6. Francis Jennings, Empire of Fortune: Crowns, Colonies, and Tribes in the Seven Years War in America (New York, 1988), 281, 334–48; also, in general, Stephen F. Auth, The Ten Years’ War: Indian-White Relations in Pennsylvania, 1755–1765 (New York, 1989), 81–90; and Anthony F. C. Wallace, King of the Delawares: Teedyuscung, 1700–1763 (Philadelphia, 1949), 155–60.
7. “In the morning”: Richard Peters to Thomas Penn, 29 Jan. 1757, quoted in Nicholas Wainwright, George Croghan, Wilderness Diplomat (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1959), 123. Character of negotiations: Jennings, Empire of Fortune, 339–40.
8. Ibid., 346–7.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: Pitt Changes Course
1. Julian S. Corbett, England in the Seven Years’ War: A Study in Combined Strategy, vol. 1 (London, 1918), 168–9, 171.
2. Loudoun to Holburne and Holburne to Loudoun, 4 Aug. 1757, ibid., 171–2.
3. Ibid., 177–8.
4. Loudoun to Cumberland, 17 Oct. 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), 399–403.
5. Loudoun’s activities: id., Lord Loudoun in North America (1933; reprint, Hamden, Conn., 1968), 348. Resistance: ibid., 125–9.
6. Ibid., 268–76, 276 n. 45.
7. “My Sittuation”: Loudoun to Argyll, 16 Feb. 1758, quoted ibid., 350. Wine: ibid., 167–8.
8. Ibid., 346.
9. For the strategic position of Cumberland and the provisions of the convention, see esp. Corbett, Seven Years’ War, 1:223–7; also Stanley Ayling, The Elder Pitt, Earl of Chatham (New York, 1976), 210–12; and Peter Douglas Brown, William Pitt, Earl of Chatham: The Great Commoner (London, 1978), 155–6. For Frederick’s position in the fall of 1757, see Dennis Showalter, The Wars of Frederick the Great (New York, 1996), 177–80; and W. F. Reddaway, Frederick the Great and the Rise of Prussia (New York, 1904), 232–3.
10. “A convention”: king to Cumberland, 21 Sept. 1757, quoted in Charles Chenevix Trench, George II (London, 1973), 284. “His honour”: Newcastle [memorandum?], quoted ibid., 284. “Here is my son”: Horace Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of George II, vol. 3 (London, 1846), 61. No regret: ibid., 62–5.
11. For Pitt’s strategic plans and policies, see Corbett, Seven Years’ War, 1:8–9, 28–9, 148, 150–2, 189–91, 374–6; and Richard Middleton, The Bells of Victory: The Pitt-Newcastle Ministry and the Conduct of the Seven Years’ War, 1757–1762 (Cambridge, U.K., 1985). For the character of his support among those who favored imperial growth, see Marie Peters, Pitt and Popularity: The Patriot Minister and London Opinion during the Seven Years’ War (Oxford, 1980); and (for a skeptical view of his strategy, stressing pragmatism over any unifying vision) id., “The Myth of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, Great Imperialist, Part 1: Pitt and Imperial Expansion, 1738–1763,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 21 (1993): 31–74.
12. Pitt’s speech on the army estimates for 1758, 14 Dec. 1757, quoted in Romney Sedgwick, ed., Letters from George III to Lord Bute, 1756–66 (London, 1939), 19–20 n. 2.
13. Frederick to Newcastle, 26 July 1756, quoted in Corbett, Seven Years’ War, 1:148.
14. Stanley M. Pargellis, Lord Loudoun in North America (1933; reprint, Hamden, Conn., 1968), 344–5; John Schutz, Thomas Pownall, British Defender of American Liberty: A Study of Anglo-American Relations in the Eighteenth Century (Glendale, Calif., 1951), 81.
15. Pargellis, Loudoun, 231, 342–5, 351, 358–9.
16. Anson: Horace Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of King George II, (London, 1846), 3:32 (Pitt’s nomination of Anson); Corbett, Seven Years’ War, 1:180. Ligonier: ibid., 33–4, 230–2; Ayling, Elder Pitt, 191, 213.
17. Descents: Corbett, Seven Years’ War, 1:192–6, 262–8, 287–9, 293–304. Ferdinand and Hanover: ibid., 227–30. Newcastle and Pitt: Reed Browning, The Duke of Newcastle (New Haven, Conn., 1975), 261 ff.; Middleton, Bells, 54, 60–1, 88–9, 113–18, 141, 148, 153–9, 193–4, 205–6, 213; Ayling, The Elder Pitt, 204–39 passim; Peters, “Myth of Pitt,” 42–8; John Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money, and the English State, 1688–1783 (New York, 1989), 170–6.
18. Corbett, Seven Years’ War, 1:232–4; Lawrence Henry Gipson, The British Empire before the Revolution, vol. 7, The Great War for the British Empire: The Victorious Years, 1758–1760, 125–6; Showalter, Wars of Frederick, 177–206.
PART IV: TURNING POINT, 1758 CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: Deadlock, and a New Beginning
1. E. C. Dawes, ed., Journal of Gen. Rufus Putnam, Kept in Northern New York during Four Campaigns of the Old French and Indian War, 1757–1760 (Albany, 1886), 49–50 (entry of 18 Nov. 1757); Rowena Buell, ed., The Memoirs of Rufus Putnam (Boston, 1903), 16.
2. Douglas Edward Leach, Arms for Empire: A Military History of the British Colonies in North America, 1607–1763 (New York, 1973), 403; 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), 151–3. Stanley M. Pargellis, Lord Loudoun in North America (1933; reprint, New York, 1968), 275–6.
3. Learned: Buell Memoirs of Putnam, 16. Quotation: Dawes, Journal of Putnam, 50–2 (entry of 2 Feb. 1758).
4. Ibid., 54–6 (entries of 8–10 Feb. 1758); Buell, Memoirs of Putnam, 21.
5. “He is a good Soldier”: ibid., 17.
6. “Concert measures”: “Resolutions of the Massachusetts General Assembly,” 24 Dec. 1757, in John Russell Bartlett, ed., Records of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, in New England, vol. 7, 1757 to 1769 (Providence, 1861), 115–16. Loudoun and Pownall: Pargellis, Loudoun, 268–73; Loudoun to Cumberland, 17 Oct. 1757, in id., ed., Military Affairs in North America, 1748–1765: Documents from the Cumberland Papers in Windsor Castle (New York, 1936), 404–5.
7. John Schutz, Thomas Pownall, British Defender of American Liberty: A Study of Anglo-AmericanRelations in the Eighteenth Century (Glendale, Calif., 1951), 85.
8. Pownall’s principles: ibid., 98. Breach with Loudoun: Schutz, Pownall, 110–18 (esp. Pownall to Loudoun, 15 Dec. 1757, quoted at 116–17); Pownall to Pitt, 1 and 28 Dec. 1757, 2 Jan., 15–19 Jan., and 20 Jan. 1758, in Gertrude Selwyn Kimball, ed., Correspondence of William Pitt when Secretary of State with Colonial Governors and Military and Naval Commissioners in America, vol. 1 (1906; reprint, New York, 1969), 128–9, 132–3, 155–6, 161–5, 166–7.
9. “There is a Spirit”: Pownall to Pitt, 15 Jan. 1758, Pitt Corr., 1:162–3. Schutz, Pownall, 119–22; Pargellis, Loudoun, 270–2.
10. Loudoun to Pitt, 14 Feb. 1758, Pitt Corr., 1:188–9.
11. Pargellis, Loudoun, 356–8, 276–7, and n. 45.
12. Ibid., 277; Schutz, Pownall, 127; quotations: Pownall to Pitt, 14 Mar. 1758, Pitt Corr., 1:203.
13. Pitt to governors in North America, 30 Dec. 1757, ibid., 135.
14. Pitt to the governors of Mass. Bay, N.H., Conn., R.I., N.Y., and N.J., 30 Dec. 1757, ibid., 136–8.
15. Ibid., 138–9.
16. Legislators’ reaction: Pownall to Pitt, 14 Mar. 1757, ibid., 203; Schutz, Pownall, 128. Loudoun’s departure: Loudoun to Pitt, 31 May 1758, Pitt Corr., 1:263.
17. For the numbers of men voted, see the letters of various governors to Pitt in Pitt Corr., 1:203, 209–11, 213, 216, 222, 227, 229, 230, 234, 235–6, 239, 240–1, 244, 311, 329–32. Maryland’s assembly had fallen out with Loudoun in 1757 over the garrisoning of Fort Cumberland and had severed all ties with the commander in chief. At the time of Loudoun’s recall the issue remained unresolved. Maryland’s lack of participation after Loudoun returned to England had less to do with opposition to the war than with the dynamics of proprietary politics. In Apr. 1758 the House of Delegates voted to appropriate £45,000 and raise a thousand provincials, but the council refused its assent because the money would have been raised by a method of taxation repugnant to the proprietary family. See Horatio Sharpe to Pitt, 16 Mar., 18 May, and 27 Aug. 1758, ibid., 209–11, 242–5, 327–32; and Pargellis,
Loudoun, 220–1.
18. This is not to say that no colonists enlisted in regular-army units; in fact, Thomas Purvis has estimated that eleven thousand Americans did so (“Colonial American Participation in the Seven Years’ War, 1755–1763” [paper presented at the 10th Wilburt S. Brown Conference in History, University of Alabama, Feb. 11–12, 1983]; Don Higginbotham cites the number as authoritative in “The Early American Way of War: Reconnaissance and Appraisal,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 45 [1987]: 235. I have not been able to determine whether the estimate includes slaves enlisted in British West Indian regiments). Most of these enlistments occurred in the ethnically diverse Middle Colonies, especially Pennsylvania, where regular recruiters attracted substantial numbers of German-speaking colonists to the four-battalion 60th Regiment—the Royal Americans—in the early years of the war.
While the social contexts of war and military service have yet to be studied in Pennsylvania as thoroughly as in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Virginia, three factors (a high level of indentured servitude among men in the military age range, a large concentration of young tenant farmers in the eastern part of the province, and a socioeconomic makeup strongly shaped by poorer German and Scotch-Irish immigrants) would have tended to promote enlistment in the regular forces. It must be borne in mind, however, that these enlistments tended to come before 1758, when Parliament’s subsidies began to enable the colonies to offer high bounties to attract men to their own provincial regiments; and that in order to enlist men, regular recruiters were compelled to offer term enlistments of three years or the duration of the war, rather than the life (twenty-year) enlistments typical of the British army as a whole.
Yet American enlistees never filled the ranks as Braddock and Loudoun assumed they should. Unlike provincial units, which tended after 1757 to recruit close to their full complements, regular units remained chronically and indeed increasingly understrength throughout the war. There were shortages of 1,710 men in America’s 21 regular battalions in Jan. 1758; 3,280 in the equivalent of 24 battalions in Oct. 1758; 4,492 in 25 battalions in 1759; 4,750 in 25 battalions in Mar. 1760; and a shortfall of 7,000 the following Oct. (see Pargellis, Loudoun, 110–11). Such deficiencies in volunteers were compensated for by a variety of expedients, but for the most part replacements came in the form of drafts from Irish regiments. Thus, by Jan. 1759, only a quarter of the troops in the Royal American Regiment, whose soldiers were supposed to be recruited exclusively in the colonies, were in fact colonists (largely Germans). Apart from a few more Germans recruited directly from Europe, the bulk of the Royal Americans were “the ‘refuse of the army in Ireland’ ” (ibid., 112).
More research needs to be done to clarify the social and economic contexts of colonial enlistment in regular regiments and to explore the wartime experiences of those soldiers. A Ph.D. dissertation in progress at the University of Western Ontario may answer many of these questions: Alexander V. Campbell, “Anvil of Empire: The Royal American Regiment, 1756–1775” (forthcoming). Campbell generously allowed me to read the thesis prospectus (April 1998), which contains a sketch of his argument.
19. New England enlistments: Abercromby to Pitt, 28 Apr. 1758, Pitt Corr., 1:226. Virginia’s lack of enthusiasm before 1758: John Ferling, “Soldiers for Virginia: Who Served in the French and Indian War?” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 94 (1986): 308–9; James Titus, The Old Dominion at War: Society, Politics, and Warfare in Late Colonial Virginia (Columbia, S.C., 1991), 102–3, 138–9. (In 1755 the Virginia Regiment had come up to only 25 percent of its authorized strength; in 1756, 41 percent; in 1757, 55 percent. Less than 10 percent of the men in the army of 1756 reenlisted to serve in 1757.) Virginia’s reversal of attitude, 1758: John Blair to Pitt, 29 June 1758, Pitt Corr., 1:289. The Burgesses now revoked the statute placing bounties on enemy Indian scalps: the end of the fantasy that a war they were unwilling to finance as a public venture could somehow be carried on by private enterprise.
20. Quotation: Sir John St. Clair to Col. Henry Bouquet, 27 May 1758, quoted in Douglas Southall Freeman, George Washington: A Biography, vol. 2, Young Washington (New York, 1948), 309.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: Old Strategies, New Men, and a Shift in the Balance
1. Stanley M. Pargellis, Lord Loudoun in North America (1933; reprint, Hamden, Conn., 1968), 356–8.
2. Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. “Abercromby, James,” “Amherst, Jeffery,” “Wolfe, James,” “Forbes, John,” and “Howe, Richard.” Additionally, on Amherst, see J. C. Long, Lord Jeffery Amherst (New York, 1933); and Daniel John Beattie, “General Jeffery Amherst and the Conquest of Canada, 1758–1760” (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1976); on Wolfe, Beckles Willson, The Life and Letters of James Wolfe (New York, 1909); on Forbes, 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), 247–8; on Abercromby, ibid., 211. On their selection, see Rex Whitworth, Field Marshal Lord Ligonier: A Story of the British Army, 1702–1770 (Oxford, 1958), 236–42. George II disapproved of irregular promotions and resisted Amherst’s appointment so stoutly that the critical offensive of 1758 might be said to have been conducted not in the field but in the royal bedchamber, where Lady Yarmouth, his favorite mistress, lobbied on Amherst’s behalf, at Ligonier’s urgent request.
3. Gipson, Victorious Years, 177; Whitworth, Ligonier, 240–1; Beattie, “Amherst,” 66.
4. Canadian defense forces: George F. G. Stanley, New France: The Last Phase, 1744–1760 (Toronto, 1968), 165–6; W. J. Eccles, “The French Forces in North America during the Seven Years’ War,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 3, 1741 to 1770, xvii–xviii. (In practice the Canadian militia was much more effective than its counterpart in the British colonies and routinely detached men for service with expeditionary forces. Yet it was still a body mainly useful for home defense, for to remove any substantial number of men from availability for planting and harvest threatened the food supply of Canada, which was marginal at best.) Disaffection of Indians of the pays d’en haut: 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), 197, 204 (entries of 1–13 Mar. and 12–20 May 1758).
5. Failed harvests and high prices: Jean Elizabeth Lunn, “Agriculture and War in Canada, 1740–1760,” Canadian Historical Review 16 (1935): 128, 130. (A minot was equivalent to about a third of a bushel.) Rationing and expedient substitutes: Bougainville, Adventure, 71–2 (22 Nov. 1756). Horse meat: Stanley, New France, 194. (Horse meat was available because animals were slaughtered to conserve fodder.) Protests: Bougainville, Adventure, 195 (12 Dec. 1757–12 Mar. 1758). Dwindling rations, 1758: ibid., 201–2 (entries of 15–25 Apr. and 3 May 1758). “Some of the inhabitants”: ibid., 206 (21 May 1758). Four-ounce bread ration: ibid., 209 (30 May 1758).
6. Stanley, New France, 191–2.
7. Ibid., 201–6; Bougainville, Adventure, 196.
8. Inflation: ibid., 198 (8 Nov. 1757). Lack of circulating medium: Gustave Lanctot, A History of Canada, vol. 3, From the Treaty of Utrecht to the Treaty of Paris, 1713–1763 (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), 162. Hoarding: Stanley, New France, 196–200.
9. Bougainville, Adventure, 213 (18–19 June 1758) and 215 (23 June 1758); Stanley, New France, 165; Ian K. Steele, Warpaths: Invasions of North America (Oxford, 1994), 205–6, 211–12; Stanley, New France, 211–12; Lanctot, Utrecht to Paris, 3:159, 162, 165.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: Montcalm Raises a Cross: The Battle of Ticonderoga
1. Abercromby’s expedition: 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), 217. “Every thing here”: E. C. Dawes, ed., Journal of Gen. Rufus Putnam, Kept in NorthernNew York during Four Campaigns of the Old French and Indian War, 1757–1760 (Albany, 1886), 63 (entry of 28 June 1758). “Covered the Lake”: Pennsylvani
a Gazette, 27 July 1758. “Valuable Baggage”: Dawes, Journal of Putnam, 67 (entry of 6 July 1758). Howe: Abercromby to Pitt, 12 July 1758, in Gertrude Selwyn Kimball, ed., Correspondence of William Pitt when Secretaryof State, with Colonial Governors and Military and Naval Commissioners in America, vol. 1 (1906; reprint, New York, 1969), 297.
2. “His death” and “Granny”: Rowena Buell, ed., The Memoirs of Rufus Putnam (Boston, 1903), 23. “I felt it” and dispatch of engineer: Abercromby to Pitt, 12 July 1758, Pitt Corr., 1:298, 299. “A little Stagnant”: Fabius Maximus Ray, ed., The Journal of Dr. Caleb Rea, Written during the Expedition against Ticonderoga in 1758 (Salem, Mass., 1881), 25 (entry of 7 July 1758).
3. 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), 221 (30 June 1758), 231 (“List and Composition of the French Army, July 8, 1758”), 222 (1 July 1758), 229–30 (7 July 1758).
4. Gipson, Victorious Years, 226–9; William Eyre to Robert Napier, 10 July 1758, 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), 420–1; Bougainville, Adventure, 230 (7 July 1758). Although firing at extreme range, guns on Rattlesnake Hill would have enfiladed the French lines and quickly made them too risky to man. With too few provisions to withstand a siege, Montcalm would have been forced to withdraw; but the only escape was by boat, and even a few cannon atop the hill would have made a shambles of the embarkation.
5. Lt. Matthew Clark was, according to Capt. Charles Lee of the 44th Foot, Abercromby’s “favourite Engineer,” but “a stripling, who had never seen the least service” (Lee, “Narrative,” enclosed in id. to Miss Sidney Lee, 16 Sept. 1758, New-York Historical Society, Collections 4 [1871]: 12).
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