Montcalm and Wolfe Part 51

[Footnote 849: _An East View of Montreal, drawn on the Spot by Thomas Patten_ (King's Maps, British Museum), _Plan of Montreal, 1759.

A Description of Montreal_, in several magazines of the time. The recent Canadian publication called _Le Vieux Montreal_, is exceedingly incorrect as to the numbers of the British troops and the position of their camps.]

On the morning after Amherst encamped above the place, Murray landed to encamp below it; and Vaudreuil, looking across the St. Lawrence, could see the tents of Haviland's little army on the southern sh.o.r.e. Bourlamaque, Bougainville, and Roquemaure, abandoned by all their militia, had crossed to Montreal with the few regulars that remained with them.

The town was crowded with non-combatant refugees. Here, too, was nearly all the remaining force of Canada, consisting of twenty-two hundred troops of the line and some two hundred colony troops; for all the Canadians had by this time gone home.

Many of the regulars, especially of the colony troops, had also deserted; and the rest were so broken in discipline that their officers were forced to use entreaties instead of commands. The three armies encamped around the city amounted to seventeen thousand men;[850] Amherst was bringing up his cannon from La Chine, and the town wall would have crumbled before them in an hour.

[Footnote 850: _A List of the Forces employed in the Expedition against Canada_. See Smith, _History of Canada_, I. Appendix xix.

Vaudreuil writes to Charles Langlade, on the ninth, that the three armies amount to twenty thousand, and raises the number to thirty-two thousand in a letter to the Minister on the next day. Berniers says twenty thousand; Levis, for obvious reasons, exaggerates the number to forty thousand.]

On the night when Amherst arrived, the Governor called a council of war.[851] It was resolved that since all the militia and many of the regulars had abandoned the army, and the Indian allies of France had gone over to the enemy, further resistance was impossible. Vaudreuil laid before the a.s.sembled officers a long paper that he had drawn up, containing fifty-five articles of capitulation to be proposed to the English; and these were unanimously approved.[852] In the morning Bougainville carried them to the tent of Amherst. He granted the greater part, modified some, and flatly refused others.

That which the French officers thought more important than all the rest was the provision that the troops should march out with arms, cannon, and the honors of war; to which it was replied: "The whole garrison of Montreal and all other French troops in Canada must lay down their arms, and shall not serve during the present war." This demand was felt to be intolerable.

The Governor sent Bougainville back to remonstrate; but Amherst was inflexible. Then Levis tried to shake his resolution, and sent him an officer with the following note: "I send your Excellency M. de la Pause, a.s.sistant Quartermaster-General of the Army, on the subject of the too rigorous article which you dictate to the troops by the capitulation, to which it would not be possible for us to subscribe."

Amherst answered the envoy: "I am fully resolved, for the infamous part the troops of France have acted in exciting the savages to perpetrate the most horrid and unheard of barbarities in the whole progress of the war, and for other open treacheries and flagrant breaches of faith, to manifest to all the world by this capitulation my detestation of such practices;"

and he dismissed La Pause with a short note, refusing to change the conditions.

[Footnote 851: _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 10 Sept. 1760_.]

[Footnote 852: _Proces-verbal de la Deliberation du Conseil de Guerre tenu a Montreal, 6 Sept. 1760_.]

On the next morning, September eighth, Vaudreuil yielded, and signed the capitulation. By it Canada and all its dependencies pa.s.sed to the British Crown. French officers, civil and military, with French troops and sailors, were to be sent to France in British ships. Free exercise of religion was a.s.sured to the people of the colony, and the religious communities were to retain their possessions, rights, and privileges. All persons who might wish to retire to France were allowed to do so, and the Canadians were to remain in full enjoyment of feudal and other property, including negro and Indian slaves.[853]

[Footnote 853: _Articles of Capitulation, 8 Sept. 1760. Amherst to Pitt, same date_.]

The greatest alarm had prevailed among the inhabitants lest they should suffer violence from the English Indians, and Vaudreuil had endeavored to provide that these dangerous enemies should be sent back at once to their villages. This was refused, with the remark: "There never have been any cruelties committed by the Indians of our army." Strict precautions were taken at the same time, not only against the few savages whom the firm conduct of Johnson at Fort Levis had not driven away, but also against the late allies of the French, now become a peril to them. In consequence, not a man, woman, or child was hurt. Amherst, in general orders, expressed his confidence "that the troops will not disgrace themselves by the least appearance of inhumanity, or by any unsoldierlike behavior in seeking for plunder; and that as the Canadians are now become British subjects, they will feel the good effects of His Majesty's protection." They were in fact treated with a kindness that seemed to surprise them.

Levis was so incensed at the demand that the troops should lay down their arms and serve no longer during the war that, before the capitulation was signed, he made a formal protest[854]

in his own name and that of the officers from France, and insisted that the negotiation should be broken off. "If," he added, "the Marquis de Vaudreuil, through political motives, thinks himself obliged to surrender the colony at once, we ask his permission to withdraw with the troops of the line to the Island of St. Helen, in order to uphold there, on our own behalf, the honor of the King's arms." The proposal was of course rejected, as Levis knew that it would be, and he and his officers were ordered to conform to the capitulation. When Vaudreuil reached France, three months after, he had the mortification to receive from the Colonial Minister a letter containing these words: "Though His Majesty was perfectly aware of the state of Canada, nevertheless, after the a.s.surances you had given to make the utmost efforts to sustain the honor of his arms, he did not expect to hear so soon of the surrender of Montreal and the whole colony. But, granting that capitulation was a necessity, his Majesty was not the less surprised and ill pleased at the conditions, so little honorable, to which you submitted, especially after the representations made you by the Chevalier de Levis."[855] The brother of Vaudreuil complained to the Minister of the terms of this letter, and the Minister replied: "I see with regret, Monsieur, that you are pained by the letter I wrote your brother; but I could not help telling him what the King did me the honor to say to me; and it would have been unpleasant for him to hear it from anybody else."[856]

[Footnote 854: _Protet de M. de Levis a M. de Vaudreuil contre la Clause dans les Articles de Capitulation qui exige que les Troupes mettront bas les Armes, avec l'Ordre de M. de Vaudreuil au Chevalier de Levis de se conformer a la Capitulation proposee. Vaudreuil au Ministre de la Marine, 10 Sept. 1760. Levis au Ministre de la Guerre, 27 Nov. 1760_.]

[Footnote 855: _Le Ministre a Vaudreuil, 5 Dec. 1760_.]

[Footnote 856: _Le Ministre au Vicomte de Vaudreuil, Frere du Gouverneur, 21 Dec. 1760_.]

It is true that Vaudreuil had in some measure drawn this reproach upon himself by his boastings about the battles he would fight; yet the royal displeasure was undeserved. The Governor had no choice but to give up the colony; for Amherst had him in his power, and knew that he could exact what terms he pleased.

Further resistance could only have ended in surrender at the discretion of the victor, and the protest of Levis was nothing but a device to save his own reputation and that of his brother officers from France.

Vaudreuil had served the King and the colony in some respects with ability, always with an unflagging zeal; and he loved the land of his birth with a jealous devotion that goes far towards redeeming his miserable defects. The King himself, and not the servants whom he abandoned to their fate, was answerable for the loss of New France.

Half the continent had changed hands at the scratch of a pen. Governor Bernard, of Ma.s.sachusetts, proclaimed a day of thanksgiving for the great event, and the Boston newspapers recount how the occasion was celebrated with a parade of the cadets and other volunteer corps, a grand dinner in Faneuil Hall, music, bonfires, illuminations, firing of cannon, and, above all, by sermons in every church of the province; for the heart of early New England always found voice through her pulpits. Before me lies a bundle of these sermons, rescued from sixscore years of dust, scrawled on their t.i.tle-pages with names of owners dead long ago, worm-eaten, dingy, stained with the damps of time, and uttering in quaint old letterpress the emotions of a buried and forgotten past.

Triumph, gratulation, hope, breathe in every line, but no ill-will against a fallen enemy. Thomas Foxcroft, pastor of the "Old Church in Boston," preaches from the text, "The Lord hath done great things for us, whereof we are glad."

"Long," he says, "had it been the common opinion, _Delenda est Carthago_, Canada must be conquered, or we could hope for no lasting quiet in these parts; and now, through the good hand of our G.o.d upon us, we see the happy day of its accomplishment.

We behold His Majesty's victorious troops treading upon the high places of the enemy, their last fortress delivered up, and their whole country surrendered to the King of Britain in the person of his general, the intrepid, the serene, the successful Amherst."

The loyal John Mellen, pastor of the Second Church in Lancaster, exclaims, boding nothing of the tempest to come: "Let us fear G.o.d and honor the King, and be peaceable subjects of an easy and happy government. And may the blessing of Heaven be ever upon those enemies of our country that have now submitted to the English Crown, and according to the oath they have taken lead quiet lives in all G.o.dliness and honesty." Then he ventures to predict that America, now thrown open to British colonists, will be peopled in a century and a half with sixty million souls: a prophecy likely to be more than fulfilled.

"G.o.d has given us to sing this day the downfall of New France, the North American Babylon, New England's rival,"

cries Eli Forbes to his congregation of sober farmers and staid matrons at the rustic village of Brookfield. Like many of his flock, he had been to the war, having served two years as chaplain of Ruggles's Ma.s.sachusetts regiment; and something of a martial spirit breathes through his discourse. He pa.s.ses in review the events of each campaign down to their triumphant close.

"Thus G.o.d was our salvation and our strength; yet he who directs the great events of war suffered not our joy to be uninterrupted, for we had to lament the fall of the valiant and good General Wolfe, whose death demands a tear from every British eye, a sigh from every Protestant heart. Is he dead? I recall myself. Such heroes are immortal; he lives on every loyal tongue; he lives in every grateful breast; and charity bids me give him a place among the princes of heaven." Nor does he forget the praises of Amherst, "the renowned general, worthy of that most honorable of all t.i.tles, the Christian hero; for he loves his enemies, and while he subdues them he makes them happy. He transplants British liberty to where till now it was unknown. He acts the General, the Briton, the Conqueror, and the Christian. What fair hopes arise from the peaceful and undisturbed enjoyment of this good land, and the blessing of our gracious G.o.d with it! Methinks I see towns enlarged, settlements increased, and this howling wilderness become a fruitful field which the Lord hath blessed; and, to complete the scene, I see churches rise and flourish in every Christian grace where has been the seat of Satan and Indian idolatry."

Nathaniel Appleton, of Cambridge, hails the dawning of a new era. "Who can tell what great and glorious things G.o.d is about to bring forward in the world, and in this world of America in particular? Oh, may the time come when these deserts, which for ages unknown have been regions of darkness and habitations of cruelty, shall be illuminated with the light of the glorious Gospel, and when this part of the world, which till the later ages was utterly unknown, shall be the glory and joy of the whole earth!"

On the American continent the war was ended, and the British colonists breathed for a s.p.a.ce, as they drifted unwittingly towards a deadlier strife. They had learned hard and useful lessons.

Their mutual jealousies and disputes, the quarrels of their governors and a.s.semblies, the want of any general military organization, and the absence, in most of them, of military habits, joined to narrow views of their own interest, had unfitted them to the last degree for carrying on offensive war. Nor were the British troops sent for their support remarkable in the beginning for good discipline or efficient command. When hostilities broke out, the army of Great Britain was so small as to be hardly worth the name.

A new one had to be created; and thus the inexperienced Shirley and the incompetent Loudon, with the futile Newcastle behind them, had, besides their own incapacity, the disadvantage of raw troops and half-formed officers; while against them stood an enemy who, though weak in numbers, was strong in a centralized military organization, skilful leaders armed with untrammelled and absolute authority, practised soldiers, and a population not only brave, but in good part inured to war.

The nature of the country was another cause that helped to protract the contest. "Geography," says Von Moltke, "is three fourths of military science;" and never was the truth of his words more fully exemplified. Canada was fortified with vast outworks of defence in the savage forests, marshes, and mountains that encompa.s.sed her, where the thoroughfares were streams choked with fallen trees and obstructed by cataracts. Never was the problem of moving troops, enc.u.mbered with baggage and artillery, a more difficult one. The question was less how to fight the enemy than how to get at him. If a few practicable roads had crossed this broad tract of wilderness, the war would have been shortened and its character changed.

From these and other reasons, the numerical superiority of the English was to some extent made unavailing. This superiority, though exaggerated by French writers, was nevertheless immense if estimated by the number of men called to arms; but only a part of these could be employed in offensive operations. The rest garrisoned forts and blockhouses and guarded the far reach of frontier from Nova Scotia to South Carolina, where a wily enemy, silent and secret as fate, choosing their own time and place of attack, and striking unawares at every unguarded spot, compelled thousands of men, scattered at countless points of defence, to keep unceasing watch against a few hundred savage marauders. Full half the levies of the colonies, and many of the regulars, were used in service of this kind.

In actual encounters the advantage of numbers was often with the French, through the comparative ease with which they could concentrate their forces at a given point. Of the ten considerable sieges or battles of the war, five, besides the great bushfight in which the Indians defeated Braddock, were victories for France; and in four of these--Oswego, Fort William Henry, Montmorenci, and Ste.-Foy--the odds were greatly on her side.

Yet in this the most picturesque and dramatic of American wars, there is nothing more noteworthy than the skill with which the French and Canadian leaders used their advantages; the indomitable spirit with which, slighted and abandoned as they were, they grappled with prodigious difficulties, and the courage with which they were seconded by regulars and militia alike.

In spite of occasional lapses, the defence of Canada deserves a tribute of admiration.

Chapter 31

1758-1763

The Peace of Paris

In accordance with the terms of the capitulation of Montreal, the French military officers, with such of the soldiers as could be kept together, as well as all the chief civil officers of the colony, sailed for France in vessels provided by the conquerors.

They were voluntarily followed by the princ.i.p.al members of the Canadian _n.o.blesse_, and by many of the merchants who had no mind to swear allegiance to King George. The peasants and poorer colonists remained at home to begin a new life under a new flag.

Though this exodus of the natural leaders of Canada was in good part deferred till the next year, and though the number of persons to be immediately embarked was reduced by the desertion of many French soldiers who had married Canadian wives, yet the English authorities were sorely perplexed to find vessels enough for the motley crowd of pa.s.sengers. When at last they were all on their way, a succession of furious autumnal storms fell upon them.

The ship that carried Levis barely escaped wreck, and that which bore Vaudreuil and his wife fared little better.[857] Worst of all was the fate of the "Auguste," on board of which was the bold but ruthless partisan, Saint-Luc de la Corne, his brother, his children, and a party of Canadian officers, together with ladies, merchants, and soldiers. A worthy ecclesiastical chronicler paints the unhappy vessel as a floating Babylon, and sees in her fate the stern judgment of Heaven.[858] It is true that New France ran riot in the last years of her existence; but before the "Auguste" was well out of the St. Lawrence she was so tossed and buffeted, so lashed with waves and pelted with rain, that the most alluring forms of sin must have lost their charm, and her inmates pa.s.sed days rather of penance than transgression.

There was a violent storm as the ship entered the Gulf; then a calm, during which she took fire in the cook's galley. The crew and pa.s.sengers subdued the flames after desperate efforts; but their only food thenceforth was dry biscuit. Off the coast of Cape Breton another gale rose. They lost their reckoning and lay tossing blindly amid the tempest.

The exhausted sailors took, in despair, to their hammocks, from which neither commands nor blows could rouse them, while amid shrieks, tears, prayers, and vows to Heaven, the "Auguste" drove towards the sh.o.r.e, struck, and rolled over on her side. La Corne with six others gained the beach; and towards night they saw the ship break asunder, and counted a hundred and fourteen corpses strewn along the sand. Aided by Indians and by English officers, La Corne made his way on snow-shoes up the St. John, and by a miracle of enduring hardihood reached Quebec before the end of winter.[859]

[Footnote 857: _Levis a Belleisle, 27 Nov. 1760_.]

[Footnote 858: Faillon, _Vie de Mademoiselle Le Ber_, 363-370.]

[Footnote 859: _Journal du Voyage de M. Saint-Luc de la Corne_. This is his own narrative.]

The other ships weathered the November gales, and landed their pa.s.sengers on the sh.o.r.es of France, where some of them found a dismal welcome, being seized and thrown into the Bastille. These were Vaudreuil, Bigot, Cadet, Pean, Breard, Varin, Le Mercier, p.e.n.i.sseault, Maurin, Corp.r.o.n, and others accused of the frauds and peculations that had helped to ruin Canada. In the next year they were all put on trial, whether as an act of pure justice or as a device to turn public indignation from the Government. In December, 1761, judges commissioned for the purpose began their sessions at the Chatelet, and a prodigious ma.s.s of evidence was laid before them. Cadet, with brazen effrontery, at first declared himself innocent, but ended with full and unblushing confession. Bigot denied everything till silenced point by point with papers bearing his own signature.

The prisoners defended themselves by accusing each other. Bigot and Vaudreuil brought mutual charges, while all agreed in denouncing Cadet. Vaudreuil, as before mentioned, was acquitted. Bigot was banished from France for life, his property was confiscated, and he was condemned to pay fifteen hundred thousand francs by way of rest.i.tution. Cadet was banished for nine years from Paris and required to refund six millions; while others were sentenced in sums varying from thirty thousand to eight hundred thousand francs, and were ordered to be held in prison till the money was paid. Of twenty-one persons brought to trial ten were condemned, six were acquitted, three received an admonition, and two were dismissed for want of evidence. Thirty-four failed to appear, of whom seven were sentenced in default, and judgment was reserved in the case of the rest.[860] Even those who escaped from justice profited little by their gains, for unless they had turned them betimes into land or other substantial values, they lost them in a discredited paper currency and dishonored bills of exchange.

[Footnote 860: _Jugement rendu souverainement et en dernier Ressort dans l'Affaire du Canada_. Papers at the Chatelet of Paris, cited by Dussieux.]

While on the American continent the last scenes of the war were drawing to their close, the contest raged in Europe with unabated violence. England was in the full career of success; but her great ally, Frederic of Prussia, seemed tottering to his ruin. In the summer of 1758 his glory was at its height.

French, Austrians, and Russians had all fled before him. But the autumn brought reverses; and the Austrian general, Daun, at the head of an overwhelming force, gained over him a partial victory, which his masterly strategy robbed of its fruits. It was but a momentary respite. His kingdom was exhausted by its own triumphs. His best generals were dead, his best soldiers killed or disabled, his resources almost spent, the very chandeliers of his palace melted into coin; and all Europe was in arms against him.

The disciplined valor of the Prussian troops and the supreme leadership of their undespairing King had thus far held the invading hosts at bay; but now the end seemed near. Frederic could not be everywhere at once; and while he stopped one leak the torrent poured in at another.

The Russians advanced again, defeated General Wedell, whom he sent against them, and made a junction with the Austrians.

In August, 1759, he attacked their united force at Kunersdorf, broke their left wing to pieces, took a hundred and eighty cannon, forced their centre to give ground, and after hours of furious fighting was overwhelmed at last. In vain he tried to stop the rout. The bullets killed two horses under him, tore his clothes, and crushed a gold snuff-box in his waistcoat pocket.

"Is there no b---- of a shot that can hit me, then?" he cried in his bitterness, as his aides-de-camp forced him from the field. For a few days he despaired; then rallied to his forlorn task, and with smiles on his lip and anguish at his heart watched, manoeuvred, and fought with cool and stubborn desperation.