Parkman Vol. 7, Chapter 23

The two French leaders were excellently fitted to exasperate each other: Montcalm, with his impetuous, impatient volubility that sometimes-forgot prudence; and Vaudreuil, always affable towards adherents but full of suspicious egotism and restless jealousy towards colleagues.

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 22.

If his achievement was not brilliant, its solid value was above price. It opened the Great West to English enterprise, took from France half her savage allies and relieved the western borders from the scourge of Indian war. From southern New York to North Carolina, the frontier populations had cause to bless the memory of the steadfast and all-enduring soldier.

So ended the campaign of 1758. The center of the French had held its own triumphantly at Ticonderoga; but their left had been forced back by the capture of Louisbourg and their right by that of Fort Duquesne, while their entire right wing had been well nigh cut off by the destruction of Fort Frontenac. The outlook was dark. Their own Indians were turning against them. “They have struck us,” wrote Doreil to the Minister of War; “they have seized three canoes loaded with furs on Lake Ontario and murdered the men in them: sad forerunner of what we have to fear! Peace, Monseigneur, give us peace! Pardon me but I cannot repeat that word too often.”

NOTE: The Bouquet and Haldimand Papers in the British Museum contain a mass of curious correspondence of the principal persons engaged in the expedition under Forbes; copies of it all are before me. The Public Record Office, America and West Indies, has also furnished much material, including the official letters of Forbes. The Writings of Washington, the Archives and Colonial Records of Pennsylvania and the magazines and newspapers of the time may be mentioned among the sources of information, along with a variety of miscellaneous contemporary letters. The Journals of Christian Frederic Post are printed in full in the Olden Time and elsewhere.

CHAPTER 23

Never was general in a more critical position than I was: God has delivered me; his be the praise! He gives me health, though I am worn out with labor, fatigue and miserable dissensions that have determined me to ask for my recall. Heaven grant that I may get it!”

Thus wrote Montcalm to his mother after his triumph at Ticonderoga. That great exploit had entailed a train of vexations, for it stirred the envy of Vaudreuil, more especially as it was due to the troops of the line, with no help from Indians and very little from Canadians. The Governor assured the Colonial Minister that the victory would have bad results, though he gives no hint what these might be; that Montcalm had mismanaged the whole affair; that he would have been beaten but for the manifest interposition of Heaven;[1] and, finally, that he had failed to follow his (Vaudreuil’s) directions and had therefore enabled the English to escape. The real directions of the Governor, dictated, perhaps, by dread lest his rival should reap laurels, were to avoid a general engagement; and it was only by setting them at nought that Abercromby had been routed. After the battle a sharp correspondence passed between the two chiefs. The Governor, who had left Montcalm to his own resources before the crisis, sent him Canadians and Indians in abundance after it was over; while he cautiously refrained from committing himself by positive orders, repeated again and again that if these reinforcements were used to harass Abercromby’s communications, the whole English army would fall back to the Hudson and leave baggage and artillery a prey to the French. These preposterous assertions and tardy succors were thought by Montcalm to be a device for giving color to the charge that he had not only failed to deserve victory but had failed also to make use of it.[2] He did what was possible and sent strong detachments to act in the English rear; which, though they did not and could not, compel the enemy to fall back, caused no slight annoyance, till Rogers checked them by the defeat of Marin. Nevertheless, Vaudreuil pretended on one hand that Montcalm had done nothing with the Canadians and Indians sent him and on the other that these same Canadians and Indians had triumphed over the enemy by their mere presence at Ticonderoga.

[1: Vaudreuil au Ministre, 8 Août, 1758.]

[2: Much of the voluminous correspondence on these matters will be found in N.Y. Col. Docs., X.]

“It was my activity in sending these succors to Carillon [Ticonderoga] that forced the English to retreat. The Marquis de Montcalm might have made their retreat difficult; but it was in vain that I wrote to him, in vain that the colony troops, Canadians and Indians, begged him to pursue the enemy.”[3] The succors he speaks of were sent in July and August, while the English did not fall back till the first of November. Neither army left its position till the season was over and Abercromby did so only when he learned that the French were setting the example. Vaudreuil grew more and more bitter.

[3: Vaudreuil au Ministre, 8 Avril, 1759.]

As the King has entrusted this colony to me, I cannot help warning you of the unhappy consequences that would follow if the Marquis de Montcalm should remain here. I shall keep him by me till I receive your orders. It is essential that they reach me early.”

“I pass over in silence all the infamous conduct and indecent talk he has held or countenanced; but I should be wanting in my duty to the King if I did not beg you to ask for his recall.”[4]

[4: Ibid.]

He does not say what is meant by infamous conduct and indecent talk but the allusion is probably to irreverent utterances touching the Governor in which the officers from France were apt to indulge, not always without the knowledge of their chief. Vaudreuil complained of this to Montcalm, adding, “I am greatly above it and I despise it.”[5] To which the General replied: “You are right to despise gossip, supposing that there has been any. For my part, though I hear that I have been torn to pieces without mercy in your presence, I do not believe it.”[6]

[5: Vaudreuil à Montcalm, 1 Août, 1758.]

[6: Montcalm à Vaudreuil, 6 Août, 1758.]

In these infelicities Bigot figures as peacemaker, though with no perceptible success. Vaudreuil’s cup of bitterness was full when letters came from Versailles ordering him to defer to Montcalm on all questions of war, or of civil administration bearing up war.[7] He had begged hard for his rival’s recall and in reply his rival was set over his head.

[7: Ordres du Roy et Dépêches des Ministres, 1758, 1759.]

The two yokefellows were excellently fitted to exasperate each other: Montcalm, with his southern vivacity of emotion and an impetuous, impatient volubility that sometimes forgot prudence; and Vaudreuil, always affable towards adherents but full of suspicious egotism and restless jealousy that bristled within him at the very thought of his colleague. Some of the by-play of the quarrel may be seen in Montcalm’s familiar correspondence with Bourlamaque. One day the Governor, in his own house, brought up the old complaint that Montcalm, after taking Fort William Henry, did not take Fort Edward also. The General, for the twentieth time, gave good reasons for not making the attempt. “I ended,” he tells Bourlamaque, “by saying quietly that when I went to war I did the best I could; and that when one is not pleased with one’s lieutenants, one had better take the field in person. He was very much moved and muttered between his teeth that perhaps he would; at which I said that I should be delighted to serve under him. Madame de Vaudreuil wanted to put in her word. I said: ‘Madame, saving due respect, permit me to have the honor to say that ladies ought not to talk war.’ She kept on. I said: ‘Madame, saving due respect, permit me to have the honor to say that if Madame de Montcalm were here and heard me talking war with Monsieur le Marquis de Vaudreuil, she would remain silent.’ This scene was in presence of eight officers, three of them belonging to the colony troops; and a pretty story they will make of it.”

These letters to Bourlamaque, in their detestable handwriting, small, cramped, confused, without stops and sometimes almost indecipherable, betray the writer’s state of mind. “I should like as well as anybody to be Marshal of France; but to buy the honor with the life I am leading here would be too much.” He recounts the last news from Fort Duquesne, just before its fall.

Mutiny among the Canadians, who want to come home; the officers busy with making money and stealing like mandarins. Their commander sets the example and will come back with three or four hundred thousand francs; the pettiest ensign, who does not gamble, will have ten, twelve, or fifteen thousand. The Indians don’t like Ligneris, who is drunk every day. Forgive the confusion of this letter; I have not slept all night with thinking of the robberies and mismanagement and folly. Pauvre Roi, pauvre France, cara patria!”

Oh, when shall we get out of this country! I think I would give half that I have to go home. Pardon this digression to a melancholy man. It is not that I have not still some remnants of gayety; but what would seem such in anybody else is melancholy for a Languedocian. Burn my letter and never doubt my attachment.”

I shall always say, Happy he who is free from the proud yoke to which I am bound. When shall I see my château of Candiac, my plantations, my chestnut grove, my oil-mill, my mulberry-trees? O bon Dieu! Bon soir; brûlez ma lettre.”

[8: The above extracts are from letters of 5 and 27 Nov. and 9 Dec. 1758 and 18 and 23 March, 1759.]

Never was dispute more untimely than that between these ill-matched colleagues. The position of the colony was desperate. Thus far the Canadians had never lost heart but had obeyed with admirable alacrity the Governor’s call to arms, borne with patience the burdens and privations of the war and submitted without revolt to the exactions and oppressions of Cadet and his crew; loyal to their native soil, loyal to their Church, loyal to the wretched government that crushed and belittled them. When the able-bodied were ordered to the war, where four fifths of them were employed in the hard and tedious work of transportation, the women, boys and old men tilled the fields and raised a scanty harvest, which always might be and sometimes was, taken from them in the name of the King. Yet the least destitute among them were forced every winter to lodge soldiers in their houses, for each of whom they were paid fifteen france a month, in return for substance devoured and wives and daughters debauched.

[9: Mémoire sur le moyen d’entretenir 10,000 Hommes de Troupes dans les Colonies, 1759.]

No pains had been spared to keep up the courage of the people and feed them with flattering illusions. When the partisan officer Boishébert was tried for peculation, his counsel met the charge by extolling the manner in which he had fulfilled the arduous duty of encouraging the Acadians,

putting on an air of triumph even in defeat; using threats, caresses, stratagems; painting our victories in vivid colors; hiding the strength and successes of the enemy; promising succors that did not and could not come; inventing plausible reasons why they did not come and making new promises to set off the failure of the old; persuading a starved people to forget their misery; taking from some to give to others; and doing all this continually in the face of a superior enemy, that this country might be snatched from England and saved to France.”

[10: Procès de Bigot, Cadet, et autres, Mémoire pour le Sieur de Boishébert.]

What Boishébert was doing in Acadia, Vaudreuil was doing on a larger scale in Canada. By indefatigable lying, by exaggerating every success and covering over every reverse, he deceived the people and in some measure himself. He had in abundance the Canadian gift of gasconade and boasted to the Colonial Minister that one of his countrymen was a match for from three to ten Englishmen. It is possible that he almost believed it; for the midnight surprise of defenseless families and the spreading of panics among scattered border settlements were inseparable from his idea of war. Hence the high value he set on Indians, who in such work outdid the Canadians themselves. Sustained by the intoxication of flattering falsehoods and not doubting that the blunders and weakness of the first years of the war gave the measure of English efficiency, the colonists had never suspected that they could be subdued.

From Montcalm and Wolfe, Chapter 23 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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