Part 10 (1/2)
[Footnote 182: Entick, _Late War_, I. 118.]
[Footnote 183: _Robinson to Lords of the Admiralty, 30 Sept. 1754.
Ibid., to Board of Ordnance, 10 Oct. 1754. Ibid., Circular Letter to American Governors, 26 Oct. 1754. Instructions to our Trusty and Well-beloved Edward Braddock, 25 Nov. 1754_.]
This movement was no sooner known at Versailles than a counter expedition was prepared on a larger scale. Eighteen s.h.i.+ps of war were fitted for sea at Brest and Rochefort, and the six battalions of La Reine, Bourgogne, Languedoc, Guienne, Artois, and Bearn, three thousand men in all, were ordered on board for Canada. Baron Dieskau, a German veteran who had served under Saxe, was made their general; and with him went the new governor of French America, the Marquis de Vaudreuil, destined to succeed Duquesne, whose health was failing under the fatigues of his office. Admiral Dubois de la Motte commanded the fleet; and lest the English should try to intercept it, another squadron of nine s.h.i.+ps, under Admiral Macnamara, was ordered to accompany it to a certain distance from the coast. There was long and tedious delay.
Doreil, commissary of war, who had embarked with Vaudreuil and Dieskau in the same s.h.i.+p, wrote from the harbor of Brest on the twenty-ninth of April: ”At last I think we are off. We should have been outside by four o'clock this morning, if M. de Macnamara had not been obliged to ask Count Dubois de la Motte to wait till noon to mend some important part of the rigging (I don't know the name of it) which was broken. It is precious time lost, and gives the English the advantage over us of two tides. I talk of these things as a blind man does of colors. What is certain is that Count Dubois de la Motte is very impatient to get away, and that the King's fleet destined for Canada is in very able and zealous hands. It is now half-past two. In half an hour all may be ready, and we may get out of the harbor before night.” He was again disappointed; it was the third of May before the fleet put to sea.[184]
[Footnote 184: _Lettres de Cremille, de Rostaing, et de Doreil au Ministre, Avril 18, 24, 28, 29, 1755. Liste des Vaisseaux de Guerre qui composent l'Escadre armee a Brest, 1755. Journal of M. de Vaudreuil's Voyage to Canada_, in _N.Y. Col. Docs._, X. 297. Pouchot, I. 25.]
During these preparations there was active diplomatic correspondence between the two Courts. Mirepoix demanded why British troops were sent to America. Sir Thomas Robinson answered that there was no intention to disturb the peace or offend any Power whatever; yet the secret orders to Braddock were the reverse of pacific. Robinson asked on his part the purpose of the French armament at Brest and Rochefort; and the answer, like his own, was a protestation that no hostility was meant. At the same time Mirepoix in the name of the King proposed that orders should be given to the American governors on both sides to refrain from all acts of aggression. But while making this proposal the French Court secretly sent orders to Duquesne to attack and destroy Fort Halifax, one of the two forts lately built by s.h.i.+rley on the Kennebec,--a river which, by the admission of the French themselves, belonged to the English. But, in making this attack, the French Governor was expressly enjoined to pretend that he acted without orders.[185] He was also told that, if necessary, he might make use of the Indians to hara.s.s the English.[186] Thus there was good faith on neither part; but it is clear through all the correspondence that the English expected to gain by precipitating an open rupture, and the French by postponing it. Projects of convention were proposed on both sides, but there was no agreement.
The English insisted as a preliminary condition that the French should evacuate all the western country as far as the Wabash. Then ensued a long discussion of their respective claims, as futile as the former discussion at Paris on Acadian boundaries.[187]
[Footnote 185: _Machault a Duquesne, 17 Fev. 1755_. The letter of Mirepoix proposing mutual abstinence from aggression, is dated on the 6th of the same month. The French dreaded Fort Halifax, because they thought it prepared the way for an advance on Quebec by way of the Chaudiere.]
[Footnote 186: _Ibid._]
[Footnote 187: This correspondence is printed among the _Pieces justificatives_ of the _Precis des Faits_.]
The British Court knew perfectly the naval and military preparations of the French. Lord Albemarle had died at Paris in December; but the secretary of the emba.s.sy, De Cosne, sent to London full information concerning the fleet at Brest and Rochefort.[188] On this, Admiral Boscawen, with eleven s.h.i.+ps of the line and one frigate, was ordered to intercept it; and as his force was plainly too small, Admiral Melbourne, with seven more s.h.i.+ps, was sent, nearly three weeks after, to join him if he could. Their orders were similar,--to capture or destroy any French vessels bound to North America.[189] Boscawen, who got to sea before La Motte, stationed himself near the southern coast of Newfoundland to cut him off; but most of the French squadron eluded him, and safely made their way, some to Louisbourg, and the others to Quebec.
Thus the English expedition was, in the main, a failure. Three of the French s.h.i.+ps, however, lost in fog and rain, had become separated from the rest, and lay rolling and tossing on an angry sea not far from Cape Race. One of them was the ”Alcide,” commanded by Captain Hocquart; the others were the ”Lis” and the ”Dauphin.” The wind fell; but the fogs continued at intervals; till, on the afternoon of the seventh of June, the weather having cleared, the watchman on the maintop saw the distant ocean studded with s.h.i.+ps. It was the fleet of Boscawen. Hocquart, who gives the account, says that in the morning they were within three leagues of him, crowding all sail in pursuit. Towards eleven o'clock one of them, the ”Dunkirk,” was abreast of him to windward, within short speaking distance; and the s.h.i.+p of the Admiral, displaying a red flag as a signal to engage, was not far off. Hocquart called out: ”Are we at peace, or war?” He declares that Howe, captain of the ”Dunkirk,” replied in French: ”La paix, la paix.” Hocquart then asked the name of the British admiral; and on hearing it said: ”I know him; he is a friend of mine.” Being asked his own name in return, he had scarcely uttered it when the batteries of the ”Dunkirk” belched flame and smoke, and volleyed a tempest of iron upon the crowded decks of the ”Alcide.” She returned the fire, but was forced at length to strike her colors.
Rostaing, second in command of the troops, was killed; and six other officers, with about eighty men, were killed or wounded.[190] At the same time the ”Lis” was attacked and overpowered. She had on board eight companies of the battalions of La Reine and Languedoc. The third French s.h.i.+p, the ”Dauphin,” escaped under cover of a rising fog.[191]
[Footnote 188: Particulars in Entick, I. 121.]
[Footnote 189: _Secret Instructions for our Trusty and Well-beloved Edward Boscawen, Esq., Vice-Admiral of the Blue, 16 April, 1755. Most secret Instructions for Francis Holbourne, Esq., Rear-Admiral of the Blue, 9 May, 1755. Robinson to Lords of the Admiralty, 8 May, 1755_.]
[Footnote 190: _Liste des Officiers tues et blesses dans le Combat de l'Alcide et du Lis_.]
[Footnote 191: Hocquart's account is given in full by Pichon, _Lettres et Memoires pour servir a l'Histoire du Cap-Breton_. The short account in _Precis des Faits_, 272, seems, too, to be drawn from Hocquart. Also _Boscawen to Robinson, 22 June, 1755. Vaudreuil au Ministre, 24 Juillet, 1755_, Entick, I. 137.
Some English accounts say that Captain Howe, in answer to the question, ”Are we at peace, or war?” returned, ”I don't know; but you had better prepare for war.” Boscawen places the action on the 10th, instead of the 8th, and puts the English loss at seven killed and twenty-seven wounded.]
Here at last was an end to negotiation. The sword was drawn and brandished in the eyes of Europe.
Chapter 7
1755
Braddock
”I have the pleasure to acquaint you that General Braddock came to my house last Sunday night,” writes Dinwiddie, at the end of February, to Governor Dobbs of North Carolina. Braddock had landed at Hampton from the s.h.i.+p ”Centurion,” along with young Commodore Keppel, who commanded the American squadron. ”I am mighty glad,” again writes Dinwiddie, ”that the General is arrived, which I hope will give me some ease; for these twelve months past I have been a perfect slave.” He conceived golden opinions of his guest. ”He is, I think, a very fine officer, and a sensible, considerate gentleman. He and I live in great harmony.”
Had he known him better, he might have praised him less. William s.h.i.+rley, son of the Governor of Ma.s.sachusetts, was Braddock's secretary; and after an acquaintance of some months wrote to his friend Governor Morris: ”We have a general most judiciously chosen for being disqualified for the service he is employed in in almost every respect.
He may be brave for aught I know, and he is honest in pecuniary matters.”[192] The astute Franklin, who also had good opportunity of knowing him, says: ”This general was, I think, a brave man, and might probably have made a good figure in some European war. But he had too much self-confidence; too high an opinion of the validity of regular troops; too mean a one of both Americans and Indians.”[193] Horace Walpole, in his function of gathering and immortalizing the gossip of his time, has left a sharply drawn sketch of Braddock in two letters to Sir Horace Mann, written in the summer of this year: ”I love to give you an idea of our characters as they rise upon the stage of history.
Braddock is a very Iroquois in disposition. He had a sister who, having gamed away all her little fortune at Bath, hanged herself with a truly English deliberation, leaving only a note upon the table with those lines: 'To die is landing on some silent sh.o.r.e,' etc. When Braddock was told of it, he only said: 'Poor f.a.n.n.y! I always thought she would play till she would be forced to _tuck herself up_.'” Under the name of Miss Sylvia S----, Goldsmith, in his life of Nash, tells the story of this unhappy woman. She was a rash but warm-hearted creature, reduced to penury and dependence, not so much by a pa.s.sion for cards as by her lavish generosity to a lover ruined by his own follies, and with whom her relations are said to have been entirely innocent. Walpole continues: ”But a more ridiculous story of Braddock, and which is recorded in heroics by Fielding in his _Covent Garden Tragedy,_ was an amorous discussion he had formerly with a Mrs. Upton, who kept him. He had gone the greatest lengths with her pin-money, and was still craving.
One day, that he was very pressing, she pulled out her purse and showed him that she had but twelve or fourteen s.h.i.+llings left. He twitched it from her: 'Let me see that.' Tied up at the other end he found five guineas. He took them, tossed the empty purse in her face, saying: 'Did you mean to cheat me?' and never went near her more. Now you are acquainted with General Braddock.”
[Footnote 192: _s.h.i.+rley the younger to Morris, 23 May, 1755_.]