Empires at War

by Jr. , William M. Fowler

  Arguments such as Vernon's carried weight. Grand imperial views struck a resonant chord among numerous factions in the English government. Fear that France might attempt to expand its colonial empire, most notably by sweeping up Spanish possessions, unleashed a flood of jingoistic and paranoid pamphlets and essays that circulated widely in London and the countryside. Hyperbolic writers raised the dark spector of Great Britain under siege-, reaching a large and influential audience, their propaganda played a crucial role in shaping policy. Because he appointed ministers and commanded the army and navy, the king ostensibly held the reins over foreign policy, but in fact Parliament and the ministry were at the helm. They controlled the treasury. No one doubted for a moment the wisdom of the old adage "Fare no better, or fare no worse, he rules the roost that carries the purse." It was clear that when "money must be got the House of Commons alone can give it."17 In English parliamentary politics, public opinion counted, and the public took their opinions from the press.

  Unlike in England, where politics belonged to the many and negotiation was the rule, in France ultimate power rested in the throne. Debates on issues centered on divining the pleasure of the king. Louis XV was little different from all the French monarchs who had preceded him. He held firmly to the premise that France was a Continental nation whose territory must be defended and, whenever possible, expanded. Its wealth was in its people and its land. Notwithstanding officers such as Galissonière, who spoke forcefully for expanding the navy and undertaking aggressive overseas expansion, Louis and his chief ministers offered little support for such ambitious goals.

  As Europe drifted toward war, Newcastle charted British foreign policy. He was a man of great experience and enormous personal wealth. Educated at Cambridge, he was connected to the kingdom's most influential families. He entered politics in the waning days of Queen Anne, and from that time he had never been absent from government. He was a close associate of Sir Robert Walpole, the masterful leader of Parliament, and from him he learned the intricacies of parliamentary politics. Supported by a coterie of political allies, the most important among them the earl of Holderness, secretary of the Southern Department (the department that oversaw the American colonies as well as Ireland, Wales, and southern Europe), he and his brother led the government.18

  Newcastle's strategy was to buy enough time to allow him to form alliances that would either dissuade France from any aggressive acts or, if the French dared attack, defeat them. The duke assumed that in the short run nothing important would come of the ongoing conflict in North America. He viewed affairs in that part of the world much like the chronic gout that bedeviled him, that is, distracting and slightly debilitating but not fatal. He believed that neither his king nor the French king thought the wilderness worth a war. In reaction to Halifax's aggressive growls, Newcastle told his friend Hardwicke, that while he understood that the French were "daily encroaching" upon the English, he did not want to do anything precipitous until, he said, "We get our Fleet in order and finish our Defensive Arrangements on the Continent."19

  Newcastle's "Defensive Arrangements" centered on protecting Hanover and restraining France. To accomplish his goals, he needed a powerful Continental ally to keep both the French and Prussian armies in check. By tradition, that ally was Austria, but its deep distrust of England made it an unlikely friend. Through his spies Newcastle was acutely aware that the French were courting Kaunitz by dangling the promise of Silesia. As for Spain, the other Bourbon power and France's natural ally, Newcastle had done all that he could to cultivate that friendship. Its foreign minister, Richard Wall, was a devoted Anglophile, and Newcastle counted him as much in his pocket as any rotten borough in England.

  Stability was Newcastle's goal. For a time he succeeded. He might have been even more successful had he resisted pressure to act precipitously in North America, but his instincts finally failed him. Hectoring voices from Cumberland, Halifax, and other expansionists drowned out moderate advice. In August 1753 Shirley arrived back in Massachusetts and immediately added his voice to those of the other expansionist governors who were bombarding London with alarming, frequently exaggerated accounts of French aggression. Halifax, anxious to believe any evil of the French that might offer an excuse to act, responded to these reports by preparing a detailed indictment of French behavior for cabinet review. At last Holder-ness, as the secretary of the Southern Department, wrote directly to the North American governors, ordering them "to repell force by force."20 In the hands of land-hungry men like Governor Shirley, these orders gave them license to do what they had long yearned for: strike at the French.

  Thomas Pelham Hollis, the duke of Newcastle

  In January 1754 a letter from William Lithgow, an agent for the Kennebec Proprietors, arrived in Boston with alarming news. According to Lithgow, the French had built a fort deep in the Maine woods at the head of the Kennebec River. If true, this meant that the French controlled the vital overland route between Quebec and northern New England. Lithgow's letter caused a near panic among a number of prominent Bostonians, including some of the governor's in-laws, who were shareholders in the Kennebec Proprietors, a land company formed to sell land in the "invaded" region.21

  Once he had Holderness's instructions in hand, Shirley called for an expedition to "repel" the French. With unwonted speech the General Court authorized five hundred men, supplies for four months, and ships to carry the small army to Maine. Shirley appointed John Winslow, a popular militia commander from Marshfield, to command. Winslow spent the spring organizing his force, and by late June he and his men were in Falmouth (Portland), Maine.

  Leaving his main force behind, Winslow pushed up the Kennebec with a small party to reconnoiter, but after several days of scouting he could not find a single Frenchmen. As Winslow returned downriver, he left groups of men behind. Attracted by generous land offers from the Kennebec company, these men had decided to settle and farm in the river valley. To protect them, Winslow built and garrisoned two forts along the river, Taconnet and Halifax. In the scale of great-power conflict, this "expedition" was of small consequence, but it was emblematic of the colonial land machinations. A cynical view might be that the entire operation was engineered to garner popularity for Shirley, which it did, and land sales for the company, which it also accomplished. Whether or not anyone ever truly believed that the French were there will never be known.

  *Near present-day Barcelona, New York.

  (2)

  George Washington

  Helps Start a War

  You are to act on the Defensive, but in Case any

  Attempts are made to obstruct the Works or interrupt

  our Settlements by any Persons whatsoever, You are

  to restrain all such Offenders, and in Case of

  resistance to make Prisoners of or kill and destroy

  them.

  —Instructions to be observ'd by Maj. Geo. Washington on the Expeditn to the Ohio

  Although Winslow might have had trouble finding the French in the Maine woods, in the Ohio Valley traders from Virginia and Pennsylvania found the enemy easily. Prodded by Galissonière's parting words that he should be fierce in defending his king's lands, Governor Jonquiere dispatched men into the Ohio. Unfortunately, as with so many colonial administrators, French and English, Jonquiere's devotion to his monarch was matched by his passion to fatten his own purse through illegal trading and bribery. When rumors of his alleged peculations reached Paris, he responded that "there is no one in this country who is not secretly motivated by self-interest."1 That facile explanation failed to satisfy his superiors, and in the fall of 1751 the king recalled him to answer the charges. But by the time Jonquiere received his summons, the St. Lawrence had iced over. The aged governor had to endure one last winter in Canada. Indeed, it was his very last—he died in Montreal on March 17, 1752.

  Jonquiere's death left New France without a governor but not without an intendant. Louis XIV had created the office of colonial intendant in i663 as a me
ans to check the power of governors. The office was modeled on the one that had been established in France to monitor provincial administrators. As with the system in France, the lines of authority among the king's officers were not clearly defined, but in general the intendant had charge of the colony's civil administration, including finance, trade, industry, and justice, reporting directly to Paris. The governor acted as commander in chief over the king's forces and was charged with protecting the colony, enforcing the law, and managing relations with Indians. This checks-and-balances system of administration was often clumsy and contentious. Government in Canada swirled about in two different and sometimes colliding orbits, one centered on the governor and the other on the intendant.

  Although not of noble birth, François Bigot came from a well-to-do family of Bordeaux. In 1723, at age twenty, he took a post in the Marine Department, where he did well. His skill at fiscal management drew attention from his superiors so that in 1732 he became the resident commissioner of marine at Rochefort. Seven years later he was posted to Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island as financial commissary. After more than a dozen years at Louisbourg, Bigot returned to France, and in 1748 he was appointed intendant of New France.

  One of the most controversial figures in the history of French Canada, Bigot is often pictured as an avaricious bureaucrat who presided over a carnival of thieves known as the "Grand Societe." Since corrupt officials rarely keep good records, it is difficult to fully fathom Bigot's administration; nonetheless, even by the loose standards of eighteenth-century France, he seems to have been a particularly clever and imaginative bookkeeper.

  A vacant governorship offered the ambitious intendant a chance to advance his own interests. Without waiting for instructions from Paris, Bigot appointed his friend Charles Le Moyne de Longueil, a native Canadian and the colony's senior military officer, to be governor. Le Moyne agreed to serve, but he was chary about Bigot's authority to appoint him, so he asked the king to confirm him in the post.2 Unknownst to both of them, the king had already appointed a successor, three months before Jonquiere's death. To the surprise of many in Canada, particularly Bigot and Le Moyne, on July 1, 1752, the new governor, Ange Duquesne de Menneville, arrived at Quebec.

  * * *

  A naval officer and the son of an admiral, Duquesne had served at sea with both Jonquiere and Galissonière. Indeed it was Galissonière's influence that had secured his appointment.

  Duquesne's instructions bore the seal of the minister of marine, Antoine-Louis Rouille, Comte de Jouy, but the language belonged to Galissoniere. The new governor was told that no one ought to trifle with the interests of the king for "the river Ohio and the rivers which fall into it unquestionably belong to France. It was discovered by M. de la Salle; since then we have always had trading posts there, and our possession of it has been all the more continuous since it is the most used communication between Canada and Louisiana."3 Brandishing the king's orders, he summoned the colony's officers to his quarters at the Chateau St. Louis overlooking the St. Lawrence. From them he learned that only a few weeks before his arrival Le Moyne had dispatched an expedition into the Ohio country.

  Led by a twenty-one-year-old native Canadian, Charles-Michel Mouet de Langlade, three hundred men, French and Indian, mostly "hard bitten Ottawa" from Michilimackinac, marched toward the Miami village of Pickawillany, home of "Old Briton." When Céloron had visited the village three years earlier, he had left orders with the chief to remove his people from English land to French territory. Old Briton had ignored the command. Langlade's orders were to punish the people of Pickawillany for their disobedience.

  At daybreak on the morning of June 21, the French and Ottawa struck without warning. Within minutes fourteen Miami were killed.4 As the Ottawa scoured the camp for spoils, scalping the dead and wounded, they came upon the body of Old Briton. They dismembered it and tossed the pieces into a boiling pot and feasted. Langlade stood aside, allowing his allies the pleasure of their triumph.

  Duquesne welcomed the news from Pickawillany. With obvious pleasure he wrote to his superiors in Paris, "This blow added to the complete pillage suffered by the English on this occasion will discourage them from trading on our lands." The governor offered high praise for young Langlade, accounting him a Canadian with "much bravery, much influence on the minds of the savages, and much zeal when ordered to attack." Langlade's only shortcoming, in the governor's eyes, was that he was a Canadian. With the arrogance of a Parisian snob, Duquesne reported that Langlade had "married a Savage woman." Duquesne was confident that a paltry pension of two hundred livres would be enough to satisfy this uncouth provincial.5

  Duquesne understood that the aggressive measures undertaken by his predecessors would provoke a British response. Yet the government in Paris was unlikely to send him any troops to defend the colony against retaliation. For that, he needed Canadian soldiers led by men like Langlade. Not surprisingly, Canadian militia resented being called from their farms and families to serve on active duty. Blithely ignoring their concerns, Duquesne summoned local leaders and announced to them a series of reforms intended to make "real soldiers" out of these reluctant part-time warriors. Duquesne's demands for more drilling, tighter discipline, and longer service were unwelcome. He further antagonized the habitants when he announced preparations for a spring offensive into the Ohio.

  Duquesne assigned command of the expedition to one of New France's most experienced and well-regarded soldiers: Paul Marin de La Malgue. At sixty-one, Marin was an experienced soldier who had commanded posts in the west, where he negotiated and traded with the Sioux, Fox, and Sauk. He was best known, however, for having led the war party that sacked Saratoga, New York, in 1746 during King George's War and laid waste to the surrounding countryside. He was, according to Duquesne, an officer "endowed with all the talent imaginable and knows no occupation than that of accomplishing the object he is entrusted with."6

  Marin's orders were clear: protect the king's lands in the Ohio. In the spring of 1753 he marched with two thousand men, the largest French force ever sent into the Ohio. He followed the path laid out four years earlier by Céloron, only this time, instead of burying plates, Marin built and garrisoned forts at critical locations. The first post he erected was at Presque Isle* on the south shore of Lake Erie. There he cut a road south to the headwaters of the Riviere aux Boeuf (French Creek), one of the tributaries to the Allegheny, which led in turn to the Ohio River. To guard this vital point, Marin laid out his second fort: Le Boeuf (present-day Waterford, Pennsylvania).

  At first the mission went well. British traders fled to avoid the French. Local Indians protested, but for the most part they were more interested in trading opportunities than in questions of sovereignty. Matters came to a head, however, on September 3, when Tanaghrisson arrived at Le Boeuf. A longtime friend to the English, Tanaghrisson hated the French because, according to legend, they had boiled and eaten his father. He was chief, "half king," of the Mingo—that is, displaced Iroquois, mostly Seneca and Cayuga, who had migrated into the Ohio country. Although the Iroquois central council claimed sovereignty over the Ohio, the Mingo, Delaware, and other tribes in the region often tried to assert their independence. When Tanaghrisson told Marin, "I shall strike at whoever" invades this country, Marin's response was contemptuous. He told him that the Mingos had "lost their minds." 7

  By then, however, Marin's enterprise had begun to encounter problems more serious than Tanaghrisson's bluster. A shortage of supplies coupled with disease and exhaustion had slowed his advance. Drought had caused streams to fall shallow, which forced additional overland trekking and portaging. Notwithstanding the obstacles, Marin pressed ahead. From his headquarters at Le Boeuf he ordered detachments south to rid the country of English. At Venango,* where French Creek empties into the Allegheny, one of Marin's patrols surprised a party of British traders. The lucky ones scurried away into the woods. The less fortunate were captured and shipped off to Canada in chains.

  Marin's vigorous
movements alarmed both the Iroquois and the English. Runners set out carrying news of the French invasion. At midnight on April 20, 1753, a party of exhausted Mohawks arrived unannounced at the home of their friend William Johnson.

  Johnson, known to the Iroquois as Warraghiygey, "He Who Does Big Business," was an Anglo-Irishman born in County Meath. Having little future in Ireland, Johnson accepted the invitation of his uncle, Admiral Sir Peter Warren, to manage the latter's estates in northern New York. Johnson arrived in 1738 and soon bought his own tract of land along the north side of the Mohawk River. A man of unusual habits in nearly every aspect of his life, Johnson was equally at ease meeting with the royal governor as he was sitting in council with his friends the Mohawk. In 1746 Governor George Clinton commissioned him colonel of the Iroquois and later made him colonel of the western New York militia, Johnson built a great home at Mount Johnson near the Mohawk River. Although the royal governor and other colonial officials exploited Johnson's close relationship to the Iroquois, they were generally disdainful of his personal behavior. On occasion Johnson wore Indian garb and dabbed war paint. He took a young Mohawk, Joseph Brant, into his home, and it was alleged that Brant's sister, Molly, was his mistress.