Crucible of War

by Fred Anderson

  In all of these measures Pitt did not hesitate to overthrow the reforms of Halifax and his colleagues at the Board of Trade, who had worked so diligently before the war to impose some measure of administrative control on America. Pitt could do what he did with so little apparent concern for their efforts because he cared nothing for administration or reform or the depressing history of colonial intrusions on the prerogative. He only wanted to win the war, and no centralizing reform measure would help him do that. Pitt’s action in reversing the thrust of a decade-long policy toward the colonies can only be properly understood if we see him as a man to whom caution was no longer a constraint, a gambler either so desperate or so sure of his luck that he could stake everything on the next roll of the dice.

  The effects of the new policies were immediately evident in the response of the assemblies, but it was another three months before it became clear that the enthusiasm of the legislators could be translated into enough enlistments to fill the newly created provincial regiments. In New England, it was perhaps unsurprising that recruitment proceeded vigorously, and it cannot have failed to gratify Pitt to learn that by late April, Massachusetts had enlisted nearly five thousand volunteers and was willing to draft another two thousand from its militia if the remainder did not volunteer in time to begin the summer’s campaign. But the colony that offered the most striking evidence of the new policies’ effect was Virginia, where enthusiasm for provincial service had never been high. From 1754 through 1757, the Old Dominion had paid its soldiers poorly and attracted few volunteers. Although the Burgesses had tried to make up the chronic deficit in enlistments by authorizing the impressment of men who had “no visible Way of getting an honest Livelihood,” it also allowed draftees to escape service by paying a ten-pound fine, without even requiring them to hire substitutes to serve in their stead. As a result, the ranks of the Virginia Regiment were rarely more than half-full, and Washington had never succeeded in inducing many veterans to reenlist. With the news that Parliament stood willing to reimburse its expenses, however, the Burgesses resolved to raise a second regiment and—“thinking by that means to compleat with greater dispatch and better men”—to offer a ten-pound bounty to every volunteer.19

  Recruitment went so well that before the end of May the 1st Virginia Regiment had enrolled 950 of the 1,000 men it had been authorized and the 2nd Regiment had enlisted 900. Every one of them was a volunteer. Even Sir John St. Clair, the crusty regular quartermaster who had lost no opportunity to denigrate the Virginia provincials since Braddock’s defeat, admitted that they seemed “a fine body of men.” Even more surprising than the caliber of the men and their enthusiasm for enlistment, however, was the social quality of their officers. Washington had been one of the few planters of stature willing to lead the provincials before 1758, and he was both young and descended from a family of the second rank. Like many of his company commanders, Washington’s second-in-command, Lieutenant Colonel Adam Stephen, was a Scot and therefore, in the reckoning of Virginia’s Anglophile gentry, barely a gentleman. But the policy change that gave provincial field officers rank equivalent to that of their counterparts in the regular army had swept away the biggest deterrent to service by members of the colony’s first families. In 1758 the man who volunteered to head the new 2nd Virginia Regiment was no less than William Byrd III, a member of the Governor’s Council and the master of Westover, the Chesapeake’s archetypal estate. Byrd’s second-in-command, Lieutenant Colonel George Mercer, came from a family by no means inferior to the Washingtons; his company commanders were on balance much more socially acceptable than those of the 1st Regiment.20

  Thus Loudoun had thought the colonists poor raw material, had bent every effort to improving them, and had failed—not through want of effort, but because the raw material had been unwilling to improve. Pitt took the same men and conditions that had thwarted the imperious laird and adapted his policies to suit them, asking not for perfection or submission but only for help, making clear his willingness to take it on the colonists’ own terms. Not surprisingly, the new generals Pitt appointed to command in America would experience frustrations so like Loudoun’s that their complaints about unsoldierly provincials and self-interested assemblies would look as if they plagiarized his letter books. But the complaints and the disdain of Loudoun’s successors would not vex Anglo-American relations after 1758 because Pitt had deprived them of the authority to act on their opinions. Pitt himself would direct policies and, insofar as possible, plan campaigns. The result would prove to be a series of victories unparalleled in British history. Pitt’s policies would gain him not just the colonists’ help but their adulation. Never before had the energies of so many colonists been engaged on behalf of the empire as they would be in the three remarkable years that began in 1758; never before had their affection for Great Britain been so heartfelt, or their passion for the empire burned with so bright a flame.

  CHAPTER 23

  Old Strategies, New Men, and a Shift in the Balance

  EARLY 1758

  PITT’S PLANS for 1758 were not in fact much different from Loudoun’s. In a sense they could not be, for the geography of eastern North America gave only a few options to anyone contemplating “an Irruption into Canada” or the removal of the French forts from the Ohio Country. There were only two promising invasion routes into New France. One was up the St. Lawrence, which meant first taking or neutralizing Louisbourg. The other was along the Lake Champlain corridor, which meant fighting one’s way past Fort Carillon, Fort St. Frédéric, and the forts that guarded the Richelieu River. The third approach, up the Mohawk Valley to Lake Ontario and then down the St. Lawrence to Montréal, remained impracticable so long as the French maintained naval command of Lake Ontario and continued to occupy the forts that dominated either end: Frontenac at its outlet and Niagara at its head. Fort Frontenac held the key to communication between Québec and the interior of the continent. To destroy it would be to render insecure all the posts that lay farther west—Niagara, Detroit, Michilimackinac, and the Ohio Country forts— and to deprive the French of their trade with the pays d’en haut. Because Fort Duquesne’s strategic importance depended upon its ability to serve as a base for Indian raids, it needed a steady supply of arms, ammunition, and other trade goods. Duquesne would become vulnerable if Fort Frontenac were destroyed, and the drying up of trade would doubtless diminish the local Indians’ affection for the French; yet because much of its food came from the Illinois Country, the garrison itself could potentially survive even in the absence of support from Canada. The only way to be sure of establishing control over the Ohio Country and its Indians was therefore to destroy Fort Duquesne, and that meant building a road across the Alleghenies—either from the upper Potomac, as Braddock had tried to do, or across Pennsylvania.

  As he had informed the governors at Hartford, Loudoun intended to attempt campaigns on all these fronts in 1758. By the time he was recalled, Loudoun had planned and begun preparations for a campaign by twelve regiments against Fort Carillon; for a bateau-borne provincial expedition under Lieutenant Colonel John Bradstreet against Fort Frontenac; for an overland march through Pennsylvania by two battalions under Colonel John Stanwix; and for an amphibious attack on Louisbourg by the six regiments that had wintered in Nova Scotia together with provincials to be sent from New England. Pitt, too, envisioned expeditions against Fort Carillon, Fort Duquesne, and Louisbourg, and later approved of Bradstreet’s expedition against Fort Frontenac; his plans differed, however, in the allocation of forces, for he intended to send many more regulars to America than were already in place and (as we have seen) to augment them with enormous numbers of provincials. But the most significant difference between Pitt’s and Loudoun’s plans lay in the men who would command the expeditions. 1

  Although Pitt had named Loudoun’s fat, fussy, indolent subordinate, Major General James Abercromby, commander in chief for North America, he had authorized Lord Ligonier to nominate four new men to take charge of the expedit
ions of 1758. These were in every way surprising choices, for they had nothing to do with seniority in the service and very little to do with experience in command. To lead the all-important Louisbourg expedition Ligonier had promoted Jeffery Amherst, a forty-year-old colonel who had never commanded anything larger than a regiment, to the temporary rank of “Major General in America.” As acting brigadier under Amherst, Ligonier suggested an even younger man, a lieutenant colonel known mostly for emotional volatility and readiness to criticize his superiors, James Wolfe. Ligonier and Pitt decided to entrust the campaign against Fort Duquesne to Acting Brigadier John Forbes, previously a colonel under Lord Loudoun: a fifty-year-old Scot, originally educated as a physician, who had distinguished himself as an officer of great experience and capacity but who was now so tormented by an inflammatory disease of the skin that he could at times barely move. To aid Abercromby in leading the expedition against Fort Carillon, they agreed upon the promotion to the rank of acting brigadier of George Augustus, Viscount Howe. At age thirty-three, Howe was one of the most promising field officers in the British army and had already gained experience with American conditions by commanding the 55th Regiment in New York.2

  Jeffery Amherst (1717–97). Shown here in a postwar engraving based on Joshua Reynolds’s portrait-in-armor as the victor of Montréal, Amherst seems very much a formal and aloof figure. He was; even in 1758, as the newly appointed commander of the Louisbourg expedition, he inspired respect, but not affection, in his subordinates. His most important brigadier, James Wolfe, found him maddeningly uncommunicative and “slow.” Courtesy of the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan.

  Except for Abercromby, all of these officers held only temporary ranks because all of them had been promoted ahead of more senior and experienced colleagues. In part that was because Pitt preferred to appoint as his commanders men without independent standing who would ultimately need to rely on him personally; but principally it was because he valued talent. What Amherst, Wolfe, Forbes, and Howe had in common was either a strong reputation for competence or past service under Lord Ligonier in which they had convinced the old campaigner of their capacity. Significantly, since they were being entrusted with commands in a setting where everything depended on maintaining adequate supply services, three of the four (Amherst, Wolfe, and Forbes) had previously demonstrated superior skill as quartermasters or commissaries. Indeed, in view of their uniform lack of experience in command above the battalion level, their administrative aptitude may have been uppermost in Ligonier’s mind when he commended them to Pitt.

  James Wolfe (1727–59). In every sense Amherst’s temperamental opposite, Wolfe was bold to the point of rashness, and only good luck (and a timely death) can account for his reputation for tactical brilliance. This watercolor by George Townshend, a subordinate who came to detest him, ironically shows him in a more appealing light than any other contemporary portrait; his sharp nose and weak chin almost inevitably invited caricature. Courtesy of the McCord Museum of Canadian History, Montreal / Musée McCord d’histoire canadienne, Montréal.

  These officers were to head the largest forces that had ever operated in North America. The command Amherst was to lead against Louisbourg consisted of 14 regular battalions, 5 companies of American rangers, a company of carpenters, and a train of siege artillery: nearly 14,000 men in all. Abercromby was given 9 regiments of regulars and the provincial troops of the colonies north of Pennsylvania—about 25,000 men—to hold New York, attack Ticonderoga, and “irrupt” into Canada. Forbes was to lead 2,000 regulars and about 5,000 Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina provincials against Fort Duquesne. Even without including sailors, marines, and the enormous miscellany of artificers, bateaumen, wagoners, sutlers, and other camp followers who supported the armies, the campaigns of 1758 would go forward with nearly 50,000 Anglo-American troops under arms: a number equivalent to two-thirds of the whole population of Canada.3

  Against these evidently overwhelming forces New France could muster 6,800 regular troops, about 2,700 troupes de la marine, and the Canadian militia, which included all able-bodied habitant males between fifteen and sixty years of age and numbered perhaps 16,000 men. At most the marquis de Montcalm would be able to field half as many men as the British could throw against him; but his problems in defending Canada only began with the imbalance in manpower. The Indian auxiliaries that had formerly been more than adequate to offset the British advantage in numbers were nowhere to be seen in the spring of 1758. In large part this was because a smallpox epidemic had ravaged the villages of the pays d’en haut following the previous campaign, convincing many nations that the French had sent bad medicine among them. The Ottawas were said to be entertaining “evil designs” and the Potawatomis seemed “indisposed” to offer any aid; in Wisconsin the Menominees had grown so far alienated that they actually attacked a French fort and killed a trader’s family.4

  Of even more pressing concern than the absence of the Indians was the extreme shortage of food supplies. The harvest failed in 1757 for the second year in a row. In normal times Canadian wheat had commanded four to five livres per minot; by January of 1758, a minot cost fifteen livres—supposing one could find a person willing to sell. In order to stretch out the scarce grain resources of Canada, peas had been mixed with flour in the making of bread since 1756. By the winter of 1757–58 even that expedient no longer sufficed, and the ration of bread and of other staples had to be reduced for civilians and soldiers alike. In December 1757, the colony government cut the beef ration, which was supposed to be a pound a day but had long stood at half that, to a pound and a half a week. In place of beef the butchers supplied horse meat and, when available, codfish. At first the women of Montréal had pelted Governor-General Vaudreuil’s door with their substitute rations, but the protests subsided when it became clear that Canadians could eat horse meat or no meat at all. As the winter wore on, food supplies dwindled to the vanishing point. By early April, Québec’s daily bread ration was down to two ounces. A month later, with unstable weather holding up the spring planting, the weekly meat ration had dropped to a half-pound of beef or horse, a half-pound of salt pork, and four ounces of salt cod. Only the arrival of a convoy of ships from France on May 22 averted actual starvation in Québec, where “some of the inhabitants [had been] reduced to living on grass,” but the necessity of diverting food supplies to the campaigns meant that the suffering of the civilian population did not cease. By the beginning of June, the daily bread ration had yet to rise above four ounces a day.5

  The famine winter of 1757–58 can be blamed only in part on the failed harvests of 1756 and 1757. In normal times Canada produced enough grain to sustain its own population with enough left over to feed an additional twelve thousand people. During any average war year rations had to be found for at least fifteen thousand regulars, troupes de la marine, Indian warriors, and militia on permanent assignment, which meant that even bumper crops would have had to be supplemented with shipments of food from France. By the fall of 1757, however, the British navy had established effective blockades at Gibraltar, along the Channel coast, and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Thus to arrive safely in Canada, any French merchantman had to run a gauntlet of Royal Navy vessels twice as well as avoid Anglo-American privateers on the high seas. The only reliable blockade-runners were French warships sailing en flûte, or stripped of most of their cannon: a configuration in which they could outsail virtually any ship in the British navy. But most flutes carried official dispatches and reinforcements; their typical cargoes of powder, shot, and Indian trade goods contributed little food to the colony’s meager supply.6

  Moreover, a pervasive corruption exacerbated the problems that overwhelming demand, poor harvests, and blockades had created. King George’s War and the current conflict had so distorted Canadian economic life that the leading sector of trade was no longer in fish, furs, and skins, but rather in military supplies and provisions. Contracting was the responsibility o
f the colony’s chief civil administrator, or intendant; and François Bigot, the man who occupied that post from 1744 through 1760, had no compunctions about using his position to create a monopoly for himself and his partners, a group called la grande société. Bigot’s business correspondent in Bordeaux would ship cargoes of provisions and luxury goods, at government expense, to Bigot, who in turn remitted government bills of exchange to pay the correspondent. In peacetime Bigot’s partners sold these cargoes on the open market and divided the profits with the intendant. In time of war, Bigot could sell the cargoes to the Crown (which is to say, to himself, as the officer responsible for provisioning the king’s forces in Canada) at a tremendous markup. Meanwhile Bigot’s agents bought Canadian grain at prices fixed by law at from five to seven livres per minot; milled it, at government expense, into flour; and sold the flour to the Crown—that is, to Bigot—at the market price, which eventually reached twenty-six livres. When famine ensued, it was Bigot, who as intendant was responsible for civil welfare, who sold rations of publicly owned flour to the populace at a government-subsidized price. What this system lacked in ethical purity it more than made up for in profits. By the winter of 1757–58 Bigot had grown so rich that he was able to sustain gambling losses in excess of 200,000 livres without visibly suffering in his style of life.7