The History of the Thirteen Colonies of North America 1497-1763 Part 12

[241] _Hakluyt's Voyages_ (1904), viii. p. 242.

[242] _Ibid._, p. 244.

[243] Le Clercq, _First Establishment of the Faith in New France_ (1881), p. 52.

[244] Le Clercq, _First Establishment of the Faith in New France_ (1881), p. 52.

[245] The modern Kingston.

[246] These men were the first to explore the river, but it was undoubtedly reached in 1659 by two fur traders, Radisson and Des Grosseilliers.

[247] _French, Historical Collections of Louisiana_ (1850), Part II.

[248] _Ibid._

[249] _Ibid._

[250] _Ibid._

[251] Parkman, _La Salle_ (edition eleven), p. 112.

[252] French, _Historical Collections of Louisiana_ (1850), Part IV.

[253] _Ibid._

[254] French, _Historical Collections of Louisiana_ (1850), Part IV.

CHAPTER XI

FRENCH AGGRESSION

In a previous chapter reference has already been made to the fatality of having no form of union among the Thirteen Colonies. Every chance of concentration existed towards the end of the seventeenth century, for the colonies were contiguous, they lay in compact and continuous territory along the eastern seaboard, backed by the boundary of the Alleghanies. They were too, for the most part, inhabited by Englishmen, who may originally have been driven to emigrate for very different reasons, but who were in reality of the same stock and blood. But though everything pointed to union, the necessary concomitants were comparative only, and union was impossible. The colonies were squabbling, jarring communities, without any const.i.tutional links; they were surrounded and separated by vast tracts of impenetrable forest; their traditions, religions, and beliefs were entirely opposed; and each colony was as much divided in thought and feeling from its neighbours as from the home country. This lack of concentration was one of the main differences between the English on the American coast and the French in Canada. This want of union was unknown in New France, where centralisation, perhaps over-centralisation, was the predominating feature. One governor at the head of all, a semi-feudal system, and an absolute reliance upon each other and upon support from home made the numerically inferior Canada in some respects superior to the Thirteen Colonies. At the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries, therefore, the French possessed great advantages over their southern rivals; and the English, disunited and internally jealous, were likely to prove impotent against the Government of Quebec.

From the very first the relations between the colonies and Canada had been unfriendly, but the feelings of antagonism increased as the seventeenth century grew in years; and by the time that Frontenac ruled Canada and Thomas Dongan was English Governor at New York, this feeling had reached a climax. So pressing had the question become that the colonies, in 1684, held a general conference at Albany, the outcome of which, to the alarm of the French, was a firm alliance with the Five Nations or Iroquois. No greater struggle, however, resulted than an acrimonious literary warfare between the energetic Dongan and the capable Denonville concerning numerous attacks upon English and Dutch traders.

The English Revolution, the recall of Dongan, and the reappointment of Count Frontenac as governor of Canada were contemporaneous and were sufficient reasons for more trouble. The acceptance of William and Mary in England meant war in Europe; and Frontenac, seeing his opportunity, began what was called by the English settlers King William's war. The French governor made elaborate plans to attack New York, but having failed, found on his return that the Iroquois had disastrously raided Canada and ma.s.sacred the people of Lachine. A fresh expedition was planned at a most unfortunate moment for the English colonists, who were suffering from the effects of the Revolution; and New York, in particular, was in the throes of the already mentioned Leisler rising.

For Frontenac it was the ideal chance; now if ever he felt that he was bound to succeed against the English. His plans were well laid: his force was divided into three parties, which were to strike their blows at the same time and paralyse the settlers with terror. The first party with a band of Indians, under the famous rangers the brothers D'Iberville, started along the familiar waterway of the Richelieu River, Lake Champlain, and the Hudson, to attack Albany. By mischance they turned to the west and fell upon the little Dutch settlement of Schenectady, which was unguarded except for a few militiamen from Connecticut. The scene can only be described as one of helpless and hideous ma.s.sacre; all who resisted were butchered and the place was deliberately and ruthlessly burnt. The second expedition was no less successful in carrying out their horrible task. It was mere murder. For three months they worked their way down to the settlement of Salmon Falls on the borders of New Hamps.h.i.+re and Maine. Here the settlers, little expecting such a terrible visit, were murdered while sleeping.

Elated with these horrors, the French and Indians moved on to join their other comrades, and together, between four and five hundred strong, attacked Fort Loyal in the settlement of Falmouth, where now stands the town of Portland. Sylva.n.u.s Davies, the commander of the fort, surrendered on the promise of quarter and freedom; the promise was so much waste paper, and some of the English suffered the fate of the inhabitants of Schenectady, while others were led captive to Quebec.

The lesson learnt by the English colonists was a salutary one, and the immediate result of Frontenac's three successes was a tendency on the part of the settlers to unite. At a solemn conference held in 1690 at Albany, the colonies came to the conclusion that a combined naval and military force must attack the French at once. The authorities in Ma.s.sachusetts took the lead; the "Bostonnais," as the French called them, were seamen to the backbone. They had come, as has been shown, of a st.u.r.dy Puritan stock, and as dwellers by the sea and traders on its waters, they possessed those very characteristics which the Canadians so sadly lacked. It was therefore the people of Boston who did all they could to further the attack by sea, by which the main effort was to be made; the land forces were not supported with the same enthusiasm and were thereby insufficient for the work in hand, as events afterwards proved, and instead of a magnificent military exhibition against Canada, the soldiers did little more than raid a French settlement at La Prairie.

The memory of David Kirke's attack upon Quebec was still green, although sixty years had pa.s.sed since that event. The aforetime s.h.i.+p's carpenter and sea-rover, Sir William Phipps, governor of Ma.s.sachusetts, was now burning to renew the old glories of the colonial navy at the expense of France. He had already, at the time of the French attack upon Falmouth, taken possession of their one stronghold in Acadia, Port Royal, and returned with much booty, some prisoners, and an increased reputation as a brave, patriotic man. In August 1690, with 34 s.h.i.+ps and 2200 men, Phipps sailed from Nantucket to attack Quebec, the headquarters of the French Government. The inhabitants had been lulled by continuous peace into a sense of security, which was neither justified by past experience not by daily occurring events. The expedition, however, landed too late in the year. What happened to it was what Wolfe dreaded nearly seventy years later. It was late in October before the men had disembarked and the wet and cold season had already set in. The food supplies ran short; sickness broke out and the little party was easily outnumbered. Phipps bombarded the lower town to his heart's content, but he made the fatal mistake of trying to attack from Beauport, instead of by means of the path, which was afterwards discovered by Wolfe, and which had already been shown to the "Bostonnais" general. The failure of the gallant band from Ma.s.sachusetts was complete; but there was something truly magnificent about the whole affair. The man who had once tended sheep, who had been a common seaman, and worked his way up the rungs of the ladder of fame and prosperity, now pitted himself against the Count de Frontenac, n.o.ble of France; the humble citizens of Boston, who, up to that moment, had shown more interest in religious intolerance and the rejection of any unnecessary pressure from England, had dared to attack the ancient fortress of New France, garrisoned by trained forces and skilled backwoodsmen warriors; practically one humble Puritanic colony strove against the pomp and might of his Catholic Majesty, Louis Quatorze.

The New England colonies, headed by Ma.s.sachusetts, were bound to struggle against the French with more determination than any of their colonial brethren. New York did occasionally suffer severe attacks such as that which had been intended for Albany; but the French realised very clearly that their raids in this direction were always liable to be repulsed, not by the settlers themselves, but by the warlike Iroquois, who were in every way bound to the English and antagonistic to France.

The Puritan colonies, on the other hand, were threatened by Indian foes just as friendly to the Canadians as the Iroquois were towards the New Yorkers. The Abenaki Indians were an ever constant danger along the New England borders, and their hostile att.i.tude was intensified by the Jesuits, who had acquired over them an influence even greater than that which they had gained over other tribes. It was, in fact, the priests'

main task, particularly during the latter years of the seventeenth century, to incite the Indians in their attacks upon the English. Wild, looting, scalping, murdering bands poured in upon the unhappy settlers who dwelt along the borders of New Hamps.h.i.+re and Maine. The French feared, and with reason, that unless they kept this blood-l.u.s.t at fever heat, the Abenaki like the Iroquois would be won over by the English owing to the fascination of a lucrative commerce.

The onslaughts that had to be resisted were not only from the Indians.

The success of Phipps at Port Royal, and his daring attack upon Quebec, forced the Canadians to cry aloud for some form of retaliation, which swiftly came. No sooner had Villebon recaptured Port Royal in Acadia, than, in 1692, a definite series of ma.s.sacres were organised along the colonial sea-coast, and for years the English frontiers were swept with desolating raids. York in Maine was the first to suffer the horrors of this combined Indian and French warfare. Wells, further north, was more successful in its resistance; for here Convers and thirty militiamen drove back a party of Indians and French who had hoped to perpetrate the usual butchery. The terror began again in 1694, and the settlers at Oyster River were either immediately killed or carried into captivity.

That such things were tolerated by the New Englanders, and especially by the people of Ma.s.sachusetts, who had been so energetic in their naval expeditions, is extremely surprising; there can be little doubt that the settlers in the larger towns exhibited extraordinary indifference to these raids upon their more isolated brethren. Ma.s.sachusetts, with a population of 50,000, was quite capable of building a strong line of forts and organising a well-equipped border police. A few forts they certainly had, but these were ill-protected and worse cared for. The only one of any importance was that of Pemaquid, which lay as a rampart in the path of any Abenaki attack on New England; but so dilatory was the conduct of the settlers that, at the very moment when they might have expected serious trouble with the French, they withdrew most of their troops and in 1689 allowed the fort to be taken by the Indians.

The energetic Phipps had done his best, and in 1692 Pemaquid was rebuilt and regarrisoned. The later story of this fort is one that causes Englishmen to blush for the scandalous and dastardly action of one of their countrymen. In 1696, acting under the orders of Stoughton, lieutenant-governor of Ma.s.sachusetts, Chubb tempted a party of Abenaki to come to the fort, and there killed some and kidnapped others. The French immediately seized the opportunity to revenge this cowardly treatment of the savages, and on August 14, Iberville, after making a triumphal progress from Quebec, capturing English vessels as he sailed along the coast, appeared before Fort Pemaquid. Chubb scornfully refused to surrender, and supported his vainglorious words by capitulating the very next day.

So delighted were the French by their success that in the following year they determined to capture Boston. The Marquis de Nesmond was to command the fleet, while Frontenac was to lead the land forces. Delay for one reason or another, contrary winds and stormy weather, kept the expedition back until the summer was pa.s.sed, when it was found to be too late in the season to proceed. By the time that any fresh expedition could be undertaken King William's War was over, and the Treaty of Ryswick had been signed and was proclaimed in America in 1698. The importance of the treaty with regard to the American colonies is to be found only in the fact that it gave breathing-s.p.a.ce to the combatants.

Both parties regarded it as a truce more than a treaty, and both looked forward to a not far distant date when their differences might once again be decided by the arbitrament of war.

The long-looked-for day came in 1701 when James II. died, and Louis XIV., with that spirit, half-bravado half-chivalrous, declared the Old Pretender James III. of England. The real fighting that now ensued took place not in the forests of North America but in the lowlands of Europe.

The Netherlands, the c.o.c.kpit of Europe, were once again to be drenched with blood. The battles of Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet played an important part in the history of North American colonies. Fighting, however, was not unknown in the West, and on May 4, 1702, war was openly declared. The old raiding expeditions began again, and the French led the way by an attack on Wells, situated on Cas...o...b..y.

The little town was terribly beset by the marauding Abenaki Indians, and was almost at its last gasp when succoured by an armed force by sea from Ma.s.sachusetts. Then followed the historic attack upon Deerfield in 1704.

It was a small town of 300 inhabitants on the north-west border of Ma.s.sachusetts. The French and their Indian allies burst upon it in February. Fifty of the people were butchered and one hundred were carried into a captivity made famous by John Williams, one of the prisoners, in _The Redeemed Captive returning to Sion_. "The direct and simple narrative of Williams is plainly the work of an honest and courageous man."[255] He tells of his own and his fellow-captives'

sufferings; and, in particular, of how the Jesuits promised him untold wealth if he would be converted, to which he replied, "the offer of the whole world would tempt him no more than a blackberry."[256] As years went by the captives were either exchanged or, having been converted, married Canadians and settled at Quebec or Montreal.

The disgrace of these murdering expeditions falls upon the French Government, for they were planned by French officials and were carried out for the most part by savage Indians. It must be allowed, however, that the havoc on the border settlements of Canada had been caused by the Five Nations, the friends of the English. Thus retaliation was the feeling that grew up on both sides. The Canadians cared nothing for the horrors that they perpetrated in the New England colonies; while the English settlers naturally vented their wrath upon the nearest object of attack, Acadia, for their indignation had been fanned to white heat by the unspeakable horrors of Indian war. In revenge for the ma.s.sacre at Deerfield, Major Benjamin Church with a force from New England appeared before Port Royal in 1704, and burnt the French settlement at Grand Pre.

Three years later Colonel John March, supported by a company of volunteers from Ma.s.sachusetts, made an attack upon Acadia, which proved abortive. This expedition, together with a French raid upon Haverfield on the Merrimac, had the effect of stirring Ma.s.sachusetts to more grandiose schemes, and in 1708 Samuel Vetch was sent to England to ask for the a.s.sistance of regular troops.

The emissary selected by the "Bostonnais" had been well-chosen, for in the colonies he was one of the most notable men of his day. He had lived in the tropical heats of Darien; he had sojourned amongst the French Canadians; and he had mixed with the cosmopolitan population of New York. His adventurous life had given him an intimate knowledge of the affairs and methods of the English and French colonial systems. He was a shrewd, self-made man; very impetuous and sanguine, but at the same time astute and wary. Above all he was filled with determination and ambition, and if he had his own advance at heart, it was only in conjunction with the true welfare of his country and her colonies. His great ambition was, that "Her Majesty shall be sole empress of the vast North American Continent." Vetch had the common sense to see that this glorious object could only be accomplished by a united and aggressive action against France. The first-hand knowledge that Vetch possessed seems to have had considerable influence at the English Court; and as Marlborough's victories had been so decisive in Europe, it was thought that something might be done in America. In fact, the agent was granted all that he had asked, and he returned to Ma.s.sachusetts with a promise of a fleet and five regiments, amounting in all to about 3000 men.

The prospect of conquering Canada now appeared less visionary than ever before; the settlers ought to have felt that they were entering on the last great struggle, had it not been for the fact that, as always, colony was divided against colony. Pennsylvania, the home of the Quaker, disapproved of war on principle; it was a safe theory for the Pennsylvanians, for they were out of reach of French attack, and they knew that they were well protected by those colonies which lay in the zone of danger. Then, too, instead of acting like true men, the people of New Jersey refused any actual help in the way of a force, though they were not so mean as the Pennsylvanians, for they did send a contribution of money. The New Yorkers exhibited a more magnanimous spirit; they threw in their lot with the people of New England and roused the Five Nations against the French. The chief expedition by land was under the command of Colonel Francis Nicholson, who wrote to Lord Sunderland in July, and said that if "I had not accepted the command, there would have been insuperable difficulties."[257] This sentence tells its own story, for the writer knew that any other commander would have been without support owing to the shameful provincial jealousies which were the everlasting reproach and curse of the American states. Nicholson was a man of robust strength, a clear, practical brain, though ambitious, vehement, and bold. He had already proved himself a fairly capable colonial governor in Virginia, New York, Maryland, and Carolina, where, though his private life may not have been a pattern of strict morality, his conduct in official affairs was unimpeachable. With 1500 men he entrenched himself at Wood Creek, near Lake Champlain, where he was besieged by Ramesay, governor of Montreal. The settlers were able to drive back the French, but were forced to wait anxiously for news of the grand naval expedition that was to do so much; they waited in vain, day by day being struck down by disease and pestilence; and Nicholson was finally compelled to retreat, leaving behind him innumerable graves as proofs of the patience and courage of his little force.

The British squadron with the promised regiments was long overdue. The forces of Ma.s.sachusetts, New Hamps.h.i.+re, and Rhode Island were encamped at Boston ready, on the appearance of the fleet, to sail to Quebec. From May to July they were diligently drilled, and Vetch wrote in August, "The bodies of men are in general better than in Europe and I hope their courage will prove so too; so that nothing in human probability can prevent the success of this glorious enterprise but the too late arrival of the fleet."[258] If it should not come, "it would be the last disappointment to her Majesty's colonies, who have so heartily complied with her royal order, and would render them much more miserable than if such a thing had never been undertaken."[259] The fleet never came! To the grief and despair of the colonies, it had been sent to Portugal to meet the exigencies of the European war. Although the hearts of the English settlers had been made sick by hope deferred, yet a tenacious energy had always been one of their strongest characteristics; and the representatives of Ma.s.sachusetts still urged the home Government to make a supreme effort against New France. They asked Nicholson, who sailed for Europe, to point out how much a.s.sistance was needed, how advantageous the undertaking would be to the Crown, and how impoverished and enfeebled the colony was by the long and expensive war. The last plea was true enough, for Ma.s.sachusetts, New Hamps.h.i.+re, and Rhode Island had spent on the disastrous military schemes of 1709 no less than 46,000. Like Ma.s.sachusetts, the colony of New York was equally anxious to impress the English Crown with the importance of the question at stake, and in 1710 sent five Mohawk chiefs under the guidance of Peter Schuyler to interest the English in colonial affairs, and at the same time to so impress the chiefs with England's power as to dispose them to hold fast to their alliance.

The resolution and tenacity shown by the colonies had some effect in the home country. An English force of over three thousand men was at last dispatched to Boston; and though timed to arrive in March, it did not reach that port until July. Meantime the people of Ma.s.sachusetts had once again stirred themselves; raised their own militia; tempted the soldiers of 1709 to rejoin by a promise of the Queen's musket; and actually quartered troops on private houses, "any law or usage to the contrary notwithstanding."[260] This fresh outburst of energy culminated in Nicholson again taking command and sailing for Port Royal. On September 24, 1710, he reached his object of attack; and on October 1 the French, finding themselves outnumbered, readily surrendered; the town became Annapolis, and Acadia or Nova Scotia pa.s.sed permanently into the possession of Great Britain, owing to the bravery of her American colonists.

The capture of Acadia was to Nicholson merely a stepping-stone towards the greater defeat of the French and the final subjugation of New France. He returned to England to further his schemes and was there ably supported by Jeremiah Dummer, who was at that time in the service of Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke. The Sacheverell trial of 1710 had, amongst other things, caused the fall of the Whigs and concluded Marlborough's warlike schemes. The Tories, champions of peace, were left in power with St John and Harley as their leaders; but so ably did the two colonials plead the cause of their brethren, that in April 1711 fifteen men-of-war and forty-six transports, containing five thousand regular troops, sailed for America. To their intense surprise the officers of this great armament found on their arrival that they were regarded by the colonists with the strongest suspicion. The s.h.i.+ps had only been provisioned to reach America; definite orders as to their further destination had not been issued; and the French had attempted to poison the minds of the Bostonians by the idea that the British forces were to subvert colonial liberties and reduce Ma.s.sachusetts, Rhode Island, and New Hamps.h.i.+re to the position of Crown colonies. One Frenchman wrote, "There is an antipathy between the English of Europe and those of America, who will not endure troops from England even to guard their forts."[261] Another, Costobelle, had said as early as December 1709, "I do not think that they are so blind as not to see that they will insensibly be brought under the yoke of the Parliament of Old England; but by the cruelties that the Canadians and Indians exercise in continual incursions upon their lands, I judge that they would rather be delivered from the inhumanity of such neighbours than preserve all the former powers of their little republic."[262] For the reasons stated in this report the New England colonists were on the horns of a dilemma; they feared the British troops, but they were equally afraid of their French neighbours.

There were, however, other difficulties. The presence of the British regulars acted as an incentive to ill-feeling, which showed itself in the deliberate lack of provisions and pilots, and in the willing shelter offered to deserters from the army. The English officers, too, failed entirely to understand now, as again in later years, the character of the colonists; they were often arrogant or at least patronising; and to the republican New Englander they appeared b.u.mptious aristocrats. The colonist was a brave and experienced man, and it was irksome to him to find himself in an inferior position to men who really knew less than he did about Indian warfare and forest fighting. On the other hand, the English troops felt quite as bitterly as the colonists, and Colonel King wrote to St John in July 1711, "You'll find in my Journal what Difficultyes we mett with through the Misfortune that the Coloneys were not inform'd of our Coming two Months sooner, and through the Interestedness, ill Nature, and Sowerness of these People, whose Government, Doctrine and Manners, whose Hypocracy and canting, are insupportable; and no man living but one of Gen'l Hill's good sense and good nature could have managed them. But if such a Man mett with nothing he could depend on, altho' vested with the Queen's Royal Power and Authority, and Supported by a Number of Troops sufficient to reduce by force all the Coloneys, 'tis easy to determine the Respect and Obedience Her Majesty may reasonably expect from them ... they will grow more stiff and disobedient every day unless they are brought under our government and deprived of their charters."[263]

The inhabitants of Boston may have shown many signs of coolness, but the authorities of Ma.s.sachusetts loyally supported the expedition which was supposed to be about to accomplish so much. On the 30th July the fleet sailed from Boston to the St Lawrence under the command of Sir Hovenden Walker, of whom little is known, and who in no way added l.u.s.tre to his name. The colonial contingent that went by sea consisted of about fifteen hundred men, led by the experienced and buoyant Samuel Vetch.

Another colonial force was commanded by Francis Nicholson, whose object was to move north by way of Lake Champlain and attack the Canadian strongholds. At the head of all was General Hill, or Jack Hill, the man about town, who was no soldier, and owed his position to his sister Abigail Hill, the famous supplanter of the d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough.

General Hill made no attempt to gain laurels for himself or his country, and his troops struggled back to Boston disgraced, not by their own actions, but by the want of action on the part of their leader.

Walker's fleet entered the St Lawrence on the 22nd of August. The Admiral, totally ignorant of the navigation of the gulf, steered his vessels in misty weather straight for the northern sh.o.r.e. His own s.h.i.+p was saved just in time, but not so those which followed, and eight of the transports were dashed to pieces on the rocks, with a loss of almost a thousand lives. Walker, as proved by his own writings, never possessed any true ability; and he was only too ready, like Jack Hill, to look for some pretext for retreat. This horrible disaster was sufficient for the Admiral's purpose, and three days later the mighty armament turned away from Quebec, and New France was for the time saved. Walker looked upon the wreck as providential, and that the army had been saved from worse disasters. It was indeed a strange action for a British sailor to pen words of sincere grat.i.tude for the loss of half his fleet. "Had we arrived safe at Quebec," he writes, "our provisions would have been reduced to a very small proportion, not exceeding eight or nine weeks at short allowance, so that between ten and twelve thousand men must have been left to perish with the extremity of cold and hunger. I must confess the melancholy contemplation of this (had it happened) strikes me with horror; for how dismal must it have been to have beheld the seas and earth locked up by adamantine frosts, and swoln with high mountains of snow in a barren and uncultivated region."[264] Walker sailed back to Boston and then with his fleet returned to England, where as a final completion to the horrible fiasco, the Admiral's s.h.i.+p was blown up.

Swift records this event as taking place in the Thames, but it more probably occurred at Spithead, owing "to an accident and carelessness of some rogue, who was going as they think to steal some gunpowder: five hundred men are lost."[265]

Every disgraceful plot deserved to come to a bad end. The ignominious conclusion of the Walker and Hill expedition was only to be expected, since its true object had been to eclipse the victories of Marlborough and bring about his entire downfall. St John and Harley had not been animated by patriotic or imperial sentiments when Mrs Masham had agreed to a.s.sist them in the backstairs attack upon the Churchill family. The price of her a.s.sistance was a high military command for her incapable brother Jack Hill. The two Tory ministers cared nothing for the success or failure of the colonies; all they required at the time was the fall of the Whigs with Marlborough at their head. The blame therefore must to a certain extent rest upon the English Crown ministers; but the incompetence of the two commanders, though not unparalleled in English history, was worse than most instances, because it bordered very closely upon cowardice. Muddle-headed as some British generals have proved themselves, it is almost impossible to find another case where the more serious charge can be brought or sustained. Marlborough had certainly fallen; but his unpatriotic enemies had not succeeded in effacing the glories of the four battles which still stand out as the chief features of the War of the Spanish Succession. Although St John's plot was disgraceful and deserved the failure that it earned, yet the disaster fell very hardly upon New England. It has been hinted that the colonials were themselves to blame, and that they were so afraid of the presence of an English force that they preferred failure to success. They feared, according to Colonel King's _Journal_, that "the conquest of Canada will naturally lead the Queen into changing their present disorderly government."[266] The New Englanders could not, however, be so indifferent as is supposed, for the people of Ma.s.sachusetts at any rate did their utmost to make the attack a success; and it was afterwards found that one in five of her male population was on active service in 1711; while many years had to elapse before the colony recovered from the effects of her financial exhaustion.[267]

The War of the Spanish Succession in Europe had for all practical purposes ceased, and the echo of it in America was dying away. The belligerents were weary; the English began to feel the burden of their National Debt; while the French were utterly exhausted, for in 1709 even nature had turned against the omnipotent Louis, and the country was impoverished by a winter which killed the fruits and vines. In 1713 terms were at last agreed to; and the Treaty of Utrecht, the first really great colonial treaty, was the result. It is idle to speculate on what enormous gains might have fallen to the English if party spirit and spite had not cut short the remarkable career of England's great captain. Had Marlborough been allowed to continue his unbroken series of triumphant victories, and had he been permitted to select a commander-in-chief in the West, it is most probable that the Treaty of Utrecht would have contained those clauses which made the Treaty of Paris so famous half a century later. As it was, the gains to England in the colonial world were not to be despised. Acadia was surrendered to Great Britain, with Hudson Bay and Newfoundland; on the other hand, Cape Breton Island was restored to France. The great faults of the treaty, as far as it concerned the Western Hemisphere, lay first in allowing the French certain fis.h.i.+ng rights off the sh.o.r.es of Newfoundland, which remained until recently "a dangerous cause of quarrel between two great nations, a perpetual irritating sore, a bar to the progress and prosperity of the Colony;"[268] and, secondly, it was unwise to restore Cape Breton to the French, as it was the key to the St Lawrence. A Frenchman pointed this out in 1745, when he said that "it was necessary that we should retain a position that would make us at all times masters of the entrance to the river which leads to New France";[269] and even in 1713 the French Government realised something of the island's importance, and reared upon its desolate, fog-bound sh.o.r.e the mighty fortress of Louisburg, a stronghold that came to be regarded as impregnable, and second only in importance to that of Quebec.

"An avalanche of defeat and disaster had fallen upon the old age of Louis XIV.,"[270] and he was forced into a treaty which contained many humiliations. He must, however, have realised that England had once more lost her opportunity, and that it was still possible for France to a.s.sert her supremacy in the West. Canada, the goal of the New Englander, was still New France, and for the next thirty years chronic warfare, sometimes only flickering, but never extinct, smouldered along the frontier line of the English and French settlers. The Canadians had the distinct advantage of knowing what their great object was. It was far more magnificent than that which filled the minds of the English; it was perhaps too widely extended, but it was undoubtedly grand--North America for the Gaul. To the governors of Ma.s.sachusetts and New York the dream of the total defeat of the French and their banishment from Canada may have occasionally appeared; but their general outlook upon the question was as circ.u.mscribed as that of the French was diffuse; and to them the safety of their colonies, the friends.h.i.+p of the Five Nations, and sound, steady trade were sufficiently difficult problems for solution.

From the moment of the Treaty of Utrecht Acadia was the source of quarrels and intrigues which were entirely due to the interference of French Canadian priests. With these difficulties, however, the Thirteen Colonies had little or nothing to do, but found ample scope for their energies in resisting priestly plots elsewhere. The Canadian Government, owing to the preaching of the Jesuit priest Sebastian Rasle, succeeded in renewing their alliance with the Abenaki Indians on the New England frontier, although the chiefs of that tribe had made terms with the people of Ma.s.sachusetts in 1717. Rasle was a man of zeal, of st.u.r.dy independent spirit, and fired with intense hatred of the English. The Ma.s.sachusetts Government realised the danger of allowing this man, from his mission-station on the Kennebec River, to urge the Indians to acts of violence and cruelty. Letters are still preserved which prove that he was the agent of the Canadian Government, and exciting the Indians for French purposes. It seems a somewhat cowardly action, but it is evident that New France, concealing itself beneath the banner of ostensible peace, was fighting the New Englanders by means of savage allies. To crush this underhand scheme, in August 1724 a body of men under Captains Harmon, Moulton, and Brown, rowed up the Kennebec, took the Indian village, killed the Jesuit Rasle, and burnt the Indian wigwams. This blow, which was both daring and statesmanlike, had an excellent effect, and was hailed with joy by the border settlers, who saw in it the end of their troubles; and after a similar raid by Captain Heath on the tribes of the Pen.o.bscot in 1726, the Indians readily made terms of peace which lasted for many years.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE MARQUIS DE MONTCALM. _From a painting by J. B.

Ma.s.se._]

The main object of the French in the West, during the first half of the eighteenth century, was to shut the English settlers in behind the Alleghanies by means of a series of forts. In spite of the strong opposition of the Five Nations,[271] the French erected one of the earliest of these permanent blockhouses at the mouth of the Niagara River in 1720. The English Colonists saw the danger, but the Legislature of New York was so mean in matters of finance that it refused any pecuniary a.s.sistance in creating a similar erection at Oswego in 1727.