Part 34 (1/2)
In the last year London called on the colonists for four thousand men.
This year Pitt asked them for twenty thousand, and promised that the King would supply arms, ammunition, tents, and provisions, leaving to the provinces only the raising, clothing, and pay of their soldiers; and he added the a.s.surance that Parliament would be asked to make some compensation even for these.[597] Thus encouraged, cheered by the removal of Loudon, and animated by the unwonted vigor of British military preparation, the several provincial a.s.semblies voted men in abundance, though the usual vexatious delays took place in raising, equipping, and sending them to the field. In this connection, an able English writer has brought against the colonies, and especially against Ma.s.sachusetts, charges which deserve attention. Viscount Bury says: ”Of all the colonies, Ma.s.sachusetts was the first which discovered the designs of the French and remonstrated against their aggressions; of all the colonies she most zealously promoted measures of union for the common defence, and made the greatest exertions in furtherance of her views.” But he adds that there is a reverse to the picture, and that ”this colony, so high-spirited, so warlike, and apparently so loyal, would never move hand or foot in her own defence till certain of repayment by the mother country.”[598] The groundlessness of this charge is shown by abundant proofs, one of which will be enough. The Englishman Pownall, who had succeeded s.h.i.+rley as royal governor of the province, made this year a report of its condition to Pitt. Ma.s.sachusetts, he says, ”has been the frontier and advanced guard of all the colonies against the enemy in Canada,” and has always taken the lead in military affairs. In the three past years she has spent on the expeditions of Johnson, Winslow, and Loudon 242,356, besides about 45,000 a year to support the provincial government, at the same time maintaining a number of forts and garrisons, keeping up scouting-parties, and building, equipping, and manning a s.h.i.+p of twenty guns for the service of the King. In the first two months of the present year, 1758, she made a further military outlay of 172,239. Of all these sums she has received from Parliament a reimburs.e.m.e.nt of only 70,117, and hence she is deep in debt; yet, in addition, she has this year raised, paid, maintained, and clothed seven thousand soldiers placed under the command of General Abercromby, besides above twenty-five hundred more serving the King by land or sea; amounting in all to about one in four of her able-bodied men.
[Footnote 597: _Pitt to the Colonial Governors, 30 Dec. 1757._]
[Footnote 598: Bury, _Exodus of the Western Nations_, II, 250, 251.]
Ma.s.sachusetts was extremely poor by the standards of the present day, living by fis.h.i.+ng, farming, and a trade sorely hampered by the British navigation laws. Her contributions of money and men were not ordained by an absolute king, but made by the voluntary act of a free people.
Pownall goes on to say that her present war-debt, due within three years, is 366,698 pounds sterling, and that to meet it she has imposed on her self taxes amounting, in the town of Boston, to thirteen s.h.i.+llings and twopence to every pound of income from real and personal estate; that her people are in distress, that she is anxious to continue her efforts in the public cause, but that without some further reimburs.e.m.e.nt she is exhausted and helpless.[599] Yet in the next year she incurred a new and heavy debt. In 1760 Parliament repaid her 59,575.[600] Far from being fully reimbursed, the end of the war found her on the brink of bankruptcy. Connecticut made equal sacrifices in the common cause,--highly to her honor, for she was little exposed to danger, being covered by the neighboring provinces; while impoverished New Hamps.h.i.+re put one in three of her able-bodied men into the field.[601]
[Footnote 599: _Pownall to Pitt, 30 Sept. 1758_ (Public Record Office, _America and West Indies_, LXXI.) ”The province of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay has exerted itself with great zeal and at vast expense for the public service.” _Registers of Privy Council, 26 July, 1757._]
[Footnote 600: _Bollan, Agent of Ma.s.sachusetts, to Speaker of a.s.sembly, 20 March, 1760._ It was her share of 200,000 granted to all the colonies in the proportion of their respective efforts.]
[Footnote 601: _Address to His Majesty from the Governor, Council, and a.s.sembly of New Hamps.h.i.+re, Jan. 1759._]
In June the combined British and provincial force which Abercromby was to lead against Ticonderoga was gathered at the head of Lake George; while Montcalm lay at its outlet around the walls of the French stronghold, with an army not one fourth so numerous. Vaudreuil had devised a plan for saving Ticonderoga by a diversion into the valley of the Mohawk under Levis, Rigaud, and Longueuil, with sixteen hundred men, who were to be joined by as many Indians. The English forts of that region were to be attacked, Schenectady threatened, and the Five Nations compelled to declare for France.[602] Thus, as the Governor gave out, the English would be forced to cease from aggression, leave Montcalm in peace, and think only of defending themselves.[603] ”This,” writes Bougainville on the fifteenth of June, ”is what M. de Vaudreuil thinks will happen, because he never doubts anything. Ticonderoga, which is the point really threatened, is abandoned without support to the troops of the line and their general. It would even be wished that they might meet a reverse, if the consequences to the colony would not be too disastrous.”
[Footnote 602: _Levis au Ministre, 17 Juin, 1758. Doreil au Ministre, 16 Juin, 1758. Montcalm a sa Femme, 18 Avril, 1758._]
[Footnote 603: _Correspondance de Vaudreuil, 1758. Livre d'Ordres, Juin, 1758._]
The proposed movement promised, no doubt, great advantages; but it was not destined to take effect. Some rangers taken on Lake George by a partisan officer named Langy declared with pardonable exaggeration that twenty-five or thirty thousand men would attack Ticonderoga in less than a fortnight. Vaudreuil saw himself forced to abandon his Mohawk expedition, and to order Levis and his followers, who had not yet left Montreal, to reinforce Montcalm.[604] Why they did not go at once is not clear. The Governor declares that there were not boats enough. From whatever cause, there was a long delay, and Montcalm was left to defend himself as he could.
[Footnote 604: _Bigot au Ministre, 21 Juillet, 1758._]
He hesitated whether he should not fall back to Crown Point. The engineer, Lotbiniere, opposed the plan, as did also Le Mercier.[605] It was but a choice of difficulties, and he stayed at Ticonderoga. His troops were disposed as they had been in the summer before; one battalion, that of Berry, being left near the fort, while the main body, under Montcalm himself, was encamped by the saw-mill at the Falls, and the rest, under Bourlamaque, occupied the head of the portage, with a small advanced force at the landing-place on Lake George. It remained to determine at which of these points he should concentrate them and make his stand against the English. Ruin threatened him in any case; each position had its fatal weakness or its peculiar danger, and his best hope was in the ignorance or blundering of his enemy. He seems to have been several days in a state of indecision.
[Footnote 605: _N.Y. Col. Docs._, X 893. Lotbiniere's relative, Vaudreuil, confirms the statement. Montcalm had not, as has been said, begun already to fall back.]
In the afternoon of the fifth of July the partisan Langy, who had again gone out to reconnoitre towards the head of Lake George, came back in haste with the report that the English were embarked in great force.
Montcalm sent a canoe down Lake Champlain to hasten Levis to his aid, and ordered the battalion of Berry to begin a breastwork and abattis on the high ground in front of the fort. That they were not begun before shows that he was in doubt as to his plan of defence; and that his whole army was not now set to work at them shows that his doubt was still unsolved.
It was nearly a month since Abercromby had begun his camp at the head of Lake George. Here, on the ground where Johnson had beaten Dieskau, where Montcalm had planted his batteries, and Monro vainly defended the wooden ramparts of Fort William Henry, were now a.s.sembled more than fifteen thousand men; and the sh.o.r.es, the foot of the mountains, and the broken plains between them were studded thick with tents. Of regulars there were six thousand three hundred and sixty-seven, officers and soldiers, and of provincials nine thousand and thirty-four.[606] To the New England levies, or at least to their chaplains, the expedition seemed a crusade against the abomination of Babylon; and they discoursed in their sermons of Moses sending forth Joshua against Amalek. Abercromby, raised to his place by political influence, was little but the nominal commander. ”A heavy man,” said Wolfe in a letter to his father; ”an aged gentleman, infirm in body and mind,” wrote William Parkman, a boy of seventeen, who carried a musket in a Ma.s.sachusetts regiment, and kept in his knapsack a dingy little notebook, in which he jotted down what pa.s.sed each day.[607] The age of the aged gentleman was fifty-two.
[Footnote 606: _Abercromby to Pitt, 12 July, 1758._]
[Footnote 607: Great-uncle of the writer, and son of the Rev. Ebenezer Parkman, a graduate of Harvard, and minister of Westborough, Ma.s.s.]
Pitt meant that the actual command of the army should be in the hands of Brigadier Lord Howe,[608] and he was in fact its real chief; ”the n.o.blest Englishman that has appeared in my time, and the best soldier in the British army,” says Wolfe.[609] And he elsewhere speaks of him as ”that great man.” Abercromby testifies to the universal respect and love with which officers and men regarded him, and Pitt calls him ”a character of ancient times; a complete model of military virtue.”[610]
High as this praise is, it seems to have been deserved. The young n.o.bleman, who was then in his thirty-fourth year, had the qualities of a leader of men. The army felt him, from general to drummer-boy. He was its soul; and while breathing into it his own energy and ardor, and bracing it by stringent discipline, he broke through the traditions of the service and gave it new shapes to suit the time and place. During the past year he had studied the art of forest warfare, and joined Rogers and his rangers in their scouting-parties, sharing all their hards.h.i.+ps and making himself one of them. Perhaps the reforms that he introduced were fruits of this rough self-imposed schooling. He made officers and men throw off all useless inc.u.mbrances, cut their hair close, wear leggings to protect them from briers, brown the barrels of their muskets, and carry in their knapsacks thirty pounds of meal, which they cooked for themselves; so that, according to an admiring Frenchman, they could live a month without their supply-trains.[611] ”You would laugh to see the droll figure we all make,” writes an officer. ”Regulars as well as provincials have cut their coats so as scarcely to reach their waists. No officer or private is allowed to carry more than one blanket and a bearskin. A small portmanteau is allowed each officer. No women follow the camp to wash our linen. Lord Howe has already shown an example by going to the brook and was.h.i.+ng his own.”[612]
[Footnote 608: Chesterfield, _Letters_, IV. 260 (ed. Mahon).]
[Footnote 609: _Wolfe to his Father, 7 Aug. 1758_, in Wright, 450.]
[Footnote 610: _Pitt to Grenville, 22 Aug. 1758_, in _Grenville Papers_, I. 262.]
[Footnote 611: Pouchot, _Derniere Guerre de l'Amerique_, I. 140.]
[Footnote 612: _Letter from Camp, 12 June, 1758_, in _Boston Evening Post._ Another, in _Boston News Letter_, contains similar statements.]