Parkman Vol. 7, Chapter 19

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.

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

Previously in Montcalm and Wolfe, Volume 7 of the French in Canada series. Continuing Chapter 18.

With the opening of the year 1758 her course of Continental victories began. The Duke of Cumberland, 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 generalship 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 ships 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.[1] 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.[2] 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 dashing 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.

[1: Order, War Office, 19 Dec. 1757.]

[2: 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 passage; but several combats of detached ships took place, one of which is too remarkable to pass unnoticed. Captain Gardiner of the “Monmouth,” a ship of four hundred and seventy men and sixty-four guns, engaged the French ship “Foudroyant,” carrying a thousand men and eighty-four guns of heavier metal than those of the Englishman. Gardiner had lately been reproved by Anson, First Lord of the Admiralty, for some alleged misconduct or shortcoming and he thought of nothing but retrieving his honor. “We must take her,” he said to his crew as the “Foudroyant” hove in sight. “She looks more than a match for us but I will not quit her while this ship can swim or I have a soul left alive;” and the sailors answered with cheers. The fight was long and furious. Gardiner was killed by a musket shot, begging his first lieutenant with his dying breath not to haul down his flag. The lieutenant nailed it to the mast. At length the “Foudroyant” ceased from thundering, struck her colors and was carried a prize to England.

[Entick, III. 56-60.]

The typical British naval officer of that time was a rugged sea-dog, a tough and stubborn fighter, though no more so than the politer generations that followed, at home on the quarter-deck but no ornament to the drawing-room, by reason of what his contemporary, Entick, the strenuous chronicler of the war, calls, not unapprovingly, “the ferocity of his manners.” While Osborn held La Clue imprisoned at Toulon, Sir Edward Hawke, worthy leader of such men, sailed with seven ships of the line and three frigates to intercept a French squadron from Rochefort convoying a fleet of transports with troops for America. The French ships cut their cables and ran for the shore, where most of them stranded in the mud and some threw cannon and munitions overboard to float themselves. The expedition was broken up. Of the many ships fitted out this year for the succor of Canada and Louisbourg, comparatively few reached their destination and these for the most part singly or by twos and threes.

Meanwhile Admiral Boscawen with his fleet bore away for Halifax, the place of rendezvous and Amherst, in the ship “Dublin,” followed in his wake.

Chapter 19

The stormy coast of Cape Breton is indented by a small land-locked bay, between which and the ocean lies a tongue of land dotted with a few grazing sheep and intersected by rows of stone that mark more or less distinctly the lines of what once were streets. Green mounds and embankments of earth enclose the whole space and beneath the highest of them yawn arches and caverns of ancient masonry. This grassy solitude was once the “Dunkirk of America;” the vaulted caverns where the sheep find shelter from the ram were casemates where terrified women sought refuge from storms of shot and shell and the shapeless green mounds were citadel, bastion, rampart and glacis. Here stood Louisbourg; and not all the efforts of its conquerors, nor all the havoc of succeeding times, have availed to efface it. Men in hundreds toiled for months with lever, spade and gunpowder in the work of destruction and for more than a century it has served as a stone quarry; but the remains of its vast defenses still tell their tale of human valor and human woe.

Stand on the mounds that were once the King’s Bastion. The glistening sea spreads eastward three thousand miles and its waves meet their first rebuff against this iron coast. Lighthouse Point is white with foam; jets of spray spout from the rocks of Goat Island; mist curls in clouds from the seething surf that lashes the crags of Black Point and the sea boils like a caldron among the reefs by the harbor’s mouth; but on the calm water within, the small fishing vessels rest tranquil at their moorings. Beyond lies a hamlet of fishermen by the edge of the water and a few scattered dwellings dot the rough hills, bristled with stunted firs, that gird the quiet basin; while close at hand, within the precinct of the vanished fortress, stand two small farmhouses. All else is a solitude of ocean, rock, marsh and forest.

[Louisbourg is described as I saw it ten days before writing the above, after an easterly gale.]

At the beginning of June, 1758, the place wore another aspect. Since the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle vast sums had been spent in repairing and strengthening it; and Louisbourg was the strongest fortress in French or British America. Nevertheless it had its weaknesses. The original plan of the works had not been fully carried out; and owing, it is said, to the bad quality of the mortar, the masonry of the ramparts was in so poor a condition that it had been replaced in some parts with fascines. The circuit of the fortifications was more than a mile and a half and the town contained about four thousand inhabitants. The best buildings in it were the convent, the hospital, the King’s storehouses and the chapel and governor’s quarters, which were under the same roof. Of the private houses, only seven or eight were of stone, the rest being humble wooden structures, suited to a population of fishermen. The garrison consisted of the battalions of Artois, Bourgogne, Cambis and Volontaires Étrangers, with two companies of artillery and twenty-four of colony troops from Canada, — in all three thousand and eighty regular troops, besides officers;[3] and to these were added a body of armed inhabitants and a band of Indians. In the harbor were five ships of the line and seven frigates, carrying in all five hundred and forty-four guns and about three thousand men.[4] Two hundred and nineteen cannon and seventeen mortars were mounted on the walls and outworks.[5] Of these last the most important were the Grand Battery on the shore of the harbor opposite its mouth and the Island Battery on the rocky islet at its entrance.

[3: Journal du Siége de Louisbourg. Twenty-nine hundred regulars were able to bear arms when the siege began. Houllière, Commandant des Troupes, au Ministre, 6 Août, 1758.]

[4: Le Prudent, 74 guns; Entreprenant, 74; Capricieux, 64; Célèbre, 64; Bienfaisant, 64; Apollon, 50; Chèvre, 22; Biche, 18; Fidèle, 22; Écho, 26; Aréthuse, 36; Comète, 30. The Bizarre, 64, sailed for France on the eighth of June and was followed by the Comète.]

[5: État d’Artillerie, appended to the Journal of Drucour. There were also forty-four cannon in reserve.]

The strongest front of the works was on the land side, along the base of the peninsular triangle on which the town stood. This front, about twelve hundred yards in extent, reached from the sea on the left to the harbor on the right and consisted of four bastions with then-connecting curtains, the Princess’s, the Queen’s, the King’s and the Dauphin’s. The King’s Bastion formed part of the citadel. The glacis before it sloped down to an extensive marsh, which, with an adjacent pond, completely protected this part of the line. On the right, however, towards the harbor, the ground was high enough to offer advantages to an enemy, as was also the case, to a less degree, on the left, towards the sea. The best defense of Louisbourg was the craggy shore, that, for leagues on either hand, was accessible only at a few points and even there with difficulty. All these points were vigilantly watched.

There had been signs of the enemy from the first opening of spring. In the intervals of fog, rain and snow-squalls, sails were seen hovering on the distant sea; and during the latter part of May a squadron of nine ships cruised off the mouth of the harbor, appearing and disappearing, sometimes driven away by gales, sometimes lost in fogs and sometimes approaching to within cannon-shot of the batteries. Their object was to blockade the port, — in which they failed; for French ships had come in at intervals, till, as we have seen, twelve of them lay safe anchored in the harbor, with more than a year’s supply of provisions for the garrison.

From Montcalm and Wolfe, Chapter 19 by Francis Parkman

To be continued.

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

A very large amount of unpublished material has been used in its preparation, consisting for the most part of documents copied from the archives and libraries of France and England, especially from the Archives de la Marine et des Colonies, the Archives de la Guerre, and the Archives Nationales at Paris, and the Public Record Office and the British Museum at London. The papers copied for the present work in France alone exceed six thousand folio pages of manuscript, additional and supplementary to the “Paris Documents” procured for the State of New York under the agency of Mr. Brodhead. The copies made in England form ten volumes, besides many English documents consulted in the original manuscript. Great numbers of autograph letters, diaries, and other writings of persons engaged in the war have also been examined on this side of the Atlantic.

I owe to the kindness of the present Marquis de Montcalm the permission to copy all the letters written by his ancestor, General Montcalm, when in America, to members of his family in France. General Montcalm, from his first arrival in Canada to a few days before his death, also carried on an active correspondence with one of his chief officers, Bourlamaque, with whom he was on terms of intimacy. These autograph letters are now preserved in a private collection. I have examined them and obtained copies of the whole. They form an interesting complement to the official correspondence of the writer, and throw the most curious side-lights on the persons and events of the time.

Besides manuscripts, the printed matter in the form of books, pamphlets, contemporary newspapers, and other publications relating to the American part of the Seven Years’ War, is varied and abundant; and I believe I may safely say that nothing in it of much consequence has escaped me. The liberality of some of the older States of the Union, especially New York and Pennsylvania, in printing the voluminous records of their colonial history, has saved me a deal of tedious labor.

The whole of this published and unpublished mass of evidence has been read and collated with extreme care, and more than common pains have been taken to secure accuracy of statement. The study of books and papers, however, could not alone answer the purpose. The plan of the work was formed in early youth; and though various causes have long delayed its execution, it has always been kept in view. Meanwhile, I have visited and examined every spot where events of any importance in connection with the contest took place, and have observed with attention such scenes and persons as might help to illustrate those I meant to describe. In short, the subject has been studied as much from life and in the open air as at the library table.

BOSTON, Sept. 16, 1884.

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