Part 7 (1/2)

[Ill.u.s.tration: WAs.h.i.+NGTON'S FIRST VICTORY

”Was.h.i.+ngton was at the head of his men with a musket in his grasp. The instant he saw the Frenchmen he discharged his gun at them, and gave the order to his men to fire. Hence it came about that the first hostile shot in the French and Indian War was fired by George Was.h.i.+ngton.”]

BRADDOCK'S Ma.s.sACRE.

Among the English officers who arrived in 1755 was General Edward Braddock. He was brave and skillful, but conceited and stubborn. When Was.h.i.+ngton, who was one of his aides, explained to him the character of the treacherous foes whom he would have to fight and advised him to adopt similar tactics, the English officer insultingly answered that when he felt the need of advice from a young Virginian, he would ask for it. He marched toward Fort Duquesne and was within a few miles of the post, when he ran into an ambush and was a.s.sailed so vehemently by a force of French and Indians that half his men were killed, the rest put to flight, and himself mortally wounded. Was.h.i.+ngton and his Virginians, by adopting the Indian style of fighting, checked the pursuit and saved the remainder of the men.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BRADDOCK'S DEFEAT.]

In the spring of 1756, England and France declared war against each other and the struggle now involved those two countries. For two years the English, despite their preponderance of forces in America, lost rather than gained ground. Their officers sent across the ocean were a sorry lot, while the French were commanded by Montcalm, a brilliant leader. He concentrated his forces and delivered many effective blows, capturing the forts on the northern border of New York and winning all the Indians to his support. The English fought in detached bodies and were continually defeated.

ENGLISH SUCCESSES.

But a change came in 1758, when William Pitt, one of the greatest Englishmen in history, was called to the head of the government. He weeded out inefficient officers, replaced them with skillful ones, who, concentrating their troops, a.s.sailed the French at three important points. Louisburg, on Cape Breton Island, which had been captured more than a hundred years before, during King George's War, was again taken by a naval expedition in the summer of 1758. In the autumn, Fort Duquesne was captured without resistance and named Fort Pitt, in honor of the ill.u.s.trious prime minister. The single defeat administered to the English was at Ticonderoga, where Montcalm commanded in person. This was a severe repulse, in which the English lost in the neighborhood of 1,600 men. It was offset by the expulsion of the French from northwestern New York and the capture of Fort Frontenac, on the present site of Kingston in Canada.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MARTELLO TOWER ON THE HEIGHTS OF ABRAHAM, WHERE WOLFE WAS KILLED.]

One wise step of Pitt was in winning the cordial support of the provincials, as the colonists were called, to the British regulars. Our ancestors thus gained a most valuable military training which served them well in the great struggle for independence a few years later.

WOLFE'S GREAT VICTORY.

The year 1759 brought decisive success to the English. Knowing that they intended to attack Quebec, Montcalm drew in his troops to defend that city. It therefore was an easy matter for the English to capture Ticonderoga, Crown Point, and Fort Niagara, General Wolfe, one of the very ablest of English leaders, left Louisburg with a fleet and sailed up the St. Lawrence. He found the fortifications of Quebec at so great an elevation that he could make no impression upon them. Three months pa.s.sed in idle waiting and the besiegers were almost disheartened. Wolfe himself was so distressed by anxiety that he fell ill. The sagacious Montcalm could not be induced to come out and give battle, and there seemed no way of reaching him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A DUTCH HOUSEHOLD.

As seen in the early days in New York.]

But the lion-hearted Wolfe would not be denied. He found a path leading up to the Heights of Abraham, as the plain above was called, and, selecting a mild night in September, his troops floated down the river in their boats and landed at the foot of the cliff. All night long the English soldiers were clambering up the steep path, dragging a few guns with them, and, when the morning sun rose, it shone on the flas.h.i.+ng bayonets of the whole army drawn up in battle array before the walls of Quebec.

The astonished Montcalm, instead of remaining within the city, marched his army out and gave battle. In the fight both Wolfe and Montcalm were fatally wounded. Wolfe lived long enough to learn that the French were fleeing before his victorious troops. ”Now, I can die happy,” he said, and shortly after expired. When Montcalm was told he must die, he mournfully replied: ”So much the better; I shall not live to see the surrender of Quebec.”

MOMENTOUS RESULTS OF THE WAR.

This battle was one of the decisive ones of the world, for, as will be seen, its results were of momentous importance to mankind. The conquest of Canada followed in 1760, and the other French forts fairly tumbled into the possession of the English. Pontiac, Chief of the Ottawas, was so angered at the turn of events that he refused to be bound by the terms of the surrender. He brought a number of tribes into an alliance, captured several British posts in the West, and laid siege to Detroit for more than a year, but in the end he was defeated, his confederacy scattered, and Pontiac himself, like Philip, was killed by one of his own race.

The war was over, so far as America was concerned, but England and France kept it up for nearly three years, fighting on the ocean and elsewhere. In 1762, Spain joined France, but received a telling blow in the same year, when an English expedition captured the city of Havana.

In this important event, the provincials gave valuable aid to the British regulars. The colonies also sent out a number of privateers which captured many rich prizes from the Spaniards.

By 1763, Great Britain had completely conquered France and Spain, and a treaty of peace was signed at Paris. France and Spain agreed to give up all of North America east of the Mississippi, and England ceded _Cuba to Spain in exchange for Florida, exchanging Florida in 1783 for the Bahama Islands. The former_ was a victory for Spanish diplomacy, since Florida was practically worthless to _Spain_, while Havana, _the capital of Cuba_, was an enormously wealthy city, and the island possessed marvelous fertility and almost boundless resources.

France, after her wholesale yielding to England, paid Spain her ally by ceding to her all her possessions west of the Mississippi, including the city of New Orleans. This enormous territory, then known as Louisiana, comprehended everything between the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi River, from British America to the Gulf of Mexico. In extent it was an empire from which many of the most important States of the Union have been carved. When it is remembered that these changes were the result of a war in which the capture of Quebec was the decisive conflict, it will be admitted that there was ample warrant for p.r.o.nouncing it one of the great battles of the world.

The thirteen original colonies were now ”full grown.” Their population had increased to 2,000,000 and was fast growing. Their men had proven their bravery and generals.h.i.+p in the French and Indian War. Many of them had developed into fine officers, and all compared favorably with the British regulars. Their loyalty to England was proven by the 30,000 lives that had been given that she might conquer her traditional rival and enemy.

The adventurous spirit of the colonists was shown by the fact that many began crossing the Alleghanies into the fertile district beyond, where they were in continual danger from the fierce Indians. James Robertson led a party of emigrants who made the first settlement in Tennessee in 1768, and the famous Daniel Boone and a company of immigrants were the pioneers in Kentucky in 1769. No effort was made to settle the country north of the Ohio until after the Revolution.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MEMORIAL HALL, HARVARD COLLEGE.]