Montcalm and Wolfe Part 48

[Footnote 807: _Letter to an Honourable Brigadier-General_ [Townshend], printed in 1760. A _Refutation_ soon after appeared, angry, but not conclusive. Other replies will be found in the _Imperial Magazine _for 1760.]

The troops were not idle. Levelling their own field-works, repairing the defences of the town, storing provisions sent ash.o.r.e from the fleet, making fascines, and cutting firewood, busied them through the autumn days bright with suns.h.i.+ne, or dark and chill with premonition of the bitter months to come. Admiral Saunders put off his departure longer than he had once thought possible; and it was past the middle of October when he fired a parting salute, and sailed down the river with his fleet. In it was the s.h.i.+p "Royal William," carrying the embalmed remains of Wolfe.

Montcalm lay in his soldier's grave before the humble altar of the Ursulines, never more to see the home for which he yearned, the wife, mother, and children whom he loved, the olive-trees and chestnut-groves of his beloved Candiac.

He slept in peace among triumphant enemies, who respected his memory, though they hardly knew his resting-place. It was left for a fellow-countryman--a colleague and a brother-in-arms--to belittle his achievements and blacken his name. The jealous spite of Vaudreuil pursued him even in death. Leaving Levis to command at Jacques-Cartier, whither the army had again withdrawn, the Governor retired to Montreal, whence he wrote a series of despatches to justify himself at the expense of others, and above all of the slain general, against whom his accusations were never so bitter as now, when the lips were cold that could have answered them. First, he threw on Ramesay all the blame of the surrender of Quebec. Then he addressed himself to his chief task, the defamation of his unconscious rival. "The letter that you wrote in cipher, on the tenth of February, to Monsieur the Marquis of Montcalm and me, in common,[808] flattered his self-love to such a degree that, far from seeking conciliation, he did nothing but try to persuade the public that his authority surpa.s.sed mine. From the moment of Monsieur de Montcalm's arrival in this colony, down to that of his death, he did not cease to sacrifice everything to his boundless ambition. He sowed dissension among the troops, tolerated the most indecent talk against the government, attached to himself the most disreputable persons, used means to corrupt the most virtuous, and, when he could not succeed, became their cruel enemy. He wanted to be Governor-General. He privately flattered with favors and promises of patronage every officer of the colony troops who adopted his ideas. He spared no pains to gain over the people of whatever calling, and persuade them of his attachment; while, either by himself or by means of the troops of the line, he made them bear the most frightful yoke _(le joug le plus affreux)._ He defamed honest people, encouraged insubordination, and closed his eyes to the rapine of his soldiers."

[Footnote 808: See _Supra_, p. 462.]

This letter was written to Vaudreuil's official superior and confidant, the Minister of the Marine and Colonies. In another letter, written about the same time to the Minister of War, who held similar relations to his rival, he declares that he "greatly regretted Monsieur de Montcalm."[809]

[Footnote 809: _Vaudreuil au Ministre de la Guerre, 1 Nov_. 1759.]

His charges are strange ones from a man who was by turns the patron, advocate, and tool of the official villains who cheated the King and plundered the people. Bigot, Cadet, and the rest of the harpies that preyed on Canada looked to Vaudreuil for support, and found it. It was but three or four weeks since he had written to the Court in high eulogy of Bigot and effusive praise of Cadet, coupled with the request that a patent of n.o.bility should be given to that notorious public thief.[810] The corruptions which disgraced his government were rife, not only in the civil administration, but also among the officers of the colony troops, over whom he had complete control. They did not, as has been seen already, extend to the officers of the line, who were outside the circle of peculation. It was these who were the habitual a.s.sociates of Montcalm; and when Vaudreuil charges him with "attaching to himself the most disreputable persons, and using means to corrupt the most virtuous," the true interpretation of his words is that the former were disreputable because they disliked him (the Governor), and the latter virtuous because they were his partisans.

[Footnote 810: See _Supra_, p. 374.]

Vaudreuil continues thus: "I am in despair, Monseigneur, to be under the necessity of painting you such a portrait after death of Monsieur the Marquis of Montcalm. Though it contains the exact truth, I would have deferred it if his personal hatred to me were alone to be considered; but I feel too deeply the loss of the colony to hide from you the cause of it. I can a.s.sure you that if I had been the sole master, Quebec would still belong to the King, and that nothing is so disadvantageous in a colony as a division of authority and the mingling of troops of the line with marine _[colony]_ troops. Thoroughly knowing Monsieur de Montcalm, I did not doubt in the least that unless I condescended to all his wishes, he would succeed in ruining Canada and wrecking all my plans."

He then charges the dead man with losing the battle of Quebec by attacking before he, the Governor, arrived to take command; and this, he says, was due to Montcalm's absolute determination to exercise independent authority, without caring whether the colony was saved or lost. "I cannot hide from you, Monseigneur, that if he had had his way in past years Oswego and Fort George _[William Henry]_ would never have been attacked or taken; and he owed the success at Ticonderoga to the orders I had given him."[811] Montcalm, on the other hand, declared at the time that Vaudreuil had ordered him not to risk a battle, and that it was only through his disobedience that Ticonderoga was saved.

[Footnote 811: _Vaudreuil au Ministre de la Marine,_ 30 _Oct. 1759._]

Ten days later Vaudreuil wrote again: "I have already had the honor, by my letter written in cipher on the thirteenth of last month, to give you a sketch of the character of Monsieur the Marquis of Montcalm; but I have just been informed of a stroke so black that I think, Monseigneur, that I should fail in my duty to you if I did not tell you of it." He goes on to say that, a little before his death, and "no doubt in fear of the fate that befell him," Montcalm placed in the hands of Father Roubaud, missionary at St. Francis, two packets of papers containing remarks on the administration of the colony, and especially on the manner in which the military posts were furnished with supplies; that these observations were accompanied by certificates; and that they involved charges against him, the Governor, of complicity inpeculation.

Roubaud, he continues, was to send these papersto France; "but now, Monseigneur, that you are informed about them, I feel no anxiety, and I am sure that the King will receive no impression from them without acquainting himself with their truth or falsity."

Vaudreuil's anxiety was natural; and so was the action of Montcalm in making known to the Court the outrageous abuses that threatened the King's service with ruin. His doing so was necessary both for his own justification and for the public good; and afterwards, when Vaudreuil and others were brought to trial at Paris, and when one of the counselfor the defence charged the late general with slanderously accusing his clients, the Court ordered the charge to be struck from the record.[812] The papers the existence of which, if they did exist, so terrified Vaudreuil, have thus far escaped research.

But the correspondence of the two rivals with the chiefs of the departments on which they severally depended is in large measure preserved; and while that of the Governor is filled with defamation of Montcalm and praise of himself, that of the General is neither egotistic nor abusive. The faults of Montcalm have sufficiently appeared.

They were those of an impetuous, excitable, and impatient nature, by no means free from either ambition or vanity; but they were never inconsistent with the character of a man of honor. His impulsive utterances, reported by retainers and sycophants, kept Vaudreuil in a state of chronic rage; and, void as he was of all magnanimity, gnawed with undying jealousy, and mortally in dread of being compromised by the knaveries to which he had lent his countenance, he could not contain himself within the bounds of decency or sense. In another letter he had the baseness to say that Montcalm met his death in trying to escape from the English.

[Footnote 812: _Proces de Bigot, Cadet, et autres._]

Among the Governor's charges are some which cannot be flatly denied. When he accuses his rival of haste and precipitation in attacking the English army, he touches a fair subject of criticism; but, as a whole, he is as false in his detraction of Montcalm as in his praises of Bigot and Cadet.

The letter which Wolfe sent to Pitt a few days before his death, written in what may be called a spirit of resolute despair, and representing success as almost hopeless, filled England with a dejection that found utterance in loud grumblings against the Ministry. Horace Walpole wrote the bad news to his friend Mann, amba.s.sador at Florence: "Two days ago came letters from Wolfe, despairing as much as heroes can despair. Quebec is well victualled, Amherst is not arrived, and fifteen thousand men are encamped to defend it. We have lost many men by the enemy, and some by our friends; that is, we now call our nine thousand only seven thousand. How this little army will get away from a much larger, and in this season, in that country, I don't guess: yes, I do."

Hardly were these lines written when tidings came that Montcalm was defeated, Quebec taken, and Wolfe killed. A flood of mixed emotions swept over England. Even Walpole grew half serious as he sent a packet of newspapers to his friend the amba.s.sador. "You may now give yourself what airs you please.

An amba.s.sador is the only man in the world whom bullying becomes.

All precedents are on your side: Persians, Greeks, Romans, always insulted their neighbors when they took Quebec. Think how pert the French would have been on such an occasion! What a scene! An army in the night dragging itself up a precipice by stumps of trees to a.s.sault a town and attack an enemy strongly intrenched and double in numbers! The King is overwhelmed with addresses on our victories; he will have enough to paper his palace."[813]

[Footnote 813: _Letters of Horace Walpole_, III. 254, 257 (ed. Cunningham 1857).]

When, in soberer mood, he wrote the annals of his time, and turned, not for the better, from the epistolary style to the historical, he thus described the impression made on the English public by the touching and inspiring story of Wolfe's heroism and death: "The incidents of dramatic fiction could not be conducted with more address to lead an audience from despondency to sudden exaltation than accident prepared to excite the pa.s.sions of a whole people. They despaired, they triumphed, and they wept; for Wolfe had fallen in the hour of victory. Joy, curiosity, astonishment, was painted on every countenance. The more they inquired, the more their admiration rose. Not an incident but was heroic and affecting."[814]

England blazed with bonfires. In one spot alone all was dark and silent; for here a widowed mother mourned for a loving and devoted son, and the people forbore to profane her grief with the clamor of their rejoicings.

[Footnote 814: Walpole, _Memoirs of George II._, II. 384.]

New England had still more cause of joy than Old, and she filled the land with jubilation. The pulpits resounded with sermons of thanksgiving, some of which were worthy of the occasion that called them forth. Among the rest, Jonathan Mayhew, a young but justly celebrated minister of Boston, pictured with enthusiasm the future greatness of the British-American colonies, with the continent thrown open before them, and foretold that, "with the continued blessing of Heaven, they will become, in another century or two, a mighty empire;" adding in cautious parenthesis, "_I do not mean an independent one_." He read Wolfe's victory aright, and divined its far-reaching consequence.

NOTE: The authorities of this chapter are, in the main, the same as those of the preceding, with some additions, the princ.i.p.al of which is the _Memoire du Sieur de Ramezay, Chevalier de l'Ordre royal et militaire de St.-Louis, cy-devant Lieutenant pour le Roy commandant a Quebec, au sujet de la Reddition de cette Ville, qui a ete suivie de la Capitulation du 18 7bre 1759_ (Archives de la Marine). To this doc.u.ment are appended a number of important "pieces justificatives." These, with the _Memoire_, have been printed by the Quebec Historical Society. The letters of Vaudreuil cited in this chapter are chiefly from the Archives Nationales.

If Montcalm, as Vaudreuil says, really intrusted papers to the care of the Jesuit missionary Roubaud, he was not fortunate in his choice of a depositary. After the war Roubaud renounced his Order, adjured his faith, and went over to the English. He gave various and contradictory accounts of the doc.u.ments said to be in his hands. On one occasion he declared that Montcalm's effects left with him at his mission of St. Francis had been burned to prevent their falling into the hands of the enemy (see Verreau, _Report on Canadian Archives_, 1874, p. 183). Again, he says that he had placed in the hands of the King of England certain letters of Montcalm (see _Mr. Roubaud's Deplorable Case, humbly submitted to Lord North's Consideration_, in _Historical Magazine_, Second Series, VIII. 283). Yet again, he speaks of these same letters as "pretended" (Verreau, _as above_). He complains that some of them had been published, without his consent, "by a Lord belonging to His Majesty's household" (_Mr. Roubaud's Deplorable Case_).

The allusion here is evidently to a pamphlet printed in London, in 1777, in French and English, and ent.i.tled, _Lettres de Monsieur le Marquis de Montcalm, Gouverneur-General en Canada, a Messieurs de Berryer et de la Mole, ecrites dans les Annees 1757, 1758, et 1759, avec une Version Angloise_. They profess to be observations by Montcalm on the English colonies, their political character, their trade, and their tendency to independence. They bear the strongest marks of being fabricated to suit the times, the colonies being then in revolt. The princ.i.p.al letter is one addressed to Mole, and bearing date Quebec, Aug. 24, 1759. It foretells the loss of her colonies as a consequence to England of her probable conquest of Canada. I laid before the Ma.s.sachusetts Historical Society my reasons for believing this letter, like the rest, an imposture (see the _Proceedings_ of that Society for 1869-1870, pp. 112-128). To these reasons it may be added that at the date a.s.signed to the letter all correspondence was stopped between Canada and France. From the arrival of the English fleet, at the end of spring, till its departure, late in autumn, communication was completely cut off. It was not till towards the end of November, when the river was clear of English s.h.i.+ps, that the naval commander Kanon ran by the batteries of Quebec and carried to France the first news from Canada. Some of the letters thus sent were dated a month before, and had waited in Canada till Kanon's departure.

Abbe Verreau--a high authority on questions of Canadian history--tells me a comparison of the handwriting has convinced him that these pretended letters of Montcalm are the work of Roubaud.

On the burial of Montcalm, see Appendix J.

Chapter 29

1759, 1760

Sainte-Foy

The fleet was gone; the great river was left a solitude; and the chill days of a fitful November pa.s.sed over Quebec in alternations of rain and frost, suns.h.i.+ne and snow. The troops, driven by cold from their encampment on the Plains, were all gathered within the walls. Their own artillery had so battered the place that it was not easy to find shelter. The Lower Town was a wilderness of scorched and crumbling walls. As you ascend Mountain Street, the Bishop's Palace, on the right, was a skeleton of tottering masonry, and the buildings on the left were a ma.s.s of ruin, where ragged boys were playing at seesaw among the fallen planks and timbers.[815] Even in the Upper Town few of the churches and public buildings had escaped.

The Cathedral was burned to a sh.e.l.l. The solid front of the College of the Jesuits was pockmarked by numberless cannon-b.a.l.l.s, and the adjacent church of the Order was wofully shattered.

The church of the Recollects suffered still more. The bombsh.e.l.ls that fell through the roof had broken into the pavement, and as they burst had thrown up the bones and skulls of the dead from the graves beneath.[816] Even the more distant Hotel-Dieu was pierced by fifteen projectiles, some of which had exploded in the halls and chambers.[817]

[Footnote 815: Drawings made on the spot by Richard Short. These drawings, twelve in number, were engraved and published in 1761.]

[Footnote 816: Short's _Views in Quebec_, 1759. Compare Pontbriand, in _N.Y. Col. Docs._, X. 1,057.]

[Footnote 817: Casgrain, _Hotel-Dieu de Quebec_, 445.]

The Commissary-General, Berniers, thus describes to Bourlamaque the state of the town: "Quebec is nothing but a shapeless ma.s.s of ruins. Confusion, disorder, pillage reign even among the inhabitants, for the English make examples of severity every day. Everybody rushes. .h.i.ther and thither, without knowing why. Each searches for his possessions, and, not finding his own, seizes those of other people. English and French, all is chaos alike. The inhabitants, famished and dest.i.tute, escape to the country. Never was there seen such a sight."[818]

[Footnote 818: _Berniers a Bourlamaque, 27 Sept. 1759_.]

Quebec swarmed with troops. There were guardhouses at twenty different points; sentinels paced the ramparts, squads of men went the rounds, soldiers off duty strolled the streets, some in mitre caps and some black three-cornered hats; while a ceaseless rolling of drums and a rigid observance of military forms betrayed the sense of a still imminent danger. While some of the inhabitants left town, others remained, having no refuge elsewhere. They were civil to the victors, but severe towards their late ruler. "The citizens," says Knox, "particularly the females, reproach M. Vaudreuil upon every occasion, and give full scope to bitter invectives." He praises the agreeable manners and cheerful spirit of the Canadian ladies, concerning whom another officer also writes: "It is very surprising with what ease the gayety of their tempers enables them to bear misfortunes which to us would be insupportable. Families whom the calamities of war have reduced from the height of luxury to the want of common necessaries laugh, dance, and sing, comforting themselves with this reflection--_Fortune de guerre_. Their young ladies take the utmost pains to teach our officers French; with what view I know not, if it is not that they may hear themselves praised, flattered, and courted without loss of time."[819]

[Footnote 819: _Alexander Campbell to John Floyd, 22 Oct. 1759_. Campbell was a lieutenant of the Highlanders; Lloyd was a Connecticut merchant.]

Knox was quartered in a small stable, with a hayloft above and a rack and manger at one end: a lodging better than fell to the lot of many of his brother officers; and, by means of a stove and some help from a carpenter, he says that he made himself tolerably comfortable. The change, however, was an agreeable one when he was ordered for a week to the General Hospital, a mile out of the town, where he was to command the guard stationed to protect the inmates and watch the enemy. Here were gathered the sick and wounded of both armies, nursed with equal care by the nuns, of whom Knox speaks with grat.i.tude and respect. "When our poor fellows were ill and ordered to be removed from their odious regimental hospital to this general receptacle, they were indeed rendered inexpressibly happy. Each patient has his bed, with curtains, allotted to him, and a nurse to attend him. Every sick or wounded officer has an apartment to himself, and is attended by one of these religious sisters, who in general are young, handsome, courteous, rigidly reserved, and very respectful.

Their office of nursing the sick furnishes them with opportunities of taking great lat.i.tudes if they are so disposed; but I never heard any of them charged with the least levity." The nuns, on their part, were well pleased with the conduct of their new masters, whom one of them describes as the "most moderate of all conquerors."

"I lived here," Knox continues, "at the French King's table, with an agreeable, polite society of officers, directors, and commissaries.

Some of the gentlemen were married, and their ladies honored us with their company. They were generally cheerful, except when we discoursed on the late revolution and the affairs of the campaign; then they seemingly gave way to grief, uttered by profound sighs, followed by an _O mon Dieu!_" He walked in the garden with the French officers, played at cards with them, and pa.s.sed the time so pleasantly that his short stay at the hospital seemed an oasis in his hard life of camp and garrison.

Mere de Sainte-Claude, the Superior, a sister of Ramesay, late commandant of Quebec, one morning sent him a note of invitation to what she called an English breakfast; and though the repast answered to nothing within his experience, he says that he "fared exceedingly well, and pa.s.sed near two hours most agreeably in the society of this ancient lady and her virgin sisters."

The excellent nuns of the General Hospital are to-day what their predecessors were, and the scene of their useful labors still answers at many points to that described by the careful pen of their military guest. Throughout the war they and the nuns of the Hotel-Dieu had been above praise in their a.s.siduous devotion to the sick and wounded.

Brigadier Murray, now in command of Quebec, was a gallant soldier, upright, humane, generous, eager for distinction, and more daring than prudent. He befriended the Canadians, issued strict orders against harming them in person or property, hanged a soldier who had robbed a citizen of Quebec, and severely punished others for slighter offences of the same sort.

In general the soldiers themselves showed kindness towards the conquered people; during harvest they were seen helping them to reap their fields, without compensation, and sharing with them their tobacco and rations. The inhabitants were disarmed, and required to take the oath of allegiance. Murray reported in the spring that the whole country, from Cap-Rouge downward, was in subjection to the British Crown.[820]