Montcalm and Wolfe Part 31

[Footnote 561: _Memoires sur le Canada_, 1749-1760.]

[Footnote 562: _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 15 Oct. 1759._]

[Footnote 563: _Ibid., 7 Nov. 1759._]

[Footnote 564: _Ibid., 6 Aout, 1758._]

Administrative corruption was not the only bane of Canada. Her financial condition was desperate. The ordinary circulating medium consisted of what was known as card money, and amounted to only a million of francs.

This being insufficient, Bigot, like his predecessor Hocquart, issued promissory notes on his own authority, and made them legal tender. They were for sums from one franc to a hundred, and were called _ordonnances_. Their issue was blamed at Versailles as an encroachment on the royal prerogative, though they were recognized by the Ministry in view of the necessity of the case. Every autumn those who held them to any considerable amount might bring them to the colonial treasurer, who gave in return bills of exchange on the royal treasury in France. At first these bills were promptly paid; then delays took place, and the notes depreciated; till in 1759 the Ministry, aghast at the amount, refused payment, and the utmost dismay and confusion followed.[565]

[Footnote 565: _Reflections sommaires sur le Commerce qui s'est fait en Canada. etat present du Canada_. Compare Stevenson, _Card Money of Canada_, in _Transactions of the Historical Society of Quebec_, 1873-1875.]

The vast jarring, discordant mechanism of corruption grew incontrollable; it seized upon Bigot, and dragged him, despite himself, into perils which his prudence would have shunned. He was becoming a victim to the rapacity of his own confederates, whom he dared not offend by refusing his connivance and his signature of frauds which became more and more recklessly audacious. He asked leave to retire from office, in the hope that his successor would bear the brunt of the ministerial displeasure. Pean had withdrawn already, and with the fruits of his plunder bought land in France, where he thought himself safe. But though the Intendant had long been an object of distrust, and had often been warned to mend his ways,[566] yet such was his energy, his executive power, and his fertility of resource, that in the crisis of the war it was hard to dispense with him. Neither his abilities, however, nor his strong connections in France, nor an ally whom he had secured in the bureau of the Colonial Minister himself, could avail him much longer; and the letters from Versailles became appalling in rebuke and menace.

[Footnote 566: _Ordres du Roy et Depeches des Ministres, 1751-1758._]

"The s.h.i.+p 'Britannia,'" wrote the Minister, Berryer, "laden with goods such as are wanted in the colony, was captured by a privateer from St.

Malo, and brought into Quebec. You sold the whole cargo for eight hundred thousand francs. The purchasers made a profit of two millions.

You bought back a part for the King at one million, or two hundred thousand more than the price which you sold the whole. With conduct like this it is no wonder that the expenses of the colony become insupportable. The amount of your drafts on the treasury is frightful.

The fortunes of your subordinates throw suspicion on your administration." And in another letter on the same day: "How could it happen that the small-pox among the Indians cost the King a million francs? What does this expense mean? Who is answerable for it? Is it the officers who command the posts, or is it the storekeepers? You give me no particulars. What has become of the immense quant.i.ty of provisions sent to Canada last year? I am forced to conclude that the King's stores are set down as consumed from the moment they arrive, and then sold to His Majesty at exorbitant prices. Thus the King buys stores in France, and then buys them again in Canada. I no longer wonder at the immense fortunes made in the colony."[567] Some months later the Minister writes: "You pay bills without examination, and then find an error in your accounts of three million six hundred thousand francs. In the letters from Canada I see nothing but incessant speculation in provisions and goods, which are sold to the King for ten times more than they cost in France. For the last time, I exhort you to give these things your serious attention, for they will not escape from mine."[568]

[Footnote 567: _Le Ministre a Bigot, 19 Jan. 1759._]

[Footnote 568: _Ibid., 29 Aout, 1759._]

"I write, Monsieur, to answer your last two letters, in which you tell me that instead of sixteen millions, your drafts on the treasury for 1758 will reach twenty-four millions, and that this year they will rise to from thirty-one to thirty-three millions. It seems, then, that there are no bounds to the expenses of Canada. They double almost every year, while you seem to give yourself no concern except to get them paid. Do you suppose that I can advise the King to approve such an administration? or do you think that you can take the immense sum of thirty-three millions out of the royal treasury by merely a.s.suring me that you have signed drafts for it? This, too, for expenses incurred irregularly, often needlessly, always wastefully; which make the fortune of everybody who has the least hand in them, and about which you know so little that after reporting them at sixteen millions, you find two months after that they will reach twenty-four. You are accused of having given the furnis.h.i.+ng of provisions to one man, who under the name of commissary-general, has set what prices he pleased; of buying for the King at second or third hand what you might have got from the producer at half the price; of having in this and other ways made the fortunes of persons connected with you; and of living in splendor in the midst of a public misery, which all the letters from the colony agree in ascribing to bad administration, and in charging M. de Vaudreuil with weakness in not preventing."[569]

[Footnote 569: _Le Ministre a Bigotu, 29 Aout, 1759_ (second letter of this date).]

These drastic utterances seem to have been partly due to a letter written by Montcalm in cipher to the Marechal de Belleisle, then minister of war. It painted the deplorable condition of Canada, and exposed without reserve the peculations and robberies of those intrusted with its interests. "It seems," said the General, "as if they were all hastening to make their fortunes before the loss of the colony; which many of them perhaps desire as a veil to their conduct." He gives among other cases that of Le Mercier, chief of Canadian artillery, who had come to Canada as a private soldier twenty years before, and had so prospered on fraudulent contracts that he would soon be worth nearly a million. "I have often," continues Montcalm, "spoken of these expenditures to M. de Vaudreuil and M. Bigot; and each throws the blame on the other."[570] And yet at the same time Vaudreuil was a.s.suring the Minister that Bigot was without blame.

[Footnote 570: _Montcalm au Ministre de la Guerre, Lettre confidentielle, 12 Avril,_ 1759.]

Some two months before Montcalm wrote this letter, the Minister, Berryer, sent a despatch to the Governor and Intendant which filled them with ire and mortification. It ordered them to do nothing without consulting the general of the French regulars, not only in matters of war, but in all matters of administration touching the defence and preservation of the colony. A plainer proof of confidence on one hand and distrust on the other could not have been given.[571]

[Footnote 571: _Le Ministre a Vaudreuil et Bigot, 20 Fev. 1759._]

One Querdisien-Tremais was sent from Bordeaux as an agent of Government to make investigation. He played the part of detective, wormed himself into the secrets of the confederates, and after six months of patient inquisition traced out four distinct combinations for public plunder.

Explicit orders were now given to Bigot, who, seeing no other escape, broke with Cadet, and made him disgorge two millions of stolen money.

The Commissary-General and his partners became so terrified that they afterwards gave up nearly seven millions more.[572] Stormy events followed, and the culprits found shelter for a time amid the tumults of war. Peculation did not cease, but a day of reckoning was at hand.

[Footnote 572: _Proces de Bigot, Cadet, et autres, Memoirs pour Francois Bigot, 3'me partie_.]

NOTE: The printed doc.u.ments of the trial of Bigot and the other peculators include the defence of Bigot, of which the first part occupies 303 quarto pages, and the second part 764. Among the other papers are the arguments for Pean, Varin, Saint-Blin, Boishebert, Martel, Joncaire-Chabert and several more, along with the elaborate _Jugement rendue_, the _Requetes du Procureur-General,_ the _Reponse aux Memoires de M. Bigot et du Sieur Pean,_ etc., forming together five quarto volumes, all of which I have carefully examined. These are in the Library of Harvard University. There is another set, also of five volumes, in the Library of the Historical Society of Quebec, containing most of the papers just mentioned, and, bound with them, various others in ma.n.u.script, among which are doc.u.ments in defence of Vaudreuil (printed in part); Estebe, Corp.r.o.n, p.e.n.i.sseault, Maurin, and Breard. I have examined this collection also. The ma.n.u.script _Ordres du Roy et Depeches des Ministres_, 1757-1760, as well as the letters of Vaudreuil, Bougainville, Daine, Doreil, and Montcalm throw much light on the maladministration of the time; as do many contemporary doc.u.ments, notably those ent.i.tled _Memoire sur les Fraudes commises dans la Colonie, etat present du Canada,_ and _Memoire sur le Canada_ (Archives Nationales). The remarkable anonymous work printed by the Historical Society of Quebec under the t.i.tle _Memoires sur le Canada depuis 1749 jusqu'ae 1760, is full of curious matter concerning Bigot and his a.s.sociates which squares well with other evidence. This is the source from which Smith, in his _History of Canada_ (Quebec, 1815), drew most of his information on the subject. A ma.n.u.script which seems to be the original draft of this valuable doc.u.ment was preserved at the Bastile, and, with other papers, was thrown into the street when that castle was destroyed. They were gathered up, and afterwards bought by a Russian named Dubrowski, who carried them to St. Petersburg. Lord Dufferin, when minister there, procured a copy of the ma.n.u.script in question, which is now in the keeping of Abbe H. Verreau at Montreal, to whose kindness I owe the opportunity of examining it. In substance it differs little from the printed work, though the language and the arrangement often vary from it. The author, whoever he may have been, was deeply versed in Canadian affairs of the time, and though often caustic, is generally trustworthy.

Chapter 18

1757, 1758

Pitt

The war kindled in the American forest was now raging in full conflagration among the kingdoms of Europe; and in the midst stood Frederic of Prussia, a veritable fire-king. He had learned through secret agents that he was to be attacked, and that the wrath of Maria Theresa with her two allies, Pompadour and the Empress of Russia, was soon to wreak itself upon him. With his usual prompt audacity he antic.i.p.ated his enemies, marched into Saxony, and began the Continental war. His position seemed desperate. England, sundered from Austria, her old ally, had made common cause with him; but he had no other friend worth the counting. France, Russia, Austria, Sweden, Saxony, the collective Germanic Empire, and most of the smaller German States had joined hands for his ruin, eager to crush him and divide the spoil, parcelling out his dominions among themselves in advance by solemn mutual compact. Against the five millions of Prussia were arrayed populations of more than a hundred million. The little kingdom was open on all sides to attack, and her enemies were spurred on by the bitterest animosity. It was thought that one campaign would end the war. The war lasted seven years, and Prussia came out of it triumphant. Such a warrior as her indomitable king Europe has rarely seen. If the Seven Years War made the maritime and colonial greatness of England, it also raised Prussia to the rank of a first-cla.s.s Power.

Frederic began with a victory, routing the Austrians in one of the fiercest of recorded conflicts, the battle of Prague. Then in his turn he was beaten at Kolin. All seemed lost. The hosts of the coalition were rolling in upon him like a deluge. Surrounded by enemies, in the jaws of destruction, hoping for little but to die in battle, this strange hero solaced himself with an exhaustless effusion of bad verses, sometimes mournful, sometimes cynical, sometimes indignant, and sometimes breathing a dauntless resolution; till, when his hour came, he threw down his pen to achieve those feats of arms which stamp him one of the foremost soldiers of the world.

The French and Imperialists, in overwhelming force, thought to crush him at Rosbach. He put them to shameful rout; and then, instead of bonfires and Te Deums, mocked at them in doggerel rhymes of amazing indecency.

While he was beating the French, the Austrians took Silesia from him. He marched to recover it, found them strongly posted at Leuthen, eighty thousand men against thirty thousand, and without hesitation resolved to attack them. Never was he more heroic than on the eve of this, his crowning triumph. "The hour is at hand," he said to his generals. "I mean, in spite of the rules of military art, to attack Prince Karl's army, which is nearly thrice our own. This risk I must run, or all is lost. We must beat him or die, all of us, before his batteries." He burst unawares upon the Austrian left, and rolled their whole host together, corps upon corps, in a tumult of irretrievable ruin.

While her great ally was reaping a full harvest of laurels, England, dragged into the Continental war because that apple of discord, Hanover, belonged to her King, found little but humiliation. Minorca was wrested from her, and the Ministry had an innocent man shot to avert from themselves the popular indignation; while the same Ministry, scared by a phantom of invasion, brought over German troops to defend British soil.

But now an event took place pregnant with glorious consequence. The reins of power fell into the hands of William Pitt. He had already held them for a brief s.p.a.ce, forced into office at the end of 1756 by popular clamor, in spite of the Whig leaders and against the wishes of the King.

But the place was untenable. Newcastle's Parliament would not support him; the Duke of c.u.mberland opposed him; the King hated him; and in April 1757, he was dismissed. Then ensued eleven weeks of bickering and dispute, during which, in the midst of a great war, England was left without a government. It became clear that none was possible without Pitt; and none with him could be permanent and strong unless joined with those influences which had thus far controlled the majorities of Parliament. Therefore an extraordinary union was brought about; Lord Chesterfield acting as go-between to reconcile the ill-a.s.sorted pair.

One of them brought to the alliance the confidence and support of the people; the other, Court management, borough interest, and parliamentary connections. Newcastle was made First Lord of the Treasury, and Pitt, the old enemy who had repeatedly browbeat and ridiculed him, became Secretary of State, with the lead of the House of Commons and full control of the war and foreign affairs. It was a partners.h.i.+p of magpie and eagle. The dirty work of government, intrigue, bribery, and all the patronage that did not affect the war, fell to the share of the old politician. If Pitt could appoint generals, admirals, and amba.s.sadors, Newcastle was welcome to the rest. "I will borrow the Duke's majorities to carry on the government," said the new secretary; and with the audacious self-confidence that was one of his traits, he told the Duke of Devons.h.i.+re, "I am sure that I can save this country, and that n.o.body else can." England hailed with one acclaim the undaunted leader who asked for no reward but the honor of serving her. The hour had found the man. For the next four years this imposing figure towers supreme in British history.

He had glaring faults, some of them of a sort not to have been expected in him. Vanity, the common weakness of small minds, was the most disfiguring foible of this great one. He had not the simplicity which becomes greatness so well. He could give himself theatrical airs, strike att.i.tudes, and dart stage lightnings from his eyes; yet he was formidable even in his affectations. Behind his great intellectual powers lay a burning enthusiasm, a force of pa.s.sion and fierce intensity of will, that gave redoubled impetus to the fiery shafts of his eloquence; and the haughty and masterful nature of the man had its share in the ascendency which he long held over Parliament. He would blast the labored argument of an adversary by a look of scorn or a contemptuous wave of the hand.

The Great Commoner was not a man of the people in the popular sense of that hackneyed phrase. Though himself poor, being a younger son, he came of a rich and influential family; he was patrician at heart; both his faults and his virtues, his proud incorruptibility and pa.s.sionate, domineering patriotism, bore the patrician stamp. Yet he loved liberty and he loved the people, because they were the English people. The effusive humanitarianism of to-day had no part in him, and the democracy of to-day would detest him. Yet to the middle-cla.s.s England of his own time, that unenfranchised England which had little representation in Parliament, he was a voice, an inspiration, and a tower of strength. He would not flatter the people; but, turning with contempt from the tricks and devices of official politics, he threw himself with a confidence that never wavered on their patriotism and public spirit. They answered him with a boundless trust, asked but to follow his lead, gave him without stint their money and their blood, loved him for his domestic virtues and his disinterestedness, believed him even in his self-contradiction, and idolized him even in his bursts of arrogant pa.s.sion. It was he who waked England from her lethargy, shook off the spell that Newcastle and his fellow-enchanters had cast over her, and taught her to know herself again. A heart that beat in unison with all that was British found responsive throbs in every corner of the vast empire that through him was to become more vast. With the instinct of his fervid patriotism he would join all its far-extended members into one, not by vain a.s.sertions of parliamentary supremacy, but by bonds of sympathy and ties of a common freedom and a common cause.

The pa.s.sion for power and glory subdued in him all the sordid parts of humanity, and he made the power and glory of England one with his own.

He could change front through resentment or through policy; but in whatever path he moved, his objects were the same: not to curb the power of France in America, but to annihilate it; crush her navy, cripple her foreign trade, ruin her in India, in Africa, and wherever else, east or west, she had found foothold; gain for England the mastery of the seas, open to her the great highways of the globe, make her supreme in commerce and colonization; and while limiting the activities of her rival to the European continent, give to her the whole world for a sphere.

To this British Roman was opposed the pampered Sardanapalus of Versailles, with the silken favorite who by calculated adultery had bought the power to ruin France. The Marquise de Pompadour, who began life as Jeanne Poisson,--Jane Fish,--daughter of the head clerk of a banking house, who then became wife of a rich financier, and then, as mistress of the King, rose to a pinnacle of gilded ignominy, chose this time to turn out of office the two ministers who had shown most ability and force,--Argenson, head of the department of war, and Machault, head of the marine and colonies; the one because he was not subservient to her will, and the other because he had unwittingly touched the self-love of her royal paramour. She aspired to a share in the conduct of the war, and not only made and unmade ministers and generals, but discussed campaigns and battles with them, while they listened to her prating with a show of obsequious respect, since to lose her favor was to risk losing all. A few months later, when blows fell heavy and fast, she turned a deaf ear to representations of financial straits and military disasters, played the heroine, affected a greatness of soul superior to misfortune, and in her perfumed boudoir varied her tiresome graces by posing as a Roman matron. In fact she never wavered in her spite against Frederic, and her fort.i.tude was perfect in bearing the sufferings of others and defying dangers that could not touch her.

When Pitt took office it was not over France, but over England that the clouds hung dense and black. Her prospects were of the gloomiest.

"Whoever is in or whoever is out," wrote Chesterfield, "I am sure we are undone both at home and abroad: at home by our increasing debt and expenses; abroad by our ill-luck and incapacity. We are no longer a nation." And his despondency was shared by many at the beginning of the most triumphant Administration in British history. The shuffling weakness of his predecessors had left Pitt a heritage of tribulation.

From America came news of Loudon's manifold failures; from Germany that of the miscarriage of the Duke of c.u.mberland, who, at the head of an army of Germans in British pay, had been forced to sign the convention of Kloster-Zeven, by which he promised to disband them. To these disasters was added a third, of which the new Government alone had to bear the burden. At the end of summer Pitt sent a great expedition to attack Rochefort; the military and naval commanders disagreed, and the consequence was failure. There was no light except from far-off India, where Clive won the great victory of Pla.s.sey, avenged the Black Hole of Calcutta, and prepared the ruin of the French power and the undisputed ascendency of England.

If the English had small cause as yet to rejoice in their own successes, they found comfort in those of their Prussian allies. The rout of the French at Rossbach and of the Austrians at Leuthen spread joy through their island. More than this, they felt that they had found at last a leader after their own heart; and the consciousness regenerated them.

For the paltering imbecility of the old Ministry they had the unconquerable courage, the iron purpose, the unwavering faith, the inextinguishable hope, of the new one. "England has long been in labor,"

said Frederic of Prussia, "and at last she has brought forth a man." It was not only that instead of weak commanders Pitt gave her strong ones; the same men who had served her feebly under the blight of the Newcastle Administration served her manfully and well under his robust impulsion.

"n.o.body ever entered his closet," said Colonel Barre, "who did not come out of it a braver man." That inspiration was felt wherever the British flag waved. Zeal awakened with the a.s.surance that conspicuous merit was sure of its reward, and that no officer who did his duty would now be made a sacrifice, like Admiral Byng, to appease public indignation at ministerial failures. As Nature, languis.h.i.+ng in chill vapors and dull smothering fogs, revives at the touch of the sun, so did England spring into fresh life under the kindling influence of one great man.

With the opening of the year 1758 her course of Continental victories began. The Duke of c.u.mberland, the King's son, was recalled in disgrace, and a general of another stamp, Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, was placed in command of the Germans in British pay, with the contingent of English troops now added to them. The French, too, changed commanders.

The Duke of Richelieu, a dissolute old beau, returned to Paris to spend in heartless gallantries the wealth he had gained by plunder; and a young soldier-churchman, the Comte de Clermont, took his place. Prince Ferdinand pushed him hard with an inferior force, drove him out of Hanover, and captured eleven thousand of his soldiers. Clermont was recalled, and was succeeded by Contades, another incapable. One of his subordinates won for him the battle; of Lutterberg; but the generals.h.i.+p of Ferdinand made it a barren victory, and the campaign remained a success for the English. They made descents on the French coasts, captured; St.-Servan, a suburb of St.-Malo, and burned three s.h.i.+ps of the line, twenty-four privateers, and sixty merchantmen; then entered Cherbourg, destroyed the forts, carried off or spiked the cannon, and burned twenty-seven vessels,--a success partially offset by a failure on the coast of Brittany, where they were repulsed with some loss. In Africa they drove the French from the Guinea coast, and seized their establishment at Senegal.

It was towards America that Pitt turned his heartiest efforts. His first aim was to take Louisbourg, as a step towards taking Quebec; then Ticonderoga, that thorn in the side of the northern colonies; and lastly Fort Duquesne, the Key of the Great West. He recalled Loudon, for whom he had a fierce contempt; but there were influences which he could not disregard, and Major-General Abercromby, who was next in order of rank, an indifferent soldier, though a veteran in years, was allowed to succeed him, and lead in person the attack on Ticonderoga.[573] Pitt hoped that Brigadier Lord Howe, an admirable officer, who was joined with Abercromby, would be the real commander, and make amends for all short-comings of his chief. To command the Louisbourg expedition, Colonel Jeffrey Amherst was recalled from the German war, and made at one leap a major-general.[574] He was energetic and resolute, somewhat cautious and slow, but with a bulldog tenacity of grip. Under him were three brigadiers, Whitmore, Lawrence, and Wolfe, of whom the youngest is the most noteworthy. In the luckless Rochefort expedition, Colonel James Wolfe was conspicuous by a das.h.i.+ng gallantry that did not escape the eye of Pitt, always on the watch for men to do his work. The young officer was ardent, headlong, void of fear, often rash, almost fanatical in his devotion to military duty, and reckless of life when the glory of England or his own was at stake. The third expedition, that against Fort Duquesne, was given to Brigadier John Forbes, whose qualities well fitted him for the task.

[Footnote 573: _Order, War Office, 19 Dec. 1757._]

[Footnote 574: _Pitt to Abercromby, 27 Jan. 1758. Instructions for our Trusty and Well-beloved Jeffrey Amherst, Esq., Major-General of our Forces in North America, 3 March, 1758._]

During his first short term of office, Pitt had given a new species of troops to the British army. These were the Scotch Highlanders, who had risen against the House of Hanover in 1745, and would raise against it again should France accomplish her favorite scheme of throwing a force into Scotland to excite another insurrection for the Stuarts. But they would be useful to fight the French abroad, though dangerous as their possible allies at home; and two regiments of them were now ordered to America.

Delay had been the ruin of the last year's attempt against Louisbourg.

This time preparation was urged on apace; and before the end of winter two fleets had put to sea: one, under Admiral Boscawen, was destined for Louisbourg; while the other, under Admiral Osborn, sailed for the Mediterranean to intercept the French fleet of Admiral La Clue, who was about to sail from Toulon for America. Osborn, cruising between the coasts of Spain and Africa, barred the way to the Straits of Gibraltar, and kept his enemy imprisoned. La Clue made no attempt to force a pa.s.sage; but several combats of detached s.h.i.+ps took place, one of which is too remarkable to pa.s.s unnoticed. Captain Gardiner of the "Monmouth,"