The Passing of New France

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CHRONICLES OF CANADA
Edited by George M. Wrong and H. H. Langton
In thirty-two volumes

Volume 10

THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE
A Chronicle of Montcalm

By WILLIAM WOOD

TORONTO, 1915

CHAPTER I

MONTCALM IN FRANCE
1712-1756

'War is the grave of the Montcalms.' No one can tell how
old this famous saying is. Perhaps it is as old as France
herself. Certainly there never was a time when the men
of the great family of Montcalm-Gozon were not ready to
fight for their king and country; and so Montcalm, like
Wolfe, was a soldier born.

Even in the Crusades his ancestors were famous all over
Europe. When the Christians of those brave days were
trying to drive the unbelievers out of Palestine they
gladly followed leaders whom they thought saintly and
heroic enough to be their champions against the dragons
of sultan, satan, and hell; for people then believed that
dragons fought on the devil's side, and that only Christian
knights, like St George, fighting on God's side, could
kill them. The Christians banded themselves together in
many ways, among others in the Order of the Knights of
St John of Jerusalem, taking an oath to be faithful unto
death. They chose the best man among them to be their
Grand Master; and so it could have been only after much
devoted service that Deodat de Gozon became Grand Master,
more than five hundred years ago, and was granted the
right of bearing the conquered Dragon of Rhodes on the
family coat of arms, where it is still to be seen. How
often this glorious badge of victory reminded our own
Montcalm of noble deeds and noble men! How often it nerved
him to uphold the family tradition!

There are centuries of change between Crusaders and
Canadians. Yet the Montcalms can bridge them with their
honour. And, among all the Montcalms who made their name
mean soldier's honour in Eastern or European war, none
have given it so high a place in the world's history as
the hero whose life and death in Canada made it immortal.
He won the supreme glory for his name, a glory so bright
that it shone even through the dust of death which shrouded
the France of the Revolution. In 1790, when the National
Assembly was suppressing pensions granted by the Crown,
it made a special exception in favour of Montcalm's
children. As kings, marquises, heirs, and pensions were
among the things the Revolution hated most, it is a
notable tribute to our Marquis of Montcalm that the
revolutionary parliament should have paid to his heirs
the pension granted by a king. Nor has another century
of change in France blotted out his name and fame. The
Montcalm was the French flagship at the naval review held
in honour of the coronation of King Edward VII. The
Montcalm took the President of France to greet his ally
the Czar of Russia. And, but for a call of duty elsewhere
at the time, the Montcalm would have flown the French
admiral's flag in 1908, at the celebration of the
Tercentenary of the founding of Quebec, when King George
V led the French- and English-speaking peoples of the
world in doing honour to the twin renown of Wolfe and
Montcalm on the field where they won equal glory, though
unequal fortune.

Montcalm was a leap-year baby, having been born on February
29, 1712, in the family castle of Candiac, near Nimes,
a very old city of the south of France, a city with many
forts built by the Romans two thousand years ago. He came
by almost as much good soldier blood on his mother's side
as on his father's, for she was one of the Castellanes,
with numbers of heroic ancestors, extending back to the
First Crusade.

The Montcalms had never been rich. They had many heroes
but no millionaires. Yet they were well known and well
loved for their kindness to all the people on their
estates; and so generous to every one in trouble, and so
ready to spend their money as well as their lives for
the sake of king and country, that they never could have
made great fortunes, even had their estate been ten times
as large as it was. Accordingly, while they were famous
and honoured all over France, they had to be very careful
about spending money on themselves. They all--and our
own Montcalm in particular--spent much more in serving
their country than their country ever spent in paying
them to serve it.

Montcalm was a delicate little boy of six when he first
went to school. He had many schoolboy faults. He found
it hard to keep quiet or to pay attention to his teacher;
he was backward in French grammar; and he wrote a very
bad hand. Many a letter of complaint was sent to his
father. 'It seems to me,' writes the teacher, 'that his
handwriting is getting worse than ever. I show him, again
and again, how to hold his pen; but he will not do it
properly. I think he ought to try to make up for his want
of cleverness by being more docile, taking more pains,
and listening to my advice.' And then poor old Dumas
would end with an exclamation of despair--'What will
become of him!'

Dumas had another pupil who was much more to his taste.
This was Montcalm's younger brother, Jean, who knew his
letters before he was three, read Latin when he was five,
and Greek and Hebrew when he was six. Dumas was so proud
of this infant prodigy that he took him to Paris and
showed him off to the learned men of the day, who were
dumbfounded at so much knowledge in so young a boy. All
this, however, was too much for a youthful brain; and
poor Jean died at the age of seven.

Dumas then turned sadly to the elder boy, who was in no
danger of being killed by too much study, and soon renewed
his complaints. At last Montcalm, now sixteen and already
an officer, could bear it no longer, and wrote to his
father telling him that in spite of his supposed stupidity
he had serious aims. 'I want to be, first, a man of
honour, brave, and a good Christian. Secondly, I want to
read moderately; to know as much Greek and Latin as other
men; also arithmetic, history, geography, literature,
and some art and science. Thirdly, I want to be obedient
to you and my dear mother; and listen to Mr Dumas's
advice. Lastly, I want to manage a horse and handle a
sword as well as ever I can.' The result of it all was
that Montcalm became a good Latin scholar, a very well
read man, an excellent horseman and swordsman, and--to
dominie Dumas's eternal confusion--such a master of French
that he might have been as great an author as he was a
soldier. His letters and dispatches from the seat of war
remind one of Caesar's. He wrote like a man who sees into
the heart of things and goes straight to the point with
the fewest words which will express exactly what he wishes
to say. In this he was like Wolfe, and like many another
great soldier whose quick eye, cool head and warm heart,
all working together in the service of his country, give
him a command over words which often equals his command
over men.

In 1727, the year Wolfe was born, Montcalm joined his
father's regiment as an ensign. Presently, in 1733, the
French and Germans fell out over the naming of a king
for Poland. Montcalm went to the front and had what French
soldiers call his 'baptism of fire.' This war gave him
little chance of learning how great battles should be
fought. But he saw two sieges; he kept his eyes open to
everything that happened; and, even in camp, he did not
forget his studies. 'I am learning German,' he wrote
home, 'and I am reading more Greek than I have read for
three or four years.'

The death of his father in 1735 made him the head of the
family of Montcalm. The next year he married Angelique
Talon du Boulay, a member of a military family, and
grand-daughter of Denis Talon; a kinsman of Jean Talon,
the best intendant who ever served New France. For the
next twenty years, from 1736 to 1756, he spent in his
ancestral castle of Candiac as much of his time as he
could spare from the army. There he had been born, and
there he always hoped he could live and die among his
own people after his wars were over. How often he was to
sigh for one look at his pleasant olive groves when he
was far away, upholding the honour of France against
great British odds and, far worse, against secret enemies
on the French side in the dying colony across the sea!
But for the present all this was far off. Meanwhile,
Candiac was a very happy home; and Montcalm's wife and
his mother made it the happier by living together under
the same roof. In course of time ten children were born,
all in the family chateau.

Montcalm's second war was the War of the Austrian
Succession, a war in which his younger opponent Wolfe
saw active service for the first time. The two future
opponents in Canada never met, however, on the same
battlefields in Europe. In 1741, the year in which Wolfe
received his first commission, Montcalm fought so well
in Bohemia that he was made a Knight of St Louis. Two
years later, at the age of thirty-one, he was promoted
to the command of a regiment which he led through three
severe campaigns in Italy. During the third campaign, in
1746, there was a terrific fight against the Austrians
under the walls of Placentia. So furious was the Austrian
attack that the French army was almost destroyed. Twice
was Montcalm's regiment broken by sheer weight of numbers.
But twice he rallied it and turned to face the enemy
again. The third attack was the worst of all. Montcalm
still fought on, though already he had three bullet
wounds, when the Austrian cavalry made a dashing charge
and swept the French off the field altogether. He met
them, sword in hand, as dauntless as ever; but he was
caught in a whirlwind of sabre-cuts and was felled to
the ground with two great gashes in his head. He was
taken prisoner; but was soon allowed to go home, on giving
his word of honour, or 'parole,' that he would take no
further part in the war until some Austrian prisoner, of
the same rank as his own, was given back by the French
in exchange. While still on parole he was promoted to be
a brigadier, so that he could command more than a single
regiment. In due time, when proper exchange of prisoners
was made, Montcalm went back to Italy, again fought
splendidly, and again was badly wounded. The year 1748
closed with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle; and seven
years of peace followed before the renewed tumult of the
Seven Years' War.

Life went very well with Montcalm at Candiac. He was
there as much as possible, and spent his time between
his castle and his olive groves, his study and his family
circle. His eldest son was a young man of much promise,
growing immensely tall, devoted to the army, and engaged
to be married. His wife and her mother-in-law were as
happy as ever with him and with each other. Nothing seemed
more peaceful than that quiet corner in the pleasant land
of southern France.

But the age-long rivalry of French and British could not
long be stilled. Even in 1754 there were rumours of war
from the Far East in India and from the Far West in
Canada. Next year, though peace was outwardly kept in
Europe, both the great rivals sent fleets and armies to
America, where the clash of arms had already been heard.
There were losses on both sides. And, when the French
general, Baron Dieskau, was made prisoner, the minister of
War, knowing the worth of Montcalm, asked him to think over
the proposal that he should take command in New France.

On January 26, 1756, the formal offer came in a letter
approved by the king. 'The king has chosen you to command
his troops in North America, and will honour you on your
departure with the rank of major-general. But what will
please you still more is that His Majesty will put your
son in your place at the head of your present regiment.
The applause of the public will add to your satisfaction.'

On the very day Montcalm received this letter he made up
his mind, accepted the command, bade good-bye to Candiac,
and set out for Paris. From Lyons he wrote to his mother:
'I am reading with much pleasure the History of New France
by Father Charlevoix. He gives a pleasant description of
Quebec.' From Paris he wrote to his wife: 'Do not expect
any long letter before the 1st of March. All my pressing
work will then be finished, and I shall be able to breathe
once more. Last night I came from Versailles and I am
going back to-morrow. My outfit will cost me a thousand
crowns more than the amount I am paid to cover it. But
I cannot stop for that.' On March 15 he wrote home:
'Yesterday I presented my son, with whom I am very well
pleased, to all the royal family.' Three days later he
wrote to his wife: 'I shall be at Brest on the twenty-first.
My son has been here since yesterday, for me to coach
him and also in order to get his uniform properly made.
He will thank the king for his promotion at the same time
that I make my adieux in my embroidered coat. Perhaps I
shall leave some debts behind me. I wait impatiently for
the accounts. You have my will. I wish you would have it
copied, and would send me the duplicate before I sail.'

On April 3 Montcalm left Brest in the Licorne, a ship of
the little fleet which the French were hurrying out to
Canada before war should be declared in Europe. The
passage proved long and stormy. But Montcalm was lucky
in being a much better sailor than his great opponent
Wolfe. Impatient to reach the capital at the earliest
possible moment he rowed ashore from below the island of
Orleans, where the Licorne met a contrary wind, and drove
up to Quebec, a distance of twenty-five miles. It was
May 13 when he first passed along the Beauport shore
between Montmorency and Quebec. Three years and nine days
later he was to come back to that very point, there to
make his last heroic stand.

On the evening of his arrival Bigot the intendant gave
a magnificent dinner-party for him. Forty guests sat down
to the banquet. Montcalm had not expected that the poor
struggling colony could boast such a scene as this. In
a letter home he said: 'Even a Parisian would have been
astonished at the profusion of good things on the table.
Such splendour and good cheer show how much the intendant's
place is worth.' We shall soon hear more of Bigot the
intendant.

On the 26th Montcalm arrived at Montreal to see the
Marquis of Vaudreuil the governor. The meeting went off
very well. The governor was as full of airs and graces
as the intendant, and said that nothing else in the world
could have given him so much pleasure as to greet the
general sent out to take command of the troops from
France. We shall soon hear more of Vaudreuil the governor.

CHAPTER II

MONTCALM IN CANADA
1756

The French colonies in North America consisted of nothing
more than two very long and very thin lines of scattered
posts and settlements, running up the St Lawrence and
the Mississippi to meet, in the far interior, at the
Great Lakes. Along the whole of these four thousand miles
there were not one hundred thousand people. Only two
parts of the country were really settled at all: one
Acadia, the other the shores of the St Lawrence between
Bic and Montreal; and both regions together covered not
more than four hundred of the whole four thousand miles.
There were but three considerable towns--Louisbourg,
Quebec, and Montreal--and Quebec, which was much the
largest, had only twelve thousand inhabitants.

The territory bordering on the Mississippi was called
Louisiana. That in the St Lawrence region was called New
France along the river and Acadia down by the Gulf; though
Canada is much the best word to cover both. Now, Canada
had ten times as many people as Louisiana; and Louisiana
by itself seemed helplessly weak. This very weakness made
the French particularly anxious about the country south
of the Lakes, where Canada and Louisiana met. For, so
long as they held it, they held the gateways of the West,
kept the valleys of the Ohio and Mississippi quite
securely, shut up the British colonies between the
Alleghany Mountains and the Atlantic and prevented them
from expanding westward. One other thing was even more
vital than this to the French in America: it was that
they should continue to hold the mouth of the St Lawrence.
Canada could live only by getting help from France; and
as this help could not come up the Mississippi it had to
come up the St Lawrence.

The general position of the French may be summed up
briefly. First, and most important of all, they had to
hold the line of the St Lawrence for a thousand miles in
from the sea. Here were their three chief positions:
Louisbourg, Quebec, and Lake Champlain.

Secondly, they had to hold another thousand miles westward,
to and across the Lakes; but especially the country south
of Lakes Ontario and Erie, into the valley of the Ohio.
Here there were a few forts, but no settlements worth
speaking of.

Thirdly, they had to hold the valley of the Mississippi,
two thousand miles from north to south. Here there were
very few forts, very few men, and no settlements of any
kind. In fact, they held the Mississippi only by the
merest thread, and chiefly because the British colonies
had not yet grown out in that direction. The Mississippi
did not come into the war, though it might have done so.
If Montcalm had survived the battle of the Plains, and
if in 1760 the defence of Canada on the St Lawrence had
seemed to him utterly hopeless, his plan would probably
then have been to take his best soldiers from Canada into
the interior, and in the end to New Orleans, there to
make a last desperate stand for France among the swamps.
But this plan died with him; and we may leave the valley
of the Mississippi out of our reckoning altogether.

Not so the valley of the Ohio, which, as we have seen,
was the meeting-place of Canada and Louisiana, and the
chief gateway to the West; and which the French and
British rivals were both most fiercely set on possessing.
It was here that the world-wide Seven Years' War first
broke out; here that George Washington first appeared as
an American commander; here that Braddock led the first
westbound British army; and here that Montcalm struck
his first blow for French America.

But, as we have also seen, even the valley of the Ohio
was less important than the line of the St Lawrence. The
Ohio region was certainly the right arm of French America.
But the St Lawrence was the body, of which the lungs were
Louisbourg, and the head and heart Quebec. Montcalm saw
this at once; and he made no single mistake in choosing
the proper kind of attack and defence during the whole
of his four campaigns.

The British colonies were different in every way from
the French. The French held a long, thin line of four
thousand miles, forming an inland loop from the Gulf of
St Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico, with only one hundred
thousand people sparsely settled in certain spots; the
British filled up the solid inside of this loop with over
twelve hundred thousand people, who had an open seaboard
on the Atlantic for two thousand miles, from Nova Scotia
down to Florida.

Now, what could have made such a great difference in
growth between the French and the British colonies, when
France had begun with all the odds of European force and
numbers in her favour? The answer is two-fold: France
had no adequate fleets and her colonies had no adequate
freedom.

First, as to fleets. The mere fact that the Old and New
Worlds had a sea between them meant that the power with
the best navy would have a great advantage. The Portuguese,
Spaniards, Dutch, and French all tried to build empires
across the sea. But they all failed whenever they came
to blows with Britain, simply because no empire can live
cut up into separate parts. The sea divided the other
empires, while, strange as it may appear, this same sea
united the British. The French were a nation of landsmen;
for one very good reason that they had two land frontiers
to defend. Their kings and statesmen understood armies
better than navies, and the French people themselves liked
soldiers better than sailors. The British, on the other
hand, since they lived on an island, had no land frontiers
to defend. The people liked sailors better than soldiers.
And their rulers understood navies better than armies,
for the sea had always been the people's second home.

At this period, whenever war broke out, the British navy
was soon able to win 'the command of the sea'; that is,
its squadrons soon made the sea a safe road for British
ships and a very unsafe road for the ships of an enemy.
In America, at that time, everything used in war, from
the regular fleets and armies themselves down to the
powder and shot, cannon and muskets, swords and bayonets,
tools, tents, and so on--all had to be brought across
the Atlantic. While this was well enough for the British,
for the French it was always very hard and risky work. In
time of war their ships were watched, chased and taken
whenever they appeared on the sea. Even during peace they
had much the worse of it, for they had to spend great sums
and much effort in building vessels to make up for the
men of-war and the merchant ships which they had lost and
the British had won. Thus they never quite succeeded in
beginning again on even terms with their triumphant rival.

We must remember, too, that every sort of trade and
money-making depended on the command of the sea, which
itself depended on the stronger navy. Even the trade with
Indians in America, two thousand miles inland, depended
on defeat or victory at sea. The French might send out
ships full of things to exchange for valuable furs. But
if they lost their ships they lost their goods, and in
consequence the trade and even the friendship of the
Indians. In the same way the navy helped or hindered the
return trade from America to Europe. The furs and food
from the British colonies crossed over in safety, and
the money or other goods in exchange came safely back.
But the French ships were not safe, and French merchants
were often ruined by the capture of their ships or by
having the sea closed to them.

To follow out all the causes and effects of the command
of the sea would be far too long a story even to begin
here. But the gist of it is quite short and quite plain:
no Navy, no Empire. That is what it meant then, and that
is what it means now.

Secondly, as to freedom in the French colonies. Of course,
freedom itself, no matter how good it is and how much we
love it, would have been nothing without the protection
of fleets. All the freedom in the world cannot hold two
countries on opposite sides of the sea together without
the link of strong fleets. But even the strongest fleet
would not have helped New France to grow as fast and as
well as New England grew. The French people were not free
in the motherland. They were not free as colonists in
Canada. All kinds of laws and rules were made for the
Canadians by persons thousands of miles away. This
interference came from men who knew scarcely anything
about Canada. They had crude notions as to what should
be done, and sometimes they ordered the men on the spot
to do impossible things. The result was that the men on
the spot, if they were bad enough and clever enough, just
hoodwinked the government in France, and did in Canada
what they liked and what made for their own profit.

Now, Bigot the intendant, the man of affairs in the
colony, was on the spot; and he was one of the cleverest
knaves ever known, with a feeble colony in his power. He
had nothing to fear from the people, the poor, helpless
French Canadians. He had nothing to fear from their
governor, the vain, incompetent Vaudreuil. He was,
moreover, three thousand miles away from the French court,
which was itself full of parasites. He had been given
great power in Canada. As intendant he was the head of
everything except the army, the navy, and the church. He
had charge of all the public money and all the public
works and whatever else might be called public business.
Of course, he was supposed to look after the interests
of France and of Canada, not after his own; and earlier
intendants like Talon had done this with perfect honesty.
But Bigot soon organized a gang of men like himself, and
gathered into his grasping hands the control of the
private as well as of the public business.

One example will show how he worked. Whenever food became
dangerously scarce in Canada the intendant's duty was to
buy it up, to put it into the king's stores, and to sell
out only enough for the people to live on till the danger
was over. There was a reason for this, as Canada, cut
off from France, was like a besieged fortress, and it
was proper to treat the people as a garrison would be
treated, and to make provision for the good of the whole.
But when Bigot had formed his gang, and had, in some way,
silenced Vaudreuil, he declared Canada in danger when it
was not, seized all the food he could lay hands on, and
sent it over to France; sent it, too, in the king's ships,
that it might be carried free. Then he made Vaudreuil
send word to the king that Canada was starving. In the
meantime, his friends in France had stored the food, and
had then assured the king that there was plenty of grain
in hand which they could ship to Canada at once. The next
step was to get an order from the king to buy this food
to be shipped to Canada. This order was secured through
influential friends in Paris, and, of course, the price
paid by the king was high. The food was then sent back
to Canada, again in the king's ships. Then Bigot and his
friends in Canada put it not into the king's but into
their own stores in Quebec, sold it to the king's stores
once more, as they had sold it in France, and then effected
a third sale, this time to the wretched French Canadians
from whom they had bought it for next to nothing at first.
Thus both the king and the French Canadians were each
robbed twice over, thanks to Vaudreuil's complaisance and
Bigot's official position as also representing the king.

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