Death or Victory

by Dan Snow

  In northern New York, the other front between the British and French zones of influence in North America, along the traditional invasion route of Lake George, or Lac du Saint-Sacrement as the French called it, the lumbering red-coated armies of King George II had been fought to a standstill over three consecutive campaigns. Raids by the mixed war parties of Natives and Canadians had slowed British movements to a crawl, terrified the British soldiers and commanders alike and destroyed convoys of supplies on which any thrust up towards Canada depended. In 1756, Vaudreuil had sent a reluctant Montcalm to attack the British fort of Oswego, their toehold on Lake Ontario. It had fallen but Montcalm was appalled by the behaviour of the Natives who massacred some of the British prisoners after the surrender of the fort. In 1757, a massive force of Native Americans from as far away as the western prairies gathered south of Montreal, recruited by the promise of scalps, slaves, and plunder on a huge scale. Montcalm took Fort William Henry at the foot of Lake George and desperately tried to prevent an even larger massacre by Native Americans furious that the Europeans had made peace between themselves, while not a scalp had been taken. He was only partially successful; despite his personal intervention and that of Bougainville and other officers, unarmed British soldiers were enslaved or slaughtered and their corpses maimed. This infamous incident, gruesomely exaggerated in the British press at the time, poisoned relations between the British and French. Montcalm could have followed up his success with a drive towards Albany but blamed the Canadians’ desire to return to collect the harvest and withdrew. In 1758, a British attack on Fort Carillon at the north end of Lake George ended in slaughter as the British threw themselves time and again on a barricade through which the French kept up a regular, terrible musketry. The British commander, Abercrombie, squandered a very favourable situation with this bizarre head-on attack, and then compounded his mistake by panicking and retreating south in headlong flight, leaving much heavy equipment behind. Again Montcalm was cautious. Rather than march south to pursue his stricken enemy he stayed put. He did not want to risk his small force on offensive operations so for the third year running there was no follow-up to a successful encounter.

  In the winter of 1758/9 reports from prisoners suggested that the relentless build-up of British forces for an assault on Canada was continuing. The British seemed likely to strike in no less than three places. There was Wolfe’s attack up the St Lawrence. A major overland invasion would move up Lake George, aiming for Montreal. Last, there would be a strike at the forts of the west, with Fort Niagara being the most obvious target. Niagara was the vital link in the chain that led from the main body of the colony on the St Lawrence River to the vast hinterland of forts and trading posts that stretched to the Mississippi and up into present-day Alberta. This was the pays d’en haut, the upper country, an area under the strong influence, if not the control, of France. Both the French and the Native Americans regarded themselves as sovereign. The Natives accepted French forts as a necessary evil to ensure the flow of gunpowder, muskets, and metal work which the French exchanged for furs and without which life was indescribably hard. Were the Frenchmen guests or masters? The answer could wait until after the common British enemy was defeated.

  Faced with this triple attack the debate over strategy grew ever fiercer. Vaudreuil wanted to hold the British everywhere; every yard of his precious Canada ceded to the British was too great a sacrifice. He urged the use of irregular troops, Native Americans and Canadians, to launch pre-emptive attacks to sow confusion among the British as they prepared for the invasion. Montcalm took entirely the opposite view. ‘Considering our inferiority,’ he wrote to Versailles, they ought to ‘contract our defensive [perimeter], in order to preserve at least, the body of the colony, and retard its loss’. He was thinking as a European statesman of bargaining chips on an eventual peace table, not of hunting and fishing grounds that were part of the Canadians’ DNA. He was fatalistic about Canada’s chances, and increasingly melodramatic about his own role: ‘prejudice’ or ‘councils of quacks are followed’, he complained, but he would play the martyr, ‘I shall none the less exert myself, as I have always done’ even if it meant he must ‘sacrifice myself for the [public] good’.16

  Montcalm and Vaudreuil had reached such an impasse that at the end of 1758 the French court was petitioned to arbitrate. In case Versailles doubted the seriousness of the issue Montcalm effectively offered his resignation by requesting his own recall to France. Two emissaries were sent, one from the Governor, the other from the General. Both carried letters and dispatches brimming with opprobrium towards the other and pleas to ignore whatever they wrote. Montcalm made the wiser choice of messenger; his letters were carried by his 29-year-old aide-de-camp, Captain Bougainville. The young ADC had enjoyed an unusual career. Born into a glittering family he showed an early aptitude for mathematics and in his mid-twenties had published a treatise on integral calculus for which he was elected to the Royal Society in London. He had also established a reputation as a brilliant lawyer. On first meeting Bougainville, Montcalm described him as ‘witty and well educated’.17 This bright, young star would prove an able diplomat for Montcalm, while Vaudreuil’s emissary was ignored.

  Bougainville had joined the army at the age of 21, which was far too old to get ahead. However, his unusual talents secured him a series of appointments as ADC to senior officers. He had been assigned to Montcalm and had joined him in Brest before they had sailed for Canada together in 1756. He did not look like a soldier; he was short, overweight, and asthmatic. But he did not flinch during his first battle, at Oswego, where he served alongside Montcalm, and subsequently proved himself an able student of war. Montcalm wrote that his young ADC,

  exposes himself readily to gunfire, a matter on which he needs to be restrained rather than encouraged. I shall be much mistaken if he does not have a good head for soldiering when experience has taught him to foresee the potential for difficulties. In the meantime there is hardly a young man who, having received only the theory, knows as much about it as he.18

  He was an adept handler of the Native Americans too. He sat on councils, sang the war songs and had even been adopted into the Nipissing tribe. Despite being wounded during the French victory at Carillon in the summer of 1758, Bougainville was the obvious choice to return to France that winter to plead for more military assistance for Canada. Bougainville’s passage was not a pleasant one. Battered by gales as soon as they left the St Lawrence he wrote that ‘we suffer in this wretched machine beyond anything words can express. The rolling is horrible and unceasing…an imagination most prolific in troublesome ideas could not come within a hundredth of outlining the unbearable details of our position.’19 In fact, their actual position was worse than he thought; the captain was mistaken in his navigation and sailed his ship into the Bristol Channel, home to a nest of privateers. Luckily, they realized their mistake, turned round and soon arrived in Morlaix. Within hours Bougainville was on the road to Paris.

  In the French capital he received compliments, promotions, and fine parties but little substance. Louis XV’s armies had been defeated in Europe and his fleet was being slowly strangled at sea. The state was rudderless. France was still an autocratic monarchy. All lines of government converged only in the person of the king. Louis’ greatgrandfather, the mighty Louis XIV, had created this system and he alone had had the self-discipline and intelligence to control it. Despite insisting that, ‘in my person alone resides the sovereign power, of which the essence is the spirit of counsel, wisdom, and reason…to me alone belongs the legislative power, independent and entire…public order emanates from me; I am its supreme guardian,’ Louis XV was unequal to the task.20 He was a man of honour who genuinely desired to do good, but he lacked the charisma and the confidence to defend his policies when they came under criticism, and the gargantuan work ethic of his great-grandfather. He hated confrontation and attempted to rule by stealth, becoming ever more secretive and suspicious. He also found it difficult to apply hims
elf to hard work, preferring the company of his many lovers or indulging his passion for hunting. A government that was designed to respond to a forceful central figure slowly became paralysed. Ministers competed to fill the void. There were constant changes of personnel. One dominant figure was Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour, once the King’s favourite mistress; she now supplied women of low status for the King’s bed, who would satisfy his lust without challenging her political power. Beautiful and clever, cultured and astute, she played a much debated role in French government throughout the war. Although accused at the time, and subsequently by some historians of dominating the affairs of state, she was not a shadowy dictator. A weak and inconstant king ensured that no one figure was able to amass that much power in the dysfunctional hierarchy of the French government. Pompadour did, though, have a powerful voice in policymaking, in particular the appointment and dismissal of key officers in the army and the state. She kept up correspondences with many of the field commanders although the letters consisted mainly of encouragement and promises to look after any family members that wanted jobs.

  Had Pompadour or any other strong figure emerged to usurp the power of the King, it may well have been better for France. Instead, half-hearted royal government staggered on. Louis’ great enemy, the energetic, commanding Frederick II, ‘Frederick the Great’, of Prussia wrote in his memoirs that his adversary’s ‘zeal was extinguished within a few days, and France was governed by four subaltern kings, each independent of the other’. France was ‘a vessel sailing without a compass on a stormy sea, simply following the impulsion of the wind’. A contemporary French historian famously commented that ministers changed ‘like scenery at the opera’. During the war France would get through four ministers of foreign affairs and five ministers of marine, who had responsibility for the colonies and the navy. Just before Bougainville’s visit in November 1758 Pompadour had secured the appointment of one of her favourites, Nicolas-René Berryer, as Minister of Marine; he was the fourth man to take the job. His qualifications for the position were dubious. He had been the Chief of Police of Paris and he treated his new job as an investigation into what would happen in Canada should it fall to the British rather than throwing himself into its defence.21

  Bougainville quickly realized that Versailles was preparing itself for the worst in Canada. Attention was fixed on central Europe where Frederick II had inflicted a stunning series of defeats on the forces of Austria, Russia and France. The threat to the colonies could wait. The honour of France’s armies and the situation in Europe were more important. French policy for 1759 was to drive into western Germany to threaten King George II’s Electorate of Hanover and Frederick’s western front, while conserving its naval resources for an all-out invasion of Britain. King George’s government would be forced to negotiate. British subsidies which were the lifeblood of Frederick’s war effort would be cut off, and any losses overseas could be restored to Louis with the stroke of a pen. In the meantime Canada would have to look to her own defence. In the words of Berryer in his audience with Bougainville, ‘Sir, one does not try to save the stables when the house is on fire.’ Bougainville shot back bravely, ‘Well, sir, at least, they cannot say that you speak like a horse.’22 Meetings with Pompadour and other key figures proved just as fruitless. The pessimism seeping out of Montcalm’s and Bougainville’s own depositions only convinced government belief that the situation in Canada was hopeless. Montcalm’s one, rather odd request was that Canada could be saved by an amphibious assault on the Carolinas. The French fleet would meet no opposition since the British ships would be concentrating on northern waters. Montcalm informed Versailles that the Cherokee would join the French as would the German settlers throughout the central colonies. The Quakers of Pennsylvania would not fight and the huge slave populations would rise up and support the French, hoping for their freedom. Ministers praised the plan and shelved it.

  A king in want of ships, guns, and men was generous with the one resource in which he was rich. Promotions, honours, and decorations flowed to the personnel in Canada. Bougainville was made a colonel, Montcalm, a lieutenant general, with a salary of 48,000 livres, and Vaudreuil received the Grand Cross of the Order of Saint Louis. The newly promoted Montcalm now outranked Vaudreuil. Rather than resolving the crisis of leadership, Versailles had exacerbated it. Over the winter the court seems to have wavered over a solution to this bitter quarrel. Ministerial minutes record that they were well aware of the problem, acknowledging that ‘the Marquis de Vaudreuil and the Marquis de Montcalm lived on such indifferent terms…This estrangement had exercised an influence over all minds.’23 They recognized that Montcalm wished to be brought home, especially now that it would be beneath the dignity of a lieutenant general to answer to a governor.

  Montcalm’s second in command, who had also received a promotion, was the very able Maréchal de camp, François-Gaston de Lévis, who was on good terms with Vaudreuil and had in the past praised Canadian military commanders for their skill. He would have been an ideal candidate to succeed Montcalm in an attempt to reconcile the French army with the Canadian colonial soldiers and militiamen. Having discussed this plan the document ends with an entry on 28 December 1758 saying simply, ‘on mature reflection, this arrangement cannot take place, as M de Montcalm is necessary at this present conjuncture’. Montcalm would stay on; Vaudreuil would defer to him in decisions relating to the defence of the colony, although he would continue to command the colony’s militia.24 It was a disastrous compromise. Instead of a firm decision, the bickering over precedence was to continue. Montcalm was instructed to get along with Vaudreuil; meanwhile, ‘M. Berryer writes to the same effect to M. Vaudreuil and directs him to conduct himself with the greatest harmony towards you; you must both feel all its necessity and all its importance.’ Strategically at least the French court had sided unambiguously with Montcalm; the focus of operations was to defend the core of the colony, forces should be stationed so as to be ‘always enabled mutually to help one another, to communicate with and to support each other. However trifling the space you can preserve, it is of utmost importance to possess always a foothold in Canada, for should we once wholly lose that country, it would be quite impossible to enter it again.’ In conclusion Montcalm was told that, ‘the recollection of what you have achieved last year makes His Majesty hope that you will still find means to disconcert their projects. M Berryer will cause to be conveyed to you as much provisions and ammunition as possible; the rest depends on your wisdom and courage, and on the bravery of the troops.’25

  Ships of the line would be hoarded in France to prepare to knock Britain out of the war by direct invasion. Instead, frigates were sent and fast private ships paid for at exorbitant rates to take supplies out to Canada. Bougainville travelled to Bordeaux where a flotilla of ships was being assembled. Even though France’s army was at least twice the size of that of Britain, no new units of regulars were sent out. There was a fear, partly thanks to Montcalm’s gloomy predictions, that they would be intercepted by the British. There was also the consideration that if they did arrive in Canada they would place too much strain on the colony’s limited food supply. Montcalm was informed that, ‘you must not expect to receive any military reinforcements’.26 Altogether around four hundred recruits, of mixed quality, were sent to bring the regular units up to strength together with sixty specialists such as engineers and sappers. Apart from the men, the ships carried food, gunpowder, and other provisions to Quebec. Bougainville boarded the frigate, La Chézine, and set sail on 20 March. A few ships crept out from other ports; in mid-March the Atalante, thirty-four guns, and the Pomone, thirty, left the Channel. All the captains hoped they would enter the gulf before the blockading squadron.

  La Chézine sailed into the basin of Quebec on 10 May, the first of twenty-three supply ships from France to do so. Its arrival provoked a blizzard of rumours in a town cut off from supplies and news for months. Nearly all of the rest of the fleet trickled in over the n
ext week. The vast majority of ships sent had beaten Durell’s British blockade. Montcalm’s pessimism had been misplaced. There was huge rejoicing by the townspeople who had been haunted by the prospect of starvation. One diarist, Jean-Claude Panet, who had arrived in New France as a 20-year-old soldier and was now approaching his fortieth birthday as a notary in a Quebec court, wrote that, ‘you cannot doubt the joy that this news gave to us’.27 Canada had been jolted by a series of poor harvests, partly caused by the inclement weather and partly by the absence of the farmers who had been called into the colony’s militia and sent to distant frontiers. To add to the discomfort of the Canadians, the winter had been awful. The same low temperatures suffered by the men at Halifax and Louisbourg had been felt right across Canada as well. ‘The winter has been one of the coldest…the ice has backed up to such an extraordinary degree and with such violence, as to throw down a house,’ wrote one officer.28 Now the arrival of the supplies ensured that Canada could fight another campaign. Vaudreuil had told Versailles that ‘of all enemies the most redoubtable is the famine to which we are exposed’. This had been averted although the man responsible for feeding the army and the colony, François Bigot, the short, red-haired, ugly Intendant, calculated that he had received about eighty days’ rations for the regular army, ‘at the rate of half a pound of flour and half a pound of pork per head’, which was less than ‘the proper ration’. Canada received about a third of the food that the colonial authorities had asked for.29 She would have to find the rest herself: cows were requisitioned; two families would have to share one beast to pull their ploughs. Montcalm dramatically announced to Vaudreuil that despite the disappointing supplies from France, ‘trifles are precious to those who have nothing…I shall entirely devote myself towards saving this unfortunate country and if necessary, die in the attempt.’30