Crucible of War

Home > Other > Crucible of War > Page 91
Crucible of War Page 91

by Fred Anderson


  2. Lawrence Henry Gipson, The British Empire before the American Revolution, vol. 6, The Great War for the Empire: The Years of Defeat, 1754–1757 (New York, 1968), 405–11.

  3. George Bubb Dodington, The Political Journal of George Bubb Dodington, ed. John Cars-well and Lewis Dralle (Oxford, 1965), 341–2.

  4. On Byng’s defeat, see Julian S. Corbett, England in the Seven Years’ War: A Study in Combined Strategy, vol. 1 (London, 1918), 107–24; on the loss of the Minorca garrison, see Gipson, Years of Defeat, 413–14; and Corbett, Seven Years’ War, 1:131–2. On disintegration of the ministry, see Middleton, Bells, 5. Fox quotation: Dodington, Political Journal, 342.

  5. Encouraging admirals: Voltaire: Candide, Zadig, and Selected Stories, ed. Donald M. Frame (New York, 1961), 78–9. Frederick decides to invade Saxony: Christopher Duffy, The Military Life of Frederick the Great (New York, 1986), 86–8; Dennis Showalter, The Wars of Frederick the Great (London, 1996), 132–5.

  6. Browning, Newcastle, 238–45; Middleton, Bells, 5–6; Gipson, Years of Defeat, 419–26.

  7. Stanley Ayling, The Elder Pitt, Earl of Chatham (New York, 1976), 186–8; Middleton, Bells, 6–8; Browning, Newcastle, 254–6.

  8. Rt. Hon. John, Lord Sheffield, ed., Autobiography of Edward Gibbon (London, 1907; reprint, 1972), 105. Gibbon valued his military service because “the habits of a sedentary life were usefully broken by the duties of an active profession” and because it made him “an Englishman, and a soldier. . . . In this peaceful service I imbibed the rudiments of the language, and science of tactics, which opened a new field of study and observation. I diligently read, and meditated, the Mémoires Militaires of Quintus Icilius (Mr. Guichardt), the only writer who has united the merits of a professor and a veteran. The discipline and evolutions of a modern battalion gave me a clearer notion of the phalanx and the legion; and the captain of the Hampshire grenadiers (the reader may smile) has not been useless to the historian of the Roman empire.”

  9. Ayling, Elder Pitt, 189–91 (policies), 200–3 (king’s distrust). Marie Peters, in “The Myth of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, Great Imperialist. Part 1: Pitt and Imperial Expansion,” Journalof Imperial and Commonwealth History 23 (1993): 40–2, argues persuasively that at most Pitt can be credited with opportunism, and not with a consistent set of views on the colonies.

  10. Fox and Cumberland: Browning, Newcastle, 257–8; Ayling, Elder Pitt, 202–3; Lewis M. Wiggin, The Faction of Cousins: A Political Account of the Grenvilles, 1733–63 (New Haven, Conn., 1958), 193–202. “Inter-ministerium”: Walpole, Memoirs of George II, 3:20.

  11. Middleton, Bells, 16–17.

  12. “Minister of measures” and “minister of money”: Browning, Newcastle, 260–1. Allocation of offices: Ayling, Elder Pitt, 100–1, 205–6; Middleton, Bells, 17–18.

  13. Relief and optimism: Middleton, Bells, 18; Ayling, Elder Pitt, 209. King’s antagonism: Browning, Newcastle, 259. Newcastle on Pitt: Ayling, Elder Pitt, 206. “Bitter . . . cup”: ibid., 208.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: The Fortunes of War in Europe

  1. Frederick, quoted in W. F. Reddaway, Frederick the Great and the Rise of Prussia (New York, 1904), 225. “Dreadful auspices”: the earl of Bute to Pitt, 1 July 1757, quoted in Stanley Ayling, The Elder Pitt, Earl of Chatham (New York, 1976), 209. Deteriorating strategic position: Dennis E. Showalter, The Wars of Frederick the Great (London, 1996), 177–8; Reddaway, Frederick and Prussia, 214–18. For clear accounts of this campaign and astute (though differing) analyses of Frederick’s generalship, see Russell F. Weigley, The Age of Battles: The Quest for Decisive Warfare from Breitenfeld to Waterloo (Bloomington, Ind., 1991), 167–95; Showalter, Wars of Frederick, 148–57; and Christopher Duffy, The Military Life of Frederick the Great (New York, 1986), 101–8.

  2. Ayling, Elder Pitt, 211.

  3. Showalter, Wars of Frederick, 176–7 (quotation at 176).

  4. Lawrence Henry Gipson, The British Empire before the American Revolution, vol. 7, The Great War for the Empire: The Victorious Years, 1758–1760 (New York, 1967), 120–2; Charles Chenevix Trench, George II (London, 1973), 283–4.

  5. Ayling, Elder Pitt, 193; Lawrence Henry Gipson, The British Empire before the American Revolution, vol. 8, The Great War for the Empire: The Culmination, 1760–1763 (New York, 1970), 113–21.

  6. Clive in Bengal: Ibid., 127–36. “This cordial”: Pitt to Bute, n.d., quoted in Peter Douglas Brown, William Pitt, Earl of Chatham: The Great Commoner (London, 1978), 152. “Infinitely happy”: same to same, n.d., ibid., 154.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Loudoun’s Offensive

  1. Pitt’s plans vs. Loudoun’s: Stanley M. Pargellis, Lord Loudoun in North America (1933; reprint, Hamden, Conn., 1968), 231–2; Lawrence Henry Gipson, The British Empire before the American Revolution, vol. 7, The Great War for the Empire: The Victorious Years, 1758–1760 (New York, 1967), 90–5. “Refused nothing”: Archibald Campbell, duke of Argyll, to Loudoun, Feb. 1757, quoted in Pargellis, Loudoun, 236.

  2. On the supply system, see Daniel J. Beattie, “The Adaptation of the British Army to Wilderness Warfare, 1755–1763,” in Maarten Ultee, ed., Adapting to Conditions: War and Society in the Eighteenth Century (University, Ala., 1986), 62–4; and Pargellis, Loudoun, 292–6. On the resistance of the New England assemblies to Loudoun’s reforms, see Fred Anderson, A People’s Army: Massachusetts Soldiers and Society in the Seven Years’ War (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1984), 180–5.

  3. Beattie, “Adaptation,” 65–7; Pargellis, Loudoun, 296–9. In 1756 the cost of moving a barrel of beef to the lake was one pound nine shillings New York currency; in 1757 Bradstreet’s estimate of the cost of transporting a barrel from Albany to Fort Edward (about fifty miles) was seven shillings (ibid., 296, 298).

  4. In 1757 Loudoun requisitioned only four thousand men from the New England provinces; see ibid., 212–16. Plans to substitute light infantry for rangers: ibid., 301–4. Americans had used ranger companies as substitutes for Indians during previous wars; they probably grew out of earlier attempts to fight Indians by offering bounties and encouraging backwoodsmen to form private scalp-hunting companies. These units had seldom distinguished themselves in woodland warfare, although in King George’s War a ranger company (largely composed of Christian Indians) under the command of John Gorham of New Hampshire performed useful service on the Louisbourg expedition (Douglas Edward Leach, Arms for Empire: A MilitaryHistory of the British Colonies in North America, 1607–1763 [New York, 1973], 183–5, 235). During the Seven Years’ War, rangers first served on the Crown Point expedition in 1755—a New Hampshire company under Captain Robert Rogers and Lieutenant John Stark. In 1756 there were three such companies; in 1757, four. Shirley had, typically, handled the establishment of the ranging companies in an irregular manner, paying their officers on the same scale as regulars and their men as provincials. Ultimately he provided for them out of his own funds, in effect making them independent companies, paid by the Crown, on an establishment separate from both the regular army and the provinces. Loudoun systematized the arrangement, continuing to pay the rangers from his own contingency money, but enlisting them (unlike provincials) for the duration of the war. Both their notorious lack of discipline and the expense of keeping them in service plagued him; in 1758, nine companies of rangers cost £35,000 sterling to maintain—twice as much as a regiment of regulars (Pargellis, Loudoun, 303).

  The colonial rangers, while a subject of military legend and popular fascination, have not yet been adequately treated in historical scholarship. The best existing work is John R. Cuneo, Robert Rogers of the Rangers (1959; reprint, New York, 1987). An excellent doctoral dissertation, completed too late to influence this book, promises to fill this lacuna in the historiography: John Edward Grenier, “The Other American Way of War: Unlimited and Irregular Warfare in the Colonial Military Tradition” (Ph.D. diss., University of Colorado at Boulder, 1999); see esp. chaps. 2-4.

  5. Quartering bill: Pargellis, Loudoun, 194. Submission of colonial governments: ibid.,
198–201. Probably because of his insecurity in the Commons in early 1757, Pitt never introduced the promised quartering bill, and the measure lay dormant until it was revived at General Gage’s request in 1765.

  6. Loudoun to Henry Fox, 22 Nov.–26 December 1756, Loudoun Papers, Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

  7. Pargellis, Loudoun, 265; Alan Rogers, Empire and Liberty: American Resistance to British Authority, 1755–1763 (Berkeley, Calif., 1974), 93–5.

  8. Loudoun to Fox, 8 Oct. 1756, Loudoun Papers.

  9. Pargellis, Loudoun, 266–7; Rogers, Empire and Liberty, 94–7.

  10. Gipson, Victorious Years, 97–103; Pargellis, Loudoun, 214–27. The naval escort consisted only of one fifty-gun man-of-war, H.M.S. Sutherland, and two frigates (ibid., 238).

  CHAPTER NINETEEN: Fort William Henry

  1. On Webb, see Loudoun to Cumberland, 5 Jan. 1757, and Loudoun to Webb, 20 June 1757, in Stanley M. Pargellis, ed., Military Affairs in North America, 1748–1765: Documents from the Cumberland Papers in Windsor Castle (1936; reprint, New York, 1969), 293, 370–1; and Dictionaryof American Biography, s.v. “Webb, Daniel.” Quotation: Pargellis, Lord Loudoun in North America (1933; reprint, Hamden, Conn., 1968), 234.

  2. Ian K. Steele, Betrayals: Fort William Henry and the “Massacre” (New York, 1990), 75–7; Lawrence Henry Gipson, The British Empire before the American Revolution, vol. 7, The Great War for the Empire: The Victorious Years, 1758–1760 (New York, 1967), 67–9. Another sloop was damaged but not destroyed in the attack, and a third survived unhurt; several “Bay boats and Gondolas” also survived, probably because they had sunk offshore, the previous fall, to be raised after the thaw—a common means of protecting vessels from winter damage (Loudoun to Webb, 20 June 1757, in Pargellis, Military Affairs, 371).

  3. Carillon scout and Rogers’s wound: John R. Cuneo, Robert Rogers of the Rangers (1959; reprint, New York, 1987), 45–53. French and Indian activities: Steele, Betrayals, 84–5.

  4. “Swimming”: Louis Antoine de Bougainville, Adventure in the Wilderness: The American Journals of Louis Antoine de Bougainville, 1756–1760, ed. Edward P. Hamilton (Norman, Okla., 1964), 116 (entry of June 15). Ransom: Steele, Betrayals, 79.

  5. French strength: Bougainville, Adventure, 152–3 (entry of 29 July 1757. The army included 6 battalions of “French Troops,” or regulars, totalling 2,570; a battalion of “Colony Troops,” or troupes de la marine, numbering 524, under Rigaud; 3,470 Canadian militia and volunteers, organized into 8 battalion-strength territorial “brigades”; and 180 artillerists). Indian participation: see ibid., 150–1 (entry of 28 July 1757); and the interpretation in Steele, Betrayals, 80–1, 111. “In the midst”: Bougainville, Adventure, 149 (entry of 27 July 1757).

  6. Garrison strength: Steele, Betrayals, 96. “An old Officer”: Loudoun to Cumberland, 25 Apr.–3 June 1757, in Pargellis, Military Affairs, 344. “At daybreak”: Bougainville, Adventure, 142–3 (entry of 24 July 1757); see also Steele, Betrayals, 91, 96–7, 217 nn. 46, 47.

  7. Gipson, Victorious Years, 79–81; Steele, Betrayals, 229–30 n. 49.

  8. Douglas Edward Leach, Arms for Empire: A Military History of the British Colonies in North America, 1607–1763 (New York, 1973), 399–400; Bougainville, Adventure, 154–6 (entry of 31 July 1757). “We know”: Monro to Webb, 3 Aug. 1757, quoted in Steele, Betrayals, 98.

  9. Bougainville, Adventure, 157 (entry of 1 Aug. 1757).

  10. Steele, Betrayals, 98–9; Bougainville, Adventure, 158–60 (entry of 3 Aug. 1757). Garden: “A Plan of Fort William Henry . . .” in Gipson, Victorious Years, facing 78.

  11. Steele, Betrayals, 99.

  12. Quotation: G. Bartman to Monro, 4 Aug. 1757, facsimile copy in ibid., 103 (fig. 9). Montcalm suggests surrender: Bougainville, Adventure, 163, 166–7 (entries of 5 and 7 Aug. 1757).

  13. Ibid., 160–9 (entries of 4–8 Aug. 1757); Steele, Betrayals, 102–5.

  14. Eleven of twenty-one guns had split or exploded by the end of 7 Aug., including both of the fort’s thirty-two–pounders. Most of the fort’s guns were iron and hence vulnerable to metal fatigue after prolonged firing. Brass guns stood up better under sustained use, but all ten of the brass cannon in the fort and the camp were small-bore fieldpieces, unable to damage the besiegers’ fieldworks (ibid., 100–8).

  15. Ibid., 105–6, 108.

  16. Situation report: ibid., 107–8, 109. (The shortage of ammunition was far from absolute, for the French would later list 2,522 solid shot, 542 shells, and 35,835 pounds of powder in their “Return of Artillery Found in the Fort.” Rather the problem was of a severe shortage of shot and shell for the five small-caliber cannon that remained functional. See Bougainville, Adventure,177 [entry of 22 Aug. 1757].) “Quite worn out”: Frye, quoted in Gipson, Victorious Years, 84.

  17. Terms of surrender from Steele, Betrayals, 110; see also Gipson, Victorious Years, 84–5.

  18. Steele, Betrayals, 110–11.

  19. Ibid., 111–12. “More than usual malice”: Joseph Frye, A Journal of the Attack of Fort William Henry by the French on the third day of August 1757 and the surrender of the 9th of the same month, Parkman Papers, vol. 42, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.

  20. Steele, Betrayals, 115–19 (killing and taking of prisoners), 144 (maximum number killed; Steele’s lower-bound estimate is 69), 134 (number of captives), 121 (number sheltered by French and early departure of Indians).

  21. Refugees’ arrival: Rufus Putnam, Journal of Gen. Rufus Putnam, Kept in Northern New York during Four Campaigns of the Old French and Indian War, 1757–1760, ed. E. C. Dawes (Albany, 1886), 42–3 (entries of 10–19 Aug. 1757). Montcalm’s reassurances and efforts to recover captives: Steele, Betrayals, 129–31. Captive returns: ibid., 139 (table 2).

  22. Ibid., 130.

  23. Ibid., 132, 144–8, 154–6, 165–70; Kerry Trask, In the Pursuit of Shadows: Massachusetts Millennialismand the Seven Years’ War (New York, 1989), 234–56.

  24. Jean Elizabeth Lunn, “Agriculture and War in Canada, 1740–1760,” Canadian Historical Review 16 (1935): 123 n. 3, 133–4, 136; Bougainville, Adventure, 171, 182, 185 (entries of 9 Aug., 10–22 and 27 Sept., 1–10 Oct. 1757).

  25. Connecticut response: Harold E. Selesky, War and Society in Colonial Connecticut (New Haven, Conn., 1990), 110. Massachusetts response: Thomas Pownall to William Pitt, 16 Aug. 1757, in Gertrude Selwyn Kimball, ed., The Correspondence of William Pitt (1906; reprint, New York, 1969), 1:94–7. Militia at Fort Edward: Steele, Betrayals, 127. This conservative figure reflects Webb’s desire to blame his failure to reinforce Monro on the laggard response of the American militia. Another witness estimated the number of militiamen who had reached Fort Edward by 15 Aug. at seven thousand ( Pennsylvania Gazette, 25 Aug. 1757).

  26. Expense: Selesky, War and Society, 110. Militia vs. provincial wages: Massachusetts House of Representatives resolve, 12 Jun. 1758, stipulated a two shillings eightpence daily wage for militia privates, plus subsistence and horse hire, or the equivalent of four pounds per month; provincial privates earned one pound sixteen shillings per month, exclusive of bounties and subsistence. (Massachusetts Archives, vol. 77, 623–3a; Fred Anderson, A People’s Army: Massachusetts Soldiers and Society in the Seven Years’ War [Chapel Hill, N.C., 1984], 225.) Comparison to England: The authorized strength of the English militia was 32,000, but the only time that more than 16,000 men actually served was at the height of the French invasion threat of 1759. Even at its theoretical maximum, the English militia would have amounted to less than 3.3 percent of the male population in the sixteen to thirty age range. See Stanley Ayling, The Elder Pitt, Earl of Chatham (New York, 1976), 191; and Eliga Gould, Persistence of Empire: British Political Culture in the Age of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, N.C., forthcoming), chap. 3.

  CHAPTER TWENTY: Other Disasters, and a Ray of Hope

  1. P. M. Hamer, “Anglo-French Rivalry in the Cherokee Country, 1754–1757,” North Carolina Historical Review 2 (1925): 303–22; id., “Fort Loudoun in
the Cherokee War, 1758–1761,” North Carolina Historical Review, 422–58; Douglas Edward Leach, Arms for Empire: A Military Historyof the British Colonies in North America, 1607–1763 (New York, 1973), 486–8; Tom Hatley, The Dividing Paths: Cherokees and South Carolinians through the Era of Revolution (New York, 1993), 96–9.

  2. Lawrence Henry Gipson, The British Empire before the American Revolution, vol. 7, The Great War for the Empire: The Victorious Years, 1758–1760 (New York, 1967), 45–6, 144; Hayes Baker-Crothers, Virginia in the French and Indian War (Chicago, 1928), 119–20.

  3. “Want nothing but Commissions”: Washington to Dinwiddie, 10 Mar. 1757, in W. W. Abbott et al., eds., The Papers of George Washington, Colonial Series, vol. 4, November 1756–October 1757 (Charlottesville, Va., 1984), 112–15; a fuller statement than the one he presented in the Memorial to John Campbell, Earl of Loudoun, 23 Mar. 1757, ibid., 120–1, and probably closer to the case as he stated it in person. Loudon’s response: Stanwix to Washington, 23 May 1757, ibid., 159–60.

  4. Difficulties of defending backcountry: Gipson, Victorious Years, 43–5; Baker-Crothers, Virginiain the French and Indian War, 111–26; James Titus, The Old Dominion at War: Society, Politics, and Warfare in Late Colonial Virginia (Columbia, S.C., 1991), 73–120 passim. Detachment to Charleston: Harry M. Ward, Major General Adam Stephen and the Cause of American Liberty (Charlottesville, Va., 1989), 42–6. Abandonment of forts: Gipson, Victorious Years, 41–2. Indians: Washington to Dinwiddie, 10 June 1757, Papers of Washington, 4:192–5 (quotation at 192).

  5. “Another campaign”: Washington to Dinwiddie, 24 Oct. 1757, in W. W. Abbot et al., eds., The Papers of George Washington, Colonial Series, vol. 5, October 1757–September 1758 (Charlottesville, Va., 1988), 25; cf. Washington to Stanwix, 8 Oct. 1757, ibid., 8–10. “Nothing very important . . . into the forest”: Vaudreuil to the minister of marine, 13 Feb. 1758, in Sylvester K. Stevens and Donald H. Kent, eds., Wilderness Chronicles of Northwestern Pennsylvania (Harrisburg, Pa., 1941), 109–10. For a sense of the character of the war in western Virginia in 1757, see Samuel Kercheval, A History of the Valley of Virginia (1833; reprint, Strasburg, Va., 1973), 78–80, 95–6, 72–108 passim.

 

‹ Prev