Part 8 (1/2)
”The Acadians cowered before their masters, hoping forbearance; willing to take an oath of fealty to England; in their single-mindedness and sincerity, refusing to pledge themselves to bear arms against France. The English were masters of the sea, were undisputed lords of the country, and could exercise clemency without apprehension. Not a whisper gave a warning of their purpose till it was ripe for execution. But it had been 'determined upon' after the ancient device of Oriental despotism, that the French inhabitants of Acadia should be carried away into captivity to other parts of the British dominions. * * France remembered the descendants of her sons in the hour of their affliction, and asked that they might have time to remove from the peninsula with their effects, leaving their lands to the English; but the answer of the British Minister claimed them as useful subjects, and refused them the liberty of transmigration. The inhabitants of Minas and the adjacent country pleaded with the British officers for the rest.i.tution of their boats and their guns, promising fidelity, if they could but retain their liberties, and declaring that not the want of arms, but their conscience, should engage them not to revolt. 'The memorial,' said Lawrence in Council, 'is highly arrogant, insidious and insulting.' The memorialists, at his summons, came submissively to Halifax. 'You want your canoes for carrying provisions to the enemy,' said he to them, though he knew no enemy was left in their vicinity. 'Guns are no part of your goods,' he continued, 'as by the laws of England all Roman Catholics are restrained from having arms, and are subject to penalties if arms are found in their houses. It is not the language of British subjects to talk of terms with the Crown, or capitulate about their fidelity and allegiance.
What excuse can you make for your presumption in treating this government with such indignity as to expound to them the nature of fidelity? Manifest your obedience by immediately taking the oaths of allegiance in the common form before the Council.' The deputies replied that they would do as the generality of the inhabitants should determine; and they merely entreated leave to return home and consult the body of their people. The next day, the unhappy men, foreseeing the sorrows that menaced them, offered to swear allegiance unconditionally.”
But it was now too late. The savage purpose had been formed. That the cruelty might have no excuse, it happened that while the scheme was under discussion letters arrived leaving no doubt that all the sh.o.r.es of the Bay of Fundy were in the possession of the British. It only remained to be fixed how the exportation should be effected:--
”To hunt them into the net was impracticable; artifice was therefore resorted to. By a general proclamation, on one and the same day, the scarcely conscious victims, 'both old men and young men, as well as all the lads of ten years of age,'
were peremptorily ordered to a.s.semble at their respective posts. On the appointed 5th of September, they obeyed. At Grand Pre, for example, 418 unarmed men came together. They were marched into the church, and its avenues were closed, when Winslow, the American commander, placed himself in their centre, and spoke:--'You are convened together to manifest to you His Majesty's final resolution to the French inhabitants of this his province. Your lands, and tenements, cattle of all kinds, and live stock of all sorts, are forfeited to the crown, and you yourselves are to be removed from this his province. I am, through his Majesty's goodness, directed to allow you liberty to carry off your money and household goods, as many as you can, without discommoding the vessels you go in.' And he then declared them the King's prisoners. Their wives and families shared their lot; their sons, 527 in number, their daughters, 576; in the whole, women and babes and old men and children all included, 1,923 souls. The blow was sudden; they had left home but for the morning, and they never were to return.
Their cattle were to stay unfed in the stalls, their fires to die out on their hearths. They had for that first day even no food for themselves or their children, and were compelled to beg for bread. The 10th of September was the day for the embarkation of a part of the exiles. They were drawn up six deep, and the young men, 161 in number, were ordered to march first on board the vessel. They could leave their farms and cottages, the shady rocks on which they had reclined, their herds and their garners; but nature yearned within them, and they would not be separated from their parents. Yet of what avail was the frenzied despair of the unarmed youth? They had not one weapon; the bayonet drove them to obey; and they marched slowly and heavily from the chapel to the sh.o.r.e, between women and children, who kneeling, prayed for blessings on their heads, they themselves weeping, and praying, and singing hymns. The seniors went next; the wives and children must wait till other transport vessels arrived. The delay had its horrors.
The wretched people left behind were kept together near the sea, without proper food or raiment, or shelter, till other s.h.i.+ps came to take them away; and December with its appalling cold had struck the s.h.i.+vering, half-clad, broken-hearted sufferers before the last of them were removed. 'The embarkation of the inhabitants goes on but slowly,' wrote Monckton, from Fort c.u.mberland, near which he had burned three hamlets, 'the most part of the wives of the men we have prisoners are gone off with their children, in hopes I would not send off their husbands without them.'
Their hope was vain. Near Annapolis, a hundred heads of families fled to the woods, and a party was detached on the hunt to bring them in. 'Our soldiers hate them,' wrote an officer on this occasion, 'and if they can but find a pretext to kill them, they will.' Did a prisoner seek to escape, he was shot down by the sentinel. Yet some fled to Quebec; more than 3,000 had withdrawn to Miramichi and the region south of the Ristigouche; some found rest on the banks of the St. John's and its branches; some found a lair in their native forests; some were charitably sheltered from the English in the wigwams of the savages. But 7,000 of these banished people were driven on board s.h.i.+ps, and scattered among the English colonies, from New Hamps.h.i.+re to Georgia alone; 1,020 to South Carolina alone. They were cast ash.o.r.e without resources; hating the poor-house as a shelter for their offspring, and abhorring the thought of selling themselves as laborers. Households, too, were separated; the colonial newspapers contained advertis.e.m.e.nts of members of families seeking their companions, of sons anxious to reach and relieve their parents, of mothers mourning for their children. The wanderers sighed for their native country; but to prevent their return, their villages, from Annapolis to the isthmus, were laid waste. Their old homes were but ruins. In the district of Minas, for instance, 250 of their houses, and more than as many barns, were consumed. The live stock which belonged to them, consisting of great numbers of horned cattle, hogs, sheep, and horses, were seized as spoils and disposed of by the English officials. A beautiful and fertile tract of country was reduced to a solitude.
There was none left round the ashes of the cottages of the Acadians but the faithful watch-dog, vainly seeking the hands that fed him. Thickets of forest-trees choked their orchards; the ocean broke over their neglected dikes, and desolated their meadows.”
Nor were the woes of this ill-treated people ended:
”Relentless misfortune pursued the exiles whereever they fled. Those sent to Georgia, drawn by a love for the spot where they were born as strong as that of the captive Jews, who wept by the side of the rivers of Babylon for their own temple and land, escaped to sea in boats, and went coasting from harbor to harbor; but when they had reached New England, just as they would have set sail for their native fields, they were stopped by orders from Nova Scotia. Those who dwelt on the St. John's were torn once more from their new homes. When Canada surrendered, hatred with its worst venom pursued the 1,500 who remained south of the Ristigouche. Once more those who dwelt in Pennsylvania presented a humble pet.i.tion to the Earl of Loudoun, then the British Commander in-Chief in America; and the cold-hearted peer, offended that the prayer was made in French, seized their five princ.i.p.al men, who in their own land had been persons of dignity and substance, and s.h.i.+pped them to England, with the request that they might be kept from ever again becoming troublesome by being consigned to service as common sailors on board s.h.i.+ps of war.”
And so it was throughout:--”We have been true,” said they in one of their pet.i.tions, ”to our religion, and true to ourselves; yet nature appears to consider us only as the objects of public vengeance.”--”I know not,” writes Mr. Bancroft, ”if the annals of the human race keep the records of wounds so wantonly inflicted, so bitter and so perennial as fell upon the French inhabitants of Acadia.”
American history has at least one element of peculiar character. The voyage of the Pilgrim Fathers--the settlement of the Virginia cavaliers--the foundation of Pennsylvania,--though all events of profound moral interest, as well as productive of fine pictorial effects, are not without parallels more or less close in the varied tale of ancient and modern colonization. But that which is distinctive and peculiar in the story of American civilization is, its struggle against the Red Men. Settlers, it is true, have often found themselves in strange company. In Africa the Greek colonizer elbowed the swarthy Ethiop. In South America the Spaniard stood beside the Peruvian and the Carib. Dutchmen have encountered the Malay and the Dyak. For two centuries English settlers have had to deal with the uncivilized races of the East and West--from the Bushmen of the Cape to the savages of New Zealand. But none of these races present the same attractive features as the brethren of the Iroquois and the Mohicans. About these latter there are points of romantic and chivalric interest. Though not free from the vices of the savage, they often exhibit virtues which might shame the European. There is something of dignity in their aspect and bearing.
They are seldom without a natural and original poetic sense,--and their language has a wild Ossianic music. They are bold in metaphor and apt in natural ill.u.s.tration. A group of actors on the scene having characteristics so peculiar and so attractive as the Red Skin is invaluable to a historian whose tendency is to see events and note character under their most pictorial aspects.
The part taken by the Indians in that war between the French and English in America which ended in the conquest of Quebec and the expulsion of the Lilies from Canada is narrated at great length by Mr. Bancroft,--and the atrocious nature of the conflict is well brought out. At the commencement of the war, we are allowed a glimpse at a curious war-council:
”'Brothers,' said the Delawares to the Miamis, 'we desire the English and the Six Nations to put their hands upon your heads, and keep the French from hurting you. Stand fast in the chain of friends.h.i.+p with the Government of Virginia.'
'Brothers,' said the Miamis to the English, 'your country is smooth; your hearts are good; the dwellings of your governors are like the spring in its bloom.' 'Brothers,'
they added to the Six Nations, holding aloft a calumet ornamented with feathers, 'the French and their Indians have struck us, yet we kept this pipe unhurt;' and they gave it to the Six Nations, in token of friends.h.i.+p with them and with their allies. A sh.e.l.l and a string of black wampum were given to signify the unity of heart; and that, though it was darkness to the westward, yet towards the sun-rising it was bright and clear. Another string of black wampum announced that the war-chiefs and braves of the Miamis held the hatchet in their hand, ready to strike the French. The widowed Queen of the Piankeshaws sent a belt of black sh.e.l.ls intermixed with white. 'Brothers,' such were her words, 'I am left a poor, lonely woman, with one son, whom I commend to the English, the Six Nations, the Shawnees, and the Delawares, and pray them to take care of him.' The Weas produced a calumet. 'We have had this feathered pipe,' said they, 'from the beginning of the world; so that when it becomes cloudy, we can sweep the clouds away. It is dark in the west, yet we sweep all clouds away towards the sun-rising, and leave a clear and serene sky.' Thus, on the alluvial lands of Western Ohio, began the contest that was to scatter death broadcast through the world. All the speeches were delivered again to the Deputies of the Nations, represented at Logstown, that they might be correctly repeated to the head Council at Onondaga. An express messenger from the Miamis hurried across the mountains, bearing to the shrewd and able Dinwiddie, the Lieutenant-Governor of Virginia, a belt of wampum, the scalp of a French Indian, and a feathered pipe, with letters from the dwellers on the Maumee and on the Wabash. 'Our good brothers of Virginia,' said the former, 'we must look upon ourselves as lost, if our brothers, the English, do not stand by us and give us arms.' 'Eldest brother,' pleaded the Picts and Windaws, 'this string of wampum a.s.sures you, that the French King's servants have spilled our blood, and eaten the flesh of three of our men. Look upon us and pity us, for we are in great distress. Our chiefs have taken up the hatchet of war. We have killed and eaten ten of the French and two of their negroes. We are your brothers; and do not think this is from our mouth only; it is from our very hearts.' Thus they solicited protection and revenge.”
The Duke of Newcastle was unequal to the task of driving the soldiers of France from Canada or from the valley of the Mississippi. The North and South were both in the hands of France. The route of the Ohio and the Mississippi had been discovered by adventurers and missionaries of that nation; and a few years of quiet possession of the territory would have allowed French statesmen to consolidate their power in those regions, and to draw a strong cordon around the entire group of English colonies on the Atlantic sea-board. But Pitt's genius was brought to bear at a critical moment on the arrangement of this great question--and he conceived the project of breaking the Mississippi line and attacking the enemy in their strongholds on the St. Lawrence. Three expeditions were fitted out. Amherst and Wolfe were ordered to join the fleet under Boscawen, destined to act against Louisburgh--Forbes was sent to the Ohio Valley--Abercrombie was intrusted with the command against Crown Point and Ticonderoga, though Lord Howe was sent out with the last named as the real soul of the enterprise. Mr. Bancroft writes:
”None of the officers won favor like Lord Howe and Wolfe.
Both were still young. To high rank and great connections Howe added manliness, humanity, capacity to discern merit, and judgment to employ it. As he reached America, he entered on the simple austerity of forest warfare. James Wolfe, but thirty-one years old, had already been eighteen years in the army; was at Dettingen and Fontenoy, and had won laurels at Laffeldt. Merit made him at two-and-twenty a lieutenant-colonel, and his active genius improved the discipline of his battalion. He was at once authoritative and humane, severe, yet indefatigably kind; modest, but aspiring and secretly conscious of ability. The brave soldier dutifully loved and obeyed his widowed mother, and his gentle nature saw visions of happiness in scenes of domestic love, even while he kindled at the prospect of glory, as 'gunpowder at fire.'”
On the 28th of May the expedition reached Halifax.--
”For six days after the British forces on their way from Halifax to Louisburgh, had entered Chapeau Rouge Bay, the surf, under a high wind, made the rugged sh.o.r.e inaccessible, and gave the French time to strengthen and extend their lines. The sun still dashed heavily, when, before daybreak, on the 8th of June, the troops, under cover of a random fire from the frigates, attempted disembarking. Wolfe, the third brigadier, who led the first division, would not allow a gun to be fired, cheered on the rowers, and, on coming to shoal water, jumped into the sea; and, in spite of the surf, which broke several boats and upset more, in spite of the well-directed fire of the French, in spite of their breastwork and rampart of felled trees, whose interwoven branches made one continued wall of green, the English landed, took the batteries, drove in the French, and on the same day invested Louisburgh. At that landing, none was more gallant than young Richard Montgomery; just one-and-twenty; Irish by birth; an humble officer in Wolfe's brigade; but also a servant of humanity, enlisted in its corps of immortals. The sagacity of Wolfe honored him with well-deserved praise, and promotion to a lieutenancy. On the morning of the 12th, an hour before dawn, Wolfe, with light infantry and Highlanders, took by surprise the light-house battery on the north-east side of the entrance to the harbor; the smaller works were successively carried. On the 23d, the English battery began to play on that of the French on the island near the centre of the mouth of the harbor.
Science, sufficient force, union among the officers, heroism, pervading mariners and soldiers, carried forward the siege, during which Barre by his conduct secured the approbation of Amherst and the confirmed friends.h.i.+p of Wolfe. Of the French s.h.i.+ps in the port, three were burned on the 21st of July; in the night following the 25th, the boats of the squadron, with small loss, set fire to the Prudent, a seventy-four, and carried off the Bienfaisant. Boscawen was prepared to send six English s.h.i.+ps into the harbor. But the town of Louisburgh was already a heap of ruins; for eight days, the French officers and men had had no safe place for rest; of fifty-two cannon opposed to the English batteries forty were disabled. The French had but five s.h.i.+ps of the line and four frigates. It was time for the Chevalier de Drucour to capitulate. The garrison became prisoners of war, and, with the sailors and marines, in all 5,637, were sent to England. On the 27th of July, the English took possession of Louisburgh, and, as a consequence, of Cape Breton and Prince Edward's Island. Thus fell the power of France on our eastern coast. Halifax being the English naval station, Louisburgh was deserted. The harbor still offers shelter from storms; the coast repels the surge: but a few hovels only mark the spot which so much treasure was lavished to fortify, so much heroism to conquer. Wolfe, whose heart was in England, returned home with the love and esteem of the army. His country was full of exultation; the trophies were deposited with pomp in the cathedral of St. Paul's; the churches gave thanks; Boscawen, himself a member of parliament, was honored by a unanimous tribute from the House of Commons. New England, too, triumphed; for the praises awarded to Amherst and Wolfe recalled the heroism of her own sons.”
This success inspired Pitt to still greater efforts. He resolved to annex the ”boundless north,” as it was then called, to the British empire in America; and early in the spring Wolfe again went out,--this time, to conquer Quebec and find a soldier's grave. Many of his companions in arms were then and afterwards famous men:--Jervis, afterwards the renowned Earl St. Vincent, James Cook, the navigator, George Townshend, Barre, and Colonel Howe.
”On the 26th of June, the whole armament arrived, without the least accident, off the Isle of Orleans, on which, the next day, they disembarked. A little south of west the cliff of Quebec was seen distinctly, seemingly impregnable, rising precipitously in the midst of one of the grandest scenes in nature. To protect this guardian citadel of New France, Montcalm had of regular troops no more than six wasted battalions; of Indian warriors few appeared, the wary savages preferring the security of neutrals; the Canadian militia gave him the superiority in numbers; but he put his chief confidence in the natural strength of the country.
Above Quebec, the high promontory on which the upper town is built expands into an elevated plain, having towards the river the steepest acclivities. For nine miles or more above the city, as far as Cape Rouge, every landing-place was intrenched and protected. The river St. Charles, after meandering through a fertile valley, sweeps the rocky base of the town, which it covers by expanding into sedgy marshes. Nine miles below Quebec, the impetuous Montmorenci, after fretting itself a whirlpool route, and leaping for miles down the steps of a rocky bed, rushes with velocity towards the ledge, over which, falling two hundred and fifty feet, it pours its fleecy cataract into the chasm. As Wolfe disembarked on the Isle of Orleans, what scene could be more imposing? On his left lay at anchor the fleet with the numerous transports; the tents of his army stretched across the island; the intrenched troops of France, having their centre at the village of Beanport, extended from the Montmorenci to the St. Charles; the city of Quebec, garrisoned by five battalions, bounded the horizon. At midnight on the 28th, the short darkness was lighted up by a fleet of fire-s.h.i.+ps, that, after a furious storm of wind, came down with the tide in the proper direction. But the British sailors grappled with them and towed them free of the s.h.i.+pping. The river was Wolfe's; the men-of-war made it so; and, being master of the deep water, he also had the superiority on the south-sh.o.r.e of the St. Lawrence. In the night of the 29th, Monckton, with four battalions, having crossed the south channel, occupied Point Levi; and where the mighty current, which below the town expands as a bay, narrows to a deep stream of but a mile in width, batteries of mortars and cannon were constructed. The citizens of Quebec, foreseeing the ruin of their houses, volunteered to pa.s.s over the river and destroy the works; but, at the trial, their courage failed them, and they retreated. The English, by the discharge of red-hot b.a.l.l.s and sh.e.l.ls, set on fire fifty houses in a night, demolished the lower town, and injured the upper. But the citadel was beyond their reach, and every avenue from the river to the cliff was too strongly intrenched for an a.s.sault.”
The summer was going rapidly, and as yet no real progress had been made.
Wolfe was eager for action,--and he pursued his researches into the nature of the formidable position with extraordinary eagerness:--
”He saw that the eastern bank of the Montmorenci was higher than the ground occupied by Montcalm, and, on the 9th of July, he crossed the north channel and encamped there; but the armies and their chiefs were still divided by the river precipitating itself down its rocky way in impa.s.sable eddies and rapids. Three miles in the interior, a ford was found; but the opposite bank was steep, woody, and well intrenched.
Not a spot on the line of the Montmorenci for miles into the interior, nor on the St. Lawrence to Quebec, was left unprotected by the vigilance of the inaccessible Montcalm.