Montcalm and Wolfe Part 4

[Footnote 52: Chalmers, _Collection of Treaties_, I. 382.]

[Footnote 53: _La Jonquiere a Clinton, 10 Aout, 1751_.]

[Footnote 54: Deposition of Morris Turner and Ralph Kilgore, in _Colonial Records of Pa._, V. 482. The deponents had been prisoners at Detroit.]

The French on their side made counter-accusations. The captive traders were examined on oath before La Jonquiere, and one of them, John Patton, is reported to have said that Croghan had instigated Indians to kill Frenchmen.[55] French officials declared that other English traders were guilty of the same practices; and there is very little doubt that the charge was true.

[Footnote 55: _Precis des Faits, avec leurs Pieces justificatives_, 100.]

The dispute with the English was not the only source of trouble to the Governor. His superiors at Versailles would not adopt his views, and looked on him with distrust. He advised the building of forts near Lake Erie, and his advice was rejected. "Niagara and Detroit," he was told, "will secure forever our communications with Louisiana."[56] "His Majesty," again wrote the Colonial Minister, "thought that expenses would diminish after the peace; but, on the contrary, they have increased. There must be great abuses. You and the Intendant must look to it."[57] Great abuses there were; and of the money sent to Canada for the service of the King the larger part found its way into the pockets of peculators. The colony was eaten to the heart with official corruption; and the centre of it was Francois Bigot, the intendant. The Minister directed La Jonquiere's attention to certain malpractices which had been reported to him; and the old man, deeply touched, replied: "I have reached the age of sixty-six years, and there is not a drop of blood in my veins that does not thrill for the service of my King. I will not conceal from you that the slightest suspicion on your part against me would cut the thread of my days."[58]

[Footnote 56: _Ordres du Roy et Depeches des Ministres_, 1750.]

[Footnote 57: _Ibid., 6 Juin_, 1751.]

[Footnote 58: _La Jonquiere au Ministre, 19 Oct_. 1751.]

Perplexities increased; affairs in the West grew worse and worse. La Jonquiere ordered Celoron to attack the English at Pickawillany; and Celoron could not or would not obey. "I cannot express," writes the Governor, "how much this business troubles me; it robs me of sleep; it makes me ill." Another letter of rebuke presently came from Versailles.

"Last year you wrote that you would soon drive the English from the Ohio; but private letters say that you have done nothing. This is deplorable. If not expelled, they will seem to acquire a right against us. Send force enough at once to drive them off, and cure them of all wish to return."[59] La Jonquiere answered with bitter complaints against Celoron, and then begged to be recalled. His health, already shattered, was ruined by fatigue and vexation; and he took to his bed.

Before spring he was near his end.[60] It is said that, though very rich, his habits of thrift so possessed his last hours that, seeing wax-candles burning in his chamber, he ordered others of tallow to be brought instead, as being good enough to die by. Thus frugally lighted on its way, his spirit fled; and the Baron de Longueuil took his place till a new governor should arrive.

[Footnote 59: _Ordres du Roy et Depeches des Ministres_, 1751.]

[Footnote 60: He died on the sixth of March, 1752 (_Bigot au Ministre, 6 Mai_); not on the seventeeth of May, as stated in the _Memoires sur le Canada_, 1749-1760.]

Sinister tidings came thick from the West. Raymond, commandant at the French fort on the Maumee, close to the centre of intrigue, wrote: "My people are leaving me for Detroit. n.o.body wants to stay here and have his throat cut. All the tribes who go to the English at Pickawillany come back loaded with gifts. I am too weak to meet the danger. Instead of twenty men, I need five hundred.... We have made peace with the English, yet they try continually to make war on us by means of the Indians; they intend to be masters of all this upper country. The tribes here are leaguing together to kill all the French, that they may have n.o.body on their lands but their English brothers. This I am told by Coldfoot, a great Miami chief, whom I think an honest man, if there is any such thing among Indians.... If the English stay in this country we are lost. We must attack, and drive them out." And he tells of war-belts sent from tribe to tribe, and rumors of plots and conspiracies far and near.

Without doubt, the English traders spared no pains to gain over the Indians by fair means or foul; sold them goods at low rates, made ample gifts, and gave gunpowder for the asking. Saint-Ange, who commanded at Vincennes, wrote that a storm would soon burst on the heads of the French. Joncaire reported that all the Ohio Indians sided with the English. Longueuil informed the Minister that the Miamis had scalped two soldiers; that the Piankishaws had killed seven Frenchmen; and that a squaw who had lived with one of the slain declared that the tribes of the Wabash and Illinois were leaguing with the Osages for a combined insurrection. Every letter brought news of murder. Small-pox had broken out at Detroit. "It is to be wished," says Longueuil, "that it would spread among our rebels; it would be fully as good as an army.... We are menaced with a general outbreak, and even Toronto is in danger....

Before long the English on the Miami will gain over all the surrounding tribes, get possession of Fort Chartres, and cut our communications with Louisiana."[61]

[Footnote 61: _Depeches de Longueuil; Lettres de Raymond; Benoit de Saint-Clere a la Jonquiere, Oct. 1751._]

The moving spirit of disaffection was the chief called Old Britain, or the Demoiselle, and its focus was his town of Pickawillany, on the Miami. At this place it is said that English traders sometimes mustered to the number of fifty or more. "It is they," wrote Longueuil, "who are the instigators of revolt and the source of all our woes."[62] Whereupon the Colonial Minister reiterated his instructions to drive them off and plunder them, which he thought would "effectually disgust them," and bring all trouble to an end.[63]

[Footnote 62: _Longueuil au Ministre, 21 Avril, 1752._]

[Footnote 63: _Le Ministre a la Jonquiere, 1752. Le Ministre a Duquesne, 9 Juillet, 1752._]

La Jonquiere's remedy had been more heroic, for he had ordered Celeron to attack the English and their red allies alike; and he charged that officer with arrogance and disobedience because he had not done so. It is not certain that obedience was easy; for though, besides the garrison of regulars, a strong body of militia was sent up to Detroit to aid the stroke,[64] the Indians of that post, whose co-operation was thought necessary, proved half-hearted, intractable, and even touched with disaffection. Thus the enterprise languished till, in June, aid came from another quarter. Charles Langlade, a young French trader married to a squaw at Green Bay, and strong in influence with the tribes of that region, came down the lakes from Michillimackinac with a fleet of canoes manned by two hundred and fifty Ottawa and Ojibwa warriors; stopped a while at Detroit; then embarked again, paddled up the Maumee to Raymond's fort at the portage, and led his greased and painted rabble through the forest to attack the Demoiselle and his English friends.

They approached Pickawillany at about nine o'clock on the morning of the twenty-first. The scared squaws fled from the cornfields into the town, where the wigwams of the Indians cl.u.s.tered about the fortified warehouse of the traders. Of these there were at the time only eight in the place.

Most of the Indians also were gone on their summer hunt, though the Demoiselle remained with a band of his tribesmen. Great was the screeching of war-whoops and clatter of guns. Three of the traders were caught outside the fort. The remaining five closed the gate, and stood on their defence. The fight was soon over. Fourteen Miamis were shot down, the Demoiselle among the rest. The five white men held out till the afternoon, when three of them surrendered, and two, Thomas Burney and Andrew McBryer, made their escape. One of the English prisoners being wounded, the victors stabbed him to death. Seventy years of missionaries had not weaned them from cannibalism, and they boiled and eat the Demoiselle.[65]

[Footnote 64: _La Jonquiere a Celeron, 1 Oct. 1751._]

[Footnote 65: On the attack of Pickawillany, _Longueuil au Ministre, 18 Aout, 1752; Duquesne au Ministre, 25 Oct. 1752; Colonial Records of Pa._, V. 599; _Journal of William Trent_, 1752. Trent was on the spot a few days after the affair.]

The captive traders, plundered to the skin, were carried by Langlade to Duquesne, the new governor, who highly praised the bold leader of the enterprise, and recommended him to the Minister for such reward as befitted one of his station. "As he is not in the King's service, and has married a squaw, I will ask for him only a pension of two hundred francs, which will flatter him infinitely."

The Marquis Duquesne, sprung from the race of the great naval commander of that name, had arrived towards midsummer; and he began his rule by a general review of troops and militia. His lofty bearing offended the Canadians; but he compelled their respect, and, according to a writer of the time, showed from the first that he was born to command. He presently took in hand an enterprise which his predecessor would probably have accomplished, had the Home Government encouraged him.

Duquesne, profiting by the infatuated neglect of the British provincial a.s.semblies, prepared to occupy the upper waters of the Ohio, and secure the pa.s.ses with forts and garrisons. Thus the Virginian and Pennsylvanian traders would be debarred all access to the West, and the tribes of that region, bereft henceforth of English guns, knives, hatchets, and blankets, English gifts and English cajoleries, would be thrown back to complete dependence on the French. The moral influence, too, of such a movement would be incalculable; for the Indian respects nothing so much as a display of vigor and daring, backed by force. In short, the intended enterprise was a master-stroke, and laid the axe to the very root of disaffection. It is true that, under the treaty, commissioners had been long in session at Paris to settle the question of American boundaries; but there was no likelihood that they would come to agreement; and if France would make good her Western claims, it behooved her, while there was yet time, to prevent her rival from fastening a firm grasp on the countries in dispute.

Yet the Colonial Minister regarded the plan with distrust. "Be on your guard," he wrote to Duquesne, "against new undertakings; private interests are generally at the bottom of them. It is through these that new posts are established. Keep only such as are indispensable, and suppress the others. The expenses of the colony are enormous; and they have doubled since the peace." Again, a little later: "Build on the Ohio such forts as are absolutely necessary, but no more. Remember that His Majesty suspects your advisers of interested views."[66]

[Footnote 66: _Ordres du Roy et Depeches des Ministres_, 1753.]

No doubt there was justice in the suspicion. Every military movement, and above all the establishment of every new post, was an opportunity to the official thieves with whom the colony swarmed. Some band of favored knaves grew rich; while a much greater number, excluded from sharing the illicit profits, clamored against the undertaking, and wrote charges of corruption to Versailles. Thus the Minister was kept tolerably well informed; but was scarcely the less helpless, for with the Atlantic between, the disorders of Canada defied his control. Duquesne was exasperated by the opposition that met him on all hands, and wrote to the Minister: "There are so many rascals in this country that one is forever the b.u.t.t of their attacks."[67]

[Footnote 67: _Duquesne au Ministre, 29 Sept._ 1754.]

It seems that unlawful gain was not the only secret spring of the movement. An officer of repute says that the Intendant, Bigot, enterprising in his pleasures as in his greed, was engaged in an intrigue with the wife of Chevalier Pean; and wishing at once to console the husband and to get rid of him, sought for him a high command at a distance from the colony. Therefore while Marin, an able officer, was made first in rank, Pean was made second. The same writer hints that Duquesne himself was influenced by similar motives in his appointment of leaders.[68]

[Footnote 68: Pouchot, _Memoire sur la derniere Guerre de l'Amerique septentrionale (ed._ 1781), I. 8.]

He mustered the colony troops, and ordered out the Canadians. With the former he was but half satisfied; with the latter he was delighted; and he praises highly their obedience and alacrity. "I had not the least trouble in getting them to march. They came on the minute, bringing their own guns, though many people tried to excite them to revolt; for the whole colony opposes my operations." The expedition set out early in the spring of 1753. The whole force was not much above a thousand men, increased by subsequent detachments to fifteen hundred; but to the Indians it seemed a mighty host; and one of their orators declared that the lakes and rivers were covered with boats and soldiers from Montreal to Presquisle.[69] Some Mohawk hunters by the St. Lawrence saw them as they pa.s.sed, and hastened home to tell the news to Johnson, whom they wakened at midnight, "whooping and hollowing in a frightful manner."[70]

Lieutenant Holland at Oswego saw a fleet of canoes upon the lake, and was told by a roving Frenchman that they belonged to an army of six thousand men going to the Ohio, "to cause all the English to quit those parts."[71]

[Footnote 69: _Duquesne au Ministre, 27 Oct._ 1753.]

[Footnote 70: _Johnson to Clinton, 20 April_, 1753, in _N.Y. Col.

Docs._, VI. 778.]

[Footnote 71: _Holland to Clinton, 15 May_, 1753, in _N.Y. Col. Docs._, VI. 780.]

The main body of the expedition landed at Presquisle, on the southeastern sh.o.r.e of Lake Erie, where the town of Erie now stands; and here for a while we leave them.

Chapter 4

1710-1754

Conflict for Acadia

While in the West all the signs of the sky foreboded storm, another tempest was gathering the East, less in extent, but not less in peril.

The conflict in Acadia has a melancholy interest, since it ended in a castastrophe which prose and verse have joined to commemorate, but of which the causes have not been understood.

Acadia--that it to say, the peninsula of Nova Scotia, with the addition, as the English claimed, of the present New Brunswick and some adjacent country--was conquered by General Nicholson in 1710, and formally transferred by France to the British Crown, three years later, by the treaty of Utrecht. By that treaty it was "expressly provided" that such of the French inhabitants as "are willing to remain there and to be subject to the Kingdom of Great Britain, are to enjoy the free exercise of their religion according to the usage of the Church of Rome, as far as the laws of Great Britain do allow the same"; but that any who choose may remove, with their effects, if they do so within a year. Very few availed themselves of this right; and after the end of the year those who remained were required to take an oath of allegiance to King George.

There is no doubt that in a little time they would have complied, had they been let alone; but the French authorities of Canada and Cape Breton did their utmost to prevent them, and employed agents to keep them hostile to England. Of these the most efficient were the French priests, who, in spite of the treaty, persuaded their flocks that they were still subjects of King Louis. Hence rose endless perplexity to the English commanders at Annapolis, who more than suspected that the Indian attacks with which they were hara.s.sed were due mainly to French instigation.[72] It was not till seventeen years after the treaty that the Acadians could be brought to take the oath without qualifications which made it almost useless. The English authorities seem to have shown throughout an unusual patience and forbearance. At length, about 1730, nearly all the inhabitants signed by crosses, since few of them could write, an oath recognizing George II as sovereign of Acadia, and promising fidelity and obedience to him.[73] This restored comparative quiet till the war of 1745, when some of the Acadians remained neutral, while some took arms against the English, and many others aided the enemy with information and supplies.

[Footnote 72: See the numerous papers in _Selections from the Public Doc.u.ments of the Province of Nova Scotia_ (Halifax, 1869), pp. 1-165; a Government publication of great value.]

[Footnote 73: The oath was _literatim_ as follows: "Je Promets et Jure Sincerement en Foi de Chretien que Je serai entierement Fidele, et Obeierai Vraiment Sa Majeste Le Roy George Second, qui (_sic_) Je reconnoi pour Le Souvrain Seigneur de l'Accadie ou Nouvelle Ecosse.

Ainsi Dieu me Soit en Aide."]

English power in Acadia, hitherto limited to a feeble garrison at Annapolis and a feebler one at Canseau, received at this time a great accession. The fortress of Louisbourg, taken by the English during the war, had been restored by the treaty; and the French at once prepared to make it a military and naval station more formidable than ever. Upon this the British Ministry resolved to establish another station as a counterpoise; and the harbor of Chebucto, on the south coast of Acadia, was chosen as the site of it. Thither in June, 1749, came a fleet of transports loaded with emigrants, tempted by offers of land and a home in the New World. Some were mechanics, tradesmen, farmers, and laborers; others were sailors, soldiers, and subaltern officers thrown out of employment by the peace. Including women and children, they counted in all about twenty-five hundred. Alone of all the British colonies on the continent, this new settlement was the offspring, not of private enterprise, but of royal authority. Yet is was free like the rest, with the same popular representation and local self-government. Edward Cornwallis, uncle of Lord Cornwallis of the Revolutionary War, was made governor and commander-in-chief. Wolfe calls him "a man of approved courage and fidelity"; and even the caustic Horace Walpole speaks of him as "a brave, sensible young man, of great temper and good nature."