Canada: the Empire of the North

A >> Agnes C. Laut >> Canada: the Empire of the North

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{258} On came the English in martial array, pausing in the Narrows at
five o'clock for the troops' evening meal, moving on before daylight of
July 6 to the landing place. The Rangers had brought in word that
Levis was coming posthaste to Montcalm's aid. Abercrombie thought to
defeat Montcalm before reenforcements could come; and now he committed
his cardinal error. He advanced across the portage without his heavy
artillery. Halfway over, the voice of the French scouts rang out, "Who
goes there?" "French," answer the English soldiers; but the French
were not tricked. The ambushed scouts fired. Lord Howe, the very
spirit of the English army, dropped dead, shot through the breast,
though the English avenged his loss by cutting the French scouts to
pieces. On the night of the 7th the English army bivouacked in sight
of the French barricade. Promptly at twelve o'clock next day a cannon
shot from Ticonderoga brought every Frenchman behind the tree line to
his place at a leap. Abercrombie had ordered his men to rush the
barricade. There was fearful silence till the English were within
twenty paces of the trees. There they broke from quick march to a run
with a wild halloo! Death unerring blazed from the French
barricade,--not bullets only, but broken glass and ragged metal that
tore hideous wounds in the ranks of the English. Caught in the
brushwood, unable even to see their foes, the maddened troops wavered
and fell back. Again Abercrombie roared the order to charge. Six
times they hurled themselves against the impassable wall, and six times
the sharpshooters behind the lines met the advance with a rain of fire.
The Highland troops to the right went almost mad. Lord John Murray,
their commander, had fallen, and not a tenth of their number remained
unwounded; but the broadswords wrought small havoc against the spiked
branches of the log barricade. Obstinate as he was stupid, Abercrombie
kept his men at the bloody but futile attempt till the sun had set
behind the mountains, etching the sad scene with the long painted
shadows. Already almost two thousand English had fallen,--seven
hundred killed, the rest wounded. The French behind the barricade,
where Montcalm marched up and down in his shirt {259} sleeves, grimed
with smoke, encouraging the men, had lost less than four hundred. In a
spirit of hilarious bravado a young Frenchman sprang to the top of the
barricade and waved a coat on the end of his bayonet. Mistaking it for
a flag of surrender, the English ceased firing and dashed up with
muskets held on the horizontal above heads. They were actually scaling
the wall when a French officer, realizing the blunder, roared: "Shoot!
shoot! you fools! Don't you see those men will seize you?"

[Illustration: THE COUNTRY ROUND TICONDEROGA]

Cleaning guns and eating snatches of food, Montcalm's men slept that
night in their places behind the logs. Montcalm had passed from man to
man, personally thanking the troops for their valor. When daylight
came over the hills with wisps of fog like cloud banners from the
mountain tops, and the sunlight pouring gold mist through the valley,
the French rose and rubbed their eyes. They could scarcely believe it!
Surely Abercrombie would come back with his heavy guns. Like the mists
of the morning the English had vanished. Far down the lake they were
retreating in such panic terror they had left their baggage. Places
were found on the portage by French scouts where the English had fled
in such haste, marchers had lost their boots in the mud and not stopped
to {260} find them. Such was the battle of Carillon, or
Ticonderoga,--good reason for Amherst refusing to go on to Quebec.

The year closed with two more victories for the English. Brigadier
John Forbes and Washington succeeded in cutting their way up to Fort
Duquesne by a new road. They found the fort abandoned, and, taking
possession in November, renamed it Pittsburg after the great English
statesman. The other victory was at Frontenac, or Kingston. As the
French had concentrated at Lake Champlain, leaving Frontenac unguarded,
Bradstreet gained permission from Abercrombie to lead three thousand
men across Lake Ontario against La Salle's old fur post. Crossing from
the ruins of old Oswego, Bradstreet encamped beneath the palisades of
Frontenac on the evening of August 25. By morning he had his cannon in
range for the walls. Inside the fort Commandant de Noyan had less than
one hundred men. At seven in the evening of August 27 he surrendered.
Bradstreet permitted the prisoners to go down to Montreal on parole, to
be exchanged for English prisoners held in Quebec. Furs to the value
of $800,000, twenty cannon, and nine vessels were captured. Bradstreet
divided the loot among his men, taking for himself not so much as a
penny's worth. The fort was destroyed. So were the vessels. The guns
and provisions were carried across the lake and deposited at Fort
Stanwix, east of old Oswego. The loss of Duquesne on the Ohio and Fort
Frontenac on Lake Ontario cut French dominion in America in two.
Henceforth there was no highway from New France to Louisiana. In
September, Abercrombie was recalled. Amherst became chief commander.

Wolfe had gone home to England ill. It was while sojourning at the
fashion resort, Bath, that he fell desperately in love with a Miss
Lowther, to whom he became engaged. Then came the summons from Pitt to
meet the cabinet ministers in the war office of London. Wolfe was
asked to take command of the campaign in 1759 against Quebec. It had
been his ambition in Louisburg to proceed at once against Quebec. Here
was his opportunity. {261} It need not be told, he took it. Amherst
now, on the field south of Lake Champlain, received 10 pounds a day as
commander in chief. For the greater task of reducing Quebec, Wolfe was
to receive 2 pounds a day. Under him were to serve Monckton,
Townshend, and Murray. Admiral Saunders was to command the fleet.
Wolfe advised sending a few ships beforehand to guard the entrance to
the St. Lawrence, and Durell was dispatched for this purpose long
before the main armaments set out. By April 30 the combined fleet and
army were at Halifax, Wolfe with a force of some 8500 men. Wolfe, now
only in his thirty-third year, had been the subject of such jealousy
that he was actually compelled to sail from Louisburg in June without
one penny of ready money in his army chest. Underling officers, whose
duty it was to advance him money on credit, had raised difficulties.

[Illustration: GENERAL JAMES WOLFE]

Cheers and cheers yet again rent the air as the fleet at last set out
for the St. Lawrence, the soldiers on deck shouting themselves hoarse
as Louisburg faded over the watery horizon, the officers at table the
first night out at sea drinking toast after toast to _British colors on
every French fort in America_.

At Quebec was fast and furious preparation for the coming siege.
Bougainville had been sent to France from Lake Champlain in 1758 with
report of the victory at Ticonderoga. In vain {262} he appealed for
more money, more men for the coming conflict! The French government
sent him back to Quebec with a bundle of advice and platitudes and
titles and badges and promotions and soft words, but of the sinew which
makes war, men and money, France had naught to spare. The rumor of the
English invasion was confirmed by Bougainville. Every man capable of
bearing arms was called to Quebec except the small forces at the
outposts, and Bourlamaque at Champlain was instructed if attacked by
Amherst to blow up Fort Carillon, then Crown Point, and retire. Grain
was gathered into the state warehouses, and so stripped of able-bodied
men were the rural districts that the crops of 1759 were planted by the
women and children. Fire ships and rafts were constructed, the channel
of St. Charles River closed by sinking vessels, and a bridge built
higher up to lead from Quebec City across the river eastward to
Beauport and Montmorency. Along the high cliffs of the St. Lawrence
from Montmorency Falls to Quebec were constructed earthworks and
intrenchments to command the approach up the river. What frigates had
come in with Bougainville were sent higher up the St. Lawrence to be
out of danger; but the crews, numbering 1400, were posted on the
ramparts of Upper Town. Counting mere boys, Quebec had a defensive
force variously given as from 9000 to 14,000; but deducting raw levies,
who scarcely know the rules of the drill room, it is doubtful if
Montcalm could boast of more than 5000 able-bodied fighters. Still he
felt secure in the impregnable strength of Quebec's natural position.
July 29, when the enemy lay encamped beneath his trenches, he could
write, "Unless they [the English] have wings, they cannot cross a river
and effect a landing and scale a precipice." One cruel feature there
was of Quebec's preparations. To keep the habitants on both sides the
river loyal, Vaudreuil, the governor, issued a proclamation telling the
people that the English intended to massacre the inhabitants, men,
women, and children. Meanwhile, morning, noon, and night, the chapel
bells are ringing . . . ringing . . . lilting . . . and calling the
faithful to prayers for the destruction of the heretic invader! Nuns
lie prostrate day and night in prayer for the {263} country's
deliverance from the English. Holy processions march through the
streets, nuns and priests and little children in white, and rough
soldiery in the uniforms with the blue facings, to pray Heaven's aid
for victory. And while the poor people starve for bread, poultry is
daily fattened on precious wheat that it may make tenderest meat for
Intendant Bigot's table, where the painted women and drunken gamblers
and gay officers nightly feast!

[Illustration: BOUGAINVILLE]

Signal fires light up the hills with ominous warning as the English
fleet glides slowly abreast the current of the St. Lawrence, now
pausing to sound where the yellow riffle of the current shows shallows,
now following the course staked out by flags, here depending on the
Frenchman, whom they have compelled to act as pilot! Nightly from hill
to hill the signal fires leap to the sky, till one flames from Cape
Tourmente, and Quebec learns that the English are surely very near.
Among the Englishmen who are out in the advance boats sounding is a
young man, James Cook, destined to become a great navigator.

June 25, sail after sail, frigate after frigate bristling with cannon,
literally swarming with soldiers and marines, glide round the end of
Orleans Island through driving rain and a squall, and to clatter of
anchor chains and rattle of falling sails, come to rest. "Pray Heaven
they be wrecked as Sir Hovenden Walker's fleet was wrecked long ago,"
sigh the nuns of Quebec. If they had {264} prayed half as hard that
their corrupt rulers, their Bigots and their kings and their painted
women whose nod could set Europe on fire with war,--if the holy
sisterhood had prayed for this gang of vampires whose vices had brought
doom to the land, to be swallowed in some abyss, their prayers might
have been more effective with Heaven.

Next day a band of rangers lands from Wolfe's ships and finds the
Island of Orleans deserted. On the church door the cure has pinned a
note, asking the English not to molest his church; and expressing
sardonic regret that the invaders have not come soon enough to enjoy
the fresh vegetables of his garden.

Wolfe for the first time gazes on the prize of his highest
ambition,--Quebec. He is at Orleans, facing the city. To his right is
the cataract of Montmorency. From the falls past Beauport to St.
Charles River, the St. Lawrence banks are high cliffs. Above the
cliffs are Montcalm's intrenched fighters. Then the north shore of the
St. Lawrence suddenly sheers up beyond St. Charles River into a lofty,
steep precipice. The precipice is Quebec City: Upper Town and the
convents and the ramparts and Castle St. Louis nestling on an upper
ledge of the rock below Cape Diamond; Lower Town crowding between the
foot of the precipice and tide water. Look again how the St. Lawrence
turns in a sharp angle at the precipice. Three sides of the city are
water,--St. Charles River nearest Wolfe, then the St. Lawrence across
the steep face of the rock, then the St. Lawrence again along a still
steeper precipice to the far side. Only the rear of the city is
vulnerable; but it is walled and inaccessible.

Quebec was a prize for any commander's ambition; but how to win it?

The night of June 28 is calm, warm, pitch-dark, the kind of summer
night when the velvet heat touches you as with a hand. The English
soldiers of the crowded transports have gone ashore, when suddenly out
of the darkness glide fire ships as from an under world, with flaming
mast poles, and hulls in shadow, roaring with fire, throwing out
combustibles, drifting straight down on the tide towards the English
fleet. But the French have managed {265} badly. They have set the
ships on fire too soon. The air is torn to tatters by terrific
explosions that light up the outlines of the city spires and churn the
river to billows. Then the English sailors are out in small boats,
avoiding the suck of the undertow. Throwing out grappling hooks, they
tow the flaming fire rafts away from their fleet. It is the first play
of the game, and the French have lost.

[Illustration: THE SITE OF QUEBEC AND THE GROUND OCCUPIED DURING THE
SIEGE OF 1759]

Monckton goes ashore south on Point Levis side next day. Townshend has
landed his troops east of the Montmorency on the north shore. It is
the second play of the game, and Wolfe has violated every rule of war,
for he has separated his forces in three divisions close to a powerful
enemy. He is counting on Montcalm's policy, however, and Montcalm's
play is to lie inactive, sleeping in his boots, refusing to be lured to
battle till winter drives the English off. It is usual in all accounts
of the great struggle to find that certain facts have been suppressed.
Let us frankly confess that when the English rangers went foraging they
brought back French scalps, and when the French Indians went scouting
they returned with English scalps. However, manners were improving.
Strict orders are given: this is not a war on women; neither women nor
children are to be touched. Wolfe posts proclamations on the parish
churches, calling on the habitants to stand neutral. In answer, they
tear the proclamations down. {266} By July 12 Wolfe's batteries on the
south side of the river are preparing to shell the city. A band of
five hundred students and habitants rows across from Quebec by night to
dislodge the English gunners, but mistaking their own shots for the
shots of the enemy, fall on each other in the dark and retreat in wild
confusion. Then the English cannon begin to do business. In a single
day half the houses of Lower Town are battered to bits, and high-tossed
bombs have plunged through roofs of Upper Town, burning the cathedral
and setting a multitude of lesser buildings on fire. In the confusion
of cannonade and counter-cannonade and a city on fire, shrouding the
ruins in a pall of smoke, some English ships slip up the river beyond
Quebec, but there the precipice of the river bank is still steeper, and
Bougainville is on guard with two thousand men. For thirty miles
around the English rangers have laid the country waste. Still Montcalm
refuses to come out and fight.

The enforced inaction exasperates Wolfe, whose health is failing him,
and who sees the season passing, no nearer the object of his ambition
than when he came. As he had stormed the batteries of Louisburg, so
now he decides to storm the heights of Montmorency. To any one who has
stood on the knob of rock above the gorge where the cataract plunges to
the St. Lawrence, or has scrambled down the bank slippery with spray,
and watched the black underpool whirl out to the river, Wolfe's venture
must seem madness; for French troops lined the intrenchments above the
cliff, and below a redoubt or battery had been built. Below the
cataract, when the tide ebbed, was a place which might be forded. From
sunrise to sunset all the last days of July, Wolfe's cannon boomed from
Levis across the city, from the fleet in mid channel, from the land
camp on the east side of Montmorency. Montcalm rightly guessed, this
presaged a night assault. To hide his design, Wolfe kept his
transports shifting up and down the St. Lawrence, as if to land at
Beauport halfway to the city. All the same, two armed transports, as
if by chance, managed to get themselves stranded just opposite the
redoubt below the cliff, where their cannon would protect a landing.
Montcalm saw the move and strengthened the troops behind the earthworks
on the {267} top of the cliff. Toward sunset the tide ebbed, and at
that time cannon were firing from all points with such fury that the
St. Lawrence lay hidden in smoke. As the air cleared, two thousand men
were seen wading and fording below the falls. There was a rush of the
tall grenadiers for the redoubt. The French retreated firing, and the
cliff above poured down an avalanche of shots. At that moment Wolfe
suffered a cruel and unforeseen check. A frightful thunderstorm burst
on the river, lashing earth and air to darkness. It was impossible to
see five paces ahead or to aim a shot. The cliff roared down with
miniature rivulets and the slippery clay bank gave to every step of the
climbers slithering down waist-deep in mud and weeds. Powder was
soaked. As the rain ceased, Indians were seen sliding down the cliff
to scalp the wounded. Wolfe ordered a retreat. The drums rolled the
recall and the English escaped pellmell, the French hooting with
derision at the top of the banks, the English yelling back strong oaths
for the enemy to come out of its rat hole and fight like men. At the
ford the men, soaked like water rats, and a sorry rabble, got into some
sort of rank and burned the two stranded vessels as they passed back to
the east side. In less than an hour four hundred and forty-three men
had fallen, the most of them killed, many both dead and wounded, into
the hands of the Indian scalpers.

One can guess Wolfe's fearful despair that night. A month had passed.
He had accomplished worse than nothing. In another month the fleet
must leave the St. Lawrence to avoid autumn storms. Fragile at all
times, Wolfe fell ill, ill of fever and of chagrin, and those officers
over whose head he had been promoted did not spare their criticisms,
their malice. It is so easy to win battles of life and war in theory.

As for Quebec, it was felt the siege was over, the contest won. Still
bad news had come from the west. Niagara had fallen before the
English, and the forts on Lake Champlain were abandoned to Amherst.
Nothing now barred the English advance down the Richelieu to Montreal.
Montcalm dispatches Levis to Montreal with eight hundred men.

{268} Why did Amherst not come to Wolfe's aid? His enemies say because
the commanding general was so sure the siege of Quebec would fail that
he did not want any share of the blame. That may be unjust. Amherst
was of the slow, cautious kind, who marched doggedly to victory. He
may not have wished to risk a second Ticonderoga. Wolfe's position was
now desperate. His only alternatives were success or ruin. "You can't
cure me," he told his surgeon, "but mend me up so I can go on for a few
days." What he did in those few days left his name immortal. Robert
Stobo, who had been captured from Washington's battalions on the Ohio,
and who knew every foot of Quebec from five years of captivity, had
escaped, joined Wolfe, and drawn plans of all surroundings. From his
ship above Quebec Wolfe could see there was one path just behind the
city where men might ascend to the Plains of Abraham outside the rear
wall, but the path was guarded, and Bougainville's troops patrolled
westward as far as Cape Rouge.

[Illustration: LOUIS JOSEPH, MARQUIS DE MONTCALM]

It was now September. From their trenches above the river the French
could see the English evacuating camp at Montmorency. They were
jubilant. Surely the English were giving up the siege. Night after
night English transports loaded with soldiers ascended the St. Lawrence
above Quebec. What did it mean? Was it a feint to draw Montcalm's men
away from the east side? {269} The French general was sleeplessly
anxious. He had not passed a night in bed since the end of June. The
fall rains were beginning, and another month of work in the trenches
meant half the army invalided.

The most of the English fleet was working up and down with the tide
between the western limits of Quebec and Cape Rouge, nine miles away.
Bougainville's force was increased to three thousand men, and he was
ordered to keep especial watch westward. The steepness of the
precipice was guard enough near the town. Wednesday, the 12th of
September, the English troops were ordered to hold themselves in
readiness. They passed the day cleaning their arms, and were ordered
not to speak after nightfall or permit a sound to be heard from the
ranks. Admiral Saunders with the main fleet was to feign attack on the
east side of the city. Admiral Holmes with Wolfe's army, now numbering
not four thousand men, was to glide down with the tide from Cape Rouge
above Quebec. Because the main fleet lay on the east side Montcalm
felt sure the attack would come from that quarter. Deserters had
brought word to Wolfe that some flatboats with provisions were coming
down the river to Quebec that night.

Here, then, the position! Saunders on the east side, opposite
Beauport, feigning attack; Montcalm watching him from the Beauport
cliffs; Wolfe nine miles up the river west of the city; Bougainville
watching him, watching too for those provisions, for Quebec was down to
empty larder.

It is said that as Wolfe rested in his ship, the _Sutherland_, off Cape
Rouge, he felt strange premonition of approaching death, and repeated
the words of Gray's "Elegy,"--"The paths of glory lead but to the
grave,"--but this has been denied. Certainly he had such strange
consciousness of impending death that, taking a miniature of his
fiancee from his breast, he asked a fellow-officer to return it to her.
About midnight the tide began to ebb, and two lanterns were hung as a
sign from the masthead of the _Sutherland_. Instantly all the ships
glided silent as the great river down with the tide. The night was
moonless. Near the little bridle path now known as Wolfe's Cove the
ships draw {270} ashore. Sharp as iron on stone a sentry's voice rings
out, "Who goes?"

"The French," answers an officer, who speaks perfect French.

"What regiment?"

"The Queen's," replies the officer, who chances to know that
Bougainville has a regiment of that name. Thinking they were the
provision transports, this sentry was satisfied. Not so another. He
ran down to the water's edge, and peering through the darkness called,
"Why can't you speak louder?"

"Hush you! We 'll be overheard," answers the English officer in French.

Thus the English boats glided towards the little bridle path that led
up to the rear of the city. Wolfe's Cove is not a path steep as a
stair up the face of a rock, as the most of the schoolbooks teach; it
is a little weed-grown, stony gully, easy to climb, but slant and
narrow, where I have walked many a night to drink from the spring near
the foot of the cliff.

Twenty-four volunteers lead the way up the stony path, silent and agile
as cats. At the top are the tents of the sentries, who rush from their
couches to be overpowered by the English. Before daybreak the whole
army has ascended to the plateau behind the city, known as the Plains
of Abraham. No use entering here into the dispute whether Wolfe took
his place where the goal now stands, or farther back from the city
wall. Roughly speaking, the main line of Wolfe's forces, three deep,
with himself, Monckton, and Murray in command, faced the rear of Quebec
about three quarters of a mile from what was then the wall. To his
left was the wooded road now known as St. Louis. He posts Townshend
facing this, at right angles to his front line. Another battalion lay
in the woods to the rear. There were, besides, a reserve regiment, and
a battalion to guard the landing.

What was Wolfe's position? Behind him lay Bougainville with three
thousand French soldiers, fresh and in perfect condition. In front lay
Quebec with three thousand more. To his right was the river; to his
left, across the St. Charles, Montcalm's main army of five thousand
men. "When your enemies blunder, {271} don't interrupt them," Napoleon
is reported to have advised. If some one had not blundered badly now,
it might have been a second Ticonderoga with Wolfe; but some one did
blunder most tragically.

Montcalm had come from the trenches above Beauport, where he had been
guarding against Saunders' landing, and he had ordered hot tea and beer
served to the troops, when he happened to look across the St. Charles
River towards Quebec. It had been cloudy, but the sun had just burst
out; and there, standing in the morning light, were the English in
battle array, red coat and tartan kilt, grenadier and Highlander, in
the distance a confused mass of color, which was not the white uniform
of the French.

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