<SPAN name="startofbook"></SPAN>
<div class="titlepage">
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_i" id="Page_i">i</SPAN></span>
<h1>The Conquest of New France</h1>
<p class="author">
By George M. Wrong</p>
<p class="book-subtitle">A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars</p>
<p>Volume 10 of the<br/>
Chronicles of America Series <br/>
∴<br/>
Allen Johnson, Editor<br/>
Assistant Editors<br/>
Gerhard R. Lomer <br/>
Charles W. Jefferys</p>
<hr class="tiny" />
<p><i>Abraham Lincoln Edition</i><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/></p>
<p>New Haven: Yale University Press<br/>
Toronto: Glasgow, Brook & Co.<br/>
London: Humphrey Milford<br/>
Oxford University Press<br/>
1918</p>
</div>
<p class="center" style="font-size:smaller">
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_ii" id="Page_ii">ii</SPAN></span>
Copyright, 1918<br/>
by Yale University Press <br/></p>
<hr class="main" />
<div class="contents">
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">iii</SPAN></span>
<SPAN name="Contents" name="Contents"></SPAN>
<h2>Contents</h2>
<p class="center">
<span class="smcap">The Conquest of New France</span></p>
</div>
<table summary="Toc1" >
<tbody>
<tr style="font-size:small;">
<th style="text-align:left;">Chapter</th>
<th class="center">Chapter Title</th>
<th>Page</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="right">I.</td>
<td class="chaptername">The Conflict Opens: Frontenac And Phips</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#link2HCH0001">1</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="right">II.</td>
<td class="chaptername">Quebec And Boston</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#link2HCH0002">24</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="right">III.</td>
<td class="chaptername"> France Loses Acadia</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#link2HCH0003">44</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="right">IV.</td>
<td class="chaptername">Louisbourg And Boston</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#link2HCH0004">67</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="right">V.</td>
<td class="chaptername">The Great West</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#link2HCH0005">97</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="right">VI.</td>
<td class="chaptername">The Valley Of The Ohio</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#link2HCH0006">145</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="right">VII.</td>
<td class="chaptername">The Expulsion Of The Acadians</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#link2HCH0007">164</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="right">VIII.</td>
<td class="chaptername">The Victories Of Montcalm</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#link2HCH0008">178</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="right">IX.</td>
<td class="chaptername">Montcalm At Quebec</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#link2HCH0009">198</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="right">X.</td>
<td class="chaptername">The Strategy Of Pitt</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#link2HCH0010">210</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="right">XI.</td>
<td class="chaptername">The Fall Of Canada</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#link2HCH0011">225</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td class="chaptername">Bibliographical Note</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#link2H_4_0013">239</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td class="chaptername">Index</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#link2H_4_0014">241</SPAN></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<hr class="main" />
<div class="start-of-book">
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_1" id="Page_1">1</SPAN></span>
<br/> <br/> <SPAN name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001"></SPAN></p>
THE CONQUEST OF NEW FRANCE</div>
<div class="chapterhead" style="text-align:center;">
<br/>
<span style="font-size:x-large;">∴</span>
<br/><br/><br/></div>
<h2> <SPAN href="#Contents">CHAPTER I.</SPAN> </h2>
<p class="chaptertitle">
The Conflict Opens: Frontenac And Phips</p>
<p><span class="smcap">Many</span> centuries of European history had
been marked by war almost ceaseless between France and England when
these two states first confronted each other in America. The conflict
for the New World was but the continuation of an age-long antagonism
in the Old, intensified now by the savagery of the wilderness and by
new dreams of empire. There was another potent cause of strife which
had not existed in the earlier days. When, during the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries, the antagonists had fought through the
interminable Hundred Years’ War, they had been of the same
religious faith. Since then, however, England had become Protestant,
while France had remained Catholic. When the rivals first met on the
shores
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_2" id="Page_2">2</SPAN></span>
of the New World, colonial America was still very young. It was in
1607 that the English occupied Virginia. At the same time the French
were securing a foothold in Acadia, now Nova Scotia. Six years had
barely passed when the English Captain Argall sailed to the north
from Virginia and destroyed the rising French settlements. Sixteen
years after this another English force attacked and captured Quebec.
Presently these conquests were restored. France remained in possession
of the St. Lawrence and in virtual possession of Acadia. The English
colonies, holding a great stretch of the Atlantic seaboard, increased
in number and power. New France also grew stronger. The steady
hostility of the rivals never wavered. There was, indeed, little
open warfare as long as the two Crowns remained at peace. From
1660 to 1688, the Stuart rulers of England remained subservient to
their cousin the Bourbon King of France and at one with him in religious
faith. But after the fall of the Stuarts France bitterly denounced the new
King, William of Orange, as both a heretic and a usurper, and attacked the
English in America with a savage fury unknown in Europe. From 1690 to 1760
the combatants fought with little more than pauses
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_3" id="Page_3">3</SPAN></span>
for renewed preparation; and the conflict ended only when France
yielded to England the mastery of her empire in America. It is
the story of this struggle, covering a period of seventy years,
which is told in the following pages.</p>
<hr class="break" />
<p>The career of Louis de Buade, Comte de Frontenac, who was Governor of
Canada from 1672 to 1682 and again from 1689 to his death in 1698, reveals
both the merits and the defects of the colonizing genius of France.
Frontenac was a man of noble birth whose life had been spent in court and
camp. The story of his family, so far as it is known, is a story of
attendance upon the royal house of France. His father and uncles had been
playmates of the young Dauphin, afterwards Louis XIII. The thoughts
familiar to Frontenac in his youth remained with him through life; and,
when he went to rule at Quebec, the very spirit that dominated the court
at Versailles crossed the sea with him.</p>
<p>A man is known by the things he loves. The things which Frontenac most
highly cherished were marks of royal favor, the ceremony due to his own
rank, the right to command. He was an egoist, supremely interested in
himself.
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_4" id="Page_4">4</SPAN></span>
He was poor, but at his country seat in France, near Blois, he
kept open house in the style of a great noble. Always he bore himself as
one to whom much was due. His guests were expected to admire his
indifferent horses as the finest to be seen, his gardens as the most
beautiful, his clothes as of the most effective cut and finish, the plate
on his table as of the best workmanship, and the food as having superior
flavor. He scolded his equals as if they were naughty children.</p>
<p>Yet there was genius in this showy court figure. In 1669, when the
Venetian Republic had asked France to lend her an efficient soldier to
lead against the rampant Turk, the great Marshal Turenne had chosen
Frontenac for the task. Crete, which Frontenac was to rescue, the Turk
indeed had taken; but, it is said, at the fearful cost of a hundred and
eighty thousand men. Three years later, Frontenac had been sent to Canada
to war with the savage Iroquois and to hold in check the aggressive
designs of the English. He had been recalled in 1682, after ten years of
service, chiefly on account of his arbitrary temper. He had quarreled with
the Bishop. He had bullied the Intendant until at one time that harried
official had barricaded his house and armed his servants.
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_5" id="Page_5">5</SPAN></span>
He had told the Jesuit missionaries that they thought more of
selling beaver-skins than of saving souls. He had insulted those
about him, sulked, threatened, foamed at the mouth in rage,
revealed a childish vanity in regard to his dignity, and a hunger
insatiable for marks of honor from the King—“more grateful,”
he once said, “than anything else to a heart shaped after the
right pattern.”</p>
<p>France, however, now required at Quebec a man who could do the needed
man’s tasks. The real worth of Frontenac had been tested; and so,
in 1689, when England had driven from her shores her Catholic king and
when France’s colony across the sea seemed to be in grave danger
from the Iroquois allies of the English, Frontenac was sent again to
Quebec to subdue these savages and, if he could, to destroy in America
the power of the age-long enemy of his country.</p>
<p>Perched high above the St. Lawrence, on a noble site where now is a public
terrace and a great hotel, stood the Château St. Louis, the scene of
Frontenac’s rule as head of the colony. No other spot in the world
commanded such a highway linking the inland waters with the sea. The
French had always an eye for points of strategic value; and in holding
Quebec they hoped to possess the
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_6" id="Page_6">6</SPAN></span>
pivot on which the destinies of North
America should turn. For a long time it seemed, indeed, as if this glowing
vision might become a reality. The imperial ideas which were working at
Quebec were based upon the substantial realities of trade. The instinct
for business was hardly less strong in these keen adventurers than the
instinct for empire. In promise of trade the interior of North America was
rich. Today its vast agriculture and its wealth in minerals have brought
rewards beyond the dreams of two hundred years ago. The wealth, however,
sought by the leaders of that time came from furs. In those wastes of
river, lake, and forest were the richest preserves in the world for
fur-bearing animals.</p>
<p>This vast wilderness was not an unoccupied land. In those wild regions
dwelt many savage tribes. Some of the natives were by no means without
political capacity. On the contrary, they were long clever enough to pit
English against French to their own advantage as the real sovereigns in
North America. One of them, whose fluent oratory had won for him the name
of Big Mouth, told the Governor of Canada, in 1688, that his people held
their lands from the Great Spirit, that they yielded no lordship to either
the English
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_7" id="Page_7">7</SPAN></span>
or the French, that they well understood the weakness of the
French and were quite able to destroy them, but that they wished to be
friends with both French and English who brought to them the advantages of
trade. In sagacity of council and dignity of carriage some of these
Indians so bore themselves that to trained observers they seemed not
unequal to the diplomats of Europe. They were, however, weak before the
superior knowledge of the white men. In all their long centuries in
America they had learned nothing of the use of iron. Their sharpest tool
had been made of chipped obsidian or of hammered copper. Their most potent
weapons had been the stone hatchet or axe and the bow and arrow. It thus
happened that, when steel and gunpowder reached America, the natives soon
came to despise their primitive implements. More and more they craved the
supplies from Europe which multiplied in a hundred ways their strength in
the conflict with nature and with man. To the Indian tribes trade with the
French or English soon became a vital necessity. From the far northwest
for a thousand miles to the bleak shores of Hudson Bay, from the banks of
the Mississippi to the banks of the St. Lawrence and the Hudson, they came
each year
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_8" id="Page_8">8</SPAN></span>
on laborious journeys, paddling their canoes and carrying them
over portages, to barter furs for the things which they must have and
which the white man alone could supply.</p>
<p>The Iroquois, the ablest and most resolute of the native tribes, held the
lands bordering on Lake Ontario which commanded the approaches from both
the Hudson and the St. Lawrence by the Great Lakes to the spacious regions
of the West. The five tribes known as the Iroquois had shown marked
political talent by forming themselves into a confederacy. From the time
of Champlain, the founder of Quebec, there had been trouble between the
French and the Iroquois. In spite of this bad beginning, the French had
later done their best to make friends with the powerful confederacy. They
had sent to them devoted missionaries, many of whom met the martyr’s
reward of torture and massacre. But the opposing influence of the English,
with whom the Iroquois chiefly traded, proved too strong.</p>
<p>With the Iroquois hostile, it was too dangerous for the French to travel
inland by way of Lake Ontario. They had, it is true, a shorter and,
indeed, a better route farther north, by way of the Ottawa River and Lake
Nipissing to Lake Huron. In time,
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_9" id="Page_9">9</SPAN></span>
however, the Iroquois made even this route unsafe. Their power was
far-reaching and their ambition limitless.
They aimed to be masters of North America. Like all virile but backward
peoples, they believed themselves superior to every other race. Their
orators declared that the fate of the world was to turn on their policy.</p>
<p>On Frontenac’s return to Canada he had a stormy inheritance in
confronting the Iroquois. They had real grievances against France.
Denonville, Frontenac’s predecessor, had met their treachery by
treachery of his own.
Louis XIV had found that these lusty savages made excellent galley slaves
and had ordered Denonville to secure a supply in Canada. In consequence
the Frenchman seized even friendly Iroquois and sent them over seas to
France. The savages in retaliation exacted a fearful vengeance in the
butchery of French colonists. The bloodiest story in the annals of Canada
is the massacre at Lachine, a village a few miles above Montreal. On the
night of August 4, 1689, fourteen hundred Iroquois burst in on the village
and a wild orgy of massacre followed. All Canada was in a panic. Some
weeks later Frontenac arrived at Quebec and took command.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_10" id="Page_10">10</SPAN></span>
To the old
soldier, now in his seventieth year, his hard task was not uncongenial. He
had fought the savage Iroquois before and the no less savage Turk. He
belonged to that school of military action which knows no scruple in its
methods, and he was prepared to make war with all the frightfulness
practised by the savages themselves. His resolute, blustering demeanor was
well fitted to impress the red men of the forest, for an imperious eye
will sometimes cow an Indian as well as a lion, and Frontenac’s mien
was
imperious. In his life in court and camp he had learned how to command.</p>
<p>The English in New York had professed to be brothers to the Iroquois and
had called them by that name. This title of equality, however, Frontenac
would not yield. Kings speak of “my people”; Frontenac spoke
to the Indians not as his brothers but as his children and as children of
the great King whom he served. He was their father, their protector, the
disposer and controller of mighty reserves of power, who loved and cared
for those putting their trust in him. He could unbend to play with their
children and give presents to their squaws. At times he seemed patient,
gentle, and forgiving. At times, too, he swaggered and boasted in terms
which the event did not always justify.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_11" id="Page_11">11</SPAN></span>
La Potherie, a cultivated Frenchman in Canada during Frontenac’s
régime, describes an amazing scene at Montreal, which seems to show
that, whether Frontenac recognized the title or not, he had qualities
which made him the real brother of the savages. In 1690 Huron and other
Indian allies of the French had come from the far interior to trade and
also to consider the eternal question of checking the Iroquois. At the
council, which began with grave decorum, a Huron orator begged the French
to make no terms with the Iroquois. Frontenac answered in the high tone
which he could so well assume. He would fight them until they should
humbly crave peace; he would make with them no treaty except in concert
with his Indian allies, whom he would never fail in fatherly care. To
impress the council by the reality of his oneness with the Indians,
Frontenac now seized a tomahawk and brandished it in the air shouting
at the same time the Indian war-song. The whole assembly, French and
Indians, joined in a wild orgy of war passion, and the old man of seventy,
fresh from the court of Louis XIV, led in the war-dance, yelled with the
Indians their savage war-whoops, danced round the circle of the council,
and showed himself in spirit a brother of
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_12" id="Page_12">12</SPAN></span>
the wildest of them. This was good diplomacy. The savages swore
to make war to the end under his lead. Many a frontier outrage, many a
village attacked in the dead of night and burned, amidst bloody massacre
of its few toil-worn settlers, was to be the result of that strange
mingling of Europe with wild America.</p>
<p>Frontenac’s task was to make war on the English and their Iroquois
allies. He had before him the King’s instructions as to the means
for effecting
this. The King aimed at nothing less than the conquest of the English
colonies in America. In 1664 the English, by a sudden blow in time of
peace, had captured New Netherland, the Dutch colony on the Hudson, which
then became New York. Now, a quarter of a century later, France thought to
strike a similar blow against the English, and Louis XIV was resolved that
the conquest should be thoroughgoing. The Dutch power had fallen before a
meager naval force. The English now would have to face one much more
formidable. Two French ships were to cross the sea and to lie in wait near
New York. Meanwhile from Canada, sixteen hundred armed men, a thousand of
them French regular troops, were to advance by land into the heart of the
colony, seize Albany and all
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_13" id="Page_13">13</SPAN></span>
the boats there available, and descend by the
Hudson to New York. The warships, hovering off the coast, would then enter
New York harbor at the same time that the land forces made their attack.
The village, for it was hardly more than this, contained, as the French
believed, only some two hundred houses and four hundred fighting men and
it was thought that a month would suffice to complete this whole work of
conquest. Once victors, the French were to show no pity. All private
property, but that of Catholics, was to be confiscated. Catholics, whether
English or Dutch, were to be left undisturbed if not too numerous and if
they would take the oath of allegiance to Louis XIV and show some promise
of keeping it. Rich Protestants were to be held for ransom. All the other
inhabitants, except those whom the French might find useful for their own
purposes, were to be driven out of the colony, homeless wanderers, to be
scattered far so that they could not combine to recover what they had
lost. With New York taken, New England would be so weakened that in time
it too would fall. Such was the plan of conquest which came from the
brilliant chambers at Versailles.</p>
<p>New York did not fall. The expedition so
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_14" id="Page_14">14</SPAN></span>
carefully planned came to
nothing. Frontenac had never shown much faith in the enterprise. At
Quebec, on his arrival in the autumn of 1689, he was planning something
less ideally perfect, but certain to produce results. The scarred old
courtier intended so to terrorize the English that they should make no
aggressive advance, to encourage the French to believe themselves superior
to their rivals, and, above all, to prove to the Indian tribes that
prudence dictated alliance with the French and not with the English.</p>
<p>Frontenac wrote a tale of blood. There were three war parties; one set out
from Montreal against New York, and one from Three Rivers and one from
Quebec against the frontier settlements of New Hampshire and Maine. To
describe one is to describe all. A band of one hundred and sixty
Frenchmen, with nearly as many Indians, gathers at Montreal in mid-winter.
The ground is deep with snow and they troop on snowshoes across the white
wastes. Dragging on sleds the needed supplies, they march up the Richelieu
River and over the frozen surface of Lake Champlain. As they advance with
caution into the colony of New York they suffer terribly, now from bitter
cold, now from thaws which make
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_15" id="Page_15">15</SPAN></span>
the soft trail almost impassable. On a February night their scouts
tell them that they are near Schenectady, on the English frontier.
There are young members of the Canadian <i>noblesse</i> in
the party. In the dead of night they creep up to the paling which
surrounds the village. The signal is given and the village is awakened by
the terrible war-whoop. Doors are smashed by axes and hatchets, and women
and children are killed as they lie in bed, or kneel, shrieking for mercy.
Houses are set on fire and living human beings are thrown into the flames.
By midday the assailants have finished their dread work and are retreating
along the forest paths dragging with them a few miserable captives. In
this winter of 1689-90 raiding parties also came back from the borders of
New Hampshire and of Maine with news of similar exploits, and Quebec and
Montreal glowed with the joy of victory.</p>
<hr class="break" />
<p>Far away an answering attack was soon on foot. Sir William Phips of
Massachusetts, the son of a poor settler on the Kennebec River, had made
his first advance in life by taking up the trade of carpenter in Boston.
Only when grown up had he learned to read and write. He married a rich
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_16" id="Page_16">16</SPAN></span>
wife, and ease of circumstances freed his mind for great designs. Some
fifty years before he was thus relieved of material cares, a Spanish
galleon carrying vast wealth had been wrecked in the West Indies. Phips
now planned to raise the ship and get the money. For this enterprise he
obtained support in England and set out on his exacting adventure. On the
voyage his crew mutinied. Armed with cutlasses, they told Phips that he
must turn pirate or perish; but he attacked the leader with his fists and
triumphed by sheer strength of body and will. A second mutiny he also
quelled, and then took his ship to Jamaica where he got rid of its
worthless crew. His enterprise had apparently failed; but the second Duke
of Albemarle and other powerful men believed in him and helped him to make
another trial. This time he succeeded in finding the wreck on the coast of
Hispaniola, and took possession of its cargo of precious metals and
jewels—treasure to the value of three hundred thousand pounds
sterling. Of the spoil Phips himself received sixteen thousand pounds, a
great fortune for a New Englander in those days. He was also knighted for
his services and, in the end, was named by William and Mary the first royal
Governor of Massachusetts.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_17" id="Page_17">17</SPAN></span>
Massachusetts, whose people had been thoroughly aroused by the French
incursions, resolved to retaliate by striking at the heart of Canada by
sea and to take Quebec. Sir William Phips, though not yet made Governor,
would lead the expedition. The first blow fell in Acadia. Phips sailed up
the Bay of Fundy and on May 11, 1690, landed a force before Port Royal.
The French Governor surrendered on terms. The conquest was intended to be
final, and the people were offered their lives and property on the
condition of taking the oath to be loyal subjects of William and Mary.
This many of them did and were left unmolested. It was a bloodless
victory. But Phips, the Puritan crusader, was something of a pirate. He
plundered private property and was himself accused of taking not merely
the silver forks and spoons of the captive Governor but even his wigs,
shirts, garters, and night caps. The Boston Puritans joyfully pillaged the
church at Port Royal, and overturned the high altar and the images. The
booty was considerable and by the end of May Phips, a prosperous hero, was
back in Boston.</p>
<p>Boston was aflame with zeal to go on and conquer Canada. By the middle of
August Phips
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_18" id="Page_18">18</SPAN></span>
had set out on the long sea voyage to Quebec, with twenty-two
hundred men, a great force for a colonial enterprise of that time, and in
all some forty ships. The voyage occupied more than two months. Apparently
the hardy carpenter-sailor, able enough to carry through a difficult
undertaking with a single ship, lacked the organizing skill to manage a
great expedition. He performed, however, the feat of navigating safely
with his fleet the treacherous waters of the lower St. Lawrence. On the
morning of October 16, 1690, watchers at Quebec saw the fleet, concerning
which they had already been warned, rounding the head of the Island of
Orleans and sailing into the broad basin. Breathless spectators counted
the ships. There were thirty-four in sight, a few large vessels, some mere
fishing craft. It was a spectacle well calculated to excite and alarm the
good people of Quebec. They might, however, take comfort in the knowledge
that their great Frontenac was present to defend them. A few days earlier
he had been in Montreal, but, when there had come the startling news of
the approach of the enemy’s ships, he had hurried down the river
and had been received with shouts of joy by the anxious populace.</p>
<p>The situation was one well suited to Frontenac’s
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_19" id="Page_19">19</SPAN></span>
genius for the dramatic. When a boat under a flag of truce put out
from the English ships, Frontenac hurried four canoes to meet it. The
English envoy was placed blindfold in one of these canoes and was
paddled to the shore. Here two soldiers took him by the arms and led
him over many obstacles up the steep ascent to the Château
St. Louis. He could see nothing but could hear the beating of drums,
the blowing of trumpets, the jeers and shouting of a great multitude
in a town which seemed to be full of soldiers and to have its streets
heavily barricaded. When the bandage was taken from his eyes he found
himself in a great room of the Château. Before him stood Frontenac,
in brilliant uniform, surrounded by the most glittering array of
officers which Quebec could muster. The astonished envoy presented a
letter from Phips. It was a curt demand in the name of King William of
England for the unconditional surrender of all “forts and
castles” in Canada, of Frontenac himself, and all his forces and
supplies. On such conditions Phips would show mercy, as a Christian
should. Frontenac must answer within an hour. When the letter had been
read the envoy took a watch from his pocket and pointed out the time to
Frontenac. It was ten
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_20" id="Page_20">20</SPAN></span>
o’clock. The reply must be given by eleven. Loud mutterings greeted
the insulting message. One officer cried out that Phips was a pirate and
that his messenger should be hanged. Frontenac knew well how to deal with
such a situation. He threw the letter in the envoy’s face and turned
his back upon him. The unhappy man, who understood French, heard the
Governor give orders that a gibbet should be erected on which he was to be
hanged. When the Bishop and the Intendant pleaded for mercy, Frontenac
seemed to yield. He would not take, he said, an hour to reply, but would
answer at once. He knew no such person as King William. James, though in
exile, was the true King of England and the good friend of the King of
France. There would be no surrender to a pirate. After this outburst, the
envoy asked if he might have the answer in writing. “No!”
thundered Frontenac. “I will answer only from the mouths of my
cannon and with my musketry!”</p>
<p>Phips could not take Quebec. In carrying out his plans, he was slow and
dilatory. Nature aided his foe. The weather was bad, the waters before
Quebec were difficult, and boats grounded unexpectedly in a falling tide.
Phips landed a force on the north side of the basin at Beauport but was
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_21" id="Page_21">21</SPAN></span>
held in check by French and Indian skirmishing parties. He sailed his
ships up close to Quebec and bombarded the stronghold, but then, as now,
ships were impotent against well-served land defenses. Soon Phips was
short of ammunition. A second time he made a landing in order to attack
Quebec from the valley of the St. Charles but French regulars fought with
militia and Indians to drive off his forces. Phips held a meeting with his
officers for prayer. Heaven, however, denied success to his arms. If he
could not take Quebec, it was time to be gone, for in the late autumn the
dangers of the St. Lawrence are great. He lay before Quebec for just a
week and on the 23d of October sailed away. It was late in November when
his battered fleet began to straggle into Boston. The ways of God had not
proved as simple as they had seemed to the Puritan faith, for the
stronghold of Satan had not fallen before the attacks of the Lord’s
people. There were searchings of heart, recriminations, and financial
distress in Boston.</p>
<hr class="break" />
<p>For seven years more the war endured. Frontenac’s victory over Phips at
Quebec was not victory over the Iroquois or victory over the colony of New
York. In 1691 this colony sent Peter
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_22" id="Page_22">22</SPAN></span>
Schuyler with a force against Canada
by way of Lake Champlain. Schuyler penetrated almost to Montreal, gained
some indecisive success, and caused much suffering to the unhappy Canadian
settlers. Frontenac made his last great stroke in July, 1696, when he led
more than two thousand men through the primeval forest to destroy the
villages of the Onondaga and the Oneida tribes of the Iroquois. On the
journey from the south shore of Lake Ontario, the old man of seventy-five
was unable to walk over the rough portages and fifty Indians shouting
songs of joy carried his great canoe on their shoulders. When the soldiers
left the canoes and marched forward to the fight, they bore Frontenac in
an easy chair. He did not destroy his enemy, for many of the Indians fled,
but he burned their chief village and taught them a new respect for the
power of the French. It was the last great effort of the old warrior. In
the next year, 1697, was concluded the Peace of Ryswick; and in 1698
Frontenac died in his seventy-ninth year, a hoary champion of France’s
imperial designs.</p>
<p>The Peace of Ryswick was an indecisive ending of an indecisive war. It was
indeed one of those bad treaties which invite renewed war. The
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_23" id="Page_23">23</SPAN></span>
struggle
had achieved little but to deepen the conviction of each side that it must
make itself stronger for the next fight. Each gave back most of what it
had gained. The peace, however, did not leave matters quite as they had
been. The position of William was stronger than before, for France had
treated with him and now recognized him as King of England. Moreover
France, hitherto always victorious, with generals who had not known
defeat, was really defeated when she could not longer advance.</p>
<hr class="main" />
<div class="chapterhead" style="text-align:center;">
<SPAN name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002"></SPAN>
<br/><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_24" id="Page_24">24</SPAN></span>
<br/><br/><br/></div>
<h2> <SPAN href="#Contents">CHAPTER II.</SPAN> </h2>
<p class="chaptertitle">
Quebec And Boston</p>
<p><span class="smcap">At</span> the end of the seventeenth century
it must have seemed a far cry from
Versailles to Quebec. The ocean was crossed only by small sailing vessels
haunted by both tempest and pestilence, the one likely to prolong the
voyage by many weeks, the other to involve the sacrifice of scores of
lives through scurvy and other maladies. Yet, remote as the colony seemed,
Quebec was the child of Versailles, protected and nourished by Louis XIV
and directed by him in its minutest affairs. The King spent laborious
hours over papers relating to the cherished colony across the sea. He sent
wise counsel to his officials in Canada and with tactful patience rebuked
their faults. He did everything for the colonists—gave them not
merely land, but muskets, farm implements, even chickens, pigs, and
sometimes wives. The defect of his government was that it tended to be too
paternal.
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_25" id="Page_25">25</SPAN></span>
The vital needs of a colony struggling with the problems of
barbarism could hardly be read correctly and provided for at Versailles.
Colonies, like men, are strong only when they learn to take care of
themselves.</p>
<p>The English colonies present a vivid contrast. London did not direct and
control Boston. In London the will, indeed, was not wanting, for the
Stuart kings, Charles II and James II, were not less despotic in spirit
than Louis XIV. But while in France there was a vast organism which moved
only as the King willed, in England power was more widely distributed. It
may be claimed with truth that English national liberties are a growth
from the local freedom which has existed from time immemorial. When
British colonists left the motherland to found a new society, their first
instinct was to create institutions which involved local control. The
solemn covenant by which in 1620 the worn company of the <i>Mayflower</i>,
after a long and painful voyage, pledged themselves to create a
self-governing society, was the inevitable expression of the English
political spirit. Do what it would, London could never control Boston as
Versailles controlled Quebec.</p>
<p>The English colonist kept his eyes fixed on his
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_26" id="Page_26">26</SPAN></span>
own fortunes. From the
state he expected little; from himself, everything. He had no great sense
of unity with neighboring colonists under the same crown. Only when he
realized some peril to his interests, some menace which would master him
if he did not fight, was he stirred to warlike energy. French leaders, on
the other hand, were thinking of world politics. The voyage of Verrazano,
the Italian sailor who had been sent out by Francis I of France in 1524,
and who had sailed along a great stretch of the Atlantic coast, was deemed
by Frenchmen a sufficient title to the whole of North America. They
flouted England’s claim based upon the voyages of the Cabots nearly thirty
years earlier. Spain, indeed, might claim Florida, but the English had no
real right to any footing in the New World. As late as in 1720, when the
fortunes of France were already on the wane in the New World, Father Bobé,
a priest of the Congregation of Missions, presented to the French court a
document which sets forth in uncompromising terms the rights of France to
all the land between the thirtieth and the fiftieth parallels of latitude.
True, he says, others occupy much of this territory, but France must drive
out intruders and in particular the English. Boston rightly belongs to
France
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_27" id="Page_27">27</SPAN></span>
and so also do New York and Philadelphia. The only regions to which
England has any just claim are Acadia, Newfoundland, and Hudson Bay, ceded
by France under the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. This weak cession all true
Frenchmen regret and England must hand the territories back. She owes
France compensation for her long occupation of lands not really hers. If
she makes immediate restitution, the King of France, generous and kind,
will forego some of his rights and allow England to retain a strip some
fifty miles wide extending from Maine to Florida. France has the right to
the whole of the interior. In the mind of the reverend memorialist, no
doubt, there was the conviction that England would soon lose the meager
strip, fifty miles wide, which France might yield.</p>
<p>These dreams of power had a certain substance. It seems to us now that,
from the first, the French were dreaming of the impossible. We know what
has happened, and after the event it is an easy task to measure political
forces. The ambitions of France were not, however, empty fancies. More
than once she has seemed on the point of mastering the nations of the
West. Just before the year 1690 she had a great opportunity. In
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_28" id="Page_28">28</SPAN></span>
England,
in 1660, the fall of the system created by Oliver Cromwell brought back to
the English throne the House of Stuart, for centuries the ally and usually
the pupil of France. Stuart kings of Scotland, allied with France, had
fought the Tudor kings of England. Stuarts in misfortune had been the
pensioners of France. Charles II, a Stuart, alien in religion to the
convictions of his people, looked to Catholic France to give him security
on his throne. Before the first half of the reign of Louis XIV had ended,
it was the boast of the French that the King of England was vassal to
their King, that the states of continental Europe had become mere pawns in
the game of their Grand Monarch, and that France could be master of as
much of the world as was really worth mastering. In 1679 the Canadian
Intendant, Duchesneau, writing from Quebec to complain of the despotic
conduct of the Governor, Frontenac, paid a tribute to “the King our
master, of whom the whole world stands in awe, who has just given law to
all Europe.”</p>
<p>To men thus obsessed by the greatness of their own ruler it seemed no
impossible task to overthrow a few English colonies in America of whose
King their own was the patron and the paymaster.
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_29" id="Page_29">29</SPAN></span>
The world of high
politics has never been conspicuous for its knowledge of human nature. A
strong blow from a strong arm would, it was believed both at Versailles
and Quebec, shatter forever a weak rival and give France the prize of
North America. Officers in Canada talked loftily of the ease with which
France might master all the English colonies. The Canadians, it was said,
were a brave and warlike people, trained to endure hardship, while the
English colonists were undisciplined, ignorant of war, and cowardly. The
link between them and the motherland, said these observers, could be
easily broken, for the colonies were longing to be free. There is no doubt
that France could put into the field armies vastly greater than those of
England. Had the French been able to cross the Channel, march on London
and destroy English power at its root, the story of civilization in a
great part of North America might well have been different, and we should
perhaps find now on the banks of the Hudson what we find on the banks of
the St. Lawrence—villages dominated by great churches and convents,
with inhabitants Catholic to a man, speaking the language and preserving
the traditions of France. The strip of inviolate sea between Calais and
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_30" id="Page_30">30</SPAN></span>
Dover made impossible, however, an assault on London. Sea power kept
secure not only England but English effort in America and in the end
defeated France.</p>
<p>England had defenses other than her great strength on the sea. In spite of
the docility towards France shown by the English King, Charles II, himself
half French in blood and at heart devoted to the triumph of the Catholic
faith, the English people would tolerate no policies likely to make
England subservient to France. This was forbidden by age-long tradition.
The struggle had become one of religion as well as of race. A fight for a
century and a half with the Roman Catholic Church had made England
sternly, fanatically Protestant. In their suspicion of the system which
France accepted, Englishmen had sent a king to the scaffold, had
overthrown the monarchy, and had created a military republic. This
republic, indeed, had fallen, but the distrust of the aims of the Roman
Catholic Church remained intense and burst into passionate fury the moment
an understanding of the aims of France gained currency.</p>
<p>There are indeed few passages in English history less creditable than the
panic fear of Roman
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_31" id="Page_31">31</SPAN></span>
Catholic plots which swept the country in the days
when Frontenac at Quebec was working to destroy English and Protestant
influence in America. In 1678, Titus Oates, a clergyman of the Church of
England who had turned Roman Catholic, declared that, while in the secrets
of his new church, he had found on foot a plot to restore Roman Catholic
dominance in England by means of the murder of Charles II and of any other
crimes necessary for that purpose. Oates said that he had left the Church
and returned to his former faith because of the terrible character of the
conspiracy which he had discovered. His story was not even plausible; he
was known to be a man of vicious life; moreover, Catholic plotters would
hardly murder a king who was at heart devoted to Catholic policy. England,
however, was in a nervous state of mind; Charles II was known to be
intriguing with France; and a cruel fury surged through the nation. For a
share in the supposed plots a score of people, among them one of the
great nobles of England, the venerable and innocent Earl of Stafford, were
condemned to death and executed. Whatever Charles II himself might have
thought, he was obliged for his own safety to acquiesce in the policy of
persecution.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_32" id="Page_32">32</SPAN></span>
Catholic France was not less malignant than Protestant England. Though
cruel severity had long been shown to Protestants, they seemed to be
secure under the law of France in certain limited rights and in a
restricted toleration. In 1685, however, Louis XIV revoked the Edict of
Nantes by which Henry IV a century earlier had guaranteed this toleration.
All over France there had already burst out terrible persecution, and the
act of Louis XIV brought a fiery climax. Unhappy heretics who would not
accept Roman Catholic doctrine found life intolerable. Tens of thousands
escaped from France in spite of a law which, though it exiled the
Protestant ministers, forbade other Protestants to leave the country.
Stories of plots were made the excuse to seize the property of
Protestants. Regiments of soldiers, charged with the task, could boast of
many enforced “conversions.” Quartered on Protestant households, they made
the life of the inmates a burden until they abandoned their religion.
Among the means used were torture before a slow fire, the tearing off of
the finger nails, the driving of the whole families naked into the streets
and the forbidding of any one to give them shelter, the violation of
women, and the crowding of the heretics
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_33" id="Page_33">33</SPAN></span>
in loathsome prisons. By such
means it took a regiment of soldiers in Rouen only a few days to “convert”
to the old faith some six hundred families. Protestant ministers caught in
France were sent to the galleys for life. The persecutions which followed
the revocation of the Edict of Nantes outdid even Titus Oates.</p>
<p>Charles II died in 1685 and the scene at his deathbed encouraged in
England suspicions of Catholic policy and in France hope that this policy
was near its climax of success. Though indolent and dissolute, Charles yet
possessed striking mental capacity and insight. He knew well that to
preserve his throne he must remain outwardly a Protestant and must also
respect the liberties of the English nation. He cherished, however, the
Roman Catholic faith and the despotic ideals of his Bourbon mother. On his
deathbed he avowed his real belief. With great precautions for secrecy, he
was received into the Roman Catholic Church and comforted with the
consolations which it offers to the dying. While this secret was suspected
by the English people, one further fact was perfectly clear. Their new
King, James II, was a zealous Roman Catholic, who would use all his
influence to bring England back
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_34" id="Page_34">34</SPAN></span>
to the Roman communion. Suspicion of the
King’s designs soon became certainty and, after four years of bitter
conflict with James, the inevitable happened. The Roman Catholic Stuart
King was driven from his throne and his daughter Mary and her Protestant
husband, William of Orange, became the sovereigns of England by choice of
the English Parliament. Again had the struggle between Roman Catholic and
Protestant brought revolution in England, and the politics of Europe
dominated America. The revolution in London was followed by revolution in
Boston and New York. The authority of James II was repudiated. His chief
agent in New England, Sir Edmund Andros, was seized and imprisoned, and
William and Mary reigned over the English colonies in America as they
reigned over the motherland.</p>
<p>To the loyal Catholics of France the English, who had driven out a
Catholic king and dethroned an ancient line, were guilty of the double sin
of heresy and of treason. To the Jesuit enthusiast in Canada not only were
they infidel devils in human shape upon whose plans must rest the curse of
God; they were also rebels, republican successors of the accursed
Cromwell, who had sent an
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_35" id="Page_35">35</SPAN></span>
anointed king to the block. It would be a holy
thing to destroy this lawless power which ruled from London. The Puritans
of Boston were, in turn, not less convinced that theirs was the cause of
God, and that Satan, enthroned in the French dominance at Quebec, must
soon fall. The smaller the pit the fiercer the rats. Passions raged in the
petty colonial capitals more bitterly than even in London and Paris. This
intensity of religious differences embittered the struggle for the mastery
of the new continent.</p>
<p>The English colonies had twenty white men to one in Canada. Yet Canada was
long able to wage war on something like equal terms. She had the supreme
advantage of a single control. There was no trouble at Quebec about
getting a reluctant legislature to vote money for war purposes. No
semblance of an elected legislature existed and the money for war came not
from the Canadians, but from the capacious, if now usually depleted,
coffers of the French court at Versailles. In the English colonies the
legislatures preferred, of all political struggles, one about money with
the Governor, the representative of the King. At least one of the English
colonies, Pennsylvania, believing that evil is best conquered by
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_36" id="Page_36">36</SPAN></span>
non-resistance, was resolutely against war for any reason, good or bad.
Other colonies often raised the more sordid objection that they were too
poor to help in war. The colonial legislatures, indeed, with their eternal
demand for the privileges and rights which the British House of Commons
had won in the long centuries of its history, constitute the most striking
of all the contrasts with Canada. In them were always the sparks of an
independent temper. The English diarist, Evelyn, wrote, in 1671, that New
England was in “a peevish and touchy humour.” Colonists who go out to
found a new state will always demand rights like those which they have
enjoyed at home. It was unthinkable that men of Boston, who, themselves,
or whose party in England, had fought against a despotic king, had sent
him to the block and driven his son from the throne, would be content with
anything short of controlling the taxes which they paid, making the laws
which they obeyed, and carrying on their affairs in their own way. When
obliged to accept a governor from England, they were resolved as far as
possible to remain his paymaster. In a majority of the colonies they
insisted that the salary of the Governor should be voted each year by
their representatives, in order that
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_37" id="Page_37">37</SPAN></span>
they might be able always to use
against him the cogent logic of financial need. On questions of this kind
Quebec had nothing to say. To the King in France and to him alone went all
demands for pay and honors. If, in such things, the people of Canada had
no remote voice, they were still as well off as Frenchmen in France. New
England was a copy of Old England and New France a copy of Old France.
There was, as yet, no “peevish and touchy humour” at either
Quebec or Versailles in respect to political rights.</p>
<p>Canada, in spite of its scanty population, was better equipped for war
than was any of the English colonies. The French were largely explorers
and hunters, familiar with hardship and danger and led by men with a love
of adventure. The English, on the other hand, were chiefly traders and
farmers who disliked and dreaded the horrors of war. There was not to be
found in all the English colonies a family of the type of the Canadian
family of Le Moyne. Charles Le Moyne, of Montreal, a member of the
Canadian <i>noblesse</i>, had ten sons, every one of whom showed the spirit and
capacity of the adventurous soldier. They all served in the time of
Frontenac. The most famous of them, Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville,
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_38" id="Page_38">38</SPAN></span>
shines in
varied rôles. He was a frontier leader who made his name a terror in the
English settlements; a sailor who seized and ravaged the English
settlements in Newfoundland, who led a French squadron to the remote and
chill waters of Hudson Bay, and captured there the English strongholds of
the fur trade; and a leader in the more peaceful task of founding, at the
mouth of the Mississippi, the colony of Louisiana. Canada had the
advantage over the English colonies in bold pioneers of this type.</p>
<p>Canada was never doubtful of the English peril or divided in the desire to
destroy it. Nearly always, a soldier or a naval officer ruled in the
Château St. Louis, at Quebec, with eyes alert to see and arms ready to
avert military danger. England sometimes sent to her colonies in America
governors who were disreputable and inefficient, needy hangers-on, too
well-known at home to make it wise there to give them office, but thought
good enough for the colonies. It would not have been easy to find a
governor less fitted to maintain the dignity and culture of high office
than Sir William Phips, Governor of Massachusetts in the time of
Frontenac. Phips, however, though a rough brawler, was reasonably
efficient, but Lord
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_39" id="Page_39">39</SPAN></span>
Cornbury, who became Earl of Clarendon, owed his
appointment as Governor of New Jersey and New York in 1701, only to his
necessities and to the desire of his powerful connections to provide for
him. Queen Anne was his cousin. He was a profligate, feeble in mind but
arrogant in spirit, with no burden of honesty and a great burden of debt,
and he made no change in his scandalous mode of life when he represented
his sovereign at New York. There were other governors only slightly
better. Canada had none as bad. Her viceroys as a rule kept up the dignity
of their office and respected the decencies of life. In English colonies,
governors eked out their incomes by charging heavy fees for official acts
and any one who refused to pay such fees was not likely to secure
attention to his business. In Canada the population was too scanty and the
opportunity too limited to furnish happy hunting-grounds of this kind. The
governors, however, badly paid as they were, must live, and, in the case
of a man like Frontenac, repair fortunes shattered at court. To do so they
were likely to have some concealed interest in the fur trade. This was
forbidden by the court but was almost a universal practice. Some of the
governors carried trading to great
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_40" id="Page_40">40</SPAN></span>
lengths and aroused the bitter
hostility of rival trading interests. The fur trade was easily controlled
as a government monopoly and it was unfair that a needy governor should
share its profits. But, after all, such a quarrel was only between rival
monopolists. Better a trading governor than one who plundered the people
or who by drunken profligacy discredited his office.</p>
<p>While all Canada was devoted to the Roman Catholic Church, the diversity
of religious beliefs in the English colonies was a marked feature of
social life. In Virginia, by law of the colony, the Church of England was
the established Church. In Massachusetts, founded by stern Puritans, the
public services of the Church of England were long prohibited. In
Pennsylvania there was dominant the sect derisively called
“Quakers,” who would have no ecclesiastical organization
and believed that religion was purely a matter for the individual soul.
Boston jeered at the superstitions of Quebec, such as the belief of the
missionaries that a drop of water, with the murmured words of baptism,
transformed a dying Indian child from an outcast savage into an angel of
light. Quebec might, however, deride Boston with equal justice.
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_41" id="Page_41">41</SPAN></span>
Sir William Phips believed that malignant and invisible devils had made a
special invasion of
Massachusetts, dragging people from their houses, pushing them into fire
and water, and carrying them through the air for miles over trees and
hills. These devils, it was thought, took visible form, of which the
favorite was that of a black cat. Witches were thought to be able to pass
through keyholes and to exercise charms which would destroy their victims.
While Phips and Frontenac were struggling for the mastery of Canada, a
fever of excitement ran through New England about these perils of
witchcraft. When, in 1692, Phips became Governor of Massachusetts, he
named a special court to try accused persons. The court considered
hundreds of cases and condemned and hanged nineteen persons for wholly
imaginary crimes. Whatever the faults of the rule of the priests at
Quebec, they never equaled this in brutality or surpassed it in blind
superstition. In New England we find bitter religious persecution. In
Canada there was none: the door was completely closed to Protestants and
the family within were all of one mind. There was no one to persecute.</p>
<p>The old contrast between French and English
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_42" id="Page_42">42</SPAN></span>
ideals still endures. At
Quebec there was an early zeal for education. In 1638, the year in which
Harvard College was organized, a college and a school for training the
French youth and the natives were founded at Quebec. In the next year the
Ursuline nuns established at Quebec the convent which through all the
intervening years has continued its important work of educating girls. In
zeal for education Quebec was therefore not behind Boston. But the spirit
was different. Quebec believed that safety lay in control by the Church,
and this control it still maintains. Massachusetts came in time to believe
that safety lay in freeing education from any spiritual authority. Today
Laval University at Quebec and Harvard University at Cambridge represent
the outcome of these differing modes of thought. Other forces were working
to produce essentially different types. The printing-press Quebec did not
know; and, down to the final overthrow of the French power in 1763, no
newspaper or book was issued in Canada. Massachusetts, on the other hand,
had a printing-press as early as in 1638 and soon books were being printed
in the colony. Of course, in the spirit of the time, there was a strict
censorship. But, by 1722, this had come to an end,
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_43" id="Page_43">43</SPAN></span>
and after that the
newspaper, unknown in Canada, was busy and free in its task of helping to
mold the thought of the English colonies in America.</p>
<hr class="main" />
<div class="chapterhead" style="text-align:center;">
<SPAN name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003"></SPAN>
<br/><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_44" id="Page_44">44</SPAN></span>
<br/><br/><br/></div>
<h2> <SPAN href="#Contents">CHAPTER III.</SPAN> </h2>
<p class="chaptertitle">
France Loses Acadia</p>
<p><span class="smcap">The</span> Peace of Ryswick in 1697 had settled
nothing finally. France was still
strong enough to aim at the mastery of Europe and America. England was
torn by internal faction and would not prepare to face her menacing enemy.
Always the English have disliked a great standing army. Now, despite the
entreaties of a king who knew the real danger, they reduced the army to
the pitiable number of seven thousand men. Louis XIV grew ever more
confident. In 1700 he was able to put his own grandson on the throne of
Spain and to dominate Europe from the Straits of Gibraltar to the
Netherlands. Another event showing his resolve soon startled the world. In
1701 died James II, the dethroned King of England, and Louis went out of
his way to insult the English people. William III was King by the will of
Parliament. Louis had recognized him as such.
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_45" id="Page_45">45</SPAN></span>
Yet, on the death of James,
Louis declared that James’s son was now the true King of England. This
impudent defiance meant, and Louis intended that it should mean, renewed
war. England had invited it by making her forces weak. William III died in
1702 and the war went on under his successor, Queen Anne.</p>
<p>Thus it happened that once more war-parties began to prowl on the Canadian
frontier, and women and children in remote clearings in the forest
shivered at the prospect of the savage scourge. The English colonies
suffered terribly. Everywhere France was aggressive. The warlike Iroquois
were now so alarmed by the French menace that, to secure protection, they
ceded their territory to Queen Anne and became British subjects, a
humiliating step indeed for a people who had once thought themselves the
most important in all the world. By 1703 the butchery on the frontier was
in full operation. The Jesuit historian Charlevoix, with complacent
exaggeration, says that in that year alone three hundred men were killed
on the New England frontier by the Abenaki Indians incited by the French.
The numbers slain were in fact fewer and the slain were not always men but
sometimes old women and
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_46" id="Page_46">46</SPAN></span>
young babies. The policy of France was to make the
war so ruthless that a gulf of hatred should keep their Indian allies from
ever making friends and resuming trade with the English, whose hatchets,
blankets, and other supplies were, as the French well knew, better and
cheaper than their own. The French hoped to seize Boston, to destroy its
industries and sink its ships, then to advance beyond Boston and deal out
to other places the same fate. The rivalry of New England was to be ended
by making that region a desert.</p>
<p>The first fury of the war raged on the frontier of Maine, which was an
outpost of Massachusetts. On an August day in 1703 the people of the
rugged little settlement of Wells were at their usual tasks when they
heard gunshots and war-whoops. Indians had crept up to attack the place.
They set the village on fire and killed or carried off some twoscore
prisoners, chiefly women and children. The village of Deerfield, on the
northwestern frontier of Massachusetts, consisted of a wooden
meeting-house and a number of rough cabins which lodged the two or three
hundred inhabitants. On a February night in 1704 savages led by a young
member of the Canadian <i>noblesse</i>, Hertel
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_47" id="Page_47">47</SPAN></span>
de Rouville, approached the
village silently on snowshoes, waited on the outskirts during the dead of
night, and then just before dawn burst in upon the sleeping people. The
work was done quickly. Within an hour after dawn the place had been
plundered and set on fire, forty or fifty dead bodies of men and women and
children lay in the village, and a hundred and eleven miserable prisoners
were following their captors on snowshoes through the forest, each
prisoner well knowing that to fall by the way meant to have his head split
by a tomahawk and the scalp torn off. When on the first night one of them
slipped away, Rouville told the others that, should a further escape
occur, he would burn alive all those remaining in his hands. The minister
of the church at Deerfield, the Reverend John Williams, was a captive,
together with his wife and five children. The wife, falling by the way,
was killed by a stroke of a tomahawk and the body was left lying on the
snow. The children were taken from their father and scattered among
different bands. After a tramp of two hundred miles through the wilderness
to the outlying Canadian settlements, the minister in the end reached
Quebec. Every effort was made, even by his Indian guard, to make him
accept the
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_48" id="Page_48">48</SPAN></span>
Roman Catholic faith, but the stern Puritan was obdurate. His
daughter, Eunice, on the other hand, caught young, became a Catholic so
devoted that later she would not return to New England lest the contact
with Protestants should injure her faith. She married a Caughnawaga Indian
and became to all outward appearance a squaw. Williams himself lived to
resume his career in New England and to write the story of the raid at
Deerfield.</p>
<p>It may be that there were men in New England and New York capable of
similar barbarities. It is true that the savage allies of the English,
when at their worst, knew no restraint. There is nothing in the French
raids on a scale as great as that of the murderous raid by the Iroquois on
the French village of Lachine. But the Puritans of New England, while they
were ready to hew down savages, did not like and rarely took part in the
massacre of Europeans.</p>
<p>As the outrages went on year after year the temper of New England towards
the savages grew more ruthless. The General Court, the Legislature of
Massachusetts, offered forty pounds for every Indian scalp brought in.
Indians, like wolves, were vermin to be destroyed. The anger
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_49" id="Page_49">49</SPAN></span>
of New
England was further kindled by what was happening on the sea. Privateers
from Port Royal, in Acadia, attacked New England commerce and New England
fishermen and made unsafe the approaches to Boston. This was to touch a
commercial community on its most tender spot; and a deep resolve was
formed that Canada should be conquered and the menace ended once for all.</p>
<p>It was only an occasional spirit in Massachusetts who made comprehensive
political plans. One of these was Samuel Vetch, a man somewhat different
from the usual type of New England leader, for he was not of English but
of Scottish origin, of the Covenanter strain. Vetch, himself an
adventurous trader, had taken a leading part in the ill-fated Scottish
attempt to found on the Isthmus of Panama a colony, which, in easy touch
with both the Pacific and the Atlantic, should carry on a gigantic
commerce between the East and the West. The colony failed, chiefly,
perhaps, because Spain would not have this intrusion into territory which
she claimed. Tropical disease and the disunion and incompetence of the
colonists themselves were Spain’s allies in the destruction. After this,
Vetch had found his way to Boston, where he soon became prominent. In 1707
Scotland and
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_50" id="Page_50">50</SPAN></span>
England were united under one Parliament, and the active mind
of Vetch was occupied with something greater than a Scottish colony at
Panama. Queen Anne, Vetch was resolved, should be “Sole Empress of the
vast North American Continent.” Massachusetts was ready for just such a
cry. The General Court took up eagerly the plan of Vetch. The scheme
required help from England and the other colonies. To England Vetch went
in 1708. Marlborough had just won the great victory of Oudenarde. It was
good, the English ministry thought, to hit France wherever she raised her
head. In the spring of 1709 Vetch returned to Boston with promises of
powerful help at once for an attack on Canada, and with the further
promise that, the victory won, he himself should be the first British
Governor of Canada. New York was to help with nine hundred men. Other
remoter colonies were to aid on a smaller scale. These contingents were to
attack Canada by way of Lake Champlain. Twelve hundred men from New
England were to join the regulars from England and go against Quebec by
way of the sea and master Canada once for all.</p>
<p>The plan was similar to the one which Amherst and Wolfe carried to success
exactly fifty years
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_51" id="Page_51">51</SPAN></span>
later, and with a Wolfe in command it might now have
succeeded. The troops from England were to be at Boston before the end of
May, 1709. The colonial forces gathered. New Jersey and Pennsylvania
refused, indeed, to send any soldiers; but New York and the other colonies
concerned did their full share. By the early summer Colonel Francis
Nicholson, with some fifteen hundred men, lay fully equipped in camp on
Wood Creek near Lake Champlain, ready to descend on Montreal as soon as
news came of the arrival of the British fleet at Boston for the attack on
Quebec. On the shores of Boston harbor lay another colonial army, large
for the time—the levies from New England which were to sail to
Quebec. Officers had come out from England to drill these hardy men, and
as soldiers they were giving a good account of themselves. They watched,
fasted, and prayed, and watched again for the fleet from England. Summer
came and then autumn and still the fleet did not arrive. Far away, in the
crowded camp on Wood Creek, pestilence broke out and as time wore on this
army slowly melted away either by death or withdrawal. At last, on October
11, 1709, word came from the British ministry, dated the 27th of July, two
months after the promised
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_52" id="Page_52">52</SPAN></span>
fleet was to arrive at Boston, that it had been
sent instead to Portugal.</p>
<p>In spite of this disappointment the resolution endured to conquer Canada.
New York joined New England in sending deputations to London to ask again
for help. Four Mohawk chiefs went with Peter Schuyler from New York and
were the wonder of the day in London. It is something to have a plan
talked about. Malplaquet, the last of Marlborough’s great victories, had
been won in the autumn of 1709 and the thought of a new enterprise was
popular. Nicholson, who had been sent from Boston, urged that the first
step should be to take Port Royal. What the colonies required for this
expedition was the aid of four frigates and five hundred soldiers who
should reach Boston by March.</p>
<p>The help arrived, though not in March but in July, 1710. Boston was filled
with enthusiasm for the enterprise. The legislature made military service
compulsory, quartered soldiers in private houses without consent of the
owners, impressed sailors, and altogether was quite arbitrary and
high-handed. The people, however, would bear almost anything if only they
could crush Port Royal, the den of privateers who seized many New
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_53" id="Page_53">53</SPAN></span>
England vessels. On the 18th of September, to the great joy of Boston, the
frigates and the transports sailed away, with Nicholson in command of the
troops and Vetch as adjutant-general.</p>
<p>What we know today as Digby Basin on the east side of the Bay of Fundy, is
a great harbor, landlocked but for a narrow entrance about a mile wide.
Through this “gut,” as it is called, the tide rushes in a torrential and
dangerous stream, but soon loses its violence in the spacious and quiet
harbor. Here the French had made their first enduring colony in America.
On the shores of the beautiful basin the <i>fleurs-de-lis</i> had been raised
over a French fort as early as 1605. A lovely valley opens from the head
of the basin to the interior. It is now known as the Annapolis Valley, a
fertile region dotted by the homesteads of a happy and contented people.
These people, however, are not French in race nor do they live under a
French Government. When on the 24th of September, 1710, the fleet from
Boston entered the basin, and in doing so lost a ship and more than a
score of men through the destructive current, the decisive moment had come
for all that region. Fate had decreed that the land should not remain
French but should become English.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_54" id="Page_54">54</SPAN></span>
Port Royal was at that time a typical French community of the New World.
The village consisted of some poor houses made of logs or planks, a wooden
church, and, lying apart, a fort defended by earthworks. The Governor,
Subercase, was a brave French officer. He ruled the little community with
a despotism tempered only by indignant protests to the King from those
whom he ruled when his views and theirs did not coincide. The peasants in
the village counted for nothing. Connected with the small garrison there
were ladies and gentlemen who had no light opinion of their own importance
and were so peppery that Subercase wished he had a madhouse in which to
confine some of them. He thought well of the country. It produced, he
said, everything that France produced except olives. The fertile land
promised abundance of grain and there was an inexhaustible supply of
timber. There were many excellent harbors. Had he a million <i>livres</i>, he
would, he said, invest it gladly in the country and be certain of a good
return. His enthusiasm had produced, however, no answering enthusiasm at
Versailles, for there the interests of Port Royal were miserably
neglected. Yet it was a thorn in the flesh of the English. In 1708
privateers from
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_55" id="Page_55">55</SPAN></span>
Port Royal had destroyed no less than thirty-five English
vessels, chiefly from Boston, and had carried to the fort four hundred and
seventy prisoners. Even in winter months French ships would flit out of
Port Royal and bring in richly laden prizes. Can we wonder at Boston’s
deep resolve that now at last the pest should end!</p>
<p>It was an imposing force which sailed into the basin. The four frigates
and thirty transports carried an army far greater than Subercase had
thought possible. The English landed some fourteen hundred men. Subercase
had less than three hundred. Within a few days, when the English began to
throw shells into the town, he asked for terms. On the 16th of October the
little garrison, neglected by France and left ragged and half-starved,
marched out with drums beating and colors flying. The English, drawn up
before the gate, showed the usual honors to a brave foe. The French flag
was hauled down and in its place floated that of Britain. Port Royal was
renamed Annapolis and Vetch was made its Governor. Three times before had
the English come to Port Royal as conquerors and then gone away, but now
they were to remain. Ever since that October day, when autumn was coloring
the abundant
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_56" id="Page_56">56</SPAN></span>
foliage of the lovely harbor, the British flag has waved over
Annapolis. Because the flag waved there it was destined to wave over all
Acadia, or Nova Scotia, and with Acadia in time went Canada.</p>
<p>A partial victory, however, such as the taking of Port Royal, was not
enough for the aroused spirit of the English. They and their allies had
beaten Louis XIV on the battlefields of Europe and had so worn out France
that clouds and darkness were about the last days of the Grand Monarch now
nearing his end. In America his agents were still drawing up papers
outlining grandiose designs for mastering the continent and for proving
that England’s empire was near its fall, but Europe knew that France
in the long war had been beaten. The right way to smite France in America
was to rely upon England’s naval power, to master the great highway
of the St. Lawrence, to isolate Canada, and to strangle one by one the
French settlements, beginning with Quebec.</p>
<p>There was malignant intrigue at the court of Queen Anne. One favorite, the
Duchess of Marlborough, had just been disgraced, and another, Mrs. Masham,
had been taken on by the weak and stupid Queen. The conquest of Canada, if
it could be achieved without the aid of Marlborough, would
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_57" id="Page_57">57</SPAN></span>
help in his much desired overthrow. Petty motives were unhappily at the
root of the great scheme. Who better to lead such an expedition than the
brother of the new favorite whose success might discredit the husband of
the old one? Accordingly General “Jack” Hill, brother of Mrs.
Masham, was appointed to the chief military command and an admiral
hitherto little known but of good habits and quick wit, Sir Hovenden
Walker, was to lead the fleet.</p>
<p>The expedition against Quebec was on a scale adequate for the time.
Britain dispatched seven regiments of regulars, numbering in all five
thousand five hundred men, and there were besides in the fleet some
thousands of sailors and marines. Never before had the English sent to
North America a force so great. On June 24, 1711, Admiral Walker arrived
at Boston with his great array. Boston was impressed, but Boston was also
a little hurt, for the British leaders were very lofty and superior in
their tone towards colonials and gave orders as if Boston were a
provincial city of England which must learn respect and obedience to His
Majesty’s officers “vested with the Queen’s Royal Power
and Authority.”</p>
<p>More than seventy ships, led by nine
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_58" id="Page_58">58</SPAN></span>
men-of-war, sailed from Boston for the attack on Canada. On board were
nearly twelve thousand men. Compared with this imposing fleet, that of
Phips, twenty-one years earlier, seems feeble. Phips had set out too
late. This fleet was in good time, for it sailed on the 30th of July.
Vetch, always competent, was in command of the colonial military forces,
but never had any chance to show his mettle, for during the voyage the
seamen were in control. The Admiral had left England with secret
instructions. He had not been informed of the task before him and for
it he was hardly prepared. There were no competent pilots to correct
his ignorance. Now that he knew where he was going he was anxious
about the dangers of the northern waters. The St. Lawrence River, he
believed, froze solidly to the bottom in winter and he feared that the ice
would crush the sides of his ships. As he had provisions for only eight or
nine weeks, his men might starve. His mind was filled, as he himself says,
with melancholy and dismal horror at the prospect of seamen and soldiers,
worn to skeletons by hunger, drawing lots to decide who should die first
amidst the “adamantine frosts” and “mountains of
snow” of bleak and barren Canada.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_59" id="Page_59">59</SPAN></span>
The Gulf and River St. Lawrence spell death to an incompetent sailor. The
fogs, the numerous shoals and islands, make skillful seamanship necessary.
It is a long journey from Boston to Quebec by water. For three weeks,
however, all went well. On the 22d of August, Walker was out of sight of
land in the Gulf where it is about seventy miles wide above the Island of
Anticosti. A strong east wind with thick fog is dreaded in those waters
even now, and on the evening of that day a storm of this kind blew up. In
the fog Walker lost his bearings. When in fact he was near the north shore
he thought he was not far from the south shore. At half-past ten at night
Paddon, the captain of the <i>Edgar</i>, Walker’s flagship, came to
tell him that land was in sight. Walker assumed that it was the south
shore and gave a fatal order for the fleet to turn and head northward, a
change which turned them straight towards cliffs and breakers. He then
went to bed. Soon one of the military officers rushed to his cabin and
begged him to come on deck as the ships were among breakers. Walker, who
was an irascible man, resented the intrusion and remained in bed. A second
time the officer appeared and said the fleet would be lost if the Admiral
did not act.
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_60" id="Page_60">60</SPAN></span>
Why it was left for a military rather than a naval officer to
rouse the Admiral in such a crisis we do not know. Perhaps the sailors
were afraid of the great man. Walker appeared on deck in dressing gown and
slippers. The fog had lifted, and in the moonlight there could be seen
breaking surf to leeward. A French pilot, captured in the Gulf, had taken
pains to give what he could of alarming information. He now declared that
the ships were off the north shore. Walker turned his own ship sharply and
succeeded in beating out into deep water and safety. For the fleet the
night was terrible. Some ships dropped anchor which held, for happily the
storm abated. Fog guns and lights as signals of distress availed little to
the ships in difficulty. Eight British transports laden with troops and
two ships carrying supplies were dashed to pieces on the rocks. The
shrieks of drowning men could be heard in the darkness. The scene was the
rocky Isle aux Œufs and adjacent reefs off the north shore. About
seven hundred soldiers, including twenty-nine officers, and in addition
perhaps two hundred sailors, were lost on that awful night.</p>
<p>The disaster was not overwhelming and Walker might have gone on and
captured Quebec. He
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_61" id="Page_61">61</SPAN></span>
had not lost a single war-ship and he had still some
eleven thousand men. General Hill might have stiffened the back of the
forlorn Admiral, but Hill himself was no better. Vetch spoke for going on.
He knew the St. Lawrence waters for he had been at Quebec and had actually
charted a part of the river and was more familiar with it, he believed,
than were the Canadians themselves. What pilots there were declared,
however, that to go on was impossible and the helpless captains of the
ships were of opinion that, with the warning of such a disaster, they
could not disregard this counsel. Though the character of the English is
such that usually a reverse serves to stiffen their backs, in this case it
was not so. A council of war yielded to the panic of the hour and the
great fleet turned homeward. Soon it was gathered in what is now Sydney
harbor in Cape Breton. From here the New England ships went home and
Walker sailed for England. At Spithead the <i>Edgar</i>, the flag-ship, blew up
and all on board perished. Walker was on shore at the time. So far was he
from being disgraced that he was given a new command. Later, when the
Whigs came in, he was dismissed from the service, less, it seems, in blame
for the disaster than for his Tory
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_62" id="Page_62">62</SPAN></span>
opinions. It is not an unusual irony of
life that Vetch, the one wholly efficient leader in the expedition, ended
his days in a debtor’s prison.</p>
<p>Quebec had shivered before a menace, the greatest in its history. Through
the long months of the summer of 1711 there had been prayer and fasting to
avert the danger. Apparently trading ships had deserted the lower St.
Lawrence in alarm, for no word had arrived at Quebec of the approach of
Walker’s fleet. Nor had the great disaster been witnessed by any
onlookers. The island where it occurred was then and still remains desert.
Up to the middle of October, nearly two months after the disaster, the
watchers at Quebec feared that they might see any day a British fleet
rounding the head of the Island of Orleans. On the 19th of October the
first news of the disaster arrived and then it was easy for Quebec to
believe that God had struck the English wretches with a terrible
vengeance. Three thousand men, it was said, had reached land and then
perished miserably. Many bodies had been found naked and in attitudes of
despair. Other thousands had perished in the water. Vessel-loads of spoil
had been gathered, rich plate, beautiful swords, magnificent clothing,
gold, silver, jewels. The truth seems to be that
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_63" id="Page_63">63</SPAN></span>
some weeks after the
disaster the evidences of the wrecks were discovered. Even to this day
ships are battered to pieces in those rock-strewn waters and no one
survives to tell the story. Some fishermen landing on the island had found
human bodies, dead horses and other animals, and the hulls of seven ships.
They had gathered some wreckage—and that was the whole story. Quebec
sang <i>Te Deum</i>. From attacks by sea there had now been two escapes which
showed God’s love for Canada. In the little church of <i>Notre Dame des
Victoires</i>, consecrated at that time to the memory of the deliverance from
Phips and Walker, daily prayers are still poured out for the well-being of
Canada. God had been a present help on land as well as on the sea.
Nicholson, with more than two thousand men, had been waiting at his camp
near Lake Champlain to descend on Montreal as soon as Walker reached
Quebec. When he received the news of the disaster he broke up his force
and retired. For the moment Canada was safe from the threatened invasion.</p>
<p>In spite of this apparent deliverance, the long war, now near its end,
brought a destructive blow to French power in America. Though France still
possessed vigor and resources which her
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_64" id="Page_64">64</SPAN></span>
enemies were apt to underrate, the
war had gone against her in Europe. Her finest armies had been destroyed
by Marlborough, her taxation was crushing, her credit was ruined, her
people were suffering for lack of food. The allies had begun to think that
there was no humiliation which they might not put upon France. Louis XIV,
they said, must give up Alsace, which, with Lorraine, he had taken some
years earlier, and he must help to drive his own grandson from the Spanish
throne. This exorbitant demand stirred the pride not only of Louis but of
the French nation, and the allies found that they could not trample France
under their feet. The Treaty of Utrecht, concluded in 1713, shows that
each side was too strong as yet to be crushed. In dismissing Marlborough,
Great Britain had lost one of her chief assets. His name had become a
terror to France. To this day, both in France and in French Canada, is
sung the popular ditty “Monsieur Malbrouck est mort,” a song of delight at
a report that Marlborough was dead. When in place of Marlborough leaders
of the type of General Hill were appointed to high command, France could
not be finally beaten. The Treaty of Utrecht was the outcome of
war-weariness. It marks, however, a double check to
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_65" id="Page_65">65</SPAN></span>
Louis XIV. He could
not master Europe and he could not master America. France now ceded to
Britain her claim to Acadia, Newfoundland, and Hudson Bay. She regarded
this, however, as only a temporary set-back and was soon planning and
plotting great designs far surpassing the narrower vision of the English
colonies.</p>
<p>It was with a wry face, however, that France yielded Acadia. To retain it
she offered to give up all rights in the Newfoundland fisheries, the
nursery of her marine. Britain would not yield Acadia, dreading chiefly
perhaps the wrath of New England which had conquered Port Royal. Britain,
however, compromised on the question of boundaries in a way so dangerous
that the long war settled finally no great issues in America. She took
Acadia “according to its ancient limits,”—but no one knew these
limits. They were to be defined by a joint commission of the two nations
which, after forty years, reached no agreement. The Island of Cape Breton
and the adjoining Ile St. Jean, now Prince Edward Island, remained to
France. Though Britain secured sovereignty over Newfoundland, France
retained extensive rights in the Newfoundland fisheries. The treaty left
unsettled the boundary between Canada and
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_66" id="Page_66">66</SPAN></span>
the English colonies. While it
yielded Hudson Bay to Britain, it settled nothing as to frontiers in the
wilderness which stretched beyond the Great Lakes into the Far West and
which had vast wealth in furs.</p>
<hr class="main" />
<div class="chapterhead" style="text-align:center;">
<SPAN name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004"></SPAN>
<br/><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_67" id="Page_67">67</SPAN></span>
<br/><br/><br/></div>
<h2> <SPAN href="#Contents">CHAPTER IV.</SPAN> </h2>
<p class="chaptertitle">
Louisbourg And Boston</p>
<p><span class="smcap">For</span> thirty years England and France now
remained at peace, and England had many reasons for desiring peace
to continue. Anne, the last of the Stuart rulers, died in 1714. The
new King, George I, Elector of Hanover, was a
German and a German unchangeable, for he was already fifty-four, with
little knowledge of England and none of the English, and with an undying
love for the dear despotic ways easily followed in a small German
principality. He and his successor George II were thinking eternally of
German rather than of English problems, and with German interests chiefly
regarded it was well that England should make a friend of France. It was
well, too, that under a new dynasty, with its title disputed, England
should not encourage France to continue the friendly policy of Louis XIV
towards James, the deposed Stuart Pretender. England had just
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_68" id="Page_68">68</SPAN></span>
made a new,
determined, and arrogant enemy by forcing upon Spain the deep humiliation
of ceding Gibraltar, which had been taken in 1704 by Admiral Rooke with
allied forces. The proudest monarchy in Europe was compelled to see a spot
of its own sacred territory held permanently by a rival nation. Gibraltar
Spain was determined to recover. Its loss drove her into the arms of the
enemies of England and remains to this day a grievance which on occasion
Spanish politicians know well how to make useful.</p>
<p>Great Britain was now under the direction of a leader whose policy was
peace. A nation is happy when a born statesman with a truly liberal mind
and a genuine love of his country comes to the front in its affairs. Such
a man was Sir Robert Walpole. He was a Whig squire, a plain country
gentleman, with enough of culture to love good pictures and the ancient
classics, but delighting chiefly in sports and agriculture, hard drinking
and politics. When only twenty-seven he was already a leader among the
Whigs; at thirty-two he was Secretary for War; and before he was forty he
had become Prime Minister, a post which he really created and was the
first Englishman to hold. Friendship with France marked a new phase of
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_69" id="Page_69">69</SPAN></span>
British policy. Walpole’s baffled enemies said that he was bribed by
France. His shrewd insight kept France lukewarm in its support of the
Stuart rising in 1715, which he punished with great severity. But it was
as a master of finance that he was strongest. While continental nations
were wasting men and money Walpole gloried in saving English lives and
English gold. He found new and fruitful modes of taxation, but when urged
to tax the colonies he preferred, as he said, to leave that to a bolder
man. It is a pity that any one was ever found bold enough to do it.</p>
<p>Walpole’s policy endured for a quarter of a century. He abandoned it only
after a bitter struggle in which he was attacked as sacrificing the
national honor for the sake of peace. Spain was an easy mark for those who
wished to arouse the warlike spirit. She still persecuted and burned
heretics, a great cause of offense in Protestant Britain, and she was
rigorous in excluding foreigners from trading with her colonies. To be the
one exception in this policy of exclusion was the privilege enjoyed by
Britain. When the fortunes of Spain were low in 1713, she had been forced
not merely to cede Gibraltar but also to give to the British the monopoly
of supplying the Spanish colonies with
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_70" id="Page_70">70</SPAN></span>
negro slaves and the right to send
one ship a year to trade at Porto Bello in South America. It seems a
sufficiently ignoble bargain for a great nation to exact: the monopoly of
carrying and selling cargoes of black men and the right to send a single
ship yearly to a Spanish colony. We can hardly imagine grave diplomats of
our day haggling over such terms. But the eighteenth century was not the
twentieth. From the treaty the British expected amazing results. The South
Sea Company was formed to carry on a vast trade with South America. One
ship a year could, of course, carry little, but the ships laden with
negroes could smuggle into the colonies merchandise and the one trading
ship could be and was reloaded fraudulently from lighters so that its
cargo was multiplied manyfold. Out of the belief in huge profits from this
trade with its exaggerated visions of profit grew in 1720 the famous South
Sea Bubble which inaugurated a period of frantic speculation in England.
Worthless shares in companies formed for trade in the South Seas sold at a
thousand per cent of their face value. It is a form of madness to which
human greed is ever liable. Walpole’s financial insight condemned from the
first the wild outburst, and his common sense
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_71" id="Page_71">71</SPAN></span>
during the crisis helped to
stem the tide of disaster. The South Sea Bubble burst partly because Spain
stood sternly on her own rights and punished British smugglers. During
many years the tension between the two nations grew. No doubt Spanish
officials were harsh. Tales were repeated in England of their brutalities
to British sailors who fell into their hands. In 1739 the story of a
certain Captain Jenkins that his ear had been cut off by Spanish captors
and thrown in his face with an insulting message to his government brought
matters to a climax. Events in other parts of Europe soon made the war
general. When, in 1740, the young King of Prussia, Frederick II, came to
the throne, his first act was to march an army into Silesia. To this
province he had, he said, in the male line, a better claim than that of
the woman, Maria Theresa, who had just inherited the Austrian crown.
Frederick conquered Silesia and held it. In 1744 he was allied with Spain
and France, while Britain allied herself with Austria, and thus Britain
and France were again at war.</p>
<p>In America both sides had long seen that the war was inevitable. Never had
French opinion been more arrogant in asserting France’s right to North
America than after the Treaty of Utrecht.
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_72" id="Page_72">72</SPAN></span>
At the dinner-table of the
Governor in Quebec there was incessant talk of Britain’s incapacity, of
the sheer luck by which she had blundered into the occupation of great
areas, while in truth she was weak through lack of union and organization.
A natural antipathy, it was said, existed between her colonies and
herself; she was a monarchy while they were really independent republics.
France, on the other hand, had grown stronger since the last war. In 1713
she had retained the island of Cape Breton and now she had made it a new
menace to British power. Boston, which had breathed more freely after the
fall of Port Royal in 1710, soon had renewed cause for alarm in regard to
its shipping. On the southern coast of Cape Breton, there was a spacious
harbor with a narrow entrance easily fortified, and here France began to
build the fortress of Louisbourg. It was planned on the most approved
military principles of the time. Through its strength, the boastful talk
went, France should master North America. The King sent out cannon,
undertook to build a hospital, to furnish chaplains for the service of the
Church, to help education, and so on. Above all, he sent to Louisbourg
soldiers.</p>
<p>Reports of these wonderful things reached
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_73" id="Page_73">73</SPAN></span>
the English colonies and caused
fears and misgivings. New England believed that Louisbourg reflected the
pomp and wealth of Versailles. The fortress was, in truth, slow in
building and never more than a rather desolate outpost of France. It
contained in all about four thousand people. During the thirty years of
the long truce it became so strong that it was without a rival on the
Atlantic coast. The excellent harbor was a haven for the fishermen of
adjacent waters and a base for French privateers, who were a terror to all
the near trade routes of the Atlantic. On the military side Louisbourg
seemed a success. But the French failed in their effort to colonize the
island of Cape Breton on which the fortress stood. Today this island has
great iron and other industries. There are coal-mines near Louisbourg; and
its harbor, long deserted after the fall of the power of France, has now
an extensive commerce. The island was indeed fabulously rich in coals and
minerals. To use these things, however, was to be the task of a new age of
industry. The colonist of the eighteenth century—a merchant, a
farmer, or a fur trader—thought that Cape Breton was bleak and
infertile and refused to settle there. Louisbourg remained a compact
fortress with a good harbor,
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_74" id="Page_74">74</SPAN></span>
free from ice during most of the year, but
too much haunted by fog. It looked out on a much-traveled sea. But it
remained set in the wilderness.</p>
<p>Even if Louisbourg made up for the loss of Port Royal, this did not,
however, console France for the cession of Acadia. The fixed idea of those
who shaped the policy of Canada was to recover Acadia and meanwhile to
keep its French settlers loyal to France. The Acadians were not a
promising people with whom to work. In Acadia, or Nova Scotia, as the
English called it, these backward people had slowly gathered during a
hundred years and had remained remote and neglected. They had cleared
farms, built primitive houses, planted orchards, and reared cattle. In
1713 their number did not exceed two or three thousand, but already they
were showing the amazing fertility of the French race in America. They
were prosperous but ignorant. Almost none of them could read. After the
cession of their land to Britain in 1713 they had been guaranteed by
treaty the free exercise of their religion and they were Catholics to a
man. It seems as if history need hardly mention a people so feeble and
obscure. Circumstances, however, made the rôle of the Acadians important.
Their position was unique. The
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_75" id="Page_75">75</SPAN></span>
Treaty of Utrecht gave them the right to
leave Acadia within a year, taking with them their personal effects. To
this Queen Anne added the just privilege of selling their lands and
houses. Neither the Acadians themselves, however, nor their new British
masters were desirous that they should leave. The Acadians were content in
their old homes; and the British did not wish them to help in building up
the neighboring French stronghold on Cape Breton. It thus happened that
the French officials could induce few of the Acadians to migrate and the
English troubled them little. Having been resolute in acquiring Nova
Scotia, Britain proceeded straightway to neglect it. She brought in few
settlers. She kept there less than two hundred soldiers and even to these
she paid so little attention that sometimes they had no uniforms. The
Acadians prospered, multiplied, and quarreled as to the boundaries of
their lands. They rendered no military service, paid no taxes, and had the
country to themselves as completely as if there had been no British
conquest. They rarely saw a British official. If they asked the British
Governor at Annapolis to settle for them some vexed question of rights or
ownership he did so and they did not even pay a fee.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_76" id="Page_76">76</SPAN></span>
This is not, however, the whole story. England’s neglect of the colony was
France’s opportunity. Perhaps the French court did not follow closely what
was going on in Acadia. The successive French Governors of Canada at
Quebec were, however, alert; and their policy was to incite the Abenaki
Indians on the New England frontier to harass the English settlements, and
to keep the Acadians an active factor in the support of French plans. The
nature of French intrigue is best seen in the career of Sebastien Rale. He
was a highly educated Jesuit priest. It was long a tradition among the
Jesuits to send some of their best men as missionaries among the Indians.
Rale spent nearly the whole of his life with the Abenakis at the mission
station of Norridgewock on the Kennebec River. He knew the language and
the customs of the Indians, attended their councils, and dominated them by
his influence. He was a model missionary, earnest and scholarly. But the
Jesuit of that age was prone to be half spiritual zealot, half political
intriguer. There is no doubt that the Indians had a genuine fear that the
English, with danger from France apparently removed by the Treaty of
Utrecht, would press claims to lands about the Kennebec River in what
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_77" id="Page_77">77</SPAN></span>
is
now the State of Maine, and that they would ignore the claims of the
Indians and drive them out. The Governor at Quebec helped to arouse the
savages against the arrogant intruders. English border ruffians stirred
the Indians by their drunken outrages and gave them real cause for anger.
The savages knew only one way of expressing political unrest. They began
murdering women and children in raids on lonely log cabins on the
frontier. The inevitable result was that in 1721 Massachusetts began a war
on them which dragged on for years. Rale, inspired from Quebec, was
believed to control the Indians and, indeed, boasted that he did so. At
last the English struck at the heart of the trouble. In 1724 some two
hundred determined men made a silent advance through the forest to the
mission village of Norridgewock where Rale lived, and Rale died fighting
the assailants. In Europe a French Jesuit such as he would have worked
among diplomats and at the luxurious courts of kings. In America he worked
among savages under the hard conditions of frontier life. The methods and
the aims in both cases were the same—by subtle and secret influence
so to mold the actions of men that France should be exalted in power. In
their high politics the
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_78" id="Page_78">78</SPAN></span>
French sometimes overreached themselves. To seize
points of vantage, to intrigue for influence, are not in themselves
creative. They must be supported by such practical efforts as will assure
an economic reserve adequate in the hour of testing. France failed partly
because she did not know how to lay sound industrial foundations which
should give substance to the brilliant planning of her leaders.</p>
<p>To French influence of this kind the English opposed forces that were the
outcome of their national character and institutions. They were keener
traders than the French and had cheaper and better goods, with the
exception perhaps of French gunpowder and of French brandy, which the
Indians preferred to English rum. Though the English were less alert and
less brilliant than the French, the work that they did was more enduring.
Their settlements encroached ever more and more upon the forest. They
found and tilled the good lands, traded and saved and gradually built up
populous communities. The British colonies had twenty times the population
of Canada. The tide of their power crept in slowly but it moved with the
relentless force that has subsequently made nearly the whole
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_79" id="Page_79">79</SPAN></span>
of North
America English in speech and modes of thought.</p>
<p>When, in 1744, open war between the two nations came at last in Europe,
each prepared to spring at the other in America—and France sprang
first. In Nova Scotia, on the narrow strait which separates the mainland
from the island of Cape Breton, the British had a weak little fishing
settlement called Canseau. Suddenly in May, 1744, when the British at
Canseau had heard nothing of war, two armed vessels from Louisbourg with
six or seven hundred soldiers and sailors appeared before the poor little
place and demanded its surrender. To this the eighty British defenders
agreed on the condition that they should be sent to Boston which, as yet,
had not heard of the war. Meanwhile they were taken to Louisbourg where
they kept their eyes open. But the French continued in their offensive.
The one vital place held by the British in Nova Scotia was Annapolis, at
that time so neglected that the sandy ramparts had crumbled into the ditch
supposed to protect them, and cows from the neighboring fields walked up
the slope and looked down into the fort. It was Duvivier, the captor of
Canseau, who attacked Annapolis. He had hoped much for help from the
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_80" id="Page_80">80</SPAN></span>
Indians and the Acadians, but, though both seemed eager, both failed him
in action. Paul Mascarene, who defended Annapolis, was of Huguenot blood,
which stimulated him to fight the better against the Catholic French.
Boston sent him help, for that little capital was deeply moved, and so
Annapolis did not fall, though it was harassed during the whole summer of
1744; and New England, in a fever at the new perils of war, prepared a
mighty stroke against the French.</p>
<p>This expedition was to undertake nothing less than the capture of
Louisbourg itself. The colonial troops had been so often reminded of their
inferiority to regular troops as fighting forces that, with provincial
docility, they had almost come to accept the estimate. It was well enough
for them to fight irregular French and Indian bands, but to attack a
fortress defended by a French garrison was something that only a few bold
spirits among them could imagine. Such a spirit, however, was William
Vaughan, a Maine trader, deeply involved in the fishing industry and
confronted with ruin from hostile Louisbourg. Shirley, the Governor of
Massachusetts, a man of eager ambition, took up the proposal and worked
out an elaborate plan. The prisoners who had been captured at Canseau
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_81" id="Page_81">81</SPAN></span>
by
the French and interned at Louisbourg now arrived at Boston and told of
bad conditions in the fortress. In January, 1745, Shirley called a session
of the General Court, the little parliament of Massachusetts, and, having
taken the unusual step of pledging the members to secrecy, he unfolded his
plan. But it proved too bold for the prudent legislators, and they voted
it down. Meanwhile New England trade was suffering from ships which used
Louisbourg as a base. At length public opinion was aroused and, when
Shirley again called the General Court, a bare majority endorsed his plan.
Soon thereafter New England was aflame. Appeals for help were sent to
England and, it is said, even to Jamaica. Shirley counted on aid from a
British squadron, under Commodore Peter Warren, in American waters, but at
first Warren had no instructions to help such a plan. This disappointment
did not keep New England from going on alone. In the end Warren received
instructions to give the necessary substantial aid, and he established a
strict blockade which played a vital part in the siege of the French
fortress.</p>
<p>In this hour of deadly peril Louisbourg was in not quite happy case. Some
of the French
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_82" id="Page_82">82</SPAN></span>
officers, who would otherwise have starved on their low
pay, were taking part in illicit trade and were neglecting their duties.
Just after Christmas in 1744, there had been a mutiny over a petty
question of butter and bacon. Here, as in all French colonies, there were
cliques, with the suspicions and bitterness which they involve. The
Governor Duchambon, though brave enough, was a man of poor judgment in a
position that required both tact and talent. The English did not make the
mistake of delaying their preparations. They were indeed so prompt that
they arrived at Canseau early in April and had to wait for the ice to
break up in Gabarus Bay, near Louisbourg, where they intended to land.
Here, on April 30, the great fleet appeared. A watcher in Louisbourg
counted ninety-six ships standing off shore. With little opposition from
the French the amazing army landed at Freshwater Cove.</p>
<p>Then began an astonishing siege. The commander of the New England forces,
William Pepperrell, was a Maine trader, who dealt in a little of
everything, fish, groceries, lumber, ships, land. Though innocent of
military science, he was firm and tactful. A British officer with strict
military ideas could not, perhaps, have led that strange
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_83" id="Page_83">83</SPAN></span>
army with
success. Pepperrell knew that he had good fighting material; he knew, too,
how to handle it. In his army of some four thousand men there was probably
not one officer with a regular training. Few of his force had proper
equipment, but nearly all his men were handy on a ship as well as on land.
In Louisbourg were about two thousand defenders, of whom only five or six
hundred were French regulars. These professional soldiers watched with
contempt not untouched with apprehension the breaches of military
precedent in the operations of the besiegers. Men harnessed like horses
dragged guns through morasses into position, exposed themselves
recklessly, and showed the skill, initiative, and resolution which we have
now come to consider the dominant qualities of the Yankee. In time Warren
arrived with a British squadron and then the French were puzzled anew.
They could not understand the relations between the fleet and the army,
which seemed to them to belong to different nations. The New Englanders
appeared to be under a Governor who was something like an independent
monarch. He had drawn up elaborate plans for his army, comical in their
apparent disregard of the realities of war, naming the hour when the force
should land
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_84" id="Page_84">84</SPAN></span>
“unobserved” before Louisbourg, instructing Pepperrell to
surprise that place while every one was asleep, and so on. Kindly
Providence was expected even to give continuous good weather. “The English
appear to have enlisted Heaven in their interests,” said a despairing
resident of the town; “so long as the expedition lasted they had the most
beautiful weather in the world.” There were no storms; the winds were
favorable; fog, so common on that coast, did not creep in; and the sky was
clear.</p>
<p>Among the French the opinion prevailed that the English colonists were
ferocious pirates plotting eternally to destroy the power of France. Their
liberty, however, it was well understood, had made them strong; and now
they quickly became formidable soldiers. Their shooting, bad at first,
was, in the end, superb. Sometimes in their excess of zeal they
overcharged their cannon so that the guns burst. But they managed to hit
practically every house in Louisbourg, and since most of the houses were
of wood there was constant danger of fire. Some of the French fought well.
Even children of ten and twelve helped to carry ammunition.</p>
<p>The Governor Duchambon tried to keep up the spirits of the garrison by
absurd exaggeration of
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_85" id="Page_85">85</SPAN></span>
British losses. He was relying much on help from
France, but only a single ship reached port. On May 19, 1745, the besieged
saw approaching Louisbourg a great French ship of war, the <i>Vigilant</i>, long
looked for, carrying 64 guns and 560 men. A northwest wind was blowing
which would have brought her quickly into the harbor. The British fleet
was two and a half leagues away to leeward. The great ship, thinking
herself secure, did not even stop to communicate with Louisbourg but
wantonly gave chase to a small British privateer which she encountered
near the shore. By skillful maneuvering the smaller ship led the French
frigate out to sea again, and then the British squadron came up. From five
o’clock to ten in the evening anxious men in Louisbourg watched the fight
and saw at last the <i>Vigilant</i> surrender after losing eighty men. This
disaster broke the spirit of the defenders, who were already short of
ammunition. When they knew that the British were preparing for a combined
assault by land and sea, they made terms and surrendered on the 17th of
June, after the siege had lasted for seven weeks. The garrison marched out
with the honors of war, to be transported to France, together with such of
the civilian population as wished to go.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_86" id="Page_86">86</SPAN></span>
The British squadron then sailed into the harbor. Pepperrell’s strange
army, ragged and war-worn after the long siege, entered the town by the
south gate. They had fought as crusaders, for to many of them Catholic
Louisbourg was a stronghold of Satan. Whitfield, the great English
evangelist, then in New England, had given them a motto—<i>Nil
desperandum Christo duce</i>. There is a story that one of the English
chaplains, old Parson Moody, a man of about seventy, had brought with him
from Boston an axe and was soon found using it to hew down the altar and
images in the church at Louisbourg. If the story is true, it does
something to explain the belief of the French in the savagery of their
opponents who would so treat things which their enemies held to be most
sacred. The French had met this fanaticism with a savagery equally intense
and directed not against things but against the flesh of men. An
inhabitant of Louisbourg during the siege describes the dauntless bravery
of the Indian allies of the French during the siege: “Full of hatred for
the English whose ferocity they abhor, they destroy all upon whom they can
lay hands.” He does not have even a word of censure for the savages who
tortured and killed in cold blood a party of some
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_87" id="Page_87">87</SPAN></span>
twenty English who had
been induced to surrender on promise of life. The French declared that not
they but the savages were responsible for such barbarities, and the
English retorted that the French must control their allies. Feeling on
such things was naturally bitter on both sides and did much to decide that
the war between the two nations should be to the death.</p>
<p>The fall of Louisbourg brought great exultation to the English colonies.
It was a unique event, the first prolonged and successful siege that had
as yet taken place north of Mexico. An odd chance of war had decreed that
untrained soldiers should win a success so prodigious. New England, it is
true, had incurred a heavy expenditure, and her men, having done so much,
naturally imagined that they had done everything, and talked as if the
siege was wholly their triumph. They were, of course, greatly aided by the
fleet under Warren, and the achievement was a joint triumph of army and
navy. New England alone, however, had the credit of conceiving and of
arousing others to carry out a brilliant exploit.</p>
<p>Victory inspires to further victory. The British, exultant after
Louisbourg, were resolved to make
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_88" id="Page_88">88</SPAN></span>
an end of French power in America. “<i>Delenda est
Canada!</i>” cried Governor Shirley to the General Court of
Massachusetts, and the response of the members was the voting of men and
money on a scale that involved the bankruptcy of the Commonwealth. Other
colonies, too, were eager for a cause which had won a success so dazzling,
and some eight thousand men were promised for an attack on Canada, proud
and valiant Massachusetts contributing nearly one-half of the total
number. The old plan was to be followed. New York was to lead in an attack
by way of Lake Champlain. New England was to collect its forces at
Louisbourg. Here a British fleet should come, carrying eight battalions of
British regulars, and, with Warren in command, the whole armada should
proceed to Quebec. Nothing came of this elaborate scheme. Neither the
promised troops nor the fleet arrived from England. British ministers
broke faith with the colonists in the adventure with quite too light a
heart.</p>
<p>Stories went abroad of disorder and dissension in Louisbourg under the
English and of the weakness of the place. Disease broke out. Hundreds of
New England soldiers died and their bones now lie in graves, unmarked and
forgotten, on the seashore
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_89" id="Page_89">89</SPAN></span>
by the deserted fortress; at almost any time
still their bones, washed down by the waves, may be picked up on the
beach. There were sullen mutterings of discontent at Louisbourg. Soldiers
grumbled over grievances which were sometimes fantastic. Rumor had been
persistent in creating a legend that vast wealth, the accumulated plunder
brought in by French privateers, was stored in the town. From this source
a rich reward in booty was expected by the soldiers. In fact, when
Louisbourg was taken, all looting was forbidden and the soldiers were put
on guard over houses which they had hoped to rob. For the soldiers there
were no prizes. Louisbourg was poor. The sailors, on the other hand, were
fortunate. As a decoy Warren kept the French flag flying over the harbor,
and French ships sailed in, one of them with a vast treasure of gold and
silver coin and ingots from Peru valued at £600,000. One other prize
was valued at £200,000 and a third at £140,000. Warren’s own
share of prize money amounted to £60,000, while Pepperrell, the
unrewarded leader of the sister service, piled up a personal debt of
£10,000. Quarrels occurred between soldiers and sailors, and in
these the New Englanders soon proved by no means the cowards which
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_90" id="Page_90">90</SPAN></span>
complacent superiority in England considered them; rather, as an
enlightened Briton said, “If they had pickaxe and spade they would dig a
way to Hell itself and storm that stronghold.”</p>
<p>Behind all difficulties was the question whether, having taken Louisbourg,
the British could continue to hold it. France answered with a resolute
“No.” To retake it she fitted out a great fleet. Nearly half
her navy gathered under the Duc d’Anville and put to sea on June
20, 1746. If in the previous summer God had helped the English with good
weather, by a similar proof His face now appeared turned a second time
against the French. In the great array there were more than sixty ships,
which were to gather at Chebucto, now Halifax, harbor, and to be joined
there by four great ships of war from the West Indies. Everything went
wrong. On the voyage across the Atlantic there was a prolonged calm,
followed by a heavy squall. Several ships were struck by lightning. A
magazine on the <i>Mars</i> blew up, killing ten and wounding twenty-one
men. Pestilence broke out. As a crowning misfortune, the fleet was
scattered by a terrific storm. After great delay d’Anville’s
ship reached Chebucto, then a wild and lonely spot. The expected fleet
from the
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_91" id="Page_91">91</SPAN></span>
West Indies had indeed come, but had gone, since the ships from France,
long overdue, had not arrived. D’Anville died suddenly—some
said of apoplexy, others of poison self-administered. More ships arrived
full of sick men and short of provisions. D’Estournel, who
succeeded d’Anville in chief command, in
despair at the outlook killed himself with his own sword after the
experience of only a day or two in his post. La Jonquière, a competent
officer, afterwards Governor of Canada, then led the expedition. The
pestilence still raged, and from two to three thousand men died. One day a
Boston sloop boldly entered Chebucto harbor to find out what was going on.
It is a wonder that the British did not descend upon the stricken French
and destroy them. In October, La Jonquière, having pulled his force
together, planned to win the small success of taking Annapolis, but again
storms scattered his ships. At the end of October he finally decided to
return to France. But there were more heavy storms; and one French crew
was so near starvation that only a chance meeting with a Portuguese ship
kept them from killing and eating five English prisoners. Only a battered
remnant of the fleet eventually reached home ports.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_92" id="Page_92">92</SPAN></span>
The disaster did not crush France. In May of the next spring, 1747, a new
fleet under La Jonquière set out to retake Louisbourg. Near the coast of
Europe, however, Admirals Anson and Warren met and completely destroyed
it, taking prisoner La Jonquière himself. This disaster effected what was
really the most important result of the war: it made the British fleet
definitely superior to the French. During the struggle England had
produced a new Drake, who attacked Spain in the spirit of the sea-dogs of
Elizabeth. Anson had gone in 1740 into the Pacific, where he seized and
plundered Spanish ships as Drake had done nearly two centuries earlier;
and in 1744, when he had been given up for lost, he completed the great
exploit of sailing round the world and bringing home rich booty. Such
feats went far to give Britain that command of the sea on which her
colonial Empire was to depend.</p>
<p>The issue of the war hung more on events that occurred in Europe than in
America, and France had made gains as well as suffered losses. It was on
the sea that she had sustained her chief defeats. In India she had gained
by taking the English factory at Madras; and in the Low Countries she was
still aggressive. Indeed, during the war England
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_93" id="Page_93">93</SPAN></span>
had been more hostile to
Spain than to France. She had not taken very seriously her support of the
colonies in their attack on Louisbourg and she had failed them utterly in
their designs on Canada. It is true that in Europe England had grave
problems to solve. Austria, with which she was allied, desired her to
fight until Frederick of Prussia should give up the province of Silesia
seized by him in 1740. In this quarrel England had no vital interest.
France had occupied the Austrian Netherlands and had refused to hand back
to Austria this territory unless she received Cape Breton in return.
Britain might have kept Cape Breton if she would have allowed France to
keep Belgium. This, in loyalty to Austria, she would not do. Accordingly
peace was made at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 on the agreement that each side
should restore to the other its conquests, not merely in Europe but also
in America and Asia. Thus it happened that the British flag went up again
at Madras while it came down at Louisbourg.</p>
<p>Boston was of course angry at the terms of the treaty. What sacrifices had
Massachusetts not made! The least of them was the great burden of debt
which she had piled up. Her sons had borne
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_94" id="Page_94">94</SPAN></span>
what Pepperrell called “almost
incredible hardships.” They had landed cannon on a lee shore when the
great waves pounded to pieces their boats and when men wading breast high
were crushed by the weight of iron. Harnessed two and three hundred to a
gun, they had dragged the pieces one after the other over rocks and
through bog and slime, and had then served them in the open under the fire
of the enemy. New Englanders had died like “rotten sheep” in Louisbourg.
The graves of nearly a thousand of them lay on the bleak point outside the
wall. What they had gained by this sacrifice must now be abandoned. A
spirit of discontent with the mother country went abroad and, after this
sacrifice of colonial interests, never wholly died out. It is not without
interest to note in passing that Gridley, the engineer who drew the plan
of the defenses of Louisbourg, thirty years later drew those of Bunker
Hill to protect men of the English race who fought against England.</p>
<p>Every one knew that the peace of 1748 was only a truce and Britain began
promptly new defenses. Into the spacious harbor of Chebucto, which three
years earlier had been the scene of the sorrows of d’Anville’s fleet,
there sailed in June, 1749, a
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_95" id="Page_95">95</SPAN></span>
considerable British squadron bent on a
momentous errand. It carried some thousands of settlers, Edward
Cornwallis, a governor clothed with adequate authority, and a force
sufficient for the defense of the new foundation. Cornwallis was delighted
with the prospect. “All the officers agree the harbour is the finest they
have ever seen”—this, of Halifax harbor with the great Bedford
Basin, opening beyond it, spacious enough to contain the fleets of the
world. “The Country is one continuous Wood, no clear spot to be seen or
heard of. D’Anville’s fleet … cleared no ground; they encamped their men
on the beach.” The garrison was withdrawn from Louisbourg and soon arrived
at Halifax, with a vast quantity of stores. A town was marked out; lots
were drawn for sites; and every one knew where he might build his house.
There were prodigious digging, chopping, hammering. “I shall be able to
get them all Houses before winter,” wrote Cornwallis cheerily. Firm
military discipline, indeed, did wonders. Before winter came, a town had
been created, and with the town a fortress which from that time has
remained the chief naval and military stronghold of Great Britain in North
America. At Louisbourg some two hundred miles farther east on the coast,
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_96" id="Page_96">96</SPAN></span>
France could reëstablish her military strength, but now Louisbourg had a
rival and each was resolved to yield nothing to the other. The founding of
Halifax was in truth the symbol of the renewal of the struggle for a
continent.</p>
<hr class="main" />
<div class="chapterhead" style="text-align:center;">
<SPAN name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005"></SPAN>
<br/><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_97" id="Page_97">97</SPAN></span>
<br/><br/><br/></div>
<h2> <SPAN href="#Contents">CHAPTER V.</SPAN> </h2>
<p class="chaptertitle">
The Great West</p>
<p><span class="smcap">In</span> days before the railway had made
possible a bulky commerce by overland routes, rivers furnished the
chief means of access to inland regions. The fame of the Ganges, the
Euphrates, the Nile, and the Danube shows the part which great rivers
have played in history. Of North America’s four greatest river
systems, the two in the far north have become known in times so
recent that their place in history is not yet determined. One of
them, the Mackenzie, a mighty stream some two thousand miles long, flows
into the Arctic Ocean through what remains chiefly a wilderness. The
waters of the other, the Saskatchewan, discharge into Hudson Bay more than
a thousand miles from their source, flowing through rich prairie land
which is still but scantily peopled. On the Saskatchewan, as on the
remaining two systems, the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi, the French
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_98" id="Page_98">98</SPAN></span>
were the pioneers. Though today the regions drained by these four rivers
are dominated by the rival race, the story which we now follow is one of
romantic enterprise in which the honors are with France.</p>
<p>More perhaps by accident than by design had the French been the first to
settle on the St. Lawrence. Fishing vessels had hovered round the entrance
to the Gulf of St. Lawrence for years before, in 1535, the French sailor,
Jacques Cartier, advanced up the river as far as the foot of the
torrential rapids where now stands the city of Montreal. Cartier was
seeking a route to the Far East. He half believed that this impressive
waterway drained the plains of China and that around the next bend he
might find the busy life of an oriental city. The time came when it was
known that a great sea lay between America and Asia and the mystery of the
pathway to this sea long fascinated the pioneers of the St. Lawrence.
Canada was a colony, a trading-post, a mission, the favorite field of
Jesuit activity, but it was also the land which offered by way of the St.
Lawrence a route leading illimitably westward to the Far East.</p>
<p>One other route rivaled the St. Lawrence in
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_99" id="Page_99">99</SPAN></span>
promise, and that was the
Mississippi. The two rivers are essentially different in their approaches
and in type. The mouth of the St. Lawrence opens directly towards Europe
and of all American rivers lies nearest to the seafaring peoples of
Europe. Since it flows chiefly in a rocky bed, its course changes little;
its waters are clear, and they become icy cold as they approach the sea
and mingle with the tide which flows into the great Gulf of St. Lawrence
from the Arctic regions. The Mississippi, on the other hand, is a turbid,
warm stream, flowing through soft lands. Its shifting channel is divided
at its mouth by deltas created from the vast quantity of soil which the
river carries in its current. On the low-lying, forest-clad, northern
shore of the Gulf of Mexico it was not easy to find the mouth of the
Mississippi by approaching it from the sea. The voyage there from France
was long and difficult; and, moreover, Spain claimed the lands bordering
on the Gulf of Mexico and declared herself ready to drive out all
intruders.</p>
<p>Nature, it is clear, dictated that, if France was to build up her power in
the interior of the New World, it was the valley of the St. Lawrence which
she should first occupy. Time has shown the
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_100" id="Page_100">100</SPAN></span>
riches of the lands drained by
the St. Lawrence. On no other river system in the world is there now such
a multitude of great cities. The modern traveler who advances by this
route to the sources of the river beyond the Great Lakes surveys wonders
ever more impressive. Before his view appear in succession Quebec,
Montreal, Toronto, Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Duluth, and many
other cities and towns, with millions in population and an aggregate of
wealth so vast as to stagger the imagination. Step by step had the French
advanced from Quebec to the interior. Champlain was on Lake Huron in 1615,
and there the Jesuits soon had a flourishing mission to the Huron Indians.
They had only to follow the shore of Lake Huron to come to the St. Mary’s
River bearing towards the sea the chilly waters of Lake Superior. On this
river, a much frequented fishing ground of the natives, they founded the
mission of Sainte Marie du Saut. Farther to the south, on the narrow
opening connecting Lake Huron and Lake Michigan, grew up the post known as
Michilimackinac. It was then inevitable that explorers and missionaries
should press on into both Lake Superior and Lake Michigan. By the time
that Frontenac came first to Canada in 1672
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_101" id="Page_101">101</SPAN></span>
the French had a post called
St. Esprit on the south shore of Lake Superior near its western end and
they had also passed westward from Lake Michigan and founded posts on both
the Illinois and the Wisconsin Rivers which flow into the Mississippi.</p>
<p>France had placed on record her claim to the whole of the Great West. On a
June morning in 1671 there had been a striking scene at Sainte Marie du
Saut. The French had summoned a great throng of Indians to the spot.
There, with impressive ceremony, Saint-Lusson, an officer from Canada, had
set up a cedar post on which was a plate engraved with the royal arms, and
proclaimed Louis XIV lord of all the Indian tribes and of all the lands,
rivers, and lakes, discovered and to be discovered in the region
stretching from the Atlantic to that other mysterious sea beyond the
spreading lands of the West. Henceforth at their peril would the natives
disobey the French King, or other states encroach upon these his lands. A
Jesuit priest followed Saint-Lusson with a description to the savages of
their new lord, the King of France. He was master of all the other rulers
of the world. At his word the earth trembled. He could set earth and sea
on fire by the
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_102" id="Page_102">102</SPAN></span>
blaze of his cannon. The priest knew the temper of his
savage audience and told of the King’s warriors covered with the blood of
his enemies, of the rivers of blood which flowed from their wounds, of the
King’s countless prisoners, of his riches and his power, so great that all
the world obeyed him. The savages gave delighted shouts at the strange
ceremony, but of its real meaning they knew nothing. What they understood
was that the French seemed to be good friends who brought them muskets,
hatchets, cloth, and especially the loved but destructive firewater which
the savage palate ever craved.</p>
<p>The mystery of the Great Lakes once solved, there still remained that of
the Western Sea. The St. Lawrence flowed eastward. Another river must
therefore be found flowing westward. The French were eager listeners when
the savages talked of a mighty river in the west flowing to the sea. They
meant, as we now suppose, the Mississippi. There are vague stories of
Frenchmen on the Mississippi at an earlier date; but, however this may be,
it is certain that in the summer of 1673 Louis Joliet, the son of a
wagon-maker of Quebec, and Jacques Marquette, a Jesuit priest, reached and
descended the great river from the
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_103" id="Page_103">103</SPAN></span>
mouth of the Wisconsin to a point far
past the mouth of the Ohio.</p>
<p>France thus planted herself on the Mississippi, though there her
occupation was less complete and thorough than it was on the St. Lawrence.
Distance was an obstacle; it was a far cry from Quebec by land, and from
France the voyage by sea through the Gulf of Mexico was hardly less
difficult. The explorer La Salle tried both routes. In 1681-1682 he set
out from Montreal, reached the Mississippi overland, and descended to its
mouth. Two years later he sailed from France with four ships bound for the
mouth of the river, there to establish a colony; but before achieving his
aim he was murdered in a treacherous attack led by his own countrymen.</p>
<p>It was Pierre Le Moyne, Sieur d’Iberville, who first made good
France’s claim to the Mississippi. He reached the river by sea in
1699 and ascended to a point some eighty miles beyond the present city of
New Orleans. Farther east, on Biloxi Bay, he built Fort Maurepas and
planted his first colony. Spain disliked this intrusion; but
Spain—soon to be herself ruled, as France then was, by a Bourbon
king—did not prove irreconcilable and slowly France built up a
colony in the south. It
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_104" id="Page_104">104</SPAN></span>
was in 1718 that Iberville’s brother, Jean Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur
de Bienville, founded New Orleans, destined to become in time one of the
great cities of North America. Its beginnings were not propitious. The
historian Charlevoix describes it as being in 1721 a low-lying, malarious
place, infested by snakes and alligators, and consisting of a hundred
wretched hovels.</p>
<p>In spite of this dreary outlook, it was still true that France, planted at
the mouth of the Mississippi, controlled the greatest waterway in the
world. Soon she had scattered settlements stretching northward to the Ohio
and the Missouri, the one river reaching eastward almost to the waters of
the St. Lawrence system, the other flowing out of the western plains from
its source in the Rocky Mountains. The old mystery, however, remained, for
the Mississippi flowed into the Gulf of Mexico, into Atlantic waters
already well known. The route to the Western Sea was still to be found.</p>
<p>It was easy enough for France to record a sweeping claim to the West, but
to make good this claim she needed a chain of posts, which should also be
forts, linking the Mississippi with the St. Lawrence and strong enough to
impress the Indians
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_105" id="Page_105">105</SPAN></span>
whose country she had invaded. At first she had
reached the interior by way of the Ottawa River and Lake Huron, and in
that northern country her position was secure enough through her posts on
the upper lakes. The route farther south by Lake Ontario and Lake Erie was
more difficult. The Iroquois menaced Niagara and long refused to let
France have a footing there to protect her pathway to Lake Erie and the
Ohio Valley. It was not until 1720, a period comparatively late, that the
French managed to have a fort at the mouth of the Niagara. On the Detroit
River, the next strategic point on the way westward, they were established
earlier. Just after Frontenac died in 1698, La Mothe Cadillac urged that
there should be built on this river a fort and town which might be made
the center of all the trading interests west of Lake Erie. End the folly,
he urged, of going still farther afield among the Indians and teaching
them the French language and French modes of thought. Leave the Indians to
live their own type of life, to hunt and to fish. They need European trade
and they have valuable furs to exchange. Encourage them to come to the
French at Detroit and see that they go nowhere else by not allowing any
other posts in the
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_106" id="Page_106">106</SPAN></span>
western country. Cadillac was himself a keen if secret
participant in the profits of the fur trade and hoped to be placed in
command at Detroit and there to become independent of control from Quebec.
Detroit was founded in 1701; and though for a long time it did not thrive,
the fact that on the site has grown up one of the great industrial cities
of modern times shows that Cadillac had read aright the meaning of the
geography of North America.</p>
<p>When France was secure at Niagara and at Detroit, two problems still
remained unsolved. One was that of occupying the valley of the Ohio, the
waters of which flow westward almost from the south shore of Lake Erie
until they empty into the vaster flood of the Mississippi. Here there was
a lion in the path, for the English claimed this region as naturally the
hinterland of the colonies of Virginia and Pennsylvania. What happened on
the Ohio we shall see in a later chapter. The other great problem, to be
followed here, was to explore the regions which lay beyond the
Mississippi. These spread into a remote unknown, unexplored by the white
man, and might ultimately lead to the Western Sea. We might have supposed
that France’s farther adventure into the
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_107" id="Page_107">107</SPAN></span>
West would have been from the
Mississippi up its great tributary the Missouri, which flows eastward from
the eternal snows of the Rocky Mountains. Always, however, the uncertain
temper of the many Indian tribes in this region made the advance
difficult. The tribes inhabiting the west bank of the Mississippi were
especially restless and savage. The Sioux, in particular, made life
perilous for the French at their posts near the mouth of the Missouri.</p>
<p>It thus happened that the white man first reached the remoter West by way
of regions farther north. It became easy enough to coast along the north
and the south shore of Lake Superior, easy enough to find rivers which fed
the great system of the St. Lawrence or of the Mississippi. These,
however, would not solve the mystery. A river flowing westward was still
to be sought. Thus, both in pursuit of the fur trade and in quest of the
Western Sea, the French advanced westward from Lake Superior. Where now
stands the city of Fort William there flows into Lake Superior the little
stream called still by its Indian name of Kaministiquia. There the French
had long maintained a trading-post from which they made adventurous
journeys northward and westward.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_108" id="Page_108">108</SPAN></span>
The rugged regions still farther north had already been explored, at least
in outline. There lay the great inland sea known as Hudson Bay. French and
English had long disputed for its mastery. By 1670 the English had found
trade to Hudson Bay so promising that they then created the Hudson’s Bay
Company, which remains one of the great trading corporations of the world.
With the English on Hudson Bay, New France was between English on the
north and English on the south and did not like it. On Hudson Bay the
English showed the same characteristics which they had shown in New
England. They were not stirred by vivid imaginings of what might be found
westward beyond the low-lying coast of the great inland sea. They came for
trade, planted themselves at the mouths of the chief rivers, unpacked
their goods, and waited for the natives to come to barter with them. For
many years the natives came, since they must have the knives, hatchets,
and firearms of Europe. To share this profitable trade the French, now
going overland to the north from Quebec, now sailing into Hudson Bay by
the Straits, attacked the English; and on those dreary waters, long before
the Great West was known, there had been many a naval
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_109" id="Page_109">109</SPAN></span>
battle, many a hand-to-hand fight for forts and their rich prize
of furs.</p>
<p>The chief French hero in this struggle was that son of Charles Le Moyne of
Montreal, Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville, who ended his days in the task of
founding the French colony of Louisiana. He was perhaps the most notable
of all the adventurous leaders whom New France produced. He was first on
Hudson Bay in the late summer of 1686, in a party of about a hundred men,
led by the Chevalier de Troyes, who had marched overland from Quebec
through the wilderness. The English on the Bay, with a charter from King
Charles II, the friend of the French, and in a time of profound peace
under his successor, thought themselves secure. They now had, however, a
rude awakening. In the dead of night the Frenchmen fell upon Fort Hayes,
captured its dazed garrison, and looted the place. The same fate befell
all the other English posts on the Bay. Iberville gained a rich store of
furs as his share of the plunder and returned with it to Quebec in 1687,
just at the time when La Salle, that other pioneer of France, was struck
down in the distant south by a murderer’s hand.</p>
<p>Iberville was, above all else, a sailor. The
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_110" id="Page_110">110</SPAN></span>
easiest route to Hudson Bay was by way of the sea. More than once
after his first experience he led to the Bay a naval expedition. His
exploits are still remembered with pride in French naval annals.
In 1697 he sailed the <i>Pelican</i> through the ice-floes of
Hudson Straits. He was attacked by three English merchantmen,
with one hundred and twenty guns against his forty-four. One of the
English ships escaped, one Iberville sank with all on board, one he
captured. That autumn the hardy corsair was in France with a great booty
from the furs which the English had laboriously gathered.</p>
<p>The triumph of the French on Hudson Bay was short-lived. Their exploits,
though brilliant and daring, were more of the nature of raids than
attempts to settle and explore. They did no more than the English to
ascend the Nelson or other rivers to find what lay beyond; and in 1713, by
the Treaty of Utrecht, as we have already seen, they gave up all claim to
Hudson Bay and yielded that region to the English.</p>
<hr class="break" />
<p>Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, Sieur de la Vérendrye, was a member of
the Canadian <i>noblesse</i>, a son of the Governor of Three Rivers on
the St.
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_111" id="Page_111">111</SPAN></span>
Lawrence. He was born in 1685 and had taken part in the border warfare of
the days of Queen Anne. He was a member of the raiding party led against
New England by Hertel de Rouville in 1704 and may have been one of those
who burst in on the little town of Deerfield, Massachusetts, and either
butchered or carried off as prisoners most of the inhabitants. Shortly
afterwards we find him a participant in warfare of a less ignoble type. In
1706 he went to France and became an ensign in a regiment of grenadiers.
Those were the days when Marlborough was hammering and destroying the
armies of Louis XIV. La Vérendrye took part in the last of the series of
great battles, the bloody conflict at Malplaquet in 1709. He received a
bullet wound through the body, was left for dead on the field, fell into
the hands of the enemy, and for fifteen months was a captive. On his
release he was too poor to maintain himself as an officer in France and
soon returned to Canada, where he served as an officer in a colonial
regiment until the peace of 1713. Then the ambitious young man, recently
married, with a growing family and slight resources, had to work out a
career suited to his genius.</p>
<p>His genius was that of an explorer; his task,
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_112" id="Page_112">112</SPAN></span>
which fully occupied his
alert mind, was that of finding the long dreamed of passage to the Western
Sea. The venture certainly offered fascinations. Noyon, a fellow-townsman
of La Vérendrye at Three Rivers, had brought back from the distant Lake of
the Woods, in 1716, a glowing account, told to him by the natives, of
walled cities, of ships and cannon, and of white-bearded men who lived
farther west. In 1720 the Jesuit Charlevoix, already familiar with Canada,
came out from France, went to the Mississippi country, and reported that
an attempt to find the path to the Western Sea might be made either by way
of the Missouri or farther north through the country of the Sioux west of
Lake Superior. Both routes involved going among warlike native tribes
engaged in incessant and bloody struggles with each other and not unlikely
to turn on the white intruder. Memorial after memorial to the French court
for assistance resulted at last in serious effort, but effort handicapped
because the court thought that a monopoly of the fur trade was the only
inducement required to promote the work of discovery.</p>
<p>La Vérendrye was more eager to reach the Western Sea than he was
to trade. To outward
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_113" id="Page_113">113</SPAN></span>
seeming, however, he became just a fur trader and a successful
one. We find him, in 1726, at the trading-post of Nipigon, not far from
the lake of that name, near the north shore of Lake Superior. From this
point it was not very difficult to reach the shore of one great sea,
Hudson Bay, but that was not the Western Sea which fired his imagination.
Incessantly he questioned the savages with whom he traded about what lay
in the unknown West. His zeal was kindled anew by the talk of an Indian
named Ochagach. This man said that he himself had been on a great lake
lying west of Lake Superior, that out of it flowed a river westward, that
he had paddled down this river until he came to water which, as La
Vérendrye understood, rose and fell like the tide. Farther, to the actual
mouth of the river, the savage had not gone, for fear of enemies, but he
had been told that it emptied into a great body of salt water upon the
shores of which lived many people. We may be sure that La Vérendrye read
into the words of the savage the meaning which he himself desired and that
in reality the Indian was describing only the waters which flow into Lake
Winnipeg.</p>
<p>La Vérendrye was all eagerness. Soon we find
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_114" id="Page_114">114</SPAN></span>
him back at Quebec stirring
by his own enthusiasm the zeal of the Marquis de Beauharnois, the Governor
of Canada, and begging for help to pay and equip a hundred men for the
great enterprise in the West. The Governor did what he could but was
unable to move the French court to give money. The sole help offered was a
monopoly of the fur trade in the region to be explored, a doubtful gift,
since it angered all the traders excluded from the monopoly. La Vérendrye,
however, was able, by promising to hand over most of the profits, to
persuade merchants in Montreal to equip him with the necessary men and
merchandise.</p>
<p>There followed a period of high hopes and of heart-breaking failure. In
1731 La Vérendrye set out for the West with three sons, a nephew, a Jesuit
priest, the Indian Ochagach as guide—a party numbering in all about
fifty. He intended to build trading-posts as he went westward and to make
the last post always a base from which to advance still farther. His
difficulties read like those of Columbus. His men not only disliked the
hard work which was inevitable but were haunted by superstitious fears of
malignant fiends in the unknown land who were ready to punish
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_115" id="Page_115">115</SPAN></span>
the invaders of their secrets. The route lay across the rough country
beyond Lake Superior. There were many long portages over which his men
must carry the provisions and heavy stores for trade. At length the party
reached Rainy Lake, and out of Rainy Lake the waters flow westward. The
country seemed delightful. Fish and game were abundant, and it was not
hard to secure a rich store of furs. On the shore of the lake, in a
charming meadow surrounded by oak trees, La Vérendrye built a
trading-post on waters flowing to the west, naming it Fort St. Pierre.</p>
<p>The voyageurs could now travel westward with the current. It is certain
that other Frenchmen had preceded them in that region, but this is the
first voyage of discovery of which we have any details. Escorted by an
imposing array of fifty canoes of Indians, La Vérendrye floated down Rainy
River to the Lake of the Woods, and here, on a beautiful peninsula jutting
out into the lake, he built another post, Fort St. Charles. It must have
seemed imposing to the natives. On walls one hundred feet square were four
bastions and a watchtower; evidence of the perennial need of alertness and
strength in the Indian country. There were a chapel, houses for the
commandant
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_116" id="Page_116">116</SPAN></span>
and the priest, a powder-magazine, a storehouse, and other buildings.
La Vérendrye cleared some land and planted wheat, and was thus
the pioneer in the mighty wheat production of the West. Fish and game were
abundant and the outlook was smiling. By this time the second winter of La
Vérendrye’s adventurous journeying was near, but even the cold of that
hard region could not chill his eagerness. He himself waited at Fort St.
Charles but his eldest son, Jean Baptiste, set out to explore still
farther.</p>
<p>We may follow with interest the little group of Frenchmen and Indian
guides as they file on snowshoes along the surface of the frozen river or
over the deep snow of the silent forest on, ever on, to the West. They are
the first white men of whom we have certain knowledge to press beyond the
Lake of the Woods into that great Northwest so full of meaning for the
future. The going was laborious and the distances seemed long, for on
their return they reported that they had gone a hundred and fifty leagues,
though in truth the distance was only a hundred and fifty miles. Then at
last they stood on the shores of a vast body of water, ice-bound and
forbidding as it lay in the grip of winter. It opened out illimitably
westward.
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_117" id="Page_117">117</SPAN></span>
But it was not the Western Sea, for its waters were fresh. The
shallow waters of Lake Winnipeg empty not into the Western Sea but into
the Atlantic by way of Hudson Bay. Its shores then were deserted and
desolate, and even to this day they are but scantily peopled. In that wild
land there was no hint of the populous East of which La Vérendrye had
dreamed.</p>
<p>At the mouth of the Winnipeg River, where it enters Lake Winnipeg, La
Vérendrye built Fort Maurepas, named after the French minister who was in
charge of the colonies and who was influential at court. The name no doubt
expresses some clinging hope which La Vérendrye still cherished of
obtaining help from the King. Already he was hard pressed for resources.
Where were the means to come from for this costly work of building forts?
From time to time he sent eastward canoes laden with furs which, after a
long and difficult journey, reached Montreal. The traders to whom the furs
were consigned sold them and kept the money as their own on account of
their outlay. La Vérendrye in the far interior could not pay his men and
would soon be without goods to trade with the Indians. After having
repeatedly begged for help but in vain, he made a rapid journey to
Montreal and
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_118" id="Page_118">118</SPAN></span>
implored the Governor to aid an enterprise which might change
the outlook of the whole world. The Governor was willing but without the
consent of France could not give help. By promising the traders, who were
now partners in his monopoly, profits of one hundred per cent on their
outlay, La Vérendrye at last secured what he needed. His canoes were laden
with goods, and soon brawny arms were driving once again the graceful
craft westward. He had offered a new hostage to fortune by arranging that
his fourth son, a lad of eighteen, should follow him in the next year.</p>
<p>La Vérendrye pressed on eagerly in advance of the heavy-laden canoes. Grim
news met him soon after he reached Fort St. Charles on the Lake of the
Woods. His nephew La Jemeraye, a born leader of men, who was at the most
advanced station, Fort Maurepas on Lake Winnipeg, had broken down from
exposure, anxiety, and overwork, and had been laid in a lonely grave in
the wilderness. Nearly all pioneer work is a record of tragedy and its
gloom lies heavy on the career of La Vérendrye. A little later came
another sorrow-laden disaster. La Vérendrye sent his eldest son Jean back
to Rainy Lake to hurry the canoes from Montreal which were bringing needed
food. The
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_119" id="Page_119">119</SPAN></span>
party landed on a peninsula at the discharge of Rainy Lake into
Rainy River, fell into an ambush of Sioux Indians, and were butchered to a
man. This incident reveals the chief cause of the slow progress in
discovery in the Great West: the temper of the savages was always
uncertain.</p>
<p>There is no sign that La Vérendrye wavered in his great hope even when he
realized that the Winnipeg River was not the river flowing westward which
he sought. We know now that the northern regions of the American continent
east of the Rocky Mountains are tilted towards the east and the north and
that in all its vast spaces there is no great river which flows to the
west. La Vérendrye, however, ignorant of this dictate of nature, longed to
paddle with the stream towards the west. The Red River flows from the
south into Lake Winnipeg at a point near the mouth of the Winnipeg River.
Up the Red River went La Vérendrye and found a tributary, the Assiniboine,
flowing into it from the west. At the point of junction, where has grown
up the city of Winnipeg, he built a tiny fort, called Fort Rouge, a name
still preserved in a suburb of the modern Winnipeg. The explorers went
southward on the Red River, and then went westward on the Assiniboine
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_120" id="Page_120">120</SPAN></span>
River only to find the waters persistently flowing against them and no
definite news of other waters leading to the Western Sea. On the
Assiniboine, near the site of the present town of Portage la Prairie in
Manitoba, La Vérendrye built Fort La Reine. Its name is evidence still
perhaps of hopes for aid through the Queen if not through the King of
France.</p>
<p>In 1737 La Vérendrye made once more the long journey to Montreal. His
fourteen canoes laden with furs were an earnest of the riches of the
wonderful West and so pleased his Montreal partners that again they fitted
him out with adequate supplies. In the summer of 1738 we find him at Fort
La Reine, rich for the moment in goods with which to trade, keen and
competent as a trader, and having great influence with the natives. All
through the West he found Indians who went to trade with the English on
Hudson Bay, and he constantly urged them not to take the long journey but
to depend upon the French who came into their own country. It was a policy
well fitted to cause searching of heart among the English traders who
seemed so secure in their snug quarters on the seashore waiting for the
Indians to come to them.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_121" id="Page_121">121</SPAN></span>
La Vérendrye had now a fresh plan for penetrating farther on his alluring
quest. He had heard of a river to the south to be reached by a journey
overland. It was a new thing for him to abandon canoes and march on foot
but this he now did and with winter approaching. On October 16, 1738, when
the autumn winds were already chill, there was a striking little parade at
Fort La Reine. The drummer beat the garrison to arms. What with soldiers
brought from Canada, the voyageurs who had paddled the great canoes, and
the Indians who dogged always the steps of the French traders, there was a
muster at the fort of some scores of men. La Vérendrye reviewed the whole
company and from them chose for his expedition twenty soldiers and
voyageurs and about twenty Assiniboine Indians. As companions for himself
he took François and Pierre, two of his three surviving sons, and two
traders who were at the fort.</p>
<p>We can picture the little company setting out on the 18th of October on
foot, with some semblance of military order, by a well-beaten trail
leading across the high land which separates the Red River country from
the regions to the southwest. La Vérendrye had heard much of a people,
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_122" id="Page_122">122</SPAN></span>
the
Mandans, dwelling in well-ordered villages on the banks of a great river
and cultivating the soil instead of living the wandering life of hunters.
Such wonders of Mandan culture had been reported to La Vérendrye that he
half expected to find them white men with a civilization equal to that of
Europe. The river was in reality not an unknown stream, as La Vérendrye
hoped, but the Missouri, a river already frequented by the French in its
lower stretches where its waters join those of the Mississippi.</p>
<p>It was a long march over the prairie. La Vérendrye found that he could not
hurry his Indian guides. They insisted on delays during days of glorious
autumn weather when it would have been wise to press on and avoid the
winter cold on the wind-swept prairie. They went out of their way to visit
a village of their own Assiniboine tribe; and, when they resumed their
journey, this whole village followed them. The prairie Indians had a more
developed sense of order and discipline than the tribes of the forest. La
Vérendrye admired the military regularity of the savages on the march.
They divided the company of more than six hundred into three columns: in
front, scouts to look out for an enemy and also for herds of
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_123" id="Page_123">123</SPAN></span>
buffalo; in
the center, well protected, the old and the lame, all those incapable of
fighting; and, for a rear-guard, strong fighting men. When buffalo were
seen, the most active of the fighters rushed to the front to aid in
hemming in the game. Women and dogs carried the baggage, the men
condescending to bear only their weapons.</p>
<p>Not until cold December had come did the party reach the chief Mandan
village. It was in some sense imposing, for the Indian lodges were
arranged neatly in streets and squares and the surrounding palisade was
strong and well built. Around the fort was a ditch fifteen feet deep and
of equal width, which made the village impregnable in Indian warfare.
After saluting the village with three volleys of musket fire, La Vérendrye
marched in with great ceremony, under the French flag, only to discover
that the Mandans were not greatly unlike the Assiniboines and other
Indians of the West whom he already knew. The men went about naked and the
women nearly so. They were skilled in dressing leather. They were also
cunning traders, for they duped La Vérendrye’s friends, the Assiniboines,
and cheated them out of their muskets, ammunition, kettles, and knives.
Great eaters were the Mandans. They cultivated
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_124" id="Page_124">124</SPAN></span>
abundant crops and stored
them in cave cellars. Every day they brought their visitors more than
twenty dishes cooked in earthen pottery of their own handicraft. There was
incredible feasting, which La Vérendrye avoided but which his sons
enjoyed. The Mandan language he could not understand and close questioning
as to the route to the Western Sea was thus impossible. He learned enough
to discredit the vague tales of white men in armor and peopled towns with
which his lying guides had regaled him. In the end he decided for the time
being to return to Fort La Reine and to leave two of his followers to
learn the Mandan language so that in the future they might act as
interpreters. When he left the Mandan village on the 13th of December, he
was already ill and it is a wonder that he did not perish from the cold on
the winter journey across hill and prairie. “In all my life I have never,”
he says, “endured such misery from illness and fatigue, as on that
journey.” On the 11th of February he was back at Fort La Reine, worn out
and broken in health but still undaunted and resolved never to abandon his
search.</p>
<p>Abandon it he never did. We find him in Montreal in 1740 involved in what
he had always
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_125" id="Page_125">125</SPAN></span>
held in horror—a lawsuit brought against him by some
impatient creditor. The report had gone abroad that he was amassing great
wealth, when, as he said, all that he had accumulated was a debt of forty
thousand <i>livres</i>. In the autumn of 1741 he was back at Fort La Reine, where
he welcomed his son Pierre from a fruitless journey to the Mandans.</p>
<p>The most famous of all the efforts of the family was now on foot. On April
29, 1742, a new expedition started from Fort La Reine, led by La
Vérendrye’s two sons, Pierre and François. They knew the nature of the
task before them, its perils as well as its hopes. They took with them no
imposing company as their father had done, but only two men. The party of
four, too feeble to fight their way, had to trust to the peaceful
disposition of the natives. When they started, the prairie was turning
from brown to green and the rivers were still swollen from the spring
thaw. In three weeks they reached a Mandan village on the upper Missouri
and were well received. It was after midsummer when they set out again and
pressed on westward with a trend to the south. The country was bare and
desolate. For twenty days they saw no human being. They had Mandan
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_126" id="Page_126">126</SPAN></span>
guides
who promised to take them to the next tribe, the Handsome Men—<i>Beaux
Hommes</i>—as the brothers called them, a tribe much feared by the
Mandans. The travelers were now mounted; for the horse, brought first to
America by the Spaniards, had run wild on the western plains where the
European himself had not yet penetrated, and had become an indispensable
aid to certain of the native tribes. Deer and buffalo were in abundance
and they had no lack of food.</p>
<p>When they reached the tribe of <i>Beaux Hommes</i>, the Mandan guides fled
homeward. Summer passed into bleak autumn with chill winds and long
nights. By the end of October they were among the Horse Indians who, they
had been told, could guide them to the sea. These, however, now said that
only the Bow Indians, farther on, could do this. Winter was near when they
were among these Indians, probably a tribe of the Sioux, whom they found
excitedly preparing for a raid on their neighbors farther west, the
Snakes. They were going, they said, towards the mountains and there the
Frenchmen could look out on the great sea. So the story goes on. The
brothers advanced ever westward and the land became more rugged, for they
were now climbing upward from the
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_127" id="Page_127">127</SPAN></span>
prairie country. At last, on January 1,
1743, they saw what both cheered and discouraged them. In the distance
were mountains. About them was the prairie, with game in abundance. It was
a great host with which the brothers traveled for there were two thousand
warriors with their families who made night vocal with songs and yells. On
the 12th of January, nearly two weeks later, with an advance party of
warriors, the La Vérendryes reached the foot of the mountains, “well
wooded with timber of every kind and very high.”</p>
<p>Was it the Rocky Mountains which they saw? Had they reached that last
mighty barrier of snow-capped peaks, rugged valleys, and torrential
streams, beyond which lay the sea? That they had done so was long assumed
and many conjectures have been offered as to the point in the Rockies near
which they made their last camp. Their further progress was checked by an
unexpected crisis. One day they came upon an encampment of the dreaded
Snake Indians which had been abandoned in great haste. This, the Bow
Indians thought, could only mean that the Snakes had hurriedly left their
camp in order to slip in behind the advance guard of the Bows and massacre
the women and children left in the rear. Panic
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_128" id="Page_128">128</SPAN></span>
seized the Bows and they
turned homeward in wild confusion. Their chief could not restrain them. “I
was very much disappointed,” writes one of the brothers, “that I could not
climb the mountains”—those mountains from which he had been told
that he might view the Western Sea.</p>
<p>There was nothing for it but to turn back through snowdrifts over the
bleak prairie. The progress was slow for the snow was sometimes two feet
deep. On the 1st of March the brothers parted with their Bow friends at
their village and then headed for home. By the 20th they were encamped
with a friendly tribe on the banks of the Missouri. Here, to assert that
Louis XV was lord of all that country, they built on an eminence a pyramid
of stones and in it they buried a tablet of lead with an inscription which
recorded the name of Louis XV, their King, and of the Marquis de
Beauharnois, Governor of Canada, and the date of the visit.</p>
<p>Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. One hundred and seventy years
later, on February 16, 1913, a schoolgirl strolling with some companions
on a Sunday afternoon near the High School in the town of Pierre, South
Dakota, stumbled upon a projecting corner of this tablet, which was in an
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_129" id="Page_129">129</SPAN></span>
excellent state of preservation. Thus we know exactly where the brothers
La Vérendrye were on April 2, 1743, when they bade farewell to their
Indian friends and set out on horseback for Fort La Reine.</p>
<p>Spring had turned to summer before the brothers reached their destination.
On July 2, 1743, they relieved the anxiety of their waiting father after
an absence of fifteen months. Moving slowly as they did, could they have
traveled from the distant Rockies from the time in January when they
turned back? It seems doubtful; and in spite of the long-cherished belief
that the brothers reached the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, it may be
that they had not penetrated beyond the barrier which we know as the Black
Hills. The chance discovery of a forgotten plate by school children may in
truth prove that, as late as in 1750, the Rocky Mountains had not yet been
seen by white men and that the first vision of that mighty range was
obtained much farther north in Canada.</p>
<p>After 1743 the French seem to have made no further efforts to reach the
Western Sea by way of the Missouri. If in reality the brothers had not
gone beyond the Black Hills in South Dakota, then their most important
work appears to have
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_130" id="Page_130">130</SPAN></span>
been done within what is now Canada, as discoverers
of the Saskatchewan, the mighty river which carries to far-distant Hudson
Bay the waters melted on the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains. It was
by this route up the Saskatchewan that fifty years later was solved the
tough and haunting problem of going over the mountains to the Pacific
Ocean. La Vérendrye now ascended the Saskatchewan for some three hundred
miles to the forks where it divides into two great branches. He was going
deeper into debt but he hoped always for help from the King. It is
pathetic to see today, on the map of that part of western Canada which he
and his sons explored, a town, a lake, and a county called Dauphin, in
honor of the heir to the throne of France. No doubt La Vérendrye had the
thought that some day he might plead with the Dauphin when he had become
King for help in his great task.</p>
<p>Before the year 1749 had ended La Vérendrye, who had returned to Montreal,
was in his grave. His sons, partners in his work, expected to be charged
with the task—to which the King, in 1749, had anew appointed their
father—of continuing the work of discovery in the West. François,
for a time ill, wrote in 1750 from Montreal to
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_131" id="Page_131">131</SPAN></span>
La Jonquière, the Governor at Quebec, that he hoped to take up
the plans of his father. The Governor’s reply was that he had
appointed another officer, Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, to lead in the
search for the Western Sea. François hurried to Quebec. The
Governor met him with a bland face and seemed friendly. François
urged that he and his brothers claimed no preëminence and that
they were ready to serve under the orders of Saint-Pierre. The Governor
was hesitant; but at last told François frankly that the new leader
desired no help either from him or from his brothers. François was
dismayed. He and his brothers were in debt. Already he had sent on stores
and men to the West and the men were likely to starve if not followed by
provisions. His chief property was in the West in the form of goods which
would be plundered without his guardianship. To tide over the immediate
future he sold the one small piece of land in Montreal which he had
inherited from his father and threw this slight sop to his urgent
creditors.</p>
<p>Saint-Pierre, strong in his right of monopoly, insisted that the brothers
should not even return to the West. François urged that to go was a
matter of life and death. In some way he secured
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_132" id="Page_132">132</SPAN></span>
leave to set out with one
laden canoe. When Saint-Pierre found that François had gone, he claimed
damages for the intrusion on his monopoly and secured an order to pursue
François and bring him back. He caught him at Michilimackinac. The meeting
between the two men at that place involved explanations. Face to face with
an injured man, Saint-Pierre admitted that he had been in the wrong, paid
to François many compliments, and regretted that he had not joined hands
with the brothers.</p>
<p>The mischief done was, however, irreparable. François, crippled by
opposition, could not carry on his trade with success and in the end he
returned to Montreal a ruined man overwhelmed with debt. He wrote to the
French court a noble appeal for relief:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I remain without friends and without patrimony … a simple ensign of the
second grade; my elder brother has only the same rank as myself; my
younger brother is only a junior cadet. This is the result of all that my
father, my brothers and myself have done.… There are in the hands of
your Lordship resources of compensation and of consolation. I venture to
appeal to you for relief. To find ourselves excluded from the West would
mean to be cruelly robbed of our heritage, to realize for ourselves all
that is bitter and to see others secure all that is sweet.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_133" id="Page_133">133</SPAN></span>
The appeal fell on deaf ears. The brothers sank into obscurity. During
Montcalm’s campaigns from 1756 to 1759 Pierre and François
seem to have been engaged in military service. François was killed
in the siege of Quebec in 1759. After the final surrender of Canada the
<i>Auguste</i>, a ship laden for the most part with refugees returning to
France, was wrecked on the St. Lawrence. Among those on board who perished
was Pierre de la Vérendrye. He died amid the howling of the tempest
and the cries of drowning men. Tragedy, unrelenting, had pursued him to
the end.</p>
<hr class="break" />
<p>Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, the choice of the Marquis de la Jonquière to
take up the search for the Western Sea in succession to the elder La
Vérendrye, himself went only as far as Fort La Reine. It was a
subordinate, the Chevalier de Niverville, whom he sent farther west to
find the great mountains and if possible the sea. The winter of 1750-51
had set in before Niverville was ready. He started apparently from Fort
Maurepas, on snowshoes, his party dragging their supplies on toboggans.
Before they reached Paskoya on the Saskatchewan (the modern Le Pas) they
had nearly perished of hunger and were able to save
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_134" id="Page_134">134</SPAN></span>
their lives only by catching a few fish through the ice. Niverville was
ill. He sent forward ten men by canoe up the Saskatchewan. They traveled
with such rapidity that on May 29, 1751, they had reached the Rockies.
They built a good fort, which they named Fort La Jonquière, and
stored it with a considerable quantity of provisions. If, as seems likely,
the brothers La Vérendrye saw only the Black Hills, these ten
unknown men were the discoverers of the Rocky Mountains.</p>
<p>Saint-Pierre braced himself to set out for the distant goal but he was
easily discouraged. Niverville, he said, was ill; the Indians were at war
among themselves; some of them were plotting what Saint-Pierre calls
“treason” to the French and their “perfidy” surpassed anything in his
lifelong experience. The hostile influence of the English he thought
all-pervasive. Obviously these are excuses. He did not like the task and
he turned back. As it was, he tells a dramatic story of how Indians
crowded into Fort La Reine in a threatening manner and how he saved the
fort and himself only by rushing to the magazine with a lighted torch,
knocking open a barrel of powder, and threatening to blow up everything
and everybody if the savages did not withdraw at once. He
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_135" id="Page_135">135</SPAN></span>
was eager to leave the country. In 1752 he handed over the command to St.
Luc de la Corne and, in August of that year, having experienced “much
wretchedness” on his journeys, he was safely back in Montreal. The
founding of Fort La Jonquière was, no doubt, a great feat. Where
the fort stood we do not know. It may have been on the North Saskatchewan,
near Edmonton, or on the south branch of the river near Calgary. In any
case it was a far-flung outpost of France.</p>
<hr class="break" />
<p>The English had always been more prosaic than the French. The traders on
Hudson Bay worked, indeed, under a monopoly not less rigorous than that
which Canada imposed. Without doubt, many an Englishman on the Bay was
haunted by the hope and desire to reach the Western Sea. But the servants
of the Company knew that to buy and sell at a profit was their chief aim.
They had been on the whole content to wait for trade to come to them. By
1740 the Indians, who made the long journey to the Bay by the intricate
waters which carried to the sea the flood of the Saskatchewan and Lake
Winnipeg, were showing to the English articles supplied by the French at
points far inland. It thus became evident that the French
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_136" id="Page_136">136</SPAN></span>
were tapping the traffic in furs near its source and cutting off the
stream which had long flowed to Hudson Bay.</p>
<p>In June, 1754, Anthony Hendry, a young man in the service of the Company,
left York factory on Hudson Bay to find out what the French were doing. We
have a slight but carefully written diary of Hendry’s journey. He
does not fail to note that in the summer weather life was made almost
intolerable by the “musketoos.” Traveling by canoe he reached
the Saskatchewan River and tells how, on the 22d of July, he came to
“a French house.” It was Fort Paskoya. When Hendry paddled up
to the river bank two Frenchmen met him and “in a very genteel
manner” invited him into their house. With all courtesy they asked
him, he says, if he had any letter from his master and where and on what
design he was going inland. His answer was that he had been sent “to
view the Country” and that he intended to return to Hudson
Bay in the spring. The Frenchmen were sorry that their own master, who was
apparently the well-known Canadian leader, St. Luc de la Corne, the
successor of Saint-Pierre, had gone to Montreal with furs, and added their
regrets that they must detain Hendry until this leader’s return.
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_137" id="Page_137">137</SPAN></span>
At this Hendry’s Indians grunted and said that the French dared not
do so. Next day Hendry took breakfast and dinner at the fort, gave
“two feet of tobacco” (at that time it was sold in long coils)
to his hosts, and in return received some moose flesh. The confidence of
his Indian guides that the French would not dare to detain him was
justified. Next day Hendry paddled on up the river and advanced more than
twenty miles, camping at night by “the largest Birch trees I have
yet seen.”</p>
<p>Hendry wished to see the country thoroughly and to come into touch with
the natives. The best way to do this and to obtain food was to leave the
river and go boldly overland. He accordingly left his canoes behind and
advanced on foot. The party was starving. On a Sunday in July he walked
twenty-six miles and says “neither Bird nor Beast to be seen,—so
that we have nothing to eat.” The next day he traveled twenty-four miles
on an empty stomach and then, to his delight, found a supply of ripe
strawberries, “the size of black currants and the finest I ever eat.” The
next day his Indians killed two moose. He then met natives who, when he
asked them to go to Hudson Bay to trade, replied that they could
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_138" id="Page_138">138</SPAN></span>
obtain
all they needed from the French posts. The tact and skill of the French
were such that, as Hendry admits, reluctantly enough, the Indians were
already strongly attached to them. Day after day Hendry journeyed on over
the rolling prairie in the warm summer days. He came to the south branch
of the Saskatchewan near the point where now stands the city of Saskatoon
and crossed the river on the 21st of August. Then on to the West, eager to
take part in the hunting of the buffalo.</p>
<p>Hendry is almost certainly the first Englishman to see this region. In the
end he reached the mountains. He makes no mention of having seen or heard
anything of Fort La Jonquière, built three years earlier. He had aims
different from those of La Vérendrye and other French explorers. Not the
Western Sea but openings for trade was he seeking. His great aim was to
reach the tribe called later the Blackfeet Indians, who were mighty
hunters of the buffalo. Hendry was alive to the impressions of nature. The
intense heat of August was followed in September by glorious weather, with
the nights cool and the mosquitoes no longer troublesome. The climate was
bracing. He complains only, from time to time, of swollen
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_139" id="Page_139">139</SPAN></span>
feet, and we need not wonder since his daily march occasionally went
beyond twenty-five miles. Sometimes for days he saw no living creature.
At other times wild life was prolific: there were moose in great
abundance, bears, including the dreaded grizzly—one of which killed
an Indian of his company and badly mutilated another—beaver, wild
horses, and, above all, the buffalo. “Saw many herds of Buffalo
grazing like English cattle,” he says, on the 13th of September,
and the next day he goes buffalo hunting. Guns and ammunition were costly.
His Indians, who used only bows and arrows, on this day killed
seven—“fine sport,” says Hendry. Often the Indians
took only the tongue, leaving the carcass for the wolves, who naturally
abounded in such advantageous conditions. It is not easy now to imagine
the part played by the buffalo in the life of the prairie. As Hendry
advanced the herds were so dense as sometimes to retard his progress.
Other writers tell of the vast numbers of these creatures. Alexander
Henry, the younger, writing on April 1, 1801, says that in a river swollen
by spring floods, drowned buffalo floated past his camp in one continuous
line for two days and two nights. In prairie fires thousands were blinded
and would go
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_140" id="Page_140">140</SPAN></span>
tumbling down banks into streams or lie down to die. One
morning the bellowing of buffaloes awakened Henry and he looked out to see
the prairie black. “The ground was covered at every point of the compass,
as far as the eye could reach, and every animal was in motion.”</p>
<p>Daily as Hendry advanced he saw smoke in the distance and his Indians told
him that it came from the camp of the Blackfeet. He reached them on Monday
the 14th of October. When four miles away he was stopped by mounted scouts
who asked whether he came as a friend or as an enemy. He was taken to the
camp of two hundred tents pitched in two rows, and was led through the
long passage between the tents to the big tent of the chief of whom he had
heard much. Not a word was spoken. The chief sat on a white buffalo skin.
Pipes were passed round and each person was presented with boiled buffalo
flesh. When talk began, Hendry told the chief that his great leader had
sent him to invite them to come to trade at Hudson Bay where his people
would get powder, shot, guns, cloth, beads, and other things. The chief
said it was far away, and his people knew nothing of paddling. Such
strangers to great waters were they that they would not even eat fish.
They despised
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_141" id="Page_141">141</SPAN></span>
Hendry’s tobacco. What they smoked was dried horse dung. In
the end Hendry was dismissed and ordered to make his camp a quarter of a
mile away from that of the Blackfeet.</p>
<p>It was close by the present site of Calgary and apparently in full view,
on clear days, of the white peaks of the Rocky Mountains that Hendry
visited the Blackfeet. He lingered in the far western country through the
greater part of the winter. On a portion of his return journey he used a
horse. When the spring thaw came, once more he took to the water in
canoes. He complains of the idleness of his Indian companions who would
remain in their huts all day and never stir to lay up a store of food even
when game was abundant. Conjuring, dancing to the hideous pounding of
drums, feasting and smoking, were their amusements. On his way back Hendry
revisited the French post on the Saskatchewan. The leader, no doubt St.
Luc de la Corne, had returned from Montreal and now had with him nine men.
“The master,” says Hendry, “invited me in to sup with
him, and was very kind. He is dressed very Genteel.” He showed
Hendry his stock of furs; “a brave parcel,” the admiring rival
thought. Hendry admits the superiority of the French as traders. They
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_142" id="Page_142">142</SPAN></span>
“talk Several Languages to perfection; they have the advantage of
us in every shape.” In the West, as in the East, France was
recognized as a formidable rival of England for the mastery of North
America.</p>
<p>When Hendry was making his peaceful visit to the French fort in 1755, the
crisis of the struggle had just been reached. In that year the battle line
from Acadia to the Ohio and the Mississippi was already forming, and the
fate of France’s eager efforts to hold the West was soon to be decided in
the East. If Britain should conquer on the St. Lawrence, she would conquer
also on the Saskatchewan and on the Mississippi.</p>
<p>Conquer she did, and thus it happened that it was Britain’s sons who
took up the later burdens of the discoverer. In the summer of 1789, just
at the time when the great Revolution was beginning in France, Alexander
Mackenzie, a Scotch trader from Montreal, starting from Lake Athabasca,
north of the farthest point reached by Hendry, was pressing still onward
into an unknown region to find a river which might lead to the sea. This
river he found; we know it now as the Mackenzie. For two weeks he and his
Indians and voyageurs paddled with the current down this mighty stream,
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_143" id="Page_143">143</SPAN></span>
and on July 14, 1789, the day of the fall of the Bastille, he saw whales
sporting in Arctic waters.</p>
<p>The real goal which Mackenzie sought was that of La Vérendrye, a western
and not a northern ocean. Three years later, after months of preparation,
he attempted the great feat of crossing the Rocky Mountains to the sea.
After nine months of rugged travel, across mountain streams and gorges, in
peril daily from hostile savages, on July 22, 1793, he reached the shore
of the Pacific Ocean, the first white man to go by land over the width of
the continent from sea to sea. It was thus a Scotchman who achieved that
of which La Vérendrye had so long dreamed; and with no aid from the state
but with only the resources of a trading company.</p>
<p>Ten years later, when France sold to the United States her last remaining
territory of Louisiana, the American Government equipped an expedition
under Lewis and Clark to cross the Rocky Mountains by way of the Missouri,
the route from which the La Vérendrye brothers had been obliged to turn
back. The party began the ascent of the Missouri on May 14, 1804, and
arrived in the Mandan country in the late autumn. Here they spent the
winter of 1804-05. Not until
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_144" id="Page_144">144</SPAN></span>
November 15, 1805, had they completed the
hard journey across the Rocky Mountains and reached the mouth of the
Columbia River on the Pacific Ocean. Little did La Vérendrye, in his eager
search for the Western Sea, imagine the difficulties to be encountered and
the hardships to be endured by those who were destined, in later days, to
realize his dream.</p>
<hr class="main" />
<div class="chapterhead" style="text-align:center;">
<SPAN name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006"></SPAN>
<br/><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_145" id="Page_145">145</SPAN></span>
<br/><br/><br/></div>
<h2> <SPAN href="#Contents">CHAPTER VI.</SPAN> </h2>
<p class="chaptertitle">
The Valley Of The Ohio</p>
<p><span class="smcap">Almost</span> at the moment in 1749 when British
ships were lying at anchor in Halifax harbor and sending to shore
hundreds of boatloads of dazed and expectant settlers for the new
colony, there had set out from Montreal, in the interests of France,
an expedition with designs so far-reaching that we wonder still at
the stupendous issues involved in efforts which seem so petty. The
purpose of France was now to make good her claim to the whole
vast West. It was a picturesque company which pushed its canoes from the
shore at Lachine on the 15th of June, six days before the British squadron
reached Halifax. There was a procession of twenty-three great birchbark
canoes well filled, for in them were more than two hundred men, at least
ten in each canoe, together with the necessary impedimenta for a long
journey. There were twenty soldiers in uniform, a hundred and
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_146" id="Page_146">146</SPAN></span>
eighty Canadians skilled in paddling and in carrying canoes and freight
over the portages, a band of Indians, and fourteen officers with
Céloron de Blainville at their head.</p>
<p>The acting Governor of Canada at this time was a dwarf in physique, but a
giant in intellect, the brilliant naval officer, the Marquis de la
Galissonière, destined later to inflict upon the English in the
Mediterranean the naval defeat which caused the execution of Admiral Byng
as a coward. This remarkable man—planning, like his predecessor
Frontenac, on a scale suited to world politics—saw that the peace of
1748 settled nothing, that in the balance now was the whole future of
North America, and that victory would be to the alert and the strong. He
chose Céloron, the most capable of the hardy young Canadian
<i>noblesse</i> whom he had at hand, a man accustomed to the life of the
forest, and sent with him this large party to assert against the English
the right of France to the valley of the Ohio. The English were now to be
shut out definitely from advancing westward and to be confined to the
strip of territory lying between the Atlantic coast and the Alleghany
Mountains, a little more than that strip fifty miles wide talked about in
Quebec as the
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_147" id="Page_147">147</SPAN></span>
maximum concession of France, but still not very much according to the
ideas of the English, and even this not secure if France should ever grow
strong enough to crowd them out.</p>
<p>At no time do we find more vivid the contrast in type between the two
nations. Before a concrete fact the British take action. When they gave up
Louisbourg they built Halifax. Their traders had pressed into the Ohio
country, not directed under any grandiose idea of empire, but simply as
individuals, to trade and reap for themselves what profit they could. When
they were checked and menaced by the French, they saw that something must
be done. How they did it we shall see presently. It was the weakness of
the English colonies that they could not unite to work out a great plan.
If Virginia took steps to advance westward, Pennsylvania was jealous lest
lands which she desired should go to a rival colony. France, on the other
hand, had complete unity of design. Céloron spoke in the name of
the King of France and he spoke in terms uncompromising enough. “The
Ohio,” said the King of France through his agent, “belongs to
me.” It is a French river. The lands bordering upon it are
“my lands.” The English intruders are foreign robbers and not
one
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_148" id="Page_148">148</SPAN></span>
of them is to be left in the western country: “I will not endure the
English on my land.” The Indians, dwelling in that region, are
“my children.”</p>
<p>Scattered over the vast region about the Great Lakes were a good many
French. At the lower end of Lake Ontario stood Fort Frontenac, a menace to
the colony of New York, as the dwellers in the British post of Oswego on
the opposite shore of the lake well knew. We have already seen that the
French held a fort at Niagara guarding the route leading farther west to
Lake Erie and to regions beyond Lake Erie, by way of the Ohio or the upper
lakes, to the Mississippi. Near the mouth of the Mississippi, New Orleans
was now becoming a considerable town with a governor independent of the
governor at Quebec. Along the Mississippi at strategic points stretching
northward beyond the mouth of the Missouri were a few French settlements,
ragged enough and with a shiftless population of fur traders and farmers,
but adequate to assert France’s possession of that mighty highway. The
weak point in France’s position was in her connection of the Mississippi
with the St. Lawrence by way of the Ohio. This was the place of danger,
for here English rivalry was strongest, and it was
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_149" id="Page_149">149</SPAN></span>
to cure this weakness that Céloron was now sent forth.</p>
<p>Céloron moved toilsomely over the portage which led past the great
cataract of Niagara and launched his canoes on Lake Erie. From its south
shore, during seven days of heart-breaking labor, the party dragged the
canoes and supplies through dense forest and over steep hills until they
reached Chautauqua Lake, the waters of which flow into the Allegheny River
and by it to the Ohio. For many weary days they went with the current,
stopping at Indian villages, treating with the savages, who were sometimes
awed and sometimes menacing. They warned the Indians to have no dealings
with the scheming English who would “infallibly prove to be
robbers,” and asserted as boldly as Céloron dared the
lordship of the King of France and his love for his forest children.
Céloron realized that he was on an historic mission. At several
points on the Ohio, with great ceremony, he buried leaden plates, as La
Vérendrye had done a few years earlier in the far West, bearing an
inscription declaring that, in the name of the King of France, he took
possession of the country. On trees over these memorials of lead he
nailed the arms of France, stamped on
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_150" id="Page_150">150</SPAN></span>
sheets of tin. Since that day at least three of the plates have been
found.</p>
<p>Céloron’s expedition went well enough. He advanced as far west on the Ohio
as the mouth of the Great Miami River, then up that river, and by
difficult portages back to Lake Erie. It was a remarkable journey; but in
the late autumn he was back again in Montreal, not sure that he had
achieved much. The natives of the country were, he thought, hostile to
France and devoted to the English who had long traded with them. This
opinion was in truth erroneous, for, when the time of testing came, the
Indians of the West fought on the side of France. Montcalm had many
hundreds of them under his banner. The expedition meant the definite and
final throwing down of the gauntlet by France. With all due ceremony she
had declared that the Ohio country was hers and that there she would allow
no English to dwell.</p>
<p>Legardeur de Saint-Pierre could hardly have known, when he left the hard
region of the Saskatchewan in 1752, that a year later he would be sent to
protect another set of outposts of France in the West. In 1753 we find him
in command of the French forces in the Ohio country. Céloron
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_151" id="Page_151">151</SPAN></span>
had been sent to Detroit. If Saint-Pierre had played his part feebly on
the Saskatchewan, he was now made for a brief period one of the central
figures in the opening act of a world drama. It is with a touch of emotion
that we see on the stage, as the opponent of this not great Frenchman, the
momentous figure of George Washington.</p>
<p>The fight for North America was now rapidly approaching its final phase in
the struggle which we know as the Seven Years’ War. During forty years,
commissioners of the two nations had been trying to reach some agreement
as to boundaries. Each side, however, made impossible demands. France
claimed all the lands drained by the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes and
by the Mississippi and its tributaries—a claim which, if made good,
would have carried her into the very heart of the colony of New York and
would have given her also the mastery of the Ohio and the regions beyond.
Britain claimed all the lands ever occupied by the Iroquois Indians, who
had been recognized as British subjects by the Treaty of Utrecht. As those
Indians had overrun regions north of the St. Lawrence, the British thus
would become masters of a good part of Canada. Neither
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_152" id="Page_152">152</SPAN></span>
side was prepared for reasonable compromise. The sword was to be the final
arbiter.</p>
<p>Events moved rapidly towards war. In 1753 Duquesne, the new Governor of
Canada, sent more than a thousand men to build Fort Le Bœuf, on
upper waters flowing to the Ohio and within easy reach of support by way
of Lake Erie. In the next
year the French were swarming in the Ohio Valley,
stirring up the Indians against the English and confident of success. They
jeered at the divisions among the English and believed their own unity so
strong that they could master the colonies one by one. The two colonies
most affected were Pennsylvania and Virginia, either of them quite ready
to see its own citizens advance into the Ohio country and possess the
land, but neither of them willing to unite with the other in effective
military action to protect the frontier.</p>
<p>It is at this crisis that there appears for the first time in history
George Washington of Virginia. In December, 1753, in the dead of winter,
he made a long, toilsome journey from Virginia to the north through snow
and rain, by difficult forest trails, over two ranges of mountains, across
streams sometimes frozen, sometimes dangerous from treacherous thaws. On
the way he heard gossip from the
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_153" id="Page_153">153</SPAN></span>
Indians about the designs of the French.
They boasted that they would come in numbers like the sands of the
seashore; that the natives would be no more an obstacle to them than the
flies and mosquitoes, which indeed they resembled; and that not the
breadth of a finger-nail of land belonged to the Indians. Washington was
told by one of the French that “it was their absolute design to take
possession of the Ohio and, by———, they would do
it!” It was no matter that the French were outnumbered two to one
by the English, for the English were dilatory and ineffective.</p>
<p>In the end, Washington arrived at Fort Le Bœuf and presented a letter
from Dinwiddie, the Lieutenant-Governor of Virginia, pointing out that the
British could not permit an armed force from Canada to invade their
territory of the Ohio and requiring that the French should leave the
country at once. Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, to whom this firm demand was
delivered, “an elderly gentleman,” says Washington, with “much the air of
a soldier” gave, of course, a polite answer in the manner of his nation,
but he intended, he said, to remain where he was as long as he had
instructions so to do. Washington kept his eyes open and made careful
observations of the plan of the
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_154" id="Page_154">154</SPAN></span>
fort, the number of men, and also of the
canoes, of which he noted that there were more than two hundred ready and
many others building. The French tried to entice away his Indians and he
says, “I cannot say that ever in my life I suffered so much anxiety.” On
the journey back he nearly perished when he fell into an ice-cold stream
and was obliged to spend the night on a tiny island in frozen clothing. He
brought comfort as cold to the waiting Dinwiddie.</p>
<p>The French meanwhile were always a little ahead of the English in their
planning. Early in April, 1754, a French force of five or six hundred men
from Canada, which had set out while Quebec was still in the icy grip of
winter, reached the upper waters of the Ohio. They attacked and destroyed
a fort which the English had begun at the forks where now stands
Pittsburgh, and, in its place, began a formidable one, called Fort
Duquesne after the Governor of Canada. In vain was Washington sent with a
few hundred men to take possession of this fort and to assert the claim of
the English to the land. He fell in with a French scouting party under
young Coulon de Jumonville, killed its leader and nine others, and took
more than a score of prisoners—warfare bloody enough
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_155" id="Page_155">155</SPAN></span>
in a time of
supposed peace. But the French were now on the Ohio in greater numbers
than the English. At a spot known as the Great Meadows, where Washington
had hastily thrown up defenses, which he called Fort Necessity, he was
forced to surrender, but was allowed to lead his force back to Virginia,
defeated in the first military adventure of his career. The French took
the view that his killing of the young officer Jumonville was
assassination, since no state of war existed, and raised a fierce clamor
that Washington was a murderer—a strange contrast to his relations
with France in the years to come.</p>
<p>What astonishes us in regard to these events is that Britain and France
long remained nominally at peace while they were carrying on active
hostilities in America and sending from Europe armies to fight. There were
various reasons for this hesitation about plunging formally into war. Each
side wished to delay until sure of its alliances in Europe. During the war
ending in 1748 France had fought with Frederick of Prussia against
Austria, and Britain had been Austria’s ally. The war had been chiefly a
land war, but France had been beaten on the sea. Now Britain and Prussia
were drawing together and, if France fought them, it must be
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_156" id="Page_156">156</SPAN></span>
with Austria
as an ally. Such an alliance offered France but slight advantage. Austria,
an inland power, could not help France against an adversary whose strength
was on the sea; she could not aid the designs of France in America or in
India, where the capable French leader Dupleix was in a fair way to build
up a mighty oriental empire. Nor had France anything to gain in Europe
from an Austrian alliance. The shoe was on the other foot. The supreme
passion of Maria Theresa who ruled Austria was to recover the province of
Silesia which had been seized in 1740 by Prussia and held—held to
this day. Austria could do little for France but France could do much for
Austria. So Austria worked for this alliance. It is a story of intrigue.
Usually in France the King carried on negotiations with foreign countries
only through his ministers, who knew the real interests of France. Now the
astute Austrian statesman, Kaunitz, went past the ministers of Louis XV to
Louis himself. This was the heyday of Madame de Pompadour, the King’s
mistress. Maria Theresa condescended to intrigue with this woman whom in
her heart she despised. There is still much mystery in the affair. The
King was flattered into thinking that personally he was swaying the
affairs
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_157" id="Page_157">157</SPAN></span>
of Europe and took delight in deceiving his ministers and working
behind their backs. While events in America were making war between France
and Britain inevitable, France was being tied to an ally who could give
her little aid. She must spend herself to fight Austria’s battles on the
land, while her real interests required that she should build up her fleet
to fight on the sea the great adversary across the English Channel.</p>
<p>The destiny of North America might, indeed, well have been other than it
is. A France strong on the sea, able to bring across to America great
forces, might have held, at any rate, her place on the St. Lawrence and
occupied the valleys of the Ohio and the Mississippi. We can hardly doubt
that the English colonies, united by a common deadly peril, could have
held against France most of the Atlantic coast. But she might well have
divided with them North America; and today the lands north of the Ohio and
westward beyond the Ohio to the Pacific Ocean might have been French. The
two nations on the brink of war in 1754 were playing for mighty stakes;
and victory was to the power which had control of the sea. France had a
great army, Britain a great fleet. In this
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_158" id="Page_158">158</SPAN></span>
contrast lay wrapped the secret
of the future of North America.</p>
<p>As the crisis drew near the vital thought about the future of America was
found, not in America, but in Europe. The English colonies were so
accustomed to distrust each other that, when Virginia grew excited about
French designs on the Ohio, Pennsylvania or North Carolina was as likely
as not to say that it was the French who were in the right and a stupid,
or excitable, or conceited, colonial governor who was in the wrong. In
Paris and London, on the other hand, there were no illusions about affairs
in America. In both capitals it was realized that a grim fight was on.
During the winter of 1754-55 extensive preparations were being made on
both sides. France equipped an army under Baron Dieskau to go to Canada;
Britain equipped one under General Braddock to go to Virginia. Each nation
asked the other why it was sending troops to America and each gave the
assurance of benevolent designs. But in the spring of 1755 a British fleet
under Admiral Boscawen put to sea with instructions to capture any French
vessels bound for North America. At the same time the two armies were on
the way across the Atlantic. Dieskau went to
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_159" id="Page_159">159</SPAN></span>
Canada, Braddock to Virginia,
each instructed to attack the other side, while in the meantime
ambassadors at the two courts gave bland assurances that their only
thought was to preserve peace.</p>
<p>The English colonists showed a political blindness that amounted to
imbecility. Albany was the central point from which the dangers on all
sides might best be surveyed. Here came together in the summer of 1754
delegates from seven of the colonies to consider the common peril. The
French were busy in winning, as they did, the support of the many Indian
tribes of the West; and the old allies of the English, the Iroquois, were
nervous for their own safety. The delegates to Albany, tied and bound by
instructions from their Assemblies, had to listen to plain words from the
savages. The one Englishman who, in dealing with the Indians, had tact and
skill equal to that of Frontenac of old, was an Irishman, Sir William
Johnson. To him the Iroquois made indignant protests that the English were
as ready as the French to rob them of their lands. If we find a bear in a
tree, they said, some one will spring up to claim that the tree belongs to
him and keep us from shooting the bear. The French, they added, are at
least men who are prepared to fight; you weak and unprepared
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_160" id="Page_160">160</SPAN></span>
English are
like women and any day the French may turn you out. Benjamin Franklin told
the delegates that they must unite to meet a common enemy. Unite, however,
they would not. No one of them would surrender to a central body any
authority through which the power of the King over them might be
increased. The Congress—the word is full of omen for the future—failed
to bring about the much-needed union.</p>
<p>In February, 1755, Braddock arrived in Virginia with his army, and early
in May he was on his march across the mountains with regulars, militia,
and Indians, to the number of nearly fifteen hundred men, to attack Fort
Duquesne and to rid the Ohio Valley of the French. He knew little of
forest warfare with its use of Indian scouts, its ambushes, its fighting
from the cover of trees. On the 9th of July, on the Monongahela River,
near Fort Duquesne, in a struggle in the forest against French and Indians
he was defeated and killed. George Washington was in the fight and had to
report to Dinwiddie the dismal record of what had happened. The frontier
was aflame; and nearly all the Indians of the West, seeing the rising
star, went over to the French. The power of France was, for the time,
supreme in the heart of the continent.
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_161" id="Page_161">161</SPAN></span>
At that moment even far away in the
lone land about the Saskatchewan, the English trader, Hendry, had to admit
that the French knew better than the English how to attract the support of
the savage tribes.</p>
<p>Meanwhile Dieskau had arrived at Quebec. In the colony of New York Sir
William Johnson, the rough and cheery Irishman, much loved of the
Iroquois, was gathering forces to attack Canada. Early in July, 1755,
Johnson had more than three thousand provincial troops at Albany, a motley
horde of embattled farmers, most of them with no uniforms, dressed in
their own homespun, carrying their own muskets, electing their own
officers, and altogether, from the strict soldier’s point of view, a
rabble rather than an army. To meet this force and destroy it if he could,
Dieskau took to the French fort at Crown Point, on Lake Champlain, and
southward from there to Ticonderoga at the head of this lake, some three
thousand five hundred men, including his French regulars, some Canadians
and Indians. Johnson’s force lay at Fort George, later Fort William Henry,
the most southerly point on Lake George. The names, given by Johnson
himself, show how the dull Hanoverian kings and their offspring were held
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_162" id="Page_162">162</SPAN></span>
in honor by the Irish diplomat who was looking for favors at court. The
two armies met on the shores of Lake George early in September and there
was an all-day fight. Each side lost some two hundred men. Among those who
perished on the French side was Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, who had escaped
all the perils of the western wilderness to meet his fate in this border
struggle. The honors of the day seem to have been with Johnson, for the
French were driven off and Dieskau himself, badly wounded, was taken
prisoner. That Johnson had great difficulty in keeping his savages from
burning alive and then boiling and eating Dieskau and smoking his flesh in
their pipes, in revenge for some of their chiefs killed in the fight,
shows what an alliance with Indians meant.</p>
<p>There was small gain to the English from Johnson’s success. He was too
cautious to advance towards Canada; and, as winter came on, he broke up
his camp and sent his men to their homes. The colonies had no permanent
military equipment. Each autumn their forces were dissolved to be
reorganized again in the following spring, a lame method of waging war.</p>
<p>For three years longer in the valley of the Ohio, as elsewhere, the star
of France remained in the
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_163" id="Page_163">163</SPAN></span>
ascendant. It began to decline only when,
farther east, on the Atlantic, superior forces sent out from England were
able to check the French. During the summer of 1758, while Wolfe and
Boscawen were pounding the walls of Louisbourg, seven thousand troops led
by General Forbes, Colonel George Washington, and Colonel Henry Bouquet,
pushed their way through the wilds beyond the Alleghanies and took
possession of the Ohio. The French destroyed Fort Duquesne and fled. On
the 25th of November the English occupied the place and named it
“Pitts-Bourgh” in honor of their great war minister.</p>
<hr class="main" />
<div class="chapterhead" style="text-align:center;">
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<br/><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_164" id="Page_164">164</SPAN></span>
<br/><br/><br/></div>
<h2> <SPAN href="#Contents">CHAPTER VII.</SPAN> </h2>
<p class="chaptertitle">
The Expulsion Of The Acadians</p>
<p><span class="smcap">We</span> have now to turn back over a number of years
to see what has been
happening in Acadia, that oldest and most easterly part of New France
which in 1710 fell into British hands. Since the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713
the Acadians had been nominally British subjects. But the Frenchman,
hardly less than the Jew, is difficult of absorption by other racial
types. We have already noted the natural aim of France to recover what she
had lost and her use of the priests to hold the Acadians to her interests.
The Acadians were secure in the free exercise of their religion. They had
no secular leaders and few, if any, clergy of their own. They were led
chiefly by priests, subjects of France, who, though working in British
territory, owned no allegiance to Great Britain, and were directed by the
Bishop of Quebec.</p>
<p>For forty years the question of the Acadians
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_165" id="Page_165">165</SPAN></span>
remained unsettled. Under the
Treaty of 1713 the Acadians might leave the country. If they remained a
year they must become British subjects. When, however, in 1715, two years
after the conclusion of the treaty, they were required to take the oath of
allegiance to the new King, George I, they declared that they could not do
so, since they were about to move to Cape Breton. When George II came to
the throne in 1727, the oath was again demanded. Still, however, the
Acadians were between two fires. Their Indian neighbors, influenced by the
French, threatened them with massacre if they took the oath, while the
British declared that they would forfeit their farms if they refused. The
truth is that the British did not wish to press the alternative. To drive
out the Acadians would be to strengthen the neighboring French colony of
Cape Breton. To force on them the oath might even cause a rising which
would overwhelm the few English in Nova Scotia. So the tradition, never
formally accepted by the British, grew up that, while the Acadians owed
obedience to George II, they would be neutral in case of war with France.
A common name for them used by the British themselves was that of the
Neutral French. In time of
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_166" id="Page_166">166</SPAN></span>
peace the Acadians could be left to themselves.
When, however, war broke out between Britain and France the question of
loyalty became acute. Such war there was in 1744. Without doubt, some
Acadians then helped the French—but it was, as they protested, only
under compulsion and, as far as they could, they seem to have refused to
aid either side. The British muttered threats that subjects of their King
who would not fight for him had no right to protection under British law.
Even then feeling was so high that there was talk of driving the Acadians
from their farms and setting them adrift; and these poor people trembled
for their own fate when the British victors at Louisbourg in 1745 removed
the French population to France. Assurances came from the British
government, however, that there was no thought of molesting the Acadians.</p>
<p>With the order “As you were” the dominant thought of the Treaty of
Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, the highly organized and efficient champions of
French policy took every step to ensure that in the next struggle the
interests of France should prevail. Peace had no sooner been signed than
Versailles was working in Nova Scotia on the old policy. The French
priests taught that eternal
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_167" id="Page_167">167</SPAN></span>
perdition awaited the Catholic Acadians who
should accept the demands of the heretic English. The Indians continued
their savage threats. Blood is thicker than water and no doubt the natural
sympathies of the Acadians were with the French. But the British were now
formidable. For them the founding of Halifax in 1749 had made all the
difference. They, too, had a menacing fortress at the door of the
Acadians, and their tone grew sterner. As a result the Acadians were told
that if, by October 15, 1749, they had not taken an unconditional oath of
allegiance to George II, they should forfeit their rights and their
property, the treasured farms on which they and their ancestors had
toiled. The Acadians were in acute distress. If they yielded to the
English, not only would their bodies be destroyed by the savage Micmac
Indians, but their immortal souls, they feared, would be in danger.</p>
<p>The Abbé Le Loutre was the parish priest of the Acadian village of
Beaubassin on Chignecto Bay and also missionary to the Micmac Indians,
whose chief village lay in British territory not many miles from Halifax.
British officials of the time denounced him as a determined fanatic who
did not stop short of murder. As in most men, there
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_168" id="Page_168">168</SPAN></span>
was in Le Loutre a
mingling of qualities. He was arrogant, domineering, and intent on his own
plans. He hated the English and their heresy, and he preached to his
people against them with frantic invective. He incited his Indians to
bloodshed. But he also knew pity. The custom of the Indians was to
consider prisoners taken by them as their property, and on one occasion Le
Loutre himself paid ransom to the Indians for thirty-seven English
captives and returned them to Halifax. It is certain that the French
government counted upon the influence of French priests to aid its
political designs. “My masters, God and the King” was a phrase of the
Sulpician father Piquet working at this time on the St. Lawrence. Le
Loutre could have echoed the words. He was an ardent politician and France
supplied him with both money and arms to induce the Indians to attack the
English. The savages haunted the outskirts of Halifax, waylaid and scalped
unhappy settlers, and, in due course, were paid from Louisbourg according
to the number of scalps which they produced. The deliberate intention was
to make new English settlements impossible in Nova Scotia and so to
discourage the English that they should abandon Halifax. All this intrigue
occurred
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_169" id="Page_169">169</SPAN></span>
in 1749 and the years following the treaty of peace. If the
English suffered, so did the Acadians. Le Loutre told them that if once
they became British subjects they would lose their priests and find their
religion suppressed. Acadians who took the oath would, he said, be denied
the sacraments of the Church. He would also turn loose on the offenders
the murderous savages whom he controlled. If pressed by the English, the
Acadians, rather than yield, must abandon their lands and remove into
French territory.</p>
<p>At this point arises the question as to what were the limits of this
French territory. In yielding Acadia in 1713, France had not defined its
boundaries. The English claimed that it included the whole region
stretching northeastward to the Gulf of St. Lawrence from the frontier of
New England. The French, however, said that Acadia meant only the
peninsula of Nova Scotia ending at the isthmus between Baie Verte and the
Bay of Chignecto; and for years a Canadian force stood there on guard,
daring the British to put a foot on the north side of the little river
Missaguash, which the French said was the international boundary.</p>
<p>There was much excitement among the Acadians in 1750, when an English
force landed on the
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_170" id="Page_170">170</SPAN></span>
isthmus and proceeded to throw up defenses on the
south side of the river. This outpost, which in due time became Fort
Lawrence, was placed on what even the French admitted to be British
territory. Forthwith on a hill two or three miles away, on the other side
of the supposed boundary, the French built Fort Beauséjour. Le Loutre was
on the spot, blustering and menacing. He told his Acadian parishioners of
the little village of Beaubassin, near Fort Lawrence and within the
British area, that rather than accept English rule they must now abandon
their lands and seek the protection of the French at Fort Beauséjour. With
his own hands he set fire to the village church. The houses of the
Acadians were also burned. A whole district was laid waste by fire. Women
and children suffered fearful privations—but what did such things
matter in view of the high politics of the priest and of France?</p>
<p>During four or five years the hostile forts confronted each other. In time
of peace there was war. The French made Beauséjour a solid fort, for it
still stands, little altered, though it has been abandoned for a century
and a half. It was chiefly the Acadians, nominal British subjects, who
built these thick walls.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_171" id="Page_171">171</SPAN></span>
The arrogant Micmacs demanded that the British should hand over to them
the best half of Nova Scotia, and they emphasized their demand by
treachery and massacre. One day a man, in the uniform of a French officer,
followed by a small party, approached Fort Lawrence, waving a white flag.
Captain Howe with a small force went out to meet him. As this party
advanced, Indians concealed behind a dike fired and killed Howe and eight
or ten others. Such ruses were well fitted to cause among the English a
resolve to enforce severe measures. The fire burned slowly but in the end
it flamed up in a cruel and relentless temper. French policy, too, showed
no pity. The Governor of Canada and the colonial minister in France were
alike insistent that the English should be given no peace and cared
nothing for the sufferings of the unhappy Acadians between the upper and
the nether millstone.</p>
<p>At last, in 1755, the English accomplished something decisive. They sent
an army to Fort Lawrence, attacked Fort Beauséjour, forced its timid
commander Vergor to surrender, mastered the whole surrounding country, and
obliged Le Loutre himself to fly to Quebec. There he embarked for France.
The English captured him on the sea,
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_172" id="Page_172">172</SPAN></span>
however, and the relentless and cruel
priest spent many years in an English prison. His later years, when he
reached France, do him some credit. By that time the Acadians had been
driven from their homes. There were nearly a thousand exiles in England.
Le Loutre tried to befriend these helpless people and obtained homes for
some of them in the parish of Belle-Isle-en-Mer in France.</p>
<p>In the meantime the price of Le Loutre’s intrigues and of the outrages of
the French and their Indian allies was now to be paid by the unhappy
Acadians. During the spring and summer of 1755, the British decided that
the question of allegiance should be settled at once, and that the
Acadians must take the oath. There was need of urgency. The army at Fort
Lawrence which had captured Fort Beauséjour was largely composed of men
from New England, and these would wish to return to their homes for the
winter. If the Acadians remained and were hostile, the country thus
occupied at laborious cost might quickly revert to the French. Already
many Acadians had fought on the side of the French and some of them,
disguised as Indians, had joined in savage outrage. A French fleet and a
French army were reported
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_173" id="Page_173">173</SPAN></span>
as likely to arrive before the winter. In fact,
France’s naval power with its base at Louisbourg was still stronger than
that of Britain with its base at Halifax. When the Acadians were told in
plain terms that they must take the oath of allegiance, they firmly
declined to do so without certain limitations involving guarantees that
they should not be arrayed against France. The Governor at Halifax, Major
Charles Lawrence, was a stern, relentless man, without pity, and his mind
was made up. Shirley, Governor of Massachusetts, was in touch with
Lawrence. The Acadians should be deported if they would not take the oath.
This step, however, the government at London never ordered. On the
contrary, as late as on August 13, 1755, Lawrence was counseled to act
with caution, prudence, and tact in dealing with the “Neutrals,” as the
Acadians are called even in this official letter. Meanwhile, without
direct warrant from London, Lawrence and his council at Halifax had taken
action. His reasoning was that of a direct soldier. The Acadians would not
take the full oath of British citizenship. Very well. Quite obviously they
could not be trusted. Already they had acted in a traitorous way.
Prolonged war with France was imminent. Since Acadians who
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_174" id="Page_174">174</SPAN></span>
might be allied
with the savages could attack British posts, they must be removed. To
replace them, British settlers could in time be brought into the country.</p>
<p>The thing was done in the summer and autumn of 1755. Colonel Robert
Monckton, a regular officer, son of an Irish peer, who always showed an
ineffable superiority to provincial officers serving under him, was placed
in charge of the work. He ordered the male inhabitants of the neighborhood
of Beauséjour to meet him there on the 10th of August. Only about
one-third of them came—some four hundred. He told them that the
government at Halifax now declared them rebels. Their lands and all other
goods were forfeited; they themselves were to be kept in prison. Not yet,
however, was made known to them the decision that they were to be treated
as traitors of whom the province must be rid. No attempt was made anywhere
to distinguish loyal from disloyal Acadians. Lawrence gave orders to the
military officers to clear the country of all Acadians, to get them by any
necessary means on board the transports which would carry them away, and
to burn their houses and crops so that those not caught might perish or be
forced to surrender during the
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_175" id="Page_175">175</SPAN></span>
coming winter. At the moment, the harvest had just been reaped or was
ripening.</p>
<p>When the stern work was done at Grand Pré, at Pisiquid, now
Windsor, at Annapolis, there were harrowing scenes. In command of
the work at Grand Pré was Colonel Winslow, an officer from
Massachusetts—some of whose relatives twenty-five years later
were to be driven, because of their loyalty to the British King,
from their own homes in Boston to this very land of Acadia. Winslow
issued a summons in French to all the male inhabitants, down to lads
of ten, to come to the church at Grand Pré on Friday, the 5th
of September, to learn the orders he had to communicate.
Those who did not appear were to forfeit their goods. No doubt many
Acadians did not understand the summons. Few of them could read and it
hardly mattered to them that on one occasion a notice on the church door
was posted upside down. Some four hundred anxious peasants appeared.
Winslow read to them a proclamation to the effect that their houses and
lands were forfeited and that they themselves and their families were to
be deported. Five vessels from Boston lay at Grand Pré. In time
more ships arrived, but chill October had come before Winslow was finally
ready.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_176" id="Page_176">176</SPAN></span>
By this time the Acadians realized what was to happen. The men were joined
by their families. As far as possible the people of the same village were
kept together. They were forced to march to the transports, a sorrow-laden
company, women carrying babes in their arms, old and decrepit people borne
in carts, young and strong men dragging what belongings they could gather.
Winslow’s task, as he says, lay heavy on his heart and hands:
“It hurts me to hear their weeping and wailing and gnashing of
teeth.” By the 1st of November he had embarked fifteen hundred
unhappy people. His last ship-load he sent off on the 13th of December.
The suffering from cold must have been terrible.</p>
<p>In all, from Grand Pré and other places, more than six thousand
Acadians were deported. They were scattered in the English colonies from
Maine to Georgia and in both France and England. Many died; many, helpless
in new surroundings, sank into decrepit pauperism. Some reached people of
their own blood in the French colony of Louisiana and in Canada. A good
many returned from their exile in the colonies to their former home after
the Seven Years’ War had ended. Today their descendants form an
appreciable part of
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_177" id="Page_177">177</SPAN></span>
the population of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward
Island. The cruel act did one thing effectively: it made Nova Scotia safe
for the British cause in the attack that was about to be directed against
Canada.</p>
<hr class="main" />
<div class="chapterhead" style="text-align:center;">
<SPAN name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008"></SPAN>
<br/><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_178" id="Page_178">178</SPAN></span>
<br/><br/><br/></div>
<h2> <SPAN href="#Contents">CHAPTER VIII.</SPAN> </h2>
<p class="chaptertitle">
The Victories Of Montcalm</p>
<p><span class="smcap">In</span> France’s last, most determined, and
most tragic struggle for North America, the noblest aspect is typified in
the figure of Montcalm.</p>
<p>The circle of the King and his mistress at Versailles does not tell the
whole story of France at this time. No doubt Madame de Pompadour made and
unmade ministers, but behind the ministers was the great administrative
system of France, with servants alert and efficient, and now chiefly
occupied with military plans to defeat the great Frederick of Prussia. At
the same time the intellect of France was busy with problems of science
and was soon to express itself in the massive volumes of Diderot’s
<i>Encyclopœdia</i>. The soldiers of France were preparing to fight
on many battlefields. The best of them took little part in the
debilitating pleasures of Versailles.</p>
<p>Louis Joseph, Marquis de Montcalm, was a
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_179" id="Page_179">179</SPAN></span>
member of the ancient nobility of
Languedoc, in the south of France. He was a scholar, a soldier, and a
landowner. He could write a Latin inscription, fight a battle, and manage
a farm—all with excellence. His was a fruitful race. His wife had
borne him ten children, of whom six had survived. He was sincerely
religious, a family man, enjoying quiet evenings at home. In his career,
as no doubt in that of many other French leaders of the time, we find no
lurid lights, no gay scenes at court—nothing but simple and
laborious devotion to duty. Though a grand seigneur, Montcalm was poor.
His letters show that his mind was always much occupied with family
affairs, the need of economy, the careers of his sons, his mill, his
plantations. He showed the minute care in management which the French
practise better than the English. In 1756 he was forty-four years of age,
a soldier who had campaigned in Germany, Bohemia, and Italy, had known
victory and defeat, had been a prisoner in the hands of the Austrians, and
had made a reputation as a man fit to lead. He lived far from court and
went to Paris only rarely. It was this quiet man who, on January 31, 1756,
was summoned to Paris to head the military force about to be sent to
Canada. Dieskau was a captive in
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_180" id="Page_180">180</SPAN></span>
English hands, and Montcalm was to
replace Dieskau.</p>
<p>Thus began that connection of Montcalm with Canada which was destined
three or four years later to bring to him first victory and then defeat,
death, and undying fame. On receiving his appointment he went to Paris,
thanked the King in person for the honor done him, and was delighted that
his son, a mere boy, was given the rank and pay of a colonel, one of the
few abuses of court favor which we find in his career. On March 26, 1756,
Montcalm embarked at Brest with his staff. War had not yet been declared,
but already Britain had captured some three hundred French merchant ships,
had taken prisoner nearly ten thousand French sailors, and was sweeping
from the sea the fleets of France.</p>
<p>Owing to the fear of British cruisers, the voyage of Montcalm had its
excitements. As usual, however, France was earlier in the field than
Britain, who had in April no force ready for America which could intercept
Montcalm. The storms were heavy, and on Easter Day, when Mass was
celebrated, a sailor firm on his feet had to hold the chalice for the
officiating priest. On board there were daily prayers, and always the
service ended
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_181" id="Page_181">181</SPAN></span>
with cries of “God save the King!” Some of the officers on
board were destined to survive to a new era in France when there should be
no more a king.</p>
<p>Montcalm had with him a capable staff and a goodly number of young
officers, gay, debonair, thinking not of great political designs about
America but chiefly of their own future careers in France, and facing
death light-heartedly enough. Next to Montcalm in command was the Chevalier
de Lévis, a member of a great French family and himself destined to attain
the high rank of Marshal of France, and a capable though not a brilliant
soldier, whose chief gift was tact and the art of managing men. Third in
command was the Chevalier de Bourlamaque, a quiet, reserved man, with no
striking social gifts and in consequence not likely at first to make a
good impression, though Montcalm, who was at the beginning a little
doubtful of his quality, came in the end to rely upon him fully. The most
brilliant man in that company was the young Colonel de Bougainville,
Montcalm’s chief aide-de-camp. Though only twenty-seven years old he was
already famous in the world of science and was destined to be still more
famous as a great navigator, to live through
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_182" id="Page_182">182</SPAN></span>
the whole period of the
French Revolution, and to die only on the eve of the fall of Napoleon. In
1756 he was too young and clever to be always prudent in speech. It is
from his quick eye and eager pen that we learn much of the inner story of
these last days of New France. Montcalm discusses frankly in his letters
these and other officers, with whom he was on the whole well pleased. In
his heart he could echo the words of Bougainville as he watched the
brilliant spectacle of the embarkation at Brest: “What a nation is ours!
Happy is he who leads and is worthy of it.”</p>
<p>It was in this spirit of confidence that Montcalm faced the struggle in
America. For him sad days were to come and his sunny, vivacious, southern
temperament caused him to suffer keenly. At first, however, all was full
of brilliant promise. So eager was he that, when his ships lay becalmed in
the St. Lawrence some thirty miles below Quebec, he landed and drove to
the city. It is the most beautiful country in the world, he writes, highly
cultivated, with many houses, the peasants living more like the lesser
gentry of France than like peasants, and speaking excellent French. He
found the hospitality in Quebec such that a Parisian would be surprised at
the profusion of good
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_183" id="Page_183">183</SPAN></span>
things of every kind. The city was, he thought, like
the best type of the cities of France. The Canadian climate was
healthgiving, the sky clear, the summer not unlike that of Languedoc, but
the winter trying, since the severe weather caused the inhabitants to
remain too much indoors. He described the Canadian ladies as witty,
lively, devout, those of Quebec amusing themselves at play, sometimes for
high stakes; those of Montreal, with conversation and dancing. He
confessed that one of them proved a little too fascinating for his own
peace of mind. The intolerable thing was the need to meet and pay court to
the Indians whom the Governor, the Marquis de Vaudreuil, regarded as
valuable allies. These savages, brutal, changeable, exacting, Montcalm
from the first despised. It filled him with disgust to see them swarming
in the streets of Montreal, sometimes carrying bows and arrows, their
coarse features worse disfigured by war-paint and a gaudy headdress of
feathers, their heads shaven, with the exception of one long scalp-lock,
their gleaming bodies nearly naked or draped with dirty buffalo or beaver
skins. What allies for a refined grand seigneur of France! It was a costly
burden to feed them. Sometimes they made howling demands for
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_184" id="Page_184">184</SPAN></span>
brandy and for <i>bouillon</i>, by which they meant human blood. Many of
them were cannibals. Once Montcalm had to give some of them, at his own
cost, a feast of three oxen roasted whole. To his disgust, they gorged
themselves and danced round the room shouting their savage war-cries.</p>
<p>The Governor of Canada, Pierre de Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil, belonged
to one of the most ancient families of France, related to that of Lévis.
He had been born in Canada where his father was Governor for the long
period of twenty-two years, from 1703 to 1725, and in his outlook and
prejudices he was wholly of New France, with a passionate devotion to its
people, and a deep resentment at any airs of superiority assumed by those
who came from old France. A certain admiration is due to Vaudreuil for his
championship of the Canadians and even of the savages of the land of his
birth against officers of his own rank and caste who came from France.
There was in Canada the eternal cleavage in outlook and manners between
the Old World and the New, which is found in equal strength in New
England, and which was one of the chief factors in causing the American
Revolution. Vaudreuil, born at Quebec in 1698, had climbed the official
ladder
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_185" id="Page_185">185</SPAN></span>
step by step until, in 1742, he had been made Governor of
Louisiana, a post he held for three years. He succeeded the Marquis
Duquesne as Governor of Canada in the year before Montcalm arrived. He
meant well but he was a vain man, always a leading figure in the small
society about him, and obsessed by a fussy self-importance. He was not
clever enough to see through flattery. The Intendant Bigot, next to the
Governor the most important man in Canada, an able and corrupt rascal,
knew how to manage the Governor and to impose his own will upon the weaker
man. Vaudreuil and his wife between them had a swarm of needy relatives in
Canada, and these and other Canadians who sought favors from the Governor
helped to sharpen his antagonism to the officers from France. Vaudreuil
believed himself a military genius. It was he and not Montcalm who had the
supreme military command, and he regarded as an unnecessary intruder this
general officer sent out from France.</p>
<p>Now that Montcalm was come, Vaudreuil showed a malignant alertness, born
of jealousy, to snub and check him. Outward courtesies were, of course,
maintained. Vaudreuil could be bland and Montcalm restrained, in spite of
his southern
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_186" id="Page_186">186</SPAN></span>
temperament, but their dispatches show the bitterness in
their relations. The court of France encouraged not merely the leaders but
even officers in subordinate posts to communicate to it their views. A
voluble correspondence about affairs in Canada has been preserved.
Vaudreuil himself must have tried the patience of the French ministers for
he wrote at prodigious length, exalting his own achievements to the point
of being ludicrous. At the same time he belittled everything done by
Montcalm, complained that he was ruining the French cause in America,
hinted that he was in league with corrupt elements in Canada, and in the
end even went so far as to request his recall in order that the more
pliant Lévis might be put in his place. The letters of Montcalm are more
reserved. Unlike Vaudreuil, he never stooped to falsehood. He knew that he
was under the orders of the Governor and he accepted the situation. When
operations were on hand, Vaudreuil would give Montcalm instructions so
ambiguous that if he failed he would be sure to get the discredit, while,
if he succeeded, to Vaudreuil would belong the glory.</p>
<p>War is, at best, a cruel business. In Europe its predatory barbarity was
passing away and there
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_187" id="Page_187">187</SPAN></span>
the lives of prisoners and of women and children
were now being respected. Montcalm had been reared under this more
civilized code, and he and his officers were shocked by what Vaudreuil
regarded as normal and proper warfare. In 1756 the French had a horde of
about two thousand savages, who had flocked to Montreal from points as far
distant as the great plains of the West. They numbered more than thirty
separate tribes or nations, as in their pride they called themselves, and
each nation had to be humored and treated as an equal, for they were not
in the service of France but were her allies. They expected to be
consulted before plans of campaign were completed. The defeat of Braddock
in 1755 had made them turn to the prosperous cause of France. Vaudreuil
gave them what they hardly required—encouragement to wage war in
their own way. The more brutal and ruthless the war on the English, he
said, the more quickly would their enemies desire the kind of peace that
France must have. The result was that the western frontiers of the English
colonies became a hell of ruthless massacre. The savages attacked English
settlements whenever they found them undefended. A pioneer might go forth
in the morning to his labor and
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_188" id="Page_188">188</SPAN></span>
return in the evening to find his house in
ashes and his wife and children lying dead with the scalps torn from their
heads as trophies of savage prowess.</p>
<p>For years, until the English gained the upper hand over the French, this
awful massacre went on. Hundreds of women and children perished. Vaudreuil
reported with pride to the French court the number of scalps taken, and in
his annals such incidents were written down as victories. He warned
Montcalm that he must not be too strict with the savages or some day they
would take themselves off and possibly go over to the English and leave
the French without indispensable allies. He complained of the lofty tone
of the French regular officers towards both Indians and Canadians, and
assured the French court that it was only his own tact which prevented an
open breach.</p>
<p>Canada lay exposed to attack by three routes: by Lake Ontario, by Lake
Champlain, and by the St. Lawrence and the sea. It was vital to control
the route to the West by Lake Ontario, vital to keep the English from
invading Canada by way of Lake Champlain, vital to guard the St. Lawrence
and keep open communications with France.
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_189" id="Page_189">189</SPAN></span>
Montcalm first directed his
attention to Lake Ontario. Oswego, lying on the south shore, was a fort
much prized by the English as a base from which they could attack the
French Fort Frontenac on the north side of the lake and cut off Canada
from the West. If the English could do this, they would redeem the failure
of Braddock and possibly turn the Indians from a French to an English
alliance.</p>
<p>The French, in turn, were resolved to capture and destroy Oswego. In the
summer of 1756, they were busy drawing up papers and instructions for the
attack. Montcalm wrote to his wife that he had never before worked so
hard. He kept every one busy, his aide-de-camp, his staff, and his
secretaries. No detail was too minute for his observation. He regulated
the changes of clothes which the officers might carry with them. He
inspected hospitals, stores, and food, and he even ordered an alteration
in the method of making bread. He reorganized the Canadian battalions and
in every quarter stirred up new activity. He was strict about granting
leave of absence. Sometimes his working day endured for twenty hours—to
bed at midnight and up again at four o’clock in the morning. He went with
Lévis to Lake
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_190" id="Page_190">190</SPAN></span>
Champlain to see with his own eyes what was going on there.
Then he turned back to Montreal. The discipline among the Canadian troops
was poor and he stiffened it, thereby naturally causing great offense to
those who liked slack ways and hated to take trouble about sanitation and
equipment. He held interminable conferences with his Indian allies. They
were astonished to find that the great soldier of whom they had heard so
much was so small in stature, but they noted the fire in his eye. He
despised their methods of warfare and notes with a touch of irony that,
while every other barbarity continues, the burning of prisoners at the
stake has rather gone out of fashion, though the savages recently burned
an English woman and her son merely to keep in practice.</p>
<p>Montcalm made his plans secretly and struck suddenly. In the middle of
August, 1756, he surprised and captured Oswego and took more than sixteen
hundred prisoners. Of these, in spite of all that he could do, his Indians
murdered some. The blow was deadly. The English lost vast stores; and now
the French controlled the whole region of the Great Lakes. The Indians
were on the side of the rising power more heartily than ever, and the
unhappy frontier of the English colonies
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_191" id="Page_191">191</SPAN></span>
was so harried that murderous savages ventured almost to the outskirts
of Philadelphia. Montcalm caused a <i>Te Deum</i> to be sung on the scene
of his victory at Oswego. In August he was back in Montreal where again
was sung another joyous <i>Te Deum</i>. He wrote letters in high praise
of some of his officers, especially of Bourlamaque, Malartic, and La
Pause, the last “<i>un homme divin</i>.” Some of the Canadian
officers, praised by Vaudreuil, he had tried and found wanting.
“Don’t forget,” he wrote to Lévis, “that
Mercier is a feeble ignoramus, Saint Luc a prattling boaster, Montigny
excellent but a drunkard. The others are not worth speaking of, including
my first lieutenant-general Rigaud.” This Rigaud was the brother of
Vaudreuil. When the Governor wrote to the minister, he, for his part,
said that the success of the expedition was wholly due to his own
vigilance and firmness, aided chiefly by this brother, “<i>mon
frère</i>,” and Le Mercier, both of whom Montcalm describes
as inept. Vaudreuil adds that only his own tact kept the Indian allies
from going home because Montcalm would not let them have the plunder which
they desired.</p>
<p>Montcalm struck his next blow at the English
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_192" id="Page_192">192</SPAN></span>
on Lake Champlain. In July,
1757, he had eight thousand men at Ticonderoga, at the northern end of
Lake George. Two thousand of these were savages drawn from more than forty
different tribes—a lawless horde whom the French could not control.
A Jesuit priest saw a party of them squatting round a fire in the French
camp roasting meat on the end of sticks and found that the meat was the
flesh of an Englishman. English prisoners, sick with horror, were forced
to watch this feast. The priest’s protest was dismissed with anger: the
savages would follow their own customs; let the French follow theirs. The
truth is that the French had been only too successful in drawing the
savages to them as allies. They formed now one-quarter of the whole French
army. They were of little use as fighters and probably, in the long run,
the French would have been better off without them. If, however, Montcalm
had caused them to go, Vaudreuil would have made frantic protests, so that
Montcalm accepted the necessity of such allies.</p>
<p>Each success, however, brought some new horrors at the hands of the
Indians. Montcalm captured Fort William Henry, at the southern end of Lake
George, in August, a year after the taking
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_193" id="Page_193">193</SPAN></span>
of Oswego. Fort William Henry
was the most advanced English post in the direction of Canada. The place
had been left weak, for the Earl of Loudoun, Commander-in-Chief of the
British forces in America, was using his resources for an expedition
against Louisbourg, which wholly failed. Colonel Monro, the brave officer
in command at Fort William Henry, made a strong defense, but was forced to
surrender. The terms were that he should march out with his soldiers and
the civilians of the place, and should be escorted in safety to Fort
Edward, about eighteen miles to the south. This time the savages surpassed
themselves in treachery and savagery. They had formally approved of the
terms of surrender, but they attacked the long line of defeated English as
they set out on the march, butchered some of their wounded, and seized
hundreds of others as prisoners. Montcalm did what he could and even
risked his life to check the savages. But some fifty English lay dead and
the whole savage horde decamped for Montreal carrying with them two
hundred prisoners.</p>
<p>Montcalm burned Fort William Henry and withdrew to Ticonderoga at the
north end of the lake. Why, asked Vaudreuil, had he not advanced
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_194" id="Page_194">194</SPAN></span>
further
south into English territory, taken Fort Edward—weak, because the
English were in a panic—menaced Albany itself, and advanced even to
New York? Montcalm’s answer was that Fort Edward was still strong, that he
had no transport except the backs of his men to take cannon eighteen miles
by land in order to batter its walls, and that his Indians had left him.
Moreover, he had been instructed to hasten his operations and allow his
Canadians to go home to gather the ripening harvest so that Canada might
not starve during the coming winter. Vaudreuil pressed at the French court
his charges against Montcalm and without doubt produced some effect.
French tact was never exhibited with more grace than in the letters which
Montcalm received from his superiors in France, urging upon him with suave
courtesy the need of considering the sensitive pride of the colonial
forces and of guiding with a light rein the barbaric might of the Indian
allies. It is hard to imagine an English Secretary of State administering
a rebuke so gently and yet so unmistakably. Montcalm well understood what
was meant. He knew that some intrigue had been working at court but he did
not suspect that the Governor himself, all blandness and compliments
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_195" id="Page_195">195</SPAN></span>
to his face, was writing to Paris voluminous attacks on his character and
conduct.</p>
<p>In the next summer (1758) Montcalm won another great success. He lay with
his forces at Ticonderoga. The English were determined to press into the
heart of Canada by way of Lake Champlain. All through the winter, after
the fall of Fort William Henry, they had been making preparations on a
great scale at Albany. By this time Amherst and Wolfe were on the scene in
America, and they spent this summer in an attack on Louisbourg which
resulted in the fall of the fortress. On the old fighting ground of Lake
Champlain and Lake George, the English were this year making military
efforts such as the Canadian frontier had never before seen. William Pitt,
who now directed the war from London, had demanded that the colonies
should raise twenty thousand men, a number well fitted to dismay the timid
legislators of New York and Pennsylvania. At Albany fifteen thousand men
came marching in by detachments—a few of them regulars, but most of
them colonial militia who, as soon as winter came on, would scatter to
their homes. The leader was General Abercromby—a leader, needless to
say, with good connections in England,
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_196" id="Page_196">196</SPAN></span>
but with no other qualification for high command.</p>
<p>On July 5, 1758, there was a sight on Lake George likely to cause a
flutter of anxiety in the heart of Montcalm at Ticonderoga. In a line of
boats, six miles long, the great English host came down the lake and,
early on the morning of the sixth, landed before the fort which Montcalm
was to defend. The soul of the army had been a brilliant young officer,
Lord Howe, who shared the hardships of the men, washed his own linen at
the brook, and was the real leader trusted by the inept Abercromby. It was
a tragic disaster for the British that at the outset of the fight Howe was
killed in a chance skirmish. Montcalm’s chief defense of Ticonderoga
consisted in a felled forest. He had cut down hundreds of trees and, on
high ground in front of the fort, made a formidable <i>abbatis</i> across
which the English must advance. Abercromby had four men to one of
Montcalm. Artillery would have knocked a passage through the trunks of the
trees which formed the <i>abbatis</i>. Abercromby, however, did not wait
to bring up artillery. He was confident that his huge force could beat
down opposition by a rapid attack, and he made the attack with all
courage and persistence.
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_197" id="Page_197">197</SPAN></span>
But the troops could not work through the thicket of fallen
trunks and, as night came on, they had to withdraw baffled. Next day Lake
George saw another strange spectacle—a British army of thirteen
thousand men, the finest ever seen hitherto in America, retreating in a
panic, with no enemy in pursuit. Nearly two thousand English had fallen,
while Montcalm’s loss was less than four hundred. He planted a great cross
on the scene of the fight with an inscription in Latin that it was God who
had wrought the victory. All Canada had a brief period of rejoicing before
the gloom of final defeat settled down upon the country.</p>
<hr class="main" />
<div class="chapterhead" style="text-align:center;">
<SPAN name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009"></SPAN>
<br/><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_198" id="Page_198">198</SPAN></span>
<br/><br/><br/></div>
<h2> <SPAN href="#Contents">CHAPTER IX.</SPAN> </h2>
<p class="chaptertitle">
Montcalm At Quebec</p>
<p><span class="smcap">The</span> rejoicing in Canada was brief. Before the
end of the year the British
were victorious at both the eastern and western ends of the long
battle-line. Louisbourg had fallen in July; Fort Duquesne, in November.
Fort Frontenac—giving command of Lake Ontario and, with it, the West—had
surrendered to Bradstreet in August just after Montcalm’s victory at
Ticonderoga. The Ohio was gone. The great fortress guarding the gateway to
the Gulf was gone. The next English attack would fall on Quebec. Montcalm
had told Vaudreuil in the autumn, with vigorous precision, that the period
of petty warfare, for taking scalps and burning houses, was past. It was
time now to defend the main trunk of the tree and not the outer branches.
The best Canadians should be incorporated into and trained in the
battalions of regulars. The militia regiments themselves should be clothed
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_199" id="Page_199">199</SPAN></span>
and drilled like regular soldiers. Interior posts, such as Detroit, should
be held by the smallest possible number of men. This counsel enraged
Vaudreuil. Montcalm, he wrote, was trying to upset everything. Vaudreuil
was certain that the English would not attack Quebec.</p>
<p>There is a melancholy greatness in the last days of Montcalm. He was
fighting against fearful odds. With only about three thousand trained
regulars and perhaps four times as many untrained Canadians and savages,
he was confronting Britain’s might on sea and land which was now thrown
against New France. From France itself Montcalm knew that he had nothing
to hope. In the autumn of 1758 he sent Bougainville to Versailles. That
brilliant and loyal helper managed to elude the vigilance of the British
fleet, reached Versailles, and there spent some months in varied and
resourceful attempts to secure aid for Canada. He saw ministers. He
procured the aid of powerful connections of his own and of his
fellow-officers in Canada. He went to what was at this time the
fountainhead of authority at the French court, and it was not the King.
“The King is nothing,” wrote Bougainville, “the Marchioness is
all-powerful—prime minister.” Bougainville saw the
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_200" id="Page_200">200</SPAN></span>
Marchioness,
Madame de Pompadour, and read to her some of Montcalm’s letters. She
showed no surprise and said nothing—her habit, as Bougainville said.
By this time the name of Montcalm was one to charm with in France.
Bougainville wrote to him “I should have to include all France if I should
attempt to give a list of those who love you and wish to see you Marshal
of France. Even the little children know your name.” There had been a time
when the court thought the recall of Montcalm would be wise in the
interests of New France. Now it was Montcalm’s day and the desire to help
him was real. France, however, could do little. Ministers were courteous
and sympathetic; but as Berryer, Minister of Marine, said to Bougainville,
with the house on fire in France, they could not take much thought of the
stable in Canada.</p>
<p>This Berryer was an inept person. He was blindly ignorant of naval
affairs, coarse, obstinate, a placeman who owed his position to intrigue
and favoritism. His only merit was that he tried to cut down expenditure,
but in regard to the navy this policy was likely to be fatal. It is
useless, said this guardian of France’s marine, to try to rival Britain on
the sea, and the wise thing to do is
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_201" id="Page_201">201</SPAN></span>
to save money by not spending it on
ships. Berryer even sold to private persons stores which he had on hand
for the use of the fleet. If the house was on fire he did not intend, it
would seem, that much should be left to burn. The old Due de Belle-Isle,
Minister of War, was of another type, a fine and efficient soldier. He
explained the situation frankly in a letter to Montcalm. Austria was an
exigent ally, and Frederick of Prussia a dangerous foe. France had to
concentrate her strength in Europe. The British fleet, he admitted,
paralyzed efforts overseas. There was no certainty, or even probability,
that troops and supplies sent from France would ever reach Canada. France,
the Duke said guardedly, was not without resources. She had a plan to
strike a deadly blow against England and, in doing so, would save Canada
without sending overseas a great army. The plan was nothing less than the
invasion of England and Scotland with a great force, the enterprise which,
nearly half a century later, Napoleon conceived as his master stroke
against the proud maritime state. During that winter and spring France was
building a great number of small boats with which to make a sudden descent
and to land an army in England.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_202" id="Page_202">202</SPAN></span>
If this plan succeeded, all else would succeed. Montcalm must just hold
on, conduct a defensive campaign and, above all, retain some part of
Canada since, as the Duke said with prophetic foresight, if the British
once held the whole of the country they would never give it up. Montcalm
himself had laid before the court a plan of his own. He estimated that the
British would have six men to his one. Rather than surrender to them, he
would withdraw to the far interior and take his army by way of the Ohio to
Louisiana. The design was a wild counsel of despair for he would be cut
off from any base of supplies, but it shows the risks he was ready to
take. In him now the court had complete confidence. Vaudreuil was
instructed to take no military action without seeking the counsel of
Montcalm. “The King,” wrote Belle-Isle to Montcalm, “relies upon your
zeal, your courage and your resolution.” Some little help was sent. The
British control of the sea was not complete; since more than twenty French
ships eluded British vigilance, bringing military stores, food (for Canada
was confronted by famine), four hundred soldiers, and Bougainville
himself, with a list of honors for the leaders in Canada. Montcalm was
given the rank of Lieutenant-General
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_203" id="Page_203">203</SPAN></span>
and, but for a technical difficulty, would have been made a Marshal of
France.</p>
<p>All this reliance upon Montcalm was galling to Vaudreuil. This weak man
was entirely in the hands of a corrupt circle who recognized in the
strength and uprightness of Montcalm their deadly enemy. An incredible
plundering was going on. Its strength was in the blindness of Vaudreuil.
The secretary of Vaudreuil, Grasset de Saint-Sauveur, an ignorant and
greedy man, was a member of the ring and yet had the entire confidence of
the Governor. The scale of the robberies was enormous. Bigot, the
Intendant, was stealing millions of francs; Cadet, the head of the
supplies department, was stealing even more. They were able men who knew
how to show diligence in their official work. More than once Montcalm
praises the resourcefulness with which Bigot met his requirements. But it
was all done at a fearful cost to the State. Under assumed names the ring
sold to the King, of whose interests they were the guardians, supplies at
a profit of a hundred or a hundred and fifty per cent. They made vast sums
out of transport. They drew pay for feeding hundreds of men who were not
in the King’s service. They received money for great bills of merchandise
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_204" id="Page_204">204</SPAN></span>
never delivered and repeated the process over and over again. To keep the
Indians friendly the King sent presents of guns, ammunition, and blankets.
These were stolen and sold. Even the bodies of Acadians were sold. They
were hired out for their keep to a contractor who allowed them to die of
cold and hunger. Hundreds of the poor exiles perished. The nemesis of a
despotic system is that, however well-intentioned it may be, its officials
are not controlled by an alert public opinion and yet must be trusted by
their master. France meant well by her colony but the colony, unlike the
English colonies, was not taught to look after itself. While nearly every
one in Canada understood what was going on, it was another thing to inform
those in control in France. La Porte, the secretary of the colonial
minister, was in the service of the ring. He intercepted letters which
should have made exposures. Until found out, he had the ear of the
minister and echoed the tone of lofty patriotism which Bigot assumed in
his letters to his superiors.</p>
<p>History has made Montcalm one of its heroes—and with justice. He was
a remarkable man, who would have won fame as a scholar had he not followed
the long family tradition of a soldier’s
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_205" id="Page_205">205</SPAN></span>
career. Bougainville once said
that the highest literary distinction of a Frenchman, a chair in the
Academy, might be within reach of Montcalm as well as the baton of a
Marshal of France. He had a prodigious memory and had read widely. His
letters, written amid the trying conditions of war, are nervous, direct,
pregnant with meaning, the notes of a penetrating intelligence. He had
deep family affection. “Adieu, my heart, I believe that I love you more
than ever I did before”; these were the last words of what he did not know
was to be his last letter to his wife. In the midst of a gay scene at
Montreal, in the spring of 1759, he writes to Bourlamaque, then at Lake
Champlain, with acute longing for the south of France in the spring. For
six or seven months in the year he could receive no letters and always the
British command of the sea made their expected arrival uncertain. “When
shall I be again at the Château of Candiac, with my plantations, my oaks,
my oil mill, my mulberry trees? O good God.” He lays bare his spirit
especially to Bourlamaque, a quiet, efficient, thoughtful man, like
himself, and enjoins him to burn the letters—which he does not,
happily for posterity. Scandal does not touch him but, like most
Frenchmen, he is dependent
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_206" id="Page_206">206</SPAN></span>
on the society of women. He lived in a house on the ramparts of Quebec
and visited constantly the <i>salons</i> of his neighbor in the Rue du
Parloir, the beautiful and witty Madame de la Naudière. In two
or three other households he was also intimate and the Bishop was a
sympathetic friend. His own tastes were those of the scholar, and more and
more, during the long Canadian winters, he enjoyed evenings of quiet
reading. The elder Mirabeau, father of the revolutionary leader of 1789,
had just published his <i>Ami des Hommes</i> and this we find Montcalm
studying. But above all he reads the great encyclopædia of Diderot. By
1759 seven of the huge volumes had been issued. They startled the
intellectual world of the time and Montcalm set out to read them, omitting
the articles which had no interest for him or which he could not
understand. C is a copious letter in an encyclopædia, and Montcalm found
excellent the articles on Christianity, College, Comedy, Comet, Commerce,
Council, and so on. Wolfe—soon to be his opponent—had the same
taste for letters. The two men, unlike in body, for Wolfe was tall and
Montcalm the opposite, were alike in spirit, painstaking students as well
as men of action.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_207" id="Page_207">207</SPAN></span>
At first Montcalm had not realized what was the deepest shadow in the life
of Canada. Perhaps chiefly because Vaudreuil was always at Montreal,
Montcalm preferred Quebec and was surprised and charmed by the life of
that city. It had, he said, the air of a real capital. There were fair
women and brave men, sumptuous dinners with forty or fifty covers,
brilliantly lighted <i>salons</i>, a vivid social life in which he was much
courted. The Intendant Bigot was agreeable and efficient. Soon, however,
Montcalm had misgivings. It was a gambling age, but he was staggered by
the extent of the gambling at the house of the Intendant. He did not wish
to break with Bigot, and there was perhaps some weakness in his failure to
denounce the orgies from which his conscience revolted. He warned his own
officers but he could not control the colonial officers, and Vaudreuil was
too weak to check a man like Bigot. Whence came the money? In time,
Montcalm understood well enough. He himself was poor. To discharge the
duties of his position he was going into debt, and he had even to consider
the possible selling of his establishment in France. He had to beg the
court for some financial relief. At the same time he saw about him a wild
extravagance. There was
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_208" id="Page_208">208</SPAN></span>
famine in Canada. During the winter of 1758-59 the
troops were put on short rations and, in spite of their bitter protests,
had to eat horse flesh. Suffering and starvation bore heavily on the poor.
Through lack of food people fell fainting in the streets. But the circle
of Bigot paid little heed and feasted, danced, and gambled. Montcalm pours
out his soul to Bourlamaque. He spends, he says, sleepless nights, and his
mind is almost disordered by what he sees. In his journal he notes his own
fight with poverty and its contrast with the careless luxury of a crowd of
worthless hangers-on making four or five hundred thousand francs a year
and insulting decency by their lavish expenditure. One of the ring, a
clerk with a petty salary, a base creature, spends more on carriages,
horses, and harness than a foppish and reckless young member of the
<i>nouveaux-riches</i> would spend in France. Corruption in Canada is protected
by corruption in France. Montcalm cries out with a devotion which his
sovereign hardly deserved, though it was due to France herself, “O King,
worthy of better service, dear France, crushed by taxes to enrich greedy
knaves!”</p>
<p>The weary winter of 1758-59 at length came to an end. In May the ships
already mentioned
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_209" id="Page_209">209</SPAN></span>
arrived from France, bringing Bougainville and, among
other things, the news that Pitt was sending great forces for a decisive
attack on Canada. At that very moment, indeed, the British ships were
entering the mouth of the St. Lawrence. Canada had already been cut off
from France. Montcalm held many councils with his officers. The strategy
decided upon was to stand at bay at Quebec, to strike the enemy if he
should try to land, and to hold out until the approach of winter should
force the retirement of the British fleet.</p>
<hr class="main" />
<div class="chapterhead">
<SPAN name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010"></SPAN>
<br/><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_210" id="Page_210">210</SPAN></span>
<br/><br/><br/></div>
<h2> <SPAN href="#Contents">CHAPTER X.</SPAN> </h2>
<p class="chaptertitle">
The Strategy Of Pitt</p>
<p><span class="smcap">During</span> four campaigns the British had suffered
humiliating disasters. It
is the old story in English history of caste privilege and deadly routine
bringing to the top men inadequate in the day of trial. It has happened
since, even in our own day, as it has happened so often before. It seems
that imminent disaster alone will arouse the nation to its best military
effort. In 1757, however, England was thoroughly aroused. Failure then on
her own special element, the sea, touched her vitally. Admiral Byng—through
sheer cowardice, as was charged—had failed to attack a French fleet
aiding in the siege of the island of Minorca which was held by the
English, and Minorca had fallen to the French. Such was the popular clamor
at this disaster that Byng was tried, condemned, and shot. There was also
an upheaval in the government. At no time in English history were men
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_211" id="Page_211">211</SPAN></span>
more
eager for the fruits of office; and now, even in a great crisis, the greed
for spoils could not be shaken off. The nation demanded a conduct of the
war which sought efficiency above all else. The politicians, however,
insisted on government favors.</p>
<p>In the end a compromise was reached. At the head of the government was
placed a politician, the Duke of Newcastle, who loved jobbery and
patronage in politics and who doled out offices to his supporters. At the
War Office was placed Pitt with a free hand to carry on military
operations. He was the terrible cornet of horse who had harried Walpole in
the days when that minister was trying to keep out of war. He knew and
even loved war; his fierce national pride had been stirred to passion by
the many humiliations at the hand of France; and now he was resolved to
organize, to spend, and to fight, until Britain trampled on France. He had
the nation behind him. He bullied and frightened the House of Commons.
Members trembled if Pitt turned on them. By his fiery energy, by making
himself a terror to weakness and incompetence, he won for Britain the
Seven Years’ War.</p>
<p>Though Pitt became Secretary of State for War in June, 1757, not until
1758 did the tide begin to
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_212" id="Page_212">212</SPAN></span>
turn in America. But when it did turn, it
flowed with resistless force. In little more than a year the doom of New
France was certain. The first great French reverse was at a point where
the naval and military power of Britain could unite in attack. Pitt well
understood the need of united action by the two services. Halifax became
the radiating center of British activities. Here, in 1757, before Pitt was
well in the saddle, a fleet and an army gathered to attack Louisbourg—an
enterprise not carried out that year partly because France had a great
fleet on the spot, and partly, too, on account of the bad quality of
British leadership.</p>
<p>Only in the campaign of 1758 did Pitt’s dominance become effective. With
him counted one quality and one alone, efficiency. The old guard at the
War Office were startled when men with rank, years, influence, and every
other claim but competence for their tasks, were passed over, and young
and obscure men were given high command. To America in the spring of 1758
were sent officers hitherto little known. Edward Boscawen, Commander of
the Fleet, and veteran among these leaders, was a comparatively young man,
only forty-seven; Jeffrey Amherst, just
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_213" id="Page_213">213</SPAN></span>
turned forty, was
Commander-in-Chief on land. Next in command to Amherst was James Wolfe,
aged thirty.</p>
<p>These young and vigorous men knew the value of promptness or they would
not have been tolerated under Pitt. Before the end of May, 1758, Boscawen
was in Halifax harbor with a fleet of some forty warships and a multitude
of transports. On board were nearly twelve thousand soldiers, more than
eleven thousand of them British regulars. The colonial forces now play a
minor part in the struggle; Pitt was ready to send from England all the
troops needed. The array at Halifax, the greatest yet seen in America,
numbered about twenty thousand men, including sailors. Before the first of
June the fleet was on its way to Louisbourg. The defense was stubborn; and
James Wolfe, who led the first landing party, had abundant opportunity to
prove his courage and capacity. By the end of July, however, Louisbourg
had fallen, and nearly six thousand prisoners were in the hands of the
English. It was the beginning of the end.</p>
<p>In the autumn Wolfe was back in England, where he was quickly given
command of the great expedition which was planned against Quebec for
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_214" id="Page_214">214</SPAN></span>
the
following year. Admiral Sir Charles Saunders, who seems almost old
compared with Wolfe, for he was nearly fifty, was in chief command of the
fleet. Amherst had remained in America as Commander-in-Chief, and was
taking slow, deliberate, thorough measures for the last steps in the
conquest of New France.</p>
<p>To be too late had been the usual fate of the many British expeditions
against Canada. No one, however, dared to be late under Pitt. On February
17, 1759, the greatest fleet that had ever put out for America left
Portsmouth. More than two hundred and fifty ships set their sails for the
long voyage. There were forty-nine warships, carrying fourteen thousand
sailors and marines, and two hundred other ships manned by perhaps seven
thousand men in the merchant service, but ready to fight if occasion
offered. Altogether nearly thirty thousand men now left the shores of
England to attack Canada.</p>
<p>There is a touch of doom for France in the fact that its own lost fortress
of Louisbourg was to be the rendezvous of the fleet. Saunders, however,
arrived so early that the entrance to Louisbourg was still blocked with
ice, and he went on to Halifax. In time he returned to Louisbourg,
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_215" id="Page_215">215</SPAN></span>
and
from there the great fleet sailed for Quebec. The voyage was uneventful.
We can picture the startled gaze of the Canadian peasants as they saw the
stately array, many miles long, pass up the St. Lawrence. On the 26th of
June, Wolfe and Saunders were in the basin before Quebec and the great
siege had begun which was to mark one of the turning-points in history.</p>
<p>Nature had furnished a noble setting for the drama now to be enacted.
Quebec stands on a bold semicircular rock on the north shore of the St.
Lawrence. At the foot of the rock sweeps the mighty river, here at the
least breadth in its whole course, but still a flood nearly a mile wide,
deep and strong. Its currents change ceaselessly with the ebb and flow of
the tide which rises a dozen feet, though the open sea is eight hundred
miles away. Behind the rock of Quebec the small stream of the St. Charles
furnishes a protection on the landward side. Below the fortress, the great
river expands into a broad basin with the outflow divided by the Island of
Orleans. In every direction there are cliffs and precipices and rising
ground. From the north shore of the great basin the land slopes gradually
into a remote blue of wooded mountains. The assailant of Quebec must land
on low
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_216" id="Page_216">216</SPAN></span>
ground commanded everywhere from heights for seven or eight miles
on the east and as many on the west. At both ends of this long front are
further natural defenses—at the east the gorge of the Montmorency
River, at the west that of the Cap Rouge River.</p>
<p>Wolfe’s desire was to land his army on the Beauport shore at some point
between Quebec and Montmorency. But Montcalm’s fortified posts, behind
which lay his army, stretched along the shore for six miles, all the way
from the Montmorency to the St. Charles. Wolfe had a great contempt for
Montcalm’s army—“five feeble French battalions mixed with
undisciplined peasants.” If only he could get to close quarters with the
“wily and cautious old fox,” as he called Montcalm! Already the British
had done what the French had thought impossible. Without pilots they had
steered their ships through treacherous channels in the river and through
the dangerous “Traverse” near Cap Tourmente. Captain Cook, destined to be
a famous navigator, was there to survey and mark the difficult places, and
British skippers laughed at the forecasts of disaster made by the pilots
whom they had captured on the river. The French were confident that the
British would
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_217" id="Page_217">217</SPAN></span>
not dare to take their ships farther up the river past the
cannonade of the guns in Quebec, though this the British accomplished
almost without loss.</p>
<p>Wolfe landed a force upon the lower side of the gorge at Montmorency and
another at the head of the Island of Orleans. He planted batteries at
Point Levis across the river from Quebec, and from there he battered the
city. The pleasant houses in the Rue du Parloir which Montcalm knew so
well were knocked into rubbish, and its fascinating ladies were driven
desolate from the capital. But this bombardment brought Wolfe no nearer
his goal. On the 31st of July he made a frontal attack on the flats at
Beauport and failed disastrously with a loss of four hundred men. Time was
fighting for Montcalm.</p>
<p>By the 1st of September Wolfe’s one hope was in a surprise by which he
could land an army above Quebec, the nearer to the fortress the better.
Its feeble walls on the landward side could not hold out against
artillery. But Bougainville guarded the high shore and marched his men
incessantly up and down to meet threatened attacks. On the heights, the
battalion of Guienne was encamped on the Plains of Abraham to guard the
Foulon. This was a cove on the river bank
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_218" id="Page_218">218</SPAN></span>
from which there was a path,
much used by the French for dragging up provisions, leading to the top of
the cliff at a point little more than a mile from the walls of the city.
On the 6th of September the battalion of Guienne was sent back to the
Beauport lines by order of Vaudreuil. Montcalm countermanded the order,
but was not obeyed, and Wolfe saw his chance. For days he threatened a
landing, above and below Quebec, now at one point, now at another, until
the French were both mystified and worn out with incessant alarms. Then,
early on the morning of the 13th of September, came Wolfe’s master-stroke.
His men embarked in boats from the war-ships lying some miles above Quebec,
dropped silently down the river, close to the north shore, made sentries
believe that they were French boats carrying provisions to the Foulon,
landed at the appointed spot, climbed up the cliff, and overpowered the
sleeping guard. A little after daylight Wolfe had nearly five thousand
soldiers, a “thin red line,” busy preparing a strong position on the
Plains of Abraham, while the fleet was landing cannon to be dragged up
the steep hill to bombard the fortress on its weakest side.</p>
<p>Montcalm had spent many anxious days. He
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_219" id="Page_219">219</SPAN></span>
had been incessantly on the move,
examining for himself over and over again every point, Cap Rouge,
Beauport, Montmorency, reviewing the militia of which he felt uncertain,
inspecting the artillery, the commissariat, everything that mattered. At
three o’clock in the morning of one of these days he wrote to Bourlamaque,
at Lake Champlain, noting the dark night, the rain, his men awake and
dressed in their tents, everyone alert. “I am booted and my horses are
saddled, which is in truth my usual way of spending the night. I have not
undressed since the twenty-third of June.” On the evening of the 12th of
September the batteries at Point Levis kept up a furious fire on Quebec.
There was much activity on board the British war-ships lying below the
town. Boats filled with men rowed towards Beauport as if to attempt a
landing during the night. Here the danger seemed to lie. At midnight the
British boats were still hovering off the shore. The French troops manned
the entrenched lines and Montcalm was continually anxious. A heavy convoy
of provisions was to come down to the Foulon that night, and orders had
been given to the French posts on the north shore above Quebec to make no
noise. The arrival of the convoy was
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_220" id="Page_220">220</SPAN></span>
vital, for the army was pressed for
food. Montcalm was therefore anxious for its fate when at break of day he
heard firing from the French cannon at Samos, above Quebec. Had the
provisions then been taken by the English? Near his camp all now seemed
quiet. He gave orders for the troops to rest, drank some cups of tea with
his aide-de-camp Johnstone, a Scotch Jacobite, and at about half-past six
rode towards Quebec to the camp of Vaudreuil to learn why the artillery
was firing at Samos. Immediately in front of the Governor’s house he
learned the momentous news. The English were on the Plains of Abraham.
Soon he had the evidence of his own eyes. On the distant heights across
the valley he could see the redcoats.</p>
<p>No doubt Montcalm had often pondered this possibility and had decided in
such a case to attack at once before the enemy could entrench and bring up
cannon. A rapid decision was now followed by rapid action. He had a
moment’s conversation with Vaudreuil. The French regiments on the right at
Vaudreuil’s camp, lying nearest to the city, were to march at once. To
Johnstone he said, “The affair is serious,” and then gave orders that all
the French left, except a few men to guard the ravine at Montmorency,
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_221" id="Page_221">221</SPAN></span>
should follow quickly to the position between Quebec and the enemy, a mile
away. Off to this point he himself galloped. Already, by orders of
officers on the spot, regiments were gathering between the walls of the
city and the British. The regiments on the French right at Beauport were
soon on the move towards the battlefield, but two thousand of the best
troops still lay inactive beyond Beauport. Johnstone declares that
Vaudreuil countermanded the order of Montcalm for these troops to come to
his support and ordered that not one of them should budge. There was haste
everywhere. By half-past nine Montcalm had some four thousand men drawn up
between the British and the walls of Quebec. He hoped that Bougainville,
advancing from Cap Rouge, would be able to assail the British rear:
“Surely Bougainville understands that I must attack.”</p>
<p>The crisis was over in fifteen minutes. Montcalm attacked at once. His
line was disorderly. His center was composed of regular troops, his wings
of Canadians and Indians. These fired irregularly and lay down to reload,
thus causing confusion. The French moved forward rapidly; the British were
coming on more slowly. The French were only some forty yards away when
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_222" id="Page_222">222</SPAN></span>
there was an answering fire from the thin red line; for Wolfe had ordered
his men to put two balls in their muskets and to hold their fire for one
dread volley. Then the roar from Wolfe’s center was like that of a
burst of artillery; and, when the smoke cleared, the French battalions
were seen breaking in disorder from the shock, the front line cut down
by the terrible fire. A bayonet charge from the redcoats followed. Some
five thousand trained British regulars bore down, working great slaughter
on four thousand French, many of them colonials who had never before
fought in the open. The rout of the French was complete. Some fled to
safety behind the walls of Quebec, others down the Côte Ste.
Geneviève and across the St. Charles River, where they stopped
pursuit by cutting the bridge. Both Wolfe and Montcalm were mortally
wounded after the issue of the day was really decided, and both survived
to be certain, the one of victory, the other of defeat. Wolfe died on
the field of battle. Montcalm was taken into a house in Quebec and died
early the next morning. It is perhaps the only incident in history of
a decisive battle of world import followed by the death of both leaders,
each made immortal by the tragedy of their common fate.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_223" id="Page_223">223</SPAN></span>
At two o’clock in the afternoon of the day of defeat, Vaudreuil held
a tumultuous council of war. It was decided to abandon Quebec, where
Montcalm lay dying and to retreat up the St. Lawrence to Montreal, to the
defense of which Lévis had been sent before the fight. That night the
whole French army fled in panic, leaving their tents standing and
abandoning quantities of stores. Vaudreuil who had talked so bravely about
death in the ruins of Canada, rather than surrender, gave orders to
Ramezay, commanding in Quebec, to make terms and haul down his flag. On
the third day after the battle, the surrender was arranged. On the fourth
day the British marched into Quebec, where ever since their flag has
floated.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Amherst, the Commander-in-Chief of the British armies in
America, was making a toilsome advance towards Montreal by way of Lake
Champlain. He had occupied both Ticonderoga and Crown Point, which had
been abandoned by the French. Across his path lay Bourlamaque at Isle aux
Noix. Another British army, having captured Niagara, was advancing on
Montreal down the St. Lawrence from Lake Ontario. Amherst, however, made
little progress this year in his menace to Montreal and soon went into
winter
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_224" id="Page_224">224</SPAN></span>
quarters, as did the other forces elsewhere. The British victory
therefore was as yet incomplete.</p>
<p>The year 1759 proved dire for France. She was held fast by her treaty with
Austria and at ruinous cost was ever sending more and more troops to help
Austria against Prussia. The great plan of which Belle-Isle had written to
Montcalm was the chief hope of her policy. England was to be invaded and
London occupied. If this were done, all else would be right. It was not
done. France could not parry Pitt’s blows. In Africa, in the West
Indies, in India, the British won successes which meant the ruin of French
power in three continents. French admirals like Conflans and La Clue were
no match for Boscawen, Hawke, and Rodney, all seamen of the first rank,
and made the stronger because dominated by the fiery Pitt.
They kept the French squadrons shut up in their own ports. When, at last,
on November 20, 1759, Conflans came out of Brest and fought Hawke at
Quiberon Bay, the French fleet was nearly destroyed, and the dream of
taking London ended in complete disaster.</p>
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<div class="chapterhead" style="text-align:center;">
<SPAN name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011"></SPAN>
<br/><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_225" id="Page_225">225</SPAN></span>
<br/><br/><br/></div>
<h2> <SPAN href="#Contents">CHAPTER XI.</SPAN> </h2>
<p class="chaptertitle">
The Fall Of Canada</p>
<p><span class="smcap">Though</span> Quebec was in their hands, the
position of the British during the winter of 1759-60 was dangerous.
In October General Murray, who was left in command, saw with misgiving
the great fleet sail away which had brought to Canada the conquering
force of Wolfe and Saunders. Murray was left with some seven thousand
men in the heart of a hostile country, and with a resourceful enemy,
still unconquered, preparing to attack him. He was separated from
other British forces by vast wastes of forest and river, and until
spring should come no fleet could aid him. Three enemies of the
English, the French said exultingly, would aid to retake Quebec: the
ruthless savages who haunted the outskirts of the fortress and massacred
many an incautious straggler; the French army which could be recruited
from the Canadian population; and, above all, the bitter
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_226" id="Page_226">226</SPAN></span>
cold of the
Canadian winter. To Murray, as to Napoleon long afterward in his rash
invasion of Russia, General February was indeed the enemy. About the two
or three British ships left at Quebec the ice froze in places a dozen feet
thick, and snowdrifts were piled so high against the walls of Quebec that
it looked sometimes as if the enemy might walk over them into the
fortress. So solidly frozen was the surface of the river that Murray sent
cannon to the south shore across the ice to repel a menace from that
quarter. There was scarcity of firewood and of provisions. Scurvy broke
out in the garrison. Many hundreds died so that by the spring Murray had
barely three thousand men fit for active duty.</p>
<p>Throughout the winter Lévis, now in command of the French forces, made
increasing preparations to destroy Murray in the spring. The headquarters
of Lévis were at Montreal. Here Vaudreuil, the Governor, kept his little
court. He and Lévis worked harmoniously, for Lévis was conciliatory and
tactful. For a time Vaudreuil treasured the thought of taking command in
person to attack Quebec. In the end, however, he showed that he had
learned something from the disasters of the previous year and did not
interfere with the
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_227" id="Page_227">227</SPAN></span>
plans made by Lévis. So throughout the winter Montreal
had its gayeties and vanities as of old. There were feasts and
dances—but over all brooded the reality of famine in the present
and the foreboding of disaster to come.</p>
<p>By April 20, 1760, the St. Lawrence was open and, though the shores were
cumbered with masses of broken ice, the central channel was free for the
boats which Lévis filled with his soldiers. It was a bleak experience to
descend the turbulent river between banks clogged with ice. When Lévis was
not far from Quebec, he learned that it was impossible to surprise Murray
who was well on guard between Cap Rouge on the west and Beauport on the
east. The one thing to do was to reach the Plains of Abraham in order to
attack the feeble walls of Quebec from the landward side. Since
Murray’s alertness made impossible attack by way of the high cliffs
which Wolfe had climbed in the night, Lévis had to reach Quebec by a
circuitous route. He landed his army a little above Cap Rouge, marched
inland over terrible roads in heavy rain, and climbed to the plateau of
Quebec from the rear at Sainte Foy. On April 27, 1760, he drew up his
army on the heights almost exactly as Wolfe had done in the previous
September.
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_228" id="Page_228">228</SPAN></span>
Murray followed the example of Montcalm. He had no trust in
the feeble defenses of Quebec and on the 28th marched out to fight on
the open plain. The battle of Sainte Foy followed exactly the precedents
of the previous year. The defenders of Quebec were driven off the field
in overwhelming defeat. The difference was that Murray took his army
back to Quebec and from behind its walls still defied his French
assailant. Lévis had poor artillery, but he did what he could. He
entrenched and poured his fire into Quebec. In the end it was
sea power which balked him. On the 15th of May, when a British
fleet appeared round the head of the Island of Orleans, Lévis withdrew in
something like panic and Quebec was safe.</p>
<p>Lévis returned to Montreal; and to this point all the forces of France
slowly retreated as they were pressed in by the overwhelming numbers of
the British. At Oswego, the scene of Montcalm’s first brilliant success
four years earlier, Amherst had gathered during the summer of 1760 an army
of about ten thousand men. From here he descended the St. Lawrence in
boats to attack Montreal from the west. From the south, down Lake
Champlain and the Richelieu River to the St. Lawrence, came another
British force under Haviland
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_229" id="Page_229">229</SPAN></span>
also to attack Montreal. At Quebec Murray put
his army on transports, left the city almost destitute of defense, and
thus brought a third considerable force against Montreal. There was little
fighting. The French withdrew to the common objective as their enemy
advanced. Early in September Lévis had gathered at Montreal all his
available force, amounting now to scarcely more than two thousand men, for
Canadians and Indians alike had deserted him. The British pressed in with
the slow and inevitable rigor of a force of nature. On the 7th of
September their united army was before the town and Amherst demanded
instant surrender. The only thing for Vaudreuil to do was to make the best
terms possible. On the next day he signed a capitulation which protected
the liberties in property and religion of the Canadians but which yielded
the whole of Canada to Great Britain. The struggle for North America had
ended.</p>
<p>In the moment of triumph Amherst inflicted on the French army a deep
humiliation to punish the outrages committed by their Indian allies. In
the early days of the war Loudoun, the Commander-in-Chief in America, had
vowed that the British would make the French “sick of such
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_230" id="Page_230">230</SPAN></span>
inhuman
villainy” and teach them to respect “the laws of nature and humanity.”
Washington speaks of his “deadly sorrow” at the dreadful outrages which he
saw, the ravishing of women, the scalping alive even of children.
Philadelphians had seen the grim spectacle of a wagon-load of corpses
brought by mourning friends and relatives of the dead and laid down at the
door of the Assembly to show to pacifist legislators what was really
happening. The French regular officers, as we have seen, had hated this
kind of warfare. Bougainville says that his soul shuddered at the sights in
Montreal, where the whole town turned out to see an English prisoner
killed, boiled, and eaten by the savages. Worse still, captive mothers
were obliged to eat the flesh of their own children. The French believed
that they could not get on without the savage allies who committed these
outrages, and they were not strong enough to coerce them. Amherst, on the
other hand, held his Indians in check and rebuked outrage. Now he was
stern to punish what the French had permitted. He could write proudly to a
friend that the French were amazed at the order in which he kept his own
Indians. Not a man, woman, or child, he said, had been hurt or a single
atrocity
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_231" id="Page_231">231</SPAN></span>
committed. It was a vivid contrast with what had taken place
after the British surrender to Montcalm at Fort William Henry. The day of
retribution had come. Because of such outrages, the French army was denied
the honors of war usually conceded to a brave and defeated foe. The French
officers and men must not, Amherst insisted, serve again during the war.
Lévis protested and begged Vaudreuil to be allowed to go on fighting
rather than accept the terms, but in vain. The humiliation was rigorously
imposed, and it was a sullen host which the British took captive.</p>
<p>France had lost an Empire. It was nearly three years still before peace
was signed at Paris in 1763. To Britain France yielded everything east of
the Mississippi except New Orleans, and to Spain she ceded New Orleans and
everything else to which she had any claim. The <i>fleurs-de-lis</i> floated
still over only two tiny fishing islands off the Newfoundland shore. All
the glowing plans of France’s leaders—of Richelieu, of Louis
XIV, of Colbert, of Frontenac, of the heroic missionaries of the Jesuit
Order—seemed to have come to nothing.</p>
<p>The fall of France did much to drag down her rival. Already was America
restless under control
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_232" id="Page_232">232</SPAN></span>
from Europe. There was now no danger to the English
in America from the French peril which had made insecure the borders of
Massachusetts, of New York, of Pennsylvania, and Virginia, and had brought
widespread desolation and sorrow. With the removal of the menace went the
need of help and defenses for the colonies from the motherland. The French
belief that there was a natural antipathy between the English of the Old
World and the English of the New was, in reality, based on the fact of a
likeness so great that neither would accept control or patronage from the
other. Towards the Englishman who assumed airs of superiority the
antagonism of the colonists was always certain to be acute. Open strife
came when the assumption of superiority took the form of levying taxes on
the colonies without asking their leave. In no remote way the fall of
French Canada, by removing a near menace to the English colonies, led to
this new conflict and to the collapse of that older British Empire which
had sprung from the England of the Stuarts.</p>
<p>When Montreal fell there were in the St. Lawrence many British ships which
had been used for troops and supplies. Before the end of September the
French soldiers and also the officials from
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_233" id="Page_233">233</SPAN></span>
France who desired to go home
were on board these ships bound for Europe. By the end of November most of
the exiles had reached home. Varying receptions awaited them. Lévis, who
took back the army, was soon again, by consent of the British government,
in active service. Fortune smiled on him to the end. He died a great noble
and Marshal of France just before the Revolution of 1789; but in that
awful upheaval his widow and his two daughters perished on the scaffold.
Vaudreuil’s shallow and vain incompetence did not go unpunished. He
was put on trial, accused of a share in the black frauds which had helped
to ruin Canada. The trial was his punishment. He was acquitted of taking
any share of the plunder and so drops out of history. Bigot and his gang,
on the other hand, were found guilty of vast depredations. The former
Intendant was for a time in the Bastille and in the end was banished from
France, after being forced to repay great sums. We find echoes of the
luxury of Quebec in the sale in France of the rich plate which the rascal
had acquired. There were, however, other and even worse plunderers. They
were tried and condemned chiefly to return what they had stolen. We rather
wonder that no expiatory
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_234" id="Page_234">234</SPAN></span>
sacrifice on the scaffold was required of any of
these knaves. Lally Tollendal, who, as the French leader in India, had
only failed and not plundered, was sent to a cruel execution.</p>
<p>Under the terms of the surrender and of the final Treaty of Peace in 1763,
civilians in Canada were given leave to return to France. Nearly the whole
of the official class and many of the large landowners, the seigneurs,
left the country. In Canada there remained a priesthood, largely native,
but soon to be recruited from France by the upheaval of the Revolution, a
few seigneurial families, natural leaders of their race, a peasantry,
exhausted by the long war but clinging tenaciously to the soil, and a good
many hardy pioneers of the forest, men skilled in hunting and in the use
of the axe. Out of these elements, amounting in 1763 to little more than
sixty thousand people, has come that French-Canadian race in America now
numbering perhaps three millions. The race has scattered far. It is found
in the mills of Massachusetts, in the canebrakes of Louisiana, on the wide
stretches of the prairie of the Canadian West, but it has always kept
intact its strong citadel on the banks of the St. Lawrence. New France
was, in reality, widely separated in spirit from old France, before
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_235" id="Page_235">235</SPAN></span>
the
new master in Canada made the division permanent. The imagination of the
Canadian peasant did not wander across the ocean to France. He knew only
the scenes about his own hearth and in them alone were his thought and
affections centered.</p>
<p>The one wider interest which the habitant treasured was love for the
Catholic Church of his fathers and of his own spiritual hopes. It thus
happened that when France in revolution assailed and for a time overthrew
the Church within her borders, the heart of French Canada was not with
France but with the persecuted Church; she hated the spirit of
revolutionary France. <i>Te Deums</i> were sung at Quebec in thanksgiving for the
defeats of Napoleon. In language and what literary culture they possessed,
in traditions and tastes, the conquered people remained French, but they
had no allegiance divided between Canada and France. To this day they are
proud to be simply Canadians, rooted in the soil of Canada, with no debt
of patriotic gratitude to the France from which they sprang or to the
Britain which obtained political dominance over their ancestors after a
long agony of war. To the British Crown many of them feel a certain
attachment because
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_236" id="Page_236">236</SPAN></span>
of the liberty guaranteed to them to pursue their own
ideals of happiness. In preserving their type of social life, their faith
and language, they have shown a resolute tenacity. To this day they are as
different in these things from their fellow-citizens of British origin in
the rest of Canada as were their ancestors from the English colonies which
lay on their borders.</p>
<p>The French in Canada are still a separate people. From time to time a
nervous fear seizes them lest too many of their race may be lost to their
old ideals in the Anglo-Saxon world surging about them. Then they listen
readily to appeals to their racial unity and draw more sharply than ever
the lines of division between themselves and the rest of North America.
They remain a fragment of an older France, remote and isolated, still
dreaming dreams like those of Frontenac of old of the dominance of their
race in North America and asserting passionately their rights in the soil
of Canada to which, first of Europeans, they came. At the mouth of the
Mississippi in the Louisiana founded by Louis XIV, along the St. Lawrence
in the Canada of Champlain and Frontenac, with a resolution more than half
pathetic, and in a world that gives little heed, men of French race
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_237" id="Page_237">237</SPAN></span>
are
still on guard to preserve in America the lineaments of that older France,
long since decayed in Europe, which was above all the eldest daughter of
the Church.</p>
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<div class="chapterhead" style="text-align:center;">
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<h2> <SPAN href="#Contents">BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.</SPAN> </h2>
<p><span class="smcap">While</span> the present narrative is based
for the most part on more recondite and widely scattered sources,
the most accessible volumes relating to the period are the following
works of Francis Parkman (Boston: many editions): <i>La Salle and
the Discovery of the Great West, Frontenac and New France under
Louis XIV, A Half Century of Conflict</i> (2 vols.), and <i>Montcalm
and Wolfe</i> (2 vols.). To these should be added, as completing the
story, George M. Wrong, <i>The Fall of Canada</i> (Oxford, 1914) which
dwells in detail on the last year of the struggle. All these volumes
contain adequate references to authorities. The last of Parkman’s
works was published more than twenty-five years ago and later research
has revised some of his conclusions, but he still commands great
authority. In <i>The Chronicles of Canada</i> (Toronto, 1913-16) half
a dozen volumes relate to the period; each of these volumes, which
embody later research and are written in an attractive style, contains
a bibliography relating to its special subject: C. W. Colby, <i>The
Fighting Governor</i> [Frontenac]; Agnes C. Laut, <i>The Adventurers
of England on Hudson Bay</i>; Lawrence J. Burpee, <i>The Pathfinders
of the Great Plains</i>; Arthur G. Doughty, <i>The Acadian Exiles</i>;
William Wood, <i>The Great Fortress</i> [Louisbourg],
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_240" id="Page_240">240</SPAN></span>
<i>The Passing
of New France</i>, and <i>The Winning of Canada.</i> Lawrence J.
Burpee’s <i>Search for the Western Sea</i> (Toronto, 1908) deals
with the work of La Vérendrye and other explorers. Anthony
Hendry’s <i>Journal</i> is published in the <i>Transactions of
the Royal Society of Canada,</i> series iii, volume i. The latest phase of
the discussions on La Vérendrye are reviewed in an article by Doane
Robinson in <i>The Mississippi Valley Historical Review</i> for December,
1916. The material relating to the discoverer was long scattered, but it
has now been collected in a volume, edited by Lawrence J. Burpee for the
Champlain Society, Toronto, but owing to the war it is at the present
date (1918) still in manuscript. Much of what is contained in Mr.
Burpee’s volume will be found in <i>South Dakota Historical
Collections,</i> volume vii, 1914 (Pierre, S. D.).</p>
<p>Additional references are given in the bibliographies appended to the
articles on <i>Chatham, Seven Years’ War,</i> and <i>Nova Scotia</i>
in <i>The Encyclopœdia Britannica,</i> 11th Edition.</p>
<p><br/> <br/> <br/> <br/></p>
<hr class="main" />
<div class="chapterhead">
<SPAN name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014"></SPAN>
<br/><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_241" id="Page_241">241</SPAN></span>
<br/><br/><br/></div>
<h2><SPAN href="#Contents">INDEX</SPAN></h2>
<h3>A</h3>
<div class="indexfont">
Abenaki Indians, incited against English,
<SPAN href="#Page_76">76</SPAN>.<br/>
Abercromby, James, General,
<SPAN href="#Page_195">195</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_196">196</SPAN>.<br/>
Arcadia, settled by French, <SPAN href="#Page_2">2</SPAN>;
comes into hands of British, <SPAN href="#Page_56">56</SPAN>;
ceded to England, <SPAN href="#Page_65">65</SPAN>;
conditions in (1713),
<SPAN href="#Page_74">74</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_75">75</SPAN>;
England’s neglect of, <SPAN href="#Page_75">75</SPAN>;
expulsion of Arcadians, <SPAN href="#Page_164">164</SPAN> <i>et seq.</i>;
boundaries undefined, <SPAN href="#Page_169">169</SPAN>.<br/>
Aix-la-Chapelle, Peace of (1748), <SPAN href="#Page_93">93</SPAN>.<br/>
Albany, plan to seize, <SPAN href="#Page_12">12</SPAN>;
colonial delegates meet at, (1754),
<SPAN href="#Page_159">159</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_160">160</SPAN>.<br/>
Alsace-Lorraine, demanded of France, <SPAN href="#Page_64">64</SPAN>.<br/>
Amherst, Jeffrey, Commander-in-Chief of British forces in America,
<SPAN href="#Page_195">195</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_213">213</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_214">214</SPAN>;
advances toward Montreal, <SPAN href="#Page_223">223</SPAN>;
attacks Montreal,
<SPAN href="#Page_228">228</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_229">229</SPAN>;
relations with Indians, <SPAN href="#Page_230">230</SPAN>.<br/>
Andros, Sir Edmund, <SPAN href="#Page_34">34</SPAN>.<br/>
Annapolis, attacked by French,
<SPAN href="#Page_79">79</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_80">80</SPAN>;
Acadians driven from, <SPAN href="#Page_175">175</SPAN>.<br/>
Annapolis Valley, <SPAN href="#Page_53">53</SPAN>.<br/>
Anne, Queen, ascends throne, <SPAN href="#Page_45">45</SPAN>;
intrigue in court,
<SPAN href="#Page_56">56</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_123">57</SPAN>;
death (1714), <SPAN href="#Page_67">67</SPAN>.<br/>
Anson, George, Admiral, <SPAN href="#Page_92">92</SPAN>.<br/>
Anville, Duc d’,
<SPAN href="#Page_90">90</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_91">91</SPAN>.<br/>
Argall, Samuel, Captain, <SPAN href="#Page_2">2</SPAN>.<br/>
Assiniboine Indians, accompany La Vérendrye,
<SPAN href="#Page_121">121</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_122">122</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_123">123</SPAN>.<br/>
Assiniboine River,
<SPAN href="#Page_119">119</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_120">120</SPAN>.<br/>
<i>Auguste</i>, The (ship), <SPAN href="#Page_133">133</SPAN>.<br/>
Austrian Succession, War of (1744-1748),
<SPAN href="#Page_71">71</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_92">92</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_93">93</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_155">155</SPAN>.<br/>
<p><br/></p>
</div>
<h3>B</h3>
<div class="indexfont">
Beauharnois, Marquis de, Governor of Canada,
<SPAN href="#Page_114">114</SPAN>.<br/>
Beauséjour, Fort, <SPAN href="#Page_170">170</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_171">171</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_172">172</SPAN>.<br/>
Belle-Isle, Duc de, French Minister of War,
<SPAN href="#Page_201">201</SPAN>.<br/>
Berryer, French Minister of Marine,
<SPAN href="#Page_200">200</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_201">201</SPAN>.<br/>
Bienville, J. B., le Moyne, Sieur de, <SPAN href="#Page_104">104</SPAN>.<br/>
Big Mouth, Indian, <SPAN href="#Page_6">6</SPAN>.<br/>
Bigot, François, Intendant of Canada,
<SPAN href="#Page_185">185</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_203">203</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_207">207</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_233">233</SPAN>.<br/>
Biloxi Bay, fort built on, <SPAN href="#Page_103">103</SPAN>.<br/>
Blackfeet Indians,
<SPAN href="#Page_140">140</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_141">141</SPAN>.<br/>
Bobé, Father, <SPAN href="#Page_26">26</SPAN>.<br/>
Boscawen, Edward, Admiral,
<SPAN href="#Page_158">158</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_163">163</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_212">212</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_213">213</SPAN>.<br/>
Boston, plan to seize, <SPAN href="#Page_46">46</SPAN>.<br/>
Bougainville, L. A. de, Colonel,
<SPAN href="#Page_181">181</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_182">182</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_199">199</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_200">200</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_217">217</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_230">230</SPAN>.<br/>
Bouquet, Henry, Colonel, <SPAN href="#Page_163">163</SPAN>.<br/>
Bourlamaque, Chevalier de, <SPAN href="#Page_181">181</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_191">191</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_223">223</SPAN>.<br/>
Bow Indians, act as guides to the La Vérendryes,
<SPAN href="#Page_126">126</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_128">128</SPAN>.<br/>
Braddock, Edward, General, <SPAN href="#Page_158">158</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_159">159</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_160">160</SPAN>.<br/>
Byng, Admiral,
<SPAN href="#Page_146">146</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_210">210</SPAN>.<br/>
<p><br/></p>
</div>
<h3>C</h3>
<div class="indexfont">
Cadet, Head of Canadian supplies department,
<SPAN href="#Page_203">203</SPAN>.<br/>
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_242" id="Page_242">242</SPAN></span>
Canada, paternal government in,
<SPAN href="#Page_24">24</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_25">25</SPAN>;
war on English colonies, <SPAN href="#Page_45">45</SPAN> <i>et seq</i>.;
English plans for ending French power in,
<SPAN href="#Page_87">87</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_88">88</SPAN>;
corruption in,
<SPAN href="#Page_203">203</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_204">204</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_207">207</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_208">208</SPAN>;
famine in, <SPAN href="#Page_208">208</SPAN>;
population (1763), <SPAN href="#Page_234">234</SPAN>;
French Canadians,
<SPAN href="#Page_235">235</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_237">237</SPAN>.<br/>
Canada and English colonies compared,
as to population, <SPAN href="#Page_35">35</SPAN>;
finances, <SPAN href="#Page_35">35</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_37">37</SPAN>;
leaders, <SPAN href="#Page_37">37</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_38">38</SPAN>;
governors, <SPAN href="#Page_39">39</SPAN>;
religion, <SPAN href="#Page_40">40</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_41">41</SPAN>;
education, <SPAN href="#Page_42">42</SPAN>;
books and newspapers,
<SPAN href="#Page_42">42</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_43">43</SPAN>;
character of people, <SPAN href="#Page_78">78</SPAN>.<br/>
Canseau, taken by French, <SPAN href="#Page_79">79</SPAN>;
British arrive at, <SPAN href="#Page_82">82</SPAN>.<br/>
Cape Breton, Island of, <SPAN href="#Page_65">65</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_72">72</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_74">74</SPAN>.<br/>
Cartier, Jacques, <SPAN href="#Page_98">98</SPAN>.<br/>
Céloron de Blainville,
<SPAN href="#Page_146">146</SPAN> <i>et seq.</i><br/>
Champlain, Samuel de, <SPAN href="#Page_100">100</SPAN>.<br/>
Charles II, becomes King (1660), <SPAN href="#Page_28">28</SPAN>;
of Catholic faith, <SPAN href="#Page_30">30</SPAN>;
intrigues with France <SPAN href="#Page_31">31</SPAN>;
Catholic persecution under, <SPAN href="#Page_31">31</SPAN>;
death (1685), <SPAN href="#Page_33">33</SPAN>.<br/>
Charlevoix, P. F. X. de, <SPAN href="#Page_45">45</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_104">104</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_112">112</SPAN>.<br/>
Chautauqua Lake, <SPAN href="#Page_149">149</SPAN>.<br/>
Clarendon, Earl of, Governor of N. J. and N. Y.,
<SPAN href="#Page_39">39</SPAN>.<br/>
Cook, James, Captain, <SPAN href="#Page_216">216</SPAN>.<br/>
Cornwallis, Edward, <SPAN href="#Page_95">95</SPAN>.<br/>
Crown Point, French Army at, <SPAN href="#Page_161">161</SPAN>;
occupied by British, <SPAN href="#Page_223">223</SPAN>.<br/>
<p><br/></p>
</div>
<h3>D</h3>
<div class="indexfont">
Deerfield Massacre,
<SPAN href="#Page_46">46</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_48">48</SPAN>.<br/>
Denonville, Marquis de, Governor of Canada,
<SPAN href="#Page_9">9</SPAN>.<br/>
Detroit, fort built at,
<SPAN href="#Page_105">105</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_106">106</SPAN>.<br/>
Dieskau, Baron, <SPAN href="#Page_158">158</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_161">161</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_162">162</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_179">179</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_180">180</SPAN>.<br/>
Digby Basin, <SPAN href="#Page_53">53</SPAN>.<br/>
Dinwiddie, Robert, Lieutenant-Governor of Va.,
<SPAN href="#Page_153">153</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_154">154</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_160">160</SPAN>.<br/>
Duchesneau, Jacques, Intendant of Canada, <SPAN href="#Page_28">28</SPAN>.<br/>
Duchambon, Governor of Louisbourg,
<SPAN href="#Page_82">82</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_84">84</SPAN>.<br/>
Duquesne, Governor of Canada, <SPAN href="#Page_152">152</SPAN>.<br/>
Duquesne, Fort,
<SPAN href="#Page_154">154</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_160">160</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_163">163</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_198">198</SPAN>.<br/>
Duvivier, <SPAN href="#Page_79">79</SPAN>.<br/>
<p><br/></p>
</div>
<h3>E</h3>
<div class="indexfont">
<i>Edgar</i>, The (ship),
<SPAN href="#Page_59">59</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_61">61</SPAN>.<br/>
Edward, Fort,
<SPAN href="#Page_193">193</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_194">194</SPAN>.<br/>
England, Protestant, <SPAN href="#Page_1">1</SPAN>;
attitude toward her colonies, <SPAN href="#Page_25">25</SPAN>;
under Charles II, <SPAN href="#Page_28">28</SPAN>;
protection from France,
<SPAN href="#Page_29">29</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_30">30</SPAN>;
reduces army, <SPAN href="#Page_44">44</SPAN>;
war with France, <SPAN href="#Page_45">45</SPAN>;
success on the sea, <SPAN href="#Page_92">92</SPAN>;
sends army to Va., <SPAN href="#Page_158">158</SPAN>;
relations with colonies, <SPAN href="#Page_232">232</SPAN>.<br/>
Estournel, d’, <SPAN href="#Page_91">91</SPAN>.<br/>
Europe, politics in middle eighteenth century,
<SPAN href="#Page_155">155</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_157">157</SPAN>.<br/>
<p><br/></p>
</div>
<h3>F</h3>
<div class="indexfont">
Forbes, John, General, <SPAN href="#Page_163">163</SPAN>.<br/>
France, Catholic, <SPAN href="#Page_1">1</SPAN>;
treatment of colonies by,
<SPAN href="#Page_24">24</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_25">25</SPAN>;
claims in North America,
<SPAN href="#Page_26">26</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_27">27</SPAN>;
persecution of Protestants,
<SPAN href="#Page_32">32</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_33">33</SPAN>;
failure in war in Europe, <SPAN href="#Page_64">64</SPAN>;
cedes part of Canada to England, <SPAN href="#Page_65">65</SPAN>;
fails in plans against English,
<SPAN href="#Page_90">90</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_92">92</SPAN>;
lays claim to the West, <SPAN href="#Page_98">98</SPAN> <i>et seq.</i>;
allies herself to Austria,
<SPAN href="#Page_156">156</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_157">157</SPAN>;
sends army to Canada, <SPAN href="#Page_158">158</SPAN>;
plans invasion of England, <SPAN href="#Page_201">201</SPAN>;
fails in undertakings of 1759, <SPAN href="#Page_224">224</SPAN>;
yields everything east of Mississippi,
<SPAN href="#Page_231">231</SPAN>.<br/>
Franklin, Benjamin, <SPAN href="#Page_160">160</SPAN>.<br/>
Frontenac, Louis de Buade, Comte de, Governor of Canada, family,
<SPAN href="#Page_3">3</SPAN>;
personal characteristics,
<SPAN href="#Page_3">3</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_5">5</SPAN>;
in Canada,
<SPAN href="#Page_4">4</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_5">5</SPAN>;
commands against Iroquois,
<SPAN href="#Page_9">9</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_12">12</SPAN>;
against English,
<SPAN href="#Page_12">12</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_15">15</SPAN>;
deals with Phips’ expedition,
<SPAN href="#Page_18">18</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_20">20</SPAN>;
leads against Iroquois, <SPAN href="#Page_22">22</SPAN>;
death (1698), <SPAN href="#Page_22">22</SPAN>.<br/>
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_243" id="Page_243">243</SPAN></span>
Frontenac, Fort,
<SPAN href="#Page_148">148</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_198">198</SPAN>.<br/>
Fur trade, government monopoly, <SPAN href="#Page_40">40</SPAN>;
on Hudson Bay, <SPAN href="#Page_108">108</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_135">135</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_136">136</SPAN>.<br/>
<p><br/></p>
</div>
<h3>G</h3>
<div class="indexfont">
George I, becomes King (1714), <SPAN href="#Page_67">67</SPAN>;
policy towards France, <SPAN href="#Page_67">67</SPAN>.<br/>
George II, demands oath of allegiance from Arcadians,
<SPAN href="#Page_165">165</SPAN>.<br/>
Fort George, <SPAN href="#Page_161">161</SPAN>.<br/>
Gibraltar, ceded to England, <SPAN href="#Page_68">68</SPAN>.<br/>
Grand Pré,
<SPAN href="#Page_175">175</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_176">176</SPAN>.<br/>
<p><br/></p>
</div>
<h3>H</h3>
<div class="indexfont">
Halifax, founded,
<SPAN href="#Page_94">94</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_96">96</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_147">147</SPAN>;
importance to British, <SPAN href="#Page_167">167</SPAN>;
center of activities, <SPAN href="#Page_212">212</SPAN>.<br/>
Harvard College, organized (1638), <SPAN href="#Page_42">42</SPAN>.<br/>
Hayes, Fort, <SPAN href="#Page_109">109</SPAN>.<br/>
Hendry, Anthony, <SPAN href="#Page_136">136</SPAN> <i>et seq.</i>,
<SPAN href="#Page_161">161</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_240">240</SPAN>.<br/>
Henry, Alexander,
<SPAN href="#Page_139">139</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_140">140</SPAN>.<br/>
Hill, “Jack”, General,
<SPAN href="#Page_57">57</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_61">61</SPAN>.<br/>
Howe, Captain, <SPAN href="#Page_171">171</SPAN>.<br/>
Howe, Lord, <SPAN href="#Page_196">196</SPAN>.<br/>
Hudson Bay,
ceded to England, <SPAN href="#Page_65">65</SPAN>;
English traders on,
<SPAN href="#Page_108">108</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_110">110</SPAN>;
France attacks,
<SPAN href="#Page_109">109</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_110">110</SPAN>.<br/>
Hudson’s Bay Company,
<SPAN href="#Page_108">108</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_135">135</SPAN>.<br/>
Huron Indians, allies of French, <SPAN href="#Page_11">11</SPAN>;
Jesuit Mission to, <SPAN href="#Page_100">100</SPAN>.<br/>
<p><br/></p>
</div>
<h3>I</h3>
<div class="indexfont">
Iberville, Pierre Le Moyne, Sieur d’,
<SPAN href="#Page_37">37</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_38">38</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_103">103</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_109">109</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_110">110</SPAN>.<br/>
Indians, pit English against French,
<SPAN href="#Page_6">6</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_7">7</SPAN>;
trade with, <SPAN href="#Page_7">7</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_8">8</SPAN>;
Frontenac seeks alliance with, <SPAN href="#Page_14">14</SPAN>;
French meet at Ste. Marie de Saut,
<SPAN href="#Page_101">101</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_102">102</SPAN>;
French gain support of, <SPAN href="#Page_161">161</SPAN>;
Montcalm’s relations with,
<SPAN href="#Page_183">183</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_184">184</SPAN>;
allies of French,
<SPAN href="#Page_187">187</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_188">188</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_192">192</SPAN>;
Amherst’s discipline of,
<SPAN href="#Page_230">230</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_231">231</SPAN>;
<i>see also</i> names of tribes.<br/>
Iroquois Indians, five tribes, <SPAN href="#Page_8">8</SPAN>;
hostile to French,
<SPAN href="#Page_8">8</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_15">15</SPAN>;
village destroyed by Frontenac, <SPAN href="#Page_22">22</SPAN>;
become British subjects, <SPAN href="#Page_45">45</SPAN>;
raid on Lachine, <SPAN href="#Page_48">48</SPAN>;
menace Niagara, <SPAN href="#Page_105">105</SPAN>;
British claim lands of, <SPAN href="#Page_151">151</SPAN>;
nervous for their safety,
<SPAN href="#Page_159">159</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_160">160</SPAN>.<br/>
Isle aux Noix, <SPAN href="#Page_223">223</SPAN>.<br/>
<p><br/></p>
</div>
<h3>J</h3>
<div class="indexfont">
James II,
<SPAN href="#Page_33">33</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_34">34</SPAN>.<br/>
Jenkins, Captain, <SPAN href="#Page_71">71</SPAN>.<br/>
Johnson, Sir William, <SPAN href="#Page_159">159</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_161">161</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_162">162</SPAN>.<br/>
Johnstone, aid-de-camp to Montcalm,
<SPAN href="#Page_220">220</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_221">221</SPAN>.<br/>
Joliet, Louis, <SPAN href="#Page_102">102</SPAN>.<br/>
Jumonville, Coulon de,
<SPAN href="#Page_154">154</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_155">155</SPAN>.<br/>
<p><br/></p>
</div>
<h3>K</h3>
<div class="indexfont">
King George’s War (1743-48),
Canseau captured, <SPAN href="#Page_79">79</SPAN>;
Annapolis attacked,
<SPAN href="#Page_79">79</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_80">80</SPAN>;
expedition against Louisbourg,
<SPAN href="#Page_80">80</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_87">87</SPAN>;
plan to end French power in America, <SPAN href="#Page_88">88</SPAN>;
Louisbourg under the English,
<SPAN href="#Page_88">88</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_90">90</SPAN>;
France fails to retake Louisbourg,
<SPAN href="#Page_90">90</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_93">93</SPAN>;
treaty of peace (1748), <SPAN href="#Page_93">93</SPAN>;
<i>see also</i> Austrian Succession, War of.<br/>
<p><br/></p>
</div>
<h3>L</h3>
<div class="indexfont">
Lachine, Massacre at,
<SPAN href="#Page_9">9</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_48">48</SPAN>.<br/>
La Corne, St. Luc de, <SPAN href="#Page_135">135</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_136">136</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_141">141</SPAN>.<br/>
La Galissonière, Marquis de,
acting Governor of Canada, <SPAN href="#Page_146">146</SPAN>.<br/>
La Jemeraye, <SPAN href="#Page_118">118</SPAN>.<br/>
La Jonquière, Marquis de, Governor of Canada,
<SPAN href="#Page_91">91</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_92">92</SPAN>.<br/>
La Jonquière, Fort, <SPAN href="#Page_134">134</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_135">135</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_138">138</SPAN>.<br/>
La Mothe Cadillac, Antoine de,
<SPAN href="#Page_105">105</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_106">106</SPAN>.<br/>
La Pause, officer under Montcalm, <SPAN href="#Page_191">191</SPAN>.<br/>
La Porte, <SPAN href="#Page_204">204</SPAN>.<br/>
La Potherie, describes council with Indians,
<SPAN href="#Page_11">11</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_12">12</SPAN>.<br/>
La Reine, Fort, <SPAN href="#Page_120">120</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_121">121</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_124">124</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_125">125</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_133">133</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_134">134</SPAN>.<br/>
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_244" id="Page_244">244</SPAN></span>
La Salle, Rene-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de, <SPAN href="#Page_103">103</SPAN>.<br/>
Laval University, <SPAN href="#Page_42">42</SPAN>.<br/>
La Vérendrye, P. G. de Varennes,
Sieur de, <SPAN href="#Page_110">110</SPAN> <i>et seq</i>.,
<SPAN href="#Page_240">240</SPAN>.<br/>
La Vérendrye brothers,
<SPAN href="#Page_125">125</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_133">133</SPAN>.<br/>
Lawrence, Charles, Major, <SPAN href="#Page_173">173</SPAN>.<br/>
Lawrence, Fort, <SPAN href="#Page_170">170</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_171">171</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_172">172</SPAN>.<br/>
Le Bœuf, Fort,
<SPAN href="#Page_152">152</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_153">153</SPAN>.<br/>
Le Loutre, Abbe, <SPAN href="#Page_167">167</SPAN> <i>et seq</i>.<br/>
Le Mercier, officer under Montcalm, <SPAN href="#Page_191">191</SPAN>.<br/>
Le Moyne, Charles, <SPAN href="#Page_37">37</SPAN>.<br/>
Lévis, Chevalier de,
next Montcalm in command, <SPAN href="#Page_181">181</SPAN>;
suggested as Montcalm’s successor by Governor,
<SPAN href="#Page_186">186</SPAN>;
at Montreal,
<SPAN href="#Page_223">223</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_226">226</SPAN>;
attempts to retake Quebec,
<SPAN href="#Page_227">227</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_228">228</SPAN>;
defeat at Montreal,
<SPAN href="#Page_228">228</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_229">229</SPAN>;
becomes Marshal of France, <SPAN href="#Page_233">233</SPAN>.<br/>
Lewis and Clark expedition, <SPAN href="#Page_143">143</SPAN>.<br/>
Loudoun, Earl of, Commander-in-Chief of British,
<SPAN href="#Page_193">193</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_229">229</SPAN>.<br/>
Louis XIV, attitude toward Canada,
<SPAN href="#Page_24">24</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_25">25</SPAN>.<br/>
Louisbourg, fortress built,
<SPAN href="#Page_72">72</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_74">74</SPAN>;
plan for capture of,
<SPAN href="#Page_80">80</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_81">81</SPAN>;
conditions in,
<SPAN href="#Page_81">81</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_82">82</SPAN>;
siege of,
<SPAN href="#Page_82">82</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_85">85</SPAN>;
English in,
<SPAN href="#Page_88">88</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_90">90</SPAN>;
treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle restores to France, <SPAN href="#Page_93">93</SPAN>;
expedition against, <SPAN href="#Page_193">193</SPAN>;
fall of fortress, <SPAN href="#Page_195">195</SPAN>;
capture of, <SPAN href="#Page_213">213</SPAN>;
rendezvous of British fleet, <SPAN href="#Page_214">214</SPAN>.<br/>
Louisiana Purchase, <SPAN href="#Page_143">143</SPAN>.
<p><br/></p>
</div>
<h3>M</h3>
<div class="indexfont">
Mackenzie, Alexander,
<SPAN href="#Page_142">142</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_143">143</SPAN>.<br/>
Mackenzie River,
<SPAN href="#Page_97">97</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_142">142</SPAN>.<br/>
Malartic, officer under Montcalm, <SPAN href="#Page_191">191</SPAN>.<br/>
Mandan Indians, <SPAN href="#Page_122">122</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_123">123</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_124">124</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_125">125</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_126">126</SPAN>.<br/>
Marquette, Jacques, Jesuit priest,
<SPAN href="#Page_102">102</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_103">103</SPAN>.<br/>
<i>Mars</i>, The (ship), <SPAN href="#Page_90">90</SPAN>.<br/>
Mascarene, Paul, <SPAN href="#Page_80">80</SPAN>.<br/>
Massachusetts, sends expeditions against French,
<SPAN href="#Page_17">17</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_21">21</SPAN>;
religion, <SPAN href="#Page_40">40</SPAN>;
offers bounty for Indian scalps, <SPAN href="#Page_48">48</SPAN>;
war with Indians (1721), <SPAN href="#Page_77">77</SPAN>.<br/>
Maurepas, Fort, at Biloxi, <SPAN href="#Page_103">103</SPAN>;
on Lake Winnipeg, <SPAN href="#Page_107">107</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_118">118</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_133">133</SPAN>.<br/>
<i>Mayflower</i>, The (ship), <SPAN href="#Page_25">25</SPAN>.<br/>
Michilimackinac, <SPAN href="#Page_100">100</SPAN>.<br/>
Micmac Indians,
<SPAN href="#Page_167">167</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_171">171</SPAN>.<br/>
Mississippi River,
<SPAN href="#Page_97">97</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_98">98</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_99">99</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_102">102</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_103">103</SPAN>.<br/>
Monckton, Robert, Colonel, <SPAN href="#Page_174">174</SPAN>.<br/>
Monro, George, Colonel, <SPAN href="#Page_193">193</SPAN>.<br/>
Montcalm, Louis Joseph, Marquis de, life in France,
<SPAN href="#Page_178">178</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_179">179</SPAN>;
sent to Canada, <SPAN href="#Page_179">179</SPAN>;
voyage, <SPAN href="#Page_180">180</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_181">181</SPAN>;
staff, <SPAN href="#Page_181">181</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_182">182</SPAN>;
impressions of Canada,
<SPAN href="#Page_182">182</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_183">183</SPAN>;
attitude toward Indians,
<SPAN href="#Page_183">183</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_184">184</SPAN>;
Vaudreuil jealous of,
<SPAN href="#Page_185">185</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_186">186</SPAN>;
activities in Canada,
<SPAN href="#Page_189">189</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_190">190</SPAN>;
captures Oswego, <SPAN href="#Page_190">190</SPAN>;
describes his officers, <SPAN href="#Page_191">191</SPAN>;
at Ticonderoga, <SPAN href="#Page_192">192</SPAN>;
captures Fort William Henry,
<SPAN href="#Page_192">192</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_193">193</SPAN>;
rebuked by French court, <SPAN href="#Page_194">194</SPAN>;
defeats British at Lake George,
<SPAN href="#Page_195">195</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_197">197</SPAN>;
plans organization of army,
<SPAN href="#Page_198">198</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_199">199</SPAN>;
fame in France, <SPAN href="#Page_200">200</SPAN>;
obtains little aid from France, <SPAN href="#Page_202">202</SPAN>;
receives rank of Lieutenant-General, <SPAN href="#Page_202">202</SPAN>;
a hero, <SPAN href="#Page_204">204</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_205">205</SPAN>;
personal characteristics,
<SPAN href="#Page_205">205</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_206">206</SPAN>;
discovers corruption of Canadian officials,
<SPAN href="#Page_207">207</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_208">208</SPAN>;
plans to meet British attack, <SPAN href="#Page_209">209</SPAN>;
at siege of Quebec,
<SPAN href="#Page_218">218</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_222">222</SPAN>.<br/>
Montigny, officer under Montcalm, <SPAN href="#Page_191">191</SPAN>.<br/>
Montreal, war party sets out from, <SPAN href="#Page_14">14</SPAN>;
Lévis at,
<SPAN href="#Page_223">223</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_226">226</SPAN>;
French defeat at,
<SPAN href="#Page_228">228</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_229">229</SPAN>.<br/>
Murray, James, General,
<SPAN href="#Page_225">225</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_228">228</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_229">229</SPAN>.<br/>
<p><br/></p>
</div>
<h3>N</h3>
<div class="indexfont">
Nantes, Edict of, <SPAN href="#Page_32">32</SPAN>.<br/>
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_245" id="Page_245">245</SPAN></span>
New France, <i>see</i> Canada. <br/>
New Netherland captured by English (1664), <SPAN href="#Page_12">12</SPAN>.<br/>
New Orleans, <SPAN href="#Page_104">104</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_148">148</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_231">231</SPAN>.<br/>
New York, plan of French to capture,
<SPAN href="#Page_12">12</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_14">14</SPAN>;
sends force against French (1691),
<SPAN href="#Page_21">21</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_22">22</SPAN>.<br/>
Newcastle, Duke of, <SPAN href="#Page_211">211</SPAN>.<br/>
Newfoundland, ceded to England, <SPAN href="#Page_65">65</SPAN>.<br/>
Niagara, Fort, <SPAN href="#Page_105">105</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_148">148</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_223">223</SPAN>.<br/>
Nicholson, Francis, Colonel,
<SPAN href="#Page_51">51</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_52">52</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_53">53</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_63">63</SPAN>.<br/>
Nipigon, <SPAN href="#Page_113">113</SPAN>.<br/>
Niverville, Chevalier de,
<SPAN href="#Page_133">133</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_134">134</SPAN>.<br/>
Nova Scotia, <i>see</i> Acadia.<br/>
Noyon, <SPAN href="#Page_112">112</SPAN>.<br/>
<p><br/></p>
</div>
<h3>O</h3>
<div class="indexfont">
Oates, Titus, <SPAN href="#Page_31">31</SPAN>.<br/>
Ochagach, Indian guide,
<SPAN href="#Page_113">113</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_114">114</SPAN>.<br/>
Ohio River, importance to French, <SPAN href="#Page_106">106</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_147">147</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_148">148</SPAN>;
Céloron on,
<SPAN href="#Page_149">149</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_150">150</SPAN>;
contest for possession,
<SPAN href="#Page_150">150</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_163">163</SPAN>.<br/>
Oswego, French plans to capture, <SPAN href="#Page_189">189</SPAN>;
captured, <SPAN href="#Page_190">190</SPAN>;
Amherst gathers army at, <SPAN href="#Page_228">228</SPAN>.<br/>
<p><br/></p>
</div>
<h3>P</h3>
<div class="indexfont">
Paddon, Captain, of the <i>Edgar</i>,
<SPAN href="#Page_59">59</SPAN>.<br/>
Panama, Isthmus of, Scottish attempt to found colony on,
<SPAN href="#Page_49">49</SPAN>.<br/>
Paskoya, Fort,
<SPAN href="#Page_134">134</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_136">136</SPAN>.<br/>
Pelican, The (ship), <SPAN href="#Page_110">110</SPAN>.<br/>
Pennsylvania, policy of non-resistance,
<SPAN href="#Page_35">35</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_36">36</SPAN>;
Quakers in, <SPAN href="#Page_40">40</SPAN>;
suffers from French and Indians, <SPAN href="#Page_152">152</SPAN>.<br/>
Pepperrell, William,
<SPAN href="#Page_82">82</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_83">83</SPAN>;
<SPAN href="#Page_89">89</SPAN>.<br/>
Phips, Sir William, Governor of Mass.,
<SPAN href="#Page_15">15</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_16">16</SPAN>;
raises Spanish wreck, <SPAN href="#Page_16">16</SPAN>;
leads expedition against Acadia, <SPAN href="#Page_17">17</SPAN>;
voyages to Quebec,
<SPAN href="#Page_18">18</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_21">21</SPAN>;
not fitted to office, <SPAN href="#Page_38">38</SPAN>;
superstitions of, <SPAN href="#Page_41">41</SPAN>.<br/>
Pierre, S. D.,
tablet of the La Vérendryes found at,
<SPAN href="#Page_128">128</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_129">129</SPAN>.<br/>
Pisiquid (Windsor), <SPAN href="#Page_175">175</SPAN>.<br/>
Pitt, William,
British Secretary of State for War,
<SPAN href="#Page_195">195</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_211">211</SPAN> <i>et seq</i>.<br/>
“Pitts-Bourgh,” <SPAN href="#Page_163">163</SPAN>.<br/>
Pompadour, Madame de,
<SPAN href="#Page_156">156</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_178">178</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_199">199</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_200">200</SPAN>.<br/>
Port Royal, captured by Phips, <SPAN href="#Page_17">17</SPAN>;
typical French community, <SPAN href="#Page_54">54</SPAN>;
captured by English,
<SPAN href="#Page_55">55</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_56">56</SPAN>;
renamed Annapolis, <SPAN href="#Page_55">55</SPAN>.<br/>
Porto Bello, <SPAN href="#Page_70">70</SPAN>.<br/>
Prince Edward Island, <SPAN href="#Page_65">65</SPAN>.<br/>
<p><br/></p>
</div>
<h3>Q</h3>
<div class="indexfont">
Quebec, captured by English, <SPAN href="#Page_2">2</SPAN>;
war party sets out from, <SPAN href="#Page_14">14</SPAN>;
Phips takes fleet to,
<SPAN href="#Page_18">18</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_21">21</SPAN>;
child of Versailles, <SPAN href="#Page_24">24</SPAN>;
expedition against (1711),
<SPAN href="#Page_57">57</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_63">63</SPAN>;
life in, <SPAN href="#Page_207">207</SPAN>;
situation of,
<SPAN href="#Page_215">215</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_216">216</SPAN>;
siege of,
<SPAN href="#Page_217">217</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_222">222</SPAN>;
French defeat at, <SPAN href="#Page_222">222</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_227">227</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_228">228</SPAN>.<br/>
<p><br/></p>
</div>
<h3>R</h3>
<div class="indexfont">
Rainy Lake,
<SPAN href="#Page_115">115</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_118">118</SPAN>.<br/>
Rale, Sebastien, Jesuit priest,
<SPAN href="#Page_76">76</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_77">77</SPAN>.<br/>
Ramezay, Chevalier de, <SPAN href="#Page_223">223</SPAN>.<br/>
Red River, <SPAN href="#Page_119">119</SPAN>.<br/>
Rigaud, brother of Governor Vaudreuil, <SPAN href="#Page_191">191</SPAN>.<br/>
Rouville, Hertel de,
<SPAN href="#Page_46">46</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_47">47</SPAN>.<br/>
Ryswick, Peace of (1697),
<SPAN href="#Page_22">22</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_23">23</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_44">44</SPAN>.<br/>
<p><br/></p>
</div>
<h3>S</h3>
<div class="indexfont">
St. Charles, Fort, <SPAN href="#Page_115">115</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_116">116</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_118">118</SPAN>.<br/>
St. Esprit, <SPAN href="#Page_101">101</SPAN>.<br/>
St. Jean, Ile, <SPAN href="#Page_65">65</SPAN>.<br/>
St. Lawrence River, French pioneers on,
<SPAN href="#Page_97">97</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_98">98</SPAN>;
location, <SPAN href="#Page_99">99</SPAN>;
cities on, <SPAN href="#Page_100">100</SPAN>;
British fleet sails up, <SPAN href="#Page_215">215</SPAN>.<br/>
St. Louis, Château, <SPAN href="#Page_5">5</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_19">19</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_38">38</SPAN>.<br/>
Saint Luc, officer under Montcalm, <SPAN href="#Page_191">191</SPAN>.<br/>
Saint-Lusson, S. F. Daumont, Sieur de, <SPAN href="#Page_101">101</SPAN>.<br/>
Saint-Pierre, Legardeur de,
<SPAN href="#Page_131">131</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_132">132</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_133">133</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_135">135</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_150">150</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_151">151</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_153">153</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_162">162</SPAN>.<br/>
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_246" id="Page_246">246</SPAN></span>
St. Pierre, Fort, <SPAN href="#Page_115">115</SPAN>.<br/>
Saint-Sauveur, Grasset de, <SPAN href="#Page_203">203</SPAN>.<br/>
Sainte Foy, Battle of, <SPAN href="#Page_228">228</SPAN>.<br/>
Ste. Marie du Saut,
<SPAN href="#Page_100">100</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_101">101</SPAN>.<br/>
Saskatchewan River,
<SPAN href="#Page_97">97</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_98">98</SPAN>.<br/>
Saunders, Sir Charles, Admiral, <SPAN href="#Page_214">214</SPAN>.<br/>
Schenectady, massacre at, <SPAN href="#Page_15">15</SPAN>.<br/>
Schuyler, Peter,
<SPAN href="#Page_21">21</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_22">22</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_52">52</SPAN>.<br/>
Seven Years’ War,
<SPAN href="#Page_151">151</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_211">211</SPAN>.<br/>
Shirley, William, Governor of Mass.,
<SPAN href="#Page_80">80</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_81">81</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_88">88</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_173">173</SPAN>.<br/>
Sioux Indians,
<SPAN href="#Page_107">107</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_119">119</SPAN>.<br/>
South Sea Bubble,
<SPAN href="#Page_70">70</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_71">71</SPAN>.<br/>
Spain, cessions to England, <SPAN href="#Page_68">68</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_69">69</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_70">70</SPAN>;
relations with England, <SPAN href="#Page_71">71</SPAN>;
England hostile to,
<SPAN href="#Page_92">92</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_93">93</SPAN>;
claims lands on Gulf of Mexico, <SPAN href="#Page_99">99</SPAN>;
New Orleans ceded to, <SPAN href="#Page_231">231</SPAN>.<br/>
Subercase, D. A. de,
Governor of Port Royal,
<SPAN href="#Page_54">54</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_55">55</SPAN>.<br/>
<p><br/></p>
</div>
<h3>T</h3>
<div class="indexfont">
Three Rivers, war party sets out from, <SPAN href="#Page_14">14</SPAN>.<br/>
Ticonderoga, French army at, <SPAN href="#Page_161">161</SPAN>;
Montcalm at, <SPAN href="#Page_192">192</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_195">195</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_196">196</SPAN>;
defeat of English at,
<SPAN href="#Page_196">196</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_197">197</SPAN>;
occupied by British, <SPAN href="#Page_223">223</SPAN>.<br/>
Tollendal, Lally, <SPAN href="#Page_234">234</SPAN>.<br/>
Troyes, Chevalier de, <SPAN href="#Page_109">109</SPAN>.<br/>
<p><br/></p>
</div>
<h3>U</h3>
<div class="indexfont">
Utrecht, Treaty of (1713),
<SPAN href="#Page_64">64</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_66">66</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_110">110</SPAN>.<br/>
<p><br/></p>
</div>
<h3>V</h3>
<div class="indexfont">
Vaudreuil, Pierre de Rigaud,
Marquis de, Governor of Canada,
values Indians as allies, <SPAN href="#Page_183">183</SPAN>;
as Governor,
<SPAN href="#Page_184">184</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_185">185</SPAN>;
jealous of Montcalm,
<SPAN href="#Page_185">185</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_186">186</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_203">203</SPAN>;
in hands of corrupt circle,
<SPAN href="#Page_203">203</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_204">204</SPAN>;
retreats to Montreal,
<SPAN href="#Page_223">223</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_226">226</SPAN>;
signs capitulation, <SPAN href="#Page_229">229</SPAN>;
trial of, <SPAN href="#Page_233">233</SPAN>.<br/>
Vaughan, William, <SPAN href="#Page_80">80</SPAN>.<br/>
Verrazano, sails along Atlantic coast (1524),
<SPAN href="#Page_26">26</SPAN>.<br/>
Vetch, Samuel, plans conquest of Canada,
<SPAN href="#Page_49">49</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_52">52</SPAN>,
adjutant-general, <SPAN href="#Page_53">53</SPAN>;
made Governor of Annapolis, <SPAN href="#Page_55">55</SPAN>;
commands colonial forces, <SPAN href="#Page_58">58</SPAN>;
familiar with St. Lawrence, <SPAN href="#Page_61">61</SPAN>;
in debtor’s prison, <SPAN href="#Page_62">62</SPAN>.<br/>
<i>Vigilant</i>, The (ship), <SPAN href="#Page_85">85</SPAN>.<br/>
Virginia, settled (1607), <SPAN href="#Page_2">2</SPAN>;
Church of England in, <SPAN href="#Page_40">40</SPAN>.<br/>
<p><br/></p>
</div>
<h3>W</h3>
<div class="indexfont">
Walker, Sir Hovenden, Admiral,
<SPAN href="#Page_57">57</SPAN> <i>et seq</i>.<br/>
Walpole, Sir Robert, English Prime Minister,
<SPAN href="#Page_68">68</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_69">69</SPAN>.<br/>
Warren, Peter, Commodore, <SPAN href="#Page_81">81</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_83">83</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_88">88</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_89">89</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_92">92</SPAN>.<br/>
Washington, George, <SPAN href="#Page_151">151</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_152">152</SPAN> <i>et seq</i>.,
<SPAN href="#Page_160">160</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_163">163</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_230">230</SPAN>.<br/>
William of Orange, France denounces,
<SPAN href="#Page_2">2</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_20">20</SPAN>;
recognized by France, <SPAN href="#Page_23">23</SPAN>;
as King of England,
<SPAN href="#Page_34">34</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_44">44</SPAN>;
death (1702), <SPAN href="#Page_45">45</SPAN>.<br/>
William Henry, Fort, <SPAN href="#Page_161">161</SPAN>,
<SPAN href="#Page_192">192</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_193">193</SPAN>.<br/>
Williams, Rev. John,
<SPAN href="#Page_47">47</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_48">48</SPAN>.<br/>
Winnipeg, Lake,
<SPAN href="#Page_117">117</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_119">119</SPAN>.<br/>
Winslow, Colonel,
<SPAN href="#Page_175">175</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_176">176</SPAN>.<br/>
Witchcraft in New England, <SPAN href="#Page_41">41</SPAN>.<br/>
Wolfe, James, General, at Louisbourg,
<SPAN href="#Page_163">163</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_195">195</SPAN>;
compared with Montcalm, <SPAN href="#Page_206">206</SPAN>;
next Amherst in command, <SPAN href="#Page_213">213</SPAN>;
at Louisbourg, <SPAN href="#Page_213">213</SPAN>;
at Quebec,
<SPAN href="#Page_216">216</SPAN>-<SPAN href="#Page_222">222</SPAN>.<br/>
Woods, Lake of the,
<SPAN href="#Page_112">112</SPAN>, <SPAN href="#Page_115">115</SPAN>.<br/></div>
<hr class="main" />
<div class="chapterhead">
<br/><br/><br/><br/></div>
<h2><SPAN href="#Contents">The Chronicles of America Series</SPAN></h2>
<ol>
<li>The Red Man's Continent<br/> by Ellsworth Huntington</li>
<li>The Spanish Conquerors<br/> by Irving Berdine Richman</li>
<li>Elizabethan Sea-Dogs<br/> by William Charles Henry Wood</li>
<li>The Crusaders of New France<br/> by William Bennett Munro</li>
<li>Pioneers of the Old South<br/> by Mary Johnson</li>
<li>The Fathers of New England<br/> by Charles McLean Andrews</li>
<li>Dutch and English on the Hudson<br/> by Maud Wilder Goodwin</li>
<li>The Quaker Colonies<br/> by Sydney George Fisher</li>
<li>Colonial Folkways<br/> by Charles McLean Andrews</li>
<li><span class="smcap">The Conquest of New France<br/>
by George McKinnon Wrong</span></li>
<li>The Eve of the Revolution<br/> by Carl Lotus Becker</li>
<li>Washington and His Comrades in Arms<br/> by George McKinnon Wrong</li>
<li>The Fathers of the Constitution<br/> by Max Farrand</li>
<li>Washington and His Colleagues<br/> by Henry Jones Ford</li>
<li>Jefferson and his Colleagues<br/> by Allen Johnson</li>
<li>John Marshall and the Constitution<br/> by Edward Samuel Corwin</li>
<li>The Fight for a Free Sea<br/> by Ralph Delahaye Paine</li>
<li>Pioneers of the Old Southwest<br/> by Constance Lindsay Skinner</li>
<li>The Old Northwest<br/> by Frederic Austin Ogg</li>
<li>The Reign of Andrew Jackson<br/> by Frederic Austin Ogg</li>
<li>The Paths of Inland Commerce<br/> by Archer Butler Hulbert</li>
<li>Adventurers of Oregon<br/> by Constance Lindsay Skinner</li>
<li>The Spanish Borderlands<br/> by Herbert Eugene Bolton</li>
<li>Texas and the Mexican War<br/> by Nathaniel Wright Stephenson</li>
<li>The Forty-Niners<br/> by Stewart Edward White</li>
<li>The Passing of the Frontier<br/> by Emerson Hough</li>
<li>The Cotton Kingdom<br/> by William E. Dodd</li>
<li>The Anti-Slavery Crusade<br/> by Jesse Macy</li>
<li>Abraham Lincoln and the Union<br/> by Nathaniel Wright Stephenson</li>
<li>The Day of the Confederacy<br/> by Nathaniel Wright Stephenson</li>
<li>Captains of the Civil War<br/> by William Charles Henry Wood</li>
<li>The Sequel of Appomattox<br/> by Walter Lynwood Fleming</li>
<li>The American Spirit in Education<br/> by Edwin E. Slosson</li>
<li>The American Spirit in Literature<br/> by Bliss Perry</li>
<li>Our Foreigners<br/> by Samuel Peter Orth</li>
<li>The Old Merchant Marine<br/> by Ralph Delahaye Paine</li>
<li>The Age of Invention<br/> by Holland Thompson</li>
<li>The Railroad Builders<br/> by John Moody</li>
<li>The Age of Big Business<br/> by Burton Jesse Hendrick</li>
<li>The Armies of Labor<br/> by Samuel Peter Orth</li>
<li>The Masters of Capital<br/> by John Moody</li>
<li>The New South<br/> by Holland Thompson</li>
<li>The Boss and the Machine<br/> by Samuel Peter Orth</li>
<li>The Cleveland Era<br/> by Henry Jones Ford</li>
<li>The Agrarian Crusade<br/> by Solon Justus Buck</li>
<li>The Path of Empire<br/> by Carl Russell Fish</li>
<li>Theodore Roosevelt and His Times<br/> by Harold Howland</li>
<li>Woodrow Wilson and the World War<br/> by Charles Seymour</li>
<li>The Canadian Dominion<br/> by Oscar D. Skelton</li>
<li>The Hispanic Nations of the New World<br/> by William R. Shepherd</li>
</ol>
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