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Montcalm and Wolfe by Francis Parkman

F >> Francis Parkman >> Montcalm and Wolfe




[Footnote 627: Pouchot, I. 137.]

[Footnote 628: _Livre d'Ordres, Disposition de Defense des
Retranchements, 8 Juillet, 1758_.]

[Footnote 629: Montcalm, _Relation de la Victoire remportee a Carillon,
8 Juillet, 1758_. Vaudreuil puts the number at 4,760, besides officers,
which includes the garrison and laborers at the fort. _Vaudreuil au
Ministre, 28 Juillet, 1758_.]

Soon after nine o'clock a distant and harmless fire of small-arms began
on the slopes of Mount Defiance. It came from a party of Indians who had
just arrived with Sir William Johnson, and who, after amusing themselves
in this manner for a time, remained for the rest of the day safe
spectators of the fight. The soldiers worked undisturbed till noon, when
volleys of musketry were heard from the forest in front. It was the
English light troops driving in the French pickets. A cannon was fired
as a signal to drop tools and form for battle. The white uniforms lined
the breastwork in a triple row, with the grenadiers behind them as a
reserve, and the second battalion of Berry watching the flanks and rear.

Meanwhile the English army had moved forward from its camp by the
saw-mill. First came the rangers, the light infantry, and Bradstreet's
armed boatmen, who, emerging into the open space, began a spattering
fire. Some of the provincial troops followed, extending from left to
right, and opening fire in turn; then the regulars, who had formed in
columns of attack under cover of the forest, advanced their solid red
masses into the sunlight, and passing through the intervals between the
provincial regiments, pushed forward to the assault. Across the rough
ground, with its maze of fallen trees whose leaves hung withering in the
July sun, they could see the top of the breastwork, but not the men
behind it; when, in an instant, all the line was obscured by a gush of
smoke, a crash of exploding firearms tore the air, and grapeshot and
musket-balls swept the whole space like a tempest; "a damnable fire,"
says an officer who heard them screaming about his ears. The English had
been ordered to carry the works with the bayonet; but their ranks were
broken by the obstructions through which they struggled in vain to force
their way, and they soon began to fire in turn. The storm raged in full
fury for an hour. The assailants pushed close to the breastwork; but
there they were stopped by the bristling mass of sharpened branches,
which they could not pass under the murderous cross-fires that swept
them from front and flank. At length they fell back, exclaiming that the
works were impregnable. Abercromby, who was at the saw-mill, a mile and
a half in the rear, sent order to attack again, and again they came on
as before.

The scene was frightful: masses of infuriated men who could not go
forward and would not go back; straining for an enemy they could not
reach, and firing on an enemy they could not see; caught in the
entanglement of fallen trees; tripped by briers, stumbling over logs,
tearing through boughs; shouting, yelling, cursing, and pelted all the
while with bullets that killed them by scores, stretched them on the
ground, or hung them on jagged branches in strange attitudes of death.
The provincials supported the regulars with spirit, and some of them
forced their way to the foot of the wooden wall.

The French fought with the intrepid gayety of their nation, and shouts
of _Vive le Roi!_ and _Vive notre General!_ mingled with the din of
musketry. Montcalm, with his coat off, for the day was hot, directed the
defence of the centre, and repaired to any part of the line where the
danger for the time seemed greatest. He is warm in praise of his enemy,
and declares that between one and seven o'clock they attacked him six
successive times. Early in the action Abercromby tried to turn the
French left by sending twenty bateaux, filled with troops, down the
outlet of Lake George. They were met by the fire of the volunteers
stationed to defend the low grounds on that side, and, still advancing,
came within range of the cannon of the fort, which sank two of them and
drove back the rest.

A curious incident happened during one of the attacks. De Bassignac, a
captain in the battalion of Royal Roussillon, tied his handkerchief to
the end of a musket and waved it over the breastwork in defiance. The
English mistook it for a sign of surrender, and came forward with all
possible speed, holding their muskets crossed over their heads in both
hands, and crying _Quarter_. The French made the same mistake; and
thinking that their enemies were giving themselves up as prisoners,
ceased firing, and mounted on the top of the breastwork to receive them.
Captain Pouchot, astonished, as he says, to see them perched there,
looked out to learn the cause, and saw that the enemy meant anything but
surrender. Whereupon he shouted with all his might: "_Tirez! Tirez! Ne
voyez-vous pas que ces gens-la vont vous enlever?_" The soldiers, still
standing on the breastwork, instantly gave the English a volley, which
killed some of them, and sent back the rest discomfited.[630]

[Footnote 630: Pouchot, I. 153. Both Niles and Entick mention the
incident.]

This was set to the account of Gallic treachery. "Another deceit the
enemy put upon us," says a military letter-writer: "they raised their
hats above the breastwork, which our people fired at; they, having
loopholes to fire through, and being covered by the sods, we did them
little damage, except shooting their hats to pieces."[631] In one of the
last assaults a soldier of the Rhode Island regiment, William Smith,
managed to get through all obstructions and ensconce himself close under
the breastwork, where in the confusion he remained for a time unnoticed,
improving his advantages meanwhile by shooting several Frenchmen. Being
at length observed, a soldier fired vertically down upon him and wounded
him severely, but not enough to prevent his springing up, striking at
one of his enemies over the top of the wall, and braining him with his
hatchet. A British officer who saw the feat, and was struck by the
reckless daring of the man, ordered two regulars to bring him off;
which, covered by a brisk fire of musketry, they succeeded in doing. A
letter from the camp two or three weeks later reports him as in a fair
way to recover, being, says the writer, much braced and invigorated by
his anger against the French, on whom he was swearing to have his
revenge.[632]

[Footnote 631: _Letter from Saratoga, 12 July, 1758_, in _New Hampshire
Gazette_. Compare _Pennsylvania Archives_, III. 474.]

[Footnote 632: _Letter from Lake George, 26 July, 1758_, in _Boston
Gazette_. The story is given, without much variation, in several other
letters.]

Toward five o'clock two English columns joined in a most determined
assault on the extreme right of the French, defended by the battalions
of Guienne and Bearn. The danger for a time was imminent. Montcalm
hastened to the spot with the reserves. The assailants hewed their way
to the foot of the breastwork; and though again and again repulsed, they
again and again renewed the attack. The Highlanders fought with stubborn
and unconquerable fury. "Even those who were mortally wounded," writes
one of their lieutenants, "cried to their companions not to lose a
thought upon them, but to follow their officers and mind the honor of
their country. Their ardor was such that it was difficult to bring them
off."[633] Their major, Campbell of Inverawe, found his foreboding true.
He received a mortal shot, and his clansmen bore him from the field.
Twenty-five of their officers were killed or wounded, and half the men
fell under the deadly fire that poured from the loopholes. Captain John
Campbell and a few followers tore their way through the abattis, climbed
the breastwork, leaped down among the French, and were bayoneted
there.[634]

[Footnote 633: _Letter of Lieutenant William Grant_, in _Maclachlan's
Highlands_, II. 340 (ed. 1875).]

[Footnote 634: _Ibid._, II. 339.]

As the colony troops and Canadians on the low ground were left
undisturbed, Levis sent them an order to make a sortie and attack the
left flank of the charging columns. They accordingly posted themselves
among the trees along the declivity, and fired upwards at the enemy, who
presently shifted their position to the right, out of the line of shot.
The assault still continued, but in vain; and at six there was another
effort, equally fruitless. From this time till half-past seven a
lingering fight was kept up by the rangers and other provincials, firing
from the edge of the woods and from behind the stumps, bushes, and
fallen trees in front of the lines. Its only objects were to cover their
comrades, who were collecting and bringing off the wounded, and to
protect the retreat of the regulars, who fell back in disorder to the
Falls. As twilight came on, the last combatant withdrew, and none were
left but the dead. Abercromby had lost in killed, wounded, and missing,
nineteen hundred and forty-four officers and men.[635] The loss of the
French, not counting that of Langy's detachment, was three hundred and
seventy-seven. Bourlamaque was dangerously wounded; Bougainville
slightly; and the hat of Levis was twice shot through.[636]

[Footnote 635: See Appendix G.]

[Footnote 636: _Levis au Ministre, 13 Juillet, 1758_.]

Montcalm, with a mighty load lifted from his soul, passed along the
lines, and gave the tired soldiers the thanks they nobly deserved. Beer,
wine, and food were served out to them, and they bivouacked for the
night on the level ground between the breastwork and the fort. The enemy
had met a terrible rebuff; yet the danger was not over. Abercromby still
had more than thirteen thousand men, and he might renew the attack with
cannon. But, on the morning of the ninth, a band of volunteers who had
gone out to watch him brought back the report that he was in full
retreat. The saw-mill at the Falls was on fire, and the last English
soldier was gone. On the morning of the tenth, Levis, with a strong
detachment, followed the road to the landing-place, and found signs that
a panic had overtaken the defeated troops. They had left behind several
hundred barrels of provisions and a large quantity of baggage; while in
a marshy place that they had crossed was found a considerable number of
their shoes, which had stuck in the mud, and which they had not stopped
to recover. They had embarked on the morning after the battle, and
retreated to the head of the lake in a disorder and dejection wofully
contrasted with the pomp of their advance. A gallant army was sacrificed
by the blunders of its chief.

Montcalm announced his victory to his wife in a strain of exaggeration
that marks the exaltation of his mind. "Without Indians, almost without
Canadians or colony troops,--I had only four hundred,--alone with Levis
and Bourlamaque and the troops of the line, thirty-one hundred fighting
men, I have beaten an army of twenty-five thousand. They repassed the
lake precipitately, with a loss of at least five thousand. This glorious
day does infinite honor to the valor of our battalions. I have no time
to write more. I am well, my dearest, and I embrace you." And he wrote
to his friend Doreil: "The army, the too-small army of the King, has
beaten the enemy. What a day for France! If I had had two hundred
Indians to send out at the head of a thousand picked men under the
Chevalier de Levis, not many would have escaped. Ah, my dear Doreil,
what soldiers are ours! I never saw the like. Why were they not at
Louisbourg?"

On the morrow of his victory he caused a great cross to be planted on
the battle-field, inscribed with these lines, composed by the
soldier-scholar himself,--

"Quid dux? quid miles? quid strata ingentia ligna?
En Signum! en victor! Deus hic, Deus ipse triumphat."

"Soldier and chief and rampart's strength are nought;
Behold the conquering Cross! 'T is God the triumph wrought."[637]

[Footnote 637: Along with the above paraphrase I may give that of
Montcalm himself, which was also inscribed on the cross:--

"Chretien! ce ne fut point Montcalm et la prudence,
Ces arbres renverses, ces heros, leurs exploits,
Qui des Anglais confus ont brise l'esperance;
C'est le bras de ton Dieu, vainqueur sur cette croix."

In the same letter in which Montcalm sent these lines to his mother he
says: "Je vous envoie, pour vous amuser, deux chansons sur le combat du
8 Juillet, dont l'une est en style des poissardes de Paris." One of
these songs, which were written by soldiers after the battle, begins,--

"Je chante des Francois
La valeur et la gloire,
Qui toujours sur l'Anglois
Remportent la victoire.
Ce sont des heros,
Tous nos generaux,
Et Montcalm et Levis,
Et Bourlamaque aussi."

"Mars, qui les engendra
Pour l'honneur de la France,
D'abord les anima
De sa haute vaillance,
Et les transporta
Dans le Canada,
Ou l'on voit les Francois
Culbuter les Anglois."

The other effusion of the military muse is in a different strain, "en
style des poissardes de Paris." The following a specimen, given
_literatim_:--

"L'aumonier fit l'exhortation,
Puis il donnit l'absolution;
Aisement cela se peut croire.
Enfants, dit-il, animez-vous!
L'bon Dieu, sa mere, tout est pour vous.
_S--e! j'sommes catholiques. Les Anglois sont des heretiques._

"Ce sont des chiens; a coups d'pieds, a coups d'poings faut leur casser
la gueule et la machoire."

"Soldats, officiers, generaux,
Chacun en ce jour fut heros.
Aisement cela se peut croire.
Montcalm, comme defunt Annibal,
S'montroit soldat et general.
_S--e! sil y avoit quelqu'un qui ne l'aimit point!_"

"Je veux etre un chien; a coups d'pieds, a coups d'poings, j'lui
cass'rai la gueule et la machoire."

This is an allusion to Vaudreuil. On the battle of Ticonderoga, see
Appendix G]




Chapter 21

1758

Fort Frontenac


The rashness of Abercromby before the fight was matched by his
poltroonery after it. Such was his terror that on the evening of his
defeat he sent an order to Colonel Cummings, commanding at Fort William
Henry, to send all the sick and wounded and all the heavy artillery to
New York without delay.[638] He himself followed so closely upon this
disgraceful missive that Cummings had no time to obey it.

[Footnote 638: _Cunningham, aide-de-camp of Abercromby, to Cummings, 8
July, 1758_.]

The defeated and humbled troops proceeded to reoccupy the ground they
had left a few days before in the flush of confidence and pride; and
young Colonel Williams, of Massachusetts, lost no time in sending the
miserable story to his uncle Israel. His letter, which is dated "Lake
George (sorrowful situation), July ye 11th," ends thus: "I have told
facts; you may put the epithets upon them. In one word, what with
fatigue, want of sleep, exercise of mind, and leaving the place we went
to capture, the best part of the army is unhinged. I have told enough to
make you sick, if the relation acts on you as the facts have on me."

In the routed army was the sturdy John Cleaveland, minister of Ipswich,
and now chaplain of Bagley's Massachusetts regiment, who regarded the
retreat with a disgust that was shared by many others. "This day," he
writes in his Diary, at the head of Lake George, two days after the
battle, "wherever I went I found people, officers and soldiers,
astonished that we left the French ground, and commenting on the strange
conduct in coming off." From this time forth the provincials called
their commander Mrs. Nabbycromby.[639] He thought of nothing but
fortifying himself. "Towards evening," continues the chaplain, "the
General, with his Rehoboam counsellors, came over to line out a fort on
the rocky hill where our breastwork was last year. Now we begin to think
strongly that the grand expedition against Canada is laid aside, and a
foundation made totally to impoverish our country." The whole army was
soon intrenched. The chaplain of Bagley's, with his brother Ebenezer,
chaplain of another regiment, one day walked round the camp and
carefully inspected it. The tour proved satisfactory to the militant
divines, and John Cleaveland reported to his wife: "We have built an
extraordinary good breastwork, sufficient to defend ourselves against
twenty thousand of the enemy, though at present we have not above a
third part of that number fit for duty." Many of the troops had been
sent to the Mohawk, and others to the Hudson.

[Footnote 639: Trumbull, _Hist. Connecticut_, II. 392. "Nabby" (Abigail)
was then a common female name in New England.]

In the regiment of which Cleaveland was chaplain there was a young
surgeon from Danvers, Dr. Caleb Rea, who also kept a copious diary, and,
being of a serious turn, listened with edification to the prayers and
exhortations to which the yeoman soldiery were daily summoned. In his
zeal, he made an inquest among them for singers, and chose the most
melodious to form a regimental choir, "the better to carry on the daily
service of singing psalms;" insomuch that the New England camp was vocal
with rustic harmony, sincere, if somewhat nasal. These seemly
observances were not inconsistent with a certain amount of disorder
among the more turbulent spirits, who, removed from the repressive
influence of tight-laced village communities, sometimes indulged in
conduct which grieved the conscientious surgeon. The rural New England
of that time, with its narrowness, its prejudices, its oddities, its
combative energy, and rugged, unconquerable strength, is among the
things of the past, or lingers in remote corners where the whistle of
the locomotive is never heard. It has spread itself in swarming millions
over half a continent, changing with changing conditions; and even the
part of it that clings to the ancestral hive has transformed and
continues to transform itself.

The provincials were happy in their chaplains, among whom there reigned
a marvellous harmony, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and
Congregationalists meeting twice a week to hold prayer-meetings
together. "A rare instance indeed," says Dr. Rea, "and perhaps scarce
ever was an army blessed with such a set of chaplains before." On one
occasion, just before the fatal expedition, nine of them, after prayers
and breakfast, went together to call upon the General. "He treated us
very kindly," says the chaplain of Bagley's, "and told us that he hoped
we would teach the people to do their duty and be courageous; and told
us a story of a chaplain in Germany, where he was, who just before the
action told the soldiers he had not time to say much, and therefore
should only say: 'Be courageous; for no cowards go to heaven.' The
General treated us to a bowl of punch and a bottle of wine, and then we
took our leave of him."[640]

[Footnote 640: For the use of the Diary of Chaplain Cleaveland, as well
as of his letters to his wife, I am indebted to the kindness of Miss
Abby E. Cleaveland, his descendant.]

When Cleaveland and the more gifted among his brethren preached of a
Sunday, officers and men of the regulars, no less than the provincials,
came to listen; yet that pious Sabbatarian, Dr. Rea, saw much to afflict
his conscience. "Sad, sad it is to see how the Sabbath is profaned in
the camp," above all by "the horrid custom of swearing, more especially
among the regulars; and I can't but charge our defeat on this sin."

It would have been well had the harmony that prevailed among the
chaplains found its counterpart among the men of the sword; but between
the British regular officers and those of the provinces there was
anything but an equal brotherhood. It is true that Pitt, in the spirit
of conciliation which he always showed towards the colonies, had
procured a change in the regulations concerning the relative rank of
British and provincial officers, thus putting them in a position much
nearer equality; but this, while appeasing the provincials, seems to
have annoyed the others. Till the campaign was nearly over, not a single
provincial colonel had been asked to join in a council of war; and,
complains Cleaveland, "they know no more of what is to be done than a
sergeant, till the orders come out." Of the British officers, the
greater part had seen but little active service. Most of them were men
of family, exceedingly prejudiced and insular, whose knowledge of the
world was limited to certain classes of their own countrymen, and who
looked down on all others, whether domestic or foreign. Towards the
provincials their attitude was one of tranquil superiority, though its
tranquillity was occasionally disturbed by what they regarded as absurd
pretension on the part of the colony officers. One of them gave vent to
his feelings in an article in the _London Chronicle_, in which he
advanced the very reasonable proposition that "a farmer is not to be
taken from the plough and made an officer in a day;" and he was answered
wrathfully, at great length, in the _Boston Evening Post_, by a writer
signing himself "A New England Man." The provincial officers, on the
other hand, and especially those of New England, being no less narrow
and prejudiced, filled with a sensitive pride and a jealous local
patriotism, and bred up in a lofty appreciation of the merits and
importance of their country, regarded British superciliousness with a
resentment which their strong love for England could not overcome. This
feeling was far from being confined to the officers. A provincial
regiment stationed at Half-Moon, on the Hudson, thought itself affronted
by Captain Cruikshank, a regular officer; and the men were so incensed
that nearly half of them went off in a body. The deportment of British
officers in the Seven Years War no doubt had some part in hastening on
the Revolution.

What with levelling Montcalm's siege works, planting palisades, and
grubbing up stumps in their bungling and laborious way, the regulars
found abundant occupation. Discipline was stiff and peremptory. The
wooden horse and the whipping-post were conspicuous objects in the camp,
and often in use. Caleb Rea, being tender-hearted, never went to see the
lash laid on; for, as he quaintly observes, "the cries were satisfactory
to me, without the sight of the strokes." He and the rest of the doctors
found active exercise for such skill as they had, since fever and
dysentery were making scarcely less havoc than the bullets at
Ticonderoga. This came from the bad state of the camps and unwholesome
food. The provincial surgeons seem to have been very little impressed
with the importance of sanitary regulations, and to have thought it
their business not to prevent disease, but only to cure it. The one
grand essential in their eyes was a well-stocked medicine-chest, rich in
exhaustless stores of rhubarb, ipecacuanha, and calomel. Even this
sometimes failed. Colonel Williams reports "the sick destitute of
everything proper for them; medicine-chest empty; nothing but their
dirty blankets for beds; Dr. Ashley dead, Dr. Wright gone home, low
enough; Bille worn off his legs,--such is our case. I have near a
hundred sick. Lost a sergeant and a private last night."[641] Chaplain
Cleaveland himself, though strong of frame, did not escape; but he found
solace in his trouble from the congenial society of a brother chaplain,
Mr. Emerson, of New Hampshire, "a right-down hearty Christian minister,
of savory conversation," who came to see him in his tent, breakfasted
with him, and joined him in prayer. Being somewhat better, he one day
thought to recreate himself with the apostolic occupation of fishing.
The sport was poor; the fish bit slowly; and as he lay in his boat,
still languid with his malady, he had leisure to reflect on the
contrasted works of Providence and man,--the bright lake basking amid
its mountains, a dream of wilderness beauty, and the swarms of harsh
humanity on the shore beside him, with their passions, discords, and
miseries. But it was with the strong meat of Calvinistic theology, and
not with reveries like these, that he was accustomed to nourish his
military flock.

[Footnote 641: _Colonel William Williams to Colonel Israel Williams, 4
Sept. 1758_.]

While at one end of the lake the force of Abercromby was diminished by
detachments and disease, that of Montcalm at the other was so increased
by reinforcements that a forward movement on his part seemed possible.
He contented himself, however, with strengthening the fort,
reconstructing the lines that he had defended so well, and sending out
frequent war-parties by way of Wood Creek and South Bay, to harass
Abercromby's communications with Fort Edward. These parties, some of
which consisted of several hundred men, were generally more or less
successful; and one of them, under La Corne, surprised and destroyed a
large wagon train escorted by forty soldiers. When Abercromby heard of
it, he ordered Rogers, with a strong detachment of provincials, light
infantry, and rangers, to go down the lake in boats, cross the mountains
to the narrow waters of Lake Champlain, and cut off the enemy. But
though Rogers set out at two in the morning, the French retreated so
fast that he arrived too late. As he was on his way back, he was met by
a messenger from the General with orders to intercept other French
parties reported to be hovering about Fort Edward. On this he retraced
his steps, marched through the forest to where Whitehall now stands, and
thence made his way up Wood Creek to old Fort Anne, a relic of former
wars, abandoned and falling to decay. Here, on the neglected "clearing"
that surrounded the ruin, his followers encamped. They counted seven
hundred in all, and consisted of about eighty rangers, a body of
Connecticut men under Major Putnam, and a small regular force, chiefly
light infantry, under Captain Dalzell, the brave officer who was
afterwards killed by Pontiac's warriors at Detroit.

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