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Horace Walpole calls the year 1759 the ' great year
the ' wonderful year because of the victories which
it brought to his country. France and Britain were
in the midst of the terrible Seven Years' War, which
involved the loss of nearly a million lives. The
outcome of the war was still uncertain. During the
summer the English people had been uneasy. France
was known to be making great preparations to invade
Britain, and many a good citizen went to bed each
night in dread lest the roar of the cannon of the
invader might be in his ears before morning. Wolfe
had just led a great expedition to Quebec, but
already there were gloomy forebodings that his
attempt would fail. News travelled slowly in those
days, and it was not until the early autumn that
good tidings arrived. Word then came that at the end
of July General Amherst had captured Ticonderoga,
the fort which commanded the entrance to Canada by
way of Lake Champlain, and that at the very same
time Sir William Johnson had captured Fort Niagara,
the key to the whole commerce of the region beyond
Lake Ontario. England was exultant. Horace Walpole
wrote on September 13, 1759, the date, though he did
not yet know it, of another and greater victory in
Canada : ' We have taken more places and ships in a
week than would have set up such pedant nations as
Greece and Rome to all futurity. If we did but call
Sir William Johnson "Gulielmus Johnsonus Niagaricus"
and Amherst "Galfridus Amhersta Ticonderogicus" we
should be quoted a thousand years hence as the
patterns of valour, virtue, and disinterest^ ness ;
for posterity always ascribes all manner of modesty
and self-denial to those that take the most pains to
perpetuate their own glory.'
The
exultation caused by the fall of Ticonderoga and
Niagara soon gave way to new fears. Word came from
Wolfe that Amherst had failed to join him before
Quebec and that he had little hope of capturing the
fortress. This news was made public, and, of course,
caused gloom and depression. Almost immediately
after this came, however, the tidings that Wolfe had
won a great victory and that Quebec had fallen.
Walpole expresses the pride and joy of the time. He
now jested at the fears of invasion and at the
weakness of the French navy: 'Can the lords of
America' he asked, 'be afraid of half a dozen
canoes?' The bells, he said, were being worn thin
with ringing for victories, and one was forced to
ask every morning what success there was for fear of
missing one. ' I don't know a word of news less than
the Conquest of America,' he writes to his friend
Montague, on October 21: 'you shall hear from me
again if we take Mexico or China before Christmas.'
The English, he added, were like Alexander: they had
no more worlds left to conquer. He affected to be
bored by meeting so many people who had won military
honours; it is 'very fatiguing: all the world is
made knights or generals '. There was nothing in all
history, he thought, to equal the victories of this
year.
The
simple-minded public, which received this joyful
news, now assured itself that the struggle was over
and that Canada had fallen. It dismissed America
from its thoughts. The newspapers of the time make
hardly any reference to the later campaign in that
part of the world. Only when, seven months after the
September day of Wolfe's victory, the British met
with bloody defeat on the very ground where he had
triumphed, did the nation realize that France still
fought for the mastery of Canada. the deuce was
thinking of Quebec?' wrote Walpole in June 1760;
'America was like a book one has read and done with
. . . but here we are on a sudden reading our book
backwards.' He mourns over the 'rueful slaughter' of
brave men and concludes sadly that 'the year 1760 is
not the year 1759'. During the year 1760, however,
British arms were to achieve the final conquests in
both India and Canada which the victories of 1759
had left still uncertain. In Canada, with which
alone we are here concerned, the struggle carried on
between September 1759 and September 1760 lays bare
the condition to which France's great colony had
been brought. We find in a survey of those last days
of New France much that helps to explain the later
history of the French race in Canada. We therefore
take up the story from the moment on September 13,
1759, when Wolfe's musketry had shattered the French
lines on the Plains of Abraham and when the fate of
Quebec was still doubtful.
The
game of war has never been played in surroundings
more striking than those at Quebec. The mighty
current of the St. Lawrence, contracted here to a
breadth of about a thousand yards, washes the base
of the high cliffs on which the stronghold stands
and then broadens into a great basin four or five
miles wide. On the east side of the basin the
beautiful island of Orleans divides the river into
two channels, a narrow and intricate one at the
north, a broad one at the south. The deep blue of
the silent, forest-clad mountains, the clear air,
the rushing tide of the spacious river, are all
elements in a scene of entrancing beauty. Quebec
stands at the east end of a plateau seven or eight
miles long and in places two or three miles wide.
Though the fortifications were insignificant, Nature
had made the place almost impregnable. At the north
the River St. Charles flows into the St. Lawrence
near the base of the high ground and constitutes a
natural and difficult ditch for the assailant to
cross. On the east and the south side the plateau
falls in steep cliffs to the strand of the St.
Lawrence. On the west side the drop to the valley of
the Cap Rouge River is not less sheer.
Wolfe's problem had been to reach Quebec on this
plateau, and he had been almost baffled. Soon after
his arrival he had taken possession of the Levis
shore and, across the mile of river, had battered
many houses in Quebec to fragments with his cannon.
Still the cliffs remained impregnable. To attack
Quebec from the front promised destruction. On the
French left flank, along the seven miles of the
Beauport shore, lay entrenched the army of Montcalm,
and here successful attack was impossible, as one
attempt, repulsed with heavy loss, had made clear.
At the other side of Quebec attack seemed equally
hopeless. The high cliffs at Cap Rouge could be
easily defended, and Colonel de Bougainville, one of
the best officers in the French army, had been sent
there with some two thousand men to watch every
movement of the British and to concentrate his force
rapidly at any threatened point. In the end Wolfe
had achieved what seemed impossible. By a secret
movement at night he had landed an army at the base
of the cliffs, had climbed the steep path at the
Anse au Foulon, had overpowered the guard which had
been left criminally weak, and at eight o'clock on
September 13 had drawn up his thin red line on the
Plains of Abraham a mile from the walls of Quebec.
Here Montcalm had attacked him promptly on the same
morning and the battle had been fought which meant,
in the long run, the ruin of French power in
America.
This
momentous battle of September 13 was especially
fatal to the leaders on both sides. Not only was
Wolfe killed ; Monckton, his next in command, was
shot through the body and disabled. On the French
side, to the loss of the Commander-in-Chief,
Montcalm, was added that of the
officer next in rank, the Brigadier Senezergues.
.Montcalm realized on his death-bed that in his
defeat was involved the loss of Quebec. One of the
last acts of the dying leader was to write to
Brigadier Townshend, for the time the British
commander, to acknowledge that the surrender of the
fortress must follow. 'Obliged to cede Quebec to
your arms,' Montcalm wrote, 'I have the honour to
entreat your Excellency's kind offices for our sick
and wounded.' Before the next day broke he was dead.
The
Governor of Canada, the Marquis de Vaudreuil, in
whom resided final military and civil authority, was
with Montcalm before Quebec. Though vain and
boastful, he was yet well-meaning and devoted to the
interests of Canada, his native country. To be a
Canadian was in his view to be a member of a
superior race ; a single Canadian, he once wrote to
the Home Government, was a match for from three to
ten Englishmen. Vaudreuil did not lack a certain
bombastic courage, but he inspired no confidence and
was not the man to lead in a crisis. Montcalm's
impulsive, but probably necessary, march to meet
Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham had come so early on
September 13 that the brief battle, little more than
a skirmish, but big with great issues, had been lost
and won before eleven o'clock in the morning.
Vaudreuil had followed the rapid march of Montcalm
from the camp at Beauport. Before he could reach the
field, so fatal to France, crowds of fugitives from
the broken army revealed the ill fortune of the day.
At first Vaudreuil would not believe that all was
lost, and he talked wildly of rallying his Canadians
and of marching up the steep Cote Ste Genevieve to
dispute with the victors their possession of the
Plains of Abraham. Some of the Canadians whom he
sent forward apparently did useful work in checking
the British pursuit of the beaten army. But, for the
time, nothing more could be done. Cadet, one of the
corrupt ring who were making vast fortunes by
robbing New France, besought the Governor not to
risk a second battle. Convinced at length of the
folly of this plan, Vaudreuil took up his position
in an extensive redoubt on the left bank of the St.
Charles River. It was reached from the Quebec side
by a bridge of boats which could be easily destroyed
should the British advance so far. The route from
Quebec was protected in some degree by the cannon of
the town. A boom of logs had been stretched across
the mouth of the St. Charles and the hulks of two
dismantled French frigates lay there in shallow
water. They were armed with cannon which swept the
approaches by water to the bridge.
To
this bridge now came crowding the disorganized
French soldiers, unable to take refuge in Quebec,
because the gates were closed, and anxious to have
the St. Charles River between them and the
victorious foe. The fragments as they arrived
Vaudreuil sent to their old positions at Beauport.
The Chevalier Johnstone, a Scots Jacobite serving
with the French and a close friend of Montcalm,
tells us how he made his way at this time to the
redoubt. He found there at two o'clock in the
afternoon, four hours after the defeat of Montcalm,
'an incredible confusion and disorder; a general
panic and consternation; M. de Vaudreuil listening
to every one, and always to the advice of him who
spoke to him last; not an order given with
reflection or coolness.' Two captains of the
regiment of Beam were shouting out that the redoubt
would be carried in an instant, that they should all
be put to the sword, and that the only thing to do
was to surrender the whole colony at once. Others
were protesting against this course. An alarm was
raised that the ships of the British fleet were
edging in towards the shore. During the panic some
one gave instructions to cut away the bridge of
boats. At the time a considerable part of the French
army was still crowding the road leading from Quebec
and the Royal Roussillon regiment was already on
that side of the bridge waiting to cross. Johnstone
says that he and a colonial officer stopped the
fatuous work of destroying the bridge and drove away
the soldiers who had their axes raised to hew
through the beams. When a council of war met in a
house near the redoubt, Johnstone ventured to enter
the room where seven officers sat with Vaudreuil,
the Governor, and Bigot, the Intendant. The
Intendant was at the table, pen in hand. Johnstone
heard nothing, for Vaudreuil promptly ordered him to
be gone as he had no business there. He went off, he
says, in deep dejection at the loss of Montcalm, and
very tired, but not too tired to stir up some
officers whom he met to protest against surrender.
Various courses were open to the French. They might
stay where they were, rally their strength, and
attack the foe before he could entrench himself or
force Quebec to surrender. A second possibility was
to retire beyond the Jacques Cartier River, thirty
miles above Quebec, where the army would be in touch
with the French ships which had ascended the St.
Lawrence to escape from the British fleet. Here they
might await the arrival of Montcalm's successor, the
Chevalier de Levis, absent at Montreal. Last of all,
the French might accept counsels of despair and end
the struggle by surrendering the colony. Before the
Council met, Vaudreuil had sent a hurried request to
Montcalm for advice and had received a message
naming these three alternatives. Undoubtedly some of
the French officers of the regular army favoured the
surrender of the entire colony and talked openly
before their men in this sense. Vaudreuil declares
that the Chevalier de Montreuil, who had had a long
experience in Canada and was the senior officer
present, insisted upon retreat to Jacques Cartier.
This may well be : Montreuil was an officer who
lacked insight and capacity. It seems that only the
civilians present were for immediate fighting. The
Intendant Bigot warned the officers that, with
winter coming on, it was folly to think of a retreat
that involved the abandonment of the tents and other
needed supplies at Beauport, things which could not
be replaced. He declares that he and Vaudreuil stood
out for attacking the British forthwith, but that
the officers were unanimous against this course.
In
truth the soldiers had no confidence in Vaudreuil as
a leader. During the absence of Levis the young
Colonel de Bougainville ranked next to Vaudreuil,
but he was posted at Cap Rouge and no commander was
present who could speak with authority. It is true
that Bougainville was only a few miles away and that
his opinion might have been secured without much
delay. Some of the officers present were, however,
jealous of this brilliant young friend of Montcalm.
Most of them, while unwilling to fight, were also
unwilling to surrender. Their great fear was lest
the British should cut off the possibility of
retreat up the river towards Montreal. To prevent
this it was quickly decided that immediately after
nightfall the French army should withdraw to Jacques
Cartier. After the council Vaudreuil was full of
bustling activity. He must have kept his secretaries
busy. At half-past four in the afternoon he sent a
dispatch to Levis at Montreal urging him to join the
defeated army at once. To M. de Ramezay, in command
at Quebec, he sent elaborate instructions to
surrender the town rather than to await its capture
by assault, and enclosed a draft of the terms to
ask. At six o'clock, with, as he said, grief in his
heart at the decision to retreat, he sent to the
stricken Montcalm in Quebec a report of what he had
done, courteous regrets at Montcalm's misfortune,
and hopes for his recovery. Thus, even in a moment
of supreme excitement, Vaudreuil forgot none of the
proprieties. But he hated Montcalm; he was glad now
to be rid of him; and soon, to draw blame away from
himself, he wrote a letter to the French Minister of
War full of charges blackening the memory of the
dead leader: ' If I had been sole master, Quebec
would still have been in the King's hands.' About
ten o'clock on the night of the battle, when
Vaudreuil had already fled, Montcalm sent a message
approving of what he had done and of the terms
proposed for the surrender of Quebec. Both leaders
thus agreed that the fortress must yield.
Vaudreuil and his officers now lost their heads in
their deadly fear lest the British should occupy the
lines of retreat towards Montreal and divide the
French forces in Canada into two parts. The
situation of the French was by no means hopeless.
Between the Beauport camp and the victorious British
lay a considerable river, fordable only at one place
and at low tide ; a little west of the Plains of
Abraham, at Cap Rouge, was Bougainville with between
two and three thousand men in an excellent position
to attack the enemy in the rear; in Quebec itself
were as many more men capable of bearing arms and of
aiding the troops from Beauport to attack the
British front. The French could, indeed, rally
something like 10,000 men. But confidence in
Vaudreuil as a soldier was impossible; no commanding
personality was there to weld together the scattered
fragments of this discouraged host; and, lacking
direction, it fled.
Soon
after nightfall the retreat from Beauport began.
Orders were given that the army should break into
three divisions and that each division should retire
as silently as possible so that the British might
not become aware of the retreat. There was grave
mismanagement somewhere. Poulariez, the officer
commanding the eastern wing of the army at
Montmorency, was left without instructions. After
long waiting, he sent to Vaudreuil's head-quarters,
only to find that the Governor had run away and that
he himself was left to follow as best he could. The
French marched by way of Charlesbourg and Old
Lorette. It unfortunately happened that brandy was
served out to the soldiers, and this heped to ^pmoy
any semblance of order in the retreat. 'This was
not', says the Chevalier Johnstone, 'a retreat, but
a flight the most abominable; a rout even a thousand
times worse than that of the morning on the Heights
of Abraham, and with so much confusion and disorder
that, if the English had known it, it would not have
required more than three hundred men to cut in
pieces our whole army. Except the Royal Regiment of
Roussillon, which M. Poulariez kept ... in order, I
did not see thirty men of any one regiment together;
all the troops mixed and interspersed and every one
running as fast as his legs could carry him as if
the enemy were pursuing them close at their heels.'
Daine, another French observer, says: 'No rout was
ever more complete than that of our army. Posterity
will hardly believe it.' Not only the Canadian
militia but even some of the regulars were so
panic-stricken that, after calling for refreshments
at the houses of the farmers, they rushed off, too
fearful of pursuit to partake of what was brought.
French Canadian peasants told the British at a later
time that in the retreat Vaudreuil and the officers
took no thought for their men, but went off in such
haste that they ' flew through the air like a cannon
ball'. Though a great part of the army was without
food, Vaudreuil took good care that needed supplies
and excellent cooks should accompany him on the
retreat. Apart from a little ammunition and some
tents and camp kettles, the French abandoned their
cannon, munitions of war, provisions, and baggage.
Since there were few, if any, wagons, not even a
barrel of powder could be taken. Officers and men
alike lost their personal effects.
At
daybreak on the morning of the 14th, Bougainville,
now at Lorette, was first made aware of the retreat
of the French. By that time the whole host had swept
past, panic-stricken and convinced that it would be
safe only beyond the river at Jacques Cartier. That
evening, after a long and weary march, the fugitives
reached Pointe aux Trembles and there rested. By
daybreak of the 15th they were again in motion. When
they reached the Jacques Cartier River they found
the bridge broken down. The army was intent on
putting the river between itself and pursuit. It
managed somehow to cross and that night the weary
men were lodged in the barns on the right bank. They
were now thirty miles from Quebec and, for the time
at least, safe.
Meanwhile, neither in Quebec nor in the British army
had the retreat become known. Before leaving, the
French had broken down the bridge across the St.
Charles so that the British might not cross easily
to the Beauport side. The tents at Beauport remained
standing and the British thought that they were
still occupied. The British were themselves busy in
making sure of their own defences before Quebec. Two
days after the battle a French officer visited the
abandoned camp, found it undisturbed, and, to the
alarm of the British, fired off some cannon that
stood ready charged. Ramezay, shut up in Quebec,
sadly needed the provisions left at Beauport and
could easily have secured them; but he was not
notified of the French retreat, and in the end the
provisions were carried off by the starving
habitants and by the Indians.
The
French hopes now rested in the successor of
Montcalm, the Chevalier de Levis. This leader of a
lost cause was a member of a French family so
ancient that it claimed descent from the tribe of
Levi and cousinship with the Virgin Mary. There was
a picture in the Chateau of Levis in which a member
of the family was represented as addressing the
Virgin as his cousin. The Chevalier was himself
destined to win new lustre for the family by the
high position to which in later years he attained as
Duke and Marshall of Franco. Montcalm had said of
him that, while a man of routine and not very able,
he was practical, sensible, and alert, with an
admirable capacity to think for himself when thrown
on his own resources. During many days while the
French had steadily baffled Wolfe's plans, Montcalm
and Levis had been constantly together, except when
the tireless energy of Levis had worn out Montcalm.
Later, with great regret, Montcalm had been obliged
to part with Levis and to send him to secure the
approaches to Montreal from the south and the west.
Thus Levis had not fought in the memorable battle of
September 13. But the evil tidings reached him
quickly. At six o'clock on the morning of the 15th a
courier arrived at Montreal with the news of the
defeat. At nine o'clock Levis was on his way to
Quebec. He received on the road a letter from the
Chevalier de Montreuil, an old companion in arms,
begging him to use all diligence and saying that he
alone could save the situation. In spite of a storm
and of bad roads he made rapid progress. When he
arrived at Jacques Cartier on September 17 there was
joy in the French camp. It was, however, with bitter
rage that Levis saw on all sides the evidence of
incompetence. Panic had spread everywhere. Officers
and men were alike disorganized. 'I never saw
anything like it,' Levis wrote, ' absolutely
everything— tents, kettles, and all their equipment,
they had left behind at Beauport.' Many Canadians
had deserted and, in disgust, the Indian allies of
the French had already set out on the return journey
to their villages.
The
task of Levis was assuredly a grave one. He strongly
condemned the retreat to Jacques Cartier. But Quebec
still held out, and, at all hazards, he said, its
loss must be prevented ; rather than surrender the
fortress to the English, the defenders should
destroy it and thus leave the enemy no stronghold in
which to pass the winter. The first task of the
defeated army was thus to rescue Quebec, and Levis
gave orders at once that the march back should
begin. Vaudreuil had always been on friendly terms
with Levis and now he was all acquiescence. 'As soon
as the Chevalier de Levis arrived,' he wrote on
October 5 to the French Minister of War, 'I
conferred with him and was charmed to see him
disposed to lead the army back towards Quebec.'
Bougainville still kept a guard at Cap Rouge and Old
Lorette; he had not joined the flight of Vaudreuil
and now stood between him and pursuit. Levis and
Vaudreuil quickly sent messages to Quebec cancelling
the instructions to surrender. Bigot, all energy in
carrying out a plan of which he thoroughly approved,
undertook to get supplies of food into Quebec. One
plan was to send them down by way of the river. He
had done this often before, in spite of the presence
of the British fleet, and he could do it again.
Moreover a route by land was still open. The French
had a depot of provisions at Charlesbourg, and,
since the British had not yet occupied the camp at
Beauport, the path to Quebec was clear. As a matter
of fact, provisions reached Quebec on the evening of
the 17th by both these routes.
All
this time, however, the British were showing great
vigour. Townshend, now in command, had made it his
first duty to strengthen his own camp, and by five
o'clock on the day of the battle he had
entrenchments five feet high on the Plains of
Abraham. Late that night he occupied the General
Hospital on the banks of the St. Charles River,
crowded now with from twelve hundred to fifteen
hundred of the wounded of both sides. On the 14th
both sides agreed to a short truce for the burial of
the dead. The season was late; the fleet must soon
depart or be caught in the ice; and the British well
understood that not a moment was to be lost in
taking Quebec. 'The utmost diligence', says Admiral
Holmes, 'was used and the greatest fatigue
undergone, with Spirit and Cheerfulness by every
Body, to bring the Campaign soon to an End.' Two
thousand men were already busy making fascines and
gabions to protect an approach to the walls. By the
evening of the 13th, many of the trees on the Plains
of Abraham likely to protect an assailant had been
cut down, and the houses near the British camp had
all been fortified. On that night the British slept
within a thousand yards of the walls of Quebec. In a
few days most of the underwood within a mile of
their flank and rear had been cleared away. For a
day or two they were aided by fine weather. They
used the steep road from the strand of the river up
to the heights at the Anse au Foulon, henceforth to
be called Wolfe's Cove, for drawing artillery and
ammunition to the Plains of Abraham. This toilsome
task was carried on with much energy. Sailors as
well as soldiers showed great alacrity ; in this
work on land the word of command was given as on
board ship: 'It was really diverting', says an
eyewitness who saw the men toiling up the hill, 'to
hear the midshipmen cry out "Starboard, starboard,
my brave — boys "
Tragedy meanwhile hovered over Quebec. Montcalm died
early on the morning of the 14th, content, as he
said, to leave the military command in the hands of
Levis, whose talents and capacity he had always
valued. Vaudreuil had agreed that Quebec must
surrender ; so also had Montcalm ; and its defenders
could claim the warrant of both leaders for such an
act. Naturally they now had deep searching of heart.
For a day or two Ramezay kept up the appearance of a
resolution to hold the place. His shot and shell
greatly annoyed the British on the Plains of Abraham
and forced them on the 15th to change their line of
encampment ; even after this, British batteries on
the south side of the river, more than a mile away,
were disturbed by Ramezay's ceaseless fire, as were
also the boats carrying munitions of war from the
Point of Levy to Wolfe's Cove. There was, however,
no heart in the defence of Quebec. Disorder and riot
soon broke out. Those within the town had not
realized at first that now they were left to their
own devices. Across the basin they could see the
white tents of the French at Beauport, and since, as
they supposed, the French army was still there,
rescue seemed not impossible. Disillusion came with
the news of the headlong flight to Jacques Cartier
and not unnaturally it produced a panic.
The
Chevalier de Ramezay, who commanded at Quebec, was a
Canadian by birth and had spent his whole life in
the service of the colony. He was the fifteenth
child of Claude de Ramezay, who had been Governor of
Montreal. Three of his brothers had perished in the
service of the French King. As early as in 1720
Ramezay had attained the rank of ensign. Later he
had seen almost every variety of service in the
country. Since he was only a colonial officer he was
rather despised by the officers from France. One of
these, Joannes, town-major of Quebec, declares, for
instance, that, as Ramezay had only known rough
backwoods fighting, he had no conception of the
proper way to defend a fortress. The Governor,
Vaudreuil, a fellow Canadian, did not like Ramezay
and had mortified him by putting another officer,
the Chevalier de Bernetz, in command of the Lower
Town. The courage of Ramezay is not, however, to be
doubted. Now, face to face with a difficult problem,
he required both courage and wisdom. Even though
Montcalm and Vaudreuil had admitted that the
fortress must surrender and had outlined the terms
to be demanded, it was for Ramezay himself to decide
when the moment to yield should come. As Montcalm
lay dying Ramezay went to him for orders. The
stricken leader was, however, resolved to leave such
decisions to those who should survive to see the
future. His time was short, he said, and he had
business to attend to of more moment than the
affairs of a ruined colony.
As, a
few months later, the British themselves found, to
defend Quebec against assault would not be easy. The
French Government had always shrunk from the great
cost of proper fortifications, and the strength of
Quebec was due less to what man had done than to
natural position. It had been hitherto immune from
assault only because of the difficulty of scaling
the steep heights rising from the river, but now
these heights had been gained by a triumphant foe.
Montcalm himself had called ridiculous the defences
on the landward side before which the British were
entrenched. The wall, not yet really finished, which
confronted the British encamped on the Plains of
Abraham, was commanded by high ground only a few
hundred yards away. It was better fitted for defence
against muskets and bows and arrows than against
artillery. For fear of shaking the rest of the
fortifications, the French engineers had not used
the necessary explosives to make excavations in the
rock. There was thus no ditch. There were no
outworks. The walls, if bombarded by the powerful
batteries which the British were erecting, could
probably not resist a cannonade for two hours. To
meet attack from this side the defenders had not a
single battery capable of action.
The
town itself was a ruin. The Lower Town, curving for
a mile or two along the strand of the river and
inhabited by the traders and poorer classes, was a
dismal sight. No less than five hundred and
thirty-five houses had been burned, hardly a dozen
remained standing, and some of the narrow streets
were impassable owing to the debris caused by the
British bombardment. The part of the city known as
the Upper Town, where dwelt the Governor, the Bishop
and other ecclesiastics, and the leading citizens,
had fared somewhat better. Its principal buildings
were, however, in ruins. The Governor's
residence—the Castle of St. Louis the Bishop's
palace the Cathedral, Marchalls' College, had all
been in range of cannon on the opposite shore, and,
of the first three, at least, the British batteries
had left little but the walls. In the Seminary, a
college for the training of priests, standing near
the Cathedral, only the kitchen was left, and here
the Cure of Quebec was living as best he could.
Wolfe's guns had dismounted some batteries in the
Upper Town and these were now filled with debris.
Even walls six feet thick had not withstood his
furious bombardment.
After
the defeat of the 13th of September Ramezay had
asked that a French engineer should be sent into
Quebec to help him make the best of its shattered
defences; but the disorganized leaders had not
heeded the request. During the siege no stores of
provisions had been kept in Quebec, because of the
danger from the British fire. Supplies had been
brought daily from the camp at Beauport and from the
surrounding country. No doubt there was food in
private houses, but most of it was now kept
concealed by the owners. With supplies for only a
few days in sight, Quebec seemed on the verge of
starvation. There were a good many mouths to feed.
Among the civilians were two thousand seven hundred
women and children and a host of clerks, workmen,
and domestic servants. The French, too, must feed
their many invalids at the General Hospital. In
addition to these were the forces in the town,
numbering perhaps two thousand six hundred. About
eleven hundred and fifty were regular soldiers; the
rest were untrained militia—peasants, mechanics, and
merchants.
As
early as on the morning of the 14th the citizens of
Quebec held a meeting to consider their position.
Headed by the Mayor, they then entreated Ramezay to
surrender. They had been prepared, they said, to
face the loss of their homes and their property.
During the prolonged bombardment they had not
murmured. Now, however, the British had won a signal
victory. Quebec, face to face with famine, could no
longer be defended. Under the rules of war, if
Ramezay should wait till it was taken by assault,
not only men but helpless women and children would
be put to the sword. Some there were who opposed
these views and declared that the citizens of Quebec
seemed more anxious to save their goods than their
country. But the wish to surrender was not confined
to unarmed citizens. Many of the Canadian militia,
an amateur soldiery, were fearful that, if found
fighting, they would be treated with the rigour
meted out, under the rules of war, to civilians in
arms; or that, if treated as soldiers, they would,
upon surrender, be transported to France. They now
declared that they would no longer serve and that
they looked upon themselves as civilians only. When
the drums beat for muster they refused to take their
places, much to the wrath of the officers of the
regular service. They abandoned even the exposed
posts of which they had charge. A French officer,
enraged, proposed to fall upon them sword in hand;
but menaces, promises, even the experiment of
serving out brandy, failed to inspire them with
courage. They deserted in bands. Flight by way of
Beauport was still possible. Within a day or two
some nine hundred had gone off, a few to the
British, but most of them to find refuge with the
inhabitants of the surrounding country. The spirit
of the men in the regular force was nearly as bad
and it was soon apparent that even the officers were
almost unanimous in desiring surrender.
What
was Ramezay to do? On the 15th of September he
called a council of war. By this time Vaudreuil's
flight to Jacques Cartier had become known to all.
At the council of war Ramezay read the instructions
in regard to surrender which he had received from
Vaudreuil ; he made also a statement as to the
famine imminent in the town. Then he asked each
officer, with these naked facts before him, to give
in writings independent view of what should be done.
Fifteen officers were present and we have still the
record, solemnly made, of each man's opinion. For
continuing the fight one officer alone stood out.
The Captain of the town artillery, M. Jacquot de
Fiedmont, who had elsewhere shown conspicuous
courage, wrote his advice ' to put the garrison on
still shorter rations and push the defence to the
last extremity '. All the others, however, advised
an opposite course, and the council of war decided
that the best thing to be hoped for was an
honourable surrender, and that, should there be
delay, even this might not be possible. The hapless
commander, with whom rested the final word, may well
have been perplexed as to his duty. Ill health did
not make his burden lighter. On the 15th he asked
permission from the British to send the women and
children past their lines, but the request met with
a stern refusal.1 His foe would not allow him to be
relieved even of this difficulty.
Scarcity of provisions caused the most serious
problem. Since the French tents were still standing
at Beauport, Ramezay sent thither, hoping to find
provisions ; but, as we have seen, the inhabitants
and the Indians had already made help from this
quarter impossible. What portion of the abandoned
supplies they could not carry off they had wasted,
and Ramezay's messengers found strewn about in the
wildest disorder flour and other stores that might
have saved Quebec. Just at this time came one gleam
of hope. News arrived from the defeated French army.
A letter from Vaudreuil, which must have been
written during his wild retreat, reached Ramezay
with the tidings that he was sending into Quebec
both provisions and troops.
The
hapless commander in Quebec had to ask himself if
such a promise could be fulfilled. He said nothing
about the letter but, in order to get more light,
sent out two officers, Joannes, of the French
regular service, and Magnan, of the Canadian
militia, to learn for themselves what the prospect
of succour by the panic-stricken French army really
was, and, if possible, to see Vaudreuil in person.
By this time, however, the Governor was far away.
Joannes pledged himself to go out and return in a
single night, that of the 15th. He went some nine or
ten miles towards Jacques Cartier; and then sent
forward an urgent letter to Vaudreuil to say that
there was a bad state of feeling in Quebec and that,
if no word was received from him by ten o'clock on
the morning of the 17th, negotiations for surrender
would be opened. What Joannes saw and heard, perhaps
from Bougainville at Lorette, led him to believe
that rescue was by no means impossible, and he
returned to Quebec convinced that the defenders
should hold out. In this he was supported by the
brave Fiedmont. But Ramezay was of stuff less stern.
Levis had not yet arrived at Jacques Cartier and a
distressing account of the lack of discipline and
order in the French army had reached Ramezay. Help
from such a force was, he thought, hardly to be
expected. By this time, indeed, he had decided to
give up the fight. Vaudreuil charges that Ramezay
reached this decision without having informed
himself of the conditions in Quebec, and declares
that there were cattle and horses in the town which
would have prevented famine.
It
must be said that Ramezay had no good reason to
believe that the demoralized French army could now
render effective help. It is, of course, easy to
suggest what he might have done, but from one urgent
fact he could not escape ;— about him were women and
children now in panic fear and clamorous for food.
Vaudreuil had instructed him not to hold out until
the British should assault Quebec. Now, because the
foe had worked with fiery energy, this assault was
imminent. By the morning of the 17th the British had
a hundred and eighteen guns mounted in their
batteries and were almost ready to open fire upon
the feeble walls. Just at this time, too, the
line-of-battle ships shifted to a position nearer
the town and prepared for a bombardment. A renewed
panic followed in Quebec. Ramezay himself describes
his situation :
'It
was no longer possible for me to hold any post
securely. The batteries had been abandoned and the
weak points were no longer guarded. I had not
officers enough to carry out my orders ; I could no
longer count upon the militia officers since the
request [to surrender] which they had made. My
situation soon became only too clear. On the 17th .
. . there was an alarm, and I learned that an
English force was coming in small boats to land in
the lower town. At the same time we saw all the
war-ships get under sail to come nearer the shore. A
strong English column advanced [by land] towards the
Palace gate where the entrance was unguarded. I
ordered a general alarm and every man to take his
place. While I was in the square with several
officers, an officer whom I had sent to carry out my
orders returned to tell me that none of the militia
would fight. At the same moment the militia officers
came to me. They said that they were in no temper to
sustain an assault; that they well knew I had orders
to the contrary; and that they intended to replace
their weapons in the armoury, so that, when the
enemy entered Quebec, the militia should be found
without arms and should not be put to the sword.
Henceforth, they said, they should regard
themselves, not as soldiers but as civilians. If the
army had not abandoned them they would have
continued to show the same devotion that they had
shown throughout the siege ; now, however, with no
further resources left, they did not feel obliged to
face a useless massacre ; such a sacrifice would not
delay by one hour the taking of the town. All this
time the enemy drew nearer and my situation was
cruel. I took the opinion of several officers near
me, and, in particular, that of my second in
command, the Chevalier de Bernetz. By their advice I
raised the flag, according to the orders I had
received, and sent to the enemy's camp M. de Joannes,
aide-major, with the terms of capitulation which M.
de Vaudreuil had sent to me.'
Not
only the militia had fallen into a state of abject
terror. ' To my great regret' says the French
officer, Bernetz, 'I saw this same unhappy spirit
working in the hearts of the regular soldiers. I
shed tears of grief over it.' He mourns, indeed,
that he had not been killed earlier in the campaign,
instead of living to see this final humiliation.
At
three o'clock on the afternoon of the 17th, in
pouring rain, Joannes, despite his vigorous protests
against surrender, was sent to the British general
to ask for terms. Townshend and Admiral Saunders
took counsel together, made moderate demands, and
gave Ramezay the four hours from seven to eleven
o'clock of that night for consideration. Joannes had
secured as long a time as possible, in order to
increase the chance of rescue, and now he and
Fiedmont, on their knees even, entreated Ramezay not
to yield. They begged him, if he could do no more,
to evacuate the Lower Town and concentrate his force
in the Upper Town, where he would be almost safe
from the fire of the British ships. It was too late;
Ramezay's spirit was gone. His forces were utterly
discouraged. Wholesale desertion was taking place
and starvation seemed imminent. The heavy rain added
to the discouragement, for it would retard any
rescuing movement. Ramezay reasoned, moreover, that
even if the British were in Quebec, they would still
be as vulnerable there as in their fortified post on
the Plains of Abraham. In fact, when seven months
later the French attacked Quebec, the British
preferred to fight on the open plain.
A
little before eleven o'clock at night, Joannes was
sent out again to the British camp with a final
acceptance of the terms offered, terms, it should be
noted, better than those which Vaudreuil had told
Ramezay to accept. Each side was to take a hostage
from the other in pledge of good faith. While this
arrangement was being carried out a singular thing
happened. Ere the dejected Joannes had left Quebec
to return to the British head-quarters with the
final surrender, help reached Quebec. A force of
fifty mounted men, under Captain de la Rochebeaucour,
sent by Bougainville, entered the town from the side
towards Beauport, and brought with them some sacks
of provisions and the news that other supplies were
coming by water and that rescue was near. When
Ramezay had signed the capitulation he had not been
aware of La Rochebeaucour's arrival. This brave
officer now went to Ramezay and, like others, begged
on his knees for delay. Whether, had Ramezay known
sooner of this succour, he would have drawn back,
and whether within the next few days France and
England would again have grappled in deadly strife
on the Plains of Abraham, who can say? The help had
come too late. Ramezay had already signed the
capitulation and would not draw back. La
Rochebeaucour rode off, carrying with him some of
the provisions that he had brought for the relief of
Quebec and bitterly angry at the conduct of Ramezay.
There
is no doubt that, had the surrender been delayed
even another day, the British would have been in a
dangerous situation. Levis was marching back to
Quebec with an army that trusted him as a leader,
and the British had good reason to be nervous about
their position. They were thus eager to enter the
town. The weather, which had been delightful for a
day or two after the battle, was now cold and wet.
Rain had made the roads so bad that only with
difficulty could the troops drag up further
artillery to the Plains of Abraham. It was desirable
that the British should occupy Quebec before it was
further injured by bombardment, for they might have
to find winter quarters there. Accordingly they were
ready to grant easy terms. On one thing only were
they unbending : the garrison in Quebec should not
serve longer in Canada. When Ramezay asked leave to
join the French army under Levis, Townshend's answer
was that all but the militia must be embarked at
once for France. The British agreed that the
garrison, bearing arms, with drums beating and
matches lighted, should march to the ships with the
honours of war; they agreed further to respect
private property, to leave the inhabitants of Quebec
undisturbed in their houses, and to permit the free
exercise of the Roman Catholic faith, until this
question should be finally determined by a treaty of
peace.
These
arrangements were completed on the 18th. Then the
grenadiers, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Murray,
took possession of the gates of the Upper Town. At
the same time a naval force, under Captain,
afterwards Sir Hugh, Palliser, occupied the Lower
Town. On the Grand Parade, with all the pomp of war,
Townshend himself received the keys of the fortress
from its former masters and the British flag was
raised over Quebec. The French garrison which
marched out made a brave showing and left only a
ruined city to their foes. Since the day of the
battle the numbers in the French ranks had declined
; now rather less than two thousand men, of whom
more than nine hundred were militia, surrendered.
All but the militia were to be taken at once to
France.
The
fatal intelligence of the surrender of Quebec
reached Bougainville when he was less than two miles
away. Levis heard it near Cap Rouge, less than ten
miles from Quebec, when his army had already covered
the greater part of the return march. 'The news,' he
writes, 'which rendered useless all that I had done,
affected me infinitely. It is unheard of that a
place should surrender which had been neither
attacked nor invested.' Bourlamaque, in command at
Isle aux Noix, wrote that the blow was
incomprehensible, terrible. The fall of the fortress
meant, indeed, as time was to show, the loss to
France of an empire.
The;
surrender of Quebec caused in the French army the
natural and stern resolve that before spring came
they would recapture the fortress. To this
everything else must give way. Levis would have
wished to close in at once on Quebec and to harass
the victors without delay. For this task, however,
his resources were slender. He had no artillery and
but little ammunition. Even food he could get only
with great difficulty. Wolfe's cruel policy of
desolating the parishes was now justified ; the
country about Quebec could not support an attacking
army. Levis soon resolved that for the moment a
siege was impossible. To be safe from attack, he
decided to return to Jacques Cartier, whither the
French had fled so precipitately on the night of the
13th. With the river of that name as his frontal
defence against a further British advance, he could
make plans in some security.
Once
more, therefore, in bad weather and over roads heavy
with recent rains, the discouraged and defeated
French army dragged itself away from Quebec. By the
24th of September the second retreat was completed
and many of the French soldiers, turning their
swords into pruning-hooks, were helping the Canadian
farmers to reap the scanty harvest. A high bluff on
the right bank of the Jacques Cartier River, where
it joins the St. Lawrence, furnished a site little
inferior to that of Quebec for a fort. The French
leaders were quickly busy with plans. By September
26 engineers had begun to lay out new works. In the
end, the works proved so strong that, as a matter of
fact, Jacques Cartier was the last point on the St.
Lawrence where the French flag was lowered.
For
the time, however, little more could be done. The
foraging parties could secure little, and famine was
imminent. When, on October 4, some Canadians brought
in twenty cattle which they had secured in the
neighbourhood of Quebec, the rejoicing was great
over what proved, after all, but a mouthful for so
considerable an army. Levis sent to the French
frigates still lying in the river some distance
above Quebec to ask for food, but his boats returned
empty. By October 15 the army at Jacques Cartier had
in sight provisions for only nine days. With such
scant resources it was impossible to keep a great
force at that point. The French quickly found that
they could not hold together their Indian allies,
unless they could supply them with food. Since this
was impossible, the Indians soon scattered to their
own villages. For the moment at least Quebec was
safe in the possession of its new owners.
With
the fall of Quebec the outlook for France in North
America was indeed gloomy. She had made magnificent
claims to hold the vast region stretching from the
mouth of the St. Lawrence to the mouth of the
Mississippi. From the early days of discovery the
sons of France, more imaginative than their English
rivals, had been haunted by the mystery of the
interior. While the English had rarely ventured far
from the sea-coast, the French pioneers had pressed
inland. Champlain had reached the Great Lakes ; La
Salle had linked the St. Lawrence with the
Mississippi in his dream of a far-reaching French
Empire ; La Verendrye had gone still farther afield
and had penetrated to the foothills of the Rocky
Mountains. Fur-traders had followed the explorers.
To this day, in regions far remote, regions which
have passed to another race, French geographical
names and some lingering remnants of French speech
often furnish a reminder of the far-reaching
energies of the explorers and traders of New France.
To assert her claim and to protect the richest
fur-trade in the world, France had built forts at
the chief points of vantage. At the forks of the
Ohio, commanding the commerce of that river, the
fleurs-de-lis had waved over Fort Duquesne. At
Niagara, commanding the passage from Lake Ontario to
Lake Erie, stood another French stronghold. Fort
Frontenac commanded the point where Lake Ontario
narrows into the River St. Lawrence. These were the
chief forts, but at many other places, even in the
far west on the Red River and beyond it, the energy
of France was represented by posts, where her
traders gathered the harvest of furs from half a
continent.
"Now,
however, this fabric which France had reared was
tumbling down. One by one the British had mastered
the vantage points. The summer of 1758 had been
disastrous to the outposts of France. With the fall
of Louisbourg in July she was stripped of power east
of Quebec. At the end of August in that year the
British had captured Fort Frontenac at the head of
the St. Lawrence and cut off communications between
Quebec and the West. A little later, in bleak
November, they had struck a vigorous blow on the
Ohio, captured Fort Duquesne, and were now rearing
in its place Fort Pitt, named after the great
minister. Niagara had still held out defiantly, but
in the summer of 1759 it too had fallen. Thus,
except at a few scattered points where surrender
must come whenever the British should demand it, the
whole power of France in the interior had fallen.
After the disaster at Quebec, only the central
region about Montreal remained to her.
This
place was now the point of danger. Vaudreuil, though
vain and bombastic, was not a coward, and he soon
resolved to take up his head-quarters in Montreal.
Accordingly, on September 28, he issued a pompous
ordinance placing Levis in command 011 the lower
river, and then set out from Jacques Cartier. On the
first of October he arrived in Montreal, in company
with the Bishop of Quebec, and was soon planning
with feverish energy to meet the expected attack on
this last foothold of France in Canada.
It
seemed possible that Montreal might be won by the
British befpre winter set in. It was menaced from
the west and from the south. At Oswego, near the
point where
the
St. Licence River flows out of Lake Ontario, General
Gage had gathered an army to descend the river to
Montreal. His path was not clear, for the French had
a fort called La Galette at La Presentation, some
seventy miles down the river from Oswego, at a point
commanding the St. Lawrence and near the Mohawk
Valley, leading to the heart of the colony of New
York. The fort was a centre from which the Indians
in alliance with the French had made numerous forays
and caused much trouble. Its defences were, however,
weak and Gage could easily have overpowered it. It
was not this problem but another which chiefly
troubled him. If he descended to La Galette, could
he winter his force there, in case it was impossible
to advance to Montreal? If Gage had known what was
happening at Quebec, he would probably have made a
start for Montreal. Communications in this campaign
were, however, extremely difficult. It is actually
true that the news of the fall of Quebec reached
England, three thousand miles away, on October 16
and did not reach General Amherst, who was on Lake
Champlain, less than two hundred miles away, until
October 18. Gage heard nothing of it for a long
time, and in the end, ' to my great concern,' says
his superior officer, Amherst, decided not to make
any advance towards Montreal during that season. In
slow deliberation he was more than a rival of his
chief.
Amherst himself was approaching Montreal from the
south along the war-worn route by Lake George and
Lake Champlain. It had been hitherto a line of
advance fatal to British arms. In 1757 Montcalm had
captured a British army at Fort William Henry at the
foot of Lake George. In the next year at Ticonderoga
Montcalm had again inflicted a bloody defeat on the
British trying to advance by this route into Canada.
Now Amherst himself, the Commander-in-Chief, was
using it for his advance. He had set out from Fort
William Henry at the south end of the lake on July
21, 1759. The French did not try to check his
progress up Lake George and Lake Champlain.
Ticonderoga, where the British had been beaten with
such heavy loss in the previous year, the French
blew up at Amherst's advance ; Crown Point, on Lake
Champlain, they also abandoned. All this had been
done by August 1, and it was the news of these
successes which had led to an outburst of rejoicing
in England and to the humorous suggestion by Horace
Walpole that Amherst should be given the title of
Ticonderogious. But, having done so much in the face
of a fleeing enemy, Amherst paused to make sure of
his ground. At Crown Point he found what he thought
the best situation in America for a fort, and he
decided to build there a massive structure which
might defy the enemies of Britain for all time. Soon
he had three thousand men engaged in the task. He
worked with untiring energy and all that he did was
good. But during these weeks after August 1 the
crisis of Wolfe's attack on Quebec had come, and the
appearance of Amherst on the St. Lawrence would have
been of inestimable service to the despairing
British leader. Help did not appear. What Wolfe
achieved, he achieved alone; Amherst gave him no
aid.
Without doubt Amherst was an efficient officer. '
There does not exist', wrote General Yorke in this
year, of Amherst, 'a worthier nor a more modest man
than that nor a plainer or better soldier.'
But, he added, 'Wolfe has more fire,' and this
difference really explains the slow policy of
Amherst. He would run no risks. Even at the cost of
much time, he must be secure in every step he took.
To himself the reasons for not advancing at once
from Crown Point were all-sufficient. His scouts
reported that the French had three or four armed
vessels on the lake. To take forward his army and
its equipment by land was impossible because of bad
roads and of the danger of ambush in the forest ;
and he could not take it by w^r in small boats
unless he was able to drive off the armed ships of
the French. He paused, accordingly, to build the
necessary vessels and a floating battery.
The
military task before him was formidable. Montcalm
had sent one of his best officers, Bourlamaque, to
guard this route. With Bourlamaque were now about
thirty-five hundred men in a strong position. Lake
Champlain discharges its waters into the Richelieu
River. A few miles after leaving Lake Champlain this
river is divided by an island which the French
called Isle aux Noix. On this island they had built
a strong fort. Its cannon swept the approaches by
way of the river. To reach the St. Lawrence Amherst
must pass this fort. If he attacked it from the
water, the French cannon could demolish his small
vessels. If he advanced to the attack with a land
force, he would find the island fort protected on
all sides by the river.
Amherst's problem had been made more difficult by
lack of communication with the British before
Quebec. Hardly any news trickled through the French
lines. As early as August 7 Amherst had sent a
letter to Wolfe by way of Nova Scotia and the
Kennebec River. Since it would be long in arriving,
he had made next day a more direct attempt. He sent
Captain Kennedy, a kinsman of General Murray, with
some companions to go through the forest to the St.
Lawrence by way of the Indian settlements on the
south shore. If Kennedy encountered Indians he was
to promise them a liberal reward for bringing him to
General Wolfe. Kennedy encountered the Indians of
St. Francis, but, instead of honouring his flag of
truce and acting as friendly guides, they treated
him and his party as spies, put them in irons, and
carried them to the French. The first news that
reached Amherst came on September 10 in the form of
a letter from Montcalm saying that they were his
prisoners.
The
conduct of the St. Francis Indians to Captain
Kennedy brought to a head the resolve of the British
to punish these savages. There was not only this but
an older score to settle with them. For well nigh a
century they had been a terror to the people of New
England and had carried on murderous warfare against
the helpless frontier settlements. Amherst now
authorized a party of two hundred and twenty picked
men, called in frontier warfare ' Rangers ', under a
well-known leader, Major Rogers, to go by forest
pathways to the head-quarters of the savages and
inflict on them summary punishment.
The
expedition set out on September 13, the very day of
Wolfe's great victory. 'Take your revenge' wrote
Amherst, 'but don't forget that though these
villains have dastardly and promiscuously murdered
the women and children of all ages, it is my orders
that no women or children are killed or hurt.' We
have Rogers's own account of what he did. In some
way the intrepid ranger managed to get past the
French armed vessels patrolling Lake Champlain. He
hid his boats on the shores of its northern inlet,
Mississquoi Bay, left two friendly Indians on watch,
and then began a long and painful march through the
forest. His goal, St. Francis, was distant a march
of many days. When Rogers had been out two days,
friendly Indians warned him that a strong party of
the enemy had found his boats and was pursuing him.
Bourlamaque, at Isle aux Noix, had in fact discerned
the purpose of the expedition and had sent a warning
to the priest at St. Francis—a warning apparently
not heeded. Rogers pushed forward, hoping to
outdistance his pursuers, who moved leisurely, since
they thought they should catch him on his return
journey. On the tenth day of a toilsome progress
through wet spruce bog, where the water was usually
about a foot deep and where the men could be dry at
night only by swinging themselves in hammocks made
of the branches of trees, he readied the River St.
Francis about fifteen miles above the village. Since
the village lay on the opposite bank of the river,
it was necessary to cross. At the ford the water was
five feet deep and the current very swift. Rogers
put the tallest of his men up stream and, by holding
on to each other, they crossed over with the loss of
only a few muskets. The force had now good dry
ground on which to march and it crept towards the
village. When three miles distant, Rogers halted his
party and climbed a tree, to take his bearings.
Then, in the early evening, he and Lieutenant Turner
and Ensign Avery went farther forward to reconnoitre.
They
found the Indians engaged in a dance. Rogers drew
his force nearer to the village until, at three
o'clock in the morning, he was distant but five
hundred yards. By this time the noisy festivities
were over and the quiet of night and of sleep had
settled down upon the savages. At half an hour
before sunrise the signal for attack was given. The
savages had no time to take arms in defence and an
appalling massacre followed. With the exception of
three houses, where was stored corn which Rogers
reserved for the use of his party, all the houses
were soon on fire. Many Indians who had concealed
themselves in the cellars and lofts of their houses
were burned to death. Others who tried to get away
in canoes were either shot or died by drowning.
Among those who thus perished was the priest. By
seven o'clock in the morning the grim work was
completed. Some two hundred Indians had been killed,
including, it should seem, a good many women, in
spite of the instructions of Amherst to the
contrary. Rogers himself had lost but one man, an
Indian from New England. The church, a fine one for
the time, was burned and a rich collection of
manuscripts relating to Indian life was destroyed.
One ornament, a silver statue, was carried off by
the victors to New England.
There
is no doubt that the massacre was looked upon by the
British as a righteous judgement. These savages,
Rogers says, were ' notoriously attached to the
French and had for nearly a century past harassed
the frontiers of New England, killing people of all
ages and sexes in a most barbarous manner . . . and
to my own knowledge in six years' time, carried into
captivity and killed on the before-mentioned
frontiers, four hundred persons. We found in the
town hanging on poles over their doors, &c., about
six hundred scalps, mostly English.' Rogers set out
for home by a circuitous route. He met with terrible
hardships. Some of his men starved to death, others
found on their route corpses of their own countrymen
scalped and horribly mangled by the enemy, and were
obliged to eat this ghastly food. Ten, it is said,
were taken and carried back to St. Francis, where
they were tortured to death by furious Indian women,
whose lives they had probably spared. For some time
haggard and worn men continued to drift into the
various French and English posts half dead with
exhaustion. Rogers himself returned in the end to
Crown Point and made his triumphant report to
Amherst.
The
savage exploit of Rogers was only side-play. It was
still Amherst's intention to be master of Montreal
before winter. He was now confronted by a
discouraged enemy. The news of the death of Montcalm
had reached Bourlamaque at Isle aux Noix on
September 18. He managed to keep it from the English
and for some days he tried to keep it even from his
own men. But rumours of what had happened began to
be whispered about. When, a little later, to the
news of the death of Montcalm was added that of the
fall of Quebec, there was general consternation.
Bourlamaque tried to restore confidence by saying
that the British, few in number and with winter
coming on, were themselves in an untenable position
and could take no further aggressive action. He says
that the return of Vaudreuil to Montreal was a new
discouragement to the French army; we are left to
conjecture whether it was the impending presence of
the volatile governor or the fact that he was
obliged to fall back from Quebec which caused this
feeling.
Bourlamaque's health was bad; he was worn out by the
fatigues of the campaign of the summer and had been
ill for months with fever, asthma, and other
ailments. Now he hardly undressed to go to bed, and
an old wound kept him from sound sleep. During each
night he made four or five rounds of inspection. The
tone of his letters is naturally despondent. But he
writes : 'We shall fight to our utmost, come what
can.' The Canadians were now discontented and
unwilling to serve. When enrolled, they deserted by
hundreds; a force of five hundred men which Levis
sent to Bourlamaque numbered on its arrival only one
hundred and twenty. The Indians were no better. They
had little taste for the operations of regular war
and went off to their homes regardless of the fate
impending over New France. Bourlamaque says that
even the offer of a keg of brandy would not tempt
them to do scouting work for him.
The
autumn proved stormy and the gales stirred up heavy
seas on Lake Champlain. The season was at its worst
when, at last, Amherst began his advance in force.
On October 13, he embarked his army in whale-boats
and, defended by a miniature navy consisting of a
brig, a sloop, and a floating battery, well armed,
he advanced down Lake Champlain. The array of about
seventy boats was striking enough to have attracted
attention; yet, owing to what must have been glaring
incompetence, M. de Laubara, the naval officer in
command of the French ships on the lake, was not
aware of the approach of the enemy until his own
retreat by the river to Isle aux Noix was cut off.
In face of the overwhelming superiority of the
English he fled down Mississquoi Bay and, when night
came on, sank two of his vessels, stranded a third,
landed his force, and took to the woods. My party
was without food and, in the end, the men were
reduced to eating their own shoes. The sailors
proved helpless on shore and the refugees would
probably have perished in the wilds had it not been
for some Scottish prisoners whom they had with them.
These men, at home in the forest, led the party
safely to Montreal. The fourth vessel of Laubara's
squadron ultimately reached Isle aux Noix, but the
loss of the ships took from the French any
possibility of action by way of the water.
Had
Amherst now pressed in on Isle aux Noix it would
probably have yielded. His foe was delighted at his
inactivity. 'In spite of my belief,' wrote
Bourlamaque, 'that he risks his head by doing
nothing, I begin to think that he will make no
movement during this campaign.' In fact Amherst had
delayed too long. Gales made the lake no longer
navigable to his whale-boats loaded down with men.
He was forced to land on the west shore, there to
wait for better weather. Just at this time news
reached him of the fall of Quebec. It might well
have furnished an added inducement to press forward.
But he did not see-it in this way. Certain now that
Canada must yield, in any case, he turned back to
Crown Point, in order to spare his men the perils of
a needless campaign. It was a thoughtfulness for
which they were not grateful, for it robbed them of
the glory of the final conquest of Canada. 'I do not
know how he will be able to save his head,'
Bourlamaque wrote to Levis concerning Amherst;
'assuredly he is making a stupid campaign.' Yet he
had done something. The French ships on the lake had
been destroyed or captured and the English could no
longer be kept from pressing in when they liked on
the feeble defences at Isle aux Noix. Active
campaigning was now suspended by the approach of
winter. The best that each army expected to do was
to hold its own during that season and to be ready
for effective work in the early spring. |
