1758

THE VICTORY OF CARILLON

A WINTER OF GAYETY AND FOREBODING

SIXTY LEAGUES ON THE ICE—SHIPS ARRIVE—FAMINE CEASES—ENGLISH MOBILIZATION—TICONDEROGA (CARILLON)—MILITARY JEALOUSIES—SAINT-SAUVEUR—RECONCILIATION OF MONTCALM AND VAUDREUIL—ENMITIES RENEWED—WINTER IN MONTREAL—HIGH COST OF LIVING—THE "ENCYCLOPEDIA"—AVARICE AND GRAFT—MADAME DE VAUDREUIL.

In the last week of February, 1758, Montcalm returned to Montreal. Writing on February 22d, he adds: "I have just arrived at Montreal, having made sixty leagues on the ice, a delightful though cold manner of traveling." Evidently Montreal was much quieter than Quebec, for Montcalm was now able to attend steadily to his correspondence and to his military preparations until the opening of navigation. Meanwhile the famine still continued; yet we find the spoilers, Varin and BrÉard, returning to France, PÉan about to do the same, to put their booty in safety, already sensing the impending crisis which will end this period of sad memories in the last days of the French rÉgime. At length, on the evening of May 19th, eight vessels, laden with 7,500 quarts of flour, arrived at Quebec, with news of some more to come, and the spectre of famine ceased to haunt the colony.

With the arrival of the vessels came the news that interested the military circles of Montreal; the replacement of M. de Paulmy, the minister of war, by the MarÉchal de Belle-Isle.

There came, too, information of the energetic efforts being made by William Pitt in England to complete the conquest of India and America, the humiliation of France, and the British supremacy of the seas.

This was no idle scheme. Already a formidable fleet and a powerful army were preparing to besiege Louisbourg under Admiral Boscawen and Major General Jeffrey Amherst, with Brigadiers Whitmore, Lawrence and James Wolfe as their able lieutenants.

On June 13th twenty-three vessels of the line, eighteen frigates and fireships, and 157 transports, bearing about 12,000 troops, left Halifax and ran before the wind towards the maritime boulevard of France in America, surnamed the Dunkerque of the new world. On the frontier of Lake St. Sacrement, Lord Loudon had been replaced by Major General Abercromby, who with more than six thousand regulars and nine thousand provincials was to take Carillon and invade Canada by Lake Champlain and the Richelieu River. Finally Brigadier John Forbes was organizing an army of six to seven thousand men destined to wrest from France the Fort Duquesne and the Ohio region.

The last terrible struggle was soon to commence. Montreal was the scene of much activity. The troops had been moved to Carillon, the district around Ticonderoga and the frontier of Lake St. Sacrement, but it was not until June 24th that Montcalm, after a serious conflict with Vaudreuil, left Montreal to direct the campaign and on June 30th at 3 o'clock in the afternoon arrived at the dilapidated fort of Carillon with a force of about 3,400 men. On July 1st he had chosen his camp at Lachute, at the sawmill. [208]

The City was then bounded: On the north by a stream and marsh, now marked by Craig Street: on the west by Fortification Lane and upper part of McGill Street of today; on the east by the Place Viger Station of today; on the south by the little River St. Pierre and the St. Lawrence. This plan of the fortifications was published in London by Thomas Jefferys, geographer to his Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales, January, 1758.]

Under him were the staff officers whom he brought from France and with whom Montrealers had become well acquainted. We would desire to follow this campaign out for this reason, but we must content ourselves with chronicling how, on July 5th, Abercromby embarked his army of 15,000 men in 900 small boats and 130 whale boats on Lake George (St. Sacrement), and moved down to Ticonderoga; how on July 6th the English army disembarked at the head of the rapids; how on the same day Lord Howe, "the soul of the army," was killed in a skirmish, and how the great victory of July 8th was due to Montcalm, when the English retreated, leaving behind them, according to General Abercromby's account, in killed, wounded and missing, 1,944 officers and men. The loss of the French, not counting that of Langy's detachment, was but 377.

Montcalm announced the victory thus to his wife: "Without Indians, almost without Canadian or colony troops—I had only 400—along with LÉvis and Bourlamaque and the troops of the line, 3,100 fighting men,—I have beaten an army of 25,000 men." [209]

And he wrote to his friend Doreil: "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 LÉvis, not many would have escaped. Ah, my dear Doreil, what soldiers are ours! Never saw I the like. Why were they not at Louisbourg?"

On the day of the victory he caused a great cross to be erected on the battlefield inscribed with these lines, attributing the victory to Divine interposition:

It was a famous victory, on the height of Ticonderoga, and no sweeter name than Carillon falls from a French Canadian's lips to this day.

Once more was Montcalm victorious, but it was to bring him bitter trouble with Vaudreuil and those surrounding him at Montreal, since the glory was due to the troops from France. On July 11th, when the English under Abercromby were in full retreat, M. de Rigaud and several colonial officers, with a good number of colonials and savages, arrived at Carillon, to be followed by more than two thousand others, on July 13th.

The object of this manoeuvre of Vaudreuil in sending this tardy reinforcement seemed to Montcalm and his officers an excuse for Vaudreuil to complain to the court, that having been reinforced he had not pursued the English, as the previous year he had not taken Fort Lydius, being unwilling to complete the victory and so give glory to the colonial troops. At Montreal feelings ran high and bitter; there were two camps, those who found fault with every action of the royal troops, and those who—the ladies especially—saw in the delay in sending the reinforcement a desire to abandon the poor battalions to the enemy.

At Carillon the colonial troops could not hide their chagrin and jealousy at not having participated more fully in the victory of the 8th of July, nor could the French regulars on their part dissimulate their satisfaction at having won the battle almost without Canadian "colony troops." Again the two hostile prejudices were in evidence and manifested themselves even in the letters of their leaders, Montcalm from Carillon, and Vaudreuil from Montreal, to the minister of war.

This acrimonious rivalry which existed between the higher military officers and the Canadian officers and functionaries, though not so largely shared by the soldiers and common people, who for the most part maintained good relations amongst themselves, is a mark of this unhappy period, and must be mentioned if we are to present a true picture of Montreal as the headquarters of military life of this period.

An epistolary duel was carried on from Montreal and Carillon veiled in the language of courtesy, but none the less bitter. In justification of the uselessness of pursuing the enemy, Montcalm relied on the experience of the men on the spot, while Vaudreuil, seated in his bureau at Montreal, "believed himself in a position at a distance of fifty leagues to determine war operations in a country he has never seen, and where the best generals would be embarrassed even after having seen it."

There are few generals who can so conduct campaigns. Von Moltke was one, Vaudreuil was not another; nor was his secretary.

Montcalm in his letters to the governor saw the hand of an enemy—that of the governor's secretary, Grasset de Saint-Sauveur. [210]

The author of the "MÉmoires du Canada (MÉmoires et rÉflections politiques et militaires sur la guerre du Canada depuis 1756 jusqu'À 1760)," says of this secretary: "M. de la JonquiÈre has placed too much confidence, as he explained himself, in a secretary named Saint-Sauveur. For this man, without honour and without sentiment, has employed all means, licit or illicit, to make his fortune. He asked and obtained from his master the exclusive right to sell eau de vie to the Indians. From that moment he attracted public enmity as well as did his master, who was said to be a half partner in the proceeds of the traffic." At the end of the same "MÉmoire," speaking of the functionaries who remained in Canada in 1760 the author writes again: "Saint-Sauveur, the governor's secretary, has remained also. I have had the pleasure of hearing the English governor, Murray, speak in 1759 of this man, saying that he desired this man to fall into his hands; that if France, or rather the French government, had tolerated vice in this man, he wished to correct him; that he was a traitor to his master; that he had abused the confidence given him; that they only saw in him cheating (friponnerie) and illicit trading; that he himself was grieved at the blindness of this general (Vaudreuil). It is doubtful whether this man dare cross over into France. It is an established fact that he is worth more than 1,200,000 livres."

With a view of a reconciliation, on August 7th Montcalm sent Bougainville from Carillon to the governor of Montreal to make personal explanations, and on the 13th the aide-de-camp returned. We learn the success of his mission from his letter written to the minister of war on August 10th: "Union appears to me today perfectly established in good faith between our chiefs." In his journal on his return to Carillon he writes of his impressions and his delicate mission at Montreal: "I have been sent by the Marquis of Montcalm to the Marquis de Vaudreuil with the order to stifle, if possible, this leaven of discord which is being fermented and which perhaps may have been hurtful to the good of the service. Thus our general still makes the advances. Public interest is the rule of his conduct and he has acted ceaselessly in the spirit of the words of Themistocles, 'Strike! But hear!' It appears that the Marquis de Vaudreuil in all his bickerings has followed the impressions of subalterns interested in creating variances, rather than his own ideas. What is, however, his own is his 'amour propre' and a jealousy of a rival—a foundation on which the mischief makers readily build. The appearances are that my journey has not been unfruitful. I hope that facts will prove it so."

Meanwhile Montcalm remained at Carillon, holding the position so as effectively to prevent any return of the English. On September 1st a courier came from Montreal with news that the English were on Lake Ontario and had arrived within three leagues of Fort Frontenac. This was followed shortly by the news of the fall of Louisbourg. This latter was at first discredited by Montcalm, but the entry in his journal, at once heartbreaking and laconic, tells its own tale: "September 6, 1758—News from Quebec announcing the capture of Louisbourg; from Montreal, that of Frontenac."

That night Montcalm left Carillon secretly with Pontleroy and Bougainville, called by Vaudreuil to consult on the critical conjuncture in which the French possessions in America were now placed.

Never since the beginning of the "Seven Years' War" was the situation so menacing for the colony. With the loss of Frontenac, the French were no longer masters of Lake Ontario; Niagara was in a perilous position and French prestige had suffered a mortal blow in the regions of the Great Lakes. With the capture of Louisbourg, the English held the gateway of Canada. Their return to Lake Ontario and the destruction of Frontenac would open to them the route of the higher reaches of the St. Lawrence, onward to Montreal.

Montreal was reached on September 6th and Montcalm stayed there four days. During that time he drew up for Vaudreuil three "mÉmoires," one on the defence of the frontier of Lake Ontario, another on that of Lake Champlain, and a third on the defence of Quebec, as well as on general operations and regulations. These, in spite of the apparent cessation of personal hostilities, and the renewal of courtesies, seem to have displeased Vaudreuil. The latter "mÉmoire" on the reorganization of the army and the future methods of conducting war in Canada was looked upon by Vaudreuil and his secretary as a personal offence. In his letter of November 1st to the minister of marine, Vaudreuil calls to his attention "the faults of this 'mÉmoire,' the passion with which it is treated, the desire to censure the government, the desire of innovation, and more particularly that of lording it over the colonists."

The Montreal clique saw in the frank attempt of Montcalm to solve the situation another depreciation of the colonial forces.

While in Montreal it was arranged, with Vaudreuil's consent, that Bougainville should be sent to France at the end of the campaign to expose the Canadian situation to the king.

On September 13th Montcalm was on his way back to Carillon. But the enemy never returned. At the end of October news arrived that the English had broken up their camp at William Henry and had left Lake St. Sacrement. On November 4th, leaving behind at Carillon a garrison of 400 men, Montcalm left Montreal with the Languedoc battalion, which was soon to be followed by the other battalions. The war of 1758 was over.

The rigorous winter season set in very early this year and the return to Montreal from Carillon was a painful journey to Montcalm and his troops. A disastrous wind on Lake Champlain separated the vessels and nigh foundered several. The cold was intense and the last vessels found themselves hampered by the ice. Yet the victorious general reached St. John without harm. "I will venture to say," he wrote to Bourlamaque, "that my vessels carry Caesar and his fortunes."

On November 9th he reached Montreal. Then started the work of distributing the troops for winter quarters, many of them being stationed round about the Montreal district. The battalion of La Sarre was stationed on the Ile JÉsus, Lachenaie, Terrebonne, Mascouche and l'Assomption; the royal Roussillons at La Prairie, Longueuil, Boucherville, Varennes and VerchÈres; that of Languedoc, in the governmental district of Three Rivers, from Ste. Anne to Batiscan; that of Guyenne, at Contrecoeur, the River Chambly, St. Ours, Sorel; the first battalion of the Berry regiment in the BeauprÉ district, and the second on the Ile d'Orleans; and that of BÉarn at Sault-au-RÉcollet, Longue Pointe, Pointe aux Trembles, the RiviÈre des Prairies, St. Sulpice, La Valtrie and Repentigny.

In Montreal Montcalm's first care was to make representations to the governor and the Intendant Bigot, of the insufficient salary of the soldiers and the officers especially, owing to the high cost of living. In his journal Montcalm gives a comparative table of the tariffs of 1758, 1755, and 1743. For example, in 1743 a sheep cost four livres; in 1755, ten; and in 1758, forty. In 1753 a pound of pork cost three sous, ten in 1755, one livre and ten sous in 1758. In 1743 a pound of butter cost five sous; twelve sous in 1755, and forty sous in 1758.

This application brought a supplementary payment of forty-five livres a month to the captains, and thirty to the lieutenants. Yet it must be added that the officers affected much disedifying ostentation and magnificence in their high rate of living, and many abused the facility they had of borrowing money. On November 12th de Bougainville and M. de Doreil, of the commissary department, were sent as representatives to the court to tell of the condition of affairs in Canada. The governor, Vaudreuil, somewhat distrusted these as friends of Montcalm but he had an ally in PÉan, who had left as early as August 13th, with warm recommendations. The ostensible purpose of the adjutant major of Quebec was to take the waters at BarÈges for the cure of a wounded arm, but M. Doreil, writing to the minister in the same month and warning him that PÉan was one of the chief causes of the maladministration of the colony, suggests that he was anxious to clear away with his fortune of 2,000,000, which he had rapidly amassed. "I have not dared to say 4,000,000, although according to public report I could have done so."

The mails to France and the favourable envoys bore Montcalm's urgent demand for peace, peace, peace at any price to meet the contingencies of the hour. Montcalm had no illusions; he foresaw final disaster owing to the weakness of the mother country, worn out by the European war, and to the supremacy of the English force by sea which would effectively cut off all supplies and reinforcements, could they be sent. Yet he did not despair, but prepared to meet the imminent invasion should peace not be declared. His letters to his family reveal a secret presentiment that he might never again see his dear Candiac or Montpellier.

Montcalm remained in Montreal till December 22d. His letters to Bourlamaque show that he spent the time intervening in a very quiet manner, going out little, reading much and finding the days very long. He read with interest the "Dictionnaire EncyclopÉdique," then in all its novelty and vogue. This vast literary, philosophic and scientific enterprise, which was to have such an effect on French thought, pernicious in its skepticism and anti-religious spirit, had been interdicted in 1752 after the publication of the first two volumes; but on its resumption by 1758 it had already given forth eight volumes. Montcalm wrote to Bourlamaque that he was skipping over the articles he did not wish to know about, and leaving those he could not understand.

Montcalm spent January and February amid the gayeties of Quebec and the pleasant company of the Rue du Parloir, which appealed to him so strongly. His correspondence with his lieutenant gives us an insight into the causes leading to the impending ruin which he foresaw surely stealing onward. He was not happy; he had a presentiment of the brooding catastrophe and foresaw the supreme crisis. Thus he wrote of January 4, 1759: "A ball on Sunday. Peace, or all will go wrong; 1759 will be worse than 1758. Ah! how black I see things!" Another day: "The colony is lost if peace does not come. I see nothing that can save her. Those who govern it have serious cause to reproach themselves. I have none for myself."

Again: "Pleasures at Quebec have been most keenly pursued in spite of the prevailing misery and the approaching loss of the colony. There have never been so many balls, nor such heavy games of chance in spite of the prohibition of last year. The governor general and the intendant have authorized it."

In March, Montcalm was again in the more sober atmosphere of Montreal, preparing military memoirs, and reading, according to his letter to Bourlamaque, in the third volume of the Encyclopedia, "the beautiful articles on Christianity, citation, comedy, comic, college, council, colony, commerce, etc." He was also preparing his letters for France. In a letter dated April 12, 1759, to the minister of war, the MarÉchal de Belle-Isle, he threw away all reserve and decided to tell all he saw and knew, thus to expose in its heartbreaking reality the desperate state of the colony, to lay bare the plagues that were gnawing it, the corruption and the depredations which were conspiring with the English invasions to precipitate its downfall. "Except for an unexpected good fortune," he wrote, "of a great diversion into the English colonies by sea, or of great mistakes on the side of the enemy, Canada will be taken this campaign or certainly next.

"The English have sixty thousand men, we at most ten thousand to eleven thousand. Our government has no money. Advance pay and provisions are wanting. In default of these the English will win. The fields are uncultivated. We need cattle. The Canadians are discouraged. There is no confidence in M. de Vaudreuil or in M. Bigot. M. de Vaudreuil is in no position to direct a war campaign. He is inactive; he gives his confidence to experimenters rather than to the general sent from France. M. Bigot appears to be engaged only in making a great fortune for himself, his adherents and hangers-on. Avarice has obtained the master hand. The officers, the government storekeepers and clerks, ... are making astounding fortunes.... The expenses which have been paid at Quebec by the treasurer of the colony reach twenty-four millions; the year before they were only twelve to thirteen millions. This year they will mount up to thirty-six millions. It seems that all are hurrying to make their fortunes before the loss of the colony, which many perhaps desire as an impenetrable veil to hide their bad conduct."

He then enumerates particular instances of glaring acts of "grafting" and illicit trading. For example: "Is it necessary to transport the artillery, gun carriages, wagons and utensils? M. Mercier, who commands the artillery, is the contractor under different names; everything is done badly and dearly; this officer, who came as a simple soldier twenty years ago, will soon become rich to the amount of about six hundred thousand or seven hundred thousand livres, perhaps a million if this lasts. I have often spoken of this to M. de Vaudreuil or to M. Bigot. Each one throws the fault onto his colleague."

"The people," he continues, "frightened by these expenses, fear a deterioration in the value of the paper money of the country; a bad effect follows—the cost of living increases. The Canadians who have not taken part in illicit profits hate the government.... Even should peace come, the colony is ruined if the whole government is not changed." Thus he wrote to his responsible chief in France.

In his journal he is naturally fuller in his condemnations and he remarks: "One would need to have the pen always in hand to write down all these 'friponneries.' O! tempora! O mores!"

This season was a painful one for him; he laments over the present and the future. "Pauvre roi! Pauvre France! Cara patria!" In another letter to Bourlamaque he surveys his own position: "In a short time I shall be forty-seven years of age. The dignity of a marshal of France would flatter me as well as any other man; it would be fine to have it in six years, but to buy it by this kind of life would be at too dear a price."

In his journal he unburdens himself more fully. "O, king, worthy of being better served," he writes. "Dear fatherland, crushed with taxes, to enrich cheats and greedy ones!... Shall I keep my innocence as I have done up to the present, in the midst of corruption? I shall have defended the colony; I shall have owed 10,000 Écus; but I shall see men enriching themselves like a Ralig, a Coban, a CÉcile, a set of men without faith, rascals interested in the provision enterprise, gaining in one year four or five hundred thousand livres, arising from their outrageous expenditures; a Maurin, a clerk at 100 crowns, an abortion by nature, a snail in figure, traveling with a suite of calÈches and carriages, spending more in conveyances, harness and in horses than a young coxcomb and giddy-headed farmer-general of revenues. And this uphold of provisions, an enterprise formed since the time of M. de la Porte, who went shares in it! Will France never produce an enlightened head of its marine department, a reformer of abuses? The peculations of a Verres, of a Marius, of which Juvenal speaks, do not come near these."

When not otherwise engaged in his literary and military studies—for social life seems to have been not very attractive to him in Montreal—Montcalm would confer with the governor, with whom the appearance of courtesy at least was preserved, though at times with underlying mutual antipathies. On one occasion he entered the office of Vaudreuil, whom he surprised listening indulgently to M. d'Eschambault, his nephew by marriage, inveighing against the French officers, accusing them of insubordinate speech against the authorities after the unfortunate events following Carillon. Caught in the act, the governor, flushing up, took the opportunity to complain bitterly of the French officers. Montcalm profited by the occasion also to unburden his heart on the subject of all the unworthy hawking of tittle-tattle and exaggerations productive of harm to the service, and he dealt "a long and strong, but respectful" lesson to both of them. "I should trust," wrote Montcalm to Bourlamaque, "that this will correct tale-bearers and those who listen to them."

Another incident related to Bourlamaque also gives a picture of the strained relations of the two military factions in Montreal. One day, in the governor's office, an officer of the colonial militia saw fit to say in the presence of Vaudreuil, Montcalm and others, that during the siege of William Henry, General Webb had great fear at Fort Lydius, that Orange and New York were without troops, and that this fort could have been easily taken. This being a favourite topic with the governor, he commented on it with eagerness. Stung to the quick by this recurrence to an old sore, Montcalm gave anew the reasons which had prevented him making the second siege in 1757, adding that it was no use feeding still on chimeras. "I concluded, by saying modestly, that I did my best at the seat of war, following my feeble lights, and that if he was not satisfied with his second in command, he had better make the campaign in person, so as to carry out his own ideas. The tears sprang to his eyes and he muttered between his teeth that such might be the case. The conversation finished on my part by saying: 'I shall be delighted and I shall willingly serve under you.'

"Madame de Vaudreuil wished to intervene. 'Madame,' I said, 'permit me, without departing from the respect due to you, to have the honour to tell you that ladies ought not to mix in war affairs.' Madame again wished to interrupt. 'Madame,' I said, 'without departing from the respect due to you, allow me to have the honour to inform you that if Madame de Montcalm were here and heard us speaking of war affairs with M. le Marquis de Vaudreuil, she would maintain silence.'"

"This scene, before his officers, three of them colonials, will be embroidered and reimbroidered; but here it is."