The Conquest of New France, A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars
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George M. Wrong >> The Conquest of New France, A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars
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THE CONQUEST OF NEW FRANCE, A CHRONICLE OF THE COLONIAL WARS
by George M. Wrong
CONTENTS
I. THE CONFLICT OPENS: FRONTENAC AND PHIPS
II. QUEBEC AND BOSTON
III. FRANCE LOSES ACADIA
IV. LOUISBOURG AND BOSTON
V. THE GREAT WEST
VI. THE VALLEY OF THE OHIO
VII. THE EXPULSION OF THE ACADIANS
VIII. THE VICTORIES OF MONTCALM
IX. MONTCALM AT QUEBEC
X. THE STRATEGY OF PITT
XI. THE FALL OF CANADA
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
THE CONQUEST OF NEW FRANCE
CHAPTER I. The Conflict Opens: Frontenac And Phips
Many centuries of European history had been marked by war almost
ceaseless between France and England when these two states first
confronted each other in America. The conflict for the New World
was but the continuation of an age-long antagonism in the Old,
intensified now by the savagery of the wilderness and by new
dreams of empire. There was another potent cause of strife which
had not existed in the earlier days. When, during the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries, the antagonists had fought through the
interminable Hundred Years' War, they had been of the same
religious faith. Since then, however, England had become
Protestant, while France had remained Catholic. When the rivals
first met on the shores of the New World, colonial America was
still very young. It was in 1607 that the English occupied
Virginia. At the same time the French were securing a foothold
in Acadia, now Nova Scotia. Six years had barely passed when
the English Captain Argall sailed to the north from Virginia
and destroyed the rising French settlements. Sixteen years
after this another English force attacked and captured Quebec.
Presently these conquests were restored. France remained in
possession of the St. Lawrence and in virtual possession of
Acadia. The English colonies, holding a great stretch of the
Atlantic seaboard, increased in number and power. New France
also grew stronger. The steady hostility of the rivals never
wavered. There was, indeed, little open warfare as long as the
two Crowns remained at peace. From 1660 to 1688, the Stuart
rulers of England remained subservient to their cousin the
Bourbon King of France and at one with him in religious faith.
But after the fall of the Stuarts France bitterly denounced the
new King, William of Orange, as both a heretic and a usurper, and
attacked the English in America with a savage fury unknown in
Europe. From 1690 to 1760 the combatants fought with little more
than pauses for renewed preparation; and the conflict ended only
when France yielded to England the mastery of her empire in
America. It is the story of this struggle, covering a period of
seventy years, which is told in the following pages.
The career of Louis de Buade, Comte de Frontenac, who was
Governor of Canada from 1672 to 1682 and again from 1689 to his
death in 1698, reveals both the merits and the defects of the
colonizing genius of France. Frontenac was a man of noble birth
whose life had been spent in court and camp. The story of his
family, so far as it is known, is a story of attendance upon the
royal house of France. His father and uncles had been playmates
of the young Dauphin, afterwards Louis XIII. The thoughts
familiar to Frontenac in his youth remained with him through
life; and, when he went to rule at Quebec, the very spirit that
dominated the court at Versailles crossed the sea with him.
A man is known by the things he loves. The things which Frontenac
most highly cherished were marks of royal favor, the ceremony due
to his own rank, the right to command. He was an egoist,
supremely interested in himself. He was poor, but at his country
seat in France, near Blois, he kept open house in the style of a
great noble. Always he bore himself as one to whom much was due.
His guests were expected to admire his indifferent horses as the
finest to be seen, his gardens as the most beautiful, his clothes
as of the most effective cut and finish, the plate on his table
as of the best workmanship, and the food as having superior
flavor. He scolded his equals as if they were naughty children.
Yet there was genius in this showy court figure. In 1669, when
the Venetian Republic had asked France to lend her an efficient
soldier to lead against the rampant Turk, the great Marshal
Turenne had chosen Frontenac for the task. Crete, which Frontenac
was to rescue, the Turk indeed had taken; but, it is said, at the
fearful cost of a hundred and eighty thousand men. Three years
later, Frontenac had been sent to Canada to war with the savage
Iroquois and to hold in check the aggressive designs of the
English. He had been recalled in 1682, after ten years of
service, chiefly on account of his arbitrary temper. He had
quarreled with the Bishop. He had bullied the Intendant until at
one time that harried official had barricaded his house and armed
his servants. He had told the Jesuit missionaries that they
thought more of selling beaver-skins than of saving souls. He had
insulted those about him, sulked, threatened, foamed at the mouth
in rage, revealed a childish vanity in regard to his dignity, and
a hunger insatiable for marks of honor from the King--"more
grateful," he once said, "than anything else to a heart shaped
after the right pattern."
France, however, now required at Quebec a man who could do the
needed man's tasks. The real worth of Frontenac had been tested;
and so, in 1689, when England had driven from her shores her
Catholic king and, when France's colony across the sea seemed to
be in grave danger from the Iroquois allies of the English,
Frontenac was sent again to Quebec to subdue these savages and,
if he could, to destroy in America the power of the age long
enemy of his country.
Perched high above the St. Lawrence, on a noble site where now is
a public terrace and a great hotel, stood the Chateau St. Louis,
the scene of Frontenac's rule as head of the colony. No other
spot in the world commanded such a highway linking the inland
waters with the sea. The French had always an eye for points of
strategic value; and in holding Quebec they hoped to possess the
pivot on which the destinies of North America should turn. For a
long time it seemed, indeed, as if this glowing vision might
become a reality. The imperial ideas which were working at Quebec
were based upon the substantial realities of trade. The instinct
for business was hardly less strong in these keen adventurers
than the instinct for empire. In promise of trade the interior of
North America was rich. Today its vast agriculture and its wealth
in minerals have brought rewards beyond the dreams of two hundred
years ago. The wealth, however, sought by the leaders of that
time came from furs. In those wastes of river, lake, and forest
were the richest preserves in the world for fur-bearing animals.
This vast wilderness was not an unoccupied land. In those wild
regions dwelt many savage tribes. Some of the natives were by no
means without political capacity. On the contrary, they were long
clever enough to pit English against French to their own
advantage as the real sovereigns in North America. One of them,
whose fluent oratory had won for him the name of Big Mouth, told
the Governor of Canada, in 1688, that his people held their lands
from the Great Spirit, that they yielded no lordship to either
the English or the French, that they well understood the weakness
of the French and were quite able to destroy them, but that they
wished to be friends with both French and English who brought to
them the advantages of trade. In sagacity of council and dignity
of carriage some of these Indians so bore themselves that to
trained observers they seemed not unequal to the diplomats of
Europe. They were, however, weak before the superior knowledge of
the white men. In all their long centuries in America they had
learned nothing of the use of iron. Their sharpest tool had been
made of chipped obsidian or of hammered copper. Their most potent
weapons had been the stone hatchet or age and the bow and arrow.
It thus happened that, when steel and gunpowder reached America,
the natives soon came to despise their primitive implements. More
and more they craved the supplies from Europe which multiplied in
a hundred ways their strength in the conflict with nature and
with man. To the Indian tribes trade with the French or English
soon became a vital necessity. From the far northwest for a
thousand miles to the bleak shores of Hudson Bay, from the banks
of the Mississippi to the banks of the St. Lawrence and the
Hudson, they came each year on laborious journeys, paddling their
canoes and carrying them over portages, to barter furs for the
things which they must have and which the white man alone could
supply.
The Iroquois, the ablest and most resolute of the native tribes,
held the lands bordering on Lake Ontario which commanded the
approaches from both the Hudson and the St. Lawrence by the Great
Lakes to the spacious regions of the West. The five tribes known
as the Iroquois had shown marked political talent by forming
themselves into a confederacy. From the time of Champlain, the
founder of Quebec, there had been trouble between the French and
the Iroquois. In spite of this bad beginning, the French had
later done their best to make friends with the powerful
confederacy. They had sent to them devoted missionaries, many of
whom met the martyr's reward of torture and massacre. But the
opposing influence of the English, with whom the Iroquois chiefly
traded, proved too strong.
With the Iroquois hostile, it was too dangerous for the French to
travel inland by way of Lake Ontario. They had, it is true, a
shorter and, indeed, a better route farther north, by way of the
Ottawa River and Lake Nipissing to Lake Huron. In time, however,
the Iroquois made even this route unsafe. Their power was
far-reaching and their ambition limitless. They aimed to be
masters of North America. Like all virile but backward peoples,
they believed themselves superior to every other race. Their
orators declared that the fate of the world was to turn on their
policy.
On Frontenac's return to Canada he had a stormy inheritance in
confronting the Iroquois. They had real grievances against
France. Devonvine, Frontenac's predecessor, had met their
treachery by treachery of his own. Louis XIV had found that these
lusty savages made excellent galley slaves and had ordered
Denonville to secure a supply in Canada. In consequence the
Frenchman seized even friendly Iroquois and sent them over seas
to France. The savages in retaliation exacted a fearful vengeance
in the butchery of French colonists. The bloodiest story in the
annals of Canada is the massacre at Lachine, a village a few
miles above Montreal. On the night of August 4, 1689, fourteen
hundred Iroquois burst in on the village and a wild orgy of
massacre followed. All Canada was in a panic. Some weeks later
Frontenac arrived at Quebec and took command. To the old soldier,
now in his seventieth year, his hard task was not uncongenial. He
had fought the savage Iroquois before and the no less savage
Turk. He belonged to that school of military action which knows
no scruple in its methods, and he was prepared to make war with
all the frightfulness practised by the savages themselves. His
resolute, blustering demeanor was well fitted to impress the red
men of the forest, for an imperious eye will sometimes cow an
Indian as well as a lion, and Frontenac's mien was imperious. In
his life in court and camp he had learned how to command.
The English in New York had professed to be brothers to the
Iroquois and had called them by that name. This title of
equality, however, Frontenac would not yield. Kings speak of "my
people"; Frontenac spoke to the Indians not as his brothers but
as his children and as children of the great King whom he served.
He was their father, their protector, the disposer and controller
of mighty reserves of power, who loved and cared for those
putting their trust in him. He could unbend to play with their
children and give presents to their squaws. At times he seemed
patient, gentle, and forgiving. At times, too, he swaggered and
boasted in terms which the event did not always justify.
La Potherie, a cultivated Frenchman in Canada during Frontenac's
regime, describes an amazing scene at Montreal, which seems to
show that, whether Frontenac recognized the title or not, he had
qualities which made him the real brother of the savages. In 1690
Huron and other Indian allies of the French had come from the far
interior to trade and also to consider the eternal question of
checking the Iroquois. At the council, which began with grave
decorum, a Huron orator begged the French to make no terms with
the Iroquois. Frontenac answered in the high tone which he could
so well assume. He would fight them until they should humbly
crave peace; he would make with them no treaty except in concert
with his Indian allies, whom he would never fail in fatherly
care. To impress the council by the reality of his oneness with
the Indians, Frontenac now seized a tomahawk and brandished it in
the air shouting at the same time the Indian war-song. The whole
assembly, French and Indians, joined in a wild orgy of war
passion, and the old man of seventy, fresh from the court of
Louis XIV, led in the war-dance, yelled with the Indians their
savage war-whoops, danced round the circle of the council, and
showed himself in spirit a brother of the wildest of them. This
was good diplomacy. The savages swore to make war to the end
under his lead. Many a frontier outrage, many a village attacked
in the dead of night and burned, amidst bloody massacre of its
few toil-worn settlers, was to be the result of that strange
mingling of Europe with wild America.
Frontenac's task was to make war on the English and their
Iroquois allies. He had before him the King's instructions as to
the means for effecting this. The King aimed at nothing less than
the conquest of the English colonies in America. In 1664 the
English, by a sudden blow in time of peace, had captured New
Netherland, the Dutch colony on the Hudson, which then became New
York. Now, a quarter of a century later, France thought to strike
a similar blow against the English, and Louis XIV was resolved
that the conquest should be thoroughgoing. The Dutch power had
fallen before a meager naval force. The English now would have to
face one much more formidable. Two French ships were to cross the
sea and to lie in wait near New York. Meanwhile from Canada,
sixteen hundred armed men, a thousand of them French regular
troops, were to advance by land into the heart of the colony,
seize Albany and all the boats there available, and descend by
the Hudson to New York. The warships, hovering off the coast,
would then enter New York harbor at the same time that the land
forces made their attack. The village, for it was hardly more
than this, contained, as the French believed, only some two
hundred houses and four hundred fighting men and it was thought
that a month would suffice to complete this whole work of
conquest. Once victors, the French were to show no pity. All
private property, but that of Catholics, was to be confiscated.
Catholics, whether English or Dutch, were to be left undisturbed
if not too numerous and if they would take the oath of allegiance
to Louis XIV and show some promise of keeping it. Rich
Protestants were to be held for ransom. All the other
inhabitants, except those whom the French might find useful for
their own purposes, were to be driven out of the colony, homeless
wanderers, to be scattered far so that they could not combine to
recover what they had lost. With New York taken, New England
would be so weakened that in time it too would fall. Such was the
plan of conquest which came from the brilliant chambers at
Versailles.
New York did not fall. The expedition so carefully planned came
to nothing. Frontenac had never shown much faith in the
enterprise. At Quebec, on his arrival in the autumn of 1689, he
was planning something less ideally perfect, but certain to
produce results. The scarred old courtier intended so to
terrorize the English that they should make no aggressive
advance, to encourage the French to believe themselves superior
to their rivals, and, above all, to prove to the Indian tribes
that prudence dictated alliance with the French and not with the
English.
Frontenac wrote a tale of blood. There were three war parties;
one set out from Montreal against New York, and one from Three
Rivers and one from Quebec against the frontier settlements of
New Hampshire and Maine. To describe one is to describe all. A
band of one hundred and sixty Frenchmen, with nearly as many
Indians, gathers at Montreal in mid-winter. The ground is deep
with snow and they troop on snowshoes across the white wastes.
Dragging on sleds the needed supplies, they march up the
Richelieu River and over the frozen surface of Lake Champlain. As
they advance with caution into the colony of New York they suffer
terribly, now from bitter cold, now from thaws which make the
soft trail almost impassable. On a February night their scouts
tell them that they are near Schenectady, on the English
frontier. There are young members of the Canadian noblesse in the
party. In the dead of night they creep up to the paling which
surrounds the village. The signal is given and the village is
awakened by the terrible war-whoop. Doors are smashed by axes and
hatchets, and women and children are killed as they lie in bed,
or kneel, shrieking for mercy. Houses are set on fire and living
human beings are thrown into the flames. By midday the assailants
have finished their dread work and are retreating along the
forest paths dragging with them a few miserable captives. In this
winter of 1689-90 raiding parties also came back from the borders
of New Hampshire and of Maine with news of similar exploits, and
Quebec and Montreal glowed with the joy of victory.
Far away an answering attack was soon on foot. Sir William Phips
of Massachusetts, the son of a poor settler on the Kennebec
River, had made his first advance in life by taking up the trade
of carpenter in Boston. Only when grown up had he learned to read
and write. He married a rich wife, and ease of circumstances
freed his mind for great designs. Some fifty years before he was
thus relieved of material cares, a Spanish galleon carrying vast
wealth had been wrecked in the West Indies. Phips now planned to
raise the ship and get the money. For this enterprise he obtained
support in England and set out on his exacting adventure. On the
voyage his crew mutinied. Armed with cutlasses, they told Phips
that he must turn pirate or perish; but he attacked the leader
with his fists and triumphed by sheer strength of body and will.
A second mutiny he also quelled, and then took his ship to
Jamaica where he got rid of its worthless crew. His enterprise
had apparently failed; but the second Duke of Albemarle and other
powerful men believed in him and helped him to make another
trial. This time he succeeded in finding the wreck on the coast
of Hispaniola, and took possession of its cargo of precious
metals and jewels--treasure to the value of three hundred
thousand pounds sterling. Of the spoil Phips himself received
sixteen thousand pounds, a great fortune for a New Englander in
those days. He was also knighted for his services and, in the
end, was named by William and Mary the first royal Governor of
Massachusetts.
Massachusetts, whose people had been thoroughly aroused by the
French incursions, resolved to retaliate by striking at the heart
of Canada by sea and to take Quebec. Sir William Phips, though
not yet made Governor, would lead the expedition. The first blow
fell in Acadia. Phips sailed up the Bay of Fundy and on May 11,
1690, landed a force before Port Royal. The French Governor
surrendered on terms. The conquest was intended to be final, and
the people were offered their lives and property on the condition
of taking, the oath to be loyal subjects of William and Mary.
This many of them did and were left unmolested. It was a
bloodless victory. But Phips, the Puritan crusader, was something
of a pirate. He plundered private property and was himself
accused of taking not merely the silver forks and spoons of the
captive Governor but even his wigs, shirts, garters, and night
caps. The Boston Puritans joyfully pillaged the church at Port
Royal, and overturned the high altar and the images. The booty
was considerable and by the end of May Phips, a prosperous hero,
was back in Boston.
Boston was aflame with zeal to go on and conquer Canada. By the
middle of August Phips had set out on the long sea voyage to
Quebec, with twenty-two hundred men, a great force for a colonial
enterprise of that time, and in all some forty ships. The voyage
occupied more than two months. Apparently the hardy
carpenter-sailor, able enough to carry through a difficult
undertaking with a single ship, lacked the organizing skill to
manage a great expedition. He performed, however, the feat of
navigating safely with his fleet the treacherous waters of the
lower St. Lawrence. On the morning of October 16, 1690, watchers
at Quebec saw the fleet, concerning which they had already been
warned, rounding the head of the Island of Orleans and sailing
into the broad basin. Breathless spectators counted the ships.
There were thirty-four in sight, a few large vessels, some mere
fishing craft. It was a spectacle well calculated to excite and
alarm the good people of Quebec. They might, however, take
comfort in the knowledge that their great Frontenac was present
to defend them. A few days earlier he had been in Montreal, but,
when there had come the startling news of the approach of the
enemy's ships, he had hurried down the river and had been
received with shouts of joy by the anxious populace.
The situation was one well suited to Frontenac's genius for the
dramatic. When a boat under a flag of truce put out from the
English ships, Frontenac hurried four canoes to meet it. The
English envoy was placed blindfold in one of these canoes and was
paddled to the shore. Here two soldiers took him by the arms and
led him over many obstacles up the steep ascent to the Chateau
St. Louis. He could see nothing but could hear the beating of
drums, the blowing of trumpets, the jeers and shouting of a great
multitude in a town which seemed to be full of soldiers and to
have its streets heavily barricaded. When the bandage was taken
from his eyes he found himself in a great room of the Chateau.
Before him stood Frontenac, in brilliant uniform, surrounded by
the most glittering array of officers which Quebec could muster.
The astonished envoy presented a letter from Phips. It was a curt
demand in the name of King William of England for the
unconditional surrender of all "forts and castles" in Canada, of
Frontenac himself, and all his forces and supplies. On such
conditions Phips would show mercy, as a Christian should.
Frontenac must answer within an hour. When the letter had been
read the envoy took a watch from his pocket and pointed out the
time to Frontenac. It was ten o'clock. The reply must be given by
eleven. Loud mutterings greeted the insulting message. One
officer cried out that Phips was a pirate and that his messenger
should be hanged. Frontenac knew well how to deal with such a
situation. He threw the letter in the envoy's face and turned his
back upon him. The unhappy man, who understood French, heard the
Governor give orders that a gibbet should be erected on which he
was to be hanged. When the Bishop and the Intendant pleaded for
mercy, Frontenac seemed to yield. He would not take, he said, an
hour to reply, but would answer at once. He knew no such person
as King William. James, though in exile, was the true King of
England and the good friend of the King of France. There would be
no surrender to a pirate. After this outburst, the envoy asked if
he might have the answer in writing. "No!" thundered Frontenac.
"I will answer only from the mouths of my cannon and with my
musketry!"
Phips could not take Quebec. In carrying out his plans, he was
slow and dilatory. Nature aided his foe. The weather was bad, the
waters before Quebec were difficult, and boats grounded
unexpectedly in a falling tide. Phips landed a force on the north
side of the basin at Beauport but was held in check by French and
Indian skirmishing parties. He sailed his ships up close to
Quebec and bombarded the stronghold, but then, as now, ships were
impotent against well-served land defenses. Soon Phips was short
of ammunition. A second time he made a landing in order to attack
Quebec from the valley of the St. Charles but French regulars
fought with militia and Indians to drive off his forces. Phips
held a meeting with his officers for prayer. Heaven, however,
denied success to his arms. If he could not take Quebec, it was
time to be gone, for in the late autumn the dangers of the St.
Lawrence are great. He lay before Quebec for just a week and on
the 23d of October sailed away. It was late in November when his
battered fleet began to straggle into Boston. The ways of God had
not proved as simple as they had seemed to the Puritan faith, for
the stronghold of Satan had not fallen before the attacks of the
Lord's people. There were searchings of heart, recriminations,
and financial distress in Boston.
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