Almost from the day of Columbus's "discovery," Spain, England, and France had competed for trade and territory in the West Indies. By the eighteenth century Spain's principal base was Havana on the island of Cuba. England's key positions were its naval bases at Antigua and Jamaica and the rich sugar islands of the Barbados. France's most valuable possessions were the large islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique. In November 1758 Pitt dispatched an expedition to seize Martinique.
Pitt was haunted by the unhappy memory of the peace made in the last French war at Aix la Chapelle in 1748. By returning Louisbourg to France and leaving the borders of North America in a confused state, and by permitting the French to keep a strong presence in the Caribbean, Pitt's predecessors, he believed, had made the current war inevitable. Bellicose and bold, Pitt was determined to reduce France's New World empire. But he was also a realist who understood the political and diplomatic dynamics surrounding him. He knew that at any moment pressure from the king, Commons, or his own cabinet colleagues might drag him to the peace table. If that were the case, Martinique would provide a valuable bargaining chip in the traditional (and inevitable) swap of territory that would come with peace. Elements of the Martinique expedition sailed from Portsmouth and Plymouth on November 10, 1758, with Major General Peregrine Thomas Hopson in overall command.29 At least seventy years old and infirm, Hopson had not been Pitt's choice. He preferred John Barrington, but the king insisted on Hopson. The king did agree, however, that Barrington might go as second in command. The year before, when he was stationed in Nova Scotia, Loudoun had asked Hopson to command the Louisbourg expedition, but Pitt reversed the decision and summoned him home out of fear for his health.
After a passage of seven weeks "without any material occurrence," the fleet rendezvoused at Carlisle Bay in the Barbados, where Commodore John Moore, a protege of Anson's, took command of the sea forces.30 After two weeks of additional preparation Moore and Hopson departed for Martinique. They arrived off Fort Royal on January 15. Fortified by nature and art, Martinique presented a serious challenge to an attacker. Numerous obstacles along the coastline made any close approach by warships extremely dangerous. Ashore, the French had prepared strong defenses.
With covering fire from the fleet, on January 16 Hopsonlanded 5,500 men at Negro Point, five miles west of Fort Royal. He took the post easily and the next day began his march toward the town. Wisely, the French defenders withdrew behind the walls of the local fort. Nearly four thousand troops, mostly Swiss and Irish, stood ready on the ramparts. As Hopson's soldiers approached the town, the fleet's guns were having a tough time. The French engineers who laid out the fort sited it high enough on the hillside that ships in the harbor could not elevate their cannon to a steep enough angle to train on it. While Moore's gunners futilely tried to lay fire on the fort, the infantry trudged ahead. As the afternoon temperature and humidity climbed to their normal oppressive range, the men stumbled through the heavy vegetation, swatting away squadrons of pestering insects. The soldiers had barely advanced two miles when their progress ground to a halt on the edge of a steep ravine. To go around it would require a five-day detour, to bridge it "would take ten days work by a thousand men . . . and another thousand . . . to carry water to the workers."31 Hopson elected to abandon the attack, and by midnight the troops were back aboard the transports.
Having failed to take Fort Royal, Hopson and Moore sailed along the west side of the island to try their luck against the town of St. Pierre, the commercial center of the island. The squadron arrived early on the morning of January 19, 1759. Although the town had plenty of notice that the British were coming, the harbor was crowded with at least forty merchantmen laden with sugar. Sugarplums danced in the heads of the English as they calculated the potential prize money anchored before them. Moore ordered Panther and two bomb vessels to sail close to the town in order to sound the harbor and draw fire so that he might assess the enemy's strength. The island batteries showed remarkable strength, however, so after several hours of engagement Moore decided that the French position was simply too strong to risk an assault, and St. Pierre, with all its promise of booty, was abandoned as well. Having "wasted balls, brawn and blood" against Fort Royal and St. Pierre, Moore and Hopson decided to abandon Martinique altogether and try their luck against another nearby French island, Guadeloupe.32
After a blustery three-day passage north past the island of Dominica, the fleet arrived off Basse Terre on Guadeloupe's southwest coast. At seven in the morning on January 2$, 1759, the fleet opened fire on the town. They kept up the barrage all day. British "hot shot" sent several waterfront warehouses bulging with rum and sugar bursting into flames. The next morning Hop-son's troops landed. "The governor, principal inhabitants, and armed negroes having retired into the mountains," Hopson's soldiers easily took control of the town.33
Hopson sent messages into the island's interior, summoning the French commander, Nadau D'Utriel, to surrender. D'Utriel replied: "The terms . . . offer[ed] me, are such as can only be dictated by the easy acquisition you have made of the town and citadel of Basse-Terre; for, otherwise, you must do me the justice to believe, that I would not have received them. The force you have with you is indeed sufficient to give you possession of the extremities of the island, but as to the inland part we have there an equal chance with you. "34
D'Utriel's prediction proved correct. Whenever Hopson's men ventured beyond the safety of their own camps, they encountered a fiercely hostile populace, who fired at them "from every sugar plantation." "With the valour of an Amazon" one planter, Madame Ducharmey, armed her slaves and led them in person against the invaders.35 Hoping to crush resistance, the British put to the torch every house, barn, and sugar mill they found. According to one report, their campaign of terror reached a vicious low when soldiers trapped slaves in a cane field and set it on fire, incinerating them. For nearly two months the British futilely attempted to corner D'Utreil. Hopson died in the midst of the campaign, a victim of heat and disease. Major General John Barrington took over.
Barrington quickly abandoned Hopson's slogging tactics. On March 7, leaving behind a small garrison at Basse Terre, Barrington embarked most of his force aboard twenty-five transports. With Moore's squadron escorting them, they made their way toward Grand Terre Island. The fleet had to tack around Old Fort Point and then beat into the prevailing easterlies, taking four days to make thirty miles.
Barrington landed without the loss of a man. The next day Moore informed him that a French squadron had been sighted north of Barbados. Moore was in a pickle. Although he was in support of Barrington, his orders from the Admiralty were also to protect British trade in the West Indies against French depredations. The squadron posed a serious threat, and Grand Terre was too far removed from the principal sea-lanes to be a proper base. Moore decided to move his ships to Prince Rupert's Bay on the north shore of Dominica. From there he could keep an eye out for the French and still be within a few days' sail of Barrington. On March 13 Moore sailed, leaving behind most of the transports and the frigate Roebuck.
Heavy rains and mud made life miserable, but Barrington persevered. With his transports and small boats he darted about the islands for two agonizing months, pursuing the enemy through the settlements of Arnoville, Petit Bourg, and Goyave. Finally, by late April, the British managed to chase D'Utreil to ground on the east side of Basse Terre near Petit Bourg. On April 22, D'Utreil entered the town and presented himself to the British.
Both the English and French had suffered much, and with the dreaded tropical summer approaching, neither side was anxious to prolong the struggle. Barrington offered generous conditions, which D'Utreil quickly accepted. On May 1, 1759, the French surrendered Guadeloupe along with the small neighboring islands of Deseada and the Saintes. The victory on Guadeloupe was part of a triumphal pattern. Aside from the Continent, where Frederick continued to struggle, British forces were victorious everywhere. The combination of strength at sea and disciplined troops ashore seemed u
nbeatable.
Fall arrived in Canada in 1759 bringing "frost and sleet."36 Behind the walls of Quebec, Murray prepared his troops for the harsh winter. His ranks totaled 7,313 soldiers. Although Murray held most of his men within the city, he did post detachments across the river at Point Lévis and along a line from the Sillery Woods to Lorette to keep marauding French and Indians at a distance. Fresh food was scarce. Dysentery and scurvy, brought on by a relentless diet of salt meat without fresh vegetables, ravaged the ranks. Sentries who normally stood their posts for two hours could barely survive a single hour standing in the wretched cold. Regimental surgeons did what they could, which often meant amputating fingers and toes. Nuns at the General Hospital comforted the sick and dying. Bodies were "laid in the snow until the spring, the ground being, at this time, impenetrably bound up with frost."37
In their more comfortable quarters at Montreal, Lévis and Vaudreuil laid plans for a spring offensive to retake Quebec. The odds were heavily against them, and neither the governor nor the general had any illusions about their chances of success. Their only hope was to move early in the spring and strike quickly before the English could bring reinforcements up the river. Once Murray was defeated, they reasoned, they could turn against the British armies coming at them via Champlain and Ontario.
They expected little help from France. Versailles was teetering toward bankruptcy. Reeling from the incredible expenses of its huge European armies, in October 1759 the government issued a decree halting payment on all Canadian bills of exchange.38 Having clearly signaled their intention not to honor their financial obligations in Canada, the ministers then spent weeks debating whether to commit troops and supplies to the colony. Although Vaudreuil and Lévis were unaware of how completely the ministry had abandoned them, they knew that they were far down on the list of national priorities. Hoping for the best, the governor and the general prepared to attack Quebec.39
Murray watched Lévis's movements carefully. Despite his official muster roll, fewer than five thousand soldiers were fit for service. A third of his army had been lost to "fevers, dysenteries, and most obstinate scorbutic disorders."40 Faced with an imminent attack, he decided to call in his outposts and consolidate his forces nearer Quebec. At the same time, fearing that French civilians within the city might act as a fifth column, he ordered them expelled. The French citizens of Quebec, who had done nothing to warrant this treatment, marched sadly through the St. Louis gate, muttering curses about the lying and faithless English.
As usual, spring arrived late in the St. Lawrence Valley in 1760, and Lévis did not leave Montreal with his army until April 20. Five days later he landed at St. Augustin, about thirteen miles upstream from Quebec. By the evening of April 26 Lévis was crossing the Cap Rouge River on his march toward Quebec. That night, according to Captain John Knox, who was with Murray, there was "violent thunder and lightning..., surpassing any thing of the kind that has been known in this country for many years; and was succeeded by a most tremendous storm of wind and rain, threatening desolation to trees, houses, etc. the river was so agitated by this uncommon storm, which came from the south-east quarter, as effectually to tear up and disperse all the remaining ice."41 Shortly after the storm passed, about two in the morning of the twenty-seventh, "the watch on board the Racehorse . . . , hearing a distressful noise on the river," found "a man almost famished on a float of ice."42 He turned out to be a sergeant of the French artillery, the sole survivor of a bateau that had overturned in the storm. After some hot rum the sergeant told his captors that Lévis was on his way toward Sillery with twelve thousand men. In fact Lévis had only seven thousand.
Murray prepared to march out from the city toward the Sillery Woods. For several hours British guns fired toward the woods, harassing the French. As Murray watched, however, the French force grew in strength. Not wishing to risk an engagement, toward evening Murray gave the order for withdrawal, and his troops returned to the city. That night Murray held a council of war and decided that he would march out again the next morning. He explained to Pitt: "The enemy was greatly superior in numbers, it is true-, but when I considered that our little army was in the habit of beating that enemy, and had a very fine train of field artillery; that shutting ourselves at once within the walls was putting all upon the single chance of holding out for a considerable time a wretched fortification, I resolved to give them battle."43
Brigadier General James Murray
Early on the morning of April 28, Murray's infantry marched through the city gate. Some men carried entrenching tools; others were harnessed to pull artillery. Most of the horses had starved or been eaten. The general halted his men a half mile from the city on the Plains of Abraham, the same ground made sacred by Montcalm and Wolfe. Murray intended to dig in, though how far down his men might have been able to dig remains unknown since in several places the earth was still rock-hard from the lingering winter freeze. From a rise on the Plains Murray looked south and saiw Lévis's van approaching through the woods of Sillery. The mass of the army was on the French left, marching close to the St. Foy road. It was, in Murray's words, a "lucky Moment."44 He ordered his men to halt digging, throw down their tools, fix bayonets, and advance on the French before they had a chance to deploy. By advancing so quickly, Murray gave up his chief advantage: position. Although he had fewer men in the field than the French, he did have considerably more artillery. But by moving down from the rise and onto soft muddy ground, he lost the advantage of his cannon. His advancing infantry masked their fire, and the mud churned up by the marching men made it nearly impossible to move the guns and ammunition forward. All along the line the action was fierce. In a mill along the St. Foy road French grenadiers and Highlanders struggled hand to hand-Highland claymores versus French bayonets. The French pressed hard, and Murray realized that if Lévis could turn his flank, he would be able to drive behind the British line and stand between them and the city. Murray ordered a full withdrawal. It was a disorderly retreat, and without horses the artillery could not be moved out of harm's way. Murray's entire artillery train, more than twenty guns, was left to the French. Hoping to cut off the British retreat, Lévis ordered one of his regiments to sweep around the British. In the confusion of battle the order went awry, and the battalion failed to carry out the movement, allowing the British to reach the safety of the city's walls. By midday Lévis's army had the city under siege.
Both sides suffered heavy casualties. Murray's losses (killed and wounded) numbered 1,088, while Lévis reported 833. Two days after the battle Murray dispatched Racehorse to carry the ill news to Halifax. Governor Lawrence was stunned. Wolfe's work, he feared, was unraveling. Lawrence dashed off a long message to Pitt. In a tone meant to convey alarm, he told the minister that he had good reason to believe that by then, May 11, Quebec was in the hands of the French.45 In fact, Murray had provisions enough to hold out against Lévis for about two weeks. If relief did not reach him before then, he would be forced to capitulate.
Lévis's position was little better. He hoped that a relief fleet was en route to him. In November Vaudreuil and Lévis had sent their chief of artillery, François-Marc-Antoine Le Mercier, off to Paris to plead for help at court. Had they known the miserable results of Mercier's mission, they would have despaired. Not only did the ministry ignore his plea; the ministers imprisoned him and charged him with fraud and embezzlement. And then, in a gesture that came too late, they sent a pitiful convoy of five merchantmen, accompanied by a single warship, to Quebec. They made it as far as the mouth of the St. Lawrence before British patrols out of Halifax took them as prizes.
On May 9, a British sentry called out from his post that a vessel was coming around lie d'Orleans. As the vessel drew nearer and glasses focused, there was no mistaking the fluttering Union Jack. While HMS Lowestoft was still coming to anchor in the St. Charles, its captain came ashore and hurried up the heights to inform Murray that Admiral Alexander Colville was on his way upriver with a relief squadron, and that he shoul
d be at the city within a few days. The officer also delivered a bundle of London newspapers filled with news of British victories. Murray dispatched copies of the papers through the lines to Lévis. With Gallic indifference Lévis dismissed the news as "vague and uninteresting."46
Despite his pretended indifference, Lévis knew then that he had no hope of retaking Quebec in this campaign. In a soldiery gesture of defiance, on the eleventh he ordered his batteries to open fire on the city, a desultory barrage that continued for several days. But with more British vessels making their way upriver, there could be little doubt of the outcome, and Lévis ordered his men to abandon their entrenchments and fall back across the Cap Rouge River.47
Lévis's rapid withdrawal toward Montreal endangered the French forces remaining on Lake Champlain and the Richelieu River. After blowing up Ticonderoga and Crown Point, Bourlamaque had consolidated his position at the northern end of the lake. He left a small guard force on Isle aux-Noix, to guard the entrance to the Richelieu River, while concentrating his main force farther upstream at Fort Chambly. His men had spent a hard winter enduring frostbite, dysentery, and scurvy. In February 1760 Lévis summoned Bourlamaque to Montreal to help him plan the retaking of Quebec and dispatched Bougainville in his place to command the Richelieu area. Bougainville's situation was precarious. Lévis's retreat toward Montreal meant that Murray could easily move upriver and stand between him and Montreal, while on his southern flank Colonel William Haviland was creeping up the lake with a strong military and naval force. Bougainville was being squeezed, and on August 27 he abandoned Isle aux-Noix and gave orders to blow up the fort at Chambly. He marched his men to join Lévis at Montreal. Bougainville's withdrawal left Haviland and Murray a clear path to Montreal.48
Empires at War Page 28