Part 21 (1/2)
Duquesne a Marin, 27 Aout, 1753. Atlas de Susane._]
All the effective male population of Canada, from fifteen years to sixty, was enrolled in the militia, and called into service at the will of the Governor. They received arms, clothing, equipment, and rations from the King, but no pay; and instead of tents they made themselves huts of bark or branches. The best of them were drawn from the upper parts of the colony, where habits of bushranging were still in full activity. Their fighting qualities were much like those of the Indians, whom they rivalled in endurance and in the arts of forest war. As bush-fighters they had few equals; they fought well behind earthworks, and were good at a surprise or sudden dash; but for regular battle on the open field they were of small account, being disorderly, and apt to break and take to cover at the moment of crisis. They had no idea of the great operations of war. At first they despised the regulars for their ignorance of woodcraft, and thought themselves able to defend the colony alone; while the regulars regarded them in turn with a contempt no less unjust. They were excessively given to gasconade, and every true Canadian boasted himself a match for three Englishmen at least. In 1750 the militia of all ranks counted about thirteen thousand; and eight years later the number had increased to about fifteen thousand.[375]
Until the last two years of the war, those employed in actual warfare were but few. Even in the critical year 1758 only about eleven hundred were called to arms, except for two or three weeks in summer;[376]
though about four thousand were employed in transporting troops and supplies, for which service they received pay.
[Footnote 375: _Recapitulation des Milices du Gouvernement de Canada_, 1750. _Denombrement des Milices_, 1758, 1759. On the militia, see also Bougainville in Margry, _Relations et Memoires inedits_, 60, and _N.Y.
Col. Docs._, X. 680.]
[Footnote 376: _Montcalm au Ministre_, _1 Sept. 1758._]
To the white fighting force of the colony are to be added the red men.
The most trusty of them were the Mission Indians, living within or near the settled limits of Canada, chiefly the Hurons of Lorette, the Abenakis of St. Francis and Batiscan, the Iroquois of Caughnawaga and La Presentation, and the Iroquois and Algonkins at the Two Mountains on the Ottawa. Besides these, all the warriors of the west and north, from Lake Superior to the Ohio, and from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, were now at the beck of France. As to the Iroquois or Five Nations who still remained in their ancient seats within the present limits of New York, their power and pride had greatly fallen; and crowded as they were between the French and the English, they were in a state of vacillation, some leaning to one side, some to the other, and some to each in turn.
As a whole, the best that France could expect from them was neutrality.
Montcalm at Montreal had more visits than he liked from his red allies.
”They are _vilains messieurs_,” he informs his mother, ”even when fresh from their toilet, at which they pa.s.s their lives. You would not believe it, but the men always carry to war, along with their tomahawk and gun, a mirror to daub their faces with various colors, and arrange feathers on their heads and rings in their ears and noses. They think it a great beauty to cut the rim of the ear and stretch it till it reaches the shoulder. Often they wear a laced coat, with no s.h.i.+rt at all. You would take them for so many masqueraders or devils. One needs the patience of an angel to get on with them. Ever since I have been here, I have had nothing but visits, harangues, and deputations of these gentry. The Iroquois ladies, who always take part in their government, came also, and did me the honor to bring me belts of wampum, which will oblige me to go to their village and sing the war-song. They are only a little way off. Yesterday we had eighty-three warriors here, who have gone out to fight. They make war with astounding cruelty, sparing neither men, women, nor children, and take off your scalp very neatly,--an operation which generally kills you.”
”Everything is horribly dear in this country; and I shall find it hard to make the two ends of the year meet, with the twenty-five thousand francs the King gives me. The Chevalier de Levis did not join me till yesterday. His health is excellent. In a few days I shall send him to one camp, and M. de Bourlamaque to another; for we have three of them: one at Carillon, eighty leagues from here, towards the place where M. de Dieskau had his affair last year; another at Frontenac, sixty leagues; and the third at Niagara, a hundred and forty leagues. I don't know when or whither I shall go myself; that depends on the movements of the enemy. It seems to me that things move slowly in this new world; and I shall have to moderate my activity accordingly. Nothing but the King's service and the wish to make a career for my son could prevent me from thinking too much of my expatriation, my distance from you, and the dull existence here, which would be duller still if I did not manage to keep some little of my natural gayety.”
The military situation was somewhat perplexing. Iroquois spies had brought reports of great preparations on the part of the English. As neither party dared offend these wavering tribes, their warriors could pa.s.s with impunity from one to the other, and were paid by each for bringing information, not always trustworthy. They declared that the English were gathering in force to renew the attempt made by Johnson the year before against Crown Point and Ticonderoga, as well as that made by s.h.i.+rley against forts Frontenac and Niagara. Vaudreuil had spared no effort to meet the double danger. Lotbiniere, a Canadian engineer, had been busied during the winter in fortifying Ticonderoga, while Pouchot, a captain in the battalion of Bearn, had rebuilt Niagara, and two French engineers were at work in strengthening the defences of Frontenac. The Governor even hoped to take the offensive, antic.i.p.ate the movements of the English, capture Oswego, and obtain the complete command of Lake Ontario. Early in the spring a blow had been struck which materially aided these schemes.
The English had built two small forts to guard the Great Carrying Place on the route to Oswego. One of these, Fort Williams, was on the Mohawk; the other, Fort Bull, a mere collection of storehouses surrounded by a palisade, was four miles distant, on the bank of Wood Creek. Here a great quant.i.ty of stores and ammunition had imprudently been collected against the opening campaign. In February Vaudreuil sent Lery, a colony officer, with three hundred and sixty-two picked men, soldiers, Canadians, and Indians, to seize these two posts. Towards the end of March, after extreme hards.h.i.+p, they reached the road that connected them, and at half-past five in the morning captured twelve men going with wagons to Fort Bull. Learning from them the weakness of that place, they dashed forward to surprise it. The thirty provincials of s.h.i.+rley's regiment who formed the garrison had barely time to shut the gate, while the a.s.sailants fired on them through the loopholes, of which they got possession in the tumult. Lery called on the defenders to yield; but they refused, and pelted the French for an hour with bullets and hand-grenades. The gate was at last beat down with axes, and they were summoned again; but again refused, and fired hotly through the opening.
The French rushed in, shouting _Vive le roi_, and a frightful struggle followed. All the garrison were killed, except two or three who hid themselves till the slaughter was over; the fort was set on fire and blown to atoms by the explosion of the magazines; and Lery then withdrew, not venturing to attack Fort Williams. Johnson, warned by Indians of the approach of the French, had pushed up the Mohawk with reinforcements; but came too late.[377]
[Footnote 377: _Bigot au Ministre, 12 Avril, 1756. Vaudreuil au Ministre, 1 Juin, 1756. Ibid., 8 Juin, 1756. Journal de ce qui s'est pa.s.se en Canada depuis le Mois d'Octobre, 1755, jusqu'au Mois de Juin, 1756. s.h.i.+rley to Fox, 7 May, 1756. Conduct of Major-General s.h.i.+rley briefly stated. Information of Captain John Vicars, of the Fiftieth (s.h.i.+rley's) Regiment. _Eastburn_, _Faithful Narrative_. Entick, I. 471.
The French accounts place the number of English at sixty or eighty.]
Vaudreuil, who always exaggerates any success in which he has had part, says that besides bombs, bullets, cannon-b.a.l.l.s, and other munitions, forty-five thousand pounds of gunpowder were destroyed on this occasion.
It is certain that damage enough was done to r.e.t.a.r.d English operations in the direction of Oswego sufficiently to give the French time for securing all their posts on Lake Ontario. Before the end of June this was in good measure done. The battalion of Bearn lay encamped before the now strong fort of Niagara, and the battalions of Guienne and La Sarre, with a body of Canadians, guarded Frontenac against attack. Those of La Reine and Languedoc had been sent to Ticonderoga, while the Governor, with Montcalm and Levis, still remained at Montreal watching the turn of events.[378] Hither, too, came the intendant Francois Bigot, the most accomplished knave in Canada, yet indispensable for his vigor and executive skill; Bougainville, who had disarmed the jealousy of Vaudreuil, and now stood high in his good graces; and the Adjutant-General, Montreuil, clearly a vain and pragmatic personage, who, having come to Canada with Dieskau the year before, thought it behooved him to give the General the advantage of his experience. ”I like M. de Montcalm very much,” he writes to the minister, ”and will do the impossible to deserve his confidence. I have spoken to him in the same terms as to M. Dieskau; thus: 'Trust only the French regulars for an expedition, but use the Canadians and Indians to hara.s.s the enemy.
Don't expose yourself; send me to carry your orders to points of danger.' The colony officers do not like those from France. The Canadians are independent, spiteful, lying, boastful; very good for skirmis.h.i.+ng, very brave behind a tree, and very timid when not under cover. I think both sides will stand on the defensive. It does not seem to me that M. de Montcalm means to attack the enemy; and I think he is right. In this country a thousand men could stop three thousand.”[379]
[Footnote 378: _Correspondance de Montcalm, Vaudreuil, et Levis._]
[Footnote 379: _Montreuil au Ministre, 12 Juin, 1756_. The original is in cipher.] ”M. de Vaudreuil overwhelms me with civilities,” Montcalm writes to the Minister of War. ”I think that he is pleased with my conduct towards him, and that it persuades him there are general officers in France who can act under his orders without prejudice or ill-humor.”[380] ”I am on good terms with him,” he says again; ”but not in his confidence, which he never gives to anybody from France. His intentions are good, but he is slow and irresolute.”[381]
[Footnote 380: _Montcalm au Ministre, 12 Juin, 1756._]
[Footnote 381: _Ibid., 19 Juin, 1756._ ”Je suis bien avec luy, sans sa confiance, qu'il ne donne jamais a personne de la France.” Erroneously rendered in _N.Y. Col. Docs._, X. 421.]
Indians presently brought word that ten thousand English were coming to attack Ticonderoga. A reinforcement of colony regulars was at once despatched to join the two battalions already there; a third battalion, Royal Roussillon, was sent after them. The militia were called out and ordered to follow with all speed, while both Montcalm and Levis hastened to the supposed scene of danger.[382] They embarked in canoes on the Richelieu, coasted the sh.o.r.e of Lake Champlain, pa.s.sed Fort Frederic or Crown Point, where all was activity and bustle, and reached Ticonderoga at the end of June. They found the fort, on which Lotbiniere had been at work all winter, advanced towards completion. It stood on the crown of the promontory, and was a square with four bastions, a ditch, blown in some parts out of the solid rock, bomb-proofs, barracks of stone, and a system of exterior defences as yet only begun. The rampart consisted of two parallel walls ten feet apart, built of the trunks of trees, and held together by transverse logs dovetailed at both ends, the s.p.a.ce between being filled with earth and gravel well packed.[383] Such was the first Fort Ticonderoga, or Carillon,--a structure quite distinct from the later fort of which the ruins still stand on the same spot. The forest had been hewn away for some distance around, and the tents of the regulars and huts of the Canadians had taken its place; innumerable bark canoes lay along the strand, and gangs of men toiled at the unfinished works.
[Footnote 382: _Montcalm au Ministre, 26 Juin, 1756. Detail de ce qui s'est pa.s.se, Oct. 1755 Juin, 1756._]
[Footnote 383: _Lotbiniere au Ministre, 31 Oct. 1756. Montcalm au Ministre, 20 Juillet, 1756._]
Ticonderoga was now the most advanced position of the French, and Crown Point, which had before held that perilous honor, was in the second line. Levis, to whom had been a.s.signed the permanent command of this post of danger, set out on foot to explore the neighboring woods and mountains, and slept out several nights before he reappeared at the camp. ”I do not think,” says Montcalm, ”that many high officers in Europe would have occasion to take such tramps as this. I cannot speak too well of him. Without being a man of brilliant parts, he has good experience, good sense, and a quick eye; and, though I had served with him before, I never should have thought that he had such promptness and efficiency. He has turned his campaigns to good account.”[384] Levis writes of his chief with equal warmth. ”I do not know if the Marquis de Montcalm is pleased with me, but I am sure that I am very much so with him, and shall always be charmed to serve under his orders. It is not for me, Monseigneur, to speak to you of his merit and his talents. You know him better than anybody else; but I may have the honor of a.s.suring you that he has pleased everybody in this colony, and manages affairs with the Indians extremely well.”[385]