France Controls Port Royal

New England has been blamed for not employing trained officers to command her levies; but with a couple of exceptions, there were none in the country, nor were they wanted.

Our special project presenting the definitive account of France in Canada by Francis Parkman, one of America’s greatest historians.

Previously in A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume 1. Continuing Chapter 7.

Church now steered for Port Royal, which he had been forbidden to attack. The two frigates and the transports had by this time rejoined him, and in spite of Dudley’s orders to make no attempt on the French fort, the British and provincial officers met in council to consider whether to do so. With one voice they decided in the negative, since they had only four hundred men available for landing, while the French garrison was no doubt much stronger, having had ample time to call the inhabitants to its aid. Church, therefore, after trying the virtue of a bombastic summons to surrender, and destroying a few houses, sailed back to Boston. It was a miserable retaliation for a barbarous outrage; as the guilty were out of reach, the invaders turned their ire on the innocent.

[On this affair, Thomas Church, Entertaining Passages (1716). The writer was the son of Benjamin Church. Penhallow; Belknap, i. 266; Dudley to — — , 21 April, 1704; Hutchinson, ii. 132; Deplorable State of New England; Entreprise des Anglais sur l’Acadie, 1704; Expéditions faites par les Anglais de la Nouvelle Angleterre, 1704; Labat, Invasion des Anglois de Baston, 1704.]

If Port Royal in French hands was a source of illicit gain to some persons in Boston, it was also an occasion of loss by the privateers and corsairs it sent out to prey on trading and fishing vessels, while at the same time it was a standing menace as the possible naval base for one of those armaments against the New England capital which were often threatened, though never carried into effect. Hence, in 1707 the New England colonists made, in their bungling way, a serious attempt to get possession of it.

Dudley’s enemies raised the old cry that at heart he wished Port Royal to remain French, and was only forced by popular clamor to countenance an attack upon it. The charge seems a malicious slander. Early in March he proposed the enterprise to the General Court; and the question being referred to a committee, they reported that a thousand soldiers should be raised, vessels impressed, and her Majesty’s frigate “Deptford,” with the province galley, employed to convoy them. An Act was passed accordingly.[1] Two regiments were soon afoot, one uniformed in red, and the other in blue; one commanded by Colonel Francis Wainwright, and the other by Colonel Winthrop Hilton. Rhode Island sent eighty more men, and New Hampshire sixty, while Connecticut would do nothing. The expedition sailed on the thirteenth of May, and included one thousand and seventy-six soldiers, with about four hundred and fifty sailors.

[1: Report of a Committee to consider his Excellency’s Speech, 12 March, 1707. Resolve for an Expedition against Port Royal (Massachusetts Archives).]

The soldiers were nearly all volunteers from the rural militia, and their training and discipline were such as they had acquired in the uncouth frolics and plentiful New England rum of the periodical “muster days.” There chanced to be one officer who knew more or less of the work in hand. This was the English engineer Rednap, sent out to look after the fortifications of New York and New England. The commander-in-chief was Colonel John March, of Newbury, who had popular qualities, had seen frontier service, and was personally brave, but totally unfit for his present position. Most of the officers were civilians from country towns, — Ipswich, Topsfield, Lynn, Salem, Dorchester, Taunton, or Weymouth.[2] In the province galley went, as secretary of the expedition, that intelligent youth, William Dudley, son of the governor.

[2: Autobiography of Rev. John Barnard, one of the five chaplains of the expedition.]

New England has been blamed for not employing trained officers to command her levies; but with the exception of Rednap, and possibly of Captain Samuel Vetch, there were none in the country, nor were they wanted. In their stubborn and jealous independence, the sons of the Puritans would have resented their presence. The provincial officers were, without exception, civilians. British regular officers, good, bad, or indifferent, were apt to put on airs of superiority which galled the democratic susceptibilities of the natives, who, rather than endure a standing military force imposed by the mother-country, preferred to suffer if they must, and fight their own battles in their own crude way. Even for irregular warfare they were at a disadvantage; Canadian feudalism developed good partisan leaders, which was rarely the case with New England democracy. Colonel John March was a tyro set over a crowd of ploughboys, fishermen, and mechanics, officered by tradesmen, farmers, blacksmiths, village magnates, and deacons of the church, — for the characters of deacon and militia officer were often joined in one. These improvised soldiers commonly did well in small numbers, and very ill in large ones.

Early in June the expedition sailed into Port Royal Basin, and Lieutenant-Colonel Appleton, with three hundred and fifty men, landed on the north shore, four or five miles below the fort, marched up to the mouth of the Annapolis, and was there met by an ambushed body of French, who, being outnumbered, presently took to their boats and retreated to the fort. Meanwhile, March, with seven hundred and fifty men, landed on the south shore and pushed on to the meadows of Allen’s River, which they were crossing in battle array when a fire blazed out upon them from a bushy hill on the farther bank, where about two hundred French lay in ambush under Subercase, the governor. March and his men crossed the stream, and after a skirmish that did little harm to either side, the French gave way. The English then advanced to a hill known as the Lion Rampant, within cannon-shot of the fort, and here began to intrench themselves, stretching their lines right and left towards the Annapolis on the one hand, and Allen’s River on the other, so as to form a semicircle before the fort, where all the inhabitants had by this time taken refuge.

Soon all was confusion in the New England camp, — the consequence of March’s incapacity for a large command, and the greenness and ignorance of both himself and his subordinates. There were conflicting opinions, wranglings, and disputes. The men, losing all confidence in their officers, became unmanageable. “The devil was at work among us,” writes one of those present. The engineer, Rednap, the only one of them who knew anything of the work in hand, began to mark out the batteries; but he soon lost temper, and declared that “it was not for him to venture his reputation with such ungovernable and undisciplined men and inconstant officers.”[3] He refused to bring up the cannon, saying that it could not be done under the fire of the fort; and the naval captains were of the same opinion.

[3: A Boston Gentleman to his Friend, 13 June, 1707 (Mass. Archives).]

One of the chaplains, Rev. John Barnard, being of a martial turn and full of zeal, took it upon himself to make a plan of the fort; and to that end, after providing himself with pen, ink, paper, and a horse-pistol, took his seat at a convenient spot; but his task was scarcely begun when it was ended by a cannon-ball that struck the ground beside him, peppered him with gravel, and caused his prompt retreat.

[Autobiography of Rev. John Barnard.]

French deserters reported that there were five hundred men in the fort, with forty-two heavy cannon, and that four or five hundred more were expected every day. This increased the general bewilderment of the besiegers. There was a council of war. Rednap declared that it would be useless to persist; and after hot debate and contradiction, it was resolved to decamp. Three days after, there was another council, which voted to bring up the cannon and open fire, in spite of Rednap and the naval captains; but in the next evening a third council resolved again to raise the siege as hopeless. This disgusted the rank and file, who were a little soothed by an order to destroy the storehouse and other buildings outside the fort; and, ill led as they were, they did the work thoroughly. “Never did men act more boldly,” says the witness before quoted; “they threatened the enemy to his nose, and would have taken the fort if the officers had shown any spirit. They found it hard to bring them off. At the end we broke up with the confusion of Babel, and went about our business like fools.”

[A Boston Gentleman to his Friend, 13 June (old style), 1707. The final attack here alluded to took place on the night of the sixteenth of June (new style).]

The baffled invaders sailed crestfallen to Casco Bay, and a vessel was sent to carry news of the miscarriage to Dudley, who, vexed and incensed, ordered another attempt. March was in a state of helpless indecision, increased by a bad cold; but the governor would not recall him, and chose instead the lamentable expedient of sending three members of the provincial council to advise and direct him. Two of them had commissions in the militia; the third, John Leverett, was a learned bachelor of divinity, formerly a tutor in Harvard College, and soon after its president, — capable, no doubt, of preaching Calvinistic sermons to the students, but totally unfit to command men or conduct a siege.

Young William Dudley was writing meanwhile to his father how jealousies and quarrels were rife among the officers, how their conduct bred disorder and desertion among the soldiers, and how Colonel March and others behaved as if they had nothing to do but make themselves popular.[4] Many of the officers seem, in fact, to have been small politicians in search of notoriety, with an eye to votes or appointments. Captain Stuckley, of the British frigate, wrote to the governor in great discontent about the “nonsensical malice” of Lieutenant-Colonel Appleton, and adds, “I don’t see what good I can do by lying here, where I am almost murdered by mosquitoes.”[5]

[4: William Dudley to Governor Dudley, 24 June, 1707.]

[5: Stuckley to Dudley, 28 June, 1707.]

The three commissioners came at last, with a reinforcement of another frigate and a hundred recruits, which did not supply losses, as the soldiers had deserted by scores. In great ill-humor, the expedition sailed back to Port Royal, where it was found that reinforcements had also reached the French, including a strongly manned privateer from Martinique. The New England men landed, and there was some sharp skirmishing in an orchard. Chaplain Barnard took part in the fray. “A shot brushed my wig,” he says, “but I was mercifully preserved. We soon drove them out of the orchard, killed a few of them, desperately wounded the privateer captain, and after that we all embarked and returned to Boston as fast as we could.” This summary statement is imperfect, for there was a good deal of skirmishing from the thirteenth August to the twentieth, when the invaders sailed for home. March was hooted as he walked Boston streets, and children ran after him crying, “Wooden sword!” There was an attempt at a court-martial; but so many officers were accused, on one ground or another, that hardly enough were left to try them, and the matter was dropped. With one remarkable exception, the New England militia reaped scant laurels on their various expeditions eastward; but of all their shortcomings, this was the most discreditable.

[A considerable number of letters and official papers on this expedition will be found in the 51st and 71st volumes of the Massachusetts Archives. See also Hutchinson, ii. 151, and Belknap, i. 273. The curious narrative of the chaplain, Barnard, is in Mass. Hist. Coll., 3d Series, v. 189-196. The account in the Deplorable State of New England is meant solely to injure Dudley. The chief French accounts are Entreprise des Anglois contre l’Acadie, 26 Juin, 1707; Subercase au Ministre, même date; Labat au Ministre, 6 Juillet, 1707; Relation appended to Dièreville, Voyage de l’Acadie. The last is extremely loose and fanciful. Subercase puts the English force at three thousand men, whereas the official returns show it to have been, soldiers and sailors, about half this number.]

From A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume 1, Chapter 7 by Francis Parkman

Volume 6 of Parkman’s History of France in North America titled “A Half-Century of Conflict” was itself published in two volumes. This means that “Volume 6” (consistent with how past books published on this website were called) must be called “Part 6”, instead – to avoid confusion. This book is Volume 1 of “A Half-Century of Conflict”. The next book in the series will be called “Part 6, A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume 2”.

The below is from Francis Parkman’s Preface to this book.

This book, forming Part VI. of the series called France and England in North America, fills the gap between Part V., “Count Frontenac,” and Part VII., “Montcalm and Wolfe;” so that the series now forms a continuous history of the efforts of France to occupy and control this continent.

In the present volumes the nature of the subject does not permit an unbroken thread of narrative, and the unity of the book lies in its being throughout, in one form or another, an illustration of the singularly contrasted characters and methods of the rival claimants to North America.

Like the rest of the series, this work is founded on original documents. The statements of secondary writers have been accepted only when found to conform to the evidence of contemporaries, whose writings have been sifted and collated with the greatest care. As extremists on each side have charged me with favoring the other, I hope I have been unfair to neither.

The manuscript material collected for the preparation of the series now complete forms about seventy volumes, most of them folios. These have been given by me from time to time to the Massachusetts Historical Society, in whose library they now are, open to the examination of those interested in the subjects of which they treat. The collection was begun forty-five years ago, and its formation has been exceedingly slow, having been retarded by difficulties which seemed insurmountable, and for years were so in fact. Hence the completion of the series has required twice the time that would have sufficed under less unfavorable conditions.

BOSTON, March 26, 1892

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