Pitt had now a free hand for the execution of such enterprises as he might desire, a freer hand indeed than any of his predecessors for ten years past had enjoyed; for Cumberland, being ill-received by the King on his return from Hastenbeck, had resigned the Commandership-in-Chief and all his military appointments of whatever description. Pitt, conscious that the Duke had been hardly treated, made no secret of his sympathy with him; but there can be no doubt that Ligonier, who succeeded him as Commander-in-Chief, was infinitely more competent as a military adviser and more sympathetic as a military colleague. And there was need for sound military capacity to deal with all the projects that were ripening in the minister's teeming brain.
June 23.
December.
Parliament met on the 1st of December, and the King's speech, after announcing vigorous prosecution of the war in America and elsewhere, begged for support for the King of Prussia. Frederick fortunately stood just at that moment at his highest in the public view, for his two masterly victories at Rossbach and Leuthen; and Parliament did not hesitate to confirm a subsidy to him to enable him to carry on the struggle. But in other respects Pitt could find little to boast of in the past year, and he was obliged to confine his eulogy to Frederick and to Clive, whose victory at Plassey, now just become known in England, could not be ascribed to any extraordinary efforts on the part of a British Ministry. The word "elsewhere" in the King's speech was understood to signify Hanover, though Pitt warmly disclaimed any such interpretation of the term; but the Commons did not quarrel with it nor with the estimates that were submitted in support of the policy. These were presented on the 7th of December and showed a force for the British Establishment of eighty-six thousand five hundred men, thirty thousand of them for Gibraltar and the colonies, and the remainder nominally for service at home. Four thousand of this number, however, were invalids, who were kept for duties in garrison only, a system wisely copied from earlier days and followed from the beginning to the end of the war. One new regiment only had been raised since the formation of Fraser's and Montgomery's Highlanders, namely Colonel Draper's, which had been created for service in India and which brought up the number of the regiments of the Line to seventy-nine. Adding the troops on the Irish to those on the British Establishment the full numbers of the Army may be set down roughly at one hundred thousand men. It was soon to be seen what Pitt could accomplish with them, when he had found officers who would fulfil his instructions.
America first occupied his attention and was dealt with summarily. The first thing to be done was to recall Lord Loudoun from the command, a resolution which was carried out before the year's end, and to appoint a new General in his place. The choice fell upon General James Abercromby, who had been sent out by Newcastle's Administration; and the selection was not a fortunate one. The next step was to summon Colonel Jeffery Amherst from Germany, where he had been employed since 1756 as Commissary to the Hessian troops in the pay of England. Amherst, it will be remembered, was a Guardsman, and was last seen by us as Ligonier's aide-de-camp on the field of Fontenoy; so it is at least probable that his appointment was due to Ligonier's influence. Three new brigadiers were nominated to serve under him, Lawrence, Whitmore, and James Wolfe. The operations to be undertaken in America were threefold. First and foremost Louisburg was to be besieged; and this duty was assigned to Amherst with fourteen thousand regular troops. Concurrently an advance was to be made upon Crown Point, and pushed forward if possible to Montreal and Quebec; which service was entrusted to Abercromby, aided by Brigadier Lord Howe, with about ten thousand regulars and twenty thousand Provincial troops. Lastly, nineteen hundred regular troops and five thousand Provincials under Brigadier-General Forbes were to repair Braddock's failure and capture Fort Duquêsne. The number of Provincial troops to be employed was five times as great as that provided by the colonies in any previous year; but Pitt, while asking for so formidable a force, agreed to supply the troops with tents, provisions, arms, and ammunition, leaving to the provinces the expenses of raising, clothing, and paying them only. Moreover, he had readjusted the former regulations as to the seniority of Provincial and Imperial officers, which had given much offence, in a spirit somewhat less to the prejudice of the Provincials. True to his principle that British battles should be fought by British subjects he grudged no expense to gather recruits from the new British beyond sea.
The troops were to be escorted to America by a fleet under Admiral Boscawen, which was strong enough to overpower any French fleet in American waters. A squadron was also sent under Admiral Osborne to the Mediterranean to intercept any French reinforcements from Toulon, while yet another squadron under Sir Edward Hawke cruised with the like object before Rochefort. Osborne's name has been forgotten, and Hawke's lesser services have been swallowed up in the fame of his action before Quiberon; but it may be said here once for all that both officers performed their parts with admirable ability and signal success. The reader may now begin to judge of Pitt's talent for organising victory.
1758
Feb. 19.
Boscawen, with twenty-three ships of the line and several smaller vessels, sailed with his convoy of transports on the 19th of February. It had been Pitt's hope that the siege of Louisburg should have been begun by the 20th of April; but fate was against him, and the Admiral did not reach Halifax until the 9th of May. Amherst, who had sailed with Captain George Rodney in H.M.S. Dublin on the 16th of March, was not less unlucky in his passage; and Boscawen, after waiting for his arrival at Halifax until the 28th of May, at last put to sea without him, but fortunately met the Dublin just outside the harbour. The huge fleet, one hundred and fifty-seven sail in all, with eleven thousand troops on board, then steered eastward, and on the 2nd of June sailed into Gabarus Bay, immediately to westward of the tongue of land whereon stood Louisburg. Here there were three possible landing-places: Freshwater Cove, four miles from the town; Flat Point, which was rather nearer; and White Point, which was within a mile of the ramparts. East of the fortress there was yet another landing-place named Lorambec. It was determined to threaten all these points simultaneously, Lawrence and Whitmore with their respective brigades moving towards White Point and Flat Point, with one regiment detached against Lorambec, while Wolfe's brigade should make a true attack upon Freshwater Cove. Nothing very clear was known of the French defences erected to cover these landing-places, and it so happened that the point selected for attack was the most strongly defended of all.
June 8.
For five days all attempts at disembarkation were frustrated by fog and storm; but at two o'clock on the morning of the 8th the troops were got into the boats, and at daybreak the frigates of the fleet stood in and opened a fierce fire upon the French entrenchments at all of the threatened points. A quarter of an hour later the boats shoved off and pulled for the shore. Wolfe's party consisted of five companies of grenadiers, a body of five hundred and fifty marksmen drawn from the different regiments and known as the Light Infantry, and a body of American Rangers, with Fraser's Highlanders and eight more companies of grenadiers in support. The beach at Freshwater Cove, for which they were making, was a quarter of a mile long, with rocks at each end; and on the shore above it more than a thousand Frenchmen lay behind entrenchments, which were further covered by abatis. Eight cannon and swivels had been brought into position to sweep every portion of the beach and of its approaches, but were cunningly masked by young evergreen shrubs planted in the ground before them. The French had not been at fault when they selected the point remotest from the town as the most likely to be attacked by an enemy.
The boats were close in-shore before the French made any sign, when they suddenly opened a deadly fire of grape and musketry. Wolfe, seeing that a landing in face of such a tempest of shot would be hopeless, signalled to the boats to sheer off; but three of them, filled with Light Infantry on the extreme right, being little exposed to the fire, pulled on to a craggy point just to eastward of the beach, which was sheltered from the enemy's cannon by a small projecting spit. There the three officers in charge leaped ashore followed by their men, and Wolfe hastened the rest of his boats to the same spot. Major Scott, who commanded the Light Infantry, was the first to reach the land; and though his boat was stove in against the rocks he scrambled ashore, and with no more than ten men held his own against six times his numbers of French and Indians, till other troops came to his support. The rest of the boats followed close in his wake. Many were stove in and not a few capsized; some of the men too were caught by the surf and drowned; but the greater part made their way ashore wet or dry, Wolfe, who was armed only with a cane, leaping into the surf and scrambling over the crags with the foremost. Arrived at the firm ground beyond, the men formed, attacked the nearest French battery in flank, and quickly carried it with the bayonet. Lawrence's brigade now rowed up, and finding the French fully occupied with Wolfe, landed at the western end of the beach with little difficulty or loss. Amherst followed him; and the French seeing themselves attacked on right and left, and fearing to be cut off from the town, abandoned all their guns, some three-and-thirty pieces great and small, and fled into the woods in the rear of their entrenchments. The British pursued, until on emerging from the forest they found themselves in a cleared space with the guns of Louisburg opening fire upon them. Then the pursuit was checked, for the first great object had been obtained. The total loss of the British little exceeded one hundred in killed, wounded, and drowned; that of the French was not much greater, but the British had gained a solid success.
Amherst pitched his camp just beyond range of the guns of the fortress, and selected Flat Point Cove as the place for landing his guns and stores. The disembarkation of material was a task of extreme difficulty and danger owing to the surf, so much so that over one hundred boats were stove in during the course of the siege. The General, therefore, had ample leisure to examine the ground before him. The harbour of Louisburg is a land-locked bay with an extreme width from north-east to south-west of about two and a half miles. The entrance is rather more than a mile wide, but is narrowed to less than half of that distance by a chain of rocky islets. The defences of the entrance were a battery on a small island on the west side of the channel and a fort on the eastern shore at the promontory of Lighthouse Point. Within the harbour on the northern shore had stood a battery known as the Grand battery, but this was destroyed by the French on the night of Amherst's landing; and on the western shore on a triangular peninsula stood Louisburg itself, the Dunkirk of America, the apex of the triangle pointing towards the harbour, the base towards the land where Amherst's force now lay encamped. The full circuit of its fortifications was about a mile and a half, and the number of cannon and mortars mounted thereon and on the outworks exceeded two hundred. The garrison consisted of five battalions of regular troops, numbering about four thousand men, together with several companies of colonial troops from Canada; the whole being under command of a gallant officer named Drucour. Finally, at anchor in the harbour lay five ships of the line and seven frigates. The strongest front of the fortress was on the side of the land, running from the sea on the south to the harbour on the north: it was made up of four bastions called in succession, from north to south, the Dauphin's, King's, Queen's, and Princess's bastions. The King's bastion formed part of the citadel, and before it the glacis sloped down to a marsh which protected it completely; but at both extremities of the line there was high ground favourable for the works of a besieging force. It was towards the northern extremity, from a hillock at the edge of the marsh, that Amherst resolved to push his first attack.
June 25.
June 29.
Meanwhile the labour to be accomplished before the guns and stores could be brought to the spot was immense. The distance from the landing-place was a mile and a half, every yard of it consisting of deep mud covered with moss and water-weeds, through which it was necessary to make not only a road but an epaulement also, to protect the road; for a French frigate, the Aréthuse, lay in a lagoon called the Barachois at the extreme western corner of the harbour, and swept all the ground before the ramparts with a flanking fire. While, therefore, this work was going forward Wolfe was ordered with twelve hundred men and artillery to the battery at Lighthouse Point, which had been abandoned by the French, in order to fire upon the Island battery and upon the ships in the harbour. After some days the Island battery was silenced with the help of the fleet, and the men of war were driven under the guns of the main fortress. The entrance to the harbour being thus laid open to the British fleet, the French commander under cover of a foggy night sank six large ships in the channel to bar the passage anew.
July 9.
July 14.
July 21.
On the very day when Wolfe succeeded in silencing the Island battery Amherst's preparations were at last completed; and the British began to break ground on the appointed hillock. From thence the trenches were carried, despite the fire of the Aréthuse, towards the Barachois; and it was soon evident that the frigate would be repaid for all the mischief that she had wrought. At the same time Wolfe broke ground to the south opposite to the Princess's bastion, and despite a fierce sortie made by a drunken party of the garrison, pushed his works steadily forward against it. Another three weeks saw the net closing tighter and the fire raining fiercer about the doomed fortress. The Aréthuse, after sticking to her moorings right gallantly under an ever increasing fire, was compelled at last to shift her position. Two days later Wolfe, as busy at the left as at the right attack, made a dash at nightfall upon some rising ground only three hundred yards before the Dauphin's bastion, drove out the French that occupied it, and would not be forced back by the fiercest fire from the ramparts. On the 21st a lucky shell fell on one of the French line-of-battle ships and set her on fire. The scanty crew left on board of her could not check the flames. She drifted from her moorings upon two of her consorts and kindled them also; and all three were burned to the water's edge. The two remaining line-of-battle ships survived them but a little time, for a few nights later six hundred sailors rowed silently into the harbour and surprised and captured both of them. One, being aground, was burned, and the other was towed off, in contempt of the fire from the fortress, to a safe anchorage.
July 27.
By this time Amherst's batteries had reduced Louisburg almost to defencelessness. The masonry of the fortress had crumbled under the concussion of its own guns and was little able to stand the shot of the British. A new battery erected on the hill to the north of the Barachois raked the western front of the French works from end to end, and there was no standing against its fire. On the 26th of July the last gun on that front was silenced and a practicable breach had been made. Drucour then made overtures for a capitulation. Amherst's reply was short and stern: the garrison must surrender as prisoners of war, and a definite answer must be returned within one hour. Drucour replied at first with defiance, but, before his messenger could reach Amherst he sent a second emissary to accept the terms; and on the following day the British occupied the fortress. The casualties of the besiegers were not heavy, little exceeding five hundred killed and wounded of all ranks. The loss of the French is unknown, but must have been very great, from sickness not less than from shot and shell. The number of soldiers and sailors made prisoners amounted to fifty-six hundred, while over two hundred cannon and a large quantity of munitions and stores were surrendered with the fortress. So Cape Breton, and Prince Edward's Island with it, passed under the dominion of the British for ever.
The siege over, Amherst proposed to Boscawen to proceed to Quebec, but the Admiral did not consider the enterprise to be feasible. Drucour's gallant defence, indeed, had accomplished one object, in preventing Amherst from co-operating with Abercromby in the attack on Canada; though, could the siege have been begun at the date fixed by Pitt, his efforts would have been of little avail. Amherst therefore left four battalions to garrison Louisburg, and sent Colonel Monckton, Colonel Lord Rollo, and Wolfe, each with a sufficient force, to complete the work of subjugation on Prince Edward's Island, the Bay of Fundy, and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Wolfe having accomplished his part of the task went home on sick leave, and Amherst sailed with five battalions for Boston, where he arrived on the 14th of September and was received with immense though rather inconvenient enthusiasm by the inhabitants. His presence was but too sorely needed to repair the mischief wrought by Abercromby's incapacity.
The prospects of Abercromby at the opening of the campaign were such as might have encouraged any General. Vaudreuil, the Governor of Canada, a corrupt and incapable man, knowing of the intended advance of the British by Lakes George and Champlain upon Ticonderoga and Crown Point, had proposed to avert it by a counter-raid along the Mohawk upon the Hudson. This plan, being vague, and indeed impracticable, was abandoned; and the defence of the approaches to Montreal was committed to Montcalm, who was stationed at Ticonderoga with an insufficient force of about four thousand men, and without support from the posts higher up the lake. To Abercromby, with seven thousand regular troops and nine thousand Provincials, the exposure of this weak and isolated force should have been welcome as the solution of all his difficulties. It must now be seen to what end he turned so excellent an opportunity.
The early months of the summer were occupied with the task, always vexatious and troublesome, of collecting the Provincial troops, and of sending supplies up the Mohawk and the Hudson to Fort Edward. The latter work was tedious and harassing, despite the facilities of carriage by water, for there were three portages between Albany and Fort Edward, at each of which all boats had to be unladen, and dragged, together with their stores, for three or even more miles overland before they could be launched again for easier progress. None the less the business went forward with great energy; and notwithstanding the danger of convoys from the attack of Indians when passing through the forest, the work of escorting was so perfectly managed that not one was molested. These admirable arrangements were due to Brigadier Lord Howe, the eldest of three brothers, all of whom were destined to leave a mark for good or evil on English history.
Howe had been appointed by Pitt to make good the failings which were suspected in Abercromby. He was now thirty-four years of age, and having arrived in America with his regiment, the Fifty-fifth, in the previous year, had been at pains to learn the art of forest-warfare from the most famous leader of the Provincial irregulars. He threw off all training and prejudices of the barrack-yard, joined the irregulars in their scouting-parties, shared the hardships and adopted the dress of his rough companions and became one of themselves. Having thus schooled himself he began to impart the lessons that he had learned to his men. He made officers and men, alike of regular and of Provincial troops, throw off all useless encumbrances; he cut the skirts off their coats and the hair off their heads, browned the barrels of their muskets, clad their lower limbs in leggings to protect them from briars, and filled the empty space in their knapsacks with thirty pounds of meal, so as to make them independent for weeks together of convoys of supplies. In a word, he headed a reaction against the stiff unpractical school of Germany so much favoured by Cumberland, and tried to equip men reasonably for the rough work that lay before them. Such ideas had occurred to other men besides him. Colonel Bouquet of the Sixtieth wished to dress his men like Indians, and Brigadier Forbes went cordially with him, for, as he wrote emphatically, "We must learn the art of war from the Indians." Washington, again, said that if the matter were left to his inclination he would put both men and officers into Indian dress and set the example himself. There was in fact a general revolt of all practical men against powder and pipeclay for bush-fighting, and Howe was fortunately in a position to turn it to account. Possibly it is to his influence that may be traced the formation in the same year of a regiment which, being designed for purposes of scouting and skirmishing only, was clothed in dark brown skirtless coats without lace of any description. This corps ranked for a time as the eightieth of the Line, and was known as Gage's Light Infantry. It must not be supposed that these reforms were accepted without demur. Officers were dismayed to find that they were expected to wash their own clothes without the help of the regimental women, and to carry their own knives and forks with them according to Howe's example; and the German soldiers, of whom there were many in the Sixtieth, sorely resented the cropping of their heads. But Howe was a strict disciplinarian, and not the less, but rather the more, on this account was adored by the men.
July 5.
By the end of June the whole of Abercromby's force, with all its supplies, was assembled at the head of Lake George. On the 4th of July the stores were shipped, and on the following day the men were embarked. The arrangements were perfect: each corps marched to its appointed place on the beach without the least confusion, and before the sun was well arisen the whole army was afloat. The scene was indescribably beautiful. Overhead the sky was blue and cloudless; the sun had just climbed above the mountain tops, and his rays slanted down over the vast rolling slope of forest to the lake. Not a breath of air was moving to ruffle the still blue water or stir the banks of green leaves around it, as the twelve hundred boats swept over the glassy surface. Robert Rogers, most famous of American partisans and instructor of Howe, with his rangers, and Gage with part of his new Light Infantry led the way. John Bradstreet of New England followed next with the boatmen, himself the best boatman among them; and then in three long parallel columns came the main body of the army. To right and left blue coats showed the presence of the Provincial troops of New England and New York, and in the centre flared the well-known English scarlet. Howe led this centre column with the Fifty-fifth, his own regiment; and after him followed the first and fourth battalions of the Sixtieth, the Twenty-seventh, Forty-fourth, Forty-sixth, and last of all the Forty-second with their sombre tartan, each regiment marked by its flying colours of green or buff or yellow or crimson. Then, unmarked by any flag, for colours they had none, came more of Gage's brown coats. Two "floating castles" armed with artillery also accompanied this column, towering high above the slender canoes and whale-boats; and in the rear came the bateaux laden with stores and baggage, with a rear-guard made up of red coats and of blue. So the great armament, stretching almost from shore to shore, crept on over the bosom of the lake, the strains of fife and drum mingling with the plashing of ten thousand oars, till the narrows were reached and the broad front dwindled into a slender procession six miles in length, still creeping on like some huge sinuous serpent on its errand of destruction and death.
July 6.
By five in the afternoon the flotilla had travelled five-and-twenty miles, and a halt was made for the baggage and artillery, which had lagged behind. At eleven o'clock it started again, and at daybreak reached the narrow channel that leads into Lake Champlain by the headland of Ticonderoga. A small advanced post of the French on the shore was driven back, and the work of disembarkation was begun. By noon the whole army had been landed on the western shore of the lake; Rogers with his rangers was sent forward to reconnoitre, and the troops were formed in four columns for the march. The route proposed was to follow the western bank of the channel which connects Lake George with Lake Champlain, since the French had destroyed the bridge over it, and to fall upon Ticonderoga from the rear. The way lay through virgin forest, encumbered with thick undergrowth and strewed with the decaying trunks and limbs of fallen trees. All order became impossible; the men struggled forward as best they could; the columns got mixed together; the guides lost all idea of their direction in the maze; and the army for a time was lost in the forest.
Meanwhile the French advanced party, some three hundred and fifty men, which had fallen back before the British, found its retreat cut off, and had no resource but to take to the woods. They too lost themselves among the trees, and the two hostile bodies were groping their way helplessly on, when the right centre column of the British, with Lord Howe and some rangers at its head, blundered unawares full upon the French party. A sharp skirmish followed, and in the general confusion the main body of the British, hearing volleys but unable to see, became very unsteady. Fortunately the rangers stood firm, and Rogers' advanced guard, turning back at the sound of shots, caught the French between two fires and virtually annihilated them. The British loss in this affair was trifling in numbers but none the less fatal to the expedition; for Lord Howe lay dead with a bullet through his heart, and with his death the whole soul of the army expired.
July 7.
Abercromby's force was for the moment paralysed. Half of his army was lost, nor did he know where to find it. So much of it as he could collect he kept under arms all night, and next morning he fell back to his landing-place, where to his great relief he found the rest of his troops awaiting him. Montcalm meanwhile had been devoured by anxiety. The channel between Lake George and Lake Champlain being impassable by boats owing to rapids, the usual route to Ticonderoga lay across it by some saw-mills at the foot of the rapids, where he had already destroyed the bridge. Nevertheless it was not by these saw-mills but on the western bank of the channel that he had determined to make his stand; nor was it until the evening of the 6th that, yielding to the advice of two of his officers, he decided to retire to Ticonderoga. Accordingly, at noon of the 7th, Abercromby sent Rogers forward with a detachment to occupy the saw-mills. The bridge was rebuilt; and the army, crossing the channel late in the afternoon, occupied the camp deserted by the French. Abercromby was now within two miles of Ticonderoga.
But meanwhile Montcalm had not been idle. The peninsula of Ticonderoga consists of a rocky plateau with low ground on each side, standing at the junction of Lakes George and Champlain. The fort stood near the end of this peninsula; and half a mile to westward of the spot the ground rises and forms a ridge across the plateau. On this ridge Montcalm decided at the last moment to throw up abatis and accept battle. The outline of the works had already been traced, and at the dawn of the 7th every man of his force was at work, cutting down the trees that covered the ground. The tops were cut off and the logs piled into a massive breast-work nine feet high, which was carefully loop-holed. The forest before the breast-work was also felled and left lying with the tops turned outwards, as though, to use the words of an eye-witness, it had been laid low by a hurricane. Between these felled trees and the breast-work the ground was covered with heavy boughs, their points being sharpened and the branches interlaced, so as to present an almost impenetrable obstacle. The French officers themselves were amazed at the work which had been accomplished in one day.
July 8.
Still the position was no Malplaquet, and there was no occasion for Abercromby to dread it. It was open to him either to attack Montcalm in his flanks, which were unfortified; or to bring up his artillery and batter the breast-work to splinters about his ears; or better still to post his guns on a height, called Mount Defiance, which commanded the position, and to rake the breast-work from end to end; or best of all to mask this improvised stronghold with a part of his force and push on with the rest northward up Lake Champlain and so cut off at once Montcalm's supplies and his retreat. The French General had but thirty-six hundred men and only eight days' provisions with him, so that this movement would have ensured his surrender without the firing of a shot. Abercromby's intelligence, however, told him that the French were six thousand strong and that three thousand more were expected to join them at any hour; and he was nervously anxious to make his attack before this reinforcement, which had in reality no existence, should arrive on the spot. Accordingly, at dawn of the 8th, Abercromby sent his engineers to reconnoitre the enemy's position from Mount Defiance. The duty was most perfunctorily fulfilled, and the chief engineer, Lieutenant-Colonel Clark, reported that the works could be captured by direct assault. This was enough for Abercromby. Without further inquiry he resolved that the artillery should be left idle at the place where it had been landed, and that the abatis should be carried with the bayonet.
It was high noon, and the French were still busily strengthening their wooden ramparts with earth and sandbags when shots in the forest before them gave warning that the British advanced parties had struck against their picquets. Instantly they fell in behind the breast-work, three deep, eight battalions of regular troops and four hundred and fifty Canadians, numbering in all little more than a fourth of the British force. The advance of the British was covered by the Light Infantry and rangers while the columns of attack were forming under shelter of the forest. Then the skirmishers cleared the front and the scarlet masses came forward, solid and steady; the picquets leading, the grenadiers in support, the battalions of the main body after the grenadiers, and the Fifty-fifth and Forty-second Highlanders in reserve. It was little that they could see through the tangle of fallen trees and dying leaves; possibly they caught a glimpse of the top of the breast-work but of not a white coat of the defenders behind it. On they came in full confidence, knowing nothing of the obstacles before them, when suddenly the breast-work broke into a sheet of flame and a storm of grape and musketry swept the ranks from end to end. Abercromby's instructions had been that the position should be taken with the bayonet, but all order was lost in the maze of fallen trees, and very soon the men began to return the fire as they advanced, but with little effect, for not an enemy could they see. Nevertheless, though riddled through and through, they scrambled on over the prostrate trunks straight upon the breast-work, when they were stopped by the tangled hedge and sharpened boughs of the inner abatis. Strive as they might they could not force their way through this under the terrible fire that rained on them in front and flank from the angles of the breast-work; and after an hour's struggle they fell back, exclaiming that the position was impregnable. Reports were sent to Abercromby, who throughout the action had never moved from the saw-mills, two miles away, and for all answer there came back the simple order to attack again.
And then came such a scene as had not been witnessed since Malplaquet nor was to be seen again till Badajoz. The men stormed forward anew, furious with rage and heedless of bullets or grape-shot, through the network of trunks and boughs against their invisible enemy. Behind the breast-work the French were cheering loudly, hoisting their hats occasionally above the parapet and laughing when they were blown to pieces, but pouring in always a deadly and unquenchable fire; while the British struggled on, grimed with sweat and smoke, vowing that they would have that wooden wall at any cost. The Highlanders broke loose from the reserve with claymores drawn and slashed their way through the branches to the breast-work, and the British rushed after them to its foot but could advance no further. They had no ladders, and as fast as they hoisted one another to the top of the breast-work they were shot down. Montcalm, cool and collected, moved to and fro among his men in his shirt-sleeves, always at the point of greatest danger, to cheer them and keep them to the fight. The French fire was appalling in its destruction. Men who had passed through the ordeal of Fontenoy declared that it was child's play compared with Ticonderoga. Nevertheless not once only, but thrice more, the British and the Americans with them hurled themselves desperately against the French stronghold, only to be beaten back time after time, until the inner abatis was hung with wisps of scarlet, like poppies that grow through a hedge of thorn, some swaying with the contortions that told of living agony, some limp and still in the merciful stillness of death. The fight had endured for five hours, when some officer of more intelligence than his fellows formed two columns and made a fifth attack upon the extreme right of the French position. The men hewed their way to the breast-work, and for a time the fate of this unequal day hung trembling in the balance. Montcalm hurried to the threatened quarter with his reserves, but only by desperate exertion held his own, for the Highlanders fought with a fury that would yield neither to discipline nor to death. Captain John Campbell and a few of his men actually scaled the wooden wall and dropped down within it, but only to be pierced at once by a score of bayonets. Finally at six o'clock a last attack was delivered, as heroic, as hopeless, and as fruitless as the rest; and then the order was given to retreat. The Highlanders were with the greatest difficulty forced away from their fallen comrades, and under cover of the skirmishers' fire the British withdrew, shattered, exhausted, and demoralised.
And then came one of those strange and dreadful scenes which break an officer's heart. Hardly was the retreat sounded when the very men who for six hours had faced the mouth of hell without flinching were seized with panic and fled in wild disorder through forest and swamp to the landing-place, leaving their arms, their accoutrements, the very shoes from their feet to mark the track of their flight. Fortunately Bradstreet and his armed boatmen mounted guard over the boats and prevented the fugitives from setting themselves afloat. Abercromby came up, as abject as the worst, despatched orders for the wounded and the heavy artillery to be sent back to New York, and followed himself so speedily with his humiliated troops that he arrived at the head of Lake George before his messenger. There he entrenched himself and sat still, while the reckoning of his ignorance and folly was made up. Of the Provincial troops three hundred and thirty-four had fallen before Ticonderoga; of the seven British battalions no fewer than sixteen hundred. The Forty-second lost close on five hundred men and officers killed and wounded, the Forty-fourth and Forty-sixth each about two hundred, the Fifty-fifth and the fourth battalion of the Sixtieth each about one hundred and fifty, the Twenty-seventh and first battalion of the Sixtieth each about a hundred. The loss of the French was less than three hundred and fifty, and Montcalm might well praise his gallant soldiers and hug himself over his victory, for he had fended off attack on Canada for at least one year.
August.
The French General contented himself with strengthening the defences of Ticonderoga and sending out parties of irregulars to harass Abercromby's communications with Fort Edward. Abercromby for his part remained throughout July and the first days of August glued to his camp at the head of Lake George, losing many men from dysentery but attempting nothing. At last he made over to Bradstreet a force of twenty-five hundred men, Provincial troops for the most part, and sent him to attack the French post of Fort Frontenac, which guarded the outlet of Lake Ontario into the St. Lawrence. The project was Bradstreet's own and had been favourably regarded some time before by Loudoun; but it was only under pressure of a council of war that Abercromby's assent to it was wrung from him. Bradstreet accordingly dropped down to Albany, and advanced by the Mohawk and Onandaga to the site of Oswego, where he launched out on to the lake on the 22nd of August, and on the 25th landed safely near Fort Frontenac. The French garrison being little over one hundred strong could make small resistance, and on the 27th surrendered as prisoners of war, leaving nine vessels, which constituted the entire naval force of the French on the lake, in Bradstreet's hands. The fort was dismantled, two of the ships were carried off, the remainder were burned since there was no fort at Oswego to protect them, and Bradstreet returned triumphant to Albany. The service that he had rendered was of vast importance. The command of Lake Ontario was lost to the French, their communications north and south were severed, the alliance of a number of wavering Indian tribes was secured for the British, and Fort Duquêsne, the point against which Pitt had levelled his third blow, was left isolated and alone.
Heartened by this success and by the news of Louisburg, Abercromby began to write vaguely of a second attempt upon Ticonderoga as soon as Amherst should have reinforced him; but it was October before the conqueror of Louisburg reached Lake George, and then both commanders agreed that the season was too far spent for further operations. The troops were accordingly sent into winter quarters, and Canada was saved for another year. It now remains to be seen how matters fared with Brigadier Forbes at Fort Duquêsne.
Forbes himself had arrived at Philadelphia early in April, to find that no army was ready for him. The Provincial troops allotted to him from Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina had not even been enlisted; Montgomery's Highlanders were in the south, and only half of Colonel Bouquet's battalion of the Sixtieth was within reach. It was the end of June before the various fractions of his force were on march: and meanwhile the General was seized with a dangerous and agonising internal disease, against which he fought with a courage and resolution which was as admirable as it was pathetic. Forbes's career had been somewhat singular. He hailed from county Fife and had begun life as a medical student, but had entered the Scots Greys as a cornet and had risen to command the regiment. He had served in Flanders and Germany on the staff of Stair, Ligonier, and General Campbell, and finally as Cumberland's quartermaster-general. But though all his training had been in the old formal school he had recognised, as has been seen, that in America he must learn a new art of war. He had studied Braddock's failure, and had perceived that even if Braddock had succeeded he must inevitably have retired from Fort Duquêsne from want of supplies. Instead, therefore, of making one long march with an unmanageable train of waggons, he decided to advance by short stages, establishing fortified magazines at every forty miles, and at last, when within reach of his destination, to march upon it with his entire force and with as few encumbrances as possible. This plan he had learned from a French treatise, though he might have gathered it from a study of Monk's campaign in the Highlands had the opportunity been open to him. Nor was Bouquet, a Swiss by nationality, less assiduous in thinking out new methods. His views as to equipment have already been noticed; but knowing the value of marksmanship in the woods, Bouquet obtained a certain number of rifled carbines for his own battalion, and thus turned a part of the Sixtieth into Riflemen before their time. He also introduced a new system of drill for work in the forest, forming his men into small columns of two abreast which could deploy into line in two minutes. Under such commanders the mistakes of Braddock were not likely to be repeated.
July.
Then came the question whether Braddock's route should be followed, or a new but shorter line of advance from Pennsylvania. Virginia was furiously jealous lest Pennsylvania should reap the advantage of a direct road to the trading station on the Ohio, and Washington was urgent in recommending the old road; but Forbes had no respect for provincial squabbles and decided for Pennsylvania. He had much difficulty in shaping the Provincials into soldiers, the material delivered to him being of the rawest, and destitute of the remotest idea of discipline. It was not till the beginning of July that Bouquet with an advanced party encamped at Raystown, now the town of Bedford, on the eastern slope of the Alleghanies, and that Forbes was able to move to the frontier village of Carlisle and thence to Shippensburg. There his illness increased, with pain so excruciating that he was unable to advance farther until September. Bouquet meanwhile pushed forward the construction of a road over the Alleghanies with immense labour and under prodigious difficulties. The wildness and desolation of the country seems somewhat to have awed even the stern resolution of Forbes. "It is an immense uninhabited wilderness," he wrote to Pitt, "overgrown everywhere with trees or brushwood, so that nowhere can one see twenty yards." Through this with its endless obstacles of jungle, ravine, and swamp Bouquet's men worked their way. The first fortified magazine had been made at Raystown and named Fort Bedford; the next was to be on the western side of the main river Alleghany at a stream called Loyalhannon Creek. Progress was necessarily slow, but Forbes's advance was not made so leisurely without an object. The French had collected a certain number of Indians for the defence of Fort Duquêsne; but if the attack were delayed it was tolerably certain that these fickle and unstable allies would grow tired of waiting and disperse to their homes. Forbes meanwhile lost no opportunity of conciliating these natives; and by the efforts of his emissaries the most powerful tribes were persuaded to join the side of the British, and scornfully to reject the rival overtures of the French.
But at this critical time a rash exploit of one of Bouquet's officers went near to wreck the whole enterprise. Major Grant of the Highlanders entreated permission to go forward with a small party to reconnoitre Fort Duquêsne, capture a few prisoners, and strike some blow which might discourage and weaken the French. Eight hundred men of the Highlanders, Sixtieth, and Provincial troops were accordingly made over to him; so setting out with these from Loyalhannon he arrived before dawn of the 14th of September at a hill, since named Grant's hill, within half a mile of the fort. With incredible rashness he scattered his force in all directions. Leaving a fourth of his men to guard the baggage, he sent parties out to right and left, took post himself two miles in advance of the baggage with a hundred men, and sent an officer forward with a company of Highlanders into the open plain to draw a map of the fort. Finally, as if to call attention to his own folly, he ordered reveillé to be beaten with all possible parade. The French and Indians at once swarmed out of the fort and drove all the parties back in confusion upon one another. The Highlanders were seized with panic at the yells of the Indians and took to their heels, and but for the firmness of the Virginians of the baggage-guard the whole force would probably have been cut to pieces. As it was, nearly three hundred men were killed, wounded, or taken, and Grant himself was among the prisoners. Forbes, who amid all torments, troubles, and reverses preserved always a keen sense of the ridiculous, declared that he could make nothing of the affair except that his friend Grant had lost his wits; which indeed was a concise and accurate summary of the whole proceeding.
Nov. 18.
Nov. 25.
But such paltry success could avail the French little, for Bradstreet's capture of Fort Frontenac had already decided the fate of Fort Duquêsne. The French commander, his supplies being cut off, was obliged to dismiss the greater number of his men; otherwise Forbes could hardly have penetrated to the Ohio in that year. The elements fought for the French. Heavy rain ruined Bouquet's new road; the horses being underfed and overworked kept breaking down fast; the magazines at Raystown and Loyalhannon were emptied faster than they could be replenished; and Forbes was in despair. All through October the rain continued until at length it gave place to snow, and the roads became a sea of mud over which retreat and advance were alike impossible. At the beginning of November the General, though now sick unto death, was carried to Loyalhannon, where he decided that no attack could be attempted for that season. Intelligence, however, was brought that the French were so weak in numbers as to be defenceless; and on the 18th, twenty-five hundred picked men marched off without tents or baggage, Forbes himself travelling in a litter at their head. At midnight of the 24th the sentries heard the sound of a distant explosion, and on the next day at dusk the troops reached the blackened ruins of what had been Fort Duquêsne. The fortifications had been blown up; barracks and store-houses were in ashes; there was no sign of anything human except the heads of the Highlanders who had been killed in Grant's engagement, stuck up on poles with their kilts hung in derision round them. Their Highland comrades went mad with rage at the sight; but the French and their allies were gone, having evacuated and destroyed the fort and retired to the fort of Venango farther up the Alleghany river. Forbes planted a stockade around a cluster of huts that were still undestroyed, and named it Pittsburg in honour of the minister. Arrangements were then made for leaving a garrison of two hundred Provincials to hold the post, for there could be no doubt that the French would collect a force from Venango and Niagara to endeavour to retake it. The garrison indeed was far too small, but there was not food enough for more; so this handful of poor men was left perforce to make the best of its solitude during the dreary days of the winter.
One duty still remained to be done before Forbes's column turned homeward,—to search for the bones of those who had fallen with Braddock. A party of Pennsylvanians made their way through the forest to the Monongahela, Major Halket of Forbes's staff accompanying them. Among the multitude of ghastly relics two skeletons were found lying together under one tree. Halket recognised the one by a peculiarity of the teeth as that of his father, Sir Peter Halket of the Forty-fourth; and in the other he thought that he saw his brother, who had fallen by his side. The two were wrapped in a Highlander's plaid and buried in one grave, under a volley fired by the Pennsylvanians. The rest of the remains were buried together in one deep trench; and then at the beginning of December the troops marched back to Pennsylvania with the dying Forbes in their midst. With great difficulty the General was brought still living to Philadelphia, where he lingered on through the winter and died in the following March. Though no brilliant action marked his advance to the Ohio he had accomplished his work against endless difficulties and in extremity of bodily torture; and that work was the taking from France of half of her Indian allies, the relief of the western border from Pennsylvania to Maryland from Indian raids, and the opening to the British of the vast regions of the West.
So ended the American campaign of 1758. The French had been struck hard on both flanks, at Louisburg in the north and on the Ohio in the south, but in the centre they had held their own. Two parts out of three of Pitt's design had been accomplished; but the most important success of all was that achieved by Bradstreet in severing the French communications at Fort Frontenac. It may be that Pitt thought best to adhere to the plan of operations mapped out for him by Loudoun, or it may be that he wished to retrieve the reputation lost by Braddock's defeat; but the fact remains that he meditated no attack on Niagara or Fort Frontenac, the capture of either of which would have entailed that of Fort Duquêsne, and that despite the industry of Bouquet and the tenacity of Forbes the advance to the Ohio would have been impossible but for the brilliant and successful enterprise of Bradstreet.
to face page 338
MONONGAHELA, July 8th 1755.
FORMATION OF AMHERST'S FLOTILLA JULY 1759.
From a contemporary plan.
THE REGION OF LAKE GEORGE, 1755.
The Country round TICONDEROGA,
From a Sketch by Lieut. Meyer of the 60th Reg.
Feb. 15.
March 31.
The reader will probably have been struck during the narrative of the American campaign of 1758 with the inferiority of the French in numbers to the British at every point. The French colonies were in fact allowed to take their chance, while French soldiers were poured by the hundred thousand into Germany to avenge King Frederick's sarcasm against Madame de Pompadour. A Pitt was hardly needed to perceive that the more employment that could be found for French armies in Europe, the fewer were the men which could be spared for the service of France's possessions beyond sea; and Pitt resolved accordingly to keep those armies fully occupied. By the convention of Klosterzeven, as has already been told, it was agreed that the Hanoverian army should be broken up; but even before Cumberland's return to England, the question of repudiating that convention had been broached, and a fortnight later a message was despatched to Frederick announcing that the army would take the field again, and requesting the services of Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick as General-in-Chief. Frederick assented; and on the 24th of November Ferdinand arrived at Stade, fresh from the victory of Rossbach in which he had taken part three weeks before, to assume the command. The whole aspect of affairs changed instantly, as if by magic. Setting his force in motion at once Ferdinand by the end of the year had driven the French back to the Aller, and renewing operations after six weeks spent in winter-quarters pressed the enemy still farther back, even across the Rhine.
June 5.
June 7.
June 29.
July 1.
It is said that even before Ferdinand had achieved this success Pitt had resolved to reinforce him with British troops, but for the present the minister reverted to his old plan of a descent on the French coast, which might serve the purpose of diverting French troops alike from America and from Germany. The first sign of his intention was seen in April, when the officers of sixteen battalions received orders to repair to the Isle of Wight by the middle of May. Such long notice was a strange preliminary for a secret expedition, for the troops themselves did not receive their orders until the 20th of May; and it was the end of the month before the whole of them, some thirteen thousand men, were encamped on the island. The Duke of Marlborough was selected for the command, and, since his military talent was doubtful, Lord George Sackville, whose ability was unquestioned, was appointed as his second, with the duty of organising the whole of the operations. Two squadrons, comprising twenty-four ships of the line under Lord Anson, Sir Edward Hawke, and Commodore Howe, were detailed to escort the transports, and on the 1st of June the armament set sail, arriving on the 5th at Cancalle Bay, about eight miles from St. Malo. A French battery, erected for the defence of the bay, was quickly silenced by the ships, and on the following day the entire army was landed. One brigade was left to guard the landing-place, and the remainder of the force marched to St. Malo, where the light dragoons under cover of night slipped down to the harbour and burned over a hundred privateers and merchant-vessels. The Duke of Marlborough then made dispositions as if for the siege of St. Malo, but hearing that a superior force was on the march to cut off his retreat, retired to Cancalle Bay, re-embarked the troops, and sailed against Granville, a petty town some twenty miles to north-east of St. Malo. Foul weather frustrated the intended operations; and on the 27th the expedition arrived off Havre de Grace. Preparations were made for landing, but after two days of inactivity Marlborough decided against an attack, and the fleet bore up for Cherbourg. There once more all was made ready for disembarkation, but the weather was adverse, forage and provisions began to fail, and the entire enterprise against the coast was abandoned. So the costly armament returned to Portsmouth, having effected absolutely nothing. It is, however, doubtful whether blame can be attached to the officers, either naval or military, for the failure. Pitt had procured no intelligence as to the dispositions of the French for defence of the threatened ports; so that a General might well hesitate to run the risk of landing, when he could not tell how soon he might find himself cut off by a superior force from the sea.
June 23.
Aug. 21.
Meanwhile Ferdinand following up his success had pursued the French over the Rhine and gained a signal victory over them at Creveld. This action appears to have hastened Pitt to a decision, for within four days he announced to the British Commissary at Ferdinand's headquarters the King's intention to reinforce the Prince with two thousand British cavalry. The troops were warned for service on the same day; but within three days it was decided to increase the reinforcement to six thousand troops, both horse and foot, and a week later the force was further augmented by three battalions. The first division of the troops was shipped off to Emden on the 11th of July, and by the second week in August the entire reinforcement had disembarked at the same port under command of the Duke of Marlborough, joining Prince Ferdinand's army at Coesfeld on the 21st. There for the present we must leave them, till the time comes for Ferdinand's operations to engage our whole attention. Meanwhile the reader need bear in mind only that the British Army is definitely committed to yet another theatre of war.
August.
Even so, however, Pitt remained unsatisfied without another stroke against the French coast. While the troops were embarking for Germany he had formed a new encampment on the Isle of Wight and was intent upon a raid on Cherbourg. So intensely distasteful were these expeditions to the officers of the Army that the Duke of Marlborough and Lord George Sackville used their interest to obtain appointment to the army in Germany, so as to be quit of them once for all. The result was that when Lieutenant-General Bligh, who had been originally selected to serve under Prince Ferdinand, arrived in London from Ireland to sail for Emden, he found to his dismay that his destination was changed, and that he must prepare to embark for France. He accepted the command as in duty bound, the more so since Prince Edward was to accompany the expedition, but he was little fit for the service, having no qualification except personal bravery and one great disqualification in advanced age. Accordingly, obedient but unwilling, he set sail on the 1st of August with twelve battalions and nine troops of light dragoons, escorted by a squadron under Commodore Howe. Not yet had the gallant sailor learned of his succession to the title through the fall of his brother Lord Howe at the head of Lake Champlain.
Aug. 16.
September.
The expedition began prosperously enough. The fleet arrived before Cherbourg on the 6th and at once opened the bombardment of the town. Early next morning it sailed to the bay of St. Marais, two leagues from Cherbourg, where the Guards and the grenadier-companies, having landed under the fire of the ships, attacked and drove off a force of three thousand French which had been drawn up to oppose them. The rest of the troops disembarked without hindrance on the following day and advanced on Cherbourg, which being unfortified to landward surrendered at once. Bligh thereupon proceeded to destroy the docks and the defences of the harbour and to burn the shipping, while the light cavalry scoured the surrounding country and levied contributions. This done, the troops were re-embarked; and after long delay owing to foul winds the fleet came to anchor on the 3rd of September in the Bay of St. Lunaire, some twelve miles east of St. Malo. There the troops were again landed during the two following days, though not without difficulty and the loss of several men drowned. Bligh's instructions bade him carry on operations against Morlaix or any other point on the coast that he might prefer to it, and he had formed some vague design of storming St. Malo from the landward side. This, however, was found to be impracticable with the force at his disposal; and now there ensued an awkward complication. The weather grew steadily worse, and Howe was obliged to warn the General that the fleet must leave the dangerous anchorage at St. Lunaire, and that it would be impossible for him to re-embark the troops at any point nearer than the bay of St. Cast, a few miles to westward. Accordingly he sailed for St. Cast, while Bligh, now thrown absolutely on his own resources ashore, marched for the same destination overland.
Sept. 9.
The army set out on the morning of the 7th of September, and after some trouble with small parties of French on the march encamped on the same evening near the river Equernon, intending to ford it next morning. It speaks volumes for the incapacity of Bligh and of his staff that the passage of the river was actually fixed for six o'clock in the morning, though that was the hour of high water. It was of course necessary to wait for the ebb-tide; so it was not until three in the afternoon that the troops forded the river, even then waist-deep, under a brisk fire from small parties of French peasants and regular troops. Owing to the lateness of the hour further advance on that day was impossible; and on resuming the march on the following morning the advanced guard encountered a body of about five hundred French troops. The enemy were driven back with considerable loss, but their prisoners gave information of the advance of at least ten thousand French from Brest. Arrived at Matignon Bligh encamped and sent his engineers to reconnoitre the beach at St. Cast in case he should be compelled to retreat. Deserters who came in during the night reported that the French were gathering additional forces from the adjacent garrisons; and in the morning Bligh sent word to Howe that he intended to embark on the following day.
Sept. 11.
Constant alarms during the night showed that the enemy was near at hand; and it would have been thought that Bligh, having made up his mind to retreat, would in so critical a position have retired as swiftly and silently as possible. On the contrary, at three o'clock on the morning of the 11th the drums beat the assembly as usual, to give the French all the information that they desired; while the troops moved off in a single column so as to consume the longest possible time on the march. It was nine o'clock before the embarkation began, and at eleven, when two-thirds of the force had been shipped, the enemy appeared in force on the hills above the beach. For some time the French were kept at a distance by the guns of the fleet, but after an hour they found shelter and opened a sharp and destructive fire. General Drury, who commanded the rear-guard, consisting of fourteen hundred men of the Guards and the grenadiers, was obliged to form his men across the beach to cover the embarkation. Twice he drove back the enemy, but, ammunition failing, he was forced back in turn, and there was nothing left but a rush for the boats. The French bringing up their artillery opened a furious fire; and all was confusion. So many of the boats were destroyed that the sailors shrank from approaching the shore and were only kept to their work by the personal example of Howe. In all seven hundred and fifty officers and men were killed and wounded, General Drury being among the slain, and the rest of the rear-guard were taken prisoners. The fleet and transports made their way back to England in no comfortable frame of mind, for the French naturally magnified their success to the utmost; and so ended Pitt's third venture against the coast of France.
There can be little doubt but that Bligh must be held responsible for the failure. It should seem indeed that he was ignorant of the elements of his duty, even to the enforcing of discipline among the troops, who at the first landing near Cherbourg behaved disgracefully. The Duke of Marlborough had met with the same trouble at Cancalle Bay, but had had at least the strength to hang a marauding soldier on the first day and so to restore order. But after all Pitt was presumably responsible for the selection of Bligh; or, if he was aware that he could not appoint the right man for such a service, he would have done better to abandon these raids on the French coast altogether. The conduct of Marlborough and Sackville in shirking the duty because it was distasteful to them does not appear commendable; but Sackville at any rate was no fool, and Pitt might at least have recognised the military objections that were raised against his plans. The truth of the matter is, as Lord Cochrane was to prove fifty years later, that sporadic attacks on the French coast are best left to the Navy; for a single frigate under a daring and resolute officer can paralyse more troops than an expedition of ten or fifteen thousand men, with infinitely less risk and expense. Pitt had not yet done with his favourite descents, but his next venture of the kind was to be directed against an island instead of the mainland, when the British fleet could interpose between his handful of battalions and the whole population of France. Meanwhile Cherbourg had at any rate been destroyed, so like a wise man the minister made the most of this success, by sending some of the captured guns with great parade through Hyde Park to the Tower.
April 30.
Oct. 26.
Dec. 29.
The operations already narrated of the year 1758 were of considerable scope, embracing as they did the advance of three separate armies in America, two raids on the French coast, and the despatch of British troops to Germany; but these by no means exhaust the tale. There were few quarters of the globe in which the British had not to complain of French encroachment, and to this insidious hostility Pitt had resolved to put a stop once for all. Five years before, the merchants of Africa had denounced the unfriendliness of the French on the Gambia, who were building forts and stirring up the natives against them. The Royal African Company also, with its monopoly of the slave-trade, was anxious for its line of fortified dep?ts on the West Coast, and prayed to be delivered from its troublesome neighbours at Senegal and in the island of Goree. One of Pitt's first actions in 1758 was to order an expedition to be prepared against Senegal, a duty for which two hundred marines and twenty-five gunners were deemed a sufficient force. On the 23rd of April Captain Marsh of the Royal Navy sailed into the Senegal river, and by the 30th Fort Louis had surrendered and was flying the British flag. Two hundred men of Talbot's regiment were at once sent to garrison the new possession, and then for some months there was a pause, while the troops for Germany and Cherbourg were embarking for their destinations. But no sooner was Bligh's expedition returned than a new enterprise was set on foot, and Captain Keppel of the Royal Navy received secret instructions to convoy Lieutenant-Colonel Worge with Forbes's regiment and two companies of the Sixty-sixth to the West Coast. Within three weeks the troops were embarked at Kinsale, and by the 28th of December Keppel's squadron was lying off Goree. On the following day the ships opened fire on the French batteries, and at nightfall the island surrendered, yielding up over three hundred prisoners and nearly an hundred guns. So with little trouble were gained the West African settlements of the French.
1759
Jan. 13.
Jan. 15.
But even before Keppel had received his instructions six more battalions were under orders for foreign service; and his squadron had hardly sailed before another fleet of transports was gathering at Portsmouth. Major-General Peregrine Hopson, who had been Governor at Nova Scotia in the difficult years that preceded the outbreak of war, was appointed to the chief command, and Colonel Barrington, a junior officer, was, despite the honourable protests of his brother, the Secretary-at-War, selected to be his second. The expedition was delayed beyond the date fixed for its departure by bad weather, but at length on the 12th of November the transports, escorted by eight ships of the line under Commodore Hughes, got under way and sailed with a fair wind to the west. On the 3rd of January 1759 they reached Barbados, the time-honoured base of all British operations in the West Indies, and there was Commodore Moore waiting with two more ships of the line to join them and to take command of the fleet. After ten days' stay they again sailed away north-westward before the trade-wind. Astern of them the mountains of St. Vincent hung distant like a faint blue cloud; ahead of them two tall peaks, shaped like gigantic sugar-loaves, rose higher and higher from the sea, and marked the southern end of St. Lucia. Then St. Lucia came abeam, a rugged mass of volcanic mountains shrouded heavily in tropical forest, and another island rose up broad and blue not many leagues ahead, an island which the men crowded forward to see, for they were told that it was Martinique. Still the fleet held on; St. Lucia was left astern and Martinique loomed up larger and bolder ahead; then an islet like a pyramid was passed on the starboard hand, the Diamond Rock, not yet His Majesty's Ship; a little farther and the fleet was under the lee of the island; yet a little farther and the land shrank back to eastward into a deep inlet ringed about by lofty volcanic hills, and a few useless cannon-shot from a rocky islet near the entrance proclaimed that the French were ready for them in the Bay of Fort Royal.
Jan. 16.
Jan. 17.
The ships lay off the bay until the next day, while Hopson thought out his plan of operations. The town and fortress of Fort Royal lies well within the bay on the northern shore, so Negro Point, which marks the entrance to the harbour to the north, was the spot selected for the landing. The ships next morning stood in and silenced two small batteries mounted at the Point, and in the afternoon the troops landed unopposed in a small bay adjacent to it. A camping ground was chosen in the only open space that could be found, between two ravines, and there the army passed the night formed up in square, to be ready against any sudden attack. At dawn of the next morning shots were heard, and the outposts reported that the enemy was advancing and entrenching a house close to the British position. The grenadiers were sent forward to dislodge them, and a smart skirmish ended in the retreat of the French. Hopson would fain have pushed more of his men into action, but the jungle was so dense that they could find no enemy. "Never was such a country," wrote the General plaintively, "the Highlands of Scotland for woods, mountains, and continued ravines are nothing to it." As it was plainly out of the question to attempt to drag the heavy artillery before Fort Royal over such a country, it was decided to re-embark the troops forthwith. Nearly one hundred men had been killed and wounded in the morning's skirmish, but the embarkation was accomplished without further loss.
Jan. 18.
On the following day the fleet coasted the island northward and by evening lay off St. Pierre, the second town in Martinique, which stood nestling in a little plain at the head of a shallow bay. The men-of-war stood in on the next morning to observe the defences of the place, and the fire of the French batteries from the heights to right and left soon convinced the Commodore that the town could not be taken without such damage to his ships as would disable them for further service. It was therefore resolved that Martinique should for the present be left alone, and that the expedition should proceed to Guadeloupe, which was not only the richest of the French Islands but the principal nest of French privateers in the West Indies. So the fleet steered northward once more past Dominica, where the white flag of the Bourbons yet floated over the fort of Roseau; while a single ship was sent forward with the chief military engineer on board to reconnoitre the town of Basseterre, which lies on the western or leeward coast a few miles to north of the most southerly point of Guadeloupe.
Jan. 23.
Jan. 24.
Jan.
The engineer returned with no very encouraging report. The town though lying on an open roadstead was well fortified, and all the approaches to it along the coast were well protected, while the fort of Basseterre, situated on a lofty eminence at the southern end, was declared to be impregnable by the attack of ships alone. Moore, however, was resolute that the town could and should be taken, and at ten o'clock on the morning of the 23rd the ships of the line and bomb-ketches opened a heavy fire on the fort and batteries. In a few hours the town, crammed with the sugar and rum of the past harvest, was burning furiously, and by nightfall every battery was silenced and the town was a heap of blackened ruins. At dawn of the morrow the troops were landed, to find the elaborate lines of defence inland deserted and every gun spiked, while desultory shots from among the sugar-canes alone told of the presence of the enemy. The army encamped in Basseterre, but the firing from the cane-fields increased, and picquets and advanced posts were harassed to death by incessant alarms and petty attacks. Hopson sent a summons to the French Governor to surrender, but received only an answer of defiance. The Governor had in fact withdrawn his force some six miles from Basseterre to an impregnable position such as can be found only in a rugged, mountainous and untamed country. Each flank was covered by inaccessible hills clothed with impenetrable forest; in his front ran the river Galeon with high and precipitous banks, and beyond the river a gully so steep and sheer that the French themselves used ladders to cross it. The position was further strengthened by entrenchments and cannon. To attack it in front was impossible. The only practicable access was by a narrow road which led through dense forest upon one flank; and this was most carefully guarded. Here therefore the French commander lay, refusing to come to action but sending out small parties to worry the British outposts, in the hope that the climate would do the work of repelling his enemy for him.
Feb. 14.
Nor was he without good ground for such hope; for Hopson was in great doubt whether it would not be more expedient for him to re-embark. His own health was failing rapidly, and the men were beginning to fall down fast under the incessant work at the advanced posts and the fatigue of carrying provisions to them. From the day of landing it had been found necessary to push these advanced posts farther and farther inland and to make them stronger and stronger, until at last they embraced a circuit of fully three miles. By the end of January the men on the sick list numbered fifteen hundred, or fully a quarter of the force. Hopson sent six hundred invalids to Antigua in the hope of saving at least some of them, but therewith his efforts came to an end, nor could all the representations of Barrington stimulate him to further action. Yet new operations were by no means difficult either of conception or of execution. Guadeloupe is in reality not one island but two, being divided by a narrow strait known as the Salt River. It is very much of the shape of a butterfly with wings outspread, flying south; the western wing being known as Guadeloupe proper and the eastern as Grande Terre, while the Salt River runs in the place of the butterfly's body. Grande Terre, the most fertile part of the island, still lay open to attack, with an excellent harbour at Point à Pitre, of which the principal defence, Fort Louis, could be reached by the cannon of ships. Moore being fortunately independent of Hopson in respect of naval operations, sent ships round to Fort Louis, which speedily battered it into surrender, and installed therein a garrison of three hundred Highlanders and Marines. But even with this new base secured to him Hopson declined to move. He was indeed sick unto death, and on the 27th of February he died, leaving the command to devolve on Barrington.
March 6.
March 11.
March.
His death came none too soon, for the force was on the brink of destruction. The number of the dead cannot be ascertained, but over and above the six hundred invalids sent to Antigua there were more than sixteen hundred men on the sick list, and the remainder were succumbing so fast that sufficient men could hardly be found to do the daily duty. Barrington resolved to close this fatal period of inaction at once. The defences of the fort of Basseterre had already been repaired and rendered safe against attack, so the Sixty-third regiment was left to hold it while the remainder of the troops were embarked on board the transports. After five days of weary beating against the trade-wind a portion of the ships came to anchor before Fort Louis; but more than half of them had fallen to leeward. The next day was spent by Barrington in an open boat reconnoitring the coast, but on his return in the evening he was met by the bad news that a French squadron had been sighted to northward of Barbados and that Moore felt bound to fall back with his own squadron to Prince Rupert's Bay, Dominica, in order to cover Basseterre and the British Leeward Islands. Finally, as sickness had wrought little less havoc in the fleet than in the army, the Commodore begged for troops to make up the complement of his crews.
Few situations could have been more embarrassing than that in which Barrington now found himself. He loyally gave Moore three hundred soldiers for his ships, and watched the fleet on which his communications depended vanish from sight. Nearly if not quite half of his force had perished or was unfit for duty; while of the rest a part was isolated in Basseterre and fully one moiety was at sea, striving to beat into Point à Pitre. Fort Louis, the only strong position in which he could hope to wait in safety, was found to be untenable; and the French were already preparing to besiege it. Yet with a resolution which stamps him as no common man, he resolved despite all difficulties to begin offensive operations at once. He had at any rate transports though he had no men-of-war, and he resolved to use them; his plan being, if he failed to bring the enemy to action, to ravage the whole island and reduce it by starvation. The cultivated land in such a confusion of mountains could lie only in the valleys, and the settlements must needs lie at the mouths of those valleys where there was communication with other parts of the island by sea or by roads that followed the coast. The French had raised abundance of batteries and entrenchments to protect these settlements, but such multiplicity of defences necessarily implied dispersion of force. Barrington's troops, few though they might be, were at any rate to some extent concentrated; and it was in his power to embark men sufficient to overwhelm any one of these isolated settlements, and so to break up the defences in detail. The operations were not in fact difficult when once a man had thought out the method of conducting them, but it was precisely in this matter of thought that Hopson had failed.
March 27.
March 29.
A fortnight was occupied in strengthening the defences of Port Louis; and on the 27th of March six hundred men were embarked under command of Colonel Crump and sent off to the south coast of Grande Terre, with orders to land between the towns of St. Anne and St. Fran?ois, destroy both of them and ruin the batteries erected for their protection. Crump, an excellent officer, performed this duty punctually and with little loss; and on the 29th Barrington, guessing that the French would certainly have detached some of their troops from Gosier, a port a few miles to westward of St. Anne, sailed with three hundred men against it, and at dawn fell upon the enemy in their entrenchments. The troops, eager for work after long inaction, attacked with great spirit, drove the enemy out with little difficulty and slight loss, and then prepared to force their way back to Fort Louis by land. Barrington had ordered two separate sallies to be made by the garrison upon the lines erected by the French against the fort, but owing to some mistake one only was delivered. Nevertheless his own little detachment did the work unaided, captured a battery of twenty-four pounders which had been planted by the enemy to open on the fort on the next day, and returned to its quarters triumphant.
April 12.
April 13.
By this time the missing transports had succeeded in working into Point à Pitre; but to countervail this advantage there came news from Basseterre that the colonel in command, a valuable officer, had been killed, together with one or two of his men, by an accidental explosion, and that the French were constructing batteries to bombard the fort. Barrington appointed a new commander, with orders to sally forth and capture these batteries without more ado; and the task, since he had chosen the right men to execute it, was performed with little trouble or loss. Moreover, having now ruined the most important settlements in Grande Terre he resolved to apply the same principles of warfare to Guadeloupe. Accordingly on the 12th of April Brigadier Clavering, with thirteen hundred men and six guns, was sent off to a bay close to Arnouville, where they landed unopposed, the enemy retiring to a strong position in rear of the river Licorne. This position was all-important to the French since it covered Mahault Bay, which was the port by which the Dutch supplied Guadeloupe with provisions from the island of St. Eustatia. It was so strong by nature that it needed little fortification by art; access to the river being barred by a mangrove swamp, across which there were but two narrow approaches, both of them protected by redoubts, palisaded entrenchments, and cannon. None the less Clavering determined to attack. Covered by a heavy fire of artillery the Fourth and Forty-second advanced against the French left, firing by platoons as coolly as if on parade, till the Highlanders drawing their claymores made a rush, and the Fourth dashing forward with the bayonet drove the French from the redoubt. Then pushing round to the rear of the entrenchments on the French right they forced the enemy to evacuate them also, and captured seventy prisoners. The French then retreated southward, setting fire to the cane-fields as they passed in order to check the British pursuit, and took post behind the river Lezarde, breaking down the bridge behind them. It was too late for Clavering to attack them on that day, for the only ford on the river was protected by a redoubt and four guns; but keeping up a fire of artillery all night in order to distract the enemy's attention, he passed a party in a canoe across the river below the position of the French, who no sooner saw their right flank turned than they retired with precipitation, abandoning all their guns. Following the coast southward to Petit Bourg, where they had prepared fortified lines and armed redoubts, the French again tried to make a stand; but Barrington had sent a bomb-vessel to await them off the coast, which opened fire with shell and drove them back once more, before they could withdraw their guns from the entrenchments.
April 14.
April 18.
April 19.
May 1.
Then and not till then did Clavering grant his men a halt after their hard work under the tropical sun; but on the 15th he was in motion again, and a detachment of a hundred men was sent to capture the next battery to southward at the town of Gouyave. The French, now thoroughly disheartened, waited only to fire one shot and then fled, leaving seven guns behind them, when the British having spiked the cannon retired to Petit Bourg. On the same day Colonel Crump was sent with seven hundred men to Mahault Bay, where he found the French defences abandoned. Having destroyed them, together with a vast quantity of stores, he marched to join Clavering at Petit Bourg and to help in the work of desolating the country round it. Heavy rain suspended operations during the two following days; but on the 18th the entire force, excepting a garrison of two hundred and fifty men which was left at Petit Bourg, renewed the advance southward upon St. Maries, where all the French troops in the island were assembled to oppose it. The French position was as usual strongly entrenched, but the paths that led to rear of it, being judged impassable, were left unguarded. A detachment was therefore sent to turn the entrenchments by these paths, and the artillery was hastened up to the front; but the guns had hardly opened fire when the French, perceiving the movement in their rear, deserted their fortifications and fled to another entrenched position on the heights beyond St. Maries. The British pursued; and, while the ground was clearing for the artillery to come into action, part of the infantry tried to force a way through the forest and precipices on the flank of the earthworks. The French, weary of finding position after position turned, left their fortified lines to meet this attack, whereupon Clavering instantly launched the remainder of his troops straight at the lines, and despite a heavy fire of artillery and musketry swept the enemy out of this last refuge. On the morrow the army entered the district of Capesterre, reputed the richest in the whole of the West Indies; and the inhabitants, dreading lest it should be overtaken by the fate of the rest, came and begged for terms. A capitulation was therefore granted on liberal conditions, and Guadeloupe, one of the wealthiest of the Antilles, with a harbour large enough to shelter the whole Navy of England from hurricanes, passed for the present to the Crown of Britain.
May 26.
The surrender came in the nick of time, for the ink of the signatures was hardly dry when news came of the arrival of General Beauharnais from Martinique with six hundred French regular troops and two thousand buccaneers. A day earlier this reinforcement would have saved Guadeloupe; but on hearing of the capitulation Beauharnais re-embarked his troops and sailed away. Nothing therefore remained for Barrington but to settle the administration, fortify the harbour, and leave a sufficient garrison to hold it. The island of Mariegalante, which had not been included in the capitulation, made some show of defiance but surrendered on the first display of force. Crump was installed as Governor; the Fourth, Sixty-third, and Sixty-fifth were left with him; the Thirty-eighth returned to its old quarters in the Leeward Islands, the Highlanders were shipped off to America, and in June Barrington, with the remnant of the Buffs, Sixty-first, and Sixty-fourth, returned to England.
So ended the campaign of Guadeloupe. The story is one which is little known, and the name of John Barrington is one of which few have heard; yet surely the achievements of himself and of his troops are such as should not be forgotten. Barrington took over from Hopson an army weakened by sickness, worn to death by defensive warfare of the most harassing kind, and disheartened by the consciousness that it was working to no purpose. He at once shifted his base for more active operations, only to find, to his great mortification, half of his force literally at sea, and the fleet taken from him for other duty. Yet he went to work at once; and knowing that he could not take the island by force reduced it to submission by cutting off and destroying its supplies. I have not hesitated to describe the petty engagements which followed, since there was not one which did not show forethought in the planning and skill in the execution. It is true that the French regular troops on the island were few, and that the enemy which deserted its entrenchments so readily was made up mainly of raw militia and armed civilians; but they never fought except in a strong position protected by artillery. It is true also that the actual work in the field was done by Crump and Clavering, two excellent officers, for Barrington was so much crippled by gout that he could hardly leave Fort Louis. Nevertheless the whole scheme of operations was Barrington's, and no man more cordially acknowledged the fact than Clavering himself. The number of the British killed and wounded in action is unfortunately not to be ascertained, but judging by the casualties of the officers, of whom eleven were killed and twenty-one wounded, it was not very great. But it is not lead and steel that are most fatal in a tropical expedition, and it is not in killed and wounded that its cost must be reckoned. The island had been conquered, but the climate had not; and the climate took its revenge. By the close of the seven months that remained of the year 1759 nearly eight hundred officers and men of the garrison had found their graves in Guadeloupe.
Authorities.—For the expeditions to Cancalle Bay and Cherbourg, see Account by an officer of the late expedition. Entick also gives details from the official documents. For the operations at Goree, see State Papers (Record Office), C. O., Col. Corres., Sierra Leone, 2, 3. For Guadeloupe, see State Papers, C. O., America and West Indies, 100, 101; W. O., Orig. Corres., 26. Entick again gives a confused statement.
Dec. 1.
It was late in November before Parliament reassembled, and listened to a speech from the throne, jubilant over the captures of Louisburg, Fort Frontenac, and Senegal, but modestly deploring the inevitable expense of the war. The Commons, however, were practically unanimous in allowing a free hand to Pitt, though the minister himself was startled when he was brought face to face with the estimates. Those for the Army were introduced a week later, and showed but a slight increase in the British Establishment, the total number of men not exceeding eighty-five thousand. Yet the main operations of the coming year were to be conducted on a grander scale than before, while at the same time provision was needed to make good the enormous waste caused by tropical expeditions. Two new regiments only were formed before the actual opening of the operations of 1759, one of them, Colonel Eyre Coote's, serving as a reminder that concurrently with all other enterprises there was progressing the struggle, which shall presently be narrated, for the mastery of the East Indies.
1759
Pitt's principal effort, as in the previous year, was directed against Canada, and the operations prescribed were little less complicated than those of the last campaign. In the first place a direct attack was to be made upon Quebec, for which purpose Amherst was to make over ten battalions to General Wolfe. In the second, the attempt to penetrate into Canada by way of Ticonderoga and Crown Point was to be renewed. Amherst himself was to take this duty upon him, Abercromby having been rightly recalled; and it was hoped that he might join Wolfe in the capital of Canada or at least make a powerful diversion in his favour. At the same time Amherst was ordered to secure Oswego and Pittsburg, and empowered to undertake any further operations that he pleased, without prejudice to the main objects of the campaign. The General having already twenty-three battalions of the King's troops in America, it was reckoned that, with the regiments to be forwarded to him from the West Indies by Hopson, he would possess a sufficient force for the work. No fresh battalions therefore were sent to him from England.
The selection of James Wolfe for the command of the expedition against Quebec came as a surprise to many. He was now thirty-two years of age, and had held a commission ever since he was fourteen, attaining the rank of captain at seventeen and of major at twenty. He had served in Flanders and distinguished himself as brigade-major at Lauffeld, but it was as Lieutenant-Colonel in command of the Twentieth Foot that he had shown himself most competent. He was an admirable regimental officer, enthusiastic over his profession and well acquainted with its duties, a stern disciplinarian yet devoted to his men, and a refined and educated gentleman. In short he was a commanding officer who could be trusted to raise the tone of any corps. He had attracted Pitt's notice by his constant though fruitless advocacy of action in the abortive descent on Rochefort in 1757, and had come prominently before the public eye by his behaviour at Louisburg. His relations with Amherst, however, appear not to have been very friendly, nor to have been improved by his return home from Cape Breton in 1758; indeed Wolfe was reprimanded as soon as he arrived in England for returning without the King's orders, under misconception of his letter of service. It was possibly under the sting of this censure that he wrote to Pitt declaring his readiness to serve in America and "particularly in the river St. Lawrence"; but be that as it may he received the appointment. There is an anecdote that he filled the great minister with dismay by some extraordinary gasconnade at a dinner to which he had been invited shortly before his departure; but even if, in a moment of elation, he may have given way to excited talk for a time, yet such outbursts were not usual with him, for he was the quietest and most modest of men. The real objection to his appointment was the state of his health. He had never been strong and was a martyr to rheumatism and stone, but he was as courageous against pain as against the bullets of the enemy; in fact, like King William the Third, he was never so happy as when under fire. For the rest nature had cursed him with a countenance of singular ugliness, his portraits showing a profile that runs in a ridiculous curve from the forehead to the tip of the nose, and recedes in as ridiculous a curve from the nose to the neck. A shock of red hair tied in a queue, and a tall, lank, ungainly figure added neither grace nor beauty to his appearance; but within that unhandsome frame lay a passionate attachment to the British soldier, and an indomitable spirit against difficulty and danger.
February.
May.
It was the middle of February when Wolfe sailed from England in H.M.S. Neptune, the flag-ship of a fleet of twenty-one sail under Admirals Saunders, Holmes, and Durell. The voyage was long and tedious, and when at last Louisburg was reached the harbour was found to be blocked with ice, so that the fleet was obliged to make for Halifax. From thence Durell was detached, too late as was presently proved, to the mouth of the St. Lawrence to intercept certain transports that were expected with supplies from France; Holmes was sent to convoy the troops that were to sail from New York; and in May the entire armament for the reduction of Quebec was assembled at Louisburg. Wolfe had been led to expect a force of twelve thousand men; but the regiments which should have been detached from Guadeloupe could not yet be spared, and those drawn from the garrisons of Nova Scotia had been reduced considerably beneath their proper strength by sickness during the winter. The quality of the troops, however, was excellent, and on this Wolfe counted to make good a serious numerical deficiency. The force was distributed into three brigades, under Brigadiers Monckton, Townsend, and Murray, all three of them men of youth, energy, and talent, well qualified to serve under such a commander as Wolfe. The grenadiers of the army were, as had now become usual, massed together and organised in two divisions, those of the regiments in garrison at Louisburg being known as the Louisburg grenadiers. Another separate corps was composed of the best marksmen in the several regiments, and was called the Light Infantry, while six companies of Provincial rangers furnished a proportion of irregular troops. The whole strength of the force was thus brought up to about eight thousand five hundred men. A fortnight sufficed for the final arrangements, for Amherst and his staff had spared no pains to provide all that was necessary; and on the 6th of June the last division of transports, amid a roar of cheering from the men, sailed out of Louisburg for the St. Lawrence.
The French commanders meanwhile had been anxiously making their preparations for defence. There could be no doubt that the British would make at least a double attack upon Canada, from Lake Champlain on the south and Lake Ontario on the west, and every able-bodied man in the colony was called out to repel it. No sooner had the dispositions been settled than news came of the intended advance by the St. Lawrence, which threw the whole colony into consternation. Five regular battalions and the militia from every part of Canada were summoned, together with a thousand Indians, to Quebec; and after much debate Montcalm, who held the command of the troops under the Governor of the city, decided on his scheme of defence. Quebec with its fortifications stands on the north bank of the St. Lawrence, being situated on a rocky headland which marks the contraction of the river from a width of fifteen or twenty miles to a strait scarcely exceeding one. Immediately to northward of this ridge the river St. Charles flows down to the St. Lawrence; and seven miles to eastward of the St. Charles the shore is cut by the rocky gorge through which pours the cataract of the Montmorenci. It was between these two streams that Montcalm disposed his army, his right resting on the St. Charles, his left on the Montmorenci, with his headquarters on the little river of Beauport midway between the two, and his front to the St. Lawrence. All along the border of the great river were thrown up entrenchments, batteries, and redoubts. From Montmorenci to Beauport abrupt and rocky heights raised these defences too high above the water to be reached by the cannon of ships. From Beauport to the St. Charles stretched broad flats of mud, which were commanded by batteries both afloat and ashore, as well as by the guns of Quebec. On the walls of the city itself were mounted over one hundred cannon; a bridge of boats with a strong bridge-head on the eastern side preserved the communication between city and camp; and for the defence of the river itself there was a floating battery of twelve heavy guns besides several gun-boats and fire-ships. The vessels of the convoy that Durell had failed to intercept, together with the frigates that escorted them, were sent up the river beyond Quebec to be out of harm's way; and the sailors were taken to man the batteries ashore. Thus strongly entrenched with fourteen thousand men of one description and another, and firm in the belief that no foreign ship would dare to attempt the intricate navigation of the St. Lawrence, Montcalm waited for the British to come.
June.
It was not until the 21st of June that the first mast-heads of the fleet were seen. For days the British had been groping their way up the river, helped partly by a captured Canadian pilot, more often by their own skill and experience. "Damn me if there are not a thousand places in the Thames fifty times more hazardous than this," growled an old skipper on one of the transports, as he waived the pilot contemptuously aside. So the great fleet crept up the stream, ships of the line passing where the French had feared to take a coasting schooner, and at last on the 26th of June the whole was anchored safely off the southern shore of the Isle of Orleans, a few miles below Quebec. No single mishap had marred this masterly and superb feat of pilotage.
June 27.
June 28.
June 29.
July.
The troops landed without resistance next day on the Isle of Orleans, and on the same afternoon a sudden squall drove many of the ships ashore and destroyed several of the flat-boats prepared for the disembarkation. The storm raised high hopes of providential deliverance in the French, which, however, were speedily dashed, for the tempest subsided as suddenly as it had arisen. On the morrow therefore the Governor of Quebec resolved to launch his fire-ships down the river upon the fleet. The attempt was duly made, but the ships were ill-handled and the service ill-executed. The British sailors coolly rowed out, grappled the burning vessels and towed them ashore, while the troops, formed up in order of battle, gazed at the most imposing display of fireworks that they had ever seen. Meanwhile Wolfe reconnoitred the French lines and the city, but could see no possible opening for a successful attack. One thing alone seemed feasible, to occupy the heights of Point Lévis over against Quebec on the southern shore, and to fire across this, the narrowest part of the river, upon the city. Monckton's brigade accordingly entrenched itself on these heights, threw up batteries, and on the 12th of July opened a fire which wrought havoc among the buildings of Quebec. But however this cannonade might afflict the nerves of the inhabitants, it could contribute little, as Wolfe well knew, to advance the real work in hand.
Accordingly, while the batteries on Point Lévis were constructing, the English General resolved to see whether a vulnerable point could be found on Montcalm's left flank. On the 8th of July, leaving a detachment to hold the camp on the Isle of Orleans, he sent Townsend's and Murray's brigades across to the northern bank of the St. Lawrence, where they proceeded to entrench themselves on the eastern side of the Montmorenci. The movement was highly perilous, since it divided his force into three portions, no one of which could support the other; but the French kept themselves rigidly on the defensive, though the British lay but a gunshot from them across the rocky gorge of the Montmorenci and annoyed their camp not a little with their artillery. Still Wolfe could accomplish nothing decisive. The news that Amherst was advancing against Ticonderoga did indeed discourage the Canadians and increase desertion among them; but in all other respects the operations before Quebec had come to a deadlock.
July 18.
July 28.
Now, however, the fleet which had already vanquished the difficulties in the navigation of the St. Lawrence once more came forward to show the way. It was the opinion of the French that no vessel could pass the batteries of Quebec without destruction; but on the night of the 18th of July H.M.S. Sutherland, of fifty guns, with several smaller vessels, sailed safely up the river, covered by the fire of the guns on Point Lévis, destroyed some small craft which they found there and anchored above the town. This was the first menace of an attempt to take Quebec in reverse, and obliged Montcalm to detach six hundred men from the camp of Beauport to defend the few accessible points between the city and Cap Rouge, some eight miles above it. Wolfe took advantage of the movement also to send a detachment to ravage the country to westward of Quebec; but though he thus added a fourth to the three isolated divisions into which he had broken up his army, Montcalm still declined to move. A second attempt was indeed made to destroy the British vessels by fire-ships, which was frustrated like the first by the coolness and gallantry of the British sailors; but beyond this French aggression would not go. Montcalm was resolved to play the part of Fabius, and he seemed likely to play it with success.
The season was now wearing on, and Wolfe was not a whit nearer to his object than at his first disembarkation. Mortified by his ill-success he now resolved to attack Montcalm's camp in front. The hazard was desperate, for, after leaving troops to hold Point Lévis and the entrenchments on the Montmorenci, he could raise little more than five thousand men with which to attack a force of more than double his strength in a very formidable position. A mile to westward of the falls of the Montmorenci there is a strand about a furlong wide at high water and half a mile wide at low tide, between that river and the foot of the cliffs. The French had built redoubts on this strand above high-water mark, which were commanded, though Wolfe could not see it, by the fire of musketry from the entrenchments above. Wolfe's hope was that by the capture of one of these redoubts he might tempt the French down to regain it and so bring on a general action, or at least find an opportunity of reconnoitring the entrenched camp itself. Moreover, below the falls of the Montmorenci was a ford, by which some at least of his troops on that river could join in the attack, and so diminish in some degree the disparity of numbers. But Wolfe held the Canadian militia in such contempt that he was not afraid to pit against them, at whatever odds, the valour of his own disciplined soldiers.
July 31.
Accordingly on the morning of the 31st of July H.M.S. Centurion stood in close to the Montmorenci, dropped her anchor and opened fire on the redoubts. Two armed transports followed her and likewise opened fire on the nearest redoubt, stranding as the tide ebbed till at last they lay high and dry on the mud. Simultaneously the batteries on the other side of the Montmorenci opened a furious fire upon the flank of Montcalm's entrenchments, and at eleven o'clock a number of boats filled with troops rowed across from Point Lévis and hovered about the river opposite Beauport as if to attack at that point. Time, however, showed Montcalm where real danger was to be apprehended, and he concentrated the whole of his twelve thousand men between Beauport and the Montmorenci. At half-past five the British batteries afloat and ashore opened fire with redoubled fury, and the boats made a dash for the shore. Unfortunately some of them grounded on a ledge short of the flats, which caused some confusion and delay, but eventually all of them reached the strand and set the men ashore. Thirteen companies of grenadiers were the first to land, and after them two hundred men of the Sixtieth; while some distance behind them the Fifteenth and Fraser's Highlanders followed in support. No sooner were they ashore than the grenadiers, the most trusted troops in the army, for some reason got out of hand. Despite the efforts of their officers they would not wait for the supports to form up, but made a rush in the greatest disorder and confusion for the redoubt and drove the French from it. Instantly a tremendous fire was poured upon them from the entrenchments above. The grenadiers recoiled for a moment; then recovering themselves they ran forward again and made a mad effort to struggle up the steep, slippery grass of the ascent, but only to roll down by scores, killed or wounded by the hail of musketry from the French lines. Where the affair would have ended it is hard to say, had not the clouds of a summer's storm, which had hung over the river all the afternoon, suddenly burst just at that moment in a deluge of rain. All ammunition on both sides was drenched, so that further firing became impossible, while the grassy slope became so treacherous that it was hopeless to attempt to climb it. Wolfe, seeing that everything was gone wrong, ordered a retreat; and the troops fell back and re-embarked, the grenadiers and Sixtieth having lost five hundred officers and men, or well-nigh half of their numbers, in killed, wounded, and missing.
August 5.
Wolfe was highly indignant over the misbehaviour of the grenadiers, and rebuked them sharply in general orders for their impetuous, irregular, and unsoldierlike proceedings. The French, on the other hand, were naturally much elated, and flattered themselves that the campaign was virtually at an end. Nor was Wolfe of a very different opinion. It is said, indeed, that he conceived the idea of leaving a part of his troops in a fortified position before Quebec, to be ready for a new attempt in the following spring. Meanwhile for the present he fell back on the tactics, which Barrington had so successfully employed at Guadeloupe, of laying waste all the settlements round about Quebec, with the object of provoking desertion among the militia and exhausting the colony generally. Montcalm, however, was not to be enticed from his lines; he had Indians with him sufficient to make hideous reprisals for Wolfe's desolation, and Canada was not to be won by the burning of villages. Wolfe, therefore, now shifted his operations to the point whither the enterprise of the fleet had led him, above and on the reverse side of Quebec. With every fair wind more and more ships had braved the fire of the batteries and passed through it in safety; and now a flotilla of flat-boats dared the same passage, while twelve hundred men under Brigadier Murray marched overland up the south bank of the St. Lawrence to do service in them. This movement compelled Montcalm to withdraw another fifteen hundred men from the camp at Beauport, to check any attempt at a landing above the city. The duty thus imposed upon this small body of French was most arduous, since it involved anxious watching of fifteen or twenty miles of the shore. So well was it performed, however, under the direction of Bougainville, an officer afterwards famous as the great navigator, that it was only after two repulses that Murray succeeded in burning a large magazine of French stores. The alarm caused by this stroke was so great that Montcalm hastened from Beauport to take command in person; but when he arrived the British had already retired, content with their success.
None the less the French from the highest to the lowest now grew seriously uneasy. Their army was on short rations. All its supplies were drawn from the districts of Three Rivers and Montreal; and, from want of transport overland, these were perforce sent down the river where the British ships lay ready to intercept them. Now was seen the error of sending the frigates up the river and allowing the British squadron to assemble by small detachments above Quebec; but it was too late to repair it. The British fleet had discovered the true method of reducing the city by severing its communications both above and below. The only hope for the French was that winter might drive the shipping from the St. Lawrence and put an end to the campaign, before Quebec should be starved out.
June 15.
July.
July 24.
Meanwhile Amherst's operations to south and west began likewise to tell upon the situation. Taking advantage of the latitude allowed to him by Pitt, he determined to add the reduction of Niagara to the enterprises prescribed to him. This duty he assigned to Brigadier Prideaux with five thousand men; Brigadier Stanwix was entrusted with the relief of Pittsburg; and Amherst in person took charge of the grand advance by Lakes George and Champlain. The operations of Prideaux and Stanwix were to be conducted in combination; for it was intended that while Prideaux was engaged with Niagara, Stanwix should push a force northward against the French posts on Lake Erie, and thence on to Niagara itself, thus releasing Prideaux for an advance to the St. Lawrence. Prideaux was the first to take the field. His force having been assembled on the Mohawk at Senectady, he moved up the stream, left a strong garrison at Fort Stanwix to guard the Great Carrying-place, and moved forward by Lake Oneida and the river Onandaga to Oswego. There leaving nearly half of his force under Colonel Haldimand to secure his retreat, he embarked with the rest on the lake for Niagara. The fort stood in the angle formed by the river Niagara and Lake Ontario, and was garrisoned by some six hundred men. Prideaux at once laid siege in form, though the trenches were at first so unskilfully laid out by the engineers as to require almost total reconstruction. At last, however, the batteries opened fire. Prideaux was unluckily killed almost immediately by the premature explosion of a shell from one of his own guns, but Sir William Johnson, who had joined the force with a party of Indians, took command in his place and pushed the siege with great energy. The fort after two or three weeks of battering was in extremity; when a party of thirteen hundred French rangers and Indians, which had been summoned from the work of harassing the British on the Ohio to the relief of Niagara, appeared on the scene in the very nick of time. Johnson rose worthily to the occasion. Leaving a third of his force in the trenches and yet another third to guard his boats, he sallied forth with the remainder to meet the relieving force, and after a brisk engagement routed it completely. The survivors fled hurriedly back to Lake Erie, burned Venango and the posts on the lake and retired to Detroit. Niagara surrendered on the evening of the same day, and thus were accomplished at a stroke the most important objects to be gained by Stanwix and Prideaux. The whole region of the Upper Ohio was left in undisputed possession of the British, and the French posts of the West were hopelessly cut off from Canada. Now, therefore, the ground was open for an advance on Montreal by Lake Ontario; and Amherst lost no time in sending General Gage to take command of Prideaux's force, with orders to attack the French post of La Galette, at the head of the rapids of the St. Lawrence, and thence to push on as close as possible to Montreal. "Now is the time," wrote Amherst to him, "and we must make use of it."
July 21.
July 26.
August.
Amherst himself had assembled his army at the end of June at the usual rendezvous by the head of Lake George. His force consisted of about eleven thousand five hundred men, five thousand of them Provincials and the remainder British. As was now the rule, he had massed the grenadiers of the army into one corps, and had formed also a body of Light Infantry which he had equipped appropriately for its work. It was not, however, until the 21st of July that the troops were embarked, and that a flotilla little less imposing than Abercromby's set sail with a fair wind over Lake George. It was drawn up in four columns, the light troops and Provincials on either flank, the regular troops in the right centre and the artillery and baggage in the left centre. An advanced and a rear-guard in line covered the head and tail of the columns, and an armed sloop followed in rear of all. Before dark they had reached the Narrows, and at daybreak of the following morning the force disembarked and marched, meeting with little resistance, by the route of Abercromby's second advance to Ticonderoga. The entrenchments which had foiled the British in the previous year had been reconstructed but were found to be deserted; Bourlamaque, the French commander, having withdrawn his garrison, some thirty-five hundred men only, into the fort. Amherst brought up his artillery to lay siege in form, but on the night of the 26th a loud explosion announced that the French had abandoned Ticonderoga and blown up the works. It was, however, but one bastion that had been destroyed, so Amherst at once repaired the damage and made preparations for advance on Crown Point. On the 1st of August he learned that Bourlamaque had abandoned this fortress also, and fallen back to the strong position of Isle aux Noix at the northern outlet of Lake Champlain. Amherst was now brought to a standstill, for the French had four armed vessels on the lake, and it was necessary for him to build vessels likewise for the protection of the flotilla before he could advance farther. He at once set about this work, concurrently with the erection of a strong fort at Crown Point, but unfortunately he began too late. Amherst was above all a methodical man, whose principle was to make good each step gained before he attempted to move again. Possibly he had not anticipated so easy an advance to Crown Point, but, be that as it may, he had made no provision for advancing beyond it, and when at last, by the middle of September, his ships were ready, the season was too far advanced for further operations. He tried to stir up Gage to hasten to the attack on La Galette, but without success. In fact by the middle of August the campaign of the armies of the south and west was virtually closed.
August.
Nevertheless for the moment the news of Amherst's advance to Crown Point caused great alarm in Quebec, and Montcalm felt himself obliged to send Lévis, one of his best officers, to superintend the defence of Montreal. Gradually, however, as Amherst's inaction was prolonged, the garrison regained confidence; and meanwhile deep discouragement fell on the British. On the 20th of August Wolfe, who was much exhausted by hard work, anxiety, and mortification, fell seriously ill and was compelled to delegate the conduct of operations to a council of his brigadiers. Several plans were propounded to them, all of which they rejected in favour of an attempt to gain a footing on the ridge above the city, cut off Montcalm's supplies from Montreal, and compel him to fight or surrender. The course was that which had been marked out by the fleet from the moment that the ships had passed above Quebec. It was indeed both difficult and hazardous, but it was the only plan that promised any hope of success; and the success, if attained, would be final. Wolfe accepted it forthwith and without demur. The army had lost over eight hundred men killed and wounded since the beginning of operations, and had been weakened still more seriously by disease; but the General was driven to desperation by sickness and disappointment and was ready to undertake any enterprise that commended itself to his officers. On the last day of August he was sufficiently recovered to go abroad once more, and on the 2nd of September he wrote to Pitt the story of his failure up to that day and of his resolutions for the future, all in a strain of dejection that sank almost to despair.
Sept. 3.
On the following day the troops were skilfully withdrawn without loss from the camp on the Montmorenci. On the night of the 4th a flotilla of flat-boats passed successfully above the town with the baggage and stores, and on the 5th seven battalions marched westward overland from Point Lévis and embarked, together with Wolfe himself, on Admiral Holmes' ships. Montcalm thereupon reinforced Bougainville to a strength of three thousand men and charged him to watch the movements of the fleet with the utmost vigilance. Bougainville's headquarters were at Cap Rouge, with detached fortified posts at Sillery, six miles down the river, at Samos yet farther down, and at Anse du Foulon, now called Wolfe's Cove, a mile and a half above Quebec. It was by this last that Wolfe, searching the heights for mile after mile with his telescope, perceived a narrow path running up the face of the precipice. From the path he turned his glass to the post above it, and seeing but ten or twelve tents concluded that the guard was not numerous and might be overpowered. There then was a way found for the ascent of the cliffs from the river: the next problem was how to turn the discovery to good account.
On the morning of the 7th of September Holmes' squadron weighed anchor and sailed up to Cap Rouge. The French instantly turned out to man their entrenchments; and Wolfe, having kept them in suspense for a sufficient time, ordered the troops into the boats and directed them to row up and down as if in search of a landing-place. The succeeding days were employed in a series of similar feints, the ships drifting daily up to Cap Rouge with the flood tide and dropping down to Quebec with the ebb, till Bougainville, who followed every movement with increasing anxiety and bewilderment, fairly wore out his troops with incessant marching to and fro.
Sept. 12.
At last on the 12th of September Wolfe's opportunity presented itself. Two deserters came in from Bougainville's camp with intelligence that at next ebb-tide a convoy of provisions would pass down the river to Quebec. Wolfe sent orders to Colonel Burton, who was in command of the standing camps, that all the men which he could spare from them should march at nightfall along the southern bank of the river, and wait at a chosen place for embarkation. As night fell Admiral Saunders moved out of the basin of Orleans with the main fleet and ranged the ships along the length of the camp at Beauport. The boats were then lowered and manned by marines, sailors, and such few soldiers as had been left below Quebec, while the ships opened fire on the beach as if to clear it for a landing. Montcalm, completely deceived, massed the whole of his troops at Beauport, and kept them under arms to repel the threatened attack. Meanwhile Holmes' squadron, with boats moored alongside the transports, lay quietly anchored off Cap Rouge, nor showed sign of life until late dusk, when seventeen hundred men took their places in the boats and drifted with the tide for some little distance up the stream. Bougainville marked the movement and made no doubt that attack was designed upon his headquarters. Night fell, dark and moonless, and all was quiet. Monsieur Vergor, who commanded the post at Anse du Foulon, gave leave to most of his guard of Canadians to go harvesting, and saw no reason why he should not himself go comfortably to bed. Bougainville remained on the alert, doubtless impatient for the tide to turn, which would carry the British away from his quarters and leave him in peace. He did not know that Wolfe was even then on board the flag-ship making his final arrangements for the morrow's battle, and that he had handed the portrait of his betrothed to Captain John Jervis of H.M.S. Porcupine, to be returned to her in the event of his death.
Sept. 13.
At length at two o'clock in the morning the tide ebbed. Two lanterns rose flickering to the maintop shrouds of the Sutherland; Wolfe and his officers stepped into their boat, and with the whole flotilla astern of them dropped silently down the river. After a due interval the sloops and frigates followed, with the second division of troops on board; and Bougainville with a sigh of relief resolved not to harass his men by a fruitless march after them. For full two hours the boats pursued their way, when the silence was broken by the challenge of a French sentry. "France," answered a Highland officer who had learned the French tongue on foreign service. "What regiment?" pursued the sentry. "The Queen's" (de la Reine) replied the officer, naming a corps that formed part of Bougainville's force. The sentry, knowing that a convoy of provisions was expected, allowed the boats to pass; for though Bougainville had, as a matter of fact, countermanded the convoy, the guards had not been apprised of the countermand. Off Samos another sentry, visible not a pistol-shot away from the boats, again challenged. "Provision-boats," answered the same officer, "don't make a noise or the English will hear." Once more the boats were suffered to pass. Presently they rounded the headland of Anse du Foulon, and there no sentry was to be seen. The leading boats were carried by the current somewhat below the intended landing-place, and the troops disembarked below the path, on a narrow strand at the foot of the heights. Then twenty-four men of the Light Infantry, who had volunteered for a certain unknown but dangerous service under Colonel Howe, slung their muskets about them, threw themselves upon the face of the cliff, and began to drag themselves through the two hundred feet of stunted bush that separated them from the enemy.
The dawn was just breaking as they reached the top, and through the dim light they could distinguish the group of tents that composed Vergor's encampment. Instantly they dashed at them; and the French, utterly surprised, at once took to their heels. Vergor, who was reputed a coward, stood firm and fired his pistols; and the report of three of the British muskets, together with the cheers of Howe's forlorn hope, gave Wolfe the signal for which he waited. He uttered the word to advance, and the rest of the troops swarmed up the cliff to their comrades as best they could. The zigzag path which had first attracted Wolfe's eye was found to be obstructed by trenches and abatis, but these obstacles were cleared away and the ascent made easier. Presently the report of cannon was heard from up the river: the batteries of Sillery and Samos were firing at the rearmost of the boats and at Holmes' squadron. Howe and his Light Infantry were detached to silence them, which they effectually did; and meanwhile the disembarkation proceeded rapidly. As fast as the boats were emptied they went back to fetch the second division from the ships and Burton's men from the opposite shore. Before the sun was well up the whole force of forty-five hundred men had accomplished the ascent, and was filing across the plain at the summit of the heights.
Wolfe went forward to reconnoitre. The ground on which he stood formed part of the high plateau which ends in the promontory of Quebec. About a mile to eastward of the landing-place was a tract of grass, known as the plains of Abraham, fairly level ground for the most part, though broken by patches of corn and clumps of bushes, and bounded on the south by the heights of the St. Lawrence and to north by those of the St. Charles. On these plains, where the plateau is less than a mile wide, Wolfe chose his position for the expected battle. His situation, despite the skilful execution of the movement which brought his army across Montcalm's line of communication, was no secure nor enviable one, for besides Montcalm's army and the garrison of Quebec in his front, he had also to reckon with Bougainville's detachment in his rear. His only chance of success was that the French should allow him to beat them in detail, that, in fact, they should bring out their main army and give him opportunity to crush it in front, before Bougainville should have time to operate effectively in his rear. But there was no reason why the French should do anything of the kind; and Wolfe's dispositions needed to be regulated accordingly. The extent of the ground was too great to permit order of battle in more than one line; and it was in one line that he prepared to meet the main force from the side of Quebec. The right wing rested on the brink of the heights above the St. Lawrence, and here was stationed a single platoon of the Twenty-eighth. Next it, in succession from right to left, stood the Thirty-fifth, three companies of the Louisburg grenadiers, the remainder of the Twenty-eighth, the Forty-third, Forty-seventh, Fraser's Highlanders, and the Fifty-eighth. Straight through the centre of the position, midway between the Forty-seventh and Fraser's, ran the road from Sillery to Quebec, and here was posted a single light field-gun which had been dragged up from Wolfe's Cove. On the extreme left, beyond the flank of the Fifty-eighth, ran the road from Sainte Foy to Quebec, with a few scattered houses on the south side and patches of bushes and coppice beyond it. The line, being three ranks deep, was not long enough to rest its left on this road, much less on the heights above the St. Charles, so the Fifteenth foot was thrown back en potence to prevent the turning of the left flank. The second battalion of the Sixtieth and the Forty-eighth Foot were stationed in rear, the one on the left and the other on the right, in eight subdivisions, with wide intervals. Two companies of the Fifty-eighth were left to guard the landing-place, the third battalion of the Sixtieth was detached to the right rear to preserve communication with it; and finally Howe's Light Infantry occupied a wood far in rear, evidently to hold Bougainville in check. Monckton commanded the right and Murray the left of the fighting line, while Townsend took charge of the scattered troops which did duty for a reserve. Wolfe in person remained with Monckton's brigade. Probably he anticipated that Montcalm would attempt to turn his right and so cut off his retreat.
Meanwhile Montcalm had passed a troubled night. The false attack of the fleet on Beauport had kept him in continual anxiety; and he was still more disquieted at daybreak to hear the sound of the cannon of Samos and Sillery above the city. He sent an officer to the Governor's quarters in Quebec for information, but received no answer; so at six o'clock he rode up to look for himself, when on reaching the right of his camp he caught sight, over the St. Charles, of an ominous band of scarlet stretched across the heights two miles away. His countenance fell. "This is a serious business," he said, and he despatched an aide-de-camp at full gallop to bring up the troops from the right and centre of the camp of Beauport. The men, only lately relieved from the manning of the entrenchments, got under arms and streamed away in hot haste across the bridge of the St. Charles and through the narrow streets of the city—Indians, Canadians, and regulars all alike stirred by the sudden approach of danger. Further reconnaissance filled Montcalm with still greater dismay. It was not a mere detachment, but practically the entire British army that had found its way to the heights between him and Montreal. Meanwhile Vaudreuil, the Governor of Quebec, who was also Commander-in-Chief, was not to be found; and there was unity neither of direction nor of obedience. Montcalm applied to Ramesay, who commanded the garrison of Quebec, for twenty-five field-guns which were mounted in one of the batteries: Ramesay declared that he needed them for his own defence and would spare but three. Then there was anxious waiting for the troops from the left of Beauport's camp, which for some reason never came. All was confusion, perplexity, and distraction.
In such circumstances Montcalm appears to have succumbed to nervous strain and to have lost his wits. He held a hasty council of war with his principal officers and decided to fight at once. He was afraid, it seems, lest Wolfe should be reinforced or lest he might entrench himself. Yet there was no occasion for extreme haste. Another two hours would have sufficed, if not to bring up the missing troops from Beauport, at all events to procure more guns and to send a messenger by a safe route to concert measures with Bougainville; and the day was yet young. The supplies of the French were failing, it is true, but their army was not starving; and from whence was Wolfe himself, with Bougainville in his rear, to draw his supplies even supposing that he did entrench himself? The British had two days' provisions with them, but for all further supply they must depend on a single zigzag path wide enough for but one man abreast. Even supposing that Montcalm could not succeed in obtaining the thirty field-guns for which he asked, and which if obtained would almost inevitably have blasted the British army off the field, there was nothing to prevent him from man?uvring with a superior force to keep the British under arms until nightfall, while his Indians and irregulars, of whom he had abundance, harried the British right flank in front and rear under shelter of the scrub, and hindered the bringing up of further stores. What would have been the condition of Wolfe's army on the following morning after a second night under arms, and what opening might there not have been for successful attack? But it was not to be. Whether Montcalm was spurred on by the impatience of his own half-distracted force, or whether he simply gave way to nervous exhaustion, must remain uncertain. At any rate he resolved with the five thousand troops that were with him to accept battle at once.
By nine o'clock his line of battle was formed, some six hundred yards from the British position. On his right, resting on the road to Sainte Foy was a battalion of Canadian militia, and next to it in succession the regular regiments of Bèarn and La Sarre. Next to these, in column on either side of the road to Sillery, were the regiments of Guienne and Languedoc, and to their left regiment Roussillon and another battalion of militia. On the extreme right and left some two thousand Indians and Canadians swarmed forward in skirmishing order in advance of the line of battle. It was with the fire of these sharpshooters that the action began. There was good cover for them not only on the flanks but also among the scattered bushes in the front. Wolfe threw out skirmishers to meet them, and the fusillade became lively, especially on the British left, where Townsend's men began to fall fast. So severe became this pressure on the left that Townsend, alarmed for his flank, brought up the second battalion of the Sixtieth to the left of the Fifty-eighth, detailed part of them to drive the Canadians from the houses by the road and doubled the remainder back en potence in line with the Fifteenth; while at the same time the Light Infantry was called up in support of the Fifteenth to strengthen the flank still further. Thus before the action was well begun the rear-guard and half of the reserve was practically absorbed in the fighting line. On the British right, where the French sharpshooters could not get round the flank, their fire was by no means so deadly; but it does not appear that either of these attacks formed part of any settled plan of Montcalm, for by throwing the mass of his skirmishers against the British left he might have made them very formidable.
Meanwhile Montcalm's three field-guns had opened fire, and were answered by the single gun on the Sillery road with great effect. So the minutes dragged on, until at a little before ten the French line advanced with loud shouts to the true attack, the regulars in the centre moving steadily, a long streak of white edged on either hand with red and with blue, and the militia striving to move as steadily on the flanks. The English, who until now had been lying down, then sprang to their feet and stood steady with recovered arms. At a range of two hundred yards the French muskets opened fire but with little effect, while much confusion and delay was caused by the Canadian militia who, true to their instincts as skirmishers, threw themselves flat on the ground to reload. Wolfe was shot through the wrist, but he merely wrapped his handkerchief round the wound, and called to the men to be steady and reserve their fire. The French recovered their order somewhat and again came on, filling the air with their cries, while the British stood calm, silent and immovable, knowing their chief and trusting him. Nearer and nearer drew the parti-coloured line, gayer and gayer as the blue and scarlet facings on the white coats came into view, brighter and brighter as the detail of metal buttons and accoutrements cleared themselves from the distance, till at length the time was come. Thirty-five yards only separated the opposing arrays, when the word rang out, the still red line sprang into life, the recovered muskets leaped forward into a long bristling bar, and with one deafening crash, the most perfect volley ever fired on battlefield burst forth as if from a single monstrous weapon, from end to end of the British line. A dense bank of smoke blotted the French from sight, and from behind it there rose a horrible din of clattering arms, and savage oaths and agonised cries. The sharp clink of ramrods broke in upon the sound as the British reloaded; and when the smoke rolled away, the gay line was seen to be shivered to fragments, while the bright coats strewed the ground like swathes of gaudy flowers. There was hardly a bullet of that volley that had not struck home.
Montcalm, himself unhurt and conspicuous on a black charger, galloped frantically up and down his shattered ranks in a vain effort to restore order. Wolfe gave the order to advance, and after one more volley the scarlet line strode forward with bayonet and claymore to complete the rout. There was nothing to stop the British, nothing even to gall them except the fire of a few sharpshooters hidden in the scrub. Wolfe himself led them at the head of the Twenty-eighth. A bullet struck him in the groin, but he paused not a moment and was still striding on, when another ball passed through his lungs. He staggered forward, still vainly striving to keep on his feet. "Support me, support me," he gasped to an officer who was close to him, "lest my gallant fellows should see me fall." Two or three men fell out and carried him to the rear, but his fall was noticed by few; and the victorious line pressed on. Some of the sharpshooters continued to fire from behind the shrubs and required to be driven out. Others taking cover nearer to the town opened a biting fire on the Highlanders who, charging as usual with the claymore only, suffered much loss in the attempt to force so wily an enemy from the bush. But other regiments came up and did the work for them with the musket, and thenceforward no further stand was made by the French, but Montcalm's whole force broke up and fled in wild confusion towards the town. He himself, borne away in the rush of the fugitives, was shot through the body, but being supported in the saddle rode in through the gates. "It is nothing, nothing," he called to the shrieking women who saw the red stains on his white uniform; "don't distress yourselves over me, good people." He was lifted from his horse and borne into a surgeon's house to die. The panic among the French increased. Their chief was dying, his second mortally wounded; and among the terrified mob that fled by the St. Charles there rose a cry to destroy the bridge of boats, lest the English should break into the camp of Beauport. This insane movement, which would have sacrificed the whole of the fugitives who had not yet crossed the river, was checked by one or two officers who still kept their wits about them; but none the less the French were not only beaten but demoralised, and the victory of the British was complete.
But the victors also had lost the services both of their General and his second. Monckton had been severely wounded by a musket-shot which for the present disabled him from duty, and Wolfe had been carried to the rear more dead than alive. He begged his bearers to set him down, and refused to see a surgeon. "There is no need," he said, "it is all over with me"; and he sank into unconsciousness. "How they run," cried out one of the attendants, as he watched the French flying before the red-coats. "Who run?" asked Wolfe, waking suddenly to life. "The enemy, Sir, they give way everywhere." "Go one of you to Colonel Burton," ordered the dying General with great earnestness, "and tell him to march Webb's regiment down to Charles River to cut off the retreat from the bridge." He ceased, and turned on his side. "Now, God be praised, I will die in peace," he murmured; and so died.
With his death and the disabling of Monckton the command devolved upon Townsend, who had no sooner assumed it than he found the rear of the army threatened by Bougainville. Turning upon this new enemy with two battalions and two field-guns he soon forced him to retire; and then, the pursuit being ended, he proceeded to entrench himself on the battlefield. The losses of the British were trifling compared with the magnitude of the success, amounting to no more than six hundred and thirty of all ranks killed and wounded. The chief sufferers were the Highlanders, during their onslaught with the claymore, and the Fifteenth, Fifty-eighth and second battalion of the Sixtieth, who bore the brunt of the sharpshooting on the left flank. Before midnight the entrenchments had made good progress, and cannon had been brought up to defend them. A battery also had been mounted at the northern angle of the town, and the French hospital, full of sick and wounded men, had been taken. Nothing is said of the exhaustion of the troops, who had been on duty continuously for at least thirty hours.
Meanwhile utter confusion reigned in the French camp. Vaudreuil called a council of war, and there was tumultuous debate. A messenger was sent to the dying Montcalm for advice, and returned with the reply that there were three courses open, to retreat up the river, to fight again, or to surrender the colony. There was much to be said for fighting, for with Bougainville's force the French could still bring superior numbers into the field; still more to be said for the defence of Quebec; but the demoralisation was too deep to permit any bold action. At nine o'clock in the evening Vaudreuil gave the order to retreat, and, the word once uttered, the entire French force streamed away in disorderly and disgraceful flight to the post of Jacques Cartier, thirty miles up the St. Lawrence. The only instructions left with the garrison of Quebec were to surrender as soon as provisions should fail. Well was it for Montcalm, always a brave and faithful soldier, that his deliverance came to him before the dawn of another day.
Sept. 17.
Townsend for his part pushed his trenches forward against Quebec with the greatest energy. The French, despite their precipitate retreat, were still superior force in his rear; and though certainly demoralised might rally on joining the unbeaten troops of Lévis, and imbibe new courage under the leadership of that excellent officer. It was therefore imperative to press the garrison hard while still overpowered by the despairing sense of its isolation. On the 17th of September the British ships of war moved up against the Lower Town, and a scarlet column approached the walls from the meadows of the St. Charles. The French drums beat to arms, but the Canadian militia refused to turn out, and the white flag was hoisted. An officer was sent to Townsend's quarters to gain time, if possible, by prolonging negotiations. Townsend's answer was peremptory: unless the town were surrendered by eleven o'clock, he would take it by storm; and on this Ramesay signed the capitulation. It was none too soon. Before the messenger with the signed articles had reached Townsend, Canadian horsemen arrived with provisions and with a cheering message that help was at hand; and on the very next morning Lévis marched out from Jacques Cartier, only to learn that he was just too late.
Sept. 18.
On the afternoon of the 18th the British entered the city, and during the following weeks were employed in strengthening the defences and making provision against the winter; for it had been decided that the fortress must be held at all risks. Monckton was still too far disabled to assume command; Townsend, fresh from the House of Commons, had no mind for such dreary duty as winter-quarters; so Brigadier Murray was left as Governor with a garrison of seven thousand five hundred men, his battalions being strengthened by drafts from the Sixty-second and Sixty-ninth, which were serving on board the fleet. At the end of October Admiral Saunders fired his farewell salute and dropped down the river with his fleet, carrying with him the embalmed remains of Wolfe, to be laid by his father's body in the parish church of Greenwich.
So ended the first stage of the conquest of Canada, with better fortune than might have been expected; for there is no gainsaying the fact that the concert of operations intended by Pitt and designed by Amherst had broken down. It should seem indeed that the scheme was too complex, that too much was attempted with the resources at command, that the combination of the various enterprises was too intricate to admit of complete success in a wild and distant country, where the campaigning season was so strictly bounded by the climate. Amherst's operations depended greatly on the help given to him by the Provincials, and the colonial assemblies whatever their good-will were always dilatory, while sometimes, as in the case of Pennsylvania, they were intolerably recalcitrant. Again, though drafts had been sent to the General to make good the losses of the previous campaign, these were not nearly sufficient to fill the gaps made by the slaughter of Ticonderoga and the bitter cold of a Canadian winter. Significantly enough, also, no care had been taken to provide the garrison of Louisburg, most arctic of quarters, even with coverlets, so that the casualties in the winter were far greater than they should have been. Again, it had been ordained that Hopson should reinforce Amherst when his work at Martinique was done, but this arrangement also had broken down; and the least forethought as to the waste of a tropical campaign would have shown that it should not have been reckoned on. The result was that Amherst and Wolfe found themselves with insufficient troops, and that as a natural consequence the former was obliged to cut the margin of his several operations too fine. The death of Prideaux, an excellent officer, was a great misfortune, though Johnson finished his work at Niagara efficiently enough. Stanwix also, after overcoming vast difficulties of transport, succeeded in penetrating to Pittsburg; but here the operations of both columns came to an end. The Ohio happened to be so low that Stanwix could not send up a battalion, as he had been bidden, to reinforce Gage for his advance to La Galette; and Gage, who was not a very enterprising man, to Amherst's great disappointment thought himself not strong enough to move in consequence. On Amherst's own failure to reach Montreal comment has already been passed; but it should be remembered that the whole burden of the preparations for Wolfe's expedition was laid upon him, and that Wolfe gratefully acknowledged the thoroughness of the work. Still the fact remains that the diversions from south and west were an almost total failure, and that Wolfe was consequently obliged to perform his difficult task unaided.
Fortune was against the British in that the weather delayed the assembling of Wolfe's army at Louisburg; for those few lost weeks might easily have made the entire difference to the campaign. Wolfe, with an inadequate force, was driven to his wits' end to solve the problem assigned to him; and it is quite incontestable that the credit for the fall of Quebec belongs rather to the Navy than to the Army. The names of Saunders and of Holmes are little remembered; and the fame of James Cook the master, whose skill and diligence did much to reveal the unknown channel of the St. Lawrence, is swallowed up in that of Captain James Cook the navigator. Still the fact remains unaltered. It was the audacity of Holmes and his squadron in running the gauntlet of the batteries of Quebec which first threatened the supplies and communications of the city, and forced Montcalm to weaken his main army by detaching Bougainville. It was the terrible restless energy of the same squadron, ever moving up and down the river, which wore out the limbs of the French soldiers and the nerves of their officers; and to the Navy fully as much as to the Army is due the praise for the movement that finally set Wolfe and his battalions on the heights of Abraham. But in truth this last most delicate and critical operation was so admirably thought out and executed by the officers of both services that it must abide for ever a masterpiece in its kind. The British Navy and Army working, as at Quebec, in concord and harmony under loyal and able chiefs, are indeed not easily baffled.
It still remains for enquiry why Wolfe did not take earlier advantage of the opportunities opened to him by the fleet; and even after allowance has been made for his constant illness, the answer is not readily found. The measures which led to the decisive action were, as has been told, taken on the advice of his brigadiers, and, if Montcalm had not succumbed to positive infatuation, would very likely have brought Wolfe to a court-martial. But if instead of wasting the whole of August in futile efforts below Quebec, Wolfe had shifted his operations forthwith to the west of the city, it seems at least probable that he could have attained his object without hazarding that desperate cast on the plains of Abraham. It would presumably have been open to him to gain the heights as he gained them ultimately, to have overwhelmed Bougainville's posts piecemeal, as was done as far as Sillery by a small detachment on the morning of the battle, and to have entrenched himself in the most suitable of them. Then having cut the French communications by land and water, he could have forced Montcalm either to abandon Quebec or to fight on his own terms. But it is easy to be wise after the event; and a brilliant success, however fortunate, is rightly held to cover all errors. Moreover, the praise for the perfection of drill and discipline which won the victory with a single volley is all Wolfe's own. Still it seems to be a fair criticism that the General was slow to perceive the real weakness of Montcalm's position and the vital spot laid open to him by the fleet for a deadly thrust. The consequence was that the work was but half done and, as shall now be seen, only narrowly escaped undoing.
The city of Quebec when the British entered into possession was little better than a shapeless mass of ruins, having been reduced to that state by the guns of the fleet. The population was thoroughly demoralised, and given over to theft and pillage; liquor was abundant and the British soldier was thirsty; in fact it needed all Murray's firmness to restore any kind of order. In December severe weather began in earnest, and the effects of bad quarters, bad food, insufficient clothing and insufficient fuel speedily made themselves felt. The sentries were relieved every hour, yet it was impossible to keep them free of frost-bite. The Highlanders despite their natural hardihood suffered more than their comrades, the kilt being but a sorry protection against a Canadian winter; and they were only relieved by a supply of long woollen hose knitted for them, perhaps as much for decency's as for charity's sake, by the nuns of the city. Still the men remained cheerful, for they were kept constantly at work cutting fuel and dragging it in sledges to their quarters, an errand on which they set forth always with muskets as well as with axes, from fear of Indians and bushrangers. Nevertheless their sufferings were great. Fifty men were frost-bitten on a single day while employed on this duty; three days later sixty-five more were similarly afflicted, and before Christmas there were over a hundred and fifty cases. This, however, would have been a small matter but for the more deadly scourge that was added to it. The garrison was victualled entirely with salt provisions; it was impossible to procure fresh meat for the men; and scurvy grew and increased until there was hardly a soldier in the ranks, even among those reckoned fit for duty, who was wholly free from the disease.
1760
With such a plague in his midst Murray might well feel apprehensive for the safety of Quebec against the enemy without the walls, for ever since the British occupation of the city the French had made no secret of their intention to recapture it. Murray had established two fortified posts a few miles to westward of Quebec at Sainte Foy and Old Lorette; while the French had established themselves at St. Augustine, only two days' march from the gates, from which position it was soon necessary to expel them. Petty skirmishes such as this were frequent, but ended always with so easy advantage to the British that the troops began to think themselves invincible. Repeated intelligence, however, still arrived of French designs against Quebec, vague enough at first, but, as the winter wore on, gradually assuming more definite form. Lévis, the ablest officer left to the French since the fall of Montcalm, was in fact straining every nerve to organise and equip a force of overwhelming strength for the purpose. He had full information of the state of Murray's army and knew that he had but to bide his time for scurvy to do the best part of his work for him. At the end of March he heard that half of the British were on the sick-list, and the report was not far from the truth. By the middle of April Murray had barely three thousand men fit for duty, while no fewer than seven hundred were lying in the snow-drifts, waiting till spring should unbind the frozen ground to give them a grave.
April 21.
April 26.
April 27.
On the 17th of April Murray, learning that the preparations of the French were complete, occupied the mouth of Cap Rouge River to prevent a landing at that point. Four days later Lévis set out with about seven thousand men, half of them regular troops, and a fleet of bateaux escorted by two frigates and by several smaller craft. The river was not yet free from ice, the weather was bad, and navigation was difficult; but on the 26th the army, reinforced by the garrisons of several outlying stations to nearly nine thousand men, landed at St. Augustine and marched upon the British advanced posts. The British at once fell back from Cap Rouge and Old Lorette upon Sainte Foy. Lévis followed after them all night, despite the difficulties of half-thawed ice and driving rain and tempest, and at daybreak arrived before Sainte Foy to find every house occupied by the British and their cannon playing on his columns as they emerged from the forest. Murray, warned by the information of a French gunner, who had been picked up half dead from the floating ice in the St. Lawrence, had marched out with half of the garrison to cover the retreat of his advanced parties. The position which he occupied was strong, and Lévis being ignorant of the weakness of his numbers would not venture to attack, but resolved to wait until nightfall and then move round the British left flank. Murray therefore was able to retire in safety to Quebec, while Lévis occupied Sainte Foy and pushed his light troops forward to Sillery.
April 28.
Murray's position now was none of the pleasantest. The fortifications of Quebec were in no condition to withstand an energetic cannonade, and the ground was still frozen so hard that it was impossible for him to throw up entrenchments, as he had long desired, outside the walls. The only alternative open to him was to sally out and fight Lévis, at odds of one against two, and beat him if he could. Murray was young, daring and fired by the example of Wolfe; his army was, as he said, in the habit of beating the enemy; and he had a fine train of artillery. He therefore resolved to go out and fight. Accordingly at half-past six on the morning of the 28th he marched out of Quebec at the head of all the troops that he could muster, a bare three thousand men, with three howitzers and twenty field-pieces, and drew them up on the ground which Montcalm had occupied on the famous 13th of September. The force was formed in one line of two brigades, the right or Burton's brigade consisting, from right to left, of the Fifteenth, Fifty-eighth, second battalion of the Sixtieth, and Forty-eighth regiments; the left or Fraser's brigade of the Forty-third, Forty-seventh, Fraser's Highlanders, and the Twenty-eighth. The Thirty-fifth and third battalion of the Sixtieth were posted in reserve in rear of the centre, while the Light Infantry and the Provincial rangers stood wide on the right and left flanks. The field-guns were distributed in pairs to each battalion.
Moving forward to reconnoitre, Murray perceived that the French line was not yet formed. That Lévis had chosen his ground was clear, for he had occupied two block-houses built by the British above Anse du Foulon at the southern edge of the plateau, as well as a house and a fortified windmill at the northern brink, and had extended his vanguard along the ridge between these two points. But the main body was still debouching in columns from Sillery Wood, a mile or more in rear, and two brigades only were as yet deployed by the block-house to form the French right wing. Thinking the opportunity favourable, Murray ordered an immediate advance; and his whole line moved forward, the men dragging their guns with them in the intervals between battalions. The ground was for the most part still covered with snow, which in some places was piled up in drifts and everywhere soft and sodden with rain; and the tramp of three thousand men soon turned the soil into a sea of mud. Arrived at the ground where Wolfe's army had stood, the line halted, and the guns unlimbering opened so destructive a fire on the French columns that Lévis ordered the battalions of his left to fall back to the woods. The man?uvre was not executed without confusion, and Murray, elated by his apparent success, ordered the line to renew its advance, inclining to its right. This movement, however, brought Burton's brigade on to low ground, where the melting snow was knee-deep and the guns could not be worked with effect. The British Light Infantry attacked the windmill and houses on the French left with great spirit, carried them in spite of a desperate resistance, and pressed on in pursuit of the retreating French. But now the battalions of the French left, no longer checked by the fire of artillery, dashed out of the woods in skirmishing order and falling on the rash pursuers fairly overwhelmed them. Over two hundred of the Light Infantry were killed and wounded, and the few survivors hurrying back in confusion upon Burton's brigade prevented it from firing on the advancing enemy. The French seized the opportunity to reform their broken ranks and the combat was hotly maintained for more than an hour, until ammunition for the British artillery failed, the tumbrils being immovably fixed in the snow-drifts.
On Murray's left his hasty advance was little less disastrous. The block-houses were indeed carried and held for a time, but the French fell back into the woods only to advance again in overwhelming force when the fire of the British artillery failed, and to extend themselves along the British front and flank. The two battalions of the reserve were called up and the fight was maintained with indomitable stubbornness; but with both flanks turned the efforts of the British were hopeless, and Murray gave the word to fall back. The men, though but two in three of them remained unhurt, were furious at the order. "Damn it, what is falling back but retreating!" they said; but there was no help for it. So first the left brigade and then the right retired, cursing as they went. Some of the regiments tried to carry off their guns with them, but finding this impossible owing to deep snow and mud spiked and abandoned them. The French followed in pursuit, hoping to cut them off from the city; but Lévis perceiving the orderliness of the retreat judged it more prudent to recall his troops, and Murray brought back the remnant of his force in safety to Quebec.
So ended the action of Sainte Foy after two hours of stern and bloody work. The loss of the British amounted to a thousand killed and wounded or a full third of the entire force. The Fifteenth, Twenty-eighth, and Highlanders were, after the Light Infantry, the greatest sufferers, but in the attenuated state of the battalions it is probable that in seven out of the ten there fell at least one man in three. The loss of the French was admitted to have exceeded eight hundred. Altogether it was an unfortunate affair, though it cannot be called discreditable to the troops. Murray was misled by overweening confidence in his men and miscalculation of the spirit of the French. His past experience doubtless partly excused the mistake; but even if he had failed to grasp that Lévis was a man who could restore confidence to demoralised troops, he might at least have guessed that he would bring up fresh regiments, who had not learned to fear the red-coats, to meet him. As things were, he sacrificed the advantages of his position and of his superiority in artillery and found himself shut up within the miserable fortifications of Quebec, with his force reduced to twenty-four hundred men, nominally fit for duty, but in reality, to use the expressive words of one of them, "half-starved scorbutic skeletons."
May 9.
May 16.
Murray, however, rose to the emergency with a spirit worthy of a British officer. The troops were at first inclined to break loose from discipline, but Murray hanged the chief offender, staved in all the rum-barrels of the sutlers and quickly restored order. Then every soul of the garrison fell to work to strengthen the defences. Officers yoked themselves to cannon and plied pickaxe and spade, and the men with such an example before them strained themselves to the utmost. In a short time one hundred and fifty guns were mounted and at work on the walls of Quebec, while the French, however they might toil at their trenches in the stubborn soil of the plateau, had hardly brought up a single cannon to answer them. None the less incessant labour and bad food were telling heavily on the enfeebled strength of the garrison, when on the 9th of May the Lowestoft frigate sailed up to Quebec with the news that a squadron was at the mouth of the river and would arrive within a few days. The tidings put new heart into the besieged, though had Lévis ventured on an assault they would have found it hard to repel him. On the 15th two more British men-of-war arrived at Quebec, and next morning two frigates sailed up above the city, attacked and destroyed Lévis' ships and with them the French supplies of food and ammunition. That same evening Lévis raised the siege and retreated with precipitation, leaving behind him forty guns, the whole of his material for the siege, and every man of his sick and wounded. Murray marched at dawn to fall upon his rear, but though he captured many stragglers failed to overtake the main body. Thus Quebec was saved; and the advent of spring, together with a supply of fresh provisions, soon turned Murray's sickly battalions into an army fit for service in the field.
During these miserable months of cold, privation, and disease Amherst had been maturing his plans for a decisive campaign. Pitt had enjoined the capture of Montreal upon him as the principal object, and had resolved to demolish the useless fortress of Louisburg, thereby releasing the garrison for active service. The provincial assemblies were called upon once more to furnish large contingents of troops for a supreme effort, and the final blow was about to fall. Amherst's design was to invade Canada simultaneously from east, west, and south. Murray was to ascend the St. Lawrence from Quebec; Brigadier Haviland was to break in by Lake Champlain; and Amherst himself was to lead the main army down the St. Lawrence from Lake Ontario. Of the three lines of advance Amherst's was not only the longest but the most difficult and dangerous, owing to the rapids which obstruct the navigation of the St. Lawrence; but on the other hand the movement would cut off the retreat of the French army to westward and force it back upon Montreal, where Haviland and Murray would close in upon it and fairly throttle it. The plan was delicate in the extreme and called for the greatest nicety of calculation, for the three armies must start from three different points hundreds of miles apart without possibility of inter-communication, and yet arrive at their goal together, lest the French should concentrate and overwhelm Murray's or Haviland's corps in detail. The principal French posts for barring the lines of advance were ?le aux Noix at the head of Lake Ontario, Sorel on the eastern side of Montreal, and La Galette at the head of the rapids of the St. Lawrence.
The year opened ill for Amherst. In March he was compelled to send thirteen hundred men to the south to quell a rising of Cherokee Indians; and he had not long communicated his instructions to Murray when he received tidings of the defeat of Sainte Foy. He at once summoned two battalions from Louisburg to reinforce Murray, but it was not until late in June that he was relieved by news of the safety of Quebec. The provincial governments also were as usual a sore trial and the cause of much vexatious delay; but Amherst was a man of tenacity and patience who never lost sight of his object nor relaxed his industry for a moment. At length, when midsummer was fully past, the net which he had woven began to close round the French.
July.
August 4.
Murray was the first to move. His garrison had rapidly recovered health and strength, and by July he was able to pick out twenty-two hundred men for the advance on Montreal, while still leaving seventeen hundred behind him for the garrison of Quebec. On the 14th of July his little column embarked in thirty-two vessels with a number of boats and bateaux, and on the following day set sail up the St. Lawrence, leaving Lord Rollo to follow with the Twenty-second and Fortieth Regiments, which had arrived from Louisburg. Murray advanced slowly, skirmishing with small parties of the enemy which hovered about the flotilla on the shore, and disarming the inhabitants as he passed. On the 4th of August he reached Three Rivers, where lay a detachment of the French army; but without delaying to attack it, he passed on to Sorel, where Bourlamaque and M. Dumas with some four thousand men were entrenched along both banks of the river. These officers had been instructed to follow up the flotilla as it moved, so British and French alike advanced towards Montreal, where Lévis lay with the main French army. Murray, meanwhile, by rigour towards the recalcitrant and lenity towards the submissive, persuaded half of Bourlamaque's militia to yield up its arms and take an oath of neutrality. By the 24th, being within nine leagues of Montreal, he sent out a party to seek news of Haviland, and then moving up to ?le Sainte Thérése, just below Montreal, he encamped and awaited the coming of his colleagues.
August 27.
Haviland, meanwhile, had embarked in the third week of August at Crown Point, with two battalions of regulars, and with Provincials and Indians sufficient to raise his force to thirty-four hundred men. Four days brought him to Bougainville's position at ?le aux Noix, where he landed, erected batteries, and opened fire on the fort; while at the same time a party of rangers dragged three guns to the rear of the position and turned them upon Bougainville's sloops of war, which got under way in all haste and stranded in the next bend of the river. Thus Bougainville's communications with the next post, St. John's, down the river Richelieu, were severed, and, as Amherst had foreseen, he was compelled to abandon the island. He joined M. Roquemaure at St. John's with infinite difficulty by a night march through the forest; and both officers falling back from St. John's and Chambly waited with Bourlamaque on the banks of the St. Lawrence, where their force melted away fast through desertion. Haviland opened communications with Murray, and both awaited the approach of Amherst.
August 26.
Sept.
Sept. 5.
The main army had assembled at Oswego during July, Amherst himself arriving on the 9th, but it was not until the first week of August that the last of the appointed regiments appeared at the rendezvous. The force consisted of eight weak battalions of British, numbering less than six thousand men, with four thousand five hundred Provincials and seven hundred Indians, or about eleven thousand in all. The flotilla for the transport of the army was made up of nearly eight hundred whale-boats and bateaux, and was escorted by gun-boats. On the 10th of August the entire force was embarked and by the 15th it had reached Oswegatchie or La Galette, on the site of the present Ogdensburg. Here a French brig of ten guns was attacked and captured by the gun-boats, and the flotilla pursued its way among the Thousand Islands. On an islet at the head of the rapids stood a French post named Fort Lévis, with a garrison of three hundred men, which Amherst forthwith invested, and after three days' cannonade reduced to surrender. Repair of the fort and of his boats detained him until the 30th, and on the 31st the expedition entered upon the most critical of its work, the descent of the rapids. On the 1st of September the flotilla was compelled to proceed in single file, but all went well until the 4th, when the most dangerous of the rapids was reached. On that day over sixty boats were wrecked or damaged and eighty-four men were drowned: but the passage was accomplished without molestation from the enemy, though large numbers of Canadians were on the watch on the banks. The next day was consumed in repairs, and on the 6th, the last rapid having been passed, the boats glided down to La Chine, nine miles from Montreal, on the left bank of the St. Lawrence. Here the army landed unopposed, marched straight upon Montreal and encamped beneath the walls on the eastern side: while Haviland on the 8th arrived on the southern shore against Amherst's camp. Amherst was a little late, having been delayed by the resistance of Fort Lévis. Had he been content to ignore it and simply to cut it off from Montreal, he, Murray and Haviland would have met, punctual to a day, on the 29th of August. As it was the junction was sufficiently complete, and the work of the campaign was practically done.
Sept. 8.
Bougainville, Bourlamaque, and Roquemaure had crossed over to Montreal with the few regular troops remaining with them, for the whole of their militia had melted away, and even the regulars had been greatly reduced by desertion. Thus the army assembled at Montreal, the sole force that remained for the defence of Canada, amounted to barely twenty-five hundred men, demoralised in order, in spirit, and in discipline. Around the city lay an hostile army of seventeen thousand men; the fortifications were contemptible except for defence against Indians, and Amherst's cannon were already moving up from La Chine. The French Governor called a council of war, which resolved that resistance was hopeless. Articles of capitulation were accordingly drawn up, and carried on the 7th by Bougainville to Amherst. The condition on which the French laid greatest stress was that they should march out with the honours of war; but this Amherst flatly refused. The troops, he said, must lay down their arms and serve no further during the present war: the French had played so inhuman a part in stirring up the Indians to treachery and barbarity of every kind, that he was determined to make an example of them. It is probable that the General referred only to the massacre of the wounded after the defeats at Fort William Henry, Ticonderoga, and the Monongahela; but the reckoning to be paid went back to earlier times. There were the wrongs, the encroachment and the double-dealing of a full century to be redressed; and the time for payment was come. In vain the French pleaded for easier terms: Amherst, a man not easily turned from his purpose, remained inflexible. Accordingly on the 8th of September, despite expostulation which rose almost to the point of mutiny on the part of Lévis, the capitulation was signed, and half a continent passed into the hands of Great Britain.
Meanwhile, as if to crown the whole work and to redeem all past failings and misfortunes, the expedition against the Cherokee Indians had been brilliantly successful. Trifling though the affair may seem in comparison with Amherst's momentous operations in the north, it marked the banishment of the panic fear of Indians which had followed on the defeat of Braddock. The command was entrusted to Colonel Montgomery, and the force committed to him was four hundred of the First Royals, seven hundred of his own Highlanders, and a strong body of Provincials. Starting from Charlestown, Carolina, Montgomery marched up one hundred and fifty miles to the township of Ninety-six, so called because it was supposed to be ninety-six miles from the township of Keowee, and pushed forward thence for four days through dense forest and mountainous country without finding any sign of Indians. Concluding therefore that the Cherokees were unaware of his advance, he left all tents and baggage behind and made a forced march to surprise the savages before they could escape. The main body of the Indians, however, retired before he could reach them; and he could accomplish no more than the destruction of crops and villages, after which he returned to a fort on the frontier, having traversed no less than sixty miles over a most difficult country without a halt. It was then resolved to begin the work anew and to make a fresh advance into the forest. On this occasion the Indians lay in wait for the British in a wooded valley and burst upon them suddenly, as they had upon Braddock, with hideous whooping and howling, and a scattered but deadly fire of rifles. The grenadiers and Light Infantry at once plunged into the forest to engage them, while the Highlanders hastened round their rear to cut off their retreat; and after a sharp action of an hour the Indians were put to flight with great slaughter. This engagement cost the British over eighty men killed and wounded, twice as many as Amherst had lost by lead and steel during the whole of his advance from Oswego to Montreal. But the mere comparison of casualties is of small moment. The really weighty matter is that British officers had learned to face the difficulties which had been fatal to Braddock, and to overcome them with a light heart.
It now remained for Amherst to enforce the capitulation on the French posts of the west. The occupation of Detroit, Miamis, and Michillimackinac was entrusted to Rogers, the partisan, with his rangers, who in the course of the winter hauled down the ensign of the Bourbons and hoisted the British flag in its place. There was still to be trouble with these remote stations, but it was not to come immediately, nor directly from the French. The rest of the General's work was principally administrative. Generous terms were granted to the inhabitants, and every precaution was taken to protect them against the Indian allies of the British. Amherst issued a general order appealing to his troops not to disgrace their victory by any unsoldierlike behaviour or appearance of inhumanity; and the army responded to the appeal with a heartiness which amazed the Canadians. A month after the capitulation the General could report that British soldiers and Canadian peasants were joining their provisions and messing together, and that when he had ordered soldiers to leave their scattered quarters so as to be closer to their companies, the people had begged that they might not be moved. Such was not the fashion in which the French were wont to treat a captured territory.
Here then for the present we may take leave of Amherst. Pitt, as shall presently be seen, had further tasks for him, which were to be executed as usual quietly and thoroughly. The fame of the man is lost in that of Wolfe, and yet it was he, not Wolfe, that was the conqueror of Canada. The criticism usually passed upon him is that he was sure but slow, and to some extent it is justified by facts. Yet it should be remembered that, when he took over the command, affairs in North America were in extreme confusion and disorder, and that the work assigned to him was, on a far larger and more formidable scale, that which had fallen to Cumberland in 1745. Braddock had started everything in the wrong direction. Not only had he quarrelled with the Provincials and failed to instruct his troops aright, but he had deliberately forced them to follow wrong methods. Loudoun, again, had not improved relations with the provincial assemblies either by his correspondence with them or by his military operations. Finally Abercromby's imbecility at Ticonderoga had sacrificed hundreds of valuable lives, disgusted the colonists, and heightened the reputation gained by the French at the Monongahela. Then Amherst took the whole of the confused business in hand, and from that moment all went smoothly and well; so smoothly indeed that people quite forgot that it had ever gone otherwise. Yet his difficulties with the Provincials were not less than those of his predecessors nor less trying to his patience than to theirs; nay, even the good-will of the colonists was sometimes as embarrassing to him as their obstruction. It must not be forgotten, moreover, that the atmosphere of young communities, such as were then the North American colonies, is most noxious to discipline. Americans, as their latest military effort has proved, do not yet understand the meaning of the term; the colonists of Australia and New Zealand, which have no such religious traditions as America, have but the vaguest conception of its significance. Thus when Amherst returned from the conquest of Louisburg to Boston, not all his efforts could prevent the inhabitants of that godly city from filling his men with rum; and the same spirit of indiscipline doubtless haunted the army through all the long and dreary months of winter-quarters. There was, again, the additional complication that in the matter of forest-fighting the British had much to learn from the Provincials; and it fell to Amherst to teach his troops greater freedom and independence in action without simultaneous relaxation of discipline. He overcame all these obstacles, however, in his quiet, methodical way. Discipline never failed; for Amherst, though no martinet, could be inexorably severe. Special corps of light troops and of marksmen were organised, and the drill of the whole army was modified to suit new conditions. It was in fact Amherst who showed the way to the reform afterwards carried out by Sir John Moore at Shorncliffe, of reducing the depth of the ranks to two men only. Such a formation would have diminished Wolfe's difficulties and materially have strengthened his dispositions on the plains of Abraham: but apparently so important an innovation never occurred to him. Amherst never fought a great action, so his improvements were never put to the test; but this does not impair his credit as a soldier of forethought and originality.
But the most remarkable quality in Amherst was his talent for organisation. The difficulties of transport in the Canada of his day were appalling. "Canada," says the American historian Parkman, "was fortified with vast outworks of defence in the savage forests, marshes, and mountains that encompassed her, where the thoroughfares were streams choked with fallen trees and obstructed by cataracts. Never was the problem of moving troops encumbered by artillery and baggage a more difficult one. The question was less how to fight an enemy than how to get at him." It was just this problem which Amherst's industry and perseverance had power to solve. We read of his launching forth on to Lake George with a flotilla of eight hundred boats and an army of eleven thousand men, and all sounds simple and straightforward enough. Yet these boats, setting aside the original task of building and collecting them, had to make several journeys to carry the necessary stores and provisions from Albany to the head of the lake, while every one of them, together with its load, required to be hauled overland from three to six miles through forest and swamp from the carrying-place on the Mohawk to Wood Creek. The same provision against the same difficulties were necessary on a smaller scale for Prideaux's attack on Niagara, and, under conditions of special embarrassment, for Stanwix's advance to the Ohio; while over and above this, there was marine transport and all necessaries for the expedition to Quebec to be provided, so as to enable Wolfe to proceed on his mission fully equipped and without delay. Add to this burden of work endless correspondence with the various provinces, as well as constant friction, obstruction, and general dilatoriness, and it becomes apparent that for all his slowness Amherst accomplished no small feat when he achieved the conquest of Canada in two campaigns.
The whole problem was in truth one of organisation, and Amherst was the man to solve it, for he was a great military administrator. Cautious undoubtedly he was in the field, but it would be absurd to contend that a man who took ten thousand men down the rapids of the St. Lawrence, with the dry comment that the said rapids were "more frightful than dangerous," was wanting in enterprise or audacity. His career as a general in the field was short, and his crowning campaign, having achieved its end without a general action, has little fame. Such is the penalty of bloodless operations, though they be the masterpiece of a mighty genius. Austerlitz is a name familiar to thousands who know nothing of the capitulation of Ulm. So Amherst to the majority of Englishmen is but a name: as though it were a small thing for a colonel taken straight from the classic fields of Flanders to cross the Atlantic to a savage wilderness, assume command of disheartened troops and the direction of discordant colonists, and quietly and deliberately to organise victory. He was the greatest military administrator produced by England since the death of Marlborough, and remained the greatest until the rise of Wellington.
Authorities.—The history of the French in Canada and of the long struggle between them and the English for the mastery of the continent has been admirably written in a series of volumes by Francis Parkman. Following in his footsteps through the original papers in the Record Office (C.O., America and West Indies, vols. lxiii., lxv., lxxiv.-lxxvi., lxxxi.-xciv., xcix.; W. O. Orig. Corres., vols. xiii.-xv.), through the Bouquet and Haldimand Papers, and through other English material, I have found little or nothing to glean, while the information which he has gathered from American sources is most valuable. The histories of Mante and Entick give a general account of the operations. Knox's Journal is one of the most valuable sources of information. Other authorities will be found given in detail by Parkman. Readers who are familiar with his works will have no difficulty in apprehending my obligations to him, which I wish to acknowledge to the full.
It is now time to return to the subject of India, which, as will be remembered, was dropped at the conclusion of the truce between France and England in January 1755. Two days after the signing of the articles, Governor Saunders left Madras for Europe, and was followed a month later by M. Godeheu. It is not likely that the departure of the two signatories of the treaty wrought any great influence on the subsequent proceedings of the East India Company; but certain it is that before the instrument was a month old the infraction of its provisions was already begun. It was in fact impossible to observe the truce. Its object seems to have been to terminate hostilities in the Carnatic alone; but it was not to be expected that, while Bussy was exerting his vast ability and energy at Aurungabad for the promotion of French interests, the British could sit with folded hands in submission to the article which bound French and English alike "not to interfere in any difference which might arise between the princes of the country." The British had their puppet as well as the French, and having used him for their own purposes could not suddenly desert him, the less so inasmuch as the Nabob Mohammed Ali had neither resources of his own nor the wits whereby to provide himself with them. When therefore Mohammed Ali begged for a British force to reduce Madura and Tinnevelly, which he conceived to be his tributaries, and to collect his tribute for him, the authorities at Madras assented without hesitation. It was, in fact, unusual, not to say impossible, for Indian tribute to be levied except by means of an armed force; and, since Mohammed Ali had no troops of his own, it might be maintained, at least with some show of reason, that the furnishing of a small army for so innocent a purpose was not an act of war.
February.
Accordingly at the beginning of February twenty-five hundred men, one-fifth of them Europeans, were placed under command of Colonel Heron, an officer lately arrived from England, who proceeded to perform the duty assigned to him. It is unnecessary to enter into details of his operations. Suffice it that he succeeded not only in occupying both Madura and Tinnevelly, but in demoralising his troops and insulting the religious prejudices of the people by scandalous pillage of a pagoda. Mohammed Ali made over the government of the subdued territory to his brother Maphuze Khan, and in June Heron, having done his work, encamped before Trichinopoly. From thence he was summoned to Madras to be tried by court-martial for accepting bribes and for malversation of funds, and was dismissed from the Company's service.
The French lost no time in protesting against this expedition as a violation of the treaty, and with not the less vigour that they were extremely jealous of the reuniting of Madura and Tinnevelly, which had long been severed from the sway of Arcot, to the dominions of Mohammed Ali. The protest was of course answered by indignant disclaimer of any sinister purpose; and M. de Leyrit, the Governor of Pondicherry, thought it more profitable to waste no further words in argument, but simply to follow the British example. An opportunity for doing so soon presented itself. The chieftain of a tract of country known as Terriore, about thirty miles north of Trichinopoly, had for some time past evaded payment of his tributary dues to Mysore. Now the Mysoreans on retiring from Trichinopoly had appointed the French their agents to watch over their interests in the Carnatic; and M. de Leyrit accordingly sent fifteen hundred men under M. Maissin into Terriore to enforce discharge of the arrears of this revenue. Maissin having fulfilled his mission with ease and success led his army eastward to Palamcotah, on territory which the British claimed to be subject to Mohammed Ali. The authorities at Madras threatened to stop him by force if he did not desist; and, De Leyrit giving way, war was for the present averted. But since both sides had now infringed the treaty, it was plain that the renewal of hostilities could not long be deferred.
1756
The rest of the year passed away without serious trouble; but, however the suspension of arms might be observed in the south, there could be no safety for the Carnatic while Bussy remained at Aurungabad, virtually viceroy of the Deccan. He had been now installed therein since 1751, wielding his great powers with consummate tact and address in the face of intrigue, jealousy, and even conspiracy; nay, he had turned the most formidable of the combinations against him into a means of increasing his influence and of gaining nearly five hundred miles of the eastern coast, from the Chilka Lake southward, for the government of Pondicherry. It is true that this vast tract, which was known as the Northern Sirkars, had for the most part been restored to its native owners under the terms of the treaty, but it was still held by France pending the ratification of the articles, which was not expected to arrive until the middle of 1756; and it was always possible that so degrading a concession might be repudiated at Versailles. Moreover, whatever the fate of the negotiations, the cardinal fact remained that Bussy continued always at the court of the Viceroy of the Deccan, and that it was vital to the British that his power should be undermined—that, in fact, Salabad Jung should be persuaded or forced to dismiss him. The first idea at Madras was to send a force to the assistance of the Mahratta, Balajee Rao, who had frequently carried on hostilities against Salabad Jung; for which duty Clive, who had returned to India with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel and Governor of Fort St. David, volunteered his services. Another officer, however, was preferred to him, who died before the work could be begun; and the authorities at Bombay, from which side the operations were to be conducted, allowed the project to drop. Native intrigue nevertheless wrought effectually for the British what they could not do for themselves; and in May the feeble Salabad Jung was prevailed upon to dismiss Bussy and the French troops from his service. But Bussy had still an army with him, and had shown himself not less formidable in the field than in the council-chamber; so his enemies, to decide the matter, applied to Madras for a body of troops to assist in the expulsion of the French. No invitation could have been more pleasing. A force of eighteen hundred men was at once ordered for the service, when in the middle of July came tidings from Bengal which demanded the presence of every British soldier that could be spared from the coast of Coromandel.
May.
May 9.
June.
The provinces of Bengal, Orissa, and Behar had since 1735 been governed by a prince known to the English as Allaverdy Khan, who, like all other viceroys of the Moguls, had become virtually independent. At his death the sovereignty descended, according to his own nomination, to his great nephew Surajah Dowlah, a youth who had early discovered propensities towards cruelty, intemperance, and debauchery such as are rare even in Oriental despots. Surajah Dowlah had always hated the English, and his hatred was not lessened after his succession by the fact that the most formidable of his competitors for the throne had received asylum and permission to deposit his treasures and his family at Madras. At the beginning of April the authorities at Calcutta received warning that the renewal of war with France was inevitable, and accordingly set about the repair of the fortifications of the settlement. Surajah Dowlah, not only irritated but alarmed lest such preparations should be levelled against himself, sent a message to the Governor requiring that the work should cease and that the newly-erected defences should be destroyed. The authorities answered by tendering explanations; but the angry Nabob heard them only to reject them, and ordered his army to march against the fort and factory of Cossimbazar. The place was in no condition to make any defence, and Surajah Dowlah having received its surrender pursued his march upon Calcutta. There the authorities, uninured to such trials as Madras, had weakly endeavoured to appease the wrath of the Nabob by desisting from further work on the fortifications: nor was it until too late that they discovered that their only safety lay in resistance. Letters were hurriedly despatched to Bombay and Madras for reinforcements, though with little hope that these would reach Calcutta in time. Appeals for aid were addressed also to the French at Chandernagore and to the Dutch at Chinsura, but were rejected by both parties, and by the French in particular with studied insolence. By the 16th of June the Nabob's army was before the city. Fort William, the principal defence, was abandoned as untenable, and the British resolved to confine their resistance to the streets. On the 18th the enemy attacked and were gallantly beaten back; but on the 19th they succeeded in carrying the principal batteries: and it was then determined, while there was yet time, to embark the women and children on the shipping in the Hooghly. The resolution was executed with a haste and disorder which soon turned to panic, and there was a general rush to escape. The Governor, who so far had shown firmness and courage, embarked with the rest, and the scanty remnant of Europeans left behind in Calcutta was compelled to capitulate. The tragedy that ensued is well known—how one hundred and forty-six Europeans were packed during the insufferable heat of a summer's night into a room not twenty feet square and with but two small windows; how the unhappy creatures strove for a time to fight with order and discipline against suffocation; how the effort proved, as it could not but prove, beyond their powers, and gave place to a succession of mad struggles for life, renewed and renewed again through hour after hour till at length they were closed by the slow mercy of death; and how when the corpses were cleared away from the door in the morning thirty-three ghastly figures staggered out from among them to tell to their countrymen the tale of the Black Hole of Calcutta.
July.
The Nabob then occupied himself with the plunder of the city and in writing inflated accounts of his conquest to Delhi; which done he left a garrison of three thousand men in Calcutta and departed with his army on the 2nd of July. On his way he extorted large contributions from Chandernagore and Chinsura as the price of their immunity, and so returned to his capital of Moorshedebad.
July 20.
August.
December.
It was not until the 15th of July that the news of the fall of Cossimbazar reached Madras. Two hundred and thirty Europeans under Major Kilpatrick were promptly shipped off to the Hooghly, and arrived at Fulta, five-and-twenty miles below Calcutta, on the 2nd of August. But there was long hesitation as to the expediency of sending further reinforcements to Bengal. News was daily expected of declaration of war with France, and it was held by many of the Council that it would be wiser policy to send aid to Salabad Jung and to complete the discomfiture of Bussy while there was yet time. Fortunately wider and less selfish views prevailed, and ultimately it was decided to send every ship and man that could be spared to the Hooghly. There was still longer debate over the selection of a commander, but the choice finally fell upon Clive, though he was subordinated to Admiral Watson, who commanded the British squadron then lying at Madras. The force entrusted to him consisted of nine hundred Europeans, two hundred and fifty of which were of the Thirty-ninth regiment, and fifteen hundred Sepoys. Thus at last on the 15th of October the transports sailed under convoy of Admiral Watson's four ships of the line, though, owing to divers misfortunes, it was Christmas before the bulk of the fleet arrived at Fulta. Even then two ships, the one containing two hundred European troops, the other the great part of the field-artillery, were still missing.
Dec. 29.
Even more discouraging was the condition of Kilpatrick's detachment which, being perforce encamped on unhealthy ground, had buried over one hundred men and could supply but thirty that were fit for duty. Still there was nothing to be gained by delay, so on the 27th of December the fleet sailed up the river and on the 29th anchored at Mayapore, two miles below the fort of Budge Budge. Here, contrary to Clive's opinion, Watson insisted that the troops should march against the fort overland. Five hundred Europeans and the whole of the Sepoys were accordingly disembarked, and after a most difficult march arrived at the place appointed for camp, a large hollow situated between two villages a mile and a half to north-east of Budge Budge. The men being greatly fatigued were permitted to leave their arms in the hollow and to lay themselves down wherever they thought best; and with inexcusable neglect not a sentry was posted. It so happened that Monichund, the officer left by Surajah Dowlah at Calcutta, had that very day reached Budge Budge with thirty-five hundred men, where on receiving intelligence of Clive's dispositions he laid his plans to attack him at nightfall. The British troops had not been long asleep when they were awaked by the fire of musketry and found the enemy upon them. Instantly they rushed to the hollow for their arms, the artillerymen deserting their guns and flying back with the infantry to take shelter. Clive, always cool and collected, called to his men to stand, knowing that the slightest retrograde movement would produce a panic, and detached two platoons from two different points to make a counter-attack. The British then recovered themselves, the artillerymen returned to their guns, and Clive was able to form his line in order for a general advance. Before the action could become general a round shot passing close to Monichund's turban caused that officer to give a hasty signal for retreat; and so Clive's army was saved, though, indeed, it was by no fault but his own that it had been endangered. H.M.S. Kent then sailed up and silenced the guns of Budge Budge; and on the following night a drunken sailor, who chanced to blunder into the fort, made the discovery that it had been abandoned by the enemy.
Dec. 30.
1757
Jan. 12.
Feb. 2.
Feb. 3.
On the 30th the fleet pursued its way up to Alighur, where Clive again landed with the army to march on Calcutta, while the ships engaged the enemy at Fort William. The Nabob's troops soon deserted both fort and town, and the fort was occupied, before Clive could reach it, by a detachment under Captain Eyre Coote of the Thirty-ninth Foot, who had sailed from England with two companies of his regiment in the previous November. It was then resolved to recapture Hooghly before the Nabob could advance from Moorshedabad; and accordingly three hundred and fifty of the Thirty-ninth with a due proportion of Sepoys were detached for the purpose, who took the town by storm with trifling loss and a week later returned to Calcutta. Meanwhile news arrived of the outbreak of war between France and England; and the Company fearing lest the French troops at Chandernagore, who numbered three hundred Europeans with a train of artillery, might join the Nabob, endeavoured to come to terms with him. The attempt was vain. Surajah Dowlah, irritated by the attack on Hooghly, collected an army of forty thousand men and moved steadily upon Calcutta. On the 2nd of February his advanced guard came into sight; whereupon Clive, who had taken up a position at the northern end of the town, marched out as if to attack. He decided, however, to wait for a more favourable moment; and on the following day the whole of the Nabob's army was encamped along the eastern side of the town, beside the entrenchment that bore the name of the Mahratta Ditch.
Feb. 4.
Even then, though the French had not joined Surajah Dowlah, Clive was loth to encounter his army without reinforcements, and made a last effort at negotiation; but, on the return of his commissioners without success, he decided to make an attempt upon the enemy's camp on the morrow. At midnight six hundred sailors were landed from the men-of-war, and with these, six hundred and fifty European infantry, a hundred gunners with six guns, and eight hundred Sepoys Clive started before dawn for the Nabob's encampment. His advance was made in a long column of three men abreast, with the artillery in rear; and day had just broken when he struck against the enemy's advanced posts and drove them back. With the coming of the light there came also a dense fog, through which the column continued to move forward, successfully repulsing an attack of the enemy's cavalry as it went, until a causeway was reached, running at right angles to the line of march, which led to the Nabob's quarters within the Mahratta Ditch. There the head of the column changed direction to the right, as it had been bidden, but in the perplexity caused by the fog found itself under the fire of the British field-guns in the rear, and broke up to seek shelter. This movement misled the rear of the column; and very soon the entire force was in hopeless confusion. The enemy opening fire with their cannon increased the disorder; and Clive had much ado to keep his men together. Finally when the fog lifted he found himself surrounded by the enemy's cavalry; and though he succeeded in driving them off he was obliged, owing to the fatigue of his troops, to abandon the attack and return to camp. His losses amounted to one hundred Europeans and fifty Sepoys killed and wounded, against which there seemed little gain to be set. The men indeed were not a little disheartened, and complained with some bitterness of the rashness of their leader.
Feb. 9.
March.
June 4.
June 13.
But if the British were discouraged, much more so was the Nabob. Blind and uncertain though the action had been, he had lost six hundred men and five hundred horses, while the idea of a British force calmly perambulating his camp was utterly distasteful and disquieting to him. Five days later he concluded a treaty whereby he agreed to restore all property taken at Calcutta and to revive all other privileges formerly granted to the British; an agreement which was expanded forty-eight hours afterwards into an offensive and defensive alliance. Clive then proposed to attack the French at Chandernagore, but this the Nabob positively forbade. In March, however, reinforcements of three companies of infantry and one of artillery arrived from Bombay, and Clive resolved to make the attack notwithstanding the Nabob's prohibition. On the 7th of March the army began its march up the river; the siege was opened a week later, and the fort, which held no very strong garrison, was soon forced to capitulate. This defiance of his wishes increased at once the Nabob's dread of the British and his anxiety to evade the obligations of the treaty. The miserable creature writhed under the masterful spirit of Clive. He made overtures to Bussy, to the Mahrattas, to any one whom he thought able to help him out of his difficulties: sometimes he threatened the English, sometimes he apologised to them; and Clive, thoroughly distrustful of this abject ally, determined to keep the whole of his army in Bengal to watch him and hold him to his obligations. Meanwhile aid suddenly reached the British from an unexpected source. The followers of the Nabob, alienated by his folly, his insults, and his caprice, began to fall away from him. Discontent ripened into disaffection, and disaffection into conspiracy. Overtures were presently made to the authorities at Calcutta to join in a plot for the overthrow of Surajah Dowlah and for the setting up of Meer Jaffier, hitherto his commander-in-chief but now foremost among the conspirators, in his place. Long negotiations followed, which have become famous for the blot which, rightly or wrongly, they have left upon the memory of Clive. Finally Meer Jaffier signed the treaty which bound the English to win for him the throne of Bengal, Orissa, and Behar, and engaged himself in return to make over to them all French factories within those provinces, as well as a slight accession of territory about Calcutta, and to give compensation for the damage inflicted by Surajah Dowlah. Meer Jaffier, however, had displayed considerable irresolution during the negotiations, and the secret of the conspiracy had already begun to leak out, so that it became necessary to clench the arrangement by immediate action. Accordingly on the 13th of June, Clive, who had been throughout the leading and deciding spirit, set his force in motion from Chandernagore upon Moorshedabad, and on the following day sent a letter to the Nabob which amounted virtually to a declaration of war.
Before the letter arrived Surajah Dowlah had awaked to his peril and sent emissaries to treat with Meer Jaffier; nay, throwing off all royal state he visited his former vassal in person to entreat humbly for reconciliation. Meer Jaffier yielded; the agreement between the two men was ratified by the usual oaths on the Koran; and Surajah Dowlah, returning a defiant answer to Clive, ordered the whole of his army to assemble some twelve miles due south of Moorshedabad at the village of Plassey.
June.
Meanwhile Clive continued his advance up the Hooghly, the Europeans travelling by water in boats, the Sepoys marching along the western bank. His force consisted in all of nine hundred Europeans, two hundred half-bred Portuguese and twenty-one hundred Sepoys, with ten guns. On the 16th he halted at Paltee, on the Cossimbazar river above its junction with the Jelingeer, and sent forward Major Eyre Coote to secure the fort of Cutwa, twelve miles farther up, which commanded the passage of the river. The governor of the fort was one of the conspirators against Surajah Dowlah, but he met Coote's overtures with defiance, and on the deployment of the British force for attack set fire to the defences and retired together with his garrison. Clive's force encamped in the plain of Cutwa that night; but the behaviour of the Governor was calculated to disquiet him, for Meer Jaffier's letters only reported vaguely that he himself, though reconciled to the Nabob, intended none the less to abide by the treaty with the British. Distrusting so ambiguous a declaration Clive decided not to cross the river into what was called the Island of Cossimbazar, until his doubts should be resolved. On the 20th further letters arrived from Meer Jaffier tending somewhat to allay Clive's misgivings as to his good faith, but holding out little hope of assistance in the coming operations; while simultaneously there came a letter from one of Clive's agents which gave some reason for doubting Meer Jaffier's sincerity. Much perplexed Clive summoned a council of war, and put it to the twenty officers therein assembled whether it would be better to cross the river and attack the Nabob at all hazards, or to halt at Cutwa, where supplies were abundant, until the close of the rainy season, and meanwhile to invoke the assistance of the Mahrattas. He gave his own opinion first in favour of remaining at Cutwa, and was followed by thirteen of the officers, including so bold a soldier as Kilpatrick. Coote and six more, however, gave their votes for immediate action or return to Calcutta. Clive broke up the council, retired alone into an adjoining grove for an hour, and on his return issued orders to cross the river on the morrow.
June 23.
At sunrise of the 22nd the army began the passage of the river, and by four in the afternoon it stood on the eastern bank. Here another letter reached Clive from Meer Jaffier, giving information as to the intended movements of the Nabob. Clive's answer was that he should advance to Plassey at once, and on the following morning to Daoodpoor, six miles beyond it; and that if Meer Jaffier failed to meet him there, he would make peace with Surajah Dowlah. The troops accordingly proceeded on their way, Europeans by water, Sepoys by land; but owing to the slow progress of the boats against the stream, it was one o'clock in the morning before they had traversed the fifteen miles to the village of Plassey. Here they were surprised to learn from the continued din of drums and cymbals that the Nabob's army was close at hand; for they had expected to meet with it farther north. Solaced by this rude music the men lay down in a mango-grove to sleep; but the officers that slept were few, and Clive was not one of them.
The grove of Plassey extended north and south for a length of about half a mile, with a width of about three hundred yards. The trees were planted in regular rows, and the whole was surrounded by a slight bank and by a ditch beyond it, choked with weeds and brambles. The grove lay at an acute angle to the river, the northern corner being fifty yards and the southern two hundred yards from the bank. A little to the northward of it and on the edge of the river stood a hunting-house of the Nabob, surrounded by a garden and wall. A mile to northward of this house the river makes a huge bend to the south-west in the form of a horse-shoe, containing a peninsula of about a mile in diameter, which shrinks at its neck to a width of some five hundred yards from stream to stream. About three hundred yards to south of this peninsula an entrenchment had been thrown up, which ran for above a furlong straight inland and parallel to the grove, and then turned off at an obtuse angle to the north-eastward for about three miles. The whole of the Nabob's army was encamped within this entrenchment and the peninsula, and the angle itself was defended by a redoubt. Some three hundred yards to the east of the redoubt, but outside the entrenchment, stood a hillock covered with trees; half a mile to southward of this hillock lay a small tank, and yet a hundred yards farther south a second and much larger tank, both of them surrounded by a mound of earth.
At dawn the Nabob's forces began to stream by many outlets from the camp towards the grove, a mighty host of thirty-five thousand foot, eighteen thousand horse, and fifty pieces of artillery. The cannon were for the most part of large calibre and were carried, together with their crews and ammunition, on large stages, which were tugged by forty or fifty yoke of oxen in front and propelled by elephants from behind. Forty or fifty French adventurers under M. St. Frais, who had formerly been of the garrison of Chandernagore, took post with four light field-guns at the larger tank, which was nearest to the grove; while two heavy guns under a native officer were posted to St. Frais's right and between him and the river. In support of these advanced parties were five thousand horse and seven thousand foot under the Nabob's most faithful general, Meer Murdeen. The rest of the hostile army extended itself in a huge curve from the hillock before the entrenchments to within half a mile of the southern angle of the grove. Thus the British could not advance against the force in their front without exposing themselves to overwhelming attack on their right flank.
Clive watched these dispositions from the hunting-house, and was surprised at the numbers and confidence of the enemy. But knowing that his only chance was to assume a bold face, he drew his troops out of the grove and formed them in a single line, with their left resting on the hunting-house and their front towards the nearest tank. The European battalion occupied the centre of the line. It mustered on that day about seven hundred men, partly of the Company's troops, since numbered the Hundred and First to the Hundred and Third Regiments, and partly of the Thirty-ninth Foot, while one hundred half-bred Portuguese also were ranked within it. Three six-pounders were posted on each flank of this battalion, manned by fifty men of the Royal Artillery and as many seamen; and to right and left of these guns, twenty-one hundred Sepoys were drawn up in two equal divisions. The line extended for six hundred yards beyond the grove, but the enemy at this point was too remote to fall upon the British flank before dispositions could be made to meet them. Two more field-guns and two howitzers were posted two hundred yards in advance of the left division of Sepoys, under shelter of two brick-kilns. Therewith Clive's order of battle was complete; and the handful of three thousand men stood up to meet its fifty thousand enemies. Its strength lay in the group of white faces in the centre, and the strength of that group lay in the will of one man. It was the first time that British troops had faced such odds; but it was not to be the last.
At eight o'clock the action was opened by the firing of one of the French guns at the tank. The shot fell true, killing one man and wounding another of the British grenadier-company. Then the whole of the enemy's guns, from the tanks in front along the whole vast sweep of the curving line, opened a heavy and continuous fire. The British guns replied and with effect, but the loss of one of Clive's soldiers was ill compensated for by the fall of ten of the enemy; and after losing thirty men in the first half hour of the cannonade Clive ordered the whole of his force to fall back into the grove. So the little band of scarlet faced about, passed into the trees and vanished from sight; while wild yells of elation rose up from the enemies that ringed them about, and their whole line closing in nearer upon the grove renewed the cannonade with redoubled energy. The shot, however, did little damage, for the British had been ordered to lie down; and Clive's field-guns, firing through embrasures made in the bank, wrought greater destruction, at the closer range, than before. So the duel of artillery continued until eleven o'clock, when Clive called a council of officers, and decided that it would be best to maintain the position until nightfall, and at midnight to take the offensive and attack the enemy's camp.
Then by chance nature interposed, as at Cré?y, to change the whole aspect of the fight. A heavy storm of rain swept over the plain, drenching both armies to the skin. The British had tarpaulins ready to cover their ammunition; but the enemy had taken no such precaution, and consequently most of their powder was damaged. Their fire began to slacken, while that of the British was as lively as ever. Nevertheless, believing that his adversary must be in the same predicament as himself, Meer Murdeen advanced from the tank towards the grove to drive the British from it. His troops were met by a deadly fire of grape, his cavalry was dispersed and he himself mortally wounded. The news of his fall shattered the shaken nerves of the unhappy Nabob, and in abject despair he sent for Meer Jaffier and besought earnestly for his help. He, the sovereign, flung his turban at the feet of his subject and cried, "Jaffier, that turban you must defend." And Jaffier, with the readiness of submissive gesture which graces Oriental duplicity, bowed his head and laid his hands upon his breast, swearing to render his utmost service. Then returning to his fellow-conspirators he forthwith despatched a letter to Clive, advising him to push forward at once, or at all events to attack the Nabob before next dawn. The messenger was afraid to deliver the letter while the fire continued; but Surajah Dowlah, as though aware that no faithful counsellor was left to him, turned to another of his leaders for help. This man, being also of the conspirators, advised him to order the army to fall back within the entrenchment and himself to retire to the capital, leaving the issue of the fight to his Generals. The wretched Nabob acted on this counsel, and mounting a camel set forth with an escort of two thousand horse for Moorshedabad. Thus it was that at about two o'clock the enemy's fire ceased, the teams were harnessed to the guns, and the whole host turning about flowed back slowly towards the entrenchments.
While all this was going forward, Clive, having resolved to make no offensive movement before night, had retired to the hunting-house to snatch a few minutes of sleep after the anxiety and fatigue of the previous day. He was roused by a message from Major Kilpatrick which brought him back speedily into the field. Despite the withdrawal of the Nabob's army St. Frais and his little party still held their position in the tank, and Kilpatrick, perceiving that the position was one from which the enemy's flank could be cannonaded during their retreat, sent word to Clive that he was about to attack it. Clive, waked abruptly from sleep, sharply reprimanded Kilpatrick for taking such a step without orders; but presently seeing that the Major was right, he took command of his two companies, and sending Kilpatrick to bring forward the rest of the army, himself led the advance against the tank.
St. Frais, aware that he could hold his ground no longer, thereupon limbered up, and retiring with perfect coolness to the redoubt at the angle of the entrenchment, made ready for action once more. Meanwhile, during the advance of the British, the southernmost division of the Nabob's army was observed to be holding aloof from the rest of the host and approaching nearer to the grove. These were the troops of Meer Jaffier, but their movement was misconstrued as a design upon the boats and baggage in the grove; and accordingly three platoons and a field-gun were detached to hold them in check. The division therefore retired slowly, but still remained significantly apart from the remainder of the host. But before this, the main body of the British had reached the tank, and planting their artillery on the mound opened fire on the enemy behind their entrenchments. Thereupon many of the Nabob's troops faced about again and moved out into the plain to meet them; the infantry opening a heavy fire, while the artillery likewise wheeled about to enter the fight anew. In effect it was at this moment that the true battle began, though the Nabob's force was by this time without leader or general. Clive perceived that his only chance was to press his attack home before the resistance to him could assume any organised form. He therefore pushed forward half of his infantry and artillery to the lesser tank, and the remainder to some rising ground a furlong to the left of it, at the same time detaching a hundred and fifty men to occupy a tank close to the entrenchments and to keep up a fire of musketry upon them. From these stations the firing was renewed at closer range than before and with admirable efficiency. The enemy suffered great loss, and the teams attached to their heavy artillery were so much cut up that the guns could not be brought into action. Nevertheless St. Frais's field-pieces at the redoubt were still well and regularly served; and the enemy, though lacking leadership, were able, under favour of the ground and of their immense superiority in numbers, to carry on the fight with some spirit in their own irregular fashion. The entrenchments themselves, the hillock to eastward of the redoubt, and every hollow or coign of vantage, were crammed with matchlockmen, while the cavalry hovered round, threatening continually to charge, though always kept at a distance by the British artillery. At length it dawned upon Clive that the isolated division of the Nabob's army by the grove must be that of Meer Jaffier, and that his flank and rear were safe. He resolved therefore to cut matters short. Two parties were detached to make simultaneous attack upon the redoubt on one side and the hillock on the other, while the main body moved up between them in support. The hillock was carried without the firing of a shot, and St. Frais, perceiving that he was now wholly unsupported, abandoned his guns and retired. At five o'clock the British were in possession of the Nabob's entrenchments and camp, and the battle of Plassey was won.
From a military standpoint the action has comparatively little interest, since the issue turned really on the good faith or, if the term be preferred, the ill-faith of the leading conspirators against Surajah Dowlah. The British could not advance until the enemy retired; it was a shower of rain that silenced the Nabob's artillery and began the discouragement which led to their retreat; and even then the British commander needed to be waked out of sleep to follow them. There were no such superb audacity of attack, no such bloody struggle, no such triumph of discipline over numbers, as were to be seen afterwards at Meeanee. The whole loss of the British amounted to but seven Europeans and sixteen Sepoys killed, thirteen Europeans and thirty-six Sepoys wounded. It was a small price to pay for dominion over the provinces of Bengal, Orissa, and Behar, for such and no less were the fruits of the victory. Yet it is not by the mere tale of the slaughtered and the maimed that such successes must be judged. The victory may have been easily won when the moment came for the actual clash of arms; but the main point is that the British were there to win it. The campaign of Plassey is less a study of military skill than of the iron will and unshaken nerve that could lead three thousand men against a host of unknown strength, and hold them undaunted, a single slender line, within a ring of fifty thousand enemies.
June 24.
1758
The day's work did not end with the capture of the camp. Eyre Coote was sent forward with a detachment to keep the enemy moving, and the army encamped for the night at Daoodpoor. On the following day Meer Jaffier was saluted by Clive as Nabob of Bengal, Orissa, and Behar, after which he hastened with his troops to Moorshedabad, reaching the city on the same evening. Surajah Dowlah had fled before his arrival, but parties were sent out at once in search of him, and a few days later he was brought back and assassinated. On the 29th Clive likewise entered the city and formally installed Meer Jaffier on the throne. He then spent the succeeding months in dividing the spoils of the victory, of which the troops received no small share, and in securing that British interests should be paramount in the new possessions, or, to use plain language, that the Company should be the true sovereign and Meer Jaffier its puppet. On this part of his task I shall for the present dwell no further, except to mention that the agent selected by him to reside at the Court of Meer Jaffier was a young man of five-and-twenty, named Warren Hastings. The work was not fully accomplished for many months, nor was it until the following May that Clive was able to return to Calcutta, having left the greater number of his troops at Cossimbazar to keep watch over Moorshedabad. A month before his arrival events in Southern India had taken a ply which called for the appointment of the ablest possible man as ruler of Bengal; and in June Clive, at the request of the authorities at Calcutta, assumed the office of President. Before long his hand will again be seen busy in the direction of new conquests; but it is necessary first to trace the course of events in Southern India.
Aug. 26.
June.
It might have seemed that, with the recall of Dupleix and the dismissal of Bussy from the court of Salabad Jung, French ascendency in India was already shaken to its foundations. Such, however, was very far from the fact. On the news of Bussy's withdrawal the French governors both at Pondicherry and at Masulipatam had sent him reinforcements, which he contrived by rare skill and daring to join to his own troops, and to use so effectively that within three months of his dismissal he was re-established at Hyderabad with all his former titles, dignities, and honours. For the rest of the year he was fully occupied in the reassertion of his position at the Viceroy's court and of French influence in the Northern Sirkars, those provinces on the eastern seaboard which, as will be remembered, should by the treaty of 1755 have been restored to their native owners. The most dangerous enemy of the British, therefore, though not removed, was fully employed over his own affairs during the year 1756. No sooner was he free, however, than he was once again busy in mischief, reducing Vizagapatam and the British factories on the Godavery, until new intrigues at the Court of the Viceroy recalled him hurriedly to Hyderabad.
May.
Still farther south, at Trichinopoly, matters remained for a time comparatively quiet. Major Caillaud, who commanded the garrison of the city, had received strict orders to abstain from all hostilities; while the French, though still in occupation of Seringham, had been so much weakened by the detachment of reinforcements for the help of Bussy, that until December 1756 they ceased to be formidable. In the following February, however, the dread of French intrigue at Madura and Tinnevelly had forced Caillaud to lead an expedition to both of these districts; and in April the necessity for collecting the revenues of the Nabob Mohammed Ali led the authorities at Madras to send a further expedition to Nellore on the river Pennar. This latter enterprise was unsuccessful, but has a distinct interest of its own for that it was entrusted to Lieutenant-Colonel Forde of the Thirty-ninth Foot, an officer who was soon to win for his name a place beside those of Clive and Lawrence. In this his first command, however, he failed; and the French, though they had received orders to attempt nothing before the arrival of reinforcements, could not resist the temptation to take the field while the forces of Madras were divided between two points so remote as Tinnevelly and Nellore. M. d'Auteuil therefore seized the moment to collect four thousand men, one-fourth of them Europeans, together with a train of siege-artillery, and on the 14th of May appeared with this force before Trichinopoly. The position of the British garrison was never more critical during the whole course of the war than at this moment. The best of the troops were absent with Caillaud; and Captain Joseph Smith, who was left in command, had but seven hundred Sepoys and less than two hundred English with which to hold the fortifications and to guard five hundred French prisoners who were still within the walls. D'Auteuil, thinking to capture Trichinopoly at small cost, tried to scare Smith into surrender by bombardment and by incessant petty attacks, but Smith was not easily frightened and held his ground until the 25th. Then Caillaud appeared, having hastened back with all speed from Madura, and by extreme skill and perseverance passed his force by night unnoticed through the midst of the French camp into the city. D'Auteuil thereupon retired to Pondicherry, and Trichinopoly was once more in safety.
Sept.
Meanwhile the authorities at Madras had initiated a diversion in favour of Trichinopoly, to which the French answered by reprisals in kind; but the operations were of little interest or significance. In September a French squadron arrived which disembarked one thousand regular troops; but even after the arrival of this reinforcement the enemy's movements were of small importance. Indeed their inactivity at this period was no less surprising than welcome to the British, for the Presidency of Madras, in the face of their superior numbers, had been obliged to withdraw all its troops into garrison and to stand strictly on the defensive. The secret of the French forbearance was that the Governor of Pondicherry, having received positive orders from France to await the arrival of further succours, was fain to content himself with the reduction of a few of the outlying forts of the Carnatic. Thus the campaign of 1757 closed with the advantage to the French of the capture of Chittapett, a post thirty miles south of Arcot, and to the British of the acquisition of Madura.
1758
April.
The year 1758 opened far more seriously for the British. At daybreak on the 28th of April a fleet of twelve sail was seen standing into the roadstead of Fort St. David and was presently recognised to be French. This was the long-expected armament on which the French had built all their hopes for the expulsion of the British from India, and it had consumed nearly twelve months in its passage. It had left Brest originally in March 1757 and had been driven back by foul weather. Then two line-of-battle ships had been taken from it for service in Canadian waters, and the squadron had waited till May for their place to be supplied by two French East Indiamen fitted out as ships of war. Then the Admiral, d'Aché, for all that a British fleet was hurrying after him, loitered on the voyage to Mauritius, and on leaving that island selected a course which kept him three months on his passage to Coromandel. At last, however, the squadron arrived in the roadstead of Fort St. David, having lost by that time between three and four hundred men through sickness. It carried on board Lally's regiment of infantry and fifty European artillerymen, together with Count Lally himself, who had been appointed to the supreme command of the French in India. Lally de Tollendal, or to give him his real name, O'Mullally of Tullindally (for he was of Irish extraction), was an officer who had been of the Irish brigade in the French service, and who enjoyed the credit of having suggested that movement of the artillery which had shattered the British column to defeat at Fontenoy. How far this training would avail him in India remained still to be seen.
April 29.
Lally's instructions from Versailles directed him first to besiege Fort St. David; and accordingly he himself sailed at once with three ships from that roadstead to Pondicherry to give the necessary orders, while the rest of the fleet worked down two miles to southward and dropped anchor off Cuddalore. But now the consequences of the long protraction of Admiral d'Aché's voyage began to reveal themselves. Commodore Stevens, who had left England with his squadron three months after him, had reached Madras five weeks before him, and joining with Admiral Pocock's squadron in the Hooghly had sailed with it on the 17th of April to intercept d'Aché. Pocock having missed the French squadron on his voyage south bore up to the northward, and on the morning of the 29th came in sight of it at its moorings before Cuddalore. D'Aché at once weighed anchor and stood out to sea; but owing to the heavy sailing of some of the English vessels it was not until the afternoon that Pocock could engage him, with seven ships against nine. The action that ensued though indecisive was decidedly to the disadvantage of the French. They lost six hundred men killed and wounded, while one of their ships of the line was so badly damaged that she was perforce run ashore and abandoned. The British ships lost little over a hundred men, though on the other hand their rigging was so much cut up that they were unable to pursue the enemy. Pocock therefore returned to Madras to refit, while the French fleet anchored some twenty miles north of Pondicherry in the roadstead of Alumparva.
April 30.
May 1.
May 6.
On the self-same day, under the energetic impulse of Lally, a thousand Europeans and as many French Sepoys under Count d'Estaing arrived before Fort St. David from Pondicherry and exchanged shots with the garrison. On the morrow M. de Soupire joined d'Estaing with additional troops and with siege-guns, and on the 1st of May appeared Lally himself, who immediately detached a force under d'Estaing against Cuddalore. The defences of this town were slight and the garrison consisted of five companies of Sepoys only, which were encumbered by the custody of fifty French prisoners. The fort accordingly capitulated on the 4th of May, on condition that the garrison should retire to Fort St. David with its arms, and that the French prisoners should be transported to neutral ground in the south until the fate of Fort St. David should be decided. Two days later d'Aché's squadron anchored again before Fort St. David and landed the troops from on board; and on the 15th the French began the erection of their first battery for the siege.
May 28.
June 2.
Lally had now the considerable force of twenty-five hundred Europeans and about the same number of Sepoys assembled before the town; but his difficulties none the less were very great. The authorities at Pondicherry were disloyal to him; the military chest was absolutely empty; and, long though his arrival had been expected, no preparation had been made for his transport and supplies. In his impatience for action, for he dreaded the return of Pocock from Madras, he had hurried the first detachment forward to Cuddalore without any transport or supplies whatever, with the result that the troops had been obliged to plunder the suburbs for food. Now, since no other means seemed open to him, he took the still more fatal step of impressing the natives for the work of carriage, without respect to custom, prejudice, or caste. For the moment, however, he was successful. The defences of Fort St. David were respectable, but the garrison was too weak in numbers to man them properly, and the quality of the troops was remarkably poor. The Sepoys numbered about sixteen hundred and the Europeans about six hundred; but of the latter less than half were effective, while two hundred and fifty out of the whole were sailors, recently landed from the frigates and most defective in discipline. Major Polier, who was in command, made the mistake of attempting to defend several outworks with an inadequate force, instead of destroying them and retiring into the main fortress. Lally was therefore able to drive the defenders from these outworks piecemeal; and his success sufficed to scare nearly the whole of the Sepoys into desertion. A ray of hope came for a moment to the garrison with the news that Pocock's squadron had arrived at Pondicherry on its way from Madras, and that the French sailors had mutinied, refusing to put to sea until their wages were paid. But Lally, always energetic, contrived to find the necessary funds, and d'Aché set sail in time to prevent any communication between the fleet and Fort St. David. Finally the fort, though not yet breached, capitulated on the 2nd of June, and Lally's first great object was gained.
June 7.
The fall of Fort St. David gave great alarm at Madras, and with reason, for the defence had been discreditably feeble. Polier had formerly proved himself in repeated actions to be a gallant soldier; but making all allowance for the defects of his garrison, his conduct was not such as was to be expected from a countryman of Caillaud and a brother officer of Clive, Lawrence, and Kilpatrick. Moreover, Lally was not a man to be content with a single success. On the very day of the surrender he detached a force under d'Estaing against Devicotah, which was perforce abandoned by the British at his approach; and there was every reason to fear that his energy would now be bent towards the capture of Madras. The government therefore called in all its scattered garrisons in the Carnatic, maintaining only that of Trichinopoly, and concentrated them in Madras; thus adding two hundred and fifty Europeans and twenty-five hundred Sepoys to the strength of that city. On this same day Lally returned to Pondicherry with his army from Fort St. David and made triumphant entry. Te Deum was sung, and thanksgiving was followed by banquets and festivities—all at a time when the public treasury was empty.
June 18.
In fact, however Lally might long for it, there was no possibility for him yet to attack Madras. D'Aché, declaring that his duty summoned him to cruise off the coast of Ceylon, would not spare the fleet to aid in the enterprise against the seat of British power in the Carnatic, and actually sailed for the south on the 4th of June. For a march overland upon Madras Lally's army required equipment; and equipment meant money, which the authorities at Pondicherry averred that they could not supply. Acting therefore on the advice of a Jesuit priest, Lally resolved to march into Tanjore and to extort the cash which he needed from the Rajah. The civil authorities in alarm recalled d'Aché to protect Pondicherry, and on the day following his arrival Lally ordered out sixteen hundred European troops and a still larger number of Sepoys and started with them for the south.
June 25.
The march was one long succession of blunders and misfortunes. The harsh measures employed towards the natives on the advance to Fort St. David had alienated every man of them from taking service with the army; so the force started without transport. Gross excesses committed by the French troops in plundering the country drove the villagers to hide away all their cattle; hence neither transport nor supplies were to be obtained on the march. The soldiers were therefore of necessity turned loose to find provisions as best they might, and their discipline, already seriously impaired, went rapidly from bad to worse. When they entered Devicotah they had not tasted food for twelve hours; and finding that only rice in the husk awaited them there, they set fire to the huts within the fort and went near to kindling the magazines. It was not until they reached Carical, after traversing fully a hundred miles, that the troops at last received a real meal. Fresh follies marked the progress of the march. The town of Nagore was seized and its ransom farmed out to the captain of the French hussars, a corps which had only recently arrived in India and had distinguished itself above all others by violence and pillage. Ammunition again, for even this was not carried with the army, was extorted by force from the Dutch settlements of Negapatam and Tranquebar. Finally, two pagodas of peculiar sanctity were plundered, though to no advantage, and the Brahmins were blown from the muzzles of guns. Lally's difficulties were doubtless great, and his methods were those honoured and to be honoured by his countrymen in many a campaign past and future; but it is hard to understand how a man calling himself a soldier could deliberately have led from three to four thousand men for a distance of a hundred miles from his base without making the slightest provision for its subsistence, or the least effort to maintain its discipline.
August.
Aug. 18.
Lally's sins soon found him out. On his arrival at Carical seven thousand Tanjorines under the Rajah's general, Monacjee, advanced to Trivalore to oppose him; and this force was soon afterwards swelled not only by native allies but by five hundred British Sepoys and ten English gunners, who had been lent by Caillaud from Trichinopoly. Monacjee fell back before Lally step by step to the city of Tanjore, but his cavalry never ceased to harass the French foraging-parties, to drive off the cattle which they had collected, and to intercept supplies. Some days were spent in fruitless negotiation, and on the 2nd of August Lally's batteries opened fire on the city; whereupon Caillaud immediately sent to the Rajah a further reinforcement of five hundred of his best Sepoys. On the 8th disquieting intelligence reached Lally of the defeat of a French squadron by the British, and of a British occupation of Carical, the only port from which his army, already much distressed by want of stores and ammunition, could possibly be relieved. On the 10th, having with difficulty repelled a sortie of the garrison, he raised the siege and retreated towards Carical, leaving three heavy guns behind him. Instantly the Tanjorines were after him, hovering about him on every side during his march, swooping down on stragglers and cutting off supplies. The sufferings of the French troops were frightful. It was only with the greatest difficulty that Lally brought them through to Carical, to find on his arrival that the British fleet was anchored at the mouth of the river.
Aug. 28.
Sept.
For on the 2nd of August Pocock had again engaged d'Aché, though with inferior numbers, and after an action of two hours had so battered the French squadron that it had crowded all sail to escape and taken refuge under the guns of Pondicherry. Moreover, d'Aché was so much disheartened that he not only refused to meet the British again, but announced his intention of returning to Mauritius. Lally had received intimation of this resolve during his retreat to Carical, and had despatched Count d'Estaing to d'Aché to protest against it. On arriving with his army at Pondicherry from Carical he repeated his remonstrances, but in vain. D'Aché had secured thirty thousand pounds by illegal capture of certain Dutch ships in Pondicherry roads, and this he was content to leave with his colleagues; but he was resolute as to his departure from the coast, and on the 2nd of September he sailed away.
Oct. 4.
Whatever Lally's indignation against d'Aché for this desertion, it must be confessed that his operations had been little more successful than the Admiral's. He had injured both the health and the discipline of his troops by the raid into Tanjore, and had failed to extract more than a trifling sum from the Rajah. The money taken by d'Aché, however, furnished him with sufficient funds to initiate preparations for a march on Madras; and since the British had seized the opportunity of his own absence to recapture some of the scattered forts in the Carnatic, he despatched three several expeditions to Trinomalee, Carangooly, and Trivatore to clear the way to Arcot, ordering them to concentrate about thirty-five miles south-east of Arcot, at Wandewash. The several columns having done their work, he joined the united force in person at Wandewash and marched with it on Arcot, which having no British garrison surrendered without resistance. There now remained but two posts in the occupation of the British between him and Madras, Conjeveram on the direct road from Arcot to Madras, and Chingleput on the river Paliar, neither of them strongly garrisoned and both therefore easy of capture. Failing, however, to appreciate the importance of these two forts, and finding that his stock of ready money was exhausted, Lally sent his troops into cantonments, and returned to Pondicherry to collect funds. Thereby he threw away his last chance of worsting the British in India.
Sept. 14.
The authorities at Madras accepted his successes in the Carnatic as the inevitable consequence of the fall of Fort St. David, and were therefore little dismayed. Nevertheless the situation had been apprehended to be serious; and early in August appeal had been made to Bengal for assistance. It was refused. Clive was not indifferent to the peril of the sister Presidency, but he had matured designs of his own for a diversion in favour of the Carnatic, which, as shall presently be seen, was brilliantly executed. Madras being thus thrown on her own resources, the authorities resolved at the end of August to recall Caillaud and all the European troops from Trichinopoly, and to leave Captain Joseph Smith in charge of that city with two thousand Sepoys only. After some inevitable delay Caillaud embarked at Negapatam, and on the 25th of September arrived safely with one hundred and eighty men at Madras. A few days before, a still more welcome reinforcement had been received in the shape of Colonel Draper's regiment, eight hundred and fifty strong, with Draper himself, lately an officer of the First Guards, in command. Such an accession of strength made it possible to profit by Lally's omission to capture Chingleput. That post covered a district which, being rich in supplies, would spare Madras the exhaustion of the stock which had been laid up for the expected siege; and in view of its importance the troops at Conjeveram were withdrawn to it, and the garrison gradually strengthened to a force of one hundred Europeans and twelve hundred Sepoys. Further, it was determined to hire a contingent of Mahrattas and of Tanjorines so as to harass the enemy's convoys and lines of communication during the siege.
June 13.
These preparations were well completed some time before Lally was ready to move. That General was indeed concentrating all the strength of France for his great effort against Madras, but in blind pursuance of this object he had removed the most dangerous enemy of the British from the post in which, of all others, he would have been most formidable. In plain words, he had recalled Bussy, with his army, from the court of Salabad Jung and from the administration of the Deccan. Further, he had ordered him to entrust the occupation of the Northern Sirkars to M. Conflans, an officer who was only just arrived from Europe, together with the smallest possible force that would enable him to maintain it. Bussy obeyed, but in perplexity and despair; for it was hard for him to abandon the work at which he had toiled for so long with unwearied zeal and unvarying success; and it was scarcely to be expected that he should feel cordially towards this new and impulsive commander who, whatever his merits, possessed not a quarter of his own ability. Lally on his side entertained decided antipathy towards Bussy. He looked upon the French authorities in India generally as a pack of rogues, wherein he was not far wrong, but in including Bussy with the common herd he was very far from right. He therefore treated Bussy's supplications to return to Hyderabad as designed merely for the thwarting of his own enterprise, and disregarded them accordingly. The junior officers of the army, with a sounder appreciation of Bussy's powers, generously petitioned that he might rank as their superior, to which request Lally, though with no very good grace, was forced to accede. Thus, for one preliminary disadvantage, there was little prospect of hearty accord and co-operation in the French camp. Then there was the deficiency of funds to be faced, which was only overcome by subscriptions from the private purses of Lally and other officers; though Bussy, the wealthiest of all, declined, if Lally is to be believed, to contribute a farthing. Finally, there were endless troubles over the matter of transport, for which Lally had no one but himself to thank; and, what with one embarrassment and another, it was the end of November before the French troops were fairly on the march for Madras.
Dec.
Dec. 13.
Lally's force comprised in all twenty-three hundred Europeans, both horse and foot, and five thousand Sepoys. The main body moved from Arcot along the direct road by Conjeveram, and a large detachment followed the bank of the Paliar upon Chingleput. Lally in person joined this latter column on the 4th of December, but having reconnoitred Chingleput decided to leave it in his rear, and to continue his march northward to Madras. The defending force collected by the British in that city amounted to seventeen hundred and fifty Europeans and twenty-two hundred Sepoys, the whole under command of Colonel Stringer Lawrence. The Colonel drew the greater part of these troops into the field to watch the French movements, failing back slowly before them as they advanced; and on the 13th Lally's entire force encamped in the plain, rather more than a mile to south-west of Fort St. George. Nearer approach to the fort was barred by two rivers, the more northerly of them, called the Triplicane, entering the sea about a thousand yards south of the glacis; the other, known as the North River, washing the actual foot of the glacis, but turning from thence abruptly southward to join the Triplicane and flow with it into the sea. Lally therefore passed round to the other side of Fort St. George, the British evacuating the outer posts before him as he advanced, and established himself in the Black Town on the north-western front of the fort, and thence along its northern side to the sea. With his right thus resting on the town and his left on the beach, he prepared to open the siege of Madras.
Dec. 14.
The Black Town was rich, and the French troops, with the indiscipline now become habitual to them, fell at once to indiscriminate plunder, with the result that in a short time a great many of them were reeling drunk. Colonel Draper thereupon proposed a sortie in force, and the suggestion was approved as tending to raise the spirit of the garrison. Accordingly, at eleven o'clock on the following morning, Draper with five hundred men and two guns marched out from the western ravelin of the fort, and holding his course westward for some distance turned north into the streets of the Black Town to attack the French right, while Major Brereton with another hundred men followed a route parallel to him, but nearer to the fort, in order to cover his retreat. By some mistake Draper's black drummers began to beat the Grenadiers' March directly they entered the town, and so gave the alarm. The French formed in a cross street to receive the attack, but in the confusion mistook the line of the British advance and awaited them at the head of the wrong street, too far to the westward. Draper therefore came up full on their left flank, poured in a volley, and bringing up his guns opened fire with grape. In a few minutes the whole of the French had taken refuge in the adjoining houses, and Draper, ordering his guns to cease fire, rushed forward to secure four cannon which the French had brought with them. The French officer in charge of them offered to surrender both himself and his guns, when Draper, looking behind him, found that he was followed by but four men, the rest having, like the enemy, fled for shelter to the houses. Had the British done their duty Draper's attack would probably have put an end to the siege then and there; but as things were, the French, hearing the guns cease, quickly rallied, and streaming out of the houses in superior numbers opened a destructive fire. Draper was obliged to abandon the guns and order a retreat, the French following after him in hot pursuit. His position was critical, for he could not retire by the route of his advance, but was obliged to take a road leading to the northern face of the fort. The way was blocked by a stagnant arm of the North River with but one bridge; and it lay within the power of Lally's regiment, on the left of the French position, to reach this bridge before him and so to cut off his retreat. Bussy, however, who was in command on the French left, either through jealousy, or possibly because his men were too much intoxicated to move, took no advantage of this opportunity. Brereton came up in time to cover Draper's retreat, and the British re-entered the fort in safety. They had lost over two hundred men in killed, wounded, and prisoners in this abortive attack; and though the French had suffered as great a loss, yet they were victorious whereas the British were demoralised. Had Lally's regiment done its duty Madras would probably have fallen in a few days. So ended an episode most thoroughly discreditable to both parties.
1759
Jan.
Feb.
Feb. 9.
Feb. 17.
Lally now began the construction of batteries over against the north and north-western fronts of the fort, from the Black Town to the sea. Meanwhile Caillaud was despatched to Tanjore to obtain troops from the Rajah; and Captain Preston, who commanded the garrison at Chingleput, never ceased to harass the French by constant petty attacks and threatening of their communications. At length, on the 2nd of January, the French batteries opened fire, which they continued throughout the month, but with no very great effect. The indiscipline which Lally had permitted during his earlier operations told heavily upon the efficiency of the besieging force; and everything moved slowly and with friction. At length, on the 30th of January, a British ship arrived to hearten the garrison with ammunition and specie, both of which were sorely needed; and on the 7th of February Caillaud, after endless difficulties at Tanjore, joined Preston at Chingleput and increased his force by thirteen hundred Sepoys and two thousand Tanjorine horse. Though half of the Sepoys and the whole of the horse were worth little, yet this growth of numbers in his rear, and the knowledge that Pocock's squadron was on its way from Bombay to relieve Madras, forced Lally to take strong measures against Chingleput. Accordingly, on the 9th of February, he detached a force of nine hundred Europeans, twelve hundred Sepoys and five hundred native horse, with eight field-pieces, to attack Caillaud in earnest. The action was hot, and Caillaud only with the greatest difficulty succeeded in holding his own; but ultimately the French were repulsed, and Chingleput, that terrible thorn, remained still rankling in Lally's side. His position was now desperate. Supplies, money, ammunition, all were failing, and his troops, both native and European, were melting away by desertion. He had succeeded in battering a breach in the fort, but his officers were averse to attempt an assault. Finally, on the 16th the arrival of Pocock's squadron, at once relieving Madras and threatening Pondicherry, brought his darling project to an end. By the morning of the 17th he was in full march for Arcot, leaving fifty-two guns, all his stores and ammunition, and forty sick and wounded men behind him.
So ended the siege of Madras, the last offensive movement of the French in India. It had cost the garrison thirty-three officers, five hundred and eighty Europeans and three hundred Sepoys killed, wounded and prisoners, while over four hundred more of the Sepoys had deserted. Happily Pocock's squadron brought reinforcements which made good the loss of Europeans. The casualties in the French army remain unknown, but, whether they were considerable or not, the survivors were at any rate demoralised. Lally retired with bitter rage in his heart against the authorities at Pondicherry, to whose apathy and self-seeking he attributed his failure. Doubtless if they had seconded his efforts loyally and truly, his difficulties would have been infinitely less, and his chances of success proportionately greater. But even if the hasty and masterful temper which estranged them from him be excused, nothing can palliate his two cardinal errors as a soldier; first, the omission to secure Chingleput while yet the capture was easy, and secondly the neglect to enforce discipline among all ranks of his army. Violence without strength, energy without foresight, imperiousness without ascendency—such are not the qualities that go to make a great leader in the field.
1758
And meanwhile the counterstroke prepared by Clive had fallen once and was about to fall again with redoubled force. Affairs in Bengal in the autumn of 1758 stood on no very sure footing. Meer Jaffier was not wholly resigned to his puppet-hood; but his nobles were disaffected, his treasury was empty, and he was threatened on his northern frontier by invasion from Oude; so he was obliged reluctantly to throw himself upon the protection of Clive. So unstable a condition of affairs presented no ideal moment for weakening the small force on which British influence in those provinces might depend; but Clive, perceiving that Bussy's withdrawal from Hyderabad gave him a chance to substitute British for French ascendency at the court of the Deccan, determined at all hazards to seize it. The ruler of one district of the Northern Sirkars, the Rajah Anunderaj, had already risen in revolt against the French, seized Vizagapatam, and appealed to Madras for assistance. An agent was sent to concert operations with him; and Clive, making up a force of five hundred European infantry and artillery, one hundred Lascars and two thousand Sepoys, together with six field-guns and as many battering pieces, shipped them off from Calcutta at the end of September. The command was entrusted to Lieutenant-Colonel Forde.
Dec.
Dec. 9.
The voyage was protracted by foul weather, and it was not until the 20th of October that the expedition reached Vizagapatam, from which it marched to join Anunderaj's troops at Cossimcotah. Here more delay was caused by the unwillingness of the Rajah to fulfil his engagement to pay the British troops; but at length on the 1st of December the force advanced and on the 3rd came in sight of the enemy, who were encamped forty miles north of Rajahmundry within sight of the fort of Peddapore and astride of the high road to the south. The French force, which was commanded by M. Conflans, consisted of five hundred Europeans, six thousand Sepoys and a quantity of native levies. Forde's army, on his side, had received the accession of five hundred worthless horse and a rabble of five thousand foot, chiefly armed with pikes and bows, which represented the contingent of Anunderaj. On the 6th Forde advanced along the high road to within four miles of Conflans, but each officer thought the other too strong to be attacked. Inaction continued until the 8th, when both commanders simultaneously framed independent designs for extricating themselves from the deadlock. Conflans's plan was to send six guns with a sufficient force to a height which commanded the British camp, and which Forde had omitted to occupy. Forde, for his part, had decided to make a detour of three miles to Condore, from which he could turn Conflans's position and regain the high road to Rajahmundry. At four o'clock on the morning of the 9th, accordingly, Forde marched away with his own troops only, while the Rajah's army, which though warned was unready to move, remained in the camp. Forde had not proceeded far before he heard the sound of Conflans's guns in his rear and received piteous messages from the Rajah for assistance. Turning back he met the Rajah's rabble in full flight and rallied them; after which the whole force pursued its march and at eight o'clock arrived at Condore.
Conflans, flattering himself that he had defeated Forde's entire army, followed him quickly, with the idea of preventing his return to his former camp; and in his haste to advance allowed his line to fall into disorder. His European battalion was in his centre, with thirteen field-pieces distributed on its flanks, while his right and left wings were composed each of three thousand Sepoys with some unwieldly native cannon. Forde formed his line in much the same order. In his centre he posted the British, now represented by the Hundred-and-First and Hundred-and-Second Foot, with six guns on their flanks, and his Sepoys, in two divisions each of nine hundred men, on either wing; and he bade the Rajah's troops keep out of the way in the rear. He then advanced under a heavy cannonade from the enemy for some distance before Condore, and halted with his centre in rear of a field of Indian corn, which entirely concealed the Europeans, but left the Sepoys uncovered on the plain on either hand. These Sepoys, being from Bengal, were dressed in scarlet instead of in the white clothing worn by their brethren in the hotter climate of the south. The French had never seen the scarlet except on the bodies of European troops, and Forde was fully aware of the fact; for he ordered the Sepoys to furl the old-fashioned Company flags, which they still carried, as also their regimental colours, that they might be the more easily mistaken for a regular battalion of British.
In the ardour of their advance the enemy's infantry out-marched their guns and moved forward without them. Their line, from its superiority in numbers, far outflanked the British on both wings; but as it drew nearer, the French battalion in the centre suddenly inclined to the right towards Forde's left wing of Sepoys. Conflans had swallowed the bait laid for him by Forde. The French battalion evidently mistook the Sepoys for Europeans, for before engaging them it dressed its ranks, and then opened fire by platoons at a distance of two hundred yards. Long though this range was for the old musket, the Sepoys seeing Europeans in front and natives menacing their flank hardly stood to deliver a feeble volley, but immediately broke, despite all the efforts of Forde, and fled away pursued by the enemy's horse. Conflans at once detached several platoons of his Europeans to join in the pursuit; when to his dismay a second line of scarlet filed steadily up from behind the Indian corn to the ground whereon the Sepoys had stood, halted and fronted as coolly as if on parade, and then with equal coolness opened fire by volleys of divisions from the left. The first volley brought down half of the French grenadiers, and by the time that the fifth and last division had pulled trigger the whole of Conflans's European battalion was broken up, and flying back in disorder to its guns, half a mile in rear.
Forde, unable to curb the eagerness of his men, allowed them to pursue in succession of divisions, the left leading; but every division marched too fast to preserve order excepting the fourth, which was kept well in hand by Captain Yorke as a rallying-point in case of mishap. But no mishap was to come. The French rallied behind their cannon, but had not time to fire more than a round or two when the British fell upon them, drove them from their batteries and captured every gun. The Sepoys and native levies of the French made little or no stand after the defeat of their Europeans, and the British Sepoys of the right, together with some rallied fugitives from the left, advanced to join their victorious comrades. No sooner were they come than Forde made fresh dispositions, and marched on without losing a moment to attack Conflans's camp. The remnants of the French battalion, which were posted in a hollow way before it, made some faint show of resistance; but seeing the British guns coming forward, turned to the right about and fled, with the British in hot pursuit. Many of the fugitives threw down their arms and surrendered; the rest, together with the remainder of the French army, ran away in hopeless confusion. Conflans, after sending off his military chest and four field-guns, jumped on a horse and galloped away, not stopping except to change horses till he reached Rajahmundry, forty miles distant. Of his Europeans seventy-six officers and men were killed, many wounded, and fifty-six taken. Thirty cannon, seven mortars, and the whole of his baggage and transport were captured. The British loss amounted to no more than forty Europeans and over two hundred Sepoys killed and wounded. Had the Rajah's cavalry been of the slightest value, the losses of the French would have been far greater; but Forde's promptness in following up his first success made his victory sufficiently complete. This brilliant little action marked the rise of yet another great leader among the British in India.
Dec. 10.
Dec. 11.
The British battalion being much fatigued was halted after the engagement in the French camp, but on the same evening Captain Knox with the right wing of Sepoys was sent forward to Rajahmundry. On the following day a further reinforcement of Sepoys joined him; and the French, still under the influence of panic, evacuated the fort. Knox at once entered it, and turning the guns on to the fugitives, though far out of range, set them running once more. Thus Rajahmundry, the gate and barrier of the district of Vizagapatam, passed into the hands of the British, with all its artillery, ammunition, and stores. Forde arrived there with the rest of the army on the 11th, eager to pursue his success by an advance on Masulipatam. This, the most important town and the centre of French influence in the province, was doubly important to the enemy as a base from which they might at any time recover their lost territory. Forde, however, was in want of money, for which he had relied on the promises of Anunderaj. The Rajah, as is the way of his kind, now refused either to supply funds or to set his rabble in motion to accompany him. At length after six weeks of negotiation this deplorable potentate was induced, partly by favourable terms of repayment, partly by a severe fright, to fulfil his undertaking; but fifty precious days had been lost, and the French had gained time to recover themselves.
1759
Feb.
March.
On the 28th of January Forde resumed his march, and on the 6th of February occupied Ellore, forty-eight miles north of Masulipatam. Here again he was compelled to halt by the dilatoriness of the Rajah in sending forward supplies; but he was not on that account idle. Conflans, having got the better of his panic after Condore, had replaced garrisons in Narsipore and Concal, two outlying strongholds to the north of Masulipatam, and had organised an army of observation, consisting of two hundred and fifty Europeans and two thousand Sepoys, under M. du Rocher. The dispositions of this latter force were so faulty as to leave Narsipore in isolation, and Forde lost no time in sending Captain Knox with a detachment of Sepoys to capture it. The French commander of the post was no sooner warned of Knox's approach then he evacuated Narsipore and joined the army of du Rocher. Then came more delay; and it was the 1st of March before Forde was again able to move. Two days later Concal was taken, though most gallantly defended by a French sergeant; and on the 6th Forde came in sight of Masulipatam. Conflans occupied a strong position before the town, which he might have held with advantage; but his heart failed him, and he retired within the fortifications.
March 7-25.
March 27.
April 1.
The defences of Masulipatam had been improved by the French since their entry into possession in 1751, and now formed an irregular parallelogram, open on the south side, where a broad estuary furnished sufficient natural protection, and closed on the three other sides by mud walls faced with brick and strengthened by eleven bastions: there was also a wet ditch and a narrow palisaded space between ditch and parapet, but no glacis. On the landward side the fort was surrounded everywhere by a heavy swamp, the road to the town being carried on a causeway to the main gate on the north-west front. This causeway was covered for a distance of a hundred and twenty yards from the wall by a parapet ending in a ravelin, which commanded the whole length of the road. The only sound ground within reach of the fort was to be found on some sandhills to east and west of it; of which those on the eastern side, being within eight hundred yards of the wall, were selected by Forde for his position. Regular approaches for a formal siege were out of the question for so small a force, so Forde was fain to begin the erection of batteries on the sandhills, to play on the works from thence as best they could. The whole of the eighteen ensuing days were devoted to the work of construction, the siege-guns being landed from ships which had followed the movements of the army along the coast. During this short period it seemed as though fate had laid itself out to raise every possible obstacle against Forde's success. No sooner had he invested Masulipatam than du Rocher's army of observation woke to sudden activity, and moved round upon Rajahmundry and the British communications with the north. The officer in charge of that fort, being unable to make any defence, was obliged to send away to safer custody a large sum in specie which had been received from Bengal; and thus Forde's supply of ready money was cut off. Du Rocher then advanced a little to the northward of Rajahmundry, vowing vengeance against Anunderaj's country, and so terrified the pusillanimous Rajah that he declined to employ either his money or his credit for the service of the British army. Forde was left absolutely penniless. He had already borrowed all the prize-money of his officers and even of his men, and knew not whither to turn for cash for the payment of his troops. The soldiers became apprehensive and discontented, and on the 19th the whole of the Europeans turned out with their arms in open mutiny, and threatened to march away. With great difficulty Forde persuaded them to return; and the men, once conciliated, went back to work with all their former ardour. But the batteries had not been completed two days when news arrived that the Viceroy, Salabad Jung, was arrived at the river Kistnah, not more than forty miles away, with an army of forty thousand men, to expel the intruders who had dared to invade the provinces under his suzerainty. Messengers arrived from him requiring Anunderaj to quit the British immediately and to repair to his standard; and the terrified Rajah actually started to return to his own country. He was only with difficulty recalled by Forde's representations that his one chance of retreat was to remain with the British. In the faint hope of gaining time Forde proposed to open negotiations with Salabad Jung, who to his great relief consented to receive his emissary and undertook for the present to advance no farther. Here, therefore, was a respite, though not such as could be counted on for long endurance.
April 6.
Meanwhile, ever since the 25th of March, Forde's batteries had maintained a hot fire; and, though the damage done to the works by day had been regularly repaired by the besieged at night, three of the bastions had been sufficiently ruined to give foothold to a storming party. But now the weather changed, and on the 5th of April the southern monsoon broke with a flood of rain that soaked the morass around the fort to its deepest. On the morrow the storm ceased, but the day was ushered in by the gloomiest of tidings for Forde. Salabad Jung was advancing from the Kistnah, and du Rocher was on the point of junction with him. Finally, on the same evening, the artillery-officers reported that but two days ammunition was left for the batteries. Here, therefore, was the climax. Before Forde was a fortress with a garrison of greater strength than his own army; behind him was a force which outnumbered his own by more than ten to one; his communications were cut, and his ammunition and his funds were exhausted. It was open to him to embark and retire ignominiously by sea, or to stake all on a single desperate venture. He chose the bolder course and resolved to storm the fort.
During the progress of the siege it had been remarked that at the south-western corner of the fort, adjoining the sound, no ditch had been constructed; the ground without being a mere waste of mire, which might well be accounted a more difficult obstacle than any ditch. Natives, however, had more than once been seen traversing this quagmire; and Captains Yorke and Knox on making trial of it found it to be stiff and heavy indeed, but not more than knee-deep. This, therefore, was a point at which at least a false attack could be made, and Forde resolved to take advantage of it. Another point at which a feint might be directed was the ravelin outside the main gate. The true attack must of necessity be delivered against the front which had been damaged by the batteries; and the north-east bastion, known as the Chameleon, was the place selected. The necessary dispositions were quickly settled. The Rajah's troops were some of them to guard the camp, and the rest to make a demonstration against the ravelin. Captain Knox with seven hundred Sepoys was to conduct the feint attack upon the south-west angle, and the remainder of the troops were detailed for the true assault on the Chameleon bastion. The Europeans, who numbered but three hundred and forty-six, including the gunners, and thirty sailors borrowed from the ships, were told off into two divisions, the first under Captain Callendar, the second under Captain Yorke; while of the seven hundred remaining Sepoys part formed a third division under Captain Macleane, and the remainder a reserve under Forde himself. It was ordered that both the true and false attacks should begin simultaneously at midnight, when the tide would be at ebb and no more than three feet of water in the ditch; and the last stroke of the gongs within the fort was to be the signal for the storming parties to advance.
April 7.
April 8.
All through daylight of the 7th of April the British batteries maintained a fierce fire, playing impartially upon the three bastions of the eastern front. At length night came to silence the guns, and at ten o'clock the troops fell in for the assault. Knox having the longer distance to traverse was the first to move off, and his column presently disappeared into the darkness. The minutes flew by, and the time came for the advance of the European troops; but Captain Callendar, the leader of the first division, was not to be found. There was anxious enquiry and search, but the missing officer could not be discovered; and at length, after a precious half-hour had been lost, Captain Fischer took his place and the column marched off without him. The men were still struggling through the morass towards the Chameleon bastion when the sound of firing told them that Knox, punctual to a second, had opened his false attack. Quickening their speed as best they might, they plunged heavily on, knee-deep in mire over the swamp, waist-deep in mud and water through the ditch; when, just as Fischer's column reached the palisade, a sharp fire from the breach and from the bastions on either hand showed that they were discovered. All the more eagerly Fischer's men hewed and hacked at the palisade; while Yorke's division engaged the St. John's bastion to his left and Macleane the Small-gate bastion to his right. The men fell fast, but presently the palisades were cleared away, and the first division swarming up the breach swept the French out of the Chameleon bastion. Fischer halted for the arrival of Yorke with the second division, and then the two officers parted, Fischer to the right to clear the northern, and Yorke to the left to clear the eastern face of the fort.
Finding a field-gun with its ammunition in the Chameleon bastion, Yorke at once trained it along the rampart to southward, and was preparing to follow in the same direction himself, when he observed a party of French Sepoys advancing between the rampart and the buildings of the town to reinforce the Chameleon bastion. Instantly he ran down, and seizing the officer at their head bade them lay down their arms and surrender. Startled beyond all thought of resistance they obeyed, and were at once sent back to the captured bastion; while Yorke, taking the way by which they had advanced, pressed on against the St. John's bastion. The French guard, which had sought shelter within the angles from the raking fire of Yorke's field-gun, fired upon him and struck down not a few of his men, but surrendered immediately afterwards. They too were sent back to the Chameleon bastion, where the Sepoys took charge of them; and Yorke pursued his way to the next bastion to southward, named the Dutch bastion, where the same scene was repeated and a fresh consignment of prisoners was sent back to the custody of the Sepoys. The Fran?ois bastion, the most southerly of all, alone remained untaken, and Yorke was eager to prosecute his success; but now the men hung back. The division had been not a little thinned by previous losses and by the detachment of guards for prisoners and for the captured bastions; and the handful of men that remained with the Captain began to wonder where such work was going to end. By threats and exhortations Yorke after a time induced them to follow him; but while passing an expense-magazine a little way beyond the Dutch bastion, one of the men caught sight of powder-barrels within it and cried out "A mine, a mine." Immediately every man rushed back in panic to the Chameleon bastion; and Yorke was left alone, with his black drummers by his side vainly beating the Grenadiers' March. Fortunately the guards in the captured bastions stood fast; and Yorke returning to the fugitives, who were on the point of leaving the fort, stopped the panic by threatening death to the first man who attempted to run. Rallying thirty-six men he went back to complete his work; but the delay had given the French in the Fran?ois bastion time to train a gun upon the line of his advance. Waiting until his party was come within close range they fired, killed sixteen of them outright and wounded several more, including Yorke himself, who was brought to the ground with a ball in each thigh. The survivors picked him up and carried him off; but with his fall the attack in that quarter came, for the time, to an end.
Fischer meanwhile had been even more successful on the northern front. He cleared the two first bastions without difficulty, and on reaching the third, by the causeway, seized the gate and cut off the troops in the ravelin from the fort. Captain Callendar, the missing officer, suddenly appeared, no man knew from whence, in the middle of the affair, but was instantly shot dead; and Fischer was still pushing on, when he received orders from Forde to halt. Conflans throughout the attack had remained by the south front of the fort, quite at his wits' end, and adding to the general confusion by a succession of contradictory orders. Knox's attack distracted him on one side, the Rajah's troops made an unearthly din by the ravelin, and the true assault on the eastern front fairly broke his spirits down. At the very moment when Yorke's men were returning discomfited from the Fran?ois bastion, he sent a messenger to Forde, offering to surrender on honourable terms. Forde was far too shrewd to betray his own weakness. He replied that he could hear of nothing but surrender at discretion; and Conflans, concluding his position to be hopeless, acceded. Five hundred Europeans and two thousand French Sepoys laid down their arms, and the British were masters of Masulipatam.
So ended this daring and marvellous adventure, with the loss to the British of but eighty-six Europeans and two hundred Sepoys killed and wounded. Salabad Jung was within fifteen miles, and du Rocher even nearer at the time of the assault; but the victory was sufficient to paralyse them also. The Viceroy quickly consented to open negotiations, and though he haggled, after the manner of his race, for a whole month, finally concluded a treaty whereby he granted to the British eighty miles of the coast, and engaged himself not only never to entertain French troops again, but even to compel such as remained to evacuate the Sirkars. Thus not only was the district secured, but French influence was displaced in favour of British at the court of Hyderabad. Such were the prizes gained by the will, resource, and resolution of one man, who had strength to rend the toils that fate had woven about him just when they seemed to have closed upon him for ever.