by Dan Snow
The French had been preparing for weeks. At vast expense merchant ships were purchased and made ready. To ensure that the fire was fed by a constant stream of fresh air the gun ports were hinged at the bottom rather than the top so they would fall open when their retaining ropes burnt through. Funnels were bored to provide a clear updraught from below decks to the rigging above. The masts were strengthened to make sure they did not collapse too soon. Barrels of gunpowder and anything flammable were packed on board. Cannon were loaded with double shot.3 It was a delicate process; one of the eight ships burst into flame in the harbour according to a French officer, ‘through the imprudence of the men who were preparing it’.4 Another journal says that ‘either from inattention or ignorance’ the ship caught fire ‘at the very moment of its completion’. In all, ‘twelve men were killed by the fire’ and for a terrifying moment ‘the most serious apprehensions were entertained’ of it setting the other ships or even the town itself aflame. It was a terrible demonstration of the potency of fire in a wooden world.5
The wind was blowing from the south-west. The logs agree that it was a squally night with a bit of rain in the air. It was as dark as ‘sable’ according to Knox, with ‘no light but what the stars produced’.6 The ebb tide was running and with conditions close to perfect the French decided to deploy their fireships. They had high hopes. One journal speculated that ‘if they acted effectually, [they] would completely put an end to the enterprise of the English’.7 Success depended on the crews being brave enough, first, to sail their ships towards an enemy fleet carrying hundreds of cannon and, second, to set fire to the ships at the last possible minute. A length of quick match ran along a trough from barrels of gunpowder and resin to the escape hatch in the ship’s side. The minute that was lit the crew would clamber down into the longboats which the fireships towed and make their escape. It required nerves of steel and a good deal of luck.
The French crews lacked both. Nearly all the sources agree that the French fired their ships too soon. This advertised their presence to the British and gave them vital extra minutes to prepare. One journal records that the day before the French captains ‘differed widely in their opinions and even some indications were perceptible of want of courage and resolution’. Perhaps as a result, at 2200 hours as they headed to the ships, they had only a vague plan to follow the example of the commander ‘who was to take the lead, and was to fire two musket shots, as the signal that each captain was to set fire to his ship’. This author then blames the commander, ‘a cowardly man of no reputation’, for taking fright and setting his ship alight far too early. They were still miles away from the British fleet but ‘a panic had seized on all the captains’, and they insisted on copying their leader and fired the charges early. 8 There is the possibility that one ship blew up prematurely and the other crews panicked, fired their ships, and leapt into the waiting longboats.
Wolfe believed that the carefully posted guard ships, the Centurion, Sutherland, and Porcupine, anchored furthest upstream, firing ‘on the fire ships obliged them to set their matches earlier than they should have done’.9 Certainly from the log of the Centurion we hear that she ‘fired several guns in order to alarm the fleet that lay 3 or 4 miles below us’. This gave the rest of the fleet time to prepare their response. However, she and the Sutherland had to take immediate evasive action. The fireships were close enough to force them to ‘cut our best bower [main] cable’ and get out of the way as soon as possible.10 The rest of the fleet watched intently. The Stirling Castle was moored much further down the river and in her log reported that ‘at half past 12 [we] saw 7 large fires floating down from Point Levis towards [us]’. It was a whole half hour later that the crew ‘observed them to be fire ships’.11
Knox watched from the Île d’Orléans: ‘as they drew near to the west end of the island, some cannon that had been loaded, on board the vessels, with round and grape shot’ were ignited by the flames and sprayed their shot at the island. It ‘rattled about the shore and trees’ and ‘so disconcerted some small detached parties, and our sentries, that they quitted their posts, and in retiring towards the camp, fell in upon each other in a confused manner and alarmed the army’. The men rushed to their arms, were ordered to load muskets and lined up in battle formation.12
Knox provides a vivid description:
nothing could be more formidable than these infernal engines were on their first appearance, with the discharge of their guns, which was followed by the bursting of grenades, also placed on board in order to convey terror into our army…they were certainly the grandest fireworks (if I may be allowed to call them so) that can possibly be conceived, every circumstance having contributed to their awful, yet beautiful, appearance.
Another eyewitness watched them floating towards the British fleet with topgallant sails and topsails set, making good progress with ‘a fresh breeze and a strong ebb tide’.13 The fire that was slowly consuming them, ‘running almost as quick as thought up the masts and rigging’, and ‘profuse clouds of smoke’ billowed from the ships, illuminated by the flames below them. The noise carried to the men on the island across the water. The shouts of the seamen, ‘the firing of cannon…the crackling of the other combustibles’, all ‘reverberated through the air, and the adjacent woods’.14
If the army panicked the navy most definitely did not. After the Stirling Castle had watched the Sutherland and the Centurion let off a few shots at the fireships and cut their anchor cables she ‘sent all boats manned and armed to tow them off’.15 Other ships did the same. With remarkable bravery and cool-headedness the sailors threw grappling hooks at the fireships and took them under tow. Even Wolfe was impressed. The ‘vigilance and dexterity of the seamen’ prevented the fireships ‘from doing any harm’.16 His mariner-phobic ‘Family Journal’ also praises the seamen, ‘as the channel near St Laurent is narrow and the ships were numerous there was a great probability of their doing mischief, the expertness of the seamen that were sent in boats to tow them aside, hindered their having any effect’.17 Knox listened to ‘the sonorous shouts, and frequent repetitions of All’s well, from our gallant seamen on the water’.18 One by one the fireships either drifted onto the shore of their own accord or were pulled away from the fleet. There was a bit of confusion as some ships like the Hunter or the Porcupine had to slip their anchors and move out of the way, the latter briefly tangling with a transport during the process. But the damage to the fleet was negligible. The Stirling Castle rewarded the men in the boats with a half pint of brandy each.
Mackellar wrote in his journal that the fireship attack ‘managed so as to entertain us instead of annoying us. They set them on fire and left them to the direction of the current before they got within half a mile of our headmost ship, which gave our boats time to grapple and tow them ashore, though in flames, and they there burnt down without touching a single ship.’19 A sergeant in the Louisbourg Grenadiers simply wrote that ‘thank God, they did no damage’.20 Their impact had almost been greater on the shore. Knox advises that in future commanders should let the men know ‘all expectant occurrences of this nature’. The army had been terrified and if Montcalm had appeared at the head of ‘three or four thousand choice veterans, or perhaps half that number, at so critical a juncture, it is difficult to say what turn our affairs might have taken’.21
A night attack on the British camp on the Île d’Orléans to coincide with the fireship attack was probably beyond even the organizational skills of Alexander the Great. Uncertain winds, strong tides, bad paths, and pitch darkness made it virtually impossible to coordinate the fireships and a sizeable attack by thousands of men. But yet again the British had showed that their army was vulnerable. The men on the shore were nervous and all too easily spooked. Montcalm, however, absolutely refused to attempt a bold stroke. He had never expected anything of the operation. His journal condescendingly refers to ‘our dear fireships’ and he describes the night’s action as if it was nothing to do with him. His tone is one of smug sarc
asm. ‘They were set on fire,’ he claimed, ‘three leagues [around nine miles] from the enemy’; they were nothing more than ‘bad jokes’. Expensive ones too; he estimated that ‘they cost 15 to 18,000 francs’.22 Montcalm was determined to keep the great mass of his men rooted to their defensive positions. He would not risk his men on daring raids at night across difficult country. He would build his trenches, redoubts, and blockhouses and then, as at Fort Carillon the year before, he would let the enemy break themselves on them.
Few appeared to share his strategic vision in Quebec where there was a, by now, depressingly familiar post mortem. At dawn the next day ‘the whole river was covered with a thick smoke’.23 Yet nothing had been achieved. Again, high hopes had been dashed. Panet thought that ‘the project was good, but was very badly executed’. The ships, he wrote, were set on fire, ‘in such a way that the English who were, at first concerned, cried Hurray! and mocked our operations’.24 The army, according to one of its officers, was ‘indignant’ at the ‘conduct of the commanders of those fireships’. Everybody blamed the crews for setting the fires too soon. He also pointed out that, ‘these fireships were not chained two by two, as had been agreed on’. That would have made it harder for small boats to tow them. This officer was furious that ‘M de Vaudreuil was unwilling to say anything disagreeable to them’ and gave them jobs with the other sailors at the various batteries. He estimated that the ‘experiment cost the king about a million’.25
Quebecers had tasted enough failure. The author of one journal wrote in the margin that, if this fiasco had occurred in the British camp and the commander had fired the ships too early, ‘he would have been beheaded at least, which would have been too great an honour for a man who deserved nothing less than the scaffold’.26 Another journal describes Vaudreuil’s attempt to ascertain what exactly had gone wrong. The following day the captains appeared in front of him, and all promptly blamed the commander of the expedition, de Louche. One of them made a brave speech in which he suggested that all of the captains should act as common seamen and take one final fireship into the heart of the British fleet to wipe clear the stain on their honours or die in the attempt. The unimpressed author of the journal writes that ‘the speech was prodigiously applauded, but no further notice was taken of an affair that had proved so very disgraceful to the colony’.27 The officers and men took their places at the cannon of the town along with all the other sailors.
Wolfe had been dismayed by the behaviour of the troops the night before when they had panicked at the sight of the fireships. He ordered that the officer commanding one outpost be ‘put under arrest and will be tried by a General Court Martial as soon as it can be conveniently assembled’.28 It was another unwelcome symptom of nerves in an army that was clearly coming to terms with its situation as a small force deep inside enemy territory.
The day before Wolfe had announced that the army ‘must hold itself to fight in constant readiness, either to march or fight, at the shortest warning’. The French could attack the camp at any time and stragglers could be ambushed by the enemy’s impressive Native Americans or Canadian irregulars. He ordered that ‘no detachments, either with or without arms are to be sent to any distance from the camp without the knowledge of the brigadier general of the day’. He also chided the soldiers, telling them that they ‘are to keep close to their encampment, [and] are not to pass without the guards or wander through the country in the disorderly manner that has been observed here’.29 The ‘detachments and outposts’ outside the camp were to ‘fortify themselves in the best manner they can’ by digging trenches, building stockades, and cutting down trees to provide cover. Wolfe assured his men that ‘in this situation a small party will be able to defend itself till succour arrives’. After only a day or two ashore the lurking danger of the forest was clear. Enemy marksmen lurked among the trees. Snipers picked off anyone who made himself a target. Wolfe specified that ‘No sentries are ever to be planted within point blank of musket shot of a wood, unless behind stones or trees, so as not to be seen in woody country.’ If passing through the woods was a necessity, ‘all imaginable care and precaution’ should be taken when doing so and ‘detachments must never halt or encamp in the little openings’. Above all, he told his men, ‘next to valour the best quality in a military man are vigilance and caution’.30
After the fire Wolfe and Saunders determined to seize the initiative. Monckton was sent to the commanding Point Lévis where Saunders had ‘reason to think that the enemy had artillery and a force’.31 Wolfe’s ‘Family Journal’ also noted another reason for wishing to possess this dominant site. From Point Lévis he could ‘bombard the town from that side’.32 Carleton, the Quartermaster General, was sent with the grenadier companies of the army to occupy the western tip of the Île d’Orléans. Wolfe believed that it was ‘absolutely necessary to possess these two points’ because if the enemy occupied either of them they would ‘make it impossible for any ship to lie in the basin of Quebec, or even within two miles of it’.33
Guy Carleton was 34 and a product of that stable for British army officers, the younger sons of the Anglican Irish. He was an old friend of Wolfe’s, having served under him as a company commander when Wolfe was running the 20th Foot.34 Wolfe’s ‘Family Journal’ is, typically, rather backhanded in its praise, describing Carleton as ‘not of a quick capacity but solid, proper for a Quartermaster General’.35 His career had been blighted by some indiscreet remarks he had made about the quality of George II’s troops from his cherished native Electorate of Hanover. George had come to hear of these jibes and hell hath no fury like an elector scorned. Carleton was virtually proscribed. Wolfe wrote to his mother twice before the siege of Louisbourg complaining about the King’s intransigence: ‘the King has refused Carleton leave to go, to my very great grief and disappointment, and with circumstances extremely unpleasant to him’. ‘Prejudices against particular people often hurt the common cause…princes of all people, see the least in to the true characters of men.’36 He was not impressed by the army’s leadership at Louisbourg and he told his mother that ‘we want grave Carleton for every purpose of the war’.37 Wolfe had requested him for the Quebec mission and the King had crossed his name off the list. Ligonier and Pitt both had to intercede with the King before he reluctantly agreed.
Carleton would now lead the grenadier companies from all the regiments and secure the headland ‘from whence’ Wolfe expected ‘our operations are likely to begin’.38 A regiment was made up of ten companies, one of them being a grenadier company. Grenadiers were an elite, the finest men in the regiment gathered together. Their forebears had used primitive grenades as a shock weapon when assaulting the enemy but their use had died out and now they shouldered muskets like the rest of the regiment.39 Cumberland’s Standing Orders of 1755 stated that these units ‘be completed out of the best men of their respective Regiments, and to be constantly kept so’. They were often the oldest troops in the regiment and by 1759 these veterans had seen a fair bit of action. The rest of the men referred to them as ‘grannies’. They were instantly recognizable. Lace-covered shoulder ornaments called ‘wings’ jutted out from their jackets and made them appear wider. In deference to their ancient role they carried on their right shoulder a perforated brass tube in which the lighted match for the grenades used to be stashed. Unlike the black felt tricorne hats worn by the rest of the infantry they sported an imposing mitre cap that added eight inches to their height, surmounted by a tuft in the regimental colour. The front panel was beautifully embroidered with wool. On it was the royal cipher, ‘G. R.’ for George Rex, surmounted by a crown and underneath, the white horse of George’s beloved Hanover. Designs differed slightly from regiment to regiment. The grenadiers who fought alongside Knox in the 43rd had a grenade stitched into the back as well as the regimental number. On the inside the sweat and grease of years of service turned the linen brown. Emblazoned just above the eyes was ‘NEC ASPERA TERRENT’, ‘Difficulties Be Damned’.
Carleton
led the grenadiers off to the end of the Île d’Orléans. According to one contemporary estimate they would have carried sixty-five pounds twelve ounces of kit, which included their muskets, ammunition, other equipment, and rations.40 They started the march early to cover six miles before the sun became unbearably hot. Next Wolfe sent Monckton’s force to occupy the dominant heights of Point Lévis. This headland sat across the narrows from Quebec itself. Mackellar recorded that Monckton’s force left ‘in the evening’. They crossed ‘the south channel from St Laurent to the village of Beaumont with four battalions, three companies of light infantry, and some rangers’.41 They camped by the shore but were ready to move early the next morning. Knox claims that the ebb tide was exhausted by the time his regiment came to cross and they were forced to spend the ‘excessively cold’ night sleeping without tents by the shore, huddled around fires to keep warm.42
The following day they set off for Point Lévis, the column of redcoats preceded by a screen of light infantrymen and rangers. As they edged away from the safety of their ships they entered the world of the Native Americans and Canadians. From invisible positions in the undergrowth marksmen opened fire on the British and the march quickly turned into a rolling skirmish with an elusive foe.
Native Americans inspired both hatred and admiration from Europeans. Their physical appearance immediately struck newcomers to North America. In 1756 Captain Charles Lee wrote home telling his sister of the tall, athletic Mohawks: ‘I assure you that if you were to see the young Warriors dressed out and armed you would never allow that there was such a thing as gentility amongst our finest gentlemen at St James’s!’43 The diaries of Louis Antoine de Bougainville, Montcalm’s erudite aide-de-camp, are one of the finest sources on Native Americans in the eighteenth century. They were, he says, ‘curious to the eye of a philosopher who seeks to study man in conditions nearest to nature’. He agreed with the British Captain that ‘in general these are brawny men, large and of good appearance’. Their appearance was ‘more suited to terrify than to please’ as they ‘were naked save for a piece of cloth in front and behind, the face and body painted, feathers on their heads’. In their hands they carried ‘the symbol and signal of war, tomahawk and spear’. On another occasion he describes a Native American war party as moving ‘through the woods in several files, the Indians almost naked, all in black and red war paint’.44