Notes
3 Again like Le Moyne, François Hertel fathered several sons who inherited his belief in wilderness tactics. Zacharie-François (1665–1752), Jacques Hertel de Cournoyer (1667–1748), and Jean-Baptiste Hertel de Rouville (1668–1722) all became regular officers in the Compagnies franches, and took part in a number of raids.
4 These “castles” were semi-permanent villages of anything between half-a-dozen and 100-plus bark longhouses, surrounded by a palisade up to 30ft high, with fighting platforms and sometimes a ditch, all set amid the clan’s corn (maize) fields.
5 For details of the American colonial militias, see Men-at-Arms 366, 372 & 383, Colonial American Troops 1610–1774 (1), (2) & (3). New England and New York are covered in MAA 372.
THE FINAL CAMPAIGNS, 1740s–50s
“King George’s War,” 1744–48: Raids on New England, 1745–46
The outbreak of the War of the Austrian Succession in Europe in 1743, which as always pitted France against Britain, brought a resumption of raiding from New France against the British colonies during “King George’s War.”
The spectacular fall of the French fortress of Louisburg on Isle Royale (Cape Breton Island) in 1745 had no major effect on Canada’s defenses, but it encouraged keeping up pressure on the enemy’s colonies. A summary of the various raiding parties that left Montreal between December 1745 and August 1746 gives an idea of the tempo of operations. Eight large expeditions, half of them between December and March, were sent to raid the New England and New York borders. Led by regular officers, with Canadian volunteers and up to 1,000 First Nations warriors, these are occasionally mentioned in American histories (for instance, the 600-strong raid that burned Saratoga on November 28, 1745).
Analysis of the documents further reveals that about 30 to 35 smaller raiding parties of Abenakis and allied “Praying Iroquois” warriors were provided with supplies, for instance a party of 20 Abenaki that “set out towards Boston, and brought in some prisoners and scalps” (C11A, 85). Together these parties totaled at least 1,000 warriors, who raided with such success that the colonists were obliged to keep large numbers of militiamen mustered for defense. Thus at least 2,000 French-allied warriors were involved in the whole spectrum of raids during a period of eight months.
Annapolis-Royal, 1744 & 1746–47
Following the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, Acadia had become the British colony of Nova Scotia, though still for the time being populated with French settlers. Port-Royal had been renamed Annapolis-Royal, and its fort had become Fort Anne, garrisoned by 150 men of the British 40th Foot. In September 1744 an attempt on Fort Anne was made by a small French seaborne expedition from Fortress Louisburg, but this withdrew after a three-week blockade.
After the fall of Louisburg the following year, in 1746 a party from Canada led by Commandant Ramezay arrived in the area. Finding Annapolis-Royal too strong, after a short blockade the force withdrew to over-winter at the wilderness raiders’ base of Beaubassin. In December reinforcements arrived at Annapolis-Royal from Boston, consisting of 450 New England provincial troops under the command of LtCol Arthur Noble, of whom about half were billeted in civilian homes at nearby Grand-Pré.
Once again, readers should not be deceived by the powdered hair and fictional armor in the conventional officer portraits on these pages: these were all fighting men with experience in the wilderness. Philippe Testard de Montigny (1724–86), born in Montreal, entered the Compagnies franches in 1736 as a 12-year-old cadet at the frontier fort of Michilimackinac, and was later commissioned. A veteran of numerous engagements including Monongahela (1755) and Oswego (1756), he was captured at Niagara in 1759. Like many Canadian officers, he chose to retire to France rather than remain in his native country after it was ceded to Britain. (Print after original portrait; private collection, author’s photo)
Charles Deschamps de Boishébert (1727–97). The son of an officer, in 1739 (so again only 12 years old) he was already an officer-cadet, and was commissioned in the Compagnies franches in 1741–42. Although he was at Detroit in 1748 and on the Ohio in 1753, he served mainly on the border of Nova Scotia, participating in many raids under Ramezay during the later 1740s including that on Grand-Pré. Later, leading a mixed wilderness force of soldiers, Canadians and warriors, he kept the British on permanent alert as far as Halifax. The ruthless British deportation of the French Acadian population in 1755 brought to his camp many volunteers eager for revenge. Boishébert went back to Canada in late 1758; knighted, in 1759 he led a party of Acadian volunteers against the British at Quebec. After the capitulation of French forces in September 1760 he too emigrated to France, where his looks earned him the nickname “le beau canadien.” (Print after an original portrait, c.1765; private collection, author’s photo)
Ramezay sent 600 men under Capt Antoine Coulon de Villiers to raid Grand-Pré; half were Canadians, and the others Acadians who had abandoned their homes, and warriors who remained loyal to the French. On February 10, 1747, after a difficult 11-day trek on snowshoes, the undetected raiders were within sight of their target. That night a strong blizzard blew up, and (yet again) the New Englanders posted no sentries. Divided into ten assault groups of about 50 men each, the raiders surrounded ten houses where 220 of Noble’s men were sleeping, and attacked in the pre-dawn darkness. Colonel Noble and about 140 of his men were killed and another 34 wounded; the rest, isolated in a stone house, surrendered the next day. The raiders suffered only six killed and 14 wounded. In a touch of 18th-century gallantry, Villiers and his officers hosted a dinner for the captured officers, and the garrison were granted the honors of war.
Charles Le Moyne, second Baron de Longueuil (1687–1755). Scion of the influential Le Moyne family, he was educated in Rochefort, France, as a naval midshipman, and was commissioned into the Canadian Compagnies franches in 1713. Revealing a talent for command and administration, he was made commandant of the important Fort Niagara in 1726, became town major of Montreal in 1733, and was knighted in the Order of Saint-Louis in 1734. In 1739–40 he led 442 men, including 319 allied warriors, on an expedition to Louisiana which pacified the hostile Chickasaw nation through the use of Canadian tactics. He was named acting governor-general of New France in 1752; here the artist’s rendering of his body-armor is particularly unconvincing. (Print after an original portrait, c.1750; private collection, author’s photo)
Luc La Corne de Saint-Luc (1711–84) was both an officer of the Compagnies franches and a successful fur trader who spoke four or five aboriginal languages. He spent part of his life in the wilderness as an outstanding leader of First Nations warriors, making many successful raids during the 1740s and 1750s. After the capitulation he reconciled himself to British rule, and was considered a man of “first property and consequence” by the British governor Sir Guy Carleton. He even led Indigenous warriors in Gen Burgoyne’s disastrous 1777 campaign during the American Revolutionary War; held blameless for the defeat, he was appointed ADC by Governor Haldiman. La Corne was not alone amongst the Canadian gentry in his choice; another veteran of frontier outposts and expeditions in the 1740–50s, Charles-François Tarieu de Lanaudière, chose to return from France to Canada in 1763, and was also named an ADC by Carleton. (Print after original portrait, c.1765; private collection, author’s photo)
The “French-Indian War,” 1754–60
The North American campaigns of the global Seven Years’ War (1754–63) were sparked by the “Jummonville Incident,” and the retaliatory capture of Fort Necessity from George Washington’s Virginia provincial troops by a force of French, Canadians and First Nations allies. By now, New France’s population had grown to some 55,000, but that of the Anglo-American colonies to about 1.5 million. Substantial regular reinforcements were shipped out from both France and Britain, and both waged the war largely in as “conventional” a manner as the local conditions allowed. Perhaps the summit of Canadian raid-warfare tactics was achieved at the battle of Monongahela on July 9, 1755, when Gen Braddock’s British colu
mn was destroyed by forest ambushers.6
Braddock’s successor, the Earl of Loudon, was a talented commander who recognized that the British forces had to be able to field the equivalent of New France’s raiders. He created both American colonial “Ranger” units, and the British Army’s first regular light infantry regiment, Gage’s 80th Regiment “of Light Armed Foot.” Initially neither was the equal of their experienced opponents, but Loudon’s initiative certainly signaled that, at last, the British and Anglo-Americans were squarely addressing the challenge.
Conversely, officers of the French metropolitan troops sent to Canada from 1755 largely spurned the Canadians’ “sauvage” way of war, preferring European linear tactics. Consequently, the deciding factor was that Britain was willing to commit overwhelming force in North America, but France was not. All French forces capitulated in September 1760, and Canada was ceded to Britain in 1763, bringing the era of New France’s raiders to an end.
A Canadian volunteer lighting his pipe during a winter trek. This 19th-century engraving could easily depict a wilderness fighter from New France during the two preceding centuries. He wears a capot with its hood up over his wool cap, a waist sash, winter moccasins, and the wide snowshoes suitable for deep snow, and his weapon is covered to protect it. Only the moustache is unlikely: since Indigenous people disliked facial hair, which was also out of fashion in Europe by the end of the 17th century, Canadians of our period were almost always clean shaven. (Print after A. Dupuy; private collection, author’s photo)
Note
6 See Men-at-Arms 48, Wolfe’s Army; and Campaign 140, Monongahela 1754–1755
MEN, EQUIPMENT & METHODS
Officers and men
Officers provided the diplomatic link with the First Nations that attracted them to the French cause. The early promoters of the new tactical doctrine, such as Le Moyne and Hertel, had become familiar with Indigenous languages and lifestyles either as traders or prisoners. Once the Compagnies franches de la Marine became the permanent garrison of New France, the young French officer-cadets’ training included a residence with an allied nation to learn its language and culture, and many volunteered for raiding expeditions. Within a couple of decades the officer-cadets were usually the Canadian-born sons of the original officers, who then came to form the great majority of the regular officer corps in New France before 1755. They had a French education and training, and this dual legacy enabled them to provide the professional but locally experienced leadership required in raid warfare.
While the enlisted men of the Independent Naval Companies were recruited in France, many of them became attracted to life in the Canadian settlements, which offered many freedoms denied to Frenchmen at home under the Ancien Régime. Billeted in inhabitants’ homes, they often found love in the arms of Canadian girls and became settlers themselves. Others discovered a taste for postings in far-away forts. All soldiers in those stations were allowed some private trading with the First Nations, and this provided the means to accumulate some savings for when they came back to Montreal after the usual three-year tour. Some soldiers in these distant postings became so accustomed to frontier life that they never did come back. The gunner “J.C.B.” met some at Michilimackinac, including one who had been there for 30 years. The soldiers on the frontier often adopted features of the Indigenous lifestyle and became experts in forest-craft. Such men were ideal for the picked parties of regulars who could withstand, like Canadian coureurs-des-bois and voyageurs, the hardships of raid warfare.
Material culture: Canadian dress
To fully understand the military success of the New France raiders, one also has to consider the arms, equipment, and especially the clothing that they used. The latter was a practical adaptation that enabled them to fight, at any time of the year, after traveling significant distances through a trackless wilderness, in near-Arctic winter conditions or through dense primeval forest in summer.
The regular Naval troops posted in Quebec, Trois-Rivières and Montreal, as well as forts in the Richelieu River valley and major garrisons such as Forts Frontenac and Niagara, or large settlements such as Detroit, wore European-style uniform (see Plate C1). But such uniforms proved useless for long wilderness expeditions, so, to quote Philippe Aubert de Gaspé, officers and men alike took to wearing the “short capot, mitasses, breechclouts and deerskin shoes [moccasins]. This practical and light equipment gave them a great advantage over enemies dressed in the European fashion” (see Plates A1, C2 & C3). Such adaptation by French settlers to the Canadian environment started in the first half of the 17th century, in a distinct costume that was a mixture of French maritime and First Nations features. Typical dress and equipment did not change markedly from the middle of the 17th until well into the 18th century, though details such as cuffs and pockets might be influenced by French fashion.
Canadians (see Plate B) usually wore a wool cap of “stocking” shape, generally either red, white or blue; better-quality caps might be trimmed with fur, especially for colder weather. Another type was the tapabord, a round cap featuring a visor (peak) that could be turned up in front, and side and rear flaps that could be tied up above the crown or let down (see Plate A). Linen shirts were worn by all, or woolen shirts in winter. A neckcloth of linen or satin material might be worn by soldiers and militiamen.
G
RIVER TRANSPORT, c.1700
The vast network of rivers served as the roads of New France, and from spring to late fall canoes were the essential means for transporting men, arms, supplies and goods by soldiers, Canadians and First Nations alike. While the essential techniques and materials used for making the light, strong birchbark canoes were common to all, the profiles of bow and stern favored by particular Indigenous peoples and the Europeans who worked with them might differ. So too did the size; the largest carried about a metric ton’s weight of cargo, and accommodated up to 14 paddlers. The example we illustrate seems to have been the main type employed for trade and expeditions, and follows, for instance, the dimensions of three that were ordered by the government in June 1700. These were to be 30ft long (9.7m) by 4ft 1in wide (1.3m), the bottom being reinforced with pine planks, and with eight thwarts or cross-planks for paddlers to sit on. They would paddle for anything from eight to 14 hours a day, using their folded capots as seat cushions; the man in the bow acted as the pilot, and the man in the stern used his paddle as a rudder. (Here, the bow man has tattoos and a quill-decorated sash, suggesting long experience among the First Nations.) A sail might also be rolled around a dismounted mast and lashed along one side, to take advantage of favorable winds.
“Habillemens des Coureurs de bois Canadiens.” This unsigned drawing of c.1730 is a unique period view of Canadian wilderness clothing in late spring or summer. All wear short capots fastened by waist sashes. One (left) has breeches, mitasses, and apparently boot-moccasins, while the others have very wide skirt-like breechclouts and are bare-legged and barefoot, as was more likely when in often damp canoes. Pipe-smoking was very common. Bullet bags and (right) a tomahawk are carried from the sashes, and one (center) has a slung powder horn. The muskets appear to be (from left to right) a long “buccaneer” type, a shorter “half-buccaneer,” and a hunting or trade model. (Courtesy Beinecke Library, Yale University, New Haven, CT; object 2001154)
The capot was a warm and ample woolen coat originally used by French sailors. In Canada its cut was more fitted, resembling the European justeaucorps coat, but without pocket flaps or many buttons. It came in several versions and lengths, the most common with knee-length skirts. A shorter style, presumably favored in warmer weather, reached only to the mid-thigh, while longer winter versions might reach low on the calves. Capots usually fastened across the breast to a button on the upper right side, though some might button down the front; buttons were of metal, leather, or cloth-covered wood or bone. Turnback “boot” cuffs, buttoned at the top as on European coats, seem to have been common, but cuffs might also be plain. (Detachable manches, or “sleeves,�
�� are sometimes mentioned, but this probably refers to cuffs.) The capot’s most distinctive feature was its large hood, affording excellent protection against the elements, especially in winter; some hoods may have been detachable.
In the 1660s Montreal volunteers were nicknamed “les capots bleus,” but there was no official uniform. While Canadian clothing was occasionally issued to militiamen right up to the end of the French regime, no specific color was prescribed, and records show that colors used by settlers varied widely. Probate records of settlers for the years 1650–1715 mention 232 capots; of these, 52.1 percent were blue, 10.3 percent white, 9.9 percent blue and red, 9 percent gray, 6 percent brown, 5.6 percent red, and the rest combined red and white or brownish red, with only 0.04 percent each black, green, buff, olive, “cinnamon,” or “musk.” Records for 1745–63 mention 85 capots, of which 28.2 percent were blue, 27 percent brown, 11.7 percent white and the same number gray, 9 percent black, 7 percent red or wine-red, 2.3 percent green, and 2.3 percent cinnamon. The notion sometimes seen in Canadian histories that blue, white, and red “uniforms” identified Montreal, Trois-Rivières, and Quebec militiamen, respectively, must be dismissed as unfounded.
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