Montcalm and Wolfe: The Riveting Story of the Heroes of the French & Indian War (73 page)

This was the place to which Rogers had requested that provisions might be sent; and the hope of finding them there had been the breath of life to the famished wayfarers. To their horror, the place was a solitude. There were fires still burning, but those who made them were gone. Amherst had sent Lieutenant Stephen up the river from Charlestown with an abundant supply of food; but finding nobody at the Amonoosuc, he had waited there two days, and then returned, carrying the provisions back with him; for which outrageous conduct he was expelled from the service. “It is hardly possible,” says Rogers, “to describe our grief and consternation.” Some gave themselves up to despair. Few but their indomitable chief had strength to go farther. There was scarcely any game, and the barren wilderness yielded no sustenance but a few lily bulbs and the tubers of the climbing plant called in New England the ground-nut. Leaving his party to these miserable resources, and promising to send them relief within ten days, Rogers made a raft of dry pine logs, and drifted on it down the stream, with Captain Ogden, a ranger, and one of the captive Indian boys. They were stopped on the second day by rapids, and gained the shore with difficulty. At the foot of the rapids, while Ogden and the ranger went in search of squirrels, Rogers set himself to making another raft; and, having no strength to use the axe, he burned down the trees, which he then divided into logs by the same process. Five days after leaving his party he reached the first English settlement, Charlestown, or “Number Four,” and immediately sent a canoe with provisions to the relief of the sufferers, following himself with other canoes two days later. Most of the men were saved, though some died miserably of famine and exhaustion. Of the few who had been captured, we are told by a French contemporary that they “became victims of the fury of the Indian women,” from whose clutches the Canadians tried in vain to save them.
¹

N
OTE
.—On the day after he reached “Number Four,” Rogers wrote a report of his expedition to Amherst. This letter is printed in his
Journals,
in which he gives also a supplementary account, containing further particulars. The
New Hampshire Gazette, Boston Evening Post,
and other newspapers of the time recount the story in detail. Hoyt (
Indian Wars,
302) repeats it, with a few additions drawn from the recollections of survivors, long after. There is another account, very short and unsatisfactory, by Thompson Maxwell, who says that he was of the party, which is doubtful. Mante (223) gives horrible details of the sufferings of the rangers. An old chief of the St. Francis Indians, said to be one of those who pursued Rogers after the town was burned, many years ago told Mr. Jesse Pennoyer, a government land surveyor, that Rogers laid an ambush for the pursuers, and defeated them with great loss. This, the story says, took place near the present town of Sherbrooke; and minute details are given, with high praise of the skill and conduct of the famous partisan. If such an incident really took place, it is scarcely possible that Rogers would not have made some mention of it. On the other hand, it is equally incredible that the Indians would have invented the tale of their own defeat. I am indebted for Pennoyer’s puzzling narrative to the kindness of R. A. Ramsay, Esq., of Montreal. It was printed, in 1869, in the
History of the Eastern Townships,
by Mrs. C. M. Day. All things considered, it is probably groundless.

Vaudreuil describes the destruction of the village in a letter to the Minister dated October 26, and says that Rogers had a hundred and fifty men; that St. Francis was burned to ashes; that the head chief and others were killed; that he (Vaudreuil), hearing of the march of the rangers, sent the most active of the Canadians to oppose them, and that Longueuil sent all the Canadians and Indians he could muster to pursue them on their retreat; that forty-six rangers were killed, and ten captured; that he thinks all the rest will starve to death; and, finally, that the affair is very unfortunate.

I once, when a college student, followed on foot the route of Rogers from Lake Memphremagog to the Connecticut.

Notes - 1

1
Pitt to Amherst,
23
Jan
., 10
March,
1759.

2
Amherst to Pitt,
19
June,
1759.
Amherst to Stanwix,
6
May,
1759.

3
Mante, 210.

Notes - 2

1
Orderly Book of Commissary Wilson in the Expedition against Ticonderoga,
1759.
Journal of Samuel Warner, a Massachusetts Soldier,
1759.
General and Regimental Orders, Army of Major-General Amherst,
1759.
Diary of Sergeant Merriman, of Ruggles’s Regiment,
1759. I owe to William L. Stone, Esq., the use of the last two curious documents.

Notes - 3

1
Vaudreuil au Ministre,
8
Nov
. 1759.
Instructions pour M. de Bourlamaque,
20
Mai,
1759,
signé Vaudreuil. Montcalm à Bourlamaque,
4
Juin,
1759.

2
Journal of Colonel Amherst
(brother of General Amherst).
Vaudreuil au Ministre,
8
Nov
. 1759.
Amherst to Prideaux,
28
July,
1759.
Amherst to Pitt,
27
July,
1759. Mante, 213. Knox, I., 397-403.
Vaudreuil à Bourlamaque,
19
Juin,
1759.

3
Amherst to Pitt,
5
Aug
. 1759.

4
Ibid
., 19
June,
1759.

Notes - 4

1
Amberest to gage,
1
Aug
. 1759.

2
General Orders,
13
Aug
. 1759.

3
Amberest to Pitt,
22
Oct
. 1759. This letter which is in the form of journal, covers twenty-one folio pages.

4
Instructions of Amberst to Prideaux,
17
May,
1759.
Prideaux to Haldimand,
30
June,
1759.

Notes - 5

1
Journal of Colonel Amherst
.

2
Pouchot, II.
130
. Compare
Mémoires sur le Canada,
1749-1760;
N.Y. Col. Docs
., VII. 395; and
Letter from Oswego,
in
Boston Evening Post,
No. 1,248.

3
Pouchot says 515, besides 60 men from Little Niagara; Vaudreuil gives a total of 589.

4
Pouchot, II. 52, 59.
Procès de Bigot, Cadet, et autres, Mémoire pour Daniel de Joncaire-Chabert
.

5
Letters of Colonel Hugh Mercer, commanding at Pittsburg, January-June,
1759.
Letters of Stanwix, May-July,
1759.
Letter from Pittsburg,
in
Boston News Letter,
No. 3,023.
Narrative of John Ormsby
.

6
Pouchot, II. 46.

Notes - 6

1
Rutherford to Haldimand,
14
July,
1759. Prideaux was extremely disgusted.
Prideaux to Haldimand,
13
July,
1759. Allan Macleane, of the Highlanders, calls the engineers “fools and blockheads, G—d d—n them.”
Macleane to Haldimand,
21
July,
1759.

2
“Il n’y avoit que 1,100 François et 200 sauvages.”
Vaudreuil au Ministre,
30
Oct
. 1759. Johnson says “1,200 men, with a number of Indians.”
Johnson to Amherst,
25
July,
1759. Portneuf, commanding at Presquisle, wrote to Pouchot that there were 1,600 French and 1,200 Indians. Pouchot, II. 94. A letter from Aubry to Pouchot put the whole at 2,500, half of them Indians.
Historical Magazine,
V., Second Series, 199.

Notes - 7

1
Johnson to Amherst,
25
July,
1759. Knox, II. 135.
Captain Delancey to
——, 25
July,
1759. This writer commanded the light infantry in the fight.

2
Johnson gives the names in his private
Diary,
printed in Stone,
Life of Johnson,
II. 394. Compare Pouchot, II. 105, 106.
Letter from Niagara,
in
Boston Evening Post,
No. 1,250.
Vaudreuil au Ministre,
30
Oct
. 1759.

Notes - 8

1
Amherst to Gage,
28
July,
1
Aug
., 14
Aug
., 11
Sept
. 1759.
Diary of Sir William Johnson,
in Stone,
Life of Johnson,
II. 394-429.

2
Bourlamaque à (Bernetz?),
22
Sept
. 1759.

3
Montcalm à Bourlamaque,
9
Août,
1759.
Rigaud à Bourlamaque,
14
Août,
1759.
Lévis à Bourlamaque,
25
Août,
1759.

4
Amherst to Wolfe,
7
Aug
. 1759.

5
Amherst to Pitt,
22
Oct
. 1759. Rogers,
Journals,
144.

Notes - 9

1
Orderly Book of Commissary Wilson
.

2
Lévis à Bourlamaque,
1
Nov
. 1759.

Notes - 10

1
Rogers says “about six hundred.” Other accounts say six or seven hundred. The late Abbé Maurault, missionary of the St. Francis Indians, and their historian, adopts the latter statement, though it is probably exaggerated.

Notes - 11

1
Événements de la Guerre en Canada,
1759, 1760. Compare
N.Y. Col. Docs
., X. 1042.

XXVII

T
HE
H
EIGHTS OF
A
BRAHAM

Elation of the French · Despondency of Wolfe · The Parishes laid waste · Operations above Quebec · Illness of Wolfe · A new Plan of Attack · Faint Hope of Success · Wolfe’s last Despatch · Confidence of Vaudreuil · Last Letters of Montcalm · French Vigilance · British Squadron at Cap-Rouge · Last Orders of Wolfe · Embarkation · Descent of the St. · Lawrence · The Heights scaled · The British Line · Last Night of Montcalm · The Alarm · March of French Troops · The Battle · The Rout · The Pursuit · Fall of Wolfe and of Montcalm

Wolfe was deeply moved by the disaster at the heights of Montmorenci, and in a General Order on the next day he rebuked the grenadiers for their precipitation. “Such impetuous, irregular, and unsoldierlike proceedings destroy all order, make it impossible for the commanders to form any disposition for an attack, and put it out of the general’s power to execute his plans. The grenadiers could not suppose that they could beat the French alone.”

The French were elated by their success. “Everybody,” says the commissary Berniers, “thought that the campaign was as good as ended, gloriously for us.” They had been sufficiently confident even before their victory; and the bearer of a flag of truce told the English officers that he had never imagined they were such fools as to attack Quebec with so small a force. Wolfe, on the other hand, had every reason to despond. At the outset, before he had seen Quebec and learned the nature of the ground, he had meant to begin the campaign by taking post on the Plains of Abraham, and thence laying siege to the town; but he soon discovered that the Plains of Abraham were hardly more within his reach than was Quebec itself. Such hope as was left him lay in the composition of Montcalm’s army. He respected the French commander, and thought his disciplined soldiers not unworthy of the British steel; but he held his militia in high scorn, and could he but face them in the open field, he never doubted the result. But Montcalm also distrusted them, and persisted in refusing the coveted battle.

Wolfe, therefore, was forced to the conviction that his chances were of the smallest. It is said that, despairing of any decisive stroke, he conceived the idea of fortifying Isle-aux-Coudres, and leaving a part of his troops there when he sailed for home, against another attempt in the spring. The more to weaken the enemy and prepare his future conquest, he began at the same time a course of action which for his credit one would gladly wipe from the record; for, though far from inhuman, he threw himself with extraordinary intensity into whatever work he had in hand, and, to accomplish it, spared others scarcely more than he spared himself. About the middle of August he issued a third proclamation to the Canadians, declaring that as they had refused his offers of protection and “had made such ungrateful returns in practising the most unchristian barbarities against his troops on all occasions, he could no longer refrain in justice to himself and his army from chastising them as they deserved.” The barbarities in question consisted in the frequent scalping and mutilating of sentinels and men on outpost duty, perpetrated no less by Canadians than by Indians. Wolfe’s object was twofold: first, to cause the militia to desert, and, secondly, to exhaust the colony. Rangers, light infantry, and Highlanders were sent to waste the settlements far and wide. Wherever resistance was offered, farmhouses and villages were laid in ashes, though churches were generally spared. St. Paul, far below Quebec, was sacked and burned, and the settlements of the opposite shore were partially destroyed. The parishes of L’Ange Gardien, Château Richer, and St. Joachim were wasted with fire and sword. Night after night the garrison of Quebec could see the light of burning houses as far down as the mountain of Cape Tourmente. Near St. Joachim there was a severe skirmish, followed by atrocious cruelties. Captain Alexander Montgomery, of the forty-third regiment, who commanded the detachment, and who has been most unjustly confounded with the revolutionary general, Richard Montgomery, ordered the prisoners to be shot in cold blood, to the indignation of his own officers.
¹
Robineau de Portneuf, curé of St. Joachim, placed himself at the head of thirty parishioners and took possession of a large stone house in the adjacent parish of Château Richer, where for a time he held the English at bay. At length he and his followers were drawn out into an ambush, where they were surrounded and killed; and, being disguised as Indians, the rangers scalped them all.
²

Most of the French writers of the time mention these barbarities without much comment, while Vaudreuil loudly denounces them. Yet he himself was answerable for atrocities incomparably worse, and on a far larger scale. He had turned loose his savages, red and white, along a frontier of six hundred miles, to waste, burn, and murder at will. “Women and children,” such were the orders of Wolfe, “are to be treated with humanity; if any violence is offered to a woman, the offender shall be punished with death.” These orders were generally obeyed. The English, with the single exception of Montgomery, killed none but armed men in the act of resistance or attack; Vaudreuil’s war-parties spared neither age nor sex.

Montcalm let the parishes burn, and still lay fast intrenched in his lines of Beauport. He would not imperil all Canada to save a few hundred farmhouses; and Wolfe was as far as ever from the battle that he coveted. Hitherto, his attacks had been made chiefly below the town; but, these having failed, he now changed his plan and renewed on a larger scale the movements begun above it in July. With every fair wind, ships and transports passed the batteries of Quebec, favored by a hot fire from Point Levi, and generally succeeded, with more or less damage, in gaining the upper river. A fleet of flatboats was also sent thither, and twelve hundred troops marched overland to embark in them, under Brigadier Murray. Admiral Holmes took command of the little fleet now gathered above the town, and operations in that quarter were systematically resumed.

To oppose them, Bougainville was sent from the camp at Beauport with fifteen hundred men. His was a most arduous and exhausting duty. He must watch the shores for fifteen or twenty miles, divide his force into detachments, and subject himself and his followers to the strain of incessant vigilance and incessant marching. Murray made a descent at Pointe-aux-Trembles, and was repulsed with loss. He tried a second time at another place, was met before landing by a body of ambushed Canadians, and was again driven back, his foremost boats full of dead and wounded. A third time he succeeded, landed at Deschambault, and burned a large building filled with stores and all the spare baggage of the French regular officers. The blow was so alarming that Montcalm hastened from Beauport to take command in person; but when he arrived the English were gone.

Vaudreuil now saw his mistake in sending the French frigates up the river out of harm’s way, and withdrawing their crews to serve the batteries of Quebec. Had these ships been there, they might have overpowered those of the English in detail as they passed the town. An attempt was made to retrieve the blunder. The sailors were sent to man the frigates anew and attack the squadron of Holmes. It was too late. Holmes was already too strong for them, and they were recalled. Yet the difficulties of the English still seemed insurmountable. Dysentery and fever broke out in their camps, the number of their effective men was greatly reduced, and the advancing season told them that their work must be done quickly, or not done at all.

On the other side, the distress of the French grew greater every day. Their army was on short rations. The operations of the English above the town filled the camp of Beauport with dismay, for troops and Canadians alike dreaded the cutting off of their supplies. These were all drawn from the districts of Three Rivers and Montreal; and, at best, they were in great danger, since when brought down in boats at night they were apt to be intercepted, while the difficulty of bringing them by land was extreme, through the scarcity of cattle and horses. Discipline was relaxed, disorder and pillage were rife, and the Canadians deserted so fast, that towards the end of August two hundred of them, it is said, would sometimes go off in one night. Early in the month the disheartening news came of the loss of Ticonderoga and Crown Point, the retreat of Bourlamaque, the fall of Niagara, and the expected advance of Amherst on Montreal. It was then that Lévis was despatched to the scene of danger; and Quebec was deplorably weakened by his absence. About this time the Lower Town was again set on fire by the English batteries, and a hundred and sixty-seven houses were burned in a night. In the front of the Upper Town nearly every building was a ruin. At the General Hospital, which was remote enough to be safe from the bombardment, every barn, shed, and garret, and even the chapel itself, were crowded with sick and wounded, with women and children from the town, and the nuns of the Ursulines and the Hôtel-Dieu, driven thither for refuge. Bishop Pontbriand, though suffering from a mortal disease, came almost daily to visit and console them from his lodging in the house of the curé at Charlesbourg.

Towards the end of August the sky brightened again. It became known that Amherst was not moving on Montreal, and Bourlamaque wrote that his position at Isle-aux-Noix was impregnable. On the twenty-seventh a deserter from Wolfe’s army brought the welcome assurance that the invaders despaired of success, and would soon sail for home; while there were movements in the English camps and fleet that seemed to confirm what he said. Vaudreuil breathed more freely, and renewed hope and confidence visited the army of Beauport.

Meanwhile a deep cloud fell on the English. Since the siege began, Wolfe had passed with ceaseless energy from camp to camp, animating the troops, observing everything, and directing everything; but now the pale face and tall lean form were seen no more, and the rumor spread that the General was dangerously ill. He had in fact been seized by an access of the disease that had tortured him for some time past; and fever had followed. His quarters were at a French farmhouse in the camp at Montmorenci; and here, as he lay in an upper chamber, helpless in bed, his singular and most unmilitary features haggard with disease and drawn with pain, no man could less have looked the hero. But as the needle, though quivering, points always to the pole, so, through torment and languor and the heats of fever, the mind of Wolfe dwelt on the capture of Quebec. His illness, which began before the twentieth of August, had so far subsided on the twenty-fifth that Knox wrote in his Diary of that day: “His Excellency General Wolfe is on the recovery, to the inconceivable joy of the whole army.” On the twenty-ninth he was able to write or dictate a letter to the three brigadiers, Monckton, Townshend, and Murray: “That the public service may not suffer by the General’s indisposition, he begs the brigadiers will meet and consult together for the public utility and advantage, and consider of the best method to attack the enemy.” The letter then proposes three plans, all bold to audacity. The first was to send a part of the army to ford the Montmorenci eight or nine miles above its mouth, march through the forest, and fall on the rear of the French at Beauport, while the rest landed and attacked them in front. The second was to cross the ford at the mouth of the Montmorenci and march along the strand, under the French intrenchments, till a place could be found where the troops might climb the heights. The third was to make a general attack from boats at the Beauport flats. Wolfe had before entertained two other plans, one of which was to scale the heights at St. Michel, about a league above Quebec; but this he had abandoned on learning that the French were there in force to receive him. The other was to storm the Lower Town; but this also he had abandoned, because the Upper Town, which commanded it, would still remain inaccessible.

The brigadiers met in consultation, rejected the three plans proposed in the letter, and advised that an attempt should be made to gain a footing on the north shore above the town, place the army between Montcalm and his base of supply, and so force him to fight or surrender. The scheme was similar to that of the heights of St. Michel. It seemed desperate, but so did all the rest; and if by chance it should succeed, the gain was far greater than could follow any success below the town. Wolfe embraced it at once.

Not that he saw much hope in it. He knew that every chance was against him. Disappointment in the past and gloom in the future, the pain and exhaustion of disease, toils, and anxieties “too great,” in the words of Burke, “to be supported by a delicate constitution, and a body unequal to the vigorous and enterprising soul that it lodged,” threw him at times into deep dejection. By those intimate with him he was heard to say that he would not go back defeated, “to be exposed to the censure and reproach of an ignorant populace.” In other moods he felt that he ought not to sacrifice what was left of his diminished army in vain conflict with hopeless obstacles. But his final resolve once taken, he would not swerve from it. His fear was that he might not be able to lead his troops in person. “I know perfectly well you cannot cure me,” he said to his physician; “but pray make me up so that I may be without pain for a few days, and able to do my duty: that is all I want.”

In a despatch which Wolfe had written to Pitt, Admiral Saunders conceived that he had ascribed to the fleet more than its just share in the disaster at Montmorenci; and he sent him a letter on the subject. Major Barré kept it from the invalid till the fever had abated. Wolfe then wrote a long answer, which reveals his mixed dejection and resolve. He affirms the justice of what Saunders had said, but adds: “I shall leave out that part of my letter to Mr. Pitt which you object to. I am sensible of my own errors in the course of the campaign, see clearly wherein I have been deficient, and think a little more or less blame to a man that must necessarily be ruined, of little or no consequence. I take the blame of that unlucky day entirely upon my own shoulders, and I expect to suffer for it.” Then, speaking of the new project of an attack above Quebec, he says despondingly: “My ill state of health prevents me from executing my own plan; it is of too desperate a nature to order others to execute.” He proceeds, however, to give directions for it. “It will be necessary to run as many small craft as possible above the town, with provisions for six weeks, for about five thousand, which is all I intend to take. My letters, I hope, will be ready to-morrow, and I hope I shall have strength to lead these men to wherever we can find the enemy.”