Death or Victory
Page 29
Any sequence of events less likely to disguise his intentions from the enemy is hard to imagine. Knox watched all afternoon as French reinforcements drifted to the left of their line. Mackellar wrote in his diary that Montcalm’s forces ‘were now sufficiently apprised of our design, and had time enough to be prepared accordingly: their entrenchments upon the edge of the bank were fully manned for a considerable way’.25 The French had watched the flat-bottomed boats attempting to find a path through the shallows, and one of Montcalm’s soldiers wrote that ‘we could no longer doubt the enemy’s intention to attack us’. Once the French commander was certain that Wolfe was focusing on the far left of his line, commanded by de Lévis, he ‘weakened’ other parts and ‘repaired in person to Chevalier de Levis’ camp’ at the head of the Guyenne Regiment.26 When he arrived he found the troops there had been having a torrid time under the ‘hottest fire imaginable’ from the ships in the St Lawrence and the shore batteries on the other side of the Montmorency. One officer records that the fire from the latter ‘galled our men more than the discharge from the shipping’.27 Mont-calm claims that the British fired in total ‘3000 shot’.28 Against this maelstrom the French deployed ‘only four pieces of cannon’. The British tried to knock them out but thanks to the strength of their earthworks they failed to do so and the French cannon fired all day. 29 Panet says that the French pierced the hull of just one of the Cats with more than thirty shot.30 In the trenches the regulars and the Canadian militiamen stood side by side; their shared experience of being under British bombardment produced a rare moment of harmony between the two groups. One French officer recorded that even ‘though it was the first time they had ever seen the face of an enemy’, they remained ‘unterrified, and stood to their arms with a steadiness, that greatly pleased our generals, and merited their applause’.31
The thirteen companies of grenadiers, supported by 200 men from the 2nd Battalion, 60th Royal American Regiment, waded up the beach, across slippery ground that until minutes before had been underwater. John Johnson remembered the ground as being ‘covered with slimy mud, exceeding slippery, and broken into deep holes’.32 Montresor wrote that it was ‘about half a mile over to the redoubt’ and another quarter of a mile beyond that lay the slope in which the French had their trenches.33 Officers bellowed at the men to form up as soon as they found their footing. But the grenadiers were in no mood to be corralled. They had spent six hours in flat-bottomed boats, in roasting sunshine, under bombardment. They had no idea of the reason for the delays. As soon as they were ashore they slid their bayonets over the muzzles of their muskets and took matters into their own hands. One officer wrote, ‘the general ordered the “Grenadiers March” to beat, which animated our men so much that we could scarce restrain them, we moved on through a very bad muddy beach and attacked the redoubt and battery which we carried’.34
Two years of ambush, skirmishing, sieges, and lonely sentry duty had produced such a desire to get to grips with the enemy that the grenadiers exploded into the French positions. Knox wrote that they must have been ‘impatient for glory’.35 Wolfe was amazed: ‘whether from the noise and hurry at landing,’ he wrote, ‘or from some other cause, the grenadiers, instead of forming themselves as they were directed, ran impetuously towards the enemy’s entrenchments in the utmost disorder and confusion, without waiting for the corps which were to sustain them, and join in the attack’.36
John Johnson looked back stoically and commented that ‘it often happens that the best concerted plans get marred in the execution; so it happened here’.37 Perhaps each grenadier company was keen to demonstrate its superiority to the others. One story has it that the 200 Royal Americans who landed with the grenadiers were keen to show off their prowess, especially because their commander, Captain David Ochterlony, had fought a duel the day before with a grenadier officer. Ochterlony shouted at the latter that although his men were not grenadiers they would be first to the redoubt. This may be myth but it illustrates the fierce competitiveness that existed between all these units, the proudest in Wolfe’s army.
Sergeant Edward ‘Ned’ Botwood was a grenadier in Lascelles’ 47th Foot. He had written a song called ‘Hot Stuff!’ to be sung to a wellknown tune before the expedition left Halifax. It is a brilliant snapshot of the mood of the men, their language, their humour, and their pride in themselves, their leadership, and their units. It is a potent warning not to dismiss the otherwise anonymous redcoats as mindless, downtrodden, or unwilling.
Come, each death-doing dog that dares venture his neck, Come, follow the hero that goes to Quebec; Jump aboard of the transports, and loose every sail, Pay your debts at the tavern by giving leg-bail; And ye that love fighting shall soon have enough; Wolfe commands us, my boys, we shall give them Hot Stuff.
Up the River St. Lawrence our troops shall advance, To the Grenadier’s March we will teach them to dance. Cape Breton we’ve taken and next we will try At the capital to give them another black eye. Vaudreuil, ’tis in vain you pretend to look gruff, Those are coming who know how to give you Hot Stuff.
With powder in his periwig, and snuff in his nose, Monsieur will run down our descent to oppose; And the Indians will come, but the Light Infantry Will soon compel them to betake to a tree. From such rascals as these may we fear a rebuff? Advance, grenadiers, and let fly your Hot Stuff!
When the Forty-seventh Regiment is dashing ashore, When bullets are whistling and cannon do roar, Says Montcalm, ‘Those are Shirley’s, I know their lapels.’ ‘You lie,’ says Ned Botwood, ‘We are of Lascelles! Though our clothing is changed, yet we scorn a powder-puff; So at you, ye bitches, here’s give you Hot Stuff!
With Monkton [sic] and Townsend [sic], those brave brigadiers, I think we shall soon have the town ’bout their ears, And when we have done with the mortars and guns, If you please, Madam Abbess, a word with your nuns. Each soldier shall enter the convent in buff And then, never fear, we will give them Hot Stuff.38
Botwood was now on the beach, surrounded by a thousand men ‘that love fighting’, sprinting towards the French positions, all discipline forgotten. A British officer who was not present but heard the story first hand from many survivors wrote, ‘the attack was impetuous, the French gave way and spiked their own cannon…but the grenadiers flushed with success pursued violently huzzaing as they went along and nothing could stop them until they got among the French lines’.39 The French abandoned the redoubt and the artillery battery on the beach and scrambled back up to their trenches. The grenadiers hardly paused at the redoubt and surged onwards up the slope. A sergeant in one of the companies of the Louisbourg Grenadiers wrote that as they charged up the beach the French ‘cannon played very briskly on us; but their small arms, in their trenches lay cool’. However, when the French ‘were sure of their mark; then they poured their small shot like showers of hail, which caused our brave grenadiers to fall very fast’.40
At least several hundred muskets fired as quickly as they could be reloaded. Panet gives the credit to his fellow Canadians for such a hot fire, but says they were ‘supported’ by French regulars.41 Alongside the men in the trenches, cannon fired ‘grape shot’, sacks of small lead balls, possibly mixed with scraps of metal and nails. The British grenadiers pushed forward into this firestorm. A witness paints a picture of them ‘labouring up the hill, sinking in the sand and entangled in the pickets’. As they clambered up the slope, they were engulfed in ‘a shower of musketry as is not to be described, which continued without intermission for the space of twenty minutes’.42 Several of the sources use the same words, ‘extraordinary’ and ‘incessant’, to describe the deluge of fire. It was too much. An officer who arrived in Quebec a month later wrote a letter when he got there saying that he had heard that the men ‘behaved with the greatest courage imaginable…but there were such lanes made through them by the small shot and grape from the enemy that they were obliged to retreat’.43
They withdrew down the hill but rallied and attacked again. Knox, who was watching
, wrote that they ‘made many efforts, though not with the greatest regularity, to gain the summit, which they found less practicable than had been expected’. ‘Their ardour,’ he wrote, ‘was checked by the repeated heavy fire.’44 One sergeant claimed that he could see Montcalm riding along his lines high above them. More believably he recorded that enemy fire ‘killed a good many of our men, I don’t recollect how many’. He also wrote that the struggling grenadiers did not even have the satisfaction of returning fire. ‘We did not fire, for it would have been no use, as they were completely entrenched, and we could see only the crown of their heads.’45 In a private letter Wolfe later raged that the ‘blockhead’ grenadiers ruined his attack with their ‘strange behaviour’.46 The cream of his army was tearing itself to pieces in front of his eyes. He curbed his language when he wrote to Pitt, probably recognizing that it was difficult to criticize men for hurling themselves enthusiastically into enemy fire. He said simply that they were ‘unable to form under so hot a fire’ while praising their leadership saying the grenadiers had ‘many gallant officers wounded, who (careless of their persons) had been solely intent on their duty’.47
Captain Schomberg whose ship, the Diana, was lying at anchor, heavily damaged, had been assigned a role in organizing the amphibious operation. He watched the slaughter and wrote that ‘the fire was very extraordinary, nor did I imagine that the fire of musketry could have been kept up so uninterruptedly’.48 Dead and wounded men lay thick on the ground. Many grenadiers tried to find shelter from the hail of gunfire in the abandoned French redoubt but even here musket balls found them.
As if to match the ferocity of battle, nature now unleashed a storm of its own. The roar of thunder was audible even over that of the cannon and lightning forked across the sky. Seconds later rain fell in such a deluge that it turned the ground beneath the grenadiers’ feet to slurry and soaked the ammunition of every soldier on the battlefield. The log of the Stirling Castle records that the ‘very heavy squall of wind and rain…rendered the mounting a high and very steep hill to come at the enemy’s lines impracticable’.49 Knox, as always, gives it a memorable description. He wrote that it was the ‘dreadfullest thunderstorm and fall of rain that can be conceived’, adding that the ‘violence of the storm exceeded any description I can attempt to give of it’.50
The shattered grenadiers looked at the slope ahead of them. Rivulets poured down over mud and grass that had been slippery even before the downpour. The men’s shoes were hardly made for these conditions. They were cut square to fit on either foot and grip was provided by hobnails through the bottoms. Above them the French troops waited for them with gleaming bayonets atop their muskets, while Native Americans and Canadians gripped hatchets and scalping knives in their wet hands. There was nothing to be gained by continuing their attack.
The bedraggled survivors trudged back to the shoreline where Monckton’s brigade was now landing in the second wave. These regiments, Wolfe reported, were ‘drawn up on the beach, in extreme good order’ and the grenadiers took shelter behind the ranks of their comrades as their officers attempted to form them up. Wolfe took stock. His shock troops had been decimated. His ammunition was unusable. Nightfall was approaching and now the tide ‘began to make’. Townshend’s brigade could only cross the ford at the foot of the Montmorency falls at low tide. They had done so during the grenadiers’ attack and now stood ready a couple of hundred yards from where the boats were landing Monckton’s brigade. Wolfe wrote that ‘in case of a repulse’ the retreat of Townshend’s men ‘might be hazardous and uncertain’. Wolfe finally made a brave decision: ‘I thought it most advisable, not to persevere in so difficult an attack.’51 His ‘Family Journal’ says that with the ‘tide now flowing [in], from that consideration alone [he] ordered the troops to retire’.52
Townshend’s men had only just arrived on the beach. Panet was impressed that they marched ‘with solemn step, and in good order’, and he grew nervous as they advanced ‘to within double the range of a musket’. At this point ‘they saw those from the barges re-embark’ and then they received the message to turn around and recross the ford.53 Monckton’s corps climbed back onto the flat-bottomed boats with the grenadiers while Wolfe covered the retreat, marching back across the ford at the head of Fraser’s 78th Highlanders. They witnessed a grim spectacle that shocked even those veterans who were hardened to war in the Americas. As soon as the grenadiers had withdrawn from the battlefield the Native Americans and Canadians descended on it like vultures. Malcolm Fraser watched the ‘men coming down from the trenches where some of our people lay killed; we imagined they were Indians who were sent to scalp them’.54 He was right. As John Johnson left the beach he was distraught that the army was ’leaving behind them, a vast number of killed and wounded to the mercy of those barbarous cannibals, whose chief thirst is after blood…who massacred and scalped them in our own sight, it not being in our power to help them, nor deliver them out of their savage and barbarous hands’. The whole army was ‘filled with horror at the barbarous cruelty of the savages committed on their brother soldiers’. One incident became a cause célèbre in the British army. Captain Ochterlony, the officer of the 60th Royal Americans who had apparently been so competitive when his men landed, was left wounded in the mud. By him lay his friend and comrade Ensign Peyton. They were approached by a group of the enemy. They tried to surrender to a Frenchman who relieved Ochterlony ‘of his watch and money, and taking his hat, which was gold lace’. He then moved off and left Ochterlony to ‘the care, and tender mercy of the two Indians’. One clubbed the captain, the other shot him. Peyton then grabbed a musket off the ground and shot one of them and tackled the other. It was a brutal death match: ‘Mr. Peyton was fearful who would have the advantage, but at length he prevailed, and got uppermost, and with his dagger killed him outright.’ The fracas attracted a group of Native Americans who made their way towards him as he attempted to reload his solitary musket. Luckily it also got the attention of some of the Highlanders who had not yet left the beach and they rushed over and dragged Peyton off. Ochterlony, with three bullets lodged in his body, was, incredibly, rescued by a combination of French soldiers and some nuns who bravely threw themselves in the way of the blood lust of their Native allies.55 One nun left an account praising the bravery of her sisters. They ‘conveyed [the British] wounded to our hospital, notwithstanding the fury and rage of the Indians’.56
The Highlanders were the last men off the beach. Townshend reports that ‘two companies of the highlanders would not retire’ until they had checked that not a single wounded Highlander lay at the mercy of the enemy. By the time they were satisfied that no living Highlanders breathed on the west side of the Montmorency ‘the tide of flood was so high’ that they ‘could scarcely wade over the ford and the enemy had time to bring their guns to rake them in their retreat’.57 Schomberg watched the army retreating and noted that the troops did so with a ‘sullen pride and in good order’.58 Montresor was particularly impressed by the Highlanders, who ’with the commander in chief at their head [crossed] the ford and to give them their due merit they passed it as regularly as at a review or exercising a manoeuvre of that kind, notwithstanding they were not 400 yards from a battery of 3 guns that bore on them the whole time’.59
Behind them they left the body of Sergeant Ned Botwood. The lyricist was just one of around four hundred and fifty casualties. Sources disagree on the numbers of dead; Barré’s calculation suggests that there were around fifty men killed outright, while many of the wounded would have died a lingering death in the hospital.60 Wolfe was furious; despite his anger at the grenadiers he could not deflect the blame for the defeat. His journal is sombre and he concludes the day’s account by calling the whole attack a ‘foolish business’. He noted grimly that ‘many excellent officers hurt’.61 Among the injured were his two favourites, Burton, whom Wolfe had intended should win the laurels of the day’s fighting, and Lieutenant Colonel Murray. A few sources hint that the British got away ligh
tly; Mackellar was unimpressed by the French artillery, saying that they ‘must have done a good deal of execution had they been well served’.62 Both Schomberg and Montresor thought that although the musketry was on a tremendous scale, the range was slightly too far to inflict maximum casualties and the steep angle down which the French had to fire meant a lot of musket balls were going high. It was scant consolation.
The two Cats were dreadfully battered. No attempt was made to refloat them as the tide came in and Saunders ordered them to be burnt. Townshend’s journal tells us that the orders were carried out, ‘in rather too much of a hurry as all the guns and two brass field pieces that the general had ordered to be put on board was destroyed’.63 The French were thrilled to see the two burning hulks in front of their lines. One story circulated through the French army that in their hurry to leave the ships the British abandoned their wounded on board and incinerated them.
A frustrating month for Wolfe had been crowned with a sharp defeat in the largest action of the campaign thus far. One French officer wrote that ‘the good order he observed in our troops, probably inclined the English general to lay aside all thoughts of succeeding in this attack, and induced him to give up’.64 Another said that the storm ‘opened Mr Wolfe’s eyes to the temerity of his undertaking’.65 Nearly all of them describe the storm as an unwelcome intermission in the slaughter of redcoats. A French officer wrote, ‘certain it is that had he attempted to have forced our lines, his whole army would have run the risk of being cut to pieces’.66 However, a few voices are far less bullish. One French journal, while praising the ‘plunging fire’ which was ‘so hot and destructive that it obliged’ the British to pull back, does say that ‘our safety that day was owing to a storm coming on at the very moment of the attack’. ‘Nothing,’ it continues, ‘could not have been more well timed, for we were in want of powder, of balls, and for a very long time there had not been any matches for the cannon.’67 Panet says that it ‘was very singular, [but] there were almost no bullets at the camp’. ‘Fortunately,’ the British grenadiers, ‘were so well received that they re-embarked on their barges with the same haste with which they had left them.’ However, ‘what happiness [it was] that they did not know that there were no bullets at the camp! What negligence that there were none there, and what misfortune there would have been, if the English had been able to continue their attack.’68