Go, one of you," commanded the dying general; "tell Colonel Burton to march Webb's regiment down Charles River to cut off retreat by the bridge. Now G.o.d be praised!" he added, sinking back; "I die in peace!"

And the spirit of Wolfe had departed, leaving as a heritage a New Empire of the North, and an immortal fame.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DEATH OF WOLFE (From the painting by Benjamin West)]

{273}

Fate had gone hard against the gallant Montcalm. The first volley from the English line had mowed his soldiers down like ripe wheat. At the second volley the ranks broke and the ground was thick strewn with the dead. When the English charged, the French fled in wildest panic downhill for the St. Charles. Wounded and faint, Montcalm on his black charger was swept swiftly along St. Louis road in the blind stampede of retreat. Near the walls a ball pa.s.sed through his groins. Two soldiers caught him from falling, and steadied him on either side of his horse through St. Louis gate, where women, waiting in mad anxiety, saw the blood dripping over his horse.