Part 48 (1/2)
[Footnote 807: _Letter to an Honourable Brigadier-General_ [Townshend], printed in 1760. A _Refutation_ soon after appeared, angry, but not conclusive. Other replies will be found in the _Imperial Magazine _for 1760.]
The troops were not idle. Levelling their own field-works, repairing the defences of the town, storing provisions sent ash.o.r.e from the fleet, making fascines, and cutting firewood, busied them through the autumn days bright with suns.h.i.+ne, or dark and chill with premonition of the bitter months to come. Admiral Saunders put off his departure longer than he had once thought possible; and it was past the middle of October when he fired a parting salute, and sailed down the river with his fleet. In it was the s.h.i.+p ”Royal William,” carrying the embalmed remains of Wolfe.
Montcalm lay in his soldier's grave before the humble altar of the Ursulines, never more to see the home for which he yearned, the wife, mother, and children whom he loved, the olive-trees and chestnut-groves of his beloved Candiac.
He slept in peace among triumphant enemies, who respected his memory, though they hardly knew his resting-place. It was left for a fellow-countryman--a colleague and a brother-in-arms--to belittle his achievements and blacken his name. The jealous spite of Vaudreuil pursued him even in death. Leaving Levis to command at Jacques-Cartier, whither the army had again withdrawn, the Governor retired to Montreal, whence he wrote a series of despatches to justify himself at the expense of others, and above all of the slain general, against whom his accusations were never so bitter as now, when the lips were cold that could have answered them. First, he threw on Ramesay all the blame of the surrender of Quebec. Then he addressed himself to his chief task, the defamation of his unconscious rival. ”The letter that you wrote in cipher, on the tenth of February, to Monsieur the Marquis of Montcalm and me, in common,[808] flattered his self-love to such a degree that, far from seeking conciliation, he did nothing but try to persuade the public that his authority surpa.s.sed mine. From the moment of Monsieur de Montcalm's arrival in this colony, down to that of his death, he did not cease to sacrifice everything to his boundless ambition. He sowed dissension among the troops, tolerated the most indecent talk against the government, attached to himself the most disreputable persons, used means to corrupt the most virtuous, and, when he could not succeed, became their cruel enemy. He wanted to be Governor-General. He privately flattered with favors and promises of patronage every officer of the colony troops who adopted his ideas. He spared no pains to gain over the people of whatever calling, and persuade them of his attachment; while, either by himself or by means of the troops of the line, he made them bear the most frightful yoke _(le joug le plus affreux)._ He defamed honest people, encouraged insubordination, and closed his eyes to the rapine of his soldiers.”
[Footnote 808: See _Supra_, p. 462.]
This letter was written to Vaudreuil's official superior and confidant, the Minister of the Marine and Colonies. In another letter, written about the same time to the Minister of War, who held similar relations to his rival, he declares that he ”greatly regretted Monsieur de Montcalm.”[809]
[Footnote 809: _Vaudreuil au Ministre de la Guerre, 1 Nov_. 1759.]
His charges are strange ones from a man who was by turns the patron, advocate, and tool of the official villains who cheated the King and plundered the people. Bigot, Cadet, and the rest of the harpies that preyed on Canada looked to Vaudreuil for support, and found it. It was but three or four weeks since he had written to the Court in high eulogy of Bigot and effusive praise of Cadet, coupled with the request that a patent of n.o.bility should be given to that notorious public thief.[810] The corruptions which disgraced his government were rife, not only in the civil administration, but also among the officers of the colony troops, over whom he had complete control. They did not, as has been seen already, extend to the officers of the line, who were outside the circle of peculation. It was these who were the habitual a.s.sociates of Montcalm; and when Vaudreuil charges him with ”attaching to himself the most disreputable persons, and using means to corrupt the most virtuous,” the true interpretation of his words is that the former were disreputable because they disliked him (the Governor), and the latter virtuous because they were his partisans.
[Footnote 810: See _Supra_, p. 374.]
Vaudreuil continues thus: ”I am in despair, Monseigneur, to be under the necessity of painting you such a portrait after death of Monsieur the Marquis of Montcalm. Though it contains the exact truth, I would have deferred it if his personal hatred to me were alone to be considered; but I feel too deeply the loss of the colony to hide from you the cause of it. I can a.s.sure you that if I had been the sole master, Quebec would still belong to the King, and that nothing is so disadvantageous in a colony as a division of authority and the mingling of troops of the line with marine _[colony]_ troops. Thoroughly knowing Monsieur de Montcalm, I did not doubt in the least that unless I condescended to all his wishes, he would succeed in ruining Canada and wrecking all my plans.”
He then charges the dead man with losing the battle of Quebec by attacking before he, the Governor, arrived to take command; and this, he says, was due to Montcalm's absolute determination to exercise independent authority, without caring whether the colony was saved or lost. ”I cannot hide from you, Monseigneur, that if he had had his way in past years Oswego and Fort George _[William Henry]_ would never have been attacked or taken; and he owed the success at Ticonderoga to the orders I had given him.”[811] Montcalm, on the other hand, declared at the time that Vaudreuil had ordered him not to risk a battle, and that it was only through his disobedience that Ticonderoga was saved.
[Footnote 811: _Vaudreuil au Ministre de la Marine,_ 30 _Oct. 1759._]
Ten days later Vaudreuil wrote again: ”I have already had the honor, by my letter written in cipher on the thirteenth of last month, to give you a sketch of the character of Monsieur the Marquis of Montcalm; but I have just been informed of a stroke so black that I think, Monseigneur, that I should fail in my duty to you if I did not tell you of it.” He goes on to say that, a little before his death, and ”no doubt in fear of the fate that befell him,” Montcalm placed in the hands of Father Roubaud, missionary at St. Francis, two packets of papers containing remarks on the administration of the colony, and especially on the manner in which the military posts were furnished with supplies; that these observations were accompanied by certificates; and that they involved charges against him, the Governor, of complicity inpeculation.
Roubaud, he continues, was to send these papersto France; ”but now, Monseigneur, that you are informed about them, I feel no anxiety, and I am sure that the King will receive no impression from them without acquainting himself with their truth or falsity.”
Vaudreuil's anxiety was natural; and so was the action of Montcalm in making known to the Court the outrageous abuses that threatened the King's service with ruin. His doing so was necessary both for his own justification and for the public good; and afterwards, when Vaudreuil and others were brought to trial at Paris, and when one of the counselfor the defence charged the late general with slanderously accusing his clients, the Court ordered the charge to be struck from the record.[812] The papers the existence of which, if they did exist, so terrified Vaudreuil, have thus far escaped research.
But the correspondence of the two rivals with the chiefs of the departments on which they severally depended is in large measure preserved; and while that of the Governor is filled with defamation of Montcalm and praise of himself, that of the General is neither egotistic nor abusive. The faults of Montcalm have sufficiently appeared.
They were those of an impetuous, excitable, and impatient nature, by no means free from either ambition or vanity; but they were never inconsistent with the character of a man of honor. His impulsive utterances, reported by retainers and sycophants, kept Vaudreuil in a state of chronic rage; and, void as he was of all magnanimity, gnawed with undying jealousy, and mortally in dread of being compromised by the knaveries to which he had lent his countenance, he could not contain himself within the bounds of decency or sense. In another letter he had the baseness to say that Montcalm met his death in trying to escape from the English.
[Footnote 812: _Proces de Bigot, Cadet, et autres._]
Among the Governor's charges are some which cannot be flatly denied. When he accuses his rival of haste and precipitation in attacking the English army, he touches a fair subject of criticism; but, as a whole, he is as false in his detraction of Montcalm as in his praises of Bigot and Cadet.
The letter which Wolfe sent to Pitt a few days before his death, written in what may be called a spirit of resolute despair, and representing success as almost hopeless, filled England with a dejection that found utterance in loud grumblings against the Ministry. Horace Walpole wrote the bad news to his friend Mann, amba.s.sador at Florence: ”Two days ago came letters from Wolfe, despairing as much as heroes can despair. Quebec is well victualled, Amherst is not arrived, and fifteen thousand men are encamped to defend it. We have lost many men by the enemy, and some by our friends; that is, we now call our nine thousand only seven thousand. How this little army will get away from a much larger, and in this season, in that country, I don't guess: yes, I do.”
Hardly were these lines written when tidings came that Montcalm was defeated, Quebec taken, and Wolfe killed. A flood of mixed emotions swept over England. Even Walpole grew half serious as he sent a packet of newspapers to his friend the amba.s.sador. ”You may now give yourself what airs you please.
An amba.s.sador is the only man in the world whom bullying becomes.
All precedents are on your side: Persians, Greeks, Romans, always insulted their neighbors when they took Quebec. Think how pert the French would have been on such an occasion! What a scene! An army in the night dragging itself up a precipice by stumps of trees to a.s.sault a town and attack an enemy strongly intrenched and double in numbers! The King is overwhelmed with addresses on our victories; he will have enough to paper his palace.”[813]
[Footnote 813: _Letters of Horace Walpole_, III. 254, 257 (ed. Cunningham 1857).]
When, in soberer mood, he wrote the annals of his time, and turned, not for the better, from the epistolary style to the historical, he thus described the impression made on the English public by the touching and inspiring story of Wolfe's heroism and death: ”The incidents of dramatic fiction could not be conducted with more address to lead an audience from despondency to sudden exaltation than accident prepared to excite the pa.s.sions of a whole people. They despaired, they triumphed, and they wept; for Wolfe had fallen in the hour of victory. Joy, curiosity, astonishment, was painted on every countenance. The more they inquired, the more their admiration rose. Not an incident but was heroic and affecting.”[814]
England blazed with bonfires. In one spot alone all was dark and silent; for here a widowed mother mourned for a loving and devoted son, and the people forbore to profane her grief with the clamor of their rejoicings.
[Footnote 814: Walpole, _Memoirs of George II._, II. 384.]
New England had still more cause of joy than Old, and she filled the land with jubilation. The pulpits resounded with sermons of thanksgiving, some of which were worthy of the occasion that called them forth. Among the rest, Jonathan Mayhew, a young but justly celebrated minister of Boston, pictured with enthusiasm the future greatness of the British-American colonies, with the continent thrown open before them, and foretold that, ”with the continued blessing of Heaven, they will become, in another century or two, a mighty empire;” adding in cautious parenthesis, ”_I do not mean an independent one_.” He read Wolfe's victory aright, and divined its far-reaching consequence.