Montcalm and Wolfe Part 24

Shirley's grand scheme for cutting New France in twain had come to wreck. There was an element of boyishness in him. He made bold plans without weighing too closely his means of executing them. The year's campaign would in all likelihood have succeeded if he could have acted promptly; if he had had ready to his hand a well-trained and well-officered force, furnished with material of war and means of transportation, and prepared to move as soon as the streams and lakes of New York were open, while those of Canada were still sealed with ice.

But timely action was out of his power. The army that should have moved in April was not ready to move till August. Of the nine discordant semi-republics whom he asked to join in the work, three or four refused, some of the others were lukewarm, and all were slow. Even Ma.s.sachusetts, usually the foremost, failed to get all her men into the field till the season was nearly ended. Having no military establishment, the colonies were forced to improvise a new army for every campaign. Each of them watched its neighbors, or, jealous lest it should do more than its just share, waited for them to begin. Each popular a.s.sembly acted under the eye of a frugal const.i.tuency, who, having little money, were as chary of it as their descendants are lavish; and most of them were shaken by internal conflicts, more absorbing than the great question on which hung the fate of the continent. Only the four New England colonies were fully earnest for the war, and one, even of these, was ready to use the crisis as a means of extorting concessions from its Governor in return for grants of money and men. When the lagging contingents came together at last, under a commander whom none of them trusted, they were met by strategical difficulties which would have perplexed older soldiers and an abler general; for they were forced to act on the circ.u.mference of a vast semicircle, in a labyrinth of forests, without roads, and choked with every kind of obstruction.

Opposed to them was a trained army, well organized and commanded, focused at Montreal, and moving for attack or defence on two radiating lines,--one towards Lake Ontario, and the other towards Lake Champlain,--supported by a martial peasantry, supplied from France with money and material, dependent on no popular vote, having no will but that of its chief, and ready on the instant to strike to right or left as the need required. It was a compact military absolutism confronting a heterogeneous group of industrial democracies, where the force of numbers was neutralized by diffusion and incoherence. A long and dismal apprenticeship waited them before they could hope for success; nor could they ever put forth their full strength without a radical change of political conditions and an awakened consciousness of common interests and a common cause. It was the sense of powerlessness arising from the want of union that, after the fall of Oswego, spread alarm through the northern and middle colonies, and drew these desponding words from William Livingston, of New Jersey: "The colonies are nearly exhausted, and their funds already antic.i.p.ated by expensive unexecuted projects.

Jealous are they of each other; some ill-const.i.tuted, others shaken with intestine divisions, and, if I may be allowed the expression, parsimonious even to prodigality. Our a.s.semblies are diffident of their governors, governors despise their a.s.semblies; and both mutually misrepresent each other to the Court of Great Britain." Military measures, he proceeds, demand secrecy and despatch; but when so many divided provinces must agree to join in them, secrecy and despatch are impossible. In conclusion he exclaims: "Canada must be demolished, --_Delenda est Carthago_,--or we are undone."[435] But Loudon was not Scipio, and cis-Atlantic Carthage was to stand for some time longer.

[Footnote 435: _Review of Military Operations_, 187, 189 (Dublin, 1757).]

The Earl, in search of a scapegoat for the loss of Oswego, naturally chose Shirley, attacked him savagely, told him that he was of no use in America, and ordered him to go home to England without delay.[436]

Shirley, who was then in Boston, answered this indecency with dignity and effect.[437] The chief fault was with Loudon himself, whose late arrival in America had caused a change of command and of plans in the crisis of the campaign. Shirley well knew the weakness of Oswego; and in early spring had sent two engineers to make it defensible, with particular instructions to strengthen Fort Ontario.[438] But they, thinking that the chief danger lay on the west and south, turned all their attention thither, and neglected Ontario till it was too late.

Shirley was about to reinforce Oswego with a strong body of troops when the arrival of Abercromby took the control out of his hands and caused ruinous delay. He cannot, however, be acquitted of mismanagement in failing to supply the place with wholesome provisions in the preceding autumn, before the streams were stopped with ice. Hence came the ravages of disease and famine which, before spring, reduced the garrison to a hundred and forty effective men. Yet there can be no doubt that the change of command was a blunder. This is the view of Franklin, who knew Shirley well, and thus speaks of him: "He would in my opinion, if continued in place, have made a much better campaign than that of Loudon, which was frivolous, expensive, and disgraceful to our nation beyond conception. For though Shirley was not bred a soldier, he was sensible and sagacious in himself, and attentive to good advice from others, capable of forming judicious plans, and quick and active in carrying them into execution."[439] He sailed for England in the autumn, disappointed and poor; the bull-headed Duke of c.u.mberland had been deeply prejudiced against him, and it was only after long waiting that this strenuous champion of British interests was rewarded in his old age with the petty government of the Bahamas.

[Footnote 436: _Loudon to Shirley, 6 Sept. 1756_.]

[Footnote 437: The correspondence on both sides is before me, copied from the originals in the Public Record Office.]

[Footnote 438: "The princ.i.p.al thing for which I sent Mr. Mackellar to Oswego was to strengthen Fort Ontario as much as he possibly could."

_Shirley to Loudon, 4 Sept. 1756._]

[Footnote 439: _Works of Franklin_, I. 220.]

Loudon had now about ten thousand men at his command, though not all fit for duty. They were posted from Albany to Lake George. The Earl himself was at Fort Edward, while about three thousand of the provincials still lay, under Winslow, at the lake. Montcalm faced them at Ticonderoga, with five thousand three hundred regulars and Canadians, in a position where they could defy three times their number.[440] "The sons of Belial are too strong for me," jocosely wrote Winslow;[441] and he set himself to intrenching his camp; then had the forest cut down for the s.p.a.ce of a mile from the lake to the mountains, so that the trees, lying in what he calls a "promiscuous manner," formed an almost impenetrable abatis. An escaped prisoner told him that the French were coming to visit him with fourteen thousand men;[442] but Montcalm thought no more of stirring than Loudon himself; and each stood watching the other, with the lake between them, till the season closed.

[Footnote 440: "Nous sommes tant a Carillon qu'aux postes avances 5,300 hommes." Bougainville, _Journal_.]

[Footnote 441: _Winslow to Loudon, 29 Sept. 1756_.]

[Footnote 442: _Examination of Sergeant James Archibald_.]

Meanwhile the western borders were still ravaged by the tomahawk. New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia all writhed under the infliction. Each had made a chain of blockhouses and wooden forts to cover its frontier, and manned them with disorderly bands, lawless, and almost beyond control.[443] The case was at the worst in Pennsylvania, where the tedious quarrelling of Governor and a.s.sembly, joined to the doggedly pacific att.i.tude of the Quakers, made vigorous defence impossible. Rewards were offered for prisoners and scalps, so bountiful that the hunting of men would have been a profitable vocation, but for the extreme wariness and agility of the game.[444] Some of the forts were well built stockades; others were almost worthless; but the enemy rarely molested even the feeblest of them, preferring to ravage the lonely and unprotected farms. There were two or three exceptions. A Virginian fort was attacked by a war-party under an officer named Douville, who was killed, and his followers were put to flight.[445] The a.s.sailants were more fortunate at a small stockade called Fort Granville, on the Juniata. A large body of French and Indians attacked it in August while most of the garrison were absent protecting the farmers at their harvest; they set it on fire, and, in spite of a most gallant resistance by the young lieutenant left in command, took it, and killed all but one of the defenders.[446]

[Footnote 443: In the public Record Office, _America and West Indies_, Lx.x.xII., is a ma.n.u.script map showing the positions of such of these posts as were north of Virginia. They are thirty-five in number, from the head of James River to a point west of Esopus, on the Hudson.]

[Footnote 444: _Colonial Records of Pa._, VII. 76.]

[Footnote 445: _Washington to Morris,--April, 1756_.]

[Footnote 446: _Colonial Records of Pa._, VII. 232, 242; _Pennsylvania Archives_, II. 744.]

What sort of resistance the Pennsylvanian borderers would have made under political circ.u.mstances less adverse may be inferred from an exploit of Colonel John Armstrong, a settler of c.u.mberland. After the loss of Fort Granville the Governor of the province sent him with three hundred men to attack the Delaware town of Kittanning, a populous nest of savages on the Alleghany, between the two French posts of Duquesne and Venango. Here most of the war-parties were fitted out, and the place was full of stores and munitions furnished by the French. Here, too, lived the redoubted chief called Captain Jacobs, the terror of the English border. Armstrong set out from Fort Shirley, the farthest outpost, on the last of August, and, a week after, was within six miles of the Indian town. By rapid marching and rare good luck, his party had escaped discovery. It was ten o'clock at night, with a bright moon. The guides were perplexed, and knew neither the exact position of the place nor the paths that led to it. The adventurers threaded the forest in single file, over hills and through hollows, bewildered and anxious, stopping to watch and listen. At length they heard in the distance the beating of an Indian drum and the whooping of warriors in the war-dance.

Guided by the sounds, they cautiously moved forward, till those in the front, scrambling down a rocky hill, found themselves on the banks of the Alleghany, about a hundred rods below Kittanning. The moon was near setting; but they could dimly see the town beyond a great intervening field of corn. "At that moment," says Armstrong, "an Indian whistled in a very singular manner, about thirty perches from our front, in the foot of the cornfield." He thought they were discovered; but one Baker, a soldier well versed in Indian ways, told him that it was only some village gallant calling to a young squaw. The party then crouched in the bushes, and kept silent. The moon sank behind the woods, and fires soon glimmered through the field, kindled to drive off mosquitoes by some of the Indians who, as the night was warm, had come out to sleep in the open air. The eastern sky began to redden with the approach of day. Many of the party, spent with a rough march of thirty miles, had fallen asleep. They were now cautiously roused; and Armstrong ordered nearly half of them to make their way along the ridge of a bushy hill that overlooked the town, till they came opposite to it, in order to place it between two fires. Twenty minutes were allowed them for the movement; but they lost their way in the dusk, and reached their station too late.

When the time had expired, Armstrong gave the signal to those left with him, who dashed into the cornfield, shooting down the astonished savages or driving them into the village, where they turned and made desperate fight.

It was a cl.u.s.ter of thirty log-cabins, the princ.i.p.al being that of the chief, Jacobs, which was loopholed for musketry, and became the centre of resistance. The fight was hot and stubborn. Armstrong ordered the town to be set on fire, which was done, though not without loss; for the Delawares at this time were commonly armed with rifles, and used them well. Armstrong himself was. .h.i.t in the shoulder. As the flames rose and the smoke grew thick, a warrior in one of the houses sang his death-song, and a squaw in the same house was heard to cry and scream.

Rough voices silenced her, and then the inmates burst out, but were instantly killed. The fire caught the house of Jacobs, who, trying to escape through an opening in the roof, was shot dead. Bands of Indians were gathering beyond the river, firing from the other bank, and even crossing to help their comrades; but the a.s.sailants held to their work till the whole place was destroyed. "During the burning of the houses,"

says Armstrong, "we were agreeably entertained by the quick succession of charged guns, gradually firing off as reached by the fire; but much more so with the vast explosion of sundry bags and large kegs of gunpowder, wherewith almost every house abounded; the prisoners afterwards informing us that the Indians had frequently said they had a sufficient stock of ammunition for ten years' war with the English."

These prisoners were eleven men, women, and children, captured in the border settlements, and now delivered by their countrymen. The day was far spent when the party withdrew, carrying their wounded on Indian horses, and moving perforce with extreme slowness, though expecting an attack every moment. None took place; and they reached the settlements at last, having bought their success with the loss of seventeen killed and thirteen wounded.[447] A medal was given to each officer, not by the Quaker-ridden a.s.sembly, but by the city council of Philadelphia.

[Footnote 447: _Report of Armstrong to Governor Denny, 14 Sept. 1756_, in _Colonial Records of Pa._, VII. 257,--a modest yet very minute account. _A list of the Names of the Persons killed, wounded, and missing in the late Expedition against the Kittanning_. Hazard, _Pennsylvania Register_, I. 366.]

The report of this affair made by Dumas, commandant at Fort Duquesne, is worth noting. He says that Attique, the French name of Kittanning, was attacked by "le General Wachinton," with three or four hundred men on horseback; that the Indians gave way; but that five or six Frenchmen who were in the town held the English in check till the fugitives rallied; that Washington and his men then took to flight, and would have been pursued but for the loss of some barrels of gunpowder which chanced to explode during the action. Dumas adds that several large parties are now on the track of the enemy, and he hopes will cut them to pieces. He then asks for a supply of provisions and merchandise to replace those which the Indians of Attique had lost by a fire.[448] Like other officers of the day, he would admit nothing but successes in the department under his command.

[Footnote 448: _Dumas a Vaudreuil, 9 Sept. 1756_, cited in _Bigot au Ministre, 6 Oct. 1756_, and in Bougainville, _Journal_.]

Vaudreuil wrote singular despatches at this time to the minister at Versailles. He takes credit to himself for the number of war-parties that his officers kept always at work, and fills page after page with details of the _coups_ they had struck; how one brought in two English scalps, another three, another one, and another seven. He owns that they committed frightful cruelties, mutilating and sometimes burning their prisoners; but he expresses no regret, and probably felt none, since he declares that the object of this murderous warfare was to punish the English till they longed for peace.[449]

[Footnote 449: _Depeches de Vaudreuil, 1756._]

The waters and mountains of Lake George, and not the western borders, were the chief centre of partisan war. Ticonderoga was a hornet's nest, pouring out swarms of savages to infest the highways and byways of the wilderness. The English at Fort William Henry, having few Indians, could not retort in kind; but they kept their scouts and rangers in active movement. What they most coveted was prisoners, as sources of information. One Kennedy, a lieutenant of provincials, with five followers, white and red, made a march of rare audacity, pa.s.sed all the French posts, took a scalp and two prisoners on the Richelieu, and burned a magazine of provisions between Montreal and St. John. The party were near famishing on the way back; and Kennedy was brought into Fort William Henry in a state of temporary insanity from starvation.[450]

Other provincial officers, Peabody, Hazen, Waterbury, and Miller, won a certain distinction in this adventurous service, though few were so conspicuous as the blunt and st.u.r.dy Israel Putnam. Winslow writes in October that he has just returned from the best "scout" yet made, and that, being a man of strict truth, he may be entirely trusted.[451]

Putnam had gone with six followers down Lake George in a whale-boat to a point on the east side, opposite the present village of Hague, hid the boat, crossed northeasterly to Lake Champlain, three miles from the French fort, climbed the mountain that overlooks it, and made a complete reconnoissance; then approached it, chased three Frenchmen, who escaped within the lines, climbed the mountain again, and moving westward along the ridge, made a minute survey of every outpost between the fort and Lake George.[452] These adventures were not always fortunate. On the nineteenth of September Captain Hodges and fifty men were ambushed a few miles from Fort William Henry by thrice their number of Canadians and Indians, and only six escaped. Thus the record stands in the _Letter Book_ of Winslow.[453] By visiting the encampments of Ticonderoga, one may learn how the blow was struck.

[Footnote 450: _Minute of Lieutenant Kennedy's Scout. Winslow to Loudon, 20 Sept. 1756._]

[Footnote 451: _Winslow to Loudon, 16 Oct. 1756._]

[Footnote 452: _Report of a Scout to Ticonderoga, Oct. 1756_, signed Israel Putnam.]

[Footnote 453: Compare Ma.s.sachusetts Archives, LXXVI. 81.]

After much persuasion, much feasting, and much consumption of tobacco and brandy, four hundred Indians, Christians from the Missions and heathen from the far west, were persuaded to go on a grand war-party with the Canadians. Of these last there were a hundred,--a wild crew, bedecked and bedaubed like their Indian companions. Periere, an officer of colony regulars, had nominal command of the whole; and among the leaders of the Canadians was the famous bushfighter, Marin. Bougainville was also of the party. In the evening of the sixteenth they all embarked in canoes at the French advance-post commanded by Contrecoeur, near the present steamboat-landing, pa.s.sed in the gloom under the bare steeps of Rogers Rock, paddled a few hours, landed on the west sh.o.r.e, and sent scouts to reconnoitre. These came back with their reports on the next day, and an Indian crier called the chiefs to council. Bougainville describes them as they stalked gravely to the place of meeting, wrapped in colored blankets, with lances in their hands. The accomplished young aide-de-camp studied his strange companions with an interest not unmixed with disgust. "Of all caprice," he says, "Indian caprice is the most capricious." They were insolent to the French, made rules for them which they did not observe themselves, and compelled the whole party to move when and whither they pleased. Hiding the canoes, and lying close in the forest by day, they all held their nocturnal course southward, by the lofty heights of Black Mountain, and among the islets of the Narrows, till the eighteenth. That night the Indian scouts reported that they had seen the fires of an encampment on the west sh.o.r.e; on which the whole party advanced to the attack, an hour before dawn, filing silently under the dark arches of the forest, the Indians nearly naked, and streaked with their war-paint of vermilion and soot. When they reached the spot they found only the smouldering fires of a deserted bivouac. Then there was a consultation; ending, after much dispute, with the choice by the Indians of a hundred and ten of their most active warriors to attempt some stroke in the neighborhood of the English fort. Marin joined them with thirty Canadians, and they set out on their errand; while the rest encamped to await the result. At night the adventurers returned, raising the death-cry and firing their guns; somewhat depressed by losses they had suffered, but boasting that they had surprised fifty-three English, and killed or taken all but one. It was a modest and perhaps an involuntary exaggeration. "The very recital of the cruelties they committed on the battle-field is horrible," writes Bougainville. "The ferocity and insolence of these black-souled barbarians makes one shudder. It is an abominable kind of war. The air one breathes is contagious of insensibility and hardness."[454] This was but one of the many such parties sent out from Ticonderoga this year.

[Footnote 454: Bougainville, _Journal_.]

Early in September a band of New England rangers came to Winslow's camp, with three prisoners taken within the lines of Ticonderoga. Their captain was Robert Rogers, of New Hampshire,--a strong, well-knit figure, in dress and appearance more woodsman than soldier, with a clear, bold eye, and features that would have been good but for the ungainly proportions of the nose.[455] He had pa.s.sed his boyhood in the rough surroundings of a frontier village. Growing to manhood, he engaged in some occupation which, he says, led him to frequent journeyings in the wilderness between the French and English settlements, and gave him a good knowledge of both.[456] It taught him also to speak a little French. He does not disclose the nature of this mysterious employment; but there can be little doubt that it was a smuggling trade with Canada.

His character leaves much to be desired. He had been charged with forgery, or complicity in it, seems to have had no scruple in matters of business, and after the war was accused of treasonable dealings with the French and Spaniards in the west.[457] He was ambitious and violent, yet able in more ways than one, by no means uneducated, and so skilled in woodcraft, so energetic and resolute, that his services were invaluable.

In recounting his own adventures, his style is direct, simple, without boasting, and to all appearance without exaggeration. During the past summer he had raised a band of men, chiefly New Hampshire borderers, and made a series of daring excursions which gave him a prominent place in this hardy by-play of war. In the spring of the present year he raised another company, and was commissioned as its captain, with his brother Richard as his first lieutenant, and the intrepid John Stark as his second. In July still another company was formed, and Richard Rogers was promoted to command it. Before the following spring there were seven such; and more were afterwards added, forming a battalion dispersed on various service, but all under the orders of Robert Rogers, with the rank of major.[458] These rangers wore a sort of woodland uniform, which varied in the different companies, and were armed with smooth-bore guns, loaded with buckshot, bullets, or sometimes both.

[Footnote 455: A large engraved portrait of him, nearly at full length, is before me, printed at London in 1776.]

[Footnote 456: Rogers, _Journals, Introduction_ (1765).]

[Footnote 457: _Provincial Papers of New Hampshire_, VI. 364.

_Correspondence of Gage, 1766. N.Y. Col. Docs._, VII. 990. Caleb Stark, _Memoir and Correspondence of John Stark_, 386.]

[Footnote 458: Rogers, _Journals. Report of the Adjutant-General of New Hampshire_ (1866), II. 158, 159.]

The best of them were commonly employed on Lake George; and nothing can surpa.s.s the adventurous hardihood of their lives. Summer and winter, day and night, were alike to them. Embarked in whaleboats or birch-canoes, they glided under the silent moon or in the languid glare of a breathless August day, when islands floated in dreamy haze, and the hot air was thick with odors of the pine; or in the bright October, when the jay screamed from the woods, squirrels gathered their winter h.o.a.rd, and congregated blackbirds chattered farewell to their summer haunts; when gay mountains basked in light, maples dropped leaves of rustling gold, sumachs glowed like rubies under the dark green of the unchanging spruce, and mossed rocks with all their painted plumage lay double in the watery mirror: that festal evening of the year, when jocund Nature disrobes herself, to wake again refreshed in the joy of her undying spring. Or, in the tomb-like silence of the winter forest, with breath frozen on his beard, the ranger strode on snow-shoes over the spotless drifts; and, like Durer's knight, a ghastly death stalked ever at his side. There were those among them for whom this stern life had a fascination that made all other existence tame.

Rogers and his men had been in active movement since midwinter. In January they skated down Lake George, pa.s.sed Ticonderoga, hid themselves by the forest-road between that post and Crown Point, intercepted two sledges loaded with provisions, and carried the drivers to Fort William Henry. In February they climbed a hill near Crown Point and made a plan of the works; then lay in ambush by the road from the fort to the neighboring village, captured a prisoner, burned houses and barns, killed fifty cattle, and returned without loss. At the end of the month they went again to Crown Point, burned more houses and barns, and reconnoitred Ticonderoga on the way back. Such excursions were repeated throughout the spring and summer. The reconnoissance of Ticonderoga and the catching of prisoners there for the sake of information were always capital objects. The valley, four miles in extent, that lay between the foot of Lake George and the French fort, was at this time guarded by four distinct outposts or fortified camps. Watched as it was at all points, and ranged incessantly by Indians in the employ of France, Rogers and his men knew every yard of the ground. On a morning in May he lay in ambush with eleven followers on a path between the fort and the nearest camp. A large body of soldiers pa.s.sed; the rangers counted a hundred and eighteen, and lay close in their hiding-place. Soon after came a party of twenty-two. They fired on them, killed six, captured one, and escaped with him to Fort William Henry. In October Rogers was pa.s.sing with twenty men in two whaleboats through the seeming solitude of the Narrows when a voice called to them out of the woods. It was that of Captain Shepherd, of the New Hampshire regiment, who had been captured two months before, and had lately made his escape. He told them that the French had the fullest information of the numbers and movements of the English; that letters often reached them from within the English lines; and that Lydius, a Dutch trader at Albany, was their princ.i.p.al correspondent.[459] Arriving at Ticonderoga, Rogers cautiously approached the fort, till, about noon, he saw a sentinel on the road leading thence to the woods. Followed by five of his men, he walked directly towards him. The man challenged, and Rogers answered in French.

Perplexed for a moment, the soldier suffered him to approach; till, seeing his mistake, he called out in amazement, "_Qui etes vous_?"

"Rogers," was the answer; and the sentinel was seized, led in hot haste to the boats, and carried to the English fort, where he gave important information.

[Footnote 459: _Letter and Order Books of Winslow_. "One Lydia.s.s ...

whom we suspect for a French spy; he lives better than anybody, without any visible means, and his daughters have had often presents from Mr.

Vaudreuil." _Loudon_ (_to Fox?_), _19 Aug. 1756_.]

An exploit of Rogers towards midsummer greatly perplexed the French. He embarked at the end of June with fifty men in five whaleboats, made light and strong, expressly for this service, rowed about ten miles down Lake George, landed on the east side, carried the boats six miles over a gorge of the mountains, launched them again in South Bay, and rowed down the narrow prolongation of Lake Champlain under cover of darkness. At dawn they were within six miles of Ticonderoga. They landed, hid their boats, and lay close all day. Embarking again in the evening, they rowed with m.u.f.fled oars under the shadow of the eastern sh.o.r.e, and pa.s.sed so close to the French fort that they heard the voices of the sentinels calling the watchword. In the morning they had left it five miles behind. Again they hid in the woods; and from their lurking-place saw bateaux pa.s.sing, some northward, and some southward, along the narrow lake.