France and England in North America, Part VI : Montcalm and Wolfe
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Title: France and England in North America, Part VI : Montcalm and Wolfe
Author: Francis Parkman
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRANCE AND ENGLAND IN NORTH AMERICA, PART VI : MONTCALM AND WOLFE ***
Produced by Curtis Weyant, Graeme Mackreth and the PG Online
Distributed Proofreading Team
FRANCIS PARKMAN
MONTCALM AND WOLFE
With a New Introduction by
SAMUEL ELIOT MORISON
COLLIER BOOKS
NEW YORK, N.Y.
This Collier Book is set from the 1884 edition
Collier Books is a division of The Crowell-Collier Publishing Company
First Collier Books Edition 1962
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 62:16974
Copyright (c) 1962 by The Crowell-Collier Publishing Company All Rights
Reserved Hecho en los E.E.U.U. Printed in the United States of America
To
Harvard College,
the alma mater under whose influence the
purpose of writing it was conceived,
This Book
is affectionately inscribed.
Preface
The names on the titlepage stand as representative of the two nations
whose final contest for the control of North America is the subject of
the book.
A very large amount of unpublished material has been used in its
preparation, consisting for the most part of documents copied from the
archives and libraries of France and England, especially from the
Archives de la Marine et des Colonies, the Archives de la Guerre, and
the Archives Nationales at Paris, and the Public Record Office and the
British Museum at London, the papers copied for the present work in
France alone exceed six thousand folio pages of manuscript, additional
and supplementary to the "Paris Documents" procured for the State of New
York under the agency of Mr. Brodhead, the copies made in England form
ten volumes, besides many English documents consulted in the original
manuscript. Great numbers of autograph letters, diaries, and other
writings of persons engaged in the war have also been examined on this
side of the Atlantic.
I owe to the kindness of the present Marquis de Montcalm the permission
to copy all the letters written by his ancestor, General Montcalm, when
in America, to members of his family in France. General Montcalm, from
his first arrival in Canada to a few days before his death, also carried
on an active correspondence with one of his chief officers, Bourlamaque,
with whom he was on terms of intimacy. These autograph letters are now
preserved in a private collection. I have examined them, and obtained
copies of the whole. They form an interesting complement to the official
correspondence of the writer, and throw the most curious side-lights on
the persons and events of the time.
Besides manuscripts, the printed matter in the form of books, pamphlets,
contemporary newspapers, and other publications relating to the American
part of the Seven Years' War, is varied and abundant; and I believe I
may safely say that nothing in it of much consequence has escaped me.
The liberality of some of the older States of the Union, especially New
York and Pennsylvania, in printing the voluminous records of their
colonial history, has saved me a deal of tedious labor.
The whole of this published and unpublished mass of evidence has been
read and collated with extreme care, and more than common pains have
been taken to secure accuracy of statement. The study of books and
papers, however, could not alone answer the purpose. The plan of the
work was formed in early youth; and though various causes have long
delayed its execution, it has always been kept in view. Meanwhile, I
have visited and examined every spot where events of any importance in
connection with the contest took place, and have observed with attention
such scenes and persons as might help to illustrate those I meant to
describe. In short, the subject has been studied as much from life and
in the open air as at the library table.
These two volumes are a departure from chronological sequence. The
period between 1700 and 1748 has been passed over for a time. When this
gap is filled, the series of "France and England in North America" will
form a continuous history of the French occupation of the continent.
BOSTON, Sept. 16, 1884.
Contents
Author's Introduction
CHAPTER I
1745-1755
The Combatants
England in the Eighteenth Century. Her Political and Social Aspects. Her
Military Condition. France. Her Power and Importance. Signs of Decay.
The Court, the Nobles, the Clergy, the People. The King and Pompadour.
The Philosophers. Germany. Prussia. Frederic II. Russia. State of
Europe. War of the Austrian Succession. American Colonies of France and
England. Contrasted Systems and their Results. Canada. Its Strong
Military Position. French Claims to the Continent. British Colonies. New
England. Virginia. Pennsylvania. New York, Jealousies, Divisions,
Internal Disputes, Military Weakness.
CHAPTER 2
1749-1752
Céloron de Bienville
La Galissonière. English Encroachment. Mission of Céloron. The Great
West. Its European Claimants. Its Indian Population. English
Fur-Traders. Céloron on the Alleghany. His Reception. His Difficulties.
Descent of the Ohio. Covert Hostility. Ascent of the Miami. La
Demoiselle. Dark Prospects for France. Christopher Gist. George Croghan.
Their Western Mission. Pickawillany. English Ascendency. English
Dissension and Rivalry. The Key of the Great West.
CHAPTER 3
1749-1753
Conflict for the West
The Five Nations. Caughnawaga. Abbé Piquet. His Schemes. His Journey.
Fort Frontenac. Toronto. Niagara. Oswego. Success of Piquet. Detroit. La
Jonquiére. His Intrigues. His Trials. His Death. English Intrigues.
Critical State of the West Pickawillany Destroyed. Duquesne. His Grand
Enterprise.
CHAPTER 4
1710-1754
Conflict for Acadia
Acadia ceded to England. Acadians swear Fidelity. Halifax founded.
French Intrigue. Acadian Priests. Mildness of English Rule. Covert
Hostility of Acadians. The New Oath. Treachery of Versailles. Indians
incited to War. Clerical Agents of Revot. Abbé Le Loutre. Acadians
impelled to emigrate. Misery of the Emigrants. Humanity of Cornwallis
and Hopson. Fanaticism and Violence of Le Loutre. Capture of the "St.
Francois." The English at Beaubassin. Le Loutre drives out the
Inhabitants. Murder of Howe. Beauséjour. Insolence of Le Loutre. His
Harshness to the Acadians. The Boundary Commission. Its Failure.
Approaching War.
CHAPTER 5
1753, 1754
Washington
The French occupy the Sources of the Ohio. Their Sufferings. Fort Le
Boeuf. Legardeur de Saint-Pierre. Mission of Washington. Robert
Dinwiddie. He opposes the French. His Dispute with the Burgesses. His
Energy. His Appeals for Help. Fort Duquesne. Death of Jumonville.
Washington at the Great Meadows. Coulon de Villiers. Fort Necessity.
CHAPTER 6
1754, 1755
The Signal of Battle
Troubles of Dinwiddie. Gathering of the Burgesses. Virginian Society.
Refractory Legislators. The Quaker Assembly It refuses to resist the
French. Apathy of New York. Shirley and the General Court of
Massachusetts. Short-sighted Policy. Attitude of Royal Governors. Indian
Allies waver. Convention at Albany. Scheme of Union. It fails. Dinwiddie
and Glen. Dinwiddie calls on England for Help. The Duke of Newcastle.
Weakness of the British Cabinet. Attitude of France. Mutual
Dissimulation. Both Powers send Troops to America. Collision. Capture of
the "Alcide" and the "Lis."
CHAPTER 7
1755
Braddock
Arrival of Braddock. His Character. Council at Alexandria. Plan of the
Campaign. Apathy of the Colonists. Rage of Braddock. Franklin. Fort
Cumberland. Composition of the Army. Offended Friends. The March. The
French Fort. Savage Allies. The Captive. Beaujeu. He goes to meet the
English. Passage of the Monongahela. The Surprise. The Battle. Rout of
Braddock. His Death. Indian Ferocity. Reception of the Ill News.
Weakness of Dunbar. The Frontier abandoned.
CHAPTER 8
1755-1763
Removal of the Acadians
State of Acadia. Threatened Invasion. Peril of the English. Their Plans.
French Forts to be attacked. Beauséjour and its Occupants. French
Treatment of the Acadians. John Winslow. Siege and Capture of
Beauséjour. Attitude of Acadians. Influence of their Priests. They
refuse the Oath of Allegiance. Their Condition and Character. Pretended
Neutrals. Moderation of English Authorities. The Acadians persist in
their Refusal. Enemies or Subjects? Choice of the Acadians. The
Consequence. Their Removal determined. Winslow at Grand Pré. Conference
with Murray. Summons to the Inhabitants. Their Seizure. Their
Embarkation. Their Fate. Their Treatment in Canada. Misapprehension
concerning them.
CHAPTER 9
1755
Dieskau
Expedition against Crown Point. William Johnson. Vaudreuil. Dieskau.
Johnson and the Indians. The Provincial Army. Doubts and Delays. March
to Lake George. Sunday in Camp. Advance of Dieskau. He changes Plan.
Marches against Johnson. Ambush. Rout of Provincials. Battle of Lake
George. Rout of the French. Rage of the Mohawks. Peril of Dieskau.
Inaction of Johnson. The Homeward March. Laurels of Victory.
CHAPTER 10
1755, 1756
Shirley. Border War
The Niagara Campaign. Albany. March to Oswego. Difficulties. The
Expedition abandoned. Shirley and Johnson. Results of the Campaign. The
Scourge of the Border. Trials of Washington. Misery of the Settlers.
Horror of their Situation. Philadelphia and the Quakers. Disputes with
the Penns. Democracy and Feudalism. Pennsylvanian Population. Appeals
from the Frontier. Quarrel of Governor and Assembly. Help refused.
Desperation of the Borderers. Fire and Slaughter. The Assembly alarmed.
They pass a mock Militia Law. They are forced to yield.
CHAPTER 11
1712-1756
Montcalm
War declared. State of Europe. Pompadour and Maria Theresa. Infatuation
of the French Court. The European War. Montcalm to command in America.
His early Life. An intractable Pupil. His Marriage. His Family. His
Campaigns. Preparation for America. His Associates. Lévis, Bourlamaque,
Bougainville. Embarkation. The Voyage. Arrival. Vaudreuil. Forces of
Canada. Troops of the Line, Colony Troops, Militia, Indians. The
Military Situation. Capture of Fort Bull. Montcalm at Ticonderoga.
CHAPTER 12
1756
Oswego
The new Campaign. Untimely Change of Commanders. Eclipse of Shirley.
Earl of Loudon. Muster of Provincials. New England Levies. Winslow at
Lake George. Johnson and the Five Nations. Bradstreet and his Boatmen.
Fight on the Onondaga. Pestilence at Oswego. Loudon and the Provincials.
New England Camps. Army Chaplains. A sudden Blow. Montcalm attacks
Oswego. Its Fall.
CHAPTER 13
1756, 1757
Partisan War
Failure of Shirley's Plan. Causes. Loudon and Shirley. Close of the
Campaign. The Western Border. Armstrong destroys Kittanning. The Scouts
of Lake George War Parties from Ticonderoga. Robert Rogers. The Rangers.
Their Hardihood and Daring. Disputes as to Quarters of Troops.
Expedition of Rogers. A Desperate Bush-fight. Enterprise of Vaudreuil.
Rigaud attacks Fort William Henry.
CHAPTER 14
1757
Montcalm and Vaudreuil
The Seat of War. Social Life at Montreal. Familiar Correspondence of
Montcalm. His Employments. His Impressions of Canada. His Hospitalities.
Misunderstandings with the Governor. Character of Vaudreuil. His
Accusations. Frenchmen and Canadians. Foibles of Montcalm. The opening
Campaign. Doubts and Suspense. London's Plan. His Character. Fatal
Delays. Abortive Attempt against Louisbourg. Disaster to the British
Fleet.
CHAPTER 15
1757
Fort William Henry
Another Blow. The War-song. The Army at Ticonderoga. Indian Allies. The
War-feast. Treatment of Prisoners. Cannibalism. Surprise and Slaughter.
The War Council. March of Lévis. The Army embarks. Fort William Henry.
Nocturnal Scene. Indian Funeral. Advance upon the Fort. General Webb.
His Difficulties. His Weakness. The Siege begun. Conduct of the Indians.
The Intercepted Letter. Desperate Position of the Besieged.
Capitulation. Ferocity of the Indians. Mission of Bougainville. Murder
of Wounded Men. A Scene of Terror. The Massacre. Efforts of Montcalm.
The Fort burned.
CHAPTER 16
1757, 1758
A Winter of Discontent
Boasts of Loudon. A Mutinous Militia. Panic. Accusations of Vaudreuil.
His Weakness. Indian Barbarities. Destruction of German Flats.
Discontent of Montcalm. Festivities at Montreal. Montcalm's Relations
with the Governor. Famine. Riots. Mutiny. Winter at Ticonderoga. A
desperate Bush-fight. Defeat of the Rangers. Adventures of Roche and
Pringle.
CHAPTER 17
1753-1760
Bigot
His Life and Character. Canadian Society. Official Festivities. A Party
of Pleasure. Hospitalities of Bigot. Desperate Gambling. Château Bigot.
Canadian Ladies. Cadet. La Friponne. Official Rascality. Methods of
Peculation. Cruel Frauds on the Acadians. Military Corruption. Péan.
Love and Knavery. Varin and his Partners. Vaudreuil and the Peculators.
He defends Bigot; praises Cadet and Péan. Canadian Finances. Peril of
Bigot. Threats of the Minister. Evidence of Montcalm. Impending Ruin of
the Confederates.
CHAPTER 18
1757, 1758
Pitt
Frederic of Prussia. The Coalition against him. His desperate Position.
Rossbach. Leuthen. Reverses of England. Weakness of the Ministry. A
Change. Pitt and Newcastle. Character of Pitt. Sources of his Power. His
Aims. Louis XV. Pompadour. She controls the Court, and directs the War.
Gloomy Prospects of England. Disasters. The New Ministry. Inspiring
Influence of Pitt. The Tide turns. British Victories. Pitt's Plans for
America. Louisbourg, Ticonderoga, Duquesne. New Commanders. Naval
Battles.
CHAPTER 19
1758
Louisbourg
Condition of the Fortress. Arrival of the English. Gallantry of Wolfe.
The English Camp. The Siege begun. Progress of the Besiegers. Sallies of
the French. Madame Drucour. Courtesies of War. French Ships destroyed.
Conflagration. Fury of the Bombardment. Exploit of English Sailors. The
End near. The White Flag. Surrender. Reception of the News in England
and America. Wolfe not satisfied. His Letters to Amherst. He destroys
Gaspé. Returns to England.
CHAPTER 20
1758
Ticonderoga
Activity of the Provinces. Sacrifices of Massachusetts. The Army at Lake
George. Proposed Incursion of Lévis. Perplexities of Montcalm. His Plan
of Defence. Camp of Abercromby. His Character. Lord Howe, His
Popularity. Embarkation of Abercromby. Advance down Lake George.
Landing. Forest Skirmish. Death of Howe. Its Effects. Position of the
French. The Lines of Ticonderoga. Blunders of Abercromby. The Assault. A
Frightful Scene. Incidents of the Battle. British Repulse. Panic.
Retreat Triumph of Montcalm.
CHAPTER 21
1758
Fort Frontenac
The Routed Army. Indignation at Abercromby. John Cleaveland and his
Brother Chaplains. Regulars and Provincials. Provincial Surgeons. French
Raids. Rogers defeats Marin. Adventures of Putnam. Expedition of
Bradstreet. Capture of Fort Frontenac.
CHAPTER 22
1758
Fort Duquesne
Dinwiddie and Washington. Brigadier Forbes. His Army. Conflicting Views.
Difficulties. Illness of Forbes. His Sufferings. His Fortitude. His
Difference with Washington. Sir John Sinclair. Troublesome Allies.
Scouting Parties. Boasts of Vaudreuil. Forbes and the Indians. Mission
of Christian Frederic Post. Council of Peace. Second Mission of Post.
Defeat of Grant. Distress of Forbes. Dark Prospects. Advance of the
Army. Capture of the French Fort. The Slain of Braddock's Field. Death
of Forbes.
CHAPTER 23
1758, 1759
The Brink of Ruin
Jealousy of Vaudreuil. He asks for Montcalm's Recall. His Discomfiture.
Scene at the Governor's House. Disgust of Montcalm. The Canadians
Despondent. Devices to encourage them. Gasconade of the Governor.
Deplorable State of the Colony. Mission of Bougainville. Duplicity of
Vaudreuil. Bougainville at Versailles. Substantial Aid refused to
Canada. A Matrimonial Treaty. Return of Bougainville. Montcalm abandoned
by the Court. His Plans of Defence. Sad News from Candiac. Promises of
Vaudreuil.
CHAPTER 24
1758, 1759
Wolfe
The Exiles of Fort Cumberland. Relief. The Voyage to Louisbourg. The
British Fleet. Expedition against Quebec. Early Life of Wolfe. His
Character. His Letters to his Parents. His Domestic Qualities. Appointed
to command the Expedition. Sails for America.
CHAPTER 25
1759
Wolfe at Quebec
French Preparation. Muster of Forces. Gasconade of Vaudreuil. Plan of
Defence. Strength of Montcalm. Advance of Wolfe. British Sailors.
Landing of the English. Difficulties before them. Storm. Fireships.
Confidence of French Commanders. Wolfe occupies Point Levi. A Futile
Night Attack. Quebec bombarded. Wolfe at the Montmorenci. Skirmishes.
Danger of the English Position. Effects of the Bombardment. Desertion
of Canadians. The English above Quebec. Severities of Wolfe. Another
Attempt to burn the Fleet. Desperate Enterprise of Wolfe. The Heights of
Montmorenci. Repulse of the English.
CHAPTER 26
1759
Amherst. Niagara
Amherst on Lake George. Capture of Ticonderoga and Crown Point. Delays
of Amherst. Niagara Expedition. La Corne attacks Oswego. His Repulse.
Niagara besieged. Aubry comes to its Relief. Battle. Rout of the French.
The Fort taken. Isle-aux-Noix. Amherst advances to attack it. Storm. The
Enterprise abandoned, Rogers attacks St. Francis. Destroys the Town.
Sufferings of the Rangers.
CHAPTER 27
1759
The Heights of Abraham
Elation of the French. Despondency of Wolfe. The Parishes laid waste.
Operations above Quebec. Illness of Wolfe. A New Plan of Attack. Faint
Hope of Success. Wolfe's Last Despatch. Confidence of Vaudreuil. Last
Letters of Montcalm. French Vigilance. British Squadron at Cap-Rouge.
Last Orders of Wolfe. Embarkation. Descent of the St. Lawrence. The
Heights scaled. The British Line. Last Night of Montcalm. The Alarm.
March of French Troops. The Battle. The Rout. The Pursuit. Fall of Wolfe
and of Montcalm.
CHAPTER 28
1759
Fall of Quebec
After the Battle. Canadians resist the Pursuit. Arrival of Vaudreuil.
Scene in the Redoubt. Panic. Movements of the Victors. Vaudreuil's
Council of War. Precipitate Retreat of the French Army. Last Hours of
Montcalm. His Death and Burial. Quebec abandoned to its Fate. Despair of
the Garrison. Lévis joins the Army. Attempts to relieve the Town.
Surrender. The British occupy Quebec. Slanders of Vaudreuil. Reception
in England of the News of Wolfe's Victory and Death. Prediction of
Jonathan Mayhew.
CHAPTER 29
1759, 1760
Sainte-Foy
Quebec after the Siege. Captain Knox and the Nuns. Escape of French
Ships. Winter at Quebec. Threats of Lévis. Attacks. Skirmishes. Feat of
the Rangers. State of the Garrison. The French prepare to retake Quebec.
Advance of Levis. The Alarm. Sortie of the English. Rash Determination
of Murray. Battle of Ste.-Foy. Retreat of the English. Lévis besieges
Quebec. Spirit of the Garrison. Peril of their Situation. Relief. Quebec
saved. Retreat of Lévis. The News in England.
CHAPTER 30
1760
Fall of Canada
Desperate Situation. Efforts of Vaudreuil and Lévis. Plans of Amherst. A
Triple Attack. Advance of Murray. Advance of Haviland. Advance of
Amherst. Capitulation of Montreal. Protest of Lévis. Injustice of Louis
XV. Joy in the British Colonies. Character of the War.
CHAPTER 31
1758-1763
The Peace of Paris
Exodus of Canadian Leaders. Wreck of the "Auguste." Trial of Bigot and
his Confederates. Frederic of Prussia. His Triumphs. His Reverses. His
Peril. His Fortitude. Death of George II. Change of Policy. Choiseul.
His Overtures of Peace. The Family Compact. Fall of Pitt. Death of the
Czarina. Frederic saved. War with Spain. Capture of Havana.
Negotiations. Terms of Peace. Shall Canada be restored? Speech of Pitt.
The Treaty signed. End of the Seven Years War.
CHAPTER 32
1763-1884
Conclusion
Results of the War. Germany. France. England. Canada. The British
Provinces.
Appendix
Index
Author's Introduction
It is the nature of great events to obscure the great events that came
before them. The Seven Years War in Europe is seen but dimly through
revolutionary convulsions and Napoleonic tempests; and the same contest
in America is half lost to sight behind the storm-cloud of the War of
Independence. Few at this day see the momentous issues involved in it,
or the greatness of the danger that it averted. The strife that armed
all the civilized world began here. "Such was the complication of
political interests," says Voltaire, "that a cannon-shot fired in
America could give the signal that set Europe in a blaze." Not quite. It
was not a cannon-shot, but a volley from the hunting-pieces of a few
backwoodsmen, commanded by a Virginian youth, George Washington.
To us of this day, the result of the American part of the war seems a
foregone conclusion. It was far from being so; and very far from being
so regarded by our forefathers. The numerical superiority of the British
colonies was offset by organic weaknesses fatal to vigorous and united
action. Nor at the outset did they, or the mother-country, aim at
conquering Canada, but only at pushing back her boundaries.
Canada--using the name in its restricted sense--was a position of great
strength; and even when her dependencies were overcome, she could hold
her own against forces far superior. Armies could reach her only by
three routes,--the Lower St. Lawrence on the east, the Upper St.
Lawrence on the west, and Lake Champlain on the south. The first access
was guarded by a fortress almost impregnable by nature, and the second
by a long chain of dangerous rapids; while the third offered a series of
points easy to defend. During this same war, Frederic of Prussia held
his ground triumphantly against greater odds, though his kingdom was
open on all sides to attack.
It was the fatuity of Louis XV. and his Pompadour that made the conquest
of Canada possible. Had they not broken the traditionary policy of
France, allied themselves to Austria, her ancient enemy, and plunged
needlessly into the European war, the whole force of the kingdom would
have been turned, from the first, to the humbling of England and the
defence of the French colonies. The French soldiers left dead on
inglorious Continental battle-fields could have saved Canada, and
perhaps made good her claim to the vast territories of the West.
But there were other contingencies. The possession of Canada was a
question of diplomacy as well as of war. If England conquered her, she
might restore her, as she had lately restored Cape Breton. She had an
interest in keeping France alive on the American continent. More than
one clear eye saw, at the middle of the last century, that the
subjection of Canada would lead to a revolt of the British colonies. So
long as an active and enterprising enemy threatened their borders, they
could not break with the mother-country, because they needed her help.
And if the arms of France had prospered in the other hemisphere; if she
had gained in Europe or Asia territories with which to buy back what she
had lost in America, then, in all likelihood, Canada would have passed
again into her hands.
The most momentous and far-reaching question ever brought to issue on
this continent was: Shall France remain here, or shall she not? If, by
diplomacy or war, she had preserved but the half, or less than the half,
of her American possessions, then a barrier would have been set to the
spread of the English-speaking races; there would have been no
Revolutionary War; and for a long time, at least, no independence. It
was not a question of scanty populations strung along the banks of the
St. Lawrence; it was--or under a government of any worth it would have
been--a question of the armies and generals of France. America owes much
to the imbecility of Louis XV. and the ambitious vanity and personal
dislikes of his mistress.
The Seven Years War made England what she is. It crippled the commerce
of her rival, ruined France in two continents, and blighted her as a
colonial power. It gave England the control of the seas and the mastery
of North America and India, made her the first of commercial nations,
and prepared that vast colonial system that has planted new Englands in
every quarter of the globe. And while it made England what she is, it
supplied to the United States the indispensable condition of their
greatness, if not of their national existence.
Before entering on the story of the great contest, we will look at the
parties to it on both sides of the Atlantic.
Montcalm and Wolfe
Chapter 1
1745-1755
The Combatants
The latter half of the reign of George II. was one of the most prosaic
periods in English history. The civil wars and the Restoration had had
their enthusiasms, religion and liberty on one side, and loyalty on the
other; but the old fires declined when William III. came to the throne,
and died to ashes under the House of Hanover. Loyalty lost half its
inspiration when it lost the tenet of the divine right of kings; and
nobody could now hold that tenet with any consistency except the
defeated and despairing Jacobites. Nor had anybody as yet proclaimed the
rival dogma of the divine right of the people. The reigning monarch held
his crown neither of God nor of the nation, but of a parliament
controlled by a ruling class. The Whig aristocracy had done a priceless
service to English liberty. It was full of political capacity, and by no
means void of patriotism; but it was only a part of the national life.
Nor was it at present moved by political emotions in any high sense. It
had done its great work when it expelled the Stuarts and placed William
of Orange on the throne; its ascendency was now complete. The Stuarts
had received their death-blow at Culloden; and nothing was left to the
dominant party but to dispute on subordinate questions, and contend for
office among themselves. The Troy squires sulked in their
country-houses, hunted foxes, and grumbled against the reigning dynasty;
yet hardly wished to see the nation convulsed by a counter-revolution
and another return of the Stuarts.
If politics had run to commonplace, so had morals; and so too had
religion. Despondent writers of the day even complained that British
courage had died out. There was little sign to the common eye that under
a dull and languid surface, forces were at work preparing a new life,
material, moral, and intellectual. As yet, Whitefield and Wesley had not
wakened the drowsy conscience of the nation, nor the voice of William
Pitt roused it like a trumpet-peal.
It was the unwashed and unsavory England of Hogarth, Fielding, Smollett,
and Sterne; of Tom Jones, Squire Western, Lady Bellaston, and Parson
Adams; of the "Rake's Progress" and "Marriage à la Mode;" of the lords
and ladies who yet live in the undying gossip of Horace Walpole,
be-powdered, be-patched, and be-rouged, flirting at masked balls,
playing cards till daylight, retailing scandal, and exchanging double
meanings. Beau Nash reigned king over the gaming-tables of Bath; the
ostrich-plumes of great ladies mingled with the peacock-feathers of
courtesans in the rotunda at Ranelagh Gardens; and young lords in velvet
suits and embroidered ruffles played away their patrimony at White's
Chocolate-House or Arthur's Club. Vice was bolder than to-day, and
manners more courtly, perhaps, but far more coarse.
The humbler clergy were thought--sometimes with reason--to be no fit
company for gentlemen, and country parsons drank their ale in the
squire's kitchen. The passenger-wagon spent the better part of a
fortnight in creeping from London to York. Travellers carried pistols
against footpads and mounted highwaymen. Dick Turpin and Jack Sheppard
were popular heroes. Tyburn counted its victims by scores; and as yet no
Howard had appeared to reform the inhuman abominations of the prisons.
The middle class, though fast rising in importance, was feebly and
imperfectly represented in parliament. The boroughs were controlled by
the nobility and gentry, or by corporations open to influence or
bribery. Parliamentary corruption had been reduced to a system; and
offices, sinecures, pensions, and gifts of money were freely used to
keep ministers in power. The great offices of state were held by men
sometimes of high ability, but of whom not a few divided their lives
among politics, cards, wine, horse-racing, and women, till time and the
gout sent them to the waters of Bath. The dull, pompous, and irascible
old King had two ruling passions,--money, and his Continental dominions
of Hanover. His elder son, the Prince of Wales, was a centre of
opposition to him. His younger son, the Duke of Cumberland, a character
far more pronounced and vigorous, had won the day at Culloden, and lost
it at Fontenoy; but whether victor or vanquished, had shown the same
vehement bull-headed courage, of late a little subdued by fast growing
corpulency. The Duke of Newcastle, the head of the government, had
gained power and kept it by his rank and connections, his wealth, his
county influence, his control of boroughs, and the extraordinary
assiduity and devotion with which he practised the arts of corruption.
Henry Fox, grasping, unscrupulous, with powerful talents, a warm friend
after his fashion, and a most indulgent father; Carteret, with his
strong, versatile intellect and jovial intrepidity; the two Townshends,
Mansfield, Halifax, and Chesterfield,--were conspicuous figures in the
politics of the time. One man towered above them all. Pitt had many
enemies and many critics. They called him ambitious, audacious,
arrogant, theatrical, pompous, domineering; but what he has left for
posterity is a loftiness of soul, undaunted courage, fiery and
passionate eloquence, proud incorruptibility, domestic virtues rare in
his day, unbounded faith in the cause for which he stood, and abilities
which without wealth or strong connections were destined to place him on
the height of power. The middle class, as yet almost voiceless, looked
to him as its champion; but he was not the champion of a class. His
patriotism was as comprehensive as it was haughty and unbending. He
lived for England, loved her with intense devotion, knew her, believed
in her, and made her greatness his own; or rather, he was himself
England incarnate.
The nation was not then in fighting equipment. After the peace of
Aix-la-Chapelle, the army within the three kingdoms had been reduced to
about eighteen thousand men. Added to these were the garrisons of
Minorca and Gibraltar, and six or seven independent companies in the
American colonies. Of sailors, less than seventeen thousand were left in
the Royal Navy. Such was the condition of England on the eve of one of
the most formidable wars in which she was ever engaged.
Her rival across the Channel was drifting slowly and unconsciously
towards the cataclysm of the Revolution; yet the old monarchy, full of
the germs of decay, was still imposing and formidable. The House of
Bourbon held the three thrones of France, Spain, and Naples; and their
threatened union in a family compact was the terror of European
diplomacy. At home France was the foremost of the Continental nations;
and she boasted herself second only to Spain as a colonial power. She
disputed with England the mastery of India, owned the islands of Bourbon
and Mauritius, held important possessions in the West Indies, and
claimed all North America except Mexico and a strip of sea-coast. Her
navy was powerful, her army numerous, and well appointed; but she lacked
the great commanders of the last reign. Soubise, Maillebois, Contades,
Broglie, and Clermont were but weak successors of Condé, Turenne,
Vendôme, and Villars. Marshal Richelieu was supreme in the arts of
gallantry, and more famous for conquests of love than of war. The best
generals of Louis XV. were foreigners. Lowendal sprang from the royal
house of Denmark; and Saxe, the best of all, was one of the three
hundred and fifty-four bastards of Augustus the Strong, Elector of
Saxony and King of Poland. He was now, 1750, dying at Chambord, his iron
constitution ruined by debaucheries.
The triumph of the Bourbon monarchy was complete. The government had
become one great machine of centralized administration, with a king for
its head; though a king who neither could nor would direct it. All
strife was over between the Crown and the nobles; feudalism was robbed
of its vitality, and left the mere image of its former self, with
nothing alive but its abuses, its caste privileges, its exactions, its
pride and vanity, its power to vex and oppress. In England, the nobility
were a living part of the nation, and if they had privileges, they paid
for them by constant service to the state; in France, they had no
political life, and were separated from the people by sharp lines of
demarcation. From warrior chiefs, they had changed to courtiers. Those
of them who could afford it, and many who could not, left their estates
to the mercy of stewards, and gathered at Versailles to revolve about
the throne as glittering satellites, paid in pomp, empty distinctions,
or rich sinecures, for the power they had lost. They ruined their
vassals to support the extravagance by which they ruined themselves.
Such as stayed at home were objects of pity and scorn. "Out of your
Majesty's presence," said one of them, "we are not only wretched, but
ridiculous."
Versailles was like a vast and gorgeous theatre, where all were actors
and spectators at once; and all played their parts to perfection. Here
swarmed by thousands this silken nobility, whose ancestors rode cased in
iron. Pageant followed pageant. A picture of the time preserves for us
an evening in the great hall of the Château, where the King, with piles
of louis d'or before him, sits at a large oval green table, throwing the
dice, among princes and princesses, dukes and duchesses, ambassadors,
marshals of France, and a vast throng of courtiers, like an animated bed
of tulips; for men and women alike wear bright and varied colors. Above
are the frescos of Le Brun; around are walls of sculptured and inlaid
marbles, with mirrors that reflect the restless splendors of the scene
and the blaze of chandeliers, sparkling with crystal pendants. Pomp,
magnificence, profusion, were a business and a duty at the Court.
Versailles was a gulf into which the labor of France poured its
earnings; and it was never full.
Here the graces and charms were a political power. Women had prodigious
influence, and the two sexes were never more alike. Men not only dressed
in colors, but they wore patches and carried muffs. The robust qualities
of the old nobility still lingered among the exiles of the provinces,
while at Court they had melted into refinements tainted with corruption.
Yet if the butterflies of Versailles had lost virility, they had not
lost courage. They fought as gayly as they danced. In the halls which
they haunted of yore, turned now into a historical picture-gallery, one
sees them still, on the canvas of Lenfant, Lepaon, or Vernet, facing
death with careless gallantry, in their small three-cornered hats,
powdered perukes, embroidered coats, and lace ruffles. Their valets
served them with ices in the trenches, under the cannon of besieged
towns. A troop of actors formed part of the army-train of Marshal Saxe.
At night there was a comedy, a ballet, or a ball, and in the morning a
battle. Saxe, however, himself a sturdy German, while he recognized
their fighting value, and knew well how to make the best of it,
sometimes complained that they were volatile, excitable, and difficult
to manage.
The weight of the Court, with its pomps, luxuries, and wars, bore on the
classes least able to support it. The poorest were taxed most; the
richest not at all. The nobles, in the main, were free from imposts. The
clergy, who had vast possessions, were wholly free, though they
consented to make voluntary gifts to the Crown; and when, in a time of
emergency, the minister Machault required them, in common with all
others hitherto exempt, to contribute a twentieth of their revenues to
the charges of government, they passionately refused, declaring that
they would obey God rather than the King. The cultivators of the soil
were ground to the earth by a threefold extortion,--the seigniorial
dues, the tithes of the Church, and the multiplied exactions of the
Crown, enforced with merciless rigor by the farmers of the revenue, who
enriched themselves by wringing the peasant on the one hand, and
cheating the King on the other. A few great cities shone with all that
is most brilliant in society, intellect, and concentrated wealth; while
the country that paid the costs lay in ignorance and penury, crushed and
despairing. Of the inhabitants of towns, too, the demands of the
tax-gatherer were extreme; but here the immense vitality of the French
people bore up the burden. While agriculture languished, and intolerable
oppression turned peasants into beggars or desperadoes; while the clergy
were sapped by corruption, and the nobles enervated by luxury and ruined
by extravagance, the middle class was growing in thrift and strength.
Arts and commerce prospered, and the seaports were alive with foreign
trade. Wealth tended from all sides towards the centre. The King did not
love his capital; but he and his favorites amused themselves with
adorning it. Some of the chief embellishments that make Paris what it is
to-day--the Place de la Concorde, the Champs Elysées, and many of the
palaces of the Faubourg St. Germain--date from this reign.
One of the vicious conditions of the time was the separation in
sympathies and interests of the four great classes of the
nation,--clergy, nobles, burghers, and peasants; and each of these,
again, divided itself into incoherent fragments. France was an aggregate
of disjointed parts, held together by a meshwork of arbitrary power,
itself touched with decay. A disastrous blow was struck at the national
welfare when the Government of Louis XV. revived the odious persecution
of the Huguenots. The attempt to scour heresy out of France cost her the
most industrious and virtuous part of her population, and robbed her of
those most fit to resist the mocking scepticism and turbid passions that
burst out like a deluge with the Revolution.
Her manifold ills were summed up in the King. Since the Valois, she had
had no monarch so worthless. He did not want understanding, still less
the graces of person. In his youth the people called him the
"Well-beloved;" but by the middle of the century they so detested him
that he dared not pass through Paris, lest the mob should execrate him.
He had not the vigor of the true tyrant; but his langour, his hatred of
all effort, his profound selfishness, his listless disregard of public
duty, and his effeminate libertinism, mixed with superstitious devotion,
made him no less a national curse. Louis XIII. was equally unfit to
govern; but he gave the reins to the Great Cardinal. Louis XV. abandoned
them to a frivolous mistress, content that she should rule on condition
of amusing him. It was a hard task; yet Madame de Pompadour accomplished
it by methods infamous to him and to her. She gained and long kept the
power that she coveted: filled the Bastille with her enemies; made and
unmade ministers; appointed and removed generals. Great questions of
policy were at the mercy of her caprices. Through her frivolous vanity,
her personal likes and dislikes, all the great departments of
government--army, navy, war, foreign affairs, justice, finance--changed
from hand to hand incessantly, and this at a time of crisis when the
kingdom needed the steadiest and surest guidance. Few of the officers of
state, except, perhaps, D'Argenson, could venture to disregard her. She
turned out Orry, the comptroller-general, put her favorite, Machault,
into his place, then made him keeper of the seals, and at last minister
of marine. The Marquis de Puysieux, in the ministry of foreign affairs,
and the Comte de St.-Florentin, charged with the affairs of the clergy,
took their cue from her. The King stinted her in nothing. First and
last, she is reckoned to have cost him thirty-six million
francs,--answering now to more than as many dollars.
The prestige of the monarchy was declining with the ideas that had given
it life and strength. A growing disrespect for king, ministry, and
clergy was beginning to prepare the catastrophe that was still some
forty years in the future. While the valleys and low places of the
kingdom were dark with misery and squalor, its heights were bright with
a gay society,--elegant, fastidious, witty,--craving the pleasures of
the mind as well as of the senses, criticising everything, analyzing
everything, believing nothing. Voltaire was in the midst of it, hating,
with all his vehement soul, the abuses that swarmed about him, and
assailing them with the inexhaustible shafts of his restless and
piercing intellect. Montesquieu was showing to a despot-ridden age the
principles of political freedom. Diderot and D'Alembert were beginning
their revolutionary Encyclopaedia. Rousseau was sounding the first notes
of his mad eloquence,--the wild revolt of a passionate and diseased
genius against a world of falsities and wrongs. The _salons_ of Paris,
cloyed with other pleasures, alive to all that was racy and new,
welcomed the pungent doctrines, and played with them as children play
with fire, thinking no danger; as time went on, even embraced them in a
genuine spirit of hope and goodwill for humanity. The Revolution began
at the top,--in the world of fashion, birth, and intellect,--and
propagated itself downwards. "We walked on a carpet of flowers," Count
Ségur afterwards said, "unconscious that it covered an abyss;" till the
gulf yawned at last, and swallowed them.
Eastward, beyond the Rhine, lay the heterogeneous patchwork of the Holy
Roman, or Germanic, Empire. The sacred bonds that throughout the Middle
Ages had held together its innumerable fragments, had lost their
strength. The Empire decayed as a whole; but not so the parts that
composed it. In the south the House of Austria reigned over a formidable
assemblage of states; and in the north the House of Brandenburg,
promoted to royalty half a century before, had raised Prussia into an
importance far beyond her extent and population. In her dissevered rags
of territory lay the destinies of Germany. It was the late King, that
honest, thrifty, dogged, headstrong despot, Frederic William, who had
made his kingdom what it was, trained it to the perfection of drill, and
left it to his son, Frederic II. the best engine of war in Europe.
Frederic himself had passed between the upper and nether millstones of
paternal discipline. Never did prince undergo such an apprenticeship.
His father set him to the work of an overseer, or steward, flung plates
at his head in the family circle, thrashed him with his rattan in
public, bullied him for submitting to such treatment, and imprisoned him
for trying to run away from it. He came at last out of purgatory; and
Europe felt him to her farthest bounds. This bookish, philosophizing,
verse-making cynic and profligate was soon to approve himself the first
warrior of his time, and one of the first of all time.
Another power had lately risen on the European world. Peter the Great,
half hero, half savage, had roused the inert barbarism of Russia into a
titanic life. His daughter Elizabeth had succeeded to his
throne,--heiress of his sensuality, if not of his talents.
Over all the Continent the aspect of the times was the same. Power had
everywhere left the plains and the lower slopes, and gathered at the
summits. Popular life was at a stand. No great idea stirred the nations
to their depths. The religious convulsions of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries were over, and the earthquake of the French
Revolution had not begun. At the middle of the eighteenth century the
history of Europe turned on the balance of power; the observance of
treaties; inheritance and succession; rivalries of sovereign houses
struggling to win power or keep it, encroach on neighbors, or prevent
neighbors from encroaching; bargains, intrigue, force, diplomacy, and
the musket, in the interest not of peoples but of rulers. Princes, great
and small, brooded over some real or fancied wrong, nursed some dubious
claim born of a marriage, a will, or an ancient covenant fished out of
the abyss of time, and watched their moment to make it good. The general
opportunity came when, in 1740, the Emperor Charles VI. died and
bequeathed his personal dominions of the House of Austria to his
daughter, Maria Theresa. The chief Powers of Europe had been pledged in
advance to sustain the will; and pending the event, the veteran Prince
Eugene had said that two hundred thousand soldiers would be worth all
their guaranties together. The two hundred thousand were not there, and
not a sovereign kept his word. They flocked to share the spoil, and
parcel out the motley heritage of the young Queen. Frederic of Prussia
led the way, invaded her province of Silesia, seized it, and kept it.
The Elector of Bavaria and the King of Spain claimed their share, and
the Elector of Saxony and the King of Sardinia prepared to follow the
example. France took part with Bavaria, and intrigued to set the
imperial crown on the head of the Elector, thinking to ruin her old
enemy, the House of Austria, and rule Germany through an emperor too
weak to dispense with her support. England, jealous of her designs,
trembling for the balance of power, and anxious for the Hanoverian
possessions of her king, threw herself into the strife on the side of
Austria. It was now that, in the Diet at Presburg, the beautiful and
distressed Queen, her infant in her arms, made her memorable appeal to
the wild chivalry of her Hungarian nobles; and, clashing their swords,
they shouted with one voice: "Let us die for our king, Maria Theresa;"
_Moriamur pro rege nostro, Mariâ_,--one of the most dramatic scenes in
history; not quite true, perhaps, but near the truth. Then came that
confusion worse confounded called the war of the Austrian Succession,
with its Mollwitz, its Dettingen, its Fontenoy, and its Scotch episode
of Culloden. The peace of Aix-la-Chapelle closed the strife in 1748.
Europe had time to breathe; but the germs of discord remained alive.
The American Combatants
The French claimed all America, from the Alleghanies to the Rocky
Mountains, and from Mexico and Florida to the North Pole, except only
the ill-defined possessions of the English on the borders of Hudson Bay;
and to these vast regions, with adjacent islands, they gave the general
name of New France. They controlled the highways of the continent, for
they held its two great rivers. First, they had seized the St. Lawrence,
and then planted themselves at the mouth of the Mississippi. Canada at
the north, and Louisiana at the south, were the keys of a boundless
interior, rich with incalculable possibilities. The English colonies,
ranged along the Atlantic coast, had no royal road to the great inland,
and were, in a manner, shut between the mountains and the sea. At the
middle of the century they numbered in all, from Georgia to Maine, about
eleven hundred and sixty thousand white inhabitants. By the census of
1754 Canada had but fifty-five thousand.[1] Add those of Louisiana and
Acadia, and the whole white population under the French flag might be
something more than eighty thousand. Here is an enormous disparity; and
hence it has been argued that the success of the English colonies and
the failure of the French was not due to difference of religious and
political systems, but simply to numerical preponderance. But this
preponderance itself grew out of a difference of systems. We have said
before, and it cannot be said too often, that in making Canada a citadel
of the state religion--a holy of holies of exclusive Roman Catholic
orthodoxy,--the clerical monitors of the Crown robbed their country of a
trans-Atlantic empire. New France could not grow with a priest on guard
at the gate to let in none but such as pleased him. One of the ablest of
Canadian governors, La Galissonière, seeing the feebleness of the colony
compared with the vastness of its claims, advised the King to send ten
thousand peasants to occupy the valley of the Ohio, and hold back the
British swarm that was just then pushing its advance-guard over the
Alleghanies. It needed no effort of the King to people his waste domain,
not with ten thousand peasants, but with twenty times ten thousand
Frenchmen of every station,--the most industrious, most instructed, most
disciplined by adversity and capable of self-rule, that the country
could boast. While La Galissonière was asking for colonists, the agents
of the Crown, set on by priestly fanaticism, or designing selfishness
masked with fanaticism, were pouring volleys of musketry into Huguenot
congregations, imprisoning for life those innocent of all but their
faith,--the men in the galleys, the women in the pestiferous dungeons of
Aigues Mortes,--hanging their ministers, kidnapping their children, and
reviving, in short, the dragonnades. Now, as in the past century, many
of the victims escaped to the British colonies, and became a part of
them. The Huguenots would have hailed as a boon the permission to
emigrate under the fleur-de-lis, and build up a Protestant France in the
valleys of the West. It would have been a bane of absolutism, but a
national glory; would have set bounds to English colonization, and
changed the face of the continent. The opportunity was spurned. The
dominant Church clung to its policy of rule and ruin. France built its
best colony on a principle of exclusion, and failed; England reversed
the system, and succeeded.
[Footnote 1: _Censuses of Canada_, iv. 61. Rameau _(La France aux
Colonies,_ ii. 81) estimates the Canadian population, in 1755, at
sixty-six thousand, besides _voyageurs_, Indian traders, etc. Vaudreuil,
in 1760, places it at seventy thousand.]
I have shown elsewhere the aspects of Canada, where a rigid scion of the
old European tree was set to grow in the wilderness. The military
Governor, holding his miniature Court on the rock of Quebec; the feudal
proprietors, whose domains lined the shores of the St. Lawrence; the
peasant; the roving bushranger; the half-tamed savage, with crucifix and
scalping-knife; priests; friars; nuns; and soldiers,--mingled to form a
society the most picturesque on the continent. What distinguished it
from the France that produced it was a total absence of revolt against
the laws of its being,--an absolute conservatism, an unquestioning
acceptance of Church and King. The Canadian, ignorant of everything but
what the priest saw fit to teach him, had never heard of Voltaire; and
if he had known him, would have thought him a devil. He had, it is true,
a spirit of insubordination born of the freedom of the forest; but if
his instincts rebelled, his mind and soul were passively submissive. The
unchecked control of a hierarchy robbed him of the independence of
intellect and character, without which, under the conditions of modern
life, a people must resign itself to a position of inferiority. Yet
Canada had a vigor of her own. It was not in spiritual deference only
that she differed from the country of her birth. Whatever she had caught
of its corruptions, she had caught nothing of its effeminacy. The mass
of her people lived in a rude poverty,--not abject, like the peasant of
old France, nor ground down by the tax-gatherer; while those of the
higher ranks--all more or less engaged in pursuits of war or adventure,
and inured to rough journeyings and forest exposures--were rugged as
their climate. Even the French regular troops, sent out to defend the
colony, caught its hardy spirit, and set an example of stubborn fighting
which their comrades at home did not always emulate.
Canada lay ensconced behind rocks and forests. All along her southern
boundaries, between her and her English foes, lay a broad tract of
wilderness, shaggy with primeval woods. Innumerable streams gurgled
beneath their shadows; innumerable lakes gleamed in the fiery sunsets;
innumerable mountains bared their rocky foreheads to the wind. These
wastes were ranged by her savage allies, Micmacs, Etechémins, Abenakis,
Caughnawagas; and no enemy could steal upon her unawares. Through the
midst of them stretched Lake Champlain, pointing straight to the heart
of the British settlement,--a watery thoroughfare of mutual attack, and
the only approach by which, without a long _détour_ by wilderness or
sea, a hostile army could come within striking distance of the colony.
The French advanced post of Fort Frederic, called Crown Point by the
English, barred the narrows of the lake, which thence spread northward
to the portals of Canada guarded by Fort St. Jean. Southwestward, some
fourteen hundred miles as a bird flies, and twice as far by the
practicable routes of travel, was Louisiana, the second of the two heads
of New France; while between lay the realms of solitude where the
Mississippi rolled its sullen tide, and the Ohio wound its belt of
silver through the verdant woodlands.
To whom belonged this world of prairies and forests? France claimed it
by right of discovery and occupation. It was her explorers who, after De
Soto, first set foot on it. The question of right, it is true, mattered
little; for, right or wrong, neither claimant would yield her
pretensions so long as she had strength to uphold them; yet one point is
worth a moment's notice. The French had established an excellent system
in the distribution of their American lands. Whoever received a grant
from the Crown was required to improve it, and this within reasonable
time. If he did not, the land ceased to be his, and was given to another
more able or industrious. An international extension of her own
principle would have destroyed the pretensions of France to all the
countries of the West. She had called them hers for three fourths of a
century, and they were still a howling waste, yielding nothing to
civilization but beaver-skins, with here and there a fort, trading-post,
or mission, and three or four puny hamlets by the Mississippi and the
Detroit. We have seen how she might have made for herself an
indisputable title, and peopled the solitudes with a host to maintain
it. She would not; others were at hand who both would and could; and the
late claimant, disinherited and forlorn, would soon be left to count the
cost of her bigotry.
The thirteen British colonies were alike, insomuch as they all had
representative governments, and a basis of English law. But the
differences among them were great. Some were purely English; others were
made up of various races, though the Anglo-Saxon was always predominant.
Some had one prevailing religious creed; others had many creeds. Some
had charters, and some had not. In most cases the governor was appointed
by the Crown; in Pennsylvania and Maryland he was appointed by a feudal
proprietor, and in Connecticut and Rhode Island he was chosen by the
people. The differences of disposition and character were still greater
than those of form.
The four northern colonies, known collectively as New England, were an
exception to the general rule of diversity. The smallest, Rhode Island,
had features all its own; but the rest were substantially one in nature
and origin. The principal among them, Massachusetts, may serve as the
type of all. It was a mosaic of little village republics, firmly
cemented together, and formed into a single body politic through
representatives sent to the "General Court" at Boston. Its government,
originally theocratic, now tended to democracy, ballasted as yet by
strong traditions of respect for established worth and ability, as well
as by the influence of certain families prominent in affairs for
generations. Yet there were no distinct class-lines, and popular power,
like popular education, was widely diffused. Practically Massachusetts
was almost independent of the mother-country. Its people were purely
English, of sound yeoman stock, with an abundant leaven drawn from the
best of the Puritan gentry; but their original character had been
somewhat modified by changed conditions of life. A harsh and exacting
creed, with its stiff formalism and its prohibition of wholesome
recreation; excess in the pursuit of gain--the only resource left to
energies robbed of their natural play; the struggle for existence on a
hard and barren soil; and the isolation of a narrow village
life,--joined to produce, in the meaner sort, qualities which were
unpleasant, and sometimes repulsive. Puritanism was not an unmixed
blessing. Its view of human nature was dark, and its attitude towards it
one of repression. It strove to crush out not only what is evil, but
much that is innocent and salutary. Human nature so treated will take
its revenge, and for every vice that it loses find another instead.
Nevertheless, while New England Puritanism bore its peculiar crop of
faults, it produced also many good and sound fruits. An uncommon vigor,
joined to the hardy virtues of a masculine race, marked the New England
type. The sinews, it is true, were hardened at the expense of blood and
flesh,--and this literally as well as figuratively; but the staple of
character was a sturdy conscientiousness, an undespairing courage,
patriotism, public spirit, sagacity, and a strong good sense. A great
change, both for better and for worse, has since come over it, due
largely to reaction against the unnatural rigors of the past. That
mixture, which is now too common, of cool emotions with excitable
brains, was then rarely seen. The New England colonies abounded in high
examples of public and private virtue, though not always under the most
prepossessing forms. They were conspicuous, moreover, for intellectual
activity, and were by no means without intellectual eminence.
Massachusetts had produced at least two men whose fame had crossed the
sea,--Edwards, who out of the grim theology of Calvin mounted to sublime
heights of mystical speculation; and Franklin, famous already by his
discoveries in electricity. On the other hand, there were few genuine
New Englanders who, however personally modest, could divest themselves
of the notion that they belonged to a people in an especial manner the
object of divine approval; and this self-righteousness, along with
certain other traits, failed to commend the Puritan colonies to the
favor of their fellows. Then, as now, New England was best known to her
neighbors by her worst side.
In one point, however, she found general applause. She was regarded as
the most military among the British colonies. This reputation was well
founded, and is easily explained. More than all the rest, she lay open
to attack. The long waving line of the New England border, with its
lonely hamlets and scattered farms, extended from the Kennebec to beyond
the Connecticut, and was everywhere vulnerable to the guns and
tomahawks of the neighboring French and their savage allies. The
colonies towards the south had thus far been safe from danger. New York
alone was within striking distance of the Canadian war-parties. That
province then consisted of a line of settlements up the Hudson and the
Mohawk, and was little exposed to attack except at its northern end,
which was guarded by the fortified town of Albany, with its outlying
posts, and by the friendly and warlike Mohawks, whose "castles" were
close at hand. Thus New England had borne the heaviest brunt of the
preceding wars, not only by the forest, but also by the sea; for the
French of Acadia and Cape Breton confronted her coast, and she was often
at blows with them. Fighting had been a necessity with her, and she had
met the emergency after a method extremely defective, but the best that
circumstances would permit. Having no trained officers and no
disciplined soldiers, and being too poor to maintain either, she
borrowed her warriors from the workshop and the plough, and officered
them with lawyers, merchants, mechanics, or farmers. To compare them
with good regular troops would be folly; but they did, on the whole,
better than could have been expected, and in the last war achieved the
brilliant success of the capture of Louisburg. This exploit, due partly
to native hardihood and partly to good luck, greatly enhanced the
military repute of New England, or rather was one of the chief sources
of it.
The great colony of Virginia stood in strong contrast to New England. In
both the population was English; but the one was Puritan with Roundhead
traditions, and the other, so far as concerned its governing class,
Anglican with Cavalier traditions. In the one, every man, woman, and
child could read and write; in the other, Sir William Berkeley once
thanked God that there were no free schools, and no prospect of any for
a century. The hope had found fruition. The lower classes of Virginia
were as untaught as the warmest friend of popular ignorance could wish.
New England had a native literature more than respectable under the
circumstances, while Virginia had none; numerous industries, while
Virginia was all agriculture, with but a single crop; a homogeneous
society and a democratic spirit, while her rival was an aristocracy.
Virginian society was distinctively stratified. On the lowest level were
the negro slaves, nearly as numerous as all the rest together; next, the
indented servants and the poor whites, of low origin, good-humored, but
boisterous, and some times vicious; next, the small and despised class
of tradesmen and mechanics; next, the farmers and lesser planters, who
were mainly of good English stock, and who merged insensibly into the
ruling class of the great landowners. It was these last who represented
the colony and made the laws. They may be described as English country
squires transplanted to a warm climate and turned slave-masters. They
sustained their position by entails, and constantly undermined it by the
reckless profusion which ruined them at last. Many of them were well
born, with an immense pride of descent, increased by the habit of
domination. Indolent and energetic by turns; rich in natural gifts and
often poor in book-learning, though some, in the lack of good teaching
at home, had been bred in the English universities; high-spirited,
generous to a fault; keeping open house in their capacious mansions,
among vast tobacco-fields and toiling negroes, and living in a rude pomp
where the fashions of St. James were somewhat oddly grafted on the
roughness of the plantation,--what they wanted in schooling was supplied
by an education which books alone would have been impotent to give, the
education which came with the possession and exercise of political
power, and the sense of a position to maintain, joined to a bold spirit
of independence and a patriotic attachment to the Old Dominion. They
were few in number; they raced, gambled, drank, and swore; they did
everything that in Puritan eyes was most reprehensible; and in the day
of need they gave the United Colonies a body of statesmen and orators
which had no equal on the continent. A vigorous aristocracy favors the
growth of personal eminence, even in those who are not of it, but only
near it.
The essential antagonism of Virginia and New England was afterwards to
become, and to remain for a century, an element of the first influence
in American history. Each might have learned much from the other; but
neither did so till, at last, the strife of their contending principles
shook the continent. Pennsylvania differed widely from both. She was a
conglomerate of creeds and races,--English, Irish, Germans, Dutch, and
Swedes; Quakers, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Romanists, Moravians, and a
variety of nondescript sects. The Quakers prevailed in the eastern
districts; quiet, industrious, virtuous, and serenely obstinate. The
Germans were strongest towards the centre of the colony, and were
chiefly peasants; successful farmers, but dull, ignorant, and
superstitious. Towards the west were the Irish, of whom some were
Celts, always quarrelling with their German neighbors, who detested
them; but the greater part were Protestants of Scotch descent, from
Ulster; a vigorous border population. Virginia and New England had each
a strong distinctive character. Pennsylvania, with her heterogeneous
population, had none but that which she owed to the sober neutral tints
of Quaker existence. A more thriving colony there was not on the
continent. Life, if monotonous, was smooth and contented. Trade and the
arts grew. Philadelphia, next to Boston, was the largest town in British
America; and was, moreover, the intellectual centre of the middle and
southern colonies. Unfortunately, for her credit in the approaching war,
the Quaker influence made Pennsylvania non-combatant. Politically, too,
she was an anomaly; for, though utterly unfeudal in disposition and
character, she was under feudal superiors in the persons of the
representatives of William Penn, the original grantee.
New York had not as yet reached the relative prominence which her
geographical position and inherent strength afterwards gave her. The
English, joined to the Dutch, the original settlers, were the dominant
population; but a half-score of other languages were spoken in the
province, the chief among them being that of the Huguenot French in the
southern parts, and that of the Germans on the Mohawk. In religion, the
province was divided between the Anglican Church, with government
support and popular dislike, and numerous dissenting sects, chiefly
Lutherans, Independents, Presbyterians, and members of the Dutch
Reformed Church. The little city of New York, like its great successor,
was the most cosmopolitan place on the continent, and probably the
gayest. It had, in abundance, balls, concerts, theatricals, and evening
clubs, with plentiful dances and other amusements, for the poorer
classes. Thither in the winter months came the great hereditary
proprietors on the Hudson; for the old Dutch feudality still held its
own, and the manors of Van Renselaer, Cortland, and Livingston, with
their seigniorial privileges, and the great estates and numerous
tenantry of the Schuylers and other leading families, formed the basis
of an aristocracy, some of whose members had done good service to the
province, and were destined to do more. Pennsylvania was feudal in form,
and not in spirit; Virginia in spirit, and not in form; New England in
neither; and New York largely in both. This social crystallization had,
it is true, many opponents. In politics, as in religion, there were
sharp antagonisms and frequent quarrels. They centred in the city; for
in the well-stocked dwellings of the Dutch farmers along the Hudson
there reigned a tranquil and prosperous routine; and the Dutch border
town of Albany had not its like in America for unruffled conservatism
and quaint picturesqueness.
Of the other colonies, the briefest mention will suffice: New Jersey,
with its wholesome population of farmers; tobacco-growing Maryland,
which, but for its proprietary government and numerous Roman Catholics,
might pass for another Virginia, inferior in growth, and less decisive
in features; Delaware, a modest appendage of Pennsylvania; wild and rude
North Carolina; and, farther on, South Carolina and Georgia, too remote
from the seat of war to take a noteworthy part in it. The attitude of
these various colonies towards each other is hardly conceivable to an
American of the present time. They had no political tie except a common
allegiance to the British Crown. Communication between them was
difficult and slow, by rough roads traced often through primeval
forests. Between some of them there was less of sympathy than of
jealousy kindled by conflicting interests or perpetual disputes
concerning boundaries. The patriotism of the colonist was bounded by the
lines of his government, except in the compact and kindred colonies of
New England, which were socially united, through politically distinct.
The country of the New Yorker was New York, and the country of the
Virginian was Virginia. The New England colonies had once confederated;
but, kindred as they were, they had long ago dropped apart. William Penn
proposed a plan of colonial union wholly fruitless. James II. tried to
unite all the northern colonies under one government; but the attempt
came to naught. Each stood aloof, jealously independent. At rare
intervals, under the pressure of an emergency, some of them would try to
act in concert; and, except in New England, the results had been most
discouraging. Nor was it this segregation only that unfitted them for
war. They were all subject to popular legislatures, through whom alone
money and men could be raised; and these elective bodies were sometimes
factious and selfish, and not always either far-sighted or reasonable.
Moreover, they were in a state of ceaseless friction with their
governors, who represented the king, or, what was worse, the feudal
proprietary. These disputes, though varying in intensity, were found
everywhere except in the two small colonies which chose their own
governors; and they were premonitions of the movement towards
independence which ended in the war of Revolution. The occasion of
difference mattered little. Active or latent, the quarrel was always
present. In New York it turned on a question of the governor's salary;
in Pennsylvania on the taxation of the proprietary estates; in Virginia
on a fee exacted for the issue of land patents. It was sure to arise
whenever some public crisis gave the representatives of the people an
opportunity of extorting concessions from the representative of the
Crown, or gave the representative of the Crown an opportunity to gain a
point for prerogative. That is to say, the time when action was most
needed was the time chosen for obstructing it.
In Canada there was no popular legislature to embarrass the central
power. The people, like an army, obeyed the word of command,--a military
advantage beyond all price.
Divided in government; divided in origin, feelings, and principles;
jealous of each other, jealous of the Crown; the people at war with the
executive, and, by the fermentation of internal politics, blinded to an
outward danger that seemed remote and vague,--such were the conditions
under which the British colonies drifted into a war that was to decide
the fate of the continent.
This war was the strife of a united and concentred few against a divided
and discordant many. It was the strife, too, of the past against the
future; of the old against the new; of moral and intellectual torpor
against moral and intellectual life; of barren absolutism against a
liberty, crude, incoherent, and chaotic, yet full of prolific vitality.
Chapter 2
1749-1752
Céleron de Bienville
When the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle was signed, the Marquis de la
Galissonière ruled over Canada. Like all the later Canadian governors,
he was a naval officer; and, a few years after, he made himself famous
by a victory, near Minorca, over the English admiral Byng,--an
achievement now remembered chiefly by the fate of the defeated
commander, judicially murdered as the scapegoat of an imbecile ministry.
Galissonière was a humpback; but his deformed person was animated by a
bold spirit and a strong and penetrating intellect. He was the chief
representative of the American policy of France. He felt that, cost what
it might, she must hold fast to Canada, and link her to Louisiana by
chains of forts strong enough to hold back the British colonies, and
cramp their growth by confinement within narrow limits; while French
settlers, sent from the mother-country, should spread and multiply in
the broad valleys of the interior. It is true, he said, that Canada and
her dependencies have always been a burden; but they are necessary as a
barrier against English ambition; and to abandon them is to abandon
ourselves; for if we suffer our enemies to become masters in America,
their trade and naval power will grow to vast proportions, and they will
draw from their colonies a wealth that will make them preponderant in
Europe.[2]
[Footnote 2: La Galissonière, _Mémoire sur les Colonies de la France
dans l'Amêrique septentrionale_.]
The treaty had done nothing to settle the vexed question of boundaries
between France and her rival. It had but staved off the inevitable
conflict. Meanwhile, the English traders were crossing the mountains
from Pennsylvania and Virginia, poaching on the domain which France
claimed as hers, ruining the French fur-trade, seducing the Indian
allies of Canada, and stirring them up against her. Worse still, English
land speculators were beginning to follow. Something must be done, and
that promptly, to drive back the intruders, and vindicate French rights
in the valley of the Ohio. To this end the Governor sent Céloron de
Bienville thither in the summer of 1749.
He was a chevalier de St. Louis and a captain in the colony troops.
Under him went fourteen officers and cadets, twenty soldiers, a hundred
and eighty Canadians, and a band of Indians, all in twenty-three
birch-bark canoes. They left La Chine on the fifteenth of June, and
pushed up the rapids of the St. Lawrence, losing a man and damaging
several canoes on the way. Ten days brought them to the mouth of the
Oswegatchie, where Ogdensburg now stands. Here they found a Sulpitian
priest, Abbé Piquet, busy at building a fort, and lodging for the
present under a shed of bark like an Indian. This enterprising father,
ostensibly a missionary, was in reality a zealous political agent, bent
on winning over the red allies of the English, retrieving French
prestige, and restoring French trade. Thus far he had attracted but two
Iroquois to his new establishment; and these he lent to Céloron.
Reaching Lake Ontario, the party stopped for a time at the French fort
of Frontenac, but avoided the rival English post of Oswego, on the
southern shore, where a trade in beaver skins, disastrous to French
interests, was carried on, and whither many tribes, once faithful to
Canada, now made resort. On the sixth of July Céloron reached Niagara.
This, the most important pass of all the western wilderness, was guarded
by a small fort of palisades on the point where the river joins the
lake. Thence, the party carried their canoes over the portage road by
the cataract, and launched them upon Lake Erie. On the fifteenth they
landed on the lonely shore where the town of Portland now stands; and
for the next seven days were busied in shouldering canoes and baggage up
and down the steep hills, through the dense forest of beech, oak, ash,
and elm, to the waters of Chautauqua Lake, eight or nine miles distant.
Here they embarked again, steering southward over the sunny waters, in
the stillness and solitude of the leafy hills, till they came to the
outlet, and glided down the peaceful current in the shade of the tall
forests that overarched it. This prosperity was short. The stream was
low, in spite of heavy rains that had drenched them on the carrying
place. Father Bonnecamp, chaplain of the expedition, wrote, in his
Journal: "In some places--and they were but too frequent--the water was
only two or three inches deep; and we were reduced to the sad necessity
of dragging our canoes over the sharp pebbles, which, with all our care
and precaution, stripped off large slivers of the bark. At last, tired
and worn, and almost in despair of ever seeing La Belle Rivière, we
entered it at noon of the 29th." The part of the Ohio, or "La Belle
Rivière," which they had thus happily reached, is now called the
Alleghany. The Great West lay outspread before them, a realm of wild and
waste fertility.
French America had two heads,--one among the snows of Canada, and one
among the canebrakes of Louisiana; one communicating with the world
through the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and the other through the Gulf of
Mexico. These vital points were feebly connected by a chain of military
posts,--slender, and often interrupted,--circling through the wilderness
nearly three thousand miles. Midway between Canada and Louisiana lay the
valley of the Ohio. If the English should seize it, they would sever the
chain of posts, and cut French America asunder. If the French held it,
and entrenched themselves well along its eastern limits, they would shut
their rivals between the Alleghanies and the sea, control all the tribes
of the West, and turn them, in case of war, against the English
borders,--a frightful and insupportable scourge.
The Indian population of the Ohio and its northern tributaries was
relatively considerable. The upper or eastern half of the valley was
occupied by mingled hordes of Delawares, Shawanoes, Wyandots, and
Iroquois, or Indians of the Five Nations, who had migrated thither from
their ancestral abodes within the present limits of the State of New
York, and who were called Mingoes by the English traders. Along with
them were a few wandering Abenakis, Nipissings, and Ottawas. Farther
west, on the waters of the Miami, the Wabash, and other neighboring
streams, was the seat of a confederacy formed of the various bands of
the Miamis and their kindred or affiliated tribes. Still farther west,
towards the Mississippi, were the remnants of the Illinois.
France had done but little to make good her claims to this grand domain.
East of the Miami she had no military post whatever. Westward, on the
Maumee, there was a small wooden fort, another on the St. Joseph, and
two on the Wabash. On the meadows of the Mississippi, in the Illinois
country, stood Fort Chartres,--a much stronger work, and one of the
chief links of the chain that connected Quebec with New Orleans. Its
four stone bastions were impregnable to musketry; and, here in the
depths of the wilderness, there was no fear that cannon would be brought
against it. It was the centre and citadel of a curious little forest
settlement, the only vestige of civilization through all this region. At
Kaskaskia, extended along the borders of the stream, were seventy or
eighty French houses; thirty or forty at Cahokia, opposite the site of
St. Louis; and a few more at the intervening hamlets of St. Philippe and
Prairie à la Roche,--a picturesque but thriftless population, mixed with
Indians, totally ignorant, busied partly with the fur-trade, and partly
with the raising of corn for the market of New Orleans. They
communicated with it by means of a sort of row galley, of eighteen or
twenty oars, which made the voyage twice a year, and usually spent ten
weeks on the return up the river.[3]
[Footnote 3: Gordon, _Journal_, 1766, appended to Pownall,
_Topographical Description_. In the Dépôt des Cartes de la Marine at
Paris, C. 4,040, are two curious maps of the Illinois colony, made a
little after the middle of the century. In 1753 the Marquis Duquesne
denounced the colonists as debauched and lazy.]
The Pope and the Bourbons had claimed this wilderness for seventy years,
and had done scarcely more for it than the Indians, its natural owners.
Of the western tribes, even of those living at the French posts, the
Hurons or Wyandots alone were Christian.[4] The devoted zeal of the
early missionaries and the politic efforts of their successors had
failed alike. The savages of the Ohio and the Mississippi, instead of
being tied to France by the mild bonds of the faith, were now in a state
which the French called defection or revolt; that is, they received and
welcomed the English traders.
[Footnote 4: "De toutes les nations domiciliées dans les postes des pays
d'en haut, il n'y a que les hurons du détroit qui aient embrassé la
Réligion chretienne." _Mémoirs du Roy pour servir d'instruction au S'r.
Marqius de Lajonquière_.]
These traders came in part from Virginia, but chiefly from Pennsylvania.
Dinwiddie, governor of Virginia, says of them: "They appear to me to be
in general a set of abandoned wretches;" and Hamilton, governor of
Pennsylvania, replies: "I concur with you in opinion that they are a
very licentious people.[5] Indian traders, of whatever nation, are
rarely models of virtue; and these, without doubt, were rough and
lawless men, with abundant blackguardism and few scruples. Not all of
them, however, are to be thus qualified. Some were of a better stamp;
among whom were Christopher Gist, William Trent, and George Croghan.
These and other chief traders hired men on the frontiers, crossed the
Alleghanies with goods packed on the backs of horses, descended into the
valley of the Ohio, and journeyed from stream to stream and village to
village along the Indian trails, with which all this wilderness was
seamed, and which the traders widened to make them practicable. More
rarely, they carried their goods on horses to the upper waters of the
Ohio, and embarked them in large wooden canoes, in which they descended
the main river, and ascended such of its numerous tributaries as were
navigable. They were bold and enterprising; and French writers, with
alarm and indignation, declare that some of them had crossed the
Mississippi and traded with the distant Osages. It is said that about
three hundred of them came over the mountains every year.
[Footnote 5: _Dinwiddie to Hamilton, 21 May, 1753. Hamilton to
Dinwiddie,--May, 1753._]
On reaching the Alleghany, Céleron de Bienville entered upon the work
assigned him, and began by taking possession of the country. The men
were drawn up in order; Louis XV. was proclaimed lord of all that
region, the arms of France, stamped on a sheet of tin, were nailed to a
tree, a plate of lead was buried at its foot, and the notary of the
expedition drew up a formal act of the whole proceeding. The leaden
plate was inscribed as follows: "Year 1749, in the reign of Louis
Fifteenth, King of France. We, Céleron, commanding the detachment sent
by the Marquis de la Galissonière, commander-general of New France, to
restore tranquillity in certain villages of these cantons, have buried
this plate at the confluence of the Ohio and the Kanaouagon
_[Conewango],_ this 29th July, as a token of renewal of possession
heretofore taken of the aforesaid River Ohio, of all streams that fall
into it, and all lands on both sides to the source of the aforesaid
streams, as the preceding Kings of France have enjoyed or ought to have
enjoyed it, and which they have upheld by force of arms and by treaties,
notably by those of Ryswick, Utrecht, and Aix-la-Chapelle."
This done, the party proceeded on its way, moving downward with the
current, and passing from time to time rough openings in the forest,
with clusters of Indian wigwams, the inmates of which showed a strong
inclination to run off at their approach. To prevent this, Chabert de
Joncaire was sent in advance, as a messenger of peace. He was himself
half Indian, being the son of a French officer and a Seneca squaw,
speaking fluently his maternal tongue, and, like his father, holding an
important place in all dealings between the French and the tribes who
spoke dialects of the Iroquois. On this occasion his success was not
complete. It needed all his art to prevent the alarmed savages from
taking to the woods. Sometimes, however, Céloron succeeded in gaining
an audience; and at a village of Senecas called La Paille Coupée he read
them a message from La Galissonière couched in terms sufficiently
imperative: "My children, since I was at war with the English, I have
learned that they have seduced you; and not content with corrupting your
hearts, have taken advantage of my absence to invade lands which are not
theirs, but mine; and therefore I have resolved to send you Monsieur de
Céloron to tell you my intentions, which are that I will not endure the
English on my land. Listen to me, children; mark well the word that I
send you; follow my advice, and the sky will always be calm and clear
over your villages. I expect from you an answer worthy of true
children." And he urged them to stop all trade with the intruders, and
send them back to whence they came. They promised compliance; "and,"
says the chaplain, Bonnecamp, "we should all have been satisfied if we
had thought them sincere; but nobody doubted that fear had extorted
their answer."
Four leagues below French Creek, by a rock scratched with Indian
hieroglyphics, they buried another leaden plate. Three days after, they
reached the Delaware village of Attiqué, at the site of Kittanning,
whose twenty-two wigwams were all empty, the owners having fled. A
little farther on, at an old abandoned village of Shawanoes, they found
six English traders, whom they warned to begone, and return no more at
their peril. Being helpless to resist, the traders pretended obedience;
and Céloron charged them with a letter to the Governor of Pennsylvania,
in which he declared that he was "greatly surprised" to find Englishmen
trespassing on the domain of France. "I know," concluded the letter,
"that our Commandant-General would be very sorry to be forced to use
violence; but his orders are precise, to leave no foreign traders within
the limits of his government."[6]
[Footnote 6: Céloron, _Journal_. Compare the letter as translated in
_N.Y. Col. Docs_., VI. 532; also _Colonial Records of Pa_., V. 325.]
On the next day they reached a village of Iroquois under a female chief,
called Queen Alequippa by the English, to whom she was devoted. Both
Queen and subjects had fled; but among the deserted wigwams were six
more Englishmen, whom Céloron warned off like the others, and who, like
them, pretended to obey. At a neighboring town they found only two
withered ancients, male and female, whose united ages, in the judgment
of the chaplain, were full two centuries. They passed the site of the
future Pittsburg; and some seventeen miles below approached Chininguée,
called Logstown by the English, one of the chief places on the river.[7]
Both English and French flags were flying over the town, and the
inhabitants, lining the shore, greeted their visitors with a salute of
musketry,--not wholly welcome, as the guns were charged will ball.
Céloron threatened to fire on them if they did not cease. The French
climbed the steep bank, and encamped on the plateau above, betwixt the
forest and the village, which consisted of some fifty cabins and
wigwams, grouped in picturesque squalor, and tenanted by a mixed
population, chiefly of Delawares, Shawanoes, and Mingoes. Here, too,
were gathered many fugitives from the deserted towns above. Céloron
feared a night attack. The camp was encircled by a ring of sentries; the
officers walked the rounds till morning; a part of the men were kept
under arms, and the rest ordered to sleep in their clothes. Joncaire
discovered through some women of his acquaintance that an attack was
intended. Whatever the danger may have been, the precautions of the
French averted it; and instead of a battle, there was a council. Céloron
delivered to the assembled chiefs a message from the Governor more
conciliatory than the former, "Through the love I bear you, my children,
I send you Monsieur de Céloron to open your eyes to the designs of the
English against your lands. The establishments they mean to make, and of
which you are certainly ignorant, tend to your complete ruin. They hide
from you their plans, which are to settle here and drive you away, if I
let them. As a good father who tenderly loves his children, and though
far away from them bears them always in his heart, I must warn you of
the danger that threatens you. The English intend to rob you of your
country; and that they may succeed, they begin by corrupting your minds.
As they mean to seize the Ohio, which belongs to me, I send to warn them
to retire."
[Footnote 7: There was another Chiningué, the Shenango of the English,
on the Alleghany.]
The reply of the chiefs, though sufficiently humble, was not all that
could be wished. They begged that the intruders might stay a little
longer, since the goods they brought were necessary to them. It was in
fact, these goods, cheap, excellent, and abundant as they were, which
formed the only true bond between the English and the Western tribes.
Logstown was one of the chief resorts of the English traders; and at
this moment there were ten of them in the place. Céloron warned them
off. "They agreed," says the chaplain, "to all that was demanded, well
resolved, no doubt, to do the contrary as soon as our backs were
turned."
Having distributed gifts among the Indians, the French proceeded on
their way, and at or near the mouth of Wheeling Creek buried another
plate of lead. They repeated the same ceremony at the mouth of the
Muskingum. Here, half a century later, when this region belonged to the
United States, a party of boys, bathing in the river, saw the plate
protruding from the bank where the freshets had laid it bare, knocked it
down with a long stick, melted half of it into bullets, and gave what
remained to a neighbor from Marietta, who, hearing of this mysterious
relic, inscribed in an unknown tongue, came to rescue it from their
hands.[8] It is now in the cabinet of the American Antiquarian
Society.[9] On the eighteenth of August, Céloron buried yet another
plate, at the mouth of the Great Kenawha. This, too, in the course of a
century, was unearthed by the floods, and was found in 1846 by a boy at
play, by the edge of the water.[10] The inscriptions on all these plates
were much alike, with variations of date and place.
[Footnote 8: O.H. Marshall, in _Magazine of American History, March,_
1878.]
[Footnote 9: For papers relating to it, see _Trans. Amer. Antiq. Soc_.,
II.]
[Footnote 10: For a facsimile of the inscription on this plate, see
_Olden Time,_ I. 288. Céloron calls the Kenawha, _Chinodahichetha_. The
inscriptions as given in his Journal correspond with those on the plates
discovered.]
The weather was by turns rainy and hot; and the men, tired and famished,
were fast falling ill. On the twenty-second they approached Scioto,
called by the French St. Yotoc, or Sinioto, a large Shawanoe town at the
mouth of the river which bears the same name. Greatly doubting what
welcome awaited them, they filled their powderhorns and prepared for the
worst. Joncaire was sent forward to propitiate the inhabitants; but they
shot bullets through the flag that he carried, and surrounded him,
yelling and brandishing their knives. Some were for killing him at once;
others for burning him alive. The interposition of a friendly Iroquois
saved him; and at length they let him go. Céloron was very uneasy at the
reception of his messenger. "I knew," he writes, "the weakness of my
party, two thirds of which were young men who had never left home
before, and would all have run at the sight of ten Indians. Still, there
was nothing for me but to keep on; for I was short of provisions, my
canoes were badly damaged, and I had no pitch or bark to mend them. So I
embarked again, ready for whatever might happen. I had good officers,
and about fifty men who could be trusted."
As they neared the town, the Indians swarmed to the shore, and began the
usual salute of musketry. "They fired," says Céloron, "full a thousand
shots; for the English give them powder for nothing." He prudently
pitched his camp on the farther side of the river, posted guards, and
kept close watch. Each party distrusted and feared the other. At length,
after much ado, many debates, and some threatening movements on the part
of the alarmed and excited Indians, a council took place at the tent of
the French commander; the chiefs apologized for the rough treatment of
Joncaire, and Céloron replied with a rebuke, which would doubtless have
been less mild, had he felt himself stronger. He gave them also a
message from the Governor, modified, apparently, to suit the
circumstances; for while warning them of the wiles of the English, it
gave no hint that the King of France claimed mastery of their lands.
Their answer was vague and unsatisfactory. It was plain that they were
bound to the enemy by interest, if not by sympathy. A party of English
traders were living in the place; and Céloron summoned them to withdraw,
on pain of what might ensue. "My instructions," he says, "enjoined me to
do this, and even to pillage the English; but I was not strong enough;
and as these traders were established in the village and well supported
by the Indians, the attempt would have failed, and put the French to
shame." The assembled chiefs having been regaled with a cup of brandy
each,--the only part of the proceeding which seemed to please
them,--Céloron reimbarked, and continued his voyage.
On the thirtieth they reached the Great Miami, called by the French,
Rivière à la Roche; and here Céloron buried the last of his leaden
plates. They now bade farewell to the Ohio, or, in the words of the
chaplain, to "La Belle Rivière,--that river so little known to the
French, and unfortunately too well known to the English." He speaks of
the multitude of Indian villages on its shores, and still more on its
northern branches. "Each, great or small, has one or more English
traders, and each of these has hired men to carry his furs. Behold,
then, the English well advanced upon our lands, and, what is worse,
under the protection of a crowd of savages whom they have drawn over to
them, and whose number increases daily."
The course of the party lay up the Miami; and they toiled thirteen days
against the shallow current before they reached a village of the Miami
Indians, lately built at the mouth of the rivulet now called Loramie
Creek. Over it ruled a chief to whom the French had given the singular
name of La Demoiselle, but whom the English, whose fast friend he was,
called Old Britain. The English traders who lived here had prudently
withdrawn, leaving only two hired men in the place. The object of
Cèloron was to induce the Demoiselle and his band to leave this new
abode and return to their old villages near the French fort on the
Maumee, where they would be safe from English seduction. To this end, he
called them to a council, gave them ample gifts, and made them an
harangue in the name of the Governor. The Demoiselle took the gifts,
thanked his French father for his good advice, and promised to follow it
at a more convenient time.[11] In vain Céloron insisted that he and his
tribesmen should remove at once. Neither blandishments nor threats would
prevail, and the French commander felt that his negotiation had failed.
[Footnote 11: Céloron, _Journal_. Compare _A Message from the
Twightwees_ (Miamis) in _Colonial Records of Pa_., V. 437, where they
say that they refused the gifts.]
He was not deceived. Far from leaving his village, the Demoiselle, who
was Great Chief of the Miami Confederacy, gathered his followers to the
spot, till, less than two years after the visit of Céloron, its
population had increased eightfold. Pique Town, or Pickawillany, as the
English called it, became one of the greatest Indian towns of the West,
the centre of English trade and influence, and a capital object of
French jealousy.
Céloron burned his shattered canoes, and led his party across the long
and difficult portage to the French post on the Maumee, where he found
Raymond, the commander, and all his men, shivering with fever and ague.
They supplied him with wooden canoes for his voyage down the river; and,
early in October, he reached Lake Erie, where he was detained for a time
by a drunken debauch of his Indians, who are called by the chaplain "a
species of men made to exercise the patience of those who have the
misfortune to travel with them." In a month more he was at Fort
Frontenac; and as he descended thence to Montreal, he stopped at the
Oswegatchie, in obedience to the Governor, who had directed him to
report the progress made by the Sulpitian, Abbé Piquet, at his new
mission. Piquet's new fort had been burned by Indians, prompted, as he
thought, by the English of Oswego; but the priest, buoyant and
undaunted, was still resolute for the glory of God and the confusion of
the heretics.
At length Céloron reached Montreal; and, closing his Journal, wrote
thus: "Father Bonnecamp, who is a Jesuit and a great mathematician,
reckons that we have travelled twelve hundred leagues; I and my officers
think we have travelled more. All I can say is, that the nations of
these countries are very ill-disposed towards the French, and devoted
entirely to the English."[12] If his expedition had done no more, it had
at least revealed clearly the deplorable condition of French interests
in the West.
[Footnote 12: _Journal de la Campagne que moy Céloron, Chevalier de
l'Ordre Royal et Militaire de St. Louis, Capitaine Commandant un
détachement envoyé dans la Belle Rivière par les ordres de M. le Marquis
de La Galissonière_, etc.
_Relation d'un voyage dans la Belle Rivière sous les ordres de M. de
Céloron, par le Père Bonnecamp, en_ 1749.]
While Céloron was warning English traders from the Ohio, a plan was on
foot in Virginia for a new invasion of the French domain. An association
was formed to settle the Ohio country; and a grant of five hundred
thousand acres was procured from the King, on condition that a hundred
families should be established upon it within seven years, a fort built,
and a garrison maintained. The Ohio Company numbered among its members
some of the chief men of Virginia, including two brothers of Washington;
and it had also a London partner, one Hanbury, a person of influence,
who acted as its agent in England. In the year after the expedition of
Céloron, its governing committee sent the trader Christopher Gist to
explore the country and select land. It must be "good level land," wrote
the Committee; "we had rather go quite down to the Mississippi than take
mean, broken land."[13] In November Gist reached Logstown, the Chiningué
of Céleron, where he found what he calls a "parcel of reprobate Indian
traders." Those whom he so stigmatizes were Pennsylvanians, chiefly
Scotch-Irish, between whom and the traders from Virginia there was great
jealousy. Gist was told that he "should never go home safe." He declared
himself the bearer of a message from the King. This imposed respect, and
he was allowed to proceed. At the Wyandot village of Muskingum he found
the trader George Croghan, sent to the Indians by the Governor of
Pennsylvania, to renew the chain of friendship.[14] "Croghan," he says,
"is a mere idol among his countrymen, the Irish traders;" yet they met
amicably, and the Pennsylvanian had with him a companion, Andrew
Montour, the interpreter, who proved of great service to Gist. As
Montour was a conspicuous person in his time, and a type of his class,
he merits a passing notice. He was the reputed grandson of a French
governor and an Indian squaw. His half-breed mother, Catharine Montour,
was a native of Canada, whence she was carried off by the Iroquois, and
adopted by them. She lived in a village at the head of Seneca Lake, and
still held the belief, inculcated by the guides of her youth, that
Christ was a Frenchman crucified by the English.[15] Her son Andrew is
thus described by the Moravian Zinzendorf, who knew him: "His face is
like that of a European, but marked with a broad Indian ring of
bear's-grease and paint drawn completely round it. He wears a coat of
fine cloth of cinnamon color, a black necktie with silver spangles, a
red satin waistcoat, trousers over which hangs his shirt, shoes and
stockings, a hat, and brass ornaments, something like the handle of a
basket, suspended from his ears."[16] He was an excellent interpreter,
and held in high account by his Indian kinsmen.
[Footnote 13: Instructions to Gist, in appendix to Pownall,
_Topographical Description of North America_.]
[Footnote 14: _Mr. Croghan's Transactions with the Indians_, in _N.Y.
Col. Docs.,_ VII. 267; _Croghan to Hamilton, 16 Dec_. 1750.]
[Footnote 15: This is stated by Count Zinzendorf, who visited her among
the Senecas. In a plan of the "Route of the Western Army," made in 1779,
and of which a tracing is before me, the village where she lived is
still called "French Catharine's Town."]
[Footnote 16: Journal of Zinzendorf, quoted in Schweinitz, _Life of
David Zeisberger, 112, note_.]
After leaving Muskingum, Gist, Croghan, and Montour went together to a
village on White Woman's Creek,--so called from one Mary Harris, who
lived here. She was born in New England, was made prisoner when a child
forty years before, and had since dwelt among her captors, finding such
comfort as she might in an Indian husband and a family of young
half-breeds. "She still remembers," says Gist, "that they used to be
very religious in New England, and wonders how white men can be so
wicked as she has seen them in these woods." He and his companions now
journeyed southwestward to the Shawanoe town at the mouth of the
Scioto, where they found a reception very different from that which had
awaited Céloron. Thence they rode northwestward along the forest path
that led to Pickawillany, the Indian town on the upper waters of the
Great Miami. Gist was delighted with the country; and reported to his
employers that "it is fine, rich, level land, well timbered with large
walnut, ash, sugar trees and cherry trees; well watered with a great
number of little streams and rivulets; full of beautiful natural
meadows, with wild rye, blue-grass, and clover, and abounding with
turkeys, deer, elks, and most sorts of game, particularly buffaloes,
thirty or forty of which are frequently seen in one meadow." A little
farther west, on the plains of the Wabash and the Illinois, he would
have found them by thousands.
They crossed the Miami on a raft, their horses swimming after them; and
were met on landing by a crowd of warriors, who, after smoking with
them, escorted them to the neighboring town, where they were greeted by
a fusillade of welcome. "We entered with English colors before us, and
were kindly received by their king, who invited us into his own house
and set our colors upon the top of it; then all the white men and
traders that were there came and welcomed us." This "king" was Old
Britain, or La Demoiselle. Great were the changes here since Céleron, a
year and a half before, had vainly enticed him to change his abode, and
dwell in the shadow of the fleur-de-lis. The town had grown to four
hundred families, or about two thousand souls; and the English traders
had built for themselves and their hosts a fort of pickets, strengthened
with logs.
There was a series of councils in the long house, or town-hall. Croghan
made the Indians a present from the Governor of Pennsylvania; and he and
Gist delivered speeches of friendship and good advice, which the
auditors received with the usual monosyllabic plaudits, ejected from the
depths of their throats. A treaty of peace was solemnly made between the
English and the confederate tribes, and all was serenity and joy; till
four Ottawas, probably from Detroit, arrived with a French flag, a gift
of brandy and tobacco, and a message from the French commandant inviting
the Miamis to visit him. Whereupon the great war-chief rose, and, with
"a fierce tone and very warlike air," said to the envoys: "Brothers the
Ottawas, we let you know, by these four strings of wampum, that we will
not hear anything the French say, nor do anything they bid us." Then
addressing the French as if actually present: "Fathers, we have made a
road to the sun-rising, and have been taken by the hand by our brothers
the English, the Six Nations, the Delawares, Shawanoes, and
Wyandots.[17] We assure you, in that road we will go; and as you
threaten us with war in the spring, we tell you that we are ready to
receive you." Then, turning again to the four envoys: "Brothers the
Ottawas, you hear what I say. Tell that to your fathers the French, for
we speak it from our hearts." The chiefs then took down the French flag
which the Ottawas had planted in the town, and dismissed the envoys with
their answer of defiance.
[Footnote 17: Compare _Message of Miamis and Hurons to the Governor of
Pennsylvania_ in _N.Y. Col. Docs_., VI. 594; and _Report of Croghan_ in
_Colonial Records of Pa_., V. 522, 523.]
On the next day the town-crier came with a message from the Demoiselle,
inviting his English guests to a "feather dance," which Gist thus
describes: "It was performed by three dancing-masters, who were painted
all over of various colors, with long sticks in their hands, upon the
ends of which were fastened long feathers of swans and other birds,
neatly woven in the shape of a fowl's wing; in this disguise they
performed many antic tricks, waving their sticks and feathers about with
great skill, to imitate the flying and fluttering of birds, keeping
exact time with their music." This music was the measured thumping of an
Indian drum. From time to time, a warrior would leap up, and the drum
and the dancers would cease as he struck a post with his tomahawk, and
in a loud voice recounted his exploits. Then the music and the dance
began anew, till another warrior caught the martial fire, and bounded
into the circle to brandish his tomahawk and vaunt his prowess.
On the first of March Gist took leave of Pickawillany, and returned
towards the Ohio. He would have gone to the Falls, where Louisville now
stands, but for a band of French Indians reported to be there, who would
probably have killed him. After visiting a deposit of mammoth bones on
the south shore, long the wonder of the traders, he turned eastward,
crossed with toil and difficulty the mountains about the sources of the
Kenawha, and after an absence of seven months reached his frontier home
on the Yadkin, whence he proceeded to Roanoke with the report of his
journey.[18]
[Footnote 18: _Journal of Christopher Gist_, in appendix to Pownall,
_Topographical Description. Mr. Croghan's Transactions with the Indians_
in _N.Y. Col. Docs_., VII. 267.]
All looked well for the English in the West; but under this fair outside
lurked hidden danger. The Miamis were hearty in the English cause, and
so perhaps were the Shawanoes; but the Delawares had not forgotten the
wrongs that drove them from their old abodes east of the Alleghanies,
while the Mingoes, or emigrant Iroquois, like their brethren of New
York, felt the influence of Joncaire and other French agents, who spared
no efforts to seduce them.[19] Still more baneful to British interests
were the apathy and dissensions of the British colonies themselves. The
Ohio Company had built a trading-house at Will's Creek, a branch of the
Potomac, to which the Indians resorted in great numbers; whereupon the
jealous traders of Pennsylvania told them that the Virginians meant to
steal away their lands. This confirmed what they had been taught by the
French emissaries, whose intrigues it powerfully aided. The governors of
New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia saw the importance of Indian
alliances, and felt their own responsibility in regard to them; but they
could do nothing without their assemblies. Those of New York and
Pennsylvania were largely composed of tradesmen and farmers, absorbed in
local interests, and possessed by two motives,--the saving of the
people's money, and opposition to the governor, who stood for the royal
prerogative. It was Hamilton, of Pennsylvania, who had sent Croghan to
the Miamis to "renew the chain of friendship;" and when the envoy
returned, the Assembly rejected his report. "I was condemned," he says,
"for bringing expense on the Government, and the Indians were
neglected."[20]
[Footnote 19: Joncaire made anti-English speeches to the Ohio Indians
under the eyes of the English themselves, who did not molest him.
_Journal of George Croghan_, 1751, in _Olden Time, I_. 136.]
[Footnote 20: _Mr. Croghan's Transactions with the Indians, N.Y. Col.
Docs.,_ VII. 267.]
In the same year Hamilton again sent him over the mountains, with a
present for the Mingoes and Delawares. Croghan succeeded in persuading
them that it would be for their good if the English should build a
fortified trading-house at the fork of the Ohio, where Pittsburg now
stands; and they made a formal request to the Governor that it should be
built accordingly. But, in the words of Croghan, the Assembly "rejected
the proposal, and condemned me for making such a report." Yet this post
on the Ohio was vital to English interests. Even the Penns,
proprietaries of the province, never lavish of their money, offered four
hundred pounds towards the cost of it, besides a hundred a year towards
its maintenance; but the Assembly would not listen.[21] The Indians were
so well convinced that a strong English trading-station in their country
would add to their safety and comfort, that when Pennsylvania refused
it, they repeated the proposal to Virginia; but here, too, it found for
the present little favor.
[Footnote 21: _Colonial Records of Pa_., V. 515, 529, 547. At a council
at Logstown (1751), the Indians said to Croghan: "The French want to
cheat us out of our country; but we will stop them, and, Brothers the
English, you must help us. We expect that you will build a strong house
on the River Ohio, that in case of war we may have a place to secure our
wives and children, likewise our brothers that come to trade with us."
_Report of Treaty at Logstown, Ibid_., V. 538.]
The question of disputed boundaries had much to do with this most
impolitic inaction. A large part of the valley of the Ohio, including
the site of the proposed establishment, was claimed by both Pennsylvania
and Virginia; and each feared that whatever money it might spend there
would turn to the profit of the other. This was not the only evil that
sprang from uncertain ownership. "Till the line is run between the two
provinces," says Dinwiddie, governor of Virginia, "I cannot appoint
magistrates to keep the traders in good order."[22] Hence they did what
they pleased, and often gave umbrage to the Indians. Clinton, of New
York, appealed to his Assembly for means to assist Pennsylvania in
"securing the fidelity of the Indians on the Ohio," and the Assembly
refused.[23] "We will take care of our Indians, and they may take care
of theirs:" such was the spirit of their answer. He wrote to the various
provinces, inviting them to send commissioners to meet the tribes at
Albany, "in order to defeat the designs and intrigues of the French."
All turned a deaf ear except Massachusetts, Connecticut, and South
Carolina, who sent the commissioners, but supplied them very meagrely
with the indispensable presents.[24] Clinton says further: "The Assembly
of this province have not given one farthing for Indian affairs, nor for
a year past have they provided for the subsistence of the garrison at
Oswego, which is the key for the commerce between the colonies and the
inland nations of Indians."[25]
[Footnote 22: _Dinwiddie to the Lords of Trade, 6 Oct_. 1752.]
[Footnote 23: _Journals of New York Assembly_, II. 283, 284. _Colonial
Records of Pa_., V. 466.]
[Footnote 24: _Clinton to Hamilton, 18 Dec. 1750. Clinton to Lords of
Trade, 13 June, 1751; Ibid., 17 July_, 1751.]
[Footnote 25: _Clinton to Bedford, 30 July_, 1750.]
In the heterogeneous structure of the British colonies, their clashing
interests, their internal disputes, and the misplaced economy of
penny-wise and short-sighted assembly-men, lay the hope of France. The
rulers of Canada knew the vast numerical preponderance of their rivals;
but with their centralized organization they felt themselves more than a
match for any one English colony alone. They hoped to wage war under the
guise of peace, and to deal with the enemy in detail; and they at length
perceived that the fork of the Ohio, so strangely neglected by the
English, formed, together with Niagara, the key of the Great West. Could
France hold firmly these two controlling passes, she might almost boast
herself mistress of the continent.
NOTE: The Journal of Céloron (Archives de la Marine) is very long and
circumstantial, including the _procès verbaux_, and reports of councils
with Indians. The Journal of the chaplain, Bonnecamp (Dépôt de la
Marine), is shorter, but is the work of an intelligent and observing
man. The author, a Jesuit, was skilled in mathematics, made daily
observations, and constructed a map of the route, still preserved at the
Dépôt de la Marine. Concurrently with these French narratives, one may
consult the English letters and documents bearing on the same subjects,
in the Colonial Records of Pennsylvania, the Archives of Pennsylvania,
and the Colonial Documents of New York.
Three of Céleron's leaden plates have been found,--the two mentioned in
the text, and another which was never buried, and which the Indians, who
regarded these mysterious tablets as "bad medicine," procured by a trick
from Joncaire, or, according to Governor Clinton, stole from him. A
Cayuga chief brought it to Colonel Johnson, on the Mohawk, who
interpreted the "Devilish writing" in such a manner as best to inspire
horror of French designs.
Chapter 3
1749-1753
Conflict for the West
The Iroquois, or Five Nations, sometimes called Six Nations after the
Tuscaroras joined them, had been a power of high importance in American
international politics. In a certain sense they may be said to have held
the balance between their French and English neighbors; but their
relative influence had of late declined. So many of them had emigrated
and joined the tribes of the Ohio, that the centre of Indian population
had passed to that region. Nevertheless, the Five Nations were still
strong enough in their ancient abodes to make their alliance an object
of the utmost consequence to both the European rivals. At the western
end of their "Long House," or belt of confederated villages, Joncaire
intrigued to gain them for France; while in the east he was counteracted
by the young colonel of militia, William Johnson, who lived on the
Mohawk, and was already well skilled in managing Indians. Johnson
sometimes lost his temper; and once wrote to Governor Clinton to
complain of the "confounded wicked things the French had infused into
the Indians' heads; among the rest that the English were determined, the
first opportunity, to destroy them all. I assure your Excellency I had
hard work to beat these and several other cursed villanous things, told
them by the French, out of their heads."[26]
[Footnote 26: _Johnson to Clinton, 28 April_, 1749.]
In former times the French had hoped to win over the Five Nations in a
body, by wholesale conversion to the Faith; but the attempt had failed.
They had, however, made within their own limits an asylum for such
converts as they could gain, whom they collected together at
Caughnawaga, near Montreal, to the number of about three hundred
warriors.[27] These could not be trusted to fight their kinsmen, but
willingly made forays against the English borders. Caughnawaga, like
various other Canadian missions, was divided between the Church, the
army, and the fur-trade. It had a chapel, fortifications, and
storehouses; two Jesuits, an officer, and three chief traders. Of these
last, two were maiden ladies, the Demoiselles Desauniers; and one of the
Jesuits, their friend Father Tournois, was their partner in business.
They carried on by means of the Mission Indians, and in collusion with
influential persons in the colony, a trade with the Dutch at Albany,
illegal, but very profitable.[28]
[Footnote 27: The estimate of a French official report, 1736, and of Sir
William Johnson, 1763.]
[Footnote 28: _La Jonquière au Ministre, 27 Fév. 1750. Ibid., 29 Oct.
1751. Ordres du Roy et Dépêches des Ministres, 1751. Notice biographique
de la Jonquière_. La Jonquifère, governor of Canada, at last broke up
their contraband trade, and ordered Tournois to Quebec.]
Besides this Iroquois mission, which was chiefly composed of Mohawks and
Oneidas, another was now begun farther westward, to win over the
Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas. This was the establishment of Father
Piquet, which Céloron had visited in its infancy when on his way to the
Ohio, and again on his return. Piquet was a man in the prime of life, of
an alert, vivacious countenance, by no means unprepossessing;[29] an
enthusiastic schemer, with great executive talents; ardent, energetic,
vain, self-confident, and boastful. The enterprise seems to have been of
his own devising; but it found warm approval from the Government.[30] La
Présentation, as he called the new mission, stood on the bank of the
River Oswegatchie where it enters the St. Lawrence. Here the rapids
ceased, and navigation was free to Lake Ontario. The place commanded the
main river, and could bar the way to hostile war-parties or contraband
traders. Rich meadows, forests, and abundance of fish and game, made it
attractive to Indians, and the Oswegatchie gave access to the Iroquois
towns. Piquet had chosen his site with great skill. His activity was
admirable. His first stockade was burned by Indian incendiaries; but it
rose quickly from its ashes, and within a year or two the mission of La
Présentation had a fort of palisades flanked with blockhouses, a chapel,
a storehouse, a barn, a stable, ovens, a saw-mill, broad fields of corn
and beans, and three villages of Iroquois, containing, in all,
forty-nine bark lodges, each holding three or four families, more or
less converted to the Faith; and, as time went on, this number
increased. The Governor had sent a squad of soldiers to man the fort,
and five small cannon to mount upon it. The place was as safe for the
new proselytes as it was convenient and agreeable. The Pennsylvanian
interpreter, Conrad Weiser, was told at Onondaga, the Iroquois capital,
that Piquet had made a hundred converts from that place alone; and that,
"having clothed them all in very fine clothes, laced with silver and
gold, he took them down and presented them to the French Governor at
Montreal, who received them very kindly, and made them large
presents."[31]
[Footnote 29: I once saw a contemporary portrait of him at the mission
of Two Mountains, where he had been stationed.]
[Footnote 30: _Rouillé à la Jonquière_, 1749. The Intendant Bigot gave
him money and provisions. _N.Y. Col. Docs., X_. 204.]
[Footnote 31: _Journal of Conrad Weiser,_ 1750.]
Such were some of the temporal attractions of La Présentation. The
nature of the spiritual instruction bestowed by Piquet and his
fellow-priests may be partly inferred from the words of a proselyte
warrior, who declared with enthusiasm that he had learned from the
Sulpitian missionary that the King of France was the eldest son of the
wife of Jesus Christ.[32] This he of course took in a literal sense, the
mystic idea of the Church as the spouse of Christ being beyond his
savage comprehension. The effect was to stimulate his devotion to the
Great Onontio beyond the sea, and to the lesser Onontio who represented
him as Governor of Canada.
[Footnote 32: Lalande, _Notice de L'Abbé Piquet, in Lettres Édifiantes_.
See also Tassé in _Revue Canadienne,_ 1870, p. 9.]
Piquet was elated by his success; and early in 1752 he wrote to the
Governor and Intendant: "It is a great miracle that, in spite of envy,
contradiction, and opposition from nearly all the Indian villages, I
have formed in less than three years one of the most flourishing
missions in Canada. I find myself in a position to extend the empire of
my good masters, Jesus Christ and the King, even to the extremities of
this new world; and, with some little help from you, to do more than
France and England have been able to do with millions of money and all
their troops."[33]
[Footnote 33: _Piquet à la Jonquière et Bigot, 8 Fév._ 1752. See
Appendix A. In spite of Piquet's self-laudation, and in spite also of
the detraction of the author of the _Mémoires sur le Canada,_ 1749-1760,
there can be no doubt of his practical capacity and his fertility of
resource. Duquesne, when governor of the colony, highly praises "ses
talents et son activité pour le service de Sa Majesté."]
The letter from which this is taken was written to urge upon the
Government a scheme in which the zealous priest could see nothing
impracticable. He proposed to raise a war-party of thirty-eight hundred
Indians, eighteen hundred of whom were to be drawn from the Canadian
missions, the Five Nations, and the tribes of the Ohio, while the
remaining two thousand were to be furnished by the Flatheads, or
Choctaws, who were at the same time to be supplied with missionaries.
The united force was first to drive the English from the Ohio, and next
attack the Dog Tribe, or Cherokees, who lived near the borders of
Virginia, with the people of which they were on friendly terms. "If,"
says Piquet, "the English of Virginia give any help to this last-named
tribe,--which will not fail to happen,--they [_the war-party_] will do
their utmost against them, through a grudge they bear them by reason of
some old quarrels." In other words, the missionary hopes to set a host
of savages to butchering English settlers in time of peace![34] His
wild project never took effect, though the Governor, he says, at first
approved it.
[Footnote 34: Appendix A.]
In the preceding year the "Apostle of the Iroquois," as he was called,
made a journey to muster recruits for his mission, and kept a copious
diary on the way. By accompanying him, one gets a clear view of an
important part of the region in dispute between the rival nations. Six
Canadians paddled him up the St. Lawrence, and five Indian converts
followed in another canoe. Emerging from among the Thousand Islands,
they stopped at Fort Frontenac, where Kingston now stands. Once the
place was a great resort of Indians; now none were here, for the English
post of Oswego, on the other side of the lake, had greater attractions.
Piquet and his company found the pork and bacon very bad, and he
complains that "there was not brandy enough in the fort to wash a
wound." They crossed to a neighboring island, where they were soon
visited by the chaplain of the fort, the storekeeper, his wife, and
three young ladies, glad of an excursion to relieve the monotony of the
garrison. "My hunters," says Piquet, "had supplied me with means of
giving them a pretty good entertainment. We drank, with all our hearts,
the health of the authorities, temporal and ecclesiastical, to the sound
of our musketry, which was very well fired, and delighted the
islanders." These islanders were a band of Indians who lived here.
Piquet gave them a feast, then discoursed of religion, and at last
persuaded them to remove to the new mission.
During eight days he and his party coasted the northern shore of Lake
Ontario, with various incidents, such as an encounter between his dog
Cerberus and a wolf, to the disadvantage of the latter, and the meeting
with "a very fine negro of twenty-two years, a fugitive from Virginia."
On the twenty-sixth of June they reached the new fort of Toronto, which
offered a striking contrast to their last stopping-place. "The wine here
is of the best; there is nothing wanting in this fort; everything is
abundant, fine, and good." There was reason for this. The Northern
Indians were flocking with their beaver-skins to the English of Oswego;
and in April, 1749, an officer named Portneuf had been sent with
soldiers and workmen to build a stockaded trading-house at Toronto, in
order to intercept them,--not by force, which would have been ruinous
to French interests, but by a tempting supply of goods and brandy.[35]
Thus the fort was kept well stocked, and with excellent effect. Piquet
found here a band of Mississagas, who would otherwise, no doubt, have
carried their furs to the English. He was strongly impelled to persuade
them to migrate to La Présentation; but the Governor had told him to
confine his efforts to other tribes; and lest, he says, the ardor of his
zeal should betray him to disobedience, he reimbarked, and encamped six
leagues from temptation.
[Footnote 35: On Toronto, _La Jonquière et Bigot au Ministre, 1749. La
Jonquière au Ministre, 30 Août, 1750. N.Y. Col. Docs. X_. 201, 246.]
Two days more brought him to Niagara, where he was warmly received by
the commandant, the chaplain, and the storekeeper,--the triumvirate who
ruled these forest outposts, and stood respectively for then: three
vital principles, war, religion, and trade. Here Piquet said mass; and
after resting a day, set out for the trading-house at the portage of the
cataract, recently built, like Toronto, to stop the Indians on their way
to Oswego.[36] Here he found Joncaire, and here also was encamped a
large band of Senecas; though, being all drunk, men, women, and
children, they were in no condition to receive the Faith, or appreciate
the temporal advantages that attended it. On the next morning, finding
them partially sober, he invited them to remove to La Présentation; "but
as they had still something left in their bottles, I could get no answer
till the following day." "I pass in silence," pursues the missionary,
"an infinity of talks on this occasion. Monsieur de Joncaire forgot
nothing that could help me, and behaved like a great servant of God and
the King. My recruits increased every moment. I went to say my breviary
while my Indians and the Senecas, without loss of time, assembled to
hold a council with Monsieur de Joncaire." The result of the council was
an entreaty to the missionary not to stop at Oswego, lest evil should
befall him at the hands of the English. He promised to do as they
wished, and presently set out on his return to Fort Niagara, attended by
Joncaire and a troop of his new followers. The journey was a triumphal
progress. "Whenever was passed a camp or a wigwam, the Indians saluted
me by firing their guns, which happened so often that I thought all the
trees along the way were charged with gunpowder; and when we reached the
fort, Monsieur de Becancour received us with great ceremony and the
firing of cannon, by which my savages were infinitely flattered."
[Footnote 36: _La Jonquière au Ministre, 23 Fév. 1750. Ibid., 6 Oct_.
1751. Compare _Colonial Records of Pa_., V. 508.]
His neophytes were gathered into the chapel for the first time in their
lives, and there rewarded with a few presents. He now prepared to turn
homeward, his flock at the mission being left in his absence without a
shepherd; and on the sixth of July he embarked, followed by a swarm of
canoes. On the twelfth they stopped at the Genesee, and went to visit
the Falls, where the city of Rochester now stands. On the way, the
Indians found a populous resort of rattlesnakes, and attacked the
gregarious reptiles with great animation, to the alarm of the
missionary, who trembled for his bare-legged retainers. His fears proved
needless. Forty-two dead snakes, as he avers, requited the efforts of
the sportsmen, and not one of them was bitten. When he returned to camp
in the afternoon he found there a canoe loaded with kegs of brandy. "The
English," he says, "had sent it to meet us, well knowing that this was
the best way to cause disorder among my new recruits and make them
desert me. The Indian in charge of the canoe, who had the look of a
great rascal, offered some to me first, and then to my Canadians and
Indians. I gave out that it was very probably poisoned, and immediately
embarked again."
He encamped on the fourteenth at Sodus Bay, and strongly advises the
planting of a French fort there. "Nevertheless," he adds, "it would be
still better to destroy Oswego, and on no account let the English build
it again." On the sixteenth he came in sight of this dreaded post.
Several times on the way he had met fleets of canoes going thither
or returning, in spite of the rival attractions of Toronto and Niagara.
No English establishment on the continent was of such ill omen to the
French. It not only robbed them of the fur-trade, by which they lived,
but threatened them with military and political, no less than commercial,
ruin. They were in constant dread lest ships of war should be built
here, strong enough to command Lake Ontario, thus separating Canada from
Louisiana, and cutting New France asunder. To meet this danger, they
soon after built at Fort Frontenac a large three-masted vessel, mounted
with heavy cannon; thus, as usual, forestalling their rivals by
promptness of action.[37] The ground on which Oswego stood was claimed
by the Province of New York, which alone had control of it; but through
the purblind apathy of the Assembly, and their incessant quarrels with
the Governor, it was commonly left to take care of itself. For some
time they would vote no money to pay the feeble little garrison; and
Clinton, who saw the necessity of maintaining it, was forced to do so on
his own personal credit.[38] "Why can't your Governor and your great men
[_the Assembly_] agree?" asked a Mohawk chief of the interpreter, Conrad
Weiser.[39]
[Footnote 37: _Lieutenant Lindesay to Johnson, July, 1751._]
[Footnote 38: _Clinton to Lords of Trade, 30 July, 1750._]
[Footnote 39: _Journal of Conrad Weiser, 1750._]
Piquet kept his promise not to land at the English fort; but he
approached in his canoe, and closely observed it. The shores, now
covered by the city of Oswego, were then a desolation of bare hills and
fields, studded with the stumps of felled trees, and hedged about with a
grim border of forests. Near the strand, by the mouth of the Onondaga,
were the houses of some of the traders; and on the higher ground behind
them stood a huge blockhouse with a projecting upper story. This
building was surrounded by a rough wall of stone, with flankers at the
angles, forming what was called the fort.[40] Piquet reconnoitred it
from his canoe with the eye of a soldier. "It is commanded," he says,
"on almost every side; two batteries, of three twelve-pounders each,
would be more than enough to reduce it to ashes." And he enlarges on the
evils that arise from it. "It not only spoils our trade, but puts the
English into communication with a vast number of our Indians, far and
near. It is true that they like our brandy better than English rum; but
they prefer English goods to ours, and can buy for two beaver-skins at
Oswego a better silver bracelet than we sell at Niagara for ten."
[Footnote 40: Compare _Doc. Hist. N.Y._, I. 463.]
The burden of these reflections was lightened when he approached Fort
Frontenac. "Never was reception more solemn. The Nipissings and
Algonkins, who were going on a war-party with Monsieur Belêtre, formed a
line of their own accord, and saluted us with three volleys of musketry,
and cries of joy without end. All our little bark vessels replied in the
same way. Monsieur de Verchères and Monsieur de Valtry ordered the
cannon of the fort to be fired; and my Indians, transported with joy at
the honor done them, shot off their guns incessantly, with cries and
acclamations that delighted everybody." A goodly band of recruits joined
him, and he pursued his voyage to La Présentation, while the canoes of
his proselytes followed in a swarm to their new home; "that
establishment"--thus in a burst of enthusiasm he closes his
Journal--"that establishment which I began two years ago, in the midst
of opposition; that establishment which may be regarded as a key of the
colony; that establishment which officers, interpreters, and traders
thought a chamaera,--that establishment, I say, forms already a mission
of Iroquois savages whom I assembled at first to the number of only six,
increased last year to eighty-seven, and this year to three hundred and
ninety-six, without counting more than a hundred and fifty whom Monsieur
Chabert de Joncaire is to bring me this autumn. And I certify that thus
far I have received from His Majesty--for all favor, grace, and
assistance--no more than a half pound of bacon and two pounds of bread
for daily rations; and that he has not yet given a pin to the chapel,
which I have maintained out of my own pocket, for the greater glory of
my masters, God and the King."[41]
[Footnote 41: _Journal qui peut servir de Mémoire et de Relation du
Voyage que j'ay fait sur le Lac Ontario pour attirer au nouvel
Établissement de La Présentation les Sauvages Iroquois des Cinq Nations,
1751_. The last passage given above is condensed in the rendering, as
the original is extremely involved and ungrammatical.]
In his late journey he had made the entire circuit of Lake Ontario.
Beyond lay four other inland oceans, to which Fort Niagara was the key.
As that all-essential post controlled the passage from Ontario to Erie,
so did Fort Detroit control that from Erie to Huron, and Fort
Michillimackinac that from Huron to Michigan; while Fort Ste. Marie, at
the outlet of Lake Superior, had lately received a garrison, and changed
from a mission and trading-station to a post of war.[42] This immense
extent of inland navigation was safe in the hands of France so long as
she held Niagara. Niagara lost, not only the lakes, but also the Valley
of the Ohio was lost with it. Next in importance was Detroit. This was
not a military post alone, but also a settlement; and, except the
hamlets about Fort Chartres, the only settlement that France owned in
all the West. There were, it is true, but a few families; yet the hope
of growth seemed good; for to such as liked a wilderness home, no spot
in America had more attraction. Father Bonnecamp stopped here for a day
on his way back from the expedition of Céloron. "The situation," he
says, "is charming. A fine river flows at the foot of the
fortifications; vast meadows, asking only to be tilled, extend beyond
the sight. Nothing can be more agreeable than the climate. Winter lasts
hardly two months. European grains and fruits grow here far better than
in many parts of France. It is the Touraine and Beauce of Canada."[43]
The white flag of the Bourbons floated over the compact little
palisaded town, with its population of soldiers and fur-traders; and
from the blockhouses which served as bastions, one saw on either hand
the small solid dwellings of the _habitants_, ranged at intervals along
the margin of the water; while at a little distance three Indian
villages--Ottawa, Pottawattamie, and Wyandot--curled their wigwam smoke
into the pure summer air.[44]
[Footnote 42: _La Jonquière au Ministre, 24 Août, 1750_.]
[Footnote 43: _Relation du Voiage de la Belle Rivière, 1749_.]
[Footnote 44: A plan of Detroit is before me, made about this time by
the engineer Lery.]
When Céloron de Bienville returned from the Ohio, he went, with a royal
commission, sent him a year before, to command at Detroit.[45] His late
chaplain, the very intelligent Father Bonnecamp, speaks of him as
fearless, energetic, and full of resource; but the Governor calls him
haughty and insubordinate. Great efforts were made, at the same time, to
build up Detroit as a centre of French power in the West. The methods
employed were of the debilitating, paternal character long familiar to
Canada. All emigrants with families were to be carried thither at the
King's expense; and every settler was to receive in free gift a gun, a
hoe, an axe, a ploughshare, a scythe, a sickle, two augers, large and
small, a sow, six hens, a cock, six pounds of powder, and twelve pounds
of lead; while to these favors were added many others. The result was
that twelve families were persuaded to go, or about a twentieth part of
the number wanted.[46] Detroit was expected to furnish supplies to the
other posts for five hundred miles around, control the neighboring
Indians, thwart English machinations, and drive off English interlopers.
[Footnote 45: _Le Ministre à la Jonquière et Bigot, 14 Mai, 1749. Le
Ministre à Céloron, 23 Mai, 1749_.]
[Footnote 46: _Ordonnance du 2 Jan. 1750. La Jonquière et Bigot au
Ministre, 1750_. Forty-six persons of all ages and both sexes had been
induced by La Galissonière to go the year before. _Lettres communes de
la Jonquière et Bigot, 1749_. The total fixed population of Detroit and
its neighborhood in 1750 is stated at four hundred and eighty-three
souls. In the following two years, a considerable number of young men
came of their own accord, and Céloron wrote to Montreal to ask for girls
to marry them.]
La Galissonière no longer governed Canada. He had been honorably
recalled, and the Marquis de la Jonquière sent in his stead.[47] La
Jonquière, like his predecessor, was a naval officer of high repute; he
was tall and imposing in person, and of undoubted capacity and courage;
but old and, according to his enemies, very avaricious.[48] The Colonial
Minister gave him special instructions regarding that thorn in the side
of Canada, Oswego. To attack it openly would be indiscreet, as the two
nations were at peace; but there was a way of dealing with it less
hazardous, if not more lawful. This was to attack it vicariously by
means of the Iroquois. "If Abbé Piquet succeeds in his mission," wrote
the Minister to the new Governor, "we can easily persuade these savages
to destroy Oswego. This is of the utmost importance; but act with great
caution."[49] In the next year the Minister wrote again: "The only means
that can be used for such an operation in time of peace are those of the
Iroquois. If by making these savages regard such an establishment
[_Oswego_] as opposed to their liberty, and, so to speak, a usurpation
by which the English mean to get possession of their lands, they could
be induced to undertake its destruction, an operation of the sort is not
to be neglected; but M. le Marquis de la Jonquière should feel with what
circumspection such an affair should be conducted, and he should labor
to accomplish it in a manner not to commit himself."[50] To this La
Jonquière replies that it will need time; but that he will gradually
bring the Iroquois to attack and destroy the English post. He received
stringent orders to use every means to prevent the English from
encroaching, but to act towards them at the same time "with the greatest
politeness."[51] This last injunction was scarcely fulfilled in a
correspondence which he had with Clinton, governor of New York, who had
written to complain of the new post at the Niagara portage as an
invasion of English territory, and also of the arrest of four English
traders in the country of the Miamis. Niagara, like Oswego, was in the
country of the Five Nations, whom the treaty of Utrecht declared
"subject to the dominion of Great Britain."[52] This declaration,
preposterous in itself, was binding on France, whose plenipotentiaries
had signed the treaty. The treaty also provided that the subjects of the
two Crowns "shall enjoy full liberty of going and coming on account of
trade," and Clinton therefore demanded that La Jonquière should disavow
the arrest of the four traders and punish its authors. The French
Governor replied with great asperity, spurned the claim that the Five
Nations were British subjects, and justified the arrest.[53] He
presently went further. Rewards were offered by his officers for the
scalps of Croghan and of another trader named Lowry.[54] When this
reached the ears of William Johnson, on the Mohawk, he wrote to Clinton
in evident anxiety for his own scalp: "If the French go on so, there is
no man can be safe in his own house; for I can at any time get an Indian
to kill any man for a small matter. Their going on in that manner is
worse than open war."
[Footnote 47: _Le Ministre à la Galissonière, 14 Mai, 1749_.]
[Footnote 48: _Mémoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760_. The charges made here
and elsewhere are denied, somewhat faintly, by a descendant of La
Jonquière in his elaborate _Notice biographique_ of his ancestor.]
[Footnote 49: _Le Ministre à La Jonquière, Mai, 1749_. The instructions
given to La Jonquière before leaving France also urge the necessity of
destroying Oswego.]
[Footnote 50: _Ordres du Roy et Dépêches des Ministres; à MM. de la
Jonquière et Bigot, 15 Avril, 1750_. See Appendix A. for original.]
[Footnote 51: _Ordres du Roy et Dépêches des Ministres, 1750_.]
[Footnote 52: Chalmers, _Collection of Treaties_, I. 382.]
[Footnote 53: _La Jonquière à Clinton, 10 Août, 1751_.]
[Footnote 54: Deposition of Morris Turner and Ralph Kilgore, in
_Colonial Records of Pa._, V. 482. The deponents had been prisoners at
Detroit.]
The French on their side made counter-accusations. The captive traders
were examined on oath before La Jonquière, and one of them, John Patton,
is reported to have said that Croghan had instigated Indians to kill
Frenchmen.[55] French officials declared that other English traders were
guilty of the same practices; and there is very little doubt that the
charge was true.
[Footnote 55: _Précis des Faits, avec leurs Pièces justificatives_,
100.]
The dispute with the English was not the only source of trouble to the
Governor. His superiors at Versailles would not adopt his views, and
looked on him with distrust. He advised the building of forts near Lake
Erie, and his advice was rejected. "Niagara and Detroit," he was told,
"will secure forever our communications with Louisiana."[56] "His
Majesty," again wrote the Colonial Minister, "thought that expenses
would diminish after the peace; but, on the contrary, they have
increased. There must be great abuses. You and the Intendant must look
to it."[57] Great abuses there were; and of the money sent to Canada for
the service of the King the larger part found its way into the pockets
of peculators. The colony was eaten to the heart with official
corruption; and the centre of it was François Bigot, the intendant. The
Minister directed La Jonquière's attention to certain malpractices
which had been reported to him; and the old man, deeply touched,
replied: "I have reached the age of sixty-six years, and there is not a
drop of blood in my veins that does not thrill for the service of my
King. I will not conceal from you that the slightest suspicion on your
part against me would cut the thread of my days."[58]
[Footnote 56: _Ordres du Roy et Dépêches des Ministres_, 1750.]
[Footnote 57: _Ibid., 6 Juin_, 1751.]
[Footnote 58: _La Jonquière au Ministre, 19 Oct_. 1751.]
Perplexities increased; affairs in the West grew worse and worse. La
Jonquière ordered Céloron to attack the English at Pickawillany; and
Céloron could not or would not obey. "I cannot express," writes the
Governor, "how much this business troubles me; it robs me of sleep; it
makes me ill." Another letter of rebuke presently came from Versailles.
"Last year you wrote that you would soon drive the English from the
Ohio; but private letters say that you have done nothing. This is
deplorable. If not expelled, they will seem to acquire a right against
us. Send force enough at once to drive them off, and cure them of all
wish to return."[59] La Jonquière answered with bitter complaints
against Céloron, and then begged to be recalled. His health, already
shattered, was ruined by fatigue and vexation; and he took to his bed.
Before spring he was near his end.[60] It is said that, though very
rich, his habits of thrift so possessed his last hours that, seeing
wax-candles burning in his chamber, he ordered others of tallow to be
brought instead, as being good enough to die by. Thus frugally lighted
on its way, his spirit fled; and the Baron de Longueuil took his place
till a new governor should arrive.
[Footnote 59: _Ordres du Roy et Dépêches des Ministres_, 1751.]
[Footnote 60: He died on the sixth of March, 1752 (_Bigot au Ministre, 6
Mai_); not on the seventeeth of May, as stated in the _Mémoires sur le
Canada_, 1749-1760.]
Sinister tidings came thick from the West. Raymond, commandant at the
French fort on the Maumee, close to the centre of intrigue, wrote: "My
people are leaving me for Detroit. Nobody wants to stay here and have
his throat cut. All the tribes who go to the English at Pickawillany
come back loaded with gifts. I am too weak to meet the danger. Instead
of twenty men, I need five hundred.... We have made peace with the
English, yet they try continually to make war on us by means of the
Indians; they intend to be masters of all this upper country. The tribes
here are leaguing together to kill all the French, that they may have
nobody on their lands but their English brothers. This I am told by
Coldfoot, a great Miami chief, whom I think an honest man, if there is
any such thing among Indians.... If the English stay in this country we
are lost. We must attack, and drive them out." And he tells of war-belts
sent from tribe to tribe, and rumors of plots and conspiracies far and
near.
Without doubt, the English traders spared no pains to gain over the
Indians by fair means or foul; sold them goods at low rates, made ample
gifts, and gave gunpowder for the asking. Saint-Ange, who commanded at
Vincennes, wrote that a storm would soon burst on the heads of the
French. Joncaire reported that all the Ohio Indians sided with the
English. Longueuil informed the Minister that the Miamis had scalped two
soldiers; that the Piankishaws had killed seven Frenchmen; and that a
squaw who had lived with one of the slain declared that the tribes of
the Wabash and Illinois were leaguing with the Osages for a combined
insurrection. Every letter brought news of murder. Small-pox had broken
out at Detroit. "It is to be wished," says Longueuil, "that it would
spread among our rebels; it would be fully as good as an army.... We are
menaced with a general outbreak, and even Toronto is in danger....
Before long the English on the Miami will gain over all the surrounding
tribes, get possession of Fort Chartres, and cut our communications with
Louisiana."[61]
[Footnote 61: _Dépêches de Longueuil; Lettres de Raymond; Benoit de
Saint-Clere à la Jonquière, Oct. 1751._]
The moving spirit of disaffection was the chief called Old Britain, or
the Demoiselle, and its focus was his town of Pickawillany, on the
Miami. At this place it is said that English traders sometimes mustered
to the number of fifty or more. "It is they," wrote Longueuil, "who are
the instigators of revolt and the source of all our woes."[62] Whereupon
the Colonial Minister reiterated his instructions to drive them off and
plunder them, which he thought would "effectually disgust them," and
bring all trouble to an end.[63]
[Footnote 62: _Longueuil au Ministre, 21 Avril, 1752._]
[Footnote 63: _Le Ministre à la Jonquière, 1752. Le Ministre à Duquesne,
9 Juillet, 1752._]
La Jonquière's remedy had been more heroic, for he had ordered Céleron
to attack the English and their red allies alike; and he charged that
officer with arrogance and disobedience because he had not done so. It
is not certain that obedience was easy; for though, besides the garrison
of regulars, a strong body of militia was sent up to Detroit to aid the
stroke,[64] the Indians of that post, whose co-operation was thought
necessary, proved half-hearted, intractable, and even touched with
disaffection. Thus the enterprise languished till, in June, aid came
from another quarter. Charles Langlade, a young French trader married to
a squaw at Green Bay, and strong in influence with the tribes of that
region, came down the lakes from Michillimackinac with a fleet of canoes
manned by two hundred and fifty Ottawa and Ojibwa warriors; stopped a
while at Detroit; then embarked again, paddled up the Maumee to
Raymond's fort at the portage, and led his greased and painted rabble
through the forest to attack the Demoiselle and his English friends.
They approached Pickawillany at about nine o'clock on the morning of the
twenty-first. The scared squaws fled from the cornfields into the town,
where the wigwams of the Indians clustered about the fortified warehouse
of the traders. Of these there were at the time only eight in the place.
Most of the Indians also were gone on their summer hunt, though the
Demoiselle remained with a band of his tribesmen. Great was the
screeching of war-whoops and clatter of guns. Three of the traders were
caught outside the fort. The remaining five closed the gate, and stood
on their defence. The fight was soon over. Fourteen Miamis were shot
down, the Demoiselle among the rest. The five white men held out till
the afternoon, when three of them surrendered, and two, Thomas Burney
and Andrew McBryer, made their escape. One of the English prisoners
being wounded, the victors stabbed him to death. Seventy years of
missionaries had not weaned them from cannibalism, and they boiled and
eat the Demoiselle.[65]
[Footnote 64: _La Jonquière à Céleron, 1 Oct. 1751._]
[Footnote 65: On the attack of Pickawillany, _Longueuil au Ministre, 18
Août, 1752; Duquesne au Ministre, 25 Oct. 1752; Colonial Records of
Pa._, V. 599; _Journal of William Trent_, 1752. Trent was on the spot a
few days after the affair.]
The captive traders, plundered to the skin, were carried by Langlade to
Duquesne, the new governor, who highly praised the bold leader of the
enterprise, and recommended him to the Minister for such reward as
befitted one of his station. "As he is not in the King's service, and
has married a squaw, I will ask for him only a pension of two hundred
francs, which will flatter him infinitely."
The Marquis Duquesne, sprung from the race of the great naval commander
of that name, had arrived towards midsummer; and he began his rule by a
general review of troops and militia. His lofty bearing offended the
Canadians; but he compelled their respect, and, according to a writer of
the time, showed from the first that he was born to command. He
presently took in hand an enterprise which his predecessor would
probably have accomplished, had the Home Government encouraged him.
Duquesne, profiting by the infatuated neglect of the British provincial
assemblies, prepared to occupy the upper waters of the Ohio, and secure
the passes with forts and garrisons. Thus the Virginian and
Pennsylvanian traders would be debarred all access to the West, and the
tribes of that region, bereft henceforth of English guns, knives,
hatchets, and blankets, English gifts and English cajoleries, would be
thrown back to complete dependence on the French. The moral influence,
too, of such a movement would be incalculable; for the Indian respects
nothing so much as a display of vigor and daring, backed by force. In
short, the intended enterprise was a master-stroke, and laid the axe to
the very root of disaffection. It is true that, under the treaty,
commissioners had been long in session at Paris to settle the question
of American boundaries; but there was no likelihood that they would come
to agreement; and if France would make good her Western claims, it
behooved her, while there was yet time, to prevent her rival from
fastening a firm grasp on the countries in dispute.
Yet the Colonial Minister regarded the plan with distrust. "Be on your
guard," he wrote to Duquesne, "against new undertakings; private
interests are generally at the bottom of them. It is through these that
new posts are established. Keep only such as are indispensable, and
suppress the others. The expenses of the colony are enormous; and they
have doubled since the peace." Again, a little later: "Build on the Ohio
such forts as are absolutely necessary, but no more. Remember that His
Majesty suspects your advisers of interested views."[66]
[Footnote 66: _Ordres du Roy et Dépêches des Ministres_, 1753.]
No doubt there was justice in the suspicion. Every military movement,
and above all the establishment of every new post, was an opportunity to
the official thieves with whom the colony swarmed. Some band of favored
knaves grew rich; while a much greater number, excluded from sharing the
illicit profits, clamored against the undertaking, and wrote charges of
corruption to Versailles. Thus the Minister was kept tolerably well
informed; but was scarcely the less helpless, for with the Atlantic
between, the disorders of Canada defied his control. Duquesne was
exasperated by the opposition that met him on all hands, and wrote to
the Minister: "There are so many rascals in this country that one is
forever the butt of their attacks."[67]
[Footnote 67: _Duquesne au Ministre, 29 Sept._ 1754.]
It seems that unlawful gain was not the only secret spring of the
movement. An officer of repute says that the Intendant, Bigot,
enterprising in his pleasures as in his greed, was engaged in an
intrigue with the wife of Chevalier Péan; and wishing at once to console
the husband and to get rid of him, sought for him a high command at a
distance from the colony. Therefore while Marin, an able officer, was
made first in rank, Péan was made second. The same writer hints that
Duquesne himself was influenced by similar motives in his appointment of
leaders.[68]
[Footnote 68: Pouchot, _Mémoire sur la dernière Guerre de l'Amérique
septentrionale (ed._ 1781), I. 8.]
He mustered the colony troops, and ordered out the Canadians. With the
former he was but half satisfied; with the latter he was delighted; and
he praises highly their obedience and alacrity. "I had not the least
trouble in getting them to march. They came on the minute, bringing
their own guns, though many people tried to excite them to revolt; for
the whole colony opposes my operations." The expedition set out early in
the spring of 1753. The whole force was not much above a thousand men,
increased by subsequent detachments to fifteen hundred; but to the
Indians it seemed a mighty host; and one of their orators declared that
the lakes and rivers were covered with boats and soldiers from Montreal
to Presquisle.[69] Some Mohawk hunters by the St. Lawrence saw them as
they passed, and hastened home to tell the news to Johnson, whom they
wakened at midnight, "whooping and hollowing in a frightful manner."[70]
Lieutenant Holland at Oswego saw a fleet of canoes upon the lake, and
was told by a roving Frenchman that they belonged to an army of six
thousand men going to the Ohio, "to cause all the English to quit those
parts."[71]
[Footnote 69: _Duquesne au Ministre, 27 Oct._ 1753.]
[Footnote 70: _Johnson to Clinton, 20 April_, 1753, in _N.Y. Col.
Docs._, VI. 778.]
[Footnote 71: _Holland to Clinton, 15 May_, 1753, in _N.Y. Col. Docs._,
VI. 780.]
The main body of the expedition landed at Presquisle, on the
southeastern shore of Lake Erie, where the town of Erie now stands; and
here for a while we leave them.
Chapter 4
1710-1754
Conflict for Acadia
While in the West all the signs of the sky foreboded storm, another
tempest was gathering the East, less in extent, but not less in peril.
The conflict in Acadia has a melancholy interest, since it ended in a
castastrophe which prose and verse have joined to commemorate, but of
which the causes have not been understood.
Acadia--that it to say, the peninsula of Nova Scotia, with the addition,
as the English claimed, of the present New Brunswick and some adjacent
country--was conquered by General Nicholson in 1710, and formally
transferred by France to the British Crown, three years later, by the
treaty of Utrecht. By that treaty it was "expressly provided" that such
of the French inhabitants as "are willing to remain there and to be
subject to the Kingdom of Great Britain, are to enjoy the free exercise
of their religion according to the usage of the Church of Rome, as far
as the laws of Great Britain do allow the same"; but that any who choose
may remove, with their effects, if they do so within a year. Very few
availed themselves of this right; and after the end of the year those
who remained were required to take an oath of allegiance to King George.
There is no doubt that in a little time they would have complied, had
they been let alone; but the French authorities of Canada and Cape
Breton did their utmost to prevent them, and employed agents to keep
them hostile to England. Of these the most efficient were the French
priests, who, in spite of the treaty, persuaded their flocks that they
were still subjects of King Louis. Hence rose endless perplexity to the
English commanders at Annapolis, who more than suspected that the Indian
attacks with which they were harassed were due mainly to French
instigation.[72] It was not till seventeen years after the treaty that
the Acadians could be brought to take the oath without qualifications
which made it almost useless. The English authorities seem to have shown
throughout an unusual patience and forbearance. At length, about 1730,
nearly all the inhabitants signed by crosses, since few of them could
write, an oath recognizing George II as sovereign of Acadia, and
promising fidelity and obedience to him.[73] This restored comparative
quiet till the war of 1745, when some of the Acadians remained neutral,
while some took arms against the English, and many others aided the
enemy with information and supplies.
[Footnote 72: See the numerous papers in _Selections from the Public
Documents of the Province of Nova Scotia_ (Halifax, 1869), pp. 1-165; a
Government publication of great value.]
[Footnote 73: The oath was _literatim_ as follows: "Je Promets et Jure
Sincerement en Foi de Chrétien que Je serai entierement Fidele, et
Obeierai Vraiment Sa Majesté Le Roy George Second, qui (_sic_) Je
reconnoi pour Le Souvrain Seigneur de l'Accadie ou Nouvelle Ecosse.
Ainsi Dieu me Soit en Aide."]
English power in Acadia, hitherto limited to a feeble garrison at
Annapolis and a feebler one at Canseau, received at this time a great
accession. The fortress of Louisbourg, taken by the English during the
war, had been restored by the treaty; and the French at once prepared to
make it a military and naval station more formidable than ever. Upon
this the British Ministry resolved to establish another station as a
counterpoise; and the harbor of Chebucto, on the south coast of Acadia,
was chosen as the site of it. Thither in June, 1749, came a fleet of
transports loaded with emigrants, tempted by offers of land and a home
in the New World. Some were mechanics, tradesmen, farmers, and laborers;
others were sailors, soldiers, and subaltern officers thrown out of
employment by the peace. Including women and children, they counted in
all about twenty-five hundred. Alone of all the British colonies on the
continent, this new settlement was the offspring, not of private
enterprise, but of royal authority. Yet is was free like the rest, with
the same popular representation and local self-government. Edward
Cornwallis, uncle of Lord Cornwallis of the Revolutionary War, was made
governor and commander-in-chief. Wolfe calls him "a man of approved
courage and fidelity"; and even the caustic Horace Walpole speaks of him
as "a brave, sensible young man, of great temper and good nature."
Before summer was over, the streets were laid out, and the building-lot
of each settler was assigned to him; before winter closed, the whole
were under shelter, the village was fenced with palisades and defended
by redoubts of timber, and the battalions lately in garrison at
Louisbourg manned the wooden ramparts. Succeeding years brought more
emigrants, and in 1752 the population was above four thousand. Thus was
born into the world the city of Halifax. Along with the crumbling old
fort and miserably disciplined garrison at Annapolis, besides six or
seven small detached posts to watch the Indians and Acadians, it
comprised the whole British force on the peninsula; for Canseau had been
destroyed by the French.
The French had never reconciled themselves to the loss of Acadia, and
were resolved, by diplomacy or force, to win it back again; but the
building of Halifax showed that this was to be no easy task, and filled
them at the same time with alarm for the safety of Louisbourg. On one
point, at least, they saw their policy clear. The Acadians, though those
of them who were not above thirty-five had been born under the British
flag, must be kept French at heart, and taught that they were still
French subjects. In 1748 they numbered eighty-eight hundred and fifty
communicants, or from twelve to thirteen thousand souls; but an
emigration, of which the causes will soon appear, had reduced them in
1752 to but little more than nine thousand.[74] These were divided into
six principal parishes, one of the largest being that of Annapolis.
Other centres of population were Grand Pré, on the basin of Mines;
Beaubassin, at the head of Chignecto Bay; Pisiquid, now Windsor; and
Cobequid, now Truro. Their priests, who were missionaries controlled by
the diocese of Quebec, acted also as their magistrates, ruling them for
this world and the next. Bring subject to a French superior, and being,
moreover, wholly French at heart, they formed in this British province a
wheel within a wheel, the inner movement always opposing the outer.
[Footnote 74: _Description de l'Acadie, avec le Nom des Paroisses et le
Nombre des Habitants, 1748. Mémoire à présenter à la Cour sur la
necessité de fixer les Limites de l'Acadie,_ par l'Abbé de l'Isle-Dieu,
1753 (1754?). Compare the estimates in _Censuses of Canada_ (Ottawa,
1876.)]
Although, by the twelfth article of the treaty of Utrecht, France had
solemnly declared the Acadians to be British subjects, the Government of
Louis XV intrigued continually to turn them from subjects into enemies.
Before me is a mass of English documents on Acadian affairs from the
peace of Aix-la-Chapelle to the catastrophe of 1755, and above a
thousand pages of French official papers from the archives of Paris,
memorials, reports, and secret correspondence, relating to the same
matters. With the help of these and some collateral lights, it is not
difficult to make a correct diagnosis of the political disease that
ravaged this miserable country. Of a multitude of proofs, only a few can
be given here; but these will suffice.
It was not that the Acadians had been ill-used by the English; the
reverse was the case. They had been left in free exercise of their
worship, as stipulated by treaty. It is true that, from time to time,
there were loud complaints from French officials that religion was in
danger, because certain priests had been rebuked, arrested, brought
before the Council at Halifax, suspended from their functions, or
required, on pain of banishment, to swear that they would do nothing
against the interests of King George. Yet such action on the part of the
provincial authorities seems, without a single exception, to have been
the consequence of misconduct on the part of the priest, in opposing the
Government and stirring his flock to disaffection. La Jonquière, the
determined adversary of the English, reported to the bishop that they
did not oppose the ecclesiastics in the exercise of their functions, and
an order of Louis XV admits that the Acadians have enjoyed liberty of
religion.[75] In a long document addressed in 1750 to the Colonial
Minister at Versailles, Roma, an officer at Louisbourg, testifies thus
to the mildness of British rule, though he ascribes it to interested
motives. "The fear that the Acadians have of the Indians is the
controlling motive which makes them side with the French. The English,
having in view the conquest of Canada, wished to give the French of that
colony, in their conduct towards the Acadians, a striking example of
the mildness of their government. Without raising the fortune of any of
the inhabitants, they have supplied them for more than thirty-five years
with the necessaries of life, often on credit and with an excess of
confidence, without troubling their debtors, without pressing them,
without wishing to force them to pay. They have left them an appearance
of liberty so excessive that they have not intervened in their disputes
or even punished their crimes. They have allowed them to refuse with
insolence certain moderate rents payable in grain and lawfully due. They
have passed over in silence the contemptuous refusal of the Acadians to
take titles from them for the new lands which they chose to occupy.[76]
[Footnote 75: _La Jonquière à Évêque de Québec, 14 Juin, 1750. Mémoire
du Roy pour servir d'Instruction au Comte de Raymond, commandant pour Sa
Majesté à l'Isle Royale_ [Cape Breton], _24 Avril, 1751_.]
[Footnote 76: See Appendix B.]
"We know very well," pursues Roma, "the fruits of this conduct in the
last war; and the English know it also. Judge then what will be the
wrath and vengeance of this cruel nation." The fruits to which Roma
alludes were the hostilities, open or secret, committed by the Acadians
against the English. He now ventures the prediction that the enraged
conquerors will take their revenge by drafting all the young Acadians on
board their ships of war, and there destroying them by slow starvation.
He proved, however, a false prophet. The English Governor merely
required the inhabitants to renew their oath of allegiance, without
qualification or evasion.
It was twenty years since the Acadians had taken such an oath; and
meanwhile a new generation had grown up. The old oath pledged them to
fidelity and obedience; but they averred that Phillips, then governor of
the province, had given them, at the same time, assurance that they
should not be required to bear arms against either French or Indians. In
fact, such service had not been demanded of them, and they would have
lived in virtual neutrality, had not many of them broken their oaths and
joined the French war-parties. For this reason Cornwallis thought it
necessary that, in renewing the pledge, they should bind themselves to
an allegiance as complete as that required of other British subjects.
This spread general consternation. Deputies from the Acadian
settlements appeared at Halifax, bringing a paper signed with the marks
of a thousand persons. The following passage contains the pith of it.
"The inhabitants in general, sir, over the whole extent of this country
are resolved not to take the oath which your Excellency requires of us;
but if your Excellency will grant us our old oath, with an exemption for
ourselves and our heirs from taking up arms, we will accept it."[77] The
answer of Cornwallis was by no means so stern as it has been
represented.[78] After the formal reception he talked in private with
the deputies; and "they went home in good humor, promising great
things."[79]
[Footnote 77: _Public Documents of Nova Scotia_, 173.]
[Footnote 78: See _Ibid._, 174, where the answer is printed.]
[Footnote 79: _Cornwallis to the Board of Trade, 11 Sept. 1749._]
The refusal of the Acadians to take the required oath was not wholly
spontaneous, but was mainly due to influence from without. The French
officials of Cape Breton and Isle St. Jean, now Prince Edward Island,
exerted themselves to the utmost, chiefly through the agency of the
priests, to excite the people to refuse any oath that should commit them
fully to British allegiance. At the same time means were used to induce
them to migrate to the neighboring islands under French rule, and
efforts were also made to set on the Indians to attack the English. But
the plans of the French will best appear in a despatch sent by La
Jonquière to the Colonial Minister in the autumn of 1749.
"Monsieur Cornwallis issued an order on the tenth of the said month
[_August_], to the effect that if the inhabitants will remain faithful
subjects of the King of Great Britain, he will allow them priests and
public exercise of their religion, with the understanding that no priest
shall officiate without his permission or before taking an oath of
fidelity to the King of Great Britain. Secondly, that the inhabitants
shall not be exempted from defending their houses, their lands, and the
Government. Thirdly, that they shall take an oath of fidelity to the
King of Great Britain, on the twenty-sixth of this month, before
officers sent them for that purpose."
La Jonquière proceeds to say that on hearing these conditions the
Acadians were filled with perplexity and alarm, and that he, the
governor, had directed Boishébert, his chief officer on the Acadian
frontier, to encourage them to leave their homes and seek asylum on
French soil. He thus recounts the steps he has taken to harass the
English of Halifax by means of their Indian neighbors. As peace had been
declared, the operation was delicate; and when three of these Indians
came to him from their missionary, Le Loutre, with letters on the
subject, La Jonquière was discreetly reticent. "I did not care to give
them any advice upon the matter, and confined myself to a promise that I
would on no account abandon them; and I have provided for supplying them
with everything, whether arms, ammunition, food, or other necessaries.
It is to be desired that these savages should succeed in thwarting the
designs of the English, and even their settlement at Halifax. They are
bent on doing so; and if they can carry out their plans, it is certain
that they will give the English great trouble, and so harass them that
they will be a great obstacle in their path. These savages are to act
alone; neither soldier nor French inhabitant is to join them; everything
will be done of their own motion, and without showing that I had any
knowledge of the matter. This is very essential; therefore I have
written to the Sieur de Boishébert to observe great prudence in his
measures, and to act very secretly, in order that the English may not
perceive that we are providing for the needs of the said savages."
"It will be the missionaries who will manage all the negotiation, and
direct the movements of the savages, who are in excellent hands, as the
Reverend Father Germain and Monsieur l'Abbé Le Loutre are very capable
of making the most of them, and using them to the greatest advantage for
our interests. They will manage their intrigue in such a way as not to
appear in it."
La Jonquière then recounts the good results which he expects from these
measures: first, the English will be prevented from making any new
settlements; secondly, we shall gradually get the Acadians out of their
hands; and lastly, they will be so discouraged by constant Indian
attacks that they will renounce their pretensions to the parts of the
country belonging to the King of France. "I feel, Monseigneur,"--thus
the Governor concludes his despatch,--"all the delicacy of this
negotiation; be assured that I will conduct it with such precaution that
the English will not be able to say that my orders had any part in
it."[80]
[Footnote 80: _La Jonquière au Ministre, 9 Oct. 1749_. See Appendix B.]
He kept his word, and so did the missionaries. The Indians gave great
trouble on the outskirts of Halifax, and murdered many harmless
settlers; yet the English authorities did not at first suspect that they
were hounded on by their priests, under the direction of the Governor
of Canada, and with the privity of the Minister at Versailles. More than
this; for, looking across the sea, we find royalty itself lending its
august countenance to the machination. Among the letters read before the
King in his cabinet in May, 1750, was one from Desherbiers, then
commanding at Louisbourg, saying that he was advising the Acadians not
to take the oath of allegiance to the King of England; another from Le
Loutre, declaring that he and Father Germain were consulting together
how to disgust the English with their enterprise of Halifax; and a third
from the Intendant, Bigot, announcing that Le Loutre was using the
Indians to harass the new settlement, and that he himself was sending
them powder, lead, and merchandise, "to confirm them in their good
designs."[81]
[Footnote 81: _Resumé des Lettres lues au Travail du Roy, Mai, 1750_.]
To this the Minister replies in a letter to Desherbiers: "His Majesty is
well satisfied with all you have done to thwart the English in their new
establishment. If the dispositions of the savages are such as they seem,
there is reason to hope that in the course of the winter they will
succeed in so harassing the settlers that some of them will become
disheartened." Desherbiers is then told that His Majesty desires him to
aid English deserters in escaping from Halifax.[82] Supplies for the
Indians are also promised; and he is informed that twelve medals are
sent him by the frigate "La Mutine," to be given to the chiefs who shall
most distinguish themselves. In another letter Desherbiers is enjoined
to treat the English authorities with great politeness.[83]
[Footnote 82: In 1750 nine captured deserters from Phillips's regiment
declared on their trial that the French had aided them and supplied them
all with money. _Public Documents of Nova Scotia_, 193.]
[Footnote 83: _Le Ministre à Desherbiers, 23 Mai, 1750; Ibid., 31 Mai,
1750_.]
When Count Raymond took command at Louisbourg, he was instructed, under
the royal hand, to give particular attention to the affairs of Acadia,
especially in two points,--the management of the Indians, and the
encouraging of Acadian emigration to countries under French rule. "His
Majesty," says the document, "has already remarked that the savages have
been most favorably disposed. It is of the utmost importance that no
means be neglected to keep them so. The missionaries among them are in a
better position than anybody to contribute to this end, and His Majesty
has reason to be satisfied with the pains they take therein. The Sieur
de Raymond will excite these missionaries not to slacken their efforts;
but he will warn them at the same time so to contain their zeal as not
to compromise themselves with the English, and give just occasion of
complaint."[84] That is, the King orders his representative to encourage
the missionaries in instigating their flocks to butcher English
settlers, but to see that they take care not to be found out. The
injunction was hardly needed. "Monsieur Desherbiers," says a letter of
earlier date, "has engaged Abbé Le Loutre to distribute the usual
presents among the savages, and Monsieur Bigot has placed in his hands
an additional gift of cloth, blankets, powder, and ball, to be given
them in case they harass the English at Halifax. This missionary is to
induce them to do so."[85] In spite of these efforts, the Indians began
to relent in their hostilities; and when Longueuil became provisional
governor of Canada, he complained to the Minister that it was very
difficult to prevent them from making peace with the English, though
Father Germain was doing his best to keep them on the war-path.[86]
La Jonquière, too, had done his best, even to the point of departing
from his original policy of allowing no soldier or Acadian to take part
with them. He had sent a body of troops under La Corne, an able partisan
officer, to watch the English frontier; and in the same vessel was sent
a supply of "merchandise, guns, and munitions for the savages and the
Acadians who may take up arms with them; and the whole is sent under
pretext of trading in furs with the savages."[87] On another occasion
La Jonquière wrote: "In order that the savages may do their part
courageously, a few Acadians, dressed and painted in their way, could
join them to strike the English. I cannot help consenting to what these
savages do, because we have our hands tied [_by the peace_],
and so can do nothing ourselves. Besides, I do not think that any
inconvenience will come of letting the Acadians mingle among them,
because if they [_the Acadians_] are captured, we shall say that they
acted of their own accord."[88] In other words, he will encourage them
to break the peace; and then, by means of a falsehood, have them
punished as felons. Many disguised Acadians did in fact join the Indian
war-parties; and their doing so was no secret to the English. "What we
call here an Indian war," wrote Hopson, successor of Cornwallis, "is no
other than a pretence for the French to commit hostilities on His
Majesty's subjects."
[Footnote 84: _Mémoire du Roy pour servir d'Instruction au Comte de
Raymond, 24 Avril, 1751_.]
[Footnote 85: _Lettre commune de Desherbiers et Bigot au Ministre, 15
Août, 1749_.]
[Footnote 86: _Longueuil au Ministre, 26 Avril, 1752_.]
[Footnote 87: _Bigot au Ministre, 1749_.]
[Footnote 88: _Dépêches de la Jonquière, 1 Mai, 1751_. See Appendix B.]
At length the Indians made peace, or pretended to do so. The chief of Le
Loutre's mission, who called himself Major Jean-Baptiste Cope, came to
Halifax with a deputation of his tribe, and they all affixed their
totems to a solemn treaty. In the next summer they returned with ninety
or a hundred warriors, were well entertained, presented with gifts, and
sent homeward in a schooner. On the way they seized the vessel and
murdered the crew. This is told by Prévost, intendant at Louisbourg, who
does not say that French instigation had any part in the treachery.[89]
It is nevertheless certain that the Indians were paid for this or some
contemporary murder; for Prévost, writing just four weeks later, says:
"Last month the savages took eighteen English scalps, and Monsieur Le
Loutre was obliged to pay them eighteen hundred livres, Acadian money,
which I have reimbursed him."[90]
[Footnote 89: _Prévost au Ministre, 12 Mars, 1753; Ibid., 17 July_,
1753. Prévost was _ordonnateur_, or intendant, at Louisbourg. The treaty
will be found in full in _Public Documents of Nova Scotia_, 683.]
[Footnote 90: _Prévost au Ministre, 16 Août_, 1753.]
From the first, the services of this zealous missionary had been beyond
price. Prévost testifies that, though Cornwallis does his best to induce
the Acadians to swear fidelity to King George, Le Loutre keeps them in
allegiance to King Louis, and threatens to set his Indians upon them
unless they declare against the English. "I have already," adds Prévost,
"paid him 11,183 livres for his daily expenses; and I never cease
advising him to be as economical as possible, and always to take care
not to compromise himself with the English Government."[91] In
consequence of "good service to religion and the state," Le Loutre
received a pension of eight hundred livres, as did also Maillard, his
brother missionary on Cape Breton. "The fear is," writes the Colonial
Minister to the Governor of Louisbourg, "that their zeal may carry them
too far. Excite them to keep the Indians in our interests, but do not
let them compromise us. Act always so as to make the English appear as
aggressors."[92]
[Footnote 91: _Ibid., 22 Juillet_, 1750.]
[Footnote 92: _Le Ministre au Comte de Raymond, 21 Juillet_, 1752. It is
curious to compare these secret instructions, given by the Minister to
the colonial officials, with a letter which the same Minister, Rouillé,
wrote ostensibly to La Jonquière, but which was really meant for the eye
of the British Minister at Versailles, Lord Albemarle, to whom it was
shown in proof of French good faith. It was afterwards printed, long
with other papers, in a small volume called _Précis des Faits, avec
Pièces justificatives_ which was sent by the French Government to all
the courts of Europe to show that the English alone were answerable for
the war. The letter, it is needless to say, breathes the highest
sentiments of international honor.]
All the Acadian clergy, in one degree or another, seem to have used
their influence to prevent the inhabitants from taking the oath, and to
persuade them that they were still French subjects. Some were noisy,
turbulent, and defiant; others were too tranquil to please the officers
of the Crown. A missionary at Annapolis is mentioned as old, and
therefore inefficient; while the curé at Grand Pré, also an elderly man,
was too much inclined to confine himself to his spiritual functions. It
is everywhere apparent that those who chose these priests, and sent them
as missionaries into a British province, expected them to act as enemies
of the British Crown. The maxim is often repeated that duty to religion
is inseparable from the duty to the King of France. The Bishop of Quebec
desired the Abbé de l'Isle-Dieu to represent to the court the need of
more missionaries to keep the Acadians Catholic and French; but, he
adds, there is danger that they (the missionaries) will be required to
take an oath to do nothing contrary to the interests of the King of
Great Britain.[93] It is a wonder that such a pledge was not always
demanded. It was exacted in a few cases, notably in that of Girard,
priest at Cobequid, who, on charges of instigating his flock to
disaffection, had been sent prisoner to Halifax, but released on taking
an oath in the above terms. Thereupon he wrote to Longueuil at Quebec
that his parishioners wanted to submit to the English, and that he,
having sworn to be true to the British King, could not prevent them.
"Though I don't pretend to be a casuist," writes Longueuil, "I could not
help answering him that he is not obliged to keep such an oath, and that
he ought to labor in all zeal to preserve and increase the number of the
faithful." Girard, to his credit, preferred to leave the colony, and
retired to Isle St. Jean.[94]
[Footnote 93: L'Isle-Dieu, _Mémoire sur l'État actuel des Missions,
1753_ (1754?).]
[Footnote 94: _Longueuil au Ministre, 27 Avril, 1752_.]
Cornwallis soon discovered to what extent the clergy stirred their
flocks to revolt; and he wrote angrily to the Bishop of Quebec: "Was it
you who sent Le Loutre as a missionary to the Micmacs? and is it for
their good that he excites these wretches to practise their cruelties
against those who have shown them every kindness? The conduct of the
priests of Acadia has been such that by command of his Majesty I have
published an Order declaring that if any one of them presumes to
exercise his functions without my express permission he shall be dealt
with according to the laws of England."[95]
[Footnote 95: _Cornwallis to the Bishop of Quebec, 1 Dec. 1749_.]
The English, bound by treaty to allow the Acadians the exercise of their
religion, at length conceived the idea of replacing the French priests
by others to be named by the Pope at the request of the British
Government. This, becoming known to the French, greatly alarmed them,
and the Intendant at Louisbourg wrote to the Minister that the matter
required serious attention.[96] It threatened, in fact, to rob them of
their chief agents of intrigue; but their alarm proved needless, as the
plan was not carried into execution.
[Footnote 96: _Daudin, prêtre, à Prévost, 23 Oct. 1753. Prévost au
Ministre, 24 Nov. 1753_.]
The French officials would have been better pleased had the conduct of
Cornwallis been such as to aid their efforts to alienate the Acadians;
and one writer, while confessing the "favorable treatment" of the
English towards the inhabitants, denounces it as a snare.[97] If so, it
was a snare intended simply to reconcile them to English rule. Nor was
it without effect. "We must give up altogether the idea of an
insurrection in Acadia," writes an officer of Cape Breton. "The Acadians
cannot be trusted; they are controlled by fear of the Indians, which
leads them to breathe French sentiments, even when their inclinations
are English. They will yield to their interests; and the English will
make it impossible that they should either hurt them or serve us, unless
we take measures different from those we have hitherto pursued."[98]
[Footnote 97: _Mémoire à présenter à la Cour, 1753_.]
[Footnote 98: _Roma au Ministre, 11 Mars, 1750_.]
During all this time, constant efforts were made to stimulate Acadian
emigration to French territory, and thus to strengthen the French
frontier. In this work the chief agent was Le Loutre. "This priest,"
says a French writer of the time, "urged the people of Les Mines, Port
Royal [_Annapolis_], and other places, to come and join the French, and
promised to all, in the name of the Governor, to settle and support them
for three years, and even indemnify them for any losses they might
incur; threatening if they did not do as he advised, to abandon them,
deprive them of their priests, have their wives and children carried
off, and their property laid waste by the Indians."[99] Some passed over
the isthmus to the shores of the gulf, and others made their way to the
Strait of Canseau. Vessels were provided to convey them, in the one case
to Isle St. Jean, now Prince Edward Island, and in the other to Isle
Royale, called by the English, Cape Breton. Some were eager to go; some
went with reluctance; some would scarcely be persuaded to go at all.
"They leave their homes with great regret," reports the Governor of Isle
St. Jean, speaking of the people of Cobequid, "and they began to move
their luggage only when the savages compelled them."[100] These savages
were the flock of Abbé Le Loutre, who was on the spot to direct the
emigration. Two thousand Acadians are reported to have left the
peninsula before the end of 1751, and many more followed within the next
two years. Nothing could exceed the misery of a great part of these
emigrants, who had left perforce most of their effects behind. They
became disheartened and apathetic. The Intendant at Louisbourg says that
they will not take the trouble to clear the land, and that some of them
live, like Indians, under huts of spruce-branches.[101] The Governor of
Isle St. Jean declares that they are dying of hunger.[102] Girard, the
priest who had withdrawn to this island rather than break his oath to
the English, writes: "Many of them cannot protect themselves day or
night from the severity of the cold. Most of the children are entirely
naked; and when I go into a house they are all crouched in the ashes,
close to the fire. They run off and hide themselves, without shoes,
stockings, or shirts. They are not all reduced to this extremity but
nearly all are in want."[103] Mortality among them was great, and would
have been greater but for rations supplied by the French Government.
[Footnote 99: _Mémoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760_.]
[Footnote 100: _Bonaventure à Desherbiers, 26 Juin, 1751_.]
[Footnote 101: _Prévost au Ministre, 25 Nov. 1750_.]
[Footnote 102: _Bonaventure, ut supra_.]
[Footnote 103: _Girard à (Bonaventure?), 27 Oct. 1753_.]
During these proceedings, the English Governor, Cornwallis, seems to
have justified the character of good temper given him by Horace Walpole.
His attitude towards the Acadians remained on the whole patient and
conciliatory. "My friends," he replied to a deputation of them asking a
general permission to leave the province, "I am not ignorant of the fact
that every means has been used to alienate the hearts of the French
subjects of His Britannic Majesty. Great advantages have been promised
you elsewhere, and you have been made to imagine that your religion was
in danger. Threats even have been resorted to in order to induce you to
remove to French territory. The savages are made use of to molest you;
they are to cut the throats of all who remain in their native country,
attached to their own interests and faithful to the Government. You know
that certain officers and missionaries, who came from Canada last
autumn, have been the cause of all our trouble during the winter. Their
conduct has been horrible, without honor, probity, or conscience. Their
aim is to embroil you with the Government. I will not believe that they
are authorized to do so by the Court of France, that being contrary to
good faith and the friendship established between the two Crowns."
What foundation there was for this amiable confidence in the Court of
Versailles has been seen already. "When you declared your desire to
submit yourselves to another Government," pursues Cornwallis, "our
determination was to hinder nobody from following what he imagined to be
his interest. We know that a forced service is worth nothing, and that a
subject compelled to be so against his will is not far from being an
enemy. We confess, however, that your determination to go gives us pain.
We are aware of your industry and temperance, and that you are not
addicted to any vice or debauchery. This province is your country. You
and your fathers have cultivated it; naturally you ought yourselves to
enjoy the fruits of your labor. Such was the design of the King, our
master. You know that we have followed his orders. You know that we have
done everything to secure to you not only the occupation of your lands,
but the ownership of them forever. We have given you also every possible
assurance of the free and public exercise of the Roman Catholic
religion. But I declare to you frankly that, according to our laws,
nobody can possess lands or houses in the province who shall refuse to
take the oath of allegiance to his King when required to do so. You know
very well that there are ill-disposed and mischievous persons among you
who corrupt the others. Your inexperience, your ignorance of the affairs
of government, and your habit of following the counsels of those who
have not your real interests at heart, make it an easy matter to seduce
you. In your petitions you ask for a general leave to quit the province.
The only manner in which you can do so is to follow the regulations
already established, and provide yourselves with our passport. And we
declare that nothing shall prevent us from giving such passports to all
who ask for them, the moment peace and tranquillity are
re-established."[104] He declares as his reason for not giving them at
once, that on crossing the frontier "you will have to pass the French
detachments and savages assembled there, and that they compel all the
inhabitants who go there to take up arms" against the English. How well
this reason was founded will soon appear.
[Footnote 104: The above passages are from two address of Cornwallis,
read to the Acadian deputies in April and May, 1750. The combined
extracts here given convey the spirit of the whole. See _Public
Documents of Nova Scotia_, 185-190.]
Hopson, the next governor, described by the French themselves as a "mild
and peaceable officer," was no less considerate in his treatment of the
Acadians; and at the end of 1752 he issued the following order to his
military subordinates: "You are to look on the French inhabitants in the
same light as the rest of His Majesty's subjects, as to the protection
of the laws and government; for which reason nothing is to be taken from
them by force, or any price set upon their goods but what they
themselves agree to. And if at any time the inhabitants should
obstinately refuse to comply with what His Majesty's service may require
of them, you are not to redress yourself by military force or in any
unlawful manner, but to lay the case before the Governor and wait his
orders thereon."[105] Unfortunately, the mild rule of Cornwallis and
Hopson was not always maintained under their successor, Lawrence.
[Footnote 105: _Public Documents of Nova Scotia_, 197.]
Louis Joseph Le Loutre, vicar-general of Acadia and missionary to the
Micmacs, was the most conspicuous person in the province, and more than
any other man was answerable for the miseries that overwhelmed it. The
sheep of which he was the shepherd dwelt, at a day's journey from
Halifax, by the banks of the River Shubenacadie, in small cabins of
logs, mixed with wigwams of birch-bark. They were not a docile flock;
and to manage them needed address, energy, and money,--with all of which
the missionary was provided. He fed their traditional dislike of the
English, and fanned their fanaticism, born of the villanous counterfeit
of Christianity which he and his predecessors had imposed on them. Thus
he contrived to use them on the one hand to murder the English, and on
the other to terrify the Acadians; yet not without cost to the French
Government; for they had learned the value of money, and, except when
their blood was up, were slow to take scalps without pay. Le Loutre was
a man of boundless egotism, a violent spirit of domination, an intense
hatred of the English, and a fanaticism that stopped at nothing. Towards
the Acadians he was a despot; and this simple and superstitious people,
extremely susceptible to the influence of their priests, trembled before
him. He was scarcely less masterful in his dealings with the Acadian
clergy; and, aided by his quality of the Bishop's vicar-general, he
dragooned even the unwilling into aiding his schemes. Three successive
governors of New France thought him invaluable, yet feared the
impetuosity of his zeal, and vainly tried to restrain it within safe
bounds. The bishop, while approving his objects, thought his medicines
too violent, and asked in a tone of reproof: "Is it right for you to
refuse the Acadians the sacraments, to threaten that they shall be
deprived of the services of a priest, and that the savages shall treat
them as enemies?"[106] "Nobody," says a French Catholic contemporary,
"was more fit than he to carry discord and desolation into a
country."[107] Cornwallis called him "a good-for-nothing scoundrel," and
offered a hundred pounds for his head.[108]
[Footnote 106: _L'Évêque de Québec à Le Loutre_; translation in _Public
Documents of Nova Scotia_, 240.]
[Footnote 107: _Mémoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760_.]
[Footnote 108: On Le Loutre, compare _Public Documents of Nova Scotia_,
178-180, _note_, with authorities there cited; _N.Y. Col. Docs._, X. 11;
_Mémoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760_ (Quebec, 1838).]
The authorities at Halifax, while exasperated by the perfidy practised
on them, were themselves not always models of international virtue. They
seized a French vessel in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, on the
charge--probably true--that she was carrying arms and ammunition to the
Acadians and Indians. A less defensible act was the capture of the armed
brig "St. François," laden with supplies for a fort lately
re-established by the French, at the mouth of the River St. John, on
ground claimed by both nations. Captain Rous, a New England officer
commanding a frigate in the Royal Navy, opened fire on the "St.
François," took her after a short cannonade, and carried her into
Halifax, where she was condemned by the court. Several captures of small
craft, accused of illegal acts, were also made by the English. These
proceedings, being all of an overt nature, gave the officers of Louis
XV. precisely what they wanted,--an occasion for uttering loud
complaints, and denouncing the English as breakers of the peace.
But the movement most alarming to the French was the English occupation
of Beaubassin,--an act perfectly lawful in itself, since, without
reasonable doubt, the place was within the limits of Acadia, and
therefore on English ground.[109] Beaubassin was a considerable
settlement on the isthmus that joins the Acadian peninsula to the
mainland. Northwest of the settlement lay a wide marsh, through which
ran a stream called the Missaguash, some two miles beyond which rose a
hill called Beauséjour. On and near this hill were stationed the troops
and Canadians sent under Boishébert and La Corne to watch the English
frontier. This French force excited disaffection among the Acadians
through all the neighboring districts, and constantly helped them to
emigrate. Cornwallis therefore resolved to send an English force to the
spot; and accordingly, towards the end of April, 1750, Major Lawrence
landed at Beaubassin with four hundred men. News of their approach had
come before them, and Le Loutre was here with his Micmacs, mixed with
some Acadians whom he had persuaded or bullied to join him. Resolved
that the people of Beaubassin should not live under English influence,
he now with his own hand set fire to the parish church, while his white
and red adherents burned the houses of the inhabitants, and thus
compelled them to cross to the French side of the river.[110] This was
the first forcible removal of the Acadians. It was as premature as it
was violent; since Lawrence, being threatened by La Corne, whose force
was several times greater than his own, presently reimbarked. In the
following September he returned with seventeen small vessels and about
seven hundred men, and again attempted to land on the strand of
Beaubassin. La Jonquière says that he could only be resisted indirectly,
because he was on the English side of the river. This indirect
resistance was undertaken by Le Loutre, who had thrown up a breastwork
along the shore and manned it with his Indians and his painted and
be-feathered Acadians. Nevertheless the English landed, and, with some
loss, drove out the defenders. Le Loutre himself seems not to have been
among them; but they kept up for a time a helter-skelter fight,
encouraged by two other missionaries, Germain and Lalerne, who were near
being caught by the English.[111] Lawrence quickly routed them, took
possession of the cemetery, and prepared to fortify himself. The village
of Beaubassin, consisting, it is said, of a hundred and forty houses,
had been burned in the spring; but there were still in the neighborhood,
on the English side, many hamlets and farms, with barns full of grain
and hay. Le Loutre's Indians now threatened to plunder and kill the
inhabitants if they did not take arms against the English. Few complied,
and the greater part fled to the woods.[112] On this the Indians and
their Acadian allies set the houses and barns on fire, and laid waste
the whole district, leaving the inhabitants no choice but to seek food
and shelter with the French.[113]
[Footnote 109: La Jonquière himself admits that he thought so. "Cette
partie là étant, à ce que je crois, dépendante de l'Acadie." _La
Jonquière au Ministre, 3 Oct. 1750_.]
[Footnote 110: It has been erroneously stated that Beaubassin was burned
by its own inhabitants. "Laloutre, ayant vu que les Acadiens ne
paroissoient pas fort pressés d'abandonner leurs biens, avoit lui-même
mis le feu á l'Église, et l'avoit fait mettre aux maisons des habitants
par quelques-uns de ceux qu'il avoit gagnés," etc. _Mémoires sur le
Canada, 1749-1760_. "Les sauvages y mirent le feu." _Précis des Faits_,
85. "Les sauvages mirent le feu aux maisons." _Prévost au Ministre, 22
Juillet, 1750_.]
[Footnote 111: La Vallière, _Journal de ce qui s'est passé à Chenitou_
[Chignecto] _et autres parties des Frontières de l'Acadie, 1750-1751_.
La Vallière was an officer on the spot.]
[Footnote 112: _Prévost au Ministre, 27 Sept. 1750_.]
[Footnote 113: "Les sauvages et Accadiens mirent le feu dans toutes les
maisons et granges, pleines de bled et de fourrages, ce qui a causé une
grande disette." La Vallière, _ut supra_.]
The English fortified themselves on a low hill by the edge of the marsh,
planted palisades, built barracks, and named the new work Fort Lawrence.
Slight skirmishes between them and the French were frequent. Neither
party respected the dividing line of the Missaguash, and a petty warfare
of aggression and reprisal began, and became chronic. Before the end of
the autumn there was an atrocious act of treachery. Among the English
officers was Captain Edward Howe, an intelligent and agreeable person,
who spoke French fluently, and had
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